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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Another day, another IPCA report on criminal conduct by policy. This time they kicked a child in the head when he was handcuffed:Police chased him and yelled out for him to stop. When he turned to face the police, he threatened them with a hammer. That's when the officers tasered ...
The investigation of two of the five parties in Parliament for fraud around their election donations has pushed the issue of party funding back into the spotlight. And while there are obvious things we can do to tighten up the donations regime - a much lower declaration threshold, realtime disclosure ...
While the south of New Zealand has been struggling with too much rain in recent days, here in the north we are so very short of it (though Saturday’s forecast looks promising). Basically, we have had almost none since Christmas.As someone who relies on rain to wash the car, ...
Former National Party MP Jami-Lee RossIt comes as no surprise that Jami-Lee Ross has been named as one of the defendants in the X2 $100,000 National Party donations case currently before the courts. Click bait journalists who were chaffing at the bit to discredit the former senior whip had already ...
Stand Clear! Winston Peters is encouraging voters to think of RNZ as belonging to “The Media Party”. He wants them to see it as a politically partisan institution with its own, vicious attack-dogs in the electoral fight. If he succeeds, it will be, and probably should be, the end of ...
"You're going to need a longer runway" Gratton et al explore the ongoing effects of upward-creeping temperatures on aviation in Greece in the period since 1955 at a range of airports in that country. For longer runways impacts are measurable but with little impact on operations. For airports with shorter runways, ...
In mid-December the Israeli secret police, the Shin Beit, revealed it had arrested dozens of Palestinian left-wing activists, including members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), in the previous few months. Among those arrested was one of the central leaders of the PFLP, Khalida Jarrar. As ...
Former National Party chief whip Jami-Lee Ross is one of the four people charged over National's multiple fraudulent donations. How unsurprising. Meanwhile, just days ago National leader Simon Bridges was trying to pretend the charges were nothing to do with his party. Yeah, right. When your chief whip effectively publicly ...
If you've been watching FYI for a while, you'll have noticed that the police have a bad habit of demanding ID from requesters. They have apparently been repeatedly told to stop doing this by the Ombudsman, but we all know what law enforcement thinks of the law, so thye keep ...
Collateral Damage: For the Green Phoenix to be reborn, the funeral pyre so patiently assembled by its identity politicians over the course of many fractious years – but with growing intensity over the past three – first has to be ignited. The terrible probability, of course, is that, in setting ...
If you follow politics in New Zealand you've likely noticed that the right wing have been going on and on about the Coalition Government failing to reduce poverty. In fact they’ve been incessantly claiming, in the absence of any conclusive data, that poverty has been getting worse.Yesterday, NewstalkZB reported:Mike Hosking: ...
The Herald reported over the weekend that an Auckland business owner is being targeted with asset forfeiture laws over a workplace death:A workplace fatality has seen police use a law usually associated with drugs and organised crime to seize millions of dollars in assets from a business owner because of ...
Just days after talking about how people feel "squeezed" and promising tax and service cuts as a "solution", National is talking about cancelling a rise in the minimum wage if elected: National is considering scrapping the Government's planned minimum wage increase if it wins this year's election, the party's finance ...
Nobody thinks about the next century anymore. That at least is Sci-Fi writer William Gibson’s observation (in this BBC 4 short interview, starting at 1:43:50 ). He calls it “Futures Fatigue”, but isn’t judgemental about it. Gibson notes that in the 20th century speculation about the 21st (and beyond) was common. Now ...
A Labour government desperate for the numbers crawls into bed with Winston Peters. Winston ignores the law and secretly takes money under the table from someone. When it is exposed just months out from an election, he is investigated by the Serious Fraud Office. That's what happened back in 2008. ...
So the Serious Fraud Office has another secret $100,050 National Party donation before the Courts in a major scandal that looks set to quash any chances Simon Bridges had of winning the 2020 election.Yesterday, Newsroom reported:The Serious Fraud Office prosecution of four people over donations to the National Party involves ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Iceberg twice the size of Washington, D.C., breaks off Pine Island glacier in Antarctica Story Highlights: The Pine Island ...
Prof Philippa Howden-ChapmanHousing policy is building up to be the key election issue again. In this blog I reflect on the importance of the role of the New Zealand Government in improving access to affordable housing. I look at what the Government has been doing to increase quality public housing ...
Writing on The Spinoff, Danyl Mclauchlan argues that we have a vacuum in our political system, in that there is no longer an anti-establishment party anymore:I think there’s a vacuum in our political system. There are obvious problems with the status quo but no real critics offering reform. It’s a ...
Stuff today has a piece about the government discovering it has been oversubsidising polluters for a decade under the Emissions Trading scheme:The Government is pledging to urgently fix an issue within the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), after it emerged some polluters are likely being over-compensated with taxpayer-funded carbon credits. [...] ...
The Marlborough District Council, tired of public scrutiny, wants to increase the amount it charges for LGOIMA requests:The cost of requesting official information from Marlborough's government agency could almost double after a jump in "fishing expeditions". Charges could be raised from $60 to $100 an hour for information supplied by ...
When Winston Peters was caught money laundering donations and stalking journalists, the Greens were conspicuous by their silence. It was another example of how getting along with their government partners was eroding their values and their own reputation. It was obviously unsustainable, and so now James Shaw has finally spoken ...
I am among the most pro-free speech people I know. I don’t doubt there are others more strident than me, but I’m certainly up there. And my support for freedom of expression isn’t limited to opposition to government-imposed restrictions. It extends to a belief that employers should have limited powers ...
With over 69,000 confirmed cases and 1,600 deaths, here’s your round-up of the latest coronavirus news. New disease and virus have now officially been named On the 11th February, the WHO Director General announced a new name for the disease: COVID-19 which is short for coronavirus disease 2019. The naming ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Feb 9, 2020 through Sat, Feb 15, 2020 Editor's Pick ANALYSIS-Climate change opens up 'frontier' farmland, but at what cost to the planet?Climate change could expand farmland globally by ...
After cross-examination Jones knew he would lose the defamation case he took against film maker Renae Maihi. That’s why he threw in the towel. The weight of evidence was clearly against the old tycoon with the defense presenting fifty articles to confirm Jones’ racist views.Being unable to harass somebody into ...
Sprung! Former NZ First president, Lester Gray, chats with RNZ's Guyon Espiner in the carpark of a Tauranga shopping centre.(Photo supplied anonymously to NZ First and The BFD.)IT’S CLEAR THAT an important aspect of Jacinda Ardern’s political success is her willingness to seek – and take – advice. This ...
Ruth Cunningham, Charlotte Paul, Andrew MoorePublic health responses to infectious diseases such as COVID-19 require us to draw on our common humanity and be explicit about our values. Recognising this will help us make good decisions in difficult situations so that, for example, the need to impose restrictive measures ...
The eastern Bay of Plenty town of Ōpōtiki is getting a new harbour, which will create 1,850 new jobs in the region, in a new round of regional services funding announced by Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones. Ōpōtiki's harbour is currently unusable by most ships, but it will receive ...
Darroch Ball MP, New Zealand First Spokesperson for Law and Order New Zealand First Law and Order spokesman Darroch Ball has submitted the ‘Sentencing (Priority of Interests in Sentencing) Amendment Bill’ – a Members Bill which introduces a new overarching ‘priority and weighting provision’ that courts must follow when sentencing ...
Fletcher Tabuteau MP, New Zealand First Deputy Leader A total delivery of 2,000 new Police Officers has been achieved. New Zealand First Deputy Leader, Fletcher Tabuteau attended the latest police graduation of Recruit Wing 335 in Porirua today. Mr Tabuteau said, “Increasing police numbers and boosting their resources was one of ...
Taupō District mayor David Trewavas has welcomed today’s announcement from regional economic development minister Shane Jones outlining $5.87m of funding for the re-development of the Taupō Airport. The bulk of the investment ($5 million) will come from the Provincial Growth Fund, while the rest will be from the New Zealand ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has defended multi-million dollar provincial growth fund money for Northland water storage. The New Zealand First leader, along with Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones, were recently in Dargaville to announce up to $12.745 million PGF funding top-up for water storage initiatives in the ...
One of our most immediate priorities upon forming Government was to get people out of sleeping in cars, garages, or on the street and into safe and warm housing. Since then, we've made major progress towards breaking the cycle of homelessness, including expanding Housing First, building more state houses, and ...
Kids learn better with a full stomach. That's why we launched our Lunches in Schools programme, which is already providing free and healthy school lunches to thousands of children so they can focus on what's important - learning. ...
Mark Patterson MP, New Zealand First List MP based in Clutha-Southland This afternoon to a crowd of over 100 people in Mataura -- Mark Patterson, New Zealand First List MP based in Clutha-Southland launched a parliamentary petition regarding the aluminium dross issue in Mataura, Southland. The petition asks that the ...
Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development New Zealand First Deputy Leader and Spokesperson for Finance, Fletcher Tabuteau has welcomed Statistics New Zealand’s latest report as a timely reminder of the value that this Coalition Government brings to every day New Zealanders: “This Coalition Government has meant a ...
Today New Zealand First made a pledge to campaign at the election to fund St John Ambulance the 90 per cent it has asked for. Government funding would allow St. John’s to achieve fully funded status. Leader of New Zealand First, Rt Hon Winston Peters publicly declared his determination to deliver ...
Darroch Ball MP, Spokesperson for Law and Order Newly released Police data shows once again the number of fleeing drivers have continued to skyrocket with a record 512 incidents occurring in December – almost tripling the number of incidents occurring just ten years ago, says New Zealand First Law and ...
While the Provincial Growth Fund has provided $2 million to set up temporary water supplies in Kaikohe and Kaitaia, Regional Economic Minister Shane Jones said he is greatly concerned that there are “issues” in implementing the projects. The Minister said the immediate solution was to pipe water from a bore ...
Mark Patterson MP, New Zealand First List MP for Clutha-Southland NZ First is calling on Rio Tinto to accept its responsibilities to the Southland community and enable the immediate removal of the toxic Aluminium Dross from the Mataura Paper Mill site. New Zealand First List MP for Clutha-Southland, Mark Patterson ...
The Coalition Government has announced that a further $500,000 will be given to help residents in Southland and Otago to speed up recovery efforts from the floods. It follows prior government assistance of $200,000 earlier this month where the Southland Mayoral Relief Fund received $100,000 to support communities impacted by ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones was on RNZ’s Morning Report talking about the recent droughts in the Northland region and what the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is doing to alleviate its impact. The PGF recently announced a funding of $2 million for temporary water supplies to Kaikohe and Kaitaia, ...
Speaking to The Country’s Jamie Mackay, New Zealand First MP and Cabinet Minister Shane Jones talks water storage, plant-based meat imitation, and superstar Hollywood director James Cameron. While water storage may have its critics, Minister Jones defended the scheme by saying: “unless we invest and continue to invest” in this ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones is accusing northern iwi leaders of selling out Māori by voting for ideologically-driven court cases rather than practical steps to increase water supply. “I just think that iwi leaders who think that water issues are going to be solved by perpetually fighting in the ...
A dairy owner in St Kilda, Dunedin was delighted to hear that an attempted robbery of his establishment was foiled by a government-funded security system. Sean Lee was delighted at how well the anti-theft smoke system worked. When a knife-wielding man entered the store, the shop assistant immediately pressed a ...
Customs says it stopped more than three tonnes of illegal drugs coming into New Zealand last year. This includes 1,180kg of methamphetamine, 329kg of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine precursors, which could have been converted into 246kg of methamphetamine, 739kg and 6469 pills of MDMA or Ecstasy and 60kg of cocaine. Offshore, ...
Hon. Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development Up to $2 million will be allocated from the Provincial Growth Fund to set up temporary water supplies in Kaikohe and Kaitaia where drought is biting hard, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. Drought conditions in Northland have led to ...
Darroch Ball, Spokesperson for Law and Order New Zealand First welcomes the deployment of an Eagle Police helicopter in Christchurch in what is a step towards fulfilling its long-standing goal to increase the use of police helicopters for the front line, particularly in addressing the scourge of fleeing drivers. Christchurch leads ...
It may have been the first sitting week of 2020, but our Government is already in full-swing - managing a strong economy, investing in infrastructure, and working to break the cycle of homelessness. Read below for all that, and more... ...
In a heated debate in Parliament, National's Deputy Leader Paula Bennett claimed that “nearly 1600 patched gang members have been added” since the Coalition Government took power. To illustrate her point, she altered a chart used by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to show her government’s progress in housing to instead ...
Speech by the Rt Hon Winston Peters at Parliament’s Opening 2020 "We all need insurance" This year New Zealanders are going to have a clear choice to make That choice is between: Optimism versus pessimism; More progress versus back to the future; Investment versus divestment; Unity versus division. New Zealand ...
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones has slammed the Board of Auckland Airport following the airport's runway closing twice within two weeks due to maintenance. Around 2,000 passengers were affected by last week’s runway closures, according to 1NEWS. Another maintenance closure on January 24 saw two international flights and three domestic flights ...
The Crown accounts are in a strong position to weather any economic uncertainty as a result of coronavirus, with the books in surplus and expenses close to forecast, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. The Treasury today released the Crown accounts for the seven months to January. The operating balance before ...
Supporting New Zealand to make most of digital and data driven technologies will be the focus of a new Digital Council that begins its work today. Minister for Government Digital Services, Kris Faafoi, and Minister of Statistics, James Shaw, have confirmed the group of experts chosen to advise the Government ...
Safety and climate change resilience are behind South Island regional roading projects that are being brought forward as part of the New Zealand Upgrade Programme, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. As part of the NZ Upgrade, $300 million was allocated for regional investment opportunities. “I’m pleased to ...
Digital and air connectivity in Fiordland are getting a big boost, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. As part of the $12 billion New Zealand Upgrade Programme announced in January, $300 million was allocated for regional investment opportunities, to be administered by the Provincial Development Unit. “I’m pleased ...
West Coast ports and roads will benefit from an investment of $18.6 million to improve safety and resilience and enable future economic growth, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. The $12 billion NZ Upgrade Programme announced last month allocated $300 million for regional investment opportunities, to be administered ...
Regional roading projects that will improve safety and resilience are being brought forward as part of the New Zealand Upgrade Programme, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. As part of the NZ Upgrade, $300 million was allocated for regional investment opportunities. “I spend a lot of time in ...
The Eastern Bay of Plenty will finally get the harbour development it has wanted for decades, thanks to a $79.4 million central Government investment, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. This game-changing project will revitalise the township of Ōpōtiki and the wider Eastern Bay of Plenty, creating hundreds ...
Regional New Zealand will be a hive of activity in the coming months as the New Zealand Upgrade Programme delivers on its promise to modernise our infrastructure, prepare for climate change and help grow our economy. As part of the $12 billion NZ Upgrade Programme announced by the Government last ...
A milestone has been reached with the graduation of more than 2,000 new Police officers since the Coalition Government took office in October 2017. Police Minister Stuart Nash says the graduation today of Wing 335 marks a surge of 2,023 new officers, and coincides with some significant breakthroughs against organised ...
Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media Minister, Kris Faafoi, and the Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins, have welcomed a new cyber security qualification as a step towards countering cyber threats and keeping New Zealanders safe. Attending the launch of the new Level 6 Diploma of Cyber Security at Auckland’s Unitec Institute ...
Government Ministers today celebrated 20 years of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park/ Ko te Pataka kai o Tikapa Moana/ Te Moananui a Toi, and recognise there is much to celebrate and so much more to do to give nature a helping hand. Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage said “New Zealanders care deeply about nature.I want to ...
Prepared remarks on coronavirus by Finance Minister Grant Robertson to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and Massey University. Good morning ladies and gentlemen, The topic of this speech is the Budget 2020 priorities. But, given the considerable interest that I imagine is in the room about COVID-19 coronavirus, I do ...
E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā iwi, e ngā rau rangatira ma. Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa. Ni sa bula vinaka. Namaste Thank you Shamima, Hon. Minister Vuniwaqa, community leaders and Women’s Crisis Centre staff for your warm welcome. It’s an honour and privilege to officially ...
The Government has released a comprehensive response to ensuring New Zealanders get a fairer deal at the petrol pump. This follows the Commerce Commission fuel market study which found motorists were paying more than they should for petrol and includes: Fuel Market Bill drafting, to pass mid-year Industry consultation in ...
E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā iwi, e ngā rau rangatira ma Tēnā koutou katoa Ni sa bula vinaka As-salaam alaikum It is a privilege to be here today. Thank you for welcoming us to your house of prayer. Thank you for your warmth. Thank you for greeting ...
Taupō Airport is to be upgraded and expanded through a $5.9 million Government funding boost, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. “Taupō Airport is the gateway to the Central North Island. It is essential for both keeping local people and businesses connected, but also to bring more people ...
The Minister of Housing Megan Woods has confirmed the Government is working with Rotorua Lakes District Council and Te Arawa for the second place-based assessment to better understand the housing and urban issues affecting the city. “Every New Zealander has a right to a warm, safe and secure place to ...
19 new community homes (in addition to 14 opened in December) delivered in Takanini, Auckland 500 people housed by CORT Housing Trust by end of March 2,290 new public housing homes delivered in Auckland (November 2017 – December 2019). Another nineteen new public housing homes are being delivered in Auckland, ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Minister for Trade and Export Growth David Parker met today with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to discuss ways to strengthen ties between New Zealand and India. “India is a priority relationship for New Zealand. We share common democratic traditions, growing two-way trade, extensive people-to-people links, ...
Speech to the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA) Delhi, India Wednesday 26 February 2020 [CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY] The Indo-Pacific: from principles to partnerships Distinguished guests, good afternoon and thank you for your invitation. It is good to be here at a time where New Zealand needs less of an introduction than ...
Tihei mauri ora Te Whare e tu nei Te Papa e takoto Tēnā korua No reira tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa Ni sa bula Vinaka It is a real pleasure to be here today, and to have the honour of addressing you all. If you’ll indulge me I’m ...
Improved air quality to support better health and environmental wellbeing is the focus of proposed amendments to air quality regulations, says the Associate Minister for the Environment, Hon Nanaia Mahuta. “Although our air quality is good in most places, during winter certain places have spikes in air pollution, mainly from ...
The remote eastern Bay of Plenty community of Raukokere will receive a Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) investment of $10.6 million for a water storage facility, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones says. “This is great news for the rural community. The landowner, Te Whānau a Maruhaeremuri Hapū Trust, will use ...
The Lake Ōkaro lakebed has transferred to Te Arawa Lakes Trust, Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti Kelvin Davis announced today. Kelvin Davis joined Te Arawa at Te Papaiōuru Marae in Rotorua to celebrate the reinstatement of Te Arawa Lakes Trust as a key decision maker over the bed ...
New legislation is being proposed which aims to reduce the stress and financial hardship caused by late payments to small businesses. The Minister for Small Business Stuart Nash is considering stricter rules around payment practices between businesses. “Late payments from large organisations to smaller suppliers can be crippling for these ...
A new partnership programme between the New Zealand Police and Fiji Police will focus on combatting transnational organised crime and enhancing investigative skills, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on the first day of her visit to Fiji. The programme will see: · New Zealand Institute of Environmental Science and Research ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Prime Minister Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama met today in Suva, and renewed their commitment to continue to strengthen Fiji-New Zealand relations on a foundation of shared values and equal partnership. The Prime Ministers acknowledged the kinship between Fijians and New Zealanders, one that has endured over ...
A $19.9 million investment from the Provincial Growth Fund will help develop essential infrastructure for an industrial hub in the Bay of Plenty town of Kawerau, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones says. “The funding will go to three projects to further develop the Putauaki Trust Industrial Hub, an industrial ...
The Provincial Growth Fund is investing $8.3 million on a roading package for Mahia that will lead to greater and wider economic benefits for the region and beyond, Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced at an event in Mahia today. The $8.3 million announced consists of: $7 ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has welcomed new reporting showing the Coalition Government is on track to meet its child poverty targets, with 18,400 children lifted out of poverty as a result of the Families Package. Stats NZ has released the first set of comprehensive child poverty statistics since the Government ...
Associate Minister of Transport Julie Anne Genter today announced that Bikes in Schools facilities have been rolled out to 20,000 more kiwi kids under this Government. She made the announcement at the opening of a new bike track at Henderson North School in Auckland. “Bikes in Schools facilities give kids ...
Benefit settings rise in line with wages as of 1 April Main benefits will increase by over 3 percent, instead of 1.66 percent, on 1 April with the Government’s decision to annually adjust benefit rates to increases in the average wage. The Minister for Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni, said ...
Strengthening New Zealand’s political and business ties with India will be the focus of Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters’ and Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker’s visit to India this week. The Ministers are co-leading a high level business delegation to India to support increased people and economic engagement ...
The Minister for Pacific Peoples, Aupito William Sio continues to champion for greater Pacific participation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers with the announcement of the Toloa Awards, with 8 recipients of the Toloa Community Fund and 13 Toloa Tertiary Scholarships. “The Toloa Programme encourages more Pacific peoples ...
Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage has extended the date for people to have their say on proposed changes to improve management of whitebait across New Zealand. Submissions were due to close on 2 March 2020 but will now remain open until 9am on Monday 16 March 2020. “I have ...
The endangered toroa/Antipodean albatross has new international protection for its 100,000km annual migration, thanks to collaborative efforts led by New Zealand, Australia and Chile. Today, 130 countries agreed to strictly protect Antipodean albatross at the Conference of Parties on the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild ...
No sales to under-18-year-olds No advertising and sponsorship of vaping products and e-cigarettes No vaping or smokeless tobacco in smokefree areas Regulates vaping product safety comprehensively, - including devices, flavours and ingredients Ensure vaping products are available for those who want to quit smoking Vaping regulation that balances ...
Justice Minister Andrew Little will travel to Berlin tomorrow to represent New Zealand at a high-level summit on nuclear disarmament. This year, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) celebrates 50 years since it entered into force. “New Zealand’s proud record and leadership on nuclear disarmament is unwavering, so it’s important we are present ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will visit two of New Zealand’s most important Pacific partners, Fiji and Australia, next week. The visit to Fiji will be the first by a New Zealand Prime Minister in four years and comes during the 50th anniversary of Fijian independence and diplomatic relations between our ...
Justice Minister Andrew Little and New Zealand First MP Darroch Ball, have today announced the appointment of the Chief Commissioner of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), the location, and the membership of the Establishment Advisory Group. Colin Carruthers QC has been appointed Chief Commissioner of the CCRC for an ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson insists NZ is in a strong position to weather the fallout from coronavirus, even though Australia has declared it a pandemic. He underlines the Crown accounts are buoyant, the fundamentals of the economy are strong and careful management has seen the economy continue to grow in ...
On the heels of the arrival of The Outsider on NEON, Jean Sergent explores how screen adaptations of Stephen King’s work are able to take on a life of their own. Stephen King, the 72 year old horror author from Portland, has a better work ethic than you or I and ...
Iwi are too reliant on investments in property and primary industries, restricting returns for their members, according to a new report. The annual Iwi Investment Report by consulting firm TDB Advisory, showed the country's eight largest iwi with a collective $9 billion worth of assets, had weak growth in the ...
Announcing a package of regional capital projects worth about $190 million, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones mentioned climate change. He said Regional New Zealand “will be a hive of activity in the coming months as the New Zealand Upgrade Programme delivers on its promise to modernise our infrastructure, prepare ...
The people of India have been holding mass protests all over India ever since the anti Muslim and anti working class Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was enacted into law on 12 December 2019. The state has made many attempts to suppress the rising ...
New Zealand consumer confidence remains high, according to the ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Index. The index was down just one point on last month to 122. "Consumers are feeling pretty happy with their lot at the moment - the lifting housing market is making homeowners feel richer, job opportunities are ...
Jacinda Ardern has described difficult conversations with Australia as being "gnarly'' - but says the trans-Tasman relationship is strong enough to get through them. ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s contentPolitical donations Yvette McCullough (RNZ): Transparency International warns need for political funding reform is urgent Gordon Campbell: On where the ...
Continued strong demand for chicken, burgers and tacos has resulted in another strong year for Restaurant Brands. The fast food operator's net profit for the year ended December fell nearly 16 percent to $30.1m, but that was for a 44-week period, versus the year earlier's 52-week period. That company changed ...
The New Zealand share market opened lower on Friday, following a sixth day of world market losses as investors respond to the economic threat of coronavirus. The NZX benchmark top 50 index opened down 1.5 percent, after last night's 0.9 percent fall. The benchmark top 50 Index has fallen more ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maggie Tonkin, Senior Lecturer, English and Creative Writing, University of Adelaide Review: Dance Nation, directed by Imara Savage. State Theatre Company South Australia and Belvoir for the Adelaide Festival Dance is at the heart of playwright Clare Barron’s Dance Nation, from the ...
The Government’s response to new revelations that one of the country’s biggest fishing companies, Talley’s, and its managing director has donated tens of thousands of undisclosed dollars to the New Zealand First Foundation is unacceptable. “The ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Michelle Grattan talks with Assistant Professor Caroline Fisher about the week in politics, including the implementation of an emergency plan to tackle the spread of coronavirus, the major parties’ policies on climate change, national security ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Euan Ritchie, Associate Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University On Churchill Island, southeast of Melbourne, small cone-shaped, shallow holes (digs) puncture the grass. They’re widespread, and reveal moist soil below ...
The University of Auckland's Tim Dare examines what SkyCity's 'de-platforming' of controversial speaker Peter Singer might mean for free speech In work first appearing in the late 1970s, Princeton Philosophy Professor Peter Singer argued that in a limited range of circumstances parents ought to be able to ask doctors to end ...
By Stefan Armbruster of SBS News in Brisbane Thousands of New Zealanders who are denied disability support are hoping Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will take the issue up with her counterpart Scott Morrison when they meet today. Despite paying taxes and the NDIS levy, New Zealanders who have come ...
The Maori Development Minister Nanaia Mahuta and her Australian counterpart have met in Sydney and formally agreed to share ideas on how to better support each country's indegineous people ...
Apparently you have a vacancy on your programme after Kanoa Lloyd decided she didn’t “need to see a homophobic Pasodoble or a xenophobic Cha Cha.” Now, we have to admit we don’t know what a Pasodoble is. But we do know xenophobia when we see ...
Public services are increasingly migrating to the internet, but as the government prioritises digital interaction many of the people who need those services the most are left behind, according to a new report. Pita, an elderly gentleman, received a letter from the IRD that claimed he hadn’t paid his tax obligations ...
By Felipe F. Salvosa II in Manila Philippines Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon has dismissed comments by Senator Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go that “politics” is behind the filing of a proposed concurrent resolution calling on regulators to temporarily allow television giant ABS-CBN to operate as Congress deliberates on its ...
The Serious Fraud Office has received a referral from NZ Police in relation to Lianne Dalziel’s election expenses. The SFO will be assessing the matter and has no further comment at this time. ...
Employers are encouraged to sign up for Road Safety Week 2020 (4-10 May), and join hundreds of communities, schools and organisations running activities to raise awareness of road safety issues. Brake, the road safety charity, which coordinates the event, ...
A poem by US National Youth Poet Laureate Kara Jackson.i woke up and the day caught me in its mouth like a strand of yarni am usefulthe motivation for a scarf, maybe some stitch started to be finishedi will make up someone’sheat i will be a fireso intricate it can be worn i ...
The euthanasia debate took an unusual turn this week when Vision NZ, the political party associated with the Destiny Church, made an unexpected policy announcement. It appeared that Vision NZ supported voluntary euthanasia, but just for one person, co-host of TV3’s The Project, Kanoa Lloyd. The now former campaign manager ...
State Services Commissioner Peter Hughes has today announced the findings of an inquiry into how Budget-sensitive material was accessed at the Treasury. The inquiry, led by Ms Jenn Bestwick, was launched by the Commission at the request of the Treasury ...
A scathing report into the accidental release of sensitive Budget 2019 information by the Treasury has found poor procurement processes and governance failures by senior leadership were to blame for security flaws in its website not being identified earlier The inquiry into the accidental release of Budget 2019 information prior ...
The Port of Tauranga's first half result is flat, despite a drop in cargo handled through the country's biggest port. The port company's net profit dropped 1.4 percent to $48.3 million in the six months to December, but was otherwise flat after accounting for a tax adjustment of $0.6m. Revenue ...
For those mothers who gave birth by non-elective Caesarean section, feelings of sadness – even of failure – can be overwhelming, writes Janice Sharan.I’m sitting next to my 15-month-old. He’s sleeping peacefully, his mop of dark hair damp with sweat, lips pursed and his chest rising and falling as he ...
Today is the last day Kiwibank will accept cheques, and its customers will no longer be able to make a payment by cheque. Inland Revenue and ACC will also follow suit on 1 March. The number of cheques has been going down by about 20 percent year-on-year and last year ...
Television New Zealand has reported a strong increase in first half profit, driven up by an increase in advertising revenue. The state-owned broadcaster made a net profit of $15.8 million in the six months to December, beating the year earlier by $5m or 47 percent. "Strong ratings performance for our ...
Air New Zealand has launched its latest safety video that moves away from celebrity appearances to push an environmental message on New Zealand's endangered native birds. The video A Journey to Safety takes a different approach from the widely criticised video of two years ago - called a 'weird mish-mash' ...
A report into how sensitive documents were accessed by the National Party before last year's Budget has found Treasury governance, oversight and risk management processes fell short. ...
In the lead up to Children’s Day in New Zealand on Sunday 1 March, The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) Aotearoa NZ President Dr Jeff Brown says the wellbeing of children and their whānau must remain a priority for all of society, not only ...
A Kiwi firm is trialling a mobile device and app that could test for Covid-19 in hospitals, schools, factories and homes anywhere in the world within 40 minutes No-one wishes harm on anyone, but sometimes a crisis is also an opportunity to quickly develop new technologies and systems to solve ...
Ahead of the forthcoming public meeting on Monday 2 March regarding the Newlands Volunteer Fire Brigade former Ohariu MP Hon Peter Dunne is extending his best wishes to all those involved in the current campaign to keep the station open. "Although ...
Sure, the new wave of RTDs might have cool labels and no carbs or whatever, but for Sam Brooks, none come close to the perfection held within that little yellow can.RTDs are coming back, if they were ever really gone. I remember the halcyon days of getting drunk off Purple ...
The ongoing strike by NorthTec tutors steps up a notch today with a public rally. For two weeks the members of Te Hautū Kahurangi | New Zealand Tertiary Education Union have been on strike. The action has meant not completing attendance registers; ...
The cut price fuel retailer, Waitomo says the Government’s proposed changes to the fuel market will mean customers will be able to see if they are getting fleeced. ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will use today’s meeting with counterpart Scott Morrison in Sydney to tell him his Government is deporting Australian criminals to New Zealand. ...
Coronavirus: Finance Minister Grant Robertson - NZ in shadow of the biggest economic uncertainty in recent times; and A2 Milk result: Net profit leaps 21% on China sales. ...
Thousands of Kiwis are expected to attend the March for Life in Auckland this Saturday (29 February). With Parliament just days away from voting on a Bill to liberalise abortion-up-to-birth in New Zealand those marching will be making a public stand ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Tormey, Professor of Politics, University of Bristol Of the many issues thrown up by Brexit, one of the most pressing is the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom. Brexit was in large measure a revolt by a certain section of English ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katherine Gibney, NHMRC early career fellow, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity While countries around the globe have been taking precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, it has now been reported in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee Baumgartner, Professor of Fisheries and River Management, Institute for Land, Water, and Society, Charles Sturt University As this summer draws to a close, it marks just over a year since successive fish death events at Menindee in Lower Darling River made ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW Every January Larry Fink, the head of the world’s largest funds manager, BlackRock, sends a letter to the chief executives of major public companies. This year’s letter focused on climate risk. “Climate change has become a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin Davis, Professor of Finance, University of Melbourne The government’s financial system inquiry, on which I sat, reported five years ago. It recommended that the creators of financial products be subject to a design and distribution obligation (DDO), which would mean the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andy Simionato, Lecturer, RMIT University Books are always transforming. The book we hold today has arrived through a number of materials (clay, papyrus, parchment, paper, pixels) and forms (tablet, scroll, codex, kindle). The book can be a tool for communication, reading, entertainment, ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Ardern gets diplomatic, fuel market legislation released, and police pinged over employment records breach.There hasn’t really been much coverage of it in The Bulletin, but it’s worth looking back at quite an important diplomatic week for the PM. She has been ...
This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list and described by Steve Braunias.Fiction 1 The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox (Victoria University Press, $35) ReadingRoom broke the storydetailing how Knox’s novel was fought over by US publishers in a ...
Sky Sport News presenters Kate King and Goran Paladin deliver the latest news of Kiwi sporting women at home and around the globe. *WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE* Hurdler Portia Bing has reinvented herself in a bid to make the Tokyo Olympics and take another step towards putting last year's disqualification at ...
Embarrassingly for the Department of Conservation, a scheduled ministerial announcement last year was postponed. David Williams reports A much-delayed project to better protect the Mackenzie Basin’s stunning landscapes and bolster biodiversity has a new boss. In the 2018 Budget, Conservation and Lands Minister Eugenie Sage announced $2.6 million to find ...
Trying to reduce drownings - and bring on a new generation of surfers - the Wave Warriors teach kids from low-decile schools water safety wrapped in a surf lesson. Eight-year-old Athena Talavai is less than half the height of the surfboard she’s expected to stand on, and probably only a quarter of the weight. She ...
The decision to give Ihumātao the highest heritage listing available sends a strong signal to the Government and Auckland Council, write Dr Frances Hancock and Nicola Short Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (HNZPT) has upgraded the heritage listing of the Ōtuataua Stonefields Reserve and included adjacent and long-contested land at ...
If Simon Bridges manages to pull off an election victory, his next headache will be choosing his Cabinet from a somewhat uninspiring line-up, writes Peter Dunne Every election year there is a call to use the election as a chance to refresh Parliament and get rid of at least some ...
An anonymous Department of Conservation staff member, who wishes to be known only as the Carefree Vigilante, provides a handy guide to dealing with menstruation, and menstrual products, in the wild.This post was first published on the Department of Conservation blog.I’ve got six or seven rational fears and about 900 ...
There is a surge of cases of the virus outside China. Australia says it expects Covid-19 to turn into a global pandemic. We cannot afford to panic in New Zealand. But we must prepare, writes Dr Siouxsie Wiles.It’s now clear to me that the new coronavirus responsible for Covid-19 is ...
The Serious Fraud Office is once again investigating a headline-generating case. But is it prosecuting the right crimes - or just the winnable ones? Compared with previous famous finance company collapses involving hundreds of millions of dollars the numbers are small; sitting MP Jami-Lee Ross and three Auckland businessmen face SFO charges ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The government would be looking for the private sector to put in four or five times as much as it invests in research and development of particular technologies to reduce emissions, Energy Minister Angus Taylor ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Two issues are currently presenting the Morrison government with fast-moving targets. One is the fallout from the coronavirus, where the picture has been altering on a near-daily basis. The other is very different – the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The federal government has activated its emergency response plan to deal with a spread of the coronavirus locally, in anticipation of it becoming a “pandemic”. It is also considering limited assistance for those hardest hit ...
In an apparent change of tune, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern expects to raise the topic of climate change with Australian counterpart Scott Morrison tomorrow. ...
The Government says it wants to protect small businesses from getting shafted by big companies who don’t or won’t pay their bills on time. The move can’t come too soon. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Muecke, Clinical senior lecturer in Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of Adelaide Humans are physiologically hardwired to love and seek out sweet things. It’s an ancient survival mechanism that evolved to prepare our bodies for periods of fasting when food supplies ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marilyn McMahon, Deputy Dean, School of Law, Deakin University The NSW government has just introduced a bill that will, among other significant reforms, make it easier for a jury to be informed about the prior convictions of a person on trial for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marilyn McMahon, Deputy Dean, School of Law, Deakin University The NSW government has just introduced a bill that will, among other significant reforms, make it easier for a jury to be informed about the prior convictions of a person on trial for ...
By RNZ Pacific Jacinda Ardern has paid tribute to the three Fijians who died in last year’s Christchurch mosque shootings. Ardern spoke today at Lautoka Mosque as part of her trip to Fiji to remember Imam Hafiz Musa Patel, Ashraf Ali Razak and Ashraf Ali, who died almost a ...
The Real Pod reassembles to dissect the cultured fourth week of The Bachelorette NZ with special thanks to Nando’s.This week on The Bachelorette NZ, a burrito bust-up ends in anaphylaxis, Steve chows down on some one-ply, and the Buenos Aires hostel goes full Lord of the Flies. It’s become abundantly ...
Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand, the Catholic Bishops' agency for justice, peace and development, is concerned that the latestchild poverty numbers show that there has been anincrease in material hardship,with 4100 more children living in ...
Dr Bryce Edwards.Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni described this year’s annual benefit increases of 3 per cent as “significant”, and “a way of sharing the wealth”. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern also heralded them as the biggest increase to benefits in nine years, if National’s 2015 one-off adjustments are excluded. ...
Is it the kind of headline that will win votes at the general election? “Rock-star reception in Fijian village” followed by a sub-head “Rapturous greeting for Ardern during visit to launch $3m sanitation project”. The reporter (veteran Barry Soper, Newstalk ZB’s political editor) poses the rhetorical question: “Is there any ...
The New Zealand First Foundation received $100,000 in just one week from two rich-listers, whose donations remained secret because the individual payments fell below the disclosure threshold. ...
Open mike 07/03/2015 
Open mike is your post.
Christchurch Mayor and former Labour MP Lianne Dalziel has been referred to the Serious Fraud Office over her attempt to launder local election donations. So, three of the biggest scams used by parties to launder donations and hide who is influencing them - donation splitting, trusts, and auctions - are ...2 hours ago
Many readers will probably have read this RNZ article (or heard the related interview), or seen calls for consultation on the Ministry of Education’s suggested changes to the number of subjects – and achievement standards – on offer to year 11 students. I’ve been following (& participating, where I ...5 hours ago
Method In Our Madness? When a liberal-democratic society encounters racism its first impulse is to shut it down – not interrogate it. But, is this wise? Is it reasonable to assume that a phenomenon as powerful, pernicious and persistent as racism is entirely without purpose? Surely, there must be, as Shakespeare puts it: ...7 hours ago
Here is the speech that Maya Forstater gave at the Woman’s Place UK Women’s Liberation 2020 conference at UCL on February 1st In a recent newsletter she wrote: it was an amazing day (and brilliant to meet so many people in real life). I talked about what makes people and ...18 hours ago
A New Hope from the National Party leader ...1 day ago
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BAMS survey of 2018 extreme weather The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society has published a collection of articles examining unusually extreme weather events of 2018 and connections of those to climate change. These investigations are listed separately below but thanks to the generosity of AMS appear free for ...1 day ago
Fans are outraged at the prospect of Destiny Church pastor Hannah Tamaki joining the Black Caps ...2 days ago
I am about to mail my overseas ballot to Florida so that it can be counted in the Democratic primary on March 17. In Florida you have closed as opposed to open primaries, which means that one must declare a party preference in order to vote in a party primary. ...6 days ago
In mid-December the Israeli secret police, the Shin Beit, revealed it had arrested dozens of Palestinian left-wing activists, including members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), in the previous few months. Among those arrested was one of the central leaders of the PFLP, Khalida Jarrar. As ...1 week ago
I am among the most pro-free speech people I know. I don’t doubt there are others more strident than me, but I’m certainly up there. And my support for freedom of expression isn’t limited to opposition to government-imposed restrictions. It extends to a belief that employers should have limited powers ...2 weeks ago
The eastern Bay of Plenty town of Ōpōtiki is getting a new harbour, which will create 1,850 new jobs in the region, in a new round of regional services funding announced by Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones. Ōpōtiki's harbour is currently unusable by most ships, but it will receive ...4 hours ago
One of our most immediate priorities upon forming Government was to get people out of sleeping in cars, garages, or on the street and into safe and warm housing. Since then, we've made major progress towards breaking the cycle of homelessness, including expanding Housing First, building more state houses, and ...2 days ago
The Crown accounts are in a strong position to weather any economic uncertainty as a result of coronavirus, with the books in surplus and expenses close to forecast, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. The Treasury today released the Crown accounts for the seven months to January. The operating balance before ...5 hours ago
Finance Minister Grant Robertson insists NZ is in a strong position to weather the fallout from coronavirus, even though Australia has declared it a pandemic. He underlines the Crown accounts are buoyant, the fundamentals of the economy are strong and careful management has seen the economy continue to grow in ...10 mins ago
On the heels of the arrival of The Outsider on NEON, Jean Sergent explores how screen adaptations of Stephen King’s work are able to take on a life of their own. Stephen King, the 72 year old horror author from Portland, has a better work ethic than you or I and ...13 mins ago
Iwi are too reliant on investments in property and primary industries, restricting returns for their members, according to a new report. The annual Iwi Investment Report by consulting firm TDB Advisory, showed the country's eight largest iwi with a collective $9 billion worth of assets, had weak growth in the ...21 mins ago
Announcing a package of regional capital projects worth about $190 million, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones mentioned climate change. He said Regional New Zealand “will be a hive of activity in the coming months as the New Zealand Upgrade Programme delivers on its promise to modernise our infrastructure, prepare ...22 mins ago
The people of India have been holding mass protests all over India ever since the anti Muslim and anti working class Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was enacted into law on 12 December 2019. The state has made many attempts to suppress the rising ...26 mins ago
New Zealand consumer confidence remains high, according to the ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Index. The index was down just one point on last month to 122. "Consumers are feeling pretty happy with their lot at the moment - the lifting housing market is making homeowners feel richer, job opportunities are ...27 mins ago
Jacinda Ardern has described difficult conversations with Australia as being "gnarly'' - but says the trans-Tasman relationship is strong enough to get through them. ...27 mins ago
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.
Continued strong demand for chicken, burgers and tacos has resulted in another strong year for Restaurant Brands. The fast food operator's net profit for the year ended December fell nearly 16 percent to $30.1m, but that was for a 44-week period, versus the year earlier's 52-week period. That company changed ...31 mins ago
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The University of Auckland's Tim Dare examines what SkyCity's 'de-platforming' of controversial speaker Peter Singer might mean for free speech In work first appearing in the late 1970s, Princeton Philosophy Professor Peter Singer argued that in a limited range of circumstances parents ought to be able to ask doctors to end ...2 hours ago
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Air New Zealand has launched its latest safety video that moves away from celebrity appearances to push an environmental message on New Zealand's endangered native birds. The video A Journey to Safety takes a different approach from the widely criticised video of two years ago - called a 'weird mish-mash' ...4 hours ago
A Kiwi firm is trialling a mobile device and app that could test for Covid-19 in hospitals, schools, factories and homes anywhere in the world within 40 minutes No-one wishes harm on anyone, but sometimes a crisis is also an opportunity to quickly develop new technologies and systems to solve ...4 hours ago
The cut price fuel retailer, Waitomo says the Government’s proposed changes to the fuel market will mean customers will be able to see if they are getting fleeced. ...6 hours ago
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will use today’s meeting with counterpart Scott Morrison in Sydney to tell him his Government is deporting Australian criminals to New Zealand. ...6 hours ago
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Cycling the length of NZ has got Rod Oram thinking about farming in the climate change era ...8 hours ago
This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list and described by Steve Braunias. Fiction 1 The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox (Victoria University Press, $35) ReadingRoom broke the story detailing how Knox’s novel was fought over by US publishers in a ...9 hours ago
Sky Sport News presenters Kate King and Goran Paladin deliver the latest news of Kiwi sporting women at home and around the globe. *WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE* Hurdler Portia Bing has reinvented herself in a bid to make the Tokyo Olympics and take another step towards putting last year's disqualification at ...9 hours ago
Embarrassingly for the Department of Conservation, a scheduled ministerial announcement last year was postponed. David Williams reports A much-delayed project to better protect the Mackenzie Basin’s stunning landscapes and bolster biodiversity has a new boss. In the 2018 Budget, Conservation and Lands Minister Eugenie Sage announced $2.6 million to find ...9 hours ago
Trying to reduce drownings - and bring on a new generation of surfers - the Wave Warriors teach kids from low-decile schools water safety wrapped in a surf lesson. Eight-year-old Athena Talavai is less than half the height of the surfboard she’s expected to stand on, and probably only a quarter of the weight. She ...9 hours ago
The decision to give Ihumātao the highest heritage listing available sends a strong signal to the Government and Auckland Council, write Dr Frances Hancock and Nicola Short Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (HNZPT) has upgraded the heritage listing of the Ōtuataua Stonefields Reserve and included adjacent and long-contested land at ...9 hours ago
If Simon Bridges manages to pull off an election victory, his next headache will be choosing his Cabinet from a somewhat uninspiring line-up, writes Peter Dunne Every election year there is a call to use the election as a chance to refresh Parliament and get rid of at least some ...9 hours ago
The Serious Fraud Office is once again investigating a headline-generating case. But is it prosecuting the right crimes - or just the winnable ones? Compared with previous famous finance company collapses involving hundreds of millions of dollars the numbers are small; sitting MP Jami-Lee Ross and three Auckland businessmen face SFO charges ...10 hours ago
The Government says it wants to protect small businesses from getting shafted by big companies who don’t or won’t pay their bills on time. The move can’t come too soon. ...20 hours ago
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.