Twenty-five neo mastiff crosses and bulldog crosses have been rounded up at a Northland property where a man was killed in a suspected mauling.
Exactly how many dogs were at the property to begin with was unclear, or whether they belong to the man who was killed, as they weren’t registered, he said.
I recall the uproar over Staffi dogs around 10 -15 years ago. The Staffordshire terrier is a fantastic little dog. Full of personality and affection. Easy to train and highly social. Its not the dogs, its their human owners who are the problem. A property with 25 large dogs roaming free and untrained… a recipe for disaster.
This looks like a breeder/horder situation that got out of hands. I am quite sorry for the bloke, but even sorrier for the dogs. They neither asked to be on that property nor did they ask for neglect and abuse.
Housesitter with a number of dogs, one of the dogs had a lot of puppies. The man who was killed didn’t own the dogs, they belonged to someone who was staying with him.
Probably not related. The feral dogs…an awful situation up here… and I was speaking with someone not long ago who was attacked and bitten whilst walking part of the Te Paki Coastal Track. She went out and purchased a .22, and will never tramp without it in future. Truly feral…cunning as shit house rats… and virtually impossible to trap and as hard to shoot. Poison has been suggested….and the rather bizarre and cruel idea to plant meat impregnated tampons with the view that the dogs will eat them and they'll expand in the throat and stomach. (This guy was serious.) The dogs will travel along Te Oneroa a Tohe and visit 'civilisation' via the access roads. One such road is very near to us and we watch our wee flock very carefully. Have had a couple of scares. Luckily our fencer, a local, put barbed wire atop the sheep netting to deter predators, four legged and two.
The tragedy out west was also too close to home for a mate of ours who is from there and until the details were released, things were a bit tense. Sounds like the guy was trying to get the owner of the dogs to move on…for obvious reasons. For the life of me I don't understand how anyone could afford to feed such massive dogs. You'd need a fairly good income.
I couldn't imagine being able to feed that many dogs either, although it's hard to tell how many were adult dogs. Maybe he was selling them and this paid for the food? But even the logistics of that much food on someone else's property when you're not set up for it. I guess if he was hunting that would help.
Horrendous for that family and community. The dog owner's life now irreversibly changed too. MSM don't seem to be saying anything about him, but I guess more details will follow.
"And animal control!" … in my experience of having had dogs in the past, animal control seems to keep their eyes on good responsible dog people, than those irresponsible people who allow their poor unregistered dogs to roam free, some unfortunately being seriously injured or killed on a road.
One example: In public an Animal Control Officer yelling, shouting and threatening an elderly retired couple and their dog who every morning very early, rain or shine, all seasons, would walk the local beach, cleaning up rubbish and taking it home to dispose of. The reason for the animal control officer's outburst … the dog was on the beach 20 minutes after the 9am curfew had passed, which as far as I know was a one off as far as the elderly couple were concerned! The elderly man tried to talk rationally to the animal control officer, who wouldn't listen and warned them to get their dog off the beach or they "will be impounded and them finded" I witnessed this event first and tried to explain to the ACO about the couple's regular early morning beach cleaning activities. I was told to mind my own business and move on! I reported the incident to the council. Their response? The animal control officer was doing his job!
A pity the ACOs don't do their job concerning feral animal owners!
So far there have been at least four sightings of packs of the dogs, with DoC closing the campsite and tracks to protect visitors to the region from the threat of being attacked.
"This is the first time that we've heard of aggressive behaviour to people," says Abraham Witana, acting operations manager of DoC Kaitai.
He said it now looks like the situation might be getting worse, with the latest sighting by a local driver last weekend.
"They saw a pack of six dogs and a small litter of puppies."
Baigent told The Project the dogs already slaughter our most treasured native birds.
"Once they get a taste for kiwi, dogs will go through and will take a lot of them. They'll systematically work their way through.
"They don't eat kiwi, they just love the thrill of the chase."
Today on The Detail, RNZ Northland reporter Nita Blake-Persen talks to Sharon Brettkelly about the war on feral dogs in the Far North.
"It boggles my mind that this is still able to happen in a country where we're striving for Predator Free Aotearoa, to have packs of feral dogs which are not only a threat obviously to wildlife but also to stock and potentially humans," she says.
Blake-Persen tells how campers and trampers at Cape Reinga earlier in the year spotted the packs of wild dogs loitering around.
"They were pretty freaked out. You don't expect to see wild dogs in New Zealand".
This week the East Asia Summit held this year in Cambodia, was attended by representatives of America, Russia and China – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and China Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Reporting on the East Asia Summit, RT the Russian official media outlet of the Russian Federation, quoted Sergei Lavrov on the world situation.
S.L.“Our American colleagues demonstrate permissiveness” for themselves in international affairs “every time they try to assert their dominance”
S.L.“The Americans have taken up a course of suppressing any independence,”
S.L.“understand the futility of a policy according to which you can just turn a blind eye to one situation, one crisis created by the US, and expect that everything will be more or less OK there,” S.L.
S.L.“They decided to turn Ukraine into a menace for Russia and for many years ignored the racist policies of the Kiev regime, which has been destroying everything Russian… they violated the principles of indivisible security, which they signed up for at the highest level and which they simply trampled upon,”
S.L.“Similarly, in the case of [US House speaker] Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, they [the Americans] ignored their own principles, which they proclaimed publicly,”
Echoing Lavrov's comments on Taiwan, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi following comments were quoted by RT
W.Y, “a serious violation of the One China policy”
W.Y. “vulgar comedy,”
W.Y. “serious consequences”
W.Y. “a serious violation of the One China policy”
Referring to China's military exercises in reaction to Pelosi's visit.
Hitler did not invade Poland out of concern for the persecution of Poland's German speaking minority.
Putin did not invade Ukraine out of concern for the persecution of Ukraine's Russian speaking minority.
World War One was not fought because an Arch Duke was assassinated in Kosovo.
World War Three will not be fought because an old lady visited Taiwan.
The underlying cause of global conflict and world war is the same as the underlying cause of pollution and climate change. Infinite economic growth on a finite planet, is running up against the physical and man made borders of the planet.
So you suggest as economic growth is the driver of conflicts.Russia's military operation is a very rational undertaking, no different to the actions of many other nations.
Human beings are rational creatures, every thing we do has a reason, or rationale.
The rationale for climate change is economic growth. If we don't pollute. Our economic and political rivals will, and outcompete us.
The rationale for war is economic growth, if our economic growth is limited and constrained by their uni-polar domination of the globe, we will try to replace it with our multi-lateral domination of the globe. If necessary, with force.
You ask, is it rational?
Is poverty in the midst of immense wealth rational?
Maybe, maybe not. It depends on who you are asking.
Is increasing our carbon emissions year on year rational?
Is filling up our oceans with plastic rational?
Maybe, maybe not. But it is profitable.
Instead of asking if doing these things is rational. A better question might be; Is it right"
Is it right to engage in mass slaughter to achieve a multi-polar world?
The underlying cause of global conflict and world war is the same as the underlying cause of pollution and climate change. Infinite economic growth on a finite planet, is running up against the physical and man made borders of the planet.
Whilst the impossibility of infinite growth is undeniable, I don't think that this is the cause of world wars. Michael Hudson, for example, alludes to a conflict between opposing economic philosophies – not capitalism versus communism, but between rentier capitalism and productive capitalism. Hudson says:
"The New Cold War is dividing the world into two contrasting economic systems
NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is the catalyst fracturing the world into two opposing spheres with incompatible economic philosophies. China, the country growing most rapidly, treats money and credit as a public utility allocated by government instead of letting the monopoly privilege of credit creation be privatized by banks, leading to them displacing government as economic and social planner. That monetary independence, relying on its own domestic money creation instead of borrowing U.S. electronic dollars, and denominating foreign trade and investment in its own currency instead of in dollars, is seen as an existential threat to America’s control of the global economy.
U.S. neoliberal doctrine calls for history to end by “freeing” the wealthy classes from a government strong enough to prevent the polarization of wealth, and ultimate decline and fall. Imposing trade and financial sanctions against Russia, Iran, Venezuela and other countries that resist U.S. diplomacy, and ultimately military confrontation, is how America intends to “spread democracy” by NATO from Ukraine to the China Seas.
The West, in its U.S. neoliberal iteration, seems to be repeating the pattern of Rome’s decline and fall. Concentrating wealth in the hands of the One Percent has always been the trajectory of Western civilization. It is a result of classical antiquity having taken a wrong track when Greece and Rome allowed the inexorable growth of debt, leading to the expropriation of much of the citizenry and reducing it to bondage to a land-owning creditor oligarchy. That is the dynamic built into the DNA of what is called the West and its “security of contracts” without any government oversight in the public interest. By stripping away prosperity at home, this dynamic requires a constant reaching out to extract an economic affluence (literally a “flowing in”) at the expense of colonies or debtor countries."
– make the first 25.000 earned tax free – that would be a great tax cut for low earners whilst it will be a little nothing for the very rich. I base this on the min cost of a rental in NZ.
– he could drop GST, give some high praises to his predecessors in N and simply state that the times are tough, and offer a lower GST or no GST on such things as electricity bills, water bills, doctor bills, school fund bills, food / school uniforms, public transport and fwiw, raise some revenue by increasing GST on say make up, booze, overseas travel, luxury cars, boats, planes – large and small etc etc etc
.
reducing expenditure
I am sure we can find money that is spend but has no results to show for and spending could be cut. Perks for Ministers could be cut. Housing allowances for Ministers could be cut. Wages for ministers could be cut. Less Propaganda Peddlers for NZTransport etc etc.
Investing
continue to invest in Health Care, Education, Infrastructure etc.
Fwiw, L could do this too, as could any other Party. That none of them actually do is the interesting part.
…and/or a Wealth Tax….by far the best way to redistribute wealth fairly and supported by the Green Party (and incidentally supported by thinking people like Parker in the current Labour government)
Which is where any proposal for a wealth tax comes unstuck. The truly wealthy will be able to structure their affairs to dodge it, lawyers and their ilk will have a field day, but the accidentally wealthy will end up having to sell their homes.
Ah yes – the 'vested interests' problem. A 20% quota of parliamentary representatives drawn from the ranks of the truly ‘poor' might be a temporary fix, at least until they had received their first few pay cheques.
Actually Sortition as a form of governance looks promising….though there would be I imagine quite a number who decline, much like jury selection….but it is certainly more likely to be truely representative.
Local government could be a trialling point but if it proved workable it could be applied at a national level….of the options I see available it is the one that appeals to me most (even though it may have some potential issues)…of course it is a pipe dream as it is not likely to occur short of absolute disaster, and probably not even then.
I think a WT can be written which is hard to get around, but I agree that with this government, which has been pathetic in relation to trusts which have been set up in there 1000's to avoid the 39% tax rate and for other reasons/avoidance (to claim Working for Families for instance), there is little hope of a rigorous WT regime eventuating.
Such a regime might well happen though if you Party Vote Green.
I am sure we can find money that is spend but has no results to show for and spending could be cut. Perks for Ministers could be cut. Housing allowances for Ministers could be cut. Wages for ministers could be cut. Less Propaganda Peddlers for NZTransport etc etc."
Great soundbites but the $ saved wouldn't even be a rounding error on a tiny part of government expenditure.
The perceived problem with tax cuts is that "rich pricks" get it too. You could eliminate this by having the tax free allowance followed by a higher (than now) tax rate.
So, using your 25k, a tax rate of 33% from then would mean someone on 70k would now pay 15k tax (compared to 14k now). So that would give a meaningful tax cut for low earners whilst not costing too much (by giving it to everyone). You could make the tax at 70k the same if the tax free level was set a a slightly higher 27,500 (and no-one under 70k would pay more tax). It still means less tax received by the govt, but probably a better way to target lower paid than other methods currently used (the current IRD payments, for example).
For the expenditure, fiddling with MPs allowances would make little difference. Taking 250k off them (so basically no salary) would save 30m a year, which would mean just 20 cents a week if passed on to 3m taxpayers.
Cutting wasteful expenses is worthwhile though, as the savings can be used in better ways – more nurses, teachers etc or just paying the existing ones better. But not tax cuts.
Yeah, but if you passed that 30 mil onto the tax payer via Mike King then you get a whole lot of mental healthcare counseling paid for which would be a much better return to the tax payer, but maybe that would demand creative thinking and that is not something i would expect a government doodaa to do. Think and creatively at that.
Of course you could send everyone 37 cents in a transaction that a bank might charge you a dollar + for. And i could totally see the doodaas on either side of the aisle talk about that just the way you do. LOL – Go figure.
You could also ensure that PAYE is paid directly to IRD on payday when the wages are paid to employees.
This would help stop employers stealing their workers money and identify earlier businesses in trouble. You could also stop large corporates having policies such as paying bills in 3-6 months so their smaller suppliers get paid to help their cashflow.
We lose hundreds of millions of dollars in tax every year to failed businesses.
and we could make tax avoidance illegal with a few years of hard labour attached to it too. 🙂
there would be many many ways to address spending without having to actually cut services. Just start limiting excesses and willful wastage for a starter.
This is long(ish) and might get frowned-upon, but it's interesting 🙂
''For just as established religions assume the maleness of God, just as psychoanalysis and Freud assumed the maleness of libido, so have the social sciences- and in particular anthropology- assumed the generic maleness of human evolution. Both popular and academic anthropological writers have presented us with scenarios of human evolution that feature, almost exclusively, the adventures and inventions of man the hunter, man the tool maker, man the territorial maker, and so forth.
Woman is not comprehended as an evolutionary or evolutionizing creature. She is treated rather as an auxiliary to a male-dominated evolutionary process; she mothers him, she mates him, she cooks his dinner, she follows around after him picking up his loose rocks. He evolves. She follows. He revolutionizes. She adjusts. If the book jackets don’t give us pictures of female homo sapiens being dragged by their hair through 2 or 3 million years of he-man evolution, we are left to assume this was the situation.
This, despite the known fact that among contemporary and historic hunting-and-gathering people, as among our remote hunting-and-gathering ancestors, 75 to 80 percent of the group's subsistence comes from the women's food gathering activities. This, despite the known fact that the oldest tools used by contemporary hunter gatherers, and the oldest most primal tools ever found in ancient sites, were women's digging sticks. This, despite worldwide legends that cite women as the first users and domesticators of fire.
This, despite the known fact that women were the first potters, the first weavers, the first textile-dyers and hide-tanners, the first to gather and study medicinal plants- i.e., the first doctors- and on and on. Observing the linguistic interplay between mother and infants, mothers and children, and among work-groups of women, it is easy to speculate on the female contribution to the origin and elaboration of language. That the first time measurements ever made, the first formal calendars, were women's lunar markings on painted pebbles and carved sticks.
And it is thoroughly known that the only "God image" ever painted on rock, carved in stone, or sculpted in clay, from the Upper Paleolithic to the Middle Neolithic- and that's roughly 30,000 years- was the image of a human female."
-"The Great Cosmic Mother", Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor
Interesting Robert. A close relative of mine is tied to a Church which lives on the father being the head of the house. Hilarious watching the wife quietly running the show while appearing to be subservient. Decision making is a lesson in lop-sided negotiation. And he still believes that men are superior.
Hate to break it to you heathen but in real life Catholic churches are mostly run by women. Priests are harder to find and often locums. In the non-Catholic structured churches it's disproportionately female in Ministry.
But yinno, carry on with the tired ignorant bullshit assumptions.
Male imagery had asserted dominance in Gobekle Tepe and quickly across most of the Turkish Upper Chalcolithic. Some dense combination of tax, fenced property, and the dense hierarchies required for urban living did it. Followed quickly by bureaucracy, organised armies, and then written language.
Spiritual nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.
everyone knows that women run things at that level Ad. Sane cultures are honest about it.
The quote in Robert's comment is about how male dominated societies such as ours tell the story of humanity, and how this erases women's culture. Victors write history. Patriarchy is only 5,000 years old though, so probably a blip we will recover from if we don't fry ourselves first.
Gobekle Tepe is one of a full region of tepe that are saying the same story, and it started at least as far back as 9,000 BC. You can't extract patriarchy, property rights and language.
yep, patriarchy didn't arise overnight, it was a process over time and multiple cultures.
Some say coming down from the trees in the first place was a mistake. But I think it's fair to say that once we started planting crops en masse, we need armies to protect the now settled farming cultures, and that meant controlling the means of human reproduction. It's still the basis of patriarchy now, only in civilised cultures we distance ourselves from this reality.
Women invented time, when we shifted from estrus to a menstrual cycle the same length of time as the moon phase. We also invented post-fertility when we developed menopause, this allowing the great cultural leaps forward for humans because grandmothers helped raise children and look after the tribe.
(of course, nature invented those things in women, but the point is poetically made).
Once women started menstruating cyclically instead of via estrus, for women time would have taken on an obvious, in your face meaning. Embodied, not abstract.
Of course there are natural cycles that affect many forms of life. I was pointing to one in particular.
let me put it another way. How females evolved biologically had a big impact on the evolution of human cultures and societies. Female fertility cycles are threaded all through human history and culture. It's just that men have been privileged by the patriarchal systems of recent millennia and thus understanding of those cycles and the roles they play has been distorted and/or rendered invisible. Just like in Sjoo and Mor's examples of technology.
So it's not just 'that's it'. It's that how women contribute and live in the world as females matters, to women, and to human societies. Being female isn't incidental, it's core.
No, you were claiming a specific epistemic privilege for women over men because of menstruation.
But I didn't. All I did was talk about women. Didn't say anything about men, nor did I imply anything. It's your philosophical framework that read something about privilege over men (a common problem in the patriarchy). As if it's just not possible for women to be important in their own right.
However, there was clearly a reproductive advantage in older women assisting with raising grandchildren (and/or as a repository of wisdom), since those genetic traits persisted. If there were no 'fitness' advantage, then the trait would not be universally expressed (if a woman lives long enough, she's going to go through menopause)
Grandmothers who were around and involved had more grandchildren…. How natural selection works.
Remember last year when Australia had all those Covid cases and deaths in Victoria and NSW and it seemed out of control compared with NZ? Well Australia now has less deaths per million than NZ-it has had Covid under better control than NZ for months now.
Actually for all intents and purposes we are currently at parity. 2/m isn't much of a difference. And Australia is at a very different point in their wave cycle – a lot more people died getting to where they are now compared to NZ.
You are entirely missing my point which is that NZ was much much better in terms of deaths/million months ago, but the trend of Covid deaths has been much worse in NZ than OZ over the last few months and there is no sign of this changing.
Take a look at the graphs in the website I referenced above.
I'm not missing your point, you're reading the data wrong. First, cumulative – overall we've lost a lot fewer people compared to Australia per capita, which if you will insist on making it a competition, is the important number. Second, their per capita numbers right now are going to be moving down because they are coming out of an infection wave. We're just hitting our second or third wave.
First, cumulative – overall we've lost a lot fewer people compared to Australia per capita…
That’s been true until now, but no longer. NZ has been rapidly overhauling Aussie's (cumulative total) 'Deaths/1M pop' metric. Wasn't expecting the switch to happen until the end of August, but, as BG correctly noted, it's happening now.
That is the infection rate which is not what I am talking about.
Case numbers are notoriously badly reported so the infection rate is highly unreliable. Death rates are more certain (in fact very certain) and so are far more reliable.
Up to 100,000 most of the half-starved North Korean soldiers could conscripts rumoured to be sent to bolster Vladimir Putin’s forces fighting Ukraine will head for the hills at the first opportunity they get according to Russian reports.
One can now self identigy as disabled and chronically ill? Can such a person be denied benefits if challenged on that self Id? And how do you quantify 'disabled' and 'chronically' ill. And then, why bother in the first place?
There are people who do self ID as disabled who aren't disabled. I doubt this is what the Society of Authors means, but it's getting harder to tell. There's a still a taboo on self IDing into an ethnic group.
I posted this from twitter, it is them who are asking for 'self identified' disabled people. '
I am asking for someone to translate into easy english for me how someone self id's as disabled.
Maybe you need to explain your own thoughts to me.
a. why do you conflate this self id with that of men who want access to places for women ( again, i am excluding Transwomen/Transmen who transitioned from self id, to make my point clear).
b. why do you assume that i like you conflate this self ID with that of men who want access to places for women.
Being disabled is not a case of being born in the wrong the body, it is not a mental illness, it is not some passing body dysphoria, being disabled is medical, permanent, and makes navigating live quite a bit different and harder for those that have to live with disabilities and chronic pain.
I guess that this operates the other way, too, though. There are people (including, presumably, authors) who may have a 'disability' but do not self-identify as disabled.
I am asking for someone to translate into easy english for me how someone self id's as disabled.
As someone with an invisible disability, how I choose to relate to the world is often a choice. I can hide my disability. I can make it visible. In that there's something about identity. Not such a big thing for me but it matters because otherwise other people get to define me and my disability.
It's not Self ID so much as 'identify as' someone who has a disability (as Belladonna points out, not everyone does). It stops other people from determining what disability or a person's disability means. This matters because there's such a lot of bullshit in society around disability, prejudice, ignorance and so on. Including in institutions.
There are all sorts of problems with tying this to Self ID and I think them using the term self in the tweet is a bit mistake because it shifts it from identifying as, to being something akin to gender identity and then we have all the issues of disability fluidity and basically making shit up.
I have no uterus, thus can't have children. I could now identify as 'chronically ill' and in need of medication – hrt, and disabled as i can not have children.
I choose not to identify as such as i believe that 'disabled' and 'chronically ill' should be reserved for those that have medical issues that forced them to need different measures of support to manage society. I.e. wheel chair ramps, wider doors to shop entrances, disabled toilets, specific care, medical needs that outweigh mine and those similar to mine many many times. There is a difference between not being perfectly healthy and being chronically ill and disabled. (This comment does not relay in any way to you Weka and your health.)
One does not identify as 'chronically ill' one is, one can not opt out of this state. I can self id as a fertile women any day i will nevertheless never birth a child as i do not have the biological capacity for it. Again, it is biology vs imagination. In this case it is more of a state of 'telling us that you are chronically ill' so that we can accept your story. Surely a little bit more of gate keeping should be given, considering the prestige of these awards.
Mind in Mexico a court has argued in favor of 'self id' age. Maybe we are in clown world.
But the Court decided to rule in a general way on highly debatable anthropological and moral issues, such as the meaning of “identity” and the jurisdiction of our personal decisions when it comes to defining it. Topics on which there is no consensus even within the most specialized sectors.
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When Parliament passed the Intelligence and security Act in 2017, they assured us all that it was full of safeguards. Any intrusive surveillance of New Zealanders would be subject to a "triple lock", requiring the approval of the Minister and (supposedly independent) Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, as well as post-facto ...
Eric Crampton writes – Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter provides a bit of the context that ought to have been showing up in other media reports on potential reductions in public service staffing. Media has been reporting on staffing cuts on the order of about 7%. Is that ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many perceive free speech to have become the preserve of the politically right wing, the religiously conservative, the libertarian fringe, the anti-trans, the anti-Māori and…. well, just fill in with whatever groups or individuals you don’t like and don’t ...
Don Brash writes – As everybody who is not blind and deaf is aware, there is a huge political preoccupation with climate change at the moment, a widespread (though by no means unanimous) belief that global temperatures are rising mainly as a result of the greenhouse gases created ...
TL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, March 27 include:Chris Bishop laid out his vision for filling Aotearoa-NZ’s $100 billion infrastructure deficit in a speech yesterday, emphasising user pays and private funding, but failed to say how to achieve bipartisanship on population, public borrowing and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins have been conveying how unhappy they are with the tax system. Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax. And this week Hipkins ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Buzz from the Beehive China has loomed large in Beehive considerations over the past 24 hours, largely because of that country’s mischief-making in the cyber espionage department. Two media statements emerged on that subject hard on the heels of the PM baulking at questions put to him on RNZ’s Morning ...
Chris Trotter writes – WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s ...
Bryce Edwards writes – When she was campaigning to be Minister of Finance last year, Nicola Willis pledged that she would resign from the job if she failed to deliver tax cuts in her first Budget. Now, it’s that pledge, along with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s ...
Robert MacCulloch writes – The Reserve Bank has doubled staff numbers in five years to 510, with personnel costs rising to $80 million in 2023 from $32 million in 2018 – up by a whopping 150%. I guess when you print $50 billion and flood markets with liquidity, ...
The furore. In case you didn’t notice there was a controversy in the weekend involving dolphins in a little town off the South Island. Don’t panic, they haven’t declared independence and resumed whaling, this was simply a sailing event.The problem began when racing was cancelled on the opening day of ...
For 20 years or more, the case for a meaningful capital tax gains has been mulled over and analysed to death, including by the tax working group chaired by Sir Michael Cullen. More than once, the International Monetary Fund has said a CGT would be a good idea for New ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: The Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) call for urgent preventive action and a risk assessment survey of long covid in this briefing noteLocal scoop: NZ road deaths surpass OECD rates, so why is the govt reversing safety plans? ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising ...
This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
COMMENTARY:By Ronny Kareni Since the atrocious footage of the suffering of an indigenous Papuan man reverberates in the heart of Puncak by the brute force of Indonesia’s army in early February, shocking tactics deployed by those in power to silence critics has been unfolding. Nowhere is this more evident ...
Analysis - Nicola Willis is holding firm on tax cuts despite the economic outlook being worse than forecast and critics urging her to wait, writes Peter Wilson for The Week In Politics. ...
Opposition MPs and unions are criticising a proposal by New Zealand’s Ministry of Pacific Peoples to cut staff by 40 percent. The country’s largest trade union — The Public Service Association — says the ministry has informed staff that it is looking to shed 63 of 156 positions. Opposition MPs ...
A poem by Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024 featured poet Carin Smeaton. Daughtr of the 90s when she gets promoted to usherette a baby blu eel carries her all the way up to mothership she’s hovering high she lets the underaged in to see keanu reeves she lets the only lonely ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. My earlier article – Can ‘Good’ be the Greater Evil? – looked at the issue of how wars should end, and how Good versus Evil ...
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 AMMA by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press, $38)A stunning debut novel reviewed by Brannavan ...
From Steve Martin to Ricky Stanicky, a pick’n’mix of things worth watching and listening to this long weekend. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. If you’re at a loss for something to occupy yourself with this Easter, don’t panic: The Spinoff’s got ...
Jesus had dinner with his 12 disciples right before he died. Noted historian Madeleine Chapman finds out who really deserved to be there.First published in 2018 but let’s be honest, the subject is timeless. As you sit on your couch this Easter Sunday, eating a chocolate egg you know ...
The newly-promoted Northern League club is on a mission to return to the National League for the first time in two decades. Plenty about domestic football in New Zealand has changed in that time – but the sense that this amateur competition is not an entirely level playing field remains. ...
Comment: Every year on February 2, a dozen men in tuxedos and top hats approach the burrow of a groundhog in Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania and entice the beaver-like rodent to emerge and predict the weather. If the groundhog, named Punxsutawney Phil, sees its own shadow when it is summoned, legend ...
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Auckland Council has put a deadline on new weather-impacted property owners applying for categorisation as government funding looks set to run out. Councillors have voted to support a deadline of September 30 for property owners who haven’t accessed support to come forward and engage with the council’s recovery office. It ...
NONFICTION 1 BBQ Economics by Liam Dann (Penguin Random House, $40) “It’s official,” wrote Dann nine days ago in the Herald, where he works as business editor at large, “we’re in recession.” Yeah, great. He delivered the bad stats: “GDP fell 0.1 percent in the December 2023 quarter, compared with ...
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25 neo mastffs and bull dog crosses !. On one property. Yea, how the fuck was THAT not a problem?
And other feral dogs previously stalking Humans.
Yep , past time for a major cull. And Dog Control !!
Damn near breaks my heart to hear about good dogs (all dogs are good dogs) ending up like this because of feral men (most likely)
Currently typing this from bed which my two boys (staffi cross and doberman mastiff cross) have graciously allowed me to share
Not often I agree with Pucky, but he's right in this instance.
As Sherlock Holmes said: "You never find a bad dog in a good family!"
But, as usual, the dogs will pay the price for human abuse!
With you PR.
I recall the uproar over Staffi dogs around 10 -15 years ago. The Staffordshire terrier is a fantastic little dog. Full of personality and affection. Easy to train and highly social. Its not the dogs, its their human owners who are the problem. A property with 25 large dogs roaming free and untrained… a recipe for disaster.
This looks like a breeder/horder situation that got out of hands. I am quite sorry for the bloke, but even sorrier for the dogs. They neither asked to be on that property nor did they ask for neglect and abuse.
Housesitter with a number of dogs, one of the dogs had a lot of puppies. The man who was killed didn’t own the dogs, they belonged to someone who was staying with him.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/08/05/family-of-man-killed-say-he-was-attacked-by-friends-dogs/
I did not see that story yet.
Sad for everyone involved.
But this is then not a story of 'feral' dogs attacking a human and killing a human.
agreed. The man dying from the dog attack and the feral dogs are two separate incidents (not related as far as I can tell).
Probably not related. The feral dogs…an awful situation up here… and I was speaking with someone not long ago who was attacked and bitten whilst walking part of the Te Paki Coastal Track. She went out and purchased a .22, and will never tramp without it in future. Truly feral…cunning as shit house rats… and virtually impossible to trap and as hard to shoot. Poison has been suggested….and the rather bizarre and cruel idea to plant meat impregnated tampons with the view that the dogs will eat them and they'll expand in the throat and stomach. (This guy was serious.) The dogs will travel along Te Oneroa a Tohe and visit 'civilisation' via the access roads. One such road is very near to us and we watch our wee flock very carefully. Have had a couple of scares. Luckily our fencer, a local, put barbed wire atop the sheep netting to deter predators, four legged and two.
The tragedy out west was also too close to home for a mate of ours who is from there and until the details were released, things were a bit tense. Sounds like the guy was trying to get the owner of the dogs to move on…for obvious reasons. For the life of me I don't understand how anyone could afford to feed such massive dogs. You'd need a fairly good income.
I couldn't imagine being able to feed that many dogs either, although it's hard to tell how many were adult dogs. Maybe he was selling them and this paid for the food? But even the logistics of that much food on someone else's property when you're not set up for it. I guess if he was hunting that would help.
Horrendous for that family and community. The dog owner's life now irreversibly changed too. MSM don't seem to be saying anything about him, but I guess more details will follow.
"one of the dogs had a lot of puppies"
"Bitches", surely. One of the bitches 🙂
How many, is it known?
Birthing bodies is the correct term nowadays
I'm a cat person 😺
Robert,they tried that nonsense up here, DCC ;with female 'dogs' instead of,well you know bitches.
That was from,newly appointed Lawyers within said Org.
One of the dog sale sites for farm dogs kept getting banned on Facebook due to the word bitch being used , algorithms ain't so bright.
"And animal control!" … in my experience of having had dogs in the past, animal control seems to keep their eyes on good responsible dog people, than those irresponsible people who allow their poor unregistered dogs to roam free, some unfortunately being seriously injured or killed on a road.
One example: In public an Animal Control Officer yelling, shouting and threatening an elderly retired couple and their dog who every morning very early, rain or shine, all seasons, would walk the local beach, cleaning up rubbish and taking it home to dispose of. The reason for the animal control officer's outburst … the dog was on the beach 20 minutes after the 9am curfew had passed, which as far as I know was a one off as far as the elderly couple were concerned! The elderly man tried to talk rationally to the animal control officer, who wouldn't listen and warned them to get their dog off the beach or they "will be impounded and them finded" I witnessed this event first and tried to explain to the ACO about the couple's regular early morning beach cleaning activities. I was told to mind my own business and move on! I reported the incident to the council. Their response? The animal control officer was doing his job!
A pity the ACOs don't do their job concerning feral animal owners!
Easier to pick on the elderly with the friendly, trained dog instead of the aggressive ferals with the untrained dogs…
Brutal thumbnail from the media arm of the National Party.
The end of the runway is approaching for the airline pilot…
More like a few sweaty passengers grabbing the stick yelling , PULL UP PUUL UP
"…from the media arm of the National Party."
Don't you mean the team of $55m?
Anyway, the Bish hits back Fired-up Chris Bishop slams 'useless, incompetent' Labour, says National fully backs Christopher Luxon | Newshub.
Go the Bish :>
This week the East Asia Summit held this year in Cambodia, was attended by representatives of America, Russia and China – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and China Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Reporting on the East Asia Summit, RT the Russian official media outlet of the Russian Federation, quoted Sergei Lavrov on the world situation.
S.L.“Our American colleagues demonstrate permissiveness” for themselves in international affairs “every time they try to assert their dominance”
S.L.“The Americans have taken up a course of suppressing any independence,”
S.L.“understand the futility of a policy according to which you can just turn a blind eye to one situation, one crisis created by the US, and expect that everything will be more or less OK there,” S.L.
S.L.“They decided to turn Ukraine into a menace for Russia and for many years ignored the racist policies of the Kiev regime, which has been destroying everything Russian… they violated the principles of indivisible security, which they signed up for at the highest level and which they simply trampled upon,”
S.L.“Similarly, in the case of [US House speaker] Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, they [the Americans] ignored their own principles, which they proclaimed publicly,”
Echoing Lavrov's comments on Taiwan, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi following comments were quoted by RT
W.Y, “a serious violation of the One China policy”
W.Y. “vulgar comedy,”
W.Y. “serious consequences”
W.Y. “a serious violation of the One China policy”
Referring to China's military exercises in reaction to Pelosi's visit.
Antony Blinken was quoted by R.T.
A.B. "There is no possible justification”
A.B. “cease these actions.”
https://www.rt.com/news/560313-lavrov-taiwan-us-blinken/
Hitler did not invade Poland out of concern for the persecution of Poland's German speaking minority.
Putin did not invade Ukraine out of concern for the persecution of Ukraine's Russian speaking minority.
World War One was not fought because an Arch Duke was assassinated in Kosovo.
World War Three will not be fought because an old lady visited Taiwan.
The underlying cause of global conflict and world war is the same as the underlying cause of pollution and climate change. Infinite economic growth on a finite planet, is running up against the physical and man made borders of the planet.
So you suggest as economic growth is the driver of conflicts.Russia's military operation is a very rational undertaking, no different to the actions of many other nations.
🙄
Human beings are rational creatures, every thing we do has a reason, or rationale.
The rationale for climate change is economic growth. If we don't pollute. Our economic and political rivals will, and outcompete us.
The rationale for war is economic growth, if our economic growth is limited and constrained by their uni-polar domination of the globe, we will try to replace it with our multi-lateral domination of the globe. If necessary, with force.
You ask, is it rational?
Is poverty in the midst of immense wealth rational?
Maybe, maybe not. It depends on who you are asking.
Is increasing our carbon emissions year on year rational?
Is filling up our oceans with plastic rational?
Maybe, maybe not. But it is profitable.
Instead of asking if doing these things is rational. A better question might be; Is it right"
Is it right to engage in mass slaughter to achieve a multi-polar world?
Is it right to engage in mass slaughter to achieve a multi-polar world?
We have a multi-polar world at present. Long may it last.
When we assess what is right' or wrong ,we should dispense with …double standards.
'According to The New York Times, over a five-year period US forces carried out more than 50,000 strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.'
US drone strikes killed thousands of civilians: report | News | DW | 19.12.2021
Now do newly obtained Kremlin documents reporting tens of thousands of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Georgia and Syria.
//
'According to The New York Times, over a five-year period US forces carried out more than 50,000 strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.' Blazer
Blazer I don't need to assess if that is wrong. It is wrong.
But what are you saying Blazer, when Russia does the same thing?
Are you saying, because the US does it, it makes it OK for Russia to do it?
Be honest now
No,I was referring to…'double standards'.
The underlying cause of global conflict and world war is the same as the underlying cause of pollution and climate change. Infinite economic growth on a finite planet, is running up against the physical and man made borders of the planet.
Whilst the impossibility of infinite growth is undeniable, I don't think that this is the cause of world wars. Michael Hudson, for example, alludes to a conflict between opposing economic philosophies – not capitalism versus communism, but between rentier capitalism and productive capitalism. Hudson says:
"The New Cold War is dividing the world into two contrasting economic systems
NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is the catalyst fracturing the world into two opposing spheres with incompatible economic philosophies. China, the country growing most rapidly, treats money and credit as a public utility allocated by government instead of letting the monopoly privilege of credit creation be privatized by banks, leading to them displacing government as economic and social planner. That monetary independence, relying on its own domestic money creation instead of borrowing U.S. electronic dollars, and denominating foreign trade and investment in its own currency instead of in dollars, is seen as an existential threat to America’s control of the global economy.
U.S. neoliberal doctrine calls for history to end by “freeing” the wealthy classes from a government strong enough to prevent the polarization of wealth, and ultimate decline and fall. Imposing trade and financial sanctions against Russia, Iran, Venezuela and other countries that resist U.S. diplomacy, and ultimately military confrontation, is how America intends to “spread democracy” by NATO from Ukraine to the China Seas.
The West, in its U.S. neoliberal iteration, seems to be repeating the pattern of Rome’s decline and fall. Concentrating wealth in the hands of the One Percent has always been the trajectory of Western civilization. It is a result of classical antiquity having taken a wrong track when Greece and Rome allowed the inexorable growth of debt, leading to the expropriation of much of the citizenry and reducing it to bondage to a land-owning creditor oligarchy. That is the dynamic built into the DNA of what is called the West and its “security of contracts” without any government oversight in the public interest. By stripping away prosperity at home, this dynamic requires a constant reaching out to extract an economic affluence (literally a “flowing in”) at the expense of colonies or debtor countries."
https://braveneweurope.com/michael-hudson-the-end-of-western-civilization
Hudson's summation is brilliant and needs a wider audience.
Nationals fiscal formula…
'Lend me your ear…New Zealand…I will increase spending on health,education and infrastructure,whilst giving tax cuts and reducing expenditure'.
Its 'Luxonomics'……stupid.
thing is if he were honest he could
tax cuts
– make the first 25.000 earned tax free – that would be a great tax cut for low earners whilst it will be a little nothing for the very rich. I base this on the min cost of a rental in NZ.
– he could drop GST, give some high praises to his predecessors in N and simply state that the times are tough, and offer a lower GST or no GST on such things as electricity bills, water bills, doctor bills, school fund bills, food / school uniforms, public transport and fwiw, raise some revenue by increasing GST on say make up, booze, overseas travel, luxury cars, boats, planes – large and small etc etc etc
.
reducing expenditure
I am sure we can find money that is spend but has no results to show for and spending could be cut. Perks for Ministers could be cut. Housing allowances for Ministers could be cut. Wages for ministers could be cut. Less Propaganda Peddlers for NZTransport etc etc.
Investing
continue to invest in Health Care, Education, Infrastructure etc.
Fwiw, L could do this too, as could any other Party. That none of them actually do is the interesting part.
Add a windfall tax, a capital gains tax and a financial transaction tax and it’s good to go
yep.
…and/or a Wealth Tax….by far the best way to redistribute wealth fairly and supported by the Green Party (and incidentally supported by thinking people like Parker in the current Labour government)
Wealth Tax – no downside at all unless you're wealthy, in which case you can probably afford and/or dodge it easily enough.
Which is where any proposal for a wealth tax comes unstuck. The truly wealthy will be able to structure their affairs to dodge it, lawyers and their ilk will have a field day, but the accidentally wealthy will end up having to sell their homes.
Is it possible to wean the truly wealthy off their addiction to tax dodging?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/128814781/signs-suggest-the-rich-are-trying-to-dodge-new-tax–heres-whats-being-done-about-it
It can only be dodged easily enough if it is designed so….unfortunately those designing often have vested interests.
Ah yes – the 'vested interests' problem. A 20% quota of parliamentary representatives drawn from the ranks of the truly ‘poor' might be a temporary fix, at least until they had received their first few pay cheques.
Or the Irish model (of deliberative democracy) looks to have some potential…randomly selected citizens assemblies to assess expert advice
Democracy is founded on random selection called sortition in ancient Greece.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
to ensure random selection,the Kleroterion was used.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleroterion
Actually Sortition as a form of governance looks promising….though there would be I imagine quite a number who decline, much like jury selection….but it is certainly more likely to be truely representative.
And bonus, the end of Party politics!
Thanks for that info. Worth a go in NZ – like empanelling a (big) jury.
It would be a better selection for local government,where local issues should dominate,rather then train fully paid professional politicians.
Local government could be a trialling point but if it proved workable it could be applied at a national level….of the options I see available it is the one that appeals to me most (even though it may have some potential issues)…of course it is a pipe dream as it is not likely to occur short of absolute disaster, and probably not even then.
I think a WT can be written which is hard to get around, but I agree that with this government, which has been pathetic in relation to trusts which have been set up in there 1000's to avoid the 39% tax rate and for other reasons/avoidance (to claim Working for Families for instance), there is little hope of a rigorous WT regime eventuating.
Such a regime might well happen though if you Party Vote Green.
I'll be party voting Green, their Wealth Tax advocacy being but one reason.
Good man…(and it should have been "their 1000's" above of course.)
Don't you mean an envy tax?
That would assume I need any more money which I don't.
Well said Sabine. What you have written above is largely something I can unusually agree with.
"reducing expenditure
I am sure we can find money that is spend but has no results to show for and spending could be cut. Perks for Ministers could be cut. Housing allowances for Ministers could be cut. Wages for ministers could be cut. Less Propaganda Peddlers for NZTransport etc etc."
Great soundbites but the $ saved wouldn't even be a rounding error on a tiny part of government expenditure.
Oh there are more soundbites to list, but its like with everything, if you save enough of the pennies it soon becomes money.
Or as an old saying goes, enough chickenshit piled up high makes a nice mountain of manure. – somewhat loosely translated.
The perceived problem with tax cuts is that "rich pricks" get it too. You could eliminate this by having the tax free allowance followed by a higher (than now) tax rate.
So, using your 25k, a tax rate of 33% from then would mean someone on 70k would now pay 15k tax (compared to 14k now). So that would give a meaningful tax cut for low earners whilst not costing too much (by giving it to everyone). You could make the tax at 70k the same if the tax free level was set a a slightly higher 27,500 (and no-one under 70k would pay more tax). It still means less tax received by the govt, but probably a better way to target lower paid than other methods currently used (the current IRD payments, for example).
For the expenditure, fiddling with MPs allowances would make little difference. Taking 250k off them (so basically no salary) would save 30m a year, which would mean just 20 cents a week if passed on to 3m taxpayers.
Cutting wasteful expenses is worthwhile though, as the savings can be used in better ways – more nurses, teachers etc or just paying the existing ones better. But not tax cuts.
Yeah, but if you passed that 30 mil onto the tax payer via Mike King then you get a whole lot of mental healthcare counseling paid for which would be a much better return to the tax payer, but maybe that would demand creative thinking and that is not something i would expect a government doodaa to do. Think and creatively at that.
Of course you could send everyone 37 cents in a transaction that a bank might charge you a dollar + for. And i could totally see the doodaas on either side of the aisle talk about that just the way you do. LOL – Go figure.
You could also ensure that PAYE is paid directly to IRD on payday when the wages are paid to employees.
This would help stop employers stealing their workers money and identify earlier businesses in trouble. You could also stop large corporates having policies such as paying bills in 3-6 months so their smaller suppliers get paid to help their cashflow.
We lose hundreds of millions of dollars in tax every year to failed businesses.
agree on that one.
and we could make tax avoidance illegal with a few years of hard labour attached to it too. 🙂
there would be many many ways to address spending without having to actually cut services. Just start limiting excesses and willful wastage for a starter.
This is long(ish) and might get frowned-upon, but it's interesting 🙂
''For just as established religions assume the maleness of God, just as psychoanalysis and Freud assumed the maleness of libido, so have the social sciences- and in particular anthropology- assumed the generic maleness of human evolution. Both popular and academic anthropological writers have presented us with scenarios of human evolution that feature, almost exclusively, the adventures and inventions of man the hunter, man the tool maker, man the territorial maker, and so forth.
Woman is not comprehended as an evolutionary or evolutionizing creature. She is treated rather as an auxiliary to a male-dominated evolutionary process; she mothers him, she mates him, she cooks his dinner, she follows around after him picking up his loose rocks. He evolves. She follows. He revolutionizes. She adjusts. If the book jackets don’t give us pictures of female homo sapiens being dragged by their hair through 2 or 3 million years of he-man evolution, we are left to assume this was the situation.
This, despite the known fact that among contemporary and historic hunting-and-gathering people, as among our remote hunting-and-gathering ancestors, 75 to 80 percent of the group's subsistence comes from the women's food gathering activities. This, despite the known fact that the oldest tools used by contemporary hunter gatherers, and the oldest most primal tools ever found in ancient sites, were women's digging sticks. This, despite worldwide legends that cite women as the first users and domesticators of fire.
This, despite the known fact that women were the first potters, the first weavers, the first textile-dyers and hide-tanners, the first to gather and study medicinal plants- i.e., the first doctors- and on and on. Observing the linguistic interplay between mother and infants, mothers and children, and among work-groups of women, it is easy to speculate on the female contribution to the origin and elaboration of language. That the first time measurements ever made, the first formal calendars, were women's lunar markings on painted pebbles and carved sticks.
And it is thoroughly known that the only "God image" ever painted on rock, carved in stone, or sculpted in clay, from the Upper Paleolithic to the Middle Neolithic- and that's roughly 30,000 years- was the image of a human female."
-"The Great Cosmic Mother", Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor
source link?
Here's a pdf of the complete text
Interesting Robert. A close relative of mine is tied to a Church which lives on the father being the head of the house. Hilarious watching the wife quietly running the show while appearing to be subservient. Decision making is a lesson in lop-sided negotiation. And he still believes that men are superior.
Hate to break it to you heathen but in real life Catholic churches are mostly run by women. Priests are harder to find and often locums. In the non-Catholic structured churches it's disproportionately female in Ministry.
But yinno, carry on with the tired ignorant bullshit assumptions.
Male imagery had asserted dominance in Gobekle Tepe and quickly across most of the Turkish Upper Chalcolithic. Some dense combination of tax, fenced property, and the dense hierarchies required for urban living did it. Followed quickly by bureaucracy, organised armies, and then written language.
Spiritual nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.
everyone knows that women run things at that level Ad. Sane cultures are honest about it.
The quote in Robert's comment is about how male dominated societies such as ours tell the story of humanity, and how this erases women's culture. Victors write history. Patriarchy is only 5,000 years old though, so probably a blip we will recover from if we don't fry ourselves first.
Gobekle Tepe is one of a full region of tepe that are saying the same story, and it started at least as far back as 9,000 BC. You can't extract patriarchy, property rights and language.
yep, patriarchy didn't arise overnight, it was a process over time and multiple cultures.
Some say coming down from the trees in the first place was a mistake. But I think it's fair to say that once we started planting crops en masse, we need armies to protect the now settled farming cultures, and that meant controlling the means of human reproduction. It's still the basis of patriarchy now, only in civilised cultures we distance ourselves from this reality.
Women invented time, when we shifted from estrus to a menstrual cycle the same length of time as the moon phase. We also invented post-fertility when we developed menopause, this allowing the great cultural leaps forward for humans because grandmothers helped raise children and look after the tribe.
(of course, nature invented those things in women, but the point is poetically made).
Birds react to day and night, month and season, year and generation. They did it well before even mammals arose.
So it's just wrong even poetically to claim the 'invention of time' for women.
Once women started menstruating cyclically instead of via estrus, for women time would have taken on an obvious, in your face meaning. Embodied, not abstract.
Of course there are natural cycles that affect many forms of life. I was pointing to one in particular.
No, you were claiming a specific epistemic privilege for women over men because of menstruation.
Time may well be gendered insofar as different cycles get registered, but that's it.
let me put it another way. How females evolved biologically had a big impact on the evolution of human cultures and societies. Female fertility cycles are threaded all through human history and culture. It's just that men have been privileged by the patriarchal systems of recent millennia and thus understanding of those cycles and the roles they play has been distorted and/or rendered invisible. Just like in Sjoo and Mor's examples of technology.
So it's not just 'that's it'. It's that how women contribute and live in the world as females matters, to women, and to human societies. Being female isn't incidental, it's core.
But I didn't. All I did was talk about women. Didn't say anything about men, nor did I imply anything. It's your philosophical framework that read something about privilege over men (a common problem in the patriarchy). As if it's just not possible for women to be important in their own right.
However, there was clearly a reproductive advantage in older women assisting with raising grandchildren (and/or as a repository of wisdom), since those genetic traits persisted. If there were no 'fitness' advantage, then the trait would not be universally expressed (if a woman lives long enough, she's going to go through menopause)
Grandmothers who were around and involved had more grandchildren…. How natural selection works.
Not sure why you started with however, this is exactly what I was pointing to.
The quote "nature invented these things".
Natural selections operates across a a suite of behaviours and variations which may be more or less adaptive. Nature doesn't invent.
not everyone expresses ideas so literally Belladonna.
Interesting – but the first gods were not necessarily anthropoid.
Remember last year when Australia had all those Covid cases and deaths in Victoria and NSW and it seemed out of control compared with NZ? Well Australia now has less deaths per million than NZ-it has had Covid under better control than NZ for months now.
NZ 472/m
Australia 470/m
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Actually for all intents and purposes we are currently at parity. 2/m isn't much of a difference. And Australia is at a very different point in their wave cycle – a lot more people died getting to where they are now compared to NZ.
You are entirely missing my point which is that NZ was much much better in terms of deaths/million months ago, but the trend of Covid deaths has been much worse in NZ than OZ over the last few months and there is no sign of this changing.
Take a look at the graphs in the website I referenced above.
I'm not missing your point, you're reading the data wrong. First, cumulative – overall we've lost a lot fewer people compared to Australia per capita, which if you will insist on making it a competition, is the important number. Second, their per capita numbers right now are going to be moving down because they are coming out of an infection wave. We're just hitting our second or third wave.
That’s been true until now, but no longer. NZ has been rapidly overhauling Aussie's (cumulative total) 'Deaths/1M pop' metric. Wasn't expecting the switch to happen until the end of August, but, as BG correctly noted, it's happening now.
Australia has an infection fatality rate of 1 per 785 cases,the NZ IFR is 1 in 1007.
That is the infection rate which is not what I am talking about.
Case numbers are notoriously badly reported so the infection rate is highly unreliable. Death rates are more certain (in fact very certain) and so are far more reliable.
Comes in around what was forecast by Baker in 2020,an order of magnitude over the influenza IFR and consistent with an excess death mortality.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores-average-baseline?country=NZL~AUS
It's like two bald men, fighting over a comb!
It's a bit weird that you find the fact that Oz has handled Covid better than NZ unworthy of a sensible comment.
There's something wrong with these people.
https://twitter.com/LauraJedeed/status/1555559384347983879
Up to 100,000most of the half-starved North Koreansoldiers couldconscripts rumoured to be sent to bolster Vladimir Putin’s forces fighting Ukraine will head for the hills at the first opportunity they getaccording to Russian reports.ifi
https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/100000-north-korean-soldiers-could-be-sent-to-bolster-putins-forces-fighting-ukraine/news-story/1126782c8c5e6fe08a8ad2d9fa38dff0
Not if they only send troops with families back home…
100k-300k North Korean defectors would likely disagree.
I don't know that I'd defect if I had family in NK especially knowing what might happen to them
I guess there's always those who can
What???
[deleted]
Luxon is expendable and he’ll be replaced if/when necessary because it’s all about the team winning, not the ‘captain’.
One can now self identigy as disabled and chronically ill? Can such a person be denied benefits if challenged on that self Id? And how do you quantify 'disabled' and 'chronically' ill. And then, why bother in the first place?
https://twitter.com/Soc_of_Authors/status/1555156215042396163
You are equating self ID'ing as disabled and chronically ill with self ID'ing as a woman, all for culture war purposes.
Have you thought this through?
how about you explain your own thinking.
There are people who do self ID as disabled who aren't disabled. I doubt this is what the Society of Authors means, but it's getting harder to tell. There's a still a taboo on self IDing into an ethnic group.
No, i think they made it to Self ID and then they threw everything and the bathwater out of the window.
identifying as disabled predates Self ID though, so I think it's more complicated than that.
i don't.
I posted this from twitter, it is them who are asking for 'self identified' disabled people. '
I am asking for someone to translate into easy english for me how someone self id's as disabled.
Maybe you need to explain your own thoughts to me.
a. why do you conflate this self id with that of men who want access to places for women ( again, i am excluding Transwomen/Transmen who transitioned from self id, to make my point clear).
b. why do you assume that i like you conflate this self ID with that of men who want access to places for women.
Being disabled is not a case of being born in the wrong the body, it is not a mental illness, it is not some passing body dysphoria, being disabled is medical, permanent, and makes navigating live quite a bit different and harder for those that have to live with disabilities and chronic pain.
So frankly, just for once, Do better.
I guess that this operates the other way, too, though. There are people (including, presumably, authors) who may have a 'disability' but do not self-identify as disabled.
As someone with an invisible disability, how I choose to relate to the world is often a choice. I can hide my disability. I can make it visible. In that there's something about identity. Not such a big thing for me but it matters because otherwise other people get to define me and my disability.
It's not Self ID so much as 'identify as' someone who has a disability (as Belladonna points out, not everyone does). It stops other people from determining what disability or a person's disability means. This matters because there's such a lot of bullshit in society around disability, prejudice, ignorance and so on. Including in institutions.
There are all sorts of problems with tying this to Self ID and I think them using the term self in the tweet is a bit mistake because it shifts it from identifying as, to being something akin to gender identity and then we have all the issues of disability fluidity and basically making shit up.
Sorry, not sure that is easy English.
I have no uterus, thus can't have children. I could now identify as 'chronically ill' and in need of medication – hrt, and disabled as i can not have children.
I choose not to identify as such as i believe that 'disabled' and 'chronically ill' should be reserved for those that have medical issues that forced them to need different measures of support to manage society. I.e. wheel chair ramps, wider doors to shop entrances, disabled toilets, specific care, medical needs that outweigh mine and those similar to mine many many times. There is a difference between not being perfectly healthy and being chronically ill and disabled. (This comment does not relay in any way to you Weka and your health.)
One does not identify as 'chronically ill' one is, one can not opt out of this state. I can self id as a fertile women any day i will nevertheless never birth a child as i do not have the biological capacity for it. Again, it is biology vs imagination. In this case it is more of a state of 'telling us that you are chronically ill' so that we can accept your story. Surely a little bit more of gate keeping should be given, considering the prestige of these awards.
Mind in Mexico a court has argued in favor of 'self id' age. Maybe we are in clown world.
Rather then call for self 'id writers with health issues they should just have called for writers with different abilities and chronic illnesses.