And here’s something else: he seems to associate with a whole bunch of people who seem intent on emailing each other in very odd phrases (what on earth is a ‘pizza related map’ and why would such a ‘map’ be drawn on a ‘hankerchief’???).
Don’t bother trying to please the left wing, it’s not worth it.
By the way, Mexico is complaining that Trump policies have now cost them 3600 well paid manufacturing jobs which were going to move out of the USA to Mexico.
James Clapper is arguably the most notorious liar in the world;
So why is RNZ National treating him as a serious and credible source? Summer Report, RNZ National, Friday 6 January 2017, 8:25 a.m.
I’m sure I was not the only person to listen with interest when perky Summer Report host Anusha Bradley read out from her script that a “leading security analyst” is “more certain than ever” that Russian hackers were working for Donald Trump. It was not until at least thirty seconds into her spiel that Bradley revealed who this “leading security analyst” was: James Clapper, the utterly discredited Director of National Intelligence.
In case you’ve forgotten, James Clapper is the man who lied under oath to Congress, and denied that the NSA was illegally collecting data on American citizens. It was seeing Clapper lying to Congress that prompted Edward Snowden to blow the whistle on the whole of the massive, illegal, unconstitutional NSA spying regime. “Sort of the breaking point was seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress. … Seeing that really meant for me there was no going back.” [1]
None of this seemed to matter to Anusha Bradley, or to “our U.S. correspondent Kevin McAleese”, who chuntered on for a minute or so, recycling Clapper’s anti-Russian rhetoric as if he were a credible source. We are accustomed to RNZ National presenters being naïve (Jesse Mulligan, Bryan Crump), ill-informed (Jesse Mulligan), even nasty (Jim Mora, Noelle McCarthy). But this morning’s performance by Anusha Bradley and her “U.S. correspondent” was as bad, as foolish, and as flagrantly dishonest as anything I have ever heard on any radio station, anywhere.
Not sure that I can ever remember chuntering but it seems fairly clear that the Russians did influence the outcome of the American election as did James Comey.
Okay the cybertrail hasn’t been published yet but I suspect it will be soon.
Good spotting, Scott! I used the word carelessly and imprecisely. I should have just written: “Kevin McAleese said….” His lazy and shoddy journalism is what damns him: he doesn’t need any help from me.
… but it seems fairly clear that the Russians did influence the outcome of the American election as did James Comey.
There is no evidence of Russian influence.
Okay the cybertrail hasn’t been published yet but I suspect it will be soon.
Well, we at least have the word of the world’s most discredited liar to boost our confidence.
This “Indivisible” guide is very much written for an American audience, but a bit of word substitution and tweaking and it is a fantastic slacktivist/occasional activist/activisit guide for NZ as well. I love the inclusion, for example, of suggested call dialogues. The left here needs to publish them so people who might not go on a protest know who to call, and how to manage the conversation!
Apparently it is going down a treat amongst Democrats in the USA, who are finally waking up to the fact that they now have oppositional, parliamentary style politics and they’ve allowed the equivalent of the right wing of the ACT party win power in state after state for the GOP.
But all the poaching of Tea Party organising model will only work if the primary agency for the left is left wing and progressive in the first place, which brings us to the tactic which the representative wing of a political party fears the most: The purge. Nothing gets the attention of a fat cat political careerist like seeing their colleagues getting dumped one by one… Thinking specifically of New Zealand, Up to now, everyone has played nice in New Zealand on this – or rather, they’ve been bullied, browbeaten and purged by MPs whose vigilance in stamping out dissent in the local party sheeple is why Labour is now a hollow shell of a political party – an elite cadre party of like minded careerist technocrats is far, far easier to control than one full of opinionated people who refuse to be bullied. In terms of the purge, in nowadays seems you need an external but affiliated organisation (Momentum or the Tea Party, may God forgive my soul for mentioning them together in the same sentence) to smash the layers of institutional defenses establishment political parties have built to protect their careerist and managerialist cadres.
Some MPs are already reasonably leftist, or pragmatic enough, to be dragged to the left. But many are simply to committed to neo-liberal ideology and/or beneficiaries from their close ties to the neo-liberal establishment to be saved. For them, forced retirement or de-selection challenges should beckon. A time traveller from the 1935 Labour party would be confused to discover the current labour party has no plan to radically reform Labour relations, fully fund “free” education, openly and fulsomely oppose free trade agreements that damage local wages and conditions or support proper progressive taxation of the rich – and will only reluctantly and listlessly pick elements of those things when threatened with open revolt.
The left’s chosen vehicle must grow an ideological backbone if it wants to be able to co-opt the organising tools of their opposition. Any who refuse to do so should be kicked into touch.
For the benefit of the more simple-minded among us, would someone please write a comprehensive list of Labour mps and where they stand on this spectrum. If you are living outside the beltway the information available is patchy to say the least and sources unreliable. We rely on a msm which, as we are clearly aware, is no better than it ought to be and if you read the likes of Chris Trotter you could be forgiven for tearing your hair out and running screaming into the bushes with the total confusion of it !
I personally am only beginning to sneak back to Labour after leaving them as a result of the foreshore and seabed fiasco.
What would be great, assuming that Labour wishes to be seen as philosophically and ideologically in opposition to National, is to have Labour candidates come on here and answer questions from those of us who are quite desperate for change but have lost trust in all of those who aspire to lead.
@Morrissey – hopefully Labour learnt from that, the strategy’s effectiveness or lack of, showed in their election results.
Helping your opponent in their denial is not a winning strategy.
If Labour didn’t know what to do, they should stay out of it and deflect it back to the real protagonists Natz vs Hager. By minimising it and calling it a ‘distraction’ helped the Natz and angered the Labour supporters who are sick of the establishment denials on these issues.
What waypoints tell you that Labour has undergone a “change in the right direction”?
In my view, nothing has changed in the perpetuation of the same careerist ‘hanging on for dear life because I can’t get $150K pa in any other job’ Labour attitude and culture from those days.
Have you heard anything from Labour about the UBI lately? How about anything around a commitment to keep national super? Or any remarks that basic benefits need to be increased?
You appear to want National to have a fourth term, so there really is no point in discussing this with you CV. Plus the whole poisoning not just the well, but the ground around it thing, ffs.
So Labour hasn’t said anything about NZ Super, benefit levels or a UBI lately then, eh? Interesting. They still have 6-7 months before the election so I guess they better start.
I’ve already said elsewhere that it’s 2:1 for a National win next (whoops THIS) year, which will increase further for National if they play the shell game that I am expecting.
At this stage I am picking the extreme upper limit party vote for LAB+GR at 43% to 44%.
Like I said, no point in talking with you while you’ve got your shit-tinted glasses on. You can frame it as a prediction, but everything I have seen from you in the past year suggests that you also want Labour to lose. Your political actions support this. You are abusing your power and I’m not playing that game any more.
“Shit tinted glasses” are probably preferable to having your head buried in the sand. CV is right – we still need Labour to get a voice and say something instead of just barking at passing cars. We need a confident and worthy opposition….. the clock is ticking.
Yeah but that wasn’t what I was referring to about CV at all. I’m happy to clarify if it’s not clear, but I really think you are misleading about what I was saying and doing.
Are you saying that I have my head buried in the sand? Care to provide some evidence of that?
Thanks for taking off the red tinted glasses and for putting putting on corrective, prescription (not prediction) glasses, Colonial Viper. Real Labour supporters must want to face reality and make themselves see clearly in order to hold caucus members, particularly the careerists and old driftwood, to account.
Unlike CV, I’ve never voted Labour, and only voted to the left of Labour. I’m not a Labour supporter, and neither are many in this thread.
The inability to engage with ideas in real terms is pretty tedious and a big part of the problem here. Of course Labour need to be held accountable. That’s nothing to do with what I was saying about CV though.
I’m quite happy to engage with ideas “in real terms”. Eg. I commented on your post the other day about how consumerism was a battle of the 1970s which had long since been lost and the left had no new ideas about it since then.
But you didn’t want to engage with that idea in real terms and shifted my comment off your post.
CV you know how the party works. Policies are released incrementally and the party policy platform contains the general principles. Can you decist from misrepresenting the position all the time. People will suspect you are getting your lines from Hooton.
I was referring to the Party’s performance of late. Sorry weka, I was in no way referring to you re head in the sand. Perhaps I should have used “one”.
Thanks for clarifying garibaldi. There’s hardly anyone here who is happy with Labour’s performance. That’s a different thing than wanting them to lose. So I will in fact take a Labour voter with their head in the sand over the ethically bankrupt politics that CV now pushes with his shit-stained glasses on. And to be clear, I’m not talking in any way at all about not criticising Labour.
Fortunately those aren’t the only choices and there is more to be gained from working constructively (including critiques) than poisoning the well.
As for Labour, I’ve long held the view that they are who they are and it’s better strategy to support them in small incremental shifts so that we get enough reprieve that the real change can be done elsewhere. If Labour fails now, that gives National another term, and that IMO is catastrophic for NZ.
I’ve put this challenge out to CV in the past, and he’s never responded meaningfully, but even if one were to think that a 4th National term might galvanise a true shift in NZ politics for something else good to arise, I’ve yet to see any evidence presented for how that might happen. Much more likely that we would have photo-fascism entrenched even further in NZ as well as more of our ability to effect change stripped from us.
Yes, many of us want a truly left wing party in NZ. We don’t have one. It’s not possible for Labour to be what we want them to be (if you disagree please explain how that could happen).
Time to get on with the work of making what we can with that.
I’ll tell you what I don’t like about Labour. They claim they are a broad church but from the evidence I have seen in the past few years, they lean to the centre right (eg Stuart Nash) and reject the left (eg Hone Harawira). The image of Chris Hipkins visciously attacking David C during the great non-event coup is also etched in my brain.
“I’ll tell you what I don’t like about Labour. They claim they are a broad church but from the evidence I have seen in the past few years, they lean to the centre right (eg Stuart Nash) and reject the left (eg Hone Harawira). The image of Chris Hipkins visciously attacking David C during the great non-event coup is also etched in my brain.”
sure, and there’s plenty of things I don’t like about them too. Nevertheless, they are the only way we are going to have a centre-left govt by the end of the year, so what’s the strategy now?
I’ve put this challenge out to CV in the past, and he’s never responded meaningfully, but even if one were to think that a 4th National term might galvanise a true shift in NZ politics for something else good to arise, I’ve yet to see any evidence presented for how that might happen.
Why would there be “any evidence” today for something which might hypothetically happen some time years in the future?
What was the evidence 12 months ago that Trump would be President of the USA today?
Did that lack of evidence back then preclude Trump becoming President?
I didn’t have any evidence when I picked a clear and significant Trump victory; I just read the political tea leaves.
Well said weka. If we want to see a Government that isn’t a National one this year then we need to see Labour maximise its vote. Some lefties might not be a fan of Labour, but Labour are still going to make up at least 50% of a leftist block in Government. If you’re a Green or NZF voter you need them to do well, your chances rely on their success.
The last few weeks of the year I felt were good ones for Andrew Little. He looked more confident and fired up infront of camera and that’s good for everyone. I’m fine with them not chasing the UBI or anything else that might scare the horses for now… Just keep getting the hits in on our woeful housing situation and that’s half the job done.
Thanks, I don’t see a lot of MSM, so often don’t have a good sense of what Little is doing unless I go look.
(I would add that if people want a centre left govt then they shouldn’t vote NZF. Peters might choose National, or he might choose Labour in which case he will hold Labour to the right. Either way it’s not going to shift us left and it could be downright disastrous).
” If Labour fails now, that gives National another term, and that IMO is catastrophic for NZ.”
Yes I totally agree which is why I made the initial request
The guide is great because what is says is if you don’t like a GOVERNMENT policy, you don’t go and occupy a National party MPs office. You go and occupy the office of a LABOUR MP who won’t come out and oppose it when you ask him or her. So you don’t need to know a “spectrum” – you just ask your local MP for an unequivocal position on an issue, and if they won’t give you one you go and sit in their office or get you and 1000 people to keep ringing them until they turn up and explain why. The pressure is on YOUR SIDE to grow some balls, and take the fight to the right.
I would add that it needs some strategy, or at least some degree of thoughtfulness. Going into an election year, the focus needs to be on policy and direct action against those MPs (and presumably LECs) who aren’t moving left, and avoiding Labour bashing for the sake of it. I’d say it needs to happen now, rather than closer to the election.
I’d like to know what the selection process is, and a timeline on that.
And I’d love to see people on The Standard organising around this. Time we stopped arguing about shit and did something.
It will be great if many of us can visit the local Labour MP offices & blog updates about how often they are not around. I know my mates and I can name half a dozen who are hardly around (may I list them here?) and we can compare notes or a real-time record
( It will be great if many of us can visit the local Labour MP offices )
I recently moved to Pukekohe in south Auckland and thought I would go along to a local branch meeting it’s been a while. I went onto Labour’s web site and I cannot even find if they have one.
“The pressure is on YOUR SIDE to grow some balls, and take the fight to the right.”
I wonder if Labour hopeful (again) Laila Harre took the opportunity to tell her mate Nikki Kaye just how bloody lucky she was that her cancer diagnosis didn’t cost her her job.
Perhaps Laila took the opportunity to remind Nikki of the many people who where not so fortunate, whose employers threw them to the wolves and who got literally the bum’s rush when they were forced to apply to WINZ for support.
On this site most of the commenters, who choose to shred Labour’s MPs on a regular basis for being so-called neo-liberals, are not even members of the party and I suspect have never been members. However, they seem to be of the view they know more about Labour’s MPs than those of us who are members and have been for many years.
I drifted away from Labour around 1983/4 because I was sick of the [then] in-fighting. I didn’t understand the nuts and bolts of it at the time, but in retrospect can appreciate it was the Douglas clan (not always Douglas himself but his hangers-on in the Party) who were behind most of the problems. I rejoined 15 years ago after Helen Clark came to power.
Since the departure of the Douglas crew and their member acolytes in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Labour has been slowly returning to its roots (albeit in a modernised version) and that can be evidenced in the types of policies I know they are planning to put forward this election year. For some people it has been too slow, but to reinvent a political party is not an easy task and it takes time to get everyone back on board again. In this respect, Andrew Little is doing a magnificent job and I am no longer as pessimistic as I was about Labour’s election chances… as I was a year or two ago.
I know there are one or two ‘light to moderate’ neo-liberals still in caucus but they are bowing out at the end of this term. Others – like for example Annette King – have well and truly re-embraced their former Labour values. Indeed I’m sure they never lost them… just put them in a cupboard for safe keeping until the time was right to bring them out again.
Perhaps those of us on the inside can appreciate the extent of the advances that have been made in recent years, but others have yet to catch up. I know CV will disagree but he appears to have had some major run-ins with the Party (I don’t know the details, just what he has revealed here) which are negatively impacting on his judgement. I’m hoping one day he will feel able to re-connect.
“On this site most of the commenters, who choose to shred Labour’s MPs on a regular basis for being so-called neo-liberals, are not even members of the party and I suspect have never been members.”
Guilty as charged, but in my defense I have tried to find enough in Labour and/or the Greens policy to give me reason to sign up.
Both have to do better.
(Oh, and I should maybe re email Annette King about a particular issue (that is within the scope of her responsibilities) and see if her re connection with true Labour roots has progressed far enough for her to challenge the Nats over their lies and deception.)
But maybe not. I did make an approach to Ruth Dyson about the same issue in person, in her office, and oh my goodness gracious me….
We left her office stunned, and shaking our heads that she would say what she did…and realised that as far as our particular issue…Labour was a predominant player in fucking things up.
And if they’ll do that for people with disabilities….
Fair enough comments Rosemary McDonald. Certainly Labour needs to to do better when it comes to policy presentation. They need to be short, sharp and easy to understand for the majority of voters. The long versions can be set aside for us political tragics who like to wallow in the complexities of policy or who have a vested interest (like yourself) in specific policy planks. 🙂
Btw, I wasn’t impressed with Ruth Dyson as a minister in the Clark government. I didn’t know much about her but some of her media responses left a lot to be desired. She was rarely definitive and liked to talk about “looking at options” but never said what those options were. Someone else who is very good like that is Nick Smith.
The wallowing thing…yes, I am focused on non -ACC disability issues and especially the family carer issue. This particular subject I know inside out…including the history under Labour.
Labour could have sorted this. Should have sorted this. Didn’t…but worse…allowed for a system where those who were willing to take a punt at being caught out could circumvent the non- payment of family carers policy.
Ruth Dyson knew this was happening when we spoke with her in early 2013…”It was only a policy not the law”. When this government made the policy that had been determined to be discriminatory actual law…well…I wonder to this day if Ruth Dyson knew that this was going to happen…and the outrage from Labour in the House that day in May 2013 was just pantomime.
Almost as if this suspicion of mine had been broadcast…a commentor on another site told of how exactly that solution (of making the Policy law) was being touted by the Ministry of Health and Crown Law back before the Family Carers case went to the Human Rights Tribunal in 2008…under Labour.
You know, from my point of view…policies and manifestos and candidate bios are all very nice and good…but being honest, truthful, showing a very high level of integrity, is even better.
I know Labour failed this test over the family carers case….in how many other areas of government responsibility did they also neglect to be honest and transparent?
Labour is history in terms of political, popular and ideological relevance. They are no longer needed, but are instead taking up space on the political spectrum which could be better used.
Nope – if the Little/King leadership team had the ability to “reconnect with people” they wouldn’t have left it until 7 months before the election to demonstrate it.
Last year I kept hearing: the affable John Key is the only real asset this National Government has which is keeping them afloat. Without his popularity, National would be gone!
Now that John Key is history and the monotonous expressionless English is in charge, this election should be a walkover for Labour. Shouldn’t it?
Unless of course, you and me are correct in our analysis (which we are).
“Yes CV i agree Labour is finished as a political force , those who continue to support them guarentee national party victory”
I’m genuinely curious as to how you see that working. If Labour are finished and we shouldn’t vote for them or support them in any way, then what else can happen apart from National getting a 4th term? Can you please explain your thinking? e.g. do you think a new left wing party will arise this year and win the election? Or do you think that the Greens will get enough votes to win the election and govern on their own?
” … write a comprehensive list of Labour mps and where they stand on…”
I smiled at that bit, picturing a serious interview with John Key, him answering the question about what his MPs believe. “I believe they believe what I tell them to believe. And believe me they do if they want to believe they have any future chances.”
“For the benefit of the more simple-minded among us, would someone please write a comprehensive list of Labour mps and where they stand on this spectrum.”
I’d be happy to collate and put up a post on that if people here want to make the list. It would need to be evidence based, and we could do it in the sense of a lay-persons guide to the Labour Party. For those of us that don’t know Labour well, there is plenty in the public domain, both words/actions from MPs themselves, as well as analysis in the media (blogosphere, social and mainstream). We could pick say five MPs to focus on at a time and go out and do the research, bring it back to comments, get feedback and then it can go into a post.
I think having an outline of how Labour works internally, including the selection process, would be important too.
That sounds like a great idea – thank you Weka. Like you, I fail to see what the alternative is if Labour can’t make it as the dominant, or at least equal party in power. I’m reading all this hand wringing, but as you suggest, too much of that and we’ll wind up with a 4th term for the Natz
JanM, Rosemary McD et al – Chris Trotter is not a friend of Labour – he’s harbouring some sort of snitch from way back which keeps him blindfolded as to what Labour is actually doing.
When you ask where Labour MPs stand on “this spectrum” – what do you mean? A simple left – right answer, or a bit more detail …… and for that maybe you could look at Labour’s policy platform – formulated after the last election debacle among much debate and argument between Party members and remnants of the neo-lib rightwing bloc . It can be found here https://www.google.co.nz/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=nzlp%20policy%20platform
This is what Labour policy for the 2017 election will be based on.
I’m not so sure it’s an ideological problem, seems more to be lack of talent.
Take the frequent talk about ‘moving more to the centre’ as an example. The general argument is that Labour needs more votes from the centre ergo they need to move politically and ideologically further to the right to capture those votes.
The corollary to that argument is moving to the right will lose votes from the left, the consequent strategy being to pass those votes to the Greens and get them back through a Labour/Green coalition..
That argument is predicated on the rationale that you can’t please both at the same time; you either go for the centre or you go for the left. It seems more a pragmatic approach than an ideological one.
My thinking is meh, this is New Zealand where a good 75% of the population would be considered ‘left’ in pretty much any other country. Just how hard is to to create a policy platform that would satisfy both the left and enough of the middle to capture 50% of the votes? … to my mind it should be a doddle for anyone with a bit of talent.
“I’m not so sure it’s an ideological problem, seems more to be lack of talent.”
Inclined to agree….compounded by special/personal interests.The Future of Work Commission is a glaring example…2 years work to produce what? if labour (or anyone else for that matter) could produce a comprehensive and clear policy prescription for a transitioning society they would be home and hosed (IMO)
Monbiot has made the same point about the left in general worldwide……its called leadership.
The future of work commision simply highlights how automation would exacerbate challenges around inequality & low productivity that New Zealand already faces. Its anti bureaucratic in nature, but not by nature?
Neoliberalism conditions you to believe that value is in paper work. It’s starts on the level of a guy checking to see if you use the rooms in your house properly. Moving up the neoliberal pyramid you have police who spend most of there time filling out paper work but the message is the same, value is in paper work. Then you’ve got managers who’s function seems to revolve around if some one gets payed to much. Derivatives traders which is a really fancy form of paper is at the top of the neoliberal pyramid because they earn the most.
To reevaluate what it means to work means finding away to destroy this mountain of paper work we’ve created that adds no value to the real economy.
Yeah. I’ve tried to avoid even commenting on that Future of Work because every time I see it mentioned I get the recurring image of Nero and his fiddle.
I don’t wish to belittle their work but I can’t see the point of it, they’re not in power they just look to be indulging themselves there.
“Take the frequent talk about ‘moving more to the centre’……” That is media opinion, DH – and is not what Labour is actually talking about.
As Andrew Little has said a couple of times – in his connections with NZers as he goes around the country – everyone he meets considers themselves “middle NZ” (except for the 1%) – so he’s talking to people who are having difficulty getting a home, who have been made redundant, farmers, business people, others who are in work, people who have been ill, etc etc – all of them considering themselves “middle NZ”
Labour is a true left wing party! Promise! Labour will show their true left wing values after we give them power! Why do people not believe this!!! Wreckers and haters!!!!!
I would have thought it’s because they understand they can’t govern alone and have seen how trying to act as a FPP party in an MMP environment has failed them.
Well, I tried to give a bit of background for you JanM but perhaps you already knew it. You’ve got to say Labour is a far better party now than it was seven years ago. Cohesive with good policy coming up and believe me… some outstanding candidates on offer this election starting with the highly talented Michael Wood. Compare them to the types on offer from the National Party and they outflank them in every respect.
Anne , do you know how much “deadwood” Labour is going to shed? Seems to me they need to fair bit of it, just like National has done already. Too many right wingers still in the Labour caucus.
Bearing in mind Labour’s numbers were decimated in 2011 and 2014 so there aren’t as many to be culled as in the National Party:
Clayton Cosgrove, Ruth Dyson, Damien O’Conner (not sure about him but think so) Su’a William Sio and I think one of the Maori electorate MPs might be going . David Shearer has already gone. I’m picking there might be one or two others who have yet to declare they’e going. All in all it looks like at least 8 MPs will be gone by the next election. That opens up a good chance some very bright and talented younger aspirants will enter the caucus. To name two of them Deborah Russell and Claire Szabo. There are others.
Lionel explains how to maximally prosecute the case of 4 black youth in Chicago who kidnapped, tied up, abused, tortured a mentally handicapped white Trump supporter
While yelling invective like “fuck Trump” and “fuck white people.” The alleged perpetrators live streamed their activities. The video is still available on the internet.
He discusses if this is a “hate crime.” Also what if the alleged perpetrators have priors, and what would need to be done to maximise their sentencing.
Also imagine the inverse situation: 4 white youth who kidnapped, tied up, abused, tortured a mentally handicapped black Obama supporter.
While yelling invective like “fuck Obama” and “fuck black people.
Very fucked up (and I strongly suspect) drug induced bullshit.
A ‘hate crime’? I have doubts.
Politically motivated? No.
Kick their collective arses from here to now, but as for pretending this sort of evil nonsense is hugely unusual and then blowing it upout of context to be something it’s not in order to score some point or other? Nah.
Very fucked up (and I strongly suspect) drug induced bullshit.
If it were four young white men who had done exactly the same to a young black intellectually disabled Obama supporter while shouting “fuck blacks” and “fuck Obama” there would be much clearer hate and political motivations, no?
I would even expect President Obama to address the incident in front of the White House press corp. If it had been carried out by white men.
Anyhow, Cook County prosecutors have now filed charges of aggravated kidnap, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
I’m not sure it’s intellectually dishonest if he actually thinks that way. But he is certainly the nastiest sack of shit I’ve had the misfortune to interact with in the recent past.
All hating and wrecking, trying to be a saboteur. Not a single useful considered criticism, not even a valid challenge to viewpoints we get from the likes of BM, Puckish, et al. Just nasty slogans hating on Labour, Greens, Democrats. All the while spreading hate propaganda and fake news all over the site, while trying to get opinion and facts he doesn’t like labelled fake news and trying to trash the idea that there really are objective facts.
Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t see a guy who devotes such ingenuity and diligence to stiffing his employees and contractors as “pro-working class.” Try looking at his actions, rather than his tweets and blowhard speeches.
That bullshit could just have easily revolved around some football team or a religious belief. The rhetoric just served as a vehicle for the abuse and isn’t in and of itself very important.
Your other point about Trump supporters being physically attacked, if true, hasn’t got sweet fuck all to do with this wee group of shit heads being shit.
So no, I won’t be writing angry tweets about what these folk did in Chicago. They are already in jail. They will be punished, I am sure, to the fullest extent of the law, but I’ve written about case after case after case of drug offenses and incidents of sexual assault and even murders committed by white folk where the system gave them a helping hand. The Stanford swimmer, Brock Turner, who was caught in the act of raping a woman, but spent a summer in jail for it instead of the 10 to 20 years he deserved, comes to mind.
Black folk and white folk both use and sell drugs at almost identical rates, with the rates for whites actually being slightly higher in both categories, but African-Americans are sent to prison at four to 10 times the rates of whites for various drug offenses.
Black folk are held super-responsible for every mistake and criminal offense made. We rarely have to march for justice in our communities. American prisons are full of black folk who are being held responsible for every mistake they’ve ever made.
Now I actually see thousands of other whites saying I caused this assault. Of course I reject that foolishness altogether. What’s most disturbing is that I hardly see many whites who are particularly angry about the crime speaking sympathetically about the victim. They are mainly using it to advance their racist agenda and demonize random black folk who had nothing to do with such a thing. Furthermore, I have routinely seen tens of thousands of African-Americans standing up and fighting and protesting for white victims of police brutality and toxic masculinity. The Alt-Right Movement does not care about violence in this country. Thousands of whites murder people every year, but you’d be hard pressed to find a protest or march headed by their movement on white on white crime.
As I type, the top trending topic in the country is now #BLMKidnapping. BLM stands for Black Lives Matter. The people in the video never even suggested such a thing. The Black Lives Matter Movement has never advocated such a thing. I have never advocated such a thing.
Pretty much. Not that that is itself new, but there is something additional going on now where people feel emboldened in promoting ideas that are at the least aligned with white supremacist views e.g. that all racism is equal, that racism is simply how one person treats another, that structural racism isn’t a real thing. I see this happening more in the US, but CV’s comment seemed a fairly classic example of it and I’m guessing we will see more of it in NZ. I noted the other day that Bradbury’s recent post where he is complaining about not being allowed to speak because he is a white man is another example. Different, but maybe part of the same shift happening in the culture. Traditionally we would expect both CV and Bradbury’s comments to come from the right or conservatives or small parts of the left, but now we have these voices becoming larger within left wing spaces.
Bradbury’s recent post where he is complaining about not being allowed to speak because he is a white man
Curiously, Bradbury has said a lot about the Sir Mad B story in the last few days – a flurry of posts, while saying the MSM have more important stories/issues they should be focusing on.
Arthur Edington once said If your theory clashes with the second law of thermal dynamics I can give you no hope, there is nothing for it but to collapse in the deepest humiliation.
Even environmentalists haven’t discovered a theory of production that fits with in the laws of thermal dynamics.
By definition, anything that comes from several points across the globe has a huge carbon footprint.
Drowsy M. Kram is correct. It’s thermodynamics, not thermal dynamics.
We can get a rich function that relates to labour/capital/energy inputs (that hasn’t happened yet). Once you’ve got energy related to parts of production, it talks to a relationship between the 2nd law of thermodynamics and so on, then it will be possible to make links to entropy/wast/ecology issues which economics has failed to do.
I talked to an overseas employment expert/philosopher recently and he was full of praise for Grant Robertson’s Future of Work project. He said it was world leading in scope and vision. I expect we will hear more about aspects of it this year (but hopefully in a form that is clear, succinct and easy to understand).
You gotta be kidding. A mish mash of a report clearly put together by different authors, few cohesive themes, with some chapters far better prepared than others which appeared simply slapdash thrown together.
@JoyFL ….do you really think so ?……I dont, not in election year.
I would prefer they kept to simple policies i..e. Kiwi Build ….and placed Future of Work as a behind the scenes driver.
Good piece here on the Israeli motive of keeping occupied territories just that, occupied. They do this to deny 3 Million Palestinians a vote.
Amazing that Jews in settlements are allowed to vote but Palestinians are not. And Israeli supporters like to say Israel is the only democracy in the region…
The Israeli electoral franchise extends to Jewish settlers in the occupied territories but there is no vote for the nearly three million Palestinians in those territories. If Israel annexed East Jerusalem and the West Bank it would have to give everyone the vote. It has used an endlessly prolonged peace process to save itself from having to do this.
Israel has options.
It can annex the occupied territories, extend the franchise to everyone and accept that Jews are a minority.
Or it can withdraw to a more modest and legally less suspect geographical area within the limits set by the UN in 1947.
Take note RWers who regularly want to deny the poor their piece of the pay pie:
“The CEO of a popular fast food chain said this week that he was “stunned” to see profits soar each time California passed minimum wage increases.
In an interview with KQED on Tuesday, Wetzel’s Pretzels CEO Bill Phelps admitted that his investors were worried about how a 2014 wage hike would impact the business. “Like most business people I was concerned about it,” Phelps said.
For years, opponents of minimum wage increases have argued that wage hikes mean fewer jobs because businesses have to raise prices and cut hours to cover the additional expenses. But Phelps said that his sales skyrocketed after a California law forced businesses to raise wages in 2014.
“I was shocked,” Phelps recalled. “I was stunned by the business.”
The same thing happened earlier this year when California raised the minimum wage to $10.50 per hour, Phelps said.”
Debt “connected” to the President-elect’s companies adding up to more than US$1 billion ($1.4b) is owed to more than 150 financial institutions, the Wall Street Journal reported overnight.
The revelation has prompted renewed concern about a potential conflict of interests minefield when Trump takes office in two weeks’ time.
According to the Journal, the loans were divided, repackaged and then sold in the form of bonds over the past five years, with some of them personally guaranteed by Mr Trump – who previously estimated his companies’ debt obligations at US$315 million.
Trump has made it clear that people who work at a senior level in his Administration will not be able move on and then lobby for corporations (5 year ban) and foreign countries (life time ban).
A good piece that illustrates the difference between shoddy journalism and fake news. A distinction that even Glenn Greenwald can’t seem to get his head around, to his discredit.
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has signaled to congressional Republican leaders that his preference is to fund the border wall through the appropriations process as soon as April, according to House Republican officials.</i?
Over the past year and a half, dozens of Palestinian men, women and children have been killed, even though they could have been overpowered while they were still alive. The difference between them and Azaria is that he was videotaped.
by AMIRA HASS, Haaretz, Jan. 5, 2017
There’s one thing on which Palestinians agree with Elor Azaria and his supporters: that he wasn’t the only one, he just had the bad luck to be videotaped without his knowledge. Palestinians agree with Azaria and his supporters that he was complying with the norm and did exactly what other soldiers do – namely, shoot with intent to kill even when nobody’s life is in danger.
Palestinians agree with Azaria that the system discriminated against him. It’s just that they believe dozens of other soldiers and policemen should also have stood trial.
Like Azaria himself, Palestinians are wondering why he stood trial while the soldiers who killed Hadeel al-Hashlamoun of Hebron were never even investigated by the Military Police. She, too, was lying on the ground, after soldiers shot her from a distance at a checkpoint because she held a knife (which no soldier was even scratched by). And then, while she was lying there, they continued shooting her in the upper body. (This was on September 22, 2015, and Hebron residents attribute the subsequent outbreak of lone-wolf attacks to this incident.)
On June 11, 2010, Maxim Vinogradov, a Border Policeman, “confirmed the kill” of Ziad Jilani, who was already lying on the ground, shot and wounded, after having run over other policemen with his car in Jerusalem’s Wadi Joz neighborhood. The prosecution decided against indicting Vinogradov, accepting his ridiculous claim that he feared Jilani had a bomb. He was in the heart of a Palestinian neighborhood – why would he blow himself up there?
Fadi Alloun of Isawiyah was also lying on the ground, after having stabbed an Israel in Jerusalem’s Musrara neighborhood on October 4, 2015. An anonymous policeman shot him to death after passersby encouraged him to do so. In this case, there was video footage from a cell phone, but it wasn’t enough for any steps to be taken against the killer.
Sara Hajuj of Bani Naim pulled a knife on Border Policemen inside the security-inspection room of a Hebron checkpoint on July 1, 2016. They sprayed her in the face with pepper spray and fled the room. Then one of them shot her, while she was alone in the room and didn’t endanger anyone.
On June 2, 2016, Ansar Hirsheh crossed the checkpoint at Anabta, where pedestrian traffic is forbidden, on foot. She had a knife in her belongings, but she didn’t endanger anyone. And there was no reason why the four armed, trained soldiers who surrounded her couldn’t have overpowered her without killing her.
Over the past year and a half, dozens of Palestinian men, women and children have been killed, even though according to both eyewitnesses and common sense, they could have been overpowered while they were still alive. Some, it later turned out, hadn’t even attempted to commit an attack. Dozens of soldiers, Border Policemen and checkpoint guards are walking free among us after having killed Palestinians who posed no danger to their lives. The defense establishment portrayed them as having acted properly.
The boundary between self-defense and nationalist vengeance has been completely blurred. This is the atmosphere in which Azaria operated.
Therefore, the message sent by the military court judges stands out for its rarity: Elor Azaria violated the rules of engagement, so he was convicted. But the message the Israeli defense establishment sends to its soldiers and policemen is equally loud and clear: “Take care that you aren’t videotaped when you do the deed. We know how to downplay the value of photographs taken by Palestinian security cameras and bury the testimony of Palestinian eyewitnesses. But we still haven’t found the solution to close-up, professional video footage.”
Precious declaration saysYours is yours and mine you leave alone nowPrecious declaration saysI believe all hope is dead no longerTick tick tick Boom!Unexploded ordnance. A veritable minefield. A National caucus with a large number of unknowns, candidates who perhaps received little in the way of vetting as the party jumped ...
Rex Ahdar writes – The Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, likes to trace his political lineage back to the pioneers of parliamentary Maoridom. I will refer to these as the ‘big four’ or better still, the Four Knights. Just as ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Willie Jackson will participate in the prestigious Oxford Union debate on Thursday, following in David Lange’s footsteps. Coincidentally, Jackson has also followed Lange’s footsteps by living in his old home in South Auckland. And like Lange, Jackson might be the sort of loud-mouth scrapper ...
That is the only way to describe an MP "forgetting" to declare $178,000 in donations. The amount of money involved - more than five times the candidate spending cap, and two and a half times the median income - is boggling. How do you just "forget" that amount of money? ...
In this week’s “A View from Afar” podcast Selwyn Manning and spoke about the upcoming US elections and what the possibility of another Trump presidency means for the US role in world affairs. We also spoke about the problems Joe … Continue reading → ...
Hi,Two years ago I briefly featured in Justin Pemberton’s Web of Chaos documentary, which touched on things like QAnon during the pandemic.I mostly prattled on about how intertwined conspiracy narratives are with Evangelical Christian thinking, something Webworm’s explored in the past.(The doc is available on TVNZ+, if you’re not in ...
The Government is leaving the entire construction sector and the community housing sector in limbo. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government released the long-awaited Bill English-led review of Kāinga Ora yesterday, but delayed key decisions on its build plan and how to help community housing providers (CHPs) build ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Daisy Simmons Farmers who can’t sleep, worrying they’ll lose everything amid increasing drought. Youth struggling with depression over a future that feels hopeless. Indigenous people grief-stricken over devastated ecosystems. For all these people and more, climate change is taking a clear toll ...
New Zealand’s relationship with China is becoming harder to define, and with that comes a worry that a deteriorating political relationship could spill over into the economic relationship. It is about more than whether New Zealand will join Pillar Two of Aukus, though the Chinese Ambassador, more or less, suggested ...
Been hoping we would see something like this from Sir Geoffrey Palmer. This is excellent.The present Bill goes further than the National Development Act 1979 in stripping away procedures designed to ensure that environmental issues are properly considered. The 1979 approach was not acceptable then and this present approach is ...
He’s Got The Moxie: Only Willie Jackson possesses the credentials to meld together a new Labour message that is, at one and the same moment, staunchly working-class, union-friendly, and which speaks to the hundreds-of-thousands of urban Māori untethered to the neo-tribal capitalist elites of the Iwi Leaders Forum.IT’S ONE OF THE ...
Tree-huggers may well accuse the Government of giving them the fingers, after Energy Minister Simeon Brown announced new measures to protect powerlines from trees, rather than measures to protect trees from powerlines. It can be no coincidence, surely, that this has been announced at the same as Fisheries Minister Shane Jones ...
Willie Jackson will participate in the prestigious Oxford Union debate on Thursday, following in David Lange’s footsteps. Coincidentally, Jackson has also followed Lange’s footsteps by living in his old home in South Auckland. And like Lange, Jackson might be the sort of loud-mouth scrapper who could take over the Labour ...
Barrister Gary Judd KC’s complaint to the Regulatory Review Committee has sparked a fierce debate about the place of tikanga Māori – or Māori customs, values and spiritual beliefs – in the law.Judd opposes the New Zealand Council of Legal Education’s plans to make teaching tikanga compulsory in the legal curriculum.AUT ...
Alwyn Poole writes – In New Zealand we have approximately 460 high schools. The gaps between the schools that produce the best results for students and those at the other end of the spectrum are enormous.In terms of the data for their leavers, the top 30 schools have ...
Bryce Edwards writes – New Zealand First Cabinet Minister Shane Jones has become the best advertisement against the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill. In selling the radical new resource consenting processes, in which ministers can green light any mine, dam, or other major development, Jones seems to be ...
Brian Eastonwrites – The Fast-Track Approvals Bill enables cabinet ministers to circumvent key environmental planning and protection processes for infrastructure projects. Its difficulties have been well canvassed. This column suggests a different way of thinking about the proposal. I am ...
The split opening up in Israel’s “War Cabinet” is not just between PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his long-term rival Benny Gantz. It is actually a three-way split, set in motion by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. It was Gallant’s open criticism of Netanyahu that finally flushed Gantz out into the open. ...
On Thursday 17 May, the Mayoral Proposal for Auckland’s Long Term Plan 2024-2034 was passed by Auckland Council, 20 to 1. It is set to be formally adopted by the Governing Body at its June 27th meeting. The entire process took 8 hours, with the vast majority of that time ...
Pakanga o muaTukua, ka ngaroPuritia taku ringaNgaro ana te ara ki pae rauThere's a battle aheadMany battles are lostBut you'll never see the end of the roadWhile you're travelling with meLate yesterday morning I headed to Wynyard Quarter to see Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick give their pre-budget State of ...
Maybe the Prime Minister and his Finance Minister expected the worst, so they mounted a stout defence of the Budget tax cuts to their party faithful at a party conference over the weekend. In turn, they were greeted with applause, which, though it may have been less than wildly enthusiastic, ...
A listing of 34 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, May 12, 2024 thru Sat, May 18, 2024. Story of the week “The legislation I signed today [will] keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and ...
TL;DR: Here’s six links that stood out to me in the last day in Aotearoa’s political economy to 6:06am on Sunday, May 19:Aotearoa-NZ is the seventh worst in the OECD’s homelessness rankings, just behind the United States and just ahead of Australia. BlackRock thinks rate hikes actually worsen inflation because ...
Halfway up a historic tower in York, we are neither up nor down. At the top you will have views of a city steeped in antiquity, made and remade by Romans, Normans, Vikings, Tescos. Below, you will find a retired minister happy to tell you all about this most astonishing ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Does breathing contribute to CO2 ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: KiwiRail’s seemingly endless requests for more money is damning. At one point, KiwiRail assured Robertson when he was the Finance Minister that the worst-case scenario would be an extra $300 million before requesting $1.2 billion a few months later. Not what most people ...
No one knows what it's likeTo be the bad manTo be the sad manBehind blue eyesNo one knows what it's likeTo be hatedTo be fatedTo telling only liesHave you ever wondered what life must be like for Mike Hosking? Seeing things in black and white through blue tinted specs? In ...
Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past two week’s editions.Share More Than A FeildingBike bling, London Read more ...
Hi,I think we all made it through another week — congratulations. I’ve been digesting the new Arab Strap record, which is astonishing. In other news, I’m going to be doing a Webworm popup in Auckland, New Zealand on Saturday July 13. I’ll bring a bunch of merch, and some other ...
The Fast-Track Approvals Bill enables cabinet ministers to circumvent key environmental planning and protection processes for infrastructure projects. Its difficulties have been well canvassed. This column suggests a different way of thinking about the proposal. I am going to explore the Bill from the perspective of its proponents with their ...
New Zealand First Cabinet Minister Shane Jones has become the best advertisement against the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill. In selling the radical new resource consenting processes, in which ministers can green light any mine, dam, or other major development, Jones seems to be shooting the proposal in the foot. ...
Buzz from the Beehive Associate Education Minister David Seymour is urging the PostPrimary Teachers Association to put learning ahead of ideology. He wants the union leaders to call off their teachers meetings around the country where they hope to muster the strength to undo the government’s plans to establish several ...
What are police for? "Fighting crime" is the obvious answer. If there's a burglary, they should show up and investigate. Ditto if there's a murder or sexual assault. Speeding or drunk or dangerous driving is a crime, so obviously they should respond to that. And obviously, they should respond to ...
Michael Reddell writes – I got curious yesterday about how the Australia/New Zealand real exchange rate had changed over the last decade, and so dug out the data on the changes in the two countries’ CPIs. Over the 10 years from March 2014 to March 2024, New Zealand’s ...
Graham Adams writes that 20 years after the land march, judges are quietly awarding a swathe of coastal rights to iwi. Early this month, an hour-long documentary was released by TVNZ to mark the 20th anniversary of the land-rights march to oppose Helen Clark’s Foreshore and Seabed Act. The account ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: Suspended Green MP Darleen Tana has passed an unpleasant milestone: she has now been absent for as many parliamentary sitting days as she has been present for this year. Tana is on full pay while she is suspended, and will benefit from a ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is no coincidence that two Labour should-have-been MPs are making the most noise about public sector cuts. As assistant general secretary of the Public Service Association, Fleur Fitzsimons has been at the forefront of revealing where the next round of state sector job ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a ...
This is one of the (extra) weekly columns on music or movies. Plenty of solid analyses of Possession exist online and most of them – inevitably – contain spoilers. This column is more in the way of a first-timer’s aid to getting your initial bearings. You don’t need to have ...
I am painting in oil, a portrait of a manWho has taken all the heart aches,And all the pain he can stand.I am using all the colors of blue,I have here on my stand.I am painting in oil, a portrait of a man.This has been an interesting week for me. ...
Helen Clark joins the Hoon as a special guest talking whether Aotearoa should join Aukus II, and her views on the fast track legislation and how Luxon and the new Government are performing. File Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts ...
With an election due in less than nine months, Britain’s embattled PM, Rishi Sunak, gave a useful speech earlier this week. He made a substantial case for his government, perhaps as compelling as is possible in the current environment. Quite an achievement. His overall theme was security, first pulling ...
Open access notablesPublicly expressed climate scepticism is greatest in regions with high CO2 emissions, Pearson et al., Climatic Change:We analysed a recently released corpus of climate-related tweets to examine the macro-level factors associated with public declarations of climate change scepticism. Analyses of over 2 million geo-located tweets in the U.S. showed that climate ...
You can be all negative about these charter schools if you want, but I’m here to accentuate the positive. You can get all worked up, if you want to, by the contradiction of Luxon saying We’re going to make sure that every school in the country is teaching exactly the same ...
Losing The Room: One can only speculate about what has persuaded the Coalition Government that it will pay no electoral price for unreasonably pushing ahead with policies that are so clearly against the national interest. They seem quite oblivious to the risk that by doing so they will convince an increasing ...
Name suppression decisions can be tough sometimes. No matter your views on free speech, you have to be hard-hearted not to be torn by the tug of the competing arguments. I think you can feel the Supreme Court wrestling with that in M v The King. The case for ...
The Merchants of Menace: The Coalition Government has convinced itself that the “Brahmins’” emollient functions have become much too irksome and expensive. Those who see themselves as the best hope of rebuilding New Zealand’s ailing capitalist system, appear to have convinced themselves that a little bit of blunt trauma is what their mollycoddled ...
When National first proposed its Muldoonist "fast-track" law, they were warned that it would inevitably lead to corruption. And that is exactly what has happened, with Resources Minister Shane Jones taking secret meetings with potential applicants:On Tuesday, in a Newsroom story, questions were raised about a dinner Jones ...
Buzz from the Beehive One day – hopefully – we will push that Russian rascal, Vladimir Putin, beyond breaking point. Perhaps it will happen today, when he learns that Foreign Minister Winston Peters is again tightening the thumbscrews. Peters announced further sanctions, this time on 28 individuals and 14 entities ...
How Labour’s and National’s failure to move beyond neoliberalism has brought New Zealand to the brink of economic and cultural chaos.TO START LOSING, so soon after you won, requires a special kind of political incompetence. At the heart of this Coalition Government’s failure to retain, and build upon, the public ...
“Members of Parliament don’t work for us, they represent us, an entirely different thing. As with so much that has turned out badly, the re-organising of MPs’ responsibilities began with the Fourth Labour Government. That’s when they began to be treated like employees – public servants – whose diaries had ...
It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a third medical school in New Zealand, ...
Time To Choose: Like it or not, the Kiwis are either going into AUKUS’s “Pillar 2” – or they are going to China.HAD ZHENG HE’S FLEET sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks ...
Henry Ergas writes – When in Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, a college president is accused of being a hypocrite, the novel’s narrator retorts that the description is grossly unfair. After all, the man is still far from the stage of moral development at which the charge ...
David Farrar writes – Radio NZ reports: The Education Review Office says too many new teachers feel poorly prepared for their jobs. In a report published on Monday, the review office said 60 percent of the principals it interviewed said their new teachers were not ready. ...
New Zealand’s economic performance and the PM’s vision Michael Reddell writes – When I wrote yesterday morning’s post, highlighting how poorly both New Zealand and its Anglo peer countries have been doing in respect of productivity in recent times (ie, in the case of New ...
Hi all,Firstly - thank you! You guys are awesome. The response I’ve received to last night’s mail has been quite overwhelming. It’s a ghastly day outside, but there are no clouds in here.In case you didn’t read my email and are wondering what on earth I’m talking about you can ...
If there was still any doubt as to who is actually running this government – and it isn’t the buffoon from Botany – then this week’s announcement of a huge spend up on charter schools has settled the matter. While jobs and public services continue to be cut in the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gaye Taylor As widespread drought raises expectations for a repeat of last year’s ferocious wildfire season, response teams across Canada are grappling with the rapidly changing face of fire in a warming climate. No longer quenched by winter, nor quelled by the ...
Half of Christchurch City Holdings Ltd’s directors and its chair resigned en masse last night in protest at Christchurch City Council’s demand to front-load dividends File Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The chair of Christchurch City Council’s investment company and four of its independent directors resigned in protest last ...
The University of Waikato has reworded an advertisement that begins the tender process for its new $300 million-plus medical school even though the Government still needs to approve it. However, even the reworded ad contains an architect’s visualisations of what the school might look like. ACT leader David Seymour told ...
As a follow-up to the Rings of Power trailer discussion, I thought I needed to add something. There has been some online mockery about the use of the same actor for both the Halbrand and Annatar incarnations of Sauron. The reasoning is that Halbrand with a shave and a new ...
This isn’t quite as dramatic as the title might suggest. I’m not going anywhere, but there is something I wanted to talk to you about.Let’s start with a typical day.Most days I send out a newsletter in the morning. If I’ve written a lot the previous evening it might be ...
Buzz from the Beehive The promise of tax relief loomed large in his considerations when the PM delivered a pre-Budget speech to the Auckland Business Chamber. The job back in Wellington is getting government spending back under control, he said, bandying figures which show that in per capita terms, the ...
Yesterday de facto Prime Minister David Seymour announced that his glove puppet government would be re-introducing charter schools, throwing $150 million at his pet quacks, donors and cronies and introducing an entire new government agency to oversee them (the existing Education Review Office, which actually knows how to review schools, ...
Seeing that, in order to discredit the figures and achieve moral superiority while attempting to deflect attention away from the military assault on Rafa, Israel supporters in NZ have seized on reports that casualty numbers in Gaza may be inflated … Continue reading → ...
David Farrar writes – Newstalk ZB report: The man responsible for a horror hit and run in central Wellington last year was on a suspended licence and was so drunk he later asked police, “Did I kill someone?” Jason Tuitama injured two women when he ran a red ...
Muriel Newman writes – Former US President Ronald Reagan once said, “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation.” The fight for ...
Why Courts should have said Waitangi Tribunal could not summons Karen Chhour Gary Judd writes – In the High Court, Justice Isacs declined to uphold the witness summons issued by the Waitangi Tribunal to compel Minister for Children, Karen Chhour, to appear before it to be ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The number of voices raising concerns about the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill is rapidly growing. This is especially apparent now that Parliament’s select committee is listening to submissions from the public to evaluate the proposed legislation. Twenty-seven thousand submissions have been made to Parliament ...
The Government has yet again failed to do the one thing that needs to happen to ensure houses can be built – commit to ongoing funding, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Treasury officials have outlined many ways in which the Fast Track Approvals Bill is deeply flawed, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking says. ...
Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick used this year's State of the Planet to call on the Government to prioritise people and planet as the delivery of the Budget approaches. A full transcript of their speeches can be found below. ...
Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick have used their State of the Planet speeches to challenge the Government to prioritise people and planet over profit as the delivery of the Budget approaches. ...
The Government’s introduction of legislation that would enable landlords to end tenancies with no reason marks a dark day for the 1.4 million people who rent their home in Aotearoa. ...
The Minister for Mental Health has found the Suicide Prevention Office and mental health support for 111 calls slipping through his fingers, says Labour spokesperson for Mental Health Ingrid Leary. ...
Today’s justification from the Minister for Children for scrapping protections for our tamariki was either a case of ignorance or deliberate deception. ...
The Green Party says the Government’s misguided policy on gangs will fail, following the announcement of the establishment of a national gang unit and district gang disruption units to target gang activities. ...
“With Police pay negotiations still unresolved after six months in Government, Mark Mitchell has today rolled the Commissioner out for a rebrand of their approach to gang crime,” Labour police spokesperson Ginny Andersen said. ...
The Government bringing back 50 charter schools will not increase achievement and is a distraction from the core mission of the education system, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Te Pāti Māori is showing extreme concern over the Environment Select Committees adoption of a lucky dip draw to determine hearings for the Fast Track Approvals bill. Of the 27,000 submissions, 2,900 requested to present. All organisations will be heard; however, the remaining 2,350 submitters will be subject to a ...
Today New Zealand First will introduce a Member’s Bill that will protect women’s spaces. The ‘Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill’ will require, primarily in the interest and safety of women and girls, that all new non-domestic publicly accessible buildings provide separate, clearly demarcated, unisex and single sex bathrooms. This Bill ...
The Green Party is welcoming Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ continuation of Hon. James Shaw’s cross-party work on climate adaptation, now in the form of a Finance and Expenditure Committee Inquiry. ...
The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
The Government has been caught in opposition to evidence once again as it looks to usher in tried, tested and failed work seminar obligations for job-seeking beneficiaries. ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed a New Zealand Government plane will head to New Caledonia in the next hour in the first in a series of proposed flights to begin bringing New Zealanders home. “New Zealanders in New Caledonia have faced a challenging few days - and bringing ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed a New Zealand Government plane will head to New Caledonia in the next hour in the first in a series of proposed flights to begin bringing New Zealanders home. “New Zealanders in New Caledonia have faced a challenging few days - and bringing them ...
The Coalition Government will introduce legislation this year that will enable roadside drug testing as part of our commitment to improve road safety and restore law and order, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Alcohol and drugs are the number one contributing factor in fatal road crashes in New Zealand. In ...
The Government has announced a series of immediate actions in response to the independent review of Kāinga Ora – Homes and Communities, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “Kāinga Ora is a large and important Crown entity, with assets of $45 billion and over $2.5 billion of expenditure each year. It ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour is pleased that Pseudoephedrine can now be purchased by the general public to protect them from winter illness, after the coalition government worked swiftly to change the law and oversaw a fast approval process by Medsafe. “Pharmacies are now putting the medicines back on their ...
Tēnā koutou katoa. Da jia hao. Good morning everyone. Prime Minister Luxon, your excellency, a great friend of New Zealand and my friend Ambassador Wang, Mayor of what he tells me is the best city in New Zealand, Wayne Brown, the highly respected Fran O’Sullivan, Champion of the Auckland business ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced that the Government will make it easier for lines firms to take action to remove vegetation from obstructing local powerlines. The change will ensure greater security of electricity supply in local communities, particularly during severe weather events. “Trees or parts of trees falling on ...
Wairarapa Moana ki Pouakani were the top winners at this year’s Ahuwhenua Trophy awards recognising the best in Māori dairy farming. Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka announced the winners and congratulated runners-up, Whakatōhea Māori Trust Board, at an awards celebration also attended by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister ...
"On the 27th of March, I sought assurances from the Chief Executive, Department of Internal Affairs, that the Department’s correct processes and policies had been followed in regards to a passport application which received media attention,” says Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden. “I raised my concerns after being ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins has announced the appointment of three new District Court Judges, to replace Judges who have recently retired. Peter James Davey of Auckland has been appointed a District Court Judge with a jury jurisdiction to be based at Whangarei. Mr Davey initially started work as a law clerk/solicitor with ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour is calling on the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) to put ideology to the side and focus on students’ learning, in reaction to the union holding paid teacher meetings across New Zealand about charter schools. “The PPTA is disrupting schools up and down the ...
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly today announced the appointment of Craig Stobo as the new chair of the Financial Markets Authority (FMA). Mr Stobo takes over from Mark Todd, whose term expired at the end of April. Mr Stobo’s appointment is for a five-year term. “The FMA plays ...
Surf Life Saving New Zealand and Coastguard New Zealand will continue to be able to keep people safe in, on, and around the water following a funding boost of $63.644 million over four years, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Associate Transport Minister Matt Doocey say. “Heading to the beach for ...
New Zealand and Tuvalu have reaffirmed their close relationship, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand is committed to working with Tuvalu on a shared vision of resilience, prosperity and security, in close concert with Australia,” says Mr Peters, who last visited Tuvalu in 2019. “It is my pleasure ...
New Zealand is gravely concerned about the situation in New Caledonia, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The escalating situation and violent protests in Nouméa are of serious concern across the Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “The immediate priority must be for all sides to take steps to de-escalate the ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon met today with Samoa’s O le Ao o le Malo, Afioga Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II, who is making a State Visit to New Zealand. “His Highness and I reflected on our two countries’ extensive community links, with Samoan–New Zealanders contributing to all areas of our national ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has announced that he has approved Waiheke Island ferry operator Island Direct to be eligible for SuperGold Card funding, paving the way for a commercial agreement to bring the operator into the scheme. “Island Direct started operating in November 2023, offering an additional option for people ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters today announced further sanctions on 28 individuals and 14 entities providing military and strategic support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Russia is directly supported by its military-industrial complex in its illegal aggression against Ukraine, attacking its sovereignty and territorial integrity. New Zealand condemns all entities and ...
A year on from the tragedy at Loafers Lodge, the Government is working hard to improve building fire safety, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “I want to share my sincere condolences with the families and friends of the victims on the anniversary of the tragic fire at Loafers ...
Ka nui te mihi kia koutou. Kia ora and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for having me here in the lead up to my Government’s first Budget. Before I get started can I acknowledge: Simon Bridges – Auckland Business Chamber CEO. Steve Jurkovich – Kiwibank CEO. Kids born ...
New Zealand and Vanuatu will enhance collaboration on issues of mutual interest, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “It is important to return to Port Vila this week with a broad, high-level political delegation which demonstrates our deep commitment to New Zealand’s relationship with Vanuatu,” Mr Peters says. “This ...
Minister for Land Information, Chris Penk will travel to Peru this week to represent New Zealand at a meeting of trade ministers from the Asia-Pacific region on behalf of Trade Minister Todd McClay. The annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Ministers Responsible for Trade meeting will be held on 17-18 May ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford will head to the United Kingdom this week to participate in the 22nd Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) and the 2024 Education World Forum (EWF). “I am looking forward to sharing this Government’s education priorities, such as introducing a knowledge-rich curriculum, implementing an evidence-based ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford has today thanked outgoing New Zealand Qualifications Authority Chair, Hon Tracey Martin. “Tracey Martin tendered her resignation late last month in order to take up a new role,” Ms Stanford says. Ms Martin will relinquish the role of Chair on 10 May and current Deputy ...
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and President Emmanuel Macron of France today announced a new non-governmental organisation, the Christchurch Call Foundation, to coordinate the Christchurch Call’s work to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. This change gives effect to the outcomes of the November 2023 Call Leaders’ Summit, ...
Distinguished public servant and former diplomat Sir Maarten Wevers will lead the independent review into the disability support services administered by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. The review was announced by Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston a fortnight ago to examine what could be done to strengthen the ...
Today’s announcement by Police Commissioner Andrew Coster of a National Gang Unit and district Gang Disruption Units will help deliver on the coalition Government’s pledge to restore law and order and crack down on criminal gangs, Police Minister Mark Mitchell says. “The National Gang Unit and Gang Disruption Units will ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today expressed regret at North Korea’s aggressive rhetoric towards New Zealand and its international partners. “New Zealand proudly stands with the international community in upholding the rules-based order through its monitoring and surveillance deployments, which it has been regularly doing alongside partners since 2018,” Mr ...
Air Vice-Marshal Tony Davies MNZM is the new Chief of Defence Force, Defence Minister Judith Collins announced today. The Chief of Defence Force commands the Navy, Army and Air Force and is the principal military advisor to the Defence Minister and other Ministers with relevant portfolio responsibilities in the defence ...
Legislation to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act has been introduced to Parliament. The Bill’s introduction reaffirms the Coalition Government’s commitment to the safety of children in care, says Minister for Children, Karen Chhour. “While section 7AA was introduced with good intentions, it creates a conflict for Oranga ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins will this week travel to the UK and Italy to meet with her defence counterparts, and to attend Battles of Cassino commemorations. “I am humbled to be able to represent the New Zealand Government in Italy at the commemorations for the 80th anniversary of what was ...
The upcoming Budget will include funding for up to 50 charter schools to help lift declining educational performance, Associate Education Minister David Seymour announced today. $153 million in new funding will be provided over four years to establish and operate up to 15 new charter schools and convert 35 state ...
“The results of the public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has now been received, with results indicating over 13,000 submissions were made from members of the public,” Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “We heard feedback about the extended lockdowns in ...
Foreign Minister, Defence Minister, other Members of Parliament Acting Chief of Defence Force, Secretary of Defence Distinguished Guests Defence and Diplomatic Colleagues Ladies and Gentlemen, Good afternoon, tēna koutou, apinun tru It’s a pleasure to be back in Port Moresby today, and to speak here at the Kumul Leadership ...
Health, infrastructure, renewable energy, and stability are among the themes of the current visit to Papua New Guinea by a New Zealand political delegation, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Papua New Guinea carries serious weight in the Pacific, and New Zealand deeply values our relationship with it,” Mr Peters ...
The coalition Government is launching Roads of Regional Significance to sit alongside Roads of National Significance as part of its plan to deliver priority roading projects across the country, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The Roads of National Significance (RoNS) built by the previous National Government are some of New Zealand’s ...
A high-level New Zealand political delegation in Honiara today congratulated the new Government of Solomon Islands, led by Jeremiah Manele, on taking office. “We are privileged to meet the new Prime Minister and members of his Cabinet during his government’s first ten days in office,” Deputy Prime Minister and ...
New Zealand voted in favour of a resolution broadening Palestine’s participation at the United Nations General Assembly overnight, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The resolution enhances the rights of Palestine to participate in the work of the UN General Assembly while stopping short of admitting Palestine as a full ...
Introduction Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here at the 2024 Infrastructure Symposium. I was extremely happy when the Prime Minister asked me to be his Minister for Infrastructure. It is one of the great barriers holding the New Zealand economy back from achieving its potential. Building high ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced the upcoming Budget will include new funding of $571 million for Defence Force pay and projects. “Our servicemen and women do New Zealand proud throughout the world and this funding will help ensure we retain their services and expertise as we navigate an increasingly ...
The PSA is taking action to force the Ministry of Education to comply with its legal obligations to do everything it can to find other roles for staff it is laying off because of the Government’s spending cuts. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Waling, Senior Lecturer & Research Fellow, Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University Netflix There has been much excitement in the lead up to the first four episodes of Bridgerton’s season three, featuring leading couple Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa De Bortoli, Senior Research Fellow, Australian Council for Educational Research Taylor Flowe/Unsplash, CC BY Australian teenagers have more disruptive maths classrooms and experience bullying at greater levels than the OECD average, a new report shows. But in better news, Australian ...
Poet, editor and former bookseller Jane Arthur’s debut children’s novel Brown Bird is the story of a shy, self-conscious 11-year-old – partly based on her childhood self – venturing out of her quiet comfort zone. Children’s books are close to my heart because mostly I believe that adults are rings ...
Peter Jackson is bringing Lord of the Rings back to Wellington, producing two new Gollum films in Wellington. Madeleine Chapman (Gollum) argues with Madeleine Chapman (Smeagol) about it. First of all, I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation. Of course it’s great news!I don’t know, it gives me ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a part-time media librarian and superannuitant explains how he spends and saves. Want to be part of The Cost of Being? Fill out the questionnaire here.Gender: Male Age: 65 Ethnicity: EuropeanRole: Media librarian ...
The Government’s Environmental Select Committee is refusing to engage meaningfully when it matters the most over new fast tracking environmental legislation, says Ngāti Ruanui. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Marsh, Senior Research Fellow in Public Health, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Christoph Soeder/dpa New Zealand’s decision to no longer offer free influenza vaccines for all children under 12 will likely wipe out recent gains in uptake. And it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexis Anja Kallio, Deputy Director (Research), Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University Many young people in contact with the justice system come from backgrounds of extreme poverty, parental abuse or neglect, parental incarceration and disrupted education. These complex traumas often manifest as addictions ...
The agency was found to be underperforming and ‘not financially viable’, explains Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. A damning report A government-ordered ...
Asia Pacific Report For more than 76 years, Palestinians have resisted occupation, dispossession and ethnic cleansing, culminating in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Yet in the midst of this catastrophic seven months of “hell on earth”, it is a paradox that there exists an extraordinary oasis of peace and nature. ...
You’ll never set foot in one. But its emissions still effect you. Shanti Mathias reports on a campaign to make private jet owners pay for their emissions in some way. The private jet passengers saunter down the red carpet, wearing sunglasses and heels; paparazzi cameras flash. The sky is blue, ...
Quality teachers back on the front line can only be a good thing. One of the difficult things we teach in senior English classes at secondary school is the development of an idea. This involves deepening your argument, without instead “going sideways” and merely adding examples while repeating the same ...
Opinion: People with certain types of health conditions are more likely than others to have their symptoms dismissed, minimised or disbelieved. These conditions are diagnosed based on the patient self-report of symptoms, where there is no definitive diagnostic test that can prove the existence of disease or demonstrate structural or ...
The intensity of it, ironically, can feel like bullying. Social media activism is reaching something of a peak with the war in Gaza, using the hashtag Blockout2024. It started at this year’s MetGala when influencer and model Haley Kalil was caught on video muttering ‘let them eat cake’ – suddenly ...
It’s 2011 and I am 43 years old. My partner, Christine, and I got together when I was 36. We had been friends for about 10 years before that. One of the first things I asked Christine was whether she wanted to have kids. I had just come out of ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Tuesday 21 May appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Opinion: As an indication of the eye-watering sums involved for the mega-prison plans announced two weeks ago by Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell, consider that $932 million has already been spent on a separate facility due to open at Waikeria next year – that’s about $1.5 million for each of the ...
New Caledonia’s Tontouta International Airport remains closed, and Air New Zealand’s next scheduled flight is on Saturday — although it is not ruling out adding extra services. Air NZ’s Captain David Morgan said on Monday evening flights would only resume when they were assured of the security of the airport ...
Asia Pacific Report As Israel drives the Palestinians deeper into another Nakba in Gaza with its assault on Rafah, the Palestine Youth Aotearoa (PYA) and solidarity supporters in Aotearoa New Zealand tonight commemorated the original Nakba — “the Catastrophe” — of 1948. The 1948 Nakba . . . more than ...
Young people on the streets in New Caledonia are saying they will “never give up” pushing back against France’s hold on the Pacific territory, a Kanak journalist in Nouméa says. Pro-independence Radio Djiido’s Andre Qaeze told RNZ Pacific young people had said that “Paris must respect us” and what had ...
This episode of A View from Afar podcast was recorded live from 12:45pm May 20, 2024 (NZST). Political scientist Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning examine: The United States and how the world is engaging with it geopolitically.Specifically, Paul and Selwyn analyse what has changed in this regard in ...
Analysis - Power is not being abused, but it is not being well managed either. New Zealand democracy, unique and currently brittle, should be handled with greater care, Alexander Gillespie writes. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Lindenmayer, Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University Forest Conservation Victoria, CC BY-NC-ND Victoria’s native forest logging industry ended on January 1 this year. The news was met with jubilation from conservationists. But did logging really ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Crosby, Professor, Monash University Rose Marinelli/ShutterstockThis article is part two of The Conversation’s “Business Basics” series where we ask leading experts to discuss key concepts in business, economics and finance. How governments should manage their budgets, and how ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole George, Associate Professor in Peace and Conflict Studies, The University of Queensland On Sunday afternoon, Australian citizens who have been trapped in New Caledonia were called to a meeting at one of the large hotels in the capital, Noumea. The ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Soong, Senior Lecturer and Socio-cultural researcher, UniSA Education Futures, University of South Australia International students have come under fire from both sides of federal politics in the past week. The Albanese government introduced legislation to parliament last Thursday to put ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jake Renzella, Lecturer, Director of Studies (Computer Science), UNSW Sydney An example of shrimp Jesus.Shutterstock AI Generator If you search “shrimp Jesus” on Facebook, you might encounter dozens of images of artificial intelligence (AI) generated crustaceans meshed in various forms with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua McLeod, Lecturer in Sport Management, Deakin University Being a sport administrator comes with many perks, so it’s no surprise many want to stay in their positions as long as possible. Recently, a trend has emerged whereby leaders in sport are seeking ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Ball, Professor of Community Health and Wellbeing, The University of Queensland Joyisjoyful/Shutterstock If you buy your olive oil in bulk, you’ve likely been in for a shock in recent weeks. Major supermarkets have been selling olive oil for up to ...
A conversation with artist and home cook Prairie Hatchard-McGill, aka @cacioeprairie. This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. A few weeks ago, I spotted Prairie strolling down Ponsonby Road at sunset, a bunch of celery tucked under her arm. She was too far away for me ...
The Haka Challenge invites anyone to learn and record the Ka Mate haka as performed by the All Blacks, to show their support for "the South Pacific's greatest truth teller". ...
At the Christchurch rally in support of Palestine, he started his hunger strike and vowed to continue until the government stops supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. ...
With Nouméa reeling as mainly young, politically active Kanak people take to the streets and protest, a spirit that has been dormant since the 1980s has awoken. Tāmaki Makaurau-based Kanak Joseph Xulué provides some context.As reports continue to emphasise the fires burning through the streets of Nouméa (the capital ...
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 A national Newspoll, conducted after the May 14 budget from a sample of over 1,200 people, gave Labor a 52–48% lead over ...
A New Zealander studying at the University of New Caledonia says students have been taught to use fire extinguishers as firefighters are unlikely to come help if there is an emergency. It comes as days of unrest followed a controversial proposed constitutional amendment which would allow more French residents of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato Getty Images There have been so many submissions on the government’s proposed Fast-track Approvals Bill – 27,000 written, with 2,900 wanting to appear before the select committee in person – that a ballot ...
We round up everything coming to streaming services this week, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, ThreeNow, Neon and TVNZ+. If you love feral robots: Atlas (Netflix, May 24)Look, if you thought This is Me…Now: A Love Story was Jennifer Lopez at her most intense, then ...
The LIVE Recording of A View from Afar podcast will begin today at 12:45pm May 20, 2024 (NZST) which is Sunday evening, 8:30pm (USEST). Today, political scientist Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning will examine: The United States and how the world is engaging with it geopolitically.Specifically, we will ...
After falling victim to a scam over the phone, Russell Brown spent the day with One NZ’s cyber defence and fraud prevention teams to see the work they do to stop millions of scam attempts every year.The only windows in the Cyber Defence Centre at One NZ’s Auckland headquarters ...
Treasury officials have outlined many ways in which the Fast Track Approvals Bill is deeply flawed, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking says. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marika Sosnowski, Postdoctoral research fellow, The University of Melbourne Ever since armed conflict has existed, ceasefires have been thought of as a bridge between war and peace. Consequently, their success has been measured by their ability to stop violence between warring parties ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antonia Shand, Research Fellow, Obstetrician, University of Sydney Backgroundy/Shutterstock Oral retinoids are a type of medicine used to treat severe acne. They’re sold under the brand name Roaccutane, among others. While oral retinoids are very effective, they can have harmful effects ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Renwick, Professor of Agricultural Economics, Lincoln University, New Zealand This month the federal government announced a plan to ban live sheep exports, set to come into effect from May 1 2028. The announcement coincided with the release of a highly ...
Rolf Harris only musician to agree to play at Trump inauguration
It is believed that the star will be performing a set packed with favourites, including Two Little Boys, Tie me Kangaroo Down Sport, and I’m Jake the Peg (Grab them by the Pussy).
And Bill Cosby is the Master of Ceremonies, I believe.
—Mike “Contra” Hosking, 2013, after playing one of Cosby’s stand-up routines ranting about the misbehaviour of black youth.
Podesta-Pizza Gate.
Look it up peeps, including his love of dodgy artwork.
Wow, you actually believe that pizza gate nonsense?
I think it’s somewhat suspicious yes, and definitely I do think the Podesta’s have bad taste in dodgy artwork.
Wow.
And here’s something else: he seems to associate with a whole bunch of people who seem intent on emailing each other in very odd phrases (what on earth is a ‘pizza related map’ and why would such a ‘map’ be drawn on a ‘hankerchief’???).
Must be Washington DC speak. Or something.
Again. Wow.
Podesta is scum
The exact wikileaks link. Do you want your pizza related map hankerchief?
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/32795
NewstalkZB’s dismal Mike “Contra” Hosking, punked on air
Actually, it’s his English equivalent…
Donald Trump, greatest American president since Reagan, tells Toyota to build plant in US or pay!
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/817071792711942145
Now, if only he’d pay the workers in his crummy casinos a decent wage.
Don’t bother trying to please the left wing, it’s not worth it.
By the way, Mexico is complaining that Trump policies have now cost them 3600 well paid manufacturing jobs which were going to move out of the USA to Mexico.
James Clapper is arguably the most notorious liar in the world;
So why is RNZ National treating him as a serious and credible source?
Summer Report, RNZ National, Friday 6 January 2017, 8:25 a.m.
I’m sure I was not the only person to listen with interest when perky Summer Report host Anusha Bradley read out from her script that a “leading security analyst” is “more certain than ever” that Russian hackers were working for Donald Trump. It was not until at least thirty seconds into her spiel that Bradley revealed who this “leading security analyst” was: James Clapper, the utterly discredited Director of National Intelligence.
In case you’ve forgotten, James Clapper is the man who lied under oath to Congress, and denied that the NSA was illegally collecting data on American citizens. It was seeing Clapper lying to Congress that prompted Edward Snowden to blow the whistle on the whole of the massive, illegal, unconstitutional NSA spying regime. “Sort of the breaking point was seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress. … Seeing that really meant for me there was no going back.” [1]
None of this seemed to matter to Anusha Bradley, or to “our U.S. correspondent Kevin McAleese”, who chuntered on for a minute or so, recycling Clapper’s anti-Russian rhetoric as if he were a credible source. We are accustomed to RNZ National presenters being naïve (Jesse Mulligan, Bryan Crump), ill-informed (Jesse Mulligan), even nasty (Jim Mora, Noelle McCarthy). But this morning’s performance by Anusha Bradley and her “U.S. correspondent” was as bad, as foolish, and as flagrantly dishonest as anything I have ever heard on any radio station, anywhere.
[1] http://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/netzwelt/snowden277_page-2.html
@Morrissey +1
@Morrissey +2
Have a read of this, from people who actually understand the technology of hacking.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/12/did-russia-tamper-with-the-2016-election-bitter-debate-likely-to-rage-on/
Nice work Mr. M
Not sure that I can ever remember chuntering but it seems fairly clear that the Russians did influence the outcome of the American election as did James Comey.
Okay the cybertrail hasn’t been published yet but I suspect it will be soon.
Hillary is still a criminal
Not sure that I can ever remember chuntering…
Good spotting, Scott! I used the word carelessly and imprecisely. I should have just written: “Kevin McAleese said….” His lazy and shoddy journalism is what damns him: he doesn’t need any help from me.
… but it seems fairly clear that the Russians did influence the outcome of the American election as did James Comey.
There is no evidence of Russian influence.
Okay the cybertrail hasn’t been published yet but I suspect it will be soon.
Well, we at least have the word of the world’s most discredited liar to boost our confidence.
This “Indivisible” guide is very much written for an American audience, but a bit of word substitution and tweaking and it is a fantastic slacktivist/occasional activist/activisit guide for NZ as well. I love the inclusion, for example, of suggested call dialogues. The left here needs to publish them so people who might not go on a protest know who to call, and how to manage the conversation!
https://www.indivisibleguide.com/
Apparently it is going down a treat amongst Democrats in the USA, who are finally waking up to the fact that they now have oppositional, parliamentary style politics and they’ve allowed the equivalent of the right wing of the ACT party win power in state after state for the GOP.
But all the poaching of Tea Party organising model will only work if the primary agency for the left is left wing and progressive in the first place, which brings us to the tactic which the representative wing of a political party fears the most: The purge. Nothing gets the attention of a fat cat political careerist like seeing their colleagues getting dumped one by one… Thinking specifically of New Zealand, Up to now, everyone has played nice in New Zealand on this – or rather, they’ve been bullied, browbeaten and purged by MPs whose vigilance in stamping out dissent in the local party sheeple is why Labour is now a hollow shell of a political party – an elite cadre party of like minded careerist technocrats is far, far easier to control than one full of opinionated people who refuse to be bullied. In terms of the purge, in nowadays seems you need an external but affiliated organisation (Momentum or the Tea Party, may God forgive my soul for mentioning them together in the same sentence) to smash the layers of institutional defenses establishment political parties have built to protect their careerist and managerialist cadres.
Some MPs are already reasonably leftist, or pragmatic enough, to be dragged to the left. But many are simply to committed to neo-liberal ideology and/or beneficiaries from their close ties to the neo-liberal establishment to be saved. For them, forced retirement or de-selection challenges should beckon. A time traveller from the 1935 Labour party would be confused to discover the current labour party has no plan to radically reform Labour relations, fully fund “free” education, openly and fulsomely oppose free trade agreements that damage local wages and conditions or support proper progressive taxation of the rich – and will only reluctantly and listlessly pick elements of those things when threatened with open revolt.
The left’s chosen vehicle must grow an ideological backbone if it wants to be able to co-opt the organising tools of their opposition. Any who refuse to do so should be kicked into touch.
For the benefit of the more simple-minded among us, would someone please write a comprehensive list of Labour mps and where they stand on this spectrum. If you are living outside the beltway the information available is patchy to say the least and sources unreliable. We rely on a msm which, as we are clearly aware, is no better than it ought to be and if you read the likes of Chris Trotter you could be forgiven for tearing your hair out and running screaming into the bushes with the total confusion of it !
I personally am only beginning to sneak back to Labour after leaving them as a result of the foreshore and seabed fiasco.
+ lots 🙂
What would be great, assuming that Labour wishes to be seen as philosophically and ideologically in opposition to National, is to have Labour candidates come on here and answer questions from those of us who are quite desperate for change but have lost trust in all of those who aspire to lead.
In the 2014 campaign, Labour candidates were all instructed to describe Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics as “a distraction.”
That is how serious and well organized Labour is.
@Morrissey – hopefully Labour learnt from that, the strategy’s effectiveness or lack of, showed in their election results.
Helping your opponent in their denial is not a winning strategy.
If Labour didn’t know what to do, they should stay out of it and deflect it back to the real protagonists Natz vs Hager. By minimising it and calling it a ‘distraction’ helped the Natz and angered the Labour supporters who are sick of the establishment denials on these issues.
“That is how serious and well organized Labour is.”
“That is how serious and well organized Labour was.”
FIFY. Different leader, Goff and Shearer gone etc. Times are a changing, best we support that change in the right direction.
What waypoints tell you that Labour has undergone a “change in the right direction”?
In my view, nothing has changed in the perpetuation of the same careerist ‘hanging on for dear life because I can’t get $150K pa in any other job’ Labour attitude and culture from those days.
Have you heard anything from Labour about the UBI lately? How about anything around a commitment to keep national super? Or any remarks that basic benefits need to be increased?
You appear to want National to have a fourth term, so there really is no point in discussing this with you CV. Plus the whole poisoning not just the well, but the ground around it thing, ffs.
So Labour hasn’t said anything about NZ Super, benefit levels or a UBI lately then, eh? Interesting. They still have 6-7 months before the election so I guess they better start.
I’ve already said elsewhere that it’s 2:1 for a National win next (whoops THIS) year, which will increase further for National if they play the shell game that I am expecting.
At this stage I am picking the extreme upper limit party vote for LAB+GR at 43% to 44%.
Like I said, no point in talking with you while you’ve got your shit-tinted glasses on. You can frame it as a prediction, but everything I have seen from you in the past year suggests that you also want Labour to lose. Your political actions support this. You are abusing your power and I’m not playing that game any more.
Well said Weka.
RT’s megaphone is toxic.
“Shit tinted glasses” are probably preferable to having your head buried in the sand. CV is right – we still need Labour to get a voice and say something instead of just barking at passing cars. We need a confident and worthy opposition….. the clock is ticking.
Yeah but that wasn’t what I was referring to about CV at all. I’m happy to clarify if it’s not clear, but I really think you are misleading about what I was saying and doing.
Are you saying that I have my head buried in the sand? Care to provide some evidence of that?
Weka you seem happy to accuse me of all kinds of nonsense (eg https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-06012017/#comment-1283313) without evidence but people better not accuse you of anything without evidence, because different standard.
Thanks for taking off the red tinted glasses and for putting putting on corrective, prescription (not prediction) glasses, Colonial Viper. Real Labour supporters must want to face reality and make themselves see clearly in order to hold caucus members, particularly the careerists and old driftwood, to account.
Unlike CV, I’ve never voted Labour, and only voted to the left of Labour. I’m not a Labour supporter, and neither are many in this thread.
The inability to engage with ideas in real terms is pretty tedious and a big part of the problem here. Of course Labour need to be held accountable. That’s nothing to do with what I was saying about CV though.
I’m quite happy to engage with ideas “in real terms”. Eg. I commented on your post the other day about how consumerism was a battle of the 1970s which had long since been lost and the left had no new ideas about it since then.
But you didn’t want to engage with that idea in real terms and shifted my comment off your post.
CV you know how the party works. Policies are released incrementally and the party policy platform contains the general principles. Can you decist from misrepresenting the position all the time. People will suspect you are getting your lines from Hooton.
From a non-partisan point of view.
A few months is insufficient to communicate and gain understanding from the electorate on any significant or complex policy.
It is barely enough time to ensure that voters are fully familiar with the headline policy items.
This has been proven over and over again.
You may argue that this is simply the way that the party “works.” That may be so, but it certainly doesn’t work for the public.
+1 Weka – Times are a changing, best we support that change in the right direction.
I was referring to the Party’s performance of late. Sorry weka, I was in no way referring to you re head in the sand. Perhaps I should have used “one”.
Thanks for clarifying garibaldi. There’s hardly anyone here who is happy with Labour’s performance. That’s a different thing than wanting them to lose. So I will in fact take a Labour voter with their head in the sand over the ethically bankrupt politics that CV now pushes with his shit-stained glasses on. And to be clear, I’m not talking in any way at all about not criticising Labour.
Fortunately those aren’t the only choices and there is more to be gained from working constructively (including critiques) than poisoning the well.
As for Labour, I’ve long held the view that they are who they are and it’s better strategy to support them in small incremental shifts so that we get enough reprieve that the real change can be done elsewhere. If Labour fails now, that gives National another term, and that IMO is catastrophic for NZ.
I’ve put this challenge out to CV in the past, and he’s never responded meaningfully, but even if one were to think that a 4th National term might galvanise a true shift in NZ politics for something else good to arise, I’ve yet to see any evidence presented for how that might happen. Much more likely that we would have photo-fascism entrenched even further in NZ as well as more of our ability to effect change stripped from us.
Yes, many of us want a truly left wing party in NZ. We don’t have one. It’s not possible for Labour to be what we want them to be (if you disagree please explain how that could happen).
Time to get on with the work of making what we can with that.
I’ll tell you what I don’t like about Labour. They claim they are a broad church but from the evidence I have seen in the past few years, they lean to the centre right (eg Stuart Nash) and reject the left (eg Hone Harawira). The image of Chris Hipkins visciously attacking David C during the great non-event coup is also etched in my brain.
When youer trying to take votes off National, of course you end up on the right.
Labour isn’t a “broad church” – it can’t even get one in four NZers to vote for it.
“I’ll tell you what I don’t like about Labour. They claim they are a broad church but from the evidence I have seen in the past few years, they lean to the centre right (eg Stuart Nash) and reject the left (eg Hone Harawira). The image of Chris Hipkins visciously attacking David C during the great non-event coup is also etched in my brain.”
sure, and there’s plenty of things I don’t like about them too. Nevertheless, they are the only way we are going to have a centre-left govt by the end of the year, so what’s the strategy now?
Why would there be “any evidence” today for something which might hypothetically happen some time years in the future?
What was the evidence 12 months ago that Trump would be President of the USA today?
Did that lack of evidence back then preclude Trump becoming President?
I didn’t have any evidence when I picked a clear and significant Trump victory; I just read the political tea leaves.
Well said weka. If we want to see a Government that isn’t a National one this year then we need to see Labour maximise its vote. Some lefties might not be a fan of Labour, but Labour are still going to make up at least 50% of a leftist block in Government. If you’re a Green or NZF voter you need them to do well, your chances rely on their success.
The last few weeks of the year I felt were good ones for Andrew Little. He looked more confident and fired up infront of camera and that’s good for everyone. I’m fine with them not chasing the UBI or anything else that might scare the horses for now… Just keep getting the hits in on our woeful housing situation and that’s half the job done.
Thanks, I don’t see a lot of MSM, so often don’t have a good sense of what Little is doing unless I go look.
(I would add that if people want a centre left govt then they shouldn’t vote NZF. Peters might choose National, or he might choose Labour in which case he will hold Labour to the right. Either way it’s not going to shift us left and it could be downright disastrous).
” If Labour fails now, that gives National another term, and that IMO is catastrophic for NZ.”
Yes I totally agree which is why I made the initial request
What did you think about the idea of crowdsourcing the list/post?
edit, sorry, just seen your reply below.
In the 2014 campaign, Labour candidates were all instructed to describe Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics as “a distraction.”
DUH ! And they still cant figure out why they lost! Thats just about the most counterproductive thing they coukd have done, short of dumping on dotcom
The guide is great because what is says is if you don’t like a GOVERNMENT policy, you don’t go and occupy a National party MPs office. You go and occupy the office of a LABOUR MP who won’t come out and oppose it when you ask him or her. So you don’t need to know a “spectrum” – you just ask your local MP for an unequivocal position on an issue, and if they won’t give you one you go and sit in their office or get you and 1000 people to keep ringing them until they turn up and explain why. The pressure is on YOUR SIDE to grow some balls, and take the fight to the right.
That is brilliant Sanctuary.
I would add that it needs some strategy, or at least some degree of thoughtfulness. Going into an election year, the focus needs to be on policy and direct action against those MPs (and presumably LECs) who aren’t moving left, and avoiding Labour bashing for the sake of it. I’d say it needs to happen now, rather than closer to the election.
I’d like to know what the selection process is, and a timeline on that.
And I’d love to see people on The Standard organising around this. Time we stopped arguing about shit and did something.
It will be great if many of us can visit the local Labour MP offices & blog updates about how often they are not around. I know my mates and I can name half a dozen who are hardly around (may I list them here?) and we can compare notes or a real-time record
Do you mean keeping a log of which electorate MPs spend the least time in their electorates? To what purpose?
( It will be great if many of us can visit the local Labour MP offices )
I recently moved to Pukekohe in south Auckland and thought I would go along to a local branch meeting it’s been a while. I went onto Labour’s web site and I cannot even find if they have one.
“The pressure is on YOUR SIDE to grow some balls, and take the fight to the right.”
I wonder if Labour hopeful (again) Laila Harre took the opportunity to tell her mate Nikki Kaye just how bloody lucky she was that her cancer diagnosis didn’t cost her her job.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11777745
Perhaps Laila took the opportunity to remind Nikki of the many people who where not so fortunate, whose employers threw them to the wolves and who got literally the bum’s rush when they were forced to apply to WINZ for support.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/72993797/Cancer-Society-attacks-ludicrous-benefit-requirements-for-cancer-patients
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/80593373/cancer-sufferer-pleas-for-benefit-break
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/286914/jobseeker-benefit-for-cancer-patients-'ludicrous‘
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11564991
http://www.nzdoctor.co.nz/news/2015/october-2015/14/minister-steps-in-to-deal-with-cancer-patients%E2%80%99-work-and-income-headache.aspx
Hearing about Nikki Kaye’s “beautiful cancer lesson” makes me want to puke.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11772239
On this site most of the commenters, who choose to shred Labour’s MPs on a regular basis for being so-called neo-liberals, are not even members of the party and I suspect have never been members. However, they seem to be of the view they know more about Labour’s MPs than those of us who are members and have been for many years.
I drifted away from Labour around 1983/4 because I was sick of the [then] in-fighting. I didn’t understand the nuts and bolts of it at the time, but in retrospect can appreciate it was the Douglas clan (not always Douglas himself but his hangers-on in the Party) who were behind most of the problems. I rejoined 15 years ago after Helen Clark came to power.
Since the departure of the Douglas crew and their member acolytes in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Labour has been slowly returning to its roots (albeit in a modernised version) and that can be evidenced in the types of policies I know they are planning to put forward this election year. For some people it has been too slow, but to reinvent a political party is not an easy task and it takes time to get everyone back on board again. In this respect, Andrew Little is doing a magnificent job and I am no longer as pessimistic as I was about Labour’s election chances… as I was a year or two ago.
I know there are one or two ‘light to moderate’ neo-liberals still in caucus but they are bowing out at the end of this term. Others – like for example Annette King – have well and truly re-embraced their former Labour values. Indeed I’m sure they never lost them… just put them in a cupboard for safe keeping until the time was right to bring them out again.
Perhaps those of us on the inside can appreciate the extent of the advances that have been made in recent years, but others have yet to catch up. I know CV will disagree but he appears to have had some major run-ins with the Party (I don’t know the details, just what he has revealed here) which are negatively impacting on his judgement. I’m hoping one day he will feel able to re-connect.
“On this site most of the commenters, who choose to shred Labour’s MPs on a regular basis for being so-called neo-liberals, are not even members of the party and I suspect have never been members.”
Guilty as charged, but in my defense I have tried to find enough in Labour and/or the Greens policy to give me reason to sign up.
Both have to do better.
(Oh, and I should maybe re email Annette King about a particular issue (that is within the scope of her responsibilities) and see if her re connection with true Labour roots has progressed far enough for her to challenge the Nats over their lies and deception.)
But maybe not. I did make an approach to Ruth Dyson about the same issue in person, in her office, and oh my goodness gracious me….
We left her office stunned, and shaking our heads that she would say what she did…and realised that as far as our particular issue…Labour was a predominant player in fucking things up.
And if they’ll do that for people with disabilities….
Ruth Dyson is one of those bowing out – I think.
Fair enough comments Rosemary McDonald. Certainly Labour needs to to do better when it comes to policy presentation. They need to be short, sharp and easy to understand for the majority of voters. The long versions can be set aside for us political tragics who like to wallow in the complexities of policy or who have a vested interest (like yourself) in specific policy planks. 🙂
Btw, I wasn’t impressed with Ruth Dyson as a minister in the Clark government. I didn’t know much about her but some of her media responses left a lot to be desired. She was rarely definitive and liked to talk about “looking at options” but never said what those options were. Someone else who is very good like that is Nick Smith.
She did a lot of good for disability issues.
As I said, I didn’t know her but her public performances re-interviews and the like… were not impressive and lacked substance.
“…political tragics..”
🙂 lol, in fact!
The wallowing thing…yes, I am focused on non -ACC disability issues and especially the family carer issue. This particular subject I know inside out…including the history under Labour.
Labour could have sorted this. Should have sorted this. Didn’t…but worse…allowed for a system where those who were willing to take a punt at being caught out could circumvent the non- payment of family carers policy.
Ruth Dyson knew this was happening when we spoke with her in early 2013…”It was only a policy not the law”. When this government made the policy that had been determined to be discriminatory actual law…well…I wonder to this day if Ruth Dyson knew that this was going to happen…and the outrage from Labour in the House that day in May 2013 was just pantomime.
Almost as if this suspicion of mine had been broadcast…a commentor on another site told of how exactly that solution (of making the Policy law) was being touted by the Ministry of Health and Crown Law back before the Family Carers case went to the Human Rights Tribunal in 2008…under Labour.
You know, from my point of view…policies and manifestos and candidate bios are all very nice and good…but being honest, truthful, showing a very high level of integrity, is even better.
I know Labour failed this test over the family carers case….in how many other areas of government responsibility did they also neglect to be honest and transparent?
Labour is history in terms of political, popular and ideological relevance. They are no longer needed, but are instead taking up space on the political spectrum which could be better used.
That’s a bold statement CV. If Anne is correct then maybe, just maybe, Labour might reconnect with people.
The clock is ticking.
Nope – if the Little/King leadership team had the ability to “reconnect with people” they wouldn’t have left it until 7 months before the election to demonstrate it.
Yes CV i agree Labour is finished as a political force , those who continue to support them guarentee national party victory
Last year I kept hearing: the affable John Key is the only real asset this National Government has which is keeping them afloat. Without his popularity, National would be gone!
Now that John Key is history and the monotonous expressionless English is in charge, this election should be a walkover for Labour. Shouldn’t it?
Unless of course, you and me are correct in our analysis (which we are).
“Yes CV i agree Labour is finished as a political force , those who continue to support them guarentee national party victory”
I’m genuinely curious as to how you see that working. If Labour are finished and we shouldn’t vote for them or support them in any way, then what else can happen apart from National getting a 4th term? Can you please explain your thinking? e.g. do you think a new left wing party will arise this year and win the election? Or do you think that the Greens will get enough votes to win the election and govern on their own?
” … write a comprehensive list of Labour mps and where they stand on…”
I smiled at that bit, picturing a serious interview with John Key, him answering the question about what his MPs believe. “I believe they believe what I tell them to believe. And believe me they do if they want to believe they have any future chances.”
“For the benefit of the more simple-minded among us, would someone please write a comprehensive list of Labour mps and where they stand on this spectrum.”
I’d be happy to collate and put up a post on that if people here want to make the list. It would need to be evidence based, and we could do it in the sense of a lay-persons guide to the Labour Party. For those of us that don’t know Labour well, there is plenty in the public domain, both words/actions from MPs themselves, as well as analysis in the media (blogosphere, social and mainstream). We could pick say five MPs to focus on at a time and go out and do the research, bring it back to comments, get feedback and then it can go into a post.
I think having an outline of how Labour works internally, including the selection process, would be important too.
That sounds like a great idea – thank you Weka. Like you, I fail to see what the alternative is if Labour can’t make it as the dominant, or at least equal party in power. I’m reading all this hand wringing, but as you suggest, too much of that and we’ll wind up with a 4th term for the Natz
JanM, Rosemary McD et al – Chris Trotter is not a friend of Labour – he’s harbouring some sort of snitch from way back which keeps him blindfolded as to what Labour is actually doing.
When you ask where Labour MPs stand on “this spectrum” – what do you mean? A simple left – right answer, or a bit more detail …… and for that maybe you could look at Labour’s policy platform – formulated after the last election debacle among much debate and argument between Party members and remnants of the neo-lib rightwing bloc . It can be found here
https://www.google.co.nz/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=nzlp%20policy%20platform
This is what Labour policy for the 2017 election will be based on.
I’m not so sure it’s an ideological problem, seems more to be lack of talent.
Take the frequent talk about ‘moving more to the centre’ as an example. The general argument is that Labour needs more votes from the centre ergo they need to move politically and ideologically further to the right to capture those votes.
The corollary to that argument is moving to the right will lose votes from the left, the consequent strategy being to pass those votes to the Greens and get them back through a Labour/Green coalition..
That argument is predicated on the rationale that you can’t please both at the same time; you either go for the centre or you go for the left. It seems more a pragmatic approach than an ideological one.
My thinking is meh, this is New Zealand where a good 75% of the population would be considered ‘left’ in pretty much any other country. Just how hard is to to create a policy platform that would satisfy both the left and enough of the middle to capture 50% of the votes? … to my mind it should be a doddle for anyone with a bit of talent.
“I’m not so sure it’s an ideological problem, seems more to be lack of talent.”
Inclined to agree….compounded by special/personal interests.The Future of Work Commission is a glaring example…2 years work to produce what? if labour (or anyone else for that matter) could produce a comprehensive and clear policy prescription for a transitioning society they would be home and hosed (IMO)
Monbiot has made the same point about the left in general worldwide……its called leadership.
A team of MBA students working on a one semester assignment would have done better work on the topic than that caucus. It was laughable.
A noticeable portion of the stuff that Labour put out was googled, cut and pasted.
The future of work commision simply highlights how automation would exacerbate challenges around inequality & low productivity that New Zealand already faces. Its anti bureaucratic in nature, but not by nature?
Neoliberalism conditions you to believe that value is in paper work. It’s starts on the level of a guy checking to see if you use the rooms in your house properly. Moving up the neoliberal pyramid you have police who spend most of there time filling out paper work but the message is the same, value is in paper work. Then you’ve got managers who’s function seems to revolve around if some one gets payed to much. Derivatives traders which is a really fancy form of paper is at the top of the neoliberal pyramid because they earn the most.
To reevaluate what it means to work means finding away to destroy this mountain of paper work we’ve created that adds no value to the real economy.
That’s seditious talk, watch I don’t audit you to ISO requirements
I suspect that hasn’t happened because bots aren’t a good excuse for saying I never received that advice.
Yeah. I’ve tried to avoid even commenting on that Future of Work because every time I see it mentioned I get the recurring image of Nero and his fiddle.
I don’t wish to belittle their work but I can’t see the point of it, they’re not in power they just look to be indulging themselves there.
“Take the frequent talk about ‘moving more to the centre’……” That is media opinion, DH – and is not what Labour is actually talking about.
As Andrew Little has said a couple of times – in his connections with NZers as he goes around the country – everyone he meets considers themselves “middle NZ” (except for the 1%) – so he’s talking to people who are having difficulty getting a home, who have been made redundant, farmers, business people, others who are in work, people who have been ill, etc etc – all of them considering themselves “middle NZ”
I think it is what they’re talking about Jenny, why else would they want a MoU with the Greens.
Labour is a true left wing party! Promise! Labour will show their true left wing values after we give them power! Why do people not believe this!!! Wreckers and haters!!!!!
I would have thought it’s because they understand they can’t govern alone and have seen how trying to act as a FPP party in an MMP environment has failed them.
….if you read the likes of Chris Trotter….
There’s your problem, right there.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-19072013/#comment-664870
Well, that all went well then!!! 🙁
Well, I tried to give a bit of background for you JanM but perhaps you already knew it. You’ve got to say Labour is a far better party now than it was seven years ago. Cohesive with good policy coming up and believe me… some outstanding candidates on offer this election starting with the highly talented Michael Wood. Compare them to the types on offer from the National Party and they outflank them in every respect.
Anne , do you know how much “deadwood” Labour is going to shed? Seems to me they need to fair bit of it, just like National has done already. Too many right wingers still in the Labour caucus.
Bearing in mind Labour’s numbers were decimated in 2011 and 2014 so there aren’t as many to be culled as in the National Party:
Clayton Cosgrove, Ruth Dyson, Damien O’Conner (not sure about him but think so) Su’a William Sio and I think one of the Maori electorate MPs might be going . David Shearer has already gone. I’m picking there might be one or two others who have yet to declare they’e going. All in all it looks like at least 8 MPs will be gone by the next election. That opens up a good chance some very bright and talented younger aspirants will enter the caucus. To name two of them Deborah Russell and Claire Szabo. There are others.
Deborah Russell. Another career minded academic technocrat for Labour’s ranks.
Funnily enough, Labour doesn’t attract many bombastic right-wing populist demagogues, so it’s no surprise you’re dismissive of its candidates.
Labour doesn’t attract many, full stop.
Nick Leggat and Phil Quin?
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M_yhz-KlZ3Q/TnYoD5xeHXI/AAAAAAAACmM/gH8uLe42BPI/s1600/P1070759.JPG
Stuart Nash?
Thank you Anne, that’s more leaving than I expected.
“You’ve got to say Labour is a far better party now than it was seven years ago.”
Yes they are ….but still frustratingly undetermined.
Thanks Anne – it all helps
ISIS Pledge to Kill Thousands of Americans by opening Gun Stores across the Mid – West
It is intended the new retail chain will be called ‘All-American Patriot’, and will have an extensive section devoted to easily concealed high calibre weapons with extended magazines.
Oh Wait! The NRA are already doing this!
Over 20M new firearms were sold last year in the USA. A new record. Under Barack Hussein Obama.
Lionel explains how to maximally prosecute the case of 4 black youth in Chicago who kidnapped, tied up, abused, tortured a mentally handicapped white Trump supporter
While yelling invective like “fuck Trump” and “fuck white people.” The alleged perpetrators live streamed their activities. The video is still available on the internet.
He discusses if this is a “hate crime.” Also what if the alleged perpetrators have priors, and what would need to be done to maximise their sentencing.
Also imagine the inverse situation: 4 white youth who kidnapped, tied up, abused, tortured a mentally handicapped black Obama supporter.
While yelling invective like “fuck Obama” and “fuck black people.
And live streaming it.
Very fucked up (and I strongly suspect) drug induced bullshit.
A ‘hate crime’? I have doubts.
Politically motivated? No.
Kick their collective arses from here to now, but as for pretending this sort of evil nonsense is hugely unusual and then blowing it upout of context to be something it’s not in order to score some point or other? Nah.
If it were four young white men who had done exactly the same to a young black intellectually disabled Obama supporter while shouting “fuck blacks” and “fuck Obama” there would be much clearer hate and political motivations, no?
I would even expect President Obama to address the incident in front of the White House press corp. If it had been carried out by white men.
Anyhow, Cook County prosecutors have now filed charges of aggravated kidnap, hate crime, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
All things being equal, I think I’d view it the same and still ‘call out’ any media seeking to surround it with a convenient context.
That’s awful, and you’re a shithead propagandist trying to score points off it.
How can it be propaganda if all the events relayed are factually true? Trump supporters are being targeted and attacked: both physically and verbally.
🙄
I’m not interested how you justify it to yourself, shithead.
But when people report things trump actually said and did, factually true things, it’s all just a smear.
CV – you are the most intellectually dishonest person I have heard in recent memory.
+1. It’s about the propaganda now. Post-truth. It’s easy to see why he likes Trump so much.
I’m not sure it’s intellectually dishonest if he actually thinks that way. But he is certainly the nastiest sack of shit I’ve had the misfortune to interact with in the recent past.
All hating and wrecking, trying to be a saboteur. Not a single useful considered criticism, not even a valid challenge to viewpoints we get from the likes of BM, Puckish, et al. Just nasty slogans hating on Labour, Greens, Democrats. All the while spreading hate propaganda and fake news all over the site, while trying to get opinion and facts he doesn’t like labelled fake news and trying to trash the idea that there really are objective facts.
Poor old Andre, your flimsy vitriol and othering can’t protect the irrelevance of the establishment pseudo-left (aka free market centre) any more.
In other news: Trump threatens Toyota to build its new plant in the USA, or else face a massive border tax
Trump is the gutsiest pro-working class President in a generation.
(Warning: “fake news” site Zero Hedge:)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-05/trump-threatens-toyota-build-new-plant-us-or-pay-big-border-tax
Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t see a guy who devotes such ingenuity and diligence to stiffing his employees and contractors as “pro-working class.” Try looking at his actions, rather than his tweets and blowhard speeches.
That bullshit could just have easily revolved around some football team or a religious belief. The rhetoric just served as a vehicle for the abuse and isn’t in and of itself very important.
Your other point about Trump supporters being physically attacked, if true, hasn’t got sweet fuck all to do with this wee group of shit heads being shit.
the new face of white supremacy.
?
So no, I won’t be writing angry tweets about what these folk did in Chicago. They are already in jail. They will be punished, I am sure, to the fullest extent of the law, but I’ve written about case after case after case of drug offenses and incidents of sexual assault and even murders committed by white folk where the system gave them a helping hand. The Stanford swimmer, Brock Turner, who was caught in the act of raping a woman, but spent a summer in jail for it instead of the 10 to 20 years he deserved, comes to mind.
Black folk and white folk both use and sell drugs at almost identical rates, with the rates for whites actually being slightly higher in both categories, but African-Americans are sent to prison at four to 10 times the rates of whites for various drug offenses.
Black folk are held super-responsible for every mistake and criminal offense made. We rarely have to march for justice in our communities. American prisons are full of black folk who are being held responsible for every mistake they’ve ever made.
Now I actually see thousands of other whites saying I caused this assault. Of course I reject that foolishness altogether. What’s most disturbing is that I hardly see many whites who are particularly angry about the crime speaking sympathetically about the victim. They are mainly using it to advance their racist agenda and demonize random black folk who had nothing to do with such a thing. Furthermore, I have routinely seen tens of thousands of African-Americans standing up and fighting and protesting for white victims of police brutality and toxic masculinity. The Alt-Right Movement does not care about violence in this country. Thousands of whites murder people every year, but you’d be hard pressed to find a protest or march headed by their movement on white on white crime.
As I type, the top trending topic in the country is now #BLMKidnapping. BLM stands for Black Lives Matter. The people in the video never even suggested such a thing. The Black Lives Matter Movement has never advocated such a thing. I have never advocated such a thing.
Shaun King, Civil Rights and BLM activist.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-don-chicago-white-assault-case-blm-movement-article-1.2935825
whole thing is worth a read.
You’re pointing to this “White people are the new victims of racism” stuff that’s behind CV’s post?
Pretty much. Not that that is itself new, but there is something additional going on now where people feel emboldened in promoting ideas that are at the least aligned with white supremacist views e.g. that all racism is equal, that racism is simply how one person treats another, that structural racism isn’t a real thing. I see this happening more in the US, but CV’s comment seemed a fairly classic example of it and I’m guessing we will see more of it in NZ. I noted the other day that Bradbury’s recent post where he is complaining about not being allowed to speak because he is a white man is another example. Different, but maybe part of the same shift happening in the culture. Traditionally we would expect both CV and Bradbury’s comments to come from the right or conservatives or small parts of the left, but now we have these voices becoming larger within left wing spaces.
Bradbury’s recent post where he is complaining about not being allowed to speak because he is a white man
Curiously, Bradbury has said a lot about the Sir Mad B story in the last few days – a flurry of posts, while saying the MSM have more important stories/issues they should be focusing on.
lol, true. It was the Klu Klux Klambs post I was thinking of.
heh. ku klux klambs.
First smile of the day 🙂
(the last few weeks have been a bit shit, with different family members in hospital and a pet death. Fucking circle of life…)
sorry to hear that McFlock.
cheers
no worries, c’est la vie. Looking forward to getting busy again though
CV’s is Slater level posting. The steady decline continues.
You’ll thank us latter when every ones making money
…….. and totally destroying the environment in the rush to “get ahead”.
Arthur Edington once said If your theory clashes with the second law of thermal dynamics I can give you no hope, there is nothing for it but to collapse in the deepest humiliation.
Even environmentalists haven’t discovered a theory of production that fits with in the laws of thermal dynamics.
By definition, anything that comes from several points across the globe has a huge carbon footprint.
Civilisation is a heat engine – Guy McPherson
Pedantic observation – it’s ‘thermodynamics’ (does sound a bit like thermal dynamics); no criticism intended.
Drowsy M. Kram is correct. It’s thermodynamics, not thermal dynamics.
We can get a rich function that relates to labour/capital/energy inputs (that hasn’t happened yet). Once you’ve got energy related to parts of production, it talks to a relationship between the 2nd law of thermodynamics and so on, then it will be possible to make links to entropy/wast/ecology issues which economics has failed to do.
It keeps getting odd. From the ‘Jesus was white’ brigade Megan Kelly, now main stream…
Megyn Kelly is awesome.
What are doing watching Fox News heh
I talked to an overseas employment expert/philosopher recently and he was full of praise for Grant Robertson’s Future of Work project. He said it was world leading in scope and vision. I expect we will hear more about aspects of it this year (but hopefully in a form that is clear, succinct and easy to understand).
Yes@Ethica….clear, succinct and easy to understand….because its definitely not a vote winner in its current form.
You gotta be kidding. A mish mash of a report clearly put together by different authors, few cohesive themes, with some chapters far better prepared than others which appeared simply slapdash thrown together.
Regardless of FoWP’s substance and grunt, or lack of, it is very important for Robertson & Labour to talk it up !!
@JoyFL ….do you really think so ?……I dont, not in election year.
I would prefer they kept to simple policies i..e. Kiwi Build ….and placed Future of Work as a behind the scenes driver.
Good piece here on the Israeli motive of keeping occupied territories just that, occupied. They do this to deny 3 Million Palestinians a vote.
Amazing that Jews in settlements are allowed to vote but Palestinians are not. And Israeli supporters like to say Israel is the only democracy in the region…
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11777761
Take note RWers who regularly want to deny the poor their piece of the pay pie:
“The CEO of a popular fast food chain said this week that he was “stunned” to see profits soar each time California passed minimum wage increases.
In an interview with KQED on Tuesday, Wetzel’s Pretzels CEO Bill Phelps admitted that his investors were worried about how a 2014 wage hike would impact the business. “Like most business people I was concerned about it,” Phelps said.
For years, opponents of minimum wage increases have argued that wage hikes mean fewer jobs because businesses have to raise prices and cut hours to cover the additional expenses. But Phelps said that his sales skyrocketed after a California law forced businesses to raise wages in 2014.
“I was shocked,” Phelps recalled. “I was stunned by the business.”
The same thing happened earlier this year when California raised the minimum wage to $10.50 per hour, Phelps said.”
https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2017/01/03/minimum-wage-goes-up-and-so-does-business-thats-what-this-fast-food-ceo-says-happened/
But we have been told this many times of course… just some will not listen.
Oh dear. It seems that Trump found a way to hide how much he really owes in his FEC statement.
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-said-he-had-315-million-in-debt-he-left-out-1-5-billion-73577d392896#.vd4vq9r78
Sounds like ordinary business working capital mixed in with long term mortgages on large properties. Nothing remarkable.
The Chump will really drain that swamp, eh.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11777900
Trump has made it clear that people who work at a senior level in his Administration will not be able move on and then lobby for corporations (5 year ban) and foreign countries (life time ban).
Gutsier than Obama ever did.
Paying attention to the types of people he is appointing seems a way more useful predictor of future events than anything the guy said to get elected.
He’s appointing the people he needs to get his agenda done.
Sure and he prolly won’t change his mind about that.
A good piece that illustrates the difference between shoddy journalism and fake news. A distinction that even Glenn Greenwald can’t seem to get his head around, to his discredit.
https://thinkprogress.org/wapo-false-report-is-not-fake-news-30b5c9c89368#.bffxds61k
N.B. Glenn Greenwald is one of the top dozen journalists anywhere in the world today. “Lauren C Wiliams” is not.
You know more than Glenn Greenwald, do you?
It’s funny, but going by the calibre of your posts on this forum over the last month or so, I wouldn’t have credited you with the necessaries.
Another Pumpkin Pinochet promise goes west.
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has signaled to congressional Republican leaders that his preference is to fund the border wall through the appropriations process as soon as April, according to House Republican officials.</i?
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/05/politics/border-wall-house-republicans-donald-trump-taxpayers/index.html
He’s already taken back 3,600 good paying jobs from Mexico and got billions in new investment for the USA which was going to go to Mexico.
So yes, Mexico is definitely going to pay for the wall. From a certain point of view.
And promised to cancel tens of thousands of jobs across the continental US, alongside the F35.
I’m sure you’ll somehow blame Obama for September’s US unemployment rate.
if the F-35 is cancelled Boeing will get to build more F-18 Super Hornets.
Also, no one outside DC believes those false unemployment statistics. And certainly not in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.
Obama is irrelevant. Putin demonstrated that masterfully.
“masterfully”.
🙄
Hebron shooter Elor Azaria is indeed the norm
Over the past year and a half, dozens of Palestinian men, women and children have been killed, even though they could have been overpowered while they were still alive. The difference between them and Azaria is that he was videotaped.
by AMIRA HASS, Haaretz, Jan. 5, 2017
There’s one thing on which Palestinians agree with Elor Azaria and his supporters: that he wasn’t the only one, he just had the bad luck to be videotaped without his knowledge. Palestinians agree with Azaria and his supporters that he was complying with the norm and did exactly what other soldiers do – namely, shoot with intent to kill even when nobody’s life is in danger.
Palestinians agree with Azaria that the system discriminated against him. It’s just that they believe dozens of other soldiers and policemen should also have stood trial.
Like Azaria himself, Palestinians are wondering why he stood trial while the soldiers who killed Hadeel al-Hashlamoun of Hebron were never even investigated by the Military Police. She, too, was lying on the ground, after soldiers shot her from a distance at a checkpoint because she held a knife (which no soldier was even scratched by). And then, while she was lying there, they continued shooting her in the upper body. (This was on September 22, 2015, and Hebron residents attribute the subsequent outbreak of lone-wolf attacks to this incident.)
On June 11, 2010, Maxim Vinogradov, a Border Policeman, “confirmed the kill” of Ziad Jilani, who was already lying on the ground, shot and wounded, after having run over other policemen with his car in Jerusalem’s Wadi Joz neighborhood. The prosecution decided against indicting Vinogradov, accepting his ridiculous claim that he feared Jilani had a bomb. He was in the heart of a Palestinian neighborhood – why would he blow himself up there?
Fadi Alloun of Isawiyah was also lying on the ground, after having stabbed an Israel in Jerusalem’s Musrara neighborhood on October 4, 2015. An anonymous policeman shot him to death after passersby encouraged him to do so. In this case, there was video footage from a cell phone, but it wasn’t enough for any steps to be taken against the killer.
Sara Hajuj of Bani Naim pulled a knife on Border Policemen inside the security-inspection room of a Hebron checkpoint on July 1, 2016. They sprayed her in the face with pepper spray and fled the room. Then one of them shot her, while she was alone in the room and didn’t endanger anyone.
On June 2, 2016, Ansar Hirsheh crossed the checkpoint at Anabta, where pedestrian traffic is forbidden, on foot. She had a knife in her belongings, but she didn’t endanger anyone. And there was no reason why the four armed, trained soldiers who surrounded her couldn’t have overpowered her without killing her.
Over the past year and a half, dozens of Palestinian men, women and children have been killed, even though according to both eyewitnesses and common sense, they could have been overpowered while they were still alive. Some, it later turned out, hadn’t even attempted to commit an attack. Dozens of soldiers, Border Policemen and checkpoint guards are walking free among us after having killed Palestinians who posed no danger to their lives. The defense establishment portrayed them as having acted properly.
The boundary between self-defense and nationalist vengeance has been completely blurred. This is the atmosphere in which Azaria operated.
Therefore, the message sent by the military court judges stands out for its rarity: Elor Azaria violated the rules of engagement, so he was convicted. But the message the Israeli defense establishment sends to its soldiers and policemen is equally loud and clear: “Take care that you aren’t videotaped when you do the deed. We know how to downplay the value of photographs taken by Palestinian security cameras and bury the testimony of Palestinian eyewitnesses. But we still haven’t found the solution to close-up, professional video footage.”
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/.premium-1.763074
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/321890/huge-iceberg-poised-to-break-off-antarctica
Larsen C starting to join its mates
but none of this is supposed to happen for decades more!!!
I don’t mean to brag – but…
I just put a jig-saw puzzle together in 1 day
And on the box it said 2 – 4 years!
😀
I love jigsaw puzzles!
brilliant!!!