Sadly this is the way it will remain. Still…tax deductable (Wellington Rape Crisis is a registered charity and they run a tight ship so books in order). Vote with your wallet, I say! Do you prefer a faceless government servant deciding which organisations get funding …… OR….. do you prefer to allocate funds yourself? Easy choice for me đ
I prefer that the government provides these essential services rather than relying on the good will of the rich which always results in there not being enough of the essential services.
Since around 2000, from being in opposition to being in government, the members of the current administration have gone up and down the country and chanted, from every which and where, the same meme, “Cut red tape this, cut red tape that! OSH this, OSH that. They are preventing progress! Let’s remove the obstacles to progress …! Get government out of the way! Reduce costs here, reduce costs there! The market must be given a chance to self regulate!”
Sadly, it would appear, it has needed a tragedy to stop Key and his cohorts in their tracks… and now they appear to be ducking for cover. Shame on them.
+1.
Slagging OSH went hand-in-hand with slagging Labour for being PC. Â Saying the term OSH in a sneering manner was a call-sign for tories. Â Â Many radio jocks and many business leaders contributed to a toxic attitude towards doing tasks/projects in a careful and considered way.Â
+1 yes well said Logi97 & KhandallaMan,
They frame their approach so that people are fooled into going along with them, “Oh that sounds good” and the purposes of any “red tape” go by the way-side. Good to make the connection. We can add “streamlining” to the list of words they use for that purpose too.
It would be nice to see some commentators reclaim the argument about the necessity and prudence of having ‘red tape’ for the benefit, protection and security of life and limb. This now is the time to start voicing this.
It would be just as good to see some commentators front-foot and strongly dismiss and damn accusations that ‘red tape’ is about being PC, nanny state, bureaucratic, costly, bad for business, bla bla bla neobla-ism.
It would be even better to see legally, morally and socially responsible business people and corporations – on the same side with workers, looking out for the interests of workers – speak out in defence of, and argue for, the need to have ‘red tape’.
The best standards and practices for workers are also best for employers, markets and businesses.
“It would be just as good to see some commentators front-foot and strongly dismiss and damn accusations that âred tapeâ is about being PC, nanny state, bureaucratic, costly, bad for business, bla bla bla neobla-ism.”
Â
Yes, that is a role for Labour. Â Unfortunately Labour abdicated that responsibility when the inner few decided that we should appeal to the light blues. Â When Phil Goff (ably advised by Shearer’s current advisors) apologied for Labour being perceived as “politically correct”‘Â Â he ceded the high ground to those who knocked OSH. Â
Labour has to get back to sticking it’s neck above the parapet on issues that effect workers, women, children, minorities and the defenceless. Â When it resorts to mimicking the themes of the powerful and the yob-mob it has lost its way. That happened when Labour apologised at the confence in Rotorua in Sept ’09.Â
 http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2859508/Phil-Goff-apologises-for-Labours-mistakes
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But right wing political parties rarely (actually, never) take responsibility for their own actions.
It is fairly clear to everyone by now that the de-regulation of the mines inspectorates in the early â90s was a grave mistake. 29 graves, to be precise.
So for Heather Roy to try to shift the blame onto OSH, when legislative âreformsâ specifically stated that mines safety had devolved to individual companies, and was no longer the âprescriptiveâ responsibility of the State is more than a little disingenous â itâs downright dishonest and insulting to all New Zealanders.
Dunnokeyo reckons the word gay means weird. Leaving aside for a moment how insulting that definition is, lets look at the other definition he used to defend his homophobic outburst; the Oxford dictionary. Obviously Key never actually looked it up, because there’s no way he would agree with the example they give for the word’s use!
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4 informal, often offensive foolish, stupid, or unimpressive: he thinks the obsession with celebrity is totally gay
I think you’ll find what he’s doing there is lying, TRP.
Rhino pointed out this other lie last night too: Asked at his post-Cabinet press conference whether he was homophobic, Mr Key said: âNo, Iâm voting for gay marriage, Iâm hardly homophobic â I led the charge on it.â
It seems Key wants to take credit for having “led the charge on” marriage equality, in spite of the whole country knowing that he’s not Louisa Wall.
Not only does this blatant lie come hot on the heels of lying about which way he voted on the liquor purchase age, it’s also a disgraceful attempt at the traditional bigot’s fallback “but some of my best friends are (x)” defense.
Hopefully ‘traditional bigots’ will decide they don’t want to vote for the man who ‘led the charge’ on ‘weird’ marriage. Good news for the Conservative Party?
Batshit Key, the media whore and shameless, lying self-publicist, squeeked out about gay marriage, wanting to quickly gatecrash into the halo effect generated by Obama’s socially enlightened prior announcement.
Louisa Wall did the correct thing with the opportunity of a private member’s bill to follow through on the socially just thing to do.
Batshit Key now needs to be held account for what he said.
And as leader of a party of many Nasties, this is an opportunity for him to demonstrate true leadership by persuading each one of his party MPs* to exercise their individual conscience votes with their conscience for discriminated individuals.
*MPs – whether they are gay, stray or sway (or whether they are out or not)
Dunnokeyo denial plan (translated into coherent English):
I don’t think anything was said;
Something might have been said but I wasn’t responsible for it;
You can’t prove I said it;
I didn’t use those exact words;
Somebody overheard/secretly recorded the private conversation I had with 300 attendees over a PA system;
I was using the words according to the hitherto unknown definition I just made up now;
It was Opposite Day when I said that.Â
Okay I’m a groupie. GT on ‘Bat Bean Beam’ draws the connection between tools for managing blogs, news groups, and other social media, and drone warfare.
…The CIA will never run out of high-level targets. The internet will never run out of trolls. This is simply because should either of those categories be emptied, the database would fill them again with the people previously defined as mid-level targets, or a nuisance. The danger of terrorism or insurgency will never disappear in the same way that online social interactions will never become perfectly smooth. This is why the kill list and the kill file are not to be understood as temporary solutions but rather as permanent features, a way not just of dealing with concrete problems but of imagining and seeing the world…
I am really glad that The Standard makes minimal use of banning and the other more insidious silencing technologies such as like-dislike scales. I find it worrying that more and more in these kinds of these media, it is possible to almost never hear alternative views. Even whole subjects can disappear entirely, fresh perspectives, any uncomfortable voices, memories or thoughts, all are smoothed away before they can even impinge on anyone’s consciousness.
This at the same time as whanau and social groups are increasingly batoning down the hatchets against out-group members, and our communities are slipping into survival mode.
And note how even National had to institute a bunch of “red tape” in order to help secure the finance company sector and protect investors after SCF, Hanover, etc.
Yep, methinks the right wing religion of smaller regulation, freer markets, more private enterprise involvement etc etc has without doubt passed its time now.
The tide is now no longer drifting at the pleasant sandy high tide beach, it is now well on the way out exposing the mud flats and the detritus that had previously been covered by the tide.
What’s that saying about geting exposed by an outgoing tide? Well, that entire political philosophy is lying stinked up on the mud flats with no togs. Think Brownlee Key and English. End.
Whatâs that saying about geting exposed by an outgoing tide? Well, that entire political philosophy is lying stinked up on the mud flats with no togs. Think Brownlee Key and English. End.
What it shows is that the people who are actually directing NZs “sovereign parliament”, have managed, over decades to completely corrupt the systems that are needed for societies, and communities to function well.
What we are currently seeing is the latest outputs of that corruption!
Does the elderly lady have any connection to the successive governments she voted in during her life that created an environment that allowed her to fill her house full of things transported by trucks and feed herself with food transported by trucks? Did she vote for people who destroyed the railways, with the smugness of an armchair ideologue? Did the woman, at some point in her life, know she ran the risk or did it come as a complete surprise when she bought a retirement home on a busy highway route?
Are the public responsible for the actions of the masters they vote for and the ideas they arrange their lives around, or can they cast off their actions entirely onto any number of random ministers?
You raise a good point of debate – in that voters need to be engaged in what they are really voting for however your point omits the role of trust and the role of someone in government, with which that trust is reasonably based on also the role of “authority” and how people relate to that, in fact the very role of government in the first place.
A political party proposes a way forward, people trust that the consequences of such have been soundly thought out. If everyone has to double guess and think deeply on each proposal, then half the point of having representatives has been lost. i.e. not everyone wants to be thinking about these things in depth; that is why we elect people to do that for us.
Sadly, the time for relying on these people to be taking their role conscientiously is over and we can no longer afford to have such beliefs. This is the message that needs to get out to the general public, once more people start pressuring government to take their role seriously again, they might start doing their jobs properly and then perhaps we can start to trust them again.
blue leopard
I don’t notice much attempt at political discussion by others. There are some comments that come from deeply held prejudices and all events that are received and remembered in their minds are then shaped to fit those prejudices and reinforce them. I don’t think most people engage in the democratic process of critical thinking about means and ends which is our responsibility if we want to live in a democracy. I was just the same when I was younger, there was no role model of active thinker on politics in my life to follow. I think its the same for most. What to do about this?
I was just the same when I was younger, there was no role model of active thinker on politics in my life to follow. I think its the same for most. What to do about this?
The aim would be to engage just 100K new people to Left Wing politics. Aged 16 and up.
In such a scenario the Right would almost never win again (oohhh McFlock!).
lol
  Â
The old “if more people supported us, we’d be more popular” tautology.
   Â
The number of meetings I’ve been in where plans have been hatched to “engage with [segment or donor XXX]” is large. The number of successful socialist revolutions in NZ in that time period: 0.00000
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The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And remember that only one dude could walk on water (ninja lore notwithstanding).Â
The number of meetings Iâve been in where plans have been hatched to âengage with [segment or donor XXX]â is large. The number of successful socialist revolutions in NZ in that time period: 0.00000
In that case perhaps the common factor for failure is you McFlock. With your outlook it’s not a surprise.
You’re mad McFlock. Why would you consider voting for the Alliance for instance if not to help them build a 100,000 strong voting base???
By the way, I said nothing about a “youth” organisation. Better keep your imagination in check mate. It seems you are reading a lot into what I write which is not there.
Leafletting lol your strategies really would be a failure.
Youâre mad McFlock. Why would you consider voting for the Alliance for instance if not to help them build a 100,000 strong voting base???
Because I agree with their policies. Which is an entirely separate issue to how successful they are, or I think they’ll be. Maybe if the Alliance get 1% lab/greens would recognise the demand and take a step to the left. Who knows?
    Â
Hey, I’d love it if the Alliance had a half-million strong voting base. But anyone can say “we will engage x-hundred thousand people”. Actually getting more than thirty is the challenge, and only comes from hard work: entertaining and persuasive speakers on the hustings, doorknocking, social media, and indeed walking around in the rain delivering thousand of leaflets. And no, social media does not remove that work.
   Â
Which takes us back to plaintive cries in meetings of a dozen folk, the mournful refrain “why don’t people vote for / support us?”Â
  Â
As for reading a lot into what you write, the problem is that in order to turn what you write into a coherent and realistic plan, lots and lots of holes need to be filled in.Â
I don’t think most people think, full stop. There is likely to be heard from many “When’s the next footy match”. In other words, so very much discussion centres upon trivia rather than upon the huge issues going on all around us.
@Prism,
Yes, I agree with your comments, and I have in the past got rather annoyed about people not engaging with politics (!), yet I realise this is unfair, and I have to remind myself that not everyone has the same interests, most are very busy and people do things in a variety of ways to help improve “the way things are”.
As to what to do about this. “ummm” is the first thing that comes to mind!
Then the standard criticism that arises of our media; information sources.
It is my experience (and from what I’ve read too) that when one meets up with a person with a real interest in political issues and critical thinking, this what sparks interest in another. This can be a real life person, and it can also be an article in a paper, or books and now, on the internet too. The issue being, the more people read banal propaganda, the more they switch off. This was my experience, a thought that politics was simply mediocre and compromised. Then coming across books that relayed intelligently presented “connected” arguments which made me realise that there really was a purpose behind all the banality that is presented to us.
I guess the best thing that any one person can do is share a passion for critical thinking when one has the opportunity to (sometimes this involves speaking out when there is pressure to remain silent) and I think that an optimism that things can change positively when there are enough people involved is also a very important thing to impart to people. All of this requires going against some of our cultural attitudes, which I believe are pretty anti politics, keep your head down, don’t complain…etc.
I really do think that there needs to be an information source in print or on TV that imparts information on this level and I am unclear as to why this hasn’t occurred yet. Perhaps a bit to do with what Nicky Hagar’s Bruce Jesson Speech touched on, left-wing people have been disempowered?
Think a lot of things would improve if we simply removed all protections from “legal persons” aka corporations and give them protections on a case by case basis depending upon how much of a public service they were providing, this would effectively remind people of the reasons the protections were devised for corporations in the first place.
Time to institute charges of corporate manslaughter and corporate grevious bodily harm which can be laid against directors and executive management.
And shareholders too.
If you want to make money off other peoples labour you should at least make sure everything possible is done to ensure their safety.
Shareholders should know how slack the governance and management of the companies they invest in is but deliberately decide to ignore it unless the dividends fall.
It would be amazing how corporate behaviour would change if people through the whole ownership/governance/management chain were held accountable for their actions.
Because people with more cash than they need would only give it to enterprises where their liability was limited to the amount of cash they put in.
Limited liability companies distance the owners from the consequences of their actions.
If you could end up supporting the family of a man killed by poor safety measures in a mine you partly owned you would think very hard before investing and you would insist on good safety.
Can’t comment on the specifics of blame you’d like to attribute, but bear in mind that Unions were designed to be transitional devices, not static everlasting organisations. If Unions in NZ crossed the line that they were theoretically designed to cross, we’d have our long awaited revolution. The reality is that they presently contribute to keeping our population well fed and protected, but to do that they need to be collaborating with the thing they supposedly must overthrow. National or Labour, more or less regulation? Deaths, or a series of occasional serious injury? Work, or poverty and revolution? Which is better and what is the question we’re all avoiding?
“I read some where that the Miners union knew the mine wasnât safe.”
Yes, I heard of someone who chose not to work in that mine because of this knowledge
“How come they didnât kick up more of a stink, isnât that their job?”
This is the hidden “cost” of low employment, poor working conditions and low pay as well as a basic trust in employer’s concern over the welfare of their staff.
Although people “knew” the mine was unsafe, or suspected as much, there would be a basic “trust” that it “would be alright”, a person might consider that they were being paranoid and that their boss ultimately wouldn’t risk their workers lives.
This line of reasoning would be all the more likely when there are few jobs around and many poorly paid ones. i.e. the other option is to what? not work and not be able to keep your family in good health? Knowing the unemployment benefit is a trap, a person who quit their job wouldn’t be entitled to an unemployment benefit anyway and such an option isn’t even considered an option for a lot of people, due to both/either their value system &/or the fact that they have a family to support and welfare isn’t sufficient for that.
Isn’t that the advantage about Unions, strength in numbers, nobody would have to quit.
Everyone downs tools for a week unless the safety concerns get sorted.
Many of the workers were contractors who the Commission said did not have the required training to carry out the tasks management gave them. Contractors are not usually associated with Unions, so it’s doubtful any strike would have been effective. The Union workers would have simply been replaced by contractors, with much applause from Brownlee and Wilkinson.
It’s good that you’re advocating for more Union powers to ensure workplace safety BM… Perhaps Slater, Farrar and the rest of the Union bashing sycophants might like to hear about your ideas?
Blind Monetarist some miners just up and left but in New Zealand the right wing have hobbled unions one of the first pieces of legislation by your shonkey led govt was to stop unions free access to the work place 2008 followed by Kate wilkinsons shelving of the recommendations of the labour parties report on mining safety 2009 preceded by Mad max bradfords sacking of mine inspectors 1998 preceeded by bill birchs gutting of mine safety rules 1992 that had been built up over the previous century.
Not trying to shift the blame their Bob.
The Labour party was born on the coast out of concern for mine safety and workers rights!
BM, the report I read was that miners, not the unions so much, new that it was unsafe. Kudos to ABC Aussie for comprehensive public service broadcasting coverage:
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The interesting thing we learnt during the Royal Commission was that miners were in fact complicit in this [ignoring methane level reports], in a certain way, because there were reports that they were putting plastic bags over the methane sensors.
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Now, it was given in evidence to the commission that this was because they felt under pressure, that management was wanting them to meet production targets.
BM
You’re like those guys in the comedy routine acting out simple-minded types spotting cars on a motorway, ooh look there’s another one. You question, someone answers, and it just flows right past you without entering your brain, and you repeat the question later on with the same result. I think you are an example of the snowfall effect that I put forward in Open Mike I think on 6/11.
The poor old miners got caught in a moral hazard that existed for miners in Emile Zola’s time. They want to make a living, have housing, and every time they delay production for safety reasons they hurt the company, it’s profitability and their jobs. In Zola’s time their safety was their own responsibility and I understand they had to shore up the passages and support the ceiling themselves.
It seems strange to me vto, that the millions of dollars needed to fix leaky homes is not clearly sheeted home to the National deregulation in the 90s. You would think that along with Mining deregulation the people would be very angry. I am.
Prime Minister John Key says he is serious when he needs to be but has to joke around sometimes.
Is she part of the parliamentary gallery? Does she not regularly see how Key does his stand-up routine in order to deflect serious questions in Question Time? Why is she not reporting that, rather than just uncritically reporting what Key says?
What is the selection criteria is to be “any reporter or editor”, responsible for the media balackouts which exist, to provide the cover stories and misdirection, to blatant lies that are sold via the MSM.
When one starts to think about those who are “selected to report the news”, one can reasonably deduce that those people are as easily “swayed”, as those chosen to be the options NZ gets to vote for!
”I dare you to show me one example where I haven’t discharged my responsibility seriously, professionally and appropriately,” he told TV3’s Firstline. (Sorry,had to cut and paste) Guess who in DomPost?
Yesterday I noted a discussion of interest rate and currency swaps that I heard on Jim Mora on Radionz. I put live links in my comment. It was new stuff to me, the financial instruments or derivatives (D) market is not my everyday experience and I would say not to the ordinary citizen.
I just listened again and there are some points that we should know. First between them Auckland and Dunedin City Councils lost $200 million last year resulting from these Ds. Then we should know that the Ds are contingent liabilities which have floating rates and there is no knowing how the rates will change year to year. It may be $1 billion that they lose next year (and that is a debt on top of the principal still owing).
I don’t know if they are the same as hedge funds, but the point was made as with hedge funds, that the seller of the D has a conflict of interest as it wants to win and you to lose, (so it will want to tip the scales against you). One thinks of the Melbourne Cup – the TAB have better rules and standards. Apparently our chief national earners, Fonterra and farming interests, are involved in these derivatives and that gives a cold feeling down the spine.
There is something called a Dual currency interest rate swap. This involves two different currencies and when one is NZ, which is very volatile and may fall, then the repayments go up, a particularly risky tricky thing to be in.
In Europe there has been legal proceedings brought against mis-selling by banks of derivatives (mis-selling another neo-lib euphemism) and a Milan bank had returned millions of dollars, might have been $1 billion not sure.
It can be difficult to find what has been done with this public money because of the old excuse “It’s commercially sensitive”. We may think we have the right to know what our officials are doing in our name, but no, ‘It’s trust us we know more than you, and we know what we are doing”. That sounds dodgy, but how can we force the issue under the present regime??
First between them Auckland and Dunedin City Councils lost $200 million last year resulting from these Ds. Then we should know that the Ds are contingent liabilities
technical note – a contingent liability is a potential sum owing, the size and nature of which depends on some future event or measure.
With interest rate D’s, there is a vast amount of uncertainty and lack of control around what this might be, year to year. As prism notes, the investment banks on the other side of the trade often PROFIT when their clients LOSE.
It’s a level of risk which no public organisation should involve itself in unless it really knows how to use D’s as tools to reduce risk and uncertainty.
Many municipal authorities in the US have gone bankrupt due to these kinds of “investments”.
No probs mate, you were very close to getting it right. Your monthly power bill could be considered a contingent liability which depends on how much power you use – will your next invoice be $300 or will it be $600?
At least in that case you have significant influence over the end result. With an interest rate swap you are at the mercy of market fraud and banker fine print scams.
I was thinking of that general competence thing for councils. At one time they couldn’t get high-flown ideas of risk-taking in exotic financial transactions – they were too tightly controlled. It seems as a citizen who isn’t snuggling up for juicy tenders and projects to councils, that the general competence should be abandoned and a slightly more lenient than the previous control should be the new norm.
Also, one of the skills that a CEO is now being paid for is no doubt the ability to handle a large budget and be able to do this financial horse-trading. So if councils had less money, which they had to parcel out in a rational way, there would be less need to do their double book-keeping. The Jim Mora Radionz item I listened to said that the borrowings and interest rate swaps were not always shown in the appropriate part of the balance sheet and there wasn’t a signal of their likely cost long-term.
And I think that employing contractors is almost double-bookeeping. Government and businesses can fudge their expenditure on human resources. Contractors are paid out of one pot, and staff and wages out of another. Staff and wages will appear to be kept at a low rate yet the real need of the organisation is met by high-paid hourly contractors. A wasteful and often mendacious system.
This Local Bodies explanation piece on council general competence and processes is very straightforward and a good example of providing clear information. http://insider.thomsonreuters.co.nz/2012/03/local-government-law-nz/ 2. Financial management strategies
Commencing in 1996, with abolition of the former Local Authorities Loans Board, local authorities have had greater powers to undertake works and to fund the works through different fiscal policies and determinations. The ability of local authorities to borrow money, or to undertake rating, has been substantially liberalised. The introduction of differential rating, and annual charges, has been modernised, and the ability to impose targeted rates has been extended. Again, to provide direction and restraint, the law requires councils to develop strategies for funding and borrowing, and to provide for implementation through the long-term plan and annual plan, and to make an annual report. These obligations are subject to overview by the Auditor-General.
Everyone saw this news, and polling on October 5 showed a sharp increase in the number of people who knew that unemployment was down. But here’s the interesting thing: among liberals and independents, the number getting the answer right stayed higher over the next several days. Apparently the news sunk in. But among conservatives, the number getting the answer right started to decline immediately. Within three days, as the chart below shows, they were answering the question exactly the same as they had before the unemployment report came out.
We see the same things here with the RWNJs continual re-writing of history when the facts conflict with what the RWNJs believe.
Yes how about calling it the snowfall effect? The brains of RWNJs get stirred up by new and unwelcome stats which register for a brief moment in time, but similar to the little globes with snow and bits of glitter in them which swirl around after a shaking, soon everything settles back to the same configuration as before.
Great imagery there Prism.
I expect there are more RWNJ who believe in a god and in a heaven as they are more likely to exist in faith rather than science or factual evidence. It is god’s will you know.
ianmac
Well when you’re on the top of the heap perhaps you feel closer to god. Then you could almost be convinced that he/she is on your side and it’s all the wonderful way that god willed it to be.
Each constituent lie is an instance pointing to a larger, elaborately constructed âtruth,â the one central to the right-wing appeal for generations: that liberalism is a species of madnessâan esoteric cult of out-of-touch, Europe-besotted ivory tower elitesâand conservatism is the creed of regular Americans and vouchsafes the eternal prosperity, security, and moral excellence of Godâs chosen nation, which was doing just fine before Bolsheviks started gumming up the works.
briefly listened to RNZ last night; an interveiw with a co-author of a recent popular publication on the findings of “political science” research into the benefits the introduction of democracy had provided to newly democratic nation states in our life-times. The interviewer was very dry and sceptical of the authors conclusions (very american) and the author just dribbled a whole lot of waffle imo.
It seemed, the advances in rule of law, social justice etc, in African countries for example, were comparitively short-lived.
Some one commented recently concerning the population attritions we are likely to see in Africa in the coming decades.
Oh I thought I’d just bat back the idea of ‘union corruption’ with the idea that yes, unions have to evolve and tighten up their organisations – at the same time as making them far stronger and more effective.
NZ’s systemic corruption is on levels which people can’t even begin to fathom, so they blow it off as “poor politics”, or right/left or other ideology!
Given that the perceptions of many of those organisations are significantly affected by the media (which “won” hands down), much lolz.
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I’m surprised the Australian police are only at 16%, given their record.Â
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It’s a survey of people’s perceptions not the reality. What a surpirse that a lot of people have a negative view of unions Wonder how they got thatidea?Â
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Yet the respondents views of individual politicians as not being corrupt, contradict the strong belief that poltiicians are corrupt. It’s all in the mind.
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And they’ve been doing those surveys for the last 30 years – roughly coincides with neoliberalism and the rise of tabloid and highly commercialised journalism. This does support research that indicates such journalism leads to cynicism about politics.
Having said that, Australian unions (and politicians very closely aligned to major unions) have had some serious shockers in the last couple of years. And the AWU scandal is crippling Gillard.
In the last week – has anyone been getting those server failure messages that were so common?
I haven’t had one since the start of last week after I’d fixed a number of things that were locking up the database and a separate set that were preventing the full use of cloudflare.
Cunliffe says it’s a dark day for hi-tech manufacturing – Fisher and Paykel sold, Rakon outsourcing jobs to Asia. And a Labour government would do more to keep such businesses and work in NZ, he says.
This is what you get when a relatively small number of shareholders and institutional investors, all of whom are already plenty wealthy, decide that maximising their return on capital is more important than anything else eg keeping jobs in NZ.
Well, capitalism hasn’t been around for 5000 years…guess it depends how you define it. I see it as taking hold after the time of Adam Smith and Ricardo.
Debt based money with a top down hierarchical structure which resulted in a few people owning nearly everything and the collapse of the economy was recorded in Sumer 5000 years ago. Which brings up that old saying: If it looks like a duck and quacks like duck, chances are, it’s a duck.
Can I make a suggestion for your summer reading list DTB, Karl Polanyi – The Great transformation. If your into your history and political economy its makes for a great read, should be around in ebook form on Gutenberg or something.
“Not until 1834 was a competitive labor market established in England; hence, industrial capitalism as a social system cannot be said to have existed before that date. Yet almost immediately the self-protection of society set in: factory laws and social legislation, and a political and industrial working class movement sprang into being. It was in this attempt to stave off the entirely new dangers of the market mechanism that protective action conflicted fatally with the self-regulation of the system. It is no exaggeration to say that the social history of the nineteenth century was determined by the logic of the market system proper after it was released by the Poor Law Reform Act of 1834.”
We are also considering an accelerated depreciation allowance to support investment in new technology.
State owned factories run by the workers as a cooperative with the production then done under contract/license. Run R&D through the universities to keep the factories up to date. Much better idea.
You can’t have the state owning the factories, the workers or their local communities have to own the factories. With state owned enterprises, the first thing a Tory Govt will do is sell the bloody things off. Need to observe and learn their patterns of behaviour.
âŚthe workers or their local communities have to own the factories.
And what else do you think the state is?
With state owned enterprises, the first thing a Tory Govt will do is sell the bloody things off.
So we change government rules so that they can’t. It’s part and parcel of making them accountable to the people of NZ in such a way so that they do what the people of NZ want them to do and not what their major backers want.
Well, I’m all for democracy and having it so that it must go to referendum. If they try to get rid of the referendum, as the arseholes did with Auckland, then they are immediately in breach of the law and are automatically found as treasonous.
Put in the right laws, make sure everyone knows what those laws are and what they’re there to do and we can limit the government which is what we really need to do.
Does anyone recall the government saying that they were going to support KidsCan “feeding the lower decile” children?
Just as we thought would happen, they have managed to get Campbell Live off their backs
but can anyone report an improvement in the diets of the needy school children…? Nah, hasn’t happened, I bet. Or has it?
. . April 4: Day 10 of living in lock-down… I wake up to a fine Saturday morning which normally would be like an early Christmas. But it’s Day 10 of Level 4 Lock Down. What will my fellow New Zealanders be doing on a day like this – staying ...
Some time during the night we went over the 850,000 views mark. We might have had our millionth view by the end of this year – certainly by early next year. Most of the people involved in Redline spent years and years producing various small left-wing papers and selling them ...
Comfortably, in the very first round, with an impressive 56% of the votes.I wonder, did members of the Shadow Cabinet start tweeting their resignations during Starmer's victory speech, or is that only a trick the right pull?It is odd how all the talk of how the next leader "needs to ...
One of the key voices in this extraordinary time in which we live is that of University of Otago epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker. Philip Matthews did an an excellent job this weekend of capturing the way he became the man for this moment in a profile for The Press.But one ...
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addressed the nation today about the decline in daylight New Zealand has been experiencing over the previous few months. She said “As many of you will notice, our attempts to stem the dwindling of the daylight over the last few months have been completely ...
Redline received this article from the KOE a Marxist party in Greece Our friends in the KOE describe here the mounting crisis in Greece and tensions on the Turkish border. As desperate people flee from their homelands which have been ruined after decades of imperialist wars and interventions the people ...
As the first week of Level Four lockdown unfolded, mounting questions grew as to just what was (and was not) allowed under its “rules”. Partly these were driven by some apparently contradictory messagesfrom different authority figures and explanations carried in the media. Partly they reflected a somewhat sketchy legal basis ...
. . April 3: Day 9 of living in lock-down… Another late-start to my work day. Everything is temporarily upended as clients are shuffled around so we can minimise our “bubble” by reducing the number of people we help. One of my colleagues has been removed from his clients; his ...
In order to meet our 2050 carbon target and do our bit to avoid making the Earth uninhabitable, New Zealand needs to decarbonise our economy, replacing fossil fuels with electricity in the energy, industrial and transport sectors. The good news is that it will mean cheaper power for all of ...
For those folk who find my other Lock-Down Diary versions too “negative” or otherwise unpalatable… Here’s a photo of a pretty flower, . . Better? Tomorrow’s Sanitised Version: a cute animal video. . . . =fs= ...
. . April 2: Day eight of living in lock-down… Today, my work day starts late. Our rosters and clients have been dramatically changed, lessening (theoretically) the number of people in our work “bubble”. If just one of us catches covid19 the impact could be considerable as Grey Base Hospital ...
As Aotearoa enters week two of lockdown, it’s clear we’re all still working out what our “bubbles” look like and how to stay in them to stop the spread of Covid-19. New to the government’s Covid-19 website is some good guidance for people living in apartment blocks. Recent decades have ...
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Lenin Don’t we all know that feeling now.
Prospect Magazine alerted me to this particularly apt quote. It is a much more evocative quote than Hemingway’s “gradually then suddenly” which is also doing ...
Yesterday was the day the consequences of the lockdown suddenly got very real for many. Firms have been closing and laying people off since the outset of the quarantine but this has mostly been happening out of the public eye. The mass closure of a number of iconic New Zealand ...
Brian Williamson1, Prof Nick Wilson2 (1Economic consultant, UK; 2University of Otago Wellington)In this blog, we outline how a win-win social contract could be forged to address the major dimensions of response to the COVID-19 pandemic when using a mitigation strategy: the particular need to protect older people from high ...
Resuming Normal Service: The Republican Party's nominee for in 1920, Warren Harding, promised the American people: “not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration”. If she wishes to remain our prime minister, then Jacinda Ardern will offer New Zealanders the same.HOW EDUCATED AMERICA snickered when the ...
No Free Society Without A Free And Functioning News Media: If we are to surrender our civil rights to the broader cause of defeating Covid-19, then foreign corporations must, likewise, surrender their right to inflict immense economic and cultural harm on New Zealanders simply because it improves their bottom line.I’M ...
by Daphna Whitmore A third of the world is under lockdown and a clear assessment of this measure to curb the spread of COVID-19 is urgently needed. With any high-stakes decisions it has to be asked what are we dealing with here? Are the measures warranted? Will they achieve their ...
I haven’t done a huge amount in the last few days. I’m reading The Poppy War and I’ve sort of poked at a couple of games – I started SOMA but I’m a wimp and I quit while in the first room after the brain scan. I might try it ...
The swan politicians may be gliding on the water, occasionally snapping at one another. Meanwhile, as the Covid19 crisis illustrates, the officials are desperately paddling below providing the real locomotion. One of the most fatuous recent grandstanding comments (of about a week ago), adding to the public’s anxieties, was ...
Much has been written about the importance of discretion in an emergency situation, and the concerns raised by the potential for it to be exercised arbitrarily. Given the quality of the discussion, there seemed little point in adding to it at any length. In particular, I point to the evidence ...
Today has felt surreal. I was all set to touch base online with my science communication students when a colleague shared the news that Bauer Media would be shutting down its publications immediately. The first link I saw implied it was Woman’s Weekly affected, and even that shocked me. But ...
Bogeymen, Real And Imagined: Is the number of psychopathic and sociopathic individuals in any given society truly as vanishingly small as we like to tell ourselves? Isn’t it more likely that the mass-shooters and serial-killers filling the headlines represent only the tip of a much, much larger iceberg of frightfulness? ...
Outgoing Police Commissioner Mike Bush appeared before the Epidemic Response Committee today, who asked him for the rules police are using to enforce the lockdown. He refused:Police Commissioner Mike Bush has admitted the advice given to Kiwis about what they're able to do during the lockdown hasn't been clear enough. ...
For those folk who find my other Lock-Down Diary versions too “negative” or otherwise unpalatable… Here’s a photo of my cat, . . Better? Tomorrow’s Sanitised Version: a pretty flower. . . . =fs= ...
. . April 1: Day seven of living in lock-down… This morning I had a brief chat with one of my neighbours, “D” (social distance between us, a good three or four metres). I learned he had resigned from his previous job and had been hired by another company – ...
Funnily enough, my thought as I start this post is whether it will be well written enough. Or should that be well enough written? Because so much of what I know about good writing came from my two stints at The Listener, which this morning was shut down due to ...
With normal democratic procedures in abeyance, there were two ways to go. First, it was open for the government to dissolve itself and invite the National Party to join a ministry of national salvation. That would have lessened the democratic deficit of the times by having a team of rivals without ...
Dr Kirsty Ross Children and young people can respond differently in times of distress. This also varies by age and developmental stage, with younger children having more magical and imaginative thinking, and older children having more awareness and knowledge of the issues our communities are facing (which brings up ...
Hungary has been a virtual dictatorship for a decade now, as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has gradually eroded its democracy. But now, its official, with the passage of an indefinite emergency law allowing rule by decree:Hungary’s parliament has passed a new set of coronavirus measures that includes jail terms for ...
While the economy is on pause under lockdown, the government is beginning to plan how to cope with the post-lockdown, post-tourism, post-export education world we will eventually find ourselves in. They're planning a lot of infrastructure spending as economic stimulus, and have asked for proposals which can start the moment ...
It's my distraction, setting up tiny scenes to photograph. I've got stuck on the Babushka dolls for now. Something about their bubble shape. Something about their never changing, smiling features, suggesting persistent equanimity. Can we get through everything that is being thrown at us and keep at least a tiny ...
. . March 31: Day six of living in lock-down… This time I managed to sleep a little longer and the alarm woke me at the pre-set time: 6.55am. Then remembered I was working a later shift and could’ve slept in. Oh well, there are things to do at home. ...
Image credit:Diamond Harbour School Blogs I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or ...
Yesterday's Horizon poll showing support for a "Yes" vote in this year's cannabis referendum sliding into the majority for the first time in a year looked like good news for reformers – and it probably is. But the result warrants some scrutiny.The poll is the fifth in a series commissioned ...
For almost a week now, every one of us who isn’t an essential worker has been confined to their bubble. We are allowed to go shopping for groceries, to visit the doctor, and to get a bit of exercise if we stay local. The reason we are doing this is ...
The Covid-19 saga will no doubt produce many twists and turns for us before it is finally brought to an end. But one thing it has shown us – and what comfort it should bring us – is that our country’s government is in good hands. I am not thinking ...
In the absence of a vaccine or a cure for a deadly disease, staying home in your bubble is what you do, the concept is not new. To the best of my knowledge last time we did this in NZ was for polio, in the years before a vaccine came ...
The following statement was released on March 28 by the National Network on Cuba, a coalition of 40 groups, based in the United States. In recent weeks, Cuba has deployed hundreds of medical providers to over a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, as well as to their neighbors in Latin ...
This has been a terrible summer for Hector’s dolphins. The first indication was very low numbers of dolphin sightings during late spring and early summer. The Otago University Marine Mammal Research Team has carried out routine dolphin surveys at Banks Peninsula for more than 30 years. In all that time, ...
On March 17, Finance Minister Grant Robertson was quick out of the blocks with an economic rescue package to help businesses through the inevitable recession resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Robertson had pulled together a scheme in short order that so far seems to have saved many jobs. In his ...
The purpose of the lockdown is to save lives, by reducing the spread of covid-19. We won't know if its really working for another week, but given the devastation that will result if it doesn't - 14,000 dead is the optimistic scenario - its definitely worth trying. But pausing the ...
. . March 30: Day five of living in lock-down… Woke up still in darkness. Alarm hadn’t gone off. Turn to radio clock; it’s a few minutes after 6am… I lie there in the dark, waiting to drift off to sleep… but it ain’t happening. Clock ticks over to 6.55 ...
The story of Les Gray, the public sector psychologist who told the truth about his use of cannabis and set off a storm, has a special place in the lore of cannabis reform in New Zealand.When Paul Shannon interviewed Gray for the 'Dope and Hope' issue of Planet magazine in ...
by Phil Duncan For Marxists, a key concern about social trends is their context – not just their causes, but why they happen when they do. Events and phenomena have causes, but they also are time or period-specific. While much of the left have capitulated recently to postmodernism, most notably ...
Since the lockdown began, we've all suddenly been reminded who the actually essential workers in our society are: not the people at the top who pay themselves the big bucks and rort the perks, but the people at the bottom they screw over and squeeze: cleaners, warehouse staff, truck drivers ...
Kia ora! As I've watched nearly all my remaining work vanish over the past couple of days, it has occured to me that one good way to keep me away from arguing with fools on Twitter all the time (in the knowledge that all we're really doing is processing our ...
Aotearoa New Zealand has committed to trying to extirpate the virus that causes COVID-19 from its shores. To do that, as a society we’ve moved to “Level 4”. That means adapting to unprecedented restrictions on our personal freedoms, particularly to our rights to move freely and associate with friends and ...
When the Prime Minister declared a state of emergency last week, she handed the police powers to enforce it. And almost immediately, we started hearing about heavy-handed, arbitrary "enforcement" by police who (at best) cared more about order than law, or (more likely) had no idea what the rules were ...
. . Lock Down: Day 4 – A photo essay with observations . March 29: Usual wake up routine as RNZ snaps on my radio-clock. Jim Mora’s voice slowly enters my conciousness; there’s talk of a second wave of covid19 taking hold in South Korea; the week in Parliament – ...
Yesterday, New Zealand recorded its first Covid-19 related death on the West Coast. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be the only fatality, with the virus now being found in every region of the country.However despite the significant danger, people are still unfortunately breaching lockdown rules.There’s really only one main very ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... ‘Misinformation kills’: The link between coronavirus conspiracies and climate denialGrist / Rob Kim / Stringer / CSA Images Scientific ...
The kids did surprisingly well today – meltdown count was about 3, and mostly fairly short ones. (And a fourth while I was writing.) Game-wise I had a go at Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark. It’s a fairly standard RPG with turn-based combat and what they call a “mature storyline” (it ...
by Don Franks Hi David, Nice hearing from you, I’m glad to hear you’re getting by okay in these grim times. You asked how’s it going for us back here in New Zealand. You would have heard that the whole country is locked down and with breaks for exercise and ...
. . Lock Down: Day 3 – A photo essay with observations . March 28: First day of the first weekend in Lock Down. It feels like it’s been weeks since only Level 3 was declared last Tuesday, only four days ago. Woke up this morning to RNZ; coffee; toast, ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Mar 22, 2020 through Sat, Mar 28, 2020Articles Linked to on FacebookSun, Mar 22, 2020In Just 10 Years, Warming Has Increased the Odds of Disasters by Chelsea Harvey, ...
I’m here in lockdown with my flatmate and her two girls (6 and 2) and it. is. a time. They’re usually really active so to start with the only boardgame in the house is the copy of Guess Who that the 6 year old got for her birthday. Flatmate commented ...
The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed ...
. . Lock Down: Day 2 – A photo essay with observations . March 27 – Day 2 of our Strange New World. The Park and Ride near my suburb, usually filled with hundreds of vehicles, had just… four; . . Another drive into Wellington City on a highway nearly ...
Fortune's Children: Under extraordinary pressure, the leader of the Government and the leader of the Opposition will each show us what they are made of. Have they been blessed with intelligence, grace, wit, poise, toughness, empathy and humour – and in what measure? More importantly, to what extent have they ...
If you’ve ever had the misfortune of having to rent a property on the open market in New Zealand, which is one of the most expensive in the entire world, you’ll likely be keenly aware of just how arrogant and entitled landlords and their real estate agents can be.Unfortunately for ...
Society-wise, aside from the specific morbidity shall we say of the medically-oriented aspects of this COVID-19 crisis, what is unfolding before the world is in more than one way an instructive study of humanity and reactions to a high intensity, high stress environment in real time. Friends, we are at ...
Right now low waged and insecure workers are feeling the economic brunt of the looming #Covid19 Recession. In response legal advocate Toby Cooper* and hospitality and worker’s rights advocate Chloe Ann-King, are putting together a series of legal blogs about your employment rights:In this legal blog we outline some ...
by Equipo Jurídico Pueblos and Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (25/03/2020) An escape plan in question On the night of March 21st and the early morning of the 22nd, the forces of the Colombian state stormed into the Modelo prison in Bogotá, murdering 23 prisoners and injuring 83, in response to the ...
When the government banned semi-automatic weapons in response to a terrorist atrocity, gun-nuts were outraged. Mired in toxic American gun culture, they thought owning weapons whose sole purpose was killing people was some sort of "constitutional right", a necessity for "defending themselves" against the government. Now, the Court of Appeal ...
Just before midnight on Wednesday March 25, Aotearoa New Zealand entered a countrywide alert level four lockdown. For at least the next four weeks, everyone who isn’t an essential worker is confined to their bubble. We are doing this to stop the explosive growth in people contracting and dying from ...
. . Lock Down: Day 1 – A photo essay with observations . Day one of the Level 4 nationwide lock-down (or, DefCon 4 as I sometimes cheekily call it) started at 11.59PM on 25 March. For a moment, most of the nation held it’s collective breath. In that brief ...
Broad, Sunlit Uplands: How those words fired my young imagination! Or, perhaps, it is more accurate to say: how those words fused, in my young mind, with the image printed on every packet of Fielder’s Cornflour. Always fascinated by history, especially modern history, I cannot hear Churchill’s wonderfully evocative words, even ...
. . 24 March 2020 9.46AM Number of covid19 cases in Aotearoa New Zealand: 102 . As of 11.59 on Thursday, most of New Zealand will go into “lock down”. People will be expected not to travel to work; not to socialise; and to stay home. I will not be ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections A respected research group, Project Drawdown, finds that deploying solutions consistent with meeting the Paris climate targets would cost tens of trillions of dollars globally. But crucially, those outlays would also yield long-term savings many times larger than the up-front costs. The new 2020 Drawdown ...
It will pass. What happens next? Not immediately, but longer term. There are many opinions, fewer certainties. Will it “change everything!” as many confidently, and contradictorily predict? In this post I look at how foresight can help bound some of the uncertainties so you can more objectively consider the future. ...
We’ve been meaning t write something on Cuba and the coronavirus but have just discovered a very good article on the subject in the US left publication Jacobin. The article looks at how Cuba, a poor country but one where capitalism has been done away with, is leading the way ...
In 2018, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey - two British citizens who had purportedly been stripped of their citizenship by the British government - were captured while fighting for Isis in Syria. The British government then conspired to hand them over to the US, and agreed to provide evidence ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters says getting New Zealanders back home and other travellers out of the country is "a nightmare for our embassies, consuls, and staff around the world".Speaking to NewstalkZB's Mike Hosking, the Foreign Minister said that he gave a clear message to people travelling overseas that they ...
The domestic travel ban has been lifted for stranded foreign tourists trying to get to international airports to fly home, after the Coalition Government announced a plan to help the tens of thousands of foreigners stranded here. Foreign Minister Rt. Hon. Winston Peters spoke with RNZ's Susie Ferguson said foreign ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters believes the country is rediscovering its resilience and self-reliance through its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.He says he is heartened that the mass majority of New Zealanders are following lockdown rules and that the government looking at the future, including paying to keep much ...
New Zealand can emulate the success of the US after the Great Depression by exploiting our own resources to turn the economy around quickly, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says. Mr. Peters told Magic Talk that New Zealand has an opportunity to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic a "superior, ...
All 45 New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel are either on their way back to New Zealand, or already in the country, according to Defence Minister Ron Mark."Twenty-eight personnel arrived back in New Zealand last week and are in isolation at the Royal New Zealand Air Force base in ...
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...
We know people are feeling anxious about COVID-19. While the situation is serious, New Zealand has a world-class health system and we’re well-prepared to keep New Zealanders safe. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging New Zealanders overseas to stay where they are amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "We are reaching a point where the best option for most New Zealanders offshore is to shelter in place, by preparing to safely stay where they are.” "This includes following the instructions ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging the tens of thousands of New Zealanders travelling overseas to consider sheltering in place, in light of COVID-19. “Since 18 March, we have been warning New Zealanders offshore that the window for flying ...
Ground-breaking law has passed that will decriminalise abortion and ensure women and pregnant people seeking abortions have compassionate healthcare. ...
The Green Party says that the measures announced by the Government today will help families and businesses to prioritise our collective health and wellbeing in the response to COVID-19. ...
As New Zealanders brace for a global downturn due to Covid-19, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says his Coalition Government’s rescue package "more significant" than any other he's seen around the world. The Coalition is to reveal a multi-billion-dollar stimulus plan on Tuesday afternoon designed to cushion the economic blow ...
The Government will be introducing legislation to make changes to the Companies Act to help companies facing insolvency due to COVID-19 to remain viable and keep New Zealanders in jobs. The temporary changes include: Giving directors of companies facing significant liquidity problems because of COVID-19 a ‘safe harbour’ from insolvency ...
The Government’s plan to cushion the blow of COVID-19 by supporting incomes, jobs and businesses, and position the economy to recover has been backed by another international report. International credit rating agency Moody’s today reaffirmed its highest Aaa credit rating on New Zealand, saying the economy is expected to remain ...
National sports organisations have been given certainty of funding to ensure they can remain viable through the COVID-19 pandemic, Sport and Recreation Minister Grant Robertson announced today. “The global spread of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on sport and recreation in New Zealand, including the cancellation or postponement of ...
Changes have been made to allow butchers to process pork, only for supply to supermarkets or other processors or retailers that are open, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor has announced. “We carefully weighed the risk of allowing butchers to open their shops for retail customers, but the risk of spreading COVID-19 ...
Essential workers who take leave from work to comply with public health guidance are being supported with a leave scheme to ensure they will continue to receive income, say the Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety Iain Lees-Galloway and Minister for Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni. A number of essential businesses ...
A Government WhatsApp channel has been launched to help make information more easily accessible and shareable in the fight against COVID-19. Govt.NZ, which is free to use on any mobile device, will carry information and news for the public, businesses, healthcare providers, not for profits and local government. It can ...
The Government has announced a plan to enable the safe, orderly exit of tens of thousands of stranded foreign nationals from New Zealand during the current COVID-19 Alert Level 4 restrictions, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters has said. “When we moved into lockdown a week ago, the ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says the Government is delivering on its commitment to support general practice doctors and nurses, and pharmacies on the front-line of our fight against COVID-19. "For us to overcome COVID-19, we need community health services such as general practice and community pharmacy to step up ...
Justice Susan Thomas has been appointed Chief High Court Judge, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. She replaces Justice Geoffrey Venning who has resigned from the position. David Parker paid tribute to Justice Venning, who he said had stewarded the High Court very capably over the last five years. “On behalf ...
Businesses can start applying to their banks for loans under the Business Finance Guarantee Scheme set up to support the New Zealand economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re moving quickly to protect New Zealand businesses, jobs and the economy during this unprecedented global economic shock,” Finance Minister Grant Robertson said. ...
Work is underway looking at measures to speed up consents for development and infrastructure projects during the recovery from COVID 19, to provide jobs and stimulate our economy. Environment Minister David Parker said the COVID-19 pandemic is a serious global crisis that will have a wide ranging and lasting impact ...
Advance payments will be made to transport construction industry contractors to retain the workforce and ensure it is ready to quickly gear up to build projects which will be vital to New Zealand’s COVID-19 economic recovery, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today. He said keeping the workforce required to build ...
The Government has tasked a group of industry leaders to seek out infrastructure projects that are ready to start as soon as the construction industry returns to normal to reduce the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford and Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones say. The Infrastructure ...
Work to scale up the health system in preparation for COVID-19 was today outlined by Health Minister David Clark, as he reported back to the new Epidemic Response Committee. “We are well placed to contain the spread of COVID-19. We have taken early and decisive action at our borders, and ...
The Government is refining its COVID-19 essential business guidance to include the distribution of news publications for communities which are hard to reach. The Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media, Kris Faafoi, said the move was in recognition of the importance for New Zealanders who might be harder to ...
The Government is ensuring supermarkets can open on Easter Sunday so we can buy groceries, but stay closed on Good Friday allowing workers to take a break. This provides a balanced approach and ensures we avoid large queues that two days closure may cause. “Supermarkets will be able to open ...
Following the successful conclusion of the Building Partner Capacity (BPC) mission at Taji, New Zealand defence personnel are returning to New Zealand from Iraq, in accordance with the Cabinet decision made in June 2019, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Ron Mark announced today. “New Zealand is very ...
The State of National Emergency to help stop the spread of COVID-19 has been extended for a further seven days, Minister of Civil Defence Peeni Henare said. The initial declaration on March 25 lasted seven days and can be extended as many times as necessary. “Since we went into isolation ...
New Zealand’s ability to go hard and go early in the fight against COVID-19 has been underpinned by strong Government finances and the growing economy heading into this global pandemic, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. The Treasury today released the Crown financial statements for the eight months to the end ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says 36 new intensive care beds at Christchurch Hospital’s new Hagley building are being fast tracked so they are available for treatment of COVID-19 patients. The Ministry of Health is working with contractor CPB and Canterbury DHB to enable access to the hospital’s ICU, ...
The Government has fast-tracked up to $1 million to help Air New Zealand move urgent freight to and from New Zealand, with the first flight to Shanghai leaving tonight, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today. Phil Twyford says it’s crucial that trade in vital goods such as medical supplies and ...
New Zealand will temporarily remove tariffs on all medical and hygiene imports needed for the COVID-19 response. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker and Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi said today that the New Zealand Customs Service will apply tariff concessions to all diagnostic reagents and testing ...
Minister of Finance Grant Robertson has clarified that the changes to the wage subsidy scheme announced yesterday mean that employers should be passing on the full subsidy to workers, except in the case where the person’s normal income is less than the level of the subsidy. “We still want employers ...
Medical face masks from the national reserve supply are now being distributed to District Health Boards, while at the same time local production is being ramped up. Yesterday more than 640,000 masks were sent to DHBS – that is an immediate two week supply, with more to follow in coming ...
The Government has made modifications to the wage subsidy scheme to ensure people don’t lose their jobs during the national lockdown. These changes will soften the impact of COVID-19 on workers, families and businesses, and position them to exit the lockdown and look to recovery, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. ...
Farmers whose herds were culled in response to the outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis will be able to minimise the tax treatment of their income in some circumstances. Revenue Minister Stuart Nash says Cabinet has agreed to change the law. It means farmers may be eligible to spread their income over ...
A $27 million dollar package, effective immediately, is being provided to social sector services and community groups to ensure they can continue to provide essential support to communities as we stay at home as a nation to stop the spread of COVID-19, Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni announced. “At ...
“The guilty plea today will provide some relief to the many people whose lives were shattered by what happened on March 15,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. “These guilty pleas and conviction bring accountability for what happened and also save the families who lost loved ones, those who were injured, ...
The Prime Minister is holding daily press conferences to update New Zealanders on the Government's response to COVID-19. Links to videos and transcripts of these updates below. These transcripts also include All of Government press conferences led by Director Ministry of Health's Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. 25 March: Live update from the Prime ...
Frontline Police numbers have broken through the 10,000 mark for the first time in history as officers step forward to keep the community safe during the COVID19 lockdown. “Two Police graduations in Auckland and Wellington in the past week have been conducted in unprecedented circumstances,” Police Minister Stuart Nash said. ...
Urgent legislation has been passed to support the package of economic and social measures needed to recover from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. “The COVID-19 Response (Taxation and Social Assistance Urgent Measures) Bill will cushion New Zealanders from the worst economic impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak,” said Revenue Minister ...
From tomorrow, Government support for farmers and growers affected by drought will be expanded and extended across the country, with access to Rural Assistance Payments (RAPS) available throughout the North Island, parts of the South Island and the Chatham Islands, Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced. “These challenging conditions have ...
Parliament has passed amendments to legislation that give the Secretary of Education stronger powers to act in the fight to limit the spread of COVID-19, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “They are part of a suite of changes passed under the COVID-19 Response (Urgent Management Measures) Legislation Bill,” Chris ...
Canada, Australia, Chile, Brunei and Myanmar have joined forces with New Zealand and Singapore by committing to keep supply chains open and remove any existing trade restrictive measures on essential goods, especially medical supplies, in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker today welcomed ...
Immediate freeze on rent increases Tenancies will not be terminated during the lock-down period, unless the parties agree, or in limited circumstances Tenants who had previously given notice can stay in their if they need to stay in the tenancy during the lock-down period Tenants will still be able to ...
As New Zealand unites to lock-down in the fight against COVID-19, the Finance Minister is urging all businesses and workers to stay connected over the next four weeks. “We understand the extreme pressure many businesses are under right now. I know most business owners think of their workers as family ...
A State of National Emergency has been declared across the country as the Government pulls out all the stops to curtail the spread of COVID-19. “Today we put in place our country’s second ever State of National Emergency as we fight a global pandemic, save New Zealanders’ lives and prevent ...
Mr Speaker I wish to make a Ministerial Statement under Standing Order 347 in relation to the recent declaration of a State of National Emergency. Having considered the advice of the Director Civil Defence Emergency Management, the Minister of Civil Defence declared a State of National Emergency for the whole of ...
People needing to travel on domestic flights, trains and Cook Strait ferries to get home before the country moves into level 4 lock-down tomorrow night will be able to continue using the passenger services until midnight on Friday, Transport Minister Phil Twyford said today. Domestic passenger services, particularly ferries, have ...
The Government, retail banks and the Reserve Bank are today announcing a major financial support package for home owners and businesses affected by the economic impacts of COVID-19. The package will include a six month principal and interest payment holiday for mortgage holders and SME customers whose incomes have been ...
By RNZ Pacific The number of people with Covid-19 in the Pacific continues to climb with French Polynesia hitting 40 cases, Guam now over 90 and the US state of Hawai’i suffering its third coronavirus death. In the past day, another person tested positive for Covid-19 in French Polynesia. ...
We needed a reasonable period of time to allow the recent surging wave of highly geared first home buyers to get financially comfortable. We didn’t get it, writes David Hargreaves of interest.co.nz.You know, I was really beginning to think (as well as hope) that we might just get away with it.By ‘it’ ...
Being stuck inside all day might be wearing you and your kids down, but there’s never been a better time to encourage them to pick up their musical instrument and get stuck into writing songs. Mike Chunn from Play It Strange explains how. Mums and dads and households with teenage children. ...
Siouxsie Wiles on the vitriolic correspondence she’s received since the Covid-19 outbreak struck, and the realities of communicating evidence.I recently received an email and text from someone telling me they are planning to email my boss, the University of Auckland vice chancellor. They are going to ask for me to ...
In our new series The Lockdown Letters, five of New Zealand’s best writers chronicle the days of Covid-19 alert level four. Today, Fiona Farrell.There’s a sign sticky-taped to the bakery window. Closed Until Further Notice. Stay Safe NZ and Be Kind. We will get through this!We all know where the words ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level four. The country is shut down, apart from essential services. For updated official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is funded by The Spinoff Members. To support this work, join The ...
With no Covid-19 cases and its economy desperate to restart, the Chathams is keen to go fishing again, writes Jim Kayes.It shouldn’t really be a surprise. They are, after all, ahead of New Zealand by 45 minutes.And though they are part of Wellington’s Rongotai electorate, the fiercely ...
Covid-19 is a real threat to older people, but these Central Otago seniors are embracing technology, experiencing no FOMO, and finding new ways to connect and share, finds Jill Herron When the full lockdown began on March 25 it meant the end of going for a swim, spa or to ...
Former editor of the Woman's Weekly, Nicky Pellegrino, bids farewell to the magazine that brought information and fun to generations of New Zealand women. All those stories. Gone. Stories about our politics, our health, our education, our aspirations. Stories about the houses we lived in and the gardens we grew, ...
As small businesses fight for their survival in the Covid-19 lockdown, it seems one of the country’s biggest retail landlords is not keen to share the pain. On the one side, you have Jonathan*. Jonathan runs a small business out of South Auckland’s Sylvia Park - New Zealand’s biggest mall. ...
On Friday night, the government quietly laid down some lockdown rules via a legal order under the Health Act. Law professor Andrew Geddis explains what it means for all of us (including David Clark). As the first week of level four lockdown unfolded, mounting questions grew as to just what was ...
The health and wellbeing of people working and being held inside our prisons needs to be a priority, writes JustSpeak director Tania Sawicki Mead. Kelvin Davis’s interview on The Hui last weekend made it clear that precautions taken by Corrections to stop the spread of Covid-19 will create an unprecedented restriction ...
Like countless New Zealanders stranded overseas, Wellingtonian Rosie O’Hagan will be braving authorities, airlines, airports and uncertainty to make it back from the other side of the world, writes Jim Kayes.Rosie O’Hagan hadn’t stepped outside for three weeks.When she finally did – around midnight on Friday ...
PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY:By David Robie A rather beautiful Guåhan legend is rather poignant in these stressed pandemic times. It is one about survival and cooperation. In ancient times, goes the story, a giant fish was eating great chunks out of this western Pacific island. The men used muscle ...
Simon Wren-Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford, raises good questions about Britain’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Some of them seem germane to this country’s response. Wren-Lewis posted his critique on his Mainly Macro blog under the heading Following the Science or a ...
Alex Casey speaks to a dream expert about why so many people are suddenly remembering their vivid and often horrible dreams. As the days begin to blur together and the only thing we get between sleeps is unimaginably horrible news and an embarrassing tootle around the block, it’s no surprise ...
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening.The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference. These may vary from the full day's numbers released in the Ministry of Health's spreadsheet of ...
Medical centres across the country are condensing services, moving online, and ushering in pandemic plans. Josie Adams assesses what it’s like to access and provide essential medical care under alert level four.On Monday, Sandra Russell woke up before dawn and drove to Milford to get her blood tested. She has ...
In our new series The Lockdown Letters, some of New Zealand’s best writers tell us what they’ve been up to in the days of Covid-19 alert level four. Today, writer and doctor Glenn Colquhoun, with the second of his Letters to Hone Tūwhare and his Travelling Band of Constant Companions. ...
ANALYSIS:By Haiqing Yu of RMIT University and Michael Keane of Curtin University China has gradually emerged out of its shadow of despair as the epicentre where the coronavirus pandemic started. Now, there is face saving required – as well as agenda-setting in the global power play. China played ...
Tech giant Google has released a giant global data set which shows how different countries are locking down, and which NZ regions are most compliant with its lockdown.A giant set of reports released by Google, created using its anonymised cellphone location data reveals the scale of human behaviour change the ...
Comedian Penny Ashton writes on the necessity of the arts, especially during lockdown.On March 22, everyone’s favourite fiscal bloodhounds, the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union, sent out a tweet in response to Creative New Zealand’s announcement that it will dedicate an emergency response package to helping New Zealand’s artists, in the ...
Wellington writer Philippa Swan’s new novel TheNight of All Souls is an homage to Pulitzer-winning and all-round fabulous American writer Edith Wharton. Wharton died in 1937 but, Swan writes, she’s very much of the moment. Nobody does social distancing like Wharton did. While Wharton was still comparatively young, she created the ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level four. The country is shut down, apart from essential services. For updated official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is funded by The Spinoff Members. To support this work, join The ...
Normally heaving year-round, Queenstown has ground to an eerie halt as Covid-19 cases rise and tourism income plummets, reports Paul Taylor. On a hill behind Queenstown's coronavirus Covid-19 community testing centre, the resort's iconic Skyline gondola sits motionless. More than 17 million people are estimated to have ridden the gondola ...
Are we drinking more in the lockdown? Hard to know, writes David Slack, but we’re certainly having to get creative about it. Almost every phone call I’ve answered this week has begun the same way: “You still off the drink, then?” Fair question. What a time to be not drinking. ...
Kiwi clinical psychologist Desiree Dickerson is stuck with her family in Spain and has written a guide in Nature: "Seven tips to manage your mental health and well-being during the Covid-19 outbreak." It’s Day 17 of the Covid-19 lockdown in Spain. In a small village on the Mediterranean coast, about ...
"Will our ills be cured? Will our feet carry us? For how long?": a short story set in Henderson by West Auckland writer Serie Barford.I learned to drive a tractor when I was a kid feeding out hay with my cousins on a dairy farm down the line. I ...
Without active testing in the community our Covid-19 picture isn’t complete, an epidemiologist says. David Williams reports. There are worse places to be self-isolating than Whakatāne, in the Bay of Plenty, says Bridget Robson, who lives on a two-acre block and keeps chickens. “We live in a beautiful part of ...
How do you hold a funeral service with the country in lockdown? Where there’s a will – and a tech-savvy uncle – there’s a way, Erin Kavanagh-Hall discovered.I was floating somewhere in the Cook Strait when I heard my grandfather’s funeral had been cancelled.I should elaborate. It was a Monday, ...
‘Stay in your bubble’ didn’t exist 100 years ago, but our ancestors would want us to know how essential it is to do so, says Jai Breitnauer.It was a warm but slightly grey January day in 2019 when I pulled the car over to the side of SH1, just south ...
David Clark’s misadventure in mountain biking was a stupid, but ultimately forgivable offence. The bigger problem is the continued uncertainty around what is and isn’t appropriate activity in lockdown, as Sam Sachdeva writes. Given the pressure he and his Cabinet colleagues are under, it is little surprise Health Minister David ...
Assessing the economic impact of Covid-19 requires a new approach to a problem economists have not encountered in modern times, writes Dr Kirdan Lees Covid-19 has presented quite a problem for economists. Containment policies that seek to flatten the Covid-19 curve or eliminate the virus, restrict economic activity. All governments ...
Every day at 1pm New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield announces precise figures on the number of confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 in the country. He is working on the best information available, and during this week the level of community transmission was put at around ...
Most of New Zealand's MPs are in lockdown just like the rest of us, confined to their neighbourhoods and stuck in their bubbles. Checkpoint called a few to ask them what they're doing. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Deery, Lecturer in Early Childhood Education, University of Melbourne “Stupid coronavirus!” I heard my six-year-old mumble while talking in her sleep. Earlier that day her swimming and basketball lessons were cancelled, a birthday party postponed, and she had to race with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tuffley, Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & CyberSecurity, Griffith University “Zoombombing” in case you haven’t heard, is the unsavoury practice of posting distressing comments, pictures or videos after gatecrashing virtual meetings hosted by the videoconferencing app Zoom. With hundreds of millions ...
Analysis - A leading epidemiologist says health authorities 'really have no idea' of the extent of community spread, Parliament's Epidemic Response Committee gets its teeth into what's going on during the lockdown and the horrendous economic imp ...
The fifth in our new series of charts, graphics and data visualisations by Chris McDowall, covering the Covid-19 epidemic within New Zealand. We’ll publish the latest set each day on The Spinoff.This work is entirely funded by the generosity of The Spinoff MembersInformation about confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 ...
The Finance Minister says struggling companies will be able to put some debt into hibernation, under new legislation unveiled today. Watch the latest government update here. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Lund, Commissioning Editor, The Conversation Editor’s note: The following is current as at April 3, 2020. Things are changing quickly so best to keep an eye on the latest information from WA Health, as well as the federal government.This article ...
During the challenges associated with lockdown, the Māori Party are congratulating Ngāti Ruanui and South Taranaki on the decision of the Court of Appeal, announced today, to stop Trans-Tasman Resources plans for risky seabed mining off the South ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sunanda Creagh, Head of Digital Storytelling What does the COVID-19 pandemic sound like? For this episode, Dallas Rogers – a senior lecturer in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney – asked academic colleagues from all over ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sven Gallasch, Lecturer in Law, Swinburne University of Technology “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion,” wrote Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (published in 1776), “but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the ...
Environment Minister David Parker has directed officials to find ways to fast-track consents for infrastructure and development projects. He says his goal is to help create a pipeline of projects so that some can start immediately once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted “so people can get back into work as fast ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin Spain and Switzerland top cases, countries converging. Chart by Keith Rankin.Spain and Switzerland top cases, countries converging. Chart by Keith Rankin.Of the larger European countries, Italy is now in third place for known cases per person in the population. Spain has overtaken Switzerland for ...
Contact tracing is a crucial part of the Covid-19 puzzle and technology might prove essential to scaling up New Zealand's tracing capacity, Marc Daalder reports With the lockdown reducing physical contact between members of the public and testing ramping up, the only missing piece of the Covid-19 puzzle is contact tracing. ...
Insolvency laws will be temporarily changed to allow troubled companies to trade while technically insolvent Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced changes to the Companies Act to allow companies to put their debts into "hibernation". Robertson said companies facing liquidity problems would have "safe harbour" from their normal insolvency duties ...
Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Ruanui and Te Kaahui o Rauru are celebrating the decision of the Court of Appeal, announced today, to stop Trans-Tasman Resources plans for risky seabed mining off the South Taranaki Bight. The Court of Appeal found that there ...
Bernard Hickey talks to Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr about a massive spike in US jobless claims, and they talk about an inspiring Kiwi app to fight Covid-19 globally. Guest, Pie Funds chief executive Mike Taylor also joins them to talk about the massive market swings and hopes for recovery. Bernard zooms out ...
Political commentators from the left and right sides of the political divide are questioning the powers being exercised by police during the nation-wide “lockdown”. The Asian Invasion 2019 blog draws attention to the warning sounded by former UK Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption when he challenged Covid-19 actions by British ...
Pacific Media Watch The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) has strongly condemned the shoot-to-kill order by President Rodrigo Duterte this week as a ‘dangerous’ opening to target and kill anyone in a public space. “We are raising the alarm in the international community on President ...
The Reserve Bank looks set to start buying council bonds as well as Government bonds to unfreeze financial markets and allow councils to defer rates and jointly invest in infrastructure with the central Government, Dileepa Fonseka reports In what would be another unprecedented move to calm financial markets and help ...
Four PhD students engaged a clinical psychologist to help them navigate an uncertain time in their studies. They share their findings here.As four PhD students from Massey University’s Joint Centre for Disaster Research we, like many others, can’t stop reading and talking about the unfolding events that have gripped our ...
The SpinoffBy Ashleigh Rushton, Lisa McLaren, Marion Tan & Sara Harrison
Covid-19 testing of the wider population is on the cards as World Health Organisation research shows people are most contagious within their first few days of being infected Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield says Covid-19 carriers are highly infectious when they show few signs of carrying the virus. People were ...
Z Energy is the latest company to cut its dividend payout and start talking to its banks about strengthening its finances. Chief executive Mike Bennetts said the company, the largest fuel retailer in the country, had been battered by a range of issues over the past 18 months, and was ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Kang, Associate professor, University of Technology Sydney Young people in Australia are among the fastest-growing group to contract COVID19. According to the Department of Health, there are now more cases in Australia among people aged 20 – 29 years than any ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Pattinson, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland Getting a good night’s sleep can be difficult at the best of times. But it can be even harder when you’re anxious or have something on your mind – a global pandemic, for example. ...
Journalist and Great Barrier Island resident Lindsay Wright reflects on outer gulf pandemic preparedness. Hardy locals can tough it out but Auckland bach owners and boaties should keep their distance. Aotea Great Barrier, the easternmost island in the Hauraki Gulf, are undergoing a Covid-19-inspired population flood. Great Barrier has scenery that makes ...
The Pharmaceutical Society of New Zealand is delighted that the government has moved quickly to provide an initial financial support package for pharmacy. The $15 million package was paid this week to pharmacy contract holders. Pharmaceutical Society president ...
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening.The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference and are "as of 9am" of the day. There were 71 new cases of Covid-19 in ...
A new poem by Wellington poet and bookseller Ash Davida Jane. washed up! it gets tiring pushing the fire alarm every nightbut things keep catching on fireor sometimes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Foster, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney Our earliest vertebrate (animals with backbones) ancestors laid eggs, but over millions of years of evolution, some species began to give birth to live young. There is a traditional dichotomy in vertebrate reproduction: species ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Foster, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney Our earliest vertebrate (animals with backbones) ancestors laid eggs, but over millions of years of evolution, some species began to give birth to live young. There is a traditional dichotomy in vertebrate reproduction: species ...
Welcome to the second edition of our lockdown Top 10s. A reminder that this chart has nothing to do with sales or launches or the publishing cycle; these are just books the Unity team love – and this week it’s westerns, full of big skies and long rides and showdowns.AUCKLANDAll ...
Wellington Mayor Andy Foster’s plan to cover revenue shortfalls through borrowing without cutting low priority spending is immoral, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union . “Businesses and households across the country are meeting financial challenges ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin John Brophy, Emeritus Professor of Creative writing, University of Melbourne “Katrina, I had in mind a prayer, but only this came,” Bruce Dawe wrote to his infant daughter, new-born, in intensive care, her life in the balance, declaring as poets must ...
The shock closure of Bauer NZ – and with it all of the country’s current affairs magazines – is a stark reminder of the fragile state of local media, writes Mel Bunce, the author of a book on the subject.It is a dark week for journalism in New Zealand, with ...
Join Leonie Hayden as she works through the first four weeks of Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy.Rāmere/FridayWe made it to the end of week one e te whānau. It wasn’t that hard! In fact it was… Māori made easy.To end our week of pronunciation practice we’re going to revisit everything we ...
India faces more challenges battling Covid-19 than any other country in the world. With 1.3 billion inhabitants, hundreds of different languages spoken, and an estimated 80% of the workforce daily wage earners currently without jobs, it could be a recipe for disaster.I’ve been living in India for more than three ...
By Sri Krishnamurthi of Pacific Media Watch The Vanuatu government is using the Covid-19 to impose draconian measures and authoritarian rule by end of last month. Wholesale censorship of all Covid-19 related content has been instituted. Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) took the extraordinary step to ...
Open mike 06/11/2012 
. . April 4: Day 10 of living in lock-down… I wake up to a fine Saturday morning which normally would be like an early Christmas. But it’s Day 10 of Level 4 Lock Down. What will my fellow New Zealanders be doing on a day like this – staying ...1 hour ago
Some time during the night we went over the 850,000 views mark. We might have had our millionth view by the end of this year – certainly by early next year. Most of the people involved in Redline spent years and years producing various small left-wing papers and selling them ...1 hour ago
Comfortably, in the very first round, with an impressive 56% of the votes.I wonder, did members of the Shadow Cabinet start tweeting their resignations during Starmer's victory speech, or is that only a trick the right pull?It is odd how all the talk of how the next leader "needs to ...2 hours ago
One of the key voices in this extraordinary time in which we live is that of University of Otago epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker. Philip Matthews did an an excellent job this weekend of capturing the way he became the man for this moment in a profile for The Press.But one ...3 hours ago
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addressed the nation today about the decline in daylight New Zealand has been experiencing over the previous few months. She said “As many of you will notice, our attempts to stem the dwindling of the daylight over the last few months have been completely ...18 hours ago
As the first week of Level Four lockdown unfolded, mounting questions grew as to just what was (and was not) allowed under its “rules”. Partly these were driven by some apparently contradictory messages from different authority figures and explanations carried in the media. Partly they reflected a somewhat sketchy legal basis ...23 hours ago
We must root out the traitors among us! ...2 days ago
In order to meet our 2050 carbon target and do our bit to avoid making the Earth uninhabitable, New Zealand needs to decarbonise our economy, replacing fossil fuels with electricity in the energy, industrial and transport sectors. The good news is that it will mean cheaper power for all of ...2 days ago
As Aotearoa enters week two of lockdown, it’s clear we’re all still working out what our “bubbles” look like and how to stay in them to stop the spread of Covid-19. New to the government’s Covid-19 website is some good guidance for people living in apartment blocks. Recent decades have ...2 days ago
Resuming Normal Service: The Republican Party's nominee for in 1920, Warren Harding, promised the American people: “not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration”. If she wishes to remain our prime minister, then Jacinda Ardern will offer New Zealanders the same.HOW EDUCATED AMERICA snickered when the ...2 days ago
I haven’t done a huge amount in the last few days. I’m reading The Poppy War and I’ve sort of poked at a couple of games – I started SOMA but I’m a wimp and I quit while in the first room after the brain scan. I might try it ...3 days ago
46 Articles Physical science of global warming & effects Global response of evapotranspiration ratio to climate conditions and watershed characteristics in a changing environment Greenhouse effect: the relative contributions of emission height and total absorption Observations & observational methods of global warming & effects Climate change induced a ...4 days ago
Image credit: Diamond Harbour School Blogs I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or ... 4 days ago
The Covid-19 saga will no doubt produce many twists and turns for us before it is finally brought to an end. But one thing it has shown us – and what comfort it should bring us – is that our country’s government is in good hands. I am not thinking ...4 days ago
The following statement was released on March 28 by the National Network on Cuba, a coalition of 40 groups, based in the United States. In recent weeks, Cuba has deployed hundreds of medical providers to over a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, as well as to their neighbors in Latin ...5 days ago
Yesterday, New Zealand recorded its first Covid-19 related death on the West Coast. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be the only fatality, with the virus now being found in every region of the country.However despite the significant danger, people are still unfortunately breaching lockdown rules.There’s really only one main very ...6 days ago
The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed ...1 week ago
Society-wise, aside from the specific morbidity shall we say of the medically-oriented aspects of this COVID-19 crisis, what is unfolding before the world is in more than one way an instructive study of humanity and reactions to a high intensity, high stress environment in real time. Friends, we are at ...1 week ago
Right now low waged and insecure workers are feeling the economic brunt of the looming #Covid19 Recession. In response legal advocate Toby Cooper* and hospitality and worker’s rights advocate Chloe Ann-King, are putting together a series of legal blogs about your employment rights: In this legal blog we outline some ...1 week ago
Foreign Minister Winston Peters says getting New Zealanders back home and other travellers out of the country is "a nightmare for our embassies, consuls, and staff around the world". Speaking to NewstalkZB's Mike Hosking, the Foreign Minister said that he gave a clear message to people travelling overseas that they ...2 days ago
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...1 week ago
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The scale of what we face right now is unlike anything we have ever seen before. Overcoming it is our common purpose. ...2 weeks ago
The Government will be introducing legislation to make changes to the Companies Act to help companies facing insolvency due to COVID-19 to remain viable and keep New Zealanders in jobs. The temporary changes include: Giving directors of companies facing significant liquidity problems because of COVID-19 a ‘safe harbour’ from insolvency ...2 days ago
By RNZ Pacific The number of people with Covid-19 in the Pacific continues to climb with French Polynesia hitting 40 cases, Guam now over 90 and the US state of Hawai’i suffering its third coronavirus death. In the past day, another person tested positive for Covid-19 in French Polynesia. ...47 mins ago
We needed a reasonable period of time to allow the recent surging wave of highly geared first home buyers to get financially comfortable. We didn’t get it, writes David Hargreaves of interest.co.nz.You know, I was really beginning to think (as well as hope) that we might just get away with it.By ‘it’ ...53 mins ago
With no Covid-19 cases and its economy desperate to restart, the Chathams is keen to go fishing again, writes Jim Kayes. It shouldn’t really be a surprise. They are, after all, ahead of New Zealand by 45 minutes. And though they are part of Wellington’s Rongotai electorate, the fiercely ...7 hours ago
Covid-19 is a real threat to older people, but these Central Otago seniors are embracing technology, experiencing no FOMO, and finding new ways to connect and share, finds Jill Herron When the full lockdown began on March 25 it meant the end of going for a swim, spa or to ...7 hours ago
Former editor of the Woman's Weekly, Nicky Pellegrino, bids farewell to the magazine that brought information and fun to generations of New Zealand women. All those stories. Gone. Stories about our politics, our health, our education, our aspirations. Stories about the houses we lived in and the gardens we grew, ...7 hours ago
As small businesses fight for their survival in the Covid-19 lockdown, it seems one of the country’s biggest retail landlords is not keen to share the pain. On the one side, you have Jonathan*. Jonathan runs a small business out of South Auckland’s Sylvia Park - New Zealand’s biggest mall. ...7 hours ago
Like countless New Zealanders stranded overseas, Wellingtonian Rosie O’Hagan will be braving authorities, airlines, airports and uncertainty to make it back from the other side of the world, writes Jim Kayes. Rosie O’Hagan hadn’t stepped outside for three weeks. When she finally did – around midnight on Friday ...21 hours ago
Simon Wren-Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford, raises good questions about Britain’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Some of them seem germane to this country’s response. Wren-Lewis posted his critique on his Mainly Macro blog under the heading Following the Science or a ...22 hours ago
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening. The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference. These may vary from the full day's numbers released in the Ministry of Health's spreadsheet of ...1 day ago
Normally heaving year-round, Queenstown has ground to an eerie halt as Covid-19 cases rise and tourism income plummets, reports Paul Taylor. On a hill behind Queenstown's coronavirus Covid-19 community testing centre, the resort's iconic Skyline gondola sits motionless. More than 17 million people are estimated to have ridden the gondola ...1 day ago
Are we drinking more in the lockdown? Hard to know, writes David Slack, but we’re certainly having to get creative about it. Almost every phone call I’ve answered this week has begun the same way: “You still off the drink, then?” Fair question. What a time to be not drinking. ...1 day ago
Kiwi clinical psychologist Desiree Dickerson is stuck with her family in Spain and has written a guide in Nature: "Seven tips to manage your mental health and well-being during the Covid-19 outbreak." It’s Day 17 of the Covid-19 lockdown in Spain. In a small village on the Mediterranean coast, about ...1 day ago
"Will our ills be cured? Will our feet carry us? For how long?": a short story set in Henderson by West Auckland writer Serie Barford. I learned to drive a tractor when I was a kid feeding out hay with my cousins on a dairy farm down the line. I ...1 day ago
Without active testing in the community our Covid-19 picture isn’t complete, an epidemiologist says. David Williams reports. There are worse places to be self-isolating than Whakatāne, in the Bay of Plenty, says Bridget Robson, who lives on a two-acre block and keeps chickens. “We live in a beautiful part of ...1 day ago
David Clark’s misadventure in mountain biking was a stupid, but ultimately forgivable offence. The bigger problem is the continued uncertainty around what is and isn’t appropriate activity in lockdown, as Sam Sachdeva writes. Given the pressure he and his Cabinet colleagues are under, it is little surprise Health Minister David ...1 day ago
Assessing the economic impact of Covid-19 requires a new approach to a problem economists have not encountered in modern times, writes Dr Kirdan Lees Covid-19 has presented quite a problem for economists. Containment policies that seek to flatten the Covid-19 curve or eliminate the virus, restrict economic activity. All governments ...2 days ago
Most of New Zealand's MPs are in lockdown just like the rest of us, confined to their neighbourhoods and stuck in their bubbles. Checkpoint called a few to ask them what they're doing. ...2 days ago
During the challenges associated with lockdown, the Māori Party are congratulating Ngāti Ruanui and South Taranaki on the decision of the Court of Appeal, announced today, to stop Trans-Tasman Resources plans for risky seabed mining off the South ...2 days ago
Environment Minister David Parker has directed officials to find ways to fast-track consents for infrastructure and development projects. He says his goal is to help create a pipeline of projects so that some can start immediately once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted “so people can get back into work as fast ...2 days ago
Contact tracing is a crucial part of the Covid-19 puzzle and technology might prove essential to scaling up New Zealand's tracing capacity, Marc Daalder reports With the lockdown reducing physical contact between members of the public and testing ramping up, the only missing piece of the Covid-19 puzzle is contact tracing. ...2 days ago
Insolvency laws will be temporarily changed to allow troubled companies to trade while technically insolvent Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced changes to the Companies Act to allow companies to put their debts into "hibernation". Robertson said companies facing liquidity problems would have "safe harbour" from their normal insolvency duties ...2 days ago
Bernard Hickey talks to Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr about a massive spike in US jobless claims, and they talk about an inspiring Kiwi app to fight Covid-19 globally. Guest, Pie Funds chief executive Mike Taylor also joins them to talk about the massive market swings and hopes for recovery. Bernard zooms out ...2 days ago
The Reserve Bank looks set to start buying council bonds as well as Government bonds to unfreeze financial markets and allow councils to defer rates and jointly invest in infrastructure with the central Government, Dileepa Fonseka reports In what would be another unprecedented move to calm financial markets and help ...2 days ago
Covid-19 testing of the wider population is on the cards as World Health Organisation research shows people are most contagious within their first few days of being infected Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield says Covid-19 carriers are highly infectious when they show few signs of carrying the virus. People were ...2 days ago
Z Energy is the latest company to cut its dividend payout and start talking to its banks about strengthening its finances. Chief executive Mike Bennetts said the company, the largest fuel retailer in the country, had been battered by a range of issues over the past 18 months, and was ...2 days ago
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Kudos to whomever made the $50K donation to Wellington Rape Crisis : )
You’re a star!
Excellent!
Excellent indeed! At the same time we note that private donations are compensating for government negligence and the government counts on this.
Sadly this is the way it will remain. Still…tax deductable (Wellington Rape Crisis is a registered charity and they run a tight ship so books in order). Vote with your wallet, I say! Do you prefer a faceless government servant deciding which organisations get funding …… OR….. do you prefer to allocate funds yourself? Easy choice for me đ
I prefer that the government provides these essential services rather than relying on the good will of the rich which always results in there not being enough of the essential services.
Yes, I do agree with Dr T and DTB that these services should be paid for and provided by the government.
Since around 2000, from being in opposition to being in government, the members of the current administration have gone up and down the country and chanted, from every which and where, the same meme, “Cut red tape this, cut red tape that! OSH this, OSH that. They are preventing progress! Let’s remove the obstacles to progress …! Get government out of the way! Reduce costs here, reduce costs there! The market must be given a chance to self regulate!”
Sadly, it would appear, it has needed a tragedy to stop Key and his cohorts in their tracks… and now they appear to be ducking for cover. Shame on them.
+1.
Slagging OSH went hand-in-hand with slagging Labour for being PC. Â Saying the term OSH in a sneering manner was a call-sign for tories. Â Â Many radio jocks and many business leaders contributed to a toxic attitude towards doing tasks/projects in a careful and considered way.Â
+1 yes well said Logi97 & KhandallaMan,
They frame their approach so that people are fooled into going along with them, “Oh that sounds good” and the purposes of any “red tape” go by the way-side. Good to make the connection. We can add “streamlining” to the list of words they use for that purpose too.
It would be nice to see some commentators reclaim the argument about the necessity and prudence of having ‘red tape’ for the benefit, protection and security of life and limb. This now is the time to start voicing this.
It would be just as good to see some commentators front-foot and strongly dismiss and damn accusations that ‘red tape’ is about being PC, nanny state, bureaucratic, costly, bad for business, bla bla bla neobla-ism.
It would be even better to see legally, morally and socially responsible business people and corporations – on the same side with workers, looking out for the interests of workers – speak out in defence of, and argue for, the need to have ‘red tape’.
The best standards and practices for workers are also best for employers, markets and businesses.
+1 Jim Nald
“It would be just as good to see some commentators front-foot and strongly dismiss and damn accusations that âred tapeâ is about being PC, nanny state, bureaucratic, costly, bad for business, bla bla bla neobla-ism.”
Â
Yes, that is a role for Labour. Â Unfortunately Labour abdicated that responsibility when the inner few decided that we should appeal to the light blues. Â When Phil Goff (ably advised by Shearer’s current advisors) apologied for Labour being perceived as “politically correct”‘Â Â he ceded the high ground to those who knocked OSH. Â
Labour has to get back to sticking it’s neck above the parapet on issues that effect workers, women, children, minorities and the defenceless. Â When it resorts to mimicking the themes of the powerful and the yob-mob it has lost its way. That happened when Labour apologised at the confence in Rotorua in Sept ’09.Â
Â
++1 Jim Nald, thoroughly agree
KM and BL
Could we also replace the words ‘radio jocks’ with ‘radio dicks’? Its seems more accurate.
That reminds me of this post:
Dunnokeyo reckons the word gay means weird. Leaving aside for a moment how insulting that definition is, lets look at the other definition he used to defend his homophobic outburst; the Oxford dictionary. Obviously Key never actually looked it up, because there’s no way he would agree with the example they give for the word’s use!
Â
I think you’ll find what he’s doing there is lying, TRP.
Rhino pointed out this other lie last night too:
Asked at his post-Cabinet press conference whether he was homophobic, Mr Key said: âNo, Iâm voting for gay marriage, Iâm hardly homophobic â I led the charge on it.â
It seems Key wants to take credit for having “led the charge on” marriage equality, in spite of the whole country knowing that he’s not Louisa Wall.
Not only does this blatant lie come hot on the heels of lying about which way he voted on the liquor purchase age, it’s also a disgraceful attempt at the traditional bigot’s fallback “but some of my best friends are (x)” defense.
Hopefully ‘traditional bigots’ will decide they don’t want to vote for the man who ‘led the charge’ on ‘weird’ marriage. Good news for the Conservative Party?
Batshit Key, the media whore and shameless, lying self-publicist, squeeked out about gay marriage, wanting to quickly gatecrash into the halo effect generated by Obama’s socially enlightened prior announcement.
Louisa Wall did the correct thing with the opportunity of a private member’s bill to follow through on the socially just thing to do.
Batshit Key now needs to be held account for what he said.
And as leader of a party of many Nasties, this is an opportunity for him to demonstrate true leadership by persuading each one of his party MPs* to exercise their individual conscience votes with their conscience for discriminated individuals.
*MPs – whether they are gay, stray or sway (or whether they are out or not)
As best I can recall, in the first instance Key did not support gay marriage.
I concur Dr Terry. Without bothering to Google check, Key is simply indulging in another brainfade…
The irony of course is that those who Key “represents”, are in fact far beyond “weird”, so perhaps this is JK being somewhat lucid.
Why are you bothering yourself over use of the word, when you can’t get your head around the real problems!
Yes its inappropriate, however its par for the course, its a non-event!
I think any event so to speak where the PM shows the world what a complete idiot he is should be highlighted.
John Key homophobe
The ignorant PM dug himself even deeper into the batshit yesterday when he said; “gay just means weird”…
Here’s an idea, let’s call a bigot a bigot.
Dunnokeyo denial plan (translated into coherent English):
I don’t think anything was said;
Something might have been said but I wasn’t responsible for it;
You can’t prove I said it;
I didn’t use those exact words;
Somebody overheard/secretly recorded the private conversation I had with 300 attendees over a PA system;
I was using the words according to the hitherto unknown definition I just made up now;
It was Opposite Day when I said that.Â
Just listening to Melbourne Cup pre race reportage on commercial radio, could have sworn it was Paddy Gower talking (bollocks) about the US elections.
Its going to go down to the wire…
Close race…
Favourite to win…
The race that stops a Nation….
On TV 3 this morning more Planet Key Speak re Beckham.
Dunnokeyo notes a “hearsay” report of something he said in private (???).
“But did you say it ?” presses the TV 3 person in response to this hint of denial.
“I’m not going to ‘characterise’ that…….” replies Dunnokeyo.
Planet Key for “Truth…truth…truth…what the fuck is that ?”
Never mind…yet a further example of prime minister as a devious, cynical bullshitter. Public consciousness of shit mountain continues to build.
And Stuffs take on Key is just Horseshit.
The Heralds is just Last coupla Days Bullshit Re Heated
And the Blame game has started.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10845396
What is it with Key ?? He should have exploded in the biggest pile of shit ever.
David H
Yesterday! In a shower of sparks that also made a loud raspberry sound followed by a short percussion.
Accrding to a tweet reported in a front page Guardian piece “John Key is quickly becoming to New Zealand what Borat was to Kazakhstan.”
About sums it up.
[fixed link – r0b]
Thanks for that Bill
đ
That page is now gone!!!!
http://bat-bean-beam.blogspot.co.nz/
Okay I’m a groupie. GT on ‘Bat Bean Beam’ draws the connection between tools for managing blogs, news groups, and other social media, and drone warfare.
…The CIA will never run out of high-level targets. The internet will never run out of trolls. This is simply because should either of those categories be emptied, the database would fill them again with the people previously defined as mid-level targets, or a nuisance. The danger of terrorism or insurgency will never disappear in the same way that online social interactions will never become perfectly smooth. This is why the kill list and the kill file are not to be understood as temporary solutions but rather as permanent features, a way not just of dealing with concrete problems but of imagining and seeing the world…
I am really glad that The Standard makes minimal use of banning and the other more insidious silencing technologies such as like-dislike scales. I find it worrying that more and more in these kinds of these media, it is possible to almost never hear alternative views. Even whole subjects can disappear entirely, fresh perspectives, any uncomfortable voices, memories or thoughts, all are smoothed away before they can even impinge on anyone’s consciousness.
This at the same time as whanau and social groups are increasingly batoning down the hatchets against out-group members, and our communities are slipping into survival mode.
Actual Link
.
Cut the “red tape” meme has led to, among others, these deaths at Pike River and tens of thousands of leaking homes.
The recent proposal to do similar regulation-cutting to the heavy trucking industry ……….. would anyone like to predict the outcome of such a proposal?
And note how even National had to institute a bunch of “red tape” in order to help secure the finance company sector and protect investors after SCF, Hanover, etc.
Yep, methinks the right wing religion of smaller regulation, freer markets, more private enterprise involvement etc etc has without doubt passed its time now.
The tide is now no longer drifting at the pleasant sandy high tide beach, it is now well on the way out exposing the mud flats and the detritus that had previously been covered by the tide.
What’s that saying about geting exposed by an outgoing tide? Well, that entire political philosophy is lying stinked up on the mud flats with no togs. Think Brownlee Key and English. End.
What it shows is that the people who are actually directing NZs “sovereign parliament”, have managed, over decades to completely corrupt the systems that are needed for societies, and communities to function well.
What we are currently seeing is the latest outputs of that corruption!
umm… profits unfettered by beastly considerations such as health and safety for a few
and higher likelihood of injury and death for many more….
Or it could be described like this …… 45 tonne unregistered truck crushes elderly lady.
yes, I think your description has more impact
đ
Does the elderly lady have any connection to the successive governments she voted in during her life that created an environment that allowed her to fill her house full of things transported by trucks and feed herself with food transported by trucks? Did she vote for people who destroyed the railways, with the smugness of an armchair ideologue? Did the woman, at some point in her life, know she ran the risk or did it come as a complete surprise when she bought a retirement home on a busy highway route?
Are the public responsible for the actions of the masters they vote for and the ideas they arrange their lives around, or can they cast off their actions entirely onto any number of random ministers?
You raise a good point of debate – in that voters need to be engaged in what they are really voting for however your point omits the role of trust and the role of someone in government, with which that trust is reasonably based on also the role of “authority” and how people relate to that, in fact the very role of government in the first place.
A political party proposes a way forward, people trust that the consequences of such have been soundly thought out. If everyone has to double guess and think deeply on each proposal, then half the point of having representatives has been lost. i.e. not everyone wants to be thinking about these things in depth; that is why we elect people to do that for us.
Sadly, the time for relying on these people to be taking their role conscientiously is over and we can no longer afford to have such beliefs. This is the message that needs to get out to the general public, once more people start pressuring government to take their role seriously again, they might start doing their jobs properly and then perhaps we can start to trust them again.
blue leopard
I don’t notice much attempt at political discussion by others. There are some comments that come from deeply held prejudices and all events that are received and remembered in their minds are then shaped to fit those prejudices and reinforce them. I don’t think most people engage in the democratic process of critical thinking about means and ends which is our responsibility if we want to live in a democracy. I was just the same when I was younger, there was no role model of active thinker on politics in my life to follow. I think its the same for most. What to do about this?
The aim would be to engage just 100K new people to Left Wing politics. Aged 16 and up.
In such a scenario the Right would almost never win again (oohhh McFlock!).
lol
  Â
The old “if more people supported us, we’d be more popular” tautology.
   Â
The number of meetings I’ve been in where plans have been hatched to “engage with [segment or donor XXX]” is large. The number of successful socialist revolutions in NZ in that time period: 0.00000
   Â
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And remember that only one dude could walk on water (ninja lore notwithstanding).Â
In that case perhaps the common factor for failure is you McFlock. With your outlook it’s not a surprise.
lol
   Â
Well, let me know how your 100k-strong youth organisation goes. I’ll be looking out for them leafleting at the next election…
You’re mad McFlock. Why would you consider voting for the Alliance for instance if not to help them build a 100,000 strong voting base???
By the way, I said nothing about a “youth” organisation. Better keep your imagination in check mate. It seems you are reading a lot into what I write which is not there.
Leafletting lol your strategies really would be a failure.
Because I agree with their policies. Which is an entirely separate issue to how successful they are, or I think they’ll be. Maybe if the Alliance get 1% lab/greens would recognise the demand and take a step to the left. Who knows?
    Â
Hey, I’d love it if the Alliance had a half-million strong voting base. But anyone can say “we will engage x-hundred thousand people”. Actually getting more than thirty is the challenge, and only comes from hard work: entertaining and persuasive speakers on the hustings, doorknocking, social media, and indeed walking around in the rain delivering thousand of leaflets. And no, social media does not remove that work.
   Â
Which takes us back to plaintive cries in meetings of a dozen folk, the mournful refrain “why don’t people vote for / support us?”Â
  Â
As for reading a lot into what you write, the problem is that in order to turn what you write into a coherent and realistic plan, lots and lots of holes need to be filled in.Â
If you want to walk on water you got to get out of the boat.
spread that left wing thought
đ
I don’t think most people think, full stop. There is likely to be heard from many “When’s the next footy match”. In other words, so very much discussion centres upon trivia rather than upon the huge issues going on all around us.
@Prism,
Yes, I agree with your comments, and I have in the past got rather annoyed about people not engaging with politics (!), yet I realise this is unfair, and I have to remind myself that not everyone has the same interests, most are very busy and people do things in a variety of ways to help improve “the way things are”.
As to what to do about this. “ummm” is the first thing that comes to mind!
Then the standard criticism that arises of our media; information sources.
It is my experience (and from what I’ve read too) that when one meets up with a person with a real interest in political issues and critical thinking, this what sparks interest in another. This can be a real life person, and it can also be an article in a paper, or books and now, on the internet too. The issue being, the more people read banal propaganda, the more they switch off. This was my experience, a thought that politics was simply mediocre and compromised. Then coming across books that relayed intelligently presented “connected” arguments which made me realise that there really was a purpose behind all the banality that is presented to us.
I guess the best thing that any one person can do is share a passion for critical thinking when one has the opportunity to (sometimes this involves speaking out when there is pressure to remain silent) and I think that an optimism that things can change positively when there are enough people involved is also a very important thing to impart to people. All of this requires going against some of our cultural attitudes, which I believe are pretty anti politics, keep your head down, don’t complain…etc.
I really do think that there needs to be an information source in print or on TV that imparts information on this level and I am unclear as to why this hasn’t occurred yet. Perhaps a bit to do with what Nicky Hagar’s Bruce Jesson Speech touched on, left-wing people have been disempowered?
Time to institute charges of corporate manslaughter and corporate grevious bodily harm which can be laid against directors and executive management.
Think a lot of things would improve if we simply removed all protections from “legal persons” aka corporations and give them protections on a case by case basis depending upon how much of a public service they were providing, this would effectively remind people of the reasons the protections were devised for corporations in the first place.
And shareholders too.
If you want to make money off other peoples labour you should at least make sure everything possible is done to ensure their safety.
Shareholders should know how slack the governance and management of the companies they invest in is but deliberately decide to ignore it unless the dividends fall.
It would be amazing how corporate behaviour would change if people through the whole ownership/governance/management chain were held accountable for their actions.
CV, Why not the owners, the shareholders ?
Because people with more cash than they need would only give it to enterprises where their liability was limited to the amount of cash they put in.
Limited liability companies distance the owners from the consequences of their actions.
If you could end up supporting the family of a man killed by poor safety measures in a mine you partly owned you would think very hard before investing and you would insist on good safety.
Because the Board of Directors have existing statutory responsibilities for governance and direction of executive management.
You have to remember that for widely held firms, the “owners” may be a hundred thousand people with KiwiSaver accounts.
Whereas the ten people in the Board Room have far more day to day and week to week power and influence over the company.
I read some where that the Miners union knew the mine wasn’t safe.
How come they didn’t kick up more of a stink, isn’t that their job?
You read somewhere the turgid stench that flies out your own arse BM? Yeah! We already knew that.
Can’t comment on the specifics of blame you’d like to attribute, but bear in mind that Unions were designed to be transitional devices, not static everlasting organisations. If Unions in NZ crossed the line that they were theoretically designed to cross, we’d have our long awaited revolution. The reality is that they presently contribute to keeping our population well fed and protected, but to do that they need to be collaborating with the thing they supposedly must overthrow. National or Labour, more or less regulation? Deaths, or a series of occasional serious injury? Work, or poverty and revolution? Which is better and what is the question we’re all avoiding?
Yeah basically. For the unions to truly succeed they would have to accept that their role would be much less needed.
@BM
“I read some where that the Miners union knew the mine wasnât safe.”
Yes, I heard of someone who chose not to work in that mine because of this knowledge
“How come they didnât kick up more of a stink, isnât that their job?”
This is the hidden “cost” of low employment, poor working conditions and low pay as well as a basic trust in employer’s concern over the welfare of their staff.
Although people “knew” the mine was unsafe, or suspected as much, there would be a basic “trust” that it “would be alright”, a person might consider that they were being paranoid and that their boss ultimately wouldn’t risk their workers lives.
This line of reasoning would be all the more likely when there are few jobs around and many poorly paid ones. i.e. the other option is to what? not work and not be able to keep your family in good health? Knowing the unemployment benefit is a trap, a person who quit their job wouldn’t be entitled to an unemployment benefit anyway and such an option isn’t even considered an option for a lot of people, due to both/either their value system &/or the fact that they have a family to support and welfare isn’t sufficient for that.
Isn’t that the advantage about Unions, strength in numbers, nobody would have to quit.
Everyone downs tools for a week unless the safety concerns get sorted.
Many of the workers were contractors who the Commission said did not have the required training to carry out the tasks management gave them. Contractors are not usually associated with Unions, so it’s doubtful any strike would have been effective. The Union workers would have simply been replaced by contractors, with much applause from Brownlee and Wilkinson.
It’s good that you’re advocating for more Union powers to ensure workplace safety BM… Perhaps Slater, Farrar and the rest of the Union bashing sycophants might like to hear about your ideas?
Blind Monetarist some miners just up and left but in New Zealand the right wing have hobbled unions one of the first pieces of legislation by your shonkey led govt was to stop unions free access to the work place 2008 followed by Kate wilkinsons shelving of the recommendations of the labour parties report on mining safety 2009 preceded by Mad max bradfords sacking of mine inspectors 1998 preceeded by bill birchs gutting of mine safety rules 1992 that had been built up over the previous century.
Not trying to shift the blame their Bob.
The Labour party was born on the coast out of concern for mine safety and workers rights!
BM, the report I read was that miners, not the unions so much, new that it was unsafe. Kudos to ABC Aussie for comprehensive public service broadcasting coverage:
Â
Wouldn’t surprise me if Pike River ran a blacklist. If you were an employee or contractor who caused too much trouble, you were never hired again.
I thought the worker were being paid bonuses to meet targets?
BM
You’re like those guys in the comedy routine acting out simple-minded types spotting cars on a motorway, ooh look there’s another one. You question, someone answers, and it just flows right past you without entering your brain, and you repeat the question later on with the same result. I think you are an example of the snowfall effect that I put forward in Open Mike I think on 6/11.
The poor old miners got caught in a moral hazard that existed for miners in Emile Zola’s time. They want to make a living, have housing, and every time they delay production for safety reasons they hurt the company, it’s profitability and their jobs. In Zola’s time their safety was their own responsibility and I understand they had to shore up the passages and support the ceiling themselves.
Read about it and learn – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germinal_(novel)
It seems strange to me vto, that the millions of dollars needed to fix leaky homes is not clearly sheeted home to the National deregulation in the 90s. You would think that along with Mining deregulation the people would be very angry. I am.
Who was the minister responsible? Lockwood Smith comes to mind.
Bill Birch and then MAD Max Bradford
Kate Chapman reports:
Is she part of the parliamentary gallery? Does she not regularly see how Key does his stand-up routine in order to deflect serious questions in Question Time? Why is she not reporting that, rather than just uncritically reporting what Key says?
Karol – The question is:
What is the selection criteria is to be “any reporter or editor”, responsible for the media balackouts which exist, to provide the cover stories and misdirection, to blatant lies that are sold via the MSM.
When one starts to think about those who are “selected to report the news”, one can reasonably deduce that those people are as easily “swayed”, as those chosen to be the options NZ gets to vote for!
NZ inc – Rotten to the core!
Did you know that you can make up to $1200 per week? [spam deleted – r0b]
Is that you Rodney Hide?
You probably need an HIV test to go along with your job application…
”I dare you to show me one example where I haven’t discharged my responsibility seriously, professionally and appropriately,” he told TV3’s Firstline. (Sorry,had to cut and paste) Guess who in DomPost?
Yesterday I noted a discussion of interest rate and currency swaps that I heard on Jim Mora on Radionz. I put live links in my comment. It was new stuff to me, the financial instruments or derivatives (D) market is not my everyday experience and I would say not to the ordinary citizen.
http://dunedinstadium.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/afternoons-with-jim-mora-the-panel-today-dcc-interest-rate-swaps/
also
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/7903907/Banks-plundering-society-globally
I just listened again and there are some points that we should know. First between them Auckland and Dunedin City Councils lost $200 million last year resulting from these Ds. Then we should know that the Ds are contingent liabilities which have floating rates and there is no knowing how the rates will change year to year. It may be $1 billion that they lose next year (and that is a debt on top of the principal still owing).
I don’t know if they are the same as hedge funds, but the point was made as with hedge funds, that the seller of the D has a conflict of interest as it wants to win and you to lose, (so it will want to tip the scales against you). One thinks of the Melbourne Cup – the TAB have better rules and standards. Apparently our chief national earners, Fonterra and farming interests, are involved in these derivatives and that gives a cold feeling down the spine.
There is something called a Dual currency interest rate swap. This involves two different currencies and when one is NZ, which is very volatile and may fall, then the repayments go up, a particularly risky tricky thing to be in.
In Europe there has been legal proceedings brought against mis-selling by banks of derivatives (mis-selling another neo-lib euphemism) and a Milan bank had returned millions of dollars, might have been $1 billion not sure.
It can be difficult to find what has been done with this public money because of the old excuse “It’s commercially sensitive”. We may think we have the right to know what our officials are doing in our name, but no, ‘It’s trust us we know more than you, and we know what we are doing”. That sounds dodgy, but how can we force the issue under the present regime??
So after the GFC, these City Councils and their investment banking mates decided to get in on the game themselves.
STUPID
technical note – a contingent liability is a potential sum owing, the size and nature of which depends on some future event or measure.
With interest rate D’s, there is a vast amount of uncertainty and lack of control around what this might be, year to year. As prism notes, the investment banks on the other side of the trade often PROFIT when their clients LOSE.
It’s a level of risk which no public organisation should involve itself in unless it really knows how to use D’s as tools to reduce risk and uncertainty.
Many municipal authorities in the US have gone bankrupt due to these kinds of “investments”.
CV
Thanks for putting right my understandings of contingencies et al. I don’t want to pass on my ignorance of these matters to others.
No probs mate, you were very close to getting it right. Your monthly power bill could be considered a contingent liability which depends on how much power you use – will your next invoice be $300 or will it be $600?
At least in that case you have significant influence over the end result. With an interest rate swap you are at the mercy of market fraud and banker fine print scams.
I was thinking of that general competence thing for councils. At one time they couldn’t get high-flown ideas of risk-taking in exotic financial transactions – they were too tightly controlled. It seems as a citizen who isn’t snuggling up for juicy tenders and projects to councils, that the general competence should be abandoned and a slightly more lenient than the previous control should be the new norm.
Also, one of the skills that a CEO is now being paid for is no doubt the ability to handle a large budget and be able to do this financial horse-trading. So if councils had less money, which they had to parcel out in a rational way, there would be less need to do their double book-keeping. The Jim Mora Radionz item I listened to said that the borrowings and interest rate swaps were not always shown in the appropriate part of the balance sheet and there wasn’t a signal of their likely cost long-term.
And I think that employing contractors is almost double-bookeeping. Government and businesses can fudge their expenditure on human resources. Contractors are paid out of one pot, and staff and wages out of another. Staff and wages will appear to be kept at a low rate yet the real need of the organisation is met by high-paid hourly contractors. A wasteful and often mendacious system.
This Local Bodies explanation piece on council general competence and processes is very straightforward and a good example of providing clear information.
http://insider.thomsonreuters.co.nz/2012/03/local-government-law-nz/
2. Financial management strategies
Commencing in 1996, with abolition of the former Local Authorities Loans Board, local authorities have had greater powers to undertake works and to fund the works through different fiscal policies and determinations. The ability of local authorities to borrow money, or to undertake rating, has been substantially liberalised. The introduction of differential rating, and annual charges, has been modernised, and the ability to impose targeted rates has been extended. Again, to provide direction and restraint, the law requires councils to develop strategies for funding and borrowing, and to provide for implementation through the long-term plan and annual plan, and to make an annual report. These obligations are subject to overview by the Auditor-General.
Good work Prism..
Does it say who is responsible for making the “investments” at either council, or who provided the advise to do so?
Still, the quicker the councils can get themselves into debt the quicker the assets can be stolen.
The new owners of the assets, will be the same gang who also will have swallowed up the “investments”.
Like a win win for them, but a huge loss for everyone else.
The Power of the Right-Wing Echo Chamber
We see the same things here with the RWNJs continual re-writing of history when the facts conflict with what the RWNJs believe.
Yes how about calling it the snowfall effect? The brains of RWNJs get stirred up by new and unwelcome stats which register for a brief moment in time, but similar to the little globes with snow and bits of glitter in them which swirl around after a shaking, soon everything settles back to the same configuration as before.
Great imagery there Prism.
I expect there are more RWNJ who believe in a god and in a heaven as they are more likely to exist in faith rather than science or factual evidence. It is god’s will you know.
ianmac
Well when you’re on the top of the heap perhaps you feel closer to god. Then you could almost be convinced that he/she is on your side and it’s all the wonderful way that god willed it to be.
Bless you my son.
More on RWNJ liars and their lies.
http://www.thebaffler.com/past/the_long_con/print
Each constituent lie is an instance pointing to a larger, elaborately constructed âtruth,â the one central to the right-wing appeal for generations: that liberalism is a species of madnessâan esoteric cult of out-of-touch, Europe-besotted ivory tower elitesâand conservatism is the creed of regular Americans and vouchsafes the eternal prosperity, security, and moral excellence of Godâs chosen nation, which was doing just fine before Bolsheviks started gumming up the works.
briefly listened to RNZ last night; an interveiw with a co-author of a recent popular publication on the findings of “political science” research into the benefits the introduction of democracy had provided to newly democratic nation states in our life-times. The interviewer was very dry and sceptical of the authors conclusions (very american) and the author just dribbled a whole lot of waffle imo.
It seemed, the advances in rule of law, social justice etc, in African countries for example, were comparitively short-lived.
Some one commented recently concerning the population attritions we are likely to see in Africa in the coming decades.
very sad.
Like Columbia we should drop the voting age to 16.
More representative balance.
+1
Just read that Rakon are taking sum jobs overseas due to the high dollar. As the Nat election billboard said:
“wave goodbye to Kiwi jobs, as well as your loved ones”
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/media-unions-political-parties-corrupt-20121105-28u3w.html
Wonder how similar this would be in NZ?
Its crucial that we enhance and strengthen workers organisations in NZ to offset the power of the media and of moneyed capitalists.
Not sure how that relates but thanks for your input
Oh I thought I’d just bat back the idea of ‘union corruption’ with the idea that yes, unions have to evolve and tighten up their organisations – at the same time as making them far stronger and more effective.
NZ’s systemic corruption is on levels which people can’t even begin to fathom, so they blow it off as “poor politics”, or right/left or other ideology!
Its not!
Agreed Viper, thats one thing that is needed!
Given that the perceptions of many of those organisations are significantly affected by the media (which “won” hands down), much lolz.
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I’m surprised the Australian police are only at 16%, given their record.Â
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No one prepared to speak out in case they are arrested
It seems like a fairly wishy washy poll with no possibility of drawing conclusions.
It’s a survey of people’s perceptions not the reality. What a surpirse that a lot of people have a negative view of unions Wonder how they got thatidea?Â
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Yet the respondents views of individual politicians as not being corrupt, contradict the strong belief that poltiicians are corrupt. It’s all in the mind.
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And they’ve been doing those surveys for the last 30 years – roughly coincides with neoliberalism and the rise of tabloid and highly commercialised journalism. This does support research that indicates such journalism leads to cynicism about politics.
Having said that, Australian unions (and politicians very closely aligned to major unions) have had some serious shockers in the last couple of years. And the AWU scandal is crippling Gillard.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/investigations/silence-kept-the-fraud-happening/story-fn6tcxar-1226510180413
Roy Morgan says bugger off Chalupa, we like earning decent wages and having good working conditions. That’s why we like unions.
In the last week – has anyone been getting those server failure messages that were so common?
I haven’t had one since the start of last week after I’d fixed a number of things that were locking up the database and a separate set that were preventing the full use of cloudflare.
It’s been pretty good for me for several days now.
Great.
All good here too.
Darn – just got one. Looks like a CPU spike when update was added to the US election post…..
More work to do on Edits. My comment went in OK – just failed to load the updated screen.
Heh I got one maybe two hours ago…first for ages though. And it was only one.
Cunliffe says it’s a dark day for hi-tech manufacturing – Fisher and Paykel sold, Rakon outsourcing jobs to Asia. And a Labour government would do more to keep such businesses and work in NZ, he says.
This is what you get when a relatively small number of shareholders and institutional investors, all of whom are already plenty wealthy, decide that maximising their return on capital is more important than anything else eg keeping jobs in NZ.
Our economic system is broken.
Capitalism has been broken for 5000 years. We just don’t seem to be getting the message.
Well, capitalism hasn’t been around for 5000 years…guess it depends how you define it. I see it as taking hold after the time of Adam Smith and Ricardo.
Debt based money with a top down hierarchical structure which resulted in a few people owning nearly everything and the collapse of the economy was recorded in Sumer 5000 years ago. Which brings up that old saying: If it looks like a duck and quacks like duck, chances are, it’s a duck.
Feudalism.
There is, essentially, no difference.
Can I make a suggestion for your summer reading list DTB, Karl Polanyi – The Great transformation. If your into your history and political economy its makes for a great read, should be around in ebook form on Gutenberg or something.
“Not until 1834 was a competitive labor market established in England; hence, industrial capitalism as a social system cannot be said to have existed before that date. Yet almost immediately the self-protection of society set in: factory laws and social legislation, and a political and industrial working class movement sprang into being. It was in this attempt to stave off the entirely new dangers of the market mechanism that protective action conflicted fatally with the self-regulation of the system. It is no exaggeration to say that the social history of the nineteenth century was determined by the logic of the market system proper after it was released by the Poor Law Reform Act of 1834.”
http://www.uncharted.org/frownland/books/Polanyi/POLANYI%20KARL%20-%20The%20Great%20Transformation%20-%20v.1.0.html
State owned factories run by the workers as a cooperative with the production then done under contract/license. Run R&D through the universities to keep the factories up to date. Much better idea.
You can’t have the state owning the factories, the workers or their local communities have to own the factories. With state owned enterprises, the first thing a Tory Govt will do is sell the bloody things off. Need to observe and learn their patterns of behaviour.
And what else do you think the state is?
So we change government rules so that they can’t. It’s part and parcel of making them accountable to the people of NZ in such a way so that they do what the people of NZ want them to do and not what their major backers want.
OK to clarify, when you say “the state”, do you mean the Crown?
The Tories will simply repeal or amend those rules and then sell off the assets. Like we see them doing now.
No, the community.
Which is why we make it so that they can’t and if they try it we book them for treason and hang the bastards.
Leaving the system as it is now with government having all power and no responsibility isn’t an option.
How do you do this? You can’t charge someone for treason if they’ve legalised the process of selling publicly owned assets.
Well, I’m all for democracy and having it so that it must go to referendum. If they try to get rid of the referendum, as the arseholes did with Auckland, then they are immediately in breach of the law and are automatically found as treasonous.
Put in the right laws, make sure everyone knows what those laws are and what they’re there to do and we can limit the government which is what we really need to do.
This from your sister Blog.
http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/why-romney-will-win_660391.html
That’s as much a sister to The Standard as Kim Kardashian is my sister.
And I should care much about the US presidential circus, because?
The way you wrote your question answers your question, Karol.
Dug take the spade out of your head!
Does anyone recall the government saying that they were going to support KidsCan “feeding the lower decile” children?
Just as we thought would happen, they have managed to get Campbell Live off their backs
but can anyone report an improvement in the diets of the needy school children…? Nah, hasn’t happened, I bet. Or has it?
Just wondering.