Does the robotic big bruv blouse coward nutbar really have the ability to learn? Once a cowardly moron always a dropkick.
I think it needs serious help.His obession with me is rather laughable.
The Great Depression in the 1930’s polarised nations enormously, towards both the extremes of left and right. The consequences in the 1940’s were catastrophic.
Eighty years later and it all repeats, except this time the collapse of the Soviet Union dealt the extreme left a terminal blow, but what we are seeing in the USA is a resurgence of the extreme right…
The right keep insisting the USSR was an example of socialism.
Socialism lasted all of a week before authoritarian power hungry demagogues took over.
Socialism has been working fine for decades in Northern Europe’s Democratic socialist countries. Worked well for NZ too, until it was largely abandoned.
The best there was, was a Social Democratic compromise. That was principly about policy priorities informed (at least in part) by the western elites’ fear of the ideas encapsulated by the Sviet Union ‘catching on’ with their own population leading to them being replaced with a new Party elite.
So yup, ordinary people got a better deal under Social Democratic governments than they had previously. Which on the one hand was a good thing. But because demands were contained within a Social Democratic framework, the steam was taken out of any move towards substantive change. And now the gains made within that framework are being, or have been unmade.
In the final analysis, the left was done over like a dog’s breakfast under both authoritarian Sviet and Social democratic rule.
@Bill Is there a country, or countries, that have achieved a sustained rule by the left even for a month? And how has it/they fared economically and with human rights and
inclusion in politics?
Christ Prism! You might want to define ‘left’ for a start. If the various Labour Parties fall within your definition then the answer is ‘Yes’.
But if you are meaning by your question; ‘Has there ever been substantive change inspired by ‘left’ politics’, then the answer is ‘No’.
For clarification of my position (in case it’s needed), substantive change would involve democratisation of the economic and political spheres. And that process would entail the devolution of state and manufacturing power to the community and workplace level respectively.
Meaning that nation states or countries become increasingly irrelevant until finally (when they no longer act as conduits of power) they would be viewed as mere historical curiosities.
Richard Wolff explains with clarity the economic, financial, and social failure of capitalism/neoliberalism in the US. He is an advocate for Marxian economics and democratic socialism.
http://www.kiwipolitico.com/
Excellent post by Pablo (Paul Buchanan) at Kiwipolitico.
I have a very, very, very strong suspicion what happened over the Israeli ‘back-packers’ mystery, but will wait for a little more sunlight to be shed on the affair before expressing it.
Hilarious if it were not so serious. Overnight the Chinese govt sternly lectures the USA about how the ‘good old days (of borrowing) are over’, clearly no longer willing to lend while the Fed continues to print money, thus devaluing the dollar. Instead they are demanding the USA dismantle it’s military spending and social welfare.
And this from the Chinese who for a decade or more have been committing economic warfare on the rest of the world by refusing to float their currency and deliberately keeping it massively undervalued.
Combined this statement with the massive cyberwar attacks the Chinese are making on intellectual property throughout the West with complete impunity, there is no doubt the Chinese are already flexing their muscles in a big way.
Well the US is the author of it’s own misfortune here, the tax cuts and increases in military spending in the last decade being the prime cause, but equally the Chinese have been sedulously digging a bear trap all these years, patiently awaiting their target to stumble into it.
Is there any compelling reason why China shouldn’t have exerted control over the value of its currency? The ‘west’ gave away control of its currencies to traders and unelected, unaccountable financial institutions. Good idea, yes?
The bear trap dug by the Chinese has literally been 30 years in the making. They have engineered a massive transfer of US capital (money, technology, know-how) to their own shores taken from the US over that time.
In leading the bear to the bear trap however, the Chinese have had to get very close to the edge of the trap themselves. Let’s see if they can avoid falling in with the bear. That would be a very messy outcome if they slip as well.
PS the Chinese learnt perfectly the behaviour and attitudes of the powerful western imperial capitalists through the humiliations and divisions they put China through in the 19th and early 20th century. And knowing that this capitalist type has no loyalty even to their own people or their own land, no loyalty other than to money they used that knowledge extremely effectively.
The current uprising has given Israeli liberals a voice again…. But the apolitical character of the protest is being challenged. Netanyahu is already claiming that the protesters are driven by political motivations. His intent is clear: he wants to delegitimise them and claim that their real goal is to topple his government. This, he hopes, will weaken nationwide support for their demands. On Monday, members of the Likud central committee started to say that the demonstrators are just a bunch of sushi eaters with nargilas (Arab pipes) – ie leftist radicals – and that the media was exaggerating their numbers…. If the Likud and Yisrael Beitenu step up their attack, the protesters will not have any choice but to confront the current coalition in the political arena as well.
They will have to say that taxpayers’ money in Israel has been spent lavishly in the occupied territories; that billions of shekels go to child support for the ultra-Orthodox, most of whom do not contribute to the economy; that the silent collusion of Israel’s governments with the settlers is ruining the country morally, politically and economically. In the end, the call for social justice and the demand to reinstate liberal values in Israel cannot be separated..
Clare Curran seems to be struggling with her ideal of free speech and the pressure to try and keep the message aligned with quack potted talking points.
I’ve added my own suggestions on questions for her poll, I found none of her questions included me. Which I presume you saw by the timing of your post there.
It might help if you catch up with the wider context.
Anne – an accusation? Have you any proof or is it just a standard sort of diss. My limited involvement in politics costs me money, out of my own pocket. I haven’t used anyone else’s money at all.
Why do you say Clare is struggling with free speech? Has she been trying to tie up your blog by posting pointless inane drivel there all day every day or something?
Bill, there was a post on moderation recently which drew quite a bit of comment and therefore the site operators would have had a good read of that topic already.
about Key not wanting to debate live “Perhaps the prospect of a discussion which did not feature a chance to gather one’s thoughts at each commercial break was a distasteful one.” whats up with the herald? i seem to be reading a bunch of critical (of National & Key) articles there? great!
remember when teh internets were infested with ACTies going on and on about how awesome ACT in general was. Unpopular, but awesome. And Brash. Bruv was very excited about how that was going to play out.
No, I think leaks are a symptom of major divisions and discontent within Act. And that’s reflected by Act’s support in polls of blogs – or rather the lack of it.
Ah, yes they do seem to be very divided, apart from more leaks Ansell keeps complaining about Boscawen trying to moderate that message, and it seems that Brash switched his preference from strong support of a hardline approach to going with the Boscawen version (which still wasn’t great). I wonder what caused him to change his mind – an MP reality check?
As you well know you have no valid reason to suggest I’d be “cosy” anywhere within Act. You seem more shitty livered than usual today.
I will say I have discussed and clashed with David Garrett a bit on blogs and he’s always been been far more reasoned and reasonable than you have been in your last post.
No idea what you really think about politics Pete, but I do know you like to position yourself in the imaginary “centre”. So that was a wee joke about where you would fit into ACT if you were in ACT.
Probably a waste of my time and yours though. I have an appalling sense of humour (as evidenced by the joke) and you’re far too stupid to understand it (as evidenced by your response).
You don’t suppose that having Ansell sitting very loudly outside the tent saying how ACT aren’t really racist enough, and how very mean they were to him, serves ACT at all?
Nah, the story isn’t how divided ACT is, it’s how racist they are. Not that John Key seems to mind.
Funny how you notice how extremist Mana is, and how worrying that is, but Nnational giving a free ticket into parliament to this mob doesn’t even register when you read that story. Instead it’s just a sorry tale of division within the ACT party.
I said before and I’ll repeat again, Harawira has earned his place in parliament and if Mana manage to get more seats then they have every right to be there. I won’t be supporting them, but that’s irrelevant to their voters rights to representation.
Same goes for Act. I particularly don’t like Act’s racism and have debated directly with John Ansell on the advertisements, calling him on his claim to them being 100% factual – they are demonstrably not and I have posted strongly pointing that out to him.
I don’t like the way Brash took over Act, I am not a fan of most Act MPs. I have never been an Act supporter, and far less so since Brash and Ansell have inflicted their ways on Act.
Felix just seems to like to try and connect me to Act because that’s his way, he rarely does debate, he’s obsessed with berate. I have no idea what he thinks that might achieve.
Well pete, you must be outraged about National giving them a free ride into parliament then right? A nasty bunch of lying racists like that, and the PM makes cozy deals with them.
There’s no free ride in Epsom, far less of a free ride than, say, Labour gives what looks like another party drone a free ride in Dunedin North (I hope I’m proven wrong). Banks will have to do a lot to earn a win there.
My current view is I hope Act MPs don’t get a pivotal position in the next government, they don’t deserve it. And National don’t deserve to get propped up by Act either, nor do they deserve a single party majority.
Perhaps you could explain why you think Banks will have to ‘do a lot’ running against his biographer. You are probably the only person in the country that doesn’t think it’s a deal:
And then, you could explain what you mean about Dunedin North.
How does National’s Epsom selection make Labour’s DN selection look bad? Is the Dunedin North candidate a ‘drone’ is some way that Paul Goldsmith is not? Will he have to win his seat to get into Parl, or has he been given a spot on the list that looks comfortable. your compaint about DN seems to be that is a safe-ish Labour seat. So what would they have to do to impress you in their selection? Select someone who doesn’t agree with the party?
Noted on Red Alert.
Concern about the removal of ordinary peoples rights in Fiji, while ignoring the removal of those rights here started by Labour in 1984. Labour neglected to restore them during 9 years in power.
Colin Peacocke, defender of John Key, and champion of Karl Du Fresne— WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? Mediawatch, National Radio, Sunday August 7, 2011
Some years ago, National Radio’s Mediawatch ran a once-over-lightly item on the low standard of sports journalism in New Zealand. Such an item might seem like a good idea—the abysmal standard of sports commentary is obvious to any sports fan in this country. However, the seriousness of this item was fatally wounded by Russell Brown’s choice of guest: Martin “Moron” Devlin. When it comes to sports journalism, Martin Devlin is an embarrassment at best, and an outrage at worst. He is perhaps, along with his former boss Bill Francis and his erstwhile colleague Murray “Deaks” Deaker, the worst thing to happen to sports journalism in this country. Yet Russell Brown interviewed him as if he was a serious commentator.
Another embarrassing Mediawatch item was an “investigation” into the political slant and unfairness of the media. While that sounds like a good topic for serious discussion, Mediawatch (Colin Peacocke, actually) was simply following the lead of a couple of hypocrites, serial liars and war criminals, i.e., British prime minister Tony Blair and his brutal media manager Alistair Campbell, who had launched a bilious, self-pitying attack on “the media” (not, of course, the friendly Murdoch outlets) for daring to continually question the honesty and integrity of their government. Colin Peacocke insisted that both Blair and Campbell had “made many good points”.
Today’s programme shows that this habit of bending over backwards to indulge the half-baked and the hypocritical is still an unfortunate feature of Mediawatch.
First up, Colin Peacocke (again) was in his most indulgent mood, this time doing his best to construe John Key’s craven comments on the Norway mass murder as actually not irresponsible at all. According to Peacocke’s interpretation, we have all been way too hard on the Prime Minister, and we shouldn’t have assumed that he actually meant what he said. Since Key did not actually say that the killer was Islamic, of course (according to Peacocke) he did not imply that. So we should disregard Key’s assertion that killings by a white Norwegian Christian in Norway provide a reason for New Zealand troops being in Afghanistan.
If that was not bad enough, today’s programme got even worse. For some reason, Peacocke chose to quote the self-styled “curmudgeon” Karl Du Fresne who has written a typically vacuous opinion piece criticising journalism schools for failing to produce journalists who are “willing to challenge authority”.
Wait a minute! Last year, Du Fresne went into core meltdown after Kim Hill had dared to ask a few challenging questions of the former Australian prime minister John Howard. Far from supporting her willingness to challenge a particularly odious and repellent authority, Du Fresne damned Hill for being “relentlessly adversarial” and dismissed her and her listeners as “chardonnay socialists”. [1] Clearly Colin Peacocke is immune to the irony of Du Fresne, of all people, criticising journalists for failing to challenge authority.
I note that in the latest entry on his dismal blog, Du Fresne has written a long and sympathetic piece about Rupert Murdoch. [2]
3. And then, it got even worse (if that is possible). Playing moron’s advocate, Peacocke relentlessly tried to defend the god-awful, unfunny Jeremy Wells “documentary” about the NZSO. His guest, former Dominion music critic Lindis Taylor, dismissed the programme as a wasted opportunity, spoiled by the narcissistic and crass behaviour of Wells. The best that Peacocke could do was to repeatedly (and lamely) insist that Wells “has a substantial body of work”.
It was quite clear that Peacocke did not believe a word of what he was saying, however. So why even try to defend the indefensible?
If that was not bad enough, today’s programme got even worse. For some reason, Peacocke chose to quote the self-styled “curmudgeon” Karl Du Fresne who has written a typically vacuous opinion piece criticising journalism schools for failing to produce journalists who are “willing to challenge authority”.
Well done Morrisey for bringing this up. On the Key comments about the Norway massacre I was particularly unimpressed with Peacocke’s logic.
The reasons that we should not be hard on Key were:
1. ‘Everyone else’ (commenting in the media) immediately leapt on the idea of it being done by radical Islamists;
2. They did this because they were following the ‘respectable’ NYT’s lead in highlighting some ‘expert’ who said some anonymous person in an internet chat room claimed responsibility for it for Al Qaeda;
3. The ‘context’ in which Key made the comment made it ‘understandable’. That context was (a) having just been talking to Obama about Afghanistan deployment (amongst other things), and (b) Obama had just spoken before Key to the media and made noises about the international effort against terrorism;
4. Key said ‘If’ and so showed – like Obama – that he didn’t know who was responsible.
This is amazing. Every one of those points actually puts Key’s comments into a worse (and more culpable frame) yet Peacocke seemed to think it exonerated him!
Think about it – all the headless chooks were running around in the media saying ‘definitely Al Qaeda’, ‘hallmarks of Islamist terrorism’, etc. (point 1) and, apparently, Key took his lead from these chooks despite (point 4) knowlng he did not know who was responsible?? Key apparently is so naive that he did not realise that what runs the rounds of the media (point 2) in the first hours after a horrific event (especially a human-induced one) is almost always highly speculative and, hence, inevitably flawed??
As for the ‘context’ – that’s the whole point of his opportunism. That Obama was also being opportunistic (just as the ‘experts’ were trying to be first to jump on the Islamist bandwagon) hardly excuses Key from being even more explicit in his opportunism. And – this is the fundamental point – Key speculatively (and supposedly with complete knowledge of just how speculative it was) tried to link it to what New Zealand troops were doing in Afghanistan.
I think what happens with people like Peacocke – the vast majority of people, in fact – is that they are so inured by the discourses that normalise and ‘reasonable-ise’ the actions of our leaders, governments and elite in general that they find it extraordinarily hard to impose some very straightforward logic onto a situation. This is particularly bad in relation to matters concerning the basic moral compass of our elite – i.e., whether what they do and say is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in a moral sense. The result is that Peacocke can list a whole bunch of reasons in an attempt to let Key off the hook without even realising he is pushing the hook’s moral and ethical barb deeper into Key.
It is so blatantly obvious that Key was being opportunistic. All the defences for it that I’ve heard are to the effect that being opportunistic in that situation is perfectly understandable! I guess the same applies to lying, stealing, murdering …
He’s the PM; he’s meant to have the character and judgment to navigate these situations without making the same opportunistic leaps that ‘media commentators’ with little to lose – and with no responsibilities to anyone else – do on a daily basis.
John Key is a politician, and a particularly indolent one. I have no expectation that he will bother to do any more study of the situation than he has already done, i.e., none. Key has just done what politicians do: blither and bluster and, of course, he has gotten away with it, largely because of the indulgence and/or blindness of “liberal” commentators like Colin Peacock. The failure here is not by the Prime Minister.
Your detailed and perceptive analysis of Peacock’s rationale for exonerating that buffoon are impressive. I think you should send your comments to Colin Peacock and force him into making a response. Here’s the email address… mediawatch@radionz.co.nz
Whats up with the dim post?
It used to be good for a laugh, now it makes me want to barf.
The irony, justifying VSM on the rubbish claim that the money is just stolen anyway, even as the universities go about their empire building with the cash extracted from generation debt via the student loans scheme. Satellite campuses go up all over the show and we are subjected to expensive marketing campaigns, even as the university autocracy (who are handsomely paid) attempt to cut funding for research and conditions for academics. Methinks he could have chosen to criticize the real thieves.
So if Fonterra freezes it’s prices, we are told that the shareholders take an effective cut in their earnings. If the farmers take a cut at the gate, the shareholders will benefit.
But aren’t the shareholders in Fonterra the farmers themselves?
If, however, the shareholders in Fonterra are overseas, then is Fonterra really a New Zealand company or only in name?
Would love someone to explain this one in relation to recent statements about
Kiwi’s owning tracts of Asia.
And here was me thinking illegal anti-worker actions like this were mainly a North American thing 🙁
Sadly enough too this started under the Labour Government, but that obviously doesn’t excuse National’s utter lack of action (other than denying everything) on it either.
Basically, it’s costs 5 cents per gig for international traffic on the Southern Cross cable and yet, on a per gig price for internet plans you’re looking at anywhere from around $0.70 to what ever the hell telecom’s excessively charging these days.
Having said that, I have great difficulty getting through 5GB a month despite feeling like I’m always on the internet for one reason or another – what on earth do people do to use 300GB?? Watch the entire tv series of War and Peace every day?? (That was a great series – I still remember it fondly; the first time I saw Anthony Hopkins’ acting (as Pierre). I still remember him throwing some idiot (Andre??) across a room in a fit of moral/romantic passion – or something. I always wanted to be like that. Still trying, but haven’t yet managed to live the dream. Sad to say, it’s not because of a lack of ‘idiots’.)
Did anyone bother to watch Nation (National would be a more exact title) today?. Plunket talking his to Tory mates said “energy companies will be sold next year.” Hullo I thought we had an election coming up .Perhaps Plunket knows something we do not .
I watched a bit of the Nation program today, which had “Lord” Christopher Monkton preaching his particular form of climate change skepticism. You might wonder why I’m even bothering to debunk Monkton further and whether this is even possible, but I can assure you it’s not to give his argument any relevance. Rather it’s to show just how stark raving mad Monkton actually is…
Monkton preaching his particular form of climate change skepticism
Please don’t besmirch the term “skeptic” by attaching it to this lunatic. He’s a denier, just like his exalted fellow-deniers, who include talkshow half-wit Leighton Smith, Waikato University’s renegade scientist and figure of fun Willem De Lange, the ACT party, Federated Farmers’ embarrassing ex-president Charlie Pederson, various sad loons who ring up to agree with Leighton Smith, the aggressive but horribly bewildered Sarah Palin and her equally bewildered mentor John McCain.
They also have another common interest they are all filthy rich . Plus they have a contempt for working people . A Google of Monkton is very revealing .Then one must ask how do they make so much money. As for L/Smith who the hell listens to him other than the racist right and some loonies.
As for L/Smith who the hell listens to him other than the racist right and some loonies.
Quite right. Even his NewstalkZB colleagues regard him as exceptionally ignorant, irrational and obsessed, and make disparaging remarks about him on air.
A skeptic is someone who looks at the evidence before making up his/her mind. Moncton shows he does not even have a basic idea of how science works, and does not want to know.
He is not a skeptic. Simply an ignorant nut case.
He is actually one of the best arguments for AGW, as he shows the lack of quality amongst the denial industry.
Has anyone mention the woeful tale of poor Horatio? I am ready for the flaming for me posting this, my sense of humour finds this incident rather funny!
Eton schoolboy Horatio Chapple, 17, an aspiring medical student, died after being mauled by a polar bear while on an expedition to the Arctic.
He was killed when the animal rampaged into the tent in which he and his friends were sleeping on a glacier in Svalbard, Norway. His friends, Patrick Flinders, 16, and Scott Smith, 17, were injured fighting off the bear, as were the expedition guides, Michael Reid, 29, and Andrew Ruck, 27.
Patrick is said to have punched the bear on the nose before it was shot dead by other members of the group. Horatio’s grandfather, Sir John Chapple, 80, was the head of the Army from 1989 to 1992, the former governor of Gibraltar and the former president of the British Schools Exploring Society, which organised the trip.
Horatio’s father, David, a spinal surgeon from Salisbury, Wilts, and his mother Susan, were too upset to comment. Edward Watson, the BSES chairman, said of Horatio: “By all accounts he would have made an excellent doctor.”
Of course he would; he came from a privileged background, went to a top public school. I love the way one of his toff mates
punched the bear on the nose
The only sad thing is the poor polar bear – it was his patch, WTF were they doing there and this creature did not deserve to die because some dickwits decided to visit.
Has anyone mention the woeful tale of poor Horatio? I am ready for the flaming for me posting this, my sense of humour finds this incident rather funny!
Flaming coming up! I don’t for the life of me get why you think it’s funny… It’s a 17 year old being killed ffs, and it doesn’t matter that he was a ‘toff’. If the funny thing is that the poor kid was called Horatio, my moron niece is naming her next baby Chelsea. Jaden is a popular name here, it’s just as cringe-worthy. Shame on you for laughing at the death of a child. 🙁 BTW, animals, who cares? Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I don’t give a toss – never have. (Except for the cat …)
the description of the lad as an “aspiring medical student” seemed out of place and unnecessary to me. Like writing that another teenager was an “aspiring apprentice panel beater” or an “aspiring marketing student”.
the description of the lad as an “aspiring medical student” seemed out of place and unnecessary to me. Like writing that another teenager was an “aspiring apprentice panel beater” or an “aspiring marketing student”.
Yet in New Zealand, any article about the death of a middle class teen, will bang on about what sport s/he played! I recall a recent (within the last year) article about the death of a child with disabilities, that went so far as to go on about what sport she would have played if she could!
Plus – I recall all the articles about the woman killed by Clayton Weatherston which referred to her as an aspiring Treasury official’!
(I like to think that if I had died as a teenager my parents would have told the reporter “she hated sport, and thought netball was for morons” and that the reporter would have published it! The high school I went to (an all-girl school) had some girls who did seriously amazing things academically, and they would be rewarded for it – but we were never allowed to forget that all but a few teachers considered that the girl with the Rhodes scholarship, the girl who was admitted to medical school when a girl getting in was still a big deal (1970), were still inferior to the 5’8″ bruiser who was dumber than toast, but nevertheless, captained the netball – and that the girl who later went on to do some very important researcn in the care of prem babies mattered less than the big bully who became a Commonwealth games swimmer. (She bullied me something awful for using big words – I was half her size, like many bullies she was a coward. B*tch… )
@vicky32 – That is the impression that I got at school. That sport was more important than real education. That reading was less important than other subjects. A very confusing thing to comprehend and so different from the avowed intentions for going to school.
That sport was more important than real education. That reading was less important than other subjects
Yes, and confusing to me, because my parents had the opposite view! School was for studying, reading, writing, learning – and to my father, maths and science (he told my brother that ‘arts’ subjects weren’t ‘real’ subjects! 🙂 after telling me the opposite.)
I have often wondered why the NZ culture is so obsessed with sport? Ask any kid born in say 1993 to state what the acheivements are of Katherine Mansfield, Sir Ernest Rutherford, Kate Shephard, Edith Cavell, Janet Frame, Dan Carter, Tana Umaga and Jonah Lomu are, s/he’ll be struggling with the first four…
@vicky32 – What? Who?? Edith Cavell was nursing wasn’t that her milieu? Wasn’t there a bridge in South Island named after her? What about Mabel Howard and Nurse Maude and washing machines?
What? Who?? Edith Cavell was nursing wasn’t that her milieu?
Edith Cavell is my son’s official hero (as he’s a nurse). She was executed during World War 1 by the Germans, and her last words were “I must have no hatred in my heart for anyone”. (Having just googled, I have discovered something I hadn’t known – she was not a New Zealander after all! (I could have sworn our teachers said she was..) I confess ignorance about Nurse Maude.. but Mabel Howard I do know of… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Cavell
There are a plethora of non-sporting heroes kids could have – Nancy Wake, Maurice Wilkins, Sir Brian Barratt-Boyes, Sir Archie McIndoe, Alan McDiarmid… etc. Who’s all over the TV adverts for all sorts of rubbish – Dan Carter! (I am only barely aware of him – wasn’t he an underwear model?) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Zealand_scientists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_M%C4%81ori_people
IMHO any ordinary UK kid would either be in Ibiza dropping E’s or struggling to find a job.
To quote Billy Connolly
I don’t go in the sea, because there are sharks there and that’s there turf
As I said, it cracked me up, the vision of someone punching a polar bear on the nose. If you want to be eaten by bears, go play in their domain.
It’s not unlike those folks that send their teenagers out on round the world solo yacht trips – why?
IMHO any ordinary UK kid would either be in Ibiza dropping E’s or struggling to find a job.
That’s pretty racist! (If I can be accused of being racist when I say something ‘anti-American’, then you’re racist for assuming all UK youth are chavs)
As I said, it cracked me up, the vision of someone punching a polar bear on the nose. If you want to be eaten by bears, go play in their domain.
It’s not unlike those folks that send their teenagers out on round the world solo yacht trips – why?
Did you actually read the article? This was a bunch of teenagers in a panic. They’d probably heard that punching sharks on the nose works – what the hell would you do in these circumstances?
I also followed links to other connected articles and this is not the first time this kind of thing has happened. In answer to whoever thinks they provoked it – read the damn article! The bear was starving. Last but not least, the area is full of people on similar trips. Sorry, you’re still shameful!
PS – that prick Connolly is just scum. Are you aware of his incredibly self-loving insults against the Liverpudlian man beheaded in Iraq in 2004?
As a Brit I don’t think I am being racist; the reality is that the UK is full of kids dropping E’s and spending their summers pissed on the beach in Ibiza.
Areas like that should not be a holiday camp for the privileged, they are wilderness – and there were three teens and two guides, and as you said, these things had happened before – did you read the article?
The last fatal attack by a polar bear in Svalbard was in September 1995
Indeed one local describe how ‘visitors’ in the past had rushed down to take pictures of bears. If the so-called ‘alarms’ didn’t scare the bear, I would have thought the sound of the shotguns connected to them would have alerted everyone.
Next time you are at the beach and there is a great white, you’ll be rushing in for a swim then? People should use common sense; those animals need protecting, as does where they live.
Next time you are at the beach and there is a great white, you’ll be rushing in for a swim then? People should use common sense; those animal need protecting, as does where they live.
No! Can’t and don’t swim… However, I got the impression from the article, that the locals are fine with camps and expeditions in the area…
However, the thing that bothered me the most, is that you thought that the death of a teenager and serious injury to his friends was funny!
Even if it had been demosntrably his fault, it still would not be funny. 🙁 Are you a parent? Will you be laughing yer arse off next time some 17 year old gets bladdered and falls off the roof of a car he’s ‘surfing’ on? Do you split yer sides when some kid at a zoo leans over the side of an enclosure, falls in and gets savaged by an angry animal?
I have dealt with more situations like you have mentioned in my professional life; I have resuscitated my own daughter aged 3/12 on the living room floor; I have dealt with serious RTA’s, dog maulings, physical abuse cases, etc.
Your example of the 17 y.o falling off a car, no I won’t be laughing my arse off at the time, but life goes on! Adolescents all take risks; some risks can be better managed – playing on the ice with polar bears is a prime example of poor risk management (bit like that school that lost several pupils on Mt. Ruapehu)
As I said ‘punching a polar bear on the nose’ was a surreal, comedic image that amused me, if you cannot see the funny side of this then I am sorry for you.
If this had been an ordinary kid, a lad from a state school, who wasn’t called Horatio, who didn’t have a grand father who was a military big wig in Gibraltar, would this have received the same media?
In a similar, local vein, one rich kid dies who goes to Kings College – it is on every news channel; five kids have committed suicide in Kawerau in three months – did they get any press? Five people have killed themselves in Rotorua in three weeks – the youngest was just 12 – where was that reported?
Can you not see the irony? The rich get glory in death, whilst the rest of us are expected to soldier on and pay homage and feel sorry.
As I said ‘punching a polar bear on the nose’ was a surreal, comedic image that amused me, if you cannot see the funny side of this then I am sorry for you.
I am sorry for you, that you think there’s a funny side… I just keep imagining the kid’s panic!
If this had been an ordinary kid, a lad from a state school, who wasn’t called Horatio, who didn’t have a grand father who was a military big wig in Gibraltar, would this have received the same media?
I think it would, yes. What makes you think it wouldn’t?
In a similar, local vein, one rich kid dies who goes to Kings College – it is on every news channel; five kids have committed suicide in Kawerau in three months – did they get any press?
Yes, or neither of us would know about it. (I heard about it on RNZ, I don’t read papers). When my brother – died – in 2004, I was told that it’s actually against the law for suicides to be reported in detail – name etc…
Five people have killed themselves in Rotorua in three weeks – the youngest was just 12 – where was that reported?
I don’t know, but it must have been as I am well aware of it.
Can you not see the irony? The rich get glory in death, whilst the rest of us are expected to soldier on and pay homage and feel sorry.
Pay homage? As me old Mum used to say, you have a chip on your shoulder… I am no more impressed with toffs than you are, but this is an exception… A child died! (My son would be annoyed at my calling a 17 year old a child, but to me, he is.)
If I have a chip it is because I fail to see why someone from priviledge has a fawning media demanding sympathy, yet kids are dying from third world diseases in both the UK and NZ and you hear very, very little.
I got where I am through self determination and a little encouragement, not thanks to a silver spoon or an old boys network.
In a letter responding to a request for more details from left-wing blog No Right Turn, posted online over the weekend, Mr Brownlee said he had not discussed fees with the panel members.
“At no time did I have any discussion with the proposed Review Panel members about the level of remuneration offered for the position,” he wrote.
“My discussions with each of the individuals focussed on the nature of the task required of the Review Panel.”
Stuff article: “I do not believe that the proposed nominees will undertake the role for fees within the ranges established in the Cabinet Fees Framework,” Mr Brownlee advised.
Actual words from Brownlee’s letter to Ryall: “It will not be possible to secure their services under the current fees range.”
Big difference. “It will not be possible….” Not “It may not be possible” or “I think…” or “I believe…” (as in the Stuff version), but the very definite “It will not be possible…”
And the only way to be so definite, is to have dicussed it with them.
Politics is about compromise, right? And framing it so the voters see your compromise as the better one. John Key was a skilful exponent of this approach (as was Keith Holyoake in an earlier age), and Chris Luxon isn’t too bad either. But in politics, the process whereby an old ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
It’s being explained as an “inadvertent error”. However, National MP David MacLeod’s excuse for failing to disclose $178,000 in donations for his election campaign last year is not necessarily enough to prevent some serious consequences. A Police investigation is now likely, and the result of his non-disclosure could even see ...
The relentless drone coming out of the Prime Minister and his deputy for a million days now has been that the last government was just hosing money all over the show and now at last the grownups are in charge and shutting that drunken sailor stuff down. There is a word ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed a New Zealand Government plane will head to riot-torn New Caledonia in the next hour in the first in a series of proposed flights to begin bringing New Zealanders home. Today’s flight will carry around 50 passengers with the most ...
Precious declaration saysYours is yours and mine you leave alone nowPrecious declaration saysI believe all hope is dead no longerTick tick tick Boom!Unexploded ordnance. A veritable minefield. A National caucus with a large number of unknowns, candidates who perhaps received little in the way of vetting as the party jumped ...
Rex Ahdar writes – The Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, likes to trace his political lineage back to the pioneers of parliamentary Maoridom. I will refer to these as the ‘big four’ or better still, the Four Knights. Just as ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Willie Jackson will participate in the prestigious Oxford Union debate on Thursday, following in David Lange’s footsteps. Coincidentally, Jackson has also followed Lange’s footsteps by living in his old home in South Auckland. And like Lange, Jackson might be the sort of loud-mouth scrapper ...
That is the only way to describe an MP "forgetting" to declare $178,000 in donations. The amount of money involved - more than five times the candidate spending cap, and two and a half times the median income - is boggling. How do you just "forget" that amount of money? ...
In this week’s “A View from Afar” podcast Selwyn Manning and spoke about the upcoming US elections and what the possibility of another Trump presidency means for the US role in world affairs. We also spoke about the problems Joe … Continue reading → ...
Hi,Two years ago I briefly featured in Justin Pemberton’s Web of Chaos documentary, which touched on things like QAnon during the pandemic.I mostly prattled on about how intertwined conspiracy narratives are with Evangelical Christian thinking, something Webworm’s explored in the past.(The doc is available on TVNZ+, if you’re not in ...
The Government is leaving the entire construction sector and the community housing sector in limbo. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government released the long-awaited Bill English-led review of Kāinga Ora yesterday, but delayed key decisions on its build plan and how to help community housing providers (CHPs) build ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Daisy Simmons Farmers who can’t sleep, worrying they’ll lose everything amid increasing drought. Youth struggling with depression over a future that feels hopeless. Indigenous people grief-stricken over devastated ecosystems. For all these people and more, climate change is taking a clear toll ...
New Zealand’s relationship with China is becoming harder to define, and with that comes a worry that a deteriorating political relationship could spill over into the economic relationship. It is about more than whether New Zealand will join Pillar Two of Aukus, though the Chinese Ambassador, more or less, suggested ...
Been hoping we would see something like this from Sir Geoffrey Palmer. This is excellent.The present Bill goes further than the National Development Act 1979 in stripping away procedures designed to ensure that environmental issues are properly considered. The 1979 approach was not acceptable then and this present approach is ...
He’s Got The Moxie: Only Willie Jackson possesses the credentials to meld together a new Labour message that is, at one and the same moment, staunchly working-class, union-friendly, and which speaks to the hundreds-of-thousands of urban Māori untethered to the neo-tribal capitalist elites of the Iwi Leaders Forum.IT’S ONE OF THE ...
Tree-huggers may well accuse the Government of giving them the fingers, after Energy Minister Simeon Brown announced new measures to protect powerlines from trees, rather than measures to protect trees from powerlines. It can be no coincidence, surely, that this has been announced at the same as Fisheries Minister Shane Jones ...
Willie Jackson will participate in the prestigious Oxford Union debate on Thursday, following in David Lange’s footsteps. Coincidentally, Jackson has also followed Lange’s footsteps by living in his old home in South Auckland. And like Lange, Jackson might be the sort of loud-mouth scrapper who could take over the Labour ...
Barrister Gary Judd KC’s complaint to the Regulatory Review Committee has sparked a fierce debate about the place of tikanga Māori – or Māori customs, values and spiritual beliefs – in the law.Judd opposes the New Zealand Council of Legal Education’s plans to make teaching tikanga compulsory in the legal curriculum.AUT ...
Alwyn Poole writes – In New Zealand we have approximately 460 high schools. The gaps between the schools that produce the best results for students and those at the other end of the spectrum are enormous.In terms of the data for their leavers, the top 30 schools have ...
Bryce Edwards writes – New Zealand First Cabinet Minister Shane Jones has become the best advertisement against the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill. In selling the radical new resource consenting processes, in which ministers can green light any mine, dam, or other major development, Jones seems to be ...
Brian Eastonwrites – The Fast-Track Approvals Bill enables cabinet ministers to circumvent key environmental planning and protection processes for infrastructure projects. Its difficulties have been well canvassed. This column suggests a different way of thinking about the proposal. I am ...
The split opening up in Israel’s “War Cabinet” is not just between PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his long-term rival Benny Gantz. It is actually a three-way split, set in motion by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. It was Gallant’s open criticism of Netanyahu that finally flushed Gantz out into the open. ...
On Thursday 17 May, the Mayoral Proposal for Auckland’s Long Term Plan 2024-2034 was passed by Auckland Council, 20 to 1. It is set to be formally adopted by the Governing Body at its June 27th meeting. The entire process took 8 hours, with the vast majority of that time ...
Pakanga o muaTukua, ka ngaroPuritia taku ringaNgaro ana te ara ki pae rauThere's a battle aheadMany battles are lostBut you'll never see the end of the roadWhile you're travelling with meLate yesterday morning I headed to Wynyard Quarter to see Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick give their pre-budget State of ...
Maybe the Prime Minister and his Finance Minister expected the worst, so they mounted a stout defence of the Budget tax cuts to their party faithful at a party conference over the weekend. In turn, they were greeted with applause, which, though it may have been less than wildly enthusiastic, ...
A listing of 34 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, May 12, 2024 thru Sat, May 18, 2024. Story of the week “The legislation I signed today [will] keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and ...
TL;DR: Here’s six links that stood out to me in the last day in Aotearoa’s political economy to 6:06am on Sunday, May 19:Aotearoa-NZ is the seventh worst in the OECD’s homelessness rankings, just behind the United States and just ahead of Australia. BlackRock thinks rate hikes actually worsen inflation because ...
Halfway up a historic tower in York, we are neither up nor down. At the top you will have views of a city steeped in antiquity, made and remade by Romans, Normans, Vikings, Tescos. Below, you will find a retired minister happy to tell you all about this most astonishing ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Does breathing contribute to CO2 ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: KiwiRail’s seemingly endless requests for more money is damning. At one point, KiwiRail assured Robertson when he was the Finance Minister that the worst-case scenario would be an extra $300 million before requesting $1.2 billion a few months later. Not what most people ...
No one knows what it's likeTo be the bad manTo be the sad manBehind blue eyesNo one knows what it's likeTo be hatedTo be fatedTo telling only liesHave you ever wondered what life must be like for Mike Hosking? Seeing things in black and white through blue tinted specs? In ...
Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past two week’s editions.Share More Than A FeildingBike bling, London Read more ...
Hi,I think we all made it through another week — congratulations. I’ve been digesting the new Arab Strap record, which is astonishing. In other news, I’m going to be doing a Webworm popup in Auckland, New Zealand on Saturday July 13. I’ll bring a bunch of merch, and some other ...
The Fast-Track Approvals Bill enables cabinet ministers to circumvent key environmental planning and protection processes for infrastructure projects. Its difficulties have been well canvassed. This column suggests a different way of thinking about the proposal. I am going to explore the Bill from the perspective of its proponents with their ...
New Zealand First Cabinet Minister Shane Jones has become the best advertisement against the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill. In selling the radical new resource consenting processes, in which ministers can green light any mine, dam, or other major development, Jones seems to be shooting the proposal in the foot. ...
Buzz from the Beehive Associate Education Minister David Seymour is urging the PostPrimary Teachers Association to put learning ahead of ideology. He wants the union leaders to call off their teachers meetings around the country where they hope to muster the strength to undo the government’s plans to establish several ...
What are police for? "Fighting crime" is the obvious answer. If there's a burglary, they should show up and investigate. Ditto if there's a murder or sexual assault. Speeding or drunk or dangerous driving is a crime, so obviously they should respond to that. And obviously, they should respond to ...
Michael Reddell writes – I got curious yesterday about how the Australia/New Zealand real exchange rate had changed over the last decade, and so dug out the data on the changes in the two countries’ CPIs. Over the 10 years from March 2014 to March 2024, New Zealand’s ...
Graham Adams writes that 20 years after the land march, judges are quietly awarding a swathe of coastal rights to iwi. Early this month, an hour-long documentary was released by TVNZ to mark the 20th anniversary of the land-rights march to oppose Helen Clark’s Foreshore and Seabed Act. The account ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: Suspended Green MP Darleen Tana has passed an unpleasant milestone: she has now been absent for as many parliamentary sitting days as she has been present for this year. Tana is on full pay while she is suspended, and will benefit from a ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is no coincidence that two Labour should-have-been MPs are making the most noise about public sector cuts. As assistant general secretary of the Public Service Association, Fleur Fitzsimons has been at the forefront of revealing where the next round of state sector job ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a ...
This is one of the (extra) weekly columns on music or movies. Plenty of solid analyses of Possession exist online and most of them – inevitably – contain spoilers. This column is more in the way of a first-timer’s aid to getting your initial bearings. You don’t need to have ...
I am painting in oil, a portrait of a manWho has taken all the heart aches,And all the pain he can stand.I am using all the colors of blue,I have here on my stand.I am painting in oil, a portrait of a man.This has been an interesting week for me. ...
Helen Clark joins the Hoon as a special guest talking whether Aotearoa should join Aukus II, and her views on the fast track legislation and how Luxon and the new Government are performing. File Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts ...
With an election due in less than nine months, Britain’s embattled PM, Rishi Sunak, gave a useful speech earlier this week. He made a substantial case for his government, perhaps as compelling as is possible in the current environment. Quite an achievement. His overall theme was security, first pulling ...
Open access notablesPublicly expressed climate scepticism is greatest in regions with high CO2 emissions, Pearson et al., Climatic Change:We analysed a recently released corpus of climate-related tweets to examine the macro-level factors associated with public declarations of climate change scepticism. Analyses of over 2 million geo-located tweets in the U.S. showed that climate ...
You can be all negative about these charter schools if you want, but I’m here to accentuate the positive. You can get all worked up, if you want to, by the contradiction of Luxon saying We’re going to make sure that every school in the country is teaching exactly the same ...
Losing The Room: One can only speculate about what has persuaded the Coalition Government that it will pay no electoral price for unreasonably pushing ahead with policies that are so clearly against the national interest. They seem quite oblivious to the risk that by doing so they will convince an increasing ...
Name suppression decisions can be tough sometimes. No matter your views on free speech, you have to be hard-hearted not to be torn by the tug of the competing arguments. I think you can feel the Supreme Court wrestling with that in M v The King. The case for ...
The Merchants of Menace: The Coalition Government has convinced itself that the “Brahmins’” emollient functions have become much too irksome and expensive. Those who see themselves as the best hope of rebuilding New Zealand’s ailing capitalist system, appear to have convinced themselves that a little bit of blunt trauma is what their mollycoddled ...
When National first proposed its Muldoonist "fast-track" law, they were warned that it would inevitably lead to corruption. And that is exactly what has happened, with Resources Minister Shane Jones taking secret meetings with potential applicants:On Tuesday, in a Newsroom story, questions were raised about a dinner Jones ...
Buzz from the Beehive One day – hopefully – we will push that Russian rascal, Vladimir Putin, beyond breaking point. Perhaps it will happen today, when he learns that Foreign Minister Winston Peters is again tightening the thumbscrews. Peters announced further sanctions, this time on 28 individuals and 14 entities ...
How Labour’s and National’s failure to move beyond neoliberalism has brought New Zealand to the brink of economic and cultural chaos.TO START LOSING, so soon after you won, requires a special kind of political incompetence. At the heart of this Coalition Government’s failure to retain, and build upon, the public ...
“Members of Parliament don’t work for us, they represent us, an entirely different thing. As with so much that has turned out badly, the re-organising of MPs’ responsibilities began with the Fourth Labour Government. That’s when they began to be treated like employees – public servants – whose diaries had ...
It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a third medical school in New Zealand, ...
Time To Choose: Like it or not, the Kiwis are either going into AUKUS’s “Pillar 2” – or they are going to China.HAD ZHENG HE’S FLEET sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks ...
Henry Ergas writes – When in Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, a college president is accused of being a hypocrite, the novel’s narrator retorts that the description is grossly unfair. After all, the man is still far from the stage of moral development at which the charge ...
David Farrar writes – Radio NZ reports: The Education Review Office says too many new teachers feel poorly prepared for their jobs. In a report published on Monday, the review office said 60 percent of the principals it interviewed said their new teachers were not ready. ...
New Zealand’s economic performance and the PM’s vision Michael Reddell writes – When I wrote yesterday morning’s post, highlighting how poorly both New Zealand and its Anglo peer countries have been doing in respect of productivity in recent times (ie, in the case of New ...
Hi all,Firstly - thank you! You guys are awesome. The response I’ve received to last night’s mail has been quite overwhelming. It’s a ghastly day outside, but there are no clouds in here.In case you didn’t read my email and are wondering what on earth I’m talking about you can ...
If there was still any doubt as to who is actually running this government – and it isn’t the buffoon from Botany – then this week’s announcement of a huge spend up on charter schools has settled the matter. While jobs and public services continue to be cut in the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gaye Taylor As widespread drought raises expectations for a repeat of last year’s ferocious wildfire season, response teams across Canada are grappling with the rapidly changing face of fire in a warming climate. No longer quenched by winter, nor quelled by the ...
Half of Christchurch City Holdings Ltd’s directors and its chair resigned en masse last night in protest at Christchurch City Council’s demand to front-load dividends File Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The chair of Christchurch City Council’s investment company and four of its independent directors resigned in protest last ...
The University of Waikato has reworded an advertisement that begins the tender process for its new $300 million-plus medical school even though the Government still needs to approve it. However, even the reworded ad contains an architect’s visualisations of what the school might look like. ACT leader David Seymour told ...
As a follow-up to the Rings of Power trailer discussion, I thought I needed to add something. There has been some online mockery about the use of the same actor for both the Halbrand and Annatar incarnations of Sauron. The reasoning is that Halbrand with a shave and a new ...
This isn’t quite as dramatic as the title might suggest. I’m not going anywhere, but there is something I wanted to talk to you about.Let’s start with a typical day.Most days I send out a newsletter in the morning. If I’ve written a lot the previous evening it might be ...
Buzz from the Beehive The promise of tax relief loomed large in his considerations when the PM delivered a pre-Budget speech to the Auckland Business Chamber. The job back in Wellington is getting government spending back under control, he said, bandying figures which show that in per capita terms, the ...
Yesterday de facto Prime Minister David Seymour announced that his glove puppet government would be re-introducing charter schools, throwing $150 million at his pet quacks, donors and cronies and introducing an entire new government agency to oversee them (the existing Education Review Office, which actually knows how to review schools, ...
Te Pāti Māori have launched a petition to stop the repeal of Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act. This announcement comes prior to the first reading of the Section 7AA repeal bill in Parliament today. “Section 7AA forces the Government to adhere to Te Tiriti o Waitangi with respect ...
The Government has yet again failed to do the one thing that needs to happen to ensure houses can be built – commit to ongoing funding, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Treasury officials have outlined many ways in which the Fast Track Approvals Bill is deeply flawed, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking says. ...
Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick used this year's State of the Planet to call on the Government to prioritise people and planet as the delivery of the Budget approaches. A full transcript of their speeches can be found below. ...
Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick have used their State of the Planet speeches to challenge the Government to prioritise people and planet over profit as the delivery of the Budget approaches. ...
The Government’s introduction of legislation that would enable landlords to end tenancies with no reason marks a dark day for the 1.4 million people who rent their home in Aotearoa. ...
The Minister for Mental Health has found the Suicide Prevention Office and mental health support for 111 calls slipping through his fingers, says Labour spokesperson for Mental Health Ingrid Leary. ...
Today’s justification from the Minister for Children for scrapping protections for our tamariki was either a case of ignorance or deliberate deception. ...
The Green Party says the Government’s misguided policy on gangs will fail, following the announcement of the establishment of a national gang unit and district gang disruption units to target gang activities. ...
“With Police pay negotiations still unresolved after six months in Government, Mark Mitchell has today rolled the Commissioner out for a rebrand of their approach to gang crime,” Labour police spokesperson Ginny Andersen said. ...
The Government bringing back 50 charter schools will not increase achievement and is a distraction from the core mission of the education system, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Te Pāti Māori is showing extreme concern over the Environment Select Committees adoption of a lucky dip draw to determine hearings for the Fast Track Approvals bill. Of the 27,000 submissions, 2,900 requested to present. All organisations will be heard; however, the remaining 2,350 submitters will be subject to a ...
Today New Zealand First will introduce a Member’s Bill that will protect women’s spaces. The ‘Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill’ will require, primarily in the interest and safety of women and girls, that all new non-domestic publicly accessible buildings provide separate, clearly demarcated, unisex and single sex bathrooms. This Bill ...
The Green Party is welcoming Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ continuation of Hon. James Shaw’s cross-party work on climate adaptation, now in the form of a Finance and Expenditure Committee Inquiry. ...
The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
The Government has been caught in opposition to evidence once again as it looks to usher in tried, tested and failed work seminar obligations for job-seeking beneficiaries. ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
The Coalition Government’s Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill, which will improve tenancy laws and help increase the supply of rental properties, has passed its first reading in Parliament says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “The Bill proposes much-needed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 that will remove barriers to increasing private ...
Standing here in Cassino War Cemetery, among the graves looking up at the beautiful Abbey of Montecassino, it is hard to imagine the utter devastation left behind by the battles which ended here in May 1944. Hundreds of thousands of shells and bombs of every description left nothing but piled ...
I present a legislative statement on the Oranga Tamariki (Repeal of Section 7AA) Amendment Bill Mr. Speaker, I move that the Oranga Tamariki (Repeal of Section 7AA) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the Bill. Thank you, Mr. ...
The Bill to repeal Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act has had its first reading in Parliament today. The Bill reaffirms the Coalition Government’s commitment to the care and safety of children in care, says Minister for Children Karen Chhour. “When I became the Minister for Children, I made ...
Kia ora koutou, good morning, and zao shang hao. Thank you Fran for the opportunity to speak at the 2024 China Business Summit – it’s great to be here today. I’d also like to acknowledge: Simon Bridges - CEO of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce. His Excellency Ambassador - Wang ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed a New Zealand Government plane will head to New Caledonia in the next hour in the first in a series of proposed flights to begin bringing New Zealanders home. “New Zealanders in New Caledonia have faced a challenging few days - and bringing ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed a New Zealand Government plane will head to New Caledonia in the next hour in the first in a series of proposed flights to begin bringing New Zealanders home. “New Zealanders in New Caledonia have faced a challenging few days - and bringing them ...
The Coalition Government will introduce legislation this year that will enable roadside drug testing as part of our commitment to improve road safety and restore law and order, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Alcohol and drugs are the number one contributing factor in fatal road crashes in New Zealand. In ...
The Government has announced a series of immediate actions in response to the independent review of Kāinga Ora – Homes and Communities, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “Kāinga Ora is a large and important Crown entity, with assets of $45 billion and over $2.5 billion of expenditure each year. It ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour is pleased that Pseudoephedrine can now be purchased by the general public to protect them from winter illness, after the coalition government worked swiftly to change the law and oversaw a fast approval process by Medsafe. “Pharmacies are now putting the medicines back on their ...
Tēnā koutou katoa. Da jia hao. Good morning everyone. Prime Minister Luxon, your excellency, a great friend of New Zealand and my friend Ambassador Wang, Mayor of what he tells me is the best city in New Zealand, Wayne Brown, the highly respected Fran O’Sullivan, Champion of the Auckland business ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced that the Government will make it easier for lines firms to take action to remove vegetation from obstructing local powerlines. The change will ensure greater security of electricity supply in local communities, particularly during severe weather events. “Trees or parts of trees falling on ...
Wairarapa Moana ki Pouakani were the top winners at this year’s Ahuwhenua Trophy awards recognising the best in Māori dairy farming. Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka announced the winners and congratulated runners-up, Whakatōhea Māori Trust Board, at an awards celebration also attended by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister ...
"On the 27th of March, I sought assurances from the Chief Executive, Department of Internal Affairs, that the Department’s correct processes and policies had been followed in regards to a passport application which received media attention,” says Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden. “I raised my concerns after being ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins has announced the appointment of three new District Court Judges, to replace Judges who have recently retired. Peter James Davey of Auckland has been appointed a District Court Judge with a jury jurisdiction to be based at Whangarei. Mr Davey initially started work as a law clerk/solicitor with ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour is calling on the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) to put ideology to the side and focus on students’ learning, in reaction to the union holding paid teacher meetings across New Zealand about charter schools. “The PPTA is disrupting schools up and down the ...
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly today announced the appointment of Craig Stobo as the new chair of the Financial Markets Authority (FMA). Mr Stobo takes over from Mark Todd, whose term expired at the end of April. Mr Stobo’s appointment is for a five-year term. “The FMA plays ...
Surf Life Saving New Zealand and Coastguard New Zealand will continue to be able to keep people safe in, on, and around the water following a funding boost of $63.644 million over four years, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Associate Transport Minister Matt Doocey say. “Heading to the beach for ...
New Zealand and Tuvalu have reaffirmed their close relationship, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand is committed to working with Tuvalu on a shared vision of resilience, prosperity and security, in close concert with Australia,” says Mr Peters, who last visited Tuvalu in 2019. “It is my pleasure ...
New Zealand is gravely concerned about the situation in New Caledonia, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The escalating situation and violent protests in Nouméa are of serious concern across the Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “The immediate priority must be for all sides to take steps to de-escalate the ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon met today with Samoa’s O le Ao o le Malo, Afioga Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II, who is making a State Visit to New Zealand. “His Highness and I reflected on our two countries’ extensive community links, with Samoan–New Zealanders contributing to all areas of our national ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has announced that he has approved Waiheke Island ferry operator Island Direct to be eligible for SuperGold Card funding, paving the way for a commercial agreement to bring the operator into the scheme. “Island Direct started operating in November 2023, offering an additional option for people ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters today announced further sanctions on 28 individuals and 14 entities providing military and strategic support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Russia is directly supported by its military-industrial complex in its illegal aggression against Ukraine, attacking its sovereignty and territorial integrity. New Zealand condemns all entities and ...
A year on from the tragedy at Loafers Lodge, the Government is working hard to improve building fire safety, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “I want to share my sincere condolences with the families and friends of the victims on the anniversary of the tragic fire at Loafers ...
Ka nui te mihi kia koutou. Kia ora and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for having me here in the lead up to my Government’s first Budget. Before I get started can I acknowledge: Simon Bridges – Auckland Business Chamber CEO. Steve Jurkovich – Kiwibank CEO. Kids born ...
New Zealand and Vanuatu will enhance collaboration on issues of mutual interest, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “It is important to return to Port Vila this week with a broad, high-level political delegation which demonstrates our deep commitment to New Zealand’s relationship with Vanuatu,” Mr Peters says. “This ...
Minister for Land Information, Chris Penk will travel to Peru this week to represent New Zealand at a meeting of trade ministers from the Asia-Pacific region on behalf of Trade Minister Todd McClay. The annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Ministers Responsible for Trade meeting will be held on 17-18 May ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford will head to the United Kingdom this week to participate in the 22nd Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) and the 2024 Education World Forum (EWF). “I am looking forward to sharing this Government’s education priorities, such as introducing a knowledge-rich curriculum, implementing an evidence-based ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford has today thanked outgoing New Zealand Qualifications Authority Chair, Hon Tracey Martin. “Tracey Martin tendered her resignation late last month in order to take up a new role,” Ms Stanford says. Ms Martin will relinquish the role of Chair on 10 May and current Deputy ...
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and President Emmanuel Macron of France today announced a new non-governmental organisation, the Christchurch Call Foundation, to coordinate the Christchurch Call’s work to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. This change gives effect to the outcomes of the November 2023 Call Leaders’ Summit, ...
Distinguished public servant and former diplomat Sir Maarten Wevers will lead the independent review into the disability support services administered by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. The review was announced by Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston a fortnight ago to examine what could be done to strengthen the ...
Today’s announcement by Police Commissioner Andrew Coster of a National Gang Unit and district Gang Disruption Units will help deliver on the coalition Government’s pledge to restore law and order and crack down on criminal gangs, Police Minister Mark Mitchell says. “The National Gang Unit and Gang Disruption Units will ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today expressed regret at North Korea’s aggressive rhetoric towards New Zealand and its international partners. “New Zealand proudly stands with the international community in upholding the rules-based order through its monitoring and surveillance deployments, which it has been regularly doing alongside partners since 2018,” Mr ...
Air Vice-Marshal Tony Davies MNZM is the new Chief of Defence Force, Defence Minister Judith Collins announced today. The Chief of Defence Force commands the Navy, Army and Air Force and is the principal military advisor to the Defence Minister and other Ministers with relevant portfolio responsibilities in the defence ...
Legislation to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act has been introduced to Parliament. The Bill’s introduction reaffirms the Coalition Government’s commitment to the safety of children in care, says Minister for Children, Karen Chhour. “While section 7AA was introduced with good intentions, it creates a conflict for Oranga ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins will this week travel to the UK and Italy to meet with her defence counterparts, and to attend Battles of Cassino commemorations. “I am humbled to be able to represent the New Zealand Government in Italy at the commemorations for the 80th anniversary of what was ...
The upcoming Budget will include funding for up to 50 charter schools to help lift declining educational performance, Associate Education Minister David Seymour announced today. $153 million in new funding will be provided over four years to establish and operate up to 15 new charter schools and convert 35 state ...
“The results of the public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has now been received, with results indicating over 13,000 submissions were made from members of the public,” Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “We heard feedback about the extended lockdowns in ...
Foreign Minister, Defence Minister, other Members of Parliament Acting Chief of Defence Force, Secretary of Defence Distinguished Guests Defence and Diplomatic Colleagues Ladies and Gentlemen, Good afternoon, tēna koutou, apinun tru It’s a pleasure to be back in Port Moresby today, and to speak here at the Kumul Leadership ...
Health, infrastructure, renewable energy, and stability are among the themes of the current visit to Papua New Guinea by a New Zealand political delegation, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Papua New Guinea carries serious weight in the Pacific, and New Zealand deeply values our relationship with it,” Mr Peters ...
The National Party insists there has been no conflict of interest in David Macleod's chairing the committee considering the contentious fast-track bill. ...
Joel MacManus endures five hours of fear and hatred as some of New Zealand’s most controversial figures – and a sitting MP – gather to fight against trans rights. Note: This article contains quotes that may offend. They have been included to present an accurate report of what was said ...
It raises valid concerns about Kāinga Ora, but there’s little to suggest the new direction for state housing charted in Sir Bill English’s report will address Aotearoa’s chronic shortage of affordable rental housing, argues Alan Johnson.Given previous National governments’ indifference or even hostility toward the idea of state housing, ...
Education is facing a bunch of changes, but the important ones are not banned cell phones or ‘woke’ foods. The Government has ordered teachers to adopt ‘structured literacy’ to get children reading. That means Reading Recovery, a system New Zealand pioneered and spread to the world, along with ‘whole language’, ...
What a difference a year has made for Caroline Powell. After coming last at the Badminton Horse Trials in 2023, Powell triumphed at this year’s event earlier this month, on board her sometimes-feisty Irish-bred mare Greenacres Special Cavalier – much to her astonishment. Now she hopes to succeed at the ...
The publishing sensation of 2024 is wartime memoir The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour and Jude Dobson, which tells the amazing story of a woman who operated behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied France. Sales went through the roof as soon as it was published: in its first week it became ...
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Comment: NZ’s main political parties need to reach a consensus on how to adjust to China’s dominance and coercion The post Bridging the Aukus chasm appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Opinion: Jacinda Ardern’s leadership significantly enhanced New Zealand’s profile on the global stage. In the first five months of her second term of government, between December 2020 and April 2021, her name appeared 24 times in the Washington Post, 10 in the New York Times, 27 in the Times and ...
Comment: The public has seen the PM’s ruthless side, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario where a member of the coalition faces the same punishment The post Christopher Luxon the disciplinarian appeared first on Newsroom. ...
By Maia Ingoe, RNZ News journalist A NZ Defence Force plane carrying 50 New Zealanders evacuated from New Caledonia landed at Auckland International Airport last night. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it would be working with France and Australia to ensure the safe departure of several evacuation ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Snow, Research Scientist, CSIRO CSIRO How often do you check your local weather forecast? How about your local climate projections for 2050? For many farmers, the answer to the first question is all the time. But the answer to the ...
Pacific Media Watch A Māori supporter of Pacific independence movements claims the French government has “constructed the crisis” in New Caledonia by pushing the indigenous Kanak population to the edge, reports Atereano Mateariki of Waatea News. A NZ Defence Force Hercules is today evacuating about 50 New Zealanders stranded in ...
COMMENTARY:By Gordon Campbell The split opening up in Israel’s “War Cabinet” is not just between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his long-term rival Benny Gantz. It is actually a three-way split, set in motion by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. It was Gallant’s open criticism of Netanyahu that finally flushed ...
Reacting to today’s Budget Speech from Labour’s Finance spokesperson, Barbara Edmonds, Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns Manager, Connor Molloy, said: “It is encouraging to see that one of Labour’s stated priorities is to focus on creating ‘a level ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Turner, System Lead, Sustainable Economies, Climateworks Centre atk work/Shutterstock In the budget last week, the government was keen to talk about its efforts to turn Australia into a renewable superpower under the umbrella of the Future Made in Australia policies. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Opposition Leader Peter Dutton might have done us a favour. As part of his budget reply speech on Thursday night he promised to stop foreigners buying existing Australian homes. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Maguire, Associate Professor in Human Rights and International Law, University of Newcastle The request by Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), for arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders is a significant step in the effort to ...
RNZ Pacific A New Zealand author, journalist and media educator who has covered the Asia-Pacific region since the 1970s says liberation “must come” for Kanaky/New Caledonia. Professor David Robie sailed on board Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior until it was bombed by French secret agents in New Zealand in July 1985 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Renwick, Professor of Agricultural Economics, Lincoln University, New Zealand Fonterra caught the business world by surprise last week with plans to sell off its consumer brands and businesses – including supermarket mainstays such as Anchor, Fresh’n Fruity and Mainland. The move ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Small, Senior lecturer, Above the Bar School of Educational Studies and Leadership, University of Canterbury With an air force plane on its way to rescue New Zealanders stranded by the violent uprising in New Caledonia, many familiar with the island’s history ...
A New Zealand government plane is heading to New Caledonia to assist with bringing New Zealanders home. Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today confirmed it was the first in a series of proposed flights. Peters said the flight would carry around 50 passengers with the most pressing needs from Nouméa ...
Regional councils must focus on building meaningful and enduring relationships with iwi and hapū to support better freshwater management, says the Auditor-General in a new report. ...
Chris Glaudel, Deputy Chief Executive of Community Housing Aotearoa, sees the announcement as a step towards addressing New Zealand’s high and rising levels of homelessness by improving our approach and system to delivering affordable homes. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ali Mamouri, Research fellow, Middle East studies, Deakin University The death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash this week occurred during one of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s most challenging periods. Raisi, a prominent figure in the political elite, ...
The end of universal flu shot funding for under-12s is a step backwards for New Zealand child health, say experts from the University of Auckland and the University of Otago. New Zealand’s decision to no longer offer free influenza vaccines for all children under 12 will likely wipe out recent ...
The PSA is taking action to force the Ministry of Education to comply with its legal obligations to do everything it can to find other roles for staff it is laying off because of the Government’s spending cuts. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Waling, Senior Lecturer & Research Fellow, Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University Netflix There has been much excitement in the lead up to the first four episodes of Bridgerton’s season three, featuring leading couple Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa De Bortoli, Senior Research Fellow, Australian Council for Educational Research Taylor Flowe/Unsplash, CC BY Australian teenagers have more disruptive maths classrooms and experience bullying at greater levels than the OECD average, a new report shows. But in better news, Australian ...
Poet, editor and former bookseller Jane Arthur’s debut children’s novel Brown Bird is the story of a shy, self-conscious 11-year-old – partly based on her childhood self – venturing out of her quiet comfort zone. Children’s books are close to my heart because mostly I believe that adults are rings ...
Peter Jackson is bringing Lord of the Rings back to Wellington, producing two new Gollum films in Wellington. Madeleine Chapman (Gollum) argues with Madeleine Chapman (Smeagol) about it. First of all, I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation. Of course it’s great news!I don’t know, it gives me ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a part-time media librarian and superannuitant explains how he spends and saves. Want to be part of The Cost of Being? Fill out the questionnaire here.Gender: Male Age: 65 Ethnicity: EuropeanRole: Media librarian ...
The Government’s Environmental Select Committee is refusing to engage meaningfully when it matters the most over new fast tracking environmental legislation, says Ngāti Ruanui. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Marsh, Senior Research Fellow in Public Health, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Christoph Soeder/dpa New Zealand’s decision to no longer offer free influenza vaccines for all children under 12 will likely wipe out recent gains in uptake. And it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexis Anja Kallio, Deputy Director (Research), Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University Many young people in contact with the justice system come from backgrounds of extreme poverty, parental abuse or neglect, parental incarceration and disrupted education. These complex traumas often manifest as addictions ...
The agency was found to be underperforming and ‘not financially viable’, explains Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. A damning report A government-ordered ...
Asia Pacific Report For more than 76 years, Palestinians have resisted occupation, dispossession and ethnic cleansing, culminating in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Yet in the midst of this catastrophic seven months of “hell on earth”, it is a paradox that there exists an extraordinary oasis of peace and nature. ...
You’ll never set foot in one. But its emissions still effect you. Shanti Mathias reports on a campaign to make private jet owners pay for their emissions in some way. The private jet passengers saunter down the red carpet, wearing sunglasses and heels; paparazzi cameras flash. The sky is blue, ...
Quality teachers back on the front line can only be a good thing. One of the difficult things we teach in senior English classes at secondary school is the development of an idea. This involves deepening your argument, without instead “going sideways” and merely adding examples while repeating the same ...
Opinion: People with certain types of health conditions are more likely than others to have their symptoms dismissed, minimised or disbelieved. These conditions are diagnosed based on the patient self-report of symptoms, where there is no definitive diagnostic test that can prove the existence of disease or demonstrate structural or ...
The intensity of it, ironically, can feel like bullying. Social media activism is reaching something of a peak with the war in Gaza, using the hashtag Blockout2024. It started at this year’s MetGala when influencer and model Haley Kalil was caught on video muttering ‘let them eat cake’ – suddenly ...
It’s 2011 and I am 43 years old. My partner, Christine, and I got together when I was 36. We had been friends for about 10 years before that. One of the first things I asked Christine was whether she wanted to have kids. I had just come out of ...
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Opinion: As an indication of the eye-watering sums involved for the mega-prison plans announced two weeks ago by Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell, consider that $932 million has already been spent on a separate facility due to open at Waikeria next year – that’s about $1.5 million for each of the ...
What a great win by the All Blacks last night, and oh big blouse bruv, the Canterbury players in the team did well you disturbed traitor!
Dad I think you are on the wrong site. Bruv is at http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz …
But he does visit occasionally, if only to repeat some of the spin he has learned for the day.
Does the robotic big bruv blouse coward nutbar really have the ability to learn? Once a cowardly moron always a dropkick.
I think it needs serious help.His obession with me is rather laughable.
Texas Governor Rick Perry held his prayer rally “The Response,” with a gaggle of the insane, bigoted, and outright racist fundamental Christian leaders imploring their God to help them turn America into a theocracy. Right Wing Watch has a collection of videos of the loons.
The Right wing watch twitter feed is both enlightening and terrifying,
Yeah its kinda which side do we fear the most?? The RWNJ or them that watch them?
The Great Depression in the 1930’s polarised nations enormously, towards both the extremes of left and right. The consequences in the 1940’s were catastrophic.
Eighty years later and it all repeats, except this time the collapse of the Soviet Union dealt the extreme left a terminal blow, but what we are seeing in the USA is a resurgence of the extreme right…
Always been of the opinion that the establishment of the Soviet Union dealt the extreme left a terminal blow. Set us back 90 odd years and counting
The right keep insisting the USSR was an example of socialism.
Socialism lasted all of a week before authoritarian power hungry demagogues took over.
Socialism has been working fine for decades in Northern Europe’s Democratic socialist countries. Worked well for NZ too, until it was largely abandoned.
There was never socialism in N. or W. Europe.
The best there was, was a Social Democratic compromise. That was principly about policy priorities informed (at least in part) by the western elites’ fear of the ideas encapsulated by the Sviet Union ‘catching on’ with their own population leading to them being replaced with a new Party elite.
So yup, ordinary people got a better deal under Social Democratic governments than they had previously. Which on the one hand was a good thing. But because demands were contained within a Social Democratic framework, the steam was taken out of any move towards substantive change. And now the gains made within that framework are being, or have been unmade.
In the final analysis, the left was done over like a dog’s breakfast under both authoritarian Sviet and Social democratic rule.
@Bill Is there a country, or countries, that have achieved a sustained rule by the left even for a month? And how has it/they fared economically and with human rights and
inclusion in politics?
Christ Prism! You might want to define ‘left’ for a start. If the various Labour Parties fall within your definition then the answer is ‘Yes’.
But if you are meaning by your question; ‘Has there ever been substantive change inspired by ‘left’ politics’, then the answer is ‘No’.
For clarification of my position (in case it’s needed), substantive change would involve democratisation of the economic and political spheres. And that process would entail the devolution of state and manufacturing power to the community and workplace level respectively.
Meaning that nation states or countries become increasingly irrelevant until finally (when they no longer act as conduits of power) they would be viewed as mere historical curiosities.
Richard Wolff explains with clarity the economic, financial, and social failure of capitalism/neoliberalism in the US. He is an advocate for Marxian economics and democratic socialism.
Well worth listening to.
http://rdwolff.com/content/crisis-and-decline-us-economy-audio
New Zealand. Fared rather well actually.
http://www.kiwipolitico.com/
Excellent post by Pablo (Paul Buchanan) at Kiwipolitico.
I have a very, very, very strong suspicion what happened over the Israeli ‘back-packers’ mystery, but will wait for a little more sunlight to be shed on the affair before expressing it.
Ta,
well worth a read
Interesting assessment. There’s obviously more to this than a dirty magazine and a pie.
Hilarious if it were not so serious. Overnight the Chinese govt sternly lectures the USA about how the ‘good old days (of borrowing) are over’, clearly no longer willing to lend while the Fed continues to print money, thus devaluing the dollar. Instead they are demanding the USA dismantle it’s military spending and social welfare.
And this from the Chinese who for a decade or more have been committing economic warfare on the rest of the world by refusing to float their currency and deliberately keeping it massively undervalued.
Combined this statement with the massive cyberwar attacks the Chinese are making on intellectual property throughout the West with complete impunity, there is no doubt the Chinese are already flexing their muscles in a big way.
Well the US is the author of it’s own misfortune here, the tax cuts and increases in military spending in the last decade being the prime cause, but equally the Chinese have been sedulously digging a bear trap all these years, patiently awaiting their target to stumble into it.
Is there any compelling reason why China shouldn’t have exerted control over the value of its currency? The ‘west’ gave away control of its currencies to traders and unelected, unaccountable financial institutions. Good idea, yes?
The bear trap dug by the Chinese has literally been 30 years in the making. They have engineered a massive transfer of US capital (money, technology, know-how) to their own shores taken from the US over that time.
In leading the bear to the bear trap however, the Chinese have had to get very close to the edge of the trap themselves. Let’s see if they can avoid falling in with the bear. That would be a very messy outcome if they slip as well.
PS the Chinese learnt perfectly the behaviour and attitudes of the powerful western imperial capitalists through the humiliations and divisions they put China through in the 19th and early 20th century. And knowing that this capitalist type has no loyalty even to their own people or their own land, no loyalty other than to money they used that knowledge extremely effectively.
Karma is a bitch.
Looks like China is going to win the war without firing a shot.
The same way the USA won the cold war. They slaughtered the Soviet economy by making them overspend on arms.
In contrast to the USA who have killed whole populations to ensure their oil supply, the Chinese are just going to buy it.
With US money, ironically.
Even the Israeli people have had enough of the neocons.
The current uprising has given Israeli liberals a voice again…. But the apolitical character of the protest is being challenged. Netanyahu is already claiming that the protesters are driven by political motivations. His intent is clear: he wants to delegitimise them and claim that their real goal is to topple his government. This, he hopes, will weaken nationwide support for their demands. On Monday, members of the Likud central committee started to say that the demonstrators are just a bunch of sushi eaters with nargilas (Arab pipes) – ie leftist radicals – and that the media was exaggerating their numbers…. If the Likud and Yisrael Beitenu step up their attack, the protesters will not have any choice but to confront the current coalition in the political arena as well.
They will have to say that taxpayers’ money in Israel has been spent lavishly in the occupied territories; that billions of shekels go to child support for the ultra-Orthodox, most of whom do not contribute to the economy; that the silent collusion of Israel’s governments with the settlers is ruining the country morally, politically and economically. In the end, the call for social justice and the demand to reinstate liberal values in Israel cannot be separated..
More:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14344515
http://972mag.com/tent-protest-in-numbers-1522720-11/
http://www.tnr.com/article/world/93039/tel-aviv-israel-protests-housing
The current uprising has given Israeli liberals a voice again….
If Israeli troops shoot these protestors, do you think it will be excused and defended by the U.S. (and New Zealand) governments in the usual manner?
Clare Curran seems to be struggling with her ideal of free speech and the pressure to try and keep the message aligned with quack potted talking points.
http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2011/08/07/poll-how-do-you-feel-about-commenting/
Hmm, asking her users how they feel about the site environment = struggling with free speech?
What ever happened to Pete George, champion of consultation and inclusion?
Our best friend Pete George is trying to divert conversations?
He still hasn’t told us who pays him.
How does the man even looks himself in the mirror in the mornings is what I want to know.
First he looks at one face, then rotates cranium 180 and looks at the other.
I’ve added my own suggestions on questions for her poll, I found none of her questions included me. Which I presume you saw by the timing of your post there.
It might help if you catch up with the wider context.
http://yournz.org/2011/08/07/free-speech-or-politics-as-usual/
Anne – an accusation? Have you any proof or is it just a standard sort of diss. My limited involvement in politics costs me money, out of my own pocket. I haven’t used anyone else’s money at all.
Yes I saw your suggestions.
Why do you say Clare is struggling with free speech? Has she been trying to tie up your blog by posting pointless inane drivel there all day every day or something?
Well, you gotta eat mate and you spend all day and half the night blogging on blog-sites.
Still pushing that blog mate; most of us just have our blogs as links on our usernames; not many of us plug them as ruthlessly as you.
Hmm. No questions canvassing opinion on the moderators regime.
Bill, there was a post on moderation recently which drew quite a bit of comment and therefore the site operators would have had a good read of that topic already.
about Key not wanting to debate live “Perhaps the prospect of a discussion which did not feature a chance to gather one’s thoughts at each commercial break was a distasteful one.” whats up with the herald? i seem to be reading a bunch of critical (of National & Key) articles there? great!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10743505&ref=mobile
The Herald actually calling Key on his duck-for-cover media strategy? I hardly know what to say.
Perhaps the sting of being turned down was finally enough to make the lapdog bite the master.
I don’t expect it to last, however.
Ladies and gentlemen; ACT.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10743434
remember when teh internets were infested with ACTies going on and on about how awesome ACT in general was. Unpopular, but awesome. And Brash. Bruv was very excited about how that was going to play out.
What a bunch of tools.
Not surprising that the infighting and leaks continue, they were prevalent before the Brash act, and his was hardly a unifying action.
Also completely unsurprising that you think the take away from that story is the ACT party has a problem with leaks.
No, I think leaks are a symptom of major divisions and discontent within Act. And that’s reflected by Act’s support in polls of blogs – or rather the lack of it.
They don’t seem to be divided when it comes to those savages and cannibals though, eh?
Ah, yes they do seem to be very divided, apart from more leaks Ansell keeps complaining about Boscawen trying to moderate that message, and it seems that Brash switched his preference from strong support of a hardline approach to going with the Boscawen version (which still wasn’t great). I wonder what caused him to change his mind – an MP reality check?
Yeah right, “very divided” between disgusting racist fucks and bigoted ignorant cunts.
I suppose you’d find a cosy spot in the middle though Pete.
As you well know you have no valid reason to suggest I’d be “cosy” anywhere within Act. You seem more shitty livered than usual today.
I will say I have discussed and clashed with David Garrett a bit on blogs and he’s always been been far more reasoned and reasonable than you have been in your last post.
No idea what you really think about politics Pete, but I do know you like to position yourself in the imaginary “centre”. So that was a wee joke about where you would fit into ACT if you were in ACT.
Probably a waste of my time and yours though. I have an appalling sense of humour (as evidenced by the joke) and you’re far too stupid to understand it (as evidenced by your response).
Jeez Pete.
You don’t suppose that having Ansell sitting very loudly outside the tent saying how ACT aren’t really racist enough, and how very mean they were to him, serves ACT at all?
Nah, the story isn’t how divided ACT is, it’s how racist they are. Not that John Key seems to mind.
Funny how you notice how extremist Mana is, and how worrying that is, but Nnational giving a free ticket into parliament to this mob doesn’t even register when you read that story. Instead it’s just a sorry tale of division within the ACT party.
Queue PG making brief, mildly disapproving noises about ACT before returning to bash the political extremism Left.
Cue Viper making pointless and factless comment.
I said before and I’ll repeat again, Harawira has earned his place in parliament and if Mana manage to get more seats then they have every right to be there. I won’t be supporting them, but that’s irrelevant to their voters rights to representation.
Same goes for Act. I particularly don’t like Act’s racism and have debated directly with John Ansell on the advertisements, calling him on his claim to them being 100% factual – they are demonstrably not and I have posted strongly pointing that out to him.
I don’t like the way Brash took over Act, I am not a fan of most Act MPs. I have never been an Act supporter, and far less so since Brash and Ansell have inflicted their ways on Act.
Felix just seems to like to try and connect me to Act because that’s his way, he rarely does debate, he’s obsessed with berate. I have no idea what he thinks that might achieve.
Well pete, you must be outraged about National giving them a free ride into parliament then right? A nasty bunch of lying racists like that, and the PM makes cozy deals with them.
Still, he’s popular, so it doesn’t matter right.
There’s no free ride in Epsom, far less of a free ride than, say, Labour gives what looks like another party drone a free ride in Dunedin North (I hope I’m proven wrong). Banks will have to do a lot to earn a win there.
My current view is I hope Act MPs don’t get a pivotal position in the next government, they don’t deserve it. And National don’t deserve to get propped up by Act either, nor do they deserve a single party majority.
PG conflates Labour in Dunedin North fighting for their own Labour candidate…with National in Epsom fighting for the ACT candidate.
Seriously dude we’re not stupid, try and use decent analogies will you.
lol.
Perhaps you could explain why you think Banks will have to ‘do a lot’ running against his biographer. You are probably the only person in the country that doesn’t think it’s a deal:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10739361
And then, you could explain what you mean about Dunedin North.
How does National’s Epsom selection make Labour’s DN selection look bad? Is the Dunedin North candidate a ‘drone’ is some way that Paul Goldsmith is not? Will he have to win his seat to get into Parl, or has he been given a spot on the list that looks comfortable. your compaint about DN seems to be that is a safe-ish Labour seat. So what would they have to do to impress you in their selection? Select someone who doesn’t agree with the party?
“Felix just seems to like to try and connect me to Act… “
Really Pete? Links or retraction please.
Haha, another one of your jokes I presume.
No, I don’t recall trying to link you to ACT. Perhaps you’ve mistaken me for someone else.
Links or retraction please.
tick tock…
Noted on Red Alert.
Concern about the removal of ordinary peoples rights in Fiji, while ignoring the removal of those rights here started by Labour in 1984. Labour neglected to restore them during 9 years in power.
http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2011/08/07/fiji-our-neighbourhood-our-concern/
Colin Peacocke, defender of John Key, and champion of Karl Du Fresne— WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?
Mediawatch, National Radio, Sunday August 7, 2011
Some years ago, National Radio’s Mediawatch ran a once-over-lightly item on the low standard of sports journalism in New Zealand. Such an item might seem like a good idea—the abysmal standard of sports commentary is obvious to any sports fan in this country. However, the seriousness of this item was fatally wounded by Russell Brown’s choice of guest: Martin “Moron” Devlin. When it comes to sports journalism, Martin Devlin is an embarrassment at best, and an outrage at worst. He is perhaps, along with his former boss Bill Francis and his erstwhile colleague Murray “Deaks” Deaker, the worst thing to happen to sports journalism in this country. Yet Russell Brown interviewed him as if he was a serious commentator.
Another embarrassing Mediawatch item was an “investigation” into the political slant and unfairness of the media. While that sounds like a good topic for serious discussion, Mediawatch (Colin Peacocke, actually) was simply following the lead of a couple of hypocrites, serial liars and war criminals, i.e., British prime minister Tony Blair and his brutal media manager Alistair Campbell, who had launched a bilious, self-pitying attack on “the media” (not, of course, the friendly Murdoch outlets) for daring to continually question the honesty and integrity of their government. Colin Peacocke insisted that both Blair and Campbell had “made many good points”.
Today’s programme shows that this habit of bending over backwards to indulge the half-baked and the hypocritical is still an unfortunate feature of Mediawatch.
First up, Colin Peacocke (again) was in his most indulgent mood, this time doing his best to construe John Key’s craven comments on the Norway mass murder as actually not irresponsible at all. According to Peacocke’s interpretation, we have all been way too hard on the Prime Minister, and we shouldn’t have assumed that he actually meant what he said. Since Key did not actually say that the killer was Islamic, of course (according to Peacocke) he did not imply that. So we should disregard Key’s assertion that killings by a white Norwegian Christian in Norway provide a reason for New Zealand troops being in Afghanistan.
If that was not bad enough, today’s programme got even worse. For some reason, Peacocke chose to quote the self-styled “curmudgeon” Karl Du Fresne who has written a typically vacuous opinion piece criticising journalism schools for failing to produce journalists who are “willing to challenge authority”.
Wait a minute! Last year, Du Fresne went into core meltdown after Kim Hill had dared to ask a few challenging questions of the former Australian prime minister John Howard. Far from supporting her willingness to challenge a particularly odious and repellent authority, Du Fresne damned Hill for being “relentlessly adversarial” and dismissed her and her listeners as “chardonnay socialists”. [1] Clearly Colin Peacocke is immune to the irony of Du Fresne, of all people, criticising journalists for failing to challenge authority.
I note that in the latest entry on his dismal blog, Du Fresne has written a long and sympathetic piece about Rupert Murdoch. [2]
3. And then, it got even worse (if that is possible). Playing moron’s advocate, Peacocke relentlessly tried to defend the god-awful, unfunny Jeremy Wells “documentary” about the NZSO. His guest, former Dominion music critic Lindis Taylor, dismissed the programme as a wasted opportunity, spoiled by the narcissistic and crass behaviour of Wells. The best that Peacocke could do was to repeatedly (and lamely) insist that Wells “has a substantial body of work”.
It was quite clear that Peacocke did not believe a word of what he was saying, however. So why even try to defend the indefensible?
Oh, that’s right! Balance…
[1] http://karldufresne.blogspot.com/2010/11/howard-deserved-more-balanced-treatment.html
[2] http://karldufresne.blogspot.com/2010/11/howard-deserved-more-balanced-treatment.html
Erratum
That second link I provided was wrong. This is what it should be….
[2] http://karldufresne.blogspot.com/2011/08/w-p-reeves-saw-much-to-like-in-murdoch.html
I am so glad I missed it then!
Well done Morrisey for bringing this up. On the Key comments about the Norway massacre I was particularly unimpressed with Peacocke’s logic.
The reasons that we should not be hard on Key were:
1. ‘Everyone else’ (commenting in the media) immediately leapt on the idea of it being done by radical Islamists;
2. They did this because they were following the ‘respectable’ NYT’s lead in highlighting some ‘expert’ who said some anonymous person in an internet chat room claimed responsibility for it for Al Qaeda;
3. The ‘context’ in which Key made the comment made it ‘understandable’. That context was (a) having just been talking to Obama about Afghanistan deployment (amongst other things), and (b) Obama had just spoken before Key to the media and made noises about the international effort against terrorism;
4. Key said ‘If’ and so showed – like Obama – that he didn’t know who was responsible.
This is amazing. Every one of those points actually puts Key’s comments into a worse (and more culpable frame) yet Peacocke seemed to think it exonerated him!
Think about it – all the headless chooks were running around in the media saying ‘definitely Al Qaeda’, ‘hallmarks of Islamist terrorism’, etc. (point 1) and, apparently, Key took his lead from these chooks despite (point 4) knowlng he did not know who was responsible?? Key apparently is so naive that he did not realise that what runs the rounds of the media (point 2) in the first hours after a horrific event (especially a human-induced one) is almost always highly speculative and, hence, inevitably flawed??
As for the ‘context’ – that’s the whole point of his opportunism. That Obama was also being opportunistic (just as the ‘experts’ were trying to be first to jump on the Islamist bandwagon) hardly excuses Key from being even more explicit in his opportunism. And – this is the fundamental point – Key speculatively (and supposedly with complete knowledge of just how speculative it was) tried to link it to what New Zealand troops were doing in Afghanistan.
I think what happens with people like Peacocke – the vast majority of people, in fact – is that they are so inured by the discourses that normalise and ‘reasonable-ise’ the actions of our leaders, governments and elite in general that they find it extraordinarily hard to impose some very straightforward logic onto a situation. This is particularly bad in relation to matters concerning the basic moral compass of our elite – i.e., whether what they do and say is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in a moral sense. The result is that Peacocke can list a whole bunch of reasons in an attempt to let Key off the hook without even realising he is pushing the hook’s moral and ethical barb deeper into Key.
It is so blatantly obvious that Key was being opportunistic. All the defences for it that I’ve heard are to the effect that being opportunistic in that situation is perfectly understandable! I guess the same applies to lying, stealing, murdering …
He’s the PM; he’s meant to have the character and judgment to navigate these situations without making the same opportunistic leaps that ‘media commentators’ with little to lose – and with no responsibilities to anyone else – do on a daily basis.
Too much to ask of our PM?
Too much to ask of our PM?
John Key is a politician, and a particularly indolent one. I have no expectation that he will bother to do any more study of the situation than he has already done, i.e., none. Key has just done what politicians do: blither and bluster and, of course, he has gotten away with it, largely because of the indulgence and/or blindness of “liberal” commentators like Colin Peacock. The failure here is not by the Prime Minister.
Your detailed and perceptive analysis of Peacock’s rationale for exonerating that buffoon are impressive. I think you should send your comments to Colin Peacock and force him into making a response. Here’s the email address…
mediawatch@radionz.co.nz
Whats up with the dim post?
It used to be good for a laugh, now it makes me want to barf.
The irony, justifying VSM on the rubbish claim that the money is just stolen anyway, even as the universities go about their empire building with the cash extracted from generation debt via the student loans scheme. Satellite campuses go up all over the show and we are subjected to expensive marketing campaigns, even as the university autocracy (who are handsomely paid) attempt to cut funding for research and conditions for academics. Methinks he could have chosen to criticize the real thieves.
So if Fonterra freezes it’s prices, we are told that the shareholders take an effective cut in their earnings. If the farmers take a cut at the gate, the shareholders will benefit.
But aren’t the shareholders in Fonterra the farmers themselves?
If, however, the shareholders in Fonterra are overseas, then is Fonterra really a New Zealand company or only in name?
Would love someone to explain this one in relation to recent statements about
Kiwi’s owning tracts of Asia.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/5402951/Fishing-probe-turns-ugly
And here was me thinking illegal anti-worker actions like this were mainly a North American thing 🙁
Sadly enough too this started under the Labour Government, but that obviously doesn’t excuse National’s utter lack of action (other than denying everything) on it either.
lolwut? http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/5400444/Low-internet-data-caps-investigated
Basically, it’s costs 5 cents per gig for international traffic on the Southern Cross cable and yet, on a per gig price for internet plans you’re looking at anywhere from around $0.70 to what ever the hell telecom’s excessively charging these days.
Yep. And now the NZ Govt is paying Telecom to do the fibre work that they should have done themselves by now.
Australia 300GB plan for AU$70 as part of a landline package.
http://www.internode.on.net/residential/adsl_broadband/easy_broadband/
I wonder when we’ll catch up with Australia?
Having said that, I have great difficulty getting through 5GB a month despite feeling like I’m always on the internet for one reason or another – what on earth do people do to use 300GB?? Watch the entire tv series of War and Peace every day?? (That was a great series – I still remember it fondly; the first time I saw Anthony Hopkins’ acting (as Pierre). I still remember him throwing some idiot (Andre??) across a room in a fit of moral/romantic passion – or something. I always wanted to be like that. Still trying, but haven’t yet managed to live the dream. Sad to say, it’s not because of a lack of ‘idiots’.)
Getting off track. Sorry.
Did anyone bother to watch Nation (National would be a more exact title) today?. Plunket talking his to Tory mates said “energy companies will be sold next year.” Hullo I thought we had an election coming up .Perhaps Plunket knows something we do not .
Mad Monkton
I watched a bit of the Nation program today, which had “Lord” Christopher Monkton preaching his particular form of climate change skepticism. You might wonder why I’m even bothering to debunk Monkton further and whether this is even possible, but I can assure you it’s not to give his argument any relevance. Rather it’s to show just how stark raving mad Monkton actually is…
Monkton preaching his particular form of climate change skepticism
Please don’t besmirch the term “skeptic” by attaching it to this lunatic. He’s a denier, just like his exalted fellow-deniers, who include talkshow half-wit Leighton Smith, Waikato University’s renegade scientist and figure of fun Willem De Lange, the ACT party, Federated Farmers’ embarrassing ex-president Charlie Pederson, various sad loons who ring up to agree with Leighton Smith, the aggressive but horribly bewildered Sarah Palin and her equally bewildered mentor John McCain.
They also have another common interest they are all filthy rich . Plus they have a contempt for working people . A Google of Monkton is very revealing .Then one must ask how do they make so much money. As for L/Smith who the hell listens to him other than the racist right and some loonies.
As for L/Smith who the hell listens to him other than the racist right and some loonies.
Quite right. Even his NewstalkZB colleagues regard him as exceptionally ignorant, irrational and obsessed, and make disparaging remarks about him on air.
Don’t forget Professor Tippler Leightons mocker of climate change a loony christen fundamentalist with absolutely no credibility
A skeptic is someone who looks at the evidence before making up his/her mind. Moncton shows he does not even have a basic idea of how science works, and does not want to know.
He is not a skeptic. Simply an ignorant nut case.
He is actually one of the best arguments for AGW, as he shows the lack of quality amongst the denial industry.
Commercial companies are now so confident that AGW is occurring they have let millions of dollars worth of contracts for ships to use Arctic waters when they become ice free. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Northwest_Passage
Has anyone mention the woeful tale of poor Horatio?
I am ready for the flaming for me posting this, my sense of humour finds this incident rather funny!
The only sad thing is the poor polar bear – it was his patch, WTF were they doing there and this creature did not deserve to die because some dickwits decided to visit.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8683416/Survivors-recover-from-surgery-after-polar-bear-kills-Eton-school-boy-Horatio-Chapple-in-Norway.html
Seems very unusual that a polar bear would rampage into a tent unprovoked.
Flaming coming up! I don’t for the life of me get why you think it’s funny… It’s a 17 year old being killed ffs, and it doesn’t matter that he was a ‘toff’. If the funny thing is that the poor kid was called Horatio, my moron niece is naming her next baby Chelsea. Jaden is a popular name here, it’s just as cringe-worthy. Shame on you for laughing at the death of a child. 🙁
BTW, animals, who cares? Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I don’t give a toss – never have. (Except for the cat …)
the description of the lad as an “aspiring medical student” seemed out of place and unnecessary to me. Like writing that another teenager was an “aspiring apprentice panel beater” or an “aspiring marketing student”.
Yet in New Zealand, any article about the death of a middle class teen, will bang on about what sport s/he played! I recall a recent (within the last year) article about the death of a child with disabilities, that went so far as to go on about what sport she would have played if she could!
Plus – I recall all the articles about the woman killed by Clayton Weatherston which referred to her as an aspiring Treasury official’!
(I like to think that if I had died as a teenager my parents would have told the reporter “she hated sport, and thought netball was for morons” and that the reporter would have published it! The high school I went to (an all-girl school) had some girls who did seriously amazing things academically, and they would be rewarded for it – but we were never allowed to forget that all but a few teachers considered that the girl with the Rhodes scholarship, the girl who was admitted to medical school when a girl getting in was still a big deal (1970), were still inferior to the 5’8″ bruiser who was dumber than toast, but nevertheless, captained the netball – and that the girl who later went on to do some very important researcn in the care of prem babies mattered less than the big bully who became a Commonwealth games swimmer. (She bullied me something awful for using big words – I was half her size, like many bullies she was a coward. B*tch… )
@vicky32 – That is the impression that I got at school. That sport was more important than real education. That reading was less important than other subjects. A very confusing thing to comprehend and so different from the avowed intentions for going to school.
Yes, and confusing to me, because my parents had the opposite view! School was for studying, reading, writing, learning – and to my father, maths and science (he told my brother that ‘arts’ subjects weren’t ‘real’ subjects! 🙂 after telling me the opposite.)
I have often wondered why the NZ culture is so obsessed with sport? Ask any kid born in say 1993 to state what the acheivements are of Katherine Mansfield, Sir Ernest Rutherford, Kate Shephard, Edith Cavell, Janet Frame, Dan Carter, Tana Umaga and Jonah Lomu are, s/he’ll be struggling with the first four…
@vicky32 – What? Who?? Edith Cavell was nursing wasn’t that her milieu? Wasn’t there a bridge in South Island named after her? What about Mabel Howard and Nurse Maude and washing machines?
Edith Cavell is my son’s official hero (as he’s a nurse). She was executed during World War 1 by the Germans, and her last words were “I must have no hatred in my heart for anyone”. (Having just googled, I have discovered something I hadn’t known – she was not a New Zealander after all! (I could have sworn our teachers said she was..) I confess ignorance about Nurse Maude.. but Mabel Howard I do know of…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Cavell
There are a plethora of non-sporting heroes kids could have – Nancy Wake, Maurice Wilkins, Sir Brian Barratt-Boyes, Sir Archie McIndoe, Alan McDiarmid… etc. Who’s all over the TV adverts for all sorts of rubbish – Dan Carter! (I am only barely aware of him – wasn’t he an underwear model?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Zealand_scientists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_M%C4%81ori_people
IMHO any ordinary UK kid would either be in Ibiza dropping E’s or struggling to find a job.
To quote Billy Connolly
As I said, it cracked me up, the vision of someone punching a polar bear on the nose. If you want to be eaten by bears, go play in their domain.
It’s not unlike those folks that send their teenagers out on round the world solo yacht trips – why?
That’s pretty racist! (If I can be accused of being racist when I say something ‘anti-American’, then you’re racist for assuming all UK youth are chavs)
Did you actually read the article? This was a bunch of teenagers in a panic. They’d probably heard that punching sharks on the nose works – what the hell would you do in these circumstances?
I also followed links to other connected articles and this is not the first time this kind of thing has happened. In answer to whoever thinks they provoked it – read the damn article! The bear was starving. Last but not least, the area is full of people on similar trips. Sorry, you’re still shameful!
PS – that prick Connolly is just scum. Are you aware of his incredibly self-loving insults against the Liverpudlian man beheaded in Iraq in 2004?
As a Brit I don’t think I am being racist; the reality is that the UK is full of kids dropping E’s and spending their summers pissed on the beach in Ibiza.
Areas like that should not be a holiday camp for the privileged, they are wilderness – and there were three teens and two guides, and as you said, these things had happened before – did you read the article?
Indeed one local describe how ‘visitors’ in the past had rushed down to take pictures of bears. If the so-called ‘alarms’ didn’t scare the bear, I would have thought the sound of the shotguns connected to them would have alerted everyone.
Next time you are at the beach and there is a great white, you’ll be rushing in for a swim then? People should use common sense; those animals need protecting, as does where they live.
No! Can’t and don’t swim… However, I got the impression from the article, that the locals are fine with camps and expeditions in the area…
However, the thing that bothered me the most, is that you thought that the death of a teenager and serious injury to his friends was funny!
Even if it had been demosntrably his fault, it still would not be funny. 🙁 Are you a parent? Will you be laughing yer arse off next time some 17 year old gets bladdered and falls off the roof of a car he’s ‘surfing’ on? Do you split yer sides when some kid at a zoo leans over the side of an enclosure, falls in and gets savaged by an angry animal?
I have dealt with more situations like you have mentioned in my professional life; I have resuscitated my own daughter aged 3/12 on the living room floor; I have dealt with serious RTA’s, dog maulings, physical abuse cases, etc.
Your example of the 17 y.o falling off a car, no I won’t be laughing my arse off at the time, but life goes on! Adolescents all take risks; some risks can be better managed – playing on the ice with polar bears is a prime example of poor risk management (bit like that school that lost several pupils on Mt. Ruapehu)
As I said ‘punching a polar bear on the nose’ was a surreal, comedic image that amused me, if you cannot see the funny side of this then I am sorry for you.
If this had been an ordinary kid, a lad from a state school, who wasn’t called Horatio, who didn’t have a grand father who was a military big wig in Gibraltar, would this have received the same media?
In a similar, local vein, one rich kid dies who goes to Kings College – it is on every news channel; five kids have committed suicide in Kawerau in three months – did they get any press? Five people have killed themselves in Rotorua in three weeks – the youngest was just 12 – where was that reported?
Can you not see the irony? The rich get glory in death, whilst the rest of us are expected to soldier on and pay homage and feel sorry.
I am sorry for you, that you think there’s a funny side… I just keep imagining the kid’s panic!
I think it would, yes. What makes you think it wouldn’t?
Yes, or neither of us would know about it. (I heard about it on RNZ, I don’t read papers). When my brother – died – in 2004, I was told that it’s actually against the law for suicides to be reported in detail – name etc…
I don’t know, but it must have been as I am well aware of it.
Pay homage? As me old Mum used to say, you have a chip on your shoulder… I am no more impressed with toffs than you are, but this is an exception… A child died! (My son would be annoyed at my calling a 17 year old a child, but to me, he is.)
If I have a chip it is because I fail to see why someone from priviledge has a fawning media demanding sympathy, yet kids are dying from third world diseases in both the UK and NZ and you hear very, very little.
I got where I am through self determination and a little encouragement, not thanks to a silver spoon or an old boys network.
Wow. Stuff has picked up on a NRT post:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/5404407/Brownlee-No-discussion-on-recovery-panel-pay
Thats great Carol, the MSM have picked up a couple of posts from No Right Turn lately, hopefully the worm is starting to turn.
Stuff article: “I do not believe that the proposed nominees will undertake the role for fees within the ranges established in the Cabinet Fees Framework,” Mr Brownlee advised.
Actual words from Brownlee’s letter to Ryall: “It will not be possible to secure their services under the current fees range.”
Big difference. “It will not be possible….” Not “It may not be possible” or “I think…” or “I believe…” (as in the Stuff version), but the very definite “It will not be possible…”
And the only way to be so definite, is to have dicussed it with them.
Brownlee lies, Stuff cover-up. Business as usual.