Just heard on the 6am news there’s a push for privately managed isolation facilities.
OMG, are we impervious to lessons from Victoria? Do we really want a clusterfuck like Melbourne here?
The government may not be perfect in its management of quarantine, but if a problem arises they can throw money at it. A private firm will inevitably cut corners to make more profit.
Keep capitalism far away from our boarder protection management – please!
Yep, the richies want to be in charge / making profit while the rest of us take all the risks and get "jobs jobs jobs" (at minimum wage, zero-hours, no security and be grateful for it you miserable peasants)
So they want to bring in their rich mates supposedly to fix the economy? Well after 30 odd years of this stuff the bulk of the population could barely fund themselves for a 4 week stay at home – so as far as I am concerned its a failed idea and they can get stuffed. Just like private quarantine is a failed idea.
Why does the news media give so much time to just 20 people – when they are like this one.Deplatform them. Why on earth did he get one of the quarantine spaces after not bothering to be here for 2 decades.
Among them was Pooj Prenna, who recently returned to New Zealand with his family, after 20 years overseas.
And why does Helen Clark continue to want to be associated with these people. She's starting to look like Tony Blair- can't some one have a word with her.
And Prenna after 20 years out of the country and not bothering he comes back and gets an invitation to the forum and starts to tell the rest of us what to do. Well lets tax him on his worldwide interests. (appears to be a silicon valley capitalist)
Why does the news media give so much time to just 20 people
Because they're rich.
And why does Helen Clark continue to want to be associated with these people.
She may have been principled when she opposed the purchase of the Airforce strike fighters but since then she's been in government where had to collude with business to get anything done. Basically, she's drunk the cool-aid that its business that does things and not government.
Yeah I get the rich bit – but there's more of us than them and we are the one's that are gunna vote. And since the rich have done little for the masses these last 30 years we certainly aren't going to be much poorer if we ignore them now or preferably charge them some real high taxes.
And ignore them we should.
Actually the taxes should be the push back. All reporters should ask these over entitled bods if they are willing to stump up more in taxes.
And as I say regardless of how much kool aid Helen has drunk she needs to stop making the life of the current labour party more difficult. She is being used by these righties as cover for the hard right agenda behind their views.
So Key and co would like to make money out of isolation and quarantine? (Never waste a crisis..Right!!)
Where is their billion dollars each insurance against failure?(No insurance against a pandemic usually, and we don't want Private collection of Profits and Public paying for failures)
Which hospitals will be used if and when they let the virus in? Private?/Public???
Would they charge people to use their hospitals?
Whose country do they plan to poach Doctors and Nurses from?
Where will they obtain their testing kits PPE and general staff?
Yeah, agree with that 100%. I have never ever heard so much fucking winging by the right since this virus thing has started. The so-called rugged everybody stands on their own two feet, no such thing as a free lunch no passengers in this world etc etc etc right are there for assistance and handouts until you want to fucking vomit. Every time I hear the news there is some other right-wing prat winging how hard done by they are, and how MUCH better they can do it, or what a stuff up this administration has caused.
The next catch cry is going to be Private Enterprise can do everything SOOOOOO much better than governments and controlling the quarantine is just another one of them. Well if this administration buckles and allows private enterprise to run it. there have to be some strict ground rules. For starters, if any person breaks out of a privately run quarantine, the company running the isolation is instantly fined $100 000 to cover the cost of the police having to apprehend the offender and also creating the risk of spreading the virus in the community.
No private quarantine would be one election platform I'd really like. I'd be furious if they buckled – this is an opportunity to do things so much better for all the rest of us.If there had to be a punishment then I'd have the personal guarantees of all this crowd – any breach they get slung out off the country.
I'd like to think the government is testing public opinion regularly.
I consider $100,000 a very low and therefore "unsuitable fine", because the private company would include this into the costs running the operation.
How about every "business leader", including ex-PM Helen Clark, John Key, that wants to open the borders or a private organisation running the quarantine for economical gains put their bodies where their big mouth is (see newspaper, radio TV etc.)… for each "escape" at least one year prison for the glorious business leaders in case of non-infection, increased to at least five years in case of causing community transmission?
Would be interesting to see how many would still promoting it.
Covid 19 coronavirus: Travellers would not escape quarantine under National, Judith Collins says
…
People would not be escaping quarantine and managed isolation if National was in charge, leader Judith Collins says.
Collins said on Newstalk ZB this morning she had "zero tolerance" for coronavirus, and that Covid-19 "simply would not be allowed in" under her party's watch.
I guess they have snipers shooting escapees? Or National party members patrolling around the facilities.
Oh, and the virus definitely doesn't care about Judith Collins.
You know the only reason Collins wants to spend up large on Wellingtons roads was because of the traffic congestion which made her late for a hair appointment.
Time for some of these peeps to get with the plot.
Actually, I'm quite happy for them to not get the plot and the longer the better. That way they continue to prove that they're last centuries problems just trying to hang on to being relevant and, most importantly, not a solution to today's issues.
Very good idea satty, but I prefer my idea otherwise it will cost us money keeping the parasites in prison unless part of their sentence is that they pay for their own jail time. Good idea though.
…. and put all the returning kiwis in Jucy vans to free up the best hotels for wealthy tourists and students – and the spokesperson for this idea is the Jucy owner.
That actually isn't a bad idea Matiri. We don't want to let prejudice about business blind us to where they can be directly useful in times of crisis like this.
Privately run managed isolation… you mean like quarantining people in private hotels and paying them to manage the day to day issues? Huh, we should have thought of that sooner. /sarcasm
Of course not. She wants a mixture of containers and tents on Sommes Island run jointly by SERCO and MSD and to be able to shoot those who get too sick then bury them in the harbour. One of the most clear-thinking, strategic and pragmatic leaders we’ve ever had.
So the people behind this are the Alpe’s, that’s Jucy. They are most likely in the crap right now.
Key was prompting this a few days ago, wearing which hat, ANZ chair, or his personal interest.
A few questions need to be asked about what’s going on here, and who’s interests are being prompted. It’s looking like a select few before the wider New Zealand
It’s looking like a select few before the wider New Zealand
It is. To manage the population the capitalists need to manage what information that the population is getting and that's the job for the privately owned MSM.
"Why don't we let in rich Americans who want to build a house in New Zealand? Who cares? They're in Mangawhai or somewhere, they are going to create thousands of jobs.
"Why do we care if someone who lives in New York wants to spend $10 million building a house in Auckland, using NZ craftsmen and NZ tradespeople?"
Why do we care if rich Americans put even more pressure on our recourses using scarce tradespeople to build houses that will likely sit empty? Good god John Key is so stupid! It’s no wonder the housing problem became a crisis under his watch. The man is so blinded by his own self-interest that he simply cannot see the bigger picture."
John Key is so full of it. Why would they create thousands of jobs?
I think you'll find that by "houses" Key means "castles" and by "jobs" he means "serfdom". All that mountainous Central Otago landscape isn't going to plough and plant itself with wheat now is it ? — @brettroberts
Someone went to the trouble of actually working out the numbers that Key and pals couldn’t be bothered with. Guess what, it doesn’t add up
OMG, are we impervious to lessons from Victoria? Do we really want a clusterfuck like Melbourne here?
The capitalists want in of the money that the government is spending and, considering that it is a necessary service, they'll be able to low bid to get the job and then ramp up the expenses to make a higher profit.
Think this needs to be viewed in the context of NZs primary economic strategy which exists across parties (and may explain the involvement of the likes of Key and Clark, strange bedfellows indeed)…..growth via population.
Watching Weka scramble around on the Standard trying to beg left wing voters to vote Greens is glorious isn’t it? It’s like Green activists spend 3 years alienating the electorate and then realise months before the election that their woke middle class identity politics virtue signalling hasn’t won them any friends. Surprise, surprise.
Unfair to blame Weka for the Greens seeming woke. Censoring an 80 year old feminist because the alphabet soup tribe claimed she hurt their feelings was a collective idiocy, for which they are still evading moral responsibility. Given enough rope, the Green leftists used it to hang themselves, using the old rationale `if we don't hang together, we'll hang separately. Their belief system did them in – can't blame individuals.
If Labour don’t win an outright majority, the Green negotiating team will need to prioritise the policy they want passed in the first 100 days so they can show voters meaningful change and don’t end up in the same position of barely getting over 5% they are in now. That would require the kind of strategic forward thinking the Greens haven’t managed to show over the last 3 years.
This notion of Bomber’s that any group of leftists are innately capable of strategic thinking seems suspiciously like blind faith. I haven't seen leftists in Aotearoa do it ever, and I've been watching them since the late 1960s.
Fuck Bomber, I'm ex Mana ex Māori Party ex Alliance voting Greens (I did last election too). People like him, Tau Henare, NZ1st & the rabid RWs fearmongering over the Greens just strengthens my resolve.
Me too! And I hope that the Labour part of the coalition is nudged along by some of the Greens policies, in an 'aiming for the moon but might it hit a star' way as part of a consensus….but always the direction is forward.
All Parties in NZ have to be poked with a stick to stick to their supposed goal of doing the best for NZ. I've voted Greens for yonks and mixed with good people, but many tend to be loving of the environment, and looking at people as if they have invaded Eden.
The problem with such lefties is the tendency to spout high-minded stuff about green matters, and follow the latest thought on how to be, but all having different ideas about how those thoughts should be infused in real-life practices. More discussion needed to be done about how, and how practically to reach the established and tabled goals, and just how many ethical barriers should be included or put aside as being too precious. It may be that there is a more pragmatic and robust side to the Greens with Shaw, I hope so.
Bomber is a jackass. So removed from any relevancy he used to have back in the late 1990's and early 2000's as to become more a sideshow than anything serious
A pre moderated blog that lets misogynist comments through from idiots who aren't allowed to post here anymore. Not a great claim to fame for a left leaning blog.
And despite all that really important stuff from a wide range of writers, the true worth of the site is laid bare by what’s permitted under the topics in the comments.
it may surprise you that many blogs are written for readers not commenters. I don't like the commenting policy there either, but plenty of people don't like TS' policy 😉
It doesn't surprise me, why would it? I know the purpose of blogs/media/social pretentiousness etc, yet I still think the moderators allowing posts through underneath topics, like calling you "a bitch", for example, doesn't leave TDB with much left wing credibility, unless you think those readers you're talking about don't view the comments, or it doesn't matter if they do.
If I authored topics there, I'd be pretty vocal about what the moderators are happy to pass under Bradbury's posts. I'd be wondering if they really had a left wing core underneath the important stuff if they let shit like that pass. Maybe some of them will write something and show some lefty credentials.
Next time someone uses the bitch word here I'll be all over it, but I'm not sure if most people don't read the comments, and definitely not convinced that would be enough of an excuse to permit that sort of crap anyway.
Regardless, an interesting editorial position from someone running one of the leading left wing blogs in NZ.
No I was talking about the relevance he used to have which has diminished considerably. But whatever – I don't have enough skin in this game to carry on
I think you might put it more like this John S, that Bomber keeps looking and thinking and remembering that we have come right through the 20th century and mucked it up. He has had to change from what was thought relevant then. Perhaps it is you who are trailing behind in a cloud of exhaust and nostalgia. There is no blame on you if you are as many of us have that problem. But it has to be overcome, so keep those cogs whirring.
The transie crowd then went ahead and cancelled Jill because their feelings got hurt
As a gay man I have no time for the transie crowd calling me tranphobic because I don't see transmen as men. They're not. And for them to try and force me to see them as men, is outright homophobic.
I'm gay because that's what nature decreed. I have no sexual attraction to women. It's very much 100% toward men. A man has a penis. Transmen do not. They may have an imitation penis but at the end of the day, they are still biologically female. All the testosterone pills in the world will not change that fundamental fact of science.
To have transmen decry me as transphobic because I have no sexual attraction to them makes them homophobic by denying my reality. Transmen (and transwomen) are not men or women and shouldn't be so quick to lambast homosexuals because we have no sexual attraction toward them. That's homophobic and denies our biochemical response. I have met transmen, and there's an innate reaction to them and recognition that they're actually female, and not truly male. Pheromones make all the difference.
Trans people can feel who they are, but their current MO of criticising homosexuals as transphobic because we are same sex attracted, is why there is such antipathy in a large section of the gay community towards trans activists. It does appear that the worst activists are straight men who would never themselves, sleep with a transwoman because again, heterosexuality has an element of sexual attraction. A straight man can't have a family with a transwoman unless it's an adopted family. I've never had a definitive answer from any straight male activist as to whether they would sleep with a transwomen, yet some of them have said they would sleep with a transman which just goes to show that if there's a vagina, and not a penis, a straight man really is sexually attracted to the female genitalia, rather than male.
The argument is far more nuanced than the simplistic "transwomen are women" or "transmen are men" argument that is constantly peddled. Of course you can't really have a good discussion about it and explain your viewpoint without activists generally leaping straight to "you're transphobic" rather than appreciate that it's far more complex than they appreciate.
I have a transexual aunty, and I also have transgender friends. I have no problem with them. I do have a problem with activists ignoring the fact that homosexuality is "same sex" and not "same gender" attraction, by and large.
that's a really good explanation of that side of it thanks.
I'll add that the terms 'woman' and 'man' get used differently by different people. Here you clearly use them to mean biological sex. Sometimes people use the terms to mean gender/roles rather than bio sex.
(yep, that's a whole can of worms, just wanted to bring it into the discussion because it's such a sticking point and point of people talking past each other).
The two separate meanings present a massive impediment to public debate. Unfortunately the debating tactic of claiming that, the alternate positions use of the terms imposes unacceptable context on the discussion, is common.
Frequently this extends as far a claiming a biological (scientific) understanding is anti-trans (or in other contexts sexist, racist etc…).
But the only likely outcome when this happens is both sides will talk past each other because their terms are mutually incompatible. Usually this just insulates the two arguments from each other rather than leading to allowing a challenge to either sides positions.
In order to understand how this came about it may be important to consider that post-modern philosophical underpinnings of many of these radical ideas reject both logic and a scientific understanding of the world and instead begin by claiming reality is constructed by some form of widely shared beliefs (also called a social construct). Were this true then it does follow that somebody could/can change sex by imagining it to be so and convincing sufficient others to believe it so.
My observation is that both sides of the war have weaponised semantics, as you say they each use the words their own way when speaking to each other* and as well as making useful communication possible it creates a lot of aggro.
I understand why each side has done that, and the issues are actually complex beneath the semantics, but it's hard to see how any progress can be made while this continues (and I think it will).
*as well as to everyone else, so people coming to the debate fresh end up completely confused. Also, society has historically used the term gender and sex interchangeably so much that now there is a new meaning for gender we don't even have consistent language in law now.
There are some significant problems with the trans movement, that aggressive trans activists (TRAs) tend to gloss over, outlined thoughtfully by J K Rowling.
Yeah, I like the clarity of your analysis too James. I came across this recently:
Third gender, or third sex, is a concept in which individuals are categorized, either by themselves or by society, as neither man nor woman. It is also a social category present in societies that recognize three or more genders. The term third is usually understood to mean "other"; some anthropologists and sociologists have described fourth, fifth, and "some" genders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender
Quite an eye-opener for me, it was. I had no idea of the deep context documented by professional researchers.
Clearly there's a realistic basis for public policy around urinals: addition of a third option to the traditional binary. Existence of the biological third option defeats the habitual binary when identified in so many diverse cultural contexts & throughout history.
while it makes sense that most straight men won't be bothered, there's a clear conflict between some trans activist politics and women's sex-based rights. My suggestion at this point is, if you are new to this debate, to take a step back and be willing to be on a steep learning curve around gender, sex, and the TA/gender critical feminist war. It's complex, and the clusterfuck of the debate is nothing like I have seen anywhere else in 40+ years of politics. If you are not new, then you already know what I am talking about and your question is a set up.
So early in the morning! Can you keep your edge right till election time? Please – it sharpens the conversation. What sif you don’t like cauliflower, broccoli is very very good for you and greener.
Sewing the seeds of discontent the left uniting is a very unusual occurence .It seems the right have been afflicted badly by the aberration more recently airing their Dirty linen(politics) in public.
Given enough rope, the Green ideological leftists idiots used it to hang themselves, using the old rationale `if we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately. Their belief system did them in – can’t blame individuals.
With my little adaptation in the quote, that is a good description of my views on Bomber and his ilk with their lack of toleration for ideas outside of their MAD silos. Same for those massive numbers of factional warriors in their little in groups on the right or religions or even amongst scientific and academic communities or in whole industries.
Since the 1970s I’ve watched with awe at the ability of a lot of ideologues of many ilks to dance on the head of a pin to gain their own position whereby they can denounce the ideas of others – when I can’t tell the difference between the denounced and the denouncer.
Then there are a pile of people who don’t indulge in point scoring games and who manage to cooperate despite their differences. In politics these tend to form larger political parties. In businesses they form corporations.
The ideological divide that I always see isn’t between left and right, green and free-market, religious (including atheists) and agnostic. But it between the those who can cooperate for the common good and those who find that beneath them.
This notion of Bomber’s that any group of leftists are innately capable of strategic thinking seems suspiciously like blind faith. I haven’t seen leftists in Aotearoa do it ever, and I’ve been watching them since the late 1960s.
Same for any group outside of traditional bureaucrats (who do seem to want to run on rails for decades – but seldom get the chance). For instance, businesses rarely maintain a strategic direction for more than about 3 years unless they are largely controlled by a single person. Infrastructure development and military tend to be better over longer strategic directions, but that is largely because of the length of their purchasing cycles.
The myth of strategic direction by a group is almost an axiom inside any MBA course. You’ll see cost shaving measures happening over longer periods of time – because they provide a continuing economic return. But you seldom see a genuine strategic direction last more than a few years when it isn’t caused by a underlying technology shift. For instance the JIT inventory strategies in the 1980s arising from better computer systems and better distribution links. Of the off-shoring of manufacturing as freight and air links and comms systems improved world wide.Or any number of other management fads that have been shored up by a change in the underlying tech.
But if you look closely at any organisation that is made up of groups of people, what you’ll see is a series of strategies competing, and a awful lot of creative story telling to explain the continuity in quite large shifts in strategic direction over very numbers of years. What you won’t see very often in any coherent strategic directions lasting for a decade or more.
I’d have to say that the Greens and before that Values have been remarkably consistent by comparison. Of course in NZ they have never really had access to sufficient power to start having to protect it. It’d be interesting to see what they’d do with it. Maybe this time
Yes, that's true, your generalised point about ideology & group coherence in relation to social context that is in perennial flux. Consistency and strategy based on it worked better when the pace of change was slower. That pace shift between '60s & '70s made much strategic thinking irrelevant – except at the geopolitical level, where stasis ruled.
The ideological divide that I always see isn’t between left and right, green and free-market, religious (including atheists) and agnostic. But it between the those who can cooperate for the common good and those who find that beneath them.
Because holism transcends binary divides. Focus on common ground is holist by nature – few adopt it as praxis. Focus on the common good inspired us in the early years of the Greens economic policy development. I recall Jeanette Fitzsimons advising us to read this:
For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Substainable Future, H.E. Daly and J.B. Cobb, Jr. 1990.
What Bomber forgets is that aside from silly distractions the Greens are the only party that take the future of NZ seriously, in context of the calamities that are coming. COVID is just the opening act.
Yeah but the question of alien life seems irrelevant to the story about our collapsing ecosystem (I don’t think there are any aliens out there, personally. Musk, Branson, Bezos are going to space and shitting on the Earth)
Everyone is dead and space is terra nullius? Or they learned their lesson and are hiding out in the trees again (metaphorically speaking), minding their own business.
seriously if we are waiting for a party to finally, finally do something other then sign meaning less paper (cause yeah, they are still signing on paper – hopefully recycled) then we are truly doomed.
the change will come when people understand that they have to change.
Sadly the Green Party is no more future orientated then any other Party. They live from election to election and hopefully a paycheck.
Anyone who consideres electric cars a greener option then standard cars cause 'fossil fuel' consumption, while pretending that the mining for lithium is NOT fossil fuel mining is neither green nor the answer to a better life.
So really you want change? Change yourself first, your community next and when the change is so far gone that they various beige suits hanging on the government tit can't refuse to acknowledge that change in the population anymore they will come to the party and not a day early.
But the most ineffective Party pretty much anywhere on this planet has been the Green Party.
referencing Dennis' point above about strategy, it's not possible for any party to do what you want, because most NZers won't vote for such a party. The Greens tread the fine line between what is needed and what is possible. That people like you and Bradbury continue to slag off the Greens is a failure of imagination on your part, which prevents seeing the strategy and most likely who the Greens actually are. Pfft, as if you're the only person that knows that EVs won't save the day and as if people in the GP don't understand cradle to grave. The Green Party cut their teeth on this stuff before you were even thinking about politics, and it's bizarre what prejudices people let blind them to the way out of our current dilemmas.
Yes, personal and then community change is absolutely necessary, but we don't have time to rely on that alone (and again, where is the strategy? It's not like people having been saying what you just said my whole life, it's not enough). The people in parliament are individuals who live in communities too, and many of them want real change.
Lithium production doesn't have to be fossil fuel dependent. That it mostly is at the moment is simply because it's cheaper that way, for now. But there's a bunch of alternative methods to getting the lithium, such as building a geothermal power station and extracting the lithium from the superheated groundwater going through the power station.
Understand its in the process of being scaled up for commercial production. If successful, I assume it could be deployed at other geothermal power stations.
Back in the late 90s/early noughties there was also Pacific Lithium's attempt to extract lithium from seawater here. But I was never sure whether that really was a good faith attempt to build a genuine productive business or just Robin Johannink grifting investors.
if the most ineffective party pretty much anywhere on this planet (hyperbole much?) are the greens, why is so much of what they have been banging on about, now mainstream thinking?I would say, in the BIG picture, the greens have been remarkably successful.
that's quite funny given Bradbury has spent more than three years running round slagging off the Greens, and actively undermining them, every chance he gets.
I'm not a GP activist, but people can call me a green activist. My preference would be that we had MANA and the Mp still in parliament, and others, and then I'd have more to write about.
I'd still be about the strategy though and will argue this with anyone that cares to: if actual lw policy matters, then the Greens have a significantly more lw policy platform than any other major party in this election. Hence the urge to vote for them. My personal political position is probably better described as deep green politics, and the GP are the best chance of us ever getting there.
But in the meantime, fucking climate change blows every other argument and stupid bullshit leftwing bitch fest out of the water.
My personal political position is probably better described as deep green politics, and the GP are the best chance of us ever getting there.
Exactly. I differ from you only on the political positioning required to get there – but I have had to drift with the times on that point recently. National's obduracy withstood the attempt by their progressives to steer their ship more cleverly, so the toxic culture within will defeat consensus politics for a while yet.
What is still missing is economic policy based on the commons. Both the left and right refuse to even think about that, yet it is the essential component for sustainable economics. Permaculture teaches design-based thinking, so I keep expecting it to emerge there. To provide that new design requires invention, so back in the '80s I conceived a synthesis of equity and enterprise as the conceptual basis for progress. Yet even permaculturalists haven't realised that yet. Too imaginal…
As written, as you quoted. Can't see how anyone could simplify further. But if you were fishing for framing to help explain it, I didn't get that far.
Green policy formulation in the first couple of years involved compiling elements deemed essential (UBI & true-cost accounting, for instance, pollution & natural resource taxes plus others). Members suggested & discussed in person when the working group met, policy drafts got amended subsequently by JF & posted to members for further comment. Then the Alliance hit & the process was shelved.
Since I was advocating something radical that hadn't been done before, I don't blame any of the others for being averse to integrating principles from the political left & right. Transcending binary belief systems is never easy.
I tend to view it from a human rights perspective as well as the economic view. Economics is all about efficiency of operations, costs & benefits quantised. When you transcend it via noticing that values are more qualities than quantities, and those drive behaviour more powerfully, then it becomes a question of how stuff gets shared.
By stuff, I mean mostly money & power, of course! So if society incorporates a conceptual framework empowering equity, people get a more equal share as of right. The convergence of legal provision on the principle is usually the structural problem: govts pretend to honour the principle while minimising the amount of provision. You know that.
Democracy allows them to get away with it. If they were bound by a charter of rights that included the provision, and their employment as MPs contracted them to legislate accordingly, public perception of the validity of wealth-sharing would be raised accordingly. People would see their entitlement to wealth-sharing as a human right.
Now the status quo does simulate this situation, since our government endorsed the UN covenant that specifies the several rights to sharing in the economy. Have you read those sections? In theory, our govt is bound to deliver. In practice, the delivery is ever arguable in extent.
So I advise strengthening the left hand side of the synthesis (equity) to reduce the gap between pretence & reality. As for the rhs (enterprise), I've always advised supplementing bau with collective endeavour. Traditional co-ops are a useful model but the operational lack seems to be around education and training: nobody provides! So generations keep passing the opportunity by out of ignorance. Remember Mondragon originated in 1956, yet the model has failed to replicate globally.
How could a working model of successful synthesis of both equity and enterprise fail to replicate? Mass psychology. Leftists promoting working together as an ideal instead of doing it in real life. Centrists being too lazy to think about it. Rightists being too scared to change.
In recent decades I've trended to the view that the paradigm shift required in politics can only get triggered by mass desperation. As we've seen recently, the inertial effect of complacency is even able to withstand a pandemic!
slagging off the Greens, and actively undermining them
Yes, I've noticed that too – I got 'silenced' from his blog for pointing out same. I can't work out what his agenda around that is supposed to be. He's built a small but vociferous army of absolute Green haters; not for anything policy-related, just due to dumb gotcha stuff he hears in the MSM.
I'm guessing some of it is because of his antipathy towards identity politics, which no doubt is in part due to the shit thrown at him by parts of the left over some of his behaviour.
Might be a bad cultural fit issue with the Greens too. He's not the only one that can't get over that.
Brain, perhaps. Since I wrote in support of it as a strategic initiative at the time. However you may recall that the Green movement originated as holistic (non-binary), and I became part of it that year (1968) on that basis, and it became overtly politic with a slogan expressly stating that it was neither right nor left in the early '80s.
Consequently the MoU was a centrist/leftist collaboration. I do understand that anyone in the leftist bubble will be unable to see it as such, of course. Bubble inevitably warp inhabitants away from reality.
So I ought to acknowledge that it was genuine evidence of leftists doing strategic thinking, eh? While simultaneously pointing out that it was a twin-tribe thingy.
"I do understand that anyone in the leftist bubble will be unable to see it as such, of course." Genuinely don’t understand why you would choose to believe that – simply having fun tilting at leftist windmills?
Sometimes absolutist reckons and wind-ups are written with such dismissive authority that gullibile readers might mistake them for facts – IMHO, of course.
One featured a progressive black Dem vs establishment black Dem battle:
Cori Bush, a progressive activist and veteran of the racial justice protest movement, defeated 20-year incumbent Missouri Rep. William Lacy Clay in a Democratic primary on Tuesday, a stunning victory for the party's insurgent left. The US House seat, based in St. Louis, has been held by Clay and his father, former Rep. William Clay Sr., one of the founders of the Congressional Black Caucus, since 1969.
Bush, who challenged Clay in 2018 and lost, was the first candidate launched by Justice Democrats, the progressive group dedicated to toppling moderate Democratic congressional incumbents. "We've been called radicals, terrorists, we've been dismissed as an impossible fringe movement — that's what they called us," Bush said in her victory speech. "But now, we are a multiracial, multiethnic, multigenerational, mass movement united in demanding change, in demanding accountability, in demanding that our police, our government, our country recognize that Black lives do, indeed, matter."
Bush's second attempt to unseat Clay, who won in 2018 with 57% of the primary vote, was backed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led group that champions the Green New Deal, and other leftist and progressive leaders, including Jamaal Bowman, who ousted Rep. Eliot Engel in New York during the state's June primary.
"Not me, US," Bush tweeted overnight, after her win was confirmed, echoing Sanders' campaign slogan in 2016 and 2020.
Bulldozer Gerry. Made the Christchurch quakes worse by demolishing everything with no regard for heritage and people's valuable stuff (literal fortunes) in the red zone. Stuffed up the rebuild. Has no regard for airport security.
sometime in the next year, we will all stare into the financial abyss. At that point, we will be well beyond the scope of the previous recession, and we will have either exhausted the remedies that spared the system last time or found that they won’t work this time around. What then?
I was part of the group that structured and sold CDOs and CLOs at Morgan Stanley in the 1990s. The two securities are remarkably alike. Like a CDO, a CLO has multiple layers, which are sold separately. The bottom layer is the riskiest, the top the safest. If just a few of the loans in a CLO default, the bottom layer will suffer a loss and the other layers will remain safe. If the defaults increase, the bottom layer will lose even more, and the pain will start to work its way up the layers.
Readers who are financially literate ought to read the detailed analysis – I'll just copy the sections other readers can comprehend, to illuminate the scenario.
The financial sector isn’t like other sectors. If it fails, fundamental aspects of modern life could fail with it. We could lose the ability to get loans to buy a house or a car, or to pay for college. Without reliable credit, many Americans might struggle to pay for their daily needs.
It is a distasteful fact that the present situation is so dire in part because the banks fell right back into bad behavior after the last crash—taking too many risks, hiding debt in complex instruments and off-balance-sheet entities, and generally exploiting loopholes in laws intended to rein in their greed. Sparing them for a second time this century will be that much harder.
Gabby I am reading Lindsey Davis and her character Falco who is a spy for the leaders, wealthy of Rome and he has to dodge all sorts including people who pop out with knives, like you who pop up to snipe. In the game that my sons spends time on-line, the spy is the one who jumps you from nowhere. It keeps him on his toes so to speak.
They've all been doing it since Reagan came in and said "Government is the problem". Wall St has been rolling back the New Deal and taking over the US government for decades now. A sham of democracy.
"Why don't we let in rich Americans who want to build a house in New Zealand? Who cares? They're in Mangawhai or somewhere, they are going to create thousands of jobs. Why do we care if someone who lives in New York wants to spend $10 million building a house in Auckland, using NZ craftsmen and NZ tradespeople?"
Golfing and tourism resorts built by two American billionaires, including the Tara Iti golf course near Mangawhai, received almost $1 million in wage subsidies between them during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Forget Roger Douglas, Prebs & co, subsidies are socialism at work! It's left/right win/win all over the place! He's reacting to this
The coronavirus pandemic sent the US economy plunging by a record-shattering 32.9 per cent annual rate last quarter
And he's alerting us to a collective gymnastics conundrum, via bad grammar:
Key said central government and the business community needed to be able to rapidly change course as information becomes available, even if such moves were disconcerting. "There is no elegant way of dismount a galloping horse."
Interesting he said Mangawhai. Cos of course he’s a member of the country’s most exclusive golf course there, Tara iti. Which is the cornerstone of a big really pricey real estate development that an American developer is doing.
The UK – It sounds like The Treasury is treating people as pawns again and the Government is playing russian roulette. Britain is heading for an unemployment crisis of Biblical proportions by the end of the year unless the Treasury's policy is torn up very soon. Businesses will start ‘shedding’ jobs rapidly in September as the furlough scheme dials down to 70pc of wages. It will reach a grim crescendo when support stops altogether at the end of October, long before the economy is in any fit state to absorb the army of unemployed.
“It is one of the biggest policy mistakes in modern British history,” said Nobel laureate Chris Pissarides from the London School of Economics.
What should governments be doing. What should the officials be doing, how should they cope with the changing ideas of governments. I may have put this up but it is worth repeating.
Lebanon's cabinet declared a two-week state of emergency in the capital city and handed control of security in the capital to the military following a massive explosion in Beirut that killed at least 135 people and injured 5,000 others.
The explosion on Tuesday sent shockwaves across the city, causing widespread damage as far as the outskirts of Beirut.
Officials said they expect the death toll to rise further as emergency workers dig through the rubble to search for survivors.
Beirut's city governor Marwan Abboud said up to 300,000 people have lost their homes and authorities are working on providing them with food, water and shelter.
Lebanon is in such a bad 'state' that its government can't look after the country properly. Instead they are like the National Party, looking after themselves and their friends, looking for personal advantage instead of managing the country for all the people doing the stodgy, practical things.
Who wants to be first in the world with edgy risky new measures – first being lauded for going naked into the neolib world – Grace Mullane virtually did that, now she is dead. We are vulnerable in our way.
We need to be aware of our vulnerability and keep looking after each other and the country tenaciously. No-one else will do it, we have to do it for ourselves.
There's just a huge crater where the warehouse full of ammonium nitrate once stood. The explosion registered as a M3.3 earthquake. Somewhere around 5% the power of the Hiroshima bomb.
Somewhere around 5% the power of the Hiroshima bomb.
So, approximately 750 ton of TNT equivalent. Really, Little Boy wasn't all that powerful as far as nukes go and you can't really compare the damage of an air-burst nuke to that done by a conventional ground explosion either.
Yeah, I get really irritated when people make senseless comparisons.
Leaving Brexit was an example of totally inadequate simple-majority law unsatisfactory for matters that change the system of the country. It was far different than an election that was part of the system. That decision has left the UK in a political hole it will never climb out of. Tried and true lefties say ' the people voted for it', for lies! They didn't have a clue what perversion of a political ploy they were falling for.
Houses for Ordinary people are The True Real resolve of Kiwis – not Rugby.
The persons who care for New Zealanders are not the Banks. For they exist night and day to squeeze every bit of fiscal Life out of the pockets of ordinary families and persons. Banks are Shylocks in new shirts. Ask Shakespeare.
They have even removed hundreds and thousands of NZeders out of once owned homes, and sold them off into the sweet arms of Landlords.
Landlords, as you know, demand monstrously cruel Rents and laugh at the poor they entrap.
The Wealthy people glutton on, receiving every perk the poor receive. Incredible crazy Gluttony !
The Excessive Land shall be demanded. The required Housing must be built and maintained. The Wealthy have had their fun. Haven't they ?
Else, New Zealand will be the world's laughing stock. Slaves.
All these economic decisions are rational given the market conditions set up by *government* of every stripe since Roger Douglas and his merry band of reverse robin hoods came along in their trojan horse and shafted ordinary kiwis
Unfortunately most of the world has got pulled into the freemarket neolib system and the housing problem is widespread. What to do without pulling the whole house of cards down on our heads? Perhaps we will be like Lebanon.
Or like the UK out of the EU and with huge loans still to repay – however we should remember that they ended up with a huge amount to pay to the USA after WW2 – through their lend-lease agreement etc. It made sense to join the European Common Market after that. Now they have decided to leave and pal up with the individualistic USA, a co-operative world is too common for those moguls, and the UK wants to plunder other pastures no doubt.
I think this may use up my quota of stupid questions for the month, but what happens if say ACT, NZ1 and the Greens all fall just below 5% and none of them win an electorate seat? And at the same time both Labour and National fall below 50% for the party vote?
How does this work in terms of forming a govt? Does Labour have to form a coalition with National?
In that scenario the party votes for those under 5% would be distributed proportionately.
If in the unlikely event Labour got 47% and National 45% Labour would be the government with National nipping at their heels. It would take just one or maybe two by-elections to fall from Labour to National to have a change of government.
If both parties ended up even, then we'd have a hung Parliament after redistribution and face another election.
OT: isn't it amazing that NZ only had one by-election this term when Jonathan Coleman left. Usually there's about 3 or more.
Which is why the Greens policy is preferential voting for both electorates and parties. Helps make sure that the parties that people actually prefer are elected.
Then whichever of Nats or Labour got the most votes gets to form the government. They will divvy up the 120 seats in relative proportion to their party vote. Say it was Labour 48% and Nat 44%, then Labour would get 63 seats (48% vote share*120 seats/92% total qualified non-wasted vote) and the Nats 57 seats (or maybe 62 and 58 depending on how the Sainte Lague formula works it out).
Not a silly question methinks. Could happen, so worth considering. I believe a national unity govt would be the framing deployed. They could also call it neoliberals disunited, eh? Would make fun political posturing a cultural norm until deckchair-arranging began to pall for all, whereupon the attraction of another election (mid-term) would suck their Titanic into an ocean vortex…
I know it deserves a full post in itself, but well done to this government and in particular Ministers Parker and O'Connor for the passage of the gazetting of the National POlicy Statement on Freshwater, National Environmental Standards for Freshwater, regulations on stock exclusion, and regulations on measurement and reporting on lakes and rivers;
The regulations that go into force reasonably quickly from this include:
• Requiring councils to give effect to Te Mana o Te Wai by prioritising the health and wellbeing of our waterways
• Halting further loss of natural wetlands and streams
• Setting higher health standards at swimming spots
• Putting controls on high-risk farm practices such as winter grazing and feedlots
• Setting stricter controls on nitrogen pollution and new bottom lines on other measures of waterway health
• Requiring urban waterways to be cleaned up and new protections for urban streams
• Preserving and restoring the connectivity of New Zealand fish species’ habitats
• Requiring mandatory and enforceable farm environment plans
• Making real-time measuring and reporting of data on water use mandatory.
They've also made special provision for vegetable growing areas which are critical for national supply, such as Pukekohe and the Horowhenua. The acid needs to go on Auckland Horizons councils to clean up these areas, even with the apparent carve-outs.
Looking forward to regional councils actually putting resource into enforcement and prosecution to get the turnaround we need.
I have mentioned that before lockdown and yes, my fear has proven correct. The majority of new unemployment cases are women.
But hey 'shovel' ready jobs are being offered. Billions being poured in shovel ready. 🙂
And women running small businesses to create an income for themselves in a society that gives few fucks of job creation for women can apply for a 'government loan' (fully refundable) or go to Winz for some much needed bullshittery in order to get nothing, cause they may share the home with a bloke aka the 'mealticket'.
I seriously hope that long term Labour will do better then that, but then Labour needs poor people, and poor women are always good to squeeze some more votes about. Right, cause 'we fight for women', and their children. One denied benefit at a time.
Without wanting to sound cynical, is there any actual breakdown analysis on this figure?
What sort of jobs we are talking about etc?
Would imagine the first people that lost their jobs were part timers that are more likely to be female (kids and things) and in hospitality (which basically shut down and is screwed) which is also more likely to be female.
Hospitality jobs, Front of house, waitresses, room maids, house keepers. Retail – all of them and more going due to self ordering and self check outs. All that retail usually also comes with office staff – production staff etc and a lot of those are also women.
So not sure what you are nitpicking about.
But yes, lets ignore the fact thatof 11.000 thousand that went on the dole 10.000 are women. And i would assume that the employment opportunities commissionar got the numbers from Winz.
Also from here a list of companies that shed jobs – Air NZ on top of the list, i would assume that a lot of the ground staff is female, a lot of the on plane staff are female.
Paying care giving jobs a decent wage would likely transfer some into that industry although I know it's not for all.
Getting over stereotypes.
Giving them some priority for courses on driving trucks and ag machinery. When ever I see agricultural areas complaining about lack of labour I think – offer part time hours and get some women trained who are well embedded in the community. Problem solved for the next decade
A lot are hospo I think. So very good argument for not extending any of the under 30 work/travel visa’s as they expire .as a lot of that work is hospo or seasonal.
i totally agree, all these women in their retail, hospitality, air NZ, cruise ship jobs etc should just move somewhere rural, be thaught how to drive a tractor and run a milking machine and all is sorted.
Yeah, right Tui.
10.000 out of 11.000 newly unemployed are women. Or did you miss that with you quick fix of bashing unde 26 year old fruit picking tourists. Mind, these women can get themselv a little camper van, bid farewell to hubby and children and just go fruit picking and sleeping in a dorm. Right? Even better, if they are single mums they can just go fruitpicking and their kids can too, right?
Good fucking grief.
This is why women in this country are among the poorest. Because there are too many that simply don't give a shit about how others do so as long as it affects not them.
Never mind that the Government has yet to actually do anything for women so far. Oh but they won't, right kinder gentler bullshit.
Err I wasn't suggesting anything like fruit picking actually and I am certainly not bashing women. I wanted to be sure that women are considered and taken onto the good number of courses being run at the moment ( and there are apparently airline pilots on some ) that lead to some of the better paid rural jobs – some of which are contracting ( driving grape pickers for example). A lot of these don't require moving to the back blocks but maybe to secondary towns like Nelson, Blenheim, Hastings Palmerston North. – or some of them may even want assistance to get HT licences to drive trucks- which generally seems to be better paid than care giving – funny that. Then there are all the trades courses – generally more women are taking these up – but we do want to make sure that any barriers are dealt with.
So no the "put the kids in the camper van and go somewhere" was not part of my thinking simply an assumption on your part so please don't sledge me about it.
Likewise hospo. Yes I have registered that we are talking about women and yes a large number of jobs seem to be from this industry and the numbers are also I assume locals eligible for welfare. But overall of out total hospo jobs pre covid a very large number (well over 2/3rds seem to be filled with those on short term visa's including the short term travel/work visa's.) There seems to be no reason to grant extensions on these visa's despite petitions and that would not have happened to any great extent pre covid so why do we not try to have locals filling our local hospo jobs? Nothing snide about that .
Do women overall need more support – right across the economy that would be a yes.
Behind a viral photo of a crowded hallway at a high school in Georgia, a potentially dire situation is brewing. Students, teachers, and parents fear the Paulding County school’s rushed reopening plans may be spiraling out of control just two days after students — who said they were told they could face expulsion for remaining home — returned to class despite reports of positive coronavirus cases among students and staff.
North Paulding High School, about an hour outside Atlanta, reopened Monday despite an outbreak among members of its high school football team, many of whom, a Facebook video shows, worked out together in a crowded indoor gym last week as part of a weightlifting fundraiser.
Does anyone know if it's legit for a sitting, albeit leaving MP such as Paula Bennett to be moonlighting for a full week of morning talkback shows on Newshub's Magic Radio especially during election cycle They're already dedicated 24/7 to trying to get the National Party into govt but what part of this and the discussions can be separated from campaign advertising $$?
ha! Huruhuru also means pubic hair. Look Waghorn, rule of thumb, if you're unsure whether naming something from someone elses culture is appropriation or not, maybe don't do it, who needs the headache.
I never write Winston Peters off. I remember the political idiots from National, Act, and the dipshit side of the left doing that in 1999, 2008, 2011, and today.
What those wishful politically dumb numpties forget is three things. He has a constituency for his brand of politic, those people are exactly the right kind of paranoid to ignore pollsters asking them who they’d vote for, and they all vote.
That is why the NZF vote on election days is always higher than virtually all of the polls by a few percent. While the greens is usually lower (lots of non voters there).
About the only thing that might mitigate that long term trend this time is Shane Jones. I am so glad he isn’t Labour any more. He is a real undisciplined pain to have around any political party.
Good probability. He has actually delivered the goodies – unlike the bridges that Bridges promised in a past by-election.
The issue would be if he could figure out how to retain the seat in subsequent elections. Electorate work is a long tedious detailed process of getting down with the distressed in an electorate. It doesn’t lend itself to the big-noting and meaningless rhetoric that Shane Jones is so well known for.
Yes, National's failure to screw over the NZ public as they wished in this case. As they couldn't say that they use personal attacks against Labour/Greens.
Jacinda always speaks in very clear language without ambiguity as she did again today. No umms or ers. Love her or hate her you wont misunderstand her.
Collins seems to jumble her sentences so that the meaning is ambiguous. And Collins spent most of her time today sneering and belittling. (As did Brownlee.)
Grant Robinson is still wedded to the delusional neoclassical/liberal school of economics. Most of Labour are and that is why they can't do the transformation that we need.
Yup, once the MMT lens is understood, it opens up a whole lot of progressive policy choices. These policies under a neoliberal view point are very difficult to justify.
Their billboards read, "Back your Future". With the greatest respect to the NZF voting demographic, their future will mostly have been planned and locked in some time ago.
Last election their billboards read, "Had Enough?"
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 27 were:1. The Minister for Ford Rangers strikes againTransport Minister Simeon Brown was again the busiest of the Cabinet ministers this week, announcing an ...
You got a fast carAnd I want a ticket to anywhereMaybe we make a dealMaybe together we can get somewhereAny place is betterYesterday’s newsletter, Trust In Me, on the report of abuse in state care, and by religious organisations, between 1950 and 2019, coupled with the hypocrisy of Christopher Luxon ...
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
Te Rangi e tu nei (The sky above us) Te Papa e takoto nei (The land beneath us) Tatou katoa te hunga ora (To us all the living) Tena koutou katoa (Greetings) ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Åkerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
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Just heard on the 6am news there’s a push for privately managed isolation facilities.
OMG, are we impervious to lessons from Victoria? Do we really want a clusterfuck like Melbourne here?
The government may not be perfect in its management of quarantine, but if a problem arises they can throw money at it. A private firm will inevitably cut corners to make more profit.
Keep capitalism far away from our boarder protection management – please!
SERCO – they've got form!
We need a quarantine island so people can't escape
Dunedin has an island literally named "quarantine island". Most harbours with islands plonked quarantine facilities on one of them.
It was one of those things that was routine before antibiotics and vaccines.
Yep, the richies want to be in charge / making profit while the rest of us take all the risks and get "jobs jobs jobs" (at minimum wage, zero-hours, no security and be grateful for it you miserable peasants)
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/422856/covid-19-business-leaders-push-for-privately-run-managed-isolation
So they want to bring in their rich mates supposedly to fix the economy? Well after 30 odd years of this stuff the bulk of the population could barely fund themselves for a 4 week stay at home – so as far as I am concerned its a failed idea and they can get stuffed. Just like private quarantine is a failed idea.
Why does the news media give so much time to just 20 people – when they are like this one.Deplatform them. Why on earth did he get one of the quarantine spaces after not bothering to be here for 2 decades.
Among them was Pooj Prenna, who recently returned to New Zealand with his family, after 20 years overseas.
And why does Helen Clark continue to want to be associated with these people. She's starting to look like Tony Blair- can't some one have a word with her.
And Prenna after 20 years out of the country and not bothering he comes back and gets an invitation to the forum and starts to tell the rest of us what to do. Well lets tax him on his worldwide interests. (appears to be a silicon valley capitalist)
Because they're rich.
She may have been principled when she opposed the purchase of the Airforce strike fighters but since then she's been in government where had to collude with business to get anything done. Basically, she's drunk the cool-aid that its business that does things and not government.
Yeah I get the rich bit – but there's more of us than them and we are the one's that are gunna vote. And since the rich have done little for the masses these last 30 years we certainly aren't going to be much poorer if we ignore them now or preferably charge them some real high taxes.
And ignore them we should.
Actually the taxes should be the push back. All reporters should ask these over entitled bods if they are willing to stump up more in taxes.
And as I say regardless of how much kool aid Helen has drunk she needs to stop making the life of the current labour party more difficult. She is being used by these righties as cover for the hard right agenda behind their views.
So Key and co would like to make money out of isolation and quarantine? (Never waste a crisis..Right!!)
Where is their billion dollars each insurance against failure?(No insurance against a pandemic usually, and we don't want Private collection of Profits and Public paying for failures)
Which hospitals will be used if and when they let the virus in? Private?/Public???
Would they charge people to use their hospitals?
Whose country do they plan to poach Doctors and Nurses from?
Where will they obtain their testing kits PPE and general staff?
We see you John Key.. You go plank.
Never waste a crises, there's profits to be had with no downside. Risk is all on us !
Yeah, agree with that 100%. I have never ever heard so much fucking winging by the right since this virus thing has started. The so-called rugged everybody stands on their own two feet, no such thing as a free lunch no passengers in this world etc etc etc right are there for assistance and handouts until you want to fucking vomit. Every time I hear the news there is some other right-wing prat winging how hard done by they are, and how MUCH better they can do it, or what a stuff up this administration has caused.
The next catch cry is going to be Private Enterprise can do everything SOOOOOO much better than governments and controlling the quarantine is just another one of them. Well if this administration buckles and allows private enterprise to run it. there have to be some strict ground rules. For starters, if any person breaks out of a privately run quarantine, the company running the isolation is instantly fined $100 000 to cover the cost of the police having to apprehend the offender and also creating the risk of spreading the virus in the community.
No private quarantine would be one election platform I'd really like. I'd be furious if they buckled – this is an opportunity to do things so much better for all the rest of us.If there had to be a punishment then I'd have the personal guarantees of all this crowd – any breach they get slung out off the country.
I'd like to think the government is testing public opinion regularly.
+100%
I consider $100,000 a very low and therefore "unsuitable fine", because the private company would include this into the costs running the operation.
How about every "business leader", including ex-PM Helen Clark, John Key, that wants to open the borders or a private organisation running the quarantine for economical gains put their bodies where their big mouth is (see newspaper, radio TV etc.)… for each "escape" at least one year prison for the glorious business leaders in case of non-infection, increased to at least five years in case of causing community transmission?
Would be interesting to see how many would still promoting it.
Just saw this article (NZ Herald):
I guess they have snipers shooting escapees? Or National party members patrolling around the facilities.
Oh, and the virus definitely doesn't care about Judith Collins.
Geez Nobody escapes when judith is in charge!!
Remember when she was in charge of prisons.
Thing is, as soon as someone did escape, Collins would be spouting excuses left, right and centre for the private enterprise that did a worse job.
Is she going to chain them to the walls?
Before or after turning central wellington into a motorway?
There's a quiet revolution going on out here. Time for some of these peeps to get with the plot.
You know the only reason Collins wants to spend up large on Wellingtons roads was because of the traffic congestion which made her late for a hair appointment.
she gets her hair done????…man they need to be fired.
Actually, I'm quite happy for them to not get the plot and the longer the better. That way they continue to prove that they're last centuries problems just trying to hang on to being relevant and, most importantly, not a solution to today's issues.
Answer to satty @1.3.1.2
Very good idea satty, but I prefer my idea otherwise it will cost us money keeping the parasites in prison unless part of their sentence is that they pay for their own jail time. Good idea though.
So right 1000%
…. and put all the returning kiwis in Jucy vans to free up the best hotels for wealthy tourists and students – and the spokesperson for this idea is the Jucy owner.
[Fixed error in user name]
[Fixed error in user name]
That actually isn't a bad idea Matiri. We don't want to let prejudice about business blind us to where they can be directly useful in times of crisis like this.
It's a terrible idea.
MPs, insulated from the failures of neoliberalism by comfortable remuneration, are able to imagine it is something other than an abject failure.
Privately run managed isolation… you mean like quarantining people in private hotels and paying them to manage the day to day issues? Huh, we should have thought of that sooner. /sarcasm
(from @yortw)
Has Helen offered her rentals as isolation facilities?
Why don't you ask her?
Would she tell me?
Of course not. She wants a mixture of containers and tents on Sommes Island run jointly by SERCO and MSD and to be able to shoot those who get too sick then bury them in the harbour. One of the most clear-thinking, strategic and pragmatic leaders we’ve ever had.
Right o…..
So the people behind this are the Alpe’s, that’s Jucy. They are most likely in the crap right now.
Key was prompting this a few days ago, wearing which hat, ANZ chair, or his personal interest.
A few questions need to be asked about what’s going on here, and who’s interests are being prompted. It’s looking like a select few before the wider New Zealand
It is. To manage the population the capitalists need to manage what information that the population is getting and that's the job for the privately owned MSM.
"
Why do we care if rich Americans put even more pressure on our recourses using scarce tradespeople to build houses that will likely sit empty? Good god John Key is so stupid! It’s no wonder the housing problem became a crisis under his watch. The man is so blinded by his own self-interest that he simply cannot see the bigger picture."
http://thejackalman.blogspot.com/2020/08/key-is-fool.html
John Key is so full of it. Why would they create thousands of jobs?
I think you'll find that by "houses" Key means "castles" and by "jobs" he means "serfdom". All that mountainous Central Otago landscape isn't going to plough and plant itself with wheat now is it ? — @brettroberts
Someone went to the trouble of actually working out the numbers that Key and pals couldn’t be bothered with. Guess what, it doesn’t add up
https://twitter.com/clintvsmith/status/1291132437460742144?s=21
The capitalists want in of the money that the government is spending and, considering that it is a necessary service, they'll be able to low bid to get the job and then ramp up the expenses to make a higher profit.
Vulture capitalists always have an eye for a bargain. An old person falling over is an opportunity to nick their wallet while they are distracted.
An economy on the rocks means it’s time to
stealprivatise assets at fire sale pricesHow do you get share in Serco, how much each? Or Black hawk done or whatever predator is around when people get shut away for a time.
Roblogic sees things so clearly that it must be through the eyes of a child. Better get sunglasses for protection robl…
“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.“ Mt 10:16
Think this needs to be viewed in the context of NZs primary economic strategy which exists across parties (and may explain the involvement of the likes of Key and Clark, strange bedfellows indeed)…..growth via population.
He's being provocative, but does pose an interesting question: "what sort of Green Party does a Labour majority Government want?"
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2020/08/05/what-green-party-does-a-labour-majority-government-want/
Unfair to blame Weka for the Greens seeming woke. Censoring an 80 year old feminist because the alphabet soup tribe claimed she hurt their feelings was a collective idiocy, for which they are still evading moral responsibility. Given enough rope, the Green leftists used it to hang themselves, using the old rationale `if we don't hang together, we'll hang separately. Their belief system did them in – can't blame individuals.
This notion of Bomber’s that any group of leftists are innately capable of strategic thinking seems suspiciously like blind faith. I haven't seen leftists in Aotearoa do it ever, and I've been watching them since the late 1960s.
Fuck Bomber, I'm ex Mana ex Māori Party ex Alliance voting Greens (I did last election too). People like him, Tau Henare, NZ1st & the rabid RWs fearmongering over the Greens just strengthens my resolve.
Right there with you on that. (although I've always voted Green the sentiment is the same).
I'll be giving my party vote to the Greens this election because I want them to be part of the government. Red and Green like Christmas![heart heart](https://cdn.ckeditor.com/4.11.3/full-all/plugins/smiley/images/heart.png)
Me too! And I hope that the Labour part of the coalition is nudged along by some of the Greens policies, in an 'aiming for the moon but might it hit a star' way as part of a consensus….but always the direction is forward.
All Parties in NZ have to be poked with a stick to stick to their supposed goal of doing the best for NZ. I've voted Greens for yonks and mixed with good people, but many tend to be loving of the environment, and looking at people as if they have invaded Eden.
The problem with such lefties is the tendency to spout high-minded stuff about green matters, and follow the latest thought on how to be, but all having different ideas about how those thoughts should be infused in real-life practices. More discussion needed to be done about how, and how practically to reach the established and tabled goals, and just how many ethical barriers should be included or put aside as being too precious. It may be that there is a more pragmatic and robust side to the Greens with Shaw, I hope so.
Bomber is a jackass. So removed from any relevancy he used to have back in the late 1990's and early 2000's as to become more a sideshow than anything serious
He runs one of the two largest left wing blogs in NZ.
A pre moderated blog that lets misogynist comments through from idiots who aren't allowed to post here anymore. Not a great claim to fame for a left leaning blog.
they have a wide range of writers, some of whom are covering really important stuff.
And despite all that really important stuff from a wide range of writers, the true worth of the site is laid bare by what’s permitted under the topics in the comments.
it may surprise you that many blogs are written for readers not commenters. I don't like the commenting policy there either, but plenty of people don't like TS' policy 😉
It doesn't surprise me, why would it? I know the purpose of blogs/media/social pretentiousness etc, yet I still think the moderators allowing posts through underneath topics, like calling you "a bitch", for example, doesn't leave TDB with much left wing credibility, unless you think those readers you're talking about don't view the comments, or it doesn't matter if they do.
If I authored topics there, I'd be pretty vocal about what the moderators are happy to pass under Bradbury's posts. I'd be wondering if they really had a left wing core underneath the important stuff if they let shit like that pass. Maybe some of them will write something and show some lefty credentials.
most readers don't read the comments.
I have zero interesting in a slanging match with TDB. Plenty of problems on TS around issues for women btw, if you want to dig into that.
Next time someone uses the bitch word here I'll be all over it, but I'm not sure if most people don't read the comments, and definitely not convinced that would be enough of an excuse to permit that sort of crap anyway.
Regardless, an interesting editorial position from someone running one of the leading left wing blogs in NZ.
Yeah he used to have TV shows, be on panels etc etc.
Now he just runs an echo chamber of a blog.
… and hangs out with Damien Grant.
what are TDB’s reader stats like?
No idea
so you just want to slag him off? Whatever you don't like about him, it doesn't make sense to say TDB has no validity or relevance.
No, I am talking about his relative relevance.
yes, you said he is irrelevant, and I pointed out that he runs one of the largest lw blogs in NZ.
No I was talking about the relevance he used to have which has diminished considerably. But whatever – I don't have enough skin in this game to carry on
I think you might put it more like this John S, that Bomber keeps looking and thinking and remembering that we have come right through the 20th century and mucked it up. He has had to change from what was thought relevant then. Perhaps it is you who are trailing behind in a cloud of exhaust and nostalgia. There is no blame on you if you are as many of us have that problem. But it has to be overcome, so keep those cogs whirring.
More mischief making from a media flogging their narrative.
My how fearful some are of the potential for significant change.
Who’s the “80 year old feminist” and who “censored” her? Who makes up this BS?
Jill Abigail wrote this
The transie crowd then went ahead and cancelled Jill because their feelings got hurt
As a gay man I have no time for the transie crowd calling me tranphobic because I don't see transmen as men. They're not. And for them to try and force me to see them as men, is outright homophobic.
http://www.google.com/amp/s/lesbian-rights-nz.org/2019/09/02/the-feminist-article-the-green-party-has-banned/amp/
Do you care that much if someone wants to be called "man" "woman" or whatever? As a straight man I couldn't care less what people want to be called.
That's likely why your viewpoint differs to mine.
I'm gay because that's what nature decreed. I have no sexual attraction to women. It's very much 100% toward men. A man has a penis. Transmen do not. They may have an imitation penis but at the end of the day, they are still biologically female. All the testosterone pills in the world will not change that fundamental fact of science.
To have transmen decry me as transphobic because I have no sexual attraction to them makes them homophobic by denying my reality. Transmen (and transwomen) are not men or women and shouldn't be so quick to lambast homosexuals because we have no sexual attraction toward them. That's homophobic and denies our biochemical response. I have met transmen, and there's an innate reaction to them and recognition that they're actually female, and not truly male. Pheromones make all the difference.
Trans people can feel who they are, but their current MO of criticising homosexuals as transphobic because we are same sex attracted, is why there is such antipathy in a large section of the gay community towards trans activists. It does appear that the worst activists are straight men who would never themselves, sleep with a transwoman because again, heterosexuality has an element of sexual attraction. A straight man can't have a family with a transwoman unless it's an adopted family. I've never had a definitive answer from any straight male activist as to whether they would sleep with a transwomen, yet some of them have said they would sleep with a transman which just goes to show that if there's a vagina, and not a penis, a straight man really is sexually attracted to the female genitalia, rather than male.
The argument is far more nuanced than the simplistic "transwomen are women" or "transmen are men" argument that is constantly peddled. Of course you can't really have a good discussion about it and explain your viewpoint without activists generally leaping straight to "you're transphobic" rather than appreciate that it's far more complex than they appreciate.
I have a transexual aunty, and I also have transgender friends. I have no problem with them. I do have a problem with activists ignoring the fact that homosexuality is "same sex" and not "same gender" attraction, by and large.
that's a really good explanation of that side of it thanks.
I'll add that the terms 'woman' and 'man' get used differently by different people. Here you clearly use them to mean biological sex. Sometimes people use the terms to mean gender/roles rather than bio sex.
(yep, that's a whole can of worms, just wanted to bring it into the discussion because it's such a sticking point and point of people talking past each other).
The two separate meanings present a massive impediment to public debate. Unfortunately the debating tactic of claiming that, the alternate positions use of the terms imposes unacceptable context on the discussion, is common.
Frequently this extends as far a claiming a biological (scientific) understanding is anti-trans (or in other contexts sexist, racist etc…).
But the only likely outcome when this happens is both sides will talk past each other because their terms are mutually incompatible. Usually this just insulates the two arguments from each other rather than leading to allowing a challenge to either sides positions.
In order to understand how this came about it may be important to consider that post-modern philosophical underpinnings of many of these radical ideas reject both logic and a scientific understanding of the world and instead begin by claiming reality is constructed by some form of widely shared beliefs (also called a social construct). Were this true then it does follow that somebody could/can change sex by imagining it to be so and convincing sufficient others to believe it so.
My observation is that both sides of the war have weaponised semantics, as you say they each use the words their own way when speaking to each other* and as well as making useful communication possible it creates a lot of aggro.
I understand why each side has done that, and the issues are actually complex beneath the semantics, but it's hard to see how any progress can be made while this continues (and I think it will).
*as well as to everyone else, so people coming to the debate fresh end up completely confused. Also, society has historically used the term gender and sex interchangeably so much that now there is a new meaning for gender we don't even have consistent language in law now.
There are some significant problems with the trans movement, that aggressive trans activists (TRAs) tend to gloss over, outlined thoughtfully by J K Rowling.
That is thoughtful… and very disturbing.
Yeah, I like the clarity of your analysis too James. I came across this recently:
Quite an eye-opener for me, it was. I had no idea of the deep context documented by professional researchers.
Clearly there's a realistic basis for public policy around urinals: addition of a third option to the traditional binary. Existence of the biological third option defeats the habitual binary when identified in so many diverse cultural contexts & throughout history.
I have a gay son, and relate so much to what you had to say. Thanks.
while it makes sense that most straight men won't be bothered, there's a clear conflict between some trans activist politics and women's sex-based rights. My suggestion at this point is, if you are new to this debate, to take a step back and be willing to be on a steep learning curve around gender, sex, and the TA/gender critical feminist war. It's complex, and the clusterfuck of the debate is nothing like I have seen anywhere else in 40+ years of politics. If you are not new, then you already know what I am talking about and your question is a set up.
Thanks. Thats the first time I heard about the story of the GP from a reasonable source.
“What is the difference between leftists and cannibals? “Cannibals don’t eat their friends.”
Attributed to Lyndon Johnson
Greens eat greens.
Those salad days are in the past.
life is but a melon, cauliflower
So early in the morning! Can you keep your edge right till election time? Please – it sharpens the conversation. What sif you don’t like cauliflower, broccoli is very very good for you and greener.
"vegetable rights and peace!"
— Neil, the Young Ones
I won’t dare telling you how to suck egg because I’d end eating humble pie.
Sewing the seeds of discontent the left uniting is a very unusual occurence .It seems the right have been afflicted badly by the aberration more recently airing their Dirty linen(politics) in public.
With my little adaptation in the quote, that is a good description of my views on Bomber and his ilk with their lack of toleration for ideas outside of their MAD silos. Same for those massive numbers of factional warriors in their little in groups on the right or religions or even amongst scientific and academic communities or in whole industries.
Since the 1970s I’ve watched with awe at the ability of a lot of ideologues of many ilks to dance on the head of a pin to gain their own position whereby they can denounce the ideas of others – when I can’t tell the difference between the denounced and the denouncer.
Then there are a pile of people who don’t indulge in point scoring games and who manage to cooperate despite their differences. In politics these tend to form larger political parties. In businesses they form corporations.
The ideological divide that I always see isn’t between left and right, green and free-market, religious (including atheists) and agnostic. But it between the those who can cooperate for the common good and those who find that beneath them.
Same for any group outside of traditional bureaucrats (who do seem to want to run on rails for decades – but seldom get the chance). For instance, businesses rarely maintain a strategic direction for more than about 3 years unless they are largely controlled by a single person. Infrastructure development and military tend to be better over longer strategic directions, but that is largely because of the length of their purchasing cycles.
The myth of strategic direction by a group is almost an axiom inside any MBA course. You’ll see cost shaving measures happening over longer periods of time – because they provide a continuing economic return. But you seldom see a genuine strategic direction last more than a few years when it isn’t caused by a underlying technology shift. For instance the JIT inventory strategies in the 1980s arising from better computer systems and better distribution links. Of the off-shoring of manufacturing as freight and air links and comms systems improved world wide.Or any number of other management fads that have been shored up by a change in the underlying tech.
But if you look closely at any organisation that is made up of groups of people, what you’ll see is a series of strategies competing, and a awful lot of creative story telling to explain the continuity in quite large shifts in strategic direction over very numbers of years. What you won’t see very often in any coherent strategic directions lasting for a decade or more.
I’d have to say that the Greens and before that Values have been remarkably consistent by comparison. Of course in NZ they have never really had access to sufficient power to start having to protect it. It’d be interesting to see what they’d do with it. Maybe this time
Then there are a pile of people who don’t indulge in point scoring games and who manage to cooperate despite their differences.
Probably most of what I've typed here in the past five years or more, has an underlying motivation that could be summarised in that one sentence.
Effective political operators are not about 'winning or losing', but on achieving useful gains that everyone can live with.
QFT
When I see either of those terms, a red flag goes up immediately. Same with “right” and “wrong”.
Yes, that's true, your generalised point about ideology & group coherence in relation to social context that is in perennial flux. Consistency and strategy based on it worked better when the pace of change was slower. That pace shift between '60s & '70s made much strategic thinking irrelevant – except at the geopolitical level, where stasis ruled.
The ideological divide that I always see isn’t between left and right, green and free-market, religious (including atheists) and agnostic. But it between the those who can cooperate for the common good and those who find that beneath them.
Because holism transcends binary divides. Focus on common ground is holist by nature – few adopt it as praxis. Focus on the common good inspired us in the early years of the Greens economic policy development. I recall Jeanette Fitzsimons advising us to read this:
For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Substainable Future, H.E. Daly and J.B. Cobb, Jr. 1990.
The notion is ancient & eternal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_good
Professor Reich brought it up to date a couple of years ago. I haven't watched this talk he gave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNLOdRMgaDY
but here's the book… https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/564303/the-common-good-by-robert-b-reich/
What Bomber forgets is that aside from silly distractions the Greens are the only party that take the future of NZ seriously, in context of the calamities that are coming. COVID is just the opening act.
https://twitter.com/hyperbolicTom/status/1289331671578243072?s=20
Did you read the bit about Fermi's Paradox, roblogic?
Yeah but the question of alien life seems irrelevant to the story about our collapsing ecosystem (I don’t think there are any aliens out there, personally. Musk, Branson, Bezos are going to space and shitting on the Earth)
Everyone is dead and space is terra nullius? Or they learned their lesson and are hiding out in the trees again (metaphorically speaking), minding their own business.
yep. It's the old left, who have tagged the environment on to their politics but still don't really get it.
seriously if we are waiting for a party to finally, finally do something other then sign meaning less paper (cause yeah, they are still signing on paper – hopefully recycled) then we are truly doomed.
the change will come when people understand that they have to change.
Sadly the Green Party is no more future orientated then any other Party. They live from election to election and hopefully a paycheck.
Anyone who consideres electric cars a greener option then standard cars cause 'fossil fuel' consumption, while pretending that the mining for lithium is NOT fossil fuel mining is neither green nor the answer to a better life.
So really you want change? Change yourself first, your community next and when the change is so far gone that they various beige suits hanging on the government tit can't refuse to acknowledge that change in the population anymore they will come to the party and not a day early.
But the most ineffective Party pretty much anywhere on this planet has been the Green Party.
It isn't easy being Green.
https://youtu.be/rRZ-IxZ46ng
referencing Dennis' point above about strategy, it's not possible for any party to do what you want, because most NZers won't vote for such a party. The Greens tread the fine line between what is needed and what is possible. That people like you and Bradbury continue to slag off the Greens is a failure of imagination on your part, which prevents seeing the strategy and most likely who the Greens actually are. Pfft, as if you're the only person that knows that EVs won't save the day and as if people in the GP don't understand cradle to grave. The Green Party cut their teeth on this stuff before you were even thinking about politics, and it's bizarre what prejudices people let blind them to the way out of our current dilemmas.
Yes, personal and then community change is absolutely necessary, but we don't have time to rely on that alone (and again, where is the strategy? It's not like people having been saying what you just said my whole life, it's not enough). The people in parliament are individuals who live in communities too, and many of them want real change.
no substantial change will happen until shit hits the fan…..
best we keep preparing then.
Lithium production doesn't have to be fossil fuel dependent. That it mostly is at the moment is simply because it's cheaper that way, for now. But there's a bunch of alternative methods to getting the lithium, such as building a geothermal power station and extracting the lithium from the superheated groundwater going through the power station.
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/04/vulcan-is-a-step-closer-to-net-zero-carbon-lithium-production/
Li from geothermal fluid is being done in the lab in NZ (in conjunction with silica extraction at Ohaaki).
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/117664525/taup-company-successfully-extracts-lithium-from-geothermal-fluid
Understand its in the process of being scaled up for commercial production. If successful, I assume it could be deployed at other geothermal power stations.
Back in the late 90s/early noughties there was also Pacific Lithium's attempt to extract lithium from seawater here. But I was never sure whether that really was a good faith attempt to build a genuine productive business or just Robin Johannink grifting investors.
if the most ineffective party pretty much anywhere on this planet (hyperbole much?) are the greens, why is so much of what they have been banging on about, now mainstream thinking?I would say, in the BIG picture, the greens have been remarkably successful.
that's quite funny given Bradbury has spent more than three years running round slagging off the Greens, and actively undermining them, every chance he gets.
I'm not a GP activist, but people can call me a green activist. My preference would be that we had MANA and the Mp still in parliament, and others, and then I'd have more to write about.
I'd still be about the strategy though and will argue this with anyone that cares to: if actual lw policy matters, then the Greens have a significantly more lw policy platform than any other major party in this election. Hence the urge to vote for them. My personal political position is probably better described as deep green politics, and the GP are the best chance of us ever getting there.
But in the meantime, fucking climate change blows every other argument and stupid bullshit leftwing bitch fest out of the water.
Oh really?
Yep I'm gonna party vote green even tho the id politics stuff is annoying. Their policies are proper left and they take CC seriously.
(unfortunately I'm in epsom & also have to swallow a dead rat (goldsmith) this election to try and get rid of ACT)
My personal political position is probably better described as deep green politics, and the GP are the best chance of us ever getting there.
Exactly. I differ from you only on the political positioning required to get there – but I have had to drift with the times on that point recently. National's obduracy withstood the attempt by their progressives to steer their ship more cleverly, so the toxic culture within will defeat consensus politics for a while yet.
What is still missing is economic policy based on the commons. Both the left and right refuse to even think about that, yet it is the essential component for sustainable economics. Permaculture teaches design-based thinking, so I keep expecting it to emerge there. To provide that new design requires invention, so back in the '80s I conceived a synthesis of equity and enterprise as the conceptual basis for progress. Yet even permaculturalists haven't realised that yet. Too imaginal…
What was the simplest way you worked out to describe it?
As written, as you quoted. Can't see how anyone could simplify further. But if you were fishing for framing to help explain it, I didn't get that far.
Green policy formulation in the first couple of years involved compiling elements deemed essential (UBI & true-cost accounting, for instance, pollution & natural resource taxes plus others). Members suggested & discussed in person when the working group met, policy drafts got amended subsequently by JF & posted to members for further comment. Then the Alliance hit & the process was shelved.
Since I was advocating something radical that hadn't been done before, I don't blame any of the others for being averse to integrating principles from the political left & right. Transcending binary belief systems is never easy.
Smaller words might help.
"economic policy based on the commons."
Can you please talk about that a bit more?
Guillotines?
I tend to view it from a human rights perspective as well as the economic view. Economics is all about efficiency of operations, costs & benefits quantised. When you transcend it via noticing that values are more qualities than quantities, and those drive behaviour more powerfully, then it becomes a question of how stuff gets shared.
By stuff, I mean mostly money & power, of course! So if society incorporates a conceptual framework empowering equity, people get a more equal share as of right. The convergence of legal provision on the principle is usually the structural problem: govts pretend to honour the principle while minimising the amount of provision. You know that.
Democracy allows them to get away with it. If they were bound by a charter of rights that included the provision, and their employment as MPs contracted them to legislate accordingly, public perception of the validity of wealth-sharing would be raised accordingly. People would see their entitlement to wealth-sharing as a human right.
Now the status quo does simulate this situation, since our government endorsed the UN covenant that specifies the several rights to sharing in the economy. Have you read those sections? In theory, our govt is bound to deliver. In practice, the delivery is ever arguable in extent.
So I advise strengthening the left hand side of the synthesis (equity) to reduce the gap between pretence & reality. As for the rhs (enterprise), I've always advised supplementing bau with collective endeavour. Traditional co-ops are a useful model but the operational lack seems to be around education and training: nobody provides! So generations keep passing the opportunity by out of ignorance. Remember Mondragon originated in 1956, yet the model has failed to replicate globally.
How could a working model of successful synthesis of both equity and enterprise fail to replicate? Mass psychology. Leftists promoting working together as an ideal instead of doing it in real life. Centrists being too lazy to think about it. Rightists being too scared to change.
In recent decades I've trended to the view that the paradigm shift required in politics can only get triggered by mass desperation. As we've seen recently, the inertial effect of complacency is even able to withstand a pandemic!
Yes, I've noticed that too – I got 'silenced' from his blog for pointing out same. I can't work out what his agenda around that is supposed to be. He's built a small but vociferous army of absolute Green haters; not for anything policy-related, just due to dumb gotcha stuff he hears in the MSM.
I'm guessing some of it is because of his antipathy towards identity politics, which no doubt is in part due to the shit thrown at him by parts of the left over some of his behaviour.
Might be a bad cultural fit issue with the Greens too. He's not the only one that can't get over that.
NZ examples of leftist strategic thinking exist, e.g. the 2016 Labour/Green MoU. Is it your eyesight or your brain that’s letting you down?
Brain, perhaps. Since I wrote in support of it as a strategic initiative at the time. However you may recall that the Green movement originated as holistic (non-binary), and I became part of it that year (1968) on that basis, and it became overtly politic with a slogan expressly stating that it was neither right nor left in the early '80s.
Consequently the MoU was a centrist/leftist collaboration. I do understand that anyone in the leftist bubble will be unable to see it as such, of course. Bubble inevitably warp inhabitants away from reality.
So I ought to acknowledge that it was genuine evidence of leftists doing strategic thinking, eh? While simultaneously pointing out that it was a twin-tribe thingy.
Sometimes absolutist reckons and wind-ups are written with such dismissive authority that gullibile readers might mistake them for facts – IMHO, of course.
CNN has a review of several primaries here: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/05/politics/primary-results-takeaways-august-4/index.html
One featured a progressive black Dem vs establishment black Dem battle:
Good, the Clays sound like the yanker version of monarchy.
Thats a huge win.
I remember her taking on Clay in the doco Knock Down The House.
Perseverance paid off.
I see a Newshub headline on my device this morning. Looks like National's put its policy out : something about Collins saying Ardern is 'weak.'
I don’t think that Collins attacking Ardern directly is going to be much of a vote winner. It will just be to get the base worked up.
Collins "Ardern is weak, the successful Covid response is because of Bloomfield"
Brownlee "Bloomfield is scaremongering, what does he know that he isn't telling us!!!"
Key "Open the borders"
Clarke "Privatise quarantine"
Hosking "Don't get tested, freedom!!!"
Bomber "Greens are scary"
etc…
What he is telling us Gerry is that he knows what you fuckers are capable of.
What Gerry is also saying is "aren't you guys lucky I'm nowhere near the controls of power", indeed we are Gerry, and very thankful.
Bulldozer Gerry. Made the Christchurch quakes worse by demolishing everything with no regard for heritage and people's valuable stuff (literal fortunes) in the red zone. Stuffed up the rebuild. Has no regard for airport security.
https://twitter.com/TryRadicalism/status/1290746244805976064?s=20
A capitalist examines the prospects of system crash: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/coronavirus-banks-collapse/612247/
Readers who are financially literate ought to read the detailed analysis – I'll just copy the sections other readers can comprehend, to illuminate the scenario.
Incomprehensible, especially the last two sections.
Playing dumb, eh? Yet clever enough to have postponed it until the danger of being selected as a Labour list candidate is safely past. 😏
It’s official, you’re talking gibberish. No wonder I cannot parse 84.3 ± 0.9% (95% CI) of your comments.
That's not a flash suit you're wearing, those tailors put one over on you.
Gabby I am reading Lindsey Davis and her character Falco who is a spy for the leaders, wealthy of Rome and he has to dodge all sorts including people who pop out with knives, like you who pop up to snipe. In the game that my sons spends time on-line, the spy is the one who jumps you from nowhere. It keeps him on his toes so to speak.
Still, we shouldn't criticise the private sector for proposing campervans as acceptable accommodation.
Trump rolled back all the laws enacted by the Obama admin.
So ponzi schemes , huge bonuses for bankers etc all the worst banking practices have been allowed to flourish to levels much worse than the GFC.
They've all been doing it since Reagan came in and said "Government is the problem". Wall St has been rolling back the New Deal and taking over the US government for decades now. A sham of democracy.
Dark knight gives Nats economic policy: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=12354064
Forget Roger Douglas, Prebs & co, subsidies are socialism at work! It's left/right win/win all over the place! He's reacting to this
And he's alerting us to a collective gymnastics conundrum, via bad grammar:
Key should fuck off to Hawaii, easier to suck up to rich Americans over there.
https://twitter.com/alans_world/status/1291071252791046144?s=20
Interesting he said Mangawhai. Cos of course he’s a member of the country’s most exclusive golf course there, Tara iti. Which is the cornerstone of a big really pricey real estate development that an American developer is doing.
Covid-19 is upsetting all and WTF – politicians are starting to resign in droves as it's not worth the money, too much stress, just too hard./sarc?
It is quite alarming, Sweden has had a stable level of Covid-19 cases, but to no avail economically. The last quarter was down 8.9% as their trading partners aren't up to trading. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/08/05/sweden-suffers-record-plunge-despite-lighter-lockdown/
The UK – It sounds like The Treasury is treating people as pawns again and the Government is playing russian roulette.
Britain is heading for an unemployment crisis of Biblical proportions by the end of the year unless the Treasury's policy is torn up very soon.
Businesses will start ‘shedding’ jobs rapidly in September as the furlough scheme dials down to 70pc of wages. It will reach a grim crescendo when support stops altogether at the end of October, long before the economy is in any fit state to absorb the army of unemployed.
“It is one of the biggest policy mistakes in modern British history,” said Nobel laureate Chris Pissarides from the London School of Economics.
Only half of the 9.6 million furlough jobs have so far come back. There must be a high risk that premature fiscal tightening will abort the recovery and lead to bitter social conflict, spelling the political death of this Government.…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/08/05/economic-consequences-mr-sunak/
Yet – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/05/bbc-spends-38-million-call-centres-staff-chase-over-75s-licence/
What should governments be doing. What should the officials be doing, how should they cope with the changing ideas of governments. I may have put this up but it is worth repeating.
*fuck*
https://twitter.com/cnni/status/1291033723471663104
Lebanon's cabinet declared a two-week state of emergency in the capital city and handed control of security in the capital to the military following a massive explosion in Beirut that killed at least 135 people and injured 5,000 others.
The explosion on Tuesday sent shockwaves across the city, causing widespread damage as far as the outskirts of Beirut.
Officials said they expect the death toll to rise further as emergency workers dig through the rubble to search for survivors.
Beirut's city governor Marwan Abboud said up to 300,000 people have lost their homes and authorities are working on providing them with food, water and shelter.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/lebanon-eyes-state-emergency-deadly-beirut-blast-live-200804234925493.html
I hope Jacinda urgently demands a review of the fertiliser stockpiles around NZ.
We tend to put fertiliser works out of town because they have a habit of blowing up. This isn’t the first one to go up, with similar consequences
The Oklahoma city bomber was horribly effective with just 3 tons of the stuff. Beirut had 2,700 tons.
This one was a ship in port, 581 fatalities when 2000 tonne went up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_disaster
This one was a fert plant a few year ago, fortunately out of town but a good bang Still killed 15 on site
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_explosion
Lebanon is in such a bad 'state' that its government can't look after the country properly. Instead they are like the National Party, looking after themselves and their friends, looking for personal advantage instead of managing the country for all the people doing the stodgy, practical things.
Nov.2019 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-protests-causes-explainer/explainer-why-is-lebanon-in-an-economic-and-political-mess-idUSKBN1XG260
Skyscrapers towering over the city landscape. I wonder who owns those? https://www.focus-economics.com/countries/lebanon
15/7 More money is not the answer to Lebanon's troubles : Any financial aid to Lebanon should be tied to a material commitment by its elites to undertake long-needed reforms. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/money-answer-lebanon-troubles-200714113658835.html
3/8 Beware of the looming chaos in the Middle East : The region in 2020 is in much worse shape than in 2010. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/beware-looming-chaos-middle-east-200803042230463.html
And we have the USA setting us up – rocket launching aiming at where?
Unmanned AI driven aircraft developed by USA Boston interests – why here? https://nelsonweekly.co.nz/2020/08/no-pilots-no-problem/
https://newzealand.ai/insights/a-new-partnership-will-create-a-strong-ai-community-in-nelson
https://newzealand.ai/
Who wants to be first in the world with edgy risky new measures – first being lauded for going naked into the neolib world – Grace Mullane virtually did that, now she is dead. We are vulnerable in our way.
We need to be aware of our vulnerability and keep looking after each other and the country tenaciously. No-one else will do it, we have to do it for ourselves.
A little stirring music from Pete Seeger and Woodie Guthrie with banjos!
that demolished grain silo held 85% of the countries stock pile. It is going to be a hard winter for the Lebanese.
the levels of disability resulting from that are mindblowing too.
There's just a huge crater where the warehouse full of ammonium nitrate once stood. The explosion registered as a M3.3 earthquake. Somewhere around 5% the power of the Hiroshima bomb.
2700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate in ONE place..
Frigging hell. Good thing that the explosion itself would have disrupted the explosion going full on.
What were they thinking? That is just daft piling all of that in a warehouse.
We stored that smelting byproduct in a flood-prone area by the Mataura River.
Probably find the ammonium nitrate in the warehouse was "temporary" when they confiscated it, but never got the funding to move or dispose of it…
Yeah – there is never anything as permanent as a temporary solution.
So, approximately 750 ton of TNT equivalent. Really, Little Boy wasn't all that powerful as far as nukes go and you can't really compare the damage of an air-burst nuke to that done by a conventional ground explosion either.
Yeah, I get really irritated when people make senseless comparisons.
Brexit in a nutshell.
https://twitter.com/MPIainDS/status/1290292769089626114
https://twitter.com/TheNewEuropean/status/1290971014487322624
Q. What was the winning margin of that indicative, not conclusive, vote on Brexit?
A. Leave 17,410,742 – 51.89% Remain 16,141,241 – 48.11% Turnout of registered voters 72.21%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2016_United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum
Leaving Brexit was an example of totally inadequate simple-majority law unsatisfactory for matters that change the system of the country. It was far different than an election that was part of the system. That decision has left the UK in a political hole it will never climb out of. Tried and true lefties say ' the people voted for it', for lies! They didn't have a clue what perversion of a political ploy they were falling for.
It needed a 55% or 60% super majority, or there should have been a confirmatory referendum once people had more information on the outcome.
The Liberal Democrats fucked it up big time by attacking Corbyn rather than joining with him in his stance.
Cameron was a fool to commission the referendum…but a genius compared with Boris.
Brexiters continually went on about 17 million people wanted the outcome without saying once that 16 million didn't.
Houses for Ordinary people are The True Real resolve of Kiwis – not Rugby.
The persons who care for New Zealanders are not the Banks. For they exist night and day to squeeze every bit of fiscal Life out of the pockets of ordinary families and persons. Banks are Shylocks in new shirts. Ask Shakespeare.
They have even removed hundreds and thousands of NZeders out of once owned homes, and sold them off into the sweet arms of Landlords.
Landlords, as you know, demand monstrously cruel Rents and laugh at the poor they entrap.
The Wealthy people glutton on, receiving every perk the poor receive. Incredible crazy Gluttony !
The Excessive Land shall be demanded. The required Housing must be built and maintained. The Wealthy have had their fun. Haven't they ?
Else, New Zealand will be the world's laughing stock. Slaves.
All these economic decisions are rational given the market conditions set up by *government* of every stripe since Roger Douglas and his merry band of reverse robin hoods came along in their trojan horse and shafted ordinary kiwis
Unfortunately most of the world has got pulled into the freemarket neolib system and the housing problem is widespread. What to do without pulling the whole house of cards down on our heads? Perhaps we will be like Lebanon.
Or like the UK out of the EU and with huge loans still to repay – however we should remember that they ended up with a huge amount to pay to the USA after WW2 – through their lend-lease agreement etc. It made sense to join the European Common Market after that. Now they have decided to leave and pal up with the individualistic USA, a co-operative world is too common for those moguls, and the UK wants to plunder other pastures no doubt.
Speaking of Banks
I am listening to John Bank's covering for the normal dude on talk back this morning.
I'd forgotten what a patronising prat he is
It' all that wax in his ears.
I think this may use up my quota of stupid questions for the month, but what happens if say ACT, NZ1 and the Greens all fall just below 5% and none of them win an electorate seat? And at the same time both Labour and National fall below 50% for the party vote?
How does this work in terms of forming a govt? Does Labour have to form a coalition with National?
I must be missing something here.
In that scenario the party votes for those under 5% would be distributed proportionately.
If in the unlikely event Labour got 47% and National 45% Labour would be the government with National nipping at their heels. It would take just one or maybe two by-elections to fall from Labour to National to have a change of government.
If both parties ended up even, then we'd have a hung Parliament after redistribution and face another election.
OT: isn't it amazing that NZ only had one by-election this term when Jonathan Coleman left. Usually there's about 3 or more.
Forgive my ignorance and it is pure lack of knowledge of history, but have we ever had a hung election in NZ?
No.
But 2020 has told us that all bets are off.
Although given how diabolical National are, it's unlikely to happen this year.
Pretty fair assessment Lol
Which is why the Greens policy is preferential voting for both electorates and parties. Helps make sure that the parties that people actually prefer are elected.
Then whichever of Nats or Labour got the most votes gets to form the government. They will divvy up the 120 seats in relative proportion to their party vote. Say it was Labour 48% and Nat 44%, then Labour would get 63 seats (48% vote share*120 seats/92% total qualified non-wasted vote) and the Nats 57 seats (or maybe 62 and 58 depending on how the Sainte Lague formula works it out).
https://www.electionresults.govt.nz/electionresults_2017/statistics/sainte-lague-formula.html
Not a silly question methinks. Could happen, so worth considering. I believe a national unity govt would be the framing deployed. They could also call it neoliberals disunited, eh? Would make fun political posturing a cultural norm until deckchair-arranging began to pall for all, whereupon the attraction of another election (mid-term) would suck their Titanic into an ocean vortex…
I know it deserves a full post in itself, but well done to this government and in particular Ministers Parker and O'Connor for the passage of the gazetting of the National POlicy Statement on Freshwater, National Environmental Standards for Freshwater, regulations on stock exclusion, and regulations on measurement and reporting on lakes and rivers;
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA2008/S00045/new-rules-in-place-to-restore-healthy-rivers.htm
The regulations that go into force reasonably quickly from this include:
• Requiring councils to give effect to Te Mana o Te Wai by prioritising the health and wellbeing of our waterways
• Halting further loss of natural wetlands and streams
• Setting higher health standards at swimming spots
• Putting controls on high-risk farm practices such as winter grazing and feedlots
• Setting stricter controls on nitrogen pollution and new bottom lines on other measures of waterway health
• Requiring urban waterways to be cleaned up and new protections for urban streams
• Preserving and restoring the connectivity of New Zealand fish species’ habitats
• Requiring mandatory and enforceable farm environment plans
• Making real-time measuring and reporting of data on water use mandatory.
They've also made special provision for vegetable growing areas which are critical for national supply, such as Pukekohe and the Horowhenua. The acid needs to go on Auckland Horizons councils to clean up these areas, even with the apparent carve-outs.
Looking forward to regional councils actually putting resource into enforcement and prosecution to get the turnaround we need.
I too feel elated whenever politicians facilitate "the passage of the gazetting of" things.
The gazetting, in particular, always gets my heart rate up.
Done with half a day of Parliamentary time to celebrate it.
Cheers.
I have mentioned that before lockdown and yes, my fear has proven correct. The majority of new unemployment cases are women.
But hey 'shovel' ready jobs are being offered. Billions being poured in shovel ready. 🙂
And women running small businesses to create an income for themselves in a society that gives few fucks of job creation for women can apply for a 'government loan' (fully refundable) or go to Winz for some much needed bullshittery in order to get nothing, cause they may share the home with a bloke aka the 'mealticket'.
I seriously hope that long term Labour will do better then that, but then Labour needs poor people, and poor women are always good to squeeze some more votes about. Right, cause 'we fight for women', and their children. One denied benefit at a time.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018758209/covid-19-attention-must-be-paid-to-jobs-for-women-during-recovery-employment-opportunities-commissioner
Without wanting to sound cynical, is there any actual breakdown analysis on this figure?
What sort of jobs we are talking about etc?
Would imagine the first people that lost their jobs were part timers that are more likely to be female (kids and things) and in hospitality (which basically shut down and is screwed) which is also more likely to be female.
Hospitality jobs, Front of house, waitresses, room maids, house keepers. Retail – all of them and more going due to self ordering and self check outs. All that retail usually also comes with office staff – production staff etc and a lot of those are also women.
So not sure what you are nitpicking about.
But yes, lets ignore the fact thatof 11.000 thousand that went on the dole 10.000 are women. And i would assume that the employment opportunities commissionar got the numbers from Winz.
Also from here a list of companies that shed jobs – Air NZ on top of the list, i would assume that a lot of the ground staff is female, a lot of the on plane staff are female.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12336053
from here a few numbers which industry has shed how many jobs and talking about the second wave of unemployment
https://www.careers.govt.nz/job-hunting/whats-happening-in-the-job-market/covid-19-and-the-labour-market/#:~:text=In%20New%20Zealand%20many%20workers,businesses%20lost%20about%2024%2C000%20employees.
the spin off also has something to say about that
https://thespinoff.co.nz/business/05-08-2020/why-the-hell-has-new-zealands-unemployment-rate-just-gone-down/
re – under utiliastion rate….lol
shovel ready. Yeah, sure . Tui!
Paying care giving jobs a decent wage would likely transfer some into that industry although I know it's not for all.
Getting over stereotypes.
Giving them some priority for courses on driving trucks and ag machinery. When ever I see agricultural areas complaining about lack of labour I think – offer part time hours and get some women trained who are well embedded in the community. Problem solved for the next decade
A lot are hospo I think. So very good argument for not extending any of the under 30 work/travel visa’s as they expire .as a lot of that work is hospo or seasonal.
i totally agree, all these women in their retail, hospitality, air NZ, cruise ship jobs etc should just move somewhere rural, be thaught how to drive a tractor and run a milking machine and all is sorted.
Yeah, right Tui.
10.000 out of 11.000 newly unemployed are women. Or did you miss that with you quick fix of bashing unde 26 year old fruit picking tourists. Mind, these women can get themselv a little camper van, bid farewell to hubby and children and just go fruit picking and sleeping in a dorm. Right? Even better, if they are single mums they can just go fruitpicking and their kids can too, right?
Good fucking grief.
This is why women in this country are among the poorest. Because there are too many that simply don't give a shit about how others do so as long as it affects not them.
Never mind that the Government has yet to actually do anything for women so far. Oh but they won't, right kinder gentler bullshit.
Err I wasn't suggesting anything like fruit picking actually and I am certainly not bashing women. I wanted to be sure that women are considered and taken onto the good number of courses being run at the moment ( and there are apparently airline pilots on some ) that lead to some of the better paid rural jobs – some of which are contracting ( driving grape pickers for example). A lot of these don't require moving to the back blocks but maybe to secondary towns like Nelson, Blenheim, Hastings Palmerston North. – or some of them may even want assistance to get HT licences to drive trucks- which generally seems to be better paid than care giving – funny that. Then there are all the trades courses – generally more women are taking these up – but we do want to make sure that any barriers are dealt with.
So no the "put the kids in the camper van and go somewhere" was not part of my thinking simply an assumption on your part so please don't sledge me about it.
Likewise hospo. Yes I have registered that we are talking about women and yes a large number of jobs seem to be from this industry and the numbers are also I assume locals eligible for welfare. But overall of out total hospo jobs pre covid a very large number (well over 2/3rds seem to be filled with those on short term visa's including the short term travel/work visa's.) There seems to be no reason to grant extensions on these visa's despite petitions and that would not have happened to any great extent pre covid so why do we not try to have locals filling our local hospo jobs? Nothing snide about that .
Do women overall need more support – right across the economy that would be a yes.
Undoing everything The Black Guy did.
https://twitter.com/NGrossman81/status/1291104766240661507
can you feel the economic anxiety of the white male working class of the US?
did you hear about her fucking emails and her lack of stamina?
oh well, to bad.
Poor people's lives are less important that rich guys profit. After all, its easy to replace the poor person killed to continue raking in the profit.
Today is the 75th Anniversary of the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Our species is unsurpassed at self-destruction.
https://twitter.com/TheSpinoffTV/status/1291101672232673282?s=20
And stupidity.
https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1291163858950918152
https://twitter.com/Freeyourmindkid/status/1290626349426671617
Behind a viral photo of a crowded hallway at a high school in Georgia, a potentially dire situation is brewing. Students, teachers, and parents fear the Paulding County school’s rushed reopening plans may be spiraling out of control just two days after students — who said they were told they could face expulsion for remaining home — returned to class despite reports of positive coronavirus cases among students and staff.
North Paulding High School, about an hour outside Atlanta, reopened Monday despite an outbreak among members of its high school football team, many of whom, a Facebook video shows, worked out together in a crowded indoor gym last week as part of a weightlifting fundraiser.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mollyhensleyclancy/georgia-school-reopening-photo-paulding-county
Does anyone know if it's legit for a sitting, albeit leaving MP such as Paula Bennett to be moonlighting for a full week of morning talkback shows on Newshub's Magic Radio especially during election cycle They're already dedicated 24/7 to trying to get the National Party into govt but what part of this and the discussions can be separated from campaign advertising $$?
https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/122353535/threats-abuse-for-huruhuru-shop-owners-over-hairy-te-reo-meaning
I thought we wanted te reo in every day usage.
This is the second article in a fortnight were shop owners are getting shit for using it .
The other one was a restaurant in Auckland..if I recall rightly
ha! Huruhuru also means pubic hair. Look Waghorn, rule of thumb, if you're unsure whether naming something from someone elses culture is appropriation or not, maybe don't do it, who needs the headache.
So bullies get to set the rules , righto!!
Did we just see Winston's last ever speech in parliament?
I am guessing yes
I never write Winston Peters off. I remember the political idiots from National, Act, and the dipshit side of the left doing that in 1999, 2008, 2011, and today.
What those wishful politically dumb numpties forget is three things. He has a constituency for his brand of politic, those people are exactly the right kind of paranoid to ignore pollsters asking them who they’d vote for, and they all vote.
That is why the NZF vote on election days is always higher than virtually all of the polls by a few percent. While the greens is usually lower (lots of non voters there).
About the only thing that might mitigate that long term trend this time is Shane Jones. I am so glad he isn’t Labour any more. He is a real undisciplined pain to have around any political party.
I think Shane Jones will win the Northland seat.
Good probability. He has actually delivered the goodies – unlike the bridges that Bridges promised in a past by-election.
The issue would be if he could figure out how to retain the seat in subsequent elections. Electorate work is a long tedious detailed process of getting down with the distressed in an electorate. It doesn’t lend itself to the big-noting and meaningless rhetoric that Shane Jones is so well known for.
A gracious, eloquent Adjournment debate speech by the Prime Minister, followed by one full of personal attacks by the Leader of the Opposition.
The contrast between the two speeches should be a marker for our approach to voting on election day.
The opposition aren't supposed to point out a govts failings before an election now?
I take it you missed Labours speeches in the house before the last election?
There's a difference between pointing out political disappointments and personal attacks.
"political disappointments"
Is this the term for failure now Lol
Yes, National's failure to screw over the NZ public as they wished in this case. As they couldn't say that they use personal attacks against Labour/Greens.
Jacinda always speaks in very clear language without ambiguity as she did again today. No umms or ers. Love her or hate her you wont misunderstand her.
https://ondemand.parliament.nz/parliament-tv-on-demand/?itemId=215321
Collins seems to jumble her sentences so that the meaning is ambiguous. And Collins spent most of her time today sneering and belittling. (As did Brownlee.)
https://ondemand.parliament.nz/parliament-tv-on-demand/?itemId=215322
More MMT talk starting to appear in the news
https://www.interest.co.nz/news/106385/grant-robertson-remains-committed-reducing-government-debt-long-term-saying-modern
It's a shame Grant Robertson has dismissed it so quickly.
Grant Robinson is still wedded to the delusional neoclassical/liberal school of economics. Most of Labour are and that is why they can't do the transformation that we need.
Yup, once the MMT lens is understood, it opens up a whole lot of progressive policy choices. These policies under a neoliberal view point are very difficult to justify.
You'll probably find this interesting.
Thanks for sharing, will have a listen when I get some time.
James Shaw with a couple of zingers in his last speech in the house this term.
"There's Labour: 'Let's keep moving.' New Zealand First: 'Let's not.'
“You can almost see the ads can’t you?” said Shaw. “New Zealand First: You can stop progress.
“Act are making a bold play for the assault rifle vote, with: ‘The Act Party – more deadly than serious.’
“And National have settled on a new leader with a new slogan: ‘Why vote for the lesser evil?'”
Their billboards read, "Back your Future". With the greatest respect to the NZF voting demographic, their future will mostly have been planned and locked in some time ago.
Last election their billboards read, "Had Enough?"
Winston, I think we have.
If Grace Mullane's murderer loses his appeal, can his sentence be adjusted, due to his utter lack of remorse?
+100
Well said.