Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Step right up to the mike…
As sharp differences between the Greens and Labour open up over coal, some of the arguments raised here in this debate carry strange echoes of the US political debate over coal.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Coal has emerged as a defining issue in the race for Virginia’s governor, and the stark divide between Republican Ken Cuccinelli and Democrat Terry McAuliffe has grown wider with the release of new federal pollution limits on coal-fired power plants……
……McAuliffe has been dogged by his statement four years ago, during his failed bid for the party’s gubernatorial nomination, that he hoped to never see another coal-fired plant constructed in Virginia. He refused to be pinned down on the issue during this campaign until he was pressed by a reporter for his position on the pollution guidelines.
McAuliffe embraced the Environmental Protection Agency rules on Tuesday after weeks of dodging questions about his position on limits intended to reduce greenhouse gases linked to climate change.
“I do, you bet,” he responded.
Cuccinelli’s seized on the admission. His campaign issued a statement that questioned McAuliffe’s stand, contending the pollution limits would cost Virginia jobs.
“As I have said repeatedly in recent months, the war on coal is a war on Virginia’s poor and a war on competitiveness for Virginia,” Cuccinelli said in a statement.
[lprent: 12 week ban as per my warning yesterday for not indicating that you have searched for parties policies. The first paragraph has no supporting links. Even a cursory look at this early phase shows that they seem to have policies that look remarkably the same.
A further 12 weeks for leaving comments on my posts this morning.
You were warned. Set the return date as April 1 as being appropiate ]
“As sharp differences between the Greens and Labour open up over coal …”
Say what? My understanding is that both parties have nearly identical positions on coal, which boil down to ‘it’s not good for the environment, but it’s good for jobs in the provinces, so an eventual wind down of the industry is the best long term plan’. Or summat like that.
Both parties oppose the partial privatisation by stealth of Solid Energy which was announced last week. Perhaps you could explain what you perceive the sharp differences to be?
Classic Jenny tr0lling. Nice answer TRP, but did you really have to ask the question at the end? Do you think that the question will (a) elicit a thoughtful reponse with references to actual L/GP policy and reality and thus invoke an interesting and educative discussion, or (b) elicit a response that is a mix of misinformation and personal attack that will invoke a thread of frustrated and somewhat chaotic rebuttal and increasing hostility towards Jenny?
(I think that someone else will most likely respond to your post and examine the differences and similarities between the two policies. Maybe we could focus on that? Small hope I know, but still…)
Are you saying, that though they both disagree on the partial privatisation of Solid Energy that there is no difference between the two parties on the actual bail out?
That leads to the next obvious question; What do they agree on, in relation to the bailout itself if they are both in agreement on it?
Are both Labour and the Greens in support of the bail out?
Or;
Are both Labour and the Greens in opposition to the bail out?
I am sure the members of both parties and indeed the voting public at large are dying to know.
I have talked to Greens Party members. They all assure me that the Green Party are vehemently opposed to the new huge Open Cast Coal Mine proposed for the Denniston Plateau. I have spoken to Labour Party people who assure me just as vehemently that Labour are for the open cast coal mine at Denniston.
This is one sharp difference over coal between the Greens and Labour.
(I am afraid Dave I can’t provide links to my private conversations to prove, or disprove this ‘blatant (mis)-information’. Nor is it easy to pin down the politicians, just like Democratic Candidate for governor of Virginia, Terry McCauliffe who refused to be drawn on the issue of coal until he was pressed.)
[deleted]
[lprent: And as final point before you go into auto-spam. Even if that was true for all MEMBERS (which it isn’t) then the opinions of Green and Labour members are not what is Green or Labour PARTY policies. Both parties have some quite robust policy making procedures and have written policies. Party policies are what you claimed were in conflict up above – but offered no indication that you’d even read them.
If you’d taken the time to investigate, you’d have found that while there are differences on coal mining, they are to do with the timing of phasing out different parts of the sector. But to do that you’d have had to have read the policies rather than simply lying about them.
While you may have your heart in the right place, you are merely a pain around the comments sections of this site simply because you don’t bother to actually search, read and link. None of these things are hard to do. You should use your time away to learn how to do those things so you don’t just sound like someone shouting nonsense repeatably. ]
Silly, that was “chem-trails”. Now that they’ve been re-named “geo-engineering” they’re something completely different and we have to start understanding them all over again.
Hun, I understand that it is difficult to understand but cold temperatures cool down hot water molecules causing the condensation you are thinking about real quick making the con trails disappear relatively quick. That is science. So when a trail hangs between 6 and 14 hours you are definitely not talking about condensation. I know that is hard to get your little brain around but there you have it.
They condense (hence “condensation”) into droplets that sometimes even freeze.
If the ambient temperatures are hotter or drier the droplets evaporate before they freeze, and disappear. But a contrail hanging around is no more ominous than a cloud hanging around.
Wow, you know what people think now, Ev. That’s so kool! And apparently they’re thinking about making strawman arguments that you can effortlessly demolish. Suh-weet!
(Note to self, must buy more tinfoil, Ev’s on to us.)
I understand that it is difficult to understand but cold temperatures cool down hot water molecules causing the condensation you are thinking about real quick making the con trails disappear relatively quick. That is science.
No, that happens to be bullshit. It’s not even worth the appellation pseudo-science.
I want to draw your attention to the submissions closing October 10 for the Social Security Fraud Measures and Debt Recovery Amendment.
There is one particularly concerning piece of information hidden in the explanatory note for
s86 (1BA) which states:
“must otherwise determine from time to time the rate of recovery and method or methods of recovery to be used and, in doing so, is not required to have regard to relevant considerations (for example, adequacy of living standards”
The danger here is that courts will look to the explanatory note for guidance, although this doesn’t form part of the legislation itself. If you disagree with this there is still time to make a short submission
Apologies if this has already been posted – but received through my inbox over the weekend –
October 22nd in Auckland – Launch of the latest report from Child Poverty Action Group “Benefit sanctions: creating an invisible underclass of children?”. Register here for the event or to order a hardcopy for $10.
2013 local elections have to be a new low, investigations need to be held (certain candidate profiles not in booklet–Auckland, packs not delivered to voters, even to one Auckland MP, bogus offers to uplift and mail residents papers for them, papers stolen from letter boxes, appalling return rates generally). Plus NZ Post has chosen October 7 to go to a delivery “target” of 1-3 day delivery of mail rather than next day. Thanks NZ Post. http://www.nzpost.co.nz/home/sending-within-nz/letters-documents/standard-post
I don’t know about that. Here in Dunedin with something like 8 candidates for mayor, over 30 for council, an STV system, plus the DHB and regional council, it took me a good hour or so to select the candidates I wanted to vote for and rank them in a suitable order. Doing that in a booth would be time consuming, and impossible without at least consulting some reference material. Democracy is important to me, so I felt committed to voting, but I refuse to believe that this is global best practice. There must be a model somewhere in the world that encourages participation more than the one we use in NZ.
That said, I would be cautious when it comes to online voting and appropriate levels of security.
Why is this article written as though this is a surprise?
” The pay between the pay of top chief executives and the staff they manage appears to be growing.
In the latest Fairfax annual survey of pay rates at listed companies, the average pay of CEOs in 2012 was 26.4 times that of the average employee in the same companies. That’s up from a multiple of 22.5 times in 2011. ”
It also suggests that while employees are being told they are hard economic times so hence no pay rises….
Fairfax reports on a study into poor standards of Fairfax and APN reporting of sexual violence crimes and rape. A light at the end of the tunnel?
I couldn’t find the article on the Wellintonian (fairfax)site despite all the other articles of that edition of the paper being there, so have had to link the entire Wellingtonian newspaper. p.22.
Some reasoned and practical comments on voting procedures for the local body elections.
Massey University academic Dr Andy Asquith, a local government and public management specialist, said there was no silver bullet to local turnouts that have steadily been falling despite politicians offering up “laudable words”.
Also on Radionz –
The president of Local Government New Zealand is calling for a review of how local elections are carried out as councils around the country report poor returns of voting papers.
Lawrence Yule told Morning Report the postal voting system is part of the problem, as people leave the forms around the house and never return them.
A record low turnout is being predicted for Saturday’s local government elections.
I’m getting confused who said what but this is how I remember comments –
He supports a return to polling booths in combination with electronic voting.
He says don’t think on line will change for the better and suggests booths on the day.
( I suggest that councils organise a local democracy festival with buskers and balloons. Get some interest in it by showing support for it, bring people to town for the fun spot by the booths!
Bring the circuses, not the bread as that would be a personal bribe).
He reports voting papers languishing at home. Check.
Getting forgotten. Check.
I have now sat down and gone through the councillors to try and choose 14. Often from a list of people I don’t know. For those, I have to rely on judgment and prejudice!
Never ever bring in preferences and demands for choice for each seat. I don’t want to be forced to indicate preferences for all the available places for Council. I can manage doing something different for the hospital though we have an extended area, and there is no ward system so I should look at people from the whole region.
Voting for this number takes time, and you know that it is just a guess as to best with some votes. But that doesn’t mean that I want it ripped away from me, and only have one character to vote for, or give up my vote to some group to decide, which is what we’ll be offered soon.
And the bio detail for the candidates is pretty empty, not enough information as to what people have been doing all their lives.
And councils need to encourage more participation by having an element of fun – just a spoonful of sugar and the councillors’ names go down – on the page! Our mayor and councillors were meeting and greeting at a local supermarket. But let’s have a morning of fun at the voting spot.
I have now sat down and gone through the councillors to try and choose 14. Often from a list of people I don’t know. For those, I have to rely on judgment and prejudice!
Which is why we should be voting directly on policies rather than representatives. That way we’ll actually get what we want rather than what a few people put into dictatorial positions want.
Rogue T
That’s a good one. With you around I’ll never get Alzheimers as my synapses spark and race around trying to get whatever subtlety you’ve put up.
“Auckland Council Group’s PRIMARY objective is to provide social services for social benefit rather than making a financial return.”
SO – WHY ARE SO MANY OF THESE SOCIAL SERVICES THEN CONTRACTED OUT TO THE PROFIT-MAKING PRIVATE SECTOR
– WHOSE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE IS ‘MAKING A FINANCIAL RETURN’???
NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
1 GENERAL INFORMATION
Auckland Council (‘the council’) is a local authority domiciled in New Zealand and governed by the Local Government Act 2002 (‘LGA 2002’) and the Local Government (Auckland) Act 2009 (‘LGAA 2009’).
The council’s principal address is 1 Greys Avenue, Auckland Central, New Zealand.The Auckland Council Group (‘the group’) consists of the ultimate parent, the council and its subsidiaries, associates and jointly controlled entities including council-controlled organisations (‘CCOs’).
All subsidiaries and associates are domiciled in New Zealand. Refer to the investment in other entities note for a list of significant group entities.
The primary objective of the group is to provide services to the Auckland community for social benefit rather than making a financial return.
Accordingly, the council has designated itself and the group as public benefit entities for the purposes of the New Zealand equivalents to International
Financial Reporting Standards (‘NZ IFRS’).
The financial statements are for the year ended 30 June 2013 and were authorised for issue by the council’s governing body on 26 September 2013.
The entities listed below are referred to within these financial statements as follows:
BASIS OF PREPARATION
Statement of compliance
These financial statements are prepared in accordance with New Zealand Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (‘NZ GAAP’), the LGA 2002 and the LGAA 2009. They comply with NZ IFRS and other applicable financial reporting standards, as appropriate for public benefit entities.
Basis of measurement
The financial statements have been prepared on a historical cost basis, with the exception of certain items identified in specific accounting policies. They are presented in New Zealand dollars
(‘NZD’) which is the group’s functional currency and are rounded to the nearest million, unless otherwise stated. All items in the financial statements are stated exclusive of Goods and Services
Tax (‘GST’), except for receivables and payables, which include GST invoiced.
Abbreviation
ACIL
ACPL
A T
ATEED
PoAL
RFA
Watercare
AWDA
Auckland Airport
Entity name
Auckland International Airport Limited
Auckland Waterfront Development Agency Limited
Auckland Council Investments Limited
Auckland Transport
Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development Limited
Ports of Auckland Limited
Regional Facilities Auckland __________
Why are the Auckland Council Group’s ‘books’ NOT open?
Why, in the largest city of the supposedly ‘least corrupt country in the world’, are citizens and ratepayers NOT being given the ‘devilish detail’ of where exactly public monies are being spent, invested and borrowed?
Because we have social engineering Nazis at work all over the place, and they have their agencies, to make a profit, and they love to lick the bum of local and central government, they are anyway mates in the games, so they get the damned contracts, and do the “dirty work” for the top Nazis ruling from Wellington!
Wrong. Governments are usually better at running things and they cost less. The only reason why we got the myth that the private sector is better is because some rich bludgers wanted a government guaranteed income.
The Gormless Fool formerly known as Oleolebiscuitbarrell 10.1.2.1
John Minto, eh? Well, that settles the argument. When you add to that the wonderful motor vehicles British Leyland makes so profitably and how profitable the BNZ was when it was government-owned the evidence is overwhelming.
TGFFKSO – John Minto is not my best hero, but he deserves a lot more respect than you would even dare to give him, and he is more genuine than your dollar bill licking mates and matesses, that you will fall to your knees for!
As for the banks, let us follow the history and what transpires, as you seem to have slept through the GFC.
Have another bikkie, to keep the sugar level high, as that will keep you stimulated. It does not seem to be rational thinking and information that gives you any kicks.
There’s actually quite a lot of research coming out that shows that private businesses do public service far worse than the government.
BTW, it’s not John Minto saying:
As well as saving money the TDC says it will mean a better service for ratepayers as problems can be dealt with more quickly as they arise. It also cites greater control, improved planning and stronger staff commitment as some of the other advantages of the change.
The council says the build-up of savings to ratepayers will reach around $3.6m by year five.
It’s the council that’s done Due Diligence rather than keeping on with ideological myths.
I love how the opposition to Jason taking puberty blockers seem to think at 7 he’s total incapable of knowing his own gender, as if gender identity were a fluid thing.
One person has a bad experience ergo all people will have an identical experience! Also, surgery and hormone treatment have identical effects and reversability! *headdesk*
Puberty blockers are reversible, the body shape issues caused by puberty? Not without significant surgery, or without potential fun from gender dysphoria…
Are you suggesting that at seven years of age, humans, generally, have the capacity to fully understand the complexity that is gender. It must be a cultural thing, because at seven, I couldn’t even spell the word.
Although now that I think about it, some kid wanted to show me his penis for a penny (I say penny only because the word goes nicely with penis and in no way indicates my age). I didn’t have a penny therefore never got to understand the complexity of gender until much older. And by then I was like – is that it?
You are becoming even more incomprehensible. And stop with your continuing efforts to prove that you are a brainy fuckhead. These efforts simply reinforce the fuckhead aspect of your personality.
Your scientific approach to all things human limits your capacity to see other possibilities. I know gender exists on a continuum, and it is fluid. How can a child understand that which even you fail to comprehend?
Well, I knew I was pretty much like all the other boys.
Apparently some other kids don’t have that sense. Not a huge proportion, maybe, but who am I to second-guess them, their parents, or their doctors? I have no idea about what they feel or what the people closet to them have considered. Neither do you.
Assuming that all kids are like you or I was as a seven year old (decades ago, in my case, long before vibrators in supermarkets) perhaps “limits your capacity to see other possibilities”.
Adele, I disagree with your assumptions. I’m pretty sure I felt at odds with conventional gender expectations by the time I was seven – probably earlier.
And from when I was a a teacher and studied child development, as I recall children know their gender by about 5 years old. Gender differentiation is very basic in most (if not) all cultures.
It’s certainly very basic to our society. People start talking to children on the basis of their biological sex as soon as they are born – adjust their language and ways of interacting with a baby o the basis of whether the child is perceived to be a boy or girl.
By the time children go to school, they know whether they should go to the boy’s or girl’s toilet.
Karol i read into Adele’s comments that at that age we all know boys are boys and girls are girls, but, at that age we don’t have any understanding of the other complexities involved in gender issues…
Well, I do think it may be more debatable as to whether a 7 year old can make major decisions about their future, and understand the full implications of their decisions.
But, looking back on my life, I am amazed that so many of my directions in life have pretty much been in keeping with my desires for my future at a very young age.
I was certain, for instance, at a very young age that I never wanted to get married. I got into a disagreement about that with some adult friends of my parents. I kept saying that I wouldn’t marry. They kept laughing and saying I’d change my mind when I got older. In the end I just shut up and thought, “You’ll see”. And, I never have had a desire to get married in the course of my life.
Same goes for the kinds of jobs I’ve done, and my kind of anti-materialistic lifestyle.
But I don’t think I have fully understood the complexity of life decisions I made in my teens, twenties and even thirties or more. That understanding can only come with experience and often after the decisions are made and the consequences play out.
Lolz, the levels of function and dysfunction exhibited by both my parents circa my 7-12 year life certainly had a lot to do with my later choices in life but gender, and the fact that there were ‘others’ didn’t register until some time in my teens,(perhaps a slow learner)…
bad, I think gender may not be an issue for children unless they are at odds with the expectations and consequences of the assigned roles.
I was certainly very aware of it from a young age. Partly because my “tomboy” ways didn’t fit expectations, and often got comment. I was also aware from a very young age that being a girl had secondary status in society in many ways, and tended to exclude me from some things I wanted to do, or mean I was expected to do others I didn’t want to do.
It was something I consciously thought about from a very young (pre-puberty) age.
PS: the 50s were very much more gender segregated than today.
There’s also the issue with cis individuals having the privilege of not having gender dysphoria, so we don’t have a drive to examine our gender identity in childhood unless $fun happens.
Your scientific approach to all things human limits your capacity to see other possibilities.
Unimpressed Nick is unimpressed.
Science only closes off things which lack empirical evidence and more often that not open more questions.
In the case of gender identity we have the better part of 60 years of stuff dating from the mistakes made with children with intersex conditions, in which the state of the genitalia was not a 1:1 match to the child’s gender identity and now parents of intersex kids usually let them make there own choice vis gender identity. Combine this with transgender stuff and and critical examination of gender roles vs gender identity (they’re not one in same, bar reproduction) and it’s a pretty obvious inference to make that gender identity is to some extent hardwired in the brain and links to the brains body image map. How though is not fully understood, but that’s neurology for you, a complex, messy emergent system…
Is gender identity going to fluid for some people? To anyone with a good understanding of biological variation the answer is obviously yes, but from the above stuff, we also know that there’s also individuals with very clear, fixed self-knowledge of their gender identity.
Is Jason one of these people? Admittedly the details are scarce, but given the details so far, they’ve been sure in their gender identity since the age of 3 and has had 4 years to work it out. And given other accounts from transexuals and third sex people, I’d then model it highly likely Jason is not going to alter his gender identity on exposure to either male or female hormone profiles.
Furthermore, puberty blockers are reversible, and the initial phases of male puberty are somewhat more reversible than female puberty if on exposure to androgen therapy Jason’s gender identity shifts.
There’s also the fact that to get puberty blockers, the family has to go through a psych eval…
Now, going away from gender identity, my exposure to history and philosophy of science (warts n all), my own fun with depression (and other bits), knowledge of the flaws of human cognition, scepticism readings and being embedded within the humanist project leads me to know how powerful science is as a tool, and how science can be a useful source of hard facts on which to iterate ethical frameworks off and avoid costly (for humane values) mistakes. Scientific knowledge of how depression alters my thinking and how antidepressants work, plus the tools to detect side effects is one of the tools I’ve used to stop myself from committing suicide*. But also that science is not the be all and end all, that there’s a rich [space] of ecological interactions vis human culture from which emerges so much richness.
So yeah, it should be fairly easy for anyone with a functioning theory of mind to work out why I’m a science bastard and somewhat annoyed with those who don’t bother to do some critical thinking.
___________________________________________
*rest are tied into an ethical framework that uses euthanasia rational from Singer, tested to it’s limits in 2012 by chronic suicidal ideation.
“I love how the opposition to Jason taking puberty blockers seem to think at 7 he’s total incapable of knowing his own gender, as if gender identity were a fluid thing.”
I’ll have a better read tomorrow, but on first look through, they’re saying a 7 yr old is not capable of understanding the implications of the decisions being made. I’d have to agree with that.
I’m also uncomfortable with the idea that all transgender kids will be traumatised by going through puberty unassisted by pharmaceuticals, which seems to be the implication.
btw, what are the risks and side-effects of puberty blockers? Long term as well as short term. And when it’s stated that puberty blocking is reversible, what does that mean in terms of risk and side-effects? At what stage?
For some it’s not to bad, but usually it’s rather painful and so ethically preventing it comes across as a good idea.
As for side effects – depends on the particular drug used, but usually side effects are not significant enough to preclude their use, with the main one being osteoporosis.
And once the drug is stopped, normal hormone release resumes 😛
Thanks Nick, I know what gender dysphoria is. I just thought there was this idea (in the article) that the only valid response to that was puberty blocking. Which I’m having difficulty believing.
“And once the drug is stopped, normal hormone release resumes”
Kind of like women on HRT at menopause, who when they stop their menopause resumes. And we know know that the line that side effects are not significant enough to preclude their use is being disproved over time, that often there are significant negative health effects that outweigh the value of delaying menopause. I’m willing to bet that the amount of knowledge about puberty blocking and its long term effects is pretty small at this stage, just like it was with HRT before enough women did it for long enough for the nasty shit to turn up in the research.
Which is why medical ethics shouldn’t be left to doctors alone 😉 Doubly, triply so when it comes to kids.
Plus, I’d love to see the research on puberty blocking and increases in environmental endocrine disruptors.
I’m willing to bet that the amount of knowledge about puberty blocking and its long term effects is pretty small at this stage,
Actually they’ve been used for almost as long as HRT as they’re used to stop precocious puberty, along with treating people with sex hormone producing cancers. So far the ecological data points to far less side effects than HRT, with increased cancer risks only occurring with certain prostate cancers iirc.
Plus, I’d love to see the research on puberty blocking and increases in environmental endocrine disruptors.
Compared to hormonal contraceptives and the various industrial organic endocrine disruptors, these would be a drop in the ocean.
And yes, GD is rather intractable to therapy (i.e you can give people tools for dealing with it, but not reducing it or removing it) as it’s a body-map issue, and the “wait and see” approach often puts trans people in puberty through suicidal ideation, self-harming and other not fun stuff. Thus it’s not a hard ethical problem to advocate for puberty blockers.
My favourite quote: “As MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen stated, “The latest IPCC report has truly sunk to the level of hilarious incoherence—it is quite amazing to see the contortions the IPCC has to go through in order to keep the international climate agenda going.””
80% of reports by Murdoch owned media outlets are anti climate change theory. Interesting…
“New research out of the US has provided evidence of the “misleading” reporting of climate change by News Corporation. The report, Is News Corp. Failing Science, written by the Union of Concerned Scientists, looked into representations of climate change at Fox News and The Wall Street Journal over a period of six and 12 months respectively.
In their study, stories were investigated and rated “accurate” or “misleading”. Misleading pieces were defined as those that:
• Had a broad dismissal of the scientific evidence that climate change is occurring and is largely due to human activities
• Disparaged climate scientists generally or specifically
• Disparaged or mocked climate science as a body of knowledge
• Cherry-picked individual facts or findings to question overall climate science conclusions
• Engaged in debates or conversations in which misleading claims drowned out accurate ones.
Out of 40 mentions of climate change on Fox News, 37 were determined to be misleading, or 93% of stories. The reporting in The Wall Street Journal (researchers looked at the opinion section) was slightly more accurate; 81% of stories were considered misleading. Disparaging the basic fundamentals of the science was the most common approach at both outlets.
This finding brings into stark reality the challenge climate scientists and activists have when it comes to the issue being reported in the media. “
And yet it is okay for the IPCC to do the same? Seems like both sides are playing the propoganda game……..
Just out of interest, who conducted the “New research out of the US”?
[lprent: Let me give you a hint oh moronic wonder. Type “Is News Corp. Failing Science” with the quotes into google and the first item is the PDF. It has nothing to do with the IPCC. ]
Who conducted the “New research out of the US”?
Was it Al Gore by chance?
Also, this doesn’t change the fact that a scientist with a Doctorate in Climate Science, from the top rated University in the world believes the IPCC reporting has “truly sunk to the level of hilarious incoherence”, I thought the IPCC was all about the science? Aparently they are only about the science that fits their agenda.
[lprent: Gee, now the fuckwit is confusing science with a politician, and confusing a *single* dissident scientist with a crap reputation (I am assuming Judith Curry) as outweighing the large number of scientists with similar or better backgrounds who disagree with her.
Ok. Richard Lindzen is a bit better. He is however a meteorologist, and does not have a docorate in “Climate Science” (if you can’t understand the difference then that just indicates exactly how illiterate you are). But at least he understands maths and doesn’t gush over the maths of a economics prof doing climate science.
Just another moronic wanker too incapable to either spell or use google. ]
Bob, you’re welcome to believe what the Koch Brothers want you to believe.
But to those of us who:
a) take the work of the vast majority of independent Science as worth listening to
b) are concerned by the way we are altering our climate. (I presume you accept at least that we are destroying habitats around the world and wildlife),
…there are better things to do than debate the nonsense you are pedalling here.
Paul, I am concerned about our environment, not about our effect on the climate. I am also concerned about the effect the likes of the ETS have on our economy, look what it has done in Australia: http://www.aigroup.com.au/portal/binary/com.epicentric.contentmanagement.servlet.ContentDeliveryServlet/LIVE_CONTENT/Publications/Reports/2013/Carbon_price_impacts_Jan_2013.pdf
Key points: In our survey of 485 businesses conducted at the end of November 2012, the carbon tax was estimated to have increased energy prices from 1 July by an average 14.5 per cent. This result was broadly consistent across sectors:
· Manufacturing businesses reported that their total energy input costs increased by an average of 14.5 per cent as a direct result of the carbon tax.
· For businesses in the services sector, the increase was reported at 13.6 per cent.
· Businesses in the construction sector reported that the carbon tax had increased their total energy costs by 14.8 per cent.
If the IPCC stopped trying to pull the wool over peoples eyes we could pull out of the ETS but leave the current tax system in place (exempting farms entirely). The funds raised from this scheme, we could put directly into enforcing clean waterway schemes such as planting native plants along the banks of rivers and streams, extensive water testing to find major polluters and targeting farmers that allow cattle to enter waterways, forcing them to fence their herds in or face large fines. The remainder of the money that is currently just being sent offshore from the ETS with no benefit to NZ’s environment, we could put towards larger subsidies for landlords installing solar panels into their properties with an aim to both reduce tenants power bills, but also in the longer term, looking to reduce the load on the power grid so the Huntley power station and all other non-renewable power stations can be wound down completely. These would have a tangible effect on the environment, the current ETS does not.
m’kay then, please show us evidence that CO2 does not retard the movement of heat through the atmosphere into space.
Feel free to actually cite some peer reviewed evidence that overthrows well known quantum behaviour of C=O bonds vis infrared photon absorption/emission, and which can be verified pretty easily in any well equipped physical chemistry lab. Behaviour which matches exactly the effects of CO2 on the atmosphere once you subtract warming from other gases and weather.
Not that you can, since such evidence doesn’t actually exist except in the ramblings of idiots who can’t do basic lab work or sanity check their equations…
No, you show me a linear relationship between CO2 concentrations and the ability of the atmosphere to hold heat. I do not deny that CO2 does trap SOME heat, there is just no evidence that CO2 causes enough of a rise in temperature to be of any significant worry based on current theory (unless you cherry pick data like the IPCC does).
The current theory shows increase in CO2 correlates to a rise in temperature (no direct correlation can be made, although IPCC report (AR4) described the likely range as between 2 and 4.5 degrees C, for double the amount of CO2 compared to pre-industrial levels) but as Dr. Richard Lindzen’s reasearch has shown, this temperature rise increases water vapour in the lower atmosphere, increasing cloud cover and providing negative feedback against further warming.
Also, higher CO2 levels lead to significantly higher crop yields (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0168192386900547) which will be required due to the continuing increase in human population.
Dr. Richard Lindzen’s reasearch has shown, this temperature rise increases water vapour in the lower atmosphere, increasing cloud cover and providing negative feedback against further warming.
Which would increase albedo enough to be detected by satellites over the last few decades. Lindzen’s models essentially predict this, although he wasn’t kind enough to actually provide tests for his theories in his theories. The required level of albedo wasn’t detected. Nor was the required increase in water vapour in the atmospheric column were detected where he predicted they should be. You’d expect a theorist to deal with the contrary evidence to their predictions.
Needless to say Lindzen hasn’t. At present his theorising has descended into conspiracy theories. But that is probably more to do with his association with the Heartland Institute and the financial benefits of being on the end of a oil fed benefit chain.
The alternate theory was that heat and CO2 was getting sucked deep into the extremely chilly oceans. This was what has been investigated over the last few decades as well. The models that used this as their precept predicted what should have been found. That was quite close to what was found (and some theorists are busy trying to figure out the variations now).
trololololololololol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect
It’s easy to work out too, you just need a set of glass bell jars with the kit to make each jar’s CO2 concentration different (controlling for pressure of course), a heat source (heat lamps + rheostats basically) and thermometers.
The main cause of divergence is basically ocean heat absorption, with other, smaller effects from atmosphere stratification, air flow and water vapour. Which for all but ocean heat, before computer models, was worked out via hydrological modelling, for which the rates of warming they worked out are still good fits even today.
But hey, why bother with basic science when you can deny reality?
lprent – And yet this mornic wanker as you so eloquently put it, is willing to listen to the authors of parts of the IPCC’s own reports, an author who states that the IPCC put political pressures on climate scientists to conform to what he has called climate alarmism.
Of course when he puts forward counter arguments against the IPCC’s findings, no-one wants to listen because the IPCC states that they are 95% certain http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/27/ipcc_ar5_wg1_teaser/ by their reasoning, I am 95% certain they have invested too much into Climate Change to let the theory fall over, can you imagine the class action law suit to reclaim taxation alone! No wonder they have started cooking the books.
Lindzen again? Who was a member of a team writing in one section of the AR3 report in the late 90’s.
He is pretty good (I’ve read some of his work), but appears to be have been fixated on clouds rather than the heat balances. He also tends to suffer the congenital problem of meteorologists in that they don’t work well over longer than decadal time scales. Personally I come from an earth sciences/geology background myself and find it hard to view such small periods of time as being significiant.
It is noticeable that when criticized on any of these types of matters – for instance the heat buildup in deeper ocean waters he tends to avoid them and goes for the surface effects that he is familiar with. It has been obvious since AR2 or 3 that the biggest unknowns were in the way that the oceans were sopping up CO2 and heat, and the speed at which ice sheets could melt.
His obsessive focus on the lower joules involved in surface meteorology is the main reason he doesn’t get listened to that much. He is piddling around looking at minor variations in heat storage while completely ignoring the larger repositories.
Lynn
A bit earlier I called in and got a 404. Then I got a 522 . cloudflare. Now after a break, I have called in to TS again and my page is different with much underlining and brilliant blue caps. So wonder if it’s cloudflare response (on Opera browser) that results in untamed lines/links going across the page.
Phil O’Reilly and Jay Timmons pimp for the TPP deal, along with the NZ Herald, by posting this.
If you read the comments below ( and see the like ratings for each) it clear that their views are not representative of the people’s who read the paper. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11135785
Jay Timmons is president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the largest manufacturing association in the United States representing small and large manufacturers in every industrial sector. He became NAM president in January 2011.
Phil O’Reilly is Chief Executive of Business NZ, New Zealand’s largest business advocacy group, representing thousands of businesses of all sizes.
The TPP is a corporate takeover bid. It is to allow companies to roam the world to find the cheapest places to manufacture their goods and sell them wherever and whenever they wish, to the detriment of workers and local businesses alike. Whoever or whatever gets damaged in the process will not be their concern or responsibility. Under the TPP no one will be able to tell them what to do.
At this point I don’t really trust anything the police say about the case.
In the balance of probabilities, I think David probably did it, but because the police monumentally cocked up the investigation, we’re never going to know for sure.
Isn’t it time to stop this ever-increasing testing cabal, which puts our children, and their enthusiastic and devoted teachers, into these untenable situations? Can we remain compliant when our children and our teachers are judged by performance on such abominations parading (and being paid for) as “assessments?” Is this how we want our children, and our teachers, to spend the precious hours they have together in our schools? When does this situation become untenable enough for us to stand up, together, on their behalf?
DTB
Aldous Huxley touched on demhumanisaion in Brave New World (632AF – After Ford) in the use of factory production, assembly line approach to human handling by those with powers of coercion over society. Use business practices to manage people as in Lean method below.
Lean manufacturing, lean enterprise, or lean production, often simply, “Lean”, is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Working from the perspective of the customer who consumes a product or service, “value” is defined as any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing
From a film on George Orwell a sombre note. The Final Warning.
This was talking about his book 1984. In the film he said it was quite good but affected by him suffering from tuberculosis as he wrote it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXm5hklbBsA
He said something like – this is the direction the world is going in – people will feel only fear, rage, self-abasement.. no sexual feelings – no loyalty except to the Party but always the intoxication of power, the thrill of trampling on others – imagine a boot on someone’s head. The moral is don’t let it happen. It depends on you.
Let me tell you in all honesty, the NZ legal system is one of the worst, and most flawed in the “developed” world, and I had my experiences with it.
It is dysfunctional in many ways, and bias, prejudice and even refusal of allowing “justice” is a regular occurence. It is only due to the wide populace not having any legal understanding and experience that the courts and so get away with what they do here.
I challenge the judiciary and government here, and I claim that justice is a “foreign” and perverted concept in too many a cases.
New Zealand is in regards to law, and justice, particularly natural justice, one of the worst performing countries there are.
It is a disgrace what goes on here, and the denial to justice, with legal aid cut to the minimum, with lawyers not even looking at cases that do not “pay” more than costs, with courts having even JPs make determinations, and so many other flaws, New Zealand is a disgrace, for sure.
No wonder then, that so many get convicted, locked up, punished, even for what they never did, and get stigmatised for the rest of their lives. Nothing more destructive than the NZ justice system comes to my mind, it is a total shambles.
An interesting poll that may or may not have been skewed by a third of those being polled being General Roll voters as opposed to those voting on the Maori Roll,
The 2011 result had the Mana Party’s Annette Sykes 1000 votes behind Te Ururoa Flavell, the Ikaroa-Rawhiti by-election had the Mana Party candidate ahead of the Maori Party on the day,
Ever the optimist i expect Waiariki to be won by Mana in 2014…
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
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 ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
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. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University Shutterstock Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem ...
Analysis - A poll showing the opposition is more popular than the government raises questions, politicians go through their 'trial by pay rise' and a Green MP loses her cool in the debating chamber. ...
The entire stretch of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast will be subject to a joint customary marine title for two hapū, and extending up to four miles out to sea. A High Court judge has found the two groups, who during the case settled a dispute over boundaries for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University A longstanding feud between TikTok and Universal Music Group seems to have finally reached an end, with both parties signing a deal that will see Universal-backed music returned to the social media ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney After several highly publicised alleged murders of women in Australia, the Albanese government this week pledged more than A$925 million over five years ...
Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Bruno Scramgnon/Pexels All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang’e 6 ...
National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel. The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23. That was the ...
Pacific Media Watch New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3. This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Political Historian and Administrator Officer, Australian Historical Association, Australian National University Australia has had its fair share of public record-keeping controversies in recent years. Some have been mere farce, as in the case of two formerly government-owned filing cabinets (containing ...
Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), a United Nations-affiliated organization dedicated to fostering peace through civilian-led initiatives, has issued a statement in response to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. ...
A poem by Tessa Keenan, from AUP New Poets 10. Mātou These days we are a photograph; one of a farm strewn with cows that used to be bright harakeke or swamp. The kids point at it and say the sun sits behind a smudge (left by someone at Christmas); ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, $25)The masterful Irish writer ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. Key facts Marriages and civil unions In ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lennon Y.C. Chang, Associate Professor of Cyber Risk and Policy, Deakin University Taiwan stands out as a beacon of democracy, innovation and resilience in an increasingly autocratic region. But this is under growing threat. In recent years, China has used a variety ...
In this excerpt from her new memoir, Dame Susan Devoy remembers her turn as star contestant on the 2022 season of Celebrity Treasure Island. The most anxious time of every day was pre-elimination, when you knew this could be your final day on the show. I felt such contradictory emotions, ...
A week that began in triumph ended in an all-too-familiar disaster for the Green Party. Duncan Greive asks if there’s something in the mission that breaks its best and brightest. A long, strange week for the Green party began with a fantastic poll result. On one level this is hardly ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Vanuatu’s former prime minister and opposition MP Ishmael Kalsakau has stepped down — just two days after he confirmed he was the rightful opposition leader. Kalsakau, MP for Port Vila, confirmed to ABC’s Pacific Beat, and the Vanuatu Daily Post on Thursday that he ...
What’s to blame for the coalition’s choppy start? Six months in, and the mojo meter is in the doldrums. A new poll would put National out of power and sees its leader, Chris Luxon, sliding in popularity. How much is it about policy, how much coalition management and a perception ...
The striking report goes far beyond the proposed repeal of the Oranga Tamariki Act’s Treaty of Waitangi provision, and its impact should be felt far beyond the unique circumstances of the claim it addresses. Earlier this week, the Waitangi Tribunal released an interim report on the government’s proposed repeal of ...
The world has been experiencing a productivity slowdown, from which New Zealand has not been exempt. COVID-19 temporarily boosted labour productivity, but more recently, productivity has retreated. The overall trend since 2007 has been one of slow productivity ...
What’s more wasteful than spending $315k on syrup and machine maintenance? Trying to drum up a controversy about it.Cast your mind back to the pre-pandemic idylls of 2019. A “rat” was a disgusting rodent and not a self-administered plague test; the sixth Labour government was in power; and the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Professor of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Monash University Ken stocker/Shutterstock In the wake of numerous killings of women allegedly by men’s violence in 2024, thousands of Australians have joined rallies across the country to demand action ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Henry Cutler, Professor and Director, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University Oleg Ivanov IL/Shutterstock Waiting times for public hospital elective surgery have been in the news ahead of this year’s federal budget. That’s the type of non-emergency surgery ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Konstantine Panegyres, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne Amna Artist/Shutterstock One of the earliest descriptions of someone with cancer comes from the fourth century BC. Satyrus, tyrant of the city of Heracleia on the Black Sea, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Rose, Professor of Sustainable Future Transport, University of Sydney LanaElcova/Shutterstock Electric vehicles are often seen as the panacea to cutting emissions – and air pollution – from transport. Is this view correct? Yes – but only once uptake accelerates. Despite the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giselle Natassia Woodley, Researcher and Phd Candidate, Edith Cowan University There is widespread agreement Australia needs to do better when it comes to gender-based violence. Anger and frustration at the numbers of women being killed saw national rallies over the weekend and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Graham, Lecturer in Economics, University of Sydney Mark and Anna Photography/Shutterstock As home ownership moves further out of reach for many Australians, “rentvesting” is being touted as a lifesaver. Rentvesting is the practice of renting one property to live ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sukhmani Khorana, Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, UNSW Sydney Netflix The new season of Heartbreak High is garnering mixed reviews. Critics are writing about the racy story lines, comparing it to other coming-of-age series about teenage relationships and ...
Bob Carr intends to launch legal action against Winston Peters and Julie Anne Genter is facing a second allegation of bullying. Both sucked the air out of an announcement on education, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in ...
In 1995, Sally Clark went out on her own in a bold and unorthodox attempt to join an illustrious group of equestrian riders conquering the world. In the days of glovebox road maps, brick cell phones, and the hit song How Bizarre, Clark refused to follow Sir Mark Todd, Blyth ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Beaglehole, Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago niphon/Getty Images The number of people accessing medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in Aotearoa New Zealand increased significantly between 2006 and 2022. But the disorder is still under-diagnosed and ...
To celebrate the start of New Zealand music month, we look back at the best local tuneage that managed to weasel its way into Hollywood productions. There’s nothing quite like the thrilling zap of recognition when New Zealand weasels its way into a glamorous Hollywood production. Crack open a Tui ...
People trust other people more than institutions. So how can the media gain that trust through journalists without losing what’s important about the institution? Anna Rawhiti-Connell reflects on two years of curating the news for The Bulletin.Amonth ago, armed cops descended on my neighbourhood as calls to “lock your ...
Opinion: PFAS – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – are a class of thousands of man-made chemicals used widely in everyday consumer items such as textiles, packaging, and cookware, popular for their water, grease and stain-repellent properties. However, the very properties that make PFAS so attractive to manufacturers are also what ...
NONFICTION 1 The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)’ This is the hottest book in New Zealand, number one with a bullet in its first week, selling more than any overseas title, and demand is so huge that it’s already been reprinted. A ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Friday 3 May appeared first on Newsroom. ...
A warning – suicide is discussed in this podcast New Zealand’s own long-running soap Shortland Street doesn’t hesitate to kill off its much-loved characters. But would TVNZ dare to kill off our favourite soap? That’s the fear as times get tough in television – even though it’s been pointed out ...
Essay: If the Crown harms children, how do you hold it accountable? Analysis by Aaron Smale in light of the Waitangi Tribunal court decision. The post The Crown versus Māori Children appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Asia Pacific Report A West Papuan resistance leader has condemned the United Nations role in allowing Indonesia to “integrate” the Melanesian Pacific region in what is claimed to be an “egregious act of inhumanity” on 1 May 1963. In an open letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Organisasi Papua Merdeka-OPM ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra A key part of the Albanese government’s political strategy is to fill the news cycle with its presence and messaging. Ministers are deployed to the maximum, even when they’ve little to say. This week ...
Recent extreme weather events showed the importance of a well-functioning insurance system, says Commerce and Consumer Affairs minister Andrew Bayly. ...
By Jo Moir, RNZ News political editor, and Craig McCulloch, deputy political editor New Zealand’s Labour Party is demanding Winston Peters be stood down as Foreign Minister for opening up the government to legal action over his “totally unacceptable” attack on a prominent AUKUS critic. In an interview on RNZ’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christian Brakenridge, Postdoctoral research fellow at Swinburne University, Centre for Urban Transitions, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute The Conversation, Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock People have a pretty intuitive sense of what is healthy – standing is better than sitting, exercise is great for overall ...
The Wellington-based Reserve Force soldier is now almost three years into his New Zealand Army career with 5th/7th Battalion, Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment. ...
Coal in the crosshairs
As sharp differences between the Greens and Labour open up over coal, some of the arguments raised here in this debate carry strange echoes of the US political debate over coal.
[lprent: 12 week ban as per my warning yesterday for not indicating that you have searched for parties policies. The first paragraph has no supporting links. Even a cursory look at this early phase shows that they seem to have policies that look remarkably the same.
A further 12 weeks for leaving comments on my posts this morning.
You were warned. Set the return date as April 1 as being appropiate ]
“As sharp differences between the Greens and Labour open up over coal …”
Say what? My understanding is that both parties have nearly identical positions on coal, which boil down to ‘it’s not good for the environment, but it’s good for jobs in the provinces, so an eventual wind down of the industry is the best long term plan’. Or summat like that.
Both parties oppose the partial privatisation by stealth of Solid Energy which was announced last week. Perhaps you could explain what you perceive the sharp differences to be?
Classic Jenny tr0lling. Nice answer TRP, but did you really have to ask the question at the end? Do you think that the question will (a) elicit a thoughtful reponse with references to actual L/GP policy and reality and thus invoke an interesting and educative discussion, or (b) elicit a response that is a mix of misinformation and personal attack that will invoke a thread of frustrated and somewhat chaotic rebuttal and increasing hostility towards Jenny?
(I think that someone else will most likely respond to your post and examine the differences and similarities between the two policies. Maybe we could focus on that? Small hope I know, but still…)
So what are you saying TRP?
Are you saying, that though they both disagree on the partial privatisation of Solid Energy that there is no difference between the two parties on the actual bail out?
That leads to the next obvious question; What do they agree on, in relation to the bailout itself if they are both in agreement on it?
Are both Labour and the Greens in support of the bail out?
Or;
Are both Labour and the Greens in opposition to the bail out?
I am sure the members of both parties and indeed the voting public at large are dying to know.
““As sharp differences between the Greens and Labour open up over coal …””
Have you gotta link to prove this blatant misinformation.
Because they seem to be almost the same to me
https://www.greens.org.nz/press-releases/green-party-launches-clean-energy-proposals
http://www.labour.org.nz/nz-power
[lprent: Thanks. I didn’t have time to look at that earlier. ]
Really Dave? Really…..?
But all joking aside;
I have talked to Greens Party members. They all assure me that the Green Party are vehemently opposed to the new huge Open Cast Coal Mine proposed for the Denniston Plateau. I have spoken to Labour Party people who assure me just as vehemently that Labour are for the open cast coal mine at Denniston.
This is one sharp difference over coal between the Greens and Labour.
(I am afraid Dave I can’t provide links to my private conversations to prove, or disprove this ‘blatant (mis)-information’. Nor is it easy to pin down the politicians, just like Democratic Candidate for governor of Virginia, Terry McCauliffe who refused to be drawn on the issue of coal until he was pressed.)
[deleted]
[lprent: And as final point before you go into auto-spam. Even if that was true for all MEMBERS (which it isn’t) then the opinions of Green and Labour members are not what is Green or Labour PARTY policies. Both parties have some quite robust policy making procedures and have written policies. Party policies are what you claimed were in conflict up above – but offered no indication that you’d even read them.
If you’d taken the time to investigate, you’d have found that while there are differences on coal mining, they are to do with the timing of phasing out different parts of the sector. But to do that you’d have had to have read the policies rather than simply lying about them.
While you may have your heart in the right place, you are merely a pain around the comments sections of this site simply because you don’t bother to actually search, read and link. None of these things are hard to do. You should use your time away to learn how to do those things so you don’t just sound like someone shouting nonsense repeatably. ]
Geo-engineering research financed by the CIA. Funny trails that don’t disappear in the sky and hey, I just felt like throwing a stick in the chicken coop! Good morning everybody!
You do realise those “Funny trails that don’t disappear in the sky” have been noticed and understood since the second world war, right?
Silly, that was “chem-trails”. Now that they’ve been re-named “geo-engineering” they’re something completely different and we have to start understanding them all over again.
Hun, I understand that it is difficult to understand but cold temperatures cool down hot water molecules causing the condensation you are thinking about real quick making the con trails disappear relatively quick. That is science. So when a trail hangs between 6 and 14 hours you are definitely not talking about condensation. I know that is hard to get your little brain around but there you have it.
Why would they disappear “relatively quick”?
They condense (hence “condensation”) into droplets that sometimes even freeze.
If the ambient temperatures are hotter or drier the droplets evaporate before they freeze, and disappear. But a contrail hanging around is no more ominous than a cloud hanging around.
That’ll be sylphs in action.
/
http://www.whale.to/b/sylph_in_action.html
Wow, you know what people think now, Ev. That’s so kool! And apparently they’re thinking about making strawman arguments that you can effortlessly demolish. Suh-weet!
(Note to self, must buy more tinfoil, Ev’s on to us.)
No, that happens to be bullshit. It’s not even worth the appellation pseudo-science.
So called persistent contrails have been around and understood since the 1940’s. They are nothing new and not mysterious at all.
http://contrailscience.com/clouds-before-planes-cloud-studies-1905/
ev, if you want to get rid of chemtrails in your neighborhood, just follow the helpful demonstration in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsdeAF_Prfo
Why oh why is the msm suppressing this information?!?!?!?!?
I will buy some vinegar tomorrow!
I want to draw your attention to the submissions closing October 10 for the Social Security Fraud Measures and Debt Recovery Amendment.
There is one particularly concerning piece of information hidden in the explanatory note for
s86 (1BA) which states:
“must otherwise determine from time to time the rate of recovery and method or methods of recovery to be used and, in doing so, is not required to have regard to relevant considerations (for example, adequacy of living standards”
The danger here is that courts will look to the explanatory note for guidance, although this doesn’t form part of the legislation itself. If you disagree with this there is still time to make a short submission
http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/pb/sc/make-submission/50SCSS_SCF_00DBHOH_BILL12009_1/social-security-fraud-measures-and-debt-recovery-amendment
in otherwords, it doesnt matter if they cant repay it we will order a big amount anyway?
Apologies if this has already been posted – but received through my inbox over the weekend –
October 22nd in Auckland – Launch of the latest report from Child Poverty Action Group “Benefit sanctions: creating an invisible underclass of children?”. Register here for the event or to order a hardcopy for $10.
2013 local elections have to be a new low, investigations need to be held (certain candidate profiles not in booklet–Auckland, packs not delivered to voters, even to one Auckland MP, bogus offers to uplift and mail residents papers for them, papers stolen from letter boxes, appalling return rates generally). Plus NZ Post has chosen October 7 to go to a delivery “target” of 1-3 day delivery of mail rather than next day. Thanks NZ Post. http://www.nzpost.co.nz/home/sending-within-nz/letters-documents/standard-post
Take the Far North for instance in terms of some of the problems.
https://www.facebook.com/RuebenForTeTaitokerau?hc_location=stream
Time for online voting as a companion to postal. The latest ‘senseless’ aka Cenus seemed to handle online ok so it is time.
Better to have a voting day, with people going to polling booths, making it an event that gets a lot of publicity.
I don’t know about that. Here in Dunedin with something like 8 candidates for mayor, over 30 for council, an STV system, plus the DHB and regional council, it took me a good hour or so to select the candidates I wanted to vote for and rank them in a suitable order. Doing that in a booth would be time consuming, and impossible without at least consulting some reference material. Democracy is important to me, so I felt committed to voting, but I refuse to believe that this is global best practice. There must be a model somewhere in the world that encourages participation more than the one we use in NZ.
That said, I would be cautious when it comes to online voting and appropriate levels of security.
Why is this article written as though this is a surprise?
” The pay between the pay of top chief executives and the staff they manage appears to be growing.
In the latest Fairfax annual survey of pay rates at listed companies, the average pay of CEOs in 2012 was 26.4 times that of the average employee in the same companies. That’s up from a multiple of 22.5 times in 2011. ”
It also suggests that while employees are being told they are hard economic times so hence no pay rises….
Fairfax reports on a study into poor standards of Fairfax and APN reporting of sexual violence crimes and rape. A light at the end of the tunnel?
I couldn’t find the article on the Wellintonian (fairfax)site despite all the other articles of that edition of the paper being there, so have had to link the entire Wellingtonian newspaper. p.22.
http://thewellingtonian.realviewdigital.com/#folio=22
Some reasoned and practical comments on voting procedures for the local body elections.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/election-2013/9237340/Have-you-voted-in-the-local-body-elections-yet
Also on Radionz –
The president of Local Government New Zealand is calling for a review of how local elections are carried out as councils around the country report poor returns of voting papers.
Lawrence Yule told Morning Report the postal voting system is part of the problem, as people leave the forms around the house and never return them.
A record low turnout is being predicted for Saturday’s local government elections.
I’m getting confused who said what but this is how I remember comments –
He supports a return to polling booths in combination with electronic voting.
He says don’t think on line will change for the better and suggests booths on the day.
( I suggest that councils organise a local democracy festival with buskers and balloons. Get some interest in it by showing support for it, bring people to town for the fun spot by the booths!
Bring the circuses, not the bread as that would be a personal bribe).
He reports voting papers languishing at home. Check.
Getting forgotten. Check.
I have now sat down and gone through the councillors to try and choose 14. Often from a list of people I don’t know. For those, I have to rely on judgment and prejudice!
Never ever bring in preferences and demands for choice for each seat. I don’t want to be forced to indicate preferences for all the available places for Council. I can manage doing something different for the hospital though we have an extended area, and there is no ward system so I should look at people from the whole region.
Voting for this number takes time, and you know that it is just a guess as to best with some votes. But that doesn’t mean that I want it ripped away from me, and only have one character to vote for, or give up my vote to some group to decide, which is what we’ll be offered soon.
And the bio detail for the candidates is pretty empty, not enough information as to what people have been doing all their lives.
And councils need to encourage more participation by having an element of fun – just a spoonful of sugar and the councillors’ names go down – on the page! Our mayor and councillors were meeting and greeting at a local supermarket. But let’s have a morning of fun at the voting spot.
Which is why we should be voting directly on policies rather than representatives. That way we’ll actually get what we want rather than what a few people put into dictatorial positions want.
“to fill life to the brim is to invite omens”.
Rogue T
That’s a good one. With you around I’ll never get Alzheimers as my synapses spark and race around trying to get whatever subtlety you’ve put up.
How many of you are aware of THIS?
“Auckland Council Group’s PRIMARY objective is to provide social services for social benefit rather than making a financial return.”
SO – WHY ARE SO MANY OF THESE SOCIAL SERVICES THEN CONTRACTED OUT TO THE PROFIT-MAKING PRIVATE SECTOR
– WHOSE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE IS ‘MAKING A FINANCIAL RETURN’???
DUH?
http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/planspoliciesprojects/reports/annual_report/Documents/annualreport20122013volume3.pdf
NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
1 GENERAL INFORMATION
Auckland Council (‘the council’) is a local authority domiciled in New Zealand and governed by the Local Government Act 2002 (‘LGA 2002’) and the Local Government (Auckland) Act 2009 (‘LGAA 2009’).
The council’s principal address is 1 Greys Avenue, Auckland Central, New Zealand.The Auckland Council Group (‘the group’) consists of the ultimate parent, the council and its subsidiaries, associates and jointly controlled entities including council-controlled organisations (‘CCOs’).
All subsidiaries and associates are domiciled in New Zealand. Refer to the investment in other entities note for a list of significant group entities.
The primary objective of the group is to provide services to the Auckland community for social benefit rather than making a financial return.
Accordingly, the council has designated itself and the group as public benefit entities for the purposes of the New Zealand equivalents to International
Financial Reporting Standards (‘NZ IFRS’).
The financial statements are for the year ended 30 June 2013 and were authorised for issue by the council’s governing body on 26 September 2013.
The entities listed below are referred to within these financial statements as follows:
BASIS OF PREPARATION
Statement of compliance
These financial statements are prepared in accordance with New Zealand Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (‘NZ GAAP’), the LGA 2002 and the LGAA 2009. They comply with NZ IFRS and other applicable financial reporting standards, as appropriate for public benefit entities.
Basis of measurement
The financial statements have been prepared on a historical cost basis, with the exception of certain items identified in specific accounting policies. They are presented in New Zealand dollars
(‘NZD’) which is the group’s functional currency and are rounded to the nearest million, unless otherwise stated. All items in the financial statements are stated exclusive of Goods and Services
Tax (‘GST’), except for receivables and payables, which include GST invoiced.
Abbreviation
ACIL
ACPL
A T
ATEED
PoAL
RFA
Watercare
AWDA
Auckland Airport
Entity name
Auckland International Airport Limited
Auckland Waterfront Development Agency Limited
Auckland Council Investments Limited
Auckland Transport
Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development Limited
Ports of Auckland Limited
Regional Facilities Auckland __________
______________________________________________________________________________
Why are the Auckland Council Group’s ‘books’ NOT open?
Why, in the largest city of the supposedly ‘least corrupt country in the world’, are citizens and ratepayers NOT being given the ‘devilish detail’ of where exactly public monies are being spent, invested and borrowed?
http://www.transparency.org/cpi2012/results
Where’s the TRANSPARENCY?
How can you have ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’ if there are not proper written records?
Which other Auckland Mayoral candidates (or mainstream media) are asking these HARD questions?
Which other Auckland Mayoral candidates have an ACTION PLAN for genuine transparency?
http://www.pennybright4mayor.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ANTI-CORRUPTION-WHITE-COLLAR-CRIME-CORPORATE-WELFARE-ACTION-PLAN-Ak-Mayoral-campaign-19-July-2013-2.pdf
Penny Bright
SO – WHY ARE SO MANY OF THESE SOCIAL SERVICES THEN CONTRACTED OUT TO THE PROFIT-MAKING PRIVATE SECTOR
Because governments are shit at running things.
No, because some people can see this as a way to make easy money.
+1
Because we have social engineering Nazis at work all over the place, and they have their agencies, to make a profit, and they love to lick the bum of local and central government, they are anyway mates in the games, so they get the damned contracts, and do the “dirty work” for the top Nazis ruling from Wellington!
Wrong. Governments are usually better at running things and they cost less. The only reason why we got the myth that the private sector is better is because some rich bludgers wanted a government guaranteed income.
John Minto, eh? Well, that settles the argument. When you add to that the wonderful motor vehicles British Leyland makes so profitably and how profitable the BNZ was when it was government-owned the evidence is overwhelming.
Going to Roxburgh in the next few months? They need good cherry-pickers…
TGFFKSO – John Minto is not my best hero, but he deserves a lot more respect than you would even dare to give him, and he is more genuine than your dollar bill licking mates and matesses, that you will fall to your knees for!
As for the banks, let us follow the history and what transpires, as you seem to have slept through the GFC.
Have another bikkie, to keep the sugar level high, as that will keep you stimulated. It does not seem to be rational thinking and information that gives you any kicks.
There’s actually quite a lot of research coming out that shows that private businesses do public service far worse than the government.
BTW, it’s not John Minto saying:
It’s the council that’s done Due Diligence rather than keeping on with ideological myths.
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/seven-too-young-decide-stop-puberty-5605446
T_T
I love how the opposition to Jason taking puberty blockers seem to think at 7 he’s total incapable of knowing his own gender, as if gender identity were a fluid thing.
sigh
http://planetransgender.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/nathan-verhelst-belgian-transgender-man.html
One person has a bad experience ergo all people will have an identical experience! Also, surgery and hormone treatment have identical effects and reversability! *headdesk*
THIS
Puberty blockers are reversible, the body shape issues caused by puberty? Not without significant surgery, or without potential fun from gender dysphoria…
Kiaora Nick
Are you suggesting that at seven years of age, humans, generally, have the capacity to fully understand the complexity that is gender. It must be a cultural thing, because at seven, I couldn’t even spell the word.
Although now that I think about it, some kid wanted to show me his penis for a penny (I say penny only because the word goes nicely with penis and in no way indicates my age). I didn’t have a penny therefore never got to understand the complexity of gender until much older. And by then I was like – is that it?
🙄
Elder things save me from people who can’t fucking think, let alone do some basic fucking research…
Dear Nick
You are becoming even more incomprehensible. And stop with your continuing efforts to prove that you are a brainy fuckhead. These efforts simply reinforce the fuckhead aspect of your personality.
Your scientific approach to all things human limits your capacity to see other possibilities. I know gender exists on a continuum, and it is fluid. How can a child understand that which even you fail to comprehend?
you couldn’t understand it at seven, so no child can?
From my perspective it’s between the child, their parents and their doctors. Unless you know better, of course.
Kiaora McFlock,
What were you doing at seven? Were you playing with your gender, or a proper ball?
Well, I knew I was pretty much like all the other boys.
Apparently some other kids don’t have that sense. Not a huge proportion, maybe, but who am I to second-guess them, their parents, or their doctors? I have no idea about what they feel or what the people closet to them have considered. Neither do you.
Assuming that all kids are like you or I was as a seven year old (decades ago, in my case, long before vibrators in supermarkets) perhaps “limits your capacity to see other possibilities”.
Adele, I disagree with your assumptions. I’m pretty sure I felt at odds with conventional gender expectations by the time I was seven – probably earlier.
And from when I was a a teacher and studied child development, as I recall children know their gender by about 5 years old. Gender differentiation is very basic in most (if not) all cultures.
It’s certainly very basic to our society. People start talking to children on the basis of their biological sex as soon as they are born – adjust their language and ways of interacting with a baby o the basis of whether the child is perceived to be a boy or girl.
By the time children go to school, they know whether they should go to the boy’s or girl’s toilet.
A brief over view of the stages of gender awareness that children go through – matches with my memory of child development when I studied it.
Karol i read into Adele’s comments that at that age we all know boys are boys and girls are girls, but, at that age we don’t have any understanding of the other complexities involved in gender issues…
Well, I do think it may be more debatable as to whether a 7 year old can make major decisions about their future, and understand the full implications of their decisions.
But, looking back on my life, I am amazed that so many of my directions in life have pretty much been in keeping with my desires for my future at a very young age.
I was certain, for instance, at a very young age that I never wanted to get married. I got into a disagreement about that with some adult friends of my parents. I kept saying that I wouldn’t marry. They kept laughing and saying I’d change my mind when I got older. In the end I just shut up and thought, “You’ll see”. And, I never have had a desire to get married in the course of my life.
Same goes for the kinds of jobs I’ve done, and my kind of anti-materialistic lifestyle.
But I don’t think I have fully understood the complexity of life decisions I made in my teens, twenties and even thirties or more. That understanding can only come with experience and often after the decisions are made and the consequences play out.
Lolz, the levels of function and dysfunction exhibited by both my parents circa my 7-12 year life certainly had a lot to do with my later choices in life but gender, and the fact that there were ‘others’ didn’t register until some time in my teens,(perhaps a slow learner)…
bad, I think gender may not be an issue for children unless they are at odds with the expectations and consequences of the assigned roles.
I was certainly very aware of it from a young age. Partly because my “tomboy” ways didn’t fit expectations, and often got comment. I was also aware from a very young age that being a girl had secondary status in society in many ways, and tended to exclude me from some things I wanted to do, or mean I was expected to do others I didn’t want to do.
It was something I consciously thought about from a very young (pre-puberty) age.
PS: the 50s were very much more gender segregated than today.
There’s also the issue with cis individuals having the privilege of not having gender dysphoria, so we don’t have a drive to examine our gender identity in childhood unless $fun happens.
Unimpressed Nick is unimpressed.
Science only closes off things which lack empirical evidence and more often that not open more questions.
In the case of gender identity we have the better part of 60 years of stuff dating from the mistakes made with children with intersex conditions, in which the state of the genitalia was not a 1:1 match to the child’s gender identity and now parents of intersex kids usually let them make there own choice vis gender identity. Combine this with transgender stuff and and critical examination of gender roles vs gender identity (they’re not one in same, bar reproduction) and it’s a pretty obvious inference to make that gender identity is to some extent hardwired in the brain and links to the brains body image map. How though is not fully understood, but that’s neurology for you, a complex, messy emergent system…
Is gender identity going to fluid for some people? To anyone with a good understanding of biological variation the answer is obviously yes, but from the above stuff, we also know that there’s also individuals with very clear, fixed self-knowledge of their gender identity.
Is Jason one of these people? Admittedly the details are scarce, but given the details so far, they’ve been sure in their gender identity since the age of 3 and has had 4 years to work it out. And given other accounts from transexuals and third sex people, I’d then model it highly likely Jason is not going to alter his gender identity on exposure to either male or female hormone profiles.
Furthermore, puberty blockers are reversible, and the initial phases of male puberty are somewhat more reversible than female puberty if on exposure to androgen therapy Jason’s gender identity shifts.
There’s also the fact that to get puberty blockers, the family has to go through a psych eval…
Now, going away from gender identity, my exposure to history and philosophy of science (warts n all), my own fun with depression (and other bits), knowledge of the flaws of human cognition, scepticism readings and being embedded within the humanist project leads me to know how powerful science is as a tool, and how science can be a useful source of hard facts on which to iterate ethical frameworks off and avoid costly (for humane values) mistakes. Scientific knowledge of how depression alters my thinking and how antidepressants work, plus the tools to detect side effects is one of the tools I’ve used to stop myself from committing suicide*. But also that science is not the be all and end all, that there’s a rich [space] of ecological interactions vis human culture from which emerges so much richness.
So yeah, it should be fairly easy for anyone with a functioning theory of mind to work out why I’m a science bastard and somewhat annoyed with those who don’t bother to do some critical thinking.
More so though when I’m running into stuff like this: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/10/06/more-formulaic-bullshit-from-thunderf00t/
___________________________________________
*rest are tied into an ethical framework that uses euthanasia rational from Singer, tested to it’s limits in 2012 by chronic suicidal ideation.
“I love how the opposition to Jason taking puberty blockers seem to think at 7 he’s total incapable of knowing his own gender, as if gender identity were a fluid thing.”
I’ll have a better read tomorrow, but on first look through, they’re saying a 7 yr old is not capable of understanding the implications of the decisions being made. I’d have to agree with that.
I’m also uncomfortable with the idea that all transgender kids will be traumatised by going through puberty unassisted by pharmaceuticals, which seems to be the implication.
btw, what are the risks and side-effects of puberty blockers? Long term as well as short term. And when it’s stated that puberty blocking is reversible, what does that mean in terms of risk and side-effects? At what stage?
Google “gender dysphoria”.
For some it’s not to bad, but usually it’s rather painful and so ethically preventing it comes across as a good idea.
As for side effects – depends on the particular drug used, but usually side effects are not significant enough to preclude their use, with the main one being osteoporosis.
And once the drug is stopped, normal hormone release resumes 😛
Thanks Nick, I know what gender dysphoria is. I just thought there was this idea (in the article) that the only valid response to that was puberty blocking. Which I’m having difficulty believing.
“And once the drug is stopped, normal hormone release resumes”
Kind of like women on HRT at menopause, who when they stop their menopause resumes. And we know know that the line that side effects are not significant enough to preclude their use is being disproved over time, that often there are significant negative health effects that outweigh the value of delaying menopause. I’m willing to bet that the amount of knowledge about puberty blocking and its long term effects is pretty small at this stage, just like it was with HRT before enough women did it for long enough for the nasty shit to turn up in the research.
Which is why medical ethics shouldn’t be left to doctors alone 😉 Doubly, triply so when it comes to kids.
Plus, I’d love to see the research on puberty blocking and increases in environmental endocrine disruptors.
Actually they’ve been used for almost as long as HRT as they’re used to stop precocious puberty, along with treating people with sex hormone producing cancers. So far the ecological data points to far less side effects than HRT, with increased cancer risks only occurring with certain prostate cancers iirc.
Compared to hormonal contraceptives and the various industrial organic endocrine disruptors, these would be a drop in the ocean.
And yes, GD is rather intractable to therapy (i.e you can give people tools for dealing with it, but not reducing it or removing it) as it’s a body-map issue, and the “wait and see” approach often puts trans people in puberty through suicidal ideation, self-harming and other not fun stuff. Thus it’s not a hard ethical problem to advocate for puberty blockers.
If they are 95% certain, why cherry pick data?
Guest essay by Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, Professor of Geology, Western Washington University
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/03/the-2013-ipcc-ar5-report-facts-vs-fictions/
My favourite quote: “As MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen stated, “The latest IPCC report has truly sunk to the level of hilarious incoherence—it is quite amazing to see the contortions the IPCC has to go through in order to keep the international climate agenda going.””
Welcome to the deniers alternate reality.
Close, welcome back to reality, the one prior to Enron setting up a Carbon Trading scam, then funding the ‘science’ keep the scam running.
80% of reports by Murdoch owned media outlets are anti climate change theory. Interesting…
“New research out of the US has provided evidence of the “misleading” reporting of climate change by News Corporation. The report, Is News Corp. Failing Science, written by the Union of Concerned Scientists, looked into representations of climate change at Fox News and The Wall Street Journal over a period of six and 12 months respectively.
In their study, stories were investigated and rated “accurate” or “misleading”. Misleading pieces were defined as those that:
• Had a broad dismissal of the scientific evidence that climate change is occurring and is largely due to human activities
• Disparaged climate scientists generally or specifically
• Disparaged or mocked climate science as a body of knowledge
• Cherry-picked individual facts or findings to question overall climate science conclusions
• Engaged in debates or conversations in which misleading claims drowned out accurate ones.
Out of 40 mentions of climate change on Fox News, 37 were determined to be misleading, or 93% of stories. The reporting in The Wall Street Journal (researchers looked at the opinion section) was slightly more accurate; 81% of stories were considered misleading. Disparaging the basic fundamentals of the science was the most common approach at both outlets.
This finding brings into stark reality the challenge climate scientists and activists have when it comes to the issue being reported in the media. “
And yet it is okay for the IPCC to do the same? Seems like both sides are playing the propoganda game……..
Just out of interest, who conducted the “New research out of the US”?
[lprent: Let me give you a hint oh moronic wonder. Type “Is News Corp. Failing Science” with the quotes into google and the first item is the PDF. It has nothing to do with the IPCC. ]
Who conducted the “New research out of the US”?
Was it Al Gore by chance?
Also, this doesn’t change the fact that a scientist with a Doctorate in Climate Science, from the top rated University in the world believes the IPCC reporting has “truly sunk to the level of hilarious incoherence”, I thought the IPCC was all about the science? Aparently they are only about the science that fits their agenda.
[lprent: Gee, now the fuckwit is confusing science with a politician, and confusing a *single* dissident scientist with a crap reputation (I am assuming Judith Curry) as outweighing the large number of scientists with similar or better backgrounds who disagree with her.
Ok. Richard Lindzen is a bit better. He is however a meteorologist, and does not have a docorate in “Climate Science” (if you can’t understand the difference then that just indicates exactly how illiterate you are). But at least he understands maths and doesn’t gush over the maths of a economics prof doing climate science.
Just another moronic wanker too incapable to either spell or use google. ]
You are a man in denial
Bob, you’re welcome to believe what the Koch Brothers want you to believe.
But to those of us who:
a) take the work of the vast majority of independent Science as worth listening to
b) are concerned by the way we are altering our climate. (I presume you accept at least that we are destroying habitats around the world and wildlife),
…there are better things to do than debate the nonsense you are pedalling here.
Paul, I am concerned about our environment, not about our effect on the climate. I am also concerned about the effect the likes of the ETS have on our economy, look what it has done in Australia:
http://www.aigroup.com.au/portal/binary/com.epicentric.contentmanagement.servlet.ContentDeliveryServlet/LIVE_CONTENT/Publications/Reports/2013/Carbon_price_impacts_Jan_2013.pdf
Key points: In our survey of 485 businesses conducted at the end of November 2012, the carbon tax was estimated to have increased energy prices from 1 July by an average 14.5 per cent. This result was broadly consistent across sectors:
· Manufacturing businesses reported that their total energy input costs increased by an average of 14.5 per cent as a direct result of the carbon tax.
· For businesses in the services sector, the increase was reported at 13.6 per cent.
· Businesses in the construction sector reported that the carbon tax had increased their total energy costs by 14.8 per cent.
If the IPCC stopped trying to pull the wool over peoples eyes we could pull out of the ETS but leave the current tax system in place (exempting farms entirely). The funds raised from this scheme, we could put directly into enforcing clean waterway schemes such as planting native plants along the banks of rivers and streams, extensive water testing to find major polluters and targeting farmers that allow cattle to enter waterways, forcing them to fence their herds in or face large fines. The remainder of the money that is currently just being sent offshore from the ETS with no benefit to NZ’s environment, we could put towards larger subsidies for landlords installing solar panels into their properties with an aim to both reduce tenants power bills, but also in the longer term, looking to reduce the load on the power grid so the Huntley power station and all other non-renewable power stations can be wound down completely. These would have a tangible effect on the environment, the current ETS does not.
Simple question Bob, are humans profoundly affecting the world at the moment?
Yes, through air and water pollution along with stripping of land for farming/mining, NOT through Greenhouse gas emissions.
🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄
m’kay then, please show us evidence that CO2 does not retard the movement of heat through the atmosphere into space.
Feel free to actually cite some peer reviewed evidence that overthrows well known quantum behaviour of C=O bonds vis infrared photon absorption/emission, and which can be verified pretty easily in any well equipped physical chemistry lab. Behaviour which matches exactly the effects of CO2 on the atmosphere once you subtract warming from other gases and weather.
Not that you can, since such evidence doesn’t actually exist except in the ramblings of idiots who can’t do basic lab work or sanity check their equations…
No, you show me a linear relationship between CO2 concentrations and the ability of the atmosphere to hold heat. I do not deny that CO2 does trap SOME heat, there is just no evidence that CO2 causes enough of a rise in temperature to be of any significant worry based on current theory (unless you cherry pick data like the IPCC does).
The current theory shows increase in CO2 correlates to a rise in temperature (no direct correlation can be made, although IPCC report (AR4) described the likely range as between 2 and 4.5 degrees C, for double the amount of CO2 compared to pre-industrial levels) but as Dr. Richard Lindzen’s reasearch has shown, this temperature rise increases water vapour in the lower atmosphere, increasing cloud cover and providing negative feedback against further warming.
Also, higher CO2 levels lead to significantly higher crop yields (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0168192386900547) which will be required due to the continuing increase in human population.
Which would increase albedo enough to be detected by satellites over the last few decades. Lindzen’s models essentially predict this, although he wasn’t kind enough to actually provide tests for his theories in his theories. The required level of albedo wasn’t detected. Nor was the required increase in water vapour in the atmospheric column were detected where he predicted they should be. You’d expect a theorist to deal with the contrary evidence to their predictions.
Needless to say Lindzen hasn’t. At present his theorising has descended into conspiracy theories. But that is probably more to do with his association with the Heartland Institute and the financial benefits of being on the end of a oil fed benefit chain.
The alternate theory was that heat and CO2 was getting sucked deep into the extremely chilly oceans. This was what has been investigated over the last few decades as well. The models that used this as their precept predicted what should have been found. That was quite close to what was found (and some theorists are busy trying to figure out the variations now).
trololololololololol:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect
It’s easy to work out too, you just need a set of glass bell jars with the kit to make each jar’s CO2 concentration different (controlling for pressure of course), a heat source (heat lamps + rheostats basically) and thermometers.
The main cause of divergence is basically ocean heat absorption, with other, smaller effects from atmosphere stratification, air flow and water vapour. Which for all but ocean heat, before computer models, was worked out via hydrological modelling, for which the rates of warming they worked out are still good fits even today.
But hey, why bother with basic science when you can deny reality?
For the lurkers, this site has a ton of interesting info: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
lprent – And yet this mornic wanker as you so eloquently put it, is willing to listen to the authors of parts of the IPCC’s own reports, an author who states that the IPCC put political pressures on climate scientists to conform to what he has called climate alarmism.
Of course when he puts forward counter arguments against the IPCC’s findings, no-one wants to listen because the IPCC states that they are 95% certain http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/27/ipcc_ar5_wg1_teaser/ by their reasoning, I am 95% certain they have invested too much into Climate Change to let the theory fall over, can you imagine the class action law suit to reclaim taxation alone! No wonder they have started cooking the books.
Lindzen again? Who was a member of a team writing in one section of the AR3 report in the late 90’s.
He is pretty good (I’ve read some of his work), but appears to be have been fixated on clouds rather than the heat balances. He also tends to suffer the congenital problem of meteorologists in that they don’t work well over longer than decadal time scales. Personally I come from an earth sciences/geology background myself and find it hard to view such small periods of time as being significiant.
It is noticeable that when criticized on any of these types of matters – for instance the heat buildup in deeper ocean waters he tends to avoid them and goes for the surface effects that he is familiar with. It has been obvious since AR2 or 3 that the biggest unknowns were in the way that the oceans were sopping up CO2 and heat, and the speed at which ice sheets could melt.
His obsessive focus on the lower joules involved in surface meteorology is the main reason he doesn’t get listened to that much. He is piddling around looking at minor variations in heat storage while completely ignoring the larger repositories.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/42599_Oath_Keepers_Is_Going_Operational_by_Forming_Special_Civilization_Preservation_Teams/
Only in America…
Gotta find time to automate the response to whatever that database jamup is…
Lynn
A bit earlier I called in and got a 404. Then I got a 522 . cloudflare. Now after a break, I have called in to TS again and my page is different with much underlining and brilliant blue caps. So wonder if it’s cloudflare response (on Opera browser) that results in untamed lines/links going across the page.
FYI – in the interests of transparency…..
Questions I have asked today of Auckland Council arising from the Auckland Council Group 2012 – 2013 Annual Report
http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/planspoliciesprojects/reports/annual_report/Documents/annualreport20122013volume3.pdf
1) Who are the members of the Auckland Council Treasury Management Steering Group?
2) Who are members of the Council group which is supposed to monitor the activities of the Auckland Council Treasury Management Steering Group?
3) Where are the details that show EXACTLY :
a) Where Auckland Council Group (Auckland Council + CCOs) monies are invested?
ie: The names of the companies in which Auckland Council Group monies are invested, and the amounts?
b) From whom exactly Auckland Council Group is borrowing, what exact amounts and for what purpose?
c) With whom exactly has the Auckland Council Group arranged derivatives investment to cover interest rates and foreign exchange risk?
4) Did any of the previous 8 Councils have investments in derivatives prior to the Auckland Council amalgamation on 1 November 2010?
5) (New question) Did the Auckland Transition Agency enter into any derivatives investments? Please provide details.
Kind regards,
Penny Bright
…….
Clyde W. Barrow
(cool name).
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/9252970/Robin-Bain-print-theory-dismissed
Not that this’ll change anyones opinion but good on JC for not giving this murderer (Bain) any compensation…
Yes this does suggest the prints were planted?
Phil O’Reilly and Jay Timmons pimp for the TPP deal, along with the NZ Herald, by posting this.
If you read the comments below ( and see the like ratings for each) it clear that their views are not representative of the people’s who read the paper.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11135785
This might explain their enthusiasm.
Jay Timmons is president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the largest manufacturing association in the United States representing small and large manufacturers in every industrial sector. He became NAM president in January 2011.
Phil O’Reilly is Chief Executive of Business NZ, New Zealand’s largest business advocacy group, representing thousands of businesses of all sizes.
The TPP – It May be Free But It’s Not Fair
well then the marks on Robin Bain’s were not caused by the gun.
I suppose davids supporters will just brush this off also.
At this point I don’t really trust anything the police say about the case.
In the balance of probabilities, I think David probably did it, but because the police monumentally cocked up the investigation, we’re never going to know for sure.
A teacher’s troubling account of giving a 106-question standardized test to 11 year olds
DTB
Aldous Huxley touched on demhumanisaion in Brave New World (632AF – After Ford) in the use of factory production, assembly line approach to human handling by those with powers of coercion over society. Use business practices to manage people as in Lean method below.
Lean manufacturing, lean enterprise, or lean production, often simply, “Lean”, is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Working from the perspective of the customer who consumes a product or service, “value” is defined as any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay for.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing
From a film on George Orwell a sombre note. The Final Warning.
This was talking about his book 1984. In the film he said it was quite good but affected by him suffering from tuberculosis as he wrote it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXm5hklbBsA
He said something like – this is the direction the world is going in – people will feel only fear, rage, self-abasement.. no sexual feelings – no loyalty except to the Party but always the intoxication of power, the thrill of trampling on others – imagine a boot on someone’s head. The moral is don’t let it happen. It depends on you.
lundys’ murder convictions quashed..
..yet another ‘you beaut!’ for the nz justice system..eh..?
..phillip ure..
drugs are bad mmmmmmmkay
..pot ain’t..
..most others are..
..(especially the legal ones..)
phillip ure
Let me tell you in all honesty, the NZ legal system is one of the worst, and most flawed in the “developed” world, and I had my experiences with it.
It is dysfunctional in many ways, and bias, prejudice and even refusal of allowing “justice” is a regular occurence. It is only due to the wide populace not having any legal understanding and experience that the courts and so get away with what they do here.
I challenge the judiciary and government here, and I claim that justice is a “foreign” and perverted concept in too many a cases.
New Zealand is in regards to law, and justice, particularly natural justice, one of the worst performing countries there are.
It is a disgrace what goes on here, and the denial to justice, with legal aid cut to the minimum, with lawyers not even looking at cases that do not “pay” more than costs, with courts having even JPs make determinations, and so many other flaws, New Zealand is a disgrace, for sure.
No wonder then, that so many get convicted, locked up, punished, even for what they never did, and get stigmatised for the rest of their lives. Nothing more destructive than the NZ justice system comes to my mind, it is a total shambles.
A Criminal Cases Review Commission is needed.
xstasy
I think we have actually sunk to banana republic level, we just haven’t recognised it yet. Australia has though.
Musica Andina, viva Chile, viva el pueblo nativo the Sudamerica:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXRTfOy4EVY
More of this and also native NZ music must be presented!
Viva la vida, Illapu, por la vida, one of the best, socialist also:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQpVV27CPfE
Keep the faith and support all deserving!
Socialistas, do NOT forget, this sacrifice, by a human being, believing in the good of people:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Rvas3PBjQ
Viva la revolution. Viva Victor!
Interesting poll result in wairiki. Espesh the party vote.
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11136335
An interesting poll that may or may not have been skewed by a third of those being polled being General Roll voters as opposed to those voting on the Maori Roll,
The 2011 result had the Mana Party’s Annette Sykes 1000 votes behind Te Ururoa Flavell, the Ikaroa-Rawhiti by-election had the Mana Party candidate ahead of the Maori Party on the day,
Ever the optimist i expect Waiariki to be won by Mana in 2014…