Among the many thousands of documents, is Bad Science: A Resource Book – described in Merchants of Doubt as a “how-to handbook for fact fighters”.
Produced by the tobacco industry to help any industry fight any legislation that responded to scientific findings, this was a representation of big tobacco’s playbook in written form.
The book provided soundbites and ready-made talking points to arm any industry fighting regulation. Among the talking points the book suggested should be pushed home were:
Too often, science is manipulated to fulfil a political agenda.
Government agencies, too often, betray the public trust by violating principles of good science in a desire to achieve a political goal.
Public policy decisions that are based on bad science impose enormous economic costs on all aspects of society.
Get that denialists? All the climate change denial in the media and other formats is a concerted litany of lies from industry seeking to protect its profits at the expense of everyone and life itself.
Well, moron, you failed to understand what I quoted and that means that you failed to ask anything of any relevance. As you always do this it becomes fairly obvious that you’re nothing but a troll. Now fuck off.
Having read the article and your comment before I responded my questions are relevant the second one especially
The link quote and your comment indicate a belief that government is the problem however it is my contention that corporations who control influence and capture governments are the problem
In reality the two work together hand in glove
Completely agree about profit industry of all types using fraudulent and corrupt practices “at the expense of everyone and life itself“
That’s as close to personal as you will read from a comment of mine
Really?
Because your laziness in refusing to do your own (incredibly easy) research and insisting we do it for you, your constant passive-aggressive questions, and your overwhelming arrogance are individually and collectively pretty fucking insulting.
Just because you don’t use rude words, it doesn’t mean you’re any less of a prick than the rest of us.
Funny, because the fact you couldn’t resist the wee quip about acceptance makes you an honorary member. If you were a tenth of the person you thought you were then you’d have resisted it.
That’s what really gets under my skin – there are lots of morons I ignore, both here and in real life. But the scab I pick at is the complete moron who thinks he’s superior to everyone else. You couldn’t even manage a simple google search, for fucks sake.
What any normal person with a barrow to push would have done is looked up all the vaccines on the NZ schedule and then on to other vaccines, looking for one or two cases of research fraud / undisclosed conflicts of interest. But no, you had no idea what you were talking about from the very start. Hell, you probably just plagiarised the “gold standard” talking point from some antivax site.
As it is, the only confirmed case of research fraud relating to vaccines is wakefield. I’m moderately surprised that you couldn’t find even one from the other side.
Funny, because the fact you couldn’t resist the wee quip about acceptance makes you an honorary member. If you were a tenth of the person you thought you were then you’d have resisted it
Actually it was a genuine query I would be interested to learn who is in the ‘us club’
Q. Do you believe you can understand what I think of myself through the comments I post on an anonymous blog site ?
Q. Are you regarded as the ‘funny one’ amongst your friends ?
That’s what really gets under my skin
Q. You let discussions on this site get under your skin ?
there are lots of morons I ignore, both here and in real life. But the scab I pick at is the complete moron who thinks he’s superior to everyone else.
Q. You’re labeling other people as morons while projecting accusations of superiority in my direction ?
You couldn’t even manage a simple google search, for fucks sake.
Be it deliberate or otherwise you still can’t grasp the basic grounds why I do not have provide a single shred more than I already have to support the position of ‘no compulsory’
What any normal person with a barrow to push would have done
Do you understand your words are making a case for my inferiority which runs counter to the core premise of your comment which is that I believe I am superior
Do you understand you’re words are making a case for my inferiority which runs counter to the core premise of your comment which is that I believe I am superior
You failed to understand the comment. Notably the bit “But the scab I pick at is the complete moron who thinks he’s superior to everyone else” (my italics).
Exhibit A: calling me “confused” based on your own failure to understand basic English.
Exhibit B: forgetting the contents of a sentence that you’d cut&pasted just a few lines previously.
Whether you want to provide evidence for your nutty claims or not is no skin off my nose. Demanding that I do your work for you, on the other hand, is what I found to be fascinating. A bit like a borer grub, in many ways.
You failed to understand the comment. Notably the bit “But the scab I pick at is the complete moron who thinks he’s superior to everyone else” (my italics).
I understood it perfectly but am not surprised to see your attempt to explain it away
@ OAB – The vaccination rates are dropping regardless
If you had understood it, you wouldn’t have gotten my “core premise” wrong.
Your idiocy supports my core position that you are a moron who has an undeserved sense of superiority. You focussed too much on your sense of superiority and missed the other component of my position, which is that you are a moron.
I’ll try to use more simplistic terminology for you:
Go and learn about the relationship between banks and the insurance companies specifically around conflict of interest between a number of primary business functions and operational strategy
See if you can identify where the conflict may encounter barriers preventing your fantasy of insurance industry driven prevention of environmental destruction
If you still don’t understand that relationship then read the section marked – The financiers of the war and military industrial complex and who are the primary beneficiaries
Q, Why do you refer a request for information from someone as an “offer for you to provide explanation”?
Q. Is it because you view other people giving you information as you giving them a gift of your attention, rather than them giving you the actual gift of knowledge?
TM: you’re not going to convert the faithful unfortunately, but your addressing to others and particularly various info and insights provided have indeed been useful.
This from Macskasy over on TDB (not yet up on his Frankly Speaking blog) is a good summary of the Northland byelection. The TV3 poll and strategy have already been well examined on posts on TS. However this instance of implausible deniability is important and thus far unaddressed:
In the TV3 video with Gower’s voice-over, note Osborne’s response (at 2:16) to an off-video question regarding the curious circumstances surrounding Mike Sabin’s sudden resignation from Parliament on 30 January;
“Ah, I’m not aware of the situation or the circumstances behind it.”
Then note Peters’ response (at 2:20) to Osborne’s comment;
“They all knew. And at the top. Including my opponent, who was a Treasurer of the organisation.”
If Peters is correct and Osborne was (is?) the Treasurer of the Northland Branch of the National Party – then it is inconceivable that he was unaware of Sabin’s situation and the police investigation.
The whole lot of them knew Osbourne was Treasurer at the time and Chair at another
time. One of the Northland Executive’s gave it up publicly it was too late to select another candidate. That’s why Osbourne is covering his arse.
See Gower is still turning the taps on and now off on Peters.
I recall some commenters here saying that it was easier to let Sandra Lee take the Auckland Central seat in 1993 than dislodge Prebble from it. Perhaps it is a similar situation of a single faction having the NP Northland selection process all sewn up.
They have got it all sewn up, the popular farmer gets done over by a Carters patsy bean counter. This is a move to ‘super city’ Northland and Carter is lining up his ducks.
Osbourne adds about Sabin “I still have no idea what he has done”oh give us a break.
Poor Mr Osborne, he will trip and stumble and land very flat on his face if this keeps up … he has received a hospital pass woefully disguised as a safe seat.
It is always great for me to read or hear dr marilyn waring. she spoke with kim hill this morning. well worth the listen for all kiwis.
i have learned alot from the fact that my favourite NZer of all time was a National Party MP.
She was and remains a revolutionary. If she were a man she would have been knighted a long time ago. perhaps the damehood was offered and she turned it down.
kudos Marilyn for working so hard to speak truth to power and changing our world for the better.
I wouldn’t call her a “revolutionary”, but she’s an interesting character. She was possibly the most progressive MP in parliament during the Muldoon era. She was also the first more-or-less open gay MP.
It was quite interesting at the time watching how Labour and National handled homosexuality. When Muldoon gay-baited Labour MP (and former agriculture minister) Colin Moyle, Rowling dumped him like a hot brick and he had to resign his seat. Lange walked into parliament over Moyle’s corpse, something I thought at the time absolutely stank but which people seem to have forgotten.
By contrast, when the Truth newspaper ‘outed’ Waring, Muldoon just shrugged it off.
It was easier to be a gay MP in the National Party, even in a rural/conservative seat (she was MP for Raglan and they stuck by her when she was ‘outed’) than in the Labour Party at the time – and, of course, it was a National MP (Venn Young) who was the first MP to try to get the anti-gay laws reformed and among the staunchest anti-gay bigots were Labour MPs like Mick Connolly, Dr Wall (who also tried to tighten the abortion laws and force the Auckland clinic to close and get its most prominent doctor prosecuted) and others. Several Labour MPs wanted it to be a criminal offence to ‘promote’ homosexuality by any sort of suggestion that it was a part of the ‘normal’ spectrum of sexuality.
People forget, or choose not to remember, just how socially reactionary the Labour Party was in the 1970s.
All good points but the reaction to Marilyn Waring v Colin Moyle, may also have to do with some sort of bias (we can turn a blind eye to gay women, but NOT gay men). Likely part of the legacy of Queen Victoria. But also men who have the power (especially back in the 1970’s) are less threatened by a gay woman, whereas a gay man could be hugely threatening for them (especially if they were unsure of their own sexuality).
I take your point about Labour in the 70’s. They were socially conservative as was the great (but not perfect) Norman Kirk.
you must be very experienced @ Tracey. That’s my experience also. But ask any drag queen or gay guy on the game (or indeed city taxi driver) and you’ll find that the actual incidence of male-to-male is probably about the same as female-to-female.
(boy! or rather ‘boi’, have I come across one or two total “on the down low” fuckups – not necessarily personally, but once or twice as well)
EDIT: I think there might need to be a ‘ :p ‘ after “you must be very experienced @ Tracey – just so you know I’m not having a go.
I’m constantly amazed tho’ by the stereotypical ‘blokehood’, just as I am by various attitudes in the ‘gay community; – such as all that “what plays in Vegas, Stays in Vegas bullshit” whilst all the while those PLAYERS keep shitting on their conquests.
Not sure why in the 21st C this shud still be an issue – but it is
Side note – the “Not sure why in the 21st C this shud still be an issue” thing is just a figure of speech, but it does buy into a liberal concept of continuous progress in civilisation and society. Looking back at the scope of the last 5,000 years, of course it just ain’t so.
Except he wasn’t gay ankerawshark. He was the victim of a dirty set-up.
When Muldoon gay-baited Labour MP (and former agriculture minister) Colin Moyle, Rowling dumped him like a hot brick and he had to resign his seat. Lange walked into parliament over Moyle’s corpse, something I thought at the time absolutely stank but which people seem to have forgotten.
@ Philip Ferguson:
That’s nothing like what happened. I was there (no, not in parliament) and through a set of circumstances found myself in the thick of it. It was “Dirty Politics” 1970s style, and Moyle/Labour were the innocent targets. A lot of people were badly hurt (one way or another) in the fallout from that affair, so it behoves people to get the facts correct.
her revolutionary-ness in my mind relates to her creating and advocating an alternative economic model which accounted for unpaid work and ecological factors. elements of which have been adopted widely outside nz.
standing before the ramparts of male structures and saying and acting to break them. i recall hwrald headlines when she cried while speaking in parliament and yet she was not silenced… which was the objective of the headline and mockery.
Yep, her work on economics is still far too radical for NZ. Imagine what NZ economic policy debate would be like now if she’d stayed in politics. Although it’s hard to see what party she could have belonged to given what happening post 1984.
Real change is going to have to be driven by organisations outside our formal political parties I think. Most of our political “leaders” are actually followers. Just look at Labour slowly coming around to the idea that maybe they need a different strategy in Northland. Followers, not leaders.
Indeed and it took the Canadians to do a Documentary on her and for TVNZ to play it at 2pm on a Saturday in the summer.
Who’s Counting?
Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics
some reviews
“Meeting Marilyn Waring on film will forever change your perception of justice, economics, and the worth of your own works. Watch this film.”
Gloria Steinem
“I give this film (and Ms. Waring, of course) every superlative…riveting, revealing, inspiring etc. It penetrates to the heart of the global, ecological, and social crisis that afflicts the world.”
Dr. David Suzuki
“A devastating critique of monetized economics, portrayed with compelling beauty and humor by Oscar-winning director Terre Nash. The film contrasts the vast, uncounted productivity of nature and women worldwide with United Nations-mandated national accounting systems rooted in military economics.”
Tranet
” Waring is one of the liveliest speakers I’ve ever heard…She also has an uncanny ability to put complex information into easily opened packages…If knowledge is power, WHO’S COUNTING is an empowering gift.”
Communities
“By contrast, when the Truth newspaper ‘outed’ Waring, Muldoon just shrugged it off.”
Not how I recall it .. it was darker than that. Marilyn’s partner was the former wife of an All Black .. a dramatic and complete heresy if ever there was one.
My recollection is that Muldoon refused to deal with Truth to intervene prior to publication, as was common with potential libel issues in those days. He believed the story would damage and weaken Marilyn and let it run. It did not harm her, and consequently he wrought utu upon his own head as it evolved.
Also worth remembering how Muldoon used the SIS ( or whatever it was called back then, I forget) in the shadowing and despicable attacks upon Colin Moyle. Maybe this is the part of Muldoon that Key truly models himself upon.
See here for the malice of Muldoon.
“Robert Muldoon (National, Tamaki, leader of the Opposition) got wind of the incident but bided his time, saying during the 1975 election campaign that he “had something” if the campaign turned sour.” (Top drawer, Mr Key ??)
As I wrote recently, the three politicians in NZ that I admire a lot for their courage of conviction and admirable guts, against tremendous odds are
* Marilyn Waring
* Jim Anderton
* Winston Peters
~Waring had come especially to disagree with the National Party policy over the issue of a nuclear-free New Zealand and, on 14 June 1984, she informed the leadership that she would vote independently on nuclear issues, disarmament issues, and rape but would continue to support the Government on confidence.
That evening Muldoon decided to call a snap election to be held on 14 July
~ Although many ordinary members of the Labour Party (who were unhappy at the way the party’s parliamentary wing was behaving) backed Anderton, he became increasingly isolated in parliament. When Anderton disobeyed party instructions to vote in favour of selling the Bank of New Zealand (which Labour had explicitly promised not to do), he was suspended from caucus. In April 1989, believing that Labour was beyond change, Anderton resigned from the party. He later said, “I did not leave the Labour Party; the Labour Party left me.”
On 1 May, Anderton announced the creation of the NewLabour Party, intended to represent the “real” spirit of the original Labour Party. Its primary goals were state intervention in the economy, retention of public assets, and full employment.
~Peters disagreed with the party leadership on a number of matters, and frequently spoke out against his party regarding them. In October 1991, Bolger sacked Peters from Cabinet. Peters remained as a National backbencher, continuing to criticise the party. In early 1993, he chose to resign from the party and from Parliament. This prompted a by-election in Tauranga some months before the scheduled general election. He stood as an independent and won easily. Shortly before the 1993 election, Peters established New Zealand First and retained his Tauranga seat. Another New Zealand First candidate, Tau Henare, unseated the Labour incumbent in Northern Maori, helping to convince people that New Zealand First was not simply Peters’ personal vehicle.
In the 1996 elections, the MMP electoral system the party won 17 seats and swept all of the Māori electorates. More importantly, it held the balance of power in Parliament.
This National Party government expands again its socialist credentials and communist leanings ………
Like farmers unable to attract free market financial support for their irrigation….
Like Chch CBD landowners scared of lowering property values….
Like Rio Tinto being unable to operator without welfare….
So too are Queenstown employers scared of the free market….. crying like babies to the gummint….. “wah wah wah we cant get anybody to do the cleaning on the minimum wage wah wah wah”…….
….. so instead of following the base rules of the free market and meeting the supply and demand dynamics by offering more money… they ask the gummint to allow in cheaper foreign labour….
Bludgers
Losers
Hypocrites
Slave-owners
They have no backbone. They cannot stand in the storm of the free market. They are weak. They are liars. They do not live by their words. They are poor specimens.
Yes, while he wrought misery on countless thousands here, he is earning – well being paid or troughing would be a better term! – shitloads of money advising governments in places like Mongolia how to inflict the failed experiment on their populaces.
What an utterly, utterly despicable creature. Someone without a single, redeeming feature.
Prebbo and Douglas completely f8cked up the Labour Party, along with 50% of Kiwis who fell by the wayside of their mad ideology. LP and NZ still hasn’t fully recovered 30 years later
I listened to some of this on the radio , no mention of training schemes for locals or paying them a wage that they can live on down there. Just wanting to expand the cheap labour supply.
Wondered if Queenstown will soon be filled with businesses owned off shore, staffed with people on work permits and patronised by tourists. Can’t see a lot of benefits there locally
You obviously don’t know Queenstown very well RedBaron.
The fact is that due to the very specific development path it has taken over the last 50 years or so, there simply are no Queenstown ‘locals’ to train for the vast majority of jobs available there.
Any Kiwi from outside Central Otago that turns up looking for a job is guaranteed one.
And yes there are quite a few off shore owned businesses, but there are far more kiwi owned ones, and they are doing a great job of liberating very significant funds from off shore visitors to the great benefit of not just Qtown, but the whole of the NZ economy.
You’d be laughed out of town if you came down and suggested the situation was otherwise!
I’ll ignore your comments about how well I know Q’town as they are wide of the mark.
When I say locals I am looking at a slightly wider definition than you appear to be.
To be more specific where are the training and employment courses followed by job offers in say Dunedin & Christchurch – where there is unemployment?
Where is the affordable employee housing that they can go to even if it is only a stepping stone to moving on to something of their own?
Do people even have the money to get to Q’town?
Interesting that immigration has a work permits office up at the junction but the government can’t be bothered funding the rounding up employers to sort out a training scheme.
And yes there are local businesses but most of the hotels and the like are foreign owned and would account for a significant portion of the wage earning force.
If you know Qtown well RedBaron, you know that QTown employers spread their net far and wide throughout the Southern regions and have very close contacts with all available points of contact for job seekers.
You would know that most Qtown employers are only too happy to provide training to suitable applicants, and that it is extremely common to assist suitable employees to get to and live in Qtown. You would even know that there are strategies in place and being developed to tackle the affordability of housing.
If you are unemployed in the South Island, or anywhere, you only need to type ‘Queenstown employment’ into google and you will find any number of jobs available for all kinds of occupations, including for unskilled workers.
If you do need training to get the kind of job you want, as above, it is highly likely a Qtown employer wil train you, but there are also any number of options available for that in any significant South Island City. (Why do you think there is not RB?).
Despite all that, if you know any Qtown business owner, they will tell you that for a long time now it has been absolutely impossible to attract and retain anything remotely like the required numbers of NZ workers to Qtown…
On the other hand there is a continuous stream of bright, enthusiastic and available workers from all round the World who are only too happy to take the opportunity to stay a while in Qtown.
It’s a practical world. Letting Qtown grind to a halt because of a lack of local employees would do far more harm to NZ than the current solution.
In the meantime, if you are a Kiwi and you want a job in Qtown, I guarantee you will be met with open arms.
Fuck are you an idiot lost sheep? Don’t you get the point here?
Free market rules.
Pay more.
That is what this National government is about. And it is entirely what Queenstown is about (we have a business operating from there so know first hand). Queenstown business owners are hard core right wing national party supporters, yet they cannot abide their own cry of free market.
It is a fail lost sheep. A big fucking fail. And it is a birdshit right on the top of their heads – what a bunch of wankers, calling for cheap foreign labour instead of paying market rates within NZ.
I’m guessing that Queenstown has a higher proportion of illegal jobs than the rest of the country. By illegal I mean jobs with no employment contracts and that ignore employment law. Under those conditions it’s pretty easy to employ transitory people from overseas than Kiwis who need stability and job security. My comment comes from talking to workers not employers.
But but but exploiting migrant workers proves that the market would give them all the labour they wanted if it weren’t for pesky minium wage and workplace safety regulations.
Just to insert a few facts into sheepie’s assertations.
I went onto Trade me and looked at the current QT jobs. Over a third of the ads where labeled part time or temp and many of these were for only a few hours a week or some dodgy commission base. So no adequate permanent income.
Of the supposedly full time jobs around about a third of these where similar to the above- lucky to receive 40 hrs at the minimum wage.
So over 50% of the jobs didn’t pay for 40 hours at minimum rates.
Of the remaing ads the bulk paid close to the minumum wage.
The few that made it to over $50k a year were for skilled tradesmen and a couple of professional jobs.
Actually even living in QT at 40 hrs minimum wage would be difficult. Rents are not low.
I didn’t calculate to the last %, as usual with Trade Me there are the double ups. And of course the temp staff places were there in force taking the usual $5-$10 an hour off people’s wages before they hand them over. Frankly, there needs to be a lot more pressure put onto employers to up their game rather than just issuing work permits if the country is ever going to get the unemployment stats down.
Who was that little Natzi that changed the face of Queenstown a couple of decades back?. (Again, genuine question). I think he became a Mayor after a Natzi term or two. Was it Warren Freer? – I may be confused. He’d have to be a Shipley disciple tho’ dontcha think?
Btw … is there anywhere else nearby that’d be worth damming – either for irrigaton of hydro ‘tuneties;? I haven’t been down that way for a while, tho’ I imagine there’d be a converted barn with a Mother Earth with a cooking programme on TV I could probably crash at. Maybe not now I’ve said that.
Ex Nat MP Queenstown mayor was Warren Cooper. Warren Freer was one of the old LP socialists. He wanted to intervene in the economy to keep prices down for consumers, with his Maximum Retail Price scheme. Was rubbished for it of course by media and Muldoon’s Nat Party.
Does anyone remember the delightful little exchange between Warren Cooper (who had been a house painter before politics) and Sam Neill back about 2000 when there was a lot of debate about pristine landscapes being invaded by rampant development? Cooper told Neill to butt out and stick to acting. Neill replied that he’d be delighted to do so if Cooper would stick to house painting..
The capitalists support it when it suits them and then favour different laws for different people when it doesn’t fit in with their interests.
Then they complain about the spread of relativism!
I still recall with amusement Village Idiot Gerry Brownlee banging on and on and on about “one law for all” when doing a bit of Maori-bashing in the early 2000s. Then the issue of civil unions came up and, hey ho big surprise, Gerry wasn’t at all in favour of one law for all but thought there should be different laws for heterosexuals and homosexuals.
Because we have such a kiss-ass media, politicians often get away with this sort of hypocrisy.
They particularly say they do whenever workers want anything. Then, we are told, ‘the market’ says ‘no’ – rather like the computer in the travel agency in that skit in ‘Little Britain’.
At some point I want to write an article on how all these human powers are attributed to ‘the market’ like our primitive ancestors attributed power to fetish objects, and indeed all kinds of inanimate objects.
‘The market’ determines CEO pay. No, it doesn’t. A bunch of pals sitting round in an office determine it.
‘The market’ determines the pay of the low-waged. No, it doesn’t. The well-heeled bosses, who give each other pay rises, determine the wages of the low-paid.
‘The market’ is a thing, not a rational, thinking being. ‘The market’ is just a set of human economic interactions. And we can opt for a different set of human economic interactions.
How odd and irrational to believe that ‘the market’, a blind set of human economic interactions, delivers better results than conscious human economic planning based on meeting human need.
And, of course, all firms plan. They are all totally in favour of planning when it comes to themselves. And against planning when it comes to the level of society.
Capitalism and capitalist ideology really is irrational.
“Capitalism and capitalist ideology really is irrational”
Just like human beings. That is why, for all it’s imperfections, Capitalism works.
It is a system that allows all the various aspects of human nature to find a satisfactory expression to some degree, and as a result Capitalist societies have been capable of immense levels of successfully co-ordinated achievement.
In turn, that is why capitalist ideology is utterly dominant at this stage of human history.
Any theoretical system that fails to account for and accommodate the realities of human nature is doomed to fail. Real people will subvert it.
That is why Socialism has failed in the past and always will. It is predicated on the assumption that a majority of individuals within a society are willing to subvert their personal nature to Socialist ideology. They aren’t, and so the society doesn’t work.
You are incapable of taking on a point directly OAB.
Throw up a Red herring as a flimsy excuse for a post, back it up with some ad hominem abuse, and then cut and run…..
You are a true bigot. I mean that in the nicest possible way, and I’m sure you will take it as a compliment.
Nonsense. as DtB says, your assertion that Capitalism “works” is false, and so you have to throw in a strawman about Socialism, when you know perfectly well that people here support a Parliamentary Social Democracy, such as the ones that made many countries great, including this one.
Right Wing false beliefs screwed it up. Own it. Take some personal responsibility you pathetic loser.
and so you have to throw in a strawman about Socialism, when you know perfectly well that people here support a Parliamentary Social Democracy, such as the ones that made many countries great, including this one.
Made them great on the basis of a Capitalist economic system, with Social Democracy being one of the many threads of political influence that Capitalism happily accommodates.
But what do you mean by Social Democracy? Do you see it as a gradual movement to a purely Socialist system?
If so, my contention is that a purely Socialist system will not succeed, for the reasons I give above.
If you can provide examples of Socialist societies that disprove my contention, please do so?
Right Wing false beliefs screwed it up. Own it. Take some personal responsibility you pathetic loser.
And that demonstrates yet again that you are a bigot. And also hints at the nasty side that underlines so many ideologues. What happens when people with your political intolerance get to power? Stalin.
“Capitalism does a great job when it’s constrained by the requirement to do right by others: ie: Socialism.
As usual OAB your answer is so derivative it’s difficult to understand how it relates to the original point, but I will take that one as indicating that you agree Capitalism is the only workable economic system given the current state of human nature.
I agree completely there is a modifying influence of Socialist thought within Capitalist societies, but I would also include all the other strands of thought / morality / philosophy / culture that Capitalism can accommodate and be influenced by.
As I said above, the ability to embrace human nature in all it’s variation, complexity, and imperfection is Capitalism’s key attribute.
Rigid ideologies cannot encompass such a variation, and so inevitably they become oppressive.
“You no answer to Piketty because he’s right.”
Your entire counter argument is this and your previous statement that my assertion was ‘false’?
I will take that as a concession that you cannot offer any argument of substance, such as an example of a more successful system.
“Loser / coward”
Honestly OAB, save your childish and pointless abuse for people it might actually bother.
Lost sheep, in a thread about how free market capitalist employers are failing and so ask nanny state to hold their poor wee hands with some welfare, claims “Capitalism works”
ha ha ha – the best own goal ever
…
and back to the original point. Meet the market. Pay more money.
You seem to be under the impression that Capitalism works to a rigid set of rules VTO?
As i’ve been pointing out, adaptability is actually one of it’s great strengths.
In Qtown there are jobs available and people wanting to work in those jobs.
Rather than leave those jobs empty, or to keep in place a restraint that would cause a massive increase in the expense of visiting Qtown, a variation in rules has been made that allows those jobs to be filled, and for Qtown to stay viable and to keep pumping benefit into the economy.
That is successful adaptation, not failure.
“Rather than leave those jobs empty, or to keep in place a restraint that would cause a massive increase in the expense of visiting Qtown, a variation in rules has been made that allows those jobs to be filled, and for Qtown to stay viable and to keep pumping benefit into the economy.
That is successful adaptation, not failure.”
Queenstown can only “stay viable” if cleaners and the low-paid continue to be paid less than market rates and less than it costs to live there.
No point going to Qtown next weekend then VTO.?
Town will have ground to a halt because no one is willing or able to live there on cleaners and wait staff wages?
Because it is a practical and sensible solution to a difficult problem.
And this does not violate any law of Capitalism, because Capitalism in general does NOT have a rigid insistence that there should be no interference in the market, and in fact NO specific Capitalist economy operates that way. It would be stupid to do so obviously!
But while you are back here, why don’t you have a genuine shot at actually answering something directly?
Here’s a representative example from the thread above. It’s a clearly expressed, easily understandable and fair question directly related both to the thread topic and the post you made in which you stated “Social democracy is not a theory; it’s a fact.”
It can be answered as simply as yes or no, or it could be answered with any degree of complexity.
But my challenge to you is that you answer the point directly OAB. No red herrings, no abuse, no diversions, no ad hominem.
Just a straight forward clarification of the the question arising from your post.
Heck, if we can ease our way past this hurdle we might even be able to work our way up to conducting a genuinely rational debate!
so here goes….
“What do you mean by Social Democracy? Do you see it as a gradual movement to a purely Socialist system?”
I’ve sat through many fascinating (and quite a few more boring) discussions where highly intelligent people discussed the nuanced distinctions between social democracy and democratic socialism, and whether one is an incremental transition to the other.
I suspect they were significantly more enlightening than anything TLS will provide, but I’ll get the popcorn ready in case someone wants to play.
No, TLS, you are the ideologue, not me. Your witless slurs on Socialism, and wide-eyed sycophancy for Capitalism betray you.
You failed to back up your rash remarks and were then forced to admit that implementing pure Capitalism would be stupid.
I’ve made my position perfectly clear. As for transitions to some form of ideal, they’d better be gradual and make an improvement before they’ll get much support from me.
There are plenty of right wing policies to drag around the back of the barn and kill with an axe first.
Perhaps you could set up a lead McFlock? Where do you sit on the matter?
If someone else were to venture a wee flag in the sand OAB might not feel quite so shy about committing himself to a definite position?
(edit) I’ve been involved in many an entertaining skirmish on the topic myself, and just an observation, but I find it there is always one sticky point that comes up with Social Democracy theory.
It is that point where you either retain elements of Capitalism, or you cross over into pure Socialism.
It is a very narrow and hazardous bridge to cross in my experience.
I’m sure OAB wouldn’t have introduced the topic if he thought it was too problematic for TS McFlock. That would be like suggesting Capitalism was a topic we could not prod.
So I await OAB’s discussion.
The topic was only introduced as a counterpoint to your false narrative. You remember, where you started inventing labels for the things you don’t understand.
“were then forced to admit that implementing pure Capitalism would be stupid.”
I wasn’t forced to admit that OAB, because at no stage did I say that i supported ‘pure Capitalism’. In fact, if you bothered to actually read my posts, you would have picked up that my core argument was that it was the ability of Capitalism to encompass and adapt to a wide variety of influences that was it’s core strength. Sigh. Perhaps that is too subtle a worldview for you.
I ran the rest of your replies through a solid materials detector, and among the smoke and mirrors, the total actual substance detected was as follows….
“As for transitions to some form of ideal, they’d better be gradual and make an improvement before they’ll get much support from me.”
I think this is as close to a definitive statement as I’ve seen you yet make. Fuck all concrete and sincere in other words.
But it’s a start, and something to work on.
So what is your ‘form of ideal’? Does that encompass elements of capitalism? If not, how is your ideal structured? See if you can nudge closer to something personal and genuine this time….
And I agree completely that for anything to be considered a ‘success’ or ‘working’, an improvement over what conditions were before the measures were taken is as good a definition as any.
This surely is where it becomes very difficult to deny that Capitalism has been successful?
For all the imperfections we can identify, the evidence that Capitalism works and has been successful is substantiated by even the briefest review of world history since 1650?
Capitalist economies have been the engine driving a period of advancement that utterly dwarfs the achievements of any other period in history under any other system. Consider the range of indicators you would use to say whether a society has improved or not over a period of time…
And then give me a rational argument that capitalism has not been successful?
And tell me what system has proved more successful, or in your opinion would be more successful?
the ability of Capitalism to encompass and adapt to a wide variety of influences
What a load of shite. Capitalists, when they can’t threaten capital flight at the slightest sign of pro-human policy, have to be dragged kicking and screaming to regulation.
As soon as they get a chance, they buy a National Party and destroy anything they can get their hands on: like you destroying collective bargaining, for example.
Pretending that Social Democracy is the same as Capitalism is the only argument you’ve got, and it’s utter bollocks.
“Pretending that Social Democracy is the same as Capitalism is the only argument you’ve got, and it’s utter bollocks.”
Even for you that is taking avoidance to a seriously whacky level OAB!
You are piss your pants running scared of ever being caught holding a definite position that could be challenged. An intellectual coward in fact. But then Bully’s usually are cowards at heart.
Stooped? You’ve never attained OAB’s altitude.
Nor did you explain where, ‘in your experience’, you saw a transition from semi-capitalist social democracy into pure socialism.
I must be gutter scum indeed then McFlock, if a pathological obsession with bullying political opponents on an anonymous on line blog is your standard of excellence. sarc.
“Nor did you explain where, ‘in your experience’, you saw a transition from semi-capitalist social democracy into pure socialism.”
Well, no, because what I actually posted was that this is indeed an inevitably sticky, narrow and hazardous bridge to cross.
That is why I asked OAB, twice, (who introduced the subject), to define what exactly he meant by the notoriously variable term ‘Social Democracy’.
But as OAB has declined to clarify his beliefs with any more detail than ‘making an improvement’ I am happy to stick my neck out and stake a further concrete opinion.
At the point you cross into ‘Pure Socialism’, your system cannot be ‘Social Democracy’.
Unless you are accepting that the terms are synonymous? In which case there is a bit of apparent semantic contradiction to explain?
But if your vision of ‘Social Democracy’ is different from ‘ Pure Socialism’, then it should be a simple matter to explain what that difference is?
And whether that difference incorporates any elements of Capitalism?
In my experience the more ideologically rigid people who claim to believe in some form of ‘Social Democracy’ find it extraordinarily difficult to make concrete statements about those two points.
I believe the difficulty is in conceding that there is anything at all that is beneficial in Capitalism, while at the same time being unable to reference highly successful examples of non Capitalist systems?
But I’m happy to be proven wrong by those willing to venture a genuine rational argument?
That is why, for all it’s imperfections, Capitalism works.
Except for the fact that it doesn’t as shown by all the poverty that it creates, all the recessions that increase that poverty even more while the rich get richer and the collapsed societies throughout history.
No.
The evidence that Capitalism works is substantiated by even the briefest review of world history since 1650.
Capitalist economies have been the engine driving a period of advancement that utterly dwarfs the achievements of any other period in history under any other system. (Unless you can cite proof that is not true?)
And it rolls on. Just take a look at the reality of the current world.
Imperfect yes, but thankfully highly open to further modification.
Great look at what captalism has done for us since 1650. Right now the planet is burning up because of excessive pollution from our wonderful improvements and machinations. For every step forward there has been a sideways step, then a half step back but we never can go back to the point we were at earlier. We just don’t notice it because we are so drunk with our own cleverness.
Then we use our devices to record the destruction we have caused because it is important that some things should be measured and retained for statistics and information and that other things should be glossed over or ignored. Nothing is done in the full light of day. That’s why the GCSB is so anxious. They want to know more, but for us to know less.
And you harp on that ‘We don’t know how lucky we are boys.’
Sheep shagger Enron,Hubbard,Merrill Lynch etc etc etc.
Money printing trillions of dollars.
Because of communism western countries brought in free healthcare free education,pensions welfare unions
Were aloud free and balanced press now communism has declined .
So has all the egalitarianism declined.
The Murdocracy is reigning supreme.
But its not Capitalism its Cronyism
Corruption is its heart.
Welfare for the super rich bailouts galore.
Arms dealers
Drugs dealers
Oil dealers
Money dealers
Propaganda dealers
Allowed to undermine any opposition that gets in their way.
Cronyism sheep shagger!
Lost sheep, in a thread about how free market capitalist employers are failing and so ask nanny state to hold their poor wee hands with some welfare, claims “Capitalism works”
Living according to tikanga isn’t trying to behave as our tūpuna behaved, it is being inspired by our ancestors to be the best we can. My goal is not only equality, acceptance, or even celebration of all sexualities or genders. I want us to do more than put aside our homophobia, I want us to re-think all our relationships. Decolonisation requires eradicating heteropatriarchy in all its forms from our communities.
I have just got home from the Tauranga march, well organised and not a bad turnout for old conservative Tauranga.
Have just donated, thanks for the link, we must stop this bullshit.
Sunday Star-Times @SundayStarTimes 2 hours ago
Tomorrow in @SundayStarTimes, Nicky Hager and @rj_gallagher exclusively reveal the high-tech tools with which NZ spies on NZers in Pacific.
Matthew Hooton @MatthewHootonNZ 1 hour ago
@SundayStarTimes @rj_gallagher That is treason.
how can that even apply in a globalised, USA’d, TPPA’d world where everything is one? It cant. Treason is no longer applicable. We are all our own individuals with no responsibility or obligation to any particular state. Fuck the state.
Part 5
Crimes against public order
Treason and other crimes against the Sovereign and the State
73 Treason
Every one owing allegiance to the Sovereign in right of New Zealand commits treason who, within or outside New Zealand,—
(a) kills or wounds or does grievous bodily harm to the Sovereign, or imprisons or restrains her or him; or
(b) levies war against New Zealand; or
(c) assists an enemy at war with New Zealand, or any armed forces against which New Zealand forces are engaged in hostilities, whether or not a state of war exists between New Zealand and any other country; or
(d) incites or assists any person with force to invade New Zealand; or
(e) uses force for the purpose of overthrowing the Government of New Zealand; or
(f) conspires with any person to do anything mentioned in this section.
Nah, see, the forces of socialism are “levying war” against New Zealand and we’re at war with “freedom of public information”, and criticising the present government is preeeeeeeetty much the same thing as “using force” to “overthrow” the government.
Opening the burglar’s tool bag and showing the tools to the home owner is nothing like treason. Treason would be breaking Kiwi law in the service of a foreign power, like, you know, what FJK does.
Jute is a long, soft, shiny vegetable fiber that can be spun into coarse, strong threads. It is produced from plants in the genus Corchorus, which was once classified with the family Tiliaceae, more recently with Malvaceae, and has now been reclassified as belonging to the family Sparrmanniaceae. “Jute” is the name of the plant or fiber that is used to make burlap, Hessian or gunny cloth.
Jute is one of the most affordable natural fibers and is second only to cotton in amount produced and variety of uses of vegetable fibers. Jute fibers are composed primarily of the plant materials cellulose and lignin. It falls into the bast fiber category (fiber collected from bast or skin of the plant) along with kenaf, industrial hemp, flax (linen), ramie, etc. The industrial term for jute fiber is raw jute. The fibers are off-white to brown, and 1–4 metres (3–13 feet) long. Jute is also called “the golden fiber” for its color and high cash value.
THIS January Jim Murphy, Labour’s leader in Scotland, made John McTernan into his chief of staff.
Here is a video of McTernan, last September at the Tory conference, offering advice to the Conservatives and praise to Margaret Thatcher.
McTernan was speaking at a breakfast meeting at a Tory-leaning think tank.
The video is here: chilling stuff from a Blairite, who recently worked for Labour in Australia. http://wingsoverscotland.com. The article is called the Cuckoo in the nest.
This is the reason that Labour will be wiped out in Scotland at the May election.
Labor in Oz eh, no surprises there as Shorten has stood aside and let Abbott slam through the same shit NACT has here and raise their risk profile.
All he had to do was give the senate enough doubt to turf the measures out as neither major party has the numbers with independents and cliveo self destructo party senators all over the place.
McTernan worked on the 2007 Australian general election that brought the former Australian Labour Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to power.
In February 2011 he was appointed ‘Thinker in Residence’ for the Government of South Australia, working on health and education reform. He gave up this role when he became Julia Gillard’s communications chief. [5] He resigned from this position after Gillard was ousted as PM and replaced by Kevin Rudd. http://powerbase.info/index.php/John_McTernan#Australian_.27Thinker_in_Residence.27
Labor in oz is a pale imitation of the golden era of hawke and keating who laid down the reforms to tax, introduced compulsory super etc that created savings with a solid tax base to fund health, education and infrastructure.
The puppets in charge now wouldn’t know reform if it bit them in the arse, all captives of the system doffing the cap to Murdoch since keating lost with the hobbled mining tax being an epic fail to claw back some of the resource pillage that’s been going on for decades.
I worry that some of our NZ leadership think it is terribly clever to listen to the like of McTernan. I do not believe Andree Little would. There are some MPs who would.
And the way to deal with the importation of cheap labour is to organise them and ensure they know their rights. In any case, the ‘cheap labour’ often comes from countries where workers have a rather greater history of militancy than in NZ.
Almost 70 Filipino workers have laid, or are laying, complaints claiming they were charged exorbitant fees to come and work in New Zealand.
All workers have similar complaints – primarily that they were charged fees of up to $15,000 for a job in New Zealand through Business Immigration and its overseas agents. Many took out loans in the Philippines to cover the fees, and were paying between 40 per cent and 50 per cent annual interest.
That is really bad.
<blockquote> Business Immigration owner Lyn Sparks would not comment on the workers' complaints but said all the agency's processes and fees were legitimate. "We get licensed every year don't we," he said.
Saturday afternoon entertainment. Guess the strategy behind Hooton’s latest crazy tweets. SST will publish a report tomorrow from Hager and an Intercept journo on the tech used to spy on NZers/the Pacific. According to Hooton, “this is actual treason”. He then goes on to say that Snowden should be executed.
Tomorrow in @SundayStarTimes, Nicky Hager and @rj_gallagher exclusively reveal the high-tech tools with which NZ spies on NZers in Pacific.
— Sunday Star-Times (@SundayStarTimes) March 6, 2015
If he reads the Crimes Act, where treason is set out, he would find
“Part 5
Crimes against public order
Treason and other crimes against the Sovereign and the State
73 Treason
Every one owing allegiance to the Sovereign in right of New Zealand commits treason who, within or outside New Zealand,—
(a) kills or wounds or does grievous bodily harm to the Sovereign, or imprisons or restrains her or him; or
(b) levies war against New Zealand; or
(c) assists an enemy at war with New Zealand, or any armed forces against which New Zealand forces are engaged in hostilities, whether or not a state of war exists between New Zealand and any other country; or
(d) incites or assists any person with force to invade New Zealand; or
(e) uses force for the purpose of overthrowing the Government of New Zealand; or
(f) conspires with any person to do anything mentioned in this section.”
Holding the government to account for its lies = treason )to the Right – except when they are in Opposition).
After suffering ‘intense mental agony’, Hamiora Pere was hanged at the Terrace Gaol, Wellington, and buried in an unmarked grave. He is the only New Zealander to have been executed after being convicted of treason.
Hamiora Pere had been tried for treason in the Supreme Court in Wellington on 28 September. He was one of the first men charged under the Disturbed Districts Act, a temporary measure containing special provisions (such as smaller juries) for trying Māori who were deemed to be ‘in open rebellion’ and had committed ‘outrages and atrocities’. These trials were a legal landmark: the colonial government was asserting its ‘absolute sovereignty’ over all Māori.
The attorney-general told the court that Pere had joined Te Kooti’s force at Puketapu, on the eastern fringe of the Urewera Range, in August 1868. He had taken part in the bloody raids on Matawhero and Oweta in November, and in the subsequent battles at Mākaretū and Ngātapa. There was no direct evidence that he had killed anybody and a murder charge against him was withdrawn. The jury took less than 15 minutes to find him guilty of treason, for which the death penalty was mandatory but could be commuted.
Hamiora Pere was one of five Māori men captured after the siege of Ngātapa (many more had been summarily executed) to be convicted of murder and/or treason. The government seems to have decided to execute one of them, ‘by way of example and caution’ to any Māori who were still tempted to take up arms. There was compelling evidence against Wi Tamararo, who was convicted of murder on 27 September but avoided execution by hanging himself two days later. There were extenuating circumstances for the other three, who had been convicted of treason. That left Pere.
The fate of Hamiora Pere cast a long shadow. It was fictionalised in two novels published in 1986. Part of the back-story in Witi Ihimaera’s The matriarch, the trial and execution is the climax of Maurice Shadbolt’s Season of the Jew, in which a youthful Pere appears repeatedly as an informant of the central character, a colonial officer. In its 2004 report on the Turanganui a Kiwa claims, the Waitangi Tribunal recommended that the attorney-general ‘reassess the record … with a view to considering whether the decision to hang Pere was safe’.
“2. From and after the passing of this Act the [Imperial Act 54 George III c146] shall be deemed not to extend to or be applicable in the administration of justice within the Colony of New Zealand.”
The Imperial Act referred to required the sentence in all cases of high treason to be “that such person should be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution and be there hanged by the neck until such person should be dead and that afterwards the head should be severed from the body of such person and the body divided into four quarters” to be disposed of as the monarch sees fit.
The 1814 English statute was definitely the law in New Zealand by virtue of our English Laws Act 1858. The sentence has actually been imposed in this country, provoking the 1870 legislation. On 23 September 1869, after a jury had found Te Kooti associates Hetariki Te Oikau, Rewi Tamanui Totitoti and Matene Te Karo guilty of high treason, Justice Johnston unwillingly sentenced each to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
“The law which I am bound to administer leaves me no alternative, and it is my duty to pass upon you the highest sentence which that law allows. The sentence that I am about to pass on you is not my word, but the word of the law. I must now proceed to pass upon you, and each of you, that awful sentence which the law has prescribed for the offence of which you have been found guilty,” the Wellington Independent reported the Judge as saying. After passing sentence he then added: “I again say that I am sure nothing will be done but the hanging.”
None of the three was executed and their sentences were commuted to imprisonment. One person has been executed for treason in New Zealand. Although it was accepted that he had killed no-one, Hamiora Pera was also charged with high treason for actions in Te Kooti’s war and tried after the other three. He was found guilty and Justice Johnston reluctantly passed sentence, again assuring him that “nothing but death” would be carried into effect. While there has been extensive debate about his guilt, he was hanged in Wellington on 16 November 1869.
On 30 June 1870 New Zealand’s Parliament changed the punishment for high treason from hanging, drawing and quartering to hanging. This remained the law until the Abolition of the Death Penalty Act 1989 came into force on 26 December 1989.”
It would reduce unemployment, and most importantly allow for better recovery from recessions, adding more economic stability. Recoveries from recessions would be faster and more robust.
I think it’d help us get closer to full employment.
Also we need to mandate that the Reserve Bank should pursue maximum employment and most favourable terms of trade.
Monetary policy cannot deliver increased employment. Only fiscal policy can do that. Also, despite central banks printing immense amounts of money into the financial economy, the world is collapsing into debt deflation. Many central banks around the world have interest rates set at 0% or even negatively, reflecting this reality.
I agree, and argued something similar on FB at the last election.
Bob Jones makes the point that we shouldn’t bother at all – free market prices should fluctuate, and legislating to prevent that using the Reserve Bank is basically equivalent to price controls.
Central bank interest rate policy is a macroeconomic policy question. Bob Jones thinks that in the absence of central bank targeting interest rates would result in market fluctuations round a ‘natural rate of interest’, but the result is likely to be that the rate of interest falls to zero instead.
Petrobras – wasn’t that the company that Bridges and Key were recently snuggling upto to drill for oil in our waters – Bridges? The one that got angry on Campbell Live defending his decisions.
Petrobras is a technically advanced and shockingly corrupt company. Rich Brazilians and most politicians see the state as a mechanism by which to enrich themselves. Petrobras helps with this process and has paid heaps of bribes to construction companies and politicians. Possibly a little bit like Fletchers in Christchurch, but on a much bigger scale.
Although all parties are involved (except maybe the far left), the politicised Brazilian Federal Police and Congressional investigators are focussing on the President’s party, the PT. In reality, Petrobras has been illicitly enriching politicians since it was founded. However, many of the legal officials are linked to the opposition PSDB (social democratic party) which is like a more corrupt National. Therefore they are trying to limit investigations to the years that the PT (Workers’ Party) has held the presidency. I hope they are not successful.
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This article, guest authored by Prof. Angela Gallego-Sala & Dr. Julie Loisel, was originally published on the Carbon Brief website on Dec 21, 2020. It is reposted below in its entirety. Click here to access the original article and comments. Peatlands Peatlands are ecosystems unlike any other. Perpetually saturated, their ...
The assault on the US Capitol and constitutional crisis that it has caused was telegraphed, predictable and yet unexpected and confusing. There are several subplots involved: whether the occupation of the Michigan State House in May was a trial run for the attacks on Congress; whether people involved in the ...
On Christmas Eve, child number 1 spotted a crack in a window. It’s a double-glazed window, and inspection showed that the small, horizontal crack was in the outermost pane. It was perpendicular to the frame, about three-quarters of the way up one side. The origins are a mystery. It MIGHT ...
Anne-Marie Broudehoux, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)Will the COVID-19 pandemic prompt a shift to healthier cities that focus on wellness rather than functional and economic concerns? This is a hypothesis that seems to be supported by several researchers around the world. In many ways, containment and physical distancing ...
Does the US need to strike a grand bargain with like-minded countries to pool their efforts? What does this tell us about today’s global politics? Perhaps the most remarkable editorial of last year was the cover leader of the London Economist on 19 November 2020. Shortly after Joe Biden was ...
Alexander Gillespie, University of Waikato and Valmaine Toki, University of WaikatoAotearoa New Zealand likes to think it punches above its weight internationally, but there is one area where we are conspicuously falling behind — the number of sites recognised by the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. Globally, there are 1,121 ...
An event organised by the Auckland PhilippinesSolidarity group Have a three-course lunch at Nanam Eatery with us! Help support the organic farming of our Lumad communities through the Mindanao Community School Agricultural Foundation. Each ticket is $50. Food will be served on shared plates. To purchase, please email phsolidarity@gmail.com or ...
"Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here." Prisons are places of unceasing emotional and physical violence, unrelieved despair and unforgivable human waste.IT WAS NATIONAL’S Bill English who accurately described New Zealand’s prisons as “fiscal and moral failures”. On the same subject, Labour’s Dr Martyn Findlay memorably suggested that no prison ...
This is a re-post from Inside Climate News by Ilana Cohen. Inside Climate News is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here. Whether or not people accept the science on Covid-19 and climate change, both global crises will have lasting impacts on health and ...
. . American Burlesque As I write this (Wednesday evening, 6 January), the US Presidential election is all but resolved, confirming Joe Biden as the next President of the (Dis-)United State of America. Trump’s turbulent political career has lasted just four years – one of the few single-term US presidents ...
The session started off so well. Annalax – suitably chastised – spent a pleasant morning with his new girlfriend (he would say paramour, of course, but for our purposes, girlfriend is easier*). He told her about Waking World Drow, and their worship of Her Ladyship. And he started ...
In a recent column I wrote for local newspapers, I ventured to suggest that Donald Trump – in addition to being a liar and a cheat, and sexist and racist – was a fascist in the making and would probably try, if he were to lose the election, to defy ...
When I was preparing for my School C English exam I knew I needed some quotes to splash through my essays. But remembering lines was never my strong point, so I tended to look for the low-hanging fruit. We’d studied Shakespeare’s King Lear that year and perhaps the lowest hanging ...
When I went to bed last night, I was expecting today to be eventful. A lot of pouting in Congress as last-ditch Trumpers staged bad-faith "objections" to a democratic election, maybe some rioting on the streets of Washington DC from angry Trump supporters. But I wasn't expecting anything like an ...
Melted ice of the past answers question today? Kate Ashley and a large crew of coauthors wind back the clock to look at Antarctic sea ice behavior in times gone by, in Mid-Holocene Antarctic sea-ice increase driven by marine ice sheet retreat. For armchair scientists following the Antarctic sea ice situation, something jumps out in ...
Christina SzalinskiWhen Martha Field became pregnant in 2005, a singular fear weighed on her mind. Not long before, as a Cornell University graduate student researching how genes and nutrients interact to cause disease, she had seen images of unborn mouse pups smaller than her pinkie nail, some with ...
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidates for President and Vice President respectively for the US 2020 Election, may have dispensed with the erstwhile nemesis, Trump the candidate – but there are numerous critical openings through which much, much worse many out there may yet see fit to ...
I don’t know Taupō well. Even though I stop off there from time to time, I’m always on the way to somewhere else. Usually Taupō means making a hot water puddle in the gritty sand followed by a swim in the lake, noticing with bemusement and resignation the traffic, the ...
Frances Williams, King’s College LondonFor most people, infection with SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – leads to mild, short-term symptoms, acute respiratory illness, or possibly no symptoms at all. But some people have long-lasting symptoms after their infection – this has been dubbed “long COVID”. Scientists are ...
Last night, a British court ruled that Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the US. Unfortunately, its not because all he is "guilty" of is journalism, or because the offence the US wants to charge him with - espionage - is of an inherently political nature; instead the judge accepted ...
Is the Gender Identity Movement a movement for human liberation, or is it a regressive movement which undermines women’s liberation and promotes sexist stereotypes? Should biological males be allowed to play in women’s sport, use women-only spaces (public toilets, changing rooms, other facilities), be able to have access to everything ...
As we welcome in the new year, our focus is on continuing to keep New Zealanders safe and moving forward with our economic recovery. There’s a lot to get on with, but before we say a final goodbye to 2020, here’s a quick look back at some of the milestones ...
A major investment to tackle wilding pines in Mt Richmond will create jobs and help protect the area’s unique ecosystems, Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor says. The Mt Richmond Forest Park has unique ecosystems developed on mineral-rich geology, including taonga plant species found nowhere else in the country. “These special plant ...
To further protect New Zealand from COVID-19, the Government is extending pre-departure testing to all passengers to New Zealand except from Australia, Antarctica and most Pacific Islands, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “The change will come into force for all flights arriving in New Zealand after 11:59pm (NZT) on Monday ...
Bay Conservation Cadets launched with first intake Supported with $3.5 million grant Part of $1.245b Jobs for Nature programme to accelerate recover from Covid Cadets will learn skills to protect and enhance environment Environment Minister David Parker today welcomed the first intake of cadets at the launch of the Bay ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
The commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Ruapekapeka represents an opportunity for all New Zealanders to reflect on the role these conflicts have had in creating our modern nation, says Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Kiri Allan. “The Battle at Te Ruapekapeka Pā, which took ...
Babies born with tongue-tie will be assessed and treated consistently under new guidelines released by the Ministry of Health, Associate Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall announced today. Around 5% to 10% of babies are born with a tongue-tie, or ankyloglossia, in New Zealand each year. At least half can ...
The prisoner disorder event at Waikeria Prison is over, with all remaining prisoners now safely and securely detained, Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis says. The majority of those involved in the event are members of the Mongols and Comancheros. Five of the men are deportees from Australia, with three subject to ...
Travellers from the United Kingdom or the United States bound for New Zealand will be required to get a negative test result for COVID-19 before departing, and work is underway to extend the requirement to other long haul flights to New Zealand, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins confirmed today. “The new PCR test requirement, foreshadowed last ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has added her warm congratulations to the New Zealanders recognised for their contributions to their communities and the country in the New Year 2021 Honours List. “The past year has been one that few of us could have imagined. In spite of all the things that ...
Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment David Parker has congratulated two retired judges who have had their contributions to the country and their communities recognised in the New Year 2021 Honours list. The Hon Tony Randerson QC has been appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio says the New Year’s Honours List 2021 highlights again the outstanding contribution made by Pacific people across Aotearoa. “We are acknowledging the work of 13 Pacific leaders in the New Year’s Honours, representing a number of sectors including health, education, community, sports, the ...
The Government’s investment in digital literacy training for seniors has led to more than 250 people participating so far, helping them stay connected. “COVID-19 has meant older New Zealanders are showing more interest in learning how to use technology like Zoom and Skype so they can to keep in touch ...
By RNZ News An independent panel says Chinese officials could have applied public health measures more forcefully in January to curb the initial covid-19 outbreak, and criticised the World Health Organisation (WHO) for not declaring an international emergency until 30 January. The experts reviewing the global handling of the pandemic, ...
Pacific Media Watch newsdesk Fiji’s NGO Coalition on Human Rights has called for stronger accountability and commitment to human rights at home in response to the country taking the world stage as the head of a UN body. The UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR) elected Fiji’s ambassador Nazhat Shameem as ...
Danyl McLauchlan reviews Stuart Ritchie’s Science Fictions, which outlines the staggering systemic flaws in the funding and publication of scientific papers. Back in August of 2006 a number of New Zealand scientists were caught up in a media controversy about whether Māori had a genetic predisposition towards violent crime. It kicked ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert G. Patman, Professor of International Relations, University of Otago America is currently experiencing its worst political and constitutional crisis since the civil war when the very survival of Abraham Lincoln’s government “of, by and for the people” was at stake. On ...
Manaaki Rangatahi report that young people experiencing homelessness are being further traumatized within the emergency accommodation where they have sought safety. Often these environments are unsafe, and unsuitable for young people to live in, and rangatahi ...
Can you figure out which of the above is the real Jacinda Ardern? Probably! But one day, that might not be true.There are many reasons to believe the internet shouldn’t exist. Social media empires exerting, intentionally or not, their control over sovereign governments. Baby Shark. Your aunt on Facebook.It pains ...
The Point of Order Ministers on a Mission Monitor has flickered only fleetingly for much of the month. More than once, the minister to trigger it has been David Parker, who set it off again yesterday with an announcement that shows how he has been spending our money. He welcomed ...
Ban Bomb Day event at the New Brighton Pier, 9am, on January 22nd, 2021 January 22nd, 2021, marks the first day the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) Enters into Force and becomes international law. Aotearoa NZ is one of the ...
Why are New Zealand’s 2 Minute Noodles called 3 Minute Noodles in the UK? It’s a puzzle that has taken hold of Dylan Reeve and refuses to let go.I’m a child of the 80s and 90s. I watched a lot of TV and was a big fan of aggressively marketed ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonatan A Lassa, Senior Lecturer, Humanitarian Emergency and Disaster Management, College of Indigenous Futures, Arts and Society, Charles Darwin University News of storms battering parts of Queensland and the threat posed by Cyclone Kimi reminded me of a recent experience I’d had. ...
The Independent Police Conduct Authority has found that the use of force to effect the arrest of a wanted offender in Auckland was justified and proportionate to the risk he posed. A man, who was well known to Police, was wanted by Police for an aggravated ...
A distinctly colonial institution, banking has long ignored te ao Māori. Teaho Pihama believes investment in tikanga Māori at Kiwibank can have significant, positive outcomes for Māori.In early 90s Tāmaki Makaurau, when Teahooterangi (Teaho) Pihama was growing up riding his bike around the streets of Kingsland until the streetlights came ...
Donald Trump’s awful presidency expires at midday on Wednesday [US time] when Air Force One will have deposited him in Florida. He retreats to his Mar-a-Lago resort and Joseph R Biden Junior takes command of the White House. Trump’s has been an unpleasant presidency, brought about largely by his own ...
The New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations (NZUSA) has elected its National President for 2021. The election took place last Friday at an NZUSA Special General Meeting (SGM) in Wellington. Andrew Lessells, 22, was elected to serve as the National ...
Think twice before you accept that surprise school reunion invite, writes Chris Schulz.It started with a Facebook notification. A school reunion was being organised. It sounded fun, with a fancy dress party set to be held in the city where I grew up, Whanganui. I hadn’t seen some of my ...
Unlike the US, there is very little NZ precedent for politicians to issue discretionary pardons – creating a challenge for those like Prof Sean Davison who might have a humanitarian claim to mercy. ...
Schools have told the Education Review Office that some children lost 10 weeks of learning in last year's lockdowns, but the overall impact of the pandemic is still unclear. In a report based on surveys of thousand of students, teachers and principals during and after last year's national and Auckland ...
The government seems to still be in holiday mode when in the past two weeks alone we have had six homicides, countless firearms incidents, and police needing to arm themselves against gangs almost every second day," says Sensible Sentencing ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Crawford, Associate Professor in Construction and Environmental Assessment, University of Melbourne Over the past few years, Australians have embraced online food delivery services such as UberEats, Deliveroo and Menulog. But home-delivered food comes with a climate cost, and single-use packaging is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland When the coronavirus pandemic hit Australia in March 2020, the Morrison government took bold and imaginative action. The most notable examples were its income support programs – JobKeeper, paying a A$750 weekly ...
Ocean Ute, which arrived at Port Taranaki yesterday, is the second live export ship to arrive in New Zealand this year. Taranaki Animal Rights Group has two demonstrations planned for today. A protest at midday and a vigil at 6.30pm tonight . The number ...
The Department of Corrections is well within its rights to refuse Jared Savage’s “Gangland” book from being read by inmates and it is outrageous that resources and time are now potentially going to be wasted in court about it, says Sensible ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Cowling, Associate Professor – Information & Communication Technology (ICT), CQUniversity Australia We’ve probably all been there. We buy some new smart gadget and when we plug it in for the first time it requires an update to work. So we end ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Vice-chancellor’s fellow, La Trobe University The new trade minister, Dan Tehan, has been handed one of the Morrison government’s most demanding roles. Despite a lot of chest-thumping in government circles about the need to stand up to “Chinese bullying”, Tehan’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Weinstein, Professorial Research Fellow, University of Adelaide There’s no question the rising rate of unemployment is one of the worst consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of Australians seeking work is heading towards 10%, almost double the pre-pandemic Australian average ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Munro, Professor, Faculty of Education and Arts, Australian Catholic University Research during the first phase of remote teaching in Victoria reported some students found the workload “too high”, missed interactions with peers, felt their thinking ability was impaired, and reported a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Keating, Visiting Fellow, College of Business & Economics, Australian National University It is tempting to think the Australian government’s decision to spend big – bigger than ever before, an unprecedented 33% of GDP this financial year according to the budget update ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Maguire-Rosier, Honorary Associate, Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, School of Literature, Art, and Media, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney Review: Humans 2.0, directed by Yaron Lifschitz, Circa at Sydney Festival The black circular stage is lit ...
Summer reissue: Greens MP Chlöe Swarbrick joins Annabelle Lee-Mather, Ben Thomas and Toby Manhire to pick over the remains of election night in a special Sunday edition of Gone By Lunchtime.First published October 18, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is funded ...
Summer reissue: Our feminist webseries On the Rag returns to dissect representation in the media and who is still being left behind when you turn on the telly. First published July 22, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is funded by its members ...
Matteo Di Maio investigates what MPs have been filling their heads with over the summer holidays What have our lords and masters been reading on the beach during the summer holidays? What books have filled their heads, given them ideas, expanded their horizons? Eight prominent politicians have revealed their choice ...
From white-collar crims to famous rappers, President Trump is to issue about 100 pardons on his final full day in office, buying protection from incriminating revelations. ...
Applaud the social media silencing of Donald Trump if you must, but be careful what you wish for, writes Matt Bartlett of the University of Auckland. The sighs of relief from all around the world were almost palpable when Donald Trump’s Twitter account was permanently banned this month. Twitter, Facebook, ...
Are the continent’s coronavirus statistics as good as they appear? Felix Geiringer looks at the numbers, and why whether they reflect the reality matters. Living in Africa during Covid times, one of the questions I am asked most often is this: how has Africa done so well?At the start of September, ...
With new strains of Covid-19 bearing down on our shores, Pattrick Smellie of BusinessDesk looks at the challenges 2021 has in store, and what can be done to prepare.In the three weeks that New Zealanders have been at the beach and ignoring Covid tracer app sign-ins, the threat of Covid-19 ...
Pacific Media Watch newsdesk Human Rights Watch (HRW) has criticised the Indonesian government of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo for its weak health response to covid-19 which has brought Indonesia to its knees since March 2020, reports CNN Indonesia. The assessment is based on Indonesia’s poor rates of testing and tracing ...
By The National in Port Moresby An expatriate who tested positive for the covid-19 coronavirus last week has been admitted to a private hospital in the Papua New Guinea capital of Port Moresby, an official has confirmed. Pacific International Hospital (PIH) chief executive officer Colonel Sandeep Shaligram toldThe National the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathan Bartlett, Associate Professor, School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, University of Newcastle Reports of about 30 deaths among elderly nursing home residents who received the Pfizer vaccine have made international headlines. With Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) expected to approve the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Culum Brown, Professor, Macquarie University How do gills work? Tully, aged 7 Great question, Tully! Animals on land breathe air, which is made up of different gasses. Oxygen is one of these gases, and is made by plants (hug ...
Dairy prices increased by 3.9% across the board at the latest Fonterra global auction. The lift followed rises of 1.3% and 4.3% in the December auctions which took dairy prices to their highest level in 11 months, defying those analysts who believed Covid-19 had disrupted dairy markets. In the latest ...
America's Cup team American Magic has spoken publicly after their boat Patriot capsized when on its way to their first win of the Challenger Selection Series yesterday. Patriot dramatically capsized yesterday, becoming temporarily airborne before crashing back into the water and tipping. The boat, helmed by New Zealander Dean Barker, could not be ...
It’s a seemingly age old question: why do Auckland’s beaches become unswimmable after every single downpour? Stewart Sowman-Lund investigates.Ah, the beach. A staple of the New Zealand summer. Unless, of course, you’re based in Auckland and it’s raining. The start of 2021 has been a lot like every other New ...
We have opened a book, among members of the Point of Order team, on how long it will be before the PM offers to sort out the land dispute at Wellington’s Shelly Bay and (to win the double) how much the settlement will cost taxpayers. Just a few weeks ago ...
Breakfast TV news is back for 2021, and Tara Ward got up early to watch. “Thank god it’s almost Christmas,” John Campbell said during the opening minutes of Breakfast’s premiere episode of the year. “2021’s been rough so far. I’m buggered”. We’re all buggered, to be fair, but I’m worried that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Pearson, Professor of Journalism and Social Media, Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, Griffith University The blame for the recent assault on the US Capitol and President Donald Trump’s broader dismantling of democratic institutions and norms can be ...
Despite a popular and unifying leader of the governing party, divisions both in policy and culture will test the progressive movement, writes Peter McKenzie.‘I think we’re confused.” Marlon Drake is an organiser for the Living Wage Movement. His job takes him all over Wellington, trying to convince businesses to increase ...
Covid-19 Recovery Minister Chris Hipkins says vaccinations should be available to the public by the middle of the year, but other countries are prioritised. ...
It’s as true now as it ever has been: nowhere else offers an education experience like that of Dunedin. But rather than resting on their laurels, the University of Otago and Otago Polytechnic have plans to make the city an even more inspiring place for students.From high in the summit ...
Haggis, neeps and tatties and whisky may not be a traditional spread for a summer gathering in NZ, but trust Auckland city councillor and Kiwi-Scot Cathy Casey on this one. Gie it laldy! Rule one: Hold it on (or near) January 25Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1759. Since the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tuffley, Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & CyberSecurity, Griffith University It could be argued artificial intelligence (AI) is already the indispensable tool of the 21st century. From helping doctors diagnose and treat patients to rapidly advancing new drug discoveries, it’s our ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Kenny, Professor, Australian Studies Institute, Australian National University Through recent natural disasters, global upheavals and a pandemic, Australia’s political centre has largely held. Australians may have disagreed at times, but they have also kept faith with governmental norms, eschewing the false ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Seale, Associate professor, UNSW Health workers are at higher risk of COVID infection and illness. They can also act as extremely efficient transmitters of viruses to others in medical and aged care facilities. That’s why health workers have been prioritised to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jim Orchard, Adjunct Lecturer, Monash University Last week, somewhat overshadowed by the events in Washington, the Democrats took control of the US Senate. The Democrats now hold a small majority in both the House and the Senate until 2022, giving President-elect Joe ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mittul Vahanvati, Lecturer, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University Heatwaves, floods, bushfires: disaster season is upon us again. We can’t prevent hazards or climate change-related extreme weather events but we can prepare for them — not just as individuals ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mandie Shean, Lecturer, School of Education, Edith Cowan University Starting school is an important event for children and a positive experience can set the tone for the rest of their school experience. Some children are excited to attend school for the first ...
Some families in emergency housing are reporting their children are becoming emotionally distressed because of their living conditions. Demand for emergency accommodation has escalated this past year with the number of emergency housing grants increasing by half. Data showed nearly 10,000 people were given an Emergency Housing Special Needs Grant between ...
Summer reissue: Michèle A’Court, Alex Casey and Leonie Hayden are back for a second season of On the Rag, and where better to start than with the mysterious, exhausting world of wellness?First published June 23, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is ...
With few Covid-19 infections and negiligible natural immunity, New Zealand faces being a victim of its own success when it is left till last to get the vaccines, argues Dr Parmjeet Parmar. ...
Steve Braunias reports on a literary cancelling. The Corrections department has refused to allow Jared Savage's best-selling book Gangland inside prison on the grounds that it "promotes violence and drug use". An inmate at Otago Corrections Facility in Dunedin was sent a copy of the book – but it was ...
New data from the CTU’s annual work life survey shows a snapshot of working people’s experiences and outlook heading out of 2020 and into the new year. Concerningly 42% of respondents cite workplace bullying as an issue in their workplace - a number ...
The dramatic capsize of American Magic brought out the best in the America's Cup sailing fraternity. But, Suzanne McFadden asks, what does it mean to the crippled New York Yacht Club campaign and to the Prada Cup? It was a scene as unreal as it was calamitous. Right at the moment the ...
An international player, selector and self-confessed cricket stats nerd, Penny Kinsella has now played a hand in recording the rich history of the women's game in New Zealand. Penny Kinsella’s cricketing career was perched on the cusp of change for the White Ferns. “My first tour to Australia, we ...
The current number of members of parliament is starting to get too low for the job we expect them to do, argues Alex Braae. As a general rule, with the possible exception of their families, nobody likes backbench MPs. But it’s nevertheless time we accepted that parliament should have more of ...
The experience in the Brazilian city of Manaus reveals how mistaken, and dangerous, the herd-immunity-by-infection theory really is. As families around the world mourn more than two million people dead from Covid-19, the Plan B academics and their PR industry collaborator continue to argue that the New Zealand government should stop ...
As New Zealand gears up to fight climate change, experts warn that we need to actually reduce emissions, not just plant trees to offset our greenhouse gases. ...
A nationwide poll has found majority support for the government to continue to closely monitor abortions in New Zealand and the reasons for it, despite the Ministry of Health recently suggesting that there is not a use for collecting much of this information. ...
The out-of-control growth in gangs, gun crime, and violent gang activity is exposing our communities to dangerous levels of violence that will inevitably end in tragedy, says Sensible Sentencing Trust. “The recent incidents of people being shot and ...
Successive governments have paid lip service to our productivity challenge but have failed to deliver. It's time to establish a Productivity Council charged with prioritising efforts. ...
Doubt over climate science is a product with an industry behind it
Get that denialists? All the climate change denial in the media and other formats is a concerted litany of lies from industry seeking to protect its profits at the expense of everyone and life itself.
“ Too often, science is manipulated to fulfill a political agenda.
Government agencies, too often, betray the public trust by violating principles of good science in a desire to achieve a political goal.
Public policy decisions that are based on bad science impose enormous economic costs on all aspects of society.”
Q. Why do you use derogatory terms when attempting to convince yourself ?
Q. Do profit driven corporations manipulate governments and government policy ?
A. DNFTT
Thank you for clearly illustrating the point that myself and others here have been making
I would suggest the same I have to OAB and that is to stay away from subject matter which you lack the emotional intelligence to discuss appropriately
The failing in your logic appears to exist at the most fundamental level as I expressed to you a few days ago
The reaction you manage is DNFTT – Oh Dear
Q. On the anti abortion issue – Are you pro choice ?
in your case I might have been in favour. Too late now, though.
😆 😈
Well, moron, you failed to understand what I quoted and that means that you failed to ask anything of any relevance. As you always do this it becomes fairly obvious that you’re nothing but a troll. Now fuck off.
Leaving the insults and profanity aside
Having read the article and your comment before I responded my questions are relevant the second one especially
The link quote and your comment indicate a belief that government is the problem however it is my contention that corporations who control influence and capture governments are the problem
In reality the two work together hand in glove
Completely agree about profit industry of all types using fraudulent and corrupt practices “at the expense of everyone and life itself“
Can’t see where you got that bollocks from. It seems that you also need remedial reading comprehension.
Q. Is it the ‘interference of ‘money’ in the righteousness of ‘the science’ which causes you anxiety ?
When will you stop fucking your pig?
Q. How many years ago did you self proclaim to be this sites attack poodle ?
You do come across as being somewhat unhinged and self important
That’s as close to personal as you will read from a comment of mine
Really?
Because your laziness in refusing to do your own (incredibly easy) research and insisting we do it for you, your constant passive-aggressive questions, and your overwhelming arrogance are individually and collectively pretty fucking insulting.
Just because you don’t use rude words, it doesn’t mean you’re any less of a prick than the rest of us.
Q. Couldn’t wait to see if I addressed a similar one to you eh McFlock ?
You like banging the same drum too eh – the snare (sneer) is blatantly the percussion instrument of choice inside the ‘us club’
Q. In addition to yourself and OAB who else is in the ‘us club’ ?
Just because you don’t use rude words, it doesn’t mean you’re any less of a prick than the rest of us.
Congratulations acceptance is an important first step
And no I am not part of your ‘us club’
Funny, because the fact you couldn’t resist the wee quip about acceptance makes you an honorary member. If you were a tenth of the person you thought you were then you’d have resisted it.
That’s what really gets under my skin – there are lots of morons I ignore, both here and in real life. But the scab I pick at is the complete moron who thinks he’s superior to everyone else. You couldn’t even manage a simple google search, for fucks sake.
What any normal person with a barrow to push would have done is looked up all the vaccines on the NZ schedule and then on to other vaccines, looking for one or two cases of research fraud / undisclosed conflicts of interest. But no, you had no idea what you were talking about from the very start. Hell, you probably just plagiarised the “gold standard” talking point from some antivax site.
As it is, the only confirmed case of research fraud relating to vaccines is wakefield. I’m moderately surprised that you couldn’t find even one from the other side.
Funny, because the fact you couldn’t resist the wee quip about acceptance makes you an honorary member. If you were a tenth of the person you thought you were then you’d have resisted it
Actually it was a genuine query I would be interested to learn who is in the ‘us club’
Q. Do you believe you can understand what I think of myself through the comments I post on an anonymous blog site ?
Q. Are you regarded as the ‘funny one’ amongst your friends ?
That’s what really gets under my skin
Q. You let discussions on this site get under your skin ?
there are lots of morons I ignore, both here and in real life. But the scab I pick at is the complete moron who thinks he’s superior to everyone else.
Q. You’re labeling other people as morons while projecting accusations of superiority in my direction ?
You couldn’t even manage a simple google search, for fucks sake.
Be it deliberate or otherwise you still can’t grasp the basic grounds why I do not have provide a single shred more than I already have to support the position of ‘no compulsory’
What any normal person with a barrow to push would have done
Do you understand your words are making a case for my inferiority which runs counter to the core premise of your comment which is that I believe I am superior
You are a confused individual
In short, nothing The Muffrey says has the slightest bearing on the case against compulsory vaccination, which is:
It would reduce the vaccination rate and therefore herd immunity.
🙄
You failed to understand the comment. Notably the bit “But the scab I pick at is the complete moron who thinks he’s superior to everyone else” (my italics).
Exhibit A: calling me “confused” based on your own failure to understand basic English.
Exhibit B: forgetting the contents of a sentence that you’d cut&pasted just a few lines previously.
Whether you want to provide evidence for your nutty claims or not is no skin off my nose. Demanding that I do your work for you, on the other hand, is what I found to be fascinating. A bit like a borer grub, in many ways.
In short, nothing The Muffrey says has the slightest bearing on the case against compulsory vaccination, which is:
It would reduce the vaccination rate and therefore herd immunity.
Q. Do you believe what you wrote there ?
Q. Do you understand what I wrote there?
Compulsory vaccination would reduce the vaccination rate.
You failed to understand the comment. Notably the bit “But the scab I pick at is the complete moron who thinks he’s superior to everyone else” (my italics).
I understood it perfectly but am not surprised to see your attempt to explain it away
@ OAB – The vaccination rates are dropping regardless
The logic of the ‘us club’ is ex-cep-tion-al
If you had understood it, you wouldn’t have gotten my “core premise” wrong.
Your idiocy supports my core position that you are a moron who has an undeserved sense of superiority. You focussed too much on your sense of superiority and missed the other component of my position, which is that you are a moron.
The vaccination rates are dropping regardless.
Don’t worry, the resulting death rate will show people how fatally incompetent scumbag anti-vax liars are, and the vaccination rate will recover.
Meanwhile, on Earth, “We have a responsibility to make sure insurers maintain their solvency”.
Q. Still beating that drum eh ?
Q. Do you understand the relationship between the banks and insurance companies ?
Which drum would that be, you boring lazy plagiarist?
I’ll try to use more simplistic terminology for you:
Go and learn about the relationship between banks and the insurance companies specifically around conflict of interest between a number of primary business functions and operational strategy
See if you can identify where the conflict may encounter barriers preventing your fantasy of insurance industry driven prevention of environmental destruction
If you still don’t understand that relationship then read the section marked – The financiers of the war and military industrial complex and who are the primary beneficiaries
Please explain in greater detail why you think I believe that. I promise not to fall asleep. Honest.
The detail I have is the link you posted which is similar in content and subject and almost identical to links you have posted previously
Q. Perhaps you can explain what the purpose of the link(s) are as they relate to your personal opinions beliefs and understandings ?
While you’re at it perhaps you can describe the intent behind ‘meanwhile on earth’ just so we are clear on your mind set
Oh and don’t forget to do the reading
How did you manage to interpret my links and remarks that way?
Quite certain there was an offer for you to provide explanation of the link(s) as well as the ‘meanwhile on planet earth’ comment
Q. Was the oversight deliberate ?
Q, Why do you refer a request for information from someone as an “offer for you to provide explanation”?
Q. Is it because you view other people giving you information as you giving them a gift of your attention, rather than them giving you the actual gift of knowledge?
Q. Where did you get the idea that my reply to DtB is an invitation for you to exhibit shit comprehension skills?
can you please stop bolding everything murp – shouting doesn’t help your case, it is just fucking rude
it also makes you look like a moderator. Use italics or something else instead.
it’s a pretty funny indicator of how wound up murph’s getting though. They hardly ever do it when they think they’re winning 👿
yes I feel s/he has become more incoherent since you and OAB have vulcan nerve pinched him/her
Insults and profanity are indicators of those who are wound up
No comments to the response around a preferred abortion approach to the existence of another commentator or the questions just focus on the font type
The reactions are a regrettable indicator as if there was a requirement for more of those
TM: you’re not going to convert the faithful unfortunately, but your addressing to others and particularly various info and insights provided have indeed been useful.
@CR. Convert us into what? Homeopathic pigfuckers?
Homeopathic pig-fucking: when a pig sits in the household water tank that is then diluted 30 times before you have a wank in the bath tub
Having to scroll through all this bolded poop from the murphy makes me almost long for a return of phil ure’s ellipsis and pete’s beigeness…..almost
Nah! Scroll on just faster.
An excellent piece on the political economy of low-wage labour. Although it’s from the US, it’s highly relevant to here, with the growth of casualisation and zero-hours contracts:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/03/06/the-political-economy-of-low-wage-labour/
This from Macskasy over on TDB (not yet up on his Frankly Speaking blog) is a good summary of the Northland byelection. The TV3 poll and strategy have already been well examined on posts on TS. However this instance of implausible deniability is important and thus far unaddressed:
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/03/07/northland-by-election-a-damning-poll-and-a-damnable-lie/#sthash.rdIJLyzb.dpuf
http://www.3news.co.nz/nznews/peters-on-track-to-win-northland-seat-2015030518#axzz3TUGGbYCd
The whole lot of them knew Osbourne was Treasurer at the time and Chair at another
time. One of the Northland Executive’s gave it up publicly it was too late to select another candidate. That’s why Osbourne is covering his arse.
See Gower is still turning the taps on and now off on Peters.
I recall some commenters here saying that it was easier to let Sandra Lee take the Auckland Central seat in 1993 than dislodge Prebble from it. Perhaps it is a similar situation of a single faction having the NP Northland selection process all sewn up.
They have got it all sewn up, the popular farmer gets done over by a Carters patsy bean counter. This is a move to ‘super city’ Northland and Carter is lining up his ducks.
Osbourne adds about Sabin “I still have no idea what he has done”oh give us a break.
Poor Mr Osborne, he will trip and stumble and land very flat on his face if this keeps up … he has received a hospital pass woefully disguised as a safe seat.
It is always great for me to read or hear dr marilyn waring. she spoke with kim hill this morning. well worth the listen for all kiwis.
i have learned alot from the fact that my favourite NZer of all time was a National Party MP.
She was and remains a revolutionary. If she were a man she would have been knighted a long time ago. perhaps the damehood was offered and she turned it down.
kudos Marilyn for working so hard to speak truth to power and changing our world for the better.
I wouldn’t call her a “revolutionary”, but she’s an interesting character. She was possibly the most progressive MP in parliament during the Muldoon era. She was also the first more-or-less open gay MP.
It was quite interesting at the time watching how Labour and National handled homosexuality. When Muldoon gay-baited Labour MP (and former agriculture minister) Colin Moyle, Rowling dumped him like a hot brick and he had to resign his seat. Lange walked into parliament over Moyle’s corpse, something I thought at the time absolutely stank but which people seem to have forgotten.
By contrast, when the Truth newspaper ‘outed’ Waring, Muldoon just shrugged it off.
It was easier to be a gay MP in the National Party, even in a rural/conservative seat (she was MP for Raglan and they stuck by her when she was ‘outed’) than in the Labour Party at the time – and, of course, it was a National MP (Venn Young) who was the first MP to try to get the anti-gay laws reformed and among the staunchest anti-gay bigots were Labour MPs like Mick Connolly, Dr Wall (who also tried to tighten the abortion laws and force the Auckland clinic to close and get its most prominent doctor prosecuted) and others. Several Labour MPs wanted it to be a criminal offence to ‘promote’ homosexuality by any sort of suggestion that it was a part of the ‘normal’ spectrum of sexuality.
People forget, or choose not to remember, just how socially reactionary the Labour Party was in the 1970s.
I was a teenager through the third Labour government, and what a nightmare it was. (I joined the LP at high school and lasted about six months; it was far too right-wing .) Completely put me off ever voting Labour.
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/anti-working-class-to-its-core-the-third-labour-government/
All good points but the reaction to Marilyn Waring v Colin Moyle, may also have to do with some sort of bias (we can turn a blind eye to gay women, but NOT gay men). Likely part of the legacy of Queen Victoria. But also men who have the power (especially back in the 1970’s) are less threatened by a gay woman, whereas a gay man could be hugely threatening for them (especially if they were unsure of their own sexuality).
I take your point about Labour in the 70’s. They were socially conservative as was the great (but not perfect) Norman Kirk.
queen victoria never said women wouldnt be lesbians. that is a myth.
in my experience more men are frightened of gay men that women are frightened of gay women.
you must be very experienced @ Tracey. That’s my experience also. But ask any drag queen or gay guy on the game (or indeed city taxi driver) and you’ll find that the actual incidence of male-to-male is probably about the same as female-to-female.
(boy! or rather ‘boi’, have I come across one or two total “on the down low” fuckups – not necessarily personally, but once or twice as well)
EDIT: I think there might need to be a ‘ :p ‘ after “you must be very experienced @ Tracey – just so you know I’m not having a go.
I’m constantly amazed tho’ by the stereotypical ‘blokehood’, just as I am by various attitudes in the ‘gay community; – such as all that “what plays in Vegas, Stays in Vegas bullshit” whilst all the while those PLAYERS keep shitting on their conquests.
Not sure why in the 21st C this shud still be an issue – but it is
Side note – the “Not sure why in the 21st C this shud still be an issue” thing is just a figure of speech, but it does buy into a liberal concept of continuous progress in civilisation and society. Looking back at the scope of the last 5,000 years, of course it just ain’t so.
Except he wasn’t gay ankerawshark. He was the victim of a dirty set-up.
@ Philip Ferguson:
That’s nothing like what happened. I was there (no, not in parliament) and through a set of circumstances found myself in the thick of it. It was “Dirty Politics” 1970s style, and Moyle/Labour were the innocent targets. A lot of people were badly hurt (one way or another) in the fallout from that affair, so it behoves people to get the facts correct.
Happily stand corrected Tracy (re comment about Queen Vic ) and Anne.
Happy to have my mis-information corrected. Ta
her revolutionary-ness in my mind relates to her creating and advocating an alternative economic model which accounted for unpaid work and ecological factors. elements of which have been adopted widely outside nz.
standing before the ramparts of male structures and saying and acting to break them. i recall hwrald headlines when she cried while speaking in parliament and yet she was not silenced… which was the objective of the headline and mockery.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 100% Marilyn’s economic wisdom enjoys enviable international recognition not afforded her here at home. Tragic for us.
Yep, her work on economics is still far too radical for NZ. Imagine what NZ economic policy debate would be like now if she’d stayed in politics. Although it’s hard to see what party she could have belonged to given what happening post 1984.
Real change is going to have to be driven by organisations outside our formal political parties I think. Most of our political “leaders” are actually followers. Just look at Labour slowly coming around to the idea that maybe they need a different strategy in Northland. Followers, not leaders.
not followers paid lackeys
+100
I was lucky enough to find her “Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth” in the withdrawn pile in the library.
Reading it, it is hard to believe she was a National MP. But I guess National is a stranger kettle of fish now.
Indeed and it took the Canadians to do a Documentary on her and for TVNZ to play it at 2pm on a Saturday in the summer.
Who’s Counting?
Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics
some reviews
“Meeting Marilyn Waring on film will forever change your perception of justice, economics, and the worth of your own works. Watch this film.”
Gloria Steinem
“I give this film (and Ms. Waring, of course) every superlative…riveting, revealing, inspiring etc. It penetrates to the heart of the global, ecological, and social crisis that afflicts the world.”
Dr. David Suzuki
“A devastating critique of monetized economics, portrayed with compelling beauty and humor by Oscar-winning director Terre Nash. The film contrasts the vast, uncounted productivity of nature and women worldwide with United Nations-mandated national accounting systems rooted in military economics.”
Tranet
” Waring is one of the liveliest speakers I’ve ever heard…She also has an uncanny ability to put complex information into easily opened packages…If knowledge is power, WHO’S COUNTING is an empowering gift.”
Communities
https://www.nfb.ca/film/whos_counting
great link .. wonderful to see again, thx tracey
“By contrast, when the Truth newspaper ‘outed’ Waring, Muldoon just shrugged it off.”
Not how I recall it .. it was darker than that. Marilyn’s partner was the former wife of an All Black .. a dramatic and complete heresy if ever there was one.
My recollection is that Muldoon refused to deal with Truth to intervene prior to publication, as was common with potential libel issues in those days. He believed the story would damage and weaken Marilyn and let it run. It did not harm her, and consequently he wrought utu upon his own head as it evolved.
Also worth remembering how Muldoon used the SIS ( or whatever it was called back then, I forget) in the shadowing and despicable attacks upon Colin Moyle. Maybe this is the part of Muldoon that Key truly models himself upon.
See here for the malice of Muldoon.
“Robert Muldoon (National, Tamaki, leader of the Opposition) got wind of the incident but bided his time, saying during the 1975 election campaign that he “had something” if the campaign turned sour.” (Top drawer, Mr Key ??)
http://www.queerhistory.net.nz/MoyleAffair.html
good observation re Muldoon and Key
“It is always great for me to read or hear dr marilyn waring. she spoke with kim hill this morning. well worth the listen for all kiwis.”
audio up now http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/20169982/marilyn-waring-40-years-of-feminism
As I wrote recently, the three politicians in NZ that I admire a lot for their courage of conviction and admirable guts, against tremendous odds are
* Marilyn Waring
* Jim Anderton
* Winston Peters
~Waring had come especially to disagree with the National Party policy over the issue of a nuclear-free New Zealand and, on 14 June 1984, she informed the leadership that she would vote independently on nuclear issues, disarmament issues, and rape but would continue to support the Government on confidence.
That evening Muldoon decided to call a snap election to be held on 14 July
~ Although many ordinary members of the Labour Party (who were unhappy at the way the party’s parliamentary wing was behaving) backed Anderton, he became increasingly isolated in parliament. When Anderton disobeyed party instructions to vote in favour of selling the Bank of New Zealand (which Labour had explicitly promised not to do), he was suspended from caucus. In April 1989, believing that Labour was beyond change, Anderton resigned from the party. He later said, “I did not leave the Labour Party; the Labour Party left me.”
On 1 May, Anderton announced the creation of the NewLabour Party, intended to represent the “real” spirit of the original Labour Party. Its primary goals were state intervention in the economy, retention of public assets, and full employment.
~Peters disagreed with the party leadership on a number of matters, and frequently spoke out against his party regarding them. In October 1991, Bolger sacked Peters from Cabinet. Peters remained as a National backbencher, continuing to criticise the party. In early 1993, he chose to resign from the party and from Parliament. This prompted a by-election in Tauranga some months before the scheduled general election. He stood as an independent and won easily. Shortly before the 1993 election, Peters established New Zealand First and retained his Tauranga seat. Another New Zealand First candidate, Tau Henare, unseated the Labour incumbent in Northern Maori, helping to convince people that New Zealand First was not simply Peters’ personal vehicle.
In the 1996 elections, the MMP electoral system the party won 17 seats and swept all of the Māori electorates. More importantly, it held the balance of power in Parliament.
+100
This National Party government expands again its socialist credentials and communist leanings ………
Like farmers unable to attract free market financial support for their irrigation….
Like Chch CBD landowners scared of lowering property values….
Like Rio Tinto being unable to operator without welfare….
So too are Queenstown employers scared of the free market….. crying like babies to the gummint….. “wah wah wah we cant get anybody to do the cleaning on the minimum wage wah wah wah”…….
….. so instead of following the base rules of the free market and meeting the supply and demand dynamics by offering more money… they ask the gummint to allow in cheaper foreign labour….
Bludgers
Losers
Hypocrites
Slave-owners
They have no backbone. They cannot stand in the storm of the free market. They are weak. They are liars. They do not live by their words. They are poor specimens.
To quote the manic street preachers ‘ if you tolerate this then your children will be next…’
+1
+1
No free market ideologue who *actually operates a business* really believes in, let alone practices, completely free market economics.
Wasn’t Roger Douglas a failed pig farmer?
Phil
Well explains his outstanding troughing skills….oink oink.
VTO, your comment here inspired an article on Redline on the subject. See: https://rdln.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=11221&action=edit&message=6&postpost=v2
Your comment is acknowledged at the end of the article.
Very good!
Yes, while he wrought misery on countless thousands here, he is earning – well being paid or troughing would be a better term! – shitloads of money advising governments in places like Mongolia how to inflict the failed experiment on their populaces.
What an utterly, utterly despicable creature. Someone without a single, redeeming feature.
Phil
Prebbo and Douglas completely f8cked up the Labour Party, along with 50% of Kiwis who fell by the wayside of their mad ideology. LP and NZ still hasn’t fully recovered 30 years later
I listened to some of this on the radio , no mention of training schemes for locals or paying them a wage that they can live on down there. Just wanting to expand the cheap labour supply.
Wondered if Queenstown will soon be filled with businesses owned off shore, staffed with people on work permits and patronised by tourists. Can’t see a lot of benefits there locally
You obviously don’t know Queenstown very well RedBaron.
The fact is that due to the very specific development path it has taken over the last 50 years or so, there simply are no Queenstown ‘locals’ to train for the vast majority of jobs available there.
Any Kiwi from outside Central Otago that turns up looking for a job is guaranteed one.
And yes there are quite a few off shore owned businesses, but there are far more kiwi owned ones, and they are doing a great job of liberating very significant funds from off shore visitors to the great benefit of not just Qtown, but the whole of the NZ economy.
You’d be laughed out of town if you came down and suggested the situation was otherwise!
No excuse. Meet the market. Pay the workers a wage that will attract.
Fail
Fail fail fail
I’ll ignore your comments about how well I know Q’town as they are wide of the mark.
When I say locals I am looking at a slightly wider definition than you appear to be.
To be more specific where are the training and employment courses followed by job offers in say Dunedin & Christchurch – where there is unemployment?
Where is the affordable employee housing that they can go to even if it is only a stepping stone to moving on to something of their own?
Do people even have the money to get to Q’town?
Interesting that immigration has a work permits office up at the junction but the government can’t be bothered funding the rounding up employers to sort out a training scheme.
And yes there are local businesses but most of the hotels and the like are foreign owned and would account for a significant portion of the wage earning force.
If you know Qtown well RedBaron, you know that QTown employers spread their net far and wide throughout the Southern regions and have very close contacts with all available points of contact for job seekers.
You would know that most Qtown employers are only too happy to provide training to suitable applicants, and that it is extremely common to assist suitable employees to get to and live in Qtown. You would even know that there are strategies in place and being developed to tackle the affordability of housing.
If you are unemployed in the South Island, or anywhere, you only need to type ‘Queenstown employment’ into google and you will find any number of jobs available for all kinds of occupations, including for unskilled workers.
If you do need training to get the kind of job you want, as above, it is highly likely a Qtown employer wil train you, but there are also any number of options available for that in any significant South Island City. (Why do you think there is not RB?).
Despite all that, if you know any Qtown business owner, they will tell you that for a long time now it has been absolutely impossible to attract and retain anything remotely like the required numbers of NZ workers to Qtown…
On the other hand there is a continuous stream of bright, enthusiastic and available workers from all round the World who are only too happy to take the opportunity to stay a while in Qtown.
It’s a practical world. Letting Qtown grind to a halt because of a lack of local employees would do far more harm to NZ than the current solution.
In the meantime, if you are a Kiwi and you want a job in Qtown, I guarantee you will be met with open arms.
Fuck are you an idiot lost sheep? Don’t you get the point here?
Free market rules.
Pay more.
That is what this National government is about. And it is entirely what Queenstown is about (we have a business operating from there so know first hand). Queenstown business owners are hard core right wing national party supporters, yet they cannot abide their own cry of free market.
It is a fail lost sheep. A big fucking fail. And it is a birdshit right on the top of their heads – what a bunch of wankers, calling for cheap foreign labour instead of paying market rates within NZ.
Pay more.
… the absolute hypocrisy makes the blood boil ….
I’m guessing that Queenstown has a higher proportion of illegal jobs than the rest of the country. By illegal I mean jobs with no employment contracts and that ignore employment law. Under those conditions it’s pretty easy to employ transitory people from overseas than Kiwis who need stability and job security. My comment comes from talking to workers not employers.
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/314356/migrant-workers-exploitation-fears
Kerikeri is the same, weka. Another NAct stronghold.
If all these employers are so great then why can’t they get the employees that they need?
The answer is that they just aren’t that great.
But but but exploiting migrant workers proves that the market would give them all the labour they wanted if it weren’t for pesky minium wage and workplace safety regulations.
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/314356/migrant-workers-exploitation-fears
Just to insert a few facts into sheepie’s assertations.
I went onto Trade me and looked at the current QT jobs. Over a third of the ads where labeled part time or temp and many of these were for only a few hours a week or some dodgy commission base. So no adequate permanent income.
Of the supposedly full time jobs around about a third of these where similar to the above- lucky to receive 40 hrs at the minimum wage.
So over 50% of the jobs didn’t pay for 40 hours at minimum rates.
Of the remaing ads the bulk paid close to the minumum wage.
The few that made it to over $50k a year were for skilled tradesmen and a couple of professional jobs.
And 40 hours/week isn’t enough to cover living in Queenstown.
Actually even living in QT at 40 hrs minimum wage would be difficult. Rents are not low.
I didn’t calculate to the last %, as usual with Trade Me there are the double ups. And of course the temp staff places were there in force taking the usual $5-$10 an hour off people’s wages before they hand them over. Frankly, there needs to be a lot more pressure put onto employers to up their game rather than just issuing work permits if the country is ever going to get the unemployment stats down.
Who was that little Natzi that changed the face of Queenstown a couple of decades back?. (Again, genuine question). I think he became a Mayor after a Natzi term or two. Was it Warren Freer? – I may be confused. He’d have to be a Shipley disciple tho’ dontcha think?
Btw … is there anywhere else nearby that’d be worth damming – either for irrigaton of hydro ‘tuneties;? I haven’t been down that way for a while, tho’ I imagine there’d be a converted barn with a Mother Earth with a cooking programme on TV I could probably crash at. Maybe not now I’ve said that.
Ex Nat MP Queenstown mayor was Warren Cooper. Warren Freer was one of the old LP socialists. He wanted to intervene in the economy to keep prices down for consumers, with his Maximum Retail Price scheme. Was rubbished for it of course by media and Muldoon’s Nat Party.
Does anyone remember the delightful little exchange between Warren Cooper (who had been a house painter before politics) and Sam Neill back about 2000 when there was a lot of debate about pristine landscapes being invaded by rampant development? Cooper told Neill to butt out and stick to acting. Neill replied that he’d be delighted to do so if Cooper would stick to house painting..
so 50% of queenstown businesses breaking the laws around payment of their workers (and those workers being migrant) is a myth?
No free market ideologue who *actually operates a business* really believes in, let alone practices, completely free market economics.
Wasn’t Roger Douglas a failed pig farmer?
Phil
Does anyone at all believe in a completely free market? Can’t say I’ve met one.
The government believes in the free market when it comes to catering for the poor and their housing in east Christchurch post-earthquakes.
The government does not believe in the free market when it comes to catering for the;
rich CBD landowners
farmers wanting water for their businesses
rio tinto when it comes simply operating their business
there is a pattern lost sheep – you should open your eyes and look at it
It’s like the “one law for all”.
The capitalists support it when it suits them and then favour different laws for different people when it doesn’t fit in with their interests.
Then they complain about the spread of relativism!
I still recall with amusement Village Idiot Gerry Brownlee banging on and on and on about “one law for all” when doing a bit of Maori-bashing in the early 2000s. Then the issue of civil unions came up and, hey ho big surprise, Gerry wasn’t at all in favour of one law for all but thought there should be different laws for heterosexuals and homosexuals.
Because we have such a kiss-ass media, politicians often get away with this sort of hypocrisy.
Phil
Key’s National is a government that primarily works for the wealthy, the corporates and foreign interests.
FACT! I have no doubts about that.
No ifs and buts.
You’re probably right.
But a cluster of people *say* they do.
They particularly say they do whenever workers want anything. Then, we are told, ‘the market’ says ‘no’ – rather like the computer in the travel agency in that skit in ‘Little Britain’.
At some point I want to write an article on how all these human powers are attributed to ‘the market’ like our primitive ancestors attributed power to fetish objects, and indeed all kinds of inanimate objects.
‘The market’ determines CEO pay. No, it doesn’t. A bunch of pals sitting round in an office determine it.
‘The market’ determines the pay of the low-waged. No, it doesn’t. The well-heeled bosses, who give each other pay rises, determine the wages of the low-paid.
‘The market’ is a thing, not a rational, thinking being. ‘The market’ is just a set of human economic interactions. And we can opt for a different set of human economic interactions.
How odd and irrational to believe that ‘the market’, a blind set of human economic interactions, delivers better results than conscious human economic planning based on meeting human need.
And, of course, all firms plan. They are all totally in favour of planning when it comes to themselves. And against planning when it comes to the level of society.
Capitalism and capitalist ideology really is irrational.
A primer on how capitalist ideology works: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/how-capitalism-works/
And the wider context of how capitalism works and why, ultimately, it doesn’t: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/how-capitalism-works-%E2%80%93-and-doesn%E2%80%99t-work/
“Capitalism and capitalist ideology really is irrational”
Just like human beings. That is why, for all it’s imperfections, Capitalism works.
It is a system that allows all the various aspects of human nature to find a satisfactory expression to some degree, and as a result Capitalist societies have been capable of immense levels of successfully co-ordinated achievement.
In turn, that is why capitalist ideology is utterly dominant at this stage of human history.
Any theoretical system that fails to account for and accommodate the realities of human nature is doomed to fail. Real people will subvert it.
That is why Socialism has failed in the past and always will. It is predicated on the assumption that a majority of individuals within a society are willing to subvert their personal nature to Socialist ideology. They aren’t, and so the society doesn’t work.
🙄
Cry-baby can’t argue the point, has to clutch a strawman. Poor cry-baby.
Social democracy is not a theory; it’s a fact.
Honduras!
You are incapable of taking on a point directly OAB.
Throw up a Red herring as a flimsy excuse for a post, back it up with some ad hominem abuse, and then cut and run…..
You are a true bigot. I mean that in the nicest possible way, and I’m sure you will take it as a compliment.
Nonsense. as DtB says, your assertion that Capitalism “works” is false, and so you have to throw in a strawman about Socialism, when you know perfectly well that people here support a Parliamentary Social Democracy, such as the ones that made many countries great, including this one.
Right Wing false beliefs screwed it up. Own it. Take some personal responsibility you pathetic loser.
your assertion that Capitalism “works” is false,
How is it false OAB?
and so you have to throw in a strawman about Socialism, when you know perfectly well that people here support a Parliamentary Social Democracy, such as the ones that made many countries great, including this one.
Made them great on the basis of a Capitalist economic system, with Social Democracy being one of the many threads of political influence that Capitalism happily accommodates.
But what do you mean by Social Democracy? Do you see it as a gradual movement to a purely Socialist system?
If so, my contention is that a purely Socialist system will not succeed, for the reasons I give above.
If you can provide examples of Socialist societies that disprove my contention, please do so?
Right Wing false beliefs screwed it up. Own it. Take some personal responsibility you pathetic loser.
And that demonstrates yet again that you are a bigot. And also hints at the nasty side that underlines so many ideologues. What happens when people with your political intolerance get to power? Stalin.
Capitalism does a great job when it’s constrained by the requirement to do right by others: ie: Socialism.
Without Socialist regulation Capitalism eats itself.
You no answer to Piketty because he’s right.
Loser helps destroy collective bargaining, Can’t even own up to it. A coward too then.
@OAB
“Capitalism does a great job when it’s constrained by the requirement to do right by others: ie: Socialism.
As usual OAB your answer is so derivative it’s difficult to understand how it relates to the original point, but I will take that one as indicating that you agree Capitalism is the only workable economic system given the current state of human nature.
I agree completely there is a modifying influence of Socialist thought within Capitalist societies, but I would also include all the other strands of thought / morality / philosophy / culture that Capitalism can accommodate and be influenced by.
As I said above, the ability to embrace human nature in all it’s variation, complexity, and imperfection is Capitalism’s key attribute.
Rigid ideologies cannot encompass such a variation, and so inevitably they become oppressive.
“You no answer to Piketty because he’s right.”
Your entire counter argument is this and your previous statement that my assertion was ‘false’?
I will take that as a concession that you cannot offer any argument of substance, such as an example of a more successful system.
“Loser / coward”
Honestly OAB, save your childish and pointless abuse for people it might actually bother.
Lost sheep, in a thread about how free market capitalist employers are failing and so ask nanny state to hold their poor wee hands with some welfare, claims “Capitalism works”
ha ha ha – the best own goal ever
…
and back to the original point. Meet the market. Pay more money.
You seem to be under the impression that Capitalism works to a rigid set of rules VTO?
As i’ve been pointing out, adaptability is actually one of it’s great strengths.
In Qtown there are jobs available and people wanting to work in those jobs.
Rather than leave those jobs empty, or to keep in place a restraint that would cause a massive increase in the expense of visiting Qtown, a variation in rules has been made that allows those jobs to be filled, and for Qtown to stay viable and to keep pumping benefit into the economy.
That is successful adaptation, not failure.
“Rather than leave those jobs empty, or to keep in place a restraint that would cause a massive increase in the expense of visiting Qtown, a variation in rules has been made that allows those jobs to be filled, and for Qtown to stay viable and to keep pumping benefit into the economy.
That is successful adaptation, not failure.”
Queenstown can only “stay viable” if cleaners and the low-paid continue to be paid less than market rates and less than it costs to live there.
That is failure.
Complete and utter failure.
It is so not success. Keep ya blinkers on mate.
No point going to Qtown next weekend then VTO.?
Town will have ground to a halt because no one is willing or able to live there on cleaners and wait staff wages?
I’m picking it will be pumping.
so why the need to change the law?
Because it is a practical and sensible solution to a difficult problem.
And this does not violate any law of Capitalism, because Capitalism in general does NOT have a rigid insistence that there should be no interference in the market, and in fact NO specific Capitalist economy operates that way. It would be stupid to do so obviously!
It would be stupid to do so, because Capitalism works. No, wait…
You’ve got no argument to put up, but you still need to get the last word in OAB?
Guess that allows you to believe you ‘won’ the discussion?
Not my problem if you can’t see the massive oxymoron in your beliefs, and I’m still going to point and laugh.
I can keep you going all week OAB 😀
You must be seen to have last word. It’s pathological.
And all the sneering last words in the world don’t hide the fact that you have made no answer of any substance at all to my points. And you won’t.
There you go. I’ve rung the bell. Now see if you can resist responding.
r > g
It is your understanding that lacks substance.
Ta da.
You just can’t help yourself 😀
But while you are back here, why don’t you have a genuine shot at actually answering something directly?
Here’s a representative example from the thread above. It’s a clearly expressed, easily understandable and fair question directly related both to the thread topic and the post you made in which you stated “Social democracy is not a theory; it’s a fact.”
It can be answered as simply as yes or no, or it could be answered with any degree of complexity.
But my challenge to you is that you answer the point directly OAB. No red herrings, no abuse, no diversions, no ad hominem.
Just a straight forward clarification of the the question arising from your post.
Heck, if we can ease our way past this hurdle we might even be able to work our way up to conducting a genuinely rational debate!
so here goes….
“What do you mean by Social Democracy? Do you see it as a gradual movement to a purely Socialist system?”
I’ve sat through many fascinating (and quite a few more boring) discussions where highly intelligent people discussed the nuanced distinctions between social democracy and democratic socialism, and whether one is an incremental transition to the other.
I suspect they were significantly more enlightening than anything TLS will provide, but I’ll get the popcorn ready in case someone wants to play.
No, TLS, you are the ideologue, not me. Your witless slurs on Socialism, and wide-eyed sycophancy for Capitalism betray you.
You failed to back up your rash remarks and were then forced to admit that implementing pure Capitalism would be stupid.
I’ve made my position perfectly clear. As for transitions to some form of ideal, they’d better be gradual and make an improvement before they’ll get much support from me.
There are plenty of right wing policies to drag around the back of the barn and kill with an axe first.
Perhaps you could set up a lead McFlock? Where do you sit on the matter?
If someone else were to venture a wee flag in the sand OAB might not feel quite so shy about committing himself to a definite position?
(edit) I’ve been involved in many an entertaining skirmish on the topic myself, and just an observation, but I find it there is always one sticky point that comes up with Social Democracy theory.
It is that point where you either retain elements of Capitalism, or you cross over into pure Socialism.
It is a very narrow and hazardous bridge to cross in my experience.
You’ve got experience of crossing from SD to DS? Where?
Frankly, the topic is only suited for pubs, and/or when both parties know what they’re talking about and know the other does so in good faith.
Just boring on the interwebs otherwise, with little or no chance for new info, personal development, or even a halfway decent argument.
I’m sure OAB wouldn’t have introduced the topic if he thought it was too problematic for TS McFlock. That would be like suggesting Capitalism was a topic we could not prod.
So I await OAB’s discussion.
The topic was only introduced as a counterpoint to your false narrative. You remember, where you started inventing labels for the things you don’t understand.
“were then forced to admit that implementing pure Capitalism would be stupid.”
I wasn’t forced to admit that OAB, because at no stage did I say that i supported ‘pure Capitalism’. In fact, if you bothered to actually read my posts, you would have picked up that my core argument was that it was the ability of Capitalism to encompass and adapt to a wide variety of influences that was it’s core strength. Sigh. Perhaps that is too subtle a worldview for you.
I ran the rest of your replies through a solid materials detector, and among the smoke and mirrors, the total actual substance detected was as follows….
“As for transitions to some form of ideal, they’d better be gradual and make an improvement before they’ll get much support from me.”
I think this is as close to a definitive statement as I’ve seen you yet make. Fuck all concrete and sincere in other words.
But it’s a start, and something to work on.
So what is your ‘form of ideal’? Does that encompass elements of capitalism? If not, how is your ideal structured? See if you can nudge closer to something personal and genuine this time….
And I agree completely that for anything to be considered a ‘success’ or ‘working’, an improvement over what conditions were before the measures were taken is as good a definition as any.
This surely is where it becomes very difficult to deny that Capitalism has been successful?
For all the imperfections we can identify, the evidence that Capitalism works and has been successful is substantiated by even the briefest review of world history since 1650?
Capitalist economies have been the engine driving a period of advancement that utterly dwarfs the achievements of any other period in history under any other system. Consider the range of indicators you would use to say whether a society has improved or not over a period of time…
And then give me a rational argument that capitalism has not been successful?
And tell me what system has proved more successful, or in your opinion would be more successful?
the ability of Capitalism to encompass and adapt to a wide variety of influences
What a load of shite. Capitalists, when they can’t threaten capital flight at the slightest sign of pro-human policy, have to be dragged kicking and screaming to regulation.
As soon as they get a chance, they buy a National Party and destroy anything they can get their hands on: like you destroying collective bargaining, for example.
Pretending that Social Democracy is the same as Capitalism is the only argument you’ve got, and it’s utter bollocks.
“Pretending that Social Democracy is the same as Capitalism is the only argument you’ve got, and it’s utter bollocks.”
Even for you that is taking avoidance to a seriously whacky level OAB!
You are piss your pants running scared of ever being caught holding a definite position that could be challenged. An intellectual coward in fact. But then Bully’s usually are cowards at heart.
Oh dear, I seem to have stooped to your level 😀
Stooped? You’ve never attained OAB’s altitude.
Nor did you explain where, ‘in your experience’, you saw a transition from semi-capitalist social democracy into pure socialism.
“Stooped? You’ve never attained OAB’s altitude.”
I must be gutter scum indeed then McFlock, if a pathological obsession with bullying political opponents on an anonymous on line blog is your standard of excellence. sarc.
“Nor did you explain where, ‘in your experience’, you saw a transition from semi-capitalist social democracy into pure socialism.”
Well, no, because what I actually posted was that this is indeed an inevitably sticky, narrow and hazardous bridge to cross.
That is why I asked OAB, twice, (who introduced the subject), to define what exactly he meant by the notoriously variable term ‘Social Democracy’.
But as OAB has declined to clarify his beliefs with any more detail than ‘making an improvement’ I am happy to stick my neck out and stake a further concrete opinion.
At the point you cross into ‘Pure Socialism’, your system cannot be ‘Social Democracy’.
Unless you are accepting that the terms are synonymous? In which case there is a bit of apparent semantic contradiction to explain?
But if your vision of ‘Social Democracy’ is different from ‘ Pure Socialism’, then it should be a simple matter to explain what that difference is?
And whether that difference incorporates any elements of Capitalism?
In my experience the more ideologically rigid people who claim to believe in some form of ‘Social Democracy’ find it extraordinarily difficult to make concrete statements about those two points.
I believe the difficulty is in conceding that there is anything at all that is beneficial in Capitalism, while at the same time being unable to reference highly successful examples of non Capitalist systems?
But I’m happy to be proven wrong by those willing to venture a genuine rational argument?
That’s the thing with not being ideologically rigid. It makes it difficult for anti-human ideologues like TLS to figure out how to label me.
Diddums.
Except for the fact that it doesn’t as shown by all the poverty that it creates, all the recessions that increase that poverty even more while the rich get richer and the collapsed societies throughout history.
You mean all that in comparison to the record of non capitalist systems over the course of history?
Yeah, you know, the ones that keep going, don’t destroy the environment and generally don’t oppress people for the enrichment of a few.
are you saying that your proof that capitalism works is your assertion that socialism doesn’t> That’s a slender premise
No.
The evidence that Capitalism works is substantiated by even the briefest review of world history since 1650.
Capitalist economies have been the engine driving a period of advancement that utterly dwarfs the achievements of any other period in history under any other system. (Unless you can cite proof that is not true?)
And it rolls on. Just take a look at the reality of the current world.
Imperfect yes, but thankfully highly open to further modification.
The New Deal hasn’t registered with this leech who climbs the ladder then burns it.
Great look at what captalism has done for us since 1650. Right now the planet is burning up because of excessive pollution from our wonderful improvements and machinations. For every step forward there has been a sideways step, then a half step back but we never can go back to the point we were at earlier. We just don’t notice it because we are so drunk with our own cleverness.
Then we use our devices to record the destruction we have caused because it is important that some things should be measured and retained for statistics and information and that other things should be glossed over or ignored. Nothing is done in the full light of day. That’s why the GCSB is so anxious. They want to know more, but for us to know less.
And you harp on that ‘We don’t know how lucky we are boys.’
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/314356/migrant-workers-exploitation-
this is a great achievement for you to be proud of…
“Capitalism works.”
Interesting assertion. Care to cite some sources?
Goldman Sachs.
Halliburtons.
Blackwater Security.
Of course it works, especially when you get all that public money.
SERCO
Sheep shagger Enron,Hubbard,Merrill Lynch etc etc etc.
Money printing trillions of dollars.
Because of communism western countries brought in free healthcare free education,pensions welfare unions
Were aloud free and balanced press now communism has declined .
So has all the egalitarianism declined.
The Murdocracy is reigning supreme.
But its not Capitalism its Cronyism
Corruption is its heart.
Welfare for the super rich bailouts galore.
Arms dealers
Drugs dealers
Oil dealers
Money dealers
Propaganda dealers
Allowed to undermine any opposition that gets in their way.
Cronyism sheep shagger!
Lost sheep, in a thread about how free market capitalist employers are failing and so ask nanny state to hold their poor wee hands with some welfare, claims “Capitalism works”
ha ha ha – the best own goal ever
Thanks VTO. Your comment here inspired me to write an article for Redline on the subject. See: https://rdln.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=11221&action=edit&message=6&postpost=v2
So much for bosses’ support for the ‘free market’
You gave us the wrong link.
Rock on brother!
Exceptional article
http://starspangledrodeo.blogspot.co.nz/2015/03/our-tupuna-dreamed-future-for-all-of-us.html
re-think, re-feel, re-imagine, reveal, re-make…
Ka tuku mihi ki a koe, Marty. He korero miharo 🙂
Very interesting whakaaro. I hope that this is widely read.
Thanks so much for this link
Action Station is crowdfunding for a national campaign to bring TPPA out to the open air.
https://actionstation.nationbuilder.com/tppanodeal
Help if you can.
I have just got home from the Tauranga march, well organised and not a bad turnout for old conservative Tauranga.
Have just donated, thanks for the link, we must stop this bullshit.
REMINDER :
NATION WIDE MARCH TODAY AGAINST TPPA.
Hope you will join the march and send a strong message to this government to be careful and not sell NZ to big business and foreign interests.
Here is the link with all the information:
Please check the TIME and VENUE of the march for your city or a city close to you:
http://www.itsourfuture.org.nz/events/
ALSO,
Please SIGN the petition to John Key here:
http://www.itsourfuture.org.nz/take-action/defend-our-sovereignty/
[Also, More info on this thread:
from twitter
Sunday Star-Times @SundayStarTimes 2 hours ago
Tomorrow in @SundayStarTimes, Nicky Hager and @rj_gallagher exclusively reveal the high-tech tools with which NZ spies on NZers in Pacific.
Matthew Hooton @MatthewHootonNZ 1 hour ago
@SundayStarTimes @rj_gallagher That is treason.
You know they’re worried when they start throwing around the t-word.
Yep, Hager is trying to overthrow the government! Shock horror! Someone ring the SAS and sort him out!
Treason – ha ha ha ha ha ha
how can that even apply in a globalised, USA’d, TPPA’d world where everything is one? It cant. Treason is no longer applicable. We are all our own individuals with no responsibility or obligation to any particular state. Fuck the state.
Treason – ha ha ha ha ha ha
Hooton seems to think that fighting for NZ sovereignty is treason – against the transnational corporate set.
Hooton
Part 5
Crimes against public order
Treason and other crimes against the Sovereign and the State
73 Treason
Every one owing allegiance to the Sovereign in right of New Zealand commits treason who, within or outside New Zealand,—
(a) kills or wounds or does grievous bodily harm to the Sovereign, or imprisons or restrains her or him; or
(b) levies war against New Zealand; or
(c) assists an enemy at war with New Zealand, or any armed forces against which New Zealand forces are engaged in hostilities, whether or not a state of war exists between New Zealand and any other country; or
(d) incites or assists any person with force to invade New Zealand; or
(e) uses force for the purpose of overthrowing the Government of New Zealand; or
(f) conspires with any person to do anything mentioned in this section.
Perhaps he meant Espionage?
Nah, see, the forces of socialism are “levying war” against New Zealand and we’re at war with “freedom of public information”, and criticising the present government is preeeeeeeetty much the same thing as “using force” to “overthrow” the government.
So Nicky Hager’s, like, three times a traitor.
Hooton actively supports Chinese economic control of this country.
That sounds more like treason to me.
I wonder how lucrative would a PR contract for a VicVichy-style puppet government would be?
He could surely ask that lucrative kind of advice from Shipley, Brash or Richardson … masters of the renmimbi .. they are treasonous in my mind.
Opening the burglar’s tool bag and showing the tools to the home owner is nothing like treason. Treason would be breaking Kiwi law in the service of a foreign power, like, you know, what FJK does.
Anyone know why Pete George is no longer stinking up the place?
Banned for a month a few days ago. Not nearly long enough IMO.
I really really miss the digressions on the burrow configurations of the lesser spotted beige hen and on and on:-)
It’s true, our community’s knowledge of all flora and fauna which are beige is being eroded by his absence.
We can still sing O Vole Mio together !!
Jute is a long, soft, shiny vegetable fiber that can be spun into coarse, strong threads. It is produced from plants in the genus Corchorus, which was once classified with the family Tiliaceae, more recently with Malvaceae, and has now been reclassified as belonging to the family Sparrmanniaceae. “Jute” is the name of the plant or fiber that is used to make burlap, Hessian or gunny cloth.
Jute is one of the most affordable natural fibers and is second only to cotton in amount produced and variety of uses of vegetable fibers. Jute fibers are composed primarily of the plant materials cellulose and lignin. It falls into the bast fiber category (fiber collected from bast or skin of the plant) along with kenaf, industrial hemp, flax (linen), ramie, etc. The industrial term for jute fiber is raw jute. The fibers are off-white to brown, and 1–4 metres (3–13 feet) long. Jute is also called “the golden fiber” for its color and high cash value.
🙂
Enjoy the constructive discussions while you can over the next few weeks till the diffuser in chief returns.
Tory Cuckoo in Labour nests.
THIS January Jim Murphy, Labour’s leader in Scotland, made John McTernan into his chief of staff.
Here is a video of McTernan, last September at the Tory conference, offering advice to the Conservatives and praise to Margaret Thatcher.
McTernan was speaking at a breakfast meeting at a Tory-leaning think tank.
McTernan poured praise on Thatcher. He said: “She changed the economic structure for good. As in forever. But also for good. It’s a good thing she did what she did.”
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-c4b2-With-friends-like-this-Labour-hardly-needs-enemies#.VPotqIbXerW
The video is here: chilling stuff from a Blairite, who recently worked for Labour in Australia.
http://wingsoverscotland.com. The article is called the Cuckoo in the nest.
This is the reason that Labour will be wiped out in Scotland at the May election.
Labor in Oz eh, no surprises there as Shorten has stood aside and let Abbott slam through the same shit NACT has here and raise their risk profile.
All he had to do was give the senate enough doubt to turf the measures out as neither major party has the numbers with independents and cliveo self destructo party senators all over the place.
Australian ‘Thinker in Residence’
McTernan worked on the 2007 Australian general election that brought the former Australian Labour Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to power.
In February 2011 he was appointed ‘Thinker in Residence’ for the Government of South Australia, working on health and education reform. He gave up this role when he became Julia Gillard’s communications chief. [5] He resigned from this position after Gillard was ousted as PM and replaced by Kevin Rudd.
http://powerbase.info/index.php/John_McTernan#Australian_.27Thinker_in_Residence.27
Labor in oz is a pale imitation of the golden era of hawke and keating who laid down the reforms to tax, introduced compulsory super etc that created savings with a solid tax base to fund health, education and infrastructure.
The puppets in charge now wouldn’t know reform if it bit them in the arse, all captives of the system doffing the cap to Murdoch since keating lost with the hobbled mining tax being an epic fail to claw back some of the resource pillage that’s been going on for decades.
Paul Keating wants the NSW government to sell off its electricity network and has been critical of Kabor for opposing it.
Seems to me that the Labour nests welcomed in the Tory Cuckoo very warmly and knowingly.
I worry that some of our NZ leadership think it is terribly clever to listen to the like of McTernan. I do not believe Andree Little would. There are some MPs who would.
New Zealand’s immigration controls: not in workers’ interests: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/new-zealand%E2%80%99s-immigration-controls-%E2%80%93-not-in-workers%E2%80%99-interests-%C2%A0/
And the way to deal with the importation of cheap labour is to organise them and ensure they know their rights. In any case, the ‘cheap labour’ often comes from countries where workers have a rather greater history of militancy than in NZ.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/business/67073141/Filipinos-charged-huge-fees-to-work-in-New-Zealand
That is really bad.
<blockquote> Business Immigration owner Lyn Sparks would not comment on the workers' complaints but said all the agency's processes and fees were legitimate. "We get licensed every year don't we," he said.
Maybe this is what shonkey meant by turning us into a trading hub, after all it’s just another commodity to be traded to a merchant banker.
The National Party approach to ethics: if it’s technically legal then it can’t be morally bankrupt!
And they will hire really expensive lawyers to make it all sound technically legal no matter how ethically wrong it is.
An Alaskan responds to Inhofe’s snowball stunt.
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y29/Blue_In_AK/1622140_950192931681791_1609883701604960399_n_zpshaonh6gj.jpg
Saturday afternoon entertainment. Guess the strategy behind Hooton’s latest crazy tweets. SST will publish a report tomorrow from Hager and an Intercept journo on the tech used to spy on NZers/the Pacific. According to Hooton, “this is actual treason”. He then goes on to say that Snowden should be executed.
https://twitter.com/MatthewHootonNZ/status/573949709938634752
True colours from a shill for sale. The PR game has no moral compass it’s all about the cash.
Mr Hooton is back to his old self then…
If he reads the Crimes Act, where treason is set out, he would find
“Part 5
Crimes against public order
Treason and other crimes against the Sovereign and the State
73 Treason
Every one owing allegiance to the Sovereign in right of New Zealand commits treason who, within or outside New Zealand,—
(a) kills or wounds or does grievous bodily harm to the Sovereign, or imprisons or restrains her or him; or
(b) levies war against New Zealand; or
(c) assists an enemy at war with New Zealand, or any armed forces against which New Zealand forces are engaged in hostilities, whether or not a state of war exists between New Zealand and any other country; or
(d) incites or assists any person with force to invade New Zealand; or
(e) uses force for the purpose of overthrowing the Government of New Zealand; or
(f) conspires with any person to do anything mentioned in this section.”
Holding the government to account for its lies = treason )to the Right – except when they are in Opposition).
After suffering ‘intense mental agony’, Hamiora Pere was hanged at the Terrace Gaol, Wellington, and buried in an unmarked grave. He is the only New Zealander to have been executed after being convicted of treason.
Hamiora Pere had been tried for treason in the Supreme Court in Wellington on 28 September. He was one of the first men charged under the Disturbed Districts Act, a temporary measure containing special provisions (such as smaller juries) for trying Māori who were deemed to be ‘in open rebellion’ and had committed ‘outrages and atrocities’. These trials were a legal landmark: the colonial government was asserting its ‘absolute sovereignty’ over all Māori.
The attorney-general told the court that Pere had joined Te Kooti’s force at Puketapu, on the eastern fringe of the Urewera Range, in August 1868. He had taken part in the bloody raids on Matawhero and Oweta in November, and in the subsequent battles at Mākaretū and Ngātapa. There was no direct evidence that he had killed anybody and a murder charge against him was withdrawn. The jury took less than 15 minutes to find him guilty of treason, for which the death penalty was mandatory but could be commuted.
Hamiora Pere was one of five Māori men captured after the siege of Ngātapa (many more had been summarily executed) to be convicted of murder and/or treason. The government seems to have decided to execute one of them, ‘by way of example and caution’ to any Māori who were still tempted to take up arms. There was compelling evidence against Wi Tamararo, who was convicted of murder on 27 September but avoided execution by hanging himself two days later. There were extenuating circumstances for the other three, who had been convicted of treason. That left Pere.
The fate of Hamiora Pere cast a long shadow. It was fictionalised in two novels published in 1986. Part of the back-story in Witi Ihimaera’s The matriarch, the trial and execution is the climax of Maurice Shadbolt’s Season of the Jew, in which a youthful Pere appears repeatedly as an informant of the central character, a colonial officer. In its 2004 report on the Turanganui a Kiwa claims, the Waitangi Tribunal recommended that the attorney-general ‘reassess the record … with a view to considering whether the decision to hang Pere was safe’.
Image: report of execution in Wellington Independent (Papers Past).
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/page/hamiora-pere-executed-treason
“Punishment of High Treason Act 1870
“2. From and after the passing of this Act the [Imperial Act 54 George III c146] shall be deemed not to extend to or be applicable in the administration of justice within the Colony of New Zealand.”
The Imperial Act referred to required the sentence in all cases of high treason to be “that such person should be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution and be there hanged by the neck until such person should be dead and that afterwards the head should be severed from the body of such person and the body divided into four quarters” to be disposed of as the monarch sees fit.
The 1814 English statute was definitely the law in New Zealand by virtue of our English Laws Act 1858. The sentence has actually been imposed in this country, provoking the 1870 legislation. On 23 September 1869, after a jury had found Te Kooti associates Hetariki Te Oikau, Rewi Tamanui Totitoti and Matene Te Karo guilty of high treason, Justice Johnston unwillingly sentenced each to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
“The law which I am bound to administer leaves me no alternative, and it is my duty to pass upon you the highest sentence which that law allows. The sentence that I am about to pass on you is not my word, but the word of the law. I must now proceed to pass upon you, and each of you, that awful sentence which the law has prescribed for the offence of which you have been found guilty,” the Wellington Independent reported the Judge as saying. After passing sentence he then added: “I again say that I am sure nothing will be done but the hanging.”
None of the three was executed and their sentences were commuted to imprisonment. One person has been executed for treason in New Zealand. Although it was accepted that he had killed no-one, Hamiora Pera was also charged with high treason for actions in Te Kooti’s war and tried after the other three. He was found guilty and Justice Johnston reluctantly passed sentence, again assuring him that “nothing but death” would be carried into effect. While there has been extensive debate about his guilt, he was hanged in Wellington on 16 November 1869.
On 30 June 1870 New Zealand’s Parliament changed the punishment for high treason from hanging, drawing and quartering to hanging. This remained the law until the Abolition of the Death Penalty Act 1989 came into force on 26 December 1989.”
https://www.lawsociety.org.nz/lawtalk/lawtalk-archives/issue-842/that-was-the-law
I aslo though you could be charged with treason if you got too interested in the sovereign’s wife??!
Matty??
An interesting paper I found on the case for central banks raising inflation targets from 2 to 4%:
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2014/wp1492.pdf
It would reduce unemployment, and most importantly allow for better recovery from recessions, adding more economic stability. Recoveries from recessions would be faster and more robust.
I think it’d help us get closer to full employment.
Also we need to mandate that the Reserve Bank should pursue maximum employment and most favourable terms of trade.
Monetary policy cannot deliver increased employment. Only fiscal policy can do that. Also, despite central banks printing immense amounts of money into the financial economy, the world is collapsing into debt deflation. Many central banks around the world have interest rates set at 0% or even negatively, reflecting this reality.
I agree, and argued something similar on FB at the last election.
Bob Jones makes the point that we shouldn’t bother at all – free market prices should fluctuate, and legislating to prevent that using the Reserve Bank is basically equivalent to price controls.
This largely just shows Bob Jones knows next to nothing about macro economics.
Maybe not, but it’s still a valid point, and one which is not macroeconomic in nature.
Central bank interest rate policy is a macroeconomic policy question. Bob Jones thinks that in the absence of central bank targeting interest rates would result in market fluctuations round a ‘natural rate of interest’, but the result is likely to be that the rate of interest falls to zero instead.
If the reserve bank is not targeting interest rates, then the treasury is setting the interest rates. Here is an explanation,
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=4656
and also,
http://www.cfeps.org/pubs/wp-pdf/WP37-MoslerForstater.pdf
NICK GRANT TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 16, 2014 NBR
Key denies mass GCSB surveillance and collection, declines to discuss XKeyscore
5th para down
““There’s no mass collection either. Not of New Zealanders.”
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/key-denies-mass-gcsb-surveillance-and-collection-declines-discuss-xkeyscore-ng-162490
that’s ok then 😉
Tor supporters find GPS/mobile tracking device on activist’s car at tech conference
https://people.torproject.org/~ioerror/skunkworks/forensics/valencia-tracking-device/
Petrobras – wasn’t that the company that Bridges and Key were recently snuggling upto to drill for oil in our waters – Bridges? The one that got angry on Campbell Live defending his decisions.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-31775677
Brazil Petrobras scandal: Top politicians accused
Petrobras is a technically advanced and shockingly corrupt company. Rich Brazilians and most politicians see the state as a mechanism by which to enrich themselves. Petrobras helps with this process and has paid heaps of bribes to construction companies and politicians. Possibly a little bit like Fletchers in Christchurch, but on a much bigger scale.
Although all parties are involved (except maybe the far left), the politicised Brazilian Federal Police and Congressional investigators are focussing on the President’s party, the PT. In reality, Petrobras has been illicitly enriching politicians since it was founded. However, many of the legal officials are linked to the opposition PSDB (social democratic party) which is like a more corrupt National. Therefore they are trying to limit investigations to the years that the PT (Workers’ Party) has held the presidency. I hope they are not successful.