….and this promotion of fear can “activate” certain groups in society into becoming proponents of authoritarianism.
“…According to Stenner’s theory, there is a certain subset of people who hold latent authoritarian tendencies. These tendencies can be triggered or “activated” by the perception of physical threats or by destabilizing social change, leading those individuals to desire policies and leaders that we might more colloquially call authoritarian.
It is as if, the NYU professor Jonathan Haidt has written, a button is pushed that says, “In case of moral threat, lock down the borders, kick out those who are different, and punish those who are morally deviant.”….
Grim reading for leftists however all is not lost apparently. The revolution can be saved with a managed float and perhaps the country has more stashed away than originally thought.
Perhaps we should worry about Venezuela after our failed finance minister and failing prime minister show that they can break even without borrowing $20 billion a year.
Do you get paid Gosman? Or simply a volunteer, but you ought to get an honorarium, or a nice bottle of whisky from the group leader each Christmas. Perhaps we should protest about the principle of you deserving compensation if not receiving some reward. Just let us know who you work for and we will decide what approach would be most suitable. We of course are trying to hold onto principles, but you wouldn’t be conversant with such matters.
You definitely do a good job of adding to the smoke and confabulation around the running of our nation. If it was cigarette smoke, it would be bad but yours is more noxious coming from lower regions.
Keyistas in the “National” party are attempting to use a symbol associated with rugby on a new national flag despite mounting medical evidence of life-changing injury.
I do apologise for bordering on spam with my repetitive woeful cries about the fact that Justin Lester, Deputy Mayor of Wellington and Mayoral candidate has a conflict of interest as he sits on the executive of the Wellington branch of the NZ Property Council (and other issues, background and history).
But now it’s becoming clear why this hasn’t been declared as a conflict of interest – the council don’t see it as one, not when they are considering creating a council body who purpose is to be a property market player:
“This year’s draft Annual Plan includes a new climate change strategy, with a focus on reducing car ownership, as well as plans for a new council-controlled organisation that can play the property market.”
WTF?
and more WTF?
“The formation of an Urban Development Agency has also been proposed. The new council-controlled organisation would be able to purchase land, enter into agreements with developers, and prepare ‘master plans’ for urban growth and big projects that boost economic development.”
The seedy links the council already with developers, (and they already have agreements with developers) instead of being destroyed for the public good will now be formalised and entrenched.
So ratepayers who can barely afford to cover their rates as it is because they are on inadequate wages or fixed wages, can’t afford to buy their first house, or struggling with their own mortgage will now get to fund the council and it’s property development fantasies. Our $$$ will be used to invest in an unstable volatile “product” that is exposed to the ever changing winds of the market.
So we are well and truly stuffed here in Wellington. This year we have a choice between the faux left that run council now and National Party aligned Nicola Young, so either way we will end up with the same.
I didn’t say anything about climate adaptation projects being more expensive that doing nothing. I have no idea how you got to that conclusion.
I’m talking about the duplicity that exists between developers and the council, how that unhealthy relationship may possibly be formalised and how the ratepayer will provide the funds for the council’s property development fantasies – we can’t afford to prop this plaything up.
If you’d read my previous comments about WCC and it’s amazing lack of interest in developing ANY climate change strategy (we are faux green as well as faux left) you would assume I would welcome some sort gesture towards mitigating climate change.
The idea to get more cars off the road is a good start but it is merely a token gesture. Reasons being:
a) Wellingtonians are the highest users of public transport in the country already. This can be built upon by reducing fares on public transport and providing free public transport in the weekend, as has been proposed by actual Green councillor, Iona Pannett, but rejected.
b)I have spoken at length with councillors, and council officers about the lack of climate strategy for the mass development projects they are so fond of. As I’ve said many times on TS, there has been no environmental protections in place on these development areas, let alone measures put in place to reduce the impact development ultimately has on climate.
Huge tracts of land have been turned into housing. This means more tarmac, less vegetation, more people sucking up resources like air conditioning as there is no shade provided by tree’s – these areas are hotter than traditional suburbs with established trees. There is no expectation for developers to plant tree’s to offset increased carbon levels. Very little public transport has been put in to these new areas, so people drive cars to work instead of catching the bus. There is no commercial zoning in these developments, so people have to drive several KM’s to get to the nearest shops and service centres.
These poorly designed developments have a detrimental effect on the environment.
Our council are a bunch of hypocrites when they pay lip service to climate change.
You’re focusing on the costs to ratepayers as well as potential conflicts of interest; your link describes climate projects as being (at least partially) behind the cost increases.
You’re making sense. People aren’t listening to each other very well at the moment. Don’t know why. OAB does lots of small, fast comments which suggest to me he is at work and can’t devote a lot of time to looking at things indepth, or taking time to check things out (that’s also a social skill that to many here lack). But his comments to you today look weird even allowing for that.
I mean that from what you’re saying, they’re using climate issues as a smokescreen: the article makes much of the increased spending that will have to occur as a result, when the real purpose is simply to channel public funds to developers.
OK OAB. I was using the article as reference only, not analysing it’s reporting of WCC’s options.
What I am doing is trying to highlight the sheer hypocrisy of the WCC around their potential implementation of climate change strategy when they’ve had their heads in the sand for years and years and refuse to acknowledge the unnecessary damage development does.
And, yes, agreed, the real purpose is to channel funds to developers.
Without looking very closely at it (only reading your comment not the link), I’d say that in theory council’s investing in property to have more control over subdivision development and thus housing is potentially a useful thing (because it’s been left to private developpers for too long). But in practice, in this neoliberal environment, it looks like a disaster waiting to happen. That they use the word ‘play’ the market in a document suggests just how far up their own arses they already are that they don’t see anything wrong with that.
I don’t know what you can do other other than what you already do. Write submissions, make oral submissions, organise. Have you talked to the GP? Are they putting up candidates this year on the GP ticket?
There’s been a lot of jiggery pokery done to local bodies in recent years, I haven’t kept up with it, but it concerns me that we don’t look at how National have been fucking with that as much as with health, education, welfare etc. It’s been low hanging fruit for them and we’ve ignored it to our detriment.
Yes, on the surface weka, it could look like council investment in private residential development could be socially beneficial, after all this council has been very good at refurbishing social housing stock to a comfortable and safe standard and building good quality new social housing.
But you’re right, the neoliberal approach is the one they are taking. This has been confirmed to me through my ongoing conversations with certain councillors.
As for getting things done, I have tried to organise at a local level on our development and others but have been met with silence. (The northern ward roughly sits within the same footprint as the Ohariu electorate, very conservative).
Ironically the only councillor supporting me is a right winger, who is more aghast at the behaviour of the council than anything. he legit though, completely on the level. The Green Party councillor won’t respond to my emails. I’ve had meetings with council managers, at the council and meetings with a councillor at my house.
I’ve really run out of options as just one person.
As for the National Government, you’re right there too, they have had a profound influence in Wellington in regard to the SHA Accord and roading.
Can’t speak for other regions. Thats why it’s always good to hear from other commenters about what’s happening in their turf, both at a local and government level. Often the regional political news doesn’t make it to the MSM, so it’s good to stay connected in other ways.
Rosie – while it is true that the WCC has done a good job of refurbishing some of its social housing stock, the reason may have been lost in some of the mists of recent history. The investor sharks were circling until the government put the kaibosh on the intended privatisation of some of the council housing stock. The deal ended up with a healthy dollop of taxpayer funding and a ‘no-sale’ edict.
Otherwise, and more pertinent to your comments, the Council (elected and administrative) have a lengthy grab-bag of strategies to aid and abet a coterie of favoured developers who can already do much as they please with the wink and nod of planning and compliance staff which constantly frustrates local communities throughout the city. In most cases, the developers eventually get largely what they want, unless cases are taken to the Environment Court. The quandry then is, how many small groups of ratepayers can affort to front against the high paid lawyers engaged by Council and developers who act as a ‘tag team’, along with their so called ‘expert’ witnesses who, on occasions, prove to be little more than paid obfuscators. The other interesting feature of the Wellington Council is that it engages its former employees as ‘Independent’ Commissioners and has an open door policy when private sector ex-colleagues are engaged by developers. Recently it seems, they also had ex-employees contracted to cover full-time staff who were engaged in the MDH propaganda campaign. It all seems pretty incestuous and getting closer to something more sinister. The latest utterances regarding the proposed new CCO is taking the situation into the ball-park of the questionable deals like those of WWL and subsequently City Shaper which is under the same developer friendly leadership.
Petertoo. I hadn’t been aware of the intention to sell off some of the housing, or only vaguely aware perhaps….was that mid to late 2000’s? During Clark’s Government and during Prendergast’s time? I had only just recently arrived back in Wellington. Or was it more recent?
“The other interesting feature of the Wellington Council is that it engages its former employees as ‘Independent’ Commissioners and has an open door policy when private sector ex-colleagues are engaged by developers.”
You mentioned this recently. It’s fascinating, as is your statement about ex employees being engaged in the MDH campaign.
You really do seem to have some very detailed knowledge of the motivations and processes of some councillors and council officials. I really would like to know the full story – after having spent 18 months dealing with these people, both developer and council and having my eyes opened to some disturbing behavioural patterns and alliances. But I only have part of the picture. I want to see the whole picture. It will also help me join a few dots that I haven’t been able to connect.
Would you consider writing a guest post about the matter?
Rosie – a number of people have been around the traps a bit but so far, the Council/developer cabal have been fortunate in that they have only had to deal with small isolated individuals and inadequately financed community groups. That said, the Council and their fellow-traveller developer friends invariably get pegged back, even by amateur litigants, at Court hearings if cases proceed that far. It is unfortunate that no-one has yet been sufficiently motivated to write a guest post, this commentor included but this will doubt change if there is evidence of the metaphorical brown paper bag or two filled with cash. In the meantime, it is suggested you keep an eye on wellington.scoop.co.nz which constantly exposes gems of information for those of a justified cynical disposition.
As an additional comment, it is not fair to be too hard on some of the Councillors. The Council administration, no doubt with some guidance from the spin-meister, Richard McLean, seem to do a good job of ensuring that any criticism is sanitised before it gets to them.
Thanks for the reminder about scoop. They DO have some interesting council snippets that would never make it to the Dom Post.
I do look forward to a time when you may be able to do a guest post – you’ve got a good writing style and you have more of a 360 degree view than me. I’m a relative newbie to the shenanigans at WCC. I was naive enough to trust them earlier on due to the political colours of a good number of the councillors.
Now, it’s anything but that. As a Labour member I can’t bring myself to attend the electorate AGM next week as Justin Lester will be speaking. He has been an active enabler, contributing to my problems with the developer in my neighbourhood and standing by as I was abused by these powerful men.
He damn well better not give any speeches about the rights and equality of women, ever.
These Auckland problems are just on my periphery at the mo and having scanned through your post on TS and the public address it would take some digesting.
Just quickly are the outsourced planners local but being paid more in fee’s than council employees would be, or are they so outsourced that they’re from another country? – (Outsourcing design tasks to other countries happens in the engineering sector, so it wasn’t a funny ha ha question).
It’s a very National Government way of working – outsource work to “consultants” and pay more while reducing job security for those who have the knowledge of the systems.
I have just voted in the flag referendum and could not help reflecting that the system is broken due to the
closure of local post offices. I have to trek to mine a few suburbs away.
Indeed. A friend of mine who works for the PWUA said something like 1300 “street receivers”, those street side boxes used to post mail, have been removed in recent years. Posties receive a lot of complaints from the public about inconvenient this is.
Can someone wise in the ways of the web and the intellectual ownership industry advise me why the link to some NZ Vimeo content that I had put in one of my comments just disappears after a short time? Are people not allowed to show examples of performances, work on line if done by Vimeo? Youtube can be invoked with little trouble, and is a great way to bring content to new viewers or refresh memories of past content.
I should mention that it was a song written for an advertisement for AMP. I don’t think it is still being used by them though I wouldn’t know as I gave up TV on changeover from digital.
“Plan A was based on a future promise that told us to stay the course. Things will come right once our trade negotiators have prevailed. This is now not going to happen. We will have some small successes in opening up new markets, but the big step change promised since the Uruguay Round now won’t happen. We need a Plan B that can actually address the problems, shocks, surprises that are starting to overwhelm us here and now.
Actually, we need multiple Plan B’s. One of the most hypnotic and seductive aspects of the liberalization plan was that it presented governments and policymakers with a ‘one size fits all’ answer to any policy problem. It would be a dire mistake to respond to the monolithic quality of Plan A by suggesting that there is a fully formed one size fits all Plan B just waiting to be implemented. Achieve resilient transitions to a more sustainable future will require many solutions of varying size fitted to problems of varying scale. We will need to draw on the reservoir of marginalized and neglected alternatives that sit outside Plan A. We will need to know as much as we can about small-scale food provisioning, medium-scale networks of food production and consumption, and the relationship between food systems and energy systems. We will need to pay attention to how specific communities and localities are trying to create their own Plan B’s in fitting these things together into credible transition pathways. In order to do so, we must first recognize that Plan A no longer provides a full or sufficient answer to the challenges of agriculture and food in the 21st century. “
Power outages.
The NZH reports this morning that there was an outage in the Auckland CBD ( http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11601121)
Most consumers were only out for a short period but 88 for about 5 hours.
BTW Outage is not in my dictionary but I think it is a very neat and clever word
Not reported by the NZH is another outage in Milford on Saturday 5.3.16, which lasted from about 2pm to 8.30pm.
It was reported by Stuff who said that the cause was that a seagull
had broken the line which must have been weakened by wind and age? One person was hospitalised for electric shock.
Is it then appropriate that the lines company is called Vector?
The 2nd meaning of Vector in my dictionary is ” The carrier of a disease or infection”.
Private providers of electricity services in the USA have vectored in mass outages that are called brown-outs, not quite black-outs.
Brownout (electricity) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownout_(electricity)
A brownout is an intentional or unintentional drop in voltage in an electrical power supply system. Intentional brownouts are used for load reduction in an emergency. The reduction lasts for minutes or hours, as opposed to short-term voltage sag (or dip).
This will no doubt be adopted here, as being more efficient than aiming for 100% provision at any time whatever the load, which involves over and under capacity, and that would probably lead to lower profits.
in the film enron; the smartest guys in the room, brownouts (unscheduled maintenance on a generator or two) were a deliberate ploy used in california to up the spot price of power therefore making massive returns to enron.
The “employment issue” in a National Party electorate office is understood to involve a claim a secret recording was made by Clutha-Southland MP Todd Barclay.
Long-serving staff member Glenys Dickson left Mr Barclay’s Gore office last month after 18 years in the job.
The circumstances of her departure have been kept under wraps.
The Otago Daily Times asked the National Party if it was investigating a claim about a secret recording, but party secretary Greg Hamilton said in a statement it was not the role of the party to investigate or comment on staffing matters.
Mr Barclay said he could not comment because it involved staff.
Last week, Gore branch secretary Maeva Smith said an “employment issue” was behind Mrs Dickson’s departure.
At the weekend, electorate chairman Stuart Davie resigned, calling his position untenable, but he declined to comment further.
It is understood some southern party members feel the matter warrants further investigation.
A central issue is whether the recording was made, or whether its existence was an unfounded claim.
A party member, who declined to be named, said that the issue was sensitive for the party because of the prominence of surveillance and spying issues during its time in office.
The Parliamentary Service, which employs electorate secretaries, declined to comment.
Mrs Dickson had worked for Deputy Prime Minister Bill English when he was Clutha-Southland MP.
Yesterday, Mr English declined to comment, but earlier this week told reporters in Wellington the resignations reflected a transition phase in which an MP builds their own team, and he was not concerned about the situation.
Queenstown electorate secretary Barbara Swan has also resigned, and is working out a notice period.
Earlier this week, Mr Barclay apologised for releasing Ms Swan’s resignation letter to a media outlet.
Mr Barclay (25), who grew up in Dipton and Gore, was elected to Parliament in 2014 after Mr English opted to become a list MP.
His youth and previous employment at Phillip Morris New Zealand prompted comment when he was selected for the blue-ribbon seat.
The “employment issue” in a National Party electorate office is understood to involve a claim a secret recording was made by Clutha-Southland MP Todd Barclay.
If the kid was found to have made a recording the woman that resigned could take a personal grievance against him for recording their conversations without her knowledge.
Yeah, there was a chat about this on Open Mike last Friday.
Nats need to respond to the membership who want an investigation and grant it………. If they have any sense of responsibility to the membership they would.
And how neurotic/paranoid/nutty is that kid if he IS recording conversations.
My understanding is the challenge could come from the Queenstown guy who pulled out at the last minute in the last pre selection process. From recollection his name was Simon Flood and he was…drumroll please…. a currency trader…. that had parachuted in from Singapore to contest the seat.
Interesting dynamic in this seat because it is a mix of ultra rural heartland Southland and cosmopolitan Queenstown. The Queenstown faction have always wanted a Queenstown advocate which is fair enough given the distinct issues they face so maybe they now sense their opportunity. Of course that will not be popular with the rural base who have plenty of issues of their own to deal with at present.
Fair point Weka. I suspect though if Barclay has been so woeful or infact has acted illegally as an employer and Queenstown can get a credible candidate up, then it could all be on. Although Barclay is based in Gore and is originally from Dipton his rural credentials as a tabacco lobbyist are hardly overwhelming. Does this disarray signal the chance of another Northland upset?
One would hope that Labour, the Greens and NZF would try talking to each other. Probably shouldn’t hold our breaths though.
I’m not sure what the rest of Southland would think about a Queenstown candidate. I guess it would depend on who it was. I can see how Baccy could easily lose the nomination next time round, he’s a really bad fit for that electorate. And now the National Party nationally appear to be saying that Clutha Southland should suck it up and get used to things being run by the suits. It will indeed be interesting to follow.
Labour had what seemed to be a credible candidate last time. I think she was a health professional or the like but she was heavily defeated. I think someone with a strong rural background would poll well here.
Skulduggery by Parata?
At Rangiora High School they administer a Trust which owns about $16million worth of land. This Trust has operated for about 100 years and the Trust is usuallyv mostly by the BOT and Principal. The school was running well until the Ministry spotted the $16million. The Trust refused to give it to the Ministry to fund repairs and build a new hall.
After a Commissioner was put in to get at the millions, Ministry fired the BOT and suspended the Principal Peggy Burrows hinting at Financial malpractice. No such malpractice exists as an audit has cleared them all but now Peggy has been fired by the Commissioner anyway. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11601495
Another principal sacked in Invercargill won her Employment Court case and was awarded $158,000. That principal compared Hekia Parata to Hitler which was a bit unfair on Adolf.
I’m not sure if the Minister and her motley Ministry crew will be compared to Hitler in this case. I don’t know how corrupt, vindictive and plain nasty Hitler was.
The old School Inspectorate, independent educational experts working directly to the Department of Education, would have nipped any problems in the bud a long time ago and before it got to this crisis point whereby a very good, highly qualified woman School Principal is sacked.
The Labour Party under Rogernomics and David Lange made a huge mistake by bringing in ‘Tomorrow’s Schools’
Hekia Parata does not have the experience or educational qualifications or ethics to be judge in this matter … she is captured by John Key’s and ACT’s privatising agenda for Charter Schools…a USA model whereby privatised schools are run by corporations …(replacing State run schools which employed highly qualified educational professionals) …and a model which has failed
“I don’t know how corrupt, vindictive and plain nasty Hitler was.”
Unutterably vile, petty, vindictive and mean-spirited. Much worse than Trump – he was even worse than Cruz (who is much more evil than Trump. Cruz is the one who’s promising to legislate Government discrimination against minorities if he gets elected).
Fairly bad in fact – I recommend http://www.amazon.com/Man-Called-Intrepid-Incredible-Narrative/dp/159921170X – outlines a lot about Hitler et al from an external perspective. Jung has a nice anecdote in Psychology and the Unconcious too. The Gnats are probably more like the Italian Fascists – crookeder but less about racial destiny.
Best Joke of the year, when he was asked what he gave to Rupert Murdoch, as a wedding present, Guest, Barry Humphries replied, a set of Jumper Leads. Hilarious,
Regarding Trump’s hideous behaviour of making the crowd vote for him, there is a really apt word for this ‘trumpery’. It is actually an old word which means foolish words or actions and has a secondary meaning of worthless and useless. All of which I gleaned from Bryan Gould’s brilliant post below.
Donald Trump appears to take aspects of his German background seriously. John Walter works for the Trump Organization, and when he visits Donald in his office, Ivana told a friend, he clicks his heels and says, “Heil Hitler,” possibly as a family joke.
Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.
“Did your cousin John give you the Hitler speeches?” I asked Trump.
Trump hesitated. “Who told you that?”
“I don’t remember,” I said.
“Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew.” (“I did give him a book about Hitler,” Marty Davis said. “But it was My New Order, Hitler’s speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.”)
Later, Trump returned to this subject. “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”
“Bernie Sanders has attacked Hillary Clinton over her record with corporate America and “disastrous trade agreements” destructive to the US economy, as well as multibillion bailouts that robbed the state of jobs – all at the expense of the US middle class….
‘Assange: Vote for Hillary Clinton is ‘vote for endless, stupid war’ which spreads terrorism’
Yes, let’s just ignore Sanders’ shilling for the NRA, Lockheed Martin and the war machine and his commitment to an ongoing drone programme.
Fuck it, while we’re at it let’s just forget about Sanders’ part in the export of nuclear waste to some place far far away where brown people live, too.
/
The Government is being accused of going easy on Chinese authorities when making trade deals for the infant formula industry.
Dozens of Kiwi brands made by small businesses going down the drain.
There were 200 brands – and now there are just 20.
Michael Barnett of the Infant Formula Exporters Association said “MPI have allowed them to control that process, so we’ve ended up with a small group of privileged exporters.”
He says many of those exporters are Chinese-owned companies based in New Zealand.
Despite the growing attacks on Donald Trump from within the Republican establishment, all three of his challengers vowed to support Trump if he wins the nomination.
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While the economy is on pause under lockdown, the government is beginning to plan how to cope with the post-lockdown, post-tourism, post-export education world we will eventually find ourselves in. They're planning a lot of infrastructure spending as economic stimulus, and have asked for proposals which can start the moment ...
It's my distraction, setting up tiny scenes to photograph. I've got stuck on the Babushka dolls for now. Something about their bubble shape. Something about their never changing, smiling features, suggesting persistent equanimity. Can we get through everything that is being thrown at us and keep at least a tiny ...
. . March 31: Day six of living in lock-down… This time I managed to sleep a little longer and the alarm woke me at the pre-set time: 6.55am. Then remembered I was working a later shift and could’ve slept in. Oh well, there are things to do at home. ...
Image credit:Diamond Harbour School Blogs I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or ...
Yesterday's Horizon poll showing support for a "Yes" vote in this year's cannabis referendum sliding into the majority for the first time in a year looked like good news for reformers – and it probably is. But the result warrants some scrutiny.The poll is the fifth in a series commissioned ...
For almost a week now, every one of us who isn’t an essential worker has been confined to their bubble. We are allowed to go shopping for groceries, to visit the doctor, and to get a bit of exercise if we stay local. The reason we are doing this is ...
The Covid-19 saga will no doubt produce many twists and turns for us before it is finally brought to an end. But one thing it has shown us – and what comfort it should bring us – is that our country’s government is in good hands. I am not thinking ...
In the absence of a vaccine or a cure for a deadly disease, staying home in your bubble is what you do, the concept is not new. To the best of my knowledge last time we did this in NZ was for polio, in the years before a vaccine came ...
The following statement was released on March 28 by the National Network on Cuba, a coalition of 40 groups, based in the United States. In recent weeks, Cuba has deployed hundreds of medical providers to over a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, as well as to their neighbors in Latin ...
This has been a terrible summer for Hector’s dolphins. The first indication was very low numbers of dolphin sightings during late spring and early summer. The Otago University Marine Mammal Research Team has carried out routine dolphin surveys at Banks Peninsula for more than 30 years. In all that time, ...
On March 17, Finance Minister Grant Robertson was quick out of the blocks with an economic rescue package to help businesses through the inevitable recession resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Robertson had pulled together a scheme in short order that so far seems to have saved many jobs. In his ...
The purpose of the lockdown is to save lives, by reducing the spread of covid-19. We won't know if its really working for another week, but given the devastation that will result if it doesn't - 14,000 dead is the optimistic scenario - its definitely worth trying. But pausing the ...
. . March 30: Day five of living in lock-down… Woke up still in darkness. Alarm hadn’t gone off. Turn to radio clock; it’s a few minutes after 6am… I lie there in the dark, waiting to drift off to sleep… but it ain’t happening. Clock ticks over to 6.55 ...
The story of Les Gray, the public sector psychologist who told the truth about his use of cannabis and set off a storm, has a special place in the lore of cannabis reform in New Zealand.When Paul Shannon interviewed Gray for the 'Dope and Hope' issue of Planet magazine in ...
by Phil Duncan For Marxists, a key concern about social trends is their context – not just their causes, but why they happen when they do. Events and phenomena have causes, but they also are time or period-specific. While much of the left have capitulated recently to postmodernism, most notably ...
Since the lockdown began, we've all suddenly been reminded who the actually essential workers in our society are: not the people at the top who pay themselves the big bucks and rort the perks, but the people at the bottom they screw over and squeeze: cleaners, warehouse staff, truck drivers ...
Kia ora! As I've watched nearly all my remaining work vanish over the past couple of days, it has occured to me that one good way to keep me away from arguing with fools on Twitter all the time (in the knowledge that all we're really doing is processing our ...
Aotearoa New Zealand has committed to trying to extirpate the virus that causes COVID-19 from its shores. To do that, as a society we’ve moved to “Level 4”. That means adapting to unprecedented restrictions on our personal freedoms, particularly to our rights to move freely and associate with friends and ...
When the Prime Minister declared a state of emergency last week, she handed the police powers to enforce it. And almost immediately, we started hearing about heavy-handed, arbitrary "enforcement" by police who (at best) cared more about order than law, or (more likely) had no idea what the rules were ...
. . Lock Down: Day 4 – A photo essay with observations . March 29: Usual wake up routine as RNZ snaps on my radio-clock. Jim Mora’s voice slowly enters my conciousness; there’s talk of a second wave of covid19 taking hold in South Korea; the week in Parliament – ...
Yesterday, New Zealand recorded its first Covid-19 related death on the West Coast. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be the only fatality, with the virus now being found in every region of the country.However despite the significant danger, people are still unfortunately breaching lockdown rules.There’s really only one main very ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... ‘Misinformation kills’: The link between coronavirus conspiracies and climate denialGrist / Rob Kim / Stringer / CSA Images Scientific ...
The kids did surprisingly well today – meltdown count was about 3, and mostly fairly short ones. (And a fourth while I was writing.) Game-wise I had a go at Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark. It’s a fairly standard RPG with turn-based combat and what they call a “mature storyline” (it ...
by Don Franks Hi David, Nice hearing from you, I’m glad to hear you’re getting by okay in these grim times. You asked how’s it going for us back here in New Zealand. You would have heard that the whole country is locked down and with breaks for exercise and ...
. . Lock Down: Day 3 – A photo essay with observations . March 28: First day of the first weekend in Lock Down. It feels like it’s been weeks since only Level 3 was declared last Tuesday, only four days ago. Woke up this morning to RNZ; coffee; toast, ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Mar 22, 2020 through Sat, Mar 28, 2020Articles Linked to on FacebookSun, Mar 22, 2020In Just 10 Years, Warming Has Increased the Odds of Disasters by Chelsea Harvey, ...
I’m here in lockdown with my flatmate and her two girls (6 and 2) and it. is. a time. They’re usually really active so to start with the only boardgame in the house is the copy of Guess Who that the 6 year old got for her birthday. Flatmate commented ...
The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed ...
. . Lock Down: Day 2 – A photo essay with observations . March 27 – Day 2 of our Strange New World. The Park and Ride near my suburb, usually filled with hundreds of vehicles, had just… four; . . Another drive into Wellington City on a highway nearly ...
Fortune's Children: Under extraordinary pressure, the leader of the Government and the leader of the Opposition will each show us what they are made of. Have they been blessed with intelligence, grace, wit, poise, toughness, empathy and humour – and in what measure? More importantly, to what extent have they ...
If you’ve ever had the misfortune of having to rent a property on the open market in New Zealand, which is one of the most expensive in the entire world, you’ll likely be keenly aware of just how arrogant and entitled landlords and their real estate agents can be.Unfortunately for ...
Society-wise, aside from the specific morbidity shall we say of the medically-oriented aspects of this COVID-19 crisis, what is unfolding before the world is in more than one way an instructive study of humanity and reactions to a high intensity, high stress environment in real time. Friends, we are at ...
Right now low waged and insecure workers are feeling the economic brunt of the looming #Covid19 Recession. In response legal advocate Toby Cooper* and hospitality and worker’s rights advocate Chloe Ann-King, are putting together a series of legal blogs about your employment rights:In this legal blog we outline some ...
by Equipo Jurídico Pueblos and Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (25/03/2020) An escape plan in question On the night of March 21st and the early morning of the 22nd, the forces of the Colombian state stormed into the Modelo prison in Bogotá, murdering 23 prisoners and injuring 83, in response to the ...
When the government banned semi-automatic weapons in response to a terrorist atrocity, gun-nuts were outraged. Mired in toxic American gun culture, they thought owning weapons whose sole purpose was killing people was some sort of "constitutional right", a necessity for "defending themselves" against the government. Now, the Court of Appeal ...
Just before midnight on Wednesday March 25, Aotearoa New Zealand entered a countrywide alert level four lockdown. For at least the next four weeks, everyone who isn’t an essential worker is confined to their bubble. We are doing this to stop the explosive growth in people contracting and dying from ...
. . Lock Down: Day 1 – A photo essay with observations . Day one of the Level 4 nationwide lock-down (or, DefCon 4 as I sometimes cheekily call it) started at 11.59PM on 25 March. For a moment, most of the nation held it’s collective breath. In that brief ...
Broad, Sunlit Uplands: How those words fired my young imagination! Or, perhaps, it is more accurate to say: how those words fused, in my young mind, with the image printed on every packet of Fielder’s Cornflour. Always fascinated by history, especially modern history, I cannot hear Churchill’s wonderfully evocative words, even ...
. . 24 March 2020 9.46AM Number of covid19 cases in Aotearoa New Zealand: 102 . As of 11.59 on Thursday, most of New Zealand will go into “lock down”. People will be expected not to travel to work; not to socialise; and to stay home. I will not be ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections A respected research group, Project Drawdown, finds that deploying solutions consistent with meeting the Paris climate targets would cost tens of trillions of dollars globally. But crucially, those outlays would also yield long-term savings many times larger than the up-front costs. The new 2020 Drawdown ...
It will pass. What happens next? Not immediately, but longer term. There are many opinions, fewer certainties. Will it “change everything!” as many confidently, and contradictorily predict? In this post I look at how foresight can help bound some of the uncertainties so you can more objectively consider the future. ...
We’ve been meaning t write something on Cuba and the coronavirus but have just discovered a very good article on the subject in the US left publication Jacobin. The article looks at how Cuba, a poor country but one where capitalism has been done away with, is leading the way ...
In 2018, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey - two British citizens who had purportedly been stripped of their citizenship by the British government - were captured while fighting for Isis in Syria. The British government then conspired to hand them over to the US, and agreed to provide evidence ...
Transformers: The disaster of the Great Depression was transformed into a new and fairer society by the democratic socialism of the First Labour Government. The disaster of the Covid-19 Pandemic offers a similar transformative possibility to the Labour-NZ First-Green Government. Seize the time, Jacinda! You will never have a better ...
Tamper with The System? Well, we already are. But there's a difference between accidentally trickling sand into a precision gearbox versus formulating a plan to alter it on the fly with improvements in mind. One action is more or less innocently unscrupulous, the other amenable to earning an easy ...
Associate Prof George Thomson, Louise Delany, Prof Nick WilsonWhile it is possible that New Zealand can use intense public health controls to eradicate COVID-19 from the country – we must also plan for other scenarios where thousands of New Zealanders are sick – including many urgently hospitalised.1 Better resilience ...
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or being ...
We're about to do something unprecedented as a nation. We hope that by taking this extraordinary action before a single life in New Zealand has been lost to the deadly novel virus we will save tens of thousands of lives. Our lives. We'll do it together, in households, in isolation ...
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”So writes the author of Ecclesiastes, a book in the Old Testament that’s counted as a ‘wisdom’ book and written as if by an unnamed king of Jerusalem. But who would have thought there would be a time ...
I was surprised when the prime minister described the Economic Response to Covid-19 package as the ‘largest peacetime government spend in New Zealand's history’. Reflecting – checking through history – I realised that the term ‘spend’ was crucial and the package had no income tax cuts. Even so, it has ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters says getting New Zealanders back home and other travellers out of the country is "a nightmare for our embassies, consuls, and staff around the world".Speaking to NewstalkZB's Mike Hosking, the Foreign Minister said that he gave a clear message to people travelling overseas that they ...
The domestic travel ban has been lifted for stranded foreign tourists trying to get to international airports to fly home, after the Coalition Government announced a plan to help the tens of thousands of foreigners stranded here. Foreign Minister Rt. Hon. Winston Peters spoke with RNZ's Susie Ferguson said foreign ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters believes the country is rediscovering its resilience and self-reliance through its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.He says he is heartened that the mass majority of New Zealanders are following lockdown rules and that the government looking at the future, including paying to keep much ...
New Zealand can emulate the success of the US after the Great Depression by exploiting our own resources to turn the economy around quickly, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says. Mr. Peters told Magic Talk that New Zealand has an opportunity to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic a "superior, ...
All 45 New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel are either on their way back to New Zealand, or already in the country, according to Defence Minister Ron Mark."Twenty-eight personnel arrived back in New Zealand last week and are in isolation at the Royal New Zealand Air Force base in ...
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...
We know people are feeling anxious about COVID-19. While the situation is serious, New Zealand has a world-class health system and we’re well-prepared to keep New Zealanders safe. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging New Zealanders overseas to stay where they are amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "We are reaching a point where the best option for most New Zealanders offshore is to shelter in place, by preparing to safely stay where they are.” "This includes following the instructions ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging the tens of thousands of New Zealanders travelling overseas to consider sheltering in place, in light of COVID-19. “Since 18 March, we have been warning New Zealanders offshore that the window for flying ...
Ground-breaking law has passed that will decriminalise abortion and ensure women and pregnant people seeking abortions have compassionate healthcare. ...
The Green Party says that the measures announced by the Government today will help families and businesses to prioritise our collective health and wellbeing in the response to COVID-19. ...
As New Zealanders brace for a global downturn due to Covid-19, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says his Coalition Government’s rescue package "more significant" than any other he's seen around the world. The Coalition is to reveal a multi-billion-dollar stimulus plan on Tuesday afternoon designed to cushion the economic blow ...
The Government will be introducing legislation to make changes to the Companies Act to help companies facing insolvency due to COVID-19 to remain viable and keep New Zealanders in jobs. The temporary changes include: Giving directors of companies facing significant liquidity problems because of COVID-19 a ‘safe harbour’ from insolvency ...
The Government’s plan to cushion the blow of COVID-19 by supporting incomes, jobs and businesses, and position the economy to recover has been backed by another international report. International credit rating agency Moody’s today reaffirmed its highest Aaa credit rating on New Zealand, saying the economy is expected to remain ...
National sports organisations have been given certainty of funding to ensure they can remain viable through the COVID-19 pandemic, Sport and Recreation Minister Grant Robertson announced today. “The global spread of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on sport and recreation in New Zealand, including the cancellation or postponement of ...
Changes have been made to allow butchers to process pork, only for supply to supermarkets or other processors or retailers that are open, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor has announced. “We carefully weighed the risk of allowing butchers to open their shops for retail customers, but the risk of spreading COVID-19 ...
Essential workers who take leave from work to comply with public health guidance are being supported with a leave scheme to ensure they will continue to receive income, say the Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety Iain Lees-Galloway and Minister for Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni. A number of essential businesses ...
A Government WhatsApp channel has been launched to help make information more easily accessible and shareable in the fight against COVID-19. Govt.NZ, which is free to use on any mobile device, will carry information and news for the public, businesses, healthcare providers, not for profits and local government. It can ...
The Government has announced a plan to enable the safe, orderly exit of tens of thousands of stranded foreign nationals from New Zealand during the current COVID-19 Alert Level 4 restrictions, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters has said. “When we moved into lockdown a week ago, the ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says the Government is delivering on its commitment to support general practice doctors and nurses, and pharmacies on the front-line of our fight against COVID-19. "For us to overcome COVID-19, we need community health services such as general practice and community pharmacy to step up ...
Justice Susan Thomas has been appointed Chief High Court Judge, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. She replaces Justice Geoffrey Venning who has resigned from the position. David Parker paid tribute to Justice Venning, who he said had stewarded the High Court very capably over the last five years. “On behalf ...
Businesses can start applying to their banks for loans under the Business Finance Guarantee Scheme set up to support the New Zealand economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re moving quickly to protect New Zealand businesses, jobs and the economy during this unprecedented global economic shock,” Finance Minister Grant Robertson said. ...
Work is underway looking at measures to speed up consents for development and infrastructure projects during the recovery from COVID 19, to provide jobs and stimulate our economy. Environment Minister David Parker said the COVID-19 pandemic is a serious global crisis that will have a wide ranging and lasting impact ...
Advance payments will be made to transport construction industry contractors to retain the workforce and ensure it is ready to quickly gear up to build projects which will be vital to New Zealand’s COVID-19 economic recovery, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today. He said keeping the workforce required to build ...
The Government has tasked a group of industry leaders to seek out infrastructure projects that are ready to start as soon as the construction industry returns to normal to reduce the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford and Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones say. The Infrastructure ...
Work to scale up the health system in preparation for COVID-19 was today outlined by Health Minister David Clark, as he reported back to the new Epidemic Response Committee. “We are well placed to contain the spread of COVID-19. We have taken early and decisive action at our borders, and ...
The Government is refining its COVID-19 essential business guidance to include the distribution of news publications for communities which are hard to reach. The Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media, Kris Faafoi, said the move was in recognition of the importance for New Zealanders who might be harder to ...
The Government is ensuring supermarkets can open on Easter Sunday so we can buy groceries, but stay closed on Good Friday allowing workers to take a break. This provides a balanced approach and ensures we avoid large queues that two days closure may cause. “Supermarkets will be able to open ...
Following the successful conclusion of the Building Partner Capacity (BPC) mission at Taji, New Zealand defence personnel are returning to New Zealand from Iraq, in accordance with the Cabinet decision made in June 2019, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Ron Mark announced today. “New Zealand is very ...
The State of National Emergency to help stop the spread of COVID-19 has been extended for a further seven days, Minister of Civil Defence Peeni Henare said. The initial declaration on March 25 lasted seven days and can be extended as many times as necessary. “Since we went into isolation ...
New Zealand’s ability to go hard and go early in the fight against COVID-19 has been underpinned by strong Government finances and the growing economy heading into this global pandemic, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. The Treasury today released the Crown financial statements for the eight months to the end ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says 36 new intensive care beds at Christchurch Hospital’s new Hagley building are being fast tracked so they are available for treatment of COVID-19 patients. The Ministry of Health is working with contractor CPB and Canterbury DHB to enable access to the hospital’s ICU, ...
The Government has fast-tracked up to $1 million to help Air New Zealand move urgent freight to and from New Zealand, with the first flight to Shanghai leaving tonight, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today. Phil Twyford says it’s crucial that trade in vital goods such as medical supplies and ...
New Zealand will temporarily remove tariffs on all medical and hygiene imports needed for the COVID-19 response. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker and Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi said today that the New Zealand Customs Service will apply tariff concessions to all diagnostic reagents and testing ...
Minister of Finance Grant Robertson has clarified that the changes to the wage subsidy scheme announced yesterday mean that employers should be passing on the full subsidy to workers, except in the case where the person’s normal income is less than the level of the subsidy. “We still want employers ...
Medical face masks from the national reserve supply are now being distributed to District Health Boards, while at the same time local production is being ramped up. Yesterday more than 640,000 masks were sent to DHBS – that is an immediate two week supply, with more to follow in coming ...
The Government has made modifications to the wage subsidy scheme to ensure people don’t lose their jobs during the national lockdown. These changes will soften the impact of COVID-19 on workers, families and businesses, and position them to exit the lockdown and look to recovery, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. ...
Farmers whose herds were culled in response to the outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis will be able to minimise the tax treatment of their income in some circumstances. Revenue Minister Stuart Nash says Cabinet has agreed to change the law. It means farmers may be eligible to spread their income over ...
A $27 million dollar package, effective immediately, is being provided to social sector services and community groups to ensure they can continue to provide essential support to communities as we stay at home as a nation to stop the spread of COVID-19, Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni announced. “At ...
“The guilty plea today will provide some relief to the many people whose lives were shattered by what happened on March 15,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. “These guilty pleas and conviction bring accountability for what happened and also save the families who lost loved ones, those who were injured, ...
The Prime Minister is holding daily press conferences to update New Zealanders on the Government's response to COVID-19. Links to videos and transcripts of these updates below. These transcripts also include All of Government press conferences led by Director Ministry of Health's Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. 25 March: Live update from the Prime ...
Frontline Police numbers have broken through the 10,000 mark for the first time in history as officers step forward to keep the community safe during the COVID19 lockdown. “Two Police graduations in Auckland and Wellington in the past week have been conducted in unprecedented circumstances,” Police Minister Stuart Nash said. ...
Urgent legislation has been passed to support the package of economic and social measures needed to recover from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. “The COVID-19 Response (Taxation and Social Assistance Urgent Measures) Bill will cushion New Zealanders from the worst economic impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak,” said Revenue Minister ...
From tomorrow, Government support for farmers and growers affected by drought will be expanded and extended across the country, with access to Rural Assistance Payments (RAPS) available throughout the North Island, parts of the South Island and the Chatham Islands, Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced. “These challenging conditions have ...
Parliament has passed amendments to legislation that give the Secretary of Education stronger powers to act in the fight to limit the spread of COVID-19, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “They are part of a suite of changes passed under the COVID-19 Response (Urgent Management Measures) Legislation Bill,” Chris ...
Canada, Australia, Chile, Brunei and Myanmar have joined forces with New Zealand and Singapore by committing to keep supply chains open and remove any existing trade restrictive measures on essential goods, especially medical supplies, in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker today welcomed ...
Immediate freeze on rent increases Tenancies will not be terminated during the lock-down period, unless the parties agree, or in limited circumstances Tenants who had previously given notice can stay in their if they need to stay in the tenancy during the lock-down period Tenants will still be able to ...
As New Zealand unites to lock-down in the fight against COVID-19, the Finance Minister is urging all businesses and workers to stay connected over the next four weeks. “We understand the extreme pressure many businesses are under right now. I know most business owners think of their workers as family ...
A State of National Emergency has been declared across the country as the Government pulls out all the stops to curtail the spread of COVID-19. “Today we put in place our country’s second ever State of National Emergency as we fight a global pandemic, save New Zealanders’ lives and prevent ...
Mr Speaker I wish to make a Ministerial Statement under Standing Order 347 in relation to the recent declaration of a State of National Emergency. Having considered the advice of the Director Civil Defence Emergency Management, the Minister of Civil Defence declared a State of National Emergency for the whole of ...
People needing to travel on domestic flights, trains and Cook Strait ferries to get home before the country moves into level 4 lock-down tomorrow night will be able to continue using the passenger services until midnight on Friday, Transport Minister Phil Twyford said today. Domestic passenger services, particularly ferries, have ...
The Government, retail banks and the Reserve Bank are today announcing a major financial support package for home owners and businesses affected by the economic impacts of COVID-19. The package will include a six month principal and interest payment holiday for mortgage holders and SME customers whose incomes have been ...
Normally heaving year-round, Queenstown has ground to an eerie halt as Covid-19 cases rise and tourism income plummets, reports Paul Taylor. On a hill behind Queenstown's coronavirus Covid-19 community testing centre, the resort's iconic Skyline gondola sits motionless. More than 17 million people are estimated to have ridden the gondola ...
Are we drinking more in the lockdown? Hard to know, writes David Slack, but we’re certainly having to get creative about it. Almost every phone call I’ve answered this week has begun the same way: “You still off the drink, then?” Fair question. What a time to be not drinking. ...
Kiwi clinical psychologist Desiree Dickerson is stuck with her family in Spain and has written a guide in Nature: "Seven tips to manage your mental health and well-being during the Covid-19 outbreak." It’s Day 17 of the Covid-19 lockdown in Spain. In a small village on the Mediterranean coast, about ...
"Will our ills be cured? Will our feet carry us? For how long?": a short story set in Henderson by West Auckland writer Serie Barford.I learned to drive a tractor when I was a kid feeding out hay with my cousins on a dairy farm down the line. I ...
Without active testing in the community our Covid-19 picture isn’t complete, an epidemiologist says. David Williams reports. There are worse places to be self-isolating than Whakatāne, in the Bay of Plenty, says Bridget Robson, who lives on a two-acre block and keeps chickens. “We live in a beautiful part of ...
‘Stay in your bubble’ didn’t exist 100 years ago, but our ancestors would want us to know how essential it is to do so, says Jai Breitnauer.It was a warm but slightly grey January day in 2019 when I pulled the car over to the side of SH1, just south ...
David Clark’s misadventure in mountain biking was a stupid, but ultimately forgivable offence. The bigger problem is the continued uncertainty around what is and isn’t appropriate activity in lockdown, as Sam Sachdeva writes. Given the pressure he and his Cabinet colleagues are under, it is little surprise Health Minister David ...
Assessing the economic impact of Covid-19 requires a new approach to a problem economists have not encountered in modern times, writes Dr Kirdan Lees Covid-19 has presented quite a problem for economists. Containment policies that seek to flatten the Covid-19 curve or eliminate the virus, restrict economic activity. All governments ...
Every day at 1pm New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield announces precise figures on the number of confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 in the country. He is working on the best information available, and during this week the level of community transmission was put at around ...
Most of New Zealand's MPs are in lockdown just like the rest of us, confined to their neighbourhoods and stuck in their bubbles. Checkpoint called a few to ask them what they're doing. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Deery, Lecturer in Early Childhood Education, University of Melbourne “Stupid coronavirus!” I heard my six-year-old mumble while talking in her sleep. Earlier that day her swimming and basketball lessons were cancelled, a birthday party postponed, and she had to race with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tuffley, Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & CyberSecurity, Griffith University “Zoombombing” in case you haven’t heard, is the unsavoury practice of posting distressing comments, pictures or videos after gatecrashing virtual meetings hosted by the videoconferencing app Zoom. With hundreds of millions ...
Analysis - A leading epidemiologist says health authorities 'really have no idea' of the extent of community spread, Parliament's Epidemic Response Committee gets its teeth into what's going on during the lockdown and the horrendous economic imp ...
The fifth in our new series of charts, graphics and data visualisations by Chris McDowall, covering the Covid-19 epidemic within New Zealand. We’ll publish the latest set each day on The Spinoff.This work is entirely funded by the generosity of The Spinoff MembersInformation about confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 ...
The Finance Minister says struggling companies will be able to put some debt into hibernation, under new legislation unveiled today. Watch the latest government update here. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Lund, Commissioning Editor, The Conversation Editor’s note: The following is current as at April 3, 2020. Things are changing quickly so best to keep an eye on the latest information from WA Health, as well as the federal government.This article ...
During the challenges associated with lockdown, the Māori Party are congratulating Ngāti Ruanui and South Taranaki on the decision of the Court of Appeal, announced today, to stop Trans-Tasman Resources plans for risky seabed mining off the South ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sunanda Creagh, Head of Digital Storytelling What does the COVID-19 pandemic sound like? For this episode, Dallas Rogers – a senior lecturer in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney – asked academic colleagues from all over ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sven Gallasch, Lecturer in Law, Swinburne University of Technology “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion,” wrote Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (published in 1776), “but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the ...
Environment Minister David Parker has directed officials to find ways to fast-track consents for infrastructure and development projects. He says his goal is to help create a pipeline of projects so that some can start immediately once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted “so people can get back into work as fast ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin Spain and Switzerland top cases, countries converging. Chart by Keith Rankin.Spain and Switzerland top cases, countries converging. Chart by Keith Rankin.Of the larger European countries, Italy is now in third place for known cases per person in the population. Spain has overtaken Switzerland for ...
Contact tracing is a crucial part of the Covid-19 puzzle and technology might prove essential to scaling up New Zealand's tracing capacity, Marc Daalder reports With the lockdown reducing physical contact between members of the public and testing ramping up, the only missing piece of the Covid-19 puzzle is contact tracing. ...
Insolvency laws will be temporarily changed to allow troubled companies to trade while technically insolvent Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced changes to the Companies Act to allow companies to put their debts into "hibernation". Robertson said companies facing liquidity problems would have "safe harbour" from their normal insolvency duties ...
Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Ruanui and Te Kaahui o Rauru are celebrating the decision of the Court of Appeal, announced today, to stop Trans-Tasman Resources plans for risky seabed mining off the South Taranaki Bight. The Court of Appeal found that there ...
Bernard Hickey talks to Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr about a massive spike in US jobless claims, and they talk about an inspiring Kiwi app to fight Covid-19 globally. Guest, Pie Funds chief executive Mike Taylor also joins them to talk about the massive market swings and hopes for recovery. Bernard zooms out ...
Political commentators from the left and right sides of the political divide are questioning the powers being exercised by police during the nation-wide “lockdown”. The Asian Invasion 2019 blog draws attention to the warning sounded by former UK Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption when he challenged Covid-19 actions by British ...
Pacific Media Watch The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) has strongly condemned the shoot-to-kill order by President Rodrigo Duterte this week as a ‘dangerous’ opening to target and kill anyone in a public space. “We are raising the alarm in the international community on President ...
The Reserve Bank looks set to start buying council bonds as well as Government bonds to unfreeze financial markets and allow councils to defer rates and jointly invest in infrastructure with the central Government, Dileepa Fonseka reports In what would be another unprecedented move to calm financial markets and help ...
Four PhD students engaged a clinical psychologist to help them navigate an uncertain time in their studies. They share their findings here.As four PhD students from Massey University’s Joint Centre for Disaster Research we, like many others, can’t stop reading and talking about the unfolding events that have gripped our ...
The SpinoffBy Ashleigh Rushton, Lisa McLaren, Marion Tan & Sara Harrison
Covid-19 testing of the wider population is on the cards as World Health Organisation research shows people are most contagious within their first few days of being infected Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield says Covid-19 carriers are highly infectious when they show few signs of carrying the virus. People were ...
Z Energy is the latest company to cut its dividend payout and start talking to its banks about strengthening its finances. Chief executive Mike Bennetts said the company, the largest fuel retailer in the country, had been battered by a range of issues over the past 18 months, and was ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Kang, Associate professor, University of Technology Sydney Young people in Australia are among the fastest-growing group to contract COVID19. According to the Department of Health, there are now more cases in Australia among people aged 20 – 29 years than any ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Pattinson, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland Getting a good night’s sleep can be difficult at the best of times. But it can be even harder when you’re anxious or have something on your mind – a global pandemic, for example. ...
Journalist and Great Barrier Island resident Lindsay Wright reflects on outer gulf pandemic preparedness. Hardy locals can tough it out but Auckland bach owners and boaties should keep their distance. Aotea Great Barrier, the easternmost island in the Hauraki Gulf, are undergoing a Covid-19-inspired population flood. Great Barrier has scenery that makes ...
The Pharmaceutical Society of New Zealand is delighted that the government has moved quickly to provide an initial financial support package for pharmacy. The $15 million package was paid this week to pharmacy contract holders. Pharmaceutical Society president ...
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening.The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference and are "as of 9am" of the day. There were 71 new cases of Covid-19 in ...
A new poem by Wellington poet and bookseller Ash Davida Jane. washed up! it gets tiring pushing the fire alarm every nightbut things keep catching on fireor sometimes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Foster, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney Our earliest vertebrate (animals with backbones) ancestors laid eggs, but over millions of years of evolution, some species began to give birth to live young. There is a traditional dichotomy in vertebrate reproduction: species ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Foster, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney Our earliest vertebrate (animals with backbones) ancestors laid eggs, but over millions of years of evolution, some species began to give birth to live young. There is a traditional dichotomy in vertebrate reproduction: species ...
Welcome to the second edition of our lockdown Top 10s. A reminder that this chart has nothing to do with sales or launches or the publishing cycle; these are just books the Unity team love – and this week it’s westerns, full of big skies and long rides and showdowns.AUCKLANDAll ...
Wellington Mayor Andy Foster’s plan to cover revenue shortfalls through borrowing without cutting low priority spending is immoral, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union . “Businesses and households across the country are meeting financial challenges ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin John Brophy, Emeritus Professor of Creative writing, University of Melbourne “Katrina, I had in mind a prayer, but only this came,” Bruce Dawe wrote to his infant daughter, new-born, in intensive care, her life in the balance, declaring as poets must ...
The shock closure of Bauer NZ – and with it all of the country’s current affairs magazines – is a stark reminder of the fragile state of local media, writes Mel Bunce, the author of a book on the subject.It is a dark week for journalism in New Zealand, with ...
Join Leonie Hayden as she works through the first four weeks of Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy.Rāmere/FridayWe made it to the end of week one e te whānau. It wasn’t that hard! In fact it was… Māori made easy.To end our week of pronunciation practice we’re going to revisit everything we ...
India faces more challenges battling Covid-19 than any other country in the world. With 1.3 billion inhabitants, hundreds of different languages spoken, and an estimated 80% of the workforce daily wage earners currently without jobs, it could be a recipe for disaster.I’ve been living in India for more than three ...
By Sri Krishnamurthi of Pacific Media Watch The Vanuatu government is using the Covid-19 to impose draconian measures and authoritarian rule by end of last month. Wholesale censorship of all Covid-19 related content has been instituted. Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) took the extraordinary step to ...
People with lower credit scores increased their borrowing upon news of the lockdown, while those with higher scores dropped away. March data from the credit-reporting agency Centrix, which runs credit checks on behalf of banks, finance companies, online lenders, and buy now pay later schemes, showed credit inquiries dropped sharply ...
Small business owners say commercial rent relief is desperately needed if they are to survive past the Covid-19 disruptions. While the wage subsidy helped with staff costs, there is currently no government assistance for commercial rent - which typically accounts for 40 percent of a firm's fixed costs. Landlords and ...
SkyCity is making 200 staff redundant as part of cost cutting because of the Covid-19 virus. The casino operator said it had no choice but to cut the size of the workforce given that once business resumes it will be at much reduced level. Chief executive Graeme Stephens said it's ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Glikson, Earth and paleo-climate scientist, Australian National University At several points in the history of our planet, increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have caused extreme global warming, prompting the majority of species on Earth to die out. In ...
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 contentMedia Henry Cooke (Stuff): There’s no easy way for Government to save media drowning. But a fast fix is ...
Just after midday a cyclist was killed on a straight road on a clear day, after being hit by a van in North Canterbury. Lucinda Rees from NZ School Speeds is asking for the mandatory cyclist/vulnerable road user passing gap, which is in consultation, ...
By Indra Singh in Suva Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama says that if Fijians continue to disregard the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic directives from authorities, a nationwide 24-hour curfew could be imposed. His comments come as Fiji yesterday recorded its two latest coronavirus cases, taking the total to seven. Bainimarama said ...
In our new series The Lockdown Letters, some of New Zealand’s best writers tell us what they’ve been up to in the days of Covid-19 alert level four. Today, Ōtaki author Renée.Yes, a few cyclists out and about. I remember my first bike bought from Farmers around 1942, five shillings a ...
Internal memos from NZ’s biggest magazine company, which announced its sudden closure yesterday, state they were lobbying to change a ban on publication. But the minister responsible, Kris Faafoi, has doubled down on rejecting that position, calling those internal communications ‘contradictory’ to what they said to him directly.Magazine publishing giant ...
Up to 100,000 foreigners could be seeking to leave the country in coming weeks, now the Government has relaxed domestic travel restrictions for them. ...
The loss of a loved one can be difficult in the best of times. But it’s even more painful when the planes are grounded.Late on Saturday night, three days into New Zealand’s level four lockdown, Harish got a call from his sister in India telling him that his father had ...
Health Minister David Clark has flouted the Government's advice to exercise locally after confirming he drove to a park to go mountain biking on Thursday. ...
Covid-19 cases top 1m; Trump brags he's #1 on Facebook and says he knows about the virus because a 'friend' got it; UK testing scandal grows; Cats more vulnerable to virus than dogsTicking up to a million cases: A gruesome landmark was passed today when we go over one million ...
“So do not fear, I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” Isaiah 41:10 COVID-19 - Lock down: one week on Welcome to the latest Policy Watch ...
Workers at the Port of Lyttelton are resisting the introduction of casual cargo handlers due to concerns about COVID19. RMTU South Island Organizer John Kerr says there is concern about a Lyttelton Port Company (LPC) proposal to "bring in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Strangio, Associate Professor of Politics, Monash University One of Australia’s preeminent historians, Stuart Macintyre, once observed of John Curtin, the Labor Party leader revered for navigating this nation through the dangers of the second world war, that he would have ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Hanmer, Adjunct Professor of Architecture, University of Adelaide New research the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that SARS CoV 2, which causes the disease known as COVID-19 coronavirus, is more stable on plastic and stainless steel than on cardboard or ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW The Australian government’s JobKeeper wage subsidy, estimated to cost A$130 billion, is a crucial measure to help keep the economy from completely cratering. But, even if COVID-19 is sufficiently under control for the economy to return ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gordon Menzies, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Technology Sydney During this pandemic, our twin health and economic crises require two different types of concern, and they operate differently. For the health crisis, a high level of concern is necessary. Saving lives ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Harriette Richards, University of Melbourne Times of instability and crisis produce increased nostalgia for the past. We long for a time that no longer exists, or never existed. Like melancholy, nostalgia is a sentiment of loss – one that’s particularly familiar to ...
RBNZ bans bank dividends; Who is next after Bauer's shock closure? Vital plan blocked; Commission wins in real estate price fixing case; Softbank walks out WeWorkNo you won’t: The Reserve Bank took the unprecedented step of prohibiting the banks from paying dividends during the coronavirus crisis or redeeming any ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Media reels after horror week, Wellington Council facing massive budget crunch, and highest single day of new Covid-19 cases.It had always been clear that this was going to be a difficult time for the media, with the Covid-19 downturn hitting ...
Former National Finance Ministers Steven Joyce and Bill English question the severity of the Covid-19 lockdown and ask whether the Government has an exit strategy. Andrew Patterson reports. Steven Joyce and Bill English have seen their fair share of financial crises and natural disasters as the last National Government's finance ...
There is no sign the government will tighten quarantine controls for those arriving at the border, in response to calls from the Opposition to quarantine and test everyone. ...
Two new cases of Covid-19 have been identified in Fiji, prompting a lockdown of its capital. Teuila Fuatai reports. Fijian health authorities are scrambling to identify close contacts of its latest two Covid-19 cases. The couple, from Nabua, Suva, appear unrelated to the country’s previous five. Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama ...
Open mike 07/03/2016 
Open mike is your post.
We must root out the traitors among us! ...10 hours ago
In order to meet our 2050 carbon target and do our bit to avoid making the Earth uninhabitable, New Zealand needs to decarbonise our economy, replacing fossil fuels with electricity in the energy, industrial and transport sectors. The good news is that it will mean cheaper power for all of ...18 hours ago
For those folk who find my other Lock-Down Diary versions too “negative” or otherwise unpalatable… Here’s a photo of a pretty flower, . . Better? Tomorrow’s Sanitised Version: a cute animal video. . . . =fs= ...19 hours ago
As Aotearoa enters week two of lockdown, it’s clear we’re all still working out what our “bubbles” look like and how to stay in them to stop the spread of Covid-19. New to the government’s Covid-19 website is some good guidance for people living in apartment blocks. Recent decades have ...21 hours ago
Yesterday was the day the consequences of the lockdown suddenly got very real for many. Firms have been closing and laying people off since the outset of the quarantine but this has mostly been happening out of the public eye. The mass closure of a number of iconic New Zealand ...22 hours ago
Resuming Normal Service: The Republican Party's nominee for in 1920, Warren Harding, promised the American people: “not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration”. If she wishes to remain our prime minister, then Jacinda Ardern will offer New Zealanders the same.HOW EDUCATED AMERICA snickered when the ...24 hours ago
by Daphna Whitmore A third of the world is under lockdown and a clear assessment of this measure to curb the spread of COVID-19 is urgently needed. With any high-stakes decisions it has to be asked what are we dealing with here? Are the measures warranted? Will they achieve their ...1 day ago
I haven’t done a huge amount in the last few days. I’m reading The Poppy War and I’ve sort of poked at a couple of games – I started SOMA but I’m a wimp and I quit while in the first room after the brain scan. I might try it ...1 day ago
Much has been written about the importance of discretion in an emergency situation, and the concerns raised by the potential for it to be exercised arbitrarily. Given the quality of the discussion, there seemed little point in adding to it at any length. In particular, I point to the evidence ...2 days ago
46 Articles Physical science of global warming & effects Global response of evapotranspiration ratio to climate conditions and watershed characteristics in a changing environment Greenhouse effect: the relative contributions of emission height and total absorption Observations & observational methods of global warming & effects Climate change induced a ...2 days ago
Image credit: Diamond Harbour School Blogs I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or ... 3 days ago
The Covid-19 saga will no doubt produce many twists and turns for us before it is finally brought to an end. But one thing it has shown us – and what comfort it should bring us – is that our country’s government is in good hands. I am not thinking ...3 days ago
The following statement was released on March 28 by the National Network on Cuba, a coalition of 40 groups, based in the United States. In recent weeks, Cuba has deployed hundreds of medical providers to over a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, as well as to their neighbors in Latin ...3 days ago
Yesterday, New Zealand recorded its first Covid-19 related death on the West Coast. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be the only fatality, with the virus now being found in every region of the country.However despite the significant danger, people are still unfortunately breaching lockdown rules.There’s really only one main very ...5 days ago
The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed ...7 days ago
Society-wise, aside from the specific morbidity shall we say of the medically-oriented aspects of this COVID-19 crisis, what is unfolding before the world is in more than one way an instructive study of humanity and reactions to a high intensity, high stress environment in real time. Friends, we are at ...1 week ago
Right now low waged and insecure workers are feeling the economic brunt of the looming #Covid19 Recession. In response legal advocate Toby Cooper* and hospitality and worker’s rights advocate Chloe Ann-King, are putting together a series of legal blogs about your employment rights: In this legal blog we outline some ...1 week ago
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or being ...1 week ago
Foreign Minister Winston Peters says getting New Zealanders back home and other travellers out of the country is "a nightmare for our embassies, consuls, and staff around the world". Speaking to NewstalkZB's Mike Hosking, the Foreign Minister said that he gave a clear message to people travelling overseas that they ...17 hours ago
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...7 days ago
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The scale of what we face right now is unlike anything we have ever seen before. Overcoming it is our common purpose. ...1 week ago
The Government will be introducing legislation to make changes to the Companies Act to help companies facing insolvency due to COVID-19 to remain viable and keep New Zealanders in jobs. The temporary changes include: Giving directors of companies facing significant liquidity problems because of COVID-19 a ‘safe harbour’ from insolvency ...16 hours ago
Normally heaving year-round, Queenstown has ground to an eerie halt as Covid-19 cases rise and tourism income plummets, reports Paul Taylor. On a hill behind Queenstown's coronavirus Covid-19 community testing centre, the resort's iconic Skyline gondola sits motionless. More than 17 million people are estimated to have ridden the gondola ...15 mins ago
Are we drinking more in the lockdown? Hard to know, writes David Slack, but we’re certainly having to get creative about it. Almost every phone call I’ve answered this week has begun the same way: “You still off the drink, then?” Fair question. What a time to be not drinking. ...40 mins ago
Kiwi clinical psychologist Desiree Dickerson is stuck with her family in Spain and has written a guide in Nature: "Seven tips to manage your mental health and well-being during the Covid-19 outbreak." It’s Day 17 of the Covid-19 lockdown in Spain. In a small village on the Mediterranean coast, about ...60 mins ago
"Will our ills be cured? Will our feet carry us? For how long?": a short story set in Henderson by West Auckland writer Serie Barford. I learned to drive a tractor when I was a kid feeding out hay with my cousins on a dairy farm down the line. I ...1 hour ago
Without active testing in the community our Covid-19 picture isn’t complete, an epidemiologist says. David Williams reports. There are worse places to be self-isolating than Whakatāne, in the Bay of Plenty, says Bridget Robson, who lives on a two-acre block and keeps chickens. “We live in a beautiful part of ...1 hour ago
‘Stay in your bubble’ didn’t exist 100 years ago, but our ancestors would want us to know how essential it is to do so, says Jai Breitnauer.It was a warm but slightly grey January day in 2019 when I pulled the car over to the side of SH1, just south ...1 hour ago
David Clark’s misadventure in mountain biking was a stupid, but ultimately forgivable offence. The bigger problem is the continued uncertainty around what is and isn’t appropriate activity in lockdown, as Sam Sachdeva writes. Given the pressure he and his Cabinet colleagues are under, it is little surprise Health Minister David ...2 hours ago
Assessing the economic impact of Covid-19 requires a new approach to a problem economists have not encountered in modern times, writes Dr Kirdan Lees Covid-19 has presented quite a problem for economists. Containment policies that seek to flatten the Covid-19 curve or eliminate the virus, restrict economic activity. All governments ...10 hours ago
Every day at 1pm New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield announces precise figures on the number of confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 in the country. He is working on the best information available, and during this week the level of community transmission was put at around ...10 hours ago
Most of New Zealand's MPs are in lockdown just like the rest of us, confined to their neighbourhoods and stuck in their bubbles. Checkpoint called a few to ask them what they're doing. ...11 hours ago
During the challenges associated with lockdown, the Māori Party are congratulating Ngāti Ruanui and South Taranaki on the decision of the Court of Appeal, announced today, to stop Trans-Tasman Resources plans for risky seabed mining off the South ...14 hours ago
Environment Minister David Parker has directed officials to find ways to fast-track consents for infrastructure and development projects. He says his goal is to help create a pipeline of projects so that some can start immediately once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted “so people can get back into work as fast ...14 hours ago
Contact tracing is a crucial part of the Covid-19 puzzle and technology might prove essential to scaling up New Zealand's tracing capacity, Marc Daalder reports With the lockdown reducing physical contact between members of the public and testing ramping up, the only missing piece of the Covid-19 puzzle is contact tracing. ...14 hours ago
Insolvency laws will be temporarily changed to allow troubled companies to trade while technically insolvent Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced changes to the Companies Act to allow companies to put their debts into "hibernation". Robertson said companies facing liquidity problems would have "safe harbour" from their normal insolvency duties ...15 hours ago
Bernard Hickey talks to Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr about a massive spike in US jobless claims, and they talk about an inspiring Kiwi app to fight Covid-19 globally. Guest, Pie Funds chief executive Mike Taylor also joins them to talk about the massive market swings and hopes for recovery. Bernard zooms out ...15 hours ago
Political commentators from the left and right sides of the political divide are questioning the powers being exercised by police during the nation-wide “lockdown”. The Asian Invasion 2019 blog draws attention to the warning sounded by former UK Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption when he challenged Covid-19 actions by British ...15 hours ago
The Reserve Bank looks set to start buying council bonds as well as Government bonds to unfreeze financial markets and allow councils to defer rates and jointly invest in infrastructure with the central Government, Dileepa Fonseka reports In what would be another unprecedented move to calm financial markets and help ...16 hours ago
Covid-19 testing of the wider population is on the cards as World Health Organisation research shows people are most contagious within their first few days of being infected Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield says Covid-19 carriers are highly infectious when they show few signs of carrying the virus. People were ...16 hours ago
Z Energy is the latest company to cut its dividend payout and start talking to its banks about strengthening its finances. Chief executive Mike Bennetts said the company, the largest fuel retailer in the country, had been battered by a range of issues over the past 18 months, and was ...16 hours ago
Journalist and Great Barrier Island resident Lindsay Wright reflects on outer gulf pandemic preparedness. Hardy locals can tough it out but Auckland bach owners and boaties should keep their distance. Aotea Great Barrier, the easternmost island in the Hauraki Gulf, are undergoing a Covid-19-inspired population flood. Great Barrier has scenery that makes ...16 hours ago
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening. The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference and are "as of 9am" of the day. There were 71 new cases of Covid-19 in ...17 hours ago
Vodafone says its continuing to see significant increases in calls and data on its networks after the first week of level 4 lockdown. ...18 hours ago
People with lower credit scores increased their borrowing upon news of the lockdown, while those with higher scores dropped away. March data from the credit-reporting agency Centrix, which runs credit checks on behalf of banks, finance companies, online lenders, and buy now pay later schemes, showed credit inquiries dropped sharply ...20 hours ago
Small business owners say commercial rent relief is desperately needed if they are to survive past the Covid-19 disruptions. While the wage subsidy helped with staff costs, there is currently no government assistance for commercial rent - which typically accounts for 40 percent of a firm's fixed costs. Landlords and ...20 hours ago
SkyCity is making 200 staff redundant as part of cost cutting because of the Covid-19 virus. The casino operator said it had no choice but to cut the size of the workforce given that once business resumes it will be at much reduced level. Chief executive Graeme Stephens said it's ...20 hours ago
Up to 100,000 foreigners could be seeking to leave the country in coming weeks, now the Government has relaxed domestic travel restrictions for them. ...22 hours ago
Health Minister David Clark has flouted the Government's advice to exercise locally after confirming he drove to a park to go mountain biking on Thursday. ...22 hours ago
Covid-19 cases top 1m; Trump brags he's #1 on Facebook and says he knows about the virus because a 'friend' got it; UK testing scandal grows; Cats more vulnerable to virus than dogs Ticking up to a million cases: A gruesome landmark was passed today when we go over one million ...22 hours ago
RBNZ bans bank dividends; Who is next after Bauer's shock closure? Vital plan blocked; Commission wins in real estate price fixing case; Softbank walks out WeWork No you won’t: The Reserve Bank took the unprecedented step of prohibiting the banks from paying dividends during the coronavirus crisis or redeeming any ...23 hours ago
Former National Finance Ministers Steven Joyce and Bill English question the severity of the Covid-19 lockdown and ask whether the Government has an exit strategy. Andrew Patterson reports. Steven Joyce and Bill English have seen their fair share of financial crises and natural disasters as the last National Government's finance ...24 hours ago
Two new cases of Covid-19 have been identified in Fiji, prompting a lockdown of its capital. Teuila Fuatai reports. Fijian health authorities are scrambling to identify close contacts of its latest two Covid-19 cases. The couple, from Nabua, Suva, appear unrelated to the country’s previous five. Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama ...1 day ago
The media promotes fear.
Fear of crime
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/crime/news/article.cfm?c_id=30&objectid=11600999
Fear of Islam
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/325102-muslims-attacks-media-britain/
Better to be scared than questioning why the 1% have everything.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/18/richest-62-billionaires-wealthy-half-world-population-combined
Of course they do.
Fear sells.
And I sense you condone it
….and this promotion of fear can “activate” certain groups in society into becoming proponents of authoritarianism.
“…According to Stenner’s theory, there is a certain subset of people who hold latent authoritarian tendencies. These tendencies can be triggered or “activated” by the perception of physical threats or by destabilizing social change, leading those individuals to desire policies and leaders that we might more colloquially call authoritarian.
It is as if, the NYU professor Jonathan Haidt has written, a button is pushed that says, “In case of moral threat, lock down the borders, kick out those who are different, and punish those who are morally deviant.”….
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism
Grim reading for leftists however all is not lost apparently. The revolution can be saved with a managed float and perhaps the country has more stashed away than originally thought.
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11832
ha ha, and where is Zimbabwe gosman? If only the world were so black and so white you funny man
How is El Salvador coming along?
How is Ukraine coming along?
And the environmentalist murders in Honduras?
How’s the economy going in the Ukraine?
Perhaps we should worry about Venezuela after our failed finance minister and failing prime minister show that they can break even without borrowing $20 billion a year.
must be the beginning of a new working week…i see our resident troll are back on the clock.
Do you get paid Gosman? Or simply a volunteer, but you ought to get an honorarium, or a nice bottle of whisky from the group leader each Christmas. Perhaps we should protest about the principle of you deserving compensation if not receiving some reward. Just let us know who you work for and we will decide what approach would be most suitable. We of course are trying to hold onto principles, but you wouldn’t be conversant with such matters.
You definitely do a good job of adding to the smoke and confabulation around the running of our nation. If it was cigarette smoke, it would be bad but yours is more noxious coming from lower regions.
Who.Oh no not Grossman again!
lol…I see i missed the “s” off trolls
Hows your boy Ron Paul doing?
Keyistas in the “National” party are attempting to use a symbol associated with rugby on a new national flag despite mounting medical evidence of life-changing injury.
http://deeperweb.com/results.php?cx=%21004415538554621685521%3Avgwa9iznfuo&cof=FORID%3A11%3BNB%3A1&ie=UTF-8&q=rugby+injury&as_qdr=
Nationalism is the last refuge of the scoundrel
I’d leave off the -ism.
Nationalism comes in positive and negative forms – some of which may be necessary to resist the ills of globalisation.
It is National that is the refuge of scoundrels.
I do apologise for bordering on spam with my repetitive woeful cries about the fact that Justin Lester, Deputy Mayor of Wellington and Mayoral candidate has a conflict of interest as he sits on the executive of the Wellington branch of the NZ Property Council (and other issues, background and history).
But now it’s becoming clear why this hasn’t been declared as a conflict of interest – the council don’t see it as one, not when they are considering creating a council body who purpose is to be a property market player:
“This year’s draft Annual Plan includes a new climate change strategy, with a focus on reducing car ownership, as well as plans for a new council-controlled organisation that can play the property market.”
WTF?
and more WTF?
“The formation of an Urban Development Agency has also been proposed. The new council-controlled organisation would be able to purchase land, enter into agreements with developers, and prepare ‘master plans’ for urban growth and big projects that boost economic development.”
The seedy links the council already with developers, (and they already have agreements with developers) instead of being destroyed for the public good will now be formalised and entrenched.
So ratepayers who can barely afford to cover their rates as it is because they are on inadequate wages or fixed wages, can’t afford to buy their first house, or struggling with their own mortgage will now get to fund the council and it’s property development fantasies. Our $$$ will be used to invest in an unstable volatile “product” that is exposed to the ever changing winds of the market.
So we are well and truly stuffed here in Wellington. This year we have a choice between the faux left that run council now and National Party aligned Nicola Young, so either way we will end up with the same.
How can it be stopped?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/77592281/wellingtons-rates-and-debt-set-to-increase-as-city-council-eyes-big-projects
What makes you think climate adaptation projects will be more expensive than doing nothing?
I didn’t say anything about climate adaptation projects being more expensive that doing nothing. I have no idea how you got to that conclusion.
I’m talking about the duplicity that exists between developers and the council, how that unhealthy relationship may possibly be formalised and how the ratepayer will provide the funds for the council’s property development fantasies – we can’t afford to prop this plaything up.
If you’d read my previous comments about WCC and it’s amazing lack of interest in developing ANY climate change strategy (we are faux green as well as faux left) you would assume I would welcome some sort gesture towards mitigating climate change.
The idea to get more cars off the road is a good start but it is merely a token gesture. Reasons being:
a) Wellingtonians are the highest users of public transport in the country already. This can be built upon by reducing fares on public transport and providing free public transport in the weekend, as has been proposed by actual Green councillor, Iona Pannett, but rejected.
b)I have spoken at length with councillors, and council officers about the lack of climate strategy for the mass development projects they are so fond of. As I’ve said many times on TS, there has been no environmental protections in place on these development areas, let alone measures put in place to reduce the impact development ultimately has on climate.
Huge tracts of land have been turned into housing. This means more tarmac, less vegetation, more people sucking up resources like air conditioning as there is no shade provided by tree’s – these areas are hotter than traditional suburbs with established trees. There is no expectation for developers to plant tree’s to offset increased carbon levels. Very little public transport has been put in to these new areas, so people drive cars to work instead of catching the bus. There is no commercial zoning in these developments, so people have to drive several KM’s to get to the nearest shops and service centres.
These poorly designed developments have a detrimental effect on the environment.
Our council are a bunch of hypocrites when they pay lip service to climate change.
You’re focusing on the costs to ratepayers as well as potential conflicts of interest; your link describes climate projects as being (at least partially) behind the cost increases.
Sounds like it’s just a smokescreen.
What do you mean smoke screen? The extra costs are the stupid convention centre and the latest Peter Jackson project we have to fund.
I really think that OAB has misunderstood what you are talking about Rosie. Make of that what you will 😉
Thats what I figured. Am I not making sense?
You’re making sense. People aren’t listening to each other very well at the moment. Don’t know why. OAB does lots of small, fast comments which suggest to me he is at work and can’t devote a lot of time to looking at things indepth, or taking time to check things out (that’s also a social skill that to many here lack). But his comments to you today look weird even allowing for that.
I mean that from what you’re saying, they’re using climate issues as a smokescreen: the article makes much of the increased spending that will have to occur as a result, when the real purpose is simply to channel public funds to developers.
OK OAB. I was using the article as reference only, not analysing it’s reporting of WCC’s options.
What I am doing is trying to highlight the sheer hypocrisy of the WCC around their potential implementation of climate change strategy when they’ve had their heads in the sand for years and years and refuse to acknowledge the unnecessary damage development does.
And, yes, agreed, the real purpose is to channel funds to developers.
+1 Rosie
Without looking very closely at it (only reading your comment not the link), I’d say that in theory council’s investing in property to have more control over subdivision development and thus housing is potentially a useful thing (because it’s been left to private developpers for too long). But in practice, in this neoliberal environment, it looks like a disaster waiting to happen. That they use the word ‘play’ the market in a document suggests just how far up their own arses they already are that they don’t see anything wrong with that.
I don’t know what you can do other other than what you already do. Write submissions, make oral submissions, organise. Have you talked to the GP? Are they putting up candidates this year on the GP ticket?
There’s been a lot of jiggery pokery done to local bodies in recent years, I haven’t kept up with it, but it concerns me that we don’t look at how National have been fucking with that as much as with health, education, welfare etc. It’s been low hanging fruit for them and we’ve ignored it to our detriment.
Yes, on the surface weka, it could look like council investment in private residential development could be socially beneficial, after all this council has been very good at refurbishing social housing stock to a comfortable and safe standard and building good quality new social housing.
But you’re right, the neoliberal approach is the one they are taking. This has been confirmed to me through my ongoing conversations with certain councillors.
As for getting things done, I have tried to organise at a local level on our development and others but have been met with silence. (The northern ward roughly sits within the same footprint as the Ohariu electorate, very conservative).
Ironically the only councillor supporting me is a right winger, who is more aghast at the behaviour of the council than anything. he legit though, completely on the level. The Green Party councillor won’t respond to my emails. I’ve had meetings with council managers, at the council and meetings with a councillor at my house.
I’ve really run out of options as just one person.
As for the National Government, you’re right there too, they have had a profound influence in Wellington in regard to the SHA Accord and roading.
Can’t speak for other regions. Thats why it’s always good to hear from other commenters about what’s happening in their turf, both at a local and government level. Often the regional political news doesn’t make it to the MSM, so it’s good to stay connected in other ways.
Hmm, maybe try phoning the Green one, or doorstepping them?
It’s not good nationally from what I can tell, although some areas seem to be doing good things in isolation.
After 18 months of this fight with the council and the developers I’m kind of pooped. They win.
Fair enough Rosie.
Rosie – while it is true that the WCC has done a good job of refurbishing some of its social housing stock, the reason may have been lost in some of the mists of recent history. The investor sharks were circling until the government put the kaibosh on the intended privatisation of some of the council housing stock. The deal ended up with a healthy dollop of taxpayer funding and a ‘no-sale’ edict.
Otherwise, and more pertinent to your comments, the Council (elected and administrative) have a lengthy grab-bag of strategies to aid and abet a coterie of favoured developers who can already do much as they please with the wink and nod of planning and compliance staff which constantly frustrates local communities throughout the city. In most cases, the developers eventually get largely what they want, unless cases are taken to the Environment Court. The quandry then is, how many small groups of ratepayers can affort to front against the high paid lawyers engaged by Council and developers who act as a ‘tag team’, along with their so called ‘expert’ witnesses who, on occasions, prove to be little more than paid obfuscators. The other interesting feature of the Wellington Council is that it engages its former employees as ‘Independent’ Commissioners and has an open door policy when private sector ex-colleagues are engaged by developers. Recently it seems, they also had ex-employees contracted to cover full-time staff who were engaged in the MDH propaganda campaign. It all seems pretty incestuous and getting closer to something more sinister. The latest utterances regarding the proposed new CCO is taking the situation into the ball-park of the questionable deals like those of WWL and subsequently City Shaper which is under the same developer friendly leadership.
Petertoo. I hadn’t been aware of the intention to sell off some of the housing, or only vaguely aware perhaps….was that mid to late 2000’s? During Clark’s Government and during Prendergast’s time? I had only just recently arrived back in Wellington. Or was it more recent?
“The other interesting feature of the Wellington Council is that it engages its former employees as ‘Independent’ Commissioners and has an open door policy when private sector ex-colleagues are engaged by developers.”
You mentioned this recently. It’s fascinating, as is your statement about ex employees being engaged in the MDH campaign.
You really do seem to have some very detailed knowledge of the motivations and processes of some councillors and council officials. I really would like to know the full story – after having spent 18 months dealing with these people, both developer and council and having my eyes opened to some disturbing behavioural patterns and alliances. But I only have part of the picture. I want to see the whole picture. It will also help me join a few dots that I haven’t been able to connect.
Would you consider writing a guest post about the matter?
Rosie – a number of people have been around the traps a bit but so far, the Council/developer cabal have been fortunate in that they have only had to deal with small isolated individuals and inadequately financed community groups. That said, the Council and their fellow-traveller developer friends invariably get pegged back, even by amateur litigants, at Court hearings if cases proceed that far. It is unfortunate that no-one has yet been sufficiently motivated to write a guest post, this commentor included but this will doubt change if there is evidence of the metaphorical brown paper bag or two filled with cash. In the meantime, it is suggested you keep an eye on wellington.scoop.co.nz which constantly exposes gems of information for those of a justified cynical disposition.
As an additional comment, it is not fair to be too hard on some of the Councillors. The Council administration, no doubt with some guidance from the spin-meister, Richard McLean, seem to do a good job of ensuring that any criticism is sanitised before it gets to them.
Thanks for the reminder about scoop. They DO have some interesting council snippets that would never make it to the Dom Post.
I do look forward to a time when you may be able to do a guest post – you’ve got a good writing style and you have more of a 360 degree view than me. I’m a relative newbie to the shenanigans at WCC. I was naive enough to trust them earlier on due to the political colours of a good number of the councillors.
Now, it’s anything but that. As a Labour member I can’t bring myself to attend the electorate AGM next week as Justin Lester will be speaking. He has been an active enabler, contributing to my problems with the developer in my neighbourhood and standing by as I was abused by these powerful men.
He damn well better not give any speeches about the rights and equality of women, ever.
+1 Rosie
+1 Rosie. Auckland Council is now apparently spending 2 million a MONTH on outsourced planners.
On top of over 1 billion in IT blowouts.
http://publicaddress.net/hardnews/the-unstable-supercity/
You are very wise to be worried.
These Auckland problems are just on my periphery at the mo and having scanned through your post on TS and the public address it would take some digesting.
Just quickly are the outsourced planners local but being paid more in fee’s than council employees would be, or are they so outsourced that they’re from another country? – (Outsourcing design tasks to other countries happens in the engineering sector, so it wasn’t a funny ha ha question).
It’s a very National Government way of working – outsource work to “consultants” and pay more while reducing job security for those who have the knowledge of the systems.
I have just voted in the flag referendum and could not help reflecting that the system is broken due to the
closure of local post offices. I have to trek to mine a few suburbs away.
Indeed. A friend of mine who works for the PWUA said something like 1300 “street receivers”, those street side boxes used to post mail, have been removed in recent years. Posties receive a lot of complaints from the public about inconvenient this is.
& small post offices all around the country too.
annnd some of the large ones in suburban centres.
Can someone wise in the ways of the web and the intellectual ownership industry advise me why the link to some NZ Vimeo content that I had put in one of my comments just disappears after a short time? Are people not allowed to show examples of performances, work on line if done by Vimeo? Youtube can be invoked with little trouble, and is a great way to bring content to new viewers or refresh memories of past content.
I should mention that it was a song written for an advertisement for AMP. I don’t think it is still being used by them though I wouldn’t know as I gave up TV on changeover from digital.
I would ask Lynn first. It always helps if you link to what you are referring to so people can see what is going on directly.
Links are still visible in the search engine but not the actual comments
/?s=vimeo&isopen=none&search_posts=true&search_comments=true&search_sortby=date
Looks like it’s not just grey’s couple of comments. Here’s a comment from Draco where the link is no longer visible,
Draco’s comment should have https://*****.com/71074210 in it (* = vimeo) as per the search results above.
Freaking odd.
I can see what is happening inside the code. It has a div with an iframe. But the other side (ie vimeo) as it set as being off.
I’ll have a look later in the day.
Lots of others are missing too, but I found this one with the link still visible
Thanks weka and lprent
is it the difference between http and https?
Does Farming need a Plan B? – an interesting read.
http://www.brct.org.nz/cuppa-tea/hugh-campbell/high-time-for-a-plan-b-for-new-zealand-agriculture/
“Plan A was based on a future promise that told us to stay the course. Things will come right once our trade negotiators have prevailed. This is now not going to happen. We will have some small successes in opening up new markets, but the big step change promised since the Uruguay Round now won’t happen. We need a Plan B that can actually address the problems, shocks, surprises that are starting to overwhelm us here and now.
Actually, we need multiple Plan B’s. One of the most hypnotic and seductive aspects of the liberalization plan was that it presented governments and policymakers with a ‘one size fits all’ answer to any policy problem. It would be a dire mistake to respond to the monolithic quality of Plan A by suggesting that there is a fully formed one size fits all Plan B just waiting to be implemented. Achieve resilient transitions to a more sustainable future will require many solutions of varying size fitted to problems of varying scale. We will need to draw on the reservoir of marginalized and neglected alternatives that sit outside Plan A. We will need to know as much as we can about small-scale food provisioning, medium-scale networks of food production and consumption, and the relationship between food systems and energy systems. We will need to pay attention to how specific communities and localities are trying to create their own Plan B’s in fitting these things together into credible transition pathways. In order to do so, we must first recognize that Plan A no longer provides a full or sufficient answer to the challenges of agriculture and food in the 21st century. “
Power outages.
The NZH reports this morning that there was an outage in the Auckland CBD ( http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11601121)
Most consumers were only out for a short period but 88 for about 5 hours.
BTW Outage is not in my dictionary but I think it is a very neat and clever word
Not reported by the NZH is another outage in Milford on Saturday 5.3.16, which lasted from about 2pm to 8.30pm.
It was reported by Stuff who said that the cause was that a seagull
had broken the line which must have been weakened by wind and age? One person was hospitalised for electric shock.
Is it then appropriate that the lines company is called Vector?
The 2nd meaning of Vector in my dictionary is ” The carrier of a disease or infection”.
BTW Outage is not in my dictionary, NZ Oxford.
Private providers of electricity services in the USA have vectored in mass outages that are called brown-outs, not quite black-outs.
Brownout (electricity) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownout_(electricity)
A brownout is an intentional or unintentional drop in voltage in an electrical power supply system. Intentional brownouts are used for load reduction in an emergency. The reduction lasts for minutes or hours, as opposed to short-term voltage sag (or dip).
This will no doubt be adopted here, as being more efficient than aiming for 100% provision at any time whatever the load, which involves over and under capacity, and that would probably lead to lower profits.
in the film enron; the smartest guys in the room, brownouts (unscheduled maintenance on a generator or two) were a deliberate ploy used in california to up the spot price of power therefore making massive returns to enron.
As some one who had to fight to get on a waiting list.
Big thanks to Idiot/Savant for this piece.
http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/2016/03/a-waiting-list-by-another-name.html
Could be a duck….
Matthew Reichbach
@fbihop
Trump rally photo is… something.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cc0Ok4_W8AAdCru.jpg
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/271932-trump-makes-rally-attendees-swear-to-vote-for-him
a GINGER in action politiking…i know he is a badass but i still prefer him to Hillary
of course Bernie is the BESTEST
Always frisk your local MP. The little fucker’s wearing a wire.
I got the impression in one of the earlier articles about this was the implication that it was normal with National MPs to record everything.
Either that’s the wrong link or Stuff have removed any reference to recording. Always best to cut and paste 😉
Not the wrong link – I’m hoping readers can join the dots. Too obscure?
I couldn’t see anything in that about recording at all. ODT link below is reporting it up front.
Yes, that’s what I was hoping they’d join the dots to. Definitely too obscure. Oh, well.
The “employment issue” in a National Party electorate office is understood to involve a claim a secret recording was made by Clutha-Southland MP Todd Barclay.
Long-serving staff member Glenys Dickson left Mr Barclay’s Gore office last month after 18 years in the job.
The circumstances of her departure have been kept under wraps.
The Otago Daily Times asked the National Party if it was investigating a claim about a secret recording, but party secretary Greg Hamilton said in a statement it was not the role of the party to investigate or comment on staffing matters.
Mr Barclay said he could not comment because it involved staff.
Last week, Gore branch secretary Maeva Smith said an “employment issue” was behind Mrs Dickson’s departure.
At the weekend, electorate chairman Stuart Davie resigned, calling his position untenable, but he declined to comment further.
It is understood some southern party members feel the matter warrants further investigation.
A central issue is whether the recording was made, or whether its existence was an unfounded claim.
A party member, who declined to be named, said that the issue was sensitive for the party because of the prominence of surveillance and spying issues during its time in office.
The Parliamentary Service, which employs electorate secretaries, declined to comment.
Mrs Dickson had worked for Deputy Prime Minister Bill English when he was Clutha-Southland MP.
Yesterday, Mr English declined to comment, but earlier this week told reporters in Wellington the resignations reflected a transition phase in which an MP builds their own team, and he was not concerned about the situation.
Queenstown electorate secretary Barbara Swan has also resigned, and is working out a notice period.
Earlier this week, Mr Barclay apologised for releasing Ms Swan’s resignation letter to a media outlet.
Mr Barclay (25), who grew up in Dipton and Gore, was elected to Parliament in 2014 after Mr English opted to become a list MP.
His youth and previous employment at Phillip Morris New Zealand prompted comment when he was selected for the blue-ribbon seat.
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/politics/375242/claim-secret-recording
Wee Toddy Baccy must be angling for a role with the SIS.
Wee Toddy Baccy, that’s good.
For a moment there I thought you said Mr Barclay had grown up!
gotta love the local news:
Gotta love good faith employers, eh…
If the kid was found to have made a recording the woman that resigned could take a personal grievance against him for recording their conversations without her knowledge.
Indeed.
and if he was recording conversations that he wasn’t party to, it’s a criminal offence.
If recordings were taken, after all. Unless it was at a photo-op where everyone could expect to be recorded.
Our PM, bold as brass hypocrite.
Yeah, there was a chat about this on Open Mike last Friday.
Nats need to respond to the membership who want an investigation and grant it………. If they have any sense of responsibility to the membership they would.
And how neurotic/paranoid/nutty is that kid if he IS recording conversations.
“And how neurotic/paranoid/nutty is that kid if he IS recording conversations.”
Probably means he’s got got a bright future in national.
What makes you think he hasn’t caught them doing something illegal? They are National Party types, after all.
Well, none of the staffers seem to have been put on the fast track to candidate selection. Does their reputations good…
Looks like the tom toms are getting louder for Barclay.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/77630096/disquiet-over-mp-todd-barclays-performance-could-spark-selection-challenge
My understanding is the challenge could come from the Queenstown guy who pulled out at the last minute in the last pre selection process. From recollection his name was Simon Flood and he was…drumroll please…. a currency trader…. that had parachuted in from Singapore to contest the seat.
Interesting dynamic in this seat because it is a mix of ultra rural heartland Southland and cosmopolitan Queenstown. The Queenstown faction have always wanted a Queenstown advocate which is fair enough given the distinct issues they face so maybe they now sense their opportunity. Of course that will not be popular with the rural base who have plenty of issues of their own to deal with at present.
Queenstown population 13,000
Gore 12,000
Clutha Southland voting age population 51,000
Queenstown doesn’t look that special in what is essentially a rural seat.
Can’t find the voter age population for the individual towns, but here’s the polling place breakdown from 2014.
Fair point Weka. I suspect though if Barclay has been so woeful or infact has acted illegally as an employer and Queenstown can get a credible candidate up, then it could all be on. Although Barclay is based in Gore and is originally from Dipton his rural credentials as a tabacco lobbyist are hardly overwhelming. Does this disarray signal the chance of another Northland upset?
One would hope that Labour, the Greens and NZF would try talking to each other. Probably shouldn’t hold our breaths though.
I’m not sure what the rest of Southland would think about a Queenstown candidate. I guess it would depend on who it was. I can see how Baccy could easily lose the nomination next time round, he’s a really bad fit for that electorate. And now the National Party nationally appear to be saying that Clutha Southland should suck it up and get used to things being run by the suits. It will indeed be interesting to follow.
Labour had what seemed to be a credible candidate last time. I think she was a health professional or the like but she was heavily defeated. I think someone with a strong rural background would poll well here.
Skulduggery by Parata?
At Rangiora High School they administer a Trust which owns about $16million worth of land. This Trust has operated for about 100 years and the Trust is usuallyv mostly by the BOT and Principal. The school was running well until the Ministry spotted the $16million. The Trust refused to give it to the Ministry to fund repairs and build a new hall.
After a Commissioner was put in to get at the millions, Ministry fired the BOT and suspended the Principal Peggy Burrows hinting at Financial malpractice. No such malpractice exists as an audit has cleared them all but now Peggy has been fired by the Commissioner anyway.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11601495
Peggy Burrows sacked.
Another principal sacked in Invercargill won her Employment Court case and was awarded $158,000. That principal compared Hekia Parata to Hitler which was a bit unfair on Adolf.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/77622719/rangiora-high-principal-peggy-burrows-sacked
Some background:
https://networkonnet.wordpress.com/2016/01/04/in-cold-blood-terror-as-an-instrument-of-control-in-state-education-part-1/
https://networkonnet.wordpress.com/2016/01/07/in-cold-blood-the-rangiora-horror-show-part-2/
https://networkonnet.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/press-release-from-nz-first-urgent-action-required-at-rangiora-high/
https://networkonnet.wordpress.com/2016/02/08/rangiora-invidious-deception-but-truth-now-out-burrows-suspended-to-get-at-schools-money/
I’m not sure if the Minister and her motley Ministry crew will be compared to Hitler in this case. I don’t know how corrupt, vindictive and plain nasty Hitler was.
The old School Inspectorate, independent educational experts working directly to the Department of Education, would have nipped any problems in the bud a long time ago and before it got to this crisis point whereby a very good, highly qualified woman School Principal is sacked.
The Labour Party under Rogernomics and David Lange made a huge mistake by bringing in ‘Tomorrow’s Schools’
http://schools.reap.org.nz/tanui/Jubileepages/Tomorrows%20Schools.htm
http://www.ppta.org.nz/events-info-forms/doc_view/26-tomorrow-s-schools-yesterday-s-mistake
Hekia Parata does not have the experience or educational qualifications or ethics to be judge in this matter … she is captured by John Key’s and ACT’s privatising agenda for Charter Schools…a USA model whereby privatised schools are run by corporations …(replacing State run schools which employed highly qualified educational professionals) …and a model which has failed
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/07/06/growing-evidence-charter-schools-are-failing
“I don’t know how corrupt, vindictive and plain nasty Hitler was.”
Unutterably vile, petty, vindictive and mean-spirited. Much worse than Trump – he was even worse than Cruz (who is much more evil than Trump. Cruz is the one who’s promising to legislate Government discrimination against minorities if he gets elected).
Fairly bad in fact – I recommend http://www.amazon.com/Man-Called-Intrepid-Incredible-Narrative/dp/159921170X – outlines a lot about Hitler et al from an external perspective. Jung has a nice anecdote in Psychology and the Unconcious too. The Gnats are probably more like the Italian Fascists – crookeder but less about racial destiny.
Worth watching.
Best Joke of the year, when he was asked what he gave to Rupert Murdoch, as a wedding present, Guest, Barry Humphries replied, a set of Jumper Leads. Hilarious,
Why automation is a bad idea,
E-Lev-in Will never be the same. Ouch!
Good spelling of a Scottish accent!
@joe90 12.57pm
Regarding Trump’s hideous behaviour of making the crowd vote for him, there is a really apt word for this ‘trumpery’. It is actually an old word which means foolish words or actions and has a secondary meaning of worthless and useless. All of which I gleaned from Bryan Gould’s brilliant post below.
http://www.bryangould.com/trumpery-is-the-last-thing-we-need/
….especially as we have had almost eight years of trumpery from key……. I knew there was a word for his unappealing and unacceptable behaviours.
Mr Drumpf is rather proud of his heritage.
Donald Trump appears to take aspects of his German background seriously. John Walter works for the Trump Organization, and when he visits Donald in his office, Ivana told a friend, he clicks his heels and says, “Heil Hitler,” possibly as a family joke.
Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.
“Did your cousin John give you the Hitler speeches?” I asked Trump.
Trump hesitated. “Who told you that?”
“I don’t remember,” I said.
“Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew.” (“I did give him a book about Hitler,” Marty Davis said. “But it was My New Order, Hitler’s speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.”)
Later, Trump returned to this subject. “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2015/07/donald-ivana-trump-divorce-prenup-marie-brenner
Sanders attacks Clinton over Wall Street ties & ‘disastrous trade agreements’
https://www.rt.com/usa/334754-sanders-attacks-clinton-debates/
“Bernie Sanders has attacked Hillary Clinton over her record with corporate America and “disastrous trade agreements” destructive to the US economy, as well as multibillion bailouts that robbed the state of jobs – all at the expense of the US middle class….
‘Assange: Vote for Hillary Clinton is ‘vote for endless, stupid war’ which spreads terrorism’
https://www.rt.com/news/332022-assange-clinton-vote-war/
‘Michael Savage: Only Trump Can Beat Hillary Clinton’
https://www.rt.com/shows/politicking-larry-king/323154-larrry-king-politickin-michael-savage/
Ralph Nader Slams Bernie Sanders for Endorsing Hillary Clinton
Yes, let’s just ignore Sanders’ shilling for the NRA, Lockheed Martin and the war machine and his commitment to an ongoing drone programme.
Fuck it, while we’re at it let’s just forget about Sanders’ part in the export of nuclear waste to some place far far away where brown people live, too.
/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-the-nra-helped-put-bernie-sanders-in-congress/2015/07/19/ed1be26c-2bfe-11e5-bd33-395c05608059_story.html
http://gui.afsc.org/birddog/bernie-sanders-lockheed-martin-f-35-jets-vermont
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/09/bernie-sanders-loves-this-1-trillion-war-machine.html
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/bernie-sanders-troubling-history-supporting-us-military-violence-abroad
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/08/31/3697175/bernie-sanders-wouldnt-end-obamas-drone-program-promises-to-use-it-very-selectively/
http://social-ecology.org/wp/1998/10/the-texas-vermont-maine-nuclear-dump-bringing-environmental-racism-home/
The Government is being accused of going easy on Chinese authorities when making trade deals for the infant formula industry.
Dozens of Kiwi brands made by small businesses going down the drain.
There were 200 brands – and now there are just 20.
Michael Barnett of the Infant Formula Exporters Association said “MPI have allowed them to control that process, so we’ve ended up with a small group of privileged exporters.”
He says many of those exporters are Chinese-owned companies based in New Zealand.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/business/infant-formula-agency-accused-government-going-easy-china?autoPlay=4785655384001
Thoughts?
My inside contact says follow the money.
I say .. also follow the political and personal relationships.
No-one who knows the culture would’ve expected anything different. But where were our government? Drunk? Asleep? Or bought and paid for?
Despite the growing attacks on Donald Trump from within the Republican establishment, all three of his challengers vowed to support Trump if he wins the nomination.
Has anybody else seen Pete Georges new profile picture on YourNZ ???
Something ain’t right.
Think he’s having a mental break down.
I’m still giggling at his description of himself as a “better democracy campaigner”.
“Eminem” anyone ?