In amongst all the verbal diarrhoea of many commentators on TPPA yesterday there were a couple of little gems which should be highlighted.
The first is that, whether a Labour led government stays in TPPA or not, the concerns this country will have with the agreement will be concerns other countries will also have. We shall not be alone in objecting to some of the more corporate-inspired invidious provisions – so there is a real possibility for renegotiation. And, perhaps, if ISDS gets excluded from TTIP, of doing the same with TTPA.
The second point, contained in a link, is more ominous. The agreement signed in New Zealand on the 4th may not be exactly the agreement ratified by the US Congress and Senate. Pressure will be applied by the US, as by far the strongest economy (!) for the other countries to fall into line. This has already happened with Peru and the drug extension from 5 to 8 years.
We desperately need a change of government to one which will be prepared to defend the interests of all New Zealanders, not just the 1% elite.
Except they didn’t kowtow during the actual negotiations that went on for years. Why do you think they will now when they have less incentive to do so?
Maybe or maybe not. However it is irrelevant in the context of renegotiation that you postulate. It won’t just be NZ that needs to kowtow but also Japan, Malaysia, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Australia, Singapore, Brunei and Vietnam. You can’t change the agreement unless ALL parties agree. Why is this difficult for you to grasp?
It is very easy to hear the pro TPP arguments. Open any newspaper and listen to any news programme.
It’s harder to hear the anti TPP argument.
Did you hear Lori Wallach’s speech?
How is it harder Paul?
You had no difficulty finding the link to Lori’s speech did you?
You had no difficulty accessing the comprehensive Herald report of the meeting she spoke at in Auckland?
Did you have any difficulty following the protests on Thursday, or coming to The Standard this morning?
Can you show me how it is in any way ‘difficult’ to access anti-TPPA arguments?
Most New Zealanders switch onto TV1, TV3, and read the Herald.
You know that though and are being disingenuous.
Yes. JUST LIKE YOU DO PAUL. Does that mean YOU end up thinking in the way that TV1,TV3, and the Herald decide?
See this is the enormous flaw behind your obsession with the unfair Media control meme. It is the fallacy (or is it an arrogance), that YOU can exercise a critical faculty and determine the truth for yourself, but the majority of other people are incapable of doing so.
Lets call that the fallacy of mass stupidity.
Frankly it is conceited, condescending, and dis-empowering bullshit.
The reality is that just like YOU, ALL PEOPLE have a brain (whoa!), they have a worldview (Hey!), they have opinions, ethics, morals, beliefs, and convictions, and they have a critical faculty with which to assess the information they choose to receive.
And having done so – they know what they think. And what they think is just as fucking valid as what you or anyone else on this site with a delusion of superiority thinks.
It’s a great paradox with the far left. On the one hand you claim to be all about ‘The People’. But on the other hand you look down on them as being stupid schmucks….
Sheep, it’s easy to see that people can be duped: all you have to do is listen to the right wing parrot chorous, relentlessly repeating the same zombie lies.
“Raising the minimum wage causes unemployment. People choose to be poor. Everyone can be rich if they work hard.” Racism, sexism, bigotry, and most of Economics: they all come down to repetition of lies. Hence earlier references to Crosby Textor and propaganda that you were too suffused with bias to respond to.
If lying to people doesn’t work, why does the National Party do so much of it?
Name calling is not an argument.
It is, despite your rant, a fact that it is much easier to hear pro-TPP arguments than those against, despite the fact that most people are against the TPP.
Your fallacy is that when people are capable of critical thinking and sound judgement they put this into practice without exception – you are conflating possible with actual.
This is obviously not true and the best evidence for this is the fact that about 1,000,000 million people are eligible to vote but don’t actually vote.
There’s a big difference between fast and slow thinking (Kahneman) and our minds naturally prefer the fast one and this dominating way of thinking prompts instinctive emotional reactions such as yours, i.e. silly biased outbursts AKA name-calling.
What is fundamentally different between the ISDS process proposed under the TPPA and the ones set out in our free trade deals with South Korea and China?
The fundamental difference is that US corporations are included in the ISDS in the TPPA.
Overall, 101 governments from all over the world have been respondents in one or more known ISDS claims. The relative share of cases brought against developed countries continues to be on the rise. In 2014, 60 per cent of all cases were brought against developing and transition economies, while the remaining 40 per cent were brought against developed countries.
There were two types of governmental measures that were challenged the most by investors in 2014.
The first were measures that cancelled or allegedly violated contracts of concessions. Second were measures that revoked or denied licences or permits.
Other challenged measures include:
legislative reforms in the renewable energy sector,
alleged discrimination of foreign investors via-à-vis domestic ones, alleged direct expropriations of investments,
alleged failure on the part of the host country to enforce its own legislation,
alleged failure to protect investments, as well as measures related to taxation, regulation of exports and bankruptcy proceedings. Some of the new cases concern public policies, including water tariff regulation, environmental issues, anti-money laundering and taxation.
Concerns about IIAs and ISDS have prompted a debate about their challenges and opportunities in multiple forums. Today, there is an emerging consensus that the regime of IIAs and the related dispute settlement mechanism need to be reformed to make them work better for sustainable development. As mentioned during the IIA Conference that was held at UNCTAD’s 2014 World Investment Forum ( WIF), such reform would need to be undertaken in a comprehensive and gradual way, taking into account the interests of all stakeholders.
It is therefore time to take stock of all of available options and consider the implications of each and every one of them. This can help identify the best possible mix of approaches and alternatives so as to maximize the benefits and minimize the potential risks. The UNCTAD Expert Meeting on the Transformation of the IIA Regime offers an important opportunity in this regard.
…..
The regime of international investment agreements (IIAs) is at a critical juncture. Increasing public attention is given to IIAs that are being negotiated and concluded as well as to investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) cases that are being brought under IIAs.
Korea cannot shaft our traders and continue to trade with us – but we produce essentially different things – trade threatens neither. But the US is or wants to be a large agricultural exporter – and insists on destroying regulations against GE, Mad Cow Disease, and monopolistic corporate abuses.
The US patent ‘industry’ is also massively dysfunctional – but they will have access to stifle NZ innovation under the TPPA. If you’d done your homework, you’d know this – but you’re a lazy, credulous far-right shill, perfectly happy to see NZ lose money and jobs.
Aren’t we lucky that the Chinese have not been as litigious as US companies – then again – with our current govt bending over backwards to be kind they have not the need to be.
We could for instance mill logs before sending them overseas – you know its called “value added”. But that is against the FTA with China so 100’s of mill workers in NZ are now out of work while thousands in China become employed.
This of course is really looking after the interests of NZers. /sarc
Interesting to see you Tony V first on Open Mike on 5th and 7th. Getting onto the site while thinking clearly before the morass of the day? Is this the real you thinking?
This for real? We desperately need a change of government to one which will be prepared to defend the interests of all New Zealanders, not just the 1% elite.
And this in Open Mike on 5 February. A good point. This was that the USA joined the TPPA negotiations on or around 2008, at the time when Key had just become leader of the National Party/Prime Minister of New Zealand.
Are we then just part of a giant neoliberalist conspiracy funded by the corporates of the United States, and aimed at total domination of the world by the wealthy elite?
everytime I read your name it reminds me of the other guy – no one imo, other than for the reason I’ve just said, cares what your name is – we care about what you write and say
Why don’t you have a pseudonym then, special for your blogging that identifies just you, which everyone can recognise wherever you comment. Something that refers to your own personal attributes in a forthright manner, or a catchphrase, or your favourite sport, something that’s unmistakeably you and won’t get confused with the plonker who now will be remembered for a generation. What you think sounds interesting, it’s good to have people who have a point of view that they produce background to argue, and sources to illustrate.
Must say, after reading and enjoying your comments for a while now – the only downside is that you are restoring a good reputation to that name you unfortunately share with that plonker!
I’m always interested in reading what you write Tony, and have got used to seeing the name appear in the comments here on TS.
Ok Winston fan here is some Peters gold from his speech at our anti TPPA rally in Paihia last Friday. This is alot cleaner footage wise, but misses some shots at Grosser and Hosking, the full interview (thanks Clare) is further down the page in a reply to Paul on Groser. Let me know what ya think?;
Almost two decades of Socialism and a great proportion of the population is now in poverty and violent crime is rampant. But I suppose many here blame all this of the ‘Damn Yankees’.
Did you not read in that article where it specifically mentioned the fall in the price of oil. Venezuela squandered virtually ALL the windfall profits when the price was high and has nothing left. According to many here the increase in social spending previously should have set them in good stead. Instead they have a budget deficit of 20 % of GDP and massive poverty. Where are the long term benefits of the revolution?
“Plan Bolivar 2000 repaired thousands of schools, hospitals, clinics, homes, churches, and parks. Over two million people received medical treatment. Nearly a thousand inexpensive markets were opened, over two million children were vaccinated, and thousands of tons of trash were collected, just to name a few of the program’s results.’
‘Since oil is Venezuela’s principal source of income, its decline, combined with growing inequality in Venezuela, had a significant impact on the poverty rate.’ ‘
And how has that benefited the Venezuelan economy and ultimately society long term considering the health sector is collapsing as it can’t import the drugs it needs?
‘Since oil is Venezuela’s principal source of income
And that is the problem across the world. Everyone assumes that a nation needs an income when it really simply needs the government spending money into creation and getting the economy working.
A UBI and government ownership of necessary services such as food and education would prevent poverty and, in fact, develop the nation. No need for foreign income.
These children will be building the economy and communities they will be living in tomorrow. It will equip them for the more challenging times ahead, and ensure they have the basic skills to secure their own and their families’ futures.
Meanwhile international capital markets and financial weapons of mass destruction are used to fuck over yet another country determined to exercise a foreign policy and economic policy independent of western empire.
For God’s sake. Gosman.
Right-wing-governed UK (including so-called Labour Govts of the era) squandered all the wealth of its North Sea on cheap imports. (Profit-gouging is not a dirty word, remember?)
Norway did not. Norway showed the way.
Venezuela is a naïve young learner – not even an advanced industrialised economy, yet you love to harp on about that.
Tell us where Norway has gone wrong, Gosman. Norway appears to have created a better economy and society while nicely ignoring the neo-liberal bullshit that you espouse.
Stop gassing about Venezuela – tell us where Norway went wrong, and why Thatcher etc were so right, and how wonderful things are in the UK, where your favoured policies are showing their fruits.
Gosman asked how the policies benefited Venezuela.
Reply cited reduced infant mortality and better education as results.
Gosman dismisses these as not being of benefit to the economy.
Fixation on the economy is typical of the neolib: If you can’t count it or the result hasn’t a dollar symbol infront of it, then ignore it.
Not to mention that a healthy and well educated population is of immense benefit to any economy.
But it hasn’t been in Venezuela’s case. The economy is so bad that the gains in literacy and health are being eroded and even get worse than where they started from. What’s the point of educating a population for 10 or so years if you can’t afford to keep it up beyond that?
Indeed, according to Gosman, what’s the point of educating and feeding ordinary people when the jilted 0.01% elite are going to deliberately fuck everyone up?
Indeed, according to Gosman, what’s the point of educating and feeding ordinary people when the jilted 0.01% elite are just going to deliberately fuck everyone up until they get their own way again?
While I have no time for corruption (whether from governments of the left or right) I find it intriguing that some should think that the alleviation of poverty is “squandering” resources.
In which case why is Venezuelan poverty rates worse now than in 1998? What happened to all that money that was spent micky and why hasn’t the economy let alone society benefitted in the way you lefties think it should? I mean Venezuela has followed the sort of policies many of you advocate yet there has been no lasting good it seems.
‘Oil crash hurts Venezuela the most
Venezuela’s economy depends mostly on oil. That was great when a barrel of oil was worth $100 a barrel in 2013 and 2014. Now oil prices have fallen to as low as $28.36 — the lowest point in 12 years.’ http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/18/news/economy/venezuela-economy-meltdown/
‘Amid lower oil prices, Venezuela is struggling to maintain the social spending that characterized the Hugo Chávez era. Crude accounts for 96 per cent of export revenues: a halving in the oil price over the past 14 months means revenues have slumped by about $36bn compared with the average of the previous two years, when the government raked in almost $79bn’
Are all countries that rely on oil for much of their revenue suffering the sort of problems Venezuela is undergoing? The answer to that is quite obviously not. Additionally why didn’t Venezuela use the oil windfall when the price was high to build up reserves to help prepare for times when the price was low? Other countries do this.
Almost all are in fact – Kuwait and the other small oil states are politically tender as the population prepares to punish the political class for declining living standards. Saudi is an exception, it is continuing its development programs, which include free education and an enormous increase in university education for women. But even Saudi doesn’t have unlimited reserves – though it does have phosphate – and phosphate, unlike oil, cannot be partially replaced by substitutes like biofuel or electric vehicles.
These children will be building the economy and communities they will be living in tomorrow. It will equip them for the more challenging times ahead, and ensure they have the basic skills to secure their own and their families’ futures.
Just an idea, but with all that oil wealth, couldn’t they have increased literacy and created a sound and developing economy?
Most countries seem to believe the two go hand in hand. For the screamingly obvious reason that increased literacy is of limited value if there is insufficient infrastructure to allow the people to benefit from it.
They probably could have: plenty of other social democracies have succeeded. Mind you, perhaps they didn’t come under relentless attack from the largest kleptocracy in the world.
So while it’s easy for you to assert that social democracy doesn’t work because Venezuela, all you’re really saying is that you’re an authoritarian follower who’s taken sides.
Gosman and the sheeple who is lost have no idea what constitutes an economy other than to think it is somehow summed up in GDP, or toilet paper.
Ignorant and heartless twits who lost their humanity many moons ago.
Because we need to take steps to return it to at least as low as it was in 1984: the last two decades have been wasted. Time to drag neo-liberalism behind the barn. Say nigh-nighs.
The ‘yankee’ Government has a long history of overthrowing and destroying socialist Governments and have already supported one military coup in Venezuela ….. http://johnpilger.com/videos/the-war-on-democracy
Since then they have used the Nixon/Kissenger method of “make the economy scream” against the people of Venezuela ……
A very successful removal of a ‘socialist’ Government which the u.s.a Govt helped in ( by supplying military aid and lists of names to be executed ) was Indonesia …..
“In 1965 the Indonesian government was overthrown by the military. Anybody opposed to the military dictatorship could be accused of being a communist: union members, landless farmers, intellectuals and ethnic Chinese…..
In less than a year and with the direct aid of western governments over one million ‘communists’ were murdered.
The army used paramilitaries and gangsters to carry out the killings.
These men have been in power – and have persecuted their opponents – ever since.”
Would you like Venezuela to be like Indonesia Gosman ????
Or do you have no concern for Indonesia ?
Is Indonesia better off than Venezuela in Gosmans world ???
For those who would like to learn more about Indonesias recent past and present I recommend the surreal and disturbing documentary ” The Act of Killing”. http://www.actofkilling.com/
“The films’ protagonists were part of a murderous frenzy in 1965 that lead to the killing of at least 1 million suspected “communists” and ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. The Act of Killing depicts old members of a death squad acting out their memories — fantasies even — of the murders and atrocities they committed nearly 50 years ago. If you are a reader of UN Dispatch or just generally care about human rights you need to see this documentary.
The Act of Killing raises profound questions about international human rights law, accountability, historical memory, and even the role of sadism in mass atrocity events.”
Presumably Heather would have been really annoyed with the Springbok protesters also, and would rather they went home and sent strongly worded letters to Muldoon instead.
I would love to be able to ask Heather what specific reason she has for supporting TPPA. I bet she could only say the cliched lines like:
It is good for the economy of NZ.
It is like all the other Free Trade agreements etc etc
But put on the spot I bet she couldn’t do more than talk in very general terms.
FFS Gosman – this is Waitangi weekend commemorating the signing of a treaty between two people. Maori have now lived with the loss of sovereignty for 175 years. They know what it is. This deal drawn up by corporations for corporations (with the compliance of willing govt officials) and effectively administered by corporate lawyers, will have an even more widespread effect on our governance than anything we have ever envisaged to date.
Governments will be effectively hamstrung to do the bidding and will of corporations over and above the interests of the citizens.
Key is the most incompetent, uncaring and irresponsible Prime Minister this country has ever had the misfortune to suffer. He hands over his Prime Ministerial responsibilities to his minions, with not a turn of the hair, ending in constant corrupt practices within his office; and he offers not an ounce of apology to the people for whom he is responsible – the People of NZ. This is just another episode in the decline in Government and the handing over of care to outside interests.
The TPPA is another battle in the class war conducted by successive governments around the world since the early 80’s — rolling back all the progressive legislation enacted in the wake of WW2.
It’s a continuation of NatCorp™’s crimes against working people, the poor, and tangata whenua.
This so called “neo-liberal consensus” cannot stand.
The American people [can be] divided into an investment class, a salary class, a wage class, and a welfare class. … People who get most of their income from one of those four things have a great many interests in common …
… Three of the four have remained roughly where they were. The investment class has actually had a bit of a rough time, as many of the investment vehicles that used to provide it with stable incomes—certificates of deposit, government bonds, and so on—have seen interest rates drop through the floor. Still, alternative investments and frantic government manipulations of stock market prices have allowed most people in the investment class to keep up their accustomed lifestyles.
The salary class, similarly, has maintained its familiar privileges and perks through a half century of convulsive change. Outside of a few coastal urban areas currently in the grip of speculative bubbles, people whose income comes mostly from salaries can generally afford to own their homes, buy new cars every few years, leave town for annual vacations, and so on. On the other end of the spectrum, the welfare class has continued to scrape by pretty much as before, dealing with the same bleak realities of grinding poverty, intrusive government bureacracy, and a galaxy of direct and indirect barriers to full participation in the national life, as their equivalents did back in 1966.
btw the outrage over the other countries may think about the dildo which has barely rated a mention, unlike the tugger incident, which was all over the international news is sheer hypocrisy.
But that’s the way they operate too. It’s not like anyone overseas cares that it’s the National Day. If they did care, they’d probably be more appalled that the PM couldn’t be arsed going to any official commemoration.
Maybe it’s all a lead up to making anzac the official day.
John Campbell is subtle and brilliant…and John Key declined an invitation to be interviewed… just as he declined open debate at Waitangi for all New Zealand to view ….and he declined open democratic debate in Parliament
John Campbell throws light into the darkness…(this is why jonkey’s friends got rid of him from TV3)
jonkey is gutless and undemocratic…he slithers around in secrecy like a Gollum
Speaking of Groser, Winston Peters made an interesting comment about him during a speech on Friday opposed to the TPPA, reffering to the snake oil salesman’s appointment to the United States. Sounds like he has something coming out about this ‘job for the boys’. He also has a crack at Mike Hosking which gave me quite a laugh.
The thing that really impressed me the other day was rather than going to a major event with the other party leaders attended by Governor General also, Peters commits to coming along to a anti TPPA rally instead, which was pretty much a washout for a crowd being an outdoor event in pouring rain. However we free styled it in an arcade and got the message out before the cops shut us down. Cheers Winston your a bloody ledgend! 87,000 views of your NZH video sure is getting the message out!
Winston goes without saying, however Clark was a pleasant surprise he spoke very well better than Robertson did at the Auckland Town Hall rally, and he was pretty solid.
With Labour it still boils back to their horseshit lateness in coming out, and then getting bushwhacked by first Goff and then Shearer. They lost alot of creds to the public on their true position, and for me probably till this bloke Clark declared a resounding no to the TPPA under it’s current format. Well done chap!
The intro to One News had footage of him being booed as he was walking out an exit from the field. It was a bit surprising to see them paint him in that negative way, I’m sure they have ignored these kind of things often in the past. The news story was a bit more positive and had him having selfies with people in the stand and interviewed a spectator that said Key should definitely be at the league rather than at the founding of a nation, blah blah.
He was booed on his way into the tunnel, going to meet and greet players, who when interviewed said such things as “he’s staunch” great guy, yadda, yadda accompanied with raised fist handshakes and bumping of shoulders. All very manly. Trevvy will be swooning at her man being all manly. Be still her beating heart. Oh, and lots of beaming selfie with rugged league players. So, all and all a positive time for Johnny enabled by Corin Dan and Gower. Nothing new from media.
well thats useful(not) …and informative in its blankness. I see advice from MoH was provided, is it likely that text may be able to be sourced from a different direction?
In anticipation of the next part of the TPPA debate (what happens if we leave?), this comment in response to Brian Easton saying we have little choice but to join the TPP because otherwise we will lose advantage in other trade deals and foreign affairs matters,
What you are effctively arguing Brian is that we have to give up our sovereign choice to stay a member of the club of sovereign nations involved in trade deals.
That’s interesting Weka. Brian Easton, as his article states, has been interested in us being an ethical and principled democracy for yonks. His views represent a warning to us, and presents the historic reasons for his concern. Good to get that wider background to set the TPPA in context – seems part of a linear progression. Do we draw a line in the sand before we succumb to it, what will be the reaction if we do, what will be the result if we don’t.
This from the link to Brian Easton in pundit in Weka’s comment. There is so much TPPA discussion, anxious, heated, emotional. This is good reading to get a cool understanding. Naturally Wayne Mapp likes it.
Thoseoutside often have little understanding of the complexity of the [international political] network. For instance a consequence of the legislation which made New Zealand nuclear-free and led to our ejection from ANZUS changed the balance in our relations with Australia and the US. Our practice had been to play one off against the other. When the US withdrew in a huff, we found ourselves much more dependent upon Australia; in one way our independence was reduced by being nuclear-free….
These complex interdependences also apply to trade negotiations….
The logic in this column is that we now do not have much choice about the TPPA. The government is trapped into agreeing to it because rejecting it has implications for other trade deals and our wider international relations. That is probably what our MFAT officials are advising, although no doubt there are many diverse views in there,…
Everyone will be watching the US, where the passage of the measures is likely to be most contentious. Many of the predictions of what will happen reflect the soothsayers’ view of the TPPA rather than a solid political assessment. There is considerable division among those who are informed. Some think the US Congress will agree to the deal this year because it is so crucial to US economic hegemony, particularly relations with Japan and the reducing of China’s economic leadership. Others think the Congress will not bear to give Obama a win and will hold it over to next year. Another view is that there are so many fish-hooks in the deal that Congress will not be able to get an agreement.
Until each of the partners has demonstrated they can implement the agreement, its provisions do not come into effect. When they have all done this the partners ratify the treaty. (Most required legislation will not come into effect until ratification.)
Easton raises export subsidies as likely to expand without agreements against them.
This enables excessive production with an attempt to gain export primacy by under-cutting unsubsidised nations production in that sector.
He says that signing seems to be a necessary strategic move now because of our interwoven relationships, while the ratification of all is necessary before it is fully implemented, which would be preferable to us withdrawing from the treaty.
Yes I see. I tried starting with a bold and ending with bold, it was a long one and I didn’t want to put it all in italics and I thought blockquote would make it too long.
Is there another sort of formatting I could do easily?
Perhaps I could use another font for a long quote – there is probably an option which I just haven’t found yet. Answering my own query, that is what I will try.
This article by Rod Oram is worthy of a post in its own right.
In it, he takes apart many of the points made by the TPP cheerleaders.
Claim #1 It is a Free Trade Agreement.
No, it isn’t. Too many tariffs and other barriers remain for it to deserve the accolade. Rather, it is a “managed trade” pact, argues Martin Sandbu, one of the best analysts at the Financial Times of London, in this article bit.ly/FTonTPPA.
Claim #2 ‘It will make us wealthy.’
No, it won’t. By 2030 it could lift our GDP by 0.9 per cent. With TPPA, we’d hit that target by January 1, 2030. Without TPPA we’d hit the target three months later.
Moreover, the government’s forecast of 0.9 per cent relies on heroic assumptions about easing non-tariff barriers. Analysis of this is coming thick and fast. Here’s a recent example from Tufts University in the US, bit.ly/TuftsTPPA and this from the Petersen Institute, the most respected, most apolitical of Washington trade think tanks, bit.ly/PetersenTPPA.
Claim #3 ‘The Investor State Dispute Settlement process has been around for years in other trade agreements, so there’s nothing to worry about. ‘
Yet the EU halted its FTA talks with the US because it said ISDS was a “very toxic issue.” It came back to the table with a bold proposal for a proper international judicial system for settling disputes.
We are about to start negotiating an FTA with the EU. Logically it will make the same judicial proposal to us. We should eagerly embrace it and actively push for the TPPA to follow suit.
He finishes his magnificent article as follows…..
‘ our government and business leaders are insisting TPPA will be a bonanza, bigger even than our Free Trade Agreement with China. At a bare minimum they are setting themselves up for severe disappointment and serious loss of credibility. They are blinding themselves to the massive work that has yet to be done on TPPA.
Worse, they are devaluing New Zealand’s reputation as an honest broker in international negotiations. Yet that is our greatest strength in the global system. It means we get taken seriously. It means we achieve far more than a country our size should.
TPPA damages that hard-won record. We will regret it. ‘
Trust Rod Oram’s opinion far more than I trust Key’s, and glad that Rod is prepared to stick his head above the parapet, a good man, like one or two others.
Anyone else notice on last night’s news bulletins (Saturday Waitangi Day), the booing towards the PM at the league game?
Hee hee, and here was FJK thinking he was always going to remain the “most loved leader of all time in NZ”!
Seems the gutless wonder might just be falling foul of his once “adoring” public, as they finally wake up to the cheating, lying, deceptive traitor he really is!
Make no mistakes the Nats are reeling, I seen plenty of them up close and talked to a number of their Ministers, as they had a grace pass from Waitangi. While they were all trying to hold a brave confident business as usual manner about themselves. I can tell you they were rocked with the Auckland demolition job on their TPPA signing. They were wandering around the Bay of Islands like stunned mullets. From generally viewed as the supreme command to dirty sellout rats over night.
I enjoyed mocking a few of them, Parata a beauty at a restaurant where I was johnny on the spot after some media hack asked if she had been getting grief about things. She piped up not yet. I gave her a bit of a polite serve which wiped her cat smile off her face lol.
“I see John is a no show tomorrow after half the country were on the streets of Auckland eariler today…looks like the teflon is coming off…being ordered out of Waitangi tomorrow must be a blow for you.” she said “I will be there don’t you worry.” after my mate and myself burst into laughter, my reply was “yeah sure you will be keep telling yourself that.” With that she headed off but did appear to have lost the spring in her step, and glared back at me like I will remember you, or I have seen you around?
We laughed some more and then I gave what looked like Maori-Tory TV hacks she was with a serve which I can not repeat.
I was interested in the discrepancy between two news items yesterday. The letter from Nga puhi to the PM clearly attempted to gag him if he attended a powhiri at the Te Ti marae. It also claimed that it applied to all political parties. http://www.scribd.com/doc/297837989/Waitangi-Letter
Then we had this report from RNZ http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/295819/joyce-defends-tpp-negotiation-methods
Quoting from this we see that it says
“Labour leader Andrew Little did give a political speech on the marae today – despite the Prime Minister being told he was not allowed to do so. Mr Little, who spoke of the importance of sovereignty, said the marae trustees placed no restrictions on what he could talk about during the powhiri.”
There appear to be only 2 ways to interpret these two items.
Option 1. Ngapuhi lied in their letter to the PM. The gagging applied only to John Key and most definitely did not apply to Andrew Little. I can see why they would want this as a description of the TPPA and its effects by Key, in his clear and reasonable manner would show up Little’s buffoonery and waffle as being the words of a fool.
Option 2. Little is lying, or simply totally ignoring the protocol requested by his hosts.
He must have known about the letter to the PM and ignored it. Even Andrew couldn’t be so out of touch as to not have seen it. Alternatively he was provided with his own advice and ignored that.
If you think option 1 is correct do you think that Ngapuhi are duplicitous and that the Government should ignore their existence at future Waitangi ceremonies, at least until they provide John Key with a public apology?
If you think option 2 is the correct one can we expect some comment from the commenter on “PM should get over Waitangi” who said
“Hardly. It’s just that I was brought up to not go into someone else’s house and demand that they behave the way I want them to, especially if I’ve been invited in.
I’m sure that when people get invited to do things at parliament that there are processes that have to be adhered to. Key is entitled to stay away, but as PM of NZ he’s not entitled to be an arse. Not that that usually stops him”
Is Andrew going to be called an ignorant, uncouth boor and an arse?
The letter explains the kawa and it is up to those who would speak to know and follow that kawa if they want to respect their hosts. This can also change and be adjusted as tangata whenua determine. There is no big story around this alwyn. Key didn’t go as we know, he was a no show, all blow, needs to grow, needs to show he ain’t just the big no in nobody eh yo.
Little did what he did – has there been a call from tangata whenua alwyn asking for recompense, has this caused a real media storm??? NO it is just your little attempt to cause trouble and stir – you are so small alwyn.
“do you think that Ngapuhi are duplicitous and that the Government should ignore their existence at future Waitangi ceremonies”
LOL – you really are so ignorant alwyn – you have zero idea of what you are talking about – you are a balloon with a hole – softly sagging to nothingness
“Marty Mars is but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing”
From what little sense I can get out of your remark you seem to think that Ngapuhi lied to the PM and that they intended to allow their mates from the Labour Party to talk politics at the powhiri.
what have you been smoking though?
another school homework site eh alwyn – didn’t you get embarrassed enough last time???
seem, intended and so on – this is all your petty stuff alwyn – instead of dealing with big issues of national importance you prefer to try and pin flies to another’s jacket – just don’t have anything worth saying, do you alwyn.
“this is all your petty stuff alwyn – instead of dealing with big issues”
Well yes I would have to agree that replying to your rubbish is dealing with petty stuff. I was just trying to make you feel that someone read what you had written, no matter how stupid you were.
Would it make you feel better if I ignored you in future and didn’t even bother reading what you say?. God knows, reading your contributions is certainly time wasted.
It’s almost as if the Bard wrote this to be aimed at you, Alwyn:
‘Sblood, you starveling, you elf-skin, you dried neat’s tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stock-fish! O for breath to utter what is like thee! you tailor’s-yard, you sheath, you bowcase; you vile standing-tuck!
I really like the way Shakespeare used the comic characters to make Henry V such a kick to the ‘nads for the audience. I’ve never been particularly big on the comedies, but played Pistol in Henry V a few years back.
🙂 yes the Bard really knew how to deliver a good literal boot where it was needed.
The thespian in our family is my daughter (a grad of Toi Whakaari and Shakespeare and Co. in Lennox MA.)
Henry IV pt 1 was the first Shakespearian play I read – introduced at school – and I went immediately out and bought my own copy. I’m too lanky to play Falstaff but that is one part I would love to play.
If you’re looking for a figure of comic incompetence to represent Alwyn you can’t go past Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing.
Marry, sir, they have committed false report;
moreover, they have spoken untruths;
secondarily, they are slanders;
sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady;
thirdly, they have verified unjust things;
and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.
lolz, is that you having a go at me alwyn? Quoting out of context again 🙄
3. Little understands how things work on the marae far better than you or Key or the MSM. Marty has said how it works. If after that you still don’t understand what happened yesterday I can’t explain it to you. I’ll give you a hint though, stop trying to understand it within a Pākehā framework.
Meanwhile, I thought this was interesting,
Greens welcomed ahead of Labour
Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei said she was happy to abide by the no-politics rule of Te Tii Marae at Waitangi as her party were welcomed onto the grounds ahead of Labour today.
The Opposition parties were to be welcomed on at the same time, but instead the Greens were taken on for a separate powhiri, leaving Labour leader Andrew Little and his MPs standing in the rain for an hour.
“lolz, is that you having a go at me alwyn?”
Of course I was quoting you. I wouldn’t say it was having a go though.
I didn’t want to identify you publicly though in case you are, as you should be, embarrassed by what you said on Friday.
“Quoting out of context again”
Not at all. That was your entire comment. The only editing I did was to remove a superfluous blank line. You should see that what you said is completely relevant to what I was talking about and that you should either comment on Little’s behaviour or withdraw your remarks about Key.
Obtaining consistency from the left is always difficult of course.
As for your comment about the Green Party. Is Hone trying to wangle a high place on the Green Party list at the next election? That would probably cause Ngapuhi to suck up to her. Pretty foolish if the Green Party did such a thing of course but it wouldn’t be beyond them.
If you want to quote in context put up a link, it’s not rocket science. As for the rest I can’t be bothered trying to figure what twisted agenda you have today, got better things to do.
Alwyn, you waste of space, you haven’t murdered your king and your best friend to keep your wife sweet only to have her top herself. So yes, completely out of context.
“The Opposition parties were to be welcomed on at the same time, but instead the Greens were taken on for a separate powhiri, leaving Labour leader Andrew Little and his MPs standing in the rain for an hour.”
Yes and as I stood there, then watched from afar I could not help thinking maybe Little should call both Goff and Shearer and ask them if it is raining where they currently are?
If so, order them to go stand out in the rain till told otherwise, or if it was not raining to go stand under a cold shower till told otherwise.
But really there was a bit of silliness going on by a few players up there including Labour locals.
Wrong people. He should be abusing Matt McCarten for letting him go anywhere near the place.
Matt, if anyone, should have known that it would only result in Little looking, shall we say, shrunken.
After all Matt will know these people very well.
I was there Alwyn – Little did not look shrunken at all, he gave a good speech on Ti Tii Marae and he had a great response from all those present. The Greens went on with the Maori Womens Welfare League – it would have been a bit too much to have us, Labour, in there as well.
As it happened, it was a real tight squeeze for all of Labour and supporters to get into the marae. And because of the weather there was no outside mike, and canvas canopy as has been available on other years for all the extra people to listen to the proceedings outside. Hey – and a bit of rain never hurt anyone.
As for what politicians could say, as Andrew Little pointed out later, if John Key had fronted up and said here I am, and what can I speak about, he would have been okay. But he was too disturbed by the massive outcry against TPPA to do that.
Andrew’s speech was along the lines of “everything” is political, the Treaty of Waitangi itself was political, so anything he could say would have political overtones but the marae was a place for discussion, debate, and agreement, and that was what he was there for. (This is very much just a basic summary of what he said, not taken from any notes, just memory).
I notice Stuff is pushing Seymour – perhaps the VRWC is polishing a fresh turd to be ready in case Key, you know, inadvertantly trips and hangs himself in the shower or something.
[lprent: I ignore ‘subtle’. You have been warned before. Banned 1 week. ]
My understanding from one report (sorry, can’t remember where) is that both parties were meant to go on together, but the bus driver who was supposed to pick up the some of of the Labour MPs didn’t turn up making them late. The decision was then made to welcome the Green Party first. Nothing significant in it – just a mix up with transport.
Perhaps John Key should have confined himself to talking about sovereignty (which is after all what Waitangi day is about) rather than whining via letters and staffers that he wanted to attack the opposition to the TPPA.
“Key should have confined himself to talking about sovereignty”
The major sovereignty issue being talked about at the moment is the effect of the TPPA. The major objection to the TPPA is claims that it abridges our sovereignty.
Discussing sovereignty without talking about the TPPA would make about as much sense as talking about the campaign for the Democratic nomination for President this year without ever saying the name Bernie Sanders. It is totally impossible to do so and still make any sense.
So if John Key’s minders weren’t such arrogant arseholes and had specified that was the ‘politics’ he wanted to talk about…
But no – those dildos wanted to make a good headline so they deliberately muffed it by asking for something that they knew they would get the appropriate response to. Perhaps you could suggest why they did that?
What was it that they are supposed to have done? You say
“they deliberately muffed it by asking for something that they knew they would get the appropriate response to.”
Do you have some reference to this. A link would be nice.
All I have seen is various Ngapuhi leaders saying come/don’t come/come/don’t come. Key then said that if he couldn’t speak he wouldn’t go.
I note the limitation on talking politics doesn’t seem to have applied to Labour. Perhaps you can suggest why??
Even Hone, at least at one point seems to think Ngapuhi have stuffed up
“”It’s a national marae and Ngapuhi are the guardians of it. What they should have done is asked other leaders from other areas for their opinion, listened to them and then decided. They didn’t have to take a vote.”
“They handled the whole thing really badly,” he said.
Can you really blame the PM wanting to know what they were up to when we had reports like
“Following the vote there were mixed messages from leaders at the marae over whether Key would be invited or not.
Some media reported that Key had been blocked from the marae while others were told by leaders that he was welcome”.
More John Key hypocrisy. He slated the sex toy throwing incident as a bad showing for NZ as it went viral around the world. His point was that it reflected badly on our National Day.
The same National Day where he refused to front up as PM.
The same Prime Ministerwho denigrated his high office by having his hair-pulling antics go viral around the world. The same Prime Minister who joked about anal rape in prisons. The same PM who now is booed in public by ordinary Kiwi voters.
I would like to make a comment as a someone who has lurked on the Standard for a while and for several reasons has only made a few posts.
I come to the Standard for some encouragement in what I feel are dark times, to learn something about the issues we are facing as a country and in our communities, and to remind me that I am not the only person in New Zealand who thinks the way I do.
To have discussions polluted by muppets whose sole reason for posting seems to be to derail or divert is incredibly frustrating. There are whole threads I now skim through as it seems to me far too much energy is being expended by people whose opinion I respect (mostly) debating with trolls.
Whole discussions just get bogged down which I suspect is their whole purpose.
I admire the perseverance of those who bother to debate with them as it may be a bit harder now that someone since the New Year seems to have pushed the “Reasoned Debate” button.
For me the Standard has been a beacon but it has dimmed a bit recently and maybe that is exactly what someone wants.
If we ban too often it involves more work for moderators. I know from long experience that causes an ever escalating pressure on moderator time. So there is always a balance required between the amount of effort required to moderate and the constaining of debate.
The most effective way to ban is to give very long bans because then we don’t have to keep banning people as often. In particular using a fast exponential scale for timespans and a low toleration for fools. That massively reduces the workload. But does cause other issues.
It causes muttering about moderators who do this by people (and other moderators) saying that there is too much banning. Especially as most have different ideas about what piss-poor behaviour is.
In particular the more partisan who seem to think that piss-poor behaviour by lefties should be treated differently to piss-poor behaviour by the right.
Personally I don’t care that much what political affiliations or views someone has, because I see quite a lot of piss-poor behaviour from all shades of the political spectrum. I’m mainly concerned with their behaviour on this site and if it affects the intent of what the site is designed for – to discuss topics of interest to the labour movement and to have robust debate.
Of course since many of the right come here to purely to disrupt either directly or with the subtlety (that I simply gaze straight through), they collect much of the moderation.
Incidentally my usual response to respectful criticism about moderation (if I don’t ban the person for trying to tell us what to do) is to simply curtail my banning – equally. I simply raise my personal threshold for bans and reduce the time span I give them for. Then I get conversations like this…
The real solution as was pointed out is for commenters to simply not to respond. Most of the unthinking trolls will then proceed to fall into astroturfing the site with whatever their latest line is trying to get a response – and suffer the inevitable result.
But since I’m currently on hold for my next overseas trip, I’ll have a look around again for a tech solution.
Personally, I quite like the comment the Huffington Post puts at the bottom of every article about Trump.
“Editor’s note: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.”
Maybe it’s easily feasible to automatically attach some sort of disclaimer to the start of regular offender’s comments?
Do they note that Clinton is a serial warmonger, has lied over and over again on what happened in Benghazi and her email records all around that time, that her hubby Bill signed NAFTA which helped destroy the American blue collar class, and best of all is on the take from the billionaire bankster fraternity, charging a quarter million dollars per speaking engagement?
Wouldn’t be hard to do technically. The only real issue would be that I’d have to either set it for the identity for every comment that they have done over time, or somehow plug it into the comment-meta while posting a comment.
The reason for the latter is that we forgive after a ban until there is a need to ban again. Then previous convictions count on their sentence.
Yes – the css attribute of display:none would make them easily invisible. I’d just have to add a extra div to allow hide/open. Obviously these are personal preferences and there are some limits to what could be done because they’d need to be done at client side using javsacript and cookies.
The only real issues with it is remembering which ones you have dropped and that they will have to either close collapsed comments or open non-collapsed comments at the user side, that it will make pages slower to open, and some screen real estate would have to be sacrificed for activating ‘buttons’.
This site effectively doesn’t run logins, and these days pages offered to non-logged users are effectively all the same. This minimizes the amount of processing the server has to do and strongly decreases the useful information about commenters that court orders could extract.
So any information stored on which comment threads are dropped has to be available on client side via cookies and acted upon via javascript executed on the client browser. Cookies are stored per client browser. So would the collapses. If you read the pages in both safari and chrome, then they would have different collapses.
When a page is opened, it’d open with either all comments visible or no comments visible. Either has issues that would need working around.
In the latter case , the javascript would locate the collapsed comments for the current page out of cookies. It would walk the invisible comments seeing if the comment should be opened, and open it. It would then have to find the comment you were last reading or wrote and jump to it. This last step is tricky to do compared to the existing system.
In the former case, the page would be set to the correct comment, and then the javascript would have to walk to collapse comments. The issue here is that you are unlikely to view at the last comment you were reading quite as well if there are collapses further up the page. The page could be jumping around quite a lot as you start reading it.
O.k. thanks I thought it was worth asking as thread collapsing is not uncommon on other sites but I have no idea of the (technical) implications, obviously.
On a different note, I still experience issues with loading of TS pages. For example, OM 07/02/2016 and OM 08/02/2016 did not load this morning (empty page) and OM 08/02/2016 still doesn’t!?
I notice something odd, that my old comments window comes back when I am doing a new one, though the old one is shown on the list at right and appears in the post.
This morning I ended up typing my second one in the comment window of my first one which had been ‘published’. So that was confusing – I refreshed with F5 to clear it and it was still there I think. Bit confused now.
Anyway everything got through after I juggled with them a bit.
That is client side caching – the server has no idea what is in the textarea used for comments. Probably the clear in the javascript that saves the comment wasn’t getting called or wasn’t activating correctly.
I’ll have a look over lunch to check that it isn’t a general problem. But it is most likely that your browser was having a bit of a brain fade. Usually restarting the browser (or logging out or restarting the system if the browser has a ‘fast start’) will fix it.
“The real solution as was pointed out is for commenters to simply not to respond.”
Any chance you could hire some cat herders? 😉 Commenters not responding to trolls only works if most or all refrain. That’s not going to happen here, and so the threads often get filled with troll call and response even if a whole bunch of people are ignoring them. Those conversations become the dominant ones because some people just walk away and others get drawn to where the energy and entertainment is.
There are lots of people commenting on ts whose otherwise good comments get ignored. One thing that those of us* sick of the troll fests could do is start talking to each other. Make those conversations the ones that are interesting. To that end, and speaking of tech, I’ve come round to the idea of a like button or similar. Maybe trial it anyway, to see if people knowing that their comments are valued even if not getting much response intially might increase responses and generate other kinds of conversations. All the usual caveats about use and abuse of such tech by commenters (and trolls).
*I have a foot in both camps, mainly because I love a good argument so the more interesting troll threads are enticing. Arguing with people who think differently than me also helps me clarify my thinking, although it would be nice to argue more with differently thinking lefties than righties or trolls (of any stripe).
Whereas goats are far far more infuriating. Most of the time they act like herd animals. But in every drive there will always be one or two who decide to be contrary and to drag part of the herd with them. After they get experienced, even good farm doags don’t like tangling with a contrarian goat…
The only thing that that goats respect is electric fences. A good hard unexpected shock tends to modify their behaviour.
I do have a like button plugin that I was prototyping and extending. I’ll have another look at where I got to with it.
Sorry can’t agree with you there Paul. I would miss the comedy and daily fun when the likes of Gosman comes on ranting about the brain dead fuckwits from the right favorite cot case called Venezuela, or Greece. What would we do if we did not have our daily dose of seeing how their shit is taken down time after time after time. Some of the replies these prats get are very smart and I am sure we can all survive the crap they come out with.
Yeah – I get sick of the trolls, too, Grey Area. I totally agree with you – if only posters wouldn’t respond to them maybe the trolls would give up !! and pigs might fly ……
But the trolls keep pushing buttons on some of our most concerned, informed and sincere commenters. Then there are the argumentative ones that can’t keep their hands off the keyboards. I have suggested a number limit that would control the output and as we rarely have very long and informed discussions we could manage that. It could be that if there was a bypass key available for a moderator to use for one of those great Socratic? discussions that would be good. But it could involve quite a lot of fiddling and coding for not much. But limits on contributions for a certain time perhaps could be done, then people would think twice about using up their ‘budget’ on trols and the trols would have to limit their puerile input.
Personally, I try really hard not to give in to the temptation to respond to the usual suspects. But occasionally one puts up a plausible looking piece of bullshit, that if left unchallenged might end up looking like accepted truth to silent lurkers.
But I can certainly do without scrolling past the endless handbag fights to find the substantive discussions.
“But occasionally one puts up a plausible looking piece of bullshit, that if left unchallenged might end up looking like accepted truth to silent lurkers.”
That’s the dilemma and is the main argument of the troll fighters (except they don’t use the word ‘occasionally’).
Also, most of us have different ideas about what a troll is.
you realise of course that by coming here and engaging, the trolls have a chance at rehabilitation? compared to some of the bottom dwellers at KB most of our rwnj friends are positively enlightened…
i think it’s always worthwhile hearing the other side of a political debate, at least our righties show more intelligence than Hosking and Henry
So the economic theory is as modern as it can be. But do Kiwis understand the downside risk of a financialised economy employing all the latest investment bank and hedge fund tricks, Newberry asks?
“Shareholders in a business aren’t ever going to lose anything more than what they put in. It is limited liability investing. But the difference with corporate-style governmental accounting is that it is unlimited liability. It is New Zealand’s taxpayers and residents who are on the hook if there are any problems.”
somewhat like Greece…..there was an interesting BBC piece on RNZ today….the parallels with TTPA were striking….think this is the piece (its not available on RNZ at mo)
quote: Switching oil sales to euros makes sense as Europe is now one of Iran’s biggest trading partners.
“Many European companies are rushing to Iran for business opportunities, so it makes sense to have revenue in euros,” said Robin Mills, chief executive of Dubai-based Qamar Energy.
Iran has pushed for years to have the euro replace the dollar as the currency for international oil trade. In 2007, Tehran failed to persuade OPEC members to switch away from the dollar, which its then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called a “worthless piece of paper”.
The NIOC source said Iran’s central bank instituted a policy while the country was under sanctions over its disputed nuclear programme to carry out foreign trade in euros.
“Iran shifted to the euro and cancelled trade in dollars because of political reasons,” the source said.
In mid Jan, the US slapped a new range of sanctions on Iran less than 24 hours after Iran had promptly released a group of US naval personnel who had been caught intruding in Iranian territorial waters.
Basically Iran made a move to strengthen new ties with the US, and the US returned the gesture with the middle finger.
This. While the issues aren’t exactly the same as the US, in NZ this is a little-discussed aspect of the housing crises. Banks and councils are putting pressure on people to build houses much bigger than they need, and people too often are building an investment rather than a home.
“. . . the problem is not so much that some people can’t maintain housing, but that our standard of housing has become inaccessible. Today, the average American requires more than three times the amount of space when compared to 1950. Back then, a new single-family house in the U.S. came in at 983 square feet with an average of 3.38 persons per household. But by 2012, the average new house size had expanded to 2500 square feet, with an average of only 2.55 persons per household. This means each American apparently now requires about 980 square feet of space per person – the same amount that was once sufficient to house the average family. And over ten percent of all housing inventory is vacant.”
Banks and councils are putting pressure on people to build houses much bigger than they need, and people too often are building an investment rather than a home.
This is all driven by private sector developers targetting projects towards the top 1%/top 5%, with too easy finance from the banking sector.
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Long stories short, the top six things in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Thursday, February 13 are:The coalition Government’s early 2024 ‘fiscal emergency’ freeze on funding, planning and building houses, schools, local roads and hospitals helped extend and deepen the economic and jobs recession through calendar ...
For obvious reasons, people feel uneasy when the right to be a citizen is sold off to wealthy foreigners. Even selling the right to residency seems a bit dubious, when so many migrants who are not millionaires get turned away or are made to jump through innumerable hoops – simply ...
A new season of White Lotus is nearly upon us: more murder mystery, more sumptuous surroundings, more rich people behaving badly.Once more we get to identify with the experience of the pampered tourist or perhaps the poorly paid help; there's something in White Lotus for all New Zealanders.And unlike the ...
In 2016, Aotearoa shockingly plunged to fourth place in the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. Nine years later, and we're back there again: New Zealand has seen a further slip in its global ranking in the latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). [...] In the latest CPI New Zealand's score ...
1. You’ve started ranking your politicians on how much they respect the rule of law2. You’ve stopped paying attention to those news publications3. You’ve developed a sudden interest in a particular period of history4. More and more people are sounding like your racist, conspiracist uncle.5. Someone just pulled a Nazi ...
Transforming New Zealand: Brian EastonBrian Easton will discuss the above topic at 2/57 Willis Street, Wellington at 5:30pm on Tuesday 26 February at 2/57 Willis Street, WellingtonThe sub-title to the above is "Why is the Left failing?" Brian Easton's analysis is based on his view that while the ...
Salvation Army’s State of the Nation 2025 report highlights falling living standards, the highest unemployment rates since the 1990s and half of all Pacific children going without food. There are reports of hundreds if not thousands of people are applying for the same jobs in the wake of last year’s ...
Mountain Tui is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Correction: On the article The Condundrum of David Seymour, Luke Malpass conducted joint reviews with Bryce Wilkinson, the architect of the Regulatory Standards Bill - not Bryce Edwards. The article ...
Tomorrow the council’s Transport, Resilience and Infrastructure Committee meet and agenda has a few interesting papers. Council’s Letter of Expectation to Auckland Transport Every year the council provide a Letter of Expectation to Auckland Transport which is part of the process for informing AT of the council’s priorities and ...
All around in my home townThey're trying to track me down, yeahThey say they want to bring me in guiltyFor the killing of a deputyFor the life of a deputySongwriter: Robert Nesta Marley.Support Nick’s Kōrero today with a 20% discount on a paid subscription to receive all my newsletters directly ...
Hi,I think all of us have probably experienced the power of music — that strange, transformative thing that gets under our skin and helps us experience this whole life thing with some kind of sanity.Listening and experiencing music has always been such a huge part of my life, and has ...
Business frustration over the stalled economy is growing, and only 34% of voters are confidentNicola Willis can deliver. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Wednesday, February 12 are:Business frustration is growing about a ...
I have now lived long enough to see a cabinet minister go both barrels on their Prime Minister and not get sacked.It used to be that the PM would have a drawer full of resignations signed by ministers on the day of their appointment, ready for such an occasion. But ...
This session will feature Simon McCallum, Senior Lecturer in Engineering and Computer Science (VUW) and recent Labour Party candidate in the Southland Electorate talking about some of the issues around AI and how this should inform Labour Party policy. Simon is an excellent speaker with a comprehensive command of AI ...
The proposed Waimate garbage incinerator is dead: The company behind a highly-controversial proposal to build a waste-to-energy plant in the Waimate District no longer has the land. [...] However, SIRRL director Paul Taylor said the sales and purchase agreement to purchase land from Murphy Farms, near Glenavy, lapsed at ...
The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been a vital tool in combatting international corruption. It forbids US companies and citizens from bribing foreign public officials anywhere in the world. And its actually enforced: some of the world's biggest companies - Siemens, Hewlett Packard, and Bristol Myers Squibb - have ...
December 2024 photo - with UK Tory Boris Johnson (Source: Facebook)Those PollsFor hours, political poll results have resounded across political hallways and commentary.According to the 1News Verizon poll, 50% of the country believe we are heading in the “wrong direction”, while 39% believe we are “on the right track”.The left ...
A Tai Rāwhiti mill that ran for 30 years before it was shut down in late 2023 is set to re-open in the coming months, which will eventually see nearly 300 new jobs in the region. A new report from Massey University shows that pensioners are struggling with rising costs. ...
As support continues to fall, Luxon also now faces his biggest internal ructions within the coalition since the election, with David Seymour reacting badly to being criticised by the PM. File photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate ...
Not since 1988 when Richard Prebble openly criticised David Lange have we seen such a challenge to a Prime Minister as that of David Seymour to Christopher Luxon last night. Prebble suggested Lange had mental health issues during a TV interview and was almost immediately fired. Seymour hasn’t gone quite ...
Three weeks in, and the 24/7 news cycle is not helping anyone feel calm and informed about the second Trump presidency. One day, the US is threatening 25% trade tariffs on its friends and neighbours. The reasons offered by the White House are absurd, such as stopping fentanyl coming in ...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Wherever you look, you'll hear headlines claiming we've passed 1.5 degrees of global warming. And while 2024 saw ...
Photo by Heather M. Edwards on UnsplashHere’s the key news, commentary, reports and debate around Aotearoa’s politics and economy in the week to Feb 10 below. That’s ahead of live chats on the Substack App and The Kākā’s front page on Substack at 5pm with: on his column in The ...
Is there anyone in the world the National Party loves more than a campaign donor? Why yes, there is! They will always have the warmest hello and would you like to slip into something more comfortable for that great god of our age, the High Net Worth Individual.The words the ...
Waste and fraud certainly exist in foreign aid programs, but rightwing celebration of USAID’s dismantling shows profound ignorance of the value of soft power (as opposed to hard power) in projecting US influence and interests abroad by non-military/coercive means (think of “hearts and minds,” “hugs, not bullets,” “honey versus vinegar,” ...
Health New Zealand is proposing to cut almost half of its data and digital positions – more than 1000 of them. The PSA has called on the Privacy Commissioner to urgently investigate the cuts due to the potential for serious consequences for patients. NZNO is calling for an urgent increase ...
We may see a few more luxury cars on Queen Street, but a loosening of rules to entice rich foreigners to invest more here is unlikely to “turbocharge our economic growth”. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate ...
Let us not dance daintily around the elephant in the room. Our politicians who serve us in the present are not honest, certainly not as honest as they should be, and while the right are taking out most of the trophies for warping narratives and literally redefining “facts”, the kiwi ...
A few weeks ago I took a look at public transport ridership in 2024. In today’s post I’m going to be looking a bit deeper at bus ridership. Buses make up the vast majority of ridership in Auckland with 70 million boardings last year out of a total of 89.4 ...
Oh, you know I did itIt's over and I feel fineNothing you could say is gonna change my mindWaited and I waited the longest nightNothing like the taste of sweet declineSongwriters: Chris Shiflett / David Eric Grohl / Nate Mendel / Taylor Hawkins.Hindsight is good, eh?The clarity when the pieces ...
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on UnsplashHere’s what we’re watching in the week to February 16 and beyond in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty:Monday, February 10The Kākā’s weekly wrap-up of news about politics and the economy is due at midday, followed by webinar for paying subscribers in Substack’s ...
A listing of 23 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, February 2, 2025 thru Sat, February 8, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if ...
Today, I stumbled across a Twitter Meme: the ending of The Lord of the Rings as a Chess scenario: https://x.com/mellon_heads/status/1887983845917564991 It gets across the basic gist. Aragorn and Gandalf offering up ‘material’ at the Morannon allows Frodo and Samwise to catch Sauron unawares – fair enough. But there are a ...
Last week, Kieran McAnulty called out Chris Bishop and Nicola Willis for their claims that Kāinga Ora’s costs were too high.They had claimed Kāinga Ora’s cost were 12% higher than market i.e. private devlopersBut Kāinga Ora’s Chair had already explained why last year:"We're not building to sell, so we'll be ...
Stuff’s Political Editor Luke Malpass - A Fellow at New Zealand IniativeLast week I half-joked that Stuff / The Post’s Luke Malpass1 always sounded like he was auditioning for a job at the New Zealand Initiative.Mountain Tui is a reader-supported publication. For a limited time, subscriptions are 20% off. Thanks ...
At a funeral on Friday, there were A4-sized photos covering every wall of the Dil’s reception lounge. There must have been 200 of them, telling the story in the usual way of the video reel but also, by enlargement, making it more possible to linger and step in.Our friend Nicky ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is methane the ...
The Government’s idea is that the private sector and Community Housing Providers will fund, build and operate new affordable housing to address our housing crisis. Meanwhile, the Government does not know where almost half of the 1,700 children who left emergency housing actually went. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong ...
Oh, home, let me come homeHome is wherever I'm with youOh, home, let me come homeHome is wherever I'm with youSongwriters: Alexander Ebert / Jade Allyson CastrinosMorena,I’m on a tight time frame this morning. In about an hour and a half, I’ll need to pack up and hit the road ...
This is a post about the Mountain Tui substack, and small tweaks - further to the poll and request post the other day. Please don’t read if you aren’t interested in my personal matters. Thank you all.After oohing-and-aahing about how to structure the Substack model since November, including obtaining ...
National’s cuts to disability support funding and freezing of new residential placements has resulted in significant mental health decline for intellectually disabled people. ...
The hundreds of jobs lost needlessly as a result of the Kinleith Mill paper production closure will have a devastating impact on the Tokoroa community - something that could have easily been avoided. ...
Today Te Pāti Māori MP for Te Tai Tokerau, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, released her members bill that will see the return of tamariki and mokopuna Māori from state care back to te iwi Māori. This bill will establish an independent authority that asserts and protects the rights promised in He Whakaputanga ...
The Whangarei District Council being forced to fluoridate their local water supply is facing a despotic Soviet-era disgrace. This is not a matter of being pro-fluoride or anti-fluoride. It is a matter of what New Zealanders see and value as democracy in our country. Individual democratically elected Councillors are not ...
Nicola Willis’ latest supermarket announcement is painfully weak with no new ideas, no real plan, and no relief for Kiwis struggling with rising grocery costs. ...
Half of Pacific children sometimes going without food is just one of many heartbreaking lowlights in the Salvation Army’s annual State of the Nation report. ...
The Salvation Army’s State of the Nation report is a bleak indictment on the failure of Government to take steps to end poverty, with those on benefits, including their children, hit hardest. ...
New Zealand First has today introduced a Member’s Bill which would restore decision-making power to local communities regarding the fluoridation of drinking water. The ‘Fluoridation (Referendum) Legislation Bill’ seeks to repeal the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Act 2021 that granted centralised authority to the Direct General of Health ...
New Zealand First has introduced a Member’s Bill aimed at preventing banks from refusing their services to businesses because of the current “Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Framework”. “This Bill ensures fairness and prevents ESG standards from perpetuating woke ideology in the banking sector being driven by unelected, globalist, climate ...
Erica Stanford has reached peak shortsightedness if today’s announcement is anything to go by, picking apart immigration settings piece by piece to the detriment of the New Zealand economy. ...
Our originating document, theTreaty of Waitangi, was signed on February 6, 1840. An agreement between Māori and the British Crown. Initially inked by Ngā Puhi in Waitangi, further signatures were added as it travelled south. The intention was to establish a colony with the cession of sovereignty to the Crown, ...
Te Whatu Ora Chief Executive Margie Apa leaving her job four months early is another symptom of this government’s failure to deliver healthcare for New Zealanders. ...
The Green Party is calling for the Prime Minister to show leadership and be unequivocal about Aotearoa New Zealand’s opposition to a proposal by the US President to remove Palestinians from Gaza. ...
The latest unemployment figures reveal that job losses are hitting Māori and Pacific people especially hard, with Māori unemployment reaching a staggering 9.7% for the December 2024 quarter and Pasifika unemployment reaching 10.5%. ...
Waitangi 2025: Waitangi Day must be community and not politically driven - Shane Jones Our originating document, theTreaty of Waitangi, was signed on February 6, 1840. An agreement between Māori and the British Crown. Initially inked by Ngā Puhi in Waitangi, further signatures were added as it travelled south. ...
Despite being confronted every day with people in genuine need being stopped from accessing emergency housing – National still won’t commit to building more public houses. ...
The Green Party says the Government is giving up on growing the country’s public housing stock, despite overwhelming evidence that we need more affordable houses to solve the housing crisis. ...
Before any thoughts of the New Year and what lies ahead could even be contemplated, New Zealand reeled with the tragedy of Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming losing her life. For over 38 years she had faithfully served as a front-line Police officer. Working alongside her was Senior Sergeant Adam Ramsay ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson will return to politics at Waitangi on Monday the 3rd of February where she will hold a stand up with fellow co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick. ...
Te Pāti Māori is appalled by the government's blatant mishandling of the school lunch programme. David Seymour’s ‘cost-saving’ measures have left tamariki across Aotearoa with unidentifiable meals, causing distress and outrage among parents and communities alike. “What’s the difference between providing inedible food, and providing no food at all?” Said ...
The Government is doubling down on outdated and volatile fossil fuels, showing how shortsighted and destructive their policies are for working New Zealanders. ...
Green Party MP Steve Abel this morning joined Coromandel locals in Waihi to condemn new mining plans announced by Shane Jones in the pit of the town’s Australian-owned Gold mine. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to strengthen its just-announced 2030-2035 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement and address its woeful lack of commitment to climate security. ...
Today marks a historic moment for Taranaki iwi with the passing of the Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill in Parliament. "Today, we stand together as descendants of Taranaki, and our tūpuna, Taranaki Maunga, is now formally acknowledged by the law as a living tūpuna. ...
Labour is relieved to see Children’s Minister Karen Chhour has woken up to reality and reversed her government’s terrible decisions to cut funding from frontline service providers – temporarily. ...
It is the first week of David Seymour’s school lunch programme and already social media reports are circulating of revolting meals, late deliveries, and mislabelled packaging. ...
The Government’s commitment to get New Zealand’s roads back on track is delivering strong results, with around 98 per cent of potholes on state highways repaired within 24 hours of identification every month since targets were introduced, Transport Minister Chris Bishop says. “Increasing productivity to help rebuild our economy is ...
The former Cadbury factory will be the site of the Inpatient Building for the new Dunedin Hospital and Health Minister Simeon Brown says actions have been taken to get the cost overruns under control. “Today I am giving the people of Dunedin certainty that we will build the new Dunedin ...
From today, Plunket in Whāngarei will be offering childhood immunisations – the first of up to 27 sites nationwide, Health Minister Simeon Brown says. The investment of $1 million into the pilot, announced in October 2024, was made possible due to the Government’s record $16.68 billion investment in health. It ...
New Zealand’s strong commitment to the rights of disabled people has continued with the response to an important United Nations report, Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston has announced. Of the 63 concluding observations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), 47 will be progressed ...
Resources Minister Shane Jones has launched New Zealand’s national Minerals Strategy and Critical Minerals List, documents that lay a strategic and enduring path for the mineral sector, with the aim of doubling exports to $3 billion by 2035. Mr Jones released the documents, which present the Coalition Government’s transformative vision ...
Firstly I want to thank OceanaGold for hosting our event today. Your operation at Waihi is impressive. I want to acknowledge local MP Scott Simpson, local government dignitaries, community stakeholders and all of you who have gathered here today. It’s a privilege to welcome you to the launch of the ...
Racing Minister, Winston Peters has announced the Government is preparing public consultation on GST policy proposals which would make the New Zealand racing industry more competitive. “The racing industry makes an important economic contribution. New Zealand thoroughbreds are in demand overseas as racehorses and for breeding. The domestic thoroughbred industry ...
Business confidence remains very high and shows the economy is on track to improve, Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis says. “The latest ANZ Business Outlook survey, released yesterday, shows business confidence and expected own activity are ‘still both very high’.” The survey reports business confidence fell eight points to +54 ...
Enabling works have begun this week on an expanded radiology unit at Hawke’s Bay Fallen Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital which will double CT scanning capacity in Hawke’s Bay to ensure more locals can benefit from access to timely, quality healthcare, Health Minister Simeon Brown says. This investment of $29.3m in the ...
The Government has today announced New Zealand’s second international climate target under the Paris Agreement, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand will reduce emissions by 51 to 55 per cent compared to 2005 levels, by 2035. “We have worked hard to set a target that is both ambitious ...
Nine years of negotiations between the Crown and iwi of Taranaki have concluded following Te Pire Whakatupua mō Te Kāhui Tupua/the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill passing its third reading in Parliament today, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “This Bill addresses the historical grievances endured by the eight iwi ...
As schools start back for 2025, there will be a relentless focus on teaching the basics brilliantly so all Kiwi kids grow up with the knowledge, skills and competencies needed to grow the New Zealand of the future, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “A world-leading education system is a key ...
Housing Minister Chris Bishop and Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson have welcomed Kāinga Ora’s decision to re-open its tender for carpets to allow wool carpet suppliers to bid. “In 2024 Kāinga Ora issued requests for tender (RFTs) seeking bids from suppliers to carpet their properties,” Mr Bishop says. “As part ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today visited Otahuhu College where the new school lunch programme has served up healthy lunches to students in the first days of the school year. “As schools open in 2025, the programme will deliver nutritious meals to around 242,000 students, every school day. On ...
Minister for Children Karen Chhour has intervened in Oranga Tamariki’s review of social service provider contracts to ensure Barnardos can continue to deliver its 0800 What’s Up hotline. “When I found out about the potential impact to this service, I asked Oranga Tamariki for an explanation. Based on the information ...
A bill to make revenue collection on imported and exported goods fairer and more effective had its first reading in Parliament, Customs Minister Casey Costello said today. “The Customs (Levies and Other Matters) Amendment Bill modernises the way in which Customs can recover the costs of services that are needed ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Department of Internal Affairs [the Department] has achieved significant progress in completing applications for New Zealand citizenship. “December 2024 saw the Department complete 5,661 citizenship applications, the most for any month in 2024. This is a 54 per cent increase compared ...
Reversals to Labour’s blanket speed limit reductions begin tonight and will be in place by 1 July, says Minister of Transport Chris Bishop. “The previous government was obsessed with slowing New Zealanders down by imposing illogical and untargeted speed limit reductions on state highways and local roads. “National campaigned on ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has announced Budget 2025 – the Growth Budget - will be delivered on Thursday 22 May. “This year’s Budget will drive forward the Government’s plan to grow our economy to improve the incomes of New Zealanders now and in the years ahead. “Budget 2025 will build ...
For the Government, 2025 will bring a relentless focus on unleashing the growth we need to lift incomes, strengthen local businesses and create opportunity. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today laid out the Government’s growth agenda in his Statement to Parliament. “Just over a year ago this Government was elected by ...
The Treaty Principles Bill submission hearings continue at Parliament today with a range of submitters expected including councils, iwi, community organisations and individuals. ...
It’s become of one of Christchurch’s most famous landmarks online, but why? Alex Casey steps through the portal of the brutalist Timezone. Ask anyone what Christchurch’s most iconic building is and you might expect to hear some of the dusty old classics like the Cathedral, or the Town Hall, or ...
New Zealand’s alignment with the White House is further underscored by its refusal to oppose Trump’s sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC). ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is a serious blow to the soft power of the United States and disastrous for many poor countries ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janet Hoek, Professor in Public Health, University of Otago Shutterstock/Aliaksandr Barouski New Zealand’s smokefree law was hailed around the world for creating a smokefree generation that would have lifelong protection from smoking’s harms. The smokefree generation would have ended sales of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By George Disney, Research Fellow, Social Epidemiology, The University of Melbourne Edwin Tan/Getty Images When the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) was established in 2013, one of its driving aims was to make disability services and support systems fairer. However, our new ...
The resignation of the director general of health is the latest departure in what Labour is calling a ‘purge’ of health leadership. Another day, another health resignation It’s a dangerous time to be a top health executive. On Friday, Dr Diana Sarfati announced her resignation as director general of health ...
Labour and the Greens say the government should focus spending on tourism infrastructure like tracks, toilets and protection of nature instead of more advertising. ...
Hundreds of people called the former prime minister vile and dehumanising things online. Internet safety agencies did nothing - then called in the lawyers. ...
Hundreds of people called the former prime minister vile and dehumanising things online. Internet safety agencies did nothing - then called in the lawyers. ...
After a morning spent calf marking, Flock Hill Station manager Richard Hill headed up Bridge Hill – about 100km from Christchurch on the way to the West Coast – to check on a fire near the station’s boundary.It was December 5 last year, and the Craigieburn area had experienced three ...
It can’t be much of a surprise that a relatively inexperienced Act MP, handed the workplace relations portfolio, doesn’t want to entertain the country’s biggest union in her office.But it still astonishes the head of that union, the CTU’s president, Richard Wagstaff.After all, he’s met regularly with ministers of all ...
Late 21st century Christchurch will be unrecognisable when compared with Christchurch today.Flooding will prompt retreat from all eastern and many northern suburbs. These areas, together with land near the Heathcote and Avon Rivers, are in a fifty-year flood zone. Fifty-year floods can happen more than once every fifty years; there ...
Is humanising a mountain the path to real transformation, or does it signal the need for a cultural paradigm shift in the operating system? Recently, a family member shared their delight at the news of Taranaki Maunga becoming a legal person.Of course, I was pleased for the eight Taranaki ...
Why New Zealanders donate money and who they give it to – and how tools like Givealittle are changing the giving landscape.Is New Zealand really a generous country? It’s difficult to quantify. Giving to registered charities can be counted through tax returns, but giving to overseas causes, giving money ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp');Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions.The post Newsroom daily quiz, Monday 17 February appeared first on Newsroom. ...
As the four Findlay siblings run out on the hockey turf, dressed in black with the silver fern, they take the drive and determination of their late mum with them.Emma Findlay is a Black Stick defender, on her way to Chile on Monday to play for the New Zealand women ...
COMMENTARY:By Paul G Buchanan Here is a scenario, but first a broad brush-painted historical parallel. Hitler and the Nazis could well have accomplished everything that they wanted to do within German borders, including exterminating Jews, so long as they confined their ambitious to Germany itself. After all, the world ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra With the unembarrassed audacity parties show as an election nears, the government has stolen the opposition’s policy to ban foreign investors buying established homes. Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Housing Minister Clare O’Neil have announced ...
The Jewish Council’s proposals are divisive, contrary to New Zealand’s human rights framework, and ignore the rights of other ethnic minorities in Aotearoa. ...
"This is shocking, and astounding," says Augusta Macassey-Pickard, spokesperson for the group. "We knew that this process was rushed, and flawed, but this is another level of compromised." ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific presenter/Bulletin editor Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark maintains that Cook Islands, a realm of New Zealand, should have consulted Wellington before signing a “partnership” deal with China. “[Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown] seems to have signed behind the backs of his own ...
COMMENTARY:By Saige England Mediawatch on RNZ today strongly criticised Stuff and YouTube among other media for using Israeli propaganda’s “Outbrain” service. Outbrain is a company founded by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) military and its technology can be tracked back to a wealthy entrepreneur, which in this case could ...
Luxon said protesters linked to Destiny Church "went too far" by disrupting Pride events in Auckland, while church leader Brian Tamaki said he told protesters, "I want you to storm the library they're in." ...
Hundreds of engineers are losing their jobs and leaving our shores due to infrastructure project delays, creating "significant" risk to our nation's development, says the head of New Zealand's engineering body. ...
In amongst all the verbal diarrhoea of many commentators on TPPA yesterday there were a couple of little gems which should be highlighted.
The first is that, whether a Labour led government stays in TPPA or not, the concerns this country will have with the agreement will be concerns other countries will also have. We shall not be alone in objecting to some of the more corporate-inspired invidious provisions – so there is a real possibility for renegotiation. And, perhaps, if ISDS gets excluded from TTIP, of doing the same with TTPA.
The second point, contained in a link, is more ominous. The agreement signed in New Zealand on the 4th may not be exactly the agreement ratified by the US Congress and Senate. Pressure will be applied by the US, as by far the strongest economy (!) for the other countries to fall into line. This has already happened with Peru and the drug extension from 5 to 8 years.
We desperately need a change of government to one which will be prepared to defend the interests of all New Zealanders, not just the 1% elite.
And you honestly think the other nations are merely going to kowtow to the US after the negotiations have concluded?
Knowing how the US behaves when its “allies” don’t ‘kowtow’…
+1
Yes, countries will kowtow.
Listen and learn.
Except they didn’t kowtow during the actual negotiations that went on for years. Why do you think they will now when they have less incentive to do so?
They didn’t kowtow?
You think NZ didn’t bend to Japan, Canada and the US?
Maybe or maybe not. However it is irrelevant in the context of renegotiation that you postulate. It won’t just be NZ that needs to kowtow but also Japan, Malaysia, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Australia, Singapore, Brunei and Vietnam. You can’t change the agreement unless ALL parties agree. Why is this difficult for you to grasp?
Incorrect.
Did you listen to the speech?
Have you read the text of the agreement? How to change it has been set out as well?
Have you?
I take that as a ‘No, I prefer to get my opinions supplied by people whose views broadly reflect my own’ then.
It is very easy to hear the pro TPP arguments. Open any newspaper and listen to any news programme.
It’s harder to hear the anti TPP argument.
Did you hear Lori Wallach’s speech?
How is it harder Paul?
You had no difficulty finding the link to Lori’s speech did you?
You had no difficulty accessing the comprehensive Herald report of the meeting she spoke at in Auckland?
Did you have any difficulty following the protests on Thursday, or coming to The Standard this morning?
Can you show me how it is in any way ‘difficult’ to access anti-TPPA arguments?
Most New Zealanders switch onto TV1, TV3, and read the Herald.
You know that though and are being disingenuous.
I am assuming you are a fanboy for the TPPA.
This clip explains the clear bias better than I can
Most New Zealanders switch onto TV1, TV3, and read the Herald.
You know that though and are being disingenuous.
Yes. JUST LIKE YOU DO PAUL. Does that mean YOU end up thinking in the way that TV1,TV3, and the Herald decide?
See this is the enormous flaw behind your obsession with the unfair Media control meme. It is the fallacy (or is it an arrogance), that YOU can exercise a critical faculty and determine the truth for yourself, but the majority of other people are incapable of doing so.
Lets call that the fallacy of mass stupidity.
Frankly it is conceited, condescending, and dis-empowering bullshit.
The reality is that just like YOU, ALL PEOPLE have a brain (whoa!), they have a worldview (Hey!), they have opinions, ethics, morals, beliefs, and convictions, and they have a critical faculty with which to assess the information they choose to receive.
And having done so – they know what they think. And what they think is just as fucking valid as what you or anyone else on this site with a delusion of superiority thinks.
It’s a great paradox with the far left. On the one hand you claim to be all about ‘The People’. But on the other hand you look down on them as being stupid schmucks….
Sheep, it’s easy to see that people can be duped: all you have to do is listen to the right wing parrot chorous, relentlessly repeating the same zombie lies.
“Raising the minimum wage causes unemployment. People choose to be poor. Everyone can be rich if they work hard.” Racism, sexism, bigotry, and most of Economics: they all come down to repetition of lies. Hence earlier references to Crosby Textor and propaganda that you were too suffused with bias to respond to.
If lying to people doesn’t work, why does the National Party do so much of it?
Name calling is not an argument.
It is, despite your rant, a fact that it is much easier to hear pro-TPP arguments than those against, despite the fact that most people are against the TPP.
Sheep, people don’t have similar access to both sides of the argument.
You know that.
If you don’t, start paying attention to the msm.
@ The lost sheep at 7 February 2016 at 1:22 pm:
Your fallacy is that when people are capable of critical thinking and sound judgement they put this into practice without exception – you are conflating possible with actual.
This is obviously not true and the best evidence for this is the fact that about 1,000,000 million people are eligible to vote but don’t actually vote.
There’s a big difference between fast and slow thinking (Kahneman) and our minds naturally prefer the fast one and this dominating way of thinking prompts instinctive emotional reactions such as yours, i.e. silly biased outbursts AKA name-calling.
Are you saying ISDS crawled onto the table by itself? The US took it up as a bargaining position by accident?
Gosman and the amazing magical thinking.
What is fundamentally different between the ISDS process proposed under the TPPA and the ones set out in our free trade deals with South Korea and China?
If you want to allege that there is no difference you’re going to have to do your own work. Then we can talk about IP and Pharmac.
The fundamental difference is that US corporations are included in the ISDS in the TPPA.
It’s the power imbalance.
Korea cannot shaft our traders and continue to trade with us – but we produce essentially different things – trade threatens neither. But the US is or wants to be a large agricultural exporter – and insists on destroying regulations against GE, Mad Cow Disease, and monopolistic corporate abuses.
The US patent ‘industry’ is also massively dysfunctional – but they will have access to stifle NZ innovation under the TPPA. If you’d done your homework, you’d know this – but you’re a lazy, credulous far-right shill, perfectly happy to see NZ lose money and jobs.
Aren’t we lucky that the Chinese have not been as litigious as US companies – then again – with our current govt bending over backwards to be kind they have not the need to be.
We could for instance mill logs before sending them overseas – you know its called “value added”. But that is against the FTA with China so 100’s of mill workers in NZ are now out of work while thousands in China become employed.
This of course is really looking after the interests of NZers. /sarc
Did you listen to the speech?
Key did – you can still see the brown stains on his tongue.
It would be ‘unthinkable’ to renege on the deal just because the yankers changed one or two iddybiddy things.
+1 Tony Veitch
Interesting to see you Tony V first on Open Mike on 5th and 7th. Getting onto the site while thinking clearly before the morass of the day? Is this the real you thinking?
This for real? We desperately need a change of government to one which will be prepared to defend the interests of all New Zealanders, not just the 1% elite.
And this in Open Mike on 5 February. A good point.
This was that the USA joined the TPPA negotiations on or around 2008, at the time when Key had just become leader of the National Party/Prime Minister of New Zealand.
Are we then just part of a giant neoliberalist conspiracy funded by the corporates of the United States, and aimed at total domination of the world by the wealthy elite?
Please don’t confuse me with the plonker who kicked his girlfriend down the stairs. I had my name long before he disgraced it!
everytime I read your name it reminds me of the other guy – no one imo, other than for the reason I’ve just said, cares what your name is – we care about what you write and say
Why don’t you have a pseudonym then, special for your blogging that identifies just you, which everyone can recognise wherever you comment. Something that refers to your own personal attributes in a forthright manner, or a catchphrase, or your favourite sport, something that’s unmistakeably you and won’t get confused with the plonker who now will be remembered for a generation. What you think sounds interesting, it’s good to have people who have a point of view that they produce background to argue, and sources to illustrate.
Must say, after reading and enjoying your comments for a while now – the only downside is that you are restoring a good reputation to that name you unfortunately share with that plonker!
I’m always interested in reading what you write Tony, and have got used to seeing the name appear in the comments here on TS.
Heh – I suppose you could remove confusion by adopting the handle “Tony Veitch (not the partner-bashing 3rd rate broadcaster)”
A welcome suggestion. Thank you, McFlock.
Looks like we need Winston and NZF to bring back some common sense back to NZ Politics?
Ok Winston fan here is some Peters gold from his speech at our anti TPPA rally in Paihia last Friday. This is alot cleaner footage wise, but misses some shots at Grosser and Hosking, the full interview (thanks Clare) is further down the page in a reply to Paul on Groser. Let me know what ya think?;
http://nzh.nu/XXYU0
Sorry Tautuhi looks like Granny NZH moVed on to the selfie stick Joyce was chewing on. Try this link or scroll down to the unedited version;
https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=nzh%20live%20winston%20peters
Almost two decades of Socialism and a great proportion of the population is now in poverty and violent crime is rampant. But I suppose many here blame all this of the ‘Damn Yankees’.
http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21690098-country-brink-social-explosion-only-negotiated-transition-can?fsrc=scn/fb/te/pe/ed/theendgameinvenezuela
Honduras
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Honduran_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/27/why-are-honduran-children-leaving/
Nothing to do with the plunging price of oil obviously.
Did you not read in that article where it specifically mentioned the fall in the price of oil. Venezuela squandered virtually ALL the windfall profits when the price was high and has nothing left. According to many here the increase in social spending previously should have set them in good stead. Instead they have a budget deficit of 20 % of GDP and massive poverty. Where are the long term benefits of the revolution?
Wikileaks took them and used some of your magical thinking to turn them into US diplomatic cables.
Not to mention increased literacy and reduced infant mortality.
How has that increased literacy benefited the economy? Infant mortality is likely going to get worse again.
“Plan Bolivar 2000 repaired thousands of schools, hospitals, clinics, homes, churches, and parks. Over two million people received medical treatment. Nearly a thousand inexpensive markets were opened, over two million children were vaccinated, and thousands of tons of trash were collected, just to name a few of the program’s results.’
‘Since oil is Venezuela’s principal source of income, its decline, combined with growing inequality in Venezuela, had a significant impact on the poverty rate.’ ‘
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/213
And how has that benefited the Venezuelan economy and ultimately society long term considering the health sector is collapsing as it can’t import the drugs it needs?
The magical thinkers are in charge now. They’ll buy and sell the country among themselves until there’s a brighter future.
Perhaps consider taking a look at your own contribution before demanding others provide responses to your fetish regarding Venezuela
Human suffering excites so much, that you can’t control the urge to repeat the message on a regular basis
And that is the problem across the world. Everyone assumes that a nation needs an income when it really simply needs the government spending money into creation and getting the economy working.
A UBI and government ownership of necessary services such as food and education would prevent poverty and, in fact, develop the nation. No need for foreign income.
If the centre-right is in charge there is no doubt child mortality will increase. That’s what happens here, after all.
Are you seriously asking about the economic benefits of literacy? It even has non-economic benefits too! Quelle horreur!
It doesn’t seem to have made a difference to Venezuela. What are all these newly literate people doing considering unemployment is so high?
These children will be building the economy and communities they will be living in tomorrow. It will equip them for the more challenging times ahead, and ensure they have the basic skills to secure their own and their families’ futures.
Except they have no jobs and are stuck in lines trying to get the basics necessities of life that are in short supply.
Ah, so you’ve gone from arguing that literacy is irrelevant to economics, to asserting that it’s useless to people in food queues.
I applaud your magical thinking.
Meanwhile international capital markets and financial weapons of mass destruction are used to fuck over yet another country determined to exercise a foreign policy and economic policy independent of western empire.
For God’s sake. Gosman.
Right-wing-governed UK (including so-called Labour Govts of the era) squandered all the wealth of its North Sea on cheap imports. (Profit-gouging is not a dirty word, remember?)
Norway did not. Norway showed the way.
Venezuela is a naïve young learner – not even an advanced industrialised economy, yet you love to harp on about that.
Tell us where Norway has gone wrong, Gosman. Norway appears to have created a better economy and society while nicely ignoring the neo-liberal bullshit that you espouse.
Stop gassing about Venezuela – tell us where Norway went wrong, and why Thatcher etc were so right, and how wonderful things are in the UK, where your favoured policies are showing their fruits.
Gosman asked how the policies benefited Venezuela.
Reply cited reduced infant mortality and better education as results.
Gosman dismisses these as not being of benefit to the economy.
Fixation on the economy is typical of the neolib: If you can’t count it or the result hasn’t a dollar symbol infront of it, then ignore it.
Not to mention that a healthy and well educated population is of immense benefit to any economy.
Gosman is a cut above the average wingnut. Such a low bar, you see.
But it hasn’t been in Venezuela’s case. The economy is so bad that the gains in literacy and health are being eroded and even get worse than where they started from. What’s the point of educating a population for 10 or so years if you can’t afford to keep it up beyond that?
You have read the articles about oil’s underpinning of the economy?
Or are you just repeating yourself without any knowledge of the matter?
What’s the point of feeding a population for 10 or so years if you can’t afford to keep it up beyond that?
Therefore we should all live by the law of the jungle?
That’s inhuman
Indeed, according to Gosman, what’s the point of educating and feeding ordinary people when the jilted 0.01% elite are going to deliberately fuck everyone up?
Indeed, according to Gosman, what’s the point of educating and feeding ordinary people when the jilted 0.01% elite are just going to deliberately fuck everyone up until they get their own way again?
The only reason to improve an economy is to improve the lives of people.
On planet gosman, the only reason for people is to improve the economy.
It is an article from the Economist.
While I have no time for corruption (whether from governments of the left or right) I find it intriguing that some should think that the alleviation of poverty is “squandering” resources.
In which case why is Venezuelan poverty rates worse now than in 1998? What happened to all that money that was spent micky and why hasn’t the economy let alone society benefitted in the way you lefties think it should? I mean Venezuela has followed the sort of policies many of you advocate yet there has been no lasting good it seems.
‘Oil crash hurts Venezuela the most
Venezuela’s economy depends mostly on oil. That was great when a barrel of oil was worth $100 a barrel in 2013 and 2014. Now oil prices have fallen to as low as $28.36 — the lowest point in 12 years.’
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/18/news/economy/venezuela-economy-meltdown/
‘At current prices, Venezuela will have to use more than 90 percent of its crude-export revenue to make debt payments, Barclays economist Alejandro Arreaza said in the report.’
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/as-crude-s-crash-punishes-venezuela-calls-for-opec-help-grow
’
Running on fumes: Venezuela ‘terrorized by oil price drop’
‘Amid lower oil prices, Venezuela is struggling to maintain the social spending that characterized the Hugo Chávez era. Crude accounts for 96 per cent of export revenues: a halving in the oil price over the past 14 months means revenues have slumped by about $36bn compared with the average of the previous two years, when the government raked in almost $79bn’
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c9c4b05c-0b81-11e5-994d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3zPy3KIAL
Are all countries that rely on oil for much of their revenue suffering the sort of problems Venezuela is undergoing? The answer to that is quite obviously not. Additionally why didn’t Venezuela use the oil windfall when the price was high to build up reserves to help prepare for times when the price was low? Other countries do this.
It did. Child mortality decreased. Literacy increased.
And they fought a fourth generation conflict against the world’s largest kleptocracy at the same time
Almost all are in fact – Kuwait and the other small oil states are politically tender as the population prepares to punish the political class for declining living standards. Saudi is an exception, it is continuing its development programs, which include free education and an enormous increase in university education for women. But even Saudi doesn’t have unlimited reserves – though it does have phosphate – and phosphate, unlike oil, cannot be partially replaced by substitutes like biofuel or electric vehicles.
Something to do with utterly mismanaging the proceeds of oil during the 17 years of high prices Socialism had the opportunity to make good use of?
Think they can still buy toilet paper in Norway.
make good use of
Increased literacy and reduced child mortality may seem useless to you, but that’s only because you want to come across as an ignorant callous ghoul.
No, wait…
How has the increased literacy amongst the wider population helped the economy?
an educated population is less likely to be hoodwinked by lying banksters and right wing corporate shills
I already answered that.
I don’t think he’s listening.
Or reading.
Multilevel marketing101..’He who asks the questions controls the conversation and the topic.’. Gets a bit tiresome though.
Just an idea, but with all that oil wealth, couldn’t they have increased literacy and created a sound and developing economy?
Most countries seem to believe the two go hand in hand. For the screamingly obvious reason that increased literacy is of limited value if there is insufficient infrastructure to allow the people to benefit from it.
They probably could have: plenty of other social democracies have succeeded. Mind you, perhaps they didn’t come under relentless attack from the largest kleptocracy in the world.
So while it’s easy for you to assert that social democracy doesn’t work because Venezuela, all you’re really saying is that you’re an authoritarian follower who’s taken sides.
Gosman and the sheeple who is lost have no idea what constitutes an economy other than to think it is somehow summed up in GDP, or toilet paper.
Ignorant and heartless twits who lost their humanity many moons ago.
Norway is a better example of how an oil rich democracy can invest in the future. They now have world leading social services and living standards.
Compare with Thatcher’s UK, who squandered the North Sea oil in a property bubble and an orgy of greed, that rewarded only the wealthy
(hat tip winston)
https://youtu.be/se_Q26Lf240?t=7m2s
+1
thatchers “tax cuts” for the rich, and war on unions has fucked up the UK to this very day
& how has NZs inequality/poverty tracked in the last 2 decades?
Over the last two decades it has been relatively stable. Why do you ask?
Because we need to take steps to return it to at least as low as it was in 1984: the last two decades have been wasted. Time to drag neo-liberalism behind the barn. Say nigh-nighs.
The ‘yankee’ Government has a long history of overthrowing and destroying socialist Governments and have already supported one military coup in Venezuela ….. http://johnpilger.com/videos/the-war-on-democracy
Since then they have used the Nixon/Kissenger method of “make the economy scream” against the people of Venezuela ……
A very successful removal of a ‘socialist’ Government which the u.s.a Govt helped in ( by supplying military aid and lists of names to be executed ) was Indonesia …..
“In 1965 the Indonesian government was overthrown by the military. Anybody opposed to the military dictatorship could be accused of being a communist: union members, landless farmers, intellectuals and ethnic Chinese…..
In less than a year and with the direct aid of western governments over one million ‘communists’ were murdered.
The army used paramilitaries and gangsters to carry out the killings.
These men have been in power – and have persecuted their opponents – ever since.”
Would you like Venezuela to be like Indonesia Gosman ????
Or do you have no concern for Indonesia ?
Is Indonesia better off than Venezuela in Gosmans world ???
For those who would like to learn more about Indonesias recent past and present I recommend the surreal and disturbing documentary ” The Act of Killing”. http://www.actofkilling.com/
“The films’ protagonists were part of a murderous frenzy in 1965 that lead to the killing of at least 1 million suspected “communists” and ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. The Act of Killing depicts old members of a death squad acting out their memories — fantasies even — of the murders and atrocities they committed nearly 50 years ago. If you are a reader of UN Dispatch or just generally care about human rights you need to see this documentary.
The Act of Killing raises profound questions about international human rights law, accountability, historical memory, and even the role of sadism in mass atrocity events.”
Compare this corporate propaganda of the TPP protest with John Campbell’s 2 hours live stream amongst the protesters.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11585760
Newshub and du Plessis Allen are not journalists. They are shills and for the 1% and big corporates.
John Campbell’s Live stream
Presumably Heather would have been really annoyed with the Springbok protesters also, and would rather they went home and sent strongly worded letters to Muldoon instead.
I would love to be able to ask Heather what specific reason she has for supporting TPPA. I bet she could only say the cliched lines like:
It is good for the economy of NZ.
It is like all the other Free Trade agreements etc etc
But put on the spot I bet she couldn’t do more than talk in very general terms.
She doesn’t appear to have a clue – apart from the usual me, me, me approach – waste of space.
Much like the opponents of the TPPA who speak of loss if sovereignty and the pernicious influence of US corporates.
Much like the opponents of the TPPA who speak of loss if sovereignty and the pernicious influence of US corporates.
Have you read this?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/76114721/rod-oram-dark-clouds-on-the-horizon
From the economist.
Usettling.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/400/1*Vh8ButOVjUWqy9vLAyFftA.png
Gosman what specifically do you support in the 6,000 pages of TPP?
FFS Gosman – this is Waitangi weekend commemorating the signing of a treaty between two people. Maori have now lived with the loss of sovereignty for 175 years. They know what it is. This deal drawn up by corporations for corporations (with the compliance of willing govt officials) and effectively administered by corporate lawyers, will have an even more widespread effect on our governance than anything we have ever envisaged to date.
Governments will be effectively hamstrung to do the bidding and will of corporations over and above the interests of the citizens.
Key is the most incompetent, uncaring and irresponsible Prime Minister this country has ever had the misfortune to suffer. He hands over his Prime Ministerial responsibilities to his minions, with not a turn of the hair, ending in constant corrupt practices within his office; and he offers not an ounce of apology to the people for whom he is responsible – the People of NZ. This is just another episode in the decline in Government and the handing over of care to outside interests.
The TPPA is another battle in the class war conducted by successive governments around the world since the early 80’s — rolling back all the progressive legislation enacted in the wake of WW2.
It’s a continuation of NatCorp™’s crimes against working people, the poor, and tangata whenua.
This so called “neo-liberal consensus” cannot stand.
It’ll be easier for her to buy a gun 😉
I imagine the remaining people at TV3 are completely desperate and will say anything for a hope of clinging to one of the last few jobs.
Key nearly always avoids anyone who disagrees with him. Dissenters are kept away. Unless he can use his advantages to humiliate them.
Exactly.
btw the outrage over the other countries may think about the dildo which has barely rated a mention, unlike the tugger incident, which was all over the international news is sheer hypocrisy.
But that’s the way they operate too. It’s not like anyone overseas cares that it’s the National Day. If they did care, they’d probably be more appalled that the PM couldn’t be arsed going to any official commemoration.
Maybe it’s all a lead up to making anzac the official day.
John Campbell is subtle and brilliant…and John Key declined an invitation to be interviewed… just as he declined open debate at Waitangi for all New Zealand to view ….and he declined open democratic debate in Parliament
John Campbell throws light into the darkness…(this is why jonkey’s friends got rid of him from TV3)
jonkey is gutless and undemocratic…he slithers around in secrecy like a Gollum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gollum
Maybe we should keep a score of the time the gutless Key fails to front any open debate and discussion on the TPPA.
Checkpoint
Waitangi.
Groser’s prize for his sale of NZ sovereignty to the corporates.
30 pieces of silver.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11585317
Speaking of Groser, Winston Peters made an interesting comment about him during a speech on Friday opposed to the TPPA, reffering to the snake oil salesman’s appointment to the United States. Sounds like he has something coming out about this ‘job for the boys’. He also has a crack at Mike Hosking which gave me quite a laugh.
The thing that really impressed me the other day was rather than going to a major event with the other party leaders attended by Governor General also, Peters commits to coming along to a anti TPPA rally instead, which was pretty much a washout for a crowd being an outdoor event in pouring rain. However we free styled it in an arcade and got the message out before the cops shut us down. Cheers Winston your a bloody ledgend! 87,000 views of your NZH video sure is getting the message out!
Here is the unedited video of his whole speech;
+1 excellent oratory from Winston, pretty good stuff from David Clark also
Winston goes without saying, however Clark was a pleasant surprise he spoke very well better than Robertson did at the Auckland Town Hall rally, and he was pretty solid.
With Labour it still boils back to their horseshit lateness in coming out, and then getting bushwhacked by first Goff and then Shearer. They lost alot of creds to the public on their true position, and for me probably till this bloke Clark declared a resounding no to the TPPA under it’s current format. Well done chap!
+ 100%
https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/wearenotrentacrowd?source=feed_text&story_id=819927578129452
Pacific Grim: How the controversial TPP signed away your digital rights
http://economyincrisis.org/content/pacific-grim-how-the-controversial-tpp-signed-away-your-digital-rights
Maybe send to Heather du Plessis Allen
According to a comment made by MIKE IN AUCKLAND over on TDB,
“John Key got booed at in Eden Park yesterday, the times they are a changing!”
Can anyone confirm this?
If true, this would be quite an ego hit for our little mannikin.
The booing was very clear on the tv1 news report. It was loud and obvious.
The intro to One News had footage of him being booed as he was walking out an exit from the field. It was a bit surprising to see them paint him in that negative way, I’m sure they have ignored these kind of things often in the past. The news story was a bit more positive and had him having selfies with people in the stand and interviewed a spectator that said Key should definitely be at the league rather than at the founding of a nation, blah blah.
He was booed on his way into the tunnel, going to meet and greet players, who when interviewed said such things as “he’s staunch” great guy, yadda, yadda accompanied with raised fist handshakes and bumping of shoulders. All very manly. Trevvy will be swooning at her man being all manly. Be still her beating heart. Oh, and lots of beaming selfie with rugged league players. So, all and all a positive time for Johnny enabled by Corin Dan and Gower. Nothing new from media.
Don’t know who Trevvy is? Please can you tell me without having to look through media reports? I try to keep up with the celeb scene.
Claire Trevett I think.
I assumed it was that great hanger-on to sportsmen Trevor Mallard.
“Trevvy will be swooning ” sounds just like him.
I’ve had that suspicion about Trevvy for a long time myself.
Yes. I do mean Claire Trevett.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/john-key-booed-by-section-of-the-crowd-at-nrl-nines-on-waitangi-day
http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/1602/TPP_Final_Mandate_3_October_2015.pdf
Its like modern art, lots & lots of black squares.
Very transparent.
well thats useful(not) …and informative in its blankness. I see advice from MoH was provided, is it likely that text may be able to be sourced from a different direction?
No wonder Julian Assange was framed…Wikileaks was warning of this in 2013
http://www.cnet.com/au/news/wikileaks-publishes-draft-of-secretive-tpp-trade-pact/
Now supported by the United Nations
‘UN panel rules Julian Assange arbitrarily detained, entitled to liberty & compensation’
https://www.rt.com/news/331371-assange-arbitrarily-detained-un/
Thanks for that Choopky. An ongoing matter that we shouldn’t lose sight of. And perhaps we won’t lose sight of Julian himself eh!
In anticipation of the next part of the TPPA debate (what happens if we leave?), this comment in response to Brian Easton saying we have little choice but to join the TPP because otherwise we will lose advantage in other trade deals and foreign affairs matters,
http://www.pundit.co.nz/content/can-we-afford-not-to-adopt-the-tppa
hear, hear.
Im more inclined to the comment below that one Weka
That’s interesting Weka. Brian Easton, as his article states, has been interested in us being an ethical and principled democracy for yonks. His views represent a warning to us, and presents the historic reasons for his concern. Good to get that wider background to set the TPPA in context – seems part of a linear progression. Do we draw a line in the sand before we succumb to it, what will be the reaction if we do, what will be the result if we don’t.
This from the link to Brian Easton in pundit in Weka’s comment. There is so much TPPA discussion, anxious, heated, emotional. This is good reading to get a cool understanding. Naturally Wayne Mapp likes it.
Thoseoutside often have little understanding of the complexity of the [international political] network. For instance a consequence of the legislation which made New Zealand nuclear-free and led to our ejection from ANZUS changed the balance in our relations with Australia and the US. Our practice had been to play one off against the other. When the US withdrew in a huff, we found ourselves much more dependent upon Australia; in one way our independence was reduced by being nuclear-free….
These complex interdependences also apply to trade negotiations….
The logic in this column is that we now do not have much choice about the TPPA. The government is trapped into agreeing to it because rejecting it has implications for other trade deals and our wider international relations. That is probably what our MFAT officials are advising, although no doubt there are many diverse views in there,…
Everyone will be watching the US, where the passage of the measures is likely to be most contentious. Many of the predictions of what will happen reflect the soothsayers’ view of the TPPA rather than a solid political assessment. There is considerable division among those who are informed. Some think the US Congress will agree to the deal this year because it is so crucial to US economic hegemony, particularly relations with Japan and the reducing of China’s economic leadership. Others think the Congress will not bear to give Obama a win and will hold it over to next year. Another view is that there are so many fish-hooks in the deal that Congress will not be able to get an agreement.
Until each of the partners has demonstrated they can implement the agreement, its provisions do not come into effect. When they have all done this the partners ratify the treaty. (Most required legislation will not come into effect until ratification.)
Easton raises export subsidies as likely to expand without agreements against them.
This enables excessive production with an attempt to gain export primacy by under-cutting unsubsidised nations production in that sector.
He says that signing seems to be a necessary strategic move now because of our interwoven relationships, while the ratification of all is necessary before it is fully implemented, which would be preferable to us withdrawing from the treaty.
Sorry, too hard to tell which are your words and which are quotes. Can you please use some formatting next time?
Yes I see. I tried starting with a bold and ending with bold, it was a long one and I didn’t want to put it all in italics and I thought blockquote would make it too long.
Is there another sort of formatting I could do easily?
Perhaps I could use another font for a long quote – there is probably an option which I just haven’t found yet. Answering my own query, that is what I will try.
This article by Rod Oram is worthy of a post in its own right.
In it, he takes apart many of the points made by the TPP cheerleaders.
Claim #1 It is a Free Trade Agreement.
No, it isn’t. Too many tariffs and other barriers remain for it to deserve the accolade. Rather, it is a “managed trade” pact, argues Martin Sandbu, one of the best analysts at the Financial Times of London, in this article bit.ly/FTonTPPA.
Claim #2 ‘It will make us wealthy.’
No, it won’t. By 2030 it could lift our GDP by 0.9 per cent. With TPPA, we’d hit that target by January 1, 2030. Without TPPA we’d hit the target three months later.
Moreover, the government’s forecast of 0.9 per cent relies on heroic assumptions about easing non-tariff barriers. Analysis of this is coming thick and fast. Here’s a recent example from Tufts University in the US, bit.ly/TuftsTPPA and this from the Petersen Institute, the most respected, most apolitical of Washington trade think tanks, bit.ly/PetersenTPPA.
Claim #3 ‘The Investor State Dispute Settlement process has been around for years in other trade agreements, so there’s nothing to worry about. ‘
Yet the EU halted its FTA talks with the US because it said ISDS was a “very toxic issue.” It came back to the table with a bold proposal for a proper international judicial system for settling disputes.
We are about to start negotiating an FTA with the EU. Logically it will make the same judicial proposal to us. We should eagerly embrace it and actively push for the TPPA to follow suit.
He finishes his magnificent article as follows…..
‘ our government and business leaders are insisting TPPA will be a bonanza, bigger even than our Free Trade Agreement with China. At a bare minimum they are setting themselves up for severe disappointment and serious loss of credibility. They are blinding themselves to the massive work that has yet to be done on TPPA.
Worse, they are devaluing New Zealand’s reputation as an honest broker in international negotiations. Yet that is our greatest strength in the global system. It means we get taken seriously. It means we achieve far more than a country our size should.
TPPA damages that hard-won record. We will regret it. ‘
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/76580827/rod-oram-tppa-honesty-pays
Trust Rod Oram’s opinion far more than I trust Key’s, and glad that Rod is prepared to stick his head above the parapet, a good man, like one or two others.
I admire their courage.
Yes someone tell Labour so they can get some backbone around the TPP.
TPPA ain’t a Free Trade Agreement – False Advertising by the National Party – Telling lies again.
Martin Sandbu, one of the best analysts at the Financial Times of London argues it is a “managed trade” pact,
Yeah managed by Corporations!
Or as others have said ‘ a forced trade’ agreement’.
even worse …it is a managed ‘trading bloc”
Anyone else notice on last night’s news bulletins (Saturday Waitangi Day), the booing towards the PM at the league game?
Hee hee, and here was FJK thinking he was always going to remain the “most loved leader of all time in NZ”!
Seems the gutless wonder might just be falling foul of his once “adoring” public, as they finally wake up to the cheating, lying, deceptive traitor he really is!
Good 🙂 Long may this positive trend continue.
Links
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/john-key-booed-by-section-of-the-crowd-at-nrl-nines-on-waitangi-day?autoPlay=4741901469001
Prime Minister booed, cheered during Auckland Nines visit
Notice he was too scared to go out in public again.
Read more: http://www.newshub.co.nz/politics/key-booed-cheered-at-auckland-nines-2016020615#ixzz3zRBni9eN
Wow.
Make no mistakes the Nats are reeling, I seen plenty of them up close and talked to a number of their Ministers, as they had a grace pass from Waitangi. While they were all trying to hold a brave confident business as usual manner about themselves. I can tell you they were rocked with the Auckland demolition job on their TPPA signing. They were wandering around the Bay of Islands like stunned mullets. From generally viewed as the supreme command to dirty sellout rats over night.
I enjoyed mocking a few of them, Parata a beauty at a restaurant where I was johnny on the spot after some media hack asked if she had been getting grief about things. She piped up not yet. I gave her a bit of a polite serve which wiped her cat smile off her face lol.
I gave her a bit of a polite serve
please elaborate
“I see John is a no show tomorrow after half the country were on the streets of Auckland eariler today…looks like the teflon is coming off…being ordered out of Waitangi tomorrow must be a blow for you.” she said “I will be there don’t you worry.” after my mate and myself burst into laughter, my reply was “yeah sure you will be keep telling yourself that.” With that she headed off but did appear to have lost the spring in her step, and glared back at me like I will remember you, or I have seen you around?
We laughed some more and then I gave what looked like Maori-Tory TV hacks she was with a serve which I can not repeat.
Canada stops sharing Five Eyes data
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/295933/canada-stops-sharing-five-eyes-data
quick, sue them.
/sarc
Can someone please take my comments out of moderation? thanks.
I was interested in the discrepancy between two news items yesterday. The letter from Nga puhi to the PM clearly attempted to gag him if he attended a powhiri at the Te Ti marae. It also claimed that it applied to all political parties.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/297837989/Waitangi-Letter
Then we had this report from RNZ
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/295819/joyce-defends-tpp-negotiation-methods
Quoting from this we see that it says
“Labour leader Andrew Little did give a political speech on the marae today – despite the Prime Minister being told he was not allowed to do so. Mr Little, who spoke of the importance of sovereignty, said the marae trustees placed no restrictions on what he could talk about during the powhiri.”
There appear to be only 2 ways to interpret these two items.
Option 1. Ngapuhi lied in their letter to the PM. The gagging applied only to John Key and most definitely did not apply to Andrew Little. I can see why they would want this as a description of the TPPA and its effects by Key, in his clear and reasonable manner would show up Little’s buffoonery and waffle as being the words of a fool.
Option 2. Little is lying, or simply totally ignoring the protocol requested by his hosts.
He must have known about the letter to the PM and ignored it. Even Andrew couldn’t be so out of touch as to not have seen it. Alternatively he was provided with his own advice and ignored that.
If you think option 1 is correct do you think that Ngapuhi are duplicitous and that the Government should ignore their existence at future Waitangi ceremonies, at least until they provide John Key with a public apology?
If you think option 2 is the correct one can we expect some comment from the commenter on “PM should get over Waitangi” who said
“Hardly. It’s just that I was brought up to not go into someone else’s house and demand that they behave the way I want them to, especially if I’ve been invited in.
I’m sure that when people get invited to do things at parliament that there are processes that have to be adhered to. Key is entitled to stay away, but as PM of NZ he’s not entitled to be an arse. Not that that usually stops him”
Is Andrew going to be called an ignorant, uncouth boor and an arse?
The letter explains the kawa and it is up to those who would speak to know and follow that kawa if they want to respect their hosts. This can also change and be adjusted as tangata whenua determine. There is no big story around this alwyn. Key didn’t go as we know, he was a no show, all blow, needs to grow, needs to show he ain’t just the big no in nobody eh yo.
Little did what he did – has there been a call from tangata whenua alwyn asking for recompense, has this caused a real media storm??? NO it is just your little attempt to cause trouble and stir – you are so small alwyn.
“do you think that Ngapuhi are duplicitous and that the Government should ignore their existence at future Waitangi ceremonies”
LOL – you really are so ignorant alwyn – you have zero idea of what you are talking about – you are a balloon with a hole – softly sagging to nothingness
nice bit of poetry marty.
This quote seems appropriate for you Marty.
“Marty Mars is but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing”
From what little sense I can get out of your remark you seem to think that Ngapuhi lied to the PM and that they intended to allow their mates from the Labour Party to talk politics at the powhiri.
what have you been smoking though?
another school homework site eh alwyn – didn’t you get embarrassed enough last time???
seem, intended and so on – this is all your petty stuff alwyn – instead of dealing with big issues of national importance you prefer to try and pin flies to another’s jacket – just don’t have anything worth saying, do you alwyn.
“this is all your petty stuff alwyn – instead of dealing with big issues”
Well yes I would have to agree that replying to your rubbish is dealing with petty stuff. I was just trying to make you feel that someone read what you had written, no matter how stupid you were.
Would it make you feel better if I ignored you in future and didn’t even bother reading what you say?. God knows, reading your contributions is certainly time wasted.
sounds like you are talking to yourself there alwyn – bit sad really
It’s almost as if the Bard wrote this to be aimed at you, Alwyn:
Henry IV pt 1.
hehehe I love that speech. Falstaff is one of my fav characters.
but lets finish it
😉
I really like the way Shakespeare used the comic characters to make Henry V such a kick to the ‘nads for the audience. I’ve never been particularly big on the comedies, but played Pistol in Henry V a few years back.
🙂 yes the Bard really knew how to deliver a good literal boot where it was needed.
The thespian in our family is my daughter (a grad of Toi Whakaari and Shakespeare and Co. in Lennox MA.)
Henry IV pt 1 was the first Shakespearian play I read – introduced at school – and I went immediately out and bought my own copy. I’m too lanky to play Falstaff but that is one part I would love to play.
If you’re looking for a figure of comic incompetence to represent Alwyn you can’t go past Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing.
Marry, sir, they have committed false report;
moreover, they have spoken untruths;
secondarily, they are slanders;
sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady;
thirdly, they have verified unjust things;
and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.
lol nice
I love this place sometimes.
I know this is getting close to the line with the rules, but did alwyn get thrashed today or what?
I daren’t comment 🙂
I always thought Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war from Julius Caesar was completely badass
lolz, is that you having a go at me alwyn? Quoting out of context again 🙄
3. Little understands how things work on the marae far better than you or Key or the MSM. Marty has said how it works. If after that you still don’t understand what happened yesterday I can’t explain it to you. I’ll give you a hint though, stop trying to understand it within a Pākehā framework.
Meanwhile, I thought this was interesting,
Greens welcomed ahead of Labour
Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei said she was happy to abide by the no-politics rule of Te Tii Marae at Waitangi as her party were welcomed onto the grounds ahead of Labour today.
The Opposition parties were to be welcomed on at the same time, but instead the Greens were taken on for a separate powhiri, leaving Labour leader Andrew Little and his MPs standing in the rain for an hour.
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/politics/372113/turei-ill-abide-waitangi-rule
“lolz, is that you having a go at me alwyn?”
Of course I was quoting you. I wouldn’t say it was having a go though.
I didn’t want to identify you publicly though in case you are, as you should be, embarrassed by what you said on Friday.
“Quoting out of context again”
Not at all. That was your entire comment. The only editing I did was to remove a superfluous blank line. You should see that what you said is completely relevant to what I was talking about and that you should either comment on Little’s behaviour or withdraw your remarks about Key.
Obtaining consistency from the left is always difficult of course.
As for your comment about the Green Party. Is Hone trying to wangle a high place on the Green Party list at the next election? That would probably cause Ngapuhi to suck up to her. Pretty foolish if the Green Party did such a thing of course but it wouldn’t be beyond them.
If you want to quote in context put up a link, it’s not rocket science. As for the rest I can’t be bothered trying to figure what twisted agenda you have today, got better things to do.
Alwyn, you waste of space, you haven’t murdered your king and your best friend to keep your wife sweet only to have her top herself. So yes, completely out of context.
“The Opposition parties were to be welcomed on at the same time, but instead the Greens were taken on for a separate powhiri, leaving Labour leader Andrew Little and his MPs standing in the rain for an hour.”
Yes and as I stood there, then watched from afar I could not help thinking maybe Little should call both Goff and Shearer and ask them if it is raining where they currently are?
If so, order them to go stand out in the rain till told otherwise, or if it was not raining to go stand under a cold shower till told otherwise.
But really there was a bit of silliness going on by a few players up there including Labour locals.
Wrong people. He should be abusing Matt McCarten for letting him go anywhere near the place.
Matt, if anyone, should have known that it would only result in Little looking, shall we say, shrunken.
After all Matt will know these people very well.
I was there Alwyn – Little did not look shrunken at all, he gave a good speech on Ti Tii Marae and he had a great response from all those present. The Greens went on with the Maori Womens Welfare League – it would have been a bit too much to have us, Labour, in there as well.
As it happened, it was a real tight squeeze for all of Labour and supporters to get into the marae. And because of the weather there was no outside mike, and canvas canopy as has been available on other years for all the extra people to listen to the proceedings outside. Hey – and a bit of rain never hurt anyone.
As for what politicians could say, as Andrew Little pointed out later, if John Key had fronted up and said here I am, and what can I speak about, he would have been okay. But he was too disturbed by the massive outcry against TPPA to do that.
Andrew’s speech was along the lines of “everything” is political, the Treaty of Waitangi itself was political, so anything he could say would have political overtones but the marae was a place for discussion, debate, and agreement, and that was what he was there for. (This is very much just a basic summary of what he said, not taken from any notes, just memory).
Looks like FJK and his band of PR polished nactoids have given up on Northland and handed it over to NZ First and Labour
Not enough photo ops for them, looks like plan B (the league game) has backfired too.
FJK’s reliance on selfies, jokes, and smart remarks doesn’t wash when the bullshit is exposed so clearly as it was on 4 Feb (the TPPA day of shame)
I notice Stuff is pushing Seymour – perhaps the VRWC is polishing a fresh turd to be ready in case Key, you know, inadvertantly trips and hangs himself in the shower or something.
[lprent: I ignore ‘subtle’. You have been warned before. Banned 1 week. ]
#FlushTPPA but sometimes they keep floating back to the surface
My understanding from one report (sorry, can’t remember where) is that both parties were meant to go on together, but the bus driver who was supposed to pick up the some of of the Labour MPs didn’t turn up making them late. The decision was then made to welcome the Green Party first. Nothing significant in it – just a mix up with transport.
thanks Karen.
Perhaps John Key should have confined himself to talking about sovereignty (which is after all what Waitangi day is about) rather than whining via letters and staffers that he wanted to attack the opposition to the TPPA.
FFS alwyn, use your brain once in a while.
“Key should have confined himself to talking about sovereignty”
The major sovereignty issue being talked about at the moment is the effect of the TPPA. The major objection to the TPPA is claims that it abridges our sovereignty.
Discussing sovereignty without talking about the TPPA would make about as much sense as talking about the campaign for the Democratic nomination for President this year without ever saying the name Bernie Sanders. It is totally impossible to do so and still make any sense.
FFS lprent, use your brain once in a while.
So if John Key’s minders weren’t such arrogant arseholes and had specified that was the ‘politics’ he wanted to talk about…
But no – those dildos wanted to make a good headline so they deliberately muffed it by asking for something that they knew they would get the appropriate response to. Perhaps you could suggest why they did that?
What was it that they are supposed to have done? You say
“they deliberately muffed it by asking for something that they knew they would get the appropriate response to.”
Do you have some reference to this. A link would be nice.
All I have seen is various Ngapuhi leaders saying come/don’t come/come/don’t come. Key then said that if he couldn’t speak he wouldn’t go.
I note the limitation on talking politics doesn’t seem to have applied to Labour. Perhaps you can suggest why??
Even Hone, at least at one point seems to think Ngapuhi have stuffed up
“”It’s a national marae and Ngapuhi are the guardians of it. What they should have done is asked other leaders from other areas for their opinion, listened to them and then decided. They didn’t have to take a vote.”
“They handled the whole thing really badly,” he said.
Can you really blame the PM wanting to know what they were up to when we had reports like
“Following the vote there were mixed messages from leaders at the marae over whether Key would be invited or not.
Some media reported that Key had been blocked from the marae while others were told by leaders that he was welcome”.
Quotes from
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/76480259/john-key-may-not-attend-waitangi-day-unless-ngapuhi-extend-official-invite
More John Key hypocrisy. He slated the sex toy throwing incident as a bad showing for NZ as it went viral around the world. His point was that it reflected badly on our National Day.
The same National Day where he refused to front up as PM.
The same Prime Ministerwho denigrated his high office by having his hair-pulling antics go viral around the world. The same Prime Minister who joked about anal rape in prisons. The same PM who now is booed in public by ordinary Kiwi voters.
I would like to make a comment as a someone who has lurked on the Standard for a while and for several reasons has only made a few posts.
I come to the Standard for some encouragement in what I feel are dark times, to learn something about the issues we are facing as a country and in our communities, and to remind me that I am not the only person in New Zealand who thinks the way I do.
To have discussions polluted by muppets whose sole reason for posting seems to be to derail or divert is incredibly frustrating. There are whole threads I now skim through as it seems to me far too much energy is being expended by people whose opinion I respect (mostly) debating with trolls.
Whole discussions just get bogged down which I suspect is their whole purpose.
I admire the perseverance of those who bother to debate with them as it may be a bit harder now that someone since the New Year seems to have pushed the “Reasoned Debate” button.
For me the Standard has been a beacon but it has dimmed a bit recently and maybe that is exactly what someone wants.
+100
I would ban them.
If we ban too often it involves more work for moderators. I know from long experience that causes an ever escalating pressure on moderator time. So there is always a balance required between the amount of effort required to moderate and the constaining of debate.
The most effective way to ban is to give very long bans because then we don’t have to keep banning people as often. In particular using a fast exponential scale for timespans and a low toleration for fools. That massively reduces the workload. But does cause other issues.
It causes muttering about moderators who do this by people (and other moderators) saying that there is too much banning. Especially as most have different ideas about what piss-poor behaviour is.
In particular the more partisan who seem to think that piss-poor behaviour by lefties should be treated differently to piss-poor behaviour by the right.
Personally I don’t care that much what political affiliations or views someone has, because I see quite a lot of piss-poor behaviour from all shades of the political spectrum. I’m mainly concerned with their behaviour on this site and if it affects the intent of what the site is designed for – to discuss topics of interest to the labour movement and to have robust debate.
Of course since many of the right come here to purely to disrupt either directly or with the subtlety (that I simply gaze straight through), they collect much of the moderation.
Incidentally my usual response to respectful criticism about moderation (if I don’t ban the person for trying to tell us what to do) is to simply curtail my banning – equally. I simply raise my personal threshold for bans and reduce the time span I give them for. Then I get conversations like this…
The real solution as was pointed out is for commenters to simply not to respond. Most of the unthinking trolls will then proceed to fall into astroturfing the site with whatever their latest line is trying to get a response – and suffer the inevitable result.
But since I’m currently on hold for my next overseas trip, I’ll have a look around again for a tech solution.
Personally, I quite like the comment the Huffington Post puts at the bottom of every article about Trump.
“Editor’s note: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.”
Maybe it’s easily feasible to automatically attach some sort of disclaimer to the start of regular offender’s comments?
Do they note that Clinton is a serial warmonger, has lied over and over again on what happened in Benghazi and her email records all around that time, that her hubby Bill signed NAFTA which helped destroy the American blue collar class, and best of all is on the take from the billionaire bankster fraternity, charging a quarter million dollars per speaking engagement?
Not yet. I have hopes they’ll get around to it.
Smooth mate 🙂
Wouldn’t be hard to do technically. The only real issue would be that I’d have to either set it for the identity for every comment that they have done over time, or somehow plug it into the comment-meta while posting a comment.
The reason for the latter is that we forgive after a ban until there is a need to ban again. Then previous convictions count on their sentence.
Is it technically easy (…) to build in a capability feature for the TS readers to collapse (sub-)threads?
Yes – the css attribute of display:none would make them easily invisible. I’d just have to add a extra div to allow hide/open. Obviously these are personal preferences and there are some limits to what could be done because they’d need to be done at client side using javsacript and cookies.
The only real issues with it is remembering which ones you have dropped and that they will have to either close collapsed comments or open non-collapsed comments at the user side, that it will make pages slower to open, and some screen real estate would have to be sacrificed for activating ‘buttons’.
This site effectively doesn’t run logins, and these days pages offered to non-logged users are effectively all the same. This minimizes the amount of processing the server has to do and strongly decreases the useful information about commenters that court orders could extract.
So any information stored on which comment threads are dropped has to be available on client side via cookies and acted upon via javascript executed on the client browser. Cookies are stored per client browser. So would the collapses. If you read the pages in both safari and chrome, then they would have different collapses.
When a page is opened, it’d open with either all comments visible or no comments visible. Either has issues that would need working around.
In the latter case , the javascript would locate the collapsed comments for the current page out of cookies. It would walk the invisible comments seeing if the comment should be opened, and open it. It would then have to find the comment you were last reading or wrote and jump to it. This last step is tricky to do compared to the existing system.
In the former case, the page would be set to the correct comment, and then the javascript would have to walk to collapse comments. The issue here is that you are unlikely to view at the last comment you were reading quite as well if there are collapses further up the page. The page could be jumping around quite a lot as you start reading it.
Neither issue is insoluble.
And there could be issues with the Replies tab. If someone relies to you and you click it there, then you won’d see the comment.
That is the only other gotcha I can see on a second think…
O.k. thanks I thought it was worth asking as thread collapsing is not uncommon on other sites but I have no idea of the (technical) implications, obviously.
On a different note, I still experience issues with loading of TS pages. For example, OM 07/02/2016 and OM 08/02/2016 did not load this morning (empty page) and OM 08/02/2016 still doesn’t!?
I notice something odd, that my old comments window comes back when I am doing a new one, though the old one is shown on the list at right and appears in the post.
This morning I ended up typing my second one in the comment window of my first one which had been ‘published’. So that was confusing – I refreshed with F5 to clear it and it was still there I think. Bit confused now.
Anyway everything got through after I juggled with them a bit.
That is client side caching – the server has no idea what is in the textarea used for comments. Probably the clear in the javascript that saves the comment wasn’t getting called or wasn’t activating correctly.
I’ll have a look over lunch to check that it isn’t a general problem. But it is most likely that your browser was having a bit of a brain fade. Usually restarting the browser (or logging out or restarting the system if the browser has a ‘fast start’) will fix it.
“The real solution as was pointed out is for commenters to simply not to respond.”
Any chance you could hire some cat herders? 😉 Commenters not responding to trolls only works if most or all refrain. That’s not going to happen here, and so the threads often get filled with troll call and response even if a whole bunch of people are ignoring them. Those conversations become the dominant ones because some people just walk away and others get drawn to where the energy and entertainment is.
There are lots of people commenting on ts whose otherwise good comments get ignored. One thing that those of us* sick of the troll fests could do is start talking to each other. Make those conversations the ones that are interesting. To that end, and speaking of tech, I’ve come round to the idea of a like button or similar. Maybe trial it anyway, to see if people knowing that their comments are valued even if not getting much response intially might increase responses and generate other kinds of conversations. All the usual caveats about use and abuse of such tech by commenters (and trolls).
*I have a foot in both camps, mainly because I love a good argument so the more interesting troll threads are enticing. Arguing with people who think differently than me also helps me clarify my thinking, although it would be nice to argue more with differently thinking lefties than righties or trolls (of any stripe).
Not cats – goats. Cats always scatter.
Whereas goats are far far more infuriating. Most of the time they act like herd animals. But in every drive there will always be one or two who decide to be contrary and to drag part of the herd with them. After they get experienced, even good farm doags don’t like tangling with a contrarian goat…
The only thing that that goats respect is electric fences. A good hard unexpected shock tends to modify their behaviour.
I do have a like button plugin that I was prototyping and extending. I’ll have another look at where I got to with it.
and the buggers have a sixth sense when the fence is off
Yep.
Goats! I’ll have to remember that 😈
And they start young…
arrrgh, not the dreaded baby goat pictures.
weka
+1
+100
I would ban them.
Sorry can’t agree with you there Paul. I would miss the comedy and daily fun when the likes of Gosman comes on ranting about the brain dead fuckwits from the right favorite cot case called Venezuela, or Greece. What would we do if we did not have our daily dose of seeing how their shit is taken down time after time after time. Some of the replies these prats get are very smart and I am sure we can all survive the crap they come out with.
Yeah – I get sick of the trolls, too, Grey Area. I totally agree with you – if only posters wouldn’t respond to them maybe the trolls would give up !! and pigs might fly ……
Do we make a pledge?
Just ignore the trolls they are suffering from SPS Sick Parrot Syndrome by engaging you give them oxygen.
But the trolls keep pushing buttons on some of our most concerned, informed and sincere commenters. Then there are the argumentative ones that can’t keep their hands off the keyboards. I have suggested a number limit that would control the output and as we rarely have very long and informed discussions we could manage that. It could be that if there was a bypass key available for a moderator to use for one of those great Socratic? discussions that would be good. But it could involve quite a lot of fiddling and coding for not much. But limits on contributions for a certain time perhaps could be done, then people would think twice about using up their ‘budget’ on trols and the trols would have to limit their puerile input.
Ban them or put them into moderation far quicker.
Personally, I try really hard not to give in to the temptation to respond to the usual suspects. But occasionally one puts up a plausible looking piece of bullshit, that if left unchallenged might end up looking like accepted truth to silent lurkers.
But I can certainly do without scrolling past the endless handbag fights to find the substantive discussions.
“But occasionally one puts up a plausible looking piece of bullshit, that if left unchallenged might end up looking like accepted truth to silent lurkers.”
That’s the dilemma and is the main argument of the troll fighters (except they don’t use the word ‘occasionally’).
Also, most of us have different ideas about what a troll is.
Handbag fights – funny. There is always a Monty Python skit for every occasion and I am sure that one must be in your mind.
you realise of course that by coming here and engaging, the trolls have a chance at rehabilitation? compared to some of the bottom dwellers at KB most of our rwnj friends are positively enlightened…
i think it’s always worthwhile hearing the other side of a political debate, at least our righties show more intelligence than Hosking and Henry
“i think it’s always worthwhile hearing the other side of a political debate, at least our righties show more intelligence than Hosking and Henry”
Well said However remember some of them do, not all of them.
well yes some of them are hopeless and just dump and run (redelusion)
To be fair ropota your contributions are of 8th grade standard and a stuck record thus only deserve a short response
Troll irony. Too early in the morning for that.
8th grade red?
“you realise of course that by coming here and engaging, the trolls have a chance at rehabilitation?”
and then there are the astroturfers…
yah those are hard to spot but they seem to cluster around significant events and gang up to defend/justify the FJK government’s latest crime
I think people who constantly engage with trolls and their ilk are the ones who need rehabilitation.
Please don’t become a killjoy; a dirty slippery troll-wrestle is one of the few guilty pleasures I can still occasionally indulge in 😉
Never understood the lure of mud wrestling myself. But it takes all kinds!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/76574076/trading-places-running-nz-like-an-investment-fund
journalism not dead yet
pat
Thanks for the heads up on the business on stuff! Straight to the point. Good stuff.
NOTE this from the stuff link from pat above –
somewhat like Greece…..there was an interesting BBC piece on RNZ today….the parallels with TTPA were striking….think this is the piece (its not available on RNZ at mo)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06wj1bt
Good read (22). Thanks for posting it Pat.
good read but disturbing subject matter….and I live in hope it’s followed up and expanded on
iran to charge its oil in euros? dumps the us $ ?
interesting times.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-oil-iran-exclusive-idUKKCN0VE1P9
quote: Switching oil sales to euros makes sense as Europe is now one of Iran’s biggest trading partners.
“Many European companies are rushing to Iran for business opportunities, so it makes sense to have revenue in euros,” said Robin Mills, chief executive of Dubai-based Qamar Energy.
Iran has pushed for years to have the euro replace the dollar as the currency for international oil trade. In 2007, Tehran failed to persuade OPEC members to switch away from the dollar, which its then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called a “worthless piece of paper”.
The NIOC source said Iran’s central bank instituted a policy while the country was under sanctions over its disputed nuclear programme to carry out foreign trade in euros.
“Iran shifted to the euro and cancelled trade in dollars because of political reasons,” the source said.
makes sense when you are involved in a de facto currency war
In mid Jan, the US slapped a new range of sanctions on Iran less than 24 hours after Iran had promptly released a group of US naval personnel who had been caught intruding in Iranian territorial waters.
Basically Iran made a move to strengthen new ties with the US, and the US returned the gesture with the middle finger.
So I’m not surprised at this move at all.
This. While the issues aren’t exactly the same as the US, in NZ this is a little-discussed aspect of the housing crises. Banks and councils are putting pressure on people to build houses much bigger than they need, and people too often are building an investment rather than a home.
With handy diagram,
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153032665153328
This is all driven by private sector developers targetting projects towards the top 1%/top 5%, with too easy finance from the banking sector.