Parata is meeting the unions seperately.
Ironic that it is fine for teachers to deal with a variety of pupils in larger classes, but Parata cant deal with a varietty of unions togetherr.
Also interesting to hear key on morning report
Said the govt needs to be able to explain the change better to parents.
They have been fed misinformation.
(To help with this the min needs to release the info to schools!)
THEN he went on to talks about class sizes of 15 16. They only exist in private schools.
Interview with John Key this morning on Morning Report. A very vague response.
Then an interview with Professor John O’Neal Education, who quietly explains the implications of larger class sizes. John points out that the teacher numbers have grown in an effort to catch up on other countries. The OECD average is about 1:22 so Parata’s 1:27 is pretty grim. http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/mnr/mnr-20120607-0822-education_professor_says_small_classes_improve_teaching-048.mp3
Yesterday’s bene bashing bombshell dropped by Bennett was a bit of a surprise to put it mildly. It dog whistled compulsory sterilisation but we were assured that this would not occur. It appears to me to be a diversionary tactic to take the public’s attention away from something really important.
But what?
What is this Government doing that is deeply unpopular, that is opposed by most of the population and that will permanently damage our economy? What is it that the Government does not want us discussing or thinking about?
Yesterdayâs bene bashing bombshell dropped by Bennett was a bit of a surprise to put it mildly.
You could be right about National needing a distraction, but yesterdays suggestion by Bennett was no bombshell for those who have been following welfare reform closely.
She has discussed this before and the Welfare Working Group pretty much pushed a eugenics line without coming out and saying it directly.
The problem is nobody pays much attention to what is being done to those at the bottom of the heap unless it is extreme. Then after expressing their disgust the good old middle class move on to something more interesting.
Thats why the people at the bottom have realised its a waste of time voting.
“Our big problem would be … if Europe goes, China could slow down, Australia would be very badly affected by the China slowdown and that’s the nightmare scenario for us â a slowdown in China, our second-largest market, a slowdown in Australia, our largest market, a weak United States and we’re in a diabolical position.” John Key, London, 7-6-2012.
âLet’s assume for a moment that John Key did not earn his fortune with what in 1993 was already recognised as the instrument which would eventually bring down our entire global economy and just realise what he said here in public.
If all these markets stumble there will be a major recession worldwide, if not a depression. And we all know what’s next. Of cause everybody is looking up and down the lines whether they are being hoodwinked into ever more belt tightening or whether some serious preparation is required. Unfortunately, the “don’t make the public panic” will always be in place as the funds need to stay in the bank(books) and any to be withdrawn will go to the few in the know. Besides, it is already forecast that China is slowing down and Australia will follow. To what extent needs to be seen.
John Key and mates know that we dear constituents cannot cope with real facts, so BLiP, they are just protecting us in a cocoon of bliss. “Hush little babies. Nothing to worry about. Just go to sleep. Daddy John and Daddy Bill will fix everything.”
It is getting serious though. The Minister and Ministry of Ed are particularly remiss given the current debate. Show us the money! Oops. I mean show us the figures!
Fuck-all point being offered the theoretical choice of chosing to be either moral or immoral within an overall system that makes the manifestation of your choices either impossbile or ineffectual. The story forgets that. Lack of wider perspective. Any colour you like… as long as it’s black.
“In sum, the left has a tendency to place caring for the weak, sick and vulnerable above all other moral concerns. It is admirable and necessary that some political party stands up for victims of injustice, racism or bad luck. But in focusing so much on the needy, the left often fails to address â and sometimes violates â other moral needs, hopes and concerns. ”
That a professor could write a book about moral choices and say something like this means he doesn’t even know how to locate morality. I suppose he is a professor of a business school after all.
Joe Bageant’s “Deer Hunting with Jesus” looks into the same sort of thing with greater depth and insight. He argues that the modern left have come to have a high-handed, patronising attitude to the poor, which puts them off, while the right take steps to actively and directly engage them, albeit via their prejudices and status anxieties.
I see it like this. In the sixties and seventies, the left was an amalgam of the working class and the avante garde. Various victories on the identity politics front have allowed large sections of the avante garde to be absorbed into the middle class, while Reagan/Thatcher economics have driven the working class into poverty. This leaves the political left not knowing who to represent and the poor not knowing who to blame.
Is this a problem of being unable to differentiate between morals in the wider context and political expediency or an orchestrated misinformation effort? The professor’s words suggests that ambition and undefined concepts of fairness are simultaneously rights and virtues. Without any examination, and examination cannot take place at a political level, such a statement is false. Certainly in the UK, it would be unrealistic to say that the government concentrates too much on the needy.
As I see it, the political left know exactly who to represent, some do. There is only dispute among entertainers who cannot retain existing power structures while abandoning the support base – a common problem. If the poor do not know what’s up, they may have a – usually rare – intelligence problem or a failure to grasp realty, but this has nothing to do with being poor.
“He argues that the modern left have come to have a high-handed, patronising attitude to the poor, which puts them off, while the right take steps to actively and directly engage them, albeit via their prejudices and status anxieties.”
It’s not unusual to find that those who receive assistance often suffer subtle and influential prejudice from the source of assistance, however, the steps the right take to “engage directly” is much like someone else described recently: handing out band aids to the person you just punched in the face. On the one hand we hear him saying that the left need to stand up for the weak, since the right won’t, but that the left cannot remain politically viable if they do, based on the incorrect assumption that the left need the poor to stay in business. Then we hear him suggesting societal dysfunction is better than addressing basic need. His argument is flawed in that it suggests he doesn’t understand who or what the left is, outside of mainstream six o’clock politics, or maybe he does, so he makes up lies about it all.
I fail to see how this makes the political right a more likely choice for the working poor. His unsubstantiated argument is a plea to “a poor working class” who he imagines is a bunch of people who are not intelligent enough to see through his illogical conclusions. He then blames the left for his prejudices. Funny how projection works like that. Not a level of argument I would expect from a professor.
I am certainly no advocate for the right, and neither was Bageant. However, you need to be in a pretty abject position to see yourself as one of the “needy.” The “needy” is what someone else calls you, not what you call yourself. Our own earlier working class movements were quite clear about wanting justice, not charity. The middle class left often want to be nice to the poor, without feeling genuine solidarity with them, while the poor themselves want to be represented, positions which are hard to synthesise on a political level. The right do not represent the working class’s interests, but their prejudices. However they at least make a connection on that level, and thus inveigle people into voting against their interests. I am with you regarding the moral position, I think that it is the one the left should make central. But the core moral value ought to be justice, not charity (in the modern, degraded sense of the word). And I also thought the professor’s piece was lightweight and morally confused.
Because people are poor, by no means infers that they lack a sense of self-esteem and integrity, or that they lack intelligence or make “bad decisions”. Agreed, justice comes first, maybe tempered with charity (which of any of us, poor or otherwise, is not in some need of charitable intent?)
I did add a little caveat to charity, Dr Terry. By “in the modern degraded sense” I meant the sort of patronising charity that gave rise to the saying “cold as charity.” Simone Weil has said that we degrade both justice and charity when we separate them: that real justice includes charity and real charity includes justice.
Uturn It is moral to run a country so that everybody who needs and wants
it can have a job with a living wage. There are lots of rights to be considered by governments but that is an important point applying to the whole society. It’s so basic that it can get overlooked when viewing those who have handicaps. Sometimes the people without handicaps, including caregivers, become invisible.
I completely agree with you Olwyn. This inequity of outcome for the various parts of the left is a huge problem. Those whose dignity, well-being, and human rights have been eroded so easily turn against those who have experienced a net benefit from the changes over the last 25 years, especially those groups that society had previously set below the white, het, working class.
I’ve read a bit of Haidt’s stuff and have found his analysis to be shallow right-wing apologism. His latest book was reviewed on NZ’s Sciblog and it didn’t impress the reviewer much either.
This can cut both ways unfortunately. Not only do those who are left out resent those who have benefited, sometimes those who have benefited feel superior to those who have not. It is just human psychology; we think we merit our gains and are unlucky in our losses. But however it is understood, it is the left’s biggest problem in my eyes. We have been divided and ruled. Gore Vidal has said, solidarity is easy for the right, because they are all after one thing – money. Whereas the left are after all sorts of things and easily fall into disagreement – I am paraphrasing, Vidal said it a whole lot better.
Yeah that’s true. In being allowed to join the “respectable” class, members of formerly heavily stigmatised groups too often look down on and victim-blame the poor and still severely oppressed.
I’m reading a (very distrubing) book ‘Scapegoat’ about hate crimes against people with disabilities, which, while always a problem, have increased as those at the bottom are squeezed harder and harder in the UK. It can’t be denied that there is also a problem of “traditional”-working -class hatred for other disdained and vulnerable minorities, as a function of their own hardship, where legitimate anger is taken out on those least able to fight back, rather than on those with the power.
There must be a way that the anger can be channelled into solidarity.
In the sixties and seventies, the left was an amalgam of the working class and the avante garde. Various victories on the identity politics front have allowed large sections of the avante garde to be absorbed into the middle class, .
But actually, you haven’t really explained how the right were able to split off a narrowed version of so-called “identity politics” from the class struggle.
The neoliberal divide and conquer was (at least partly) the outcome of the right targeting the shift from classic marxism to neo-marxism; from a materialistc/economic-based left-wing analysis to a focus on culture.
And that shift was a result of the difficulty marxists (and socialists generally) had with explaining why the (r)evolution predicted by Marx, hadn’t happened – why the working classes hadn’t joined to over-throw their oppressors & exploiters. The neo-marxist explanation was that cultural/social constructions and processes were keeping the exploited working classes in a state of “false consciousness” – i.e. they’d been conned into supporting capitalism, against their own interests by (in Althusser’s terms) Ideological State Apparatuses e.g. media, religious organisations, education, the family etc. The New Left started to shift away from (what many saw as) the underlying material and economic determinism of classical marxism.
This began the ‘turn to culture’…. but the postmodernists – enthused by the increasing proliferation of easily replicated communication, and media productions (videos, visual images etc), really went intensely into the cultural realm. (i.e. just change culture, and thence attitudes, then all the inequalities can be dissolved and economic and social justice will reign. They split off from the materially-based class struggle.
But the strength of the neoliberal right is, that they had a unifying model – the “business does it best” trope. Through this they amalgamated policies that target material and economic circumstances, with methods of cultural persuasion : the business model of dealing with the financial and economic realities, while also using marketing and advertising techniques to sell their political product – and increasingly a kind of viral marketing through all areas of culture and media.
So, in my view, the crucial thing is for the left to find their own unifying concept. Then use this as a way to unify material/economic struggles with relevant discourses, cultural productions and policies targeting social divisions social division. …. and probably includes those kind of values that you are calling “moral”.
Hi Carol, to start at the end, I am not using the term “moral” in any prissy sense, but in the sense that I think social and economic justice are best construed in terms of a moral issue; that of how we treat our fellow human beings. I realise, however, in saying this that the term “moral” is also employed divisively and on a petty level, eg. Ms Bennett’s recent moves. It is hard to win with language.
“…the biggest beneficiaries from changes in social attitudes will be those within the middle & upper classes (women, LGBT people, Maori elite etc).”
I agree, but such people were then often exiles from the middle classes. In a way, you could say that the neo-libs broadened the criteria for being members of the middle class, and that not all of those on the above list naturally gravitated to the avante garde anyway. In fact do we still have an avante garde beyond comic and graffiti artists?
“…the strength of the neoliberal right is, that they had a unifying model.”
The closest I can think of as a unifying model for the left is the idea that being allowed into the middle classes, whether you are blue collar, female, brown or rainbow, (or any combination) is not exactly power. Power is either physical or economic might, and anything less depends upon the acquiescence of might. If there was a sudden need for large numbers of soldiers, for example, the blue-collar male workers could just as easily be invited back into the tent, & the LGBT, etc unceremoniously kicked out, as workers were under Thatcher. Someone said recently in a post on the Herald site (I forget which one) that if you are not able to take a year off work without going on the dole and without loss on the scale of losing your house, you are not part of the elite, whatever airs you give yourself. This seems to me like a good place to start. I think it is hard to separate the economic from the social so far as oppression is concerned, since you are economically punished if you are socially on the outer, and you are socially punished if you are economically on the outer. And the only might we have is in our numbers, whichever form of injustice we have suffered, or seen others suffer.
Ah, Olwyn, I see you quoted from my post before I edited it out (I looked at what I’d posted and it seemed awfully long).
Yes, it is a complicated situation, and I mostly agree with you. I think left and right wing ideas of moral behaviour tends to differ. So I just talk about left wing values. Of course, the neolibs talk as though their policies are based in some objective reality, while it masks some very self-centred values.
Maybe, though the middleclass is going to shrink in the future as resources become more scarce.
Yes, ultimately political power lies in force – it’s a negative form of power – stopping people from doing things.. Foucault talked of a more positive form of creative power. People exercise power with their actions e.g. by doing something innovative, an imaginative protest, or making something useful for people – such things can be quite powerful.
Maybe, though the middleclass is going to shrink in the future as resources become more scarce.
Already happening. Look at the UK, USA, Spain, Greece, Portugal. In Australia, the coastal capital city middle class isn’t shrinking, but it is stagnating.
Carol: Yes I was speaking of power purely in terms of might. There are most certainly creative powers and the power of an idea whose time has come, etc. However, if the middle class shrinks it will not because that is what the middle class want.
Well, they are going to shrink, but they are going to continue to tear away at the under class and the working class in order to maintain their own position for as long as possible.
Trotter seems finally to have seen the light. However, the possibility of government reclaiming the right to be the sole creator of money seems to be the “elephant in the living room” these days. It is something all columnists should be “shouting from the rooftops”.
it was certainly a good introduction and for many people it probably scared them stupid but why did he limit the scope of the reality as if it only applies to Home Loans. It reads as if he was wanting to expose the big lie . . . only to mention a smaller fib ? Or maybe he has a drip feed plan to slowly acclimatise people to the truth that the entire Global Economy is a big ol’ scam with me, you and the other seven billion who call Earth home as the oblivious marks.
Either way it was great to see it in a mainstream newspaper.
( as a bonus the Peter Taylor & Moriarty show running in the comments is funny stuff )
I saw that article the part that confused me about it though was he was saying the home loan is just a book entry. Surely they have to pay the person you are purchasing the house off?
Well my point was about the house is paid for with money part. The article and you seem to ignore that part – the bank is not creating money by book entry only – they are actually making a payment to a person.
Judging by his article I’d say yes he’s on the barmy side. Banks don’t print money out of thin air, he’s dreadfully misinformed there. Time he retired IMO.
No they don’t, your linked article states that “banks are said to create money.” Note the word ‘said’. And they don’t create it out of thin air anyway, which is what Trotter was claiming. They can only lend money which is deposited with them (or borrowed), they can’t create a loan from nothing.
NZ doesn’t really have fractional reserve banking either, in practice the banks do retain a fraction of deposits for daily withdrawals etc but the Govt doesn’t set reserve ratios on banks here. We use capital ratios to control lending.
They can only lend money which is deposited with them (or borrowed), they canât create a loan from nothing.
Then you explain how a $1000 deposit in a bank becomes $10000 in circulation and that the original deposit can be withdrawn without decreasing the money in circulation.
NZ doesnât really have fractional reserve banking either, in practice the banks do retain a fraction of deposits for daily withdrawals etc but the Govt doesnât set reserve ratios on banks here. We use capital ratios to control lending.
C’mon people you’re not that financially illiterate. The M3 money supply grows because money lent by banks usually ends up back in the bank for them to lend out again. Banks just do not create any money out of thin air, that’s fantasy thinking.
Spare the facepalm BS, check for yourself and you’ll find NZ is one of the few countries in the world that doesn’t set a fractional reserve for trading banks. (well it didn’t last time I read up on it) We use capital adequacy instead.
Of course they had it, banks can’t lend from a negative balance sheet. When a bank lends money they take it out of their cash account and transfer it to the recipient, it’s real money. It’s a paper entry only because that’s the way we do things these days, we don’t lug wads of cash around any more
Guys I’m not one to belittle others but this talk about banks printing money from nothing just makes people appear a little foolish IMO. The banking system leads to money creation but we’re just as much a part of that as the banks are. M3 money supply includes bank deposits. If someone pays us with borrowed money, and we put that money in the bank, well we’ve just created more money (M3 money anyway).
When you read informed commentary about banks creating money they’re usually talking about the whole banking system, not the banks per se.
I don’t know what they taught you guys at school but banking doesn’t look to be part of it. Fractional reserve banking means they lend out a fraction of what they borrow, not a multiple. They retain a small fraction for cash reserves, that’s the fractional reserve, and they lend out the larger fraction.
And as I’ve stated NZ banks aren’t required to retain a fractional reserve, they can lend out 100% of deposits if they want (provided they have enough capital).
Keep on with your misconceptions, doesn’t bother me, but whenever you bring this up among people who do understand banking they just laugh at you.
“In 1985, New Zealand was the first country to abandon reserve ratios completely, and we are still among the minority in not having a ratio system at all.”
Like all modern monetary systems, the monetary system in New Zealand is based on fiat and fractional-reserve banking. In a fractional-reserve banking system, the largest portion of money created is not created by the Reserve Bank itself, 80% or more is created by private sector commercial banks.
Fractional-reserve banking:
Like all modern monetary systems, the monetary system in New Zealand is based on fiat and fractional-reserve banking. In a fractional-reserve banking system, the largest portion of money created is not created by the Reserve Bank itself, 80% or more is created by private sector commercial banks.[6]
Very Matrix-y. The human (I assume) with the programme pseudonym just revealed a human-looking response to be little more than the output of a search engine.
Most of the money supply is created as debt against future earnings. Thin air.
Only a small fraction is money held as deposits.
There is absolutely know reason why we cannot do that themselves instead of paying fees/interest to banks, which really is money out of thin air. And one reason why our economic system requires continual growth.
Sneering and sniggering about prisoners’ rights
National Radio, Thursday 7 June 2012
Maybe you heard this nasty little item on National Radio just before 9 o’clock this morning. In a tone of barely contained levity, Simon Mercep said that prisoners have been “grumbling” about the quality of the food they get. Prisoners have laid 374 complaints about food in the past year.
Obviously, in the minds of the producers at National Radio, this is a matter for amusement and sniffy disdain, and it was treated as such. Corrections Association head Bevan Hanlon clearly thinks it’s a big joke: “One of their main complaints was that, ha ha ha, the bread was only buttered on one side.” He called their complaints “whingeing” and said that the only reason they complain is “because they can.”
Of course, the prisoners’ concerns are much more profound than that, and it’s a concern to hear someone in Hanlon’s position dismissing so callously the views of the people he and his colleagues are entrusted to look after.
The final insult was to give the last word to that moral pygmy and outspoken advocate of knife-killing, Garth “the Knife” McVicar. He asserted that he has been into every prison in New Zealand and that “they are all very humane places”. He repeated Bevan Hanlon’s contention that the prisoners are simply “whingeing”.
In view of his defiant support for child-killer Bruce Emery, for the monstrous ACT member of parliament David Garrett, and for the brutal and extreme Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, surely McVicar is a discredited and thoroughly disreputable commentator. It beggars belief that Radio New Zealand should go to him for comment about anything at all.
Surely for all the crimes he has committed, Garrett himself should be sensibly sentenced? There was drunk driving, there was an assault in Tonga, and lets not forget the whole dead baby thing.
Garrett also loudly and truculently supported the knife-killing of that boy in Manurewa. He was speaking in his capacity as an SS Trust “legal adviser”.
And wasn’t the hypocrisy of the SST silence in condeming, and as you point out, even supporting the murderer of the 16 year old Manurewa boy so very telling of their ethnic compass. Can’t remember the name of the murderer now but I do remember he only got a minimum sentence and was out in under half the time served. Imagine if the victim had been Pakeha and middle class?
It was Bruce Emery. He was supported not only by the SS Trust, but vociferously championed by NewstalkZB and sympathetically covered by (among others) the New Zealand Herald and TV3.
Sorry Morrissey, a duh moment on my behalf. Of course, Bruce Emery’s name is in your post above! I recall the sympathy the media gave him at the time and the way they angled a justification for his vile crime. It was chilling,and truely sickening.
Lawyer John Pike told the court that sending copies of the evidence taken from DotCom’s computers to the USA was not a breach of the Solicitor General’s ruling because “that only covered ‘original material’, not copies”.
So, in making this statement, it is clear that the Crown and the FBI themselves have shown that there is a massive distinction between an original work and a copy.
By highlighting this distinction, and effectively saying that a copy is not an original and therefore ought not be subject to the same laws as apply to an original — they are striking at the very heart of the MPAA/RIAA’s own assertion that unauthorised copying is theft.
That’s interesting Dv. And maybe if I steal a replica of a medal or gun or jewel it is not theft. And as you say any stuff downloaded must be a copy and therefore not illegal. What a tangle!
FBI agents who copied data from Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom’s computers and took it overseas were not acting illegally because information isn’t “physical material”, the Crown says.
FBI agents who copied data from Megaupload founder Kim Dotcomâs computers and took it overseas were not acting illegally because information isnât âphysical materialâ, the Crown says.
Interesting legal approach. I’m sure it will stand them in good stead when dotcom’s lawyers argue that that there was no problem. That holding copyrighted data isn’t unlawful because it isn’t “physical material”.
If a teacher cannot teach maths, cannot even do the basics…
Such a teacher would not survive. Such a teacher exists only in the minds of ideologues in the ACT and National parties. The children soon make life intolerable for an incompetent teacher. Unlike incompetent Education Ministers, teachers have no place to hide.
Ok i’ll bite,
I read your post which as always says little and suggests nothing
so PG the question to you is HOW?????????
do you isolate the 10-20% into special in-class groups? How?
do you introduce specialty teachers who travel the country doing Workshops? How?
do you group the failing kids from various schools into multi-school hubs? How?
do you introduce additional user-pays programmes for failing kids? How?
or do you just waffle on as usual supplying sidetracks to empty yards and building bridges for trolls all the while ignoring the reality that without a massive gigantic and really really big increase in funding, Education of NZ children is looking down the barrel of a shotgun loaded with disparity.
being unable to offer any actual answers you proffer a response that only highlights the inadequacies of the current system. PG if ‘it’s already done’? What are you suggesting needs to change?
The best things that could change would be for Government to do it’s homework properly, and for both Government and teacher groups to learn how to work together rather than have schoolyard scraps all the time.
The attitude of both sides of the incessant arguments is the biggest impediment to improvement.
you had a straightforward out if you had simply said something like:
‘the government could reverse the hundred million it has given to private schools since 2008 and return it to the public schools it stole it from’ but no just carry on ignoring the theft of the dwindling Education resources and blame the teachers.
btw, the only people who need to remove impediment is the succession of governments who have committed Education to the asylum of user pays bean counting
How about the Government could actually listen to the Teachers and researchers instead of simply following blindly whatever fuckup is the latest fashion in the USA and UK.
The sheer stupidity and arrogance of the Government is the biggest obstacle to improvement.
Or maybe it is not stupidity. Just a another way of ensuring State schooled kids cannot compete for jobs with their inbred brats. “Keeping their winning ticket”.
Because I just have a peripheral interest in the topic.
And I thought that putting up questions might get some sensible responses, even some intelligent responses, rather than resorting to abuse.
There might even be teachers that are able to contribute, they should be adept at discussions, and I’m sure they wouldn’t try to put down any student that asked questions.
You have regularly been corrected by many people, including teachers. Yet you persist in posting up your frivolous, half-baked contributions about something you know nothing about, then when confronted, you scuttle away and claim that you were just “putting up questions.”
You rarely make a serious or coherent statement about anything, and when exasperated regulars point this out to you, you squeal about being “abused”.
what abuse PG?
please point out the abuse you have suffered since posting your insightful questions.
( please note i edited out a line earlier that was admittedly a bit snarky but not abusive)
also, as someone who wanted to be an MP how can you only have a peripheral interest in what is arguably the single most important policy matter facing any nation, ie the funding of the education of its people?
No politician is an expert on everything, they all specialise. And my main interests are more general than specific, although there are some I have more experience with.
more bs puerile git Massey university say the cuts will affect the bottom 14% of children not reaching the required levl of education to function in the workplace.
There have been âSave TVNZ 7âł public meetings around the country. Itâs Dunedinâs turn tomorrow night:
Thursday 7 June, 6-8pm
Colquhoun Theatre, 1st floor of Dunedin Hospital, Great King Street
– entrance just to the left (north) of the main hospital entrance
I miss the ‘latest comments’ box which used to be on the right of the screen.
Do other people using more sophisticated devices still get it?
[lprent: Fixed. There was a problem with the latest minify update. Turned it off and logged it for looking at why it works on the first page, but not the post pages. ]
Umm.. it’s a nuisance to have to hit ‘Comments RSS’ everytime though. Is there something else I can do to retrieve the comments box at top right of screen?
When I hit “comments RSS” I get an error page “This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.” with all the latest comments scripted, no gui.
Shouldn’t need to hit the âComments RSSâ link at all especially considering that the box (technically, all three boxes) is still there on the main page.
10 years ago there were 2 effective (at least) interventions in Decile 1 schools the
Feso’otaiga Academic and Community Leadership Program and
AMHI
Both were successful and both have had their funding cut.
This is the Nats commenting on the funding in 1998
The funding was seeding, and then to be carried on by the schools.
BUT the model was broken, because the schools couldn’t afford to carry on.
In a dissent in that case, Justice John Paul Stevens predicted that such spending would overwhelm state court races, which would be especially harmful since judges must not only be independent but be seen to be independent as well. North Carolina is proving him right.
Peak Oil hits another snag
The story of Peak Oil just canât get legs; for 50 years the Greens have found that stating a lie over and over doesnât make it true.
The US Geological Survey recently announced a 200 year supply of Shale OIL under Utah/Colorado; this known as the Brakken shale.
Well today, Forbes has announced a shale oil/gas source called the Bazhenov shale; 80 times the size of the Brakken, in a large area of Siberia. Bye bye Peak Oil.
No – shale production has proved very efficient in the USA.
“The Bakken is a huge boon, both to the economic health of the northern Plains states, but also to the petroleum balance of the United States. From just 60,000 barrels per day five years ago, the Bakken is now giving up 500,000 bpd, with 210,000 bpd of that coming on in just the past year.”
So no problem; and the cost of gas in the USA is about one-third of what it was 5 years ago.
They are now setting up export contracts of LPG/CNG to the likes of India.
Some 800,000 real [not subsidized] jobs have been the result of the boom.
This will be a key part of the USA shaking of the economic slump
Meanwhile”green jobs” are still holding back Europe as they subsidize Wind/solar and kill real jobs as companies harvest Government subsidies.
Always nice to meet another idiot. You certainly are one.
The point about peak oil is that it is when the costs of extracting oil and gas start to rise. It is not (as morons like yourself seem to think) when there are no liquid hydrocarbons to available to extract. So your comment merely shows your major deficiencies in the understanding of economics. Now we have done a hasty repair on your basic lack of understanding with sarcasm as the tack, have another look at your linked article…
Any mention of cost? Nope. I wonder why?
Hell, we’ll probably never run out of hydrocarbons. As the germans proved in WW2 you can create industrial levels of producing the right hydrocarbon factions for liquid fuel from crap coal if you are willing to pay the cost of production. Of course that cost is sky-high and it is probably cheaper to simply produce a complete network of magnalev trains…
Were these ‘new’ fields known about previously? Ah yes…
From the looks of it, geologists have been looking at the Bazhenov for more than 20 years.
I guess that means they have. In fact you can find mentions of this structure from as far back as early last century if you hunt around in geological texts. Geologists have known about shale fields in Utah and Colorado since the 19th century. Neither were economic to mine and as we can see from this following statement from your link…
Itâs only in the last five years that the technology and expertise has been developed that will enable drillers to harvest it. Lukoilâs president Vagit Alekperov said a year ago that his company was also experimenting with the shale.
…there is a pretty good probability that they may still not be economic. It will take another decade at least to find out because it depends on a lot of uncertainties. This is pretty much a puff piece trying to attract investment capital to the field. Less than a third of fields at this stage of development prove to be worthwhile to put into ‘reserves’. Only a very few get made commercially viable in less than a few decades. And the only reason they’re looking at fields like this at present for oil is because the oil price is going through the roof.
You are a wee fool aren’t you. Hammer isn’t that good a name for you. Dumbo would be better…
Your link reckons there is 24 billion barrels recoverable from Bakken shale. You know how much oil that represents? About 6 – 9 months worth at present rates of use.
And ‘your’ Bazhenov saving grace is 80 times the land area. Not 80 times the quantity of recoverable oil.
And even if it was 80 times the oil, it would represent much less than a 40 year supply. Y’know, because we use more of the stuff year on year
Talking of Europe being held back by pursuing the “Green Dream” of running on more and more wind and solar sources of energy, we have the sad case of Spain.
Recently from the New York Post:
In January, the Spanish government removed lavish subsidies for its renewable-energy industry, and the industry all but imploded. You could say it was never a renewable-energy industry at all, but a government-subsidy industry: The government gave the makers of inefficient windmills and solar panels piles of cash that consumers never would.
âThey destroyed the Spanish market overnight with the moratorium [on subsidies],â European Wind Energy Association CEO Christian Kjaer told Bloomberg News.
The Spanish example shows how the whole green-energy ârevolutionâ was really an ideologically driven boondoggle from the start.
âŠâŠ.researchers at King Juan Carlos University found in 2009 that Spain had destroyed 2.2 jobs in other industries for every green job it created, and that the Spanish government has spent more than half a million euros for each green job created since 2000.
If Spain is effectively bankrupt then so is the UK, the USA, and numerous other highly indebted nations.
All you’ve really shown here is your basic lack of understanding economics. That’s real economics, not the delusional stuff that economists, this government and Treasury use.
Hi dumbo. I see that you’re still cherrypicking your examples without bothering to apply either intelligence or industry to the task.
As far as I’m aware there are no subsidies still in place for the Baltic and North Sea windfarms, nor for those in Texas.
All of them took subsidies to get the industry up and running. Just as there were subsidies in the 19th and 20th centuries to get coal, hydro, geothermal and nuclear power industries up and running. Private industry are pretty useless about getting into new infrastructure areas that may be a wee bit risky. Governments use power infrastructure subsidies to get things up and running to the point that the economies of scale kick in and the risks become clearer. Subsequently the subsidies get progressively removed after a decade or so (except for nuclear – which was a complete waste of time and a soak for subsidies).
Right now I think that Germany is trying to push for more offshore windfarms and is moving the subsidies to encourage an industry to form (there are close to 10,000 towers producing nearly 10% of their power on land). The reason for this is obvious. They closed their nuclear power stations last year at a considerable saving in subsidies and are now trying to catch up with the cheap Danish power from their offshore windfarms.
The only problem that Spain had was that they’d only started to push their windfarm industries relatively recently. So the fledgeling industry hadn’t hit critical mass yet and was unlikely to do so for another decade. But you were clearly too lazy to read.
Basically you are a simple munter who seems to never engage your brain and who is too lazy to find some actual information. You’re like a idiot parrot who sees a few Key words and then tries to extrapolate a idea from them. Too stupid to think really.
BTW: It’d pay to link when you quote. When I wear my moderators cap I’ll ban quite rapidly for that particular tactic.
Â
“researchers at King Juan Carlos University found in 2009 that Spain had destroyed 2.2 jobs in other industries for every green job it created, and that the Spanish government has spent more than half a million euros for each green job created since 2000.”
Â
Rubbish. Debunked here Hammer:
hey ham murmurer Lies and BS you are telling porkies the Spanish economy has Imploded because of over investment in their property bubble you bubble brain.
You can laugh but we are going through another property bubble right here in god zone.
Sooner than later its going to crash again.
Iprent:
Well this is a pleasureâŠ.
weâve got the “Leaders of the Left” explaining away the observations of the Right by using such in-depth explanations as to why I am wrong by using indepth analysis such asâŠ.
: another idiot; morons like yourself ; you are a wee fool arenât you:    Dumbo would be betterâŠ
 You’ve missed the point Iprent –  I achieved the  response which I expected to my fact based comments; have another nice day.
Keep it up  lprent7 June 2012 at 4:15 pm
It is a pleasure to meet minds with you
Umm. As far as I am aware all I do is express my opinions mostly on this site. Anyone thinking I am a leader of the left is really stupid. For a starter, I’m quite noticeably right on things like economic policy compared to most on this site and around the left.
But I guess if it helps you then I guess it is a harmless conceit for you to believe… I always like helping people with their self help procedures on their way to a climatic revelation. In your case I think that a paper towel may be good to have handy rather than a calculator.
A meeting of minds it is not. So far you haven’t actually managed to express an opinion of your own as far as I can see. You have merely repeated something you read somewhere without really understanding it.
Which is of course why you whine about how others treat you with contempt. That you never address the holes they chop into your poorly constructed comments could explain their attitude.
It is a common fallacy of the inept that inconvieniences like contradictions to a theory are just part of an intelligent design to fool those with more skepticism than your simple faith in your own omni-potence of understanding. Unfortunately others usually tend to view this trait of ignoring the blindingly obvious is because you’re just too damn lazy to exert yourself. I know I do…
When you do provide links, people only have to quote the parts of your own links that clearly contradict your plagiarized argument. But, like me, they probably suspect that you are incapable of understanding why there is a contradiction.
 Sorry Iprent – I missed a few more of your GEMS;  apparently I am also:
… dumbo ;     Basically you are a simple munter ;    seems to never engage your brain Â
too lazy to find some actual information ;     Youâre like a idiot parrot  ; Too stupid to think really ;
Iâll ban quite rapidly  –
ohhhhhh – Â sounding desperate ??
No doubt replying to you with your own words will be an excuse for banning me for being honest.
If you may have any doubt – have a nice day.  Enjoy the sun.
– I was just pointing out where the state of world oil/gas supplies are going over the next few decades.Â
This is obviously a threat to your world view – Sad!
I am sorry for your poor state of mind. Â Maybe you should seek help?Â
I see that as usual for our more pathetically ignorant trolls you have :-
1. Been pretty much incapable of making up your own words and instead have to mostly quote the words of your betters amongst the internet mythmakers instead. Based on your previous efforts, I suspect that is all you can actually do apart from a rather juvenile and ineffectual attempt at taunting. I have seen prepubescent relatives with far better stirring techniques – It appears that you were raised in a convent?
2. Found it impossible to put the quotes in a coherent context. In this case you failed to locate the reply button (hard to do, but clearly not impossible), failed to link to the comment you were replying to, and failed to even mention the number of the comment that you were replying to. Of course that could be part of a “cunning plan” to make it hard for observers to gauge your level of ignorance. That probably also explains why you didn’t even attempt to rebutt anything that I said and didn’t even argue about any of the counter points I made to your dumb unthinking claims.. But if so, then Baldric was way better at the planning.
3. Gone immediately to try for victim status rather than arguing. Probably because your self-esteem has been crushed by people thinking that you have no idea about what you ae commenting on and expressing their incredulity that you could use a keyboard. But this forum is all about arguing, so what better place to exercise your rather useless skills at it into something more substantial*.
Perhaps you should READ the policy to find out what gets people banned. I realize that it may FEEL like exerting your lazy arse. However if you are capable of understanding words (rather than just cut’n’pasting) it is the easiest way to find out what moderators will be looking to eradicate.
If I’d thought that you were worth banning then I’d have done it already when I was moderating, rather than giving a reply and a gentle warning about linking.
* I am sure that a few of the other commentators will be happy to treat you as a chew toy (try again) act as a sadistic drill instructor (damnit) assist you. It was only the other day that some were complaining that I was too abrupt and that they had noone to assist…
Let me guess, Hammer, you’re trying to win a bet that you can get banned from the Standard for terminal stupidity? The content of your comments was the first clue, your failure to work out how the reply button works was the real giveaway.
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A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the countryâs books after Teanau Tuionoâs membersâ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his memberâs bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Todayâs advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,â says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. âWe know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,â Dr Reti says. âEvery day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikoheâs new $14.7 million sports complex. âThe completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,â Mr Jones says. âThis facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Petersâ engagements in TĂŒrkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges.  âReturning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,â Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen â good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood â a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - Â It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Â Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Â Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. âOur Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealandâs hydrogen future, with the opening of the countryâs first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. âI want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealandâs own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealandâs energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. âThe report shows that New Zealandâs emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,â Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where heâll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Governmentâs work to restore law and order. âAttending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealandâs human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the worldâs largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. âThe reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealandâs wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin  NgÄ mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho  Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today.  I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. âOur Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealandâs overseas missions.  âOur diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealandâs interests around the world,â Mr Peters says.  âI am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. Â âOver 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. âIt is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. âOur coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
âChina remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,â Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says.  Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. âRecently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachersâ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul.  âThe Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. âScience, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During todayâs meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. âThe Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in TaupĆ as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the TaupĆ International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. âAnticipation for the ITM TaupĆ Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. âThe coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. âThis project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sectorâs productivity,â Mr Jones says. âThe project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Governmentâs plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. âBenefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Governmentâs commitment to doubling New Zealandâs renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealandâs latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. âOur Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. âNew Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Governmentâs intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. âThe introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
âOur exporters should, therefore, be deeply concerned that the Fast-track Approvals Bill was not assessed for consistency with any of our free trade commitments prior to being introduced to the House,â says Gary Taylor, Chief Executive of the Environmental ...
NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff is calling on all political parties to support the new Memberâs Bill from Labourâs workplace relations and safety spokesperson Camilla Belich MP that would ensure negligent companies are held accountable when their employees ...
A historian with an uncanny track record of predicting US election winners tells RNZ's Sunday Morning that President Biden looks to be on track for another term, but things could still go very wrong for him. ...
A historian with a track record of predicting US election winners tells RNZ's Sunday Morning that President Biden looks to be on track for another term, but things could still go wrong for him. ...
Ngaio Marsh House is one of Christchurchâs best kept secrets â and contains more than a few mysteries of its own.Trust Ngaio Marsh to leave more than a few mysteries scattered through her house long after her departure. For a start, thereâs the curious concrete portal in the garden, ...
Appointment viewing has been lost to the mists of time, but memories of Montana Sunday Theatre can still be conjured by hitting play on a particular piece of classical music. âYouâre not going to be able to sell it.â Over 30 years on, Karen Bieleski still recalls how the task ...
Performance Review King Luxon sat behind His massive polished oak desk. It is Performance Review time. There is a knock on the door. âEnter!â says the King. In steps Minister of Disabilities and Carer Pedicures, Penny Simmonds. âI can explain everything âŠâ she begins. âFine,â says King Luxon, pressing the ...
The pair opened their first fully collaborative exhibition, Nina for Flowers, last Saturday. Gabi Lardies visited their studio to find out who Nina is and what working together was like.âIt didnât start out like, âThis is a show about Nina,ââ says Josephine Jelicich, gripping a thermos of peppermint tea. ...
Thank you, Dr Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner, for your brilliant invention. Iâm another mid-20s Kiwi who had an OE last year. I hopped on my bicycle where France meets the Atlantic and cycled east. I pedalled through the Loire Valley, down rivers lined with willows and ancient wisteria-draped chateaus. I relished ...
Asia Pacific Report From France to Australia, university pro-Palestine protests in the United States have now spread to several countries with students pitching on-campus camps. And students at Columbia and other US universities remain defiant as campuses have witnessed the biggest protests since the anti-Vietnam war and anti-apartheid eras in ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)New Zealand Government’s Fast Track legislation. Many criticisms are being made of the Governmentâs Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. Itâs important to understand what the Government ...
Tara Ward talks to presenter Naomi Toilalo about the new TV show that turns food waste into a three course feast. Naomi Toilalo is standing in the warehouse at Good Neighbour Tauranga, helping unpack the two-and-a-half tonnes of rejected food that will arrive at the community support hub that day. ...
Scout is our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our Whatâs Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Scoutâs human, Avril, for her support. Dog name: Scout (named after the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird â she inherited the independent spirit ...
Megan Alatini takes us through her life in TV, including âterribleâ daytime TV, the class of Carol Hirschfeld and her most embarrassing TrueBliss moment. When she responded to a vague newspaper ad asking âdo you have what it takes to be a popstar?â 25 years ago, Megan Alatini never guessed ...
A new exhibition in Wellington showcases the faces behind your local goods and services. Back in 1977, when I was a fine arts student at the University of Canterbury, I took a series of photographs of Christchurch shopkeepers. The photos were for a calendar â a project for my end ...
Toomaj and his resistance to tyranny through his songs have become an icon for the youth of Iran, so his sentence has hit the nation hard. Toomaj Salehi is not the first artist to pay the price for standing with the people. ...
My cousin Dylan and I spotted these big eels under the bridge that summer. We watched them lounging under the dark weed, facing into the flow of water, their mouths frozen open. Dylan and I couldnât stop thinking about those eels. The night we went down to the creek, we ...
Newsroom, home of satire. My long-running weekly satirical series The Secret Diary has moved to Newsroom and will appear every Saturday, with Victor Billot’s wildly popular satirical Odes continuing to appear every Sunday. Diaries, Odes â while serious political columnists toil at meaningful opinions and stroke their chins to an ...
Tara Ward unravels the many nuanced layers of a cartoon about talking dogs.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. Itâs not often an episode of a childrenâs cartoon has adults sobbing into their sleeves, but thatâs exactly what happened this week when ...
There’s an island in the far reaches of Auckland’s territory, sitting off the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula, 30 minutes by air from the city or four hours on the slow boat. Aotea Great Barrier is off-grid, it has a population of fewer than a thousand people ⊠and most ...
Asia Pacific Report An Australian author and advocate, Jim Aubrey, today led a national symbolic one minuteâs silence to mark the âblood debtâ owed to Papuan allies during the Second World War indigenous resistance against the invading Japanese forces. âA promise to most people is a promise,â Aubrey said in ...
Asia Pacific Report The Freedom Flotilla is ready to sail to Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. All the required paperwork has been submitted to the port authority, and the cargo has been loaded and prepared for the humanitarian trip to the besieged enclave. However, organisers received word of an âadministrative ...
Pacific Media Watch Palestine solidarity protesters today demonstrated at the Auckland headquarters of Television New Zealand, accusing the countryâs major TV network of broadcasting âpropagandaâ backing Israelâs genocidal war on Gaza. About 50 protesters targeted the main entrance to the TVNZ building near Sky Tower and also picketed a side ...
Opinion by Lynley Hood. Forty years on from my 1985 Fulbright Grant, my disquiet over the war in Gaza evoked some troubling questions. The answer to my first question – What is the primary purpose of the Fulbright Programme? – was on the Fulbright NZ website. It says: US Senator, ...
The ministers responsible for green-lighting major projects need to be open about potential conflicts of interest, says Transparency International. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University It has been a particularly distressing start to the year. There is little that can ease the current grief of individuals, families and communities who have needlessly lost a loved one to menâs ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Lichen, the first described example of symbiosis.AdeJ Artventure/Shutterstock Once known only to those studying biology, the word symbiosis is now widely used. Symbiosis is the intimate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Hemsley, Head, Childhood Dementia Research Group, Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University Olena Ivanova/Shutterstock âChildhoodâ and âdementiaâ are two words we wish we didnât have to use together. But sadly, around 1,400 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University The governmentâs Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has just published its second report. It was set up by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth in 2022 to provide: ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne The Queensland state election will be held in October. A YouGov poll for The Courier Mail, conducted April 9â17 from a sample ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Naeni, PhD candidate at Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University Thereâs been much talk in recent months about what a possible second Donald Trump presidency in the United States could mean for Europe, Russiaâs war in Ukraine, the ...
A brief round-up of submissions on the controversial proposed law. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week, submissions on the controversial Fast-track Approvals Bill closed just hours after the government released a list of stakeholder organisations who were sent letters advising how they could ...
A poem from Robin Peaceâs new collection Detritus of Empire: feather / grass / rock. Cereal giving I see a womanâs hands, see her curious hands break a stalk as she walks through the tall prairie, the savannah, the steppe, wherever it was. See her idly bite the grass that ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Booksâ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingwayâs Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)A handsomely produced (debossed cover, lovely ...
The Commissioner's decision validates the longstanding efforts of the local community and ensures that Awataha Marae will be managed to serve the needs of the local community, particularly for hosting tangihanga. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Salles, Associate professor, University of Sydney Examples of Australian landscapes.Unsplash Seventy thousand years ago, the sea level was much lower than today. Australia, along with New Guinea and Tasmania, formed a connected landmass known as Sahul. Around this time â ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Castagna, Lecturer, Creative Writing, Western Sydney University Day Day Market, ParramattaPhoto: Garry Trinh I live on the edge of Parramatta, Australiaâs fastest-growing city, on the kind of old-fashioned suburban street that has 1950s fibros constructed in the post-war housing boom, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Ryan, Teaching Fellow in Economics, University of Waikato GettyImagesfatido/Getty Images There is an ongoing global debate over whether the high inflation seen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic can be lowered without a recession. New Zealand is not ...
The âWicked Gameâ heartthrob is in his late 60s now. That didnât stop him putting on a lively, goofy and very sparkly show. Apart from âWicked Gameâ, which graces a sultry playlist of mine simply called đ, my last sustained Chris Isaak listening session took place when I was about ...
Analysis - Two ministers were stripped of portfolios in a warning to Cabinet, drama broke out at the Waitangi Tribunal, and the gang patch ban bill ran into opposition. ...
Tara Ward makes an impassioned plea for some vital pop culture merch. In April 1999, I became obsessed with a new reality television show called Popstars. Every Tuesday night, five strangers transformed into music royalty before my very eyes as Joe, Keri, Carly, Erika and Megan were chosen to form ...
PNG Post-Courier In the early hours of ANZAC Day, aerial photographs captured an impressive gathering of Australians and Papua New Guineans at Isurava in the Northern (Oro) Province. The solemn dawn service yesterday was held at a site steeped in history, where some of the fiercest battles of World War ...
The PSA is shocked that Oranga Tamariki has used the cost cutting drive to downgrade its commitment to Te Ao MÄori and remove many specialist MÄori roles. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland There can be no more powerful symbol of the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea than the prime ministers of these neighbouring countries walking together on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharon Robinson, Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director of ARC Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong Andrew Netherwood Over the last 25 years, the ozone hole which forming over Antarctica each spring has started to shrink. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Viktoria Kahui, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Economics, University of Otago Getty Images/Amy Toensing Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing. One emerging concept focuses on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Colin Bednall, Associate Professor in Management, Swinburne University of Technology marvent/Shutterstock Finding the best person to fill a position can be tough, from drafting a job ad to producing a shortlist of top interview candidates. Employers typically consider information from ...
Wondering where to host your next BYO? Whether its a small gathering or a massive party, weâve got some recommendations. I was first introduced to the concept of BYOs at Dunedinâs India Gardens, a legendary but sadly defunct establishment, which purveyed enormous quantities of mango chicken to Aotearoaâs drunkest future ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julien Cooper, Honorary Lecturer, Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University Julien Cooper The hyper-arid desert of Eastern Sudan, the Atbai Desert, seems like an unlikely place to find evidence of ancient cattle herders. But in this dry environment, my new ...
The sector says itâs hopeful her replacement Paul Goldsmith will be able to throw it a lifeline, after six months with a minister deemed missing in action, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoffâs morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign ...
The government can't just rely on axing public sector jobs and has to do more to cut spending, says the chief economist at a free market think tank. ...
Rock The Vote NZ, known for its advocacy for minor party unity and its role within the Freedoms NZ Coalition during the 2023 General Election, celebrates this merger as a strategic enhancement of its operational strength and outreach. ...
Nearly everyone has experienced the frustration of something you use breaking and being difficult or expensive to fix. Proposed legislation could change that. Itâs been raining on and off all Sunday afternoon but people are lining up outside a building in a corner of Gribblehirst Park in Sandringham, Auckland. In ...
Hi there comrades, please give our new branch a “like” on FB. We need all the support we can get in such a strong National electorate http://www.facebook.com/groups/163564560349751/#!/pages/Young-Labour-Marlborough/152818718149669
By the way, I agree with enough is enough re Alliance and Kiwibank
Not sure how your labour branch is relevant to honours or Cullen- might be better posted in the Open Mike thread? đ
This should have been posted in the Open Thread not here.
[lprent: Yep… moved. ]
Does anyone know whether teachers are entitled to redundancy? Haven’t heard the government offering it …
Yes, or at least they used to.
I lay odds that the redundancy costs are not in cluded in the costings.
I saw an item on stuff? Today it is gone that Key had told Parata to talk to the unions.
.
Here ’tis
ThaNks blip.
I liked the emmerson cartoon.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10811241
Parata is meeting the unions seperately.
Ironic that it is fine for teachers to deal with a variety of pupils in larger classes, but Parata cant deal with a varietty of unions togetherr.
Also interesting to hear key on morning report
Said the govt needs to be able to explain the change better to parents.
They have been fed misinformation.
(To help with this the min needs to release the info to schools!)
THEN he went on to talks about class sizes of 15 16. They only exist in private schools.
Interview with John Key this morning on Morning Report. A very vague response.
Then an interview with Professor John O’Neal Education, who quietly explains the implications of larger class sizes. John points out that the teacher numbers have grown in an effort to catch up on other countries. The OECD average is about 1:22 so Parata’s 1:27 is pretty grim.
http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/mnr/mnr-20120607-0822-education_professor_says_small_classes_improve_teaching-048.mp3
Yesterday’s bene bashing bombshell dropped by Bennett was a bit of a surprise to put it mildly. It dog whistled compulsory sterilisation but we were assured that this would not occur. It appears to me to be a diversionary tactic to take the public’s attention away from something really important.
But what?
What is this Government doing that is deeply unpopular, that is opposed by most of the population and that will permanently damage our economy? What is it that the Government does not want us discussing or thinking about?
Could it be this?
You could be right about National needing a distraction, but yesterdays suggestion by Bennett was no bombshell for those who have been following welfare reform closely.
She has discussed this before and the Welfare Working Group pretty much pushed a eugenics line without coming out and saying it directly.
The problem is nobody pays much attention to what is being done to those at the bottom of the heap unless it is extreme. Then after expressing their disgust the good old middle class move on to something more interesting.
Thats why the people at the bottom have realised its a waste of time voting.
I thought it would have been something to do with asset sales. They appear to be abusing parliamentary process again. Oh dear.
“Our big problem would be … if Europe goes, China could slow down, Australia would be very badly affected by the China slowdown and that’s the nightmare scenario for us â a slowdown in China, our second-largest market, a slowdown in Australia, our largest market, a weak United States and we’re in a diabolical position.” John Key, London, 7-6-2012.
âLet’s assume for a moment that John Key did not earn his fortune with what in 1993 was already recognised as the instrument which would eventually bring down our entire global economy and just realise what he said here in public.
If all these markets stumble there will be a major recession worldwide, if not a depression. And we all know what’s next. Of cause everybody is looking up and down the lines whether they are being hoodwinked into ever more belt tightening or whether some serious preparation is required. Unfortunately, the “don’t make the public panic” will always be in place as the funds need to stay in the bank(books) and any to be withdrawn will go to the few in the know. Besides, it is already forecast that China is slowing down and Australia will follow. To what extent needs to be seen.
.
A worryng trend . . .
– Treasury pulling figures from the collective arse of its battalion of consultants
– Minister of Education witholding vital numbers on staffing cuts in schools
– Department of Statistics cancelling release of unemployment figures
– Tourism operators astounded by government figures showing domestic tourism is soaring
– Expert dismisses government figures on retirement as “meaningless”
. . . isn’t National Ltdâą being run by some sort of financial genius known for his acumen with figures?
John Key and mates know that we dear constituents cannot cope with real facts, so BLiP, they are just protecting us in a cocoon of bliss. “Hush little babies. Nothing to worry about. Just go to sleep. Daddy John and Daddy Bill will fix everything.”
It is getting serious though. The Minister and Ministry of Ed are particularly remiss given the current debate. Show us the money! Oops. I mean show us the figures!
.
Heh! Its here now folks . . . Daddy State!!
Why working-class people vote Conservative
‘
=>conservative
This?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/05/why-working-class-people-vote-conservative
Fuck-all point being offered the theoretical choice of chosing to be either moral or immoral within an overall system that makes the manifestation of your choices either impossbile or ineffectual. The story forgets that. Lack of wider perspective. Any colour you like… as long as it’s black.
“In sum, the left has a tendency to place caring for the weak, sick and vulnerable above all other moral concerns. It is admirable and necessary that some political party stands up for victims of injustice, racism or bad luck. But in focusing so much on the needy, the left often fails to address â and sometimes violates â other moral needs, hopes and concerns. ”
That a professor could write a book about moral choices and say something like this means he doesn’t even know how to locate morality. I suppose he is a professor of a business school after all.
Joe Bageant’s “Deer Hunting with Jesus” looks into the same sort of thing with greater depth and insight. He argues that the modern left have come to have a high-handed, patronising attitude to the poor, which puts them off, while the right take steps to actively and directly engage them, albeit via their prejudices and status anxieties.
I see it like this. In the sixties and seventies, the left was an amalgam of the working class and the avante garde. Various victories on the identity politics front have allowed large sections of the avante garde to be absorbed into the middle class, while Reagan/Thatcher economics have driven the working class into poverty. This leaves the political left not knowing who to represent and the poor not knowing who to blame.
Is this a problem of being unable to differentiate between morals in the wider context and political expediency or an orchestrated misinformation effort? The professor’s words suggests that ambition and undefined concepts of fairness are simultaneously rights and virtues. Without any examination, and examination cannot take place at a political level, such a statement is false. Certainly in the UK, it would be unrealistic to say that the government concentrates too much on the needy.
As I see it, the political left know exactly who to represent, some do. There is only dispute among entertainers who cannot retain existing power structures while abandoning the support base – a common problem. If the poor do not know what’s up, they may have a – usually rare – intelligence problem or a failure to grasp realty, but this has nothing to do with being poor.
“He argues that the modern left have come to have a high-handed, patronising attitude to the poor, which puts them off, while the right take steps to actively and directly engage them, albeit via their prejudices and status anxieties.”
It’s not unusual to find that those who receive assistance often suffer subtle and influential prejudice from the source of assistance, however, the steps the right take to “engage directly” is much like someone else described recently: handing out band aids to the person you just punched in the face. On the one hand we hear him saying that the left need to stand up for the weak, since the right won’t, but that the left cannot remain politically viable if they do, based on the incorrect assumption that the left need the poor to stay in business. Then we hear him suggesting societal dysfunction is better than addressing basic need. His argument is flawed in that it suggests he doesn’t understand who or what the left is, outside of mainstream six o’clock politics, or maybe he does, so he makes up lies about it all.
I fail to see how this makes the political right a more likely choice for the working poor. His unsubstantiated argument is a plea to “a poor working class” who he imagines is a bunch of people who are not intelligent enough to see through his illogical conclusions. He then blames the left for his prejudices. Funny how projection works like that. Not a level of argument I would expect from a professor.
I am certainly no advocate for the right, and neither was Bageant. However, you need to be in a pretty abject position to see yourself as one of the “needy.” The “needy” is what someone else calls you, not what you call yourself. Our own earlier working class movements were quite clear about wanting justice, not charity. The middle class left often want to be nice to the poor, without feeling genuine solidarity with them, while the poor themselves want to be represented, positions which are hard to synthesise on a political level. The right do not represent the working class’s interests, but their prejudices. However they at least make a connection on that level, and thus inveigle people into voting against their interests. I am with you regarding the moral position, I think that it is the one the left should make central. But the core moral value ought to be justice, not charity (in the modern, degraded sense of the word). And I also thought the professor’s piece was lightweight and morally confused.
Because people are poor, by no means infers that they lack a sense of self-esteem and integrity, or that they lack intelligence or make “bad decisions”. Agreed, justice comes first, maybe tempered with charity (which of any of us, poor or otherwise, is not in some need of charitable intent?)
I did add a little caveat to charity, Dr Terry. By “in the modern degraded sense” I meant the sort of patronising charity that gave rise to the saying “cold as charity.” Simone Weil has said that we degrade both justice and charity when we separate them: that real justice includes charity and real charity includes justice.
Uturn It is moral to run a country so that everybody who needs and wants
it can have a job with a living wage. There are lots of rights to be considered by governments but that is an important point applying to the whole society. It’s so basic that it can get overlooked when viewing those who have handicaps. Sometimes the people without handicaps, including caregivers, become invisible.
I completely agree with you Olwyn. This inequity of outcome for the various parts of the left is a huge problem. Those whose dignity, well-being, and human rights have been eroded so easily turn against those who have experienced a net benefit from the changes over the last 25 years, especially those groups that society had previously set below the white, het, working class.
I’ve read a bit of Haidt’s stuff and have found his analysis to be shallow right-wing apologism. His latest book was reviewed on NZ’s Sciblog and it didn’t impress the reviewer much either.
This can cut both ways unfortunately. Not only do those who are left out resent those who have benefited, sometimes those who have benefited feel superior to those who have not. It is just human psychology; we think we merit our gains and are unlucky in our losses. But however it is understood, it is the left’s biggest problem in my eyes. We have been divided and ruled. Gore Vidal has said, solidarity is easy for the right, because they are all after one thing – money. Whereas the left are after all sorts of things and easily fall into disagreement – I am paraphrasing, Vidal said it a whole lot better.
Olwyn, I much appreciate your line of thinking.
Yeah that’s true. In being allowed to join the “respectable” class, members of formerly heavily stigmatised groups too often look down on and victim-blame the poor and still severely oppressed.
I’m reading a (very distrubing) book ‘Scapegoat’ about hate crimes against people with disabilities, which, while always a problem, have increased as those at the bottom are squeezed harder and harder in the UK. It can’t be denied that there is also a problem of “traditional”-working -class hatred for other disdained and vulnerable minorities, as a function of their own hardship, where legitimate anger is taken out on those least able to fight back, rather than on those with the power.
There must be a way that the anger can be channelled into solidarity.
Olwyn+1
Olwyn, I largely agree with you here:
In the sixties and seventies, the left was an amalgam of the working class and the avante garde. Various victories on the identity politics front have allowed large sections of the avante garde to be absorbed into the middle class, .
But actually, you haven’t really explained how the right were able to split off a narrowed version of so-called “identity politics” from the class struggle.
The neoliberal divide and conquer was (at least partly) the outcome of the right targeting the shift from classic marxism to neo-marxism; from a materialistc/economic-based left-wing analysis to a focus on culture.
And that shift was a result of the difficulty marxists (and socialists generally) had with explaining why the (r)evolution predicted by Marx, hadn’t happened – why the working classes hadn’t joined to over-throw their oppressors & exploiters. The neo-marxist explanation was that cultural/social constructions and processes were keeping the exploited working classes in a state of “false consciousness” – i.e. they’d been conned into supporting capitalism, against their own interests by (in Althusser’s terms) Ideological State Apparatuses e.g. media, religious organisations, education, the family etc. The New Left started to shift away from (what many saw as) the underlying material and economic determinism of classical marxism.
This began the ‘turn to culture’…. but the postmodernists – enthused by the increasing proliferation of easily replicated communication, and media productions (videos, visual images etc), really went intensely into the cultural realm. (i.e. just change culture, and thence attitudes, then all the inequalities can be dissolved and economic and social justice will reign. They split off from the materially-based class struggle.
But the strength of the neoliberal right is, that they had a unifying model – the “business does it best” trope. Through this they amalgamated policies that target material and economic circumstances, with methods of cultural persuasion : the business model of dealing with the financial and economic realities, while also using marketing and advertising techniques to sell their political product – and increasingly a kind of viral marketing through all areas of culture and media.
So, in my view, the crucial thing is for the left to find their own unifying concept. Then use this as a way to unify material/economic struggles with relevant discourses, cultural productions and policies targeting social divisions social division. …. and probably includes those kind of values that you are calling “moral”.
Hi Carol, to start at the end, I am not using the term “moral” in any prissy sense, but in the sense that I think social and economic justice are best construed in terms of a moral issue; that of how we treat our fellow human beings. I realise, however, in saying this that the term “moral” is also employed divisively and on a petty level, eg. Ms Bennett’s recent moves. It is hard to win with language.
“…the biggest beneficiaries from changes in social attitudes will be those within the middle & upper classes (women, LGBT people, Maori elite etc).”
I agree, but such people were then often exiles from the middle classes. In a way, you could say that the neo-libs broadened the criteria for being members of the middle class, and that not all of those on the above list naturally gravitated to the avante garde anyway. In fact do we still have an avante garde beyond comic and graffiti artists?
“…the strength of the neoliberal right is, that they had a unifying model.”
The closest I can think of as a unifying model for the left is the idea that being allowed into the middle classes, whether you are blue collar, female, brown or rainbow, (or any combination) is not exactly power. Power is either physical or economic might, and anything less depends upon the acquiescence of might. If there was a sudden need for large numbers of soldiers, for example, the blue-collar male workers could just as easily be invited back into the tent, & the LGBT, etc unceremoniously kicked out, as workers were under Thatcher. Someone said recently in a post on the Herald site (I forget which one) that if you are not able to take a year off work without going on the dole and without loss on the scale of losing your house, you are not part of the elite, whatever airs you give yourself. This seems to me like a good place to start. I think it is hard to separate the economic from the social so far as oppression is concerned, since you are economically punished if you are socially on the outer, and you are socially punished if you are economically on the outer. And the only might we have is in our numbers, whichever form of injustice we have suffered, or seen others suffer.
Ah, Olwyn, I see you quoted from my post before I edited it out (I looked at what I’d posted and it seemed awfully long).
Yes, it is a complicated situation, and I mostly agree with you. I think left and right wing ideas of moral behaviour tends to differ. So I just talk about left wing values. Of course, the neolibs talk as though their policies are based in some objective reality, while it masks some very self-centred values.
Maybe, though the middleclass is going to shrink in the future as resources become more scarce.
Yes, ultimately political power lies in force – it’s a negative form of power – stopping people from doing things.. Foucault talked of a more positive form of creative power. People exercise power with their actions e.g. by doing something innovative, an imaginative protest, or making something useful for people – such things can be quite powerful.
Already happening. Look at the UK, USA, Spain, Greece, Portugal. In Australia, the coastal capital city middle class isn’t shrinking, but it is stagnating.
Carol: Yes I was speaking of power purely in terms of might. There are most certainly creative powers and the power of an idea whose time has come, etc. However, if the middle class shrinks it will not because that is what the middle class want.
“IF the middle class shrinks…”
Well, they are going to shrink, but they are going to continue to tear away at the under class and the working class in order to maintain their own position for as long as possible.
god knows what happened to that link
thankyou yes, that article
Has Cris Trotter gone over to the barmy side? Turns out money is printed out of thin air after all. What do you reckon does John Key know it too?
Trotter seems finally to have seen the light. However, the possibility of government reclaiming the right to be the sole creator of money seems to be the “elephant in the living room” these days. It is something all columnists should be “shouting from the rooftops”.
it was certainly a good introduction and for many people it probably scared them stupid but why did he limit the scope of the reality as if it only applies to Home Loans. It reads as if he was wanting to expose the big lie . . . only to mention a smaller fib ? Or maybe he has a drip feed plan to slowly acclimatise people to the truth that the entire Global Economy is a big ol’ scam with me, you and the other seven billion who call Earth home as the oblivious marks.
Either way it was great to see it in a mainstream newspaper.
( as a bonus the Peter Taylor & Moriarty show running in the comments is funny stuff )
I saw that article the part that confused me about it though was he was saying the home loan is just a book entry. Surely they have to pay the person you are purchasing the house off?
The book entry creates the money that pays for the house. Another book entry destroys that money. The two do not happen at the same time.
Sorry but that really didn’t explain anything to me.
Money is created
House paid for with money
Money is then destroyed as the loan is paid back
Which bit are you having trouble with?
Well my point was about the house is paid for with money part. The article and you seem to ignore that part – the bank is not creating money by book entry only – they are actually making a payment to a person.
The money was created through bookkeeping. If the money had not been created then the person could not have been paid.
Judging by his article I’d say yes he’s on the barmy side. Banks don’t print money out of thin air, he’s dreadfully misinformed there. Time he retired IMO.
Actually, they do. In fact, ~95% of the money in circulation is bank printed money.
No they don’t, your linked article states that “banks are said to create money.” Note the word ‘said’. And they don’t create it out of thin air anyway, which is what Trotter was claiming. They can only lend money which is deposited with them (or borrowed), they can’t create a loan from nothing.
NZ doesn’t really have fractional reserve banking either, in practice the banks do retain a fraction of deposits for daily withdrawals etc but the Govt doesn’t set reserve ratios on banks here. We use capital ratios to control lending.
Then you explain how a $1000 deposit in a bank becomes $10000 in circulation and that the original deposit can be withdrawn without decreasing the money in circulation.
/facepalm
C’mon people you’re not that financially illiterate. The M3 money supply grows because money lent by banks usually ends up back in the bank for them to lend out again. Banks just do not create any money out of thin air, that’s fantasy thinking.
Spare the facepalm BS, check for yourself and you’ll find NZ is one of the few countries in the world that doesn’t set a fractional reserve for trading banks. (well it didn’t last time I read up on it) We use capital adequacy instead.
The fact is, before loaning out the money, the bank didn’t have it.
They changed a word but it’s still the same thing. Drop those ratios and you will see the economy collapse as not enough new money enters circulation.
Of course they had it, banks can’t lend from a negative balance sheet. When a bank lends money they take it out of their cash account and transfer it to the recipient, it’s real money. It’s a paper entry only because that’s the way we do things these days, we don’t lug wads of cash around any more
Guys I’m not one to belittle others but this talk about banks printing money from nothing just makes people appear a little foolish IMO. The banking system leads to money creation but we’re just as much a part of that as the banks are. M3 money supply includes bank deposits. If someone pays us with borrowed money, and we put that money in the bank, well we’ve just created more money (M3 money anyway).
When you read informed commentary about banks creating money they’re usually talking about the whole banking system, not the banks per se.
It’s called Fractional Reserve Banking. I linked to it further up. They loan out a multiple of the money that is deposited with them.
Yeah, that’s what we’ve been saying all along. Banks create money.
And it’s not the banks that perform this modern miracle of financing but lolly shops.
DH seriously has no idea.
Hey DH, look up “quantitative easing” and get back to us, OK?
I don’t know what they taught you guys at school but banking doesn’t look to be part of it. Fractional reserve banking means they lend out a fraction of what they borrow, not a multiple. They retain a small fraction for cash reserves, that’s the fractional reserve, and they lend out the larger fraction.
And as I’ve stated NZ banks aren’t required to retain a fractional reserve, they can lend out 100% of deposits if they want (provided they have enough capital).
Keep on with your misconceptions, doesn’t bother me, but whenever you bring this up among people who do understand banking they just laugh at you.
It is rare if ever I agree with Draco but, yeah, facepalm.
Quoted from the reserve bank;
“In 1985, New Zealand was the first country to abandon reserve ratios completely, and we are still among the minority in not having a ratio system at all.”
Like all modern monetary systems, the monetary system in New Zealand is based on fiat and fractional-reserve banking. In a fractional-reserve banking system, the largest portion of money created is not created by the Reserve Bank itself, 80% or more is created by private sector commercial banks.
http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/research/bulletin/2007_2011/2008mar71_1lawrence.pdf
Fractional-reserve banking:
Like all modern monetary systems, the monetary system in New Zealand is based on fiat and fractional-reserve banking. In a fractional-reserve banking system, the largest portion of money created is not created by the Reserve Bank itself, 80% or more is created by private sector commercial banks.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_Bank_of_New_Zealand#Fractional-reserve_banking
Very Matrix-y. The human (I assume) with the programme pseudonym just revealed a human-looking response to be little more than the output of a search engine.
He is actually more correct than you are.
Most of the money supply is created as debt against future earnings. Thin air.
Only a small fraction is money held as deposits.
There is absolutely know reason why we cannot do that themselves instead of paying fees/interest to banks, which really is money out of thin air. And one reason why our economic system requires continual growth.
Sneering and sniggering about prisoners’ rights
National Radio, Thursday 7 June 2012
Maybe you heard this nasty little item on National Radio just before 9 o’clock this morning. In a tone of barely contained levity, Simon Mercep said that prisoners have been “grumbling” about the quality of the food they get. Prisoners have laid 374 complaints about food in the past year.
Obviously, in the minds of the producers at National Radio, this is a matter for amusement and sniffy disdain, and it was treated as such. Corrections Association head Bevan Hanlon clearly thinks it’s a big joke: “One of their main complaints was that, ha ha ha, the bread was only buttered on one side.” He called their complaints “whingeing” and said that the only reason they complain is “because they can.”
Of course, the prisoners’ concerns are much more profound than that, and it’s a concern to hear someone in Hanlon’s position dismissing so callously the views of the people he and his colleagues are entrusted to look after.
The final insult was to give the last word to that moral pygmy and outspoken advocate of knife-killing, Garth “the Knife” McVicar. He asserted that he has been into every prison in New Zealand and that “they are all very humane places”. He repeated Bevan Hanlon’s contention that the prisoners are simply “whingeing”.
In view of his defiant support for child-killer Bruce Emery, for the monstrous ACT member of parliament David Garrett, and for the brutal and extreme Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, surely McVicar is a discredited and thoroughly disreputable commentator. It beggars belief that Radio New Zealand should go to him for comment about anything at all.
Surely for all the crimes he has committed, Garrett himself should be sensibly sentenced? There was drunk driving, there was an assault in Tonga, and lets not forget the whole dead baby thing.
Garrett also loudly and truculently supported the knife-killing of that boy in Manurewa. He was speaking in his capacity as an SS Trust “legal adviser”.
And wasn’t the hypocrisy of the SST silence in condeming, and as you point out, even supporting the murderer of the 16 year old Manurewa boy so very telling of their ethnic compass. Can’t remember the name of the murderer now but I do remember he only got a minimum sentence and was out in under half the time served. Imagine if the victim had been Pakeha and middle class?
Canât remember the name of the murderer…
It was Bruce Emery. He was supported not only by the SS Trust, but vociferously championed by NewstalkZB and sympathetically covered by (among others) the New Zealand Herald and TV3.
Sorry Morrissey, a duh moment on my behalf. Of course, Bruce Emery’s name is in your post above! I recall the sympathy the media gave him at the time and the way they angled a justification for his vile crime. It was chilling,and truely sickening.
By the way, apparently the lobbying arm of Garth McVictim is no longer a trust. So it’s just “SS”
…the murderer of the 16 year old Manurewa boy
Actually, Pihema Cameron was just FIFTEEN years old when Bruce Emery chased him down and knifed him to death.
Re dotcom
From aardvark
http://www.aardvark.co.nz/daily/2012/0607.shtml#continue
Lawyer John Pike told the court that sending copies of the evidence taken from DotCom’s computers to the USA was not a breach of the Solicitor General’s ruling because “that only covered ‘original material’, not copies”.
So, in making this statement, it is clear that the Crown and the FBI themselves have shown that there is a massive distinction between an original work and a copy.
By highlighting this distinction, and effectively saying that a copy is not an original and therefore ought not be subject to the same laws as apply to an original — they are striking at the very heart of the MPAA/RIAA’s own assertion that unauthorised copying is theft.
That’s interesting Dv. And maybe if I steal a replica of a medal or gun or jewel it is not theft. And as you say any stuff downloaded must be a copy and therefore not illegal. What a tangle!
AND here is a stuff report
Sounds like dancing on the head of a pin
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/7054878/Dotcom-info-not-physical
FBI agents who copied data from Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom’s computers and took it overseas were not acting illegally because information isn’t “physical material”, the Crown says.
Interesting legal approach. I’m sure it will stand them in good stead when dotcom’s lawyers argue that that there was no problem. That holding copyrighted data isn’t unlawful because it isn’t “physical material”.
Laws are only there for the convenience of keeping the punters in punterland cowed for the ruling elite.
Giving the material to the FBI was legal because USA!! USA!! USA!!
Why don’t they both increase and decrease class sizes?
Nudging up the size of average classes of average kids will hardly make a difference.
Redirecting substantial resources to the bottom 10-20% of kids that are failing could make a big difference.
Nudging up the size of average classes of average kids will hardly make a difference.
What an ignorant statement. You need to do some serious research, and talk to some teachers.
You know, the biggest issue in the class is the quality of teaching. It does not matter if 1 child is exposed or 40 is exposed to a useless teacher.
Is a teacher cannot teach maths, cannot even do the basics, class size is an irrelevance as all the children are fuked.
If a teacher cannot teach maths, cannot even do the basics…
Such a teacher would not survive. Such a teacher exists only in the minds of ideologues in the ACT and National parties. The children soon make life intolerable for an incompetent teacher. Unlike incompetent Education Ministers, teachers have no place to hide.
Itâs already done, low decile schools already get extra resources
Ok i’ll bite,
I read your post which as always says little and suggests nothing
so PG the question to you is HOW?????????
do you isolate the 10-20% into special in-class groups? How?
do you introduce specialty teachers who travel the country doing Workshops? How?
do you group the failing kids from various schools into multi-school hubs? How?
do you introduce additional user-pays programmes for failing kids? How?
or do you just waffle on as usual supplying sidetracks to empty yards and building bridges for trolls all the while ignoring the reality that without a massive gigantic and really really big increase in funding, Education of NZ children is looking down the barrel of a shotgun loaded with disparity.
I’m just posing a question. It’s a very complex issue with no easy one size fits all solution.
being unable to offer any actual answers you proffer a response that only highlights the inadequacies of the current system. PG if ‘it’s already done’? What are you suggesting needs to change?
p.s. are you serious in your insinuation that the only kids that are failing are from low decile schools? Perhaps you need a referesher in what the term means
http://www.kiwifamilies.co.nz/articles/school-deciles/
note:
“Does the decile of a school tell me anything about the quality of the education at that school?
Absolutely not. Deciles are a funding mechanism only and in no way reflect the quality of the education delivered at that school.”
The best things that could change would be for Government to do it’s homework properly, and for both Government and teacher groups to learn how to work together rather than have schoolyard scraps all the time.
The attitude of both sides of the incessant arguments is the biggest impediment to improvement.
you had a straightforward out if you had simply said something like:
‘the government could reverse the hundred million it has given to private schools since 2008 and return it to the public schools it stole it from’ but no just carry on ignoring the theft of the dwindling Education resources and blame the teachers.
btw, the only people who need to remove impediment is the succession of governments who have committed Education to the asylum of user pays bean counting
Just do what I do freedom, treat all of PG’s questions as rhetorical and move on to the next post.
How about the Government could actually listen to the Teachers and researchers instead of simply following blindly whatever fuckup is the latest fashion in the USA and UK.
The sheer stupidity and arrogance of the Government is the biggest obstacle to improvement.
Or maybe it is not stupidity. Just a another way of ensuring State schooled kids cannot compete for jobs with their inbred brats. “Keeping their winning ticket”.
pathetic grovelling again
‘Iâm just posing a question’ a.k.a. trolling PG
Iâm just posing a question.
Instead of idiotically posing questions, why don’t you do some reading and talk to some teachers?
Because I just have a peripheral interest in the topic.
And I thought that putting up questions might get some sensible responses, even some intelligent responses, rather than resorting to abuse.
There might even be teachers that are able to contribute, they should be adept at discussions, and I’m sure they wouldn’t try to put down any student that asked questions.
You have regularly been corrected by many people, including teachers. Yet you persist in posting up your frivolous, half-baked contributions about something you know nothing about, then when confronted, you scuttle away and claim that you were just “putting up questions.”
You rarely make a serious or coherent statement about anything, and when exasperated regulars point this out to you, you squeal about being “abused”.
Are you actually Judith Collins, by any chance?
what abuse PG?
please point out the abuse you have suffered since posting your insightful questions.
( please note i edited out a line earlier that was admittedly a bit snarky but not abusive)
also, as someone who wanted to be an MP how can you only have a peripheral interest in what is arguably the single most important policy matter facing any nation, ie the funding of the education of its people?
No politician is an expert on everything, they all specialise. And my main interests are more general than specific, although there are some I have more experience with.
Pretentious in all trades, master at none…
Which, IMO, is a serious mistake. Politicians need to have a basic understanding of everything.
Correct. Subject area specialists should advise the pollies, who need a much broader view of the country to put the advice into context.
more bs puerile git Massey university say the cuts will affect the bottom 14% of children not reaching the required levl of education to function in the workplace.
Save TVNZ 7 â Dunedin public meeting
There have been âSave TVNZ 7âł public meetings around the country. Itâs Dunedinâs turn tomorrow night:
Thursday 7 June, 6-8pm
Colquhoun Theatre, 1st floor of Dunedin Hospital, Great King Street
– entrance just to the left (north) of the main hospital entrance
I miss the ‘latest comments’ box which used to be on the right of the screen.
Do other people using more sophisticated devices still get it?
[lprent: Fixed. There was a problem with the latest minify update. Turned it off and logged it for looking at why it works on the first page, but not the post pages. ]
I’m emabarassed now. It’s still there, I just needed to hit the “Comments RSS”.
sigh.
Umm.. it’s a nuisance to have to hit ‘Comments RSS’ everytime though. Is there something else I can do to retrieve the comments box at top right of screen?
I’m seriously technically challenged!
When I hit “comments RSS” I get an error page “This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.” with all the latest comments scripted, no gui.
Google Chrome.
[lprent: adding to list. ]
seems to be fixed, cheers đ
Shouldn’t need to hit the âComments RSSâ link at all especially considering that the box (technically, all three boxes) is still there on the main page.
10 years ago there were 2 effective (at least) interventions in Decile 1 schools the
Feso’otaiga Academic and Community Leadership Program and
AMHI
Both were successful and both have had their funding cut.
This is the Nats commenting on the funding in 1998
The funding was seeding, and then to be carried on by the schools.
BUT the model was broken, because the schools couldn’t afford to carry on.
The debate is an interesting commentary
http://www.vdig.net/hansard/archive.jsp?y=1998&m=11&d=19&o=82&p=82
They bought democracy and now the law.
In a dissent in that case, Justice John Paul Stevens predicted that such spending would overwhelm state court races, which would be especially harmful since judges must not only be independent but be seen to be independent as well. North Carolina is proving him right.
Peak Oil hits another snag
The story of Peak Oil just canât get legs; for 50 years the Greens have found that stating a lie over and over doesnât make it true.
The US Geological Survey recently announced a 200 year supply of Shale OIL under Utah/Colorado; this known as the Brakken shale.
Well today, Forbes has announced a shale oil/gas source called the Bazhenov shale; 80 times the size of the Brakken, in a large area of Siberia. Bye bye Peak Oil.
http://thegwpf.org/energy-news/5896-meet-the-oil-shale-eighty-times-bigger-than-the-bakken.html
And it’s going to take 400 years to get that 200 years of supply out.
No – shale production has proved very efficient in the USA.
“The Bakken is a huge boon, both to the economic health of the northern Plains states, but also to the petroleum balance of the United States. From just 60,000 barrels per day five years ago, the Bakken is now giving up 500,000 bpd, with 210,000 bpd of that coming on in just the past year.”
So no problem; and the cost of gas in the USA is about one-third of what it was 5 years ago.
They are now setting up export contracts of LPG/CNG to the likes of India.
Some 800,000 real [not subsidized] jobs have been the result of the boom.
This will be a key part of the USA shaking of the economic slump
Meanwhile”green jobs” are still holding back Europe as they subsidize Wind/solar and kill real jobs as companies harvest Government subsidies.
Always nice to meet another idiot. You certainly are one.
The point about peak oil is that it is when the costs of extracting oil and gas start to rise. It is not (as morons like yourself seem to think) when there are no liquid hydrocarbons to available to extract. So your comment merely shows your major deficiencies in the understanding of economics. Now we have done a hasty repair on your basic lack of understanding with sarcasm as the tack, have another look at your linked article…
Any mention of cost? Nope. I wonder why?
Hell, we’ll probably never run out of hydrocarbons. As the germans proved in WW2 you can create industrial levels of producing the right hydrocarbon factions for liquid fuel from crap coal if you are willing to pay the cost of production. Of course that cost is sky-high and it is probably cheaper to simply produce a complete network of magnalev trains…
Were these ‘new’ fields known about previously? Ah yes…
I guess that means they have. In fact you can find mentions of this structure from as far back as early last century if you hunt around in geological texts. Geologists have known about shale fields in Utah and Colorado since the 19th century. Neither were economic to mine and as we can see from this following statement from your link…
…there is a pretty good probability that they may still not be economic. It will take another decade at least to find out because it depends on a lot of uncertainties. This is pretty much a puff piece trying to attract investment capital to the field. Less than a third of fields at this stage of development prove to be worthwhile to put into ‘reserves’. Only a very few get made commercially viable in less than a few decades. And the only reason they’re looking at fields like this at present for oil is because the oil price is going through the roof.
You are a wee fool aren’t you. Hammer isn’t that good a name for you. Dumbo would be better…
More like bye bye Siberia. Rivers up there are flowing black already. If the yanks don’t wake up, it’ll be bye bye Utah and Colorado as well.
Your link reckons there is 24 billion barrels recoverable from Bakken shale. You know how much oil that represents? About 6 – 9 months worth at present rates of use.
And ‘your’ Bazhenov saving grace is 80 times the land area. Not 80 times the quantity of recoverable oil.
And even if it was 80 times the oil, it would represent much less than a 40 year supply. Y’know, because we use more of the stuff year on year
Not “justice” “charity”(urrgh!)tension. Compassion.
Seems like a wee weak man that MCVICTIM chappie.(urrgh!)
D te B, u the person! A liberal education a day….
Uturn, Wonder about we?
Some of you may enjoy the updated –
http://www.dodgyjohnhasgone.com/uncategorized/john-banks-do-the-honorable-thing-resign/#comments
– with the ‘Open Letter’ calling for John Banks to do the ‘Honorable’ thing – and RESIGN?
Kind regards
Penny Bright
‘Anti-corruption campaigner’
Talking of Europe being held back by pursuing the “Green Dream” of running on more and more wind and solar sources of energy, we have the sad case of Spain.
Recently from the New York Post:
In January, the Spanish government removed lavish subsidies for its renewable-energy industry, and the industry all but imploded. You could say it was never a renewable-energy industry at all, but a government-subsidy industry: The government gave the makers of inefficient windmills and solar panels piles of cash that consumers never would.
âThey destroyed the Spanish market overnight with the moratorium [on subsidies],â European Wind Energy Association CEO Christian Kjaer told Bloomberg News.
The Spanish example shows how the whole green-energy ârevolutionâ was really an ideologically driven boondoggle from the start.
âŠâŠ.researchers at King Juan Carlos University found in 2009 that Spain had destroyed 2.2 jobs in other industries for every green job it created, and that the Spanish government has spent more than half a million euros for each green job created since 2000.
Spain is now effectively bankrupt.
If Spain is effectively bankrupt then so is the UK, the USA, and numerous other highly indebted nations.
All you’ve really shown here is your basic lack of understanding economics. That’s real economics, not the delusional stuff that economists, this government and Treasury use.
Hi dumbo. I see that you’re still cherrypicking your examples without bothering to apply either intelligence or industry to the task.
As far as I’m aware there are no subsidies still in place for the Baltic and North Sea windfarms, nor for those in Texas.
All of them took subsidies to get the industry up and running. Just as there were subsidies in the 19th and 20th centuries to get coal, hydro, geothermal and nuclear power industries up and running. Private industry are pretty useless about getting into new infrastructure areas that may be a wee bit risky. Governments use power infrastructure subsidies to get things up and running to the point that the economies of scale kick in and the risks become clearer. Subsequently the subsidies get progressively removed after a decade or so (except for nuclear – which was a complete waste of time and a soak for subsidies).
Right now I think that Germany is trying to push for more offshore windfarms and is moving the subsidies to encourage an industry to form (there are close to 10,000 towers producing nearly 10% of their power on land). The reason for this is obvious. They closed their nuclear power stations last year at a considerable saving in subsidies and are now trying to catch up with the cheap Danish power from their offshore windfarms.
The only problem that Spain had was that they’d only started to push their windfarm industries relatively recently. So the fledgeling industry hadn’t hit critical mass yet and was unlikely to do so for another decade. But you were clearly too lazy to read.
Basically you are a simple munter who seems to never engage your brain and who is too lazy to find some actual information. You’re like a idiot parrot who sees a few Key words and then tries to extrapolate a idea from them. Too stupid to think really.
BTW: It’d pay to link when you quote. When I wear my moderators cap I’ll ban quite rapidly for that particular tactic.
Â
“researchers at King Juan Carlos University found in 2009 that Spain had destroyed 2.2 jobs in other industries for every green job it created, and that the Spanish government has spent more than half a million euros for each green job created since 2000.”
Â
Rubbish. Debunked here Hammer:
http://greeneconomypost.com/debunk-spanish-study-green-jobs-1582.htmÂ
hey ham murmurer Lies and BS you are telling porkies the Spanish economy has Imploded because of over investment in their property bubble you bubble brain.
You can laugh but we are going through another property bubble right here in god zone.
Sooner than later its going to crash again.
The Herald apparently thinks there is a film director named Coward Robert Ford. Sub editors … who needs ’em?
Iprent:
Well this is a pleasureâŠ.
weâve got the “Leaders of the Left” explaining away the observations of the Right by using such in-depth explanations as to why I am wrong by using indepth analysis such asâŠ.
: another idiot; morons like yourself ; you are a wee fool arenât you:    Dumbo would be betterâŠ
 You’ve missed the point Iprent –  I achieved the  response which I expected to my fact based comments; have another nice day.
Keep it up  lprent 7 June 2012 at 4:15 pm
It is a pleasure to meet minds with you
hahahahahaha
Fact based? No, not even close which is what Lynn showed you and now you seem to have taken exception to have been shown to be a moron.
Umm. As far as I am aware all I do is express my opinions mostly on this site. Anyone thinking I am a leader of the left is really stupid. For a starter, I’m quite noticeably right on things like economic policy compared to most on this site and around the left.
But I guess if it helps you then I guess it is a harmless conceit for you to believe… I always like helping people with their self help procedures on their way to a climatic revelation. In your case I think that a paper towel may be good to have handy rather than a calculator.
A meeting of minds it is not. So far you haven’t actually managed to express an opinion of your own as far as I can see. You have merely repeated something you read somewhere without really understanding it.
Which is of course why you whine about how others treat you with contempt. That you never address the holes they chop into your poorly constructed comments could explain their attitude.
It is a common fallacy of the inept that inconvieniences like contradictions to a theory are just part of an intelligent design to fool those with more skepticism than your simple faith in your own omni-potence of understanding. Unfortunately others usually tend to view this trait of ignoring the blindingly obvious is because you’re just too damn lazy to exert yourself. I know I do…
When you do provide links, people only have to quote the parts of your own links that clearly contradict your plagiarized argument. But, like me, they probably suspect that you are incapable of understanding why there is a contradiction.
Kind of defines why you’re known as dumbo..
 Sorry Iprent – I missed a few more of your GEMS;  apparently I am also:
… dumbo ;     Basically you are a simple munter ;    seems to never engage your brain Â
too lazy to find some actual information ;     Youâre like a idiot parrot  ; Too stupid to think really ;
Iâll ban quite rapidly  –
ohhhhhh – Â sounding desperate ??
No doubt replying to you with your own words will be an excuse for banning me for being honest.
If you may have any doubt – have a nice day.  Enjoy the sun.
– I was just pointing out where the state of world oil/gas supplies are going over the next few decades.Â
This is obviously a threat to your world view – Sad!
I am sorry for your poor state of mind. Â Maybe you should seek help?Â
I see that as usual for our more pathetically ignorant trolls you have :-
1. Been pretty much incapable of making up your own words and instead have to mostly quote the words of your betters amongst the internet mythmakers instead. Based on your previous efforts, I suspect that is all you can actually do apart from a rather juvenile and ineffectual attempt at taunting. I have seen prepubescent relatives with far better stirring techniques – It appears that you were raised in a convent?
2. Found it impossible to put the quotes in a coherent context. In this case you failed to locate the reply button (hard to do, but clearly not impossible), failed to link to the comment you were replying to, and failed to even mention the number of the comment that you were replying to. Of course that could be part of a “cunning plan” to make it hard for observers to gauge your level of ignorance. That probably also explains why you didn’t even attempt to rebutt anything that I said and didn’t even argue about any of the counter points I made to your dumb unthinking claims.. But if so, then Baldric was way better at the planning.
3. Gone immediately to try for victim status rather than arguing. Probably because your self-esteem has been crushed by people thinking that you have no idea about what you ae commenting on and expressing their incredulity that you could use a keyboard. But this forum is all about arguing, so what better place to exercise your rather useless skills at it into something more substantial*.
Perhaps you should READ the policy to find out what gets people banned. I realize that it may FEEL like exerting your lazy arse. However if you are capable of understanding words (rather than just cut’n’pasting) it is the easiest way to find out what moderators will be looking to eradicate.
If I’d thought that you were worth banning then I’d have done it already when I was moderating, rather than giving a reply and a gentle warning about linking.
* I am sure that a few of the other commentators will be happy to
treat you as a chew toy(try again)act as a sadistic drill instructor(damnit) assist you. It was only the other day that some were complaining that I was too abrupt and that they had noone to assist…Hi Iprent
Are you actually seeking help?
Most of us hope so….
Peace be with you.Â
Let me guess, Hammer, you’re trying to win a bet that you can get banned from the Standard for terminal stupidity? The content of your comments was the first clue, your failure to work out how the reply button works was the real giveaway.
One major advantage of trains have over cars and trucks.
Awesome!