Labour’s health spokesman David Clark said we need to invest more heavily in primary healthcare but failed to elaborate how much more Labour would invest.
“Kids from more affluent backgrounds are entering the contest massively well prepared, while kids from less affluent backgrounds are not. The well-prepared kids win, and everybody pretends to themselves it’s a meritocracy,” he says.
…
“We need to be honest that the inequality problem does not kick in at 99 per cent, but much earlier than that.”
Not surprising. It’s difficult and expensive to undo the damage that National does. And then we have to take in account that 2.3 billion is around 1% of GDP compared to the government using around 30%.
Labour were fools to say that there won’t be any tax increases. Instead they should have said that taxes will be reviewed to cover the necessary expenses needed to maintain a good society.
Except, as I recall, they didn’t promise zero tax increases.
They said that at that stage, dependent on the budget and how the nats left the country, they could pay for all their pledges in the current tax levels and would review the entire tax system.
Even without going “gosh darn it, the Greens insist we raise taxes slightly, but that’s living in a coalition”, they have more than enough room for a “neutral tax shift” post review or even an outright increase.
Natz have taken 156 affordable state homes in Glen Innes and then turned that into only 39 affordable homes (if you think $650k is affordable).
Of the 156 state houses only 78 are replaced.
Presumably the other 104 homes are not affordable and for profit for the developer and Natz cronies.
No wonder we have a fucking housing crisis with this type of carry on.
The MSM are keeping the asset sales rout going by these vomitous spin articles not pointing out that the government are taking away affordable houses so that developers can profit from the asset sales.
How stupid do they think people are??? No wonder Granny has to give it’s papers away for free these days.
Please tell me this man is never working with sensitive sources ever.
👻 added,
Yashar AliVerified account @yashar
When someone mails you an entire document they are giving you permission to do this. Did the NYT reporters describe Trump’s tax returns? no. https://twitter.com/Dave_Fox/status/871939708489670656 …
*
I’ve had sources who were risking jail, or worse. Some understood the risks, some needed my help to understand and try to stay safe.
*
This kind of rhetoric sabotages what I do, & what I try to help other journalists do, in understanding, communicating, and mitigating risk.
*
The Intercept’s mistake was not exactly unheard of, people make these mistakes all the time, but in this case, the source bears the cost.
This from the Electronic Frontier Foundation on how printing often leaves footprints via yellow dots that aren’t visible to the naked eye. The dots tell things like the serial number of the printer and the date and time the document was printed. I think this might apply to colour printers (printing in black and white doesn’t have this set of footprints)
There’s all kinds of things that can be done to trace who did what with documents. Subtle changes in wording of different copies, subtle changes to fonts and letter spacings, variations in the letterhead, etc etc.
If The Intercept had any interest in trying to obscure the trail back to the leaker, at a minimum they should have had a staffer rewrite the whole thing in their own words (including changing the spelling of names) before sending it back to the agency as a text file for comment (and told the agency they had done so).
Sen. Mark Warner says there’s a lot more to the Russian hacking than the leak described.
.
The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee told USA TODAY on Tuesday that Russian attacks on election systems were broader and targeted more states than those detailed in an explosive intelligence report leaked to the website The Intercept.
“I don’t believe they got into changing actual voting outcomes,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said in an interview. “But the extent of the attacks is much broader than has been reported so far.” He said he was pushing intelligence agencies to declassify the names of those states hit to help put electoral systems on notice before the midterm voting in 2018.
“None of these actions from the Russians stopped on Election Day,” he warned.
Apparently Mondelez a US company, bought Cadbury and has taken out 130 million in dividends, a 120m loan so it can claim 43m in interest, and given itself 47.7m in royalties and service fees so it can maximise it’s profits while paying as little local tax as possible.
Even sadder is that now the locals have to crowd fund to keep their jobs and factories at Cadbury so offshore companies can have more profit.
But the National government thinks this foreign investment is wonderful. This is ‘investment’ in the provinces.
Tegal also has done a similar rout with it’s private equity owners who recently floated it and it’s now in trouble on the share market.
On the float, a measly, 1.2 m was given in capital to Tegal, 129m was given to it’s shareholders aka the private equity firm, 130m to pay back debt the private equity firm took out to float, and 23m in fees for floating on the sharemarket.
Apparently Business Desk did the analysis of Cadbury.
Do commentators real not understand why Kiwis like to invest in property – rather than shares when this sort of carry on is perfectly legal.
It’s a triple whammy of not encouraging people to invest in Kiwi business due to the routs, off shore companies not paying taxes and parasitically killing the business so that the locals lose their jobs and livelihoods.
More on Cadbury. Radionz did a piece this morning. An attempt to set up a local buy-in to keep the factory in Dunedin, and it is a reasonable investment with a known product and sales continuing for a popular product.
I think that regions have to set up investment trusts or something to buy their main and likely ongoing enterprises. Government is determined to undermine stability in jobs apparently carrying forward neolib ideas that people work harder when they are insecure and living near survival level. That’s the theory, but not sure what they say about working people when there is no work. Do they have a theory to counteract the despair of not having any part to play in society?
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/20m-plan-save-factory
Jim O’Malley, a Dunedin city councillor, is trying to raise $20 million to keep the factory open on a portion of the site.
Mr O’Malley is working in a personal capacity; the Dunedin City Council is not involved in the bid.
Mr O’Malley’s plan is to run a public share offer aimed at the general public as well as business.
Before launching any share offer, Mr O’Malley has organised a two-week pledge period to gauge interest, starting today.
If there was little interest, the plan would be dumped, and the ”lights will turn off in March”.
Shares in Dunedin Manufacturing Holdings (DMH) would be priced at $50 if the offer goes ahead.
A website has been launched – http://www.ownthefactory.co.nz – to register pledges.
”You will not be committed to make an investment at this time, but we ask you to only make a pledge if you intend to invest in the future,” he said.
My point is, that it should not be happening in the first place. It should not be legal to do what Mondelez has done. Sounds like a similar issue at Dick Smith as well. Pumpkin patch, that security firm that went bust, Tegal possibly on the ropes after all that money routed out by directors and shareholders. It is certainly is not moral and it’s certainly not sustainable.
Seen that a few times over the past few years. Foreign company buys local company that has little or no debt and immediately takes out a huge loan and pays a massive dividend.
It shouldn’t be allowed as it’s nothing more than a scam and can result in the local company going bankrupt – usually after the new owners have sold it on.
All this for jaffas and pineapple lumps? Give me a break. How pathetic. How can we fight the diabetes epidemic when people carry on like this about stupid bloody lollies?
Also keeping the monetary lolly in the country. And some of us like sweet things and if we can keep them in moderation, same as we keep our criticisms, we can get advantage without downsides.
Just listened to an interview on National Radio from a jellyfish expert. Apparantly they (the jellyfish) have no heart, no brain and no backbone. I thought, there you go, they must be tory voters.
yes, they also usually kill with thousands of stingers that each inject a tiny trace of poison into an almost invisible or trivial cut, the weight of these injections eventually killing a larger organism
There were a lot of interesting things said on the radio jellyfish interview. I’ll pass on what I remember to add to the sting of the humorous twist that johnr heard. (E&OE)
The dried jellyfish or some, are very water absorbent and can be used in products requiring that, baby naps etc.
Jellyfish are colonising and can act together though individual entities attached to main platform.
They bloom naturally, and spread to wide proportions, and this will happen with climate change because more warmth will encourage.
They drift and depending on their structure will drift to the left or right, depending on which ‘sail’ the majority put up.
They eat into our fish stocks, and when hauled up with fish catch in a massive reproduction phase, they tipped the fishing boat over.
One has a sting that mimics herpes with blisters, and like herpes will stay in the body arising later and this may last for years.
I think in Oz they always take vinegar with them to the beach. If not, swill salt water over stings, if you rub them they hook into you more and release venom or something, yuk.
I was wondering if over the Barrier Reef perhaps they could moor? jellyfish clumps to shade and cool the water – if they could de-acidify the water it might help, but presumably they would have the opposite effect.
It looks as if we need to find a way to use them as resources if they are going to be increasing with as bad effects as we ourselves have.
When listing facts & trivia about jellyfish you cannot omit green fluorescent protein, which has its own pedestal in cellular and molecular biology research.
Hey these jellyfish are definitely something else! I was all prepared to dislike them but the next thing I’ll find out that one brighter one is my first cousin once removed.
Yes – Diddums, Gosman. As if much more than 1% of voters would have even noticed that one comment. More fun to annoy you than worry about people who probably have not read the thread… After all, you seem to exist for the sole purpose of annoying the majority who read this site.
We keep hearing from conservative idiots, such as Family First, that like to rewrite history to conform to their biases about how great the nuclear family is. Real history, once you get round to reading it, proves them wrong.
Citing “How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature” by George Monbiot:
“The nuclear family, as idealised today, was an invention of the Victorians, but it bore little relation to the family life we are told to emulate. Its development was driven by economic rather than spiritual needs, as the Industrial Revolution made manufacturing in the household inviable. Much as the Victorians might have extolled their families, ‘it was simply assumed that men would have their extramarital affairs and women would also find intimacy, even passion, outside marriage’, and often with other women.8 Gillis links the twentieth century’s attempt to find intimacy and passion only within marriage – and the impossible expectations this raises – to the rise in the rate of divorce.”
“The conservatives’ supposedly moral concerns turn out to be nothing but an example of the age-old custom of first idealising and then sanctifying one’s own culture. The past they invoke is fabricated from their own anxieties and obsessions. It has nothing to offer us”
8 Gillis links the twentieth century’s attempt to find intimacy and passion only within marriage – and the impossible expectations this raises – to the rise in the rate of divorce.”
Who can know about causes for divorce even after doing huge long term research? But finding someone to live with life-long is quite a task, and getting used to someone of another gender, another family, and having to form one’s own family culture, is quite an effort and can be greatly affected by stresses from outside, and unreal expectations, and self-centred or narrow interests. Being drawn to passion is a mistake. It’s the result of peak emotion and who can live at that level all the time, or would want to it would be exhausting, one would be sated. Reality says, to have a peak there must be a lower base that’s common. Even when there is divorce available, some people stay married, they may get past wanting a real friendship and enjoyment and settle for what they know on the basis that divorce might end up worse.
It’s a wonder that we don’t give up trying to live with some other ornery blighter, but we are such hopeful romantics!
But finding someone to live with life-long is quite a task
They didn’t say that previous generations weren’t finding someone to live with lifelong. they just said that there was a whole lot more flexibility in relationships than what the conservatives like to portray up to and including having sex outside of the main relationship.
I have a book about rural English customs. It says that often an Anglican minister unmarried, in a rural area, would have a young housekeeper and would find her a good husband as time went on. And then get another young housekeeper. I have forgotten when perhaps late 1800s.
That sounds like the same type of myth as the myth of chivalry that Bill put up.
And I really don’t know WTF it’s got to do with how the nuclear family is a modern creation used to help businesses by splitting people from the community.
This is a conversation I am interested in.
What are the sacrifices/changes folks have made in respect to climate change?
I have stopped flying back and forth from aucks for work.
Started planting trees too.
Our house is heated by solid fuel so if I keep planting as well as harvesting, it should be a closed loop.
I live rurally so have been cutting trips to town unless there are three reasons to go.
The last one for me too, it’s not that hard. Working local food too, both within NZ and reducing food coming from overseas. I burn wood but haven’t done much on replanting yet. What are you doing with that? (I don’t own land).
A few years back a British guy won an employment case off the back of human rights legislation when he lost his job for refusing to fly for conference meetings etc.
The human rights legislation is the same here as there.
The judge decided he was discriminated against on the basis of his belief (around AGW) and that the discriminationwas on a par with religious discrimination.
I’m not saying everyone’s who’s aware of AGW and who is ‘forced’ to fly by their employer will have either the presence of mind or stamina to follow that lead, but some might – maybe even someone reading this comment. 😉
Heh. Top law firms won’t represent Trump. Coz he probably won’t pay any attention to their advice and will likely stiff them like he does to everybody else.
Massive disconnect here from Bling. He admits vulnerable families don’t trust him or his government or the Police yet can’t imagine how more money might, I don’t know, fund research into repairing that trust and pay for more decent people at the coal face to action the results.
That’s before we even get into the community-busting, inequality-growing hopelessness among the disenfranchise which his government has carefully watched over.
This, ‘I care on my bad days’, shit is disgusting from him after admitting he and his predecessor are at fault.
Sounds like Blinglish just wants to feed into their hopeless meme. Out of our big hearts we keep trying – but – fling hands open – what can we do, just hold the line really when talking about the great unwashed and beneficiaries, and really all those that aren’t like US.
Craaaap. People go doolally when they are constantly confronted with closed doors when they knock and expect to be spoken to. When that’s been going for three generations and the only jobs available are those where you are supposed to sit like a battery hen, and you have never been able to sit quiet and relax, then you’re not suited by the jobs available. Some action jobs that go away for the week, and back to the pub and some films in the weekend, would get work for youngsters like this. It would take them out of their peer group and environment to where they could learn to put their back into it and properly despise the finger-tappers. Then there would be equality of put-downs.
Just government planning the economy would be a start. But the buggers resigned from that when Labour went and got Rogered back in 1984 and they’ve taken years to stand up again after that. Perhaps now they can grow a pair and do what a decent government can do, efficiently, first phase within a year and having some clear movement by 100 days. Then second phase – trying ten different projects in second year, and carry on five for third year. And if elected again, explore new ways of implementing those projects both completed, and piloted taking the next term. Plus jump start and trial some new ones. The energy would grow, people could come up with a project thought out, rough costings, ideas for obtaining resources (not stealing them after midnight from across the river etc.) and things would be amazing. And there would be a few frauds. That’s only to be expected so need lots of practical auditors to ensure frauds were kept small. But one fault can’t stop good outcome.
Apparently the Russian involvement in the U.S. election is a little more sinister.
Their foray into A.I. was to create a prototype humanoid.
There are some who fear it got away and finished up winning the Whitehouse.
I was just thinking – what a great market for the wealthy cynic? Have your very own AI model of Donald Trump stumping round your home, making unsavoury comments, annoying your relatives, insulting the annoying neighbours, and threatening to beat up your creditors, and inventing bad jokes and making sexist and racist jokes and remarks. And you need not take any responsibility – just shrug and say it’s modern technology, a release of a beta version, ‘He’s like…you know… a force of nature.”
And there could be a whole range of products, clothing stylists, hair stylists, musical versions of him as concert pianist, mad guitarist or drummer, singer – the mind boggles. This could be a revitalisation of USA business which had been in the doldrums just waiting for some new craze, and will truly MAKE AMERICA GRATE AGAIN.
Chatting to an Englishman at a social event.. ok a bar.
Got around to UK GE and Brexit and migrants.
His view is that Brexit will stop the flow of migrants into England and that that will be a good thing.
I asked him where he lives and works and where he intends to retire: he said NZ.
I told him that he was therefore a migrant. i suggested there was a dichotomy between what he was saying about migrants and his current status!
“An ExPat, I’m not a migrant”
“What’s the differance?”
Things went downhill and I’m none the wiser. Can anyone enlighten me?
Reading between the lines ExPat is a term with both or either racial and “Imperial” connotations!
Do the English who come here have any other cultural bagage?
What are we doing for immigrants from England to help adjust to our culture? Is there an education or cultural awareness program to help then overcome the negative aspects of their culture?
Should we give them lesson in cooking and language to help them make the shift?
He sounds like most migrants, white, brown and pink, there are not enough high paid or satisfying jobs in NZ so they come here and get residency or citizenship, work overseas once that is acheived and then are planning to come back here to retire.
It’s working out kinda the opposite of what most governments would want…
Take note of this that I heard and have sourced for your information and knowledge.
Bill English telling local government to borrow more despite that they are trying to be fiscally prudent and stay within limits to give them a high credit rating and low interest.
49 Local Government entities do this by going through one agency but Billy Boy wants them to get as loaded up as government (which isn’t high of course, but is crushingly burdened by all the private credit for our imported purchases at home and out in the mean streets.) http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/businessnews/audio/201846567/business-news-for-7-june-2017
Listen 3.30-6 mins – was on Business News 6.49am Wednesday 7 June 2017
When will we realise that leaving the door open for the very rich to gorge themselves in a unfettered desire to fill the void of greed. Never works out well for ordinary folk.
It’ll appeal to the Facebook and Instagram crowd(s) and people who think that a sentence or a Tweet equals an essay. The mind-numbing and dumbing down has reached its next phase; expect more photos of kittens & cupcakes 😉
Not only are the regulations for rentals completely inadequate, there are only 15 compliance officers for the whole of NZ. No wonder there are so many of these disgusting boarding houses.
Well I’ve never been able to get one off their butt to actually leave the office in Auckland. Glad the MP for Kelston was able to get (embrace) one into action recently. Good on her.
Have to say since she has come back to parliament, she has been one of the best preforms for labour. I never hesitate sending people to her office for help.
With the rental regulations as they stand there is nothing stopping Stuff from running stories about people living in sub standard housing that throw a whole new angle on the situation.
I want to read Jeff and Julia stories that go like this:
“The prevailing wind blows straight into the front of our home. The gaps around the windows and door are really bad. The house is icy cold for 6 months of the year. We provided our landlord with a 14 day notice requesting that he start taking steps to fix the issue. He did nothing. After 4 months we lodged papers at the Tenancy Tribunal, cost us $20.
The adjudicator ordered he must pay us $1500 damages and all of the rent we’ve paid since we gave him the 14 day notice is being returned to us. He gave us notice to move out, we went back to the Tribunal, it is illegal for him to kick us out for retaliatory reasons. We got $3000 damages for that.
He still needs to fix the house but with our house savings and windfall of make good money, we’re looking for a do-up in South Auckland to buy.”
The Tenancy Services website is really well organized and really easy to understand. Bugger boo hoo, get even.
I thought there was a good question asked in the House today. A supplementary question so the Beehive Blues were able to answer with the trusty “I don’t have those details to hand.”
For years the government have offered proof of how many houses are being built by quoting the number of building consents granted. Getting the nod to build 20 apartments is of course quite a different thing to 20 families moving into their new homes.
‘Show me the houses!’
When a home is completed, one of the last tasks is to have a ‘Code of Compliance’ issued. The question was: “How many NZ Codes of Compliance have been issued in the last year?”
I think it’s a question worthy of going on the card. Allow them enough time to have that figure at hand. I think it will be an embarrassing number.
But had incoming migration of 70,000 plus 180,000 working visas issued, …. do the math, that’s why there is rising homelessness and overcrowding among other things.
It’s really bonkers to be in the top 3 countries in the world per capita with migration (the others are Israel and Liechtenstein), and turning NZ a formally pristine wealthy and educated country into a banana republic with mass surveillance, pollution and disabled people being billed $200 a night for dodgy hotels and having to move from week to week. Or working families with kids living in cars.
It’s the National government creating the problem as it benefits them voter wise and like all ponzi schemes looks good at the beginning with cash flooding in.
Urban houses with large sections are often sold with lines like “Approval for 8 units”.
Is Nick counting those 8 units when quoting consent numbers? The consent may go no further than a seductive sub-heading in the marketing for the property. Can’t live in those.
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This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The cruelty of short-term memory loss is that each time you ask where she is, you get the fresh shock and grief of the news. That was Dad's day yesterday.Comfortingly, it seems to be less so today. Last night he looked crumpled, today he seems more settled. There's a card ...
Photo by Alvan Nee on UnsplashIt’s that new day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm. Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat about the week’s news ...
Buzz from the Beehive One minister is talking tough while a colleague – whose ministry had acted tough and drawn a barrage of flak – has shown an official softening. Some ministers are doing what Labour was good at, which is distributing public funds to causes regarded as worthy or ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. My earlier article – Can ‘Good’ be the Greater Evil? – looked at the issue of how wars should end, and how Good versus Evil ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 AMMA by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press, $38)A stunning debut novel reviewed by Brannavan ...
From Steve Martin to Ricky Stanicky, a pick’n’mix of things worth watching and listening to this long weekend. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. If you’re at a loss for something to occupy yourself with this Easter, don’t panic: The Spinoff’s got ...
Jesus had dinner with his 12 disciples right before he died. Noted historian Madeleine Chapman finds out who really deserved to be there.First published in 2018 but let’s be honest, the subject is timeless. As you sit on your couch this Easter Sunday, eating a chocolate egg you know ...
The newly-promoted Northern League club is on a mission to return to the National League for the first time in two decades. Plenty about domestic football in New Zealand has changed in that time – but the sense that this amateur competition is not an entirely level playing field remains. ...
Comment: Every year on February 2, a dozen men in tuxedos and top hats approach the burrow of a groundhog in Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania and entice the beaver-like rodent to emerge and predict the weather. If the groundhog, named Punxsutawney Phil, sees its own shadow when it is summoned, legend ...
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Auckland Council has put a deadline on new weather-impacted property owners applying for categorisation as government funding looks set to run out. Councillors have voted to support a deadline of September 30 for property owners who haven’t accessed support to come forward and engage with the council’s recovery office. It ...
NONFICTION 1 BBQ Economics by Liam Dann (Penguin Random House, $40) “It’s official,” wrote Dann nine days ago in the Herald, where he works as business editor at large, “we’re in recession.” Yeah, great. He delivered the bad stats: “GDP fell 0.1 percent in the December 2023 quarter, compared with ...
By Anneke Smith, RNZ News political reporter A petition urging the New Zealand government to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people has been tabled in the House. More than 200 people gathered on Parliament’s forecourt today and they were met by MPs from Labour, the Greens and Te ...
Pacific Media Watch The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog RSF (Reporters Without Borders) has appealed for information about the “disappearance” of Palestinian journalist Bayan Abusultan. She was reportedly last seen on March 19 among people “sequestered” in this week’s raid and siege of Al Shifa hospital by Israeli troops in ...
EDITORIAL:The Jakarta Post It happens again and again; indigenous Papuans fall victim to Indonesian soldiers. This time, we have photographic evidence for the brutality, with videos on social media showing a Papuan man being tortured by a group of plainclothes men alleged to be the Indonesian Military (TNI) members. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity A strange and eclectic range of activities takes place across these few weeks of the year. Some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University It’s Easter weekend, which means many of us will be kicking back with the greatest hits on repeat. But whether you’re a boomer, or an ‘80s or ’90s kid, you might be ...
RNZ Pacific Fiji’s Acting Public Prosecutor has filed an appeal against the sentences of former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended police chief Sitiveni Qiliho in their corruption case. Bainimarama was granted an absolute discharge for attempting to pervert the course of justice while Qiliho received a conditional discharge with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arosha Weerakoon, Senior Lecturer and General Dentist, School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland Casezy idea/Shutterstock How does toothpaste work? What did people use before toothpaste was invented? – Amelia, age 7, Meanjin (Brisbane) Thanks for your ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Hallam, Associate professor, UNSW Sydney IM Imagery/Shutterstock Solar SunShot is well named. The Australian government announced today it would plough A$1 billion into bringing back solar manufacturing to Australia, boosting energy security, swapping coal and gas jobs for those ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Dix, Research Fellow in Nutrition & Dietetics, The University of Queensland Easter is the time for chocolate. The shops are full of fantastically packaged and shiny chocolates in all shapes and sizes, making trips to the supermarket with children more challenging ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Felton, Adjunct Senior Researcher, University of South Australia Even in a stubborn cost-of-living crisis, it seems there’s one luxury most Australians won’t sacrifice – their daily cup of coffee. Coffee sales have largely remained stable, even as financial pressures have ...
Mining company Trans-Tasman Resources has unexpectedly withdrawn its application for a consent to suck the valuable metals vanadium and titanium from the Taranaki seafloor, as it apparently wagers on the Government’s new fast-track process. It had spent two-and-a-half days putting its case to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision-making committee, at ...
Contrary to the Associate Minister of Education’s claims, analysis of Healthy School Lunches Programme - Ka Ora, Ka Ako assessments has revealed it provides excellent value for the taxpayer dollar, as a groundswell of public opposition to Government ...
Greenpeace says wannabe Taranaki seabed miner Trans-Tasman Resources is likely banking on Christopher Luxon’s fast-track process to side-step proper scrutiny of its Taranaki seabed mining proposal by bailing out of the Environmental Protection Agency hearing ...
Kiwis Against Seabed mining today slammed Australian owned would-be seabed miner Trans Tasman Resources (TTR) for abandoning its application to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to mine the seabed of the South Taranaki Bight. The company ...
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Gosh, this is good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=220&v=pTPvPwF38kY
Bluddy good riffer!
Notice how the right never get any nice tunes/poems written for them…
The great Howard Zinn.
Artists in Times of War
https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=howard+zinn+artists+in+times+of+war&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi1_eH7pqrUAhXJmJQKHYw3ApQQ_AUIDCgD&biw=1360&bih=653
Very good!!
Doctors warn fees will increase unless Government stumps up more cash
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/93363517/doctors-fees-will-increase-unless-government-stumps-up-more-cash-gps
Labour’s health spokesman David Clark said we need to invest more heavily in primary healthcare but failed to elaborate how much more Labour would invest.
Hospital patients being put up in motels
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/93333026/wellington-hospital-sends-preop-patients-to-motels-in-response-to-bed-shortages
Hospital hits crisis point – multiple patients unable to be admitted.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/93285908/patients-forced-to-wait-hours-as-palmerston-north-hospital-hits-capacity
Maybe we need Obamacare like that other well-run country we follow – the USA.
A very good article IMO that deserves attention here: The middle class is ruining the American dream.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11869848
…
Isn’t that the way it has always been in the Western system all over the world?
Very interesting, thanks for posting.
Andrew Kirton on health
Little on the health funding shortfall
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201846573/govt-short-changing-health-sector-by-2-point-3-billion-labour
$2.3 billion shortfall unlikely to be corrected in first term.
Not surprising. It’s difficult and expensive to undo the damage that National does. And then we have to take in account that 2.3 billion is around 1% of GDP compared to the government using around 30%.
It’s far more difficult when fiscal constraints have been self-imposed and there is no willingness to increase taxes of the elite.
True.
Labour were fools to say that there won’t be any tax increases. Instead they should have said that taxes will be reviewed to cover the necessary expenses needed to maintain a good society.
Except, as I recall, they didn’t promise zero tax increases.
They said that at that stage, dependent on the budget and how the nats left the country, they could pay for all their pledges in the current tax levels and would review the entire tax system.
Even without going “gosh darn it, the Greens insist we raise taxes slightly, but that’s living in a coalition”, they have more than enough room for a “neutral tax shift” post review or even an outright increase.
what’s a neutral tax shift?
that GST/income tax malarky key pulled – technically they projected no increase in taxes, just more GST less income tax
It’s the 70th anniversary of the Marshall Plan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
If anyone remembers the Marshall Plan, here’s a good text on how the German government views it now in terms of recent events:
http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/sid_192467928A5AB69CD9B00E5E1E7FB639/EN/Infoservice/Presse/Reden/2017/170518-BM_Marshall-Plan_70.html
Natz have taken 156 affordable state homes in Glen Innes and then turned that into only 39 affordable homes (if you think $650k is affordable).
Of the 156 state houses only 78 are replaced.
Presumably the other 104 homes are not affordable and for profit for the developer and Natz cronies.
No wonder we have a fucking housing crisis with this type of carry on.
The MSM are keeping the asset sales rout going by these vomitous spin articles not pointing out that the government are taking away affordable houses so that developers can profit from the asset sales.
How stupid do they think people are??? No wonder Granny has to give it’s papers away for free these days.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11870527
New Zealand’s first Artificial Intelligence Forum starts in Wellington today
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/innovation/93267316/innovation-series-businesses-not-latching-onto-artificial-intelligence-opportunity
Quinn Norton on the NSA leaker getting caught,
https://twitter.com/quinnnorton/status/872193952853745665
This from the Electronic Frontier Foundation on how printing often leaves footprints via yellow dots that aren’t visible to the naked eye. The dots tell things like the serial number of the printer and the date and time the document was printed. I think this might apply to colour printers (printing in black and white doesn’t have this set of footprints)
https://twitter.com/EFF/status/872198852958314496
There’s all kinds of things that can be done to trace who did what with documents. Subtle changes in wording of different copies, subtle changes to fonts and letter spacings, variations in the letterhead, etc etc.
If The Intercept had any interest in trying to obscure the trail back to the leaker, at a minimum they should have had a staffer rewrite the whole thing in their own words (including changing the spelling of names) before sending it back to the agency as a text file for comment (and told the agency they had done so).
True and in this case it appears they didn’t even do the most basic of precautions. Weird.
http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/06/how-intercept-outed-reality-winner.html?m=1
edit:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/06/06/the-easy-trail-that-led-the-feds-to-reality-winner-alleged-source-of-nsa-leak/?utm_term=.49de0442f601
Good explanation.
Sen. Mark Warner says there’s a lot more to the Russian hacking than the leak described.
.
The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee told USA TODAY on Tuesday that Russian attacks on election systems were broader and targeted more states than those detailed in an explosive intelligence report leaked to the website The Intercept.
“I don’t believe they got into changing actual voting outcomes,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said in an interview. “But the extent of the attacks is much broader than has been reported so far.” He said he was pushing intelligence agencies to declassify the names of those states hit to help put electoral systems on notice before the midterm voting in 2018.
“None of these actions from the Russians stopped on Election Day,” he warned.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/06/06/mark-warner-more-state-election-systems-targeted-by-russians-nsa-senate-intelligence/102549928/
Apparently Mondelez a US company, bought Cadbury and has taken out 130 million in dividends, a 120m loan so it can claim 43m in interest, and given itself 47.7m in royalties and service fees so it can maximise it’s profits while paying as little local tax as possible.
Even sadder is that now the locals have to crowd fund to keep their jobs and factories at Cadbury so offshore companies can have more profit.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11870727
But the National government thinks this foreign investment is wonderful. This is ‘investment’ in the provinces.
Tegal also has done a similar rout with it’s private equity owners who recently floated it and it’s now in trouble on the share market.
On the float, a measly, 1.2 m was given in capital to Tegal, 129m was given to it’s shareholders aka the private equity firm, 130m to pay back debt the private equity firm took out to float, and 23m in fees for floating on the sharemarket.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201843153/business-commentator-rod-oram
Apparently Business Desk did the analysis of Cadbury.
Do commentators real not understand why Kiwis like to invest in property – rather than shares when this sort of carry on is perfectly legal.
It’s a triple whammy of not encouraging people to invest in Kiwi business due to the routs, off shore companies not paying taxes and parasitically killing the business so that the locals lose their jobs and livelihoods.
It’s obscene.
More on Cadbury. Radionz did a piece this morning. An attempt to set up a local buy-in to keep the factory in Dunedin, and it is a reasonable investment with a known product and sales continuing for a popular product.
I think that regions have to set up investment trusts or something to buy their main and likely ongoing enterprises. Government is determined to undermine stability in jobs apparently carrying forward neolib ideas that people work harder when they are insecure and living near survival level. That’s the theory, but not sure what they say about working people when there is no work. Do they have a theory to counteract the despair of not having any part to play in society?
food Otago
8:54 am today
Dunedin public called on to invest in Cadbury proposal
From Morning Report, 8:54 am toda
Listen duration 3′ :49″ en
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201846594/dunedin-public-called-on-to-invest-in-cadbury-proposal
Less than a year before Cadbury is due to close its Dunedin factory and the race is on to save it, and up to 360 jobs. A Dunedin City Councillor is launching a last-minute bid to keep the factory open with his ‘own the factory’ campaign.
and
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/332441/last-ditch-bid-to-keep-confectionary-made-in-nz
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/20m-plan-save-factory
Jim O’Malley, a Dunedin city councillor, is trying to raise $20 million to keep the factory open on a portion of the site.
Mr O’Malley is working in a personal capacity; the Dunedin City Council is not involved in the bid.
Mr O’Malley’s plan is to run a public share offer aimed at the general public as well as business.
Before launching any share offer, Mr O’Malley has organised a two-week pledge period to gauge interest, starting today.
If there was little interest, the plan would be dumped, and the ”lights will turn off in March”.
Shares in Dunedin Manufacturing Holdings (DMH) would be priced at $50 if the offer goes ahead.
A website has been launched – http://www.ownthefactory.co.nz – to register pledges.
”You will not be committed to make an investment at this time, but we ask you to only make a pledge if you intend to invest in the future,” he said.
and
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/93402836/ambitious-20-million-plan-to-keep-kiwi-cadbury-brands-in-new-zealand
And investment opportunity. Can a NZ owned business buy this from Cadbury, making condensed milk, milk products etc?
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/cadbury-dairy-unit-sale-mondelez-offers-going-concern
My point is, that it should not be happening in the first place. It should not be legal to do what Mondelez has done. Sounds like a similar issue at Dick Smith as well. Pumpkin patch, that security firm that went bust, Tegal possibly on the ropes after all that money routed out by directors and shareholders. It is certainly is not moral and it’s certainly not sustainable.
Seen that a few times over the past few years. Foreign company buys local company that has little or no debt and immediately takes out a huge loan and pays a massive dividend.
It shouldn’t be allowed as it’s nothing more than a scam and can result in the local company going bankrupt – usually after the new owners have sold it on.
What happens when Shareholders don’t get enough profit…
Donkey fed to tigers at China zoo in ‘fit of rage’ by shareholders
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2017/06/donkey-fed-to-tigers-at-china-zoo-in-fit-of-rage-by-shareholders.html
Dunedin CC should just take over the factory and make the owners take a bath.
slightly exceeds the authority of the local govt act, methinks 🙂
All this for jaffas and pineapple lumps? Give me a break. How pathetic. How can we fight the diabetes epidemic when people carry on like this about stupid bloody lollies?
Nah, it’s about jobs, corporate loyalty (or lack), and industry diversity. Not because of pineapple lumps.
Also keeping the monetary lolly in the country. And some of us like sweet things and if we can keep them in moderation, same as we keep our criticisms, we can get advantage without downsides.
Just listened to an interview on National Radio from a jellyfish expert. Apparantly they (the jellyfish) have no heart, no brain and no backbone. I thought, there you go, they must be tory voters.
yes, they also usually kill with thousands of stingers that each inject a tiny trace of poison into an almost invisible or trivial cut, the weight of these injections eventually killing a larger organism
They have also apparently defied evolution and are now eating up the food chain. Which I kind of admired, so maybe there is hope yet 😉
There were a lot of interesting things said on the radio jellyfish interview. I’ll pass on what I remember to add to the sting of the humorous twist that johnr heard. (E&OE)
The dried jellyfish or some, are very water absorbent and can be used in products requiring that, baby naps etc.
Jellyfish are colonising and can act together though individual entities attached to main platform.
They bloom naturally, and spread to wide proportions, and this will happen with climate change because more warmth will encourage.
They drift and depending on their structure will drift to the left or right, depending on which ‘sail’ the majority put up.
They eat into our fish stocks, and when hauled up with fish catch in a massive reproduction phase, they tipped the fishing boat over.
One has a sting that mimics herpes with blisters, and like herpes will stay in the body arising later and this may last for years.
I think in Oz they always take vinegar with them to the beach. If not, swill salt water over stings, if you rub them they hook into you more and release venom or something, yuk.
I was wondering if over the Barrier Reef perhaps they could moor? jellyfish clumps to shade and cool the water – if they could de-acidify the water it might help, but presumably they would have the opposite effect.
It looks as if we need to find a way to use them as resources if they are going to be increasing with as bad effects as we ourselves have.
Don’t knock the old jellyfish too much, we may well have to use them as a source of protein when our fish stocks collapse.
When listing facts & trivia about jellyfish you cannot omit green fluorescent protein, which has its own pedestal in cellular and molecular biology research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_fluorescent_protein
Hey these jellyfish are definitely something else! I was all prepared to dislike them but the next thing I’ll find out that one brighter one is my first cousin once removed.
Wow way to diss almost 50 % of the voting population there. Good luck with trying to win them back after that.
When did the Natz get 50% of enrolled voters?
FYI – never. Closest was 48% of enrolled voters in 1951
People need to learn from the truth, not get upset by it.
Yes – Diddums, Gosman. As if much more than 1% of voters would have even noticed that one comment. More fun to annoy you than worry about people who probably have not read the thread… After all, you seem to exist for the sole purpose of annoying the majority who read this site.
We keep hearing from conservative idiots, such as Family First, that like to rewrite history to conform to their biases about how great the nuclear family is. Real history, once you get round to reading it, proves them wrong.
Citing “How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature” by George Monbiot:
8 Gillis links the twentieth century’s attempt to find intimacy and passion only within marriage – and the impossible expectations this raises – to the rise in the rate of divorce.”
Who can know about causes for divorce even after doing huge long term research? But finding someone to live with life-long is quite a task, and getting used to someone of another gender, another family, and having to form one’s own family culture, is quite an effort and can be greatly affected by stresses from outside, and unreal expectations, and self-centred or narrow interests. Being drawn to passion is a mistake. It’s the result of peak emotion and who can live at that level all the time, or would want to it would be exhausting, one would be sated. Reality says, to have a peak there must be a lower base that’s common. Even when there is divorce available, some people stay married, they may get past wanting a real friendship and enjoyment and settle for what they know on the basis that divorce might end up worse.
It’s a wonder that we don’t give up trying to live with some other ornery blighter, but we are such hopeful romantics!
They didn’t say that previous generations weren’t finding someone to live with lifelong. they just said that there was a whole lot more flexibility in relationships than what the conservatives like to portray up to and including having sex outside of the main relationship.
I have a book about rural English customs. It says that often an Anglican minister unmarried, in a rural area, would have a young housekeeper and would find her a good husband as time went on. And then get another young housekeeper. I have forgotten when perhaps late 1800s.
That sounds like the same type of myth as the myth of chivalry that Bill put up.
And I really don’t know WTF it’s got to do with how the nuclear family is a modern creation used to help businesses by splitting people from the community.
Question about the Paris agreement. Why do you need government to sign up? Why can’t citizens make the sacrifices that may need to be made?
5……4…….3……
Venezuela in 3, 2, 1…
What has Venezuela have to do with the Paris Climate Agreement?
That was probably a response to when your comment was just “test”, before your edit.
This, and Venezuela won’t be far off anyway.
You wondered if your ban for lying was lifted and didn’t want to type your inane point if it wasn’t going to appear.
I guessed you were going to rant about Venezuela but instead it was a rant about self-regulation in response to climate change.
Self-regulation. Interesting concept. How does it work?
Lol. Just happy to see the commentariat self-regulating 🙂
How is paying for climate change mitigation in another country related to regulation?
I meant they were regulating your trolling so the mods don’t have to. But by all means carry on being a dick Gosman.
fish gotta swim…
“Question about the Paris agreement. Why do you need government to sign up? Why can’t citizens make the sacrifices that may need to be made?”
Citizens can make the sacrifices too. What steps have you taken Gosman?
This is a conversation I am interested in.
What are the sacrifices/changes folks have made in respect to climate change?
I have stopped flying back and forth from aucks for work.
Started planting trees too.
Our house is heated by solid fuel so if I keep planting as well as harvesting, it should be a closed loop.
I live rurally so have been cutting trips to town unless there are three reasons to go.
The last one for me too, it’s not that hard. Working local food too, both within NZ and reducing food coming from overseas. I burn wood but haven’t done much on replanting yet. What are you doing with that? (I don’t own land).
Re planting, both here on our place and a mates farm: gums, fruit trees, manuka and mac.
Nice. I’d love to learn about coppicing.
A few years back a British guy won an employment case off the back of human rights legislation when he lost his job for refusing to fly for conference meetings etc.
The human rights legislation is the same here as there.
The judge decided he was discriminated against on the basis of his belief (around AGW) and that the discriminationwas on a par with religious discrimination.
I’m not saying everyone’s who’s aware of AGW and who is ‘forced’ to fly by their employer will have either the presence of mind or stamina to follow that lead, but some might – maybe even someone reading this comment. 😉
Heh. Top law firms won’t represent Trump. Coz he probably won’t pay any attention to their advice and will likely stiff them like he does to everybody else.
http://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/world/four-top-law-firms-turned-down-trump-report/ar-BBCbJc0?li=BBqdg4K&ocid=mailsignout
Massive disconnect here from Bling. He admits vulnerable families don’t trust him or his government or the Police yet can’t imagine how more money might, I don’t know, fund research into repairing that trust and pay for more decent people at the coal face to action the results.
That’s before we even get into the community-busting, inequality-growing hopelessness among the disenfranchise which his government has carefully watched over.
This, ‘I care on my bad days’, shit is disgusting from him after admitting he and his predecessor are at fault.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2017/06/bill-english-on-family-violence-sometimes-on-my-worst-day-i-think-we-service-misery.html
Sounds like Blinglish just wants to feed into their hopeless meme. Out of our big hearts we keep trying – but – fling hands open – what can we do, just hold the line really when talking about the great unwashed and beneficiaries, and really all those that aren’t like US.
Craaaap. People go doolally when they are constantly confronted with closed doors when they knock and expect to be spoken to. When that’s been going for three generations and the only jobs available are those where you are supposed to sit like a battery hen, and you have never been able to sit quiet and relax, then you’re not suited by the jobs available. Some action jobs that go away for the week, and back to the pub and some films in the weekend, would get work for youngsters like this. It would take them out of their peer group and environment to where they could learn to put their back into it and properly despise the finger-tappers. Then there would be equality of put-downs.
Just government planning the economy would be a start. But the buggers resigned from that when Labour went and got Rogered back in 1984 and they’ve taken years to stand up again after that. Perhaps now they can grow a pair and do what a decent government can do, efficiently, first phase within a year and having some clear movement by 100 days. Then second phase – trying ten different projects in second year, and carry on five for third year. And if elected again, explore new ways of implementing those projects both completed, and piloted taking the next term. Plus jump start and trial some new ones. The energy would grow, people could come up with a project thought out, rough costings, ideas for obtaining resources (not stealing them after midnight from across the river etc.) and things would be amazing. And there would be a few frauds. That’s only to be expected so need lots of practical auditors to ensure frauds were kept small. But one fault can’t stop good outcome.
Wingnut fight!.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/the-pro-trump-internet-and-the-alt-right-is-turning-on?utm_term=.tkaEEEVp7z#.rkRjjj7OqK
Apparently the Russian involvement in the U.S. election is a little more sinister.
Their foray into A.I. was to create a prototype humanoid.
There are some who fear it got away and finished up winning the Whitehouse.
Who, what? Frank N. Stein?
I was just thinking – what a great market for the wealthy cynic? Have your very own AI model of Donald Trump stumping round your home, making unsavoury comments, annoying your relatives, insulting the annoying neighbours, and threatening to beat up your creditors, and inventing bad jokes and making sexist and racist jokes and remarks. And you need not take any responsibility – just shrug and say it’s modern technology, a release of a beta version, ‘He’s like…you know… a force of nature.”
And there could be a whole range of products, clothing stylists, hair stylists, musical versions of him as concert pianist, mad guitarist or drummer, singer – the mind boggles. This could be a revitalisation of USA business which had been in the doldrums just waiting for some new craze, and will truly MAKE AMERICA GRATE AGAIN.
This could be a prototype version of the drummer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8aGlOj2VFo
You can already get Trump to voice your GPS. Wonder what it says after it directs you into the sewage ponds.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-voice-gps_us_591f454de4b094cdba540695
Andre Funny thanks for that. It’s having a laugh, snigger, guffaw, that keeps us going.
NSA contractor faces 10-year sentence in first Espionage Act charge under Trump
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/06/reality-winner-espionage-act-leak-russian-hacking
Chatting to an Englishman at a social event.. ok a bar.
Got around to UK GE and Brexit and migrants.
His view is that Brexit will stop the flow of migrants into England and that that will be a good thing.
I asked him where he lives and works and where he intends to retire: he said NZ.
I told him that he was therefore a migrant. i suggested there was a dichotomy between what he was saying about migrants and his current status!
“An ExPat, I’m not a migrant”
“What’s the differance?”
Things went downhill and I’m none the wiser. Can anyone enlighten me?
He believes he’s retiring to the colonies.
It’s one of the complications of having been part of the British Empire.
I am picking he is white skinned therefore an ‘alright’ migrant.
Im picking that you are right in what he thinks.
Its sad.
Reading between the lines ExPat is a term with both or either racial and “Imperial” connotations!
Do the English who come here have any other cultural bagage?
What are we doing for immigrants from England to help adjust to our culture? Is there an education or cultural awareness program to help then overcome the negative aspects of their culture?
Should we give them lesson in cooking and language to help them make the shift?
He sounds like most migrants, white, brown and pink, there are not enough high paid or satisfying jobs in NZ so they come here and get residency or citizenship, work overseas once that is acheived and then are planning to come back here to retire.
It’s working out kinda the opposite of what most governments would want…
You wasted some precious drinking conversation time with a bigot – a racist one by the sounds of it.
Take note of this that I heard and have sourced for your information and knowledge.
Bill English telling local government to borrow more despite that they are trying to be fiscally prudent and stay within limits to give them a high credit rating and low interest.
49 Local Government entities do this by going through one agency but Billy Boy wants them to get as loaded up as government (which isn’t high of course, but is crushingly burdened by all the private credit for our imported purchases at home and out in the mean streets.)
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/businessnews/audio/201846567/business-news-for-7-june-2017
Listen 3.30-6 mins – was on Business News 6.49am Wednesday 7 June 2017
*face palm*
AWW Yes that’s what I thought.
When will we realise that leaving the door open for the very rich to gorge themselves in a unfettered desire to fill the void of greed. Never works out well for ordinary folk.
This is not good.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/06/qatar-diplomatic-crisis-latest-updates-170605105550769.html
Then mr small hands wads in
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/world/middleeast/trump-qatar-saudi-arabia.html?_r=0
Qatar: home of Al Jazeera….. anything to do with Trump’s bias against Qatar?
High possibility. It all seems just a bit odd.
The new Herald on line format is a straight steal from the UK Independent.
And it’s crap
It’ll appeal to the Facebook and Instagram crowd(s) and people who think that a sentence or a Tweet equals an essay. The mind-numbing and dumbing down has reached its next phase; expect more photos of kittens & cupcakes 😉
Not only are the regulations for rentals completely inadequate, there are only 15 compliance officers for the whole of NZ. No wonder there are so many of these disgusting boarding houses.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/93422776/just-15-compliance-officers-to-keep-entire-rental-market-in-line
Well I’ve never been able to get one off their butt to actually leave the office in Auckland. Glad the MP for Kelston was able to get (embrace) one into action recently. Good on her.
Have to say since she has come back to parliament, she has been one of the best preforms for labour. I never hesitate sending people to her office for help.
With the rental regulations as they stand there is nothing stopping Stuff from running stories about people living in sub standard housing that throw a whole new angle on the situation.
I want to read Jeff and Julia stories that go like this:
“The prevailing wind blows straight into the front of our home. The gaps around the windows and door are really bad. The house is icy cold for 6 months of the year. We provided our landlord with a 14 day notice requesting that he start taking steps to fix the issue. He did nothing. After 4 months we lodged papers at the Tenancy Tribunal, cost us $20.
The adjudicator ordered he must pay us $1500 damages and all of the rent we’ve paid since we gave him the 14 day notice is being returned to us. He gave us notice to move out, we went back to the Tribunal, it is illegal for him to kick us out for retaliatory reasons. We got $3000 damages for that.
He still needs to fix the house but with our house savings and windfall of make good money, we’re looking for a do-up in South Auckland to buy.”
The Tenancy Services website is really well organized and really easy to understand. Bugger boo hoo, get even.
I thought there was a good question asked in the House today. A supplementary question so the Beehive Blues were able to answer with the trusty “I don’t have those details to hand.”
For years the government have offered proof of how many houses are being built by quoting the number of building consents granted. Getting the nod to build 20 apartments is of course quite a different thing to 20 families moving into their new homes.
‘Show me the houses!’
When a home is completed, one of the last tasks is to have a ‘Code of Compliance’ issued. The question was: “How many NZ Codes of Compliance have been issued in the last year?”
I think it’s a question worthy of going on the card. Allow them enough time to have that figure at hand. I think it will be an embarrassing number.
And then minus off those houses that got demolished…. and those houses unliveable due to natural disasters…
Ha! Yes, a supplementary question could create a headline for the MSM.
‘NZ is 120 houses better off this year’.
But had incoming migration of 70,000 plus 180,000 working visas issued, …. do the math, that’s why there is rising homelessness and overcrowding among other things.
It’s really bonkers to be in the top 3 countries in the world per capita with migration (the others are Israel and Liechtenstein), and turning NZ a formally pristine wealthy and educated country into a banana republic with mass surveillance, pollution and disabled people being billed $200 a night for dodgy hotels and having to move from week to week. Or working families with kids living in cars.
It’s the National government creating the problem as it benefits them voter wise and like all ponzi schemes looks good at the beginning with cash flooding in.
Urban houses with large sections are often sold with lines like “Approval for 8 units”.
Is Nick counting those 8 units when quoting consent numbers? The consent may go no further than a seductive sub-heading in the marketing for the property. Can’t live in those.
UBI
A lovely long discussion on productivity and capitalism and so on that you can partake of while eating something warming while you chew over this which arises from Austria, but is in very readable English, not too much jargon.
https://antinational.org/en/what-wrong-free-money/
and
http://www.cca-glasgow.com/programme/caught-learning–whats-wrong-with-free-money