That cats had been affected was published from somewhere in East many months ago, probably during our first lockdown. ….and it's not a reference I kept.
I wondered then about the myriad of homes where cats are well-cuddled pets.
I think the last nail is in RNZ coffin,Media watch going near total bias on trans genderism. Sorry no link,but i'm sure some are still reeling and others can find.
It was the 2nd to last story on Media Watch, but personally I felt it was a good article, I guess left for dead didn't like it because it was not anti trans. Given the atmosphere around us trans folk today I felt the item was fairly reasonable, again perhaps because for a change it wasn't overtly anti trans
Far from the truth,but it seems you happy to make it up as you go,ho hum.
Edited: if we stick to the facts,we should be able to move forward on what is a very simple matter,women’s rights.
Their you go again,and you wonder why men on this site don't comment.I have no problem with the trans community.That comment above from Joa about this site being anti-trans and the MSM being against said community is factually wrong,hence my two cents worth,but I will go back into my box.thanks!
I thought you just said the matter was about women's rights. I said it's about two sets of rights that are sometimes in conflict. What's the problem.
Trans people are out numbered and outgunned on TS. Joanne's comment is challenging, but it doesn't hurt for it to be here. You said her views about you are wrong, so it's all good I would have thought.
For all the help you have been,not.You just through me under the proverbial bus.And by the way have a read of Selina Todd (The people)the rise and fall of the working class 1910-2010,
Oh and too finish off,you were helping Joanna with her hypocrisy.Her being out numbered an all,they are a very small % of the pop, you know that would apply here @TS no.
their you go again,I never said that"women's rights are the only issue" show me where or retract.And maybe you are conflating middle class with working class,re another flame you started.This "Sorry,I have not idea what you mean"What do you mean to say,maybe copy and paste that bit you don't understand and I can only try and explain.
if we stick to the facts,we should be able to move forward on what is a very simple matter,women’s rights.
In the context of the thread this read to me like: Mediawatch did a terrible job by framing it as trans rights vs transphobia, and you were saying it should have been about women's rights instead.
Maybe what you really meant was that in addition to the issues for trans people, women's rights should be considered too.
Oh I see your problem,at that stage you hadn't listen to broadcast.which was about Trans rights,It should be clear I was countering that narrative.I see you are bussy,It would help if you didn't jump in half cocked,If I could share your gun analogy back up this thread "outgunned I think it was.
do you realise that I've written actual posts about the issue from a gender critical perspective?
I haven't listened to the Mediawatch piece, but it's clear that it took an anti-feminist approach. And my opinion is that it should be looking at the conflict of rights, not trans' rights or women's rights alone.
Yes,if only you had listen first before commenting. I know your got a lot on,so wadding in to defend Joanna,were she's is quite capable to do that herself,instead of making me out to be some sort of problem.
Too be clear,I've read what Joanne has said here over the last few week's,and mostly agree,but upending other peoples rights ie:biological women is wrong.
I appreciated listening to it. But the reality is (and this is why I comment so much on these issues on TS) is that there has been a virtual shut down in the media of GC voices.
You see for me this issue isn't. about people. Its about ideology. So Gender ideology is about how gender identity trumps biological sex. I don't believe that is true.
And for those of you who about to tell me sex is on a spectrum or there are more that two sexes, yah. Great. Iwill post a link for a scienctific competition, the prize money for which is $10,0000.00. If you can prove this is the case, you are going to win an awlful lot of money. Thing is no one has claimed the prize as of yet. Funny that.
I don't mind at all people identifying as the opposite sex. You are allowed to do that. But legislating for that, pushing your way into women's private spaces and sporting competitions. No Thank You.
Nor will I repeat back the phrase "trans women are real women'. I don't believe that to be the case……. And the science backs me up. I am also entitled to my GC views.
The mysogonists vile narrative by some trans gender activists against women e.g JK Rowling, Kathleen Stock is disgusting.
Re the media watch piece. the person with the Scottish accent said that in 30 years time their will be apologies from politicians who didn't support gender ideology. But I think it is just as likely that the 22,000 and counting de-transitioners who have irreverisble damage to their bodies will be asking and receiving the apology.
BTW congratulations to the Listener who are covering this issue in a balanced way
Is that said out of a sense of kindness and politeness do you think , or is it intended as a statement of fact. If that’s a statement of fact, I just can’t go along with it, and I couldn’t say it myself with any sincerity.Now I realise that’s because biological reality carries the most weight with me, the reason for that is, that the cultural baggage that makes up gender is so diverse and changeable, over time and culture.For another, gender might be the most important.Do we both have the right to feel the way we do?
I could say without feeling jarred by it, that "to all intents and purposes that person is a woman " ie, looks like one , behaves like one.Like Fa'afafine",in the manner of "
It's very unfair, but "passing "matters .Women are much more likely to welcome into their spaces someone who looks more like them, smaller, feminine, relatively hairless, feminine voice ,and of course, those transwomen who successfully "pass" have been using female spaces for a while now.
This feels like narcissistic rambling so I’ll stop now.
Well I will claim that $10,000 as a few weeks ago I directed you to a peer reviewed study on pregnancies in intersex individuals which you accepted as fact (and extrapolated into thinking it was a study of every intersex person in the world 🙄)
So, when can I expect my winnings?
Unless of course you're a liar…
After all, you are now saying the opposite of what you said at the time.
There's no shortage of men commenting on this site and my comment was not about this site being anti trans, it was about you bringing up this RNZ report and implying that it wasn't anti trans enough for you. You, Anker and others consistently say you have nothing against us trans folk yet in the last few weeks virtually every Open Mike has been taken over by your little group bemoaning the fact that I want my rights to be recognised as much as anyones. If you have issues with Gender ideology then fine, tell us and let it be, but no, that's not good enough you have to tell us day after day after day. I'm quite sure that if I stated my understanding of who I am in the same fashion I would very quickly be shown the door. It may be true that some people have been ill served by those who subscribe to the kind of gender ideology that gets talked about on here but you know what? Us Transpeople, particularly Transwomen don't get verbally abused, we get beaten up and murdered at a rate higher than any other group you would care to name. Not, I would say in absolute numbers but in terms of percentages. So if you, as you say, support Trans people then let us get on with our lives which are real, and often boring.
These discussions are being had now, Joanne, because of the legislation proposals and the impacts they may/and have had on women and girls.
It is not in any way intended to give you discomfort, or any other transgender people in the community.
However, the current gender ideology pushed by very aggressive activists (which I will not assume that you share) requires compliance from women and girls, in fact demands it. So, the discussion is occurring because those demands are taking place. And we are sharing information here, on TS, because the impacts on women's rights are not being actively investigated or discussed in many other places.
Just like anyone else, you are welcome to participate, or just scroll past. There is no intention to make you feel uncomfortable or require you to contribute unless you want to.
it's a tricky balance on TS, because there have been lots of problems with women being here historically so I am loathe to accept a line of telling women to not talk about their politics freely.
There is also the issue of legislative and social changes that affect women, and this is one of the better places to discuss that. That's a live issue, which is why we keep talking about it.
But I also see an obvious imbalance.
I'm quite sure that if I stated my understanding of who I am in the same fashion I would very quickly be shown the door.
Not sure I understand what you mean, would you mind clarifying?
I don't think that is correct Joanne, that virtually every Open Mike is "taken over". Open Mike is for everybody to share whatever they are concerned or interested. in. That's how it works.
My impression is that Open Mike has become dominated with info on Covid 19. I completely understand that even if I don't follow it.
Do you have a problem with women saying "I want my rights recognised as much as anyone's?"
I think gender identity is a relatively new term that has come out of gender ideology, postulated by Judith Butler and some others. I disagree with her theory and think biological realty trumps gender identity, not the other way around as many gender activists believe.
I am not sure about your assertion that trans women are murdered more than anyone (other than in South America
Sorry, last comment posted before I finished writing and for some reason, I can't edit it.
I think in South America more trans women are murdered per % but not in NZ. Interested to see if anyone has different stats on this.
Unfortunately rapes and assaults are often hard to quantify as often not reported to the police.
But women as a sex class are very vulnerable to sexual assault because they are smaller and not as physically strong and overwhelmingly the people who commit rape and violent assault are biological males
The latest UN figures show that 137 women across the world are killed every day by a partner or member of their own family – a total of 50,000 women a year murdered by people they know and should be able to trust.
In saying that, no one should be killed for what they are and on grounds of their sex or gender id. And yet, in the 2021 in the UK every third day on average a women gets killed. By partners, strangers in the parks and cops and everyone is meh.
Us Transpeople, particularly Transwomen don't get verbally abused, we get beaten up and murdered at a rate higher than any other group you would care to name. Not, I would say in absolute numbers but in terms of percentages.
Lots of women get murdered, it's true, but Joanne said %. Think about that.
It's not a competition.
When gender critical women minimalise the violence and abuse that trans women get directed at them, it's not too dissimilar when men minimalise violence against women.
But even in % no transwomen has been killed since 2018 in NZ while every other week a women is found dead, somewhere. Every year.
Women get beaten, kids get beaten every other month to death in NZ.
Most of that violence is from men. So again, we are asking women to make space for a group of people that is being victimised by men. Why are we – women – responsible for the safe keeping of Trans identified people from men, when no one is even pretending to care about safe keeping women and children. Why do we have to give up safe spaces to men who may victimise us? And why are pepole like Joanne so concerned to not talk about the real violence that women live daily and the reasons why women have created many of he safe spaces that trans want access to in the first place and often without any assistance from the state.
The fact that annoys me is that this distinction of the % gets thrown out all he time, because otherwise, many trans people would need to admit that they too live in countries were it is as safe for them as anyone else who are considered 'minorities', like NZ , or the UK, or Germany, and where their human rights are granted and people to try to their best ability to accommodate them.
But I think you are despite it not being your intention. How does it hurt women to acknowledge that trans women get abused as well?
But even in % no transwomen has been killed since 2018 in NZ while every other week a women is found dead, somewhere. Every year.
Women get beaten, kids get beaten every other month to death in NZ.
That's you making it a competition again.
I oppose self-ID in its current form, and I strongly believe in single sex spaces. But I don't see why the needs of trans women need to be negated as part of retaining women's rights.
Geniune apology Joanne. I missed understodd when you said bemoanig the fact that I want my rights. I thought you were referring to women, rather than yourself.
That's right,down played issues women have about current bill before the house,and even mis-represented the sporting issue,and as we now know those rules are about to be changed by the Olympic committee.
There is one, incredibly vocal, monied, government supported group that demands access to any and all spaces that Non Males have fougth for since the 1900, who pretty much show the attitude of the above poster to anything that is not total submission to that ideology. And as per the attitude of the lawmakers involved in the submissions hearings, it is already all decided. But then Non Males, are they even human, and why would we consider them human, and do they have rights if we can't even define who they are?
Fwiw, one could be mistaken and consider this a new mens rights activisim, as men are the primary benefector of these new rules and laws that are created. In the mean time, Non Males of all colors, creeds, and identifications are simply self selecting to resign, not compete, and not drink to much fluids lest they have to go to some public toilet that they rather not go too for all the obvious reasons.
Who will suffer the most if this legislation will be pushed through?
and yet trans women still exist and they are different from men.
If trans women want and need things to enable them to take part in society eg a gender recognition certificate in the UK, then how is this any different than wheelchair users needing ramps?
As Joanne says, the problem is with gender indentity ideology, which is pushing a sociopolitical agenda far beyond human rights issues. I don't think it helps women to deny that, or that there is in fact a conflict of rights (women want no self-ID, many trans people want self-ID). At some point we have to sort this out in ways that are good for women and trans women.
The conflict you speak of is there because we have a government who'd rather colonize women spaces and wholesale cancel women so to speak – then actually create something for the Trans community, and not just for the trans identified males btw. Goverment that demand to the point of threatening of prison and fines – that women give up their spaces, their awards, their sports, their meeting spaces to the point where a court ruled that trans women must be included in lesbian spaces even if they hold a date night.
That is not a conflict, that is colonisation. Taking over spaces, places and language that used to be used by a particular group of people to be themselves, speak of themselves and congregate.
The government could create these spaces. Men, Women, Unisex (Trans). It could, and we would not be having this discussion in the first place. But the government does not. So Transpeople – non binary people – and any other identification is now allowed to be where previously they could not be, and women will have to submit, or else deal with the fall out of job loss, loss of income, legal threats, questioning by the police, online harasment without recourse etc.
And yet, 'women' – aka 'non males ' exist. But then what are women, Weka? And are they even human.
the government is taking rights – hard won rights – away from Women, to give these rights over to men. And there are no other words for it. And the only one who has no longer rights, are women. The government has made Men the definer of women, and they will put this into law. Welcome back to the 1500.
Transwomen are Trans identified males and it should not be the duty of Women to accomodate these men into their spaces. Men should be taking care of their gender non conforming brethren. And government should be creating spaces for these men. Be they toilets, changing rooms, or shelters and refuges and prisons. As for housing and job discrimination, take that to the relevant courts and fix it there. And if they don't have the money to do so, bring back legal aid.
So We – women have to do nothing, as WE – women have not created this problem. Lesbians don't have to fix anything, as they did nothing. Mothers don't have to fix anything, as they did nothing.
It is a lazy government that has work to do, and that is to create spaces for trans people, non binary and other gender fluid people and leave Women for those who are women. It is government that on behalf of a few men is throwing away its female population wholesale into a ditch of 'can't be defined, gets called body with vagina, and gets beat up by trans identified male in boxing matches for funsies'.
It is a lazy government that has work to do, and that is to create spaces for trans people, non binary and other gender fluid people and leave Women for those who are women. It is government that on behalf of a few men is throwing away its female population wholesale into a ditch of 'can't be defined, gets called body with vagina, and gets beat up by trans identified male in boxing matches for funsies'.
A lot of my fury is for the politicians that have created this mess.
All of my fury is for them, as without them this would not be an issue mostly. And my question is, why. What is in for the political/media/academic class that pushes this shit on mainly working class and poor class women, as the nice and polite middle class and upper class women will only ever use a public toilet at their fancy eatery or the koru club in the airport.
The ones that will have to compete for a space in the loo at the mall are the shop girls that have to use the public loos there, or the school girls that suddenly end up in unisex toilets with boys galore while they try to change a tampon or a sanitary pad.
A pox on the house of everyone of the lawmakers that pushes that shit on us and our kids.
They already have the same rights you and I have. Those that pass already use female spaces without incidents – at least i have not heard of any issues. They have the same rights as all men and women, gay, hetero, bi, have in this country. This is not about rights, and frankly i don't think it ever was. If women don't have rights, then trans women don't have rights, and trans men being trans identified women also don't have rights.
I don't have an issue with the Identification of Transwomen / Transmen, i have an issue with Self ID that needs to be followed up by nothing, but grants access to US in spaces were we like to be on our own to everyone anytime without exception. Make it easier for adults to transition, put their paper work in order (born bio male, gender F or vis versa), grant them access to the law and courts if their 'rights' are not given. All that can happen without remotely doing what they propose now. And above all, stop pretending that Women and Transwomen and Men and Transmen are the same. They aren't. And that fault, is with government. These proposed chances are so drastic that i find it hard to believe that that was the best they could come up with to accommodate an actual trans population of less then a percent or two, into the women spaces of half of this worlds population.
Why are the government all over the industrial world – which funnily is enough the 'world' were women have the most rights, highest earning power and best life conditions and most rights – insisting in telling us that Trans identified men are women, and that no women, you can not be upset about this or else we give you big big trouble. So why are governments and here in NZ too, telling women to shut up and submit to Men in their spaces and just take that loss of actual rights on the chin and suck it up.
'sex' M , Gender F or vis versa. There you have it. It should also clear that up if they have an accident and need medical care. That can be printed on Driver lisences, and any other legal document.
(for purpose of identifying trans as to their 'dead' personality, that should be kept in cases of the sexual offenders register or similar. i.e. Alonsus Alonsus, also known as Brigitte Brigitte).
Job applications, the one that i got was, My birth name is xxx, but i go by yyy. That was good enough for me, and besides i was hiring a baker and this transperson came recommended. In the same sense as you and I would identify as women, and men would identify as men. Why do we have to bake a special cake for these people? This is a serious question.
My point is that these people are someone before they transition, and there should be a reference to that person.
And last but least, why do we need to erase several thousand years of womenhood, language, and customs, to accommodate gender non conform males.
They have exactly the same rights as we all have. They have the same human rights. Heck, we are discriminating against women daily, we kill women daily, we abuse them daily, we don't hire them, we don't promote them, we rather hire and promote a Trans identified male to a board then a women. WE call this 'equity'.
What if the trans woman doesn't want their employer to know they are trans?
They have exactly the same rights as we all have. They have the same human rights. Heck, we are discriminating against women daily, we kill women daily, we abuse them daily, we don't hire them, we don't promote them, we rather hire and promote a Trans identified male to a board then a women. WE call this 'equity'.
Oh, so women's rights don't get respected, let's disrespect trans rights too.
"What if the trans woman doesn't want their employer to know they are trans?"
That's a question worth a whole post, I think, weka.
I've been turning it over in my mind, having been through the eighties when declaring your sexuality required a lot of courage from friends, so I can understand how this may be a dilemma.
At present, I think that there has to be societal acceptance of however people want to identify, but to 'hide' those identities by passing, is also not going to help for individuals in the long run.
Accurate records of birth, and gender identity are necessary for statistics and the delivery of health, justice and support systems, so I don't support the replacement of biological sex with gender identity. I do support some form of official documentation that records gender identity for those that wish it. The gender reassignment surgery is one status that should allow people into their gender identified single sex space, particularly as they are no longer male or female bodied. It is the self-id access that is of particular concern.
Is it harmful to transpeople to not identify them as the biological sex they identify as? I can only think, No.
I believe it is more harmful to require them to have to hide themselves amongst others in order for them to feel accepted.
In addition, the removal of boundaries in regards to single-sex spaces, both physical and other, requires much more discussion. Trans rights do matter, but we do need to understand what rights they actually want, and need to be able to live their lives fully. At present, the demand is sophistry, Transwomen are Women, so they become a de-facto protected category, while removing that protected category by that inclusion.
Yes trans people do have the same rights as we all do. Difficulties can arise with people living as another sex when it comes to presenting a birth certificate where the birth sex does not align with the lived in gender. Transpeople have the ability to change their birth certificates now ie without the proposed amendment. .
Some must believe it is unfair to either have to live life as a woman or to do the hormonal or surgical transition or get the certifications around this, hence the amendments proposed.
These amendments enable a person to aver that they are male or female etc. with no formal proof required that this is so. I thought at first, that looking at the Maori roll which has a similar provision that this 'averring' in the trans context was fair.
I no longer do. The reason is that Maori, if pressed, if this ever came to pass, are actually able to provide proof by way of whakapapa, certificates, genealogy even DNA. With no requirement to even live as a woman let alone embark on any transition this proof ipso facto is not attainable by a trans person.
Rather than forcing people to not believe the evidence of their eyes why was work not done around examining the existing ways to change birth certificates, examine them for unexpected/unfair difficulties but to expect evidence of a transition or active transitioning?
The longer this goes on and the more I see the evidence of malice, threats of violence against bio women the more I see it may be/is just more of oppression that men/patriarchy have traditionally dealt against women.
In other words my male bullshit meter is clanging like it does/did when sexist jokes were about and we 'did not have a sense of humour', the country was not 'ready' to enact equal pay, the rubbish about male overwhelming sexuality that means male cannot control it and so rape…….women wearing clothing that 'invites' rape etc etc. Many of the memes promulgated by trans women and their supporters are incredibly misogynistic, openly violent and crude like male bullshit often is.
If someone could answer me why the existing provision could not have been amended ……I gather it was around the legal costs around statutory declarations..at least that was said.
I personally think bio women have been 'snowed' by the mighty powerful US based corporations and males of all sorts and stripes…..by the trans community with the catchy rights based argument and by hetero men who probably thing we are 'over-reacting, again…..perhaps even being 'hysterical'.
Not holding my breath that any good will come from the submissions before the select Committee.
We have unsafe spaces in the public sphere to look forward to, women prisoners being raped by males in women's prisons (UK) , by born males trying to insert themselves through human rights legislation into sensitive female spaces such as Rape Crisis Centres (Canada)
Rape Crisis Centre Edinbourough is run by an entire male who lied about his GRC in the first place to get a similar job previously. They then pontificated about 'rape and orgasms' (literally 14 century it was thought that if a women got pregnant by rape its because she had an orgasm'), and that bigotted rape victims need to be re-educated to their bigottry before they could get help. In the US they now hand out condoms to men in female prisons, and abortions to the women who end up pregnant. I read somewhere that some 3000+ males are looking to relocate to womens prisons in California alone. You can't get cancer care in the US unless you pay, but the state will pay for fake tits and a neo vag for a bloke, go figure.
This whole Self ID is an affront to women everywhere, it is sexual abuse made legal, it is putting women back on the urinary leash, and it is taking women out – no pun intended, one by one out of Universities, jobs, and generally public life.
And all of that here in NZ courtesy to the Green and the Labour Party, and one can't actually make this shit up. For the right we are 'helpmeets' at best, for the 'left' we are something that can't even be defined.
Weka, I think those are really good questions. It seems like some activists want transwomen, in particular, to be treated as if they are biological women.
I want to preserve biological women as a sex class and be referred to as women, not mensturaters, chest feeders, birthing parent etc.
I want female only spaces and sporting competitions for biological women only.
I am unsure why transwomen want the opposite…..i.e. to have their gender identity treated as the same as biological women, when it just isn't. Its not possible. Just one of those things.
But if trans people want help with being treated with respect, getting jobs etc no problem.
I tend to take people as I find them, no matter who they are.
Here an update from the female prisons in the UK, they are now apparently reviewing the rule to allow trans identified males into womens prison, they are even building a rather large annex to house trans identified people and youth offenders.
Some activists propose that housing male inmates who identify as transgender in separate units is a compromise that would take the safety and dignity of both the female population and the transgender-identifying population into account.
This push led to the creation of the first transgender unit in the UK. The dedicated transgender wing is in HMP Downview, a closed category women’s prison in England that houses 300 women and has a juvenile unit."
Transgender-identifying inmates have rejected the push for separate units like the one at HMP Downview (pictured), telling a researcher they wanted “to be treated in the same manner of people of the same gender as them” including “wanting to be searched more, to share a cell and shower at the same time as other people in custody.” Courtesy: @HMPDownview / Twitter
However, transgender-identifying inmates are overwhelmingly against separate units like the one available at HMP Downview, Dr Matt Maycock, a Dundee University-based researcher who has worked for SPS, found. Dr Maycock interviewed 13 transgender-identifying individuals incarcerated in Scottish prisons, and determined that the majority wanted “to be treated in the same manner of people of the same gender as them” including “wanting to be searched more, to share a cell and shower at the same time as other people in custody something that is in contrast to what would be seen as undesirable to their fellow people in custody.” The research was published in the Prison Service Journal. Continue reading Transgender Policy That Led to Male Sex Offenders in Women’s Jails Set to be Reviewed | Women Are Human. Read more at: https://www.womenarehuman.com/transgender-policy-that-led-to-male-sex-offenders-in-womens-jails-set-to-be-reviewed/
Maybe it is really only the access to women they want, and the right to behave in these places and around women and with women as they like. Maybe they really just want others to validate their existance every day as a women and if they don't get their fix then they get to complain about a hate crime.
And i find it very telling that a court in England knows that women are going to be harmed by these men, yet, they will put the wellbeing of men – violent men who have and will abuse women – before the wellbeing of the incarcerated women.
“to be treated in the same manner of people of the same gender as them” including “wanting to be searched more, to share a cell and shower at the same time as other people in custody something that is in contrast to what would be seen as undesirable to their fellow people in custody.”
I find it interesting that the vast majority of people know this is a bad idea, know exactly what this (or can at least imagine) will lead to yet I wouldn't be surprised if it happened lest someone in a government position be labelled a transphobe
That once again woman are the lest of peoples considerations
this is already happening. Both for ideology and because people are afraid to speak against that ideology (and that fear is reasonable given that people lose their jobs, careers, friends, SM accounts)
So in Rolleston we have, I think two trans women and they aren't segregated however all but one of Rollestons units are voluntary segregation so no real issues there
Last time I was in Chch Womens there were two trans women and one was in directed segs, a little more solid but similar to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb6OpRfyLFo
so imagine you're a women in prison and this person is in your wing.
The other was your more traditional Fa'afafine type, she was in the wing with the women but had seperate shower times and you couldn't have her anywhere near mens prison
Oh yes……women again making the accommodations trying to seek the best of a bad job, not accepting but trying to mitigate the inevitable.
It would be interesting to do a femo-linguistic exercise on the words/sayings in this issue.
I first came across it when the catch-cry was 'no debate'.
This immediately struck me as profoundly anti democratic. Why? If something is as good as it is made out to be it will stand up the scrutiny of good hearted people.
No debate (ie no democracy) was behind the case that went to the High Court so that SUFW could be stopped from holding meetings in Council premises. This was disguised by calling it 'hate speech' and was rightly called out by the Judges.
Then in Wellington, some/a City councillors could not see that protesting against people who were legally discussing things in Council premises could be seen as a conflict of interest.
My view is they should be impartial as far as the use of local govt premises are concerned….I see now of course why one was doing it. It also explains why my intuition about this particular person being self- rather than community-driven has turned out to be true right back from 2017 I have had the shivers running up my spine, they are our local councillor.
The words 'no debate' also falls into male/female roles since time immemorial,
no debate about bearing children until your insides fell out through multiple prolapses
no debate about not being able to work when married,
no debate about whose name went on to a certificate of title for a home, no debate just accepting what a male boss wanted to pay you,
no debate about not being able to raise one's own money (always with a male guarantor)
and, most overwhelmingly,
no debate when a man is about to sexually assault or rape you.
As well, like the covid anti vaxx movement, the trans movement here in NZ has some memes, 'players' and ways that are not NZ…..we have imported them.
@puckish Rogue. My distaste for the views of Jordan Peterson came about well before the current trans issues……at the time when Lauren Southern, Stefan Molyneux, Katie Hopkins and Tommy Robinson seemed to be thought worthy of respect and listened to.
Blazer, I do not want to spend time unpicking anything Peterson says through a feminist lens. It is a waste of my time that I would rather spend reading or listening to the views of people who can recognise patriarchy when they see it and not be apologists for it.
He had had a tough time health wise lately and it does not seem to have marked a sea change in his views, which often happens when confronting death in the face.
I know one should be exposing oneself to all views. Take it from me when the above were in the news, including Peterson, I spent hours and hours researching them to see their views so I could be fair in my appraisal of them.
At the end I felt much as I do now when trying to assess the reasons for anti vax sentiments by reading their views and going down the rabbit hole. It gives me a feeling of being besmirched/mental nausea.
I think it is important Jordan P gets to put his views across.
he does have some points (men with skills, most homeless men. Homicide victims so I do write him off.
Blazer nothing i factual as such, but presenting info that favours his case. Like I said he has a perspective he is entitled too
but he does appear to gloss over sex assaults and also that women earn less overall.
most men I come across are really decent. But they have been brought up to be self focused and self need driven. Women more empathetic.
men seem to be able to watch porn or visit prostitutes (not all men) which to me shows a lack of empathy and an ability to objectify those human beings.
Reply to Blazer and Joe 90. I am aware women watch porn. Although not porn as such the movie 50 shades of grey seemed to be aimed at women (I never saw it) as somehow an exciting new way of spicing up your sex life.
I also accept what you say Joe 90 about extreme religious groups, although there is a difference between women being dominated in their lives by husbands and males they encounter and the sex industry.
I find the idea of porn destestable, but I understand that the stuff available on the internet is heavily dominated by men abusing and dominating women. ……..Also I belive there a very few women who visit male prostitutes.
I think its good to discuss these things as its not black and white.
As you may have noticed from discussion on recent threads – the two sexes are different, have quite different sexual strategies and engage with sex in different modes.
The extraordinary sales success of 50 Shades – driven almost entirely by female buyers – cannot be so lightly dismissed as you have. You can rightly criticise it on any number of literary and accuracy grounds, but as a fantasy it clearly worked for huge numbers of women all over the world.
It's always been my view that both sexes equally consume pornography but in different forms. Males typically, but not always, align their interest visually, while women through narrative. 50 Shades was nothing new – it was really just a romance novel with an extra dose of spice added on. And women have been avid consumers of these for generations.
The big difference really is that the one form of imaginative arousal is socially deprecated while the other goes unremarked on.
Reply to Red Logic,….."It has always been my view that both sexes equally consume pornography"…..That's an extraordinary claim, how do you justify it?
Huge sales of 50 Shades of Grey I think means that it is commericially successful. Why this is, we can't be 100% sure.
I have never read it or seen the movie. However I have read (feminists) critiques of it. The relationship between the two protaginists seems deeply problematic. It appears it is about an older man who stalks a younger women and enoourages/grooms her into S and M relationship. The control by the male isn't just into the context of the B and D sex. He apparently stalks her. This is not a healthy template for relationships.
I also wonder about the damage for women who portray such scenes in movies. I note none of the big stars, such as Jennifer Anistan, Charleze Theron etc don't take on these roles. they don't have too. Melanie Griffiths daughter who was in 50 Shades of Grey was a virtual unknown it was her break out role. So yeah I do wonder what it does to these actress playing such parts. Afterall Holywood is full of exploitation of women.
Todays paper suggests that ever since the Government has abandoned the elimination strategy, they are adrift as to what to do. I don't believe that this started with the drop of the elimination strategy. We have no planning, financial or with immigration, housing, poverty, law and order etc. None is actually in real terms improving, all blamed on covid of cause.
I think that is should be mandated that everybody has a chance to get fully vaccinated until the 15 December. After that, we are back to "normal" and people have to take responsibility over their own health. I mean a year surely is enough notice. The only logistical work needed is border control in and out the country. Plane, ship, hang glider whatever is used. Resources need to be allocated to those areas and the health system freed up by allocation resourcing by rate of incidence. For example: 100% are 50 beds, Covid incidence is 10 % so 5 beds are allocated unless more are available due to not being used by i.e. accidents, heart attack's, etc. Sounds like rationing but this is done right now anyways.
If the virus is to be "contained" rather than eliminated, the only choice is to manage all surrounding support systems. In the end you cannot hold someone's hand forever because it starts to look like milking the system.
If the patient is unvaccinated or refuses to say, then they should be:
Offered a tele consult in the first instance to manage their medical problems remotely.
If a face-to-face consultation is considered clinically necessary, then the practice needs to arrange for the patient to be seen face-to-face by a clinician. This clinician may or may not be the patient’s regular GP.
The patient should be treated as a ‘red’ stream patient according to practice procedures and appropriate precautions taken including:
separation in the waiting room, or waiting outside the practice (e.g., in the carpark).
the use of appropriate PPE by clinical staff interacting with the patient.
The upshot of this will be that many, if not most, of us who are unvaccinated will not seek medical attention at all. (Who wants to be treated like unclean plague carriers, especially when the vaccinated can also carry and transmit the virus? )
So we will not go to our GP for the usual health issues and those health issues will not be dealt to and could very well develop into the kinds of co- morbidities that are listed for those who the Covid kills.
Result!
I have not been able to access what advice is being given hospital based doctors, but I imagine it will be pretty much the same.
All those kindhearted lefties lurking on TS who have been demanding that the unvaccinated are refused medical treatment and can expect nothing more than an area set aside in the carpark can celebrate.
Their fantasies have come to fruition.
PS. What happened to "herd immunity"? What % vaccinated before we get there?
What about those who have had Covid and recovered and now have natural immunity? Why are they not a category on the Pass?
Conclusions This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant.
Why would anyone play Russian Roulette trying to acquire a natural immunity by getting Covid? It might not work – you might die instead or get Long Covid.
I really would like to know. Why would anyone do this to themselves unless they were about ready to leave the world anyway. And there are easier ways now seeing it is now 7/11/21.
Wanting to acquire an immunity from catching covid that might mean you would die, or catch long covid does not seem to me to be capable of a rationale explanation.
I don't have a problem with GPs taking precautions, but that statement smacks of values judgements.
Seeing people by phone/video makes sense anyway, but this one is fucked up,
If a face-to-face consultation is considered clinically necessary, then the practice needs to arrange for the patient to be seen face-to-face by a clinician. This clinician may or may not be the patient’s regular GP.
That's just punitive shit.
And I completely agree that the end result will be vulnerable people not getting medical care (and then ending up in A and E).
Right now in Auckland I haven't been able to have a face to face GP consultation for 3 months ; all done by tele consult. My quarterly oncology appointment has been postponed twice now and arranged (hopefully this time) for mid – December. By then it will have been a 6 month gap.
My husband obtained an urgent dental appointment but had to have a Covid test as close as possible to the date of consult.
So we've been living this way for months ; both double vaxed and hoping for booster shots in March.
I have close friends in Hamilton who seem to have been in Level three forever. When one of the young adults experienced shortness of breath and heart palpitations after their first Pfizer injection I most strenuously advised going to the doctor…preferably the one he had been enrolled with since before birth. I was shocked when I was told that they will only see patients who are getting the Pfizer product.
I'm not sure if you are aware McFlock, but an awful lot of young folk are aware of the possible heart issues but feel they have no choice…what with jobs and all that. And pressure from all sides to do the decent thing. And being told that the vaccine is safe and effective and any side effects and mild and transitory and even full blown myocarditis will also be mild and transitory. And of course if you can't get to see a doctor or go to the hospital and even the ambos write it off as stress…your report to CARM will be dismissed anyway.
So what's the point?
We should be able to speak about the very real adverse effects of the Pfizer product… but we can't can we?
Go on…call me a misinformation peddling anti-vaxxer…
WTF has work got to do with it? It's an online form. Heck, you could do it yourself if they were cool with it.
Even if CARM don't think it's linked, they log it. It's not usually about the individual, it's about the patterns of reports they get. But to establish a pattern, they need reports.
Big pharma doesn't need to cover anything up with folk like you around.
Don't understand this…..if he had had his first injection then he was getting the Pfizer product. The sheet that everyone is given says what to do and where to go if there are side effects. Not sure that they advised for heart things going to their own Dr or going to A & E.
If a face-to-face consultation is considered clinically necessary, then the practice needs to arrange for the patient to be seen face-to-face by a clinician. This clinician may or may not be the patient’s regular GP.
That's just punitive shit.
This is normal practice already in a in some areas – I sort of wondered why they mentioned it at all. It's really frustrating for people with chronic illnesses, and has been for a long time.
I guess it might be to do with the some sort of rotation among the doctors?
I have to book 3 days ahead if I want to see a GP of my choice. I didn't get that from the statement, I took it to mean that they would be at the back of the queue. I could be wrong about that, but their tone is really that of someone who highly disapproves and wants the person to know it.
What is the problem here? Even in normal times with group practices and urgency your own Dr may not be available they may have a locum or because of urgency it might be better to see another in the practice. I have even been advised to go straight to the hospital or to an after hours clinic that has lab & xray facilities. These words continue what has been normal practice in my Dr's practice. It says they are to be seen by another clinician. This could be another Dr or the hospital, or a clinic.
Surely a person who wanted to see a Dr could take advantage of the options under Manage my Health for repeats of prescriptions, Zoom/telehealth consultation, carpark consultation (I had one last year in lockdown).
Since Covid last year my Dr has operated a screening process in his rooms with anyone who answers 'yes' to questions such as cold symptoms being required to remain outside in the corridor, masked until the appointment time The nurse will see you and then if necessary the Dr will come out masked to triage me, it was sinus and to take me through to his actual rooms.
I do not see the problem with being referred another Doctor. This may be one who has premises better suited to consults with possibly infectious patients.
I have just checked with partner who goes to a different practice they have operated a changed system since Covid came last year with more info being provided at phone up stage to work out the best ways of being seen. He then went to a closed door, had a nurse assessment/verbal questionnaire and then went to the waiting room where there were 3 other people at 2m spaces.
Sister has had a couple of carpark consults in Gore since Covid last year but to be fair the Dr also used to do carpark consults, if needed, with my mother when she was frail (she died in 2010) .
Have other people's Drs practices not been operating with changed procedures since last year?
If you have a GP who is older, overweight, is immunocompromised, Maori, diabetic etc etc, any of or all of the above, it is only right they protect themselves by not seeing people with Covid and those unvacinated will present more risk to them.
Surely by not going to the Dr by availing yourself of the options that are there you are just 'cutting your nose off to spite your face', as my Dad, bless him, used to say.
Many of us had telehealth, carpark consults last year. We did not feel either clean or dirty by accepting these practices but accepting of the fact that everyone is trying to keep others safe. .
I really do not understand the problem here when these processes have been par for the course for many medical practices for over 18 months now.
As I said below I had a carpark consult when no-one was vaccinated. I accepted this, I had covid-like symptoms and also the fact that my Dr looked a little space age-y when he came out. Now they feel that they can moderate this process as many are vaccinated.
I think the medical staff are under such intense pressure it must be very scary for them and also infuriating that they will have to treat people with covid who have refused the jab. I am not saying this is right or wrong but human.
I would hate to be in their postiion and I would feel resentment towards every patient who didn't do absolutely everything they could not to endanger me and my family. But maybe medical staff are people than I am.
Its great your practice worked out red/greeen streams for their patients Patricia. But maybe that isn't want is formost in GPs mind at the moment.
I visited my wonderful GP last week, to get as much stuff checked as possible before Covid hits. She told me that had done all their jabs for now and were now trying to work out how they were going to look after their patients who got sick with Covid in the Community. I doubt they prioritized how can we make sure the unvacinated don't feel bad about their choice.
People have a right not to be vacinated, but their are consequences. If it is that important to people not to be vacinated then, thats what goes with it.
Yep, you may as well clear out the smokers, overweight, drivers who caused accidents from the hospital wards too… just so the vaccinated can get a clean run 🙄
I don't believe that unvaccinated people should be denied health care, and it's reprehensible politically to promote that idea. But, there's a difference between smokers' personal choices and needing health services, and unvaccinated people. Smoking isn't contagious.
i put '' around the word for a reason. And for what its worth, my sister life time issues can be directly attributed to having spend her life in cars full of smoke, waiting for her parents to leave the smoky bar / restaurant, and generally be surrounded by smokers all her life. I would even go so far that the smoking of my parents contributed to the smoking of my siblings and I (with me being the only one to have kicked the habit). So yes, it is 'contagious' but not in the sense of a virus. Rather a social contagion, and a physical softening as clearly all my siblings and i were second hand smokes a day after we were born thus leading to addiction later in life.
contagion: the spreading of a harmful idea or practice.
contagion: the communication of disease from one person or organism to another by close contact.
sure, but your parents' smoking didn't lead to 200 people being infected. Contagious has an actual medical meaning that differentiates it from the kind of issues that you are talking about, and it's why we have lock downs for covid but not smoking.
Ok Please don't take this seriously. I am posting it for light relief. One of my favourite comedians, Jack Dee on triaging health care for the NHS. (pre covid).
There is no intention or practice of denying health care to people who are unvaccinated……all along in the info about the vaccine passport it has been clear to state that access to food or health care is not restricted.
Some practices have been operating differently this since last year.
No, read what I wrote. We haven't got unlimited resources and hence it has to be apportioned. It always has before but no one ever seem to have asked the hard questions. I wonder why.
Smokers, overweight and drunk drivers are a different category then a transferable virus. The first lot is doing the harm to themselves and also others in some cases by administering a drug/food to their body. The people who get infected are getting the disease via a transferable virus that is not visible to the naked eye and is a living thing looking for a host. BIG DIFFERENCE.
If an option exists to limit the outfall of this or any disease, an obligation on the citizen/resident to protect all people within their family, district, city, country that is within their means is not an unreasonable request. If a person feels that their right is to deny this, all good and fine. But please don't ask the same community to fork out endlessly for treatment whilst their family can't get access to an ICU or hospital bed for any treatment that is urgent.
This has to be a managed risk rather than have a runaway health issue. I mean this is not the first time a pandemic has happened. Vaccination was then and is now a way to limit casualties. One has to wonder whether reason and logic has gone out the window.
No, not at all. What I am saying is that everybody has a right to protection and as a nation we have to look at the sum of things rather than personal issues in cases like that. We are talking about a disease that does not differentiate between races, religion, age or income. It is an obligation on every person to do their best not to abscond from their responsibility within the community. I have a sister who is adamant to not vaccinate, that's ok with me. But she has to take precautions not to get ill. And this means limited contacts, family need to distance and wear mask to protect HER. Do you think that is a good outcome for anyone?
And are all unvaccinated do the same and follow their own protection protocol? There is an issue here and it can cost lives.
It is an obligation on every person to do their best not to abscond from their responsibility within the community.
Yup – that's why I vaccinated – more from a sense of duty than conviction. (It helped that I had something of a choice here in WA and could go with the AZ vaccine.)
But stepping from this position to compulsion erases the individual's agency and incurs a social and political cost – that may or may not be worth paying.
….family need to distance and wear mask to protect HER.
No, no, no!!!
[deleted]
22.10.21…the day New Zealand officially lost the plot…Science died, and those who have chosen not to risk the known side effects from the Pfizer product because of existing health conditions (which will not be recognized by doctors because the Word has already come down from On High that only those with an allergy to Pfizer product ingredients (specifically PEGs) will be allowed an exemption) will be called 'fucking filth anti vaxxers' who should be forced to wait in the carpark for medical attention.
Should we even risk seeking it.
As for 'absconding from their responsibility within the community' tell that to the people who rushed to get the Pfizer product and are now suffering the consequences… and are not allowed to speak publicly about it.
Those of us who have chosen to decline the Pfizer product on health grounds are of course going to practice good infection control and support our immune systems with good nutrition.
[if you want to make claims about a public figure in a heated debate, then you have to link. I’m now past asking for this (and it’s not just you). Feel free to repost once you have link so we know what you are talking about – weka]
Yes, you have the choice. Also to wait for other vaccines. But you have to also live with the consequences and not complain about lack of treatment places, overwhelmed health systems, resources being diverted for wage subsidies, border control etc. to keep NZ ticking over for all.
Being vaccinated does not mean that you are immune or cannot pass the virus on, but it does mean that if you are infected, the symptoms become manageable to the majority and can be treated at home. No need to end up in ICU.
We need to get out of this mental prison of being preoccupied by stealth with one issue only. Why do you think so many people flaunt borders etc. getting unruly, aggression is on the rise.
This would lead me back to my initial posting. Enough said.
but this dystopian world were we are going to will produce this exact outcome. When everything is in a shortage they will start triaging, and guess who will not be provided a service or a reduced service.
And we already do that. Women with physical ailments after giving birth are not receiving the same care by ACC then someone who breaks a leg while mountain biking down a hill – sober, drunk or high for that matter.
And so as long as society is ok with doing that – to the groups is can get away with it i.e. Women, children, oldies, infirm, chronically ill etc, they have no issues putting us on waiting lists, medicating our ailments rather then finding what is wrong and curing that etc.
So this is just good banter among good citizens proposing whom they would exclude from healthcare, and obviously it will never be the good citizens themselves cause 'good citizen'.
Women with physical ailments after giving birth are not receiving the same care
Yeah this one definitely irks me. There's a whole history everything around sexual health, childbirth and post natal care falling into a chasms opened up by competing ideologies and ideas in tension with each other.
We are merely defective men, and if men don't suffer from something, no one does. See how that is fixed now, and cheap too. No investments and pay out needed. It's just Non Males.
I'll limit myself to saying that this non-woman got into very deep shit here for insisting some years back that men and women were indeed different and this had many important implications.
My perspective here is not at all sophisticated – merely informed by this simple idea that I find so obvious I feel stupid for typing it out.
Sabine, I am originally from a country where we have not had any rationing of health services and women have 1 year paid parental leave. I am one of those who would like to have a solid system in place that is not from an anglo saxon origin where you show a stiff upper lip until you die.
Not in my world. But we need to take realities into consideration. NZ has a small tax base and a government that has not shown any vision or idea how to get out of this. Meanwhile we drown in debt and the kids will get the bill for that (not to mention the environmental issues).It will not be easy, no one in their right mind would assume this. But we have to find a way because right now, with the talk about freedom etc. everybody is loosing theirs. In case it isn't obvious.
We lost our freedoms last year march on the eve of Lockdown L4. Since then nothing has changed. And despite that, we got us the Americas Cup, some Amazon Give a way for no return and the Wiggles, and gave our underpaid and over worked nurses a run around for a decent and deserved pay raise. We have priorities for our spending, and sadly we spend it on frivolous stuff rather then invest it in our healthcare.
And now we are going to sleep in the bed we made.
And i will not be blaming the people who don't want to be pfizered for the national shortage of trained staff for our ICU beds, and ICU beds. We always knew it was going to be bad when it gets here.
Not just a threat but a consequence. Smaller family gatherings and police call outs to businesses if entry to a shop is not permitted and a heated verbal exchange or an assault occurs.
The deliberately unvaccinated are a threat to the passively unvaccinated. The unvaccinated are not a homogeneous group of steely-eyed ideologues who have made a firm decision to not get vaccinated. Some will be merely misinformed, indifferent, out of the loop or have other stuff going on in their lives. We need to try and get to these people and get them vaccinated for their own sake. As usual Peterson heads up to such a level of abstraction that he's dumb as a rock.
To respond to the question one has to accept the premise that in fact the vaccinated feel threatened by the unvaccinated.
I am far from convinced the vaccinated do feel threatened other than the exhibiting innate good sense for fear of infection.
Many in the US are wary on a personal level of the unvaccinated as they sometimes do not follow other public health advice such masking and physical distancing.
There are very few public figure people in my life that my intuition clangs about
I mentioned one, a Wellington City Councillor above, you have mentioned Jordan Petterson and please nobody mention Gerard Wall former Porirua MP and arch anti abortionist…….ooops!
long covid is estimated at between 10% and 40% of people who are infected. I'm guessing you haven't factored in that.
2% of health care workers in the UK have long covid. Kids get long covid. People who had mild covid are getting decline in kidney function months later.
It's a novel virus, there is a still a lot we don't know about it.
We literally know nothing about it. And it would be very nice if our officials could actually admit that. And frankly, that is one of the reason people refuse the jabs. We know actually nothing much at all about this virus, we are always three steps behind, and then the bugger mutates into a different version.
And thus, maybe saying that this jab is the best preventative medication we have would be more honest rather then sell it as a vaccine. And frankly, it might have also taken a bit the edge of the 'anti vac' movement, as obviously it ain't a vaccine.
thanks, that was interesting. Have you come across any research or analysis on people with autoimmune conditions or PVFS having a flare after being vaccinated?
No. The only thing that comes to mind is that in my current workplace of about 40 people that I interact with regularly – 6 had an unhappy reaction to their vaccination that I know of.
But I've no idea if there is any correlation between this and a vulnerability to long covid.
it was a tangent (whether people with chronic illness are at risk of flare or relapse from vaccination). Looks like they are in somewhat low numbers, anecdotally and from what I can tell this isn't being researched very well.
An anecdotal story of one person, my sister, who has fibromyalgia rheumatica, still on prednisone and has had no problems or flares with either of her Covid vaccinations. She is also allergic to penicillin so getting Covid with the often follow-up lung etc infections would be very hard to treat.
that doesn't really help much sorry. Most people are ok, some aren't, it's the ones that aren't that are being missed and afaik the research on this isn't being done (or at least not well or in a timely manner).
thanks, it's not looking good. Some of those people will have simple disability and still be able to work/have a life. Others will have their life destroyed by it.
The report concludes that, without substantial changes in resource consumption, "the most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity". Although its methods and premises were heavily challenged on its publication, subsequent work to validate its forecasts continue to confirm that insufficient changes have been made since 1972 to significantly alter their nature.
It has been reevaluated by KPMG sustainability analysist and found to be accurate:
Technological advances have meant simply that we go farther and deeper to extract fossil fuels, and despite some efficiencies, consumption and emissions have only increased. The MIT authors, she points out, predicted as much.
“They said that even if we innovate ourselves out of resource scarcity, we would probably see an increase in pollution from those adaptations unless we also limit our continued search for growth,” she said.
Her assessment, Beyond Growth, is a call, not for 'degrowth' but 'agrowth':
Under an agrowth strategy, a decline or increase in GDP/profits are both acceptable outcomes. Growth, and certainly progress, might still happen, but it’s no longer the goal.
Obviously the only metric of any import is wealth. /s
With an agrowth agenda, profit is no longer the only goal, so then we could use the productive capacity of the earth to feed and house those who need it rather than continuing to concentrate wealth in the global north.
Pretty sure that approach would be popular with the 6b people you refer to.
Whether it's dressed up as 'agrowth' or 'degrowth' strikes me a semantic gymnastics. In essence it still comes down to the following:
Advocates of degrowth propose to address this paradox through a process they call “shrink and share,” proposing not only to limit total global consumption but also to redistribute it equitably. A more equitable distribution of a smaller pie would presumably allow those remaining in deep agrarian poverty to make the leap to modern living standards and fertility rates.
Such a scheme might be possible theoretically but as a practical matter would appear to be unlikely, requiring some combination of voluntary austerity and redistribution at a global scale or, lacking that, some form of global government that would mandate limits on personal consumption and would forcibly redistribute wealth from richer precincts of the global economy to poorer ones.
Even if such a scenario were plausible, it is not clear that it would actually degrow the economy. Global per-capita income today is about $10,000–$15,000, depending on the accounting method.32 Even with perfect redistribution of wealth, this level of income would probably be insufficient to achieve something approximating modern living standards globally. Actually degrowing the economy significantly from present levels would probably leave large populations stranded in deep agrarian poverty. And to provide a first-world perspective, such a perfect redistribution would require — for global GDP to be maintained at its current level — High Income countries (World Bank designated) to reduce their present GDP by between about 60 percent to 70 percent, again depending on the accounting method.33 This surely qualifies as exceptional austerity, voluntary or otherwise.
There is also the small matter of whether such a scheme could actually sustain itself economically or ecologically. It is not clear that such a scheme could work without large-scale collectivization, as it is not clear that the incentives necessary to keep producers producing, savers saving, and investors investing in new or replacement capital voluntarily could be sustained.
Again it's worth asking – if you argue to impose this massive re-distribution and hard ceiling on human development indefinitely into the future – exactly how to you imagine to achieve this? For literally the whole of future of the human race however long this might be?
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.
Nowhere have I suggested capitalism is an ideal, inescapable reality. And I've repeatedly said that it's not obvious that any of the economic systems we've tried so far will work well in the post-growth world we're heading into.
As I've said a few times – from a political economy pov we're in uncharted waters. If I had to guess the coming evolution will conserve the proven elements of conservatism, capitalism and socialism – but leverage a wholly new social and ethical universalism.
The fixation on wealth and global quality of life as zero-sum are from a capitalist, false scarcity point of view. Also, from your provided link:
7.
Getting to a zero-growth steady state economy with declining calls on natural capital will require, then, sustaining — or better yet, accelerating — two trends that capitalism has proven better able to advance than any alternative economic arrangement to date: lifting large agrarian populations out of poverty, and improving resource productivity through technological change.
Both the USSR and China achieved lifting large agrarian populations out of poverty, so by any reasonable analysis some variation of socialism, not capitalism, has proven better. Capitalism has largely got us to where we are now, and still stands in the way of immediate action on a majority of the crises the world is facing. It is important to remember markets and their mechanisms don't only exist under capitalism.
Again it's worth asking – if you argue to impose this massive re-distribution and hard ceiling on human development indefinitely into the future – exactly how to you imagine to achieve this? For literally the whole of future of the human race however long this might be?
Large-scale wealth redistribution is an unachievable utopia – we know why.
Limiting consumption to reflect the resource ceiling of spaceship Earth is an unachievable utopia – we know why.
1.5-Degree Lifestyles:Towards A Fair Consumption Space for All
[PDF; 2021]
If applied, the recommendations from the 1.5-Degree Lifestyles report will bring us back to a status of good ancestry. Some of the policy proposals herewith may be perceived as too far-reaching and intruding on privacy and the rights of the individual. But we are in a precarious situation. Carbon emissions must be brought to net zero in less than a few decades. This means we have to explore all possible means at our disposal and design the future we want to truly emerge from the current planetary emergency. The 1.5-Degree Lifestyles report is a bold attempt to do just that.
Yes I am rather and I've spoken to this earlier. But at the same time China will build more coal fired power stations will be built and for the next 15 odd years their CO2 trajectory will continue to rise. Due to their climate and geographic realities – renewables really is not an option for China, nor many other locations:
What realistic chance to meet the 1.5 degree global warming target?
We’re Heading Straight for a Demi-Armageddon
What happens when we do something—but not enough—to stop climate change? In a prelude to the conference, the UN added up the most recent pledges of parties to the 2015 Paris Agreement. If all 192 keep their promises, the synthesis found, the planet would still be on track to warm 2.7 degrees Celsius, or 4.9 degrees Fahrenheit, by the end of the century. This is nearly twice the 1.5-degree-Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) goal agreed to in principle in Paris. But it is also not nearly the jump predicted in the hottest scenario envisioned in the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—4.4 degrees Celsius, or 8 degrees Fahrenheit.
In many ways I'm seeing CC as one of a number of important but not necessarily the most urgent issues facing humanity. Right now we're faced with some very urgent challenges around authoritarianism, covid disruptions to global systems and increasing social polarisation to name a few that leap to mind.
Longer term CC is on a list of quite a few catastrophe's that could kick us in the arse.
Part of the problem is the embedded psychological flaw that we put a far greater weight on negative events or the possibility of loss, than we do the positive. There are good evolutionary reasons for this – all the good years mean little if everyone starves during the one year of famine, or that rustle in the bushes turn out to be a predator. Yet when faced with complex technical problems our collective risk management is very prone to leaping to wrong conclusions.
But all other things being equal (which they probably won't be) I'd suggest by 2050 we should have CC under control. I'd rate the odds at over 70% – if and only if there is a global consensus on fast tracking advanced next gen nuclear. Absent that the odds drop – my main concern being the increasing economic and social impacts of de-globalisation, the disruption of trade, the return of famine, mass migrations and internecine strife. That would be the perfect storm that would cripple our ability to act on climate change directly and adapt to it's inevitable impact.
In short a bumpy ride, but we can choose to avoid the worst pot-holes.
But all other things being equal (which they probably won't be) I'd suggest by 2050 we should have CC under control. I'd rate the odds at over 70% – if and only if there is a global consensus on fast tracking advanced next gen nuclear.
Them's good odds, "all other things being equal" and "if and only if there is a global consensus on fast tracking advanced next gen nuclear." But, as you observe, the devil is in the "pot holes", and our easy ride is ending.
Nevertheless filled with optimism that I'll see out my days in relative comfort – so lucky to be born when and where I was.
“COP26 must be the COP for children,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. “Climate change is one of the greatest threats facing this generation, with 1 billion children at extremely high risk. Yet, while the outlook is dire, world leaders at COP26 have a significant, time-sensitive opportunity to redirect the terrible path we are on. They can do so by committing to strengthening the resilience of services that children depend upon, and by cutting emissions faster and deeper. The futures of billions of children depend on it.”
I was thinking of the overdevelopped world's insistence that people stop growing food for themselves and their neighbours and grow cash crops for the global economy instead.
Yet at the same time we live in a world that produces roughly 25% more food than we can consume. The problem is clearly one of distribution rather than production.
The boiler-plate left wing response is to blame capitalism for everything – yet the root cause is poverty something that capitalism has done a remarkable job in reducing. In 1800 almost all of humanity lived in extreme poverty – now after 200 years of capitalism life expectancies have doubled, population growth is slowing and less than 10% of people live in poverty. Indeed the more capitalist a nation is, the more likely it's people are to suffer obesity than starvation. We need a better explanation.
The answers that on the ground are a good deal more pragmatic and less ideological than we'd like. Things like decent transport, reliable electricity, functioning economies, and rule of law governance. Boring stuff – but transformative.
So is the answer for so many African countries, where malnutrition is rife to become 'Capitalist'…..or just more Capitalist than they are at present?
I always thought their access to beneficial capital was something out of their control.
One would think that 25,000 people dying every day from something that does not need a vaccine ,but could be solved by benevolent intervention would be a big priority.
Nah – all I'm saying is that if we want to eradicate poverty and hunger (and on current trends we're well on the way to achieving this by the end of this century if not sooner) then smashing capitalism is not the most obvious starting point.
I'll put this thought out there – the left might do better if it could formulate a constructive model of socialism that was capable of footing it on equal terms with both the energy and innovation of capitalism, and the stability and continuity of conservatism.
Lot's of attempts have been made at this – and I'd argue it's well overdue we firmly relegated Marx and his fellow travellers to a big fat footnote of history and started thinking about a holistic political economy better adapted to the post-growth world we're heading into. The timing feels good on this.
But the wealth of those capitalist countries is derived to a large part from their capture and control of the resources/labour of other smaller less powerful countries.
Yup there is a great deal that can and should be done to enforce greater transparency and trust to global financial systems. That linked article is absolutely on the nail with this – there is every reason to build more fairness into global trade systems at the institutional level.
Yet arguably the reason why poorer countries are too often the losers in this game is because they have weak governments – prone to corrupt kleptocratic elites, weak institutions and geopolitical considerations that put them on the backfoot in any negotiation.
So while I'm absolutely in favour of more global multi-lateral action as the article suggests – top down action has it's limits unless also met with the kind of on the ground, human development basics like clean safe water, reliable electricity, education and basic medical care. Only then does a nation have the chance to build the kind of middle class that has sufficient political clout to hold it’s elites to account.
'Yet arguably the reason why poorer countries are too often the losers in this game is because they have weak governments – prone to corrupt kleptocratic elites, weak institutions and geopolitical considerations that put them on the backfoot in any negotiation.'
'Arguably is right!
Tokenism by the worlds economic powers,whose corporations actively seek out resources and labour exploitation for their own shareholders profit ,definately doesn't help alleviate poverty.
The 2plus trillion dollars the U.S 'spent' on Afghanistan ,largely went into the pockets of their own multi nationals and look at the outcome-a giant leap backwards .
Millionaire western politicians doing the bidding of billionaire donors.
I posted to this in more detail elsewhere but in essence I see capitalism (with a little 'c') as little more than a set of economic tools coupled with one important social idea. (It's when it tips into the neo-liberal's singular insistence that markets can be the only measure of value that it becomes an ideology.)
In brief the economic tools were things like fractional reserve lending (that greatly expanded money supply), double entry book-keeping (that formalised business accounts) and the rules of contract law. This isn't exhaustive but gives a sense of what I mean – think of them as commercial technologies that enabled modern business to exist.
The other big idea was that of private property. It's so important that Marx was intuitively drawn to attack it – even if he was proven utterly wrong on this. Private property creates both incentives and the continuity to let economies grow.
And in the 1600's when capitalism was being invented – grow they needed to do – because while the historic record speaks to the events and lives of a tiny minority of the elites, the vast majority of people lived lives of extreme poverty none of us moderns would tolerate for more than a few days, weeks at most.
What we can immediately recognise is that while remarkably successful at enabling human production and development – none of these tools or ideas innately spoke to the subsequent problem of distribution. And this is where the socialist impulse has played a vital moderating role. As you say socialism is everywhere.
The other days I spoke to a vision of a world in which say 9b humans lived fully upper middle class lives by say the end of this century. (This is not so crazy – if my grandfather who was born in 1870 was shown a video of my daily life in 2021 he would be astonished beyond all belief.) It's my sense that getting there is going to require the harnessing of human innovation, a just distribution and stable social structures – each of these drawing on all three of our existing economic modes.
But to achieve this merger we need one more radical transformative idea.
You appear to give Capitalism alot of credit I don't believe it deserves.
The core premise is…who creates and gets first use of created capital.
Its impossible to deny that it is only a small,select elite(born to rule) who have structured society on the cornerstone of compounding interest on debt.
You allude to 'neo-liberalism' as a replacement/excuse for pure Capitalism.
This standard of modern day living you are enamoured with, relies on infinite growth and material acquisition as a worthy goal for aspiration.
We know that ,today a tiny % of the worlds population control 90% of the worlds wealth.
We also know that to enforce any ideology dominant military power is required.
Free markets,laissez faire capitalism and all the propaganda associated with them(trickle down etc)are an illusion.
That bastion of freedom,democracy and supposedly Capitalism that you admire-the U.S.A empire is maintained by domination of financial markets and military might.
This is not a sustainable regime.
As an aside your belief that freedom from hunger will be alleviated before the end of this century,is not very comforting…its 2021,so @25,000 deaths a day times 365 days x 78 years is a hell of alot of…'collateral damage.
You appear to give Capitalism alot of credit I don’t believe it deserves.
Only if you ignore everything else I’ve written to this on this theme.
relies on infinite growth and material acquisition as a worthy goal for aspiration.
Nowhere is there a rule that says capitalism relies on infinite growth. That's a strawman argument. It's fair to say it's well adapted to growth, but then we can point to Japan which has experienced at least two decades of post-growth see that capitalism has adapted to this as well.
You allude to 'neo-liberalism' as a replacement/excuse for pure Capitalism.
Neo-liberalism is what happens when you go too far with capitalism. There is a close parallel with what happens when you take socialism too far and it degenerates into communism. Or you take good ideas around social justice and it becomes the cult of woke. Or sane ideas around ethnic identity and pervert them into racial supremacy.
Getting a sense of where the boundaries lie is important.
Capitalism does not seem to have a hard set of 'rules' regardless.
Its merits are a debate that can never be resolved.
', how quickly a zero-growth economy is achieved, and calls on natural capital globally peak and then decline, depends upon three closely related phenomena: how rapidly global population stabilizes, how rapidly incomes among the global poor rise, and the rate at which resource-sparing technological change occurs.'
Breakthrough Institute are an interesting group and I've read a fair bit of their material in the past year or two. The article you reference is a good one and underlines my assertion that the left really needs to get over not only Marx, but Malthus as well. Oddly enough I was idly contemplating a post along those just those lines but hesitated at how to present it without pointlessly enraging some people here.
I get it – nowhere have I presented our history as anything like ideal. The US have – like all superpowers – behaved quite ruthlessly at various times. In a world where nation states are still the top social order and lacking any global authority to constrain them – one will usually dominate.
What we get to hope for is the least tyrannical one. And of all the realistic alternatives the post WW2 period might have offered – the US was probably the best bet.
Good question – the timeline I have in mind is that capitalism slowly emerged out of the Renaissance era (alongside a similar flourishing in the science domain) in the 15th and 16th centuries.
But it took another few hundred years until roughly the 1840's when the first round of globalisation really took off that we started to see the industrial revolution have it's huge impact on our daily lives. And even by 1900 most people were still very poor indeed, it's only the post-WW2 period that has seen modernity really spread out across the majority of humanity.
I accept this is a very low resolution presentation – and there is lots of opportunity to parse the precedents and details – but for the purposes of this conversation it's what I have in mind when I say 'capitalism'.
While you did post a hypocritical partisan load of bile I don't for one minute condone some of the responses to your post but it could be said you asked for it.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
do you want the day off? Because while I appreciated the political point you are trying to make there, yours was the only abusive response so it’s hard to not be thinking you are still flaming.
Full credit to the leaders of both Maori and Pacifica. This region has some of the poorest and most marginalised people in the country, so for it to reach nearly 90% ahead of many other regions means that the effort of so many in the region has been magnificent:
Counties Manukau DHB has 192 first doses to go to hit 90 percent. Sitting at 80 percent fully vaccinated. Auckland DHB 95 percent first dose, 87 percent fully vaccinated. Waitematā is 92 percent first dose, 83 percent fully vaccinated.
Fair enough, just think this passport system is doomed to fail , they are already causing unintended consequences like a couple of events my youngster would have been in involved being canceled due to volunteers not willing to police the gates checking them , and just uncertainty on how it's going to operate.
The traffic light system is only designed to work with passports. Without the passport thing you are stuck with the levels we have now. That doesn't balance out the conflicting rights.
We expect Joe n Jill publican to police underage drinking in their premises, no different to vaccination status. It'll really be the police who do the policing though, quiet walk through by the force and check a few certificates / passports. Publican will probably wear it just like they do for underage.
Talking to a neighbouring publican about this and he's not worried about it, he sees it as an opportunity to get rid of his barflies, says there's a very strong correlation.
I'm not concerned about pubs ,they can hire an orc or 2 to police the doors!!
It's my kids event that's been canned(I'm sure it wont be the only on in nz) because the organizers dont want to put the lions club who run the gate to face possible abuse from antis.
I am not really concerned about protecting the unvaccinated, they have made their choice. Rather it is protecting everybody else from their selfishness both in terms of spreading covid and tying up hospital beds that concerns me. Yes policing the passports will be problematic but i can't see a better way forward.
People don't like being told what to do, especially by a Government led by Jacinda Ardern. The government should have come out at the outset and said "Don't get vaccinated."
All the contrarians would have rushed to get vaccinated. Then the government could have announced, "Just kidding, get jabbed."
It's a good joke, and yes, there are some contrarians that are that stupid.
But (serious hat on) our divisions on vaccination are nowhere near those of some other countries. Every single MP is vaccinated (first dose or second). Across the country there are (e.g.) mayors who are anti-Ardern on many other issues, but encouraging their communities to get vaccinated. From Hone to Hosking, it's consistent across the range of political opinion.
People ranting like Coutts and Gunn make for juicy headlines, but it doesn't alter arithmetic. The antis are a tiny minority.
This late spring afternoon I unwrapped the carefully folded and labelled bean seeds my friend gave me weeks ago. She teases me. Seven white shiny seeds pressed into moist dark soil. Evenly spaced with three tall bamboo stakes in the tub to climb on.
There's a little Beruit vibe around these parts. Retired, terrified handy dog and her elderly scared witless heading dog friend say can you lot fuck off with your stinking fireworks.
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
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I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Pacific Media Watch Earthwise hosts Lois and Martin Griffiths. Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths on Plains FM 96.9 community radio talk to Dr David Robie, a New Zealand author, independent journalist and media educator with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region. David talks about the struggle to raise awareness ...
Pacific Media Watch Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was held for 12 hours at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, says Israeli forces rounded up Palestinian journalists at the facility and made them kneel on the ground for hours, while naked and blindfolded. “The occupation forces handcuffed and blindfolded us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute chinasong, Shutterstock Electricity customers in four Australian states can breathe a sigh of relief. After two years in a row of 20% price increases, power prices have finally stabilised. In many places they’re ...
Chumbawamba have reportedly issued the deputy PM a cease-and-desist notice after he used their song 'Tubthumping' before his state of the nation speech. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
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Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
SailGP’s races feature in-your-face action, with agile, hydro-foiling catamarans tacking and jibing for the title over several days. However, public comments ahead of the global series’ return to New Zealand have left this past year’s controversy in the shadows, as a key appointment attracts criticism from dolphin advocates. A year ...
Opinion: We are fast approaching a fundamental change in prisons. As the number of people on custodial remand looks set to overtake the number of sentenced prisoners, the main function of prisons in New Zealand may become incarcerating un-sentenced people who may not be guilty of offending. We have already ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
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I read in todays NZ Herald that a zoo in Denver has detected a number of their animals have contracted covid.Hyenas,Lions,Tigers.
Wonder what the wider implications could be with this revelation.
We have a huge number of domestic cats here in NZ.
Can sheep/cows catch covid?
This reference would suggest not.
https://modernfarmer.com/2020/09/which-farm-animals-can-catch-covid-19/
That cats had been affected was published from somewhere in East many months ago, probably during our first lockdown. ….and it's not a reference I kept.
I wondered then about the myriad of homes where cats are well-cuddled pets.
I will respond in full later.I am just getting my sewing machine out…I'm making masks for…cats.
I was threading elastic through homemade masks while watching Q&A.
1. Where did you get your cat mask patterns from?
2. Are you thinking of using cat animals prints for your masks?
I would have thought human prints would be appropriate.
Just use a Covid print, it will cover both.
Please send video of your first attempt at fitting.
Lol, I can't wait to see it.
I just googled, hoping to find some funny memes. Don't look (fuck people are weird).
When you say Don't look, people will look.
When you say Don't look, people will look.
sorry. It wasn't that bad, but the photos of cat masks with eyeholes cut into them was just too much
It's a very serious matter Robert….in fact it may become a….catastrophe!
👍🏼 😹
Pity Al most likely can’t be persuaded to post here, so have decided it’s not worth my suggesting it to him.
I miss the robust, precise style of his better arguments, when he could be bothered to make one.
Don’t think he’d survive being moderated here.
Al is alot of things,but stupid it is not one of them.
He would get destroyed by this lot!
Tru dat.
And he’d still think he won.
☘🐧💪🏼
I think the last nail is in RNZ coffin,Media watch going near total bias on trans genderism. Sorry no link,but i'm sure some are still reeling and others can find.
I would be interested to hear more left for dead.
did have a quick look on RNZ but couldn’t see anything
It was the 2nd to last story on Media Watch, but personally I felt it was a good article, I guess left for dead didn't like it because it was not anti trans. Given the atmosphere around us trans folk today I felt the item was fairly reasonable, again perhaps because for a change it wasn't overtly anti trans
please fix your username on next comment (there’s a bug with where the cursor goes)
Far from the truth,but it seems you happy to make it up as you go,ho hum.
Edited: if we stick to the facts,we should be able to move forward on what is a very simple matter,women’s rights.
women's rights and trans people's rights, and how to resolve any conflicts.
Their you go again,and you wonder why men on this site don't comment.I have no problem with the trans community.That comment above from Joa about this site being anti-trans and the MSM being against said community is factually wrong,hence my two cents worth,but I will go back into my box.thanks!
I thought you just said the matter was about women's rights. I said it's about two sets of rights that are sometimes in conflict. What's the problem.
Trans people are out numbered and outgunned on TS. Joanne's comment is challenging, but it doesn't hurt for it to be here. You said her views about you are wrong, so it's all good I would have thought.
For all the help you have been,not.You just through me under the proverbial bus.And by the way have a read of Selina Todd (The people)the rise and fall of the working class 1910-2010,
Oh and too finish off,you were helping Joanna with her hypocrisy.Her being out numbered an all,they are a very small % of the pop, you know that would apply here @TS no.
I was talking about TS.
Sorry, I have not idea what you mean. I didn't throw you under a bus, I disagreed that women's rights are the only issue.
their you go again,I never said that"women's rights are the only issue" show me where or retract.And maybe you are conflating middle class with working class,re another flame you started.This "Sorry,I have not idea what you mean"What do you mean to say,maybe copy and paste that bit you don't understand and I can only try and explain.
You said upthread,
In the context of the thread this read to me like: Mediawatch did a terrible job by framing it as trans rights vs transphobia, and you were saying it should have been about women's rights instead.
Maybe what you really meant was that in addition to the issues for trans people, women's rights should be considered too.
Please clarify.
Oh I see your problem,at that stage you hadn't listen to broadcast.which was about Trans rights,It should be clear I was countering that narrative.I see you are bussy,It would help if you didn't jump in half cocked,If I could share your gun analogy back up this thread "outgunned I think it was.
do you realise that I've written actual posts about the issue from a gender critical perspective?
I haven't listened to the Mediawatch piece, but it's clear that it took an anti-feminist approach. And my opinion is that it should be looking at the conflict of rights, not trans' rights or women's rights alone.
Agreed.
Yes,if only you had listen first before commenting. I know your got a lot on,so wadding in to defend Joanna,were she's is quite capable to do that herself,instead of making me out to be some sort of problem.
Too be clear,I've read what Joanne has said here over the last few week's,and mostly agree,but upending other peoples rights ie:biological women is wrong.
I appreciated listening to it. But the reality is (and this is why I comment so much on these issues on TS) is that there has been a virtual shut down in the media of GC voices.
You see for me this issue isn't. about people. Its about ideology. So Gender ideology is about how gender identity trumps biological sex. I don't believe that is true.
And for those of you who about to tell me sex is on a spectrum or there are more that two sexes, yah. Great. Iwill post a link for a scienctific competition, the prize money for which is $10,0000.00. If you can prove this is the case, you are going to win an awlful lot of money. Thing is no one has claimed the prize as of yet. Funny that.
I don't mind at all people identifying as the opposite sex. You are allowed to do that. But legislating for that, pushing your way into women's private spaces and sporting competitions. No Thank You.
Nor will I repeat back the phrase "trans women are real women'. I don't believe that to be the case……. And the science backs me up. I am also entitled to my GC views.
The mysogonists vile narrative by some trans gender activists against women e.g JK Rowling, Kathleen Stock is disgusting.
Re the media watch piece. the person with the Scottish accent said that in 30 years time their will be apologies from politicians who didn't support gender ideology. But I think it is just as likely that the 22,000 and counting de-transitioners who have irreverisble damage to their bodies will be asking and receiving the apology.
BTW congratulations to the Listener who are covering this issue in a balanced way
Thanks Anker, totally agree.
"Transwomen are real women "
Is that said out of a sense of kindness and politeness do you think , or is it intended as a statement of fact. If that’s a statement of fact, I just can’t go along with it, and I couldn’t say it myself with any sincerity.Now I realise that’s because biological reality carries the most weight with me, the reason for that is, that the cultural baggage that makes up gender is so diverse and changeable, over time and culture.For another, gender might be the most important.Do we both have the right to feel the way we do?
I could say without feeling jarred by it, that "to all intents and purposes that person is a woman " ie, looks like one , behaves like one.Like Fa'afafine",in the manner of "
It's very unfair, but "passing "matters .Women are much more likely to welcome into their spaces someone who looks more like them, smaller, feminine, relatively hairless, feminine voice ,and of course, those transwomen who successfully "pass" have been using female spaces for a while now.
This feels like narcissistic rambling so I’ll stop now.
"to all intents and purposes that person is a woman"
"to all intents and purposes that person is a transwomen".
intents and purposes – what is a women?
and if you can't define it, can you discriminate against it?
Well I will claim that $10,000 as a few weeks ago I directed you to a peer reviewed study on pregnancies in intersex individuals which you accepted as fact (and extrapolated into thinking it was a study of every intersex person in the world 🙄)
So, when can I expect my winnings?
Unless of course you're a liar…
After all, you are now saying the opposite of what you said at the time.
So, where's my money?
There's no shortage of men commenting on this site and my comment was not about this site being anti trans, it was about you bringing up this RNZ report and implying that it wasn't anti trans enough for you. You, Anker and others consistently say you have nothing against us trans folk yet in the last few weeks virtually every Open Mike has been taken over by your little group bemoaning the fact that I want my rights to be recognised as much as anyones. If you have issues with Gender ideology then fine, tell us and let it be, but no, that's not good enough you have to tell us day after day after day. I'm quite sure that if I stated my understanding of who I am in the same fashion I would very quickly be shown the door. It may be true that some people have been ill served by those who subscribe to the kind of gender ideology that gets talked about on here but you know what? Us Transpeople, particularly Transwomen don't get verbally abused, we get beaten up and murdered at a rate higher than any other group you would care to name. Not, I would say in absolute numbers but in terms of percentages. So if you, as you say, support Trans people then let us get on with our lives which are real, and often boring.
These discussions are being had now, Joanne, because of the legislation proposals and the impacts they may/and have had on women and girls.
It is not in any way intended to give you discomfort, or any other transgender people in the community.
However, the current gender ideology pushed by very aggressive activists (which I will not assume that you share) requires compliance from women and girls, in fact demands it. So, the discussion is occurring because those demands are taking place. And we are sharing information here, on TS, because the impacts on women's rights are not being actively investigated or discussed in many other places.
Just like anyone else, you are welcome to participate, or just scroll past. There is no intention to make you feel uncomfortable or require you to contribute unless you want to.
it's a tricky balance on TS, because there have been lots of problems with women being here historically so I am loathe to accept a line of telling women to not talk about their politics freely.
There is also the issue of legislative and social changes that affect women, and this is one of the better places to discuss that. That's a live issue, which is why we keep talking about it.
But I also see an obvious imbalance.
Not sure I understand what you mean, would you mind clarifying?
There are a number of men here like myself who have stopped commenting on this topic because no point.
And yet here you are again…using a comment to say you are not commenting.
So, what is your insight?
Like me Soltka, I usually just skim read, trans people have my support.
I don't think that is correct Joanne, that virtually every Open Mike is "taken over". Open Mike is for everybody to share whatever they are concerned or interested. in. That's how it works.
My impression is that Open Mike has become dominated with info on Covid 19. I completely understand that even if I don't follow it.
Do you have a problem with women saying "I want my rights recognised as much as anyone's?"
I think gender identity is a relatively new term that has come out of gender ideology, postulated by Judith Butler and some others. I disagree with her theory and think biological realty trumps gender identity, not the other way around as many gender activists believe.
I am not sure about your assertion that trans women are murdered more than anyone (other than in South America
Sorry, last comment posted before I finished writing and for some reason, I can't edit it.
I think in South America more trans women are murdered per % but not in NZ. Interested to see if anyone has different stats on this.
Unfortunately rapes and assaults are often hard to quantify as often not reported to the police.
But women as a sex class are very vulnerable to sexual assault because they are smaller and not as physically strong and overwhelmingly the people who commit rape and violent assault are biological males
the last transwomen in NZ to be murdered was in 2018.
per the trans rememberance day 350 transpeople were killed in 2020, and so far in 2021 some 49 were killed
https://pflag.org/blog/transgender-day-remembrance-2021
women however are dying like flies
In saying that, no one should be killed for what they are and on grounds of their sex or gender id. And yet, in the 2021 in the UK every third day on average a women gets killed. By partners, strangers in the parks and cops and everyone is meh.
Here's what Joanne said,
Lots of women get murdered, it's true, but Joanne said %. Think about that.
It's not a competition.
When gender critical women minimalise the violence and abuse that trans women get directed at them, it's not too dissimilar when men minimalise violence against women.
I am not trying to diminish the death of anyone.
But even in % no transwomen has been killed since 2018 in NZ while every other week a women is found dead, somewhere. Every year.
Women get beaten, kids get beaten every other month to death in NZ.
Most of that violence is from men. So again, we are asking women to make space for a group of people that is being victimised by men. Why are we – women – responsible for the safe keeping of Trans identified people from men, when no one is even pretending to care about safe keeping women and children. Why do we have to give up safe spaces to men who may victimise us? And why are pepole like Joanne so concerned to not talk about the real violence that women live daily and the reasons why women have created many of he safe spaces that trans want access to in the first place and often without any assistance from the state.
The fact that annoys me is that this distinction of the % gets thrown out all he time, because otherwise, many trans people would need to admit that they too live in countries were it is as safe for them as anyone else who are considered 'minorities', like NZ , or the UK, or Germany, and where their human rights are granted and people to try to their best ability to accommodate them.
But I think you are despite it not being your intention. How does it hurt women to acknowledge that trans women get abused as well?
That's you making it a competition again.
I oppose self-ID in its current form, and I strongly believe in single sex spaces. But I don't see why the needs of trans women need to be negated as part of retaining women's rights.
This is hopeless,were have I implied it wasn't anti-trans enough.You have mis-understand or are being a troll.which is it ?
Geniune apology Joanne. I missed understodd when you said bemoanig the fact that I want my rights. I thought you were referring to women, rather than yourself.
'and you wonder why men on this site don't comment'
Well thats not quite accurate
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018819466/avoiding-the-mistakes-of-the-past-in-trans-rights-coverage
I haven't listened yet. They apparently missed that the issue is about the conflict of rights.
That's right,down played issues women have about current bill before the house,and even mis-represented the sporting issue,and as we now know those rules are about to be changed by the Olympic committee.
There is no 'conflict of rights'.
There is one, incredibly vocal, monied, government supported group that demands access to any and all spaces that Non Males have fougth for since the 1900, who pretty much show the attitude of the above poster to anything that is not total submission to that ideology. And as per the attitude of the lawmakers involved in the submissions hearings, it is already all decided. But then Non Males, are they even human, and why would we consider them human, and do they have rights if we can't even define who they are?
Fwiw, one could be mistaken and consider this a new mens rights activisim, as men are the primary benefector of these new rules and laws that are created. In the mean time, Non Males of all colors, creeds, and identifications are simply self selecting to resign, not compete, and not drink to much fluids lest they have to go to some public toilet that they rather not go too for all the obvious reasons.
Who will suffer the most if this legislation will be pushed through?
and yet trans women still exist and they are different from men.
If trans women want and need things to enable them to take part in society eg a gender recognition certificate in the UK, then how is this any different than wheelchair users needing ramps?
As Joanne says, the problem is with gender indentity ideology, which is pushing a sociopolitical agenda far beyond human rights issues. I don't think it helps women to deny that, or that there is in fact a conflict of rights (women want no self-ID, many trans people want self-ID). At some point we have to sort this out in ways that are good for women and trans women.
The conflict you speak of is there because we have a government who'd rather colonize women spaces and wholesale cancel women so to speak – then actually create something for the Trans community, and not just for the trans identified males btw. Goverment that demand to the point of threatening of prison and fines – that women give up their spaces, their awards, their sports, their meeting spaces to the point where a court ruled that trans women must be included in lesbian spaces even if they hold a date night.
That is not a conflict, that is colonisation. Taking over spaces, places and language that used to be used by a particular group of people to be themselves, speak of themselves and congregate.
The government could create these spaces. Men, Women, Unisex (Trans). It could, and we would not be having this discussion in the first place. But the government does not. So Transpeople – non binary people – and any other identification is now allowed to be where previously they could not be, and women will have to submit, or else deal with the fall out of job loss, loss of income, legal threats, questioning by the police, online harasment without recourse etc.
And yet, 'women' – aka 'non males ' exist. But then what are women, Weka? And are they even human.
the government is taking rights – hard won rights – away from Women, to give these rights over to men. And there are no other words for it. And the only one who has no longer rights, are women. The government has made Men the definer of women, and they will put this into law. Welcome back to the 1500.
Transwomen are Trans identified males and it should not be the duty of Women to accomodate these men into their spaces. Men should be taking care of their gender non conforming brethren. And government should be creating spaces for these men. Be they toilets, changing rooms, or shelters and refuges and prisons. As for housing and job discrimination, take that to the relevant courts and fix it there. And if they don't have the money to do so, bring back legal aid.
So We – women have to do nothing, as WE – women have not created this problem. Lesbians don't have to fix anything, as they did nothing. Mothers don't have to fix anything, as they did nothing.
It is a lazy government that has work to do, and that is to create spaces for trans people, non binary and other gender fluid people and leave Women for those who are women. It is government that on behalf of a few men is throwing away its female population wholesale into a ditch of 'can't be defined, gets called body with vagina, and gets beat up by trans identified male in boxing matches for funsies'.
A lot of my fury is for the politicians that have created this mess.
All of my fury is for them, as without them this would not be an issue mostly. And my question is, why. What is in for the political/media/academic class that pushes this shit on mainly working class and poor class women, as the nice and polite middle class and upper class women will only ever use a public toilet at their fancy eatery or the koru club in the airport.
The ones that will have to compete for a space in the loo at the mall are the shop girls that have to use the public loos there, or the school girls that suddenly end up in unisex toilets with boys galore while they try to change a tampon or a sanitary pad.
A pox on the house of everyone of the lawmakers that pushes that shit on us and our kids.
I don't quite see it that way. I think the politcians have either been taken in by the ideology or are too scared to speak up.
I agree with this view Anker.
Agreed
yeah, I know all that Sabine. And you know that I know that, so maybe consider you are missing what I am saying.
If self-ID doesn't go ahead, do trans people have rights to take part in society like everyone else? What are the issues that are stopping them?
They already have the same rights you and I have. Those that pass already use female spaces without incidents – at least i have not heard of any issues. They have the same rights as all men and women, gay, hetero, bi, have in this country. This is not about rights, and frankly i don't think it ever was. If women don't have rights, then trans women don't have rights, and trans men being trans identified women also don't have rights.
I don't have an issue with the Identification of Transwomen / Transmen, i have an issue with Self ID that needs to be followed up by nothing, but grants access to US in spaces were we like to be on our own to everyone anytime without exception. Make it easier for adults to transition, put their paper work in order (born bio male, gender F or vis versa), grant them access to the law and courts if their 'rights' are not given. All that can happen without remotely doing what they propose now. And above all, stop pretending that Women and Transwomen and Men and Transmen are the same. They aren't. And that fault, is with government. These proposed chances are so drastic that i find it hard to believe that that was the best they could come up with to accommodate an actual trans population of less then a percent or two, into the women spaces of half of this worlds population.
Why are the government all over the industrial world – which funnily is enough the 'world' were women have the most rights, highest earning power and best life conditions and most rights – insisting in telling us that Trans identified men are women, and that no women, you can not be upset about this or else we give you big big trouble. So why are governments and here in NZ too, telling women to shut up and submit to Men in their spaces and just take that loss of actual rights on the chin and suck it up.
explain to me what the needs are of a trans woman in regards to what it says on their birth certificate, in terms of job applications.
Birth Certificate
'sex' M , Gender F or vis versa. There you have it. It should also clear that up if they have an accident and need medical care. That can be printed on Driver lisences, and any other legal document.
(for purpose of identifying trans as to their 'dead' personality, that should be kept in cases of the sexual offenders register or similar. i.e. Alonsus Alonsus, also known as Brigitte Brigitte).
Job applications, the one that i got was, My birth name is xxx, but i go by yyy. That was good enough for me, and besides i was hiring a baker and this transperson came recommended. In the same sense as you and I would identify as women, and men would identify as men. Why do we have to bake a special cake for these people? This is a serious question.
My point is that these people are someone before they transition, and there should be a reference to that person.
And last but least, why do we need to erase several thousand years of womenhood, language, and customs, to accommodate gender non conform males.
They have exactly the same rights as we all have. They have the same human rights. Heck, we are discriminating against women daily, we kill women daily, we abuse them daily, we don't hire them, we don't promote them, we rather hire and promote a Trans identified male to a board then a women. WE call this 'equity'.
Sabine, "'sex' M , Gender F or vis versa."
What if the trans woman doesn't want their employer to know they are trans?
Oh, so women's rights don't get respected, let's disrespect trans rights too.
"What if the trans woman doesn't want their employer to know they are trans?"
That's a question worth a whole post, I think, weka.
I've been turning it over in my mind, having been through the eighties when declaring your sexuality required a lot of courage from friends, so I can understand how this may be a dilemma.
At present, I think that there has to be societal acceptance of however people want to identify, but to 'hide' those identities by passing, is also not going to help for individuals in the long run.
Accurate records of birth, and gender identity are necessary for statistics and the delivery of health, justice and support systems, so I don't support the replacement of biological sex with gender identity. I do support some form of official documentation that records gender identity for those that wish it. The gender reassignment surgery is one status that should allow people into their gender identified single sex space, particularly as they are no longer male or female bodied. It is the self-id access that is of particular concern.
Is it harmful to transpeople to not identify them as the biological sex they identify as? I can only think, No.
I believe it is more harmful to require them to have to hide themselves amongst others in order for them to feel accepted.
In addition, the removal of boundaries in regards to single-sex spaces, both physical and other, requires much more discussion. Trans rights do matter, but we do need to understand what rights they actually want, and need to be able to live their lives fully. At present, the demand is sophistry, Transwomen are Women, so they become a de-facto protected category, while removing that protected category by that inclusion.
I assume that part of the reason is that it alleviates gender dysphoria to an extent.
Don't want to think about the AGP side of it.
Yes trans people do have the same rights as we all do. Difficulties can arise with people living as another sex when it comes to presenting a birth certificate where the birth sex does not align with the lived in gender. Transpeople have the ability to change their birth certificates now ie without the proposed amendment. .
Some must believe it is unfair to either have to live life as a woman or to do the hormonal or surgical transition or get the certifications around this, hence the amendments proposed.
These amendments enable a person to aver that they are male or female etc. with no formal proof required that this is so. I thought at first, that looking at the Maori roll which has a similar provision that this 'averring' in the trans context was fair.
I no longer do. The reason is that Maori, if pressed, if this ever came to pass, are actually able to provide proof by way of whakapapa, certificates, genealogy even DNA. With no requirement to even live as a woman let alone embark on any transition this proof ipso facto is not attainable by a trans person.
Rather than forcing people to not believe the evidence of their eyes why was work not done around examining the existing ways to change birth certificates, examine them for unexpected/unfair difficulties but to expect evidence of a transition or active transitioning?
The longer this goes on and the more I see the evidence of malice, threats of violence against bio women the more I see it may be/is just more of oppression that men/patriarchy have traditionally dealt against women.
In other words my male bullshit meter is clanging like it does/did when sexist jokes were about and we 'did not have a sense of humour', the country was not 'ready' to enact equal pay, the rubbish about male overwhelming sexuality that means male cannot control it and so rape…….women wearing clothing that 'invites' rape etc etc. Many of the memes promulgated by trans women and their supporters are incredibly misogynistic, openly violent and crude like male bullshit often is.
If someone could answer me why the existing provision could not have been amended ……I gather it was around the legal costs around statutory declarations..at least that was said.
I personally think bio women have been 'snowed' by the mighty powerful US based corporations and males of all sorts and stripes…..by the trans community with the catchy rights based argument and by hetero men who probably thing we are 'over-reacting, again…..perhaps even being 'hysterical'.
Not holding my breath that any good will come from the submissions before the select Committee.
We have unsafe spaces in the public sphere to look forward to, women prisoners being raped by males in women's prisons (UK) , by born males trying to insert themselves through human rights legislation into sensitive female spaces such as Rape Crisis Centres (Canada)
Rape Crisis Centre Edinbourough is run by an entire male who lied about his GRC in the first place to get a similar job previously. They then pontificated about 'rape and orgasms' (literally 14 century it was thought that if a women got pregnant by rape its because she had an orgasm'), and that bigotted rape victims need to be re-educated to their bigottry before they could get help. In the US they now hand out condoms to men in female prisons, and abortions to the women who end up pregnant. I read somewhere that some 3000+ males are looking to relocate to womens prisons in California alone. You can't get cancer care in the US unless you pay, but the state will pay for fake tits and a neo vag for a bloke, go figure.
This whole Self ID is an affront to women everywhere, it is sexual abuse made legal, it is putting women back on the urinary leash, and it is taking women out – no pun intended, one by one out of Universities, jobs, and generally public life.
And all of that here in NZ courtesy to the Green and the Labour Party, and one can't actually make this shit up. For the right we are 'helpmeets' at best, for the 'left' we are something that can't even be defined.
Women, politically homeless since ages ago.
Weka, I think those are really good questions. It seems like some activists want transwomen, in particular, to be treated as if they are biological women.
I want to preserve biological women as a sex class and be referred to as women, not mensturaters, chest feeders, birthing parent etc.
I want female only spaces and sporting competitions for biological women only.
I am unsure why transwomen want the opposite…..i.e. to have their gender identity treated as the same as biological women, when it just isn't. Its not possible. Just one of those things.
But if trans people want help with being treated with respect, getting jobs etc no problem.
I tend to take people as I find them, no matter who they are.
' It seems like some activists want transwomen, in particular, to be treated as if they are biological women.'
Isn't this the case though?
How else does Laurel Hubbard get to compete in womens events.
Sounds entirely reasonable to me
Here an update from the female prisons in the UK, they are now apparently reviewing the rule to allow trans identified males into womens prison, they are even building a rather large annex to house trans identified people and youth offenders.
Now this is the bit that i thought is telling
Maybe it is really only the access to women they want, and the right to behave in these places and around women and with women as they like. Maybe they really just want others to validate their existance every day as a women and if they don't get their fix then they get to complain about a hate crime.
And i find it very telling that a court in England knows that women are going to be harmed by these men, yet, they will put the wellbeing of men – violent men who have and will abuse women – before the wellbeing of the incarcerated women.
“to be treated in the same manner of people of the same gender as them” including “wanting to be searched more, to share a cell and shower at the same time as other people in custody something that is in contrast to what would be seen as undesirable to their fellow people in custody.”
I find it interesting that the vast majority of people know this is a bad idea, know exactly what this (or can at least imagine) will lead to yet I wouldn't be surprised if it happened lest someone in a government position be labelled a transphobe
That once again woman are the lest of peoples considerations
this is already happening. Both for ideology and because people are afraid to speak against that ideology (and that fear is reasonable given that people lose their jobs, careers, friends, SM accounts)
Sure is.
So in Rolleston we have, I think two trans women and they aren't segregated however all but one of Rollestons units are voluntary segregation so no real issues there
Last time I was in Chch Womens there were two trans women and one was in directed segs, a little more solid but similar to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb6OpRfyLFo
so imagine you're a women in prison and this person is in your wing.
The other was your more traditional Fa'afafine type, she was in the wing with the women but had seperate shower times and you couldn't have her anywhere near mens prison
And why is it women who have to figure this out and provide places.?
Because men simply don't.
100% Sabine and Fransceca.
Oh yes……women again making the accommodations trying to seek the best of a bad job, not accepting but trying to mitigate the inevitable.
It would be interesting to do a femo-linguistic exercise on the words/sayings in this issue.
I first came across it when the catch-cry was 'no debate'.
This immediately struck me as profoundly anti democratic. Why? If something is as good as it is made out to be it will stand up the scrutiny of good hearted people.
No debate (ie no democracy) was behind the case that went to the High Court so that SUFW could be stopped from holding meetings in Council premises. This was disguised by calling it 'hate speech' and was rightly called out by the Judges.
Then in Wellington, some/a City councillors could not see that protesting against people who were legally discussing things in Council premises could be seen as a conflict of interest.
My view is they should be impartial as far as the use of local govt premises are concerned….I see now of course why one was doing it. It also explains why my intuition about this particular person being self- rather than community-driven has turned out to be true right back from 2017 I have had the shivers running up my spine, they are our local councillor.
The words 'no debate' also falls into male/female roles since time immemorial,
no debate about bearing children until your insides fell out through multiple prolapses
no debate about not being able to work when married,
no debate about whose name went on to a certificate of title for a home, no debate just accepting what a male boss wanted to pay you,
no debate about not being able to raise one's own money (always with a male guarantor)
and, most overwhelmingly,
no debate when a man is about to sexually assault or rape you.
As well, like the covid anti vaxx movement, the trans movement here in NZ has some memes, 'players' and ways that are not NZ…..we have imported them.
Agree Shanreagh
yes to all of it.
I don't want to upset anyone but our learned Jordan Peterson has this to add.
https://youtu.be/JB9sfe_mQ1I
Jordan Peterson is a twit, not a learned anything and on feminism he is back in the dark ages.
Just my completely unbiased view though, he makes the hairs on my neck stand up and a shiver run down my spine.
Anything in that particular clip that you found him being non factual about?
It would be very shallow to label him a 'twit' on the basis that your opinion does not align with his,would it not?
Jordans a good man and makes good points. However he was unfairly targeted as a transphobe and so had the twitter/social media mob come after him
@puckish Rogue. My distaste for the views of Jordan Peterson came about well before the current trans issues……at the time when Lauren Southern, Stefan Molyneux, Katie Hopkins and Tommy Robinson seemed to be thought worthy of respect and listened to.
Blazer, I do not want to spend time unpicking anything Peterson says through a feminist lens. It is a waste of my time that I would rather spend reading or listening to the views of people who can recognise patriarchy when they see it and not be apologists for it.
He had had a tough time health wise lately and it does not seem to have marked a sea change in his views, which often happens when confronting death in the face.
I know one should be exposing oneself to all views. Take it from me when the above were in the news, including Peterson, I spent hours and hours researching them to see their views so I could be fair in my appraisal of them.
At the end I felt much as I do now when trying to assess the reasons for anti vax sentiments by reading their views and going down the rabbit hole. It gives me a feeling of being besmirched/mental nausea.
https://www.vox.com/conversations/2018/6/6/17409144/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life-feminism-philosophy
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life.html
Blazer nothing i factual as such, but presenting info that favours his case. Like I said he has a perspective he is entitled too
but he does appear to gloss over sex assaults and also that women earn less overall.
most men I come across are really decent. But they have been brought up to be self focused and self need driven. Women more empathetic.
men seem to be able to watch porn or visit prostitutes (not all men) which to me shows a lack of empathy and an ability to objectify those human beings.
Your statement that 'men seem to be able to watch porn or visit prostitutes' is hard to validate.
A quick search may surprise you, as to just how many women watch porn.
Regardless there are always differing viewpoints.
The lamest allegation imo….is the labelling of people whose views you disagree with as being…apologists.
Thread
https://twitter.com/_Bryana_Joy/status/1456661231322927104
[…]
https://twitter.com/_Bryana_Joy/status/1456663053240573957
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1456663048513523715.html
Reply to Blazer and Joe 90. I am aware women watch porn. Although not porn as such the movie 50 shades of grey seemed to be aimed at women (I never saw it) as somehow an exciting new way of spicing up your sex life.
I also accept what you say Joe 90 about extreme religious groups, although there is a difference between women being dominated in their lives by husbands and males they encounter and the sex industry.
I find the idea of porn destestable, but I understand that the stuff available on the internet is heavily dominated by men abusing and dominating women. ……..Also I belive there a very few women who visit male prostitutes.
I think its good to discuss these things as its not black and white.
@Anker
As you may have noticed from discussion on recent threads – the two sexes are different, have quite different sexual strategies and engage with sex in different modes.
The extraordinary sales success of 50 Shades – driven almost entirely by female buyers – cannot be so lightly dismissed as you have. You can rightly criticise it on any number of literary and accuracy grounds, but as a fantasy it clearly worked for huge numbers of women all over the world.
It's always been my view that both sexes equally consume pornography but in different forms. Males typically, but not always, align their interest visually, while women through narrative. 50 Shades was nothing new – it was really just a romance novel with an extra dose of spice added on. And women have been avid consumers of these for generations.
The big difference really is that the one form of imaginative arousal is socially deprecated while the other goes unremarked on.
If you go to the RNZ web page,go to Sunday morning then Media Watch and have a listen. My linking skills are not renown.
The last third of that program,there about's.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018819466/avoiding-the-mistakes-of-the-past-in-trans-rights-coverage
Reply to Red Logic,….."It has always been my view that both sexes equally consume pornography"…..That's an extraordinary claim, how do you justify it?
Huge sales of 50 Shades of Grey I think means that it is commericially successful. Why this is, we can't be 100% sure.
I have never read it or seen the movie. However I have read (feminists) critiques of it. The relationship between the two protaginists seems deeply problematic. It appears it is about an older man who stalks a younger women and enoourages/grooms her into S and M relationship. The control by the male isn't just into the context of the B and D sex. He apparently stalks her. This is not a healthy template for relationships.
I also wonder about the damage for women who portray such scenes in movies. I note none of the big stars, such as Jennifer Anistan, Charleze Theron etc don't take on these roles. they don't have too. Melanie Griffiths daughter who was in 50 Shades of Grey was a virtual unknown it was her break out role. So yeah I do wonder what it does to these actress playing such parts. Afterall Holywood is full of exploitation of women.
I think you rather missed my point. But I'll leave it there.
no problem
RNZ have far bigger problems than their alleged bias(?) on "trans genderism"……their class bias just for starters…..
Too right,a damn shame of a once fine broadcaster.
Todays paper suggests that ever since the Government has abandoned the elimination strategy, they are adrift as to what to do. I don't believe that this started with the drop of the elimination strategy. We have no planning, financial or with immigration, housing, poverty, law and order etc. None is actually in real terms improving, all blamed on covid of cause.
I think that is should be mandated that everybody has a chance to get fully vaccinated until the 15 December. After that, we are back to "normal" and people have to take responsibility over their own health. I mean a year surely is enough notice. The only logistical work needed is border control in and out the country. Plane, ship, hang glider whatever is used. Resources need to be allocated to those areas and the health system freed up by allocation resourcing by rate of incidence. For example: 100% are 50 beds, Covid incidence is 10 % so 5 beds are allocated unless more are available due to not being used by i.e. accidents, heart attack's, etc. Sounds like rationing but this is done right now anyways.
If the virus is to be "contained" rather than eliminated, the only choice is to manage all surrounding support systems. In the end you cannot hold someone's hand forever because it starts to look like milking the system.
This is a question put by a well known clinical psychologist-Jordan Peterson-'what threat do the unvaccinated present to the…vaccinated'?
One way is for the unvaccinated to overwhelm the health system, so the vaccinated have more trouble getting care they need.
Yes that is the conclusion I came to as well.
Not sure it is a very compelling message to the reluctant though.
Why? Selfish much…
"Compelling message to the reluctant."
Consider this…your family member/child has no help for a condition because the unvaccinated have overwhelmed the health system.
So do you think presenting that scenario to the unvaccinated would encourage them to get vaxxed?
Hi Blazer. Just a thought. The parent could be the unvaccinated party?
When people take a stance for whatever reason, they are willing to risk themselves, yet will go to extraordinary lengths to protect their children.
…the unvaccinated to overwhelm the health system, so the vaccinated have more trouble getting care they need.
At the general practice level this is sorted already….with the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners setting out the protocols for keeping the filthy, unworthy unvaxxed away from the clean, deserving vaccinated.
If the patient is unvaccinated or refuses to say, then they should be:
The upshot of this will be that many, if not most, of us who are unvaccinated will not seek medical attention at all. (Who wants to be treated like unclean plague carriers, especially when the vaccinated can also carry and transmit the virus? )
So we will not go to our GP for the usual health issues and those health issues will not be dealt to and could very well develop into the kinds of co- morbidities that are listed for those who the Covid kills.
Result!
I have not been able to access what advice is being given hospital based doctors, but I imagine it will be pretty much the same.
All those kindhearted lefties lurking on TS who have been demanding that the unvaccinated are refused medical treatment and can expect nothing more than an area set aside in the carpark can celebrate.
Their fantasies have come to fruition.
PS. What happened to "herd immunity"? What % vaccinated before we get there?
What about those who have had Covid and recovered and now have natural immunity? Why are they not a category on the Pass?
Afaik, there is no herd immunity for covid at this time. And natural immunity from previous infection apparently wanes over time.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1#disqus_thread
Conclusions This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant.
yes, but natural immunity and vaccination both wane over time.
Maybe I missed your point. You said,
Because the government believes that public health is best served by a vaccination programme that reaches 90%+?
Additionally, the numbers of people in NZ who have had covid is still quite small.
But sure, they're not going to do that because then less people would vaccinate.
When evaluating the relevance and reliability of scientific studies, there are some key considerations:
Number of participants
Length of study
Has it been peer reviewed?
Does it form part of meta analysis? Or it a single study and results to be viewed with caution until other similar studies are released?
I have seen this study before and until the warning on the top of the first page has been resolved then it should be treated with caution.
"This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice."
It has not been referred either.
Doh 'refereed' …not 'referred'.
Why would anyone play Russian Roulette trying to acquire a natural immunity by getting Covid? It might not work – you might die instead or get Long Covid.
is that a rhetorical question or would you really like to know?
I really would like to know. Why would anyone do this to themselves unless they were about ready to leave the world anyway. And there are easier ways now seeing it is now 7/11/21.
Wanting to acquire an immunity from catching covid that might mean you would die, or catch long covid does not seem to me to be capable of a rationale explanation.
BUT over to you.
I don't have a problem with GPs taking precautions, but that statement smacks of values judgements.
Seeing people by phone/video makes sense anyway, but this one is fucked up,
That's just punitive shit.
And I completely agree that the end result will be vulnerable people not getting medical care (and then ending up in A and E).
Two New Zealands. Let's see how that works out.
Right now in Auckland I haven't been able to have a face to face GP consultation for 3 months ; all done by tele consult. My quarterly oncology appointment has been postponed twice now and arranged (hopefully this time) for mid – December. By then it will have been a 6 month gap.
My husband obtained an urgent dental appointment but had to have a Covid test as close as possible to the date of consult.
So we've been living this way for months ; both double vaxed and hoping for booster shots in March.
I have close friends in Hamilton who seem to have been in Level three forever. When one of the young adults experienced shortness of breath and heart palpitations after their first Pfizer injection I most strenuously advised going to the doctor…preferably the one he had been enrolled with since before birth. I was shocked when I was told that they will only see patients who are getting the Pfizer product.
I trust you also encouraged them to report the adverse event? It's useless if not used.
Of course I did. And of course they didn't.
I'm not sure if you are aware McFlock, but an awful lot of young folk are aware of the possible heart issues but feel they have no choice…what with jobs and all that. And pressure from all sides to do the decent thing. And being told that the vaccine is safe and effective and any side effects and mild and transitory and even full blown myocarditis will also be mild and transitory. And of course if you can't get to see a doctor or go to the hospital and even the ambos write it off as stress…your report to CARM will be dismissed anyway.
So what's the point?
We should be able to speak about the very real adverse effects of the Pfizer product… but we can't can we?
Go on…call me a misinformation peddling anti-vaxxer…
WTF has work got to do with it? It's an online form. Heck, you could do it yourself if they were cool with it.
Even if CARM don't think it's linked, they log it. It's not usually about the individual, it's about the patterns of reports they get. But to establish a pattern, they need reports.
Big pharma doesn't need to cover anything up with folk like you around.
Don't understand this…..if he had had his first injection then he was getting the Pfizer product. The sheet that everyone is given says what to do and where to go if there are side effects. Not sure that they advised for heart things going to their own Dr or going to A & E.
This is normal practice already in a in some areas – I sort of wondered why they mentioned it at all. It's really frustrating for people with chronic illnesses, and has been for a long time.
I guess it might be to do with the some sort of rotation among the doctors?
I have to book 3 days ahead if I want to see a GP of my choice. I didn't get that from the statement, I took it to mean that they would be at the back of the queue. I could be wrong about that, but their tone is really that of someone who highly disapproves and wants the person to know it.
What is the problem here? Even in normal times with group practices and urgency your own Dr may not be available they may have a locum or because of urgency it might be better to see another in the practice. I have even been advised to go straight to the hospital or to an after hours clinic that has lab & xray facilities. These words continue what has been normal practice in my Dr's practice. It says they are to be seen by another clinician. This could be another Dr or the hospital, or a clinic.
Surely a person who wanted to see a Dr could take advantage of the options under Manage my Health for repeats of prescriptions, Zoom/telehealth consultation, carpark consultation (I had one last year in lockdown).
Since Covid last year my Dr has operated a screening process in his rooms with anyone who answers 'yes' to questions such as cold symptoms being required to remain outside in the corridor, masked until the appointment time The nurse will see you and then if necessary the Dr will come out masked to triage me, it was sinus and to take me through to his actual rooms.
I do not see the problem with being referred another Doctor. This may be one who has premises better suited to consults with possibly infectious patients.
I have just checked with partner who goes to a different practice they have operated a changed system since Covid came last year with more info being provided at phone up stage to work out the best ways of being seen. He then went to a closed door, had a nurse assessment/verbal questionnaire and then went to the waiting room where there were 3 other people at 2m spaces.
Sister has had a couple of carpark consults in Gore since Covid last year but to be fair the Dr also used to do carpark consults, if needed, with my mother when she was frail (she died in 2010) .
Have other people's Drs practices not been operating with changed procedures since last year?
on this one I have to disagree with you Weka.
If you have a GP who is older, overweight, is immunocompromised, Maori, diabetic etc etc, any of or all of the above, it is only right they protect themselves by not seeing people with Covid and those unvacinated will present more risk to them.
they should say that then, if that's the reason.
Surely by not going to the Dr by availing yourself of the options that are there you are just 'cutting your nose off to spite your face', as my Dad, bless him, used to say.
Many of us had telehealth, carpark consults last year. We did not feel either clean or dirty by accepting these practices but accepting of the fact that everyone is trying to keep others safe. .
I really do not understand the problem here when these processes have been par for the course for many medical practices for over 18 months now.
As I said below I had a carpark consult when no-one was vaccinated. I accepted this, I had covid-like symptoms and also the fact that my Dr looked a little space age-y when he came out. Now they feel that they can moderate this process as many are vaccinated.
The red and green streams at our Dr's practice are for feverish likely covid and no symptoms at all. Not vaccinated or unvaccinated.
I think the medical staff are under such intense pressure it must be very scary for them and also infuriating that they will have to treat people with covid who have refused the jab. I am not saying this is right or wrong but human.
I would hate to be in their postiion and I would feel resentment towards every patient who didn't do absolutely everything they could not to endanger me and my family. But maybe medical staff are people than I am.
Its great your practice worked out red/greeen streams for their patients Patricia. But maybe that isn't want is formost in GPs mind at the moment.
I visited my wonderful GP last week, to get as much stuff checked as possible before Covid hits. She told me that had done all their jabs for now and were now trying to work out how they were going to look after their patients who got sick with Covid in the Community. I doubt they prioritized how can we make sure the unvacinated don't feel bad about their choice.
People have a right not to be vacinated, but their are consequences. If it is that important to people not to be vacinated then, thats what goes with it.
Yep, you may as well clear out the smokers, overweight, drivers who caused accidents from the hospital wards too… just so the vaccinated can get a clean run 🙄
I don't believe that unvaccinated people should be denied health care, and it's reprehensible politically to promote that idea. But, there's a difference between smokers' personal choices and needing health services, and unvaccinated people. Smoking isn't contagious.
it is 'contagious', we call it second hand smoking.
that's not contagious, it's sharing toxins. Contagious is when you end up with 200+ cases a day, some of whom will get a permanent disability.
i put '' around the word for a reason. And for what its worth, my sister life time issues can be directly attributed to having spend her life in cars full of smoke, waiting for her parents to leave the smoky bar / restaurant, and generally be surrounded by smokers all her life. I would even go so far that the smoking of my parents contributed to the smoking of my siblings and I (with me being the only one to have kicked the habit). So yes, it is 'contagious' but not in the sense of a virus. Rather a social contagion, and a physical softening as clearly all my siblings and i were second hand smokes a day after we were born thus leading to addiction later in life.
contagion: the spreading of a harmful idea or practice.
contagion: the communication of disease from one person or organism to another by close contact.
both are valid word choices.
sure, but your parents' smoking didn't lead to 200 people being infected. Contagious has an actual medical meaning that differentiates it from the kind of issues that you are talking about, and it's why we have lock downs for covid but not smoking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drhkVKlHWZI
Ok Please don't take this seriously. I am posting it for light relief. One of my favourite comedians, Jack Dee on triaging health care for the NHS. (pre covid).
There is no intention or practice of denying health care to people who are unvaccinated……all along in the info about the vaccine passport it has been clear to state that access to food or health care is not restricted.
Some practices have been operating differently this since last year.
No, read what I wrote. We haven't got unlimited resources and hence it has to be apportioned. It always has before but no one ever seem to have asked the hard questions. I wonder why.
Smokers, overweight and drunk drivers are a different category then a transferable virus. The first lot is doing the harm to themselves and also others in some cases by administering a drug/food to their body. The people who get infected are getting the disease via a transferable virus that is not visible to the naked eye and is a living thing looking for a host. BIG DIFFERENCE.
If an option exists to limit the outfall of this or any disease, an obligation on the citizen/resident to protect all people within their family, district, city, country that is within their means is not an unreasonable request. If a person feels that their right is to deny this, all good and fine. But please don't ask the same community to fork out endlessly for treatment whilst their family can't get access to an ICU or hospital bed for any treatment that is urgent.
This has to be a managed risk rather than have a runaway health issue. I mean this is not the first time a pandemic has happened. Vaccination was then and is now a way to limit casualties. One has to wonder whether reason and logic has gone out the window.
You are pre-supposing in that argument that only the unvaccinated transmit the virus.
No, not at all. What I am saying is that everybody has a right to protection and as a nation we have to look at the sum of things rather than personal issues in cases like that. We are talking about a disease that does not differentiate between races, religion, age or income. It is an obligation on every person to do their best not to abscond from their responsibility within the community. I have a sister who is adamant to not vaccinate, that's ok with me. But she has to take precautions not to get ill. And this means limited contacts, family need to distance and wear mask to protect HER. Do you think that is a good outcome for anyone?
And are all unvaccinated do the same and follow their own protection protocol? There is an issue here and it can cost lives.
It is an obligation on every person to do their best not to abscond from their responsibility within the community.
Yup – that's why I vaccinated – more from a sense of duty than conviction. (It helped that I had something of a choice here in WA and could go with the AZ vaccine.)
But stepping from this position to compulsion erases the individual's agency and incurs a social and political cost – that may or may not be worth paying.
It is an obligation on every person to do their best not to abscond from their responsibility within the community.
And those of us who, after much careful consideration, have decided not to risk the Pfizer product are what…?
Sociopaths?
….family need to distance and wear mask to protect HER.
No, no, no!!!
[deleted]
22.10.21…the day New Zealand officially lost the plot…Science died, and those who have chosen not to risk the known side effects from the Pfizer product because of existing health conditions (which will not be recognized by doctors because the Word has already come down from On High that only those with an allergy to Pfizer product ingredients (specifically PEGs) will be allowed an exemption) will be called 'fucking filth anti vaxxers' who should be forced to wait in the carpark for medical attention.
Should we even risk seeking it.
As for 'absconding from their responsibility within the community' tell that to the people who rushed to get the Pfizer product and are now suffering the consequences… and are not allowed to speak publicly about it.
Those of us who have chosen to decline the Pfizer product on health grounds are of course going to practice good infection control and support our immune systems with good nutrition.
[if you want to make claims about a public figure in a heated debate, then you have to link. I’m now past asking for this (and it’s not just you). Feel free to repost once you have link so we know what you are talking about – weka]
mod note.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/454049/watch-live-govt-reveals-its-covid-19-protection-framework
(-5.00)
.https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-22-10-2021/#comment-1826556
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdMSRolWCyQ&t=61s
(about .40)
thanks 👍
That bloody interview. At the 40s mark, that's spin. Telling people that they're safe once double vaxxed, all she had to do was say safer.
does -5.00 mean five minutes from the end of the video?
Yes, you have the choice. Also to wait for other vaccines. But you have to also live with the consequences and not complain about lack of treatment places, overwhelmed health systems, resources being diverted for wage subsidies, border control etc. to keep NZ ticking over for all.
Being vaccinated does not mean that you are immune or cannot pass the virus on, but it does mean that if you are infected, the symptoms become manageable to the majority and can be treated at home. No need to end up in ICU.
We need to get out of this mental prison of being preoccupied by stealth with one issue only. Why do you think so many people flaunt borders etc. getting unruly, aggression is on the rise.
This would lead me back to my initial posting. Enough said.
Agree and nicely put F Waka
No liver transplants for anyone who ever drank an alcoholic beverage.
No ACC for anyone who broke their body skiing or mountain biking.
No helicopter service for anyone who is responsible for their own accidents.
I can only shake my head because these are just emotional responses.
Of course they are.
but this dystopian world were we are going to will produce this exact outcome. When everything is in a shortage they will start triaging, and guess who will not be provided a service or a reduced service.
And we already do that. Women with physical ailments after giving birth are not receiving the same care by ACC then someone who breaks a leg while mountain biking down a hill – sober, drunk or high for that matter.
And so as long as society is ok with doing that – to the groups is can get away with it i.e. Women, children, oldies, infirm, chronically ill etc, they have no issues putting us on waiting lists, medicating our ailments rather then finding what is wrong and curing that etc.
So this is just good banter among good citizens proposing whom they would exclude from healthcare, and obviously it will never be the good citizens themselves cause 'good citizen'.
Women with physical ailments after giving birth are not receiving the same care
Yeah this one definitely irks me. There's a whole history everything around sexual health, childbirth and post natal care falling into a chasms opened up by competing ideologies and ideas in tension with each other.
We are merely defective men, and if men don't suffer from something, no one does. See how that is fixed now, and cheap too. No investments and pay out needed. It's just Non Males.
I'll limit myself to saying that this non-woman got into very deep shit here for insisting some years back that men and women were indeed different and this had many important implications.
My perspective here is not at all sophisticated – merely informed by this simple idea that I find so obvious I feel stupid for typing it out.
Sabine, I am originally from a country where we have not had any rationing of health services and women have 1 year paid parental leave. I am one of those who would like to have a solid system in place that is not from an anglo saxon origin where you show a stiff upper lip until you die.
Not in my world. But we need to take realities into consideration. NZ has a small tax base and a government that has not shown any vision or idea how to get out of this. Meanwhile we drown in debt and the kids will get the bill for that (not to mention the environmental issues).It will not be easy, no one in their right mind would assume this. But we have to find a way because right now, with the talk about freedom etc. everybody is loosing theirs. In case it isn't obvious.
We lost our freedoms last year march on the eve of Lockdown L4. Since then nothing has changed. And despite that, we got us the Americas Cup, some Amazon Give a way for no return and the Wiggles, and gave our underpaid and over worked nurses a run around for a decent and deserved pay raise. We have priorities for our spending, and sadly we spend it on frivolous stuff rather then invest it in our healthcare.
And now we are going to sleep in the bed we made.
And i will not be blaming the people who don't want to be pfizered for the national shortage of trained staff for our ICU beds, and ICU beds. We always knew it was going to be bad when it gets here.
Sabine….I assume you are anti vax then?
Not just a threat but a consequence. Smaller family gatherings and police call outs to businesses if entry to a shop is not permitted and a heated verbal exchange or an assault occurs.
The deliberately unvaccinated are a threat to the passively unvaccinated. The unvaccinated are not a homogeneous group of steely-eyed ideologues who have made a firm decision to not get vaccinated. Some will be merely misinformed, indifferent, out of the loop or have other stuff going on in their lives. We need to try and get to these people and get them vaccinated for their own sake. As usual Peterson heads up to such a level of abstraction that he's dumb as a rock.
Well Jordan Peterson, words fail me.
Could you link to the background to this please?
To respond to the question one has to accept the premise that in fact the vaccinated feel threatened by the unvaccinated.
I am far from convinced the vaccinated do feel threatened other than the exhibiting innate good sense for fear of infection.
Many in the US are wary on a personal level of the unvaccinated as they sometimes do not follow other public health advice such masking and physical distancing.
There are very few public figure people in my life that my intuition clangs about
I mentioned one, a Wellington City Councillor above, you have mentioned Jordan Petterson and please nobody mention Gerard Wall former Porirua MP and arch anti abortionist…….ooops!
https://youtu.be/mbxN6OcBT5I
long covid is estimated at between 10% and 40% of people who are infected. I'm guessing you haven't factored in that.
2% of health care workers in the UK have long covid. Kids get long covid. People who had mild covid are getting decline in kidney function months later.
It's a novel virus, there is a still a lot we don't know about it.
We literally know nothing about it. And it would be very nice if our officials could actually admit that. And frankly, that is one of the reason people refuse the jabs. We know actually nothing much at all about this virus, we are always three steps behind, and then the bugger mutates into a different version.
And thus, maybe saying that this jab is the best preventative medication we have would be more honest rather then sell it as a vaccine. And frankly, it might have also taken a bit the edge of the 'anti vac' movement, as obviously it ain't a vaccine.
You may find this dip into the causes of long covid interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnPvw20iH80
Not definitive, but some solid indications as to why people are reacting so very differently.
thanks, that was interesting. Have you come across any research or analysis on people with autoimmune conditions or PVFS having a flare after being vaccinated?
No. The only thing that comes to mind is that in my current workplace of about 40 people that I interact with regularly – 6 had an unhappy reaction to their vaccination that I know of.
But I've no idea if there is any correlation between this and a vulnerability to long covid.
it was a tangent (whether people with chronic illness are at risk of flare or relapse from vaccination). Looks like they are in somewhat low numbers, anecdotally and from what I can tell this isn't being researched very well.
An anecdotal story of one person, my sister, who has fibromyalgia rheumatica, still on prednisone and has had no problems or flares with either of her Covid vaccinations. She is also allergic to penicillin so getting Covid with the often follow-up lung etc infections would be very hard to treat.
that doesn't really help much sorry. Most people are ok, some aren't, it's the ones that aren't that are being missed and afaik the research on this isn't being done (or at least not well or in a timely manner).
Weka …the guardian reports today that (from a big study) 37 per cent have ended up with long covid, including some pretty scary symptoms.
Sorry on my phone and can't link but someone will do this I'm sure.
thanks, it's not looking good. Some of those people will have simple disability and still be able to work/have a life. Others will have their life destroyed by it.
Probably the same study, reported on RNZ
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018819491/long-covid-issues-continuing-to-mount
The Limits to Growth is an MIT study from 1972:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/25/gaya-herrington-mit-study-the-limits-to-growth
It has been reevaluated by KPMG sustainability analysist and found to be accurate:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/25/gaya-herrington-mit-study-the-limits-to-growth
Her assessment, Beyond Growth, is a call, not for 'degrowth' but 'agrowth':
Nice one. I don't trust KPMG, but good to see The Limits of Growth being taken seriously.
Growth, and certainly progress, might still happen, but it’s no longer the goal.
Now explain that to the roughly 6b people in the world who are nowhere near as wealthy as you are.
Obviously the only metric of any import is wealth. /s
With an agrowth agenda, profit is no longer the only goal, so then we could use the productive capacity of the earth to feed and house those who need it rather than continuing to concentrate wealth in the global north.
Pretty sure that approach would be popular with the 6b people you refer to.
Whether it's dressed up as 'agrowth' or 'degrowth' strikes me a semantic gymnastics. In essence it still comes down to the following:
https://thebreakthrough.org/journal/issue-6/does-capitalism-require-endless-growth
Section 5
Again it's worth asking – if you argue to impose this massive re-distribution and hard ceiling on human development indefinitely into the future – exactly how to you imagine to achieve this? For literally the whole of future of the human race however long this might be?
High income countries can reduce their GDP easily.
All they need to do is stymie the property market.
I'm sure I read it makes up about 42% of GDP in either Auck or NZ.
An unproductive class of unearned income.
― Ursula K. Le Guin
Nowhere have I suggested capitalism is an ideal, inescapable reality. And I've repeatedly said that it's not obvious that any of the economic systems we've tried so far will work well in the post-growth world we're heading into.
As I've said a few times – from a political economy pov we're in uncharted waters. If I had to guess the coming evolution will conserve the proven elements of conservatism, capitalism and socialism – but leverage a wholly new social and ethical universalism.
The fixation on wealth and global quality of life as zero-sum are from a capitalist, false scarcity point of view. Also, from your provided link:
Both the USSR and China achieved lifting large agrarian populations out of poverty, so by any reasonable analysis some variation of socialism, not capitalism, has proven better. Capitalism has largely got us to where we are now, and still stands in the way of immediate action on a majority of the crises the world is facing. It is important to remember markets and their mechanisms don't only exist under capitalism.
Large-scale wealth redistribution is an unachievable utopia – we know why.
Limiting consumption to reflect the resource ceiling of spaceship Earth is an unachievable utopia – we know why.
Tick tock.
1.5-Degree Lifestyles: Towards A Fair Consumption Space for All
[PDF; 2021]
If applied, the recommendations from the 1.5-Degree Lifestyles report will bring us back to a status of good ancestry. Some of the policy proposals herewith may be perceived as too far-reaching and intruding on privacy and the rights of the individual. But we are in a precarious situation. Carbon emissions must be brought to net zero in less than a few decades. This means we have to explore all possible means at our disposal and design the future we want to truly emerge from the current planetary emergency. The 1.5-Degree Lifestyles report is a bold attempt to do just that.
This means we have to explore all possible means at our disposal
Oh good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94ZA6ddXk4c
You must be stoked
But what chance to meet the 1.5 degree global warming target?
Yes I am rather and I've spoken to this earlier. But at the same time China will build more coal fired power stations will be built and for the next 15 odd years their CO2 trajectory will continue to rise. Due to their climate and geographic realities – renewables really is not an option for China, nor many other locations:
Yet the good news is that contrary to the hype – in the developed world CO2 emissions per unit of GDP have been declining for some time now.
What realistic chance to meet the 1.5 degree global warming target?
I've put up a number of references that address your question.
However if you prefer to wallow in unproductive catastrophism count me out.
What’s your best reckon for a +1.5 degree future – a 50% chance? More? Less?
It’s your choice to characterise my lack of optimism as “unproductive catastrophism” – I’ll refrain from my usual response. https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-22-07-2021/#comment-1805387
In many ways I'm seeing CC as one of a number of important but not necessarily the most urgent issues facing humanity. Right now we're faced with some very urgent challenges around authoritarianism, covid disruptions to global systems and increasing social polarisation to name a few that leap to mind.
Longer term CC is on a list of quite a few catastrophe's that could kick us in the arse.
Part of the problem is the embedded psychological flaw that we put a far greater weight on negative events or the possibility of loss, than we do the positive. There are good evolutionary reasons for this – all the good years mean little if everyone starves during the one year of famine, or that rustle in the bushes turn out to be a predator. Yet when faced with complex technical problems our collective risk management is very prone to leaping to wrong conclusions.
But all other things being equal (which they probably won't be) I'd suggest by 2050 we should have CC under control. I'd rate the odds at over 70% – if and only if there is a global consensus on fast tracking advanced next gen nuclear. Absent that the odds drop – my main concern being the increasing economic and social impacts of de-globalisation, the disruption of trade, the return of famine, mass migrations and internecine strife. That would be the perfect storm that would cripple our ability to act on climate change directly and adapt to it's inevitable impact.
In short a bumpy ride, but we can choose to avoid the worst pot-holes.
Them's good odds, "all other things being equal" and "if and only if there is a global consensus on fast tracking advanced next gen nuclear." But, as you observe, the devil is in the "pot holes", and our easy ride is ending.
Nevertheless filled with optimism that I'll see out my days in relative comfort – so lucky to be born when and where I was.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/454843/growing-numbers-of-children-forced-to-flee-by-climate-change-report
You’ve got to accentuate the positive …
Apparantly 25,000 people die of starvation everyday….there appears to be a 'cure' …it's called FOOD.
Losing 25,000 to Hunger Every Day | United Nations
Probably had co-morbidities…
neoliberal capitalism is a co-morbidity.
More likely lack of a functioning government, and corruption, .
I was thinking of the overdevelopped world's insistence that people stop growing food for themselves and their neighbours and grow cash crops for the global economy instead.
+1 Extractive economies – many left over from the colonial era.
Dead…right Robert…they identified malnutrition as the…prevelant..one.
https://www.bread.org/what-causes-hunger
Yet at the same time we live in a world that produces roughly 25% more food than we can consume. The problem is clearly one of distribution rather than production.
The boiler-plate left wing response is to blame capitalism for everything – yet the root cause is poverty something that capitalism has done a remarkable job in reducing. In 1800 almost all of humanity lived in extreme poverty – now after 200 years of capitalism life expectancies have doubled, population growth is slowing and less than 10% of people live in poverty. Indeed the more capitalist a nation is, the more likely it's people are to suffer obesity than starvation. We need a better explanation.
The answers that on the ground are a good deal more pragmatic and less ideological than we'd like. Things like decent transport, reliable electricity, functioning economies, and rule of law governance. Boring stuff – but transformative.
'The problem is clearly one of distribution rather than production.'
affordability not relevant?
Yes affordability is absolutely relevant – and largely bundled up in the items I mentioned in my last para.
So is the answer for so many African countries, where malnutrition is rife to become 'Capitalist'…..or just more Capitalist than they are at present?
I always thought their access to beneficial capital was something out of their control.
One would think that 25,000 people dying every day from something that does not need a vaccine ,but could be solved by benevolent intervention would be a big priority.
A fine 'so what you're saying' moment there.
Nah – all I'm saying is that if we want to eradicate poverty and hunger (and on current trends we're well on the way to achieving this by the end of this century if not sooner) then smashing capitalism is not the most obvious starting point.
I'll put this thought out there – the left might do better if it could formulate a constructive model of socialism that was capable of footing it on equal terms with both the energy and innovation of capitalism, and the stability and continuity of conservatism.
Lot's of attempts have been made at this – and I'd argue it's well overdue we firmly relegated Marx and his fellow travellers to a big fat footnote of history and started thinking about a holistic political economy better adapted to the post-growth world we're heading into. The timing feels good on this.
I am very interested in your definition of Capitalism,and expressly where it exists in meaningful form.
Everywhere I look I see varying degrees of…Socialism.
But the wealth of those capitalist countries is derived to a large part from their capture and control of the resources/labour of other smaller less powerful countries.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/jan/14/aid-in-reverse-how-poor-countries-develop-rich-countries
Yup there is a great deal that can and should be done to enforce greater transparency and trust to global financial systems. That linked article is absolutely on the nail with this – there is every reason to build more fairness into global trade systems at the institutional level.
Yet arguably the reason why poorer countries are too often the losers in this game is because they have weak governments – prone to corrupt kleptocratic elites, weak institutions and geopolitical considerations that put them on the backfoot in any negotiation.
So while I'm absolutely in favour of more global multi-lateral action as the article suggests – top down action has it's limits unless also met with the kind of on the ground, human development basics like clean safe water, reliable electricity, education and basic medical care. Only then does a nation have the chance to build the kind of middle class that has sufficient political clout to hold it’s elites to account.
'Yet arguably the reason why poorer countries are too often the losers in this game is because they have weak governments – prone to corrupt kleptocratic elites, weak institutions and geopolitical considerations that put them on the backfoot in any negotiation.'
'Arguably is right!
Tokenism by the worlds economic powers,whose corporations actively seek out resources and labour exploitation for their own shareholders profit ,definately doesn't help alleviate poverty.
The 2plus trillion dollars the U.S 'spent' on Afghanistan ,largely went into the pockets of their own multi nationals and look at the outcome-a giant leap backwards .
Millionaire western politicians doing the bidding of billionaire donors.
I posted to this in more detail elsewhere but in essence I see capitalism (with a little 'c') as little more than a set of economic tools coupled with one important social idea. (It's when it tips into the neo-liberal's singular insistence that markets can be the only measure of value that it becomes an ideology.)
In brief the economic tools were things like fractional reserve lending (that greatly expanded money supply), double entry book-keeping (that formalised business accounts) and the rules of contract law. This isn't exhaustive but gives a sense of what I mean – think of them as commercial technologies that enabled modern business to exist.
The other big idea was that of private property. It's so important that Marx was intuitively drawn to attack it – even if he was proven utterly wrong on this. Private property creates both incentives and the continuity to let economies grow.
And in the 1600's when capitalism was being invented – grow they needed to do – because while the historic record speaks to the events and lives of a tiny minority of the elites, the vast majority of people lived lives of extreme poverty none of us moderns would tolerate for more than a few days, weeks at most.
What we can immediately recognise is that while remarkably successful at enabling human production and development – none of these tools or ideas innately spoke to the subsequent problem of distribution. And this is where the socialist impulse has played a vital moderating role. As you say socialism is everywhere.
The other days I spoke to a vision of a world in which say 9b humans lived fully upper middle class lives by say the end of this century. (This is not so crazy – if my grandfather who was born in 1870 was shown a video of my daily life in 2021 he would be astonished beyond all belief.) It's my sense that getting there is going to require the harnessing of human innovation, a just distribution and stable social structures – each of these drawing on all three of our existing economic modes.
But to achieve this merger we need one more radical transformative idea.
Thank you.
You appear to give Capitalism alot of credit I don't believe it deserves.
The core premise is…who creates and gets first use of created capital.
Its impossible to deny that it is only a small,select elite(born to rule) who have structured society on the cornerstone of compounding interest on debt.
You allude to 'neo-liberalism' as a replacement/excuse for pure Capitalism.
This standard of modern day living you are enamoured with, relies on infinite growth and material acquisition as a worthy goal for aspiration.
We know that ,today a tiny % of the worlds population control 90% of the worlds wealth.
We also know that to enforce any ideology dominant military power is required.
Free markets,laissez faire capitalism and all the propaganda associated with them(trickle down etc)are an illusion.
That bastion of freedom,democracy and supposedly Capitalism that you admire-the U.S.A empire is maintained by domination of financial markets and military might.
This is not a sustainable regime.
As an aside your belief that freedom from hunger will be alleviated before the end of this century,is not very comforting…its 2021,so @25,000 deaths a day times 365 days x 78 years is a hell of alot of…'collateral damage.
You appear to give Capitalism alot of credit I don’t believe it deserves.
Only if you ignore everything else I’ve written to this on this theme.
relies on infinite growth and material acquisition as a worthy goal for aspiration.
Nowhere is there a rule that says capitalism relies on infinite growth. That's a strawman argument. It's fair to say it's well adapted to growth, but then we can point to Japan which has experienced at least two decades of post-growth see that capitalism has adapted to this as well.
You allude to 'neo-liberalism' as a replacement/excuse for pure Capitalism.
Neo-liberalism is what happens when you go too far with capitalism. There is a close parallel with what happens when you take socialism too far and it degenerates into communism. Or you take good ideas around social justice and it becomes the cult of woke. Or sane ideas around ethnic identity and pervert them into racial supremacy.
Getting a sense of where the boundaries lie is important.
Capitalism does not seem to have a hard set of 'rules' regardless.
Its merits are a debate that can never be resolved.
', how quickly a zero-growth economy is achieved, and calls on natural capital globally peak and then decline, depends upon three closely related phenomena: how rapidly global population stabilizes, how rapidly incomes among the global poor rise, and the rate at which resource-sparing technological change occurs.'
Does Capitalism Require Endless Growth? | The Breakthrough Institute
Breakthrough Institute are an interesting group and I've read a fair bit of their material in the past year or two. The article you reference is a good one and underlines my assertion that the left really needs to get over not only Marx, but Malthus as well. Oddly enough I was idly contemplating a post along those just those lines but hesitated at how to present it without pointlessly enraging some people here.
@RL-I just wish the 'right' would get over their 2 options re geo politics-
1-we will bomb you back to the…Stone Age.
2-we will make your economy…scream.
All done in the best possible…taste…naturellement.
I get it – nowhere have I presented our history as anything like ideal. The US have – like all superpowers – behaved quite ruthlessly at various times. In a world where nation states are still the top social order and lacking any global authority to constrain them – one will usually dominate.
What we get to hope for is the least tyrannical one. And of all the realistic alternatives the post WW2 period might have offered – the US was probably the best bet.
Red , you must be aware , in Latin America for instance that any govt that has attempted these things tends to get very promptly regime changed
"… In 1800 almost all of humanity lived in extreme poverty – now after 200 years of capitalism life expectancies have doubled…"
Since when was capitalism only introduced 200 years ago!? The timing sounds much more like the industrial revolution doesn't it?
Good question – the timeline I have in mind is that capitalism slowly emerged out of the Renaissance era (alongside a similar flourishing in the science domain) in the 15th and 16th centuries.
But it took another few hundred years until roughly the 1840's when the first round of globalisation really took off that we started to see the industrial revolution have it's huge impact on our daily lives. And even by 1900 most people were still very poor indeed, it's only the post-WW2 period that has seen modernity really spread out across the majority of humanity.
I accept this is a very low resolution presentation – and there is lots of opportunity to parse the precedents and details – but for the purposes of this conversation it's what I have in mind when I say 'capitalism'.
We can't feed poor people for free, they might feel entitled……NZGovt/WINZ.
While you did post a hypocritical partisan load of bile I don't for one minute condone some of the responses to your post but it could be said you asked for it.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
do you want the day off? Because while I appreciated the political point you are trying to make there, yours was the only abusive response so it’s hard to not be thinking you are still flaming.
No problem Weka – I'll leave it.
Congratulations to Counties Manukau!
Full credit to the leaders of both Maori and Pacifica. This region has some of the poorest and most marginalised people in the country, so for it to reach nearly 90% ahead of many other regions means that the effort of so many in the region has been magnificent:
@rarahsobson
Counties Manukau DHB has 192 first doses to go to hit 90 percent. Sitting at 80 percent fully vaccinated. Auckland DHB 95 percent first dose, 87 percent fully vaccinated. Waitematā is 92 percent first dose, 83 percent fully vaccinated.
+100
Time to let them free then, instead of punishing them, as they've got to 90% , just move to a system of no entry to low vaccine areas .
they need 90% double not single.
Fair enough, just think this passport system is doomed to fail , they are already causing unintended consequences like a couple of events my youngster would have been in involved being canceled due to volunteers not willing to police the gates checking them , and just uncertainty on how it's going to operate.
Have you got a better idea? Now else can you balance rights to refuse medical treatment with rights to public safety?
Broad brush is the only way
Red light the the low % vaccinated areas, ie nortland ,westcoast.
Passports are going to be un applicable as an internal method,
Ok for air travel though.
Un policable!!! Fucking auto correct
The traffic light system is only designed to work with passports. Without the passport thing you are stuck with the levels we have now. That doesn't balance out the conflicting rights.
You cant expect Joe n Jill public to police passports.
The unvaccinated will have to protect them selves.
We expect Joe n Jill publican to police underage drinking in their premises, no different to vaccination status. It'll really be the police who do the policing though, quiet walk through by the force and check a few certificates / passports. Publican will probably wear it just like they do for underage.
Talking to a neighbouring publican about this and he's not worried about it, he sees it as an opportunity to get rid of his barflies, says there's a very strong correlation.
I'm not concerned about pubs ,they can hire an orc or 2 to police the doors!!
It's my kids event that's been canned(I'm sure it wont be the only on in nz) because the organizers dont want to put the lions club who run the gate to face possible abuse from antis.
I am not really concerned about protecting the unvaccinated, they have made their choice. Rather it is protecting everybody else from their selfishness both in terms of spreading covid and tying up hospital beds that concerns me. Yes policing the passports will be problematic but i can't see a better way forward.
Great effort.
People don't like being told what to do, especially by a Government led by Jacinda Ardern. The government should have come out at the outset and said "Don't get vaccinated."
All the contrarians would have rushed to get vaccinated. Then the government could have announced, "Just kidding, get jabbed."
It's a good joke, and yes, there are some contrarians that are that stupid.
But (serious hat on) our divisions on vaccination are nowhere near those of some other countries. Every single MP is vaccinated (first dose or second). Across the country there are (e.g.) mayors who are anti-Ardern on many other issues, but encouraging their communities to get vaccinated. From Hone to Hosking, it's consistent across the range of political opinion.
People ranting like Coutts and Gunn make for juicy headlines, but it doesn't alter arithmetic. The antis are a tiny minority.
This late spring afternoon I unwrapped the carefully folded and labelled bean seeds my friend gave me weeks ago. She teases me. Seven white shiny seeds pressed into moist dark soil. Evenly spaced with three tall bamboo stakes in the tub to climb on.
Hope you have better luck than me.
I planted some baked beans a number of weeks ago and still….nothing.
I think you take them out of the tin first Blazer and why waste a tin doing that? I'd just eat them if I were you.
Grafton Gully might give you some of theirs….I still have some borlotti beans to plant.
There's a little Beruit vibe around these parts. Retired, terrified handy dog and her elderly scared witless heading dog friend say can you lot fuck off with your stinking fireworks.