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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From the Wall Street Journal:Inside a room of the ornately decorated Hotel du Palais during last month’s Group of Seven summit in Biarritz, France, President Trump awaited a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi. Mr. Trump looked over a gathering of American and Egyptian officials and called out in ...
by the Redline blog collective At Redline we are very saddened to hear of the death of Magdalen Burns who passed away on the morning of Friday, September 13 (British time). Magdalen was a great fighter for the rights of women in general and lesbian women in particular, a defender ...
The Brexit issue has certainly brought with it a series of apparently difficult constitutional issues, many of them concerning the respective roles of the executive and parliament. Most of them arise because of the unwillingness of MPs, despite their professions to the contrary, to be bound by a constitutional rarity ...
. . This blogpost is different to my usual format of reporting on issues… Since July 1011, I have blogged on a variety of political issues; near always political and/or environmental; mostly highly critical of the previous National Government. Other issues included Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and repression of ...
Those close to the Police Minister believe the initiative may be the result of Nash “seeing a great deal” on AliExpress. In a move that comes seemingly out of nowhere, Police Minister Stuart Nash announced this afternoon that he expects all frontline staff to don bearskin hats, famously worn by ...
The government has released its Arms Legislation Bill, containing the second tranche of changes to gun laws following the March 15 massacre. And it all looks quite sensible: a national gun register, higher penalties for illegal possession and dealing, tighter restrictions on arms dealers and shooting clubs, and a shorter ...
Private prisons are a stain on humanity. Prison operators explicitly profit from human misery, then lobby for longer prisons terms so they can keep on profiting. And in the US, prison companies run not only local and state prisons, but also Donald Trump's immigration concentration camps. Faced with this moral ...
When National was in power, they were very keen on Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) - basicly, using private companies to finance public infrastructure as a way of hiding debt from the public. They were keen on using them for everything - roads, schools, hospitals. But as the UK shows, that "service" ...
Moving And Shaking: There was a time when people spoke matter-of-factly about the “labour movement” – a political phenomenon understood to embrace much more than the Labour Party. Included within the term’s definition was the whole trade union movement – many of whose members looked upon the Labour Party as ...
by Philip Ferguson Much of the left, even people who formally identify as marxists, have collapsed politically in the face of postmodern gender theory of the sort pioneered by American philosopher Judith Butler. For Butler even biological sex is socially constructed. “If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps ...
The media is reporting that the (alleged) Labour party sexual assaulter has resigned from their job at Parliament, which means hopefully he won't be turning up there making people feel unsafe in future. Good. But as with everything about this scandal, it just raises other questions. Most significantly: why the ...
By Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern I am every bit as angry as you are. I am every bit as disappointed as you must be. The people with power, oversight and the ability to do something about these processes within the Labour Party should be ashamed. Whoever those people are, I ...
Property developers think there is an "oversupply" of houses in Auckland:High turnover rates and falling prices may be a sign that there are too many new houses going in to some parts of Auckland, commentators say. [...] Property developer David Whitburn said there was a "bit of an oversupply" in ...
Labour Party president Nigel Haworth resigned yesterday over the party's sexual assault scandal. But while that's good news, its unlikely to take away the stench of a coverup. Because according to Paula Bennett in Parliament yesterday, pretty much everyone in the Prime Minister's office was involved as well:I have been ...
Two-Faced? Labour insiders' commitment to the neoliberal status quo puts them at odds with their party’s membership; its trade union affiliates; and a majority of Labour voters, but this only serves to strengthen the perception they have of themselves as a special elite. Among the lesser breeds, they’ll talk up a ...
There has been a lot of talk about Boris Johnson wanting an election, and he has blustered with great gusto about 'chicken' Jeremy Corbyn refusing one, but I think there are many reasons why he is secretly glad he has been refused the opportunity:The Tories are an utter rabble,tearing themselves ...
Scottish appeal court judges have declared that Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament in the run-up to the October Brexit deadline is unlawful. The three judges, chaired by Lord Carloway, Scotland’s most senior judge, overturned an earlier ruling that the courts did not have the powers to interfere in the prime ...
By Simon Bridges. The following is a press release from the office of Simon Bridges, leader of The National Party. Key ora, New Zealand. Happy Maori Language Week. Look, I’m writing to you today because I want to clear something up. There’s been a lot of kerfuffle around some things ...
I understand there's some stuff going round about how the SIS "was removed from the list of public offices covered by the Public Records Act in 2017". The context of course being their records derived from US torture, which will be disposed of or sealed. The good news is that ...
Dr. Christopher Labos and Jonathan Jarry discuss the recent Canadian fluoride/IQ research. They provide an expert analysis of the paper and its problems. Click on image to go to podcast. The critical debate about the recent ...
Australia is burning down again, and meanwhile its natural disaster minister is denying climate change:Australia’s minister responsible for drought and natural disasters, David Littleproud, has said that he doesn’t “know if climate change is manmade”. Clarifying earlier comments that the question is “irrelevant” when considering the Coalition government’s response to ...
Auckland Philippines Solidarity is excited to host Professor Judy Taguiwalo for a speaking tour of NZ in September. She is a well-known activist in the Philippines and was a political prisoner under the Marcos dictatorship. Professor Taguiwalo briefly served as a Cabinet member under President Duterte but was forced from ...
This open letter to the Green Party was penned after an opinion piece by Jill Abigail, a feminist and founding member of the party, was censored by the Greens’ leadership. (Redline has reprinted her article here).The intolerance of the Green Party leaders and their acceptance of the misogyny of gender ...
Today is a Member's day, and David Seymour's End of Life Choice Bill continues its slow crawl through its committee stage. They're spending the whole day on it today, though the first hour is likely to be spent on voting left over from last time. After that they'll move on ...
An ambitious plan to fly to Los Angeles petered out into a brief sight-seeing trip and a desire to return home and get some sleep before work tomorrow. Air New Zealand has confirmed a flight to Los Angeles last night was turned back about a quarter of the way into ...
There appears to be consensus – by omission – that the concept of indigenous futures should be accepted at face value. So I scavenged the internet to see if I could locate an academic descriptor or a framework around how we think about it as a concept, and whether it ...
Here’s another novelty chocolate to shove in your gob, New Zealand Cadbury could be seeking to make itself great again with a rumoured new release: Pineapple Trumps, a spin on its classic chocolate-encased pineapple treat and do-it-yourself tooth remover. The global confectionery manufacturer and bumbling “before” character in an infomercial, ...
During my time in the Pentagon I had the privilege of sitting down with military leaders and defence and security officials from a variety of Latin American nations. Sometimes I was present as a subordinate assistant to a senior US defence department official, sometimes as part of a delegation that ...
Kia ora, Aotearoa. It’s that magical time of year. Te Wiki o te Reo Māori. In English, the week that frightens talk radio. As you probably know by now, all your favourite media outlets are participating, some more successfully than others. Stuff has changed its name to Puna for the ...
International Day of Older Persons is a day to celebrate older people – to highlight the value of all older people and to promote dignity and respect. The 2019 international theme is “The Journey to Age Equality“. ...
One in six New Zealanders did not complete the 2018 Census - a result which has already led to the resignation of the Government's chief statistician. ...
The New Zealand Maori Council has cautioned the nation and policy makers on the 2018 Census figures released today and indicated that while some work has been done the fact that Maori remained unrepresented as a national figure in the tally on the day ...
A ground-breaking study which looks at how Māori and Samoan peoples describe their experience of youth justice across three different but comparable countries is calling for participants. ...
New Zealand’s 34th Census of Population and Dwellings was held on 6 March 2018. We combined data from the census forms with administrative data to create the 2018 Census dataset, which meets Stats NZ’s quality criteria for population structure ...
Results from the 2018 Census show New Zealand’s cultural make-up is becoming more diverse after high population growth in the past five years, Stats NZ said today. ...
Population growth since 2013 has resulted in one new general electorate in the North Island but no change to the number of Māori electorates for the next general election, Stats NZ said today. ...
As the public submissions process draws to a close, and with more than 900 submissions received to date, the Royal Commission is still urging people to come forward if they have information which may help with its inquiries. “We have twice extended ...
Amending the rules on black hole expenditure and loss continuity shows excellent judgment from the Government, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union . ...
If we want New Zealand to be the best place in the world to be a child, the Government needs to increase benefits, remove sanctions, individualise benefits, and fix abatement rates now, says Child Poverty Action Group and ActionStation . ...
Today the we have another chance to do the right thing to really lift incomes for thousands of people in this country who are missing out, says The Salvation Army Te Ope Whakaora. ...
Saving the ocean’s environment continues tomorrow as Ngati Ruanui Iwi takes on Trans-Tasman Resources (TTR) who wish to mine iron sand off the South Taranaki Bight in the Tasman Sea in what has been a five-year battle. ...
Wellington - 23 September 2019 -- Kiwis Against Seabed Mining (KASM) and Greenpeace are in the Court of Appeal in Wellington this week, defending last year’s High Court ruling that quashed Trans-Tasman Resources’ (TTR) consent to mine the South ...
“Climate change is here - we all need to do our part.” Monday 23rd September 2019. Press Release: Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre Climate change is happening. CEAC – compendium facts tribute to ‘Climate Change Week’ https://www.stuff.co.nz/science/115098866/exceptionally-rare-warming-above-antarctica-may-be-affecting-nzs-weather ...
Criminal law changes are now increasingly being used by politicians as a vote gathering tool pandering to lynch mob special interest groups. To look tough against crime, govts constantly increase penalties, create new crimes, and make it harder to get ...
It has been two years since Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called climate change her generation's nuclear free moment. And on Monday, against a backdrop of global climate protest, she will give the opening speech at the United Nation's climate ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson is under intense scrutiny. New figures show economic growth has slowed to levels not seen for six years. And he has chosen not to answer questions about when he heard about serious allegations of a sexual assault cover-up ...
NZDF Attends Commemorations to Mark International Mission in East Timor A New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) contingent participated today in the 20th anniversary commemorations of the International Force East Timor (INTERFET) mission in Dili. The commemoration ...
They’ve only been up and running for a few months, but a New Zealand not-for-profit has already made a big impact on period poverty in New Zealand. ...
The allocation of money for publicly funded broadcasting for election campaigns should be turned on it's head according to Massey University professor of communication design Claire Robinson. ...
Disappointment expressed by Fletcher Building CEO, Ross Taylor, reflects the increasing frustration held by many with this Government’s failure to protect private property rights.[1] ...
The independent Interim Climate Change Committee today launched an eight-week, nationwide call for evidence on options available to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ...
Social Credit has lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman over the way the Overseas Investment Office is handling its official information request for disclosure of documents on the sale of Westland Milk Products to Chinese company Inner Mongolian ...
This Friday in Solidarity with the Global Climate Strike All of the SodaStream’s e-commerce platforms and head office operations will be closed to kick-off the week-long event, and employees will march the #CLIMATESTRIKE in Auckland on 27 September. ...
Federated Farmers congratulates the Auditor-General’s office on its release today of its report Managing Freshwater Quality: Challenges and Opportunities. ...
Growth has now slowed to a 6-year low, and downside risks are dominating. June quarter GDP growth came in at 0.5%qoq, in line with our expectation, and slightly above consensus. Although there were a few sensational reports of the chance of a negative print. ...
Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) is calling the release of the National Climate Change Risk Assessment (NCCRA) framework a good first step in balancing New Zealand’s response to climate change. ...
Family First NZ says that a new Colorado report compiled by the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area finds marijuana-positive traffic fatalities, hospitalisations, marijuana use, and illegal market activity have exploded since marijuana legalization. ...
This year’s Ratepayers’ Report , local government league tables released yesterday, reveals which local councils owe the most and which owe the least. ...
Rachel MacGregor welcomes the decision released today by Justice Hinton. The key issue on which all the various litigation has been based is the question, did Colin Craig sexually harass Rachel. That question has been answered – he did. Justice ...
The Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU) has today ratified a ground breaking pay deal with Dunedin Railways which will see all union members being paid a living wage and the lowest paid receiving an 18% wage increase. Higher paid RMTU members ...
Inclusion for trans women/men and non-binary peoples has today been announced as the cornerstone of a new resolution for the National Council of Women New Zealand (NCWNZ). ...
It took a testy Morning Report interview this week to remind me that Simon Bridges was still the Leader of the Opposition. Until then, he had been largely invisible as the events of recent weeks unfolded. ...
The National Council of Women NZ has today welcomed the news that the Government has purchased Kate Sheppard’s house in Christchurch, the base for the NZ suffrage campaign. ...
The Māori Party supports mana whenua of Ihumātao and acknowledges their coming together to reach consensus on the future of their whenua. “We also acknowledge the leadership of the Kīngitanga who have played an important role in supporting ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is questioning why, for the second time, Jacinda Ardern has appointed a Crown-owned company Chief Executive to Chair her “Business Advisory Council”, following her announcement that Mercury CEO Fraser Whineray ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marcus Luigi Spiller, Associate Professor (Urban Planning) – honorary , University of Melbourne Labor’s Rudd-era National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) has come under attack just when it might be needed. The Abbott government stopped funding new deals under the scheme in 2014, ...
It’s Spinoff Youth Voting Week, where old people aren’t allowed to vote*. To celebrate, Tamsyn Matchett has written on a civics education programme giving teenagers a first sweet taste of local democracy before they’re legally permitted to vote for real.The Spinoff local election coverage is entirely funded by The Spinoff ...
Carla van Zon, former artistic director of the Auckland Arts Festival, issues a call for artists to make their voices heard in the battle against climate change.I am passionate about the arts and believe art can change lives, attitudes and even the world, individual by individual. I also believe that ...
Christchurch City Councillor Deon Swiggs has identified himself as the person at the centre of a complaint of inappropriate behaviour, but denies he has done anything wrong. ...
Reporters have been denied any access to the prime minister's meeting with US President Donald Trump tomorrow, but Jacinda Ardern says it wasn't her decision. ...
New Zealand businesses will benefit from tax breaks worth at least $80 million over five years, to encourage them to spend more on research and innovation. ...
Nerds, rejoice. The day of reckoning is finally upon us, with the release of the data from the 2018 census. So what are some of the interesting facts and figures?Forget about how badly this Census was botched. Forget about how there are concerns over how accurate the response data is, ...
A perfectly preserved set of Big Fresh Animatronic Fruit and Veges went on sale this week. Hayden Donnell delivers an exclusive update on their fate.Everyone remembers their first encounter with Junk & Disorderly’s set of Big Fresh Animatronic Fruit & Veges. There’s something overpowering about the experience. The Butter looms ...
In our latest local elections 2019 race briefing (read the rest here), Don Rowe looks at the two horse race to control the tourism capital of New Zealand.The Spinoff local election coverage is entirely funded by The Spinoff Members. For more about becoming a member and supporting The Spinoff’s journalism click here.Where?Queenstown, ...
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 content by Dr Bryce Edwards.Foreign affairs and trade Derek Cheng (Herald): Jacinda Ardern to take climate change stage in ...
The Government has included two small tax changes with its 32 page 'Economic Plan' that paints a big picture for economic and wellbeing transformation. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simone Casey, Research Associate, Future Social Service Institute, RMIT University In all Australia’s capital cities, average share-house rents in the inner suburbs (where jobs are concentrated) leave people without enough money for food and other basics, new research shows. This research, for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liam Lenten, Senior Lecturer, Department of Economics and Finance, La Trobe University Tonight is the AFL’s annual night of nights, the red-carpet spectacular known as the Brownlow Medal vote count. The Brownlow is awarded to the season’s “fairest and best” player. But ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gianluca Demartini, Associate professor, The University of Queensland The information we encounter online everyday can be misleading, incomplete or fabricated. Being exposed to “fake news” on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter can influence our thoughts and decisions. We’ve already ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Howard Manns, Lecturer in Linguistics, Monash University Not to put a damper on things, but Australian food hasn’t always made us happy little Vegemites. One needn’t look further than the humble meat pie to see how our love/hate relationship with Aussie tucker ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kirrie J Ballard, Professor, Speech Pathology, University of Sydney Sam is a high school drama teacher — articulate, funny, smart. It’s an ordinary day and she isn’t feeling great, but pushes through. At morning tea, she spills coffee down her shirt; at ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Penelope Carroll, Researcher in Public Health, Massey University Our research project explored the everyday lives of disabled young people, aged from 12 to 25 years, with mobility, vision and hearing impairments. We measured and asked them about factors that enabled or constrained ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jagannath Adhikari, Sessional Lecturer, UNSW Reducing emissions from deforestation and farming is an urgent global priority if we want to control climate change. However, like many climate change problems, the solution is complicated. Cutting down forests to plant edible crops feeds some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Margaret Kristin Merga, Senior Lecturer in Education, Edith Cowan University Reading aloud can help young children learn about new words and how to sound them. There’s great value too in providing opportunities for children to enjoy regular silent reading, which is sustained ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lili Pâquet, Lecturer in Writing, University of New England In Dervla McTiernan’s book, The Scholar, published earlier this year, women are consistently used as the “fall guys” for men with high aspirations. Two young women are killed when they uncover fraud. Another ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Indonesia to send contaminated recycling back to NZ, LAWA report shows water quality dropping at more sites than not, and Spark Sport suffers harsh weekend.Shipping containers full of contaminated recycling could be shipped back to New Zealand, Anna Whyte from One News reported ...
Solomon Islands and Kiribati last week dramatically switched diplomatic allegiances from Taiwan to China, a shift with possibly wide-ranging implications writes Stephen Hoadley of the University of Auckland. ...
Jacinda Ardern has a busy agenda for her second trip to the annual leaders' week, not least a high-profile sit-down with US President Donald Trump. ...
An Auckland mayoral candidate has reacted furiously to an advertising approach from Māori Television, which he says was a pay-for-play offer of coverage. Alex Braae reports. Craig Lord, a long-shot candidate for the Auckland mayoralty, has described an advertising offer from Māori Television as inappropriate, and close to “extortion.”In an email ...
Two important World Cup contests played out on Saturday night; one of which has consequences not just for this tournament in Japan, but possibly the next one in France, too. ...
Until our mental health system gets its promised overhaul, we need to find cost-effective and creative ways for mental health professionals to increase their awareness across all areas of diversity. ...
Two important World Cup contests played out on Saturday night; one of which has consequences not just for this tournament in Japan, but possibly the next one in France, too. ...
Assessing the fallout – for better and for worse – of Spark’s dismal RWC debut.The worst fears of Spark came true over the weekend, as issues impacted its stream of the All Blacks’ pivotal matchup with South Africa, leading to it transferring the livestream to TVNZ’s Duke. The following day ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Scott Morrison was frank, when quizzed at a news conference during his visit to Washington, on whether he would be seeking to travel to China in the next year. “Well, you have to be invited ...
By Michael Andrew Social media and tech industries have been replicating the ugliest aspects of capitalism from the 1800s, according to an AUT computer science lecturer. Associate Professor Tony Clear says that social media and tech executives are taking advantage of unregulated markets in a similar way as wealthy ...
Covering Climate Now: There’s a range of dairy-free ice creams available these days, but it’s a fair bet none will be as delicious – or satisfying – as making your own. The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is made possible thanks to Spinoff Members. Join us here!If the latest stats ...
Covering Climate Action: Ahead of the UN’s Climate Action Summit, artist Joseph Michael and composer Rhian Sheehan teamed up to create Voices For The Future, a 30-minute installation projected onto the UN buildings.The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is made possible thanks to Spinoff Members. Join us here!Joseph Michael is ...
New Zealand banning Huawei’s 5G network equipment won’t impact you nearly as much as the US’s recent moves against Huawei phones, writes Henry Burrell. Twenty years ago, you would have shown off your flash new Ericsson or Nokia. How times change. Now, those two entities exist only to provide mobile network ...
Op-Ed by Kaveh Zahedi, Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)Kaveh Zahedi is Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).In less than ten days world leaders will be ...
Grant McDougall reviews Kilgour’s new solo album, Bobbie’s A Girl, which sees him reflecting on the deaths of his friend and former bandmate, Peter Gutteridge and his own mother, Helen Kilgour. There is a passage in Shayne Carter’s excellent recent autobiography, Dead People I Have Known, in which he describes ...
New Zealand painter-poet Gregory O’Brien has just published a new collection of essays and art; pitched as a “field notebook … my whale survey”, Always Song in the Water drifts from his own front lawn in Hataitai, up to Northland and way, way across the Pacific. It’s the sort of ...
Ruby Porterlooks into New Zealand’s future when the sea level rises 10, 25 and 80 metres, and finds out how much of Auckland will be left.I grew up in Ponsonby, but the only bay I knew around here was Cox’s. It’s fed by a creek which was once a mahinga ...
Opening up a skid pad, create more housing for single people and make the central city dog friendly: policies from Christchurch's lesser-known mayoral candidates. ...
Josie Adams, Hayden Donnell, and Alice Webb-Liddall read thousands of policy statements to find the climate change deniers, fudgers, prevaricators (and believers) running in our local elections.The Spinoff local election coverage is made possible thanks to The SpinoffMembers. For more about becoming a member and supporting The Spinoff’s journalism click here.One of the problems ...
The paintings of Colin McCahon convey dissonance and uncertainty, writes Shannon Te Ao. So what does this say about us? And why are we maintaining this Pākehā male narrative at the expense of more inclusive representation?Colin McCahon would have turned 100 on August the 1st. If you keep one eye ...
Open mike 07/03/2015 
Open mike is your post.
Like many people, my submission on the Zero Carbon Bill urged more ambitious targets. And if the select committee was in any doubt, they're needed:An assessment backed by the world’s major climate science bodies has found commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions must be at least tripled and increased by ...2 hours ago
Anti-fluoride campaigners think a new Canadian fluoride IQ study is the best thing since sliced bread but the scientific critiques warn they are wrong. Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty The new Canadian ... 3 hours ago
Reprinted from Jacobinmag by Jane Slaughter and Chris Brooks Almost 50,000 UAW workers are on strike against GM and a two-tier labor system that undermines worker solidarity. But members may need to wage a battle on two fronts — against the company, but also against their own union leadership. Forty-nine ...19 hours ago
Before Jacingrant There Was Gracinda: Grant Robertson and his 2014 running mate, Jacinda Ardern. She stood at his side: loyal and obliging, as she had ever been. The media dubbed this duo “Gracinda” – a sort of political “Brangelina”. The other young people who worked alongside Robertson were also ambitious ...1 day ago
. . Just when you thought Simon Bridges couldn’t sink any lower – he has. After the March 15th Christchurch terror attack, the (current) Leader of the National Party issued strong committments to support urgently needed gun law reform; “We will be ready and prepared to be constructive and to ...2 days ago
We all know that bad parents simply don’t care about their children’s education. Most truants have loser parents, and grow up to be involved with crime, or in low paid employment usually like their parents. The nonsense so-called “climate strike” coming up will be attended mostly by the least intelligent ...3 days ago
To Protect and Serve: When the Prime Minister finds herself enmeshed in the coils of a full-blown political scandal, her colleagues and party comrades have only one priority: to release her as swiftly – and with as little lasting injury – as possible. Is this what Jacinda Ardern’s colleagues and ...3 days ago
When military leaders cover up and lie to elected civilian authorities, the foundation of democratic civil-military relations is undermined because it is those authorities who are entrusted to hold the military accountable to the public that they mutually serve. But this is only true if civilian political authorities take their ...3 days ago
BP, Z and Mobil all insist that petrol price hikes are temporary, “in a very literal sense.” The nation’s major petrol providers are trying to allay customer fears over prices, promising that they’ll move to lower them again “immediately” when the Middle East is returned to its formerly peaceful state. ...4 days ago
South African coach Rassie Erasmus says he has no idea what they’re going to do about the boat. In a highly anticipated press conference this afternoon, All Blacks coach Steve Hansen has finally unveiled the team’s boat for its Rugby World Cup 2019 campaign. In a press conference that went ...4 days ago
Get Back Jojo! The elation in Mayor Phil Goff’s camp may be easily imagined as they watched social media light up in indignation at challenger John Tamihere’s "Sieg Heil to that" quip. Just when JT’s notoriously right-wing, sexist and homophobic stains were beginning to fade back into his ‘colourful’ past, ...4 days ago
Patrick Gower is good value when he's high. Not that I've ever, you know, got stoned with him. But in the second part of his documentary Patrick Gower on Weed, he does what you'd expect in a modern weed documentary and immerses himself – first with a doctor, then a ...5 days ago
We surveyed candidates on their attitudes to issues facing the Western Bay Region, find out what they think: “Closing the Gap” Tauranga, one of the area groups of Income Equality Aotearoa NZ Inc., has surveyed all candidates in the three local body elections to discover attitudes to some basic issues ...5 days ago
Why is New Zealand climate change policy so crap? The Herald this morning has a long article on the twists and turns of climate change policy in New Zealand [paywalled / depaywall script], which shows where we've been. The short version is that the government first began worrying about this ...5 days ago
The All Blacks have been, for more than a century, arguably the most successful International sports team in the world. But they are more than that; even for those Kiwis who are immune to the charms of rugby (and there are more than a few), the All Blacks are ambassadors ...5 days ago
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Dangerous Foes: For those readers of Bowalley Road who feel disposed to dismiss any prospect of an Israeli destabilisation of New Zealand politics, the example of the United Kingdom repays close attention. Ever since the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the British Labour Party, the Israelis have sanctioned, funded and ...1 week ago
Make It 16, the youth-led campaign to lower New Zealand's voting age, is holding an official campaign launch at Parliament this Friday from 16:30. If you'd like to attend, you can register using EventBrite here. ...1 week ago
by Don Franks It was a lovely sunny Wellington afternoon with blue skies above the beaches. In Courtenay Place, political activists packed out a stuffy upstairs room for an important meeting. The assembled pacifists, anarchists, communists and independent young radicals of Peace Action Wellington felt the need for a mission ...1 week ago
From the Wall Street Journal:Inside a room of the ornately decorated Hotel du Palais during last month’s Group of Seven summit in Biarritz, France, President Trump awaited a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi. Mr. Trump looked over a gathering of American and Egyptian officials and called out in ...1 week ago
Those close to the Police Minister believe the initiative may be the result of Nash “seeing a great deal” on AliExpress. In a move that comes seemingly out of nowhere, Police Minister Stuart Nash announced this afternoon that he expects all frontline staff to don bearskin hats, famously worn by ...1 week ago
Moving And Shaking: There was a time when people spoke matter-of-factly about the “labour movement” – a political phenomenon understood to embrace much more than the Labour Party. Included within the term’s definition was the whole trade union movement – many of whose members looked upon the Labour Party as ...1 week ago
By Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern I am every bit as angry as you are. I am every bit as disappointed as you must be. The people with power, oversight and the ability to do something about these processes within the Labour Party should be ashamed. Whoever those people are, I ...2 weeks ago
Two-Faced? Labour insiders' commitment to the neoliberal status quo puts them at odds with their party’s membership; its trade union affiliates; and a majority of Labour voters, but this only serves to strengthen the perception they have of themselves as a special elite. Among the lesser breeds, they’ll talk up a ...2 weeks ago
By Simon Bridges. The following is a press release from the office of Simon Bridges, leader of The National Party. Key ora, New Zealand. Happy Maori Language Week. Look, I’m writing to you today because I want to clear something up. There’s been a lot of kerfuffle around some things ...2 weeks ago
Dr. Christopher Labos and Jonathan Jarry discuss the recent Canadian fluoride/IQ research. They provide an expert analysis of the paper and its problems. Click on image to go to podcast. The critical debate about the recent ... 2 weeks ago
An ambitious plan to fly to Los Angeles petered out into a brief sight-seeing trip and a desire to return home and get some sleep before work tomorrow. Air New Zealand has confirmed a flight to Los Angeles last night was turned back about a quarter of the way into ...2 weeks ago
There appears to be consensus – by omission – that the concept of indigenous futures should be accepted at face value. So I scavenged the internet to see if I could locate an academic descriptor or a framework around how we think about it as a concept, and whether it ...2 weeks ago
Here’s another novelty chocolate to shove in your gob, New Zealand Cadbury could be seeking to make itself great again with a rumoured new release: Pineapple Trumps, a spin on its classic chocolate-encased pineapple treat and do-it-yourself tooth remover. The global confectionery manufacturer and bumbling “before” character in an infomercial, ...2 weeks ago
Kia ora, Aotearoa. It’s that magical time of year. Te Wiki o te Reo Māori. In English, the week that frightens talk radio. As you probably know by now, all your favourite media outlets are participating, some more successfully than others. Stuff has changed its name to Puna for the ...2 weeks ago
Thousands of young Kiwis will walk off school grounds and take to the streets on September 27 to strike for climate action. ...53 mins ago
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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.