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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Looking at the headlines this morning it’s hard to feel anything other than pessimistic about the future of humanity.Note that I’m not speaking about the future of mankind, but the survival of our humanity. The values that we believe in seem to be ebbing away, by the day.Perhaps every generation ...
Swabbing mixed breed baby chicks to test for avian influenzaUh oh. Bird flu – often deadly to humans – is not only being transmitted from infected birds to dairy cows, but is now travelling between dairy cows. As of last Friday, Bloomberg News reports, there were 32 American dairy herds ...
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 ...
What is it with the mining industry? Its not enough for them to pillage the earth - they apparently can't even be bothered getting resource consent to do so: The proponent behind a major mine near the Clutha River had already been undertaking activity in the area without a ...
Photo # 1 I am a huge fan of Singapore’s approach to housing, as described here two years ago by copying and pasting from The ConversationWhat Singapore has that Australia does not is a public housing developer, the Housing Development Board, which puts new dwellings on public and reclaimed land, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Reactions to news of the government’s readiness to make urgent changes to “the resource management system” through a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) suggest a balanced approach is being taken. The Taxpayers’ Union says the proposed changes don’t go far enough. Greenpeace says ...
I’m starting to wonder if Anna Burns-Francis might be the best political interviewer we’ve got. That might sound unlikely to you, it came as a bit of a surprise to me.Jack Tame can be excellent, but has some pretty average days. I like Rebecca Wright on Newshub, she asks good ...
Chris Trotter writes – Willie Jackson is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also ...
Graeme Edgeler writes – This morning [April 21], the Wellington High Court is hearing a judicial review brought by Hon. Karen Chhour, the Minister for Children, against a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal. This is unusual, judicial reviews are much more likely to brought against ministers, rather than ...
Both of Parliament’s watchdogs have now ripped into the Government’s Fast-track Approvals Bill. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s political economy and beyond on the morning of Tuesday, April 23 are:The Lead: The Auditor General,John Ryan, has joined the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah SpengemanPeople wait to board an electric bus in Pune, India. (Image credit: courtesy of ITDP) Public transportation riders in Pune, India, love the city’s new electric buses so much they will actually skip an older diesel bus that ...
The infrastructure industry yesterday issued a “hurry up” message to the Government, telling it to get cracking on developing a pipeline of infrastructure projects.The hiatus around the change of Government has seen some major projects cancelled and others delayed, and there is uncertainty about what will happen with the new ...
Hi,Over the weekend I revisited a podcast I really adore, Dead Eyes. It’s about a guy who got fired from Band of Brothers over two decades ago because Tom Hanks said he had “dead eyes”.If you don’t recall — 2001’s Band of Brothers was part of the emerging trend of ...
Buzz from the Beehive The 180 or so recipients of letters from the Government telling them how to submit infrastructure projects for “fast track” consideration includes some whose project applications previously have been rejected by the courts. News media were quick to feature these in their reports after RMA Reform Minister Chris ...
It would not be a desirable way to start your holiday by breaking your back, your head, or your wrist, but on our first hour in Singapore I gave it a try.We were chatting, last week, before we started a meeting of Hazel’s Enviro Trust, about the things that can ...
Calling all journalists, academics, planners, lawyers, political activists, environmentalists, and other members of the public who believe that the relationships between vested interests and politicians need to be scrutinised. We need to work together to make sure that the new Fast-Track Approvals Bill – currently being pushed through by the ...
Feel worried. Shane Jones and a couple of his Cabinet colleagues are about to be granted the power to override any and all objections to projects like dams, mines, roads etc even if: said projects will harm biodiversity, increase global warming and cause other environmental harms, and even if ...
Bryce Edwards writes- The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. ...
Michael Bassett writes – If you think there is a move afoot by the radical Maori fringe of New Zealand society to create a parallel system of government to the one that we elect at our triennial elections, you aren’t wrong. Over the last few days we have ...
Without a corresponding drop in interest rates, it’s doubtful any changes to the CCCFA will unleash a massive rush of home buyers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Monday, April 22 included:The Government making a ...
Sunday was a lazy day. I started watching Jack Tame on Q&A, the interviews are usually good for something to write about. Saying the things that the politicians won’t, but are quite possibly thinking. Things that are true and need to be extracted from between the lines.As you might know ...
In our Weekly Roundup last week we covered news from Auckland Transport that the WX1 Western Express is going to get an upgrade next year with double decker electric buses. As part of the announcement, AT also said “Since we introduced the WX1 Western Express last November we have seen ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 29 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Stats NZ releases its statutory report on Census 2023 tomorrow.Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers a pre-Budget speech at ...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 14, 2024 thru Sat, April 20, 2024. Story of the week Our story of the week hinges on these words from the abstract of a fresh academic ...
The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. The Government says this will ...
This is a column to say thank you. So many of have been in touch since Mum died to say so many kind and thoughtful things. You’re wonderful, all of you. You’ve asked how we’re doing, how Dad’s doing. A little more realisation each day, of the irretrievable finality of ...
Identifying the engine type in your car is crucial for various reasons, including maintenance, repairs, and performance upgrades. Knowing the specific engine model allows you to access detailed technical information, locate compatible parts, and make informed decisions about modifications. This comprehensive guide will provide you with a step-by-step approach to ...
Introduction: The allure of racing is undeniable. The thrill of speed, the roar of engines, and the exhilaration of competition all contribute to the allure of this adrenaline-driven sport. For those who yearn to experience the pinnacle of racing, becoming a race car driver is the ultimate dream. However, the ...
Introduction Automobiles have become ubiquitous in modern society, serving as a primary mode of transportation and a symbol of economic growth and personal mobility. With countless vehicles traversing roads and highways worldwide, it begs the question: how many cars are there in the world? Determining the precise number is a ...
Maintaining a safe and reliable vehicle requires regular inspections. Whether it’s a routine maintenance checkup or a safety inspection, knowing how long the process will take can help you plan your day accordingly. This article delves into the factors that influence the duration of a car inspection and provides an ...
Mazda Motor Corporation, commonly known as Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Fuchu, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. The company was founded in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd., and began producing vehicles in 1931. Mazda is primarily known for its production of passenger cars, but ...
Your car battery is an essential component that provides power to start your engine, operate your electrical systems, and store energy. Over time, batteries can weaken and lose their ability to hold a charge, which can lead to starting problems, power failures, and other issues. Replacing your battery before it ...
In most states, you cannot register a car without a valid driver’s license. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. Exceptions to the RuleIf you are under 18 years old: In some states, you can register a car in your name even if you do not ...
Mazda, a Japanese automotive manufacturer with a rich history of innovation and engineering excellence, has emerged as a formidable player in the global car market. Known for its reputation of producing high-quality, fuel-efficient, and driver-oriented vehicles, Mazda has consistently garnered praise from industry experts and consumers alike. In this article, ...
Struts are an essential part of a car’s suspension system. They are responsible for supporting the weight of the car and damping the oscillations of the springs. Struts are typically made of steel or aluminum and are filled with hydraulic fluid. How Do Struts Work? Struts work by transferring the ...
Car registration is a mandatory process that all vehicle owners must complete annually. This process involves registering your car with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and paying an associated fee. The registration process ensures that your vehicle is properly licensed and insured, and helps law enforcement and other authorities ...
Zoom is a video conferencing service that allows you to share your screen, webcam, and audio with other participants. In addition to sharing your own audio, you can also share the audio from your computer with other participants. This can be useful for playing music, sharing presentations with audio, or ...
Building your own computer can be a rewarding and cost-effective way to get a high-performance machine tailored to your specific needs. However, it also requires careful planning and execution, and one of the most important factors to consider is the time it will take. The exact time it takes to ...
Sleep mode is a power-saving state that allows your computer to quickly resume operation without having to boot up from scratch. This can be useful if you need to step away from your computer for a short period of time but don’t want to shut it down completely. There are ...
Introduction Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) has revolutionized the field of translation by harnessing the power of technology to assist human translators in their work. This innovative approach combines specialized software with human expertise to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and consistency of translations. In this comprehensive article, we will delve into the ...
In today’s digital age, mobile devices have become an indispensable part of our daily lives. Among the vast array of portable computing options available, iPads and tablet computers stand out as two prominent contenders. While both offer similar functionalities, there are subtle yet significant differences between these two devices. This ...
A computer is an electronic device that can be programmed to carry out a set of instructions. The basic components of a computer are the processor, memory, storage, input devices, and output devices. The Processor The processor, also known as the central processing unit (CPU), is the brain of the ...
Voice Memos is a convenient app on your iPhone that allows you to quickly record and store audio snippets. These recordings can be useful for a variety of purposes, such as taking notes, capturing ideas, or recording interviews. While you can listen to your voice memos on your iPhone, you ...
Laptop screens are essential for interacting with our devices and accessing information. However, when lines appear on the screen, it can be frustrating and disrupt productivity. Understanding the underlying causes of these lines is crucial for finding effective solutions. Types of Screen Lines Horizontal lines: Also known as scan ...
Right-clicking is a common and essential computer operation that allows users to access additional options and settings. While most desktop computers have dedicated right-click buttons on their mice, laptops often do not have these buttons due to space limitations. This article will provide a comprehensive guide on how to right-click ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
A new exhibition in Wellington showcases the faces behind your local goods and services. Back in 1977, when I was a fine arts student at the University of Canterbury, I took a series of photographs of Christchurch shopkeepers. The photos were for a calendar – a project for my end ...
Toomaj and his resistance to tyranny through his songs have become an icon for the youth of Iran, so his sentence has hit the nation hard. Toomaj Salehi is not the first artist to pay the price for standing with the people. ...
My cousin Dylan and I spotted these big eels under the bridge that summer. We watched them lounging under the dark weed, facing into the flow of water, their mouths frozen open. Dylan and I couldn’t stop thinking about those eels. The night we went down to the creek, we ...
Newsroom, home of satire. My long-running weekly satirical series The Secret Diary has moved to Newsroom and will appear every Saturday, with Victor Billot’s wildly popular satirical Odes continuing to appear every Sunday. Diaries, Odes – while serious political columnists toil at meaningful opinions and stroke their chins to an ...
Tara Ward unravels the many nuanced layers of a cartoon about talking dogs.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. It’s not often an episode of a children’s cartoon has adults sobbing into their sleeves, but that’s exactly what happened this week when ...
Working as a doctor in developing countries to help communities achieve better health outcomes is nothing short of a life goal for Jessica Tater. The University of Otago medical student has her sights firmly set on joining the international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) when she qualifies ...
There’s an island in the far reaches of Auckland’s territory, sitting off the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula, 30 minutes by air from the city or four hours on the slow boat. Aotea Great Barrier is off-grid, it has a population of fewer than a thousand people … and most ...
Asia Pacific Report An Australian author and advocate, Jim Aubrey, today led a national symbolic one minute’s silence to mark the “blood debt” owed to Papuan allies during the Second World War indigenous resistance against the invading Japanese forces. “A promise to most people is a promise,” Aubrey said in ...
Asia Pacific Report The Freedom Flotilla is ready to sail to Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. All the required paperwork has been submitted to the port authority, and the cargo has been loaded and prepared for the humanitarian trip to the besieged enclave. However, organisers received word of an “administrative ...
Pacific Media Watch Palestine solidarity protesters today demonstrated at the Auckland headquarters of Television New Zealand, accusing the country’s major TV network of broadcasting “propaganda” backing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. About 50 protesters targeted the main entrance to the TVNZ building near Sky Tower and also picketed a side ...
Opinion by Lynley Hood. Forty years on from my 1985 Fulbright Grant, my disquiet over the war in Gaza evoked some troubling questions. The answer to my first question – What is the primary purpose of the Fulbright Programme? – was on the Fulbright NZ website. It says: US Senator, ...
The ministers responsible for green-lighting major projects need to be open about potential conflicts of interest, says Transparency International. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University It has been a particularly distressing start to the year. There is little that can ease the current grief of individuals, families and communities who have needlessly lost a loved one to men’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Lichen, the first described example of symbiosis.AdeJ Artventure/Shutterstock Once known only to those studying biology, the word symbiosis is now widely used. Symbiosis is the intimate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Hemsley, Head, Childhood Dementia Research Group, Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University Olena Ivanova/Shutterstock “Childhood” and “dementia” are two words we wish we didn’t have to use together. But sadly, around 1,400 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University The government’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has just published its second report. It was set up by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth in 2022 to provide: ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne The Queensland state election will be held in October. A YouGov poll for The Courier Mail, conducted April 9–17 from a sample ...
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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???
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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.