Now??? It has been for a long long time. The only surprising thing about a futures market starting up is that it didn't happen a long long time ago.
When it comes to California and other western states, as far as I'm concerned a massive price increase in water would actually be a good thing. It might get them to be a bit more careful in how much they use.
Twenty years ago on return to NZ, I was shocked at how high Auckland's water prices were compared to San Diego's. But I should have been shocked in retrospect at how low San Diego's price was. Considering a lot of San Diego's water comes from the Colorado River, around 500km and a mountain range away.
This piece takes a look at how much water cost is embodied in food from California:
In your case, the knowledge deficit appears to be in the area of water law, water economics, and the engineering of water supply in western US states.
For a lot of other readers though, an occasional reminder of how much water actually goes into food supply might be useful. Particularly when that food supply comes from places where adequate water doesn't just fall from the sky. For instance, the 150g bag of almonds I just bought represents as much water as I use in my house in three weeks.
So when prices rise in western states, the first things to go will be the low value crops with disproportionately high water demand. Cotton. Alfalfa to be shipped to Saudi Arabia. Rice. Other water users producing higher value crops will adopt ways of using less water.
Cities will also adapt to lower water use, through means such as discouraging lawns and swimming pools by regulation and and progressive pricing structures and reusing treated sewage water for applications that don't require drinking water. That's already happening, for instance in San Diego the first 11 cubic metres per month costs about $1.90/cu m, over 50 cubic metres per month the charge is $4.22/cu m. But realistically, personal water use is pretty small compared to the vast amounts agriculture consumes.
What's gonna happen when investors buy water and hold onto it till it's scarce? Fair play?
I saw a company in US yesterday selling what was basically a roof mounted solar powered dehumidifier that pulled in only a few litres per day – for drinking water. The cost was up around 4K per unit. The interesting bit was what drove them to make it. Many Americans do not have safe, or secure, drinking water.
Agriculture/hort has very high use, but also very high land area for water collection. But do we see them making simple earthworks to retain water? Do we see in areas of low rainfall crops suited to the area?
Business is solving nothing till impending (financial) doom forces their hand. Impending planetary doom not a concern.
You buy almonds? Boo. Grow some macadamias. They’re free and require no maintenance.
Investors and speculators have a long history in water supply issues. Owens Valley in California provides just one example of the sordid dealings that have gone on. But just a quick google turns up plenty of info that suggests they aren't currently considered much of a problem, and may even be stabilisers.
Outta curiosity, what kind of water allocation and distribution would you set up, and how would it be paid for, if you were handed the magic wand?
The problem of lack of access to safe drinking water for personal use is much more an infrastructure cost issue. Because personal water needs are so tiny, compared to agricultural use. That's where spending 4K for a system to pull water from the air (a link for that assertion would be useful BTW) can make more sense than paying tens of thousands to get a pipe laid to your house. It's possible that was also in a state where collecting rainwater from your roof was illegal, because someone else has been allocated rights to that water.
The govt has relaxed the rules on how much water you are allowed to store on your property .
But it has to meet the building code plus the water would have to be filtered and your collection system kept clean for potable water.
With the amount of pollution in built up areas it would be expensive for individuals to keep a clean safe water supply.
Dust would be a much bigger problem than you would expect I have worked in the building industry for most of my life and as the number of cars trucks etc have increased over the years the amount of dust ending up on roofs and in spoutings is unbelieveable the closer you get to high traffic areas the bigger the dust build up so much so that spoutings need cleaning every year just to work properly.
Fair points. At the least, any property that has plants on it needs its own water catchment system. We're going to need urban farms as well as home gardens.
There will be solutions to the dust issue: plant more trees and wind brakes. We should be transitioning to less traffic anyway.
That's all very nice. It might even have some effect on groundwater levels in built-up areas and improve water quality in the waterways draining those built-up areas. I can't see how that results in secure supply for industrial users, let alone agricultural. Nor do I see any proposed mechanism for paying for it or pricing supply to industrial and agriculture.
Do that in California, and the Central Valley and Imperial Valley will revert back to the dusty near-deserts they were before the massive importation of water from elsewhere (mostly the Colorado River), instead of being the massively productive area it is now. Because there simply isn’t enough water supply falling from the sky and running off the surrounding hills to sustain water-needy agriculture there.
Do that in California, and the Central Valley and Imperial Valley will revert back to the dusty near-deserts they were before the massive importation of water from elsewhere (mostly the Colorado River), instead of being the massively productive area it is now.
A NZr Wendy Campbell Purdie got fired up by St Barbe Baker (who lived in NZ later to his death in 1982). She ended up planting many trees which enabled crops to grow with protection from the hard sun.
She wrote: “Trees I planted in Tiznit, Morocco, in January and December 1960 are now twice as tall as a man. One of the thousand trees I planted near Bou Saada in March 1964 is now taller than the large Conservator of Forests in Algeria. He was startled.” https://internationaltreefoundation.org/women-heart-men-trees/
And I think that the system she used was to space the trees so they formed a canopy giving an umbrella overstory and then crops were planted in rows underneath in the understory, and evaporation and sun scald was limited.
And there is much work that has been done to recover from desertification and alleviate drought which seems to have largely been ignored by developed nations like the USA who allow business to decimate the land if its cheaper than following the right practices for agriculture.
Such as (from a report from Food and Agriculture Organisation in their work against desertification and in facilitating food growing #84, 1967. – http://www.fao.org/3/55408e/55408e0a.htm)
Denmark. – The countryside of Middle Jutland has been completely changed over the last century: large stretches of heathland have disappeared. Protective shelterbelts divide the land into squares, and there are small and large plantations everywhere. Average production on sandy fields in Jutland is now on a level with production in the restof the country.
Experience has shown that, depending on the density, protective and forest plantations reduce by 20 to 40 percent the force of the wind which blows eastward across Jutland.
The right kind of protection around a field reduces, for example, evaporation: 1 mm less evaporation means that about 32 million cubic meters more water is available for the crops. (HAR SKODSHØJ).
@greywarshark – if you've got the answers on how to make that land productive without a shitload of imported water, then there's a fuckload of money to be made doing it.
Without access to imported water, you can buy land there for under a thousand bucks an acre. $1500 an acre if you want a natural streambed running through the middle of it. But if it's got access to imported water, the land is worth ten times as much.
You are so ecologically illiterate engaging any further is a waste of my time. Also an opportunity for you to talk more nonsense which we'd be better off without.
Storing groundwater will revert ecosystems to dusty near deserts? FFS.
You do not see the things you wish to see because I can't be fucked with your nonsense.
Dunno Bleeple, it is kind of useful to see the thinking laid bare. Money is the premier driver, and the degree of ecological illiteracy is probably not even recognised. Which tbf is pretty much why we're in the situation we're in.
Andre @ 1.41pm I was not talking about real estate values in the deserts in California that have flourished with imported water. It is taken for granted that cannot carry on.
I was saying that all is not lost for growing something there. It may be a different crop grown in a different way. But one thing is certain, that the previous profitability has gone. Are you a USA born person? You seem obsessed with the politics there and more interested in the goings on there than ours.
@ greywarshark The thread starter was about water markets in California. The differential in real estate value depending on access to water is an integral part of the whole water system in western US.
Yes, I was born in the US, spent about a third of my adult life working there, and still have extended family there. Some of whom are involved in farming in western states. Also, one of my rellies made his living for a while in western water law, and is now practicing at the intersection of water law and engineering.
So western US farming and water supply and US politics are all topics on which I do have some insight beyond just keyboard warrioring from a remote small island in the middle of a big ocean.
Allocating rain water that falls on someone else's is peak insanity and comes from the capitalist mindset that refuses to work with nature but instead treats it as a resource and/or commodity.
Bleeple pointed to the solution above: transition to ag that intentionally holds water in the soil. This is the basis of regenerative agricultures.
Also peak insanity: growing milk in dry climates like Otago and Canterbury via water extraction from the water table or rivers, shipping that milk to a factory and using coal to burn off all the water, then shipping the powder overseas, all to make money. We're also a net exporter of soil fertility that will take time to reinstate once we are forced into regenag.
Making Fonterra or farmers pay for the right to farm so destructively is what society does when it can't regulate itself. Letting people make water an item of the financial sector's greed frenzy doubles down on all the issues and makes things like conservation, just transition, regeneration so much harder.
I don't think NZ has a better example of the failure of capitalism and democracy than that, and later generations will look at us with bafflement and anger.
No, as opposed to local food people who say that it's not what we eat that matters but how it is produced. That includes but isn't limited to animal welfare.
By all means make an ethical argument for eating almonds imported from California over mutton from the farmer down the road, I'm all ears. You can save yourself the trouble if it's just killing animals is always wrong/eating plants is always right.
Love eating well-done chicken (and Xmas turkey), pork (hmm, bacon), lamb (shanks for the memories) and (what's the) beef, moreso now I've cut down, but "vegan zealots" seems tad pejorative. Live and let live I reckon, unless you're a production animal of course.
It’s amusing to see push back against promoting a lifestyle choice such as veganism (and to a lesser extent vegetarianism) – after all it's not compulsory, although Thunberg apparently 'persuaded' her father into it.
Greta Thunberg's father: 'She is happy, but I worry'
"I did all these things, I knew they were the right thing to do… but I didn't do it to save the climate, I did it to save my child," Mr Thunberg said.
"I have two daughters and to be honest they are all that matter to me. I just want them to be happy," he added. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-50901789
Fwiw, eating plants is always right – I eat fewer veges than is healthy, but it's tough, you know. Wonder if almond trees would crop OK in NZ.
You know I wasn't talking about vegans but the vegans who are zealots, right? The ones who do want everyone to be vegan even if it means ecocidal almond orchards or monsantoed soy fields.
Thanks Weka – no, I didn't know that you weren't talking about all vegans, but rather only about vegans who are zealots and "who do want everyone to be to be vegan even if it means ecocidal almond orchards or monsantoed soy fields."
I thought you'd made your opinion of those who, for whatever reason, promote the benefits of a vegan diet quite clear. To me, it even comes across in the above quote, but maybe I'm guilty of a little too much reading between the lines
Or maybe projecting? Why would you assume that 'vegan zealots' = all vegans?
I'm good with people making personal choices to be vegan where that doesn't impact on others. I was vegetarian for a long time, so I appreciate the ethical positioning. There is however a big difference between individual choice and a movement that is actively working against actions needed to get us out of the massive climate and ecological crisis. And the zealots who support that.
"Projecting" – meaning I might subconsciously consider (all) vegans to be zealots? It's possible – certainly wouldn't 'convert' voluntarily.
I don't consciously consider (the growth of) NZ veganism a threat, nor share your opinion that the 'vegan movement' "is actively working against actions needed to get us out of the massive climate and ecological crisis". And, if you're right, there's still a good chance there are even greater threats to a sustainable future for humanity than vegan zealots.
I've yet to meat one of these rare beasts – they'd tell me, right?
Commercial growing of almonds is limited to areas where no or little frost hazard because of their early blossoming but with the renewed interest in healthy foods and because of the quantities imported it is an undeveloped crop in New Zealand. Suitable areas would be parts of Hawkes’ Bay, Nelson, Canterbury and Otago where humidity is not a problem.
Hazelnuts and walnuts are the nuts of choice further south. Recently harvested hazelnuts are another world compared to the long stored ones we usually can buy.
I have a friend in the Waikato who grows walnuts semi-commercially. He used to give me a whole big box full each year when i lived there, mmmm. Can get them also at the market here which i do sometimes as well as the macadamia.
Agree that all nuts are heaps better when not stored too long.
My nursery is swelling with sweet chestnut seedlings, as the nuts I collected and planted in autumn grow and show themselves in their beds for me to transfer them to pots and grow-on. I'd like to see them planted extensively throughout the region/rohe, along with hazels, similarly grown (it's too, too easy!). Imagine a "thin-forest" of nut-trees across Southland/Otago/Canterbury etc…
I'm encouraging gevuina as well; I've just 10 or so, but learning…
Did WTB make any points beyond expressing generalised horror at the idea of markets for water? It sure didn't look like it to me.
If vegans want to argue against irrigating unsuitable areas for beef and dairy, where that irrigation lowers water tables and dries up watercourses, and the cows fill what's left full of nitrates and fecal lurgies, I'll be right with them. But over most of New Zealand, enough water falls from the sky to allow reasonable stocking rates with minimal additional water. If vegans want to argue against overstocking because of the resulting environmental damage, I'll be right with them on that, too.
If people want almond milk, that's totally fine with me. Whatever their motivations may be. But if almond growers has to pay a reasonable price for water, the price of almond milk would go waaay up.
When it comes to soy, well, yes, vegans do in fact have a good argument that much less land and other inputs would be needed to feed humans if humans ate the soy directly instead of wasting most of the nutrients in the soy by converting most of it to cow shit and cow piss and just a tiny bit of cow meat. IIRC, only about 1/20th of the inputs would be needed if humans ate the soy directly, instead of eating it in the form of dead cow. For me personally, though, the taste and texture etc of soy products are just so wrong that it's too high a price to pay.
You need to show that you actually have something useful to add to the topic of discussion. Otherwise you're just an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
[lprent: should we find you two a room to work it out in? Pretty boring listening. ]
Do you not understand I am utterly bored trying to inform a fool with his fingers in his ears.
I'm also not here to trot out information at your request.
Nobody has answers that satisfy anything you disagree with, ever. You just take part of a sentence and run up many paragraphs of nonsense then demand answers to your garbage.
[lprent: should we find you two a room to work it out in? Pretty boring listening. ]
Mmmmmmmm, how to win friends and influence people, not. The fact that we may not all share your views or even your particular knowledge base makes us all the more interesting I would have thought and doesn't deserve a 'shut-up' or telling someone they are 'stupid'.
Actually Shanreagh Bleeple is flat out getting information, developing ideas etc to ameliorate climate change. He is fully extended studying, thinking, worrying and can get annoyed when people miss the urgency of the matter, and we as a country and elsewhere, are so slow to get started on new methods and argue instead. If we don't share his views then we probably don't understand what is actually going on.
So getting a bit tetchy goes with the situation and it would be good if you don't start taking people to task because you don't 'share their views' or approach. We are into more than interesting, idle discussion here, we are trying to gather information and get a handle on what we can do to survive in the world. As adults here most recognise the serious commenters and we need to be a bit tolerant when tempers flare. remembering that thoughtful people are under a lot of stress.
The most learned and thoughtful people in the world are the ones who are able to multi-task ie express their views plus not getting snarly at others…On here it is just a matter of proof reading and we all do that don't we?
I understand perfectly what is going on. I don't need it coated with a heap of grumpy to understand it better. No exceptions are needed for the so-called ‘serious commentators’ as that is all of us isn't it?
To go much further down your track is close to the old 'ends justify the means trick'…..you are allowing an exception because you agree with the subject matter.
I sense a bit of head patting here and that is definitely not needed.
Domestic water costs much much more than agricultural water because of the cost to treat it to make it safe and taste ok, and the massive cost of piping it to every house.
Similarly, for domestic electricity, the cost of the wiring to get it to every house is a large component of the electricity price. Between Transpower and local lines charges, getting it to the house is a bigger component of the bill than the actual electricity. Similarly, domestic customers get rorted for huge marketing and administrative costs for all the different retailers.
Andre your almonds or almond milk will be highly tainted by glyphosate.
Then the bees needed to pollinate the almonds are dying out because of widespread use of glysophate.
So your almonds could be a very expensive luxury given the rapid increase in temperature in the growing areas in the US.
The free market needs Welfare every 10 years to survive .
So anyone who pushes this free market theory cause that's all it is, Is making shit up no where in this world does the free market exist it's a myth pushed by the wealthy to keep the poor poorer .
Well now, glyphosate is waaaay down the list of concerns in almonds. Even for those that have bought into the false demonising of glyphosate.
Personally, I'd be more worried about my almonds coming from a batch that for some reason had regressed to a natural high amygdalin content that has been genetically modified out of the ancestors to almonds. (My concern level about that is indistinguishable from zero).
Neonicotinoid insecticides on the other hand …
Just outta curiosity, if you've got a problem with a market model for water allocation in areas where it's a scarce resource, what kind of allocation and cost recovery model would you impose if you were handed a magic wand?
If you're a worker spending all day every day exposed to it, then you should probably be concerned enough to take some rudimentary precautions to reduce exposure. At massive levels of exposure, there aren't many substances that aren't likely to cause harm of one kind or another.
In terms or what the risk really is, a few studies suggest workers at the highest levels of exposure may have a slightly increased risk of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. (Other credible studies find no increased risk). Like maybe 30% increased risk of a rare-ish cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Reminder, these are workers with the highest exposure, they're the ones spending all day mixing and spraying it. But realistically, the absolute numbers of people involved in the studies are so low that there remains a high chance the claimed elevated risk (reminder, it's only the small number of workers with the highest exposure level that show any elevated risk) is just noise rather than true signal.
If the risk is so low for workers with the highest levels of exposure to the stuff, what does that mean for the rest of us whose exposure is many orders of magnitude less? It means that while it may indeed be unwise to take a weekly swig from the bottle of Roundup in the garage, but if you can refrain from that, there really isn't anything to be concerned about.
Something that amuses me (in a black humour way) about the glyphosate demonisation is that most growers that feel pressured to not use it then go on to substitute something else. Often that something else is something that has much more significant questions against its use, such as dicamba. But for the growers, the pressure is off until the whatever else they've changed to catches the attention of the loony brigade.
Best to keep an open mind, and I wonder about the utility of the "loony brigade" label – after all, while our collective knowledge is increasing in leaps and bounds, it's evident that behavioural and ‘institutional’ quirks can delay optimal responses to some new knowledge.
Not to mention that 'unknowns' will always outnumber 'knowns'.
It may this, it may that … Arguing like that is just making up one's mind that they don't like something and are making up all kinds of shit that may be true, but don't really care whether or not it is true as long as the fear and doubt created is enough to create opposition to whatever it is they don't like.
Meanwhile, many large studies have been done which have found zero evidence that glyphosate causes harm in the vast majority of people exposed to it, with a very weak possibility of slightly increased risk of a rare harm in the very small portion of the population with extremely high exposure to it.
I'd call that very good reason to continue using it until something else comes along that has received equal scrutiny and been found to have a better effectiveness/risk profile. That's going to be tough because the actual demonstrated risk of glyphosate is somewhere between very very very low and zero.
Right now, the specious fear,uncertainty, doubt whipped up by the loony glyphosate antis have the effect of increasing the use of alternatives that are much higher risk of harm. That's just dumb.
"A conservative estimate from our results shows that 54% of species in the core human gut microbiome are sensitive to glyphosate"
The results are interesting in that some gut species are resistant (to glyphosate), while others are sensitive – imbalances in the gut microbiome will very likely result. Evolution baby, happens fast for microbes, way slower for humans.
Science uses terms like may, could, likely… until further evidence is at hand. Conclusions should not be grabbed at, nor should possibilities be ignored.
The human gut microbiome has a profound effect on human development, health and disease outcomes.
But we could always pretend everything's fine because glyphosate is very useful and convenient. Should it turn out to be altering the evolution of the human gut, no biggie right?
Thanks Andre; the use of glyphosate has many benefits.
When planning, conducting and analysing the results of scientific research, really does pay to keep an open mind, IMHO and experience. I hope that doesn’t make me a ‘loony‘, or ‘dumb‘ in your eyes, but even if it does it’s too late for me to change now. Maybe too late for us both.
In this case, plenty of studies of actual humans exposed to the substance of interest have been done from which a reasonable conclusion can be drawn.
That reasonable conclusion is that for the vast majority of exposure scenarios, there is zero evidence of harm. For the worst exposure case, there might be a tiny blip of risk, or the numbers are so small that's it's also fairly likely to be a statistical artefact from how widely the net was cast.
A reasonable open mind is also capable of accepting when enough has been investigated to come to a conclusion that there really is nothing there. Until new good evidence of a different conclusion becomes available.
Glyphosate is certainly in the category of enough investigations have been done to conclude it is safe, with maybe a tiny question mark against highest exposure workers. In any reasonable world, the burden of proof would now shift to those asserting (currently without evidence) that it is harmful to those exposed to tiny residual amounts.
There’s a vast body of historical scientific research on the safety of glyphosate in animals, including research that was conducted carefully by scientists with no conflicts of interest. All research has limitations – IMHO it's prudent to remain open-minded about potential and/or as yet poorly recognised side effects of such a large-scale (global) experiment. Such concerns may prove to be unfounded, but that previous quote sums things up (for me), and we can agree to disagree.
Future long-term studies examining physiologically relevant doses in both healthy and genetically susceptible populations are warranted to determine the real risk posed to human health.
DDT was highly effective in keeping the mosquito vector of malaria in check, and that wasn’t its only use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT
DDT was originally used and tested for spraying on surfaces as a contact poison, and it's highly effective and low risk used that way.
Had it stayed within that method of application and use, it would likely never have developed the bad name it now has. The problems came about when they started spraying enormous quantities of it indiscriminately outdoors more or less anywhere a flying insect might be, before any investigations had been done of what its effects in the wider ecosystem might be.
When the problems became obvious, it was banned. At the cost of enormous human suffering from malaria that could have been reduced had it been reverted to its original use on indoor surfaces.
But DDT is now making a bit of a comeback, strictly limited to application to indoor surfaces. Which is a good thing. It will alleviate a lot of suffering from malaria, at least until the local mosquito populations develop resistance.
Dunno why the problems from spraying massive amounts of DDT into the environment without prior testing is relevant to glyphosate. They are totally different situations. Glyphosate has been extensively studied across humans and many other lifeforms, and negligible harm has been detected, except to the targeted pest plants and nearby plants that cop unintended overspray.
@Rosemary the conversation with DMK was philosophical in nature around the relationship of results from studies and the acceptance (or not) of vague hypothetical undemonstrated risks from those substances after tests have been done.
But if you want links, here's just the first one that popped up from my search:
Conclusions: In this large, prospective cohort study, no association was apparent between glyphosate and any solid tumors or lymphoid malignancies overall, including NHL and its subtypes. There was some evidence of increased risk of AML among the highest exposed group that requires confirmation.
Note that the "some evidence" was for a different kind of cancer than the non-Hodgkin's lymphoma cited elsewhere. The one-off appearance of weak evidence for different effects in different studies is a strong indication of statistical noise rather than real effects. That statistical noise should be expected when dredging large data sets, which is effectively what these studies are doing when looking for evidence of some previously unknown harm from a substance.
This piece from The Conversation has a good walk through the evidence, and what the different organisation statements really mean and how they should be interpreted.
Relevance? "Problems from spraying massive amounts of DDT into the environment" were recognised only after the event. 'We' are learning, but there's always room for improvement, if the spirit is willing.
Would you be oppsed to “Future long-term studies examining physiologically relevant doses in both healthy and genetically susceptible populations“?
I'm just of the opinion that the evidence from the large number of studies already done on actual humans is sufficient to conclude the risk of harm is negligible (except maybe for the highest exposure workers).
So now, as far as I'm concerned, the burden of proof has clearly shifted to those that continue to baseless assert risk against the huge amount of evidence of negligible harm that has already been gathered. And that it's quite appropriate to continue using it in the meantime.
Note that glyphosate was first introduced in 1974, and has been very extensively used since the 90s. The complete lack of field evidence of harm so far is quite strong evidence for safety.
It's also a clear point of difference with DDT where the harms became evident from the field quite quickly, and were quickly and easily confirmed in lab studies.
Excellent! A brief, balanced and appropriately cautious editorial opinion (in JNCI) on the 2017 study you cited about a possible association between glyphosate exposure and (only) cancer. Worth a read.
Evaluating the potential for glyphosate exposure to increase cancer risks in humans is important due to its widespread and increasing use in the United States and globally and indications of potential carcinogenicity from toxicologic and epidemiologic studies. Epidemiologic studies have inherent limitations with respect to cancer prevention as they generally detect elevated cancer incidence and mortality cancer hazard decades after carcinogen exposure begins. The timeline for identifying cancer hazards in prospective cohort studies may be accelerated by incorporating biomarkers that may reflect carcinogenic hazards earlier than cancer incidence or mortality outcomes. Expansion of current efforts to collect biological samples from AHS participants would increase the potential to provide timely evidence to evaluate the potential for glyphosate and other pesticides to cause cancer in humans. https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/110/5/446/4633859
Translation: We didn't find anything, but give us more money to keep looking because we think it's important. BTW doing this stuff is hard coz there's lots of factors, so we need more money to keep trying to figure it out.
Is that the best way to bolster your position? To be fair to the author, I doubt she's after more money, but maybe you know her circumstances better than I?
There's nothing in that piece that argues against my position. They didn't find anything suggesting harm from glyphosate. They included a lot of waffle about benzene (a well-known serious risk), for some reason that's not at all clear to me, but didn't attribute any harm to glyphosate. None.
It's just a collection of maybe this, maybe that … we need to keep looking to be sure.
Ward is an epidemiologist. The piece argues for more epidemiological studies. Studies need funding. If that funding comes through, it may create more employment for Ward and/or her colleagues.
A lot of my immediate family are and were academics. That funding treadmill is one of the many reasons I had zero interest in following them into academia.
edit: although in hindsight maybe I should have followed up my interest in Paul Callahan’s MRI machine a bit more, at Massey. That was a seriously interesting bit of kit, and the math to work out what it could tell us was really fascinating too.
Seemed to me that you were having a go at the author (Ward) for her money grubbing ways, but maybe I misread.
Ward is indeed an epidemiologist, with some expertise in the epidemiology of cancers – that's probably why she was considered an appropriate scientist to write an editorial on a primary research paper that might be expected to have real-world implications.
Ward's work is heavily centered around "cancer disparities, cancer treatment and outcomes, cancer surveillance, Occupational cancer and environmental cancer.
Presumably that particular expert on cancer epidemiology (Ward) believed it was relevant, but if the reason for the benzene ‘waffle‘ genuinely eludes you then there's really little point in further discussion. Over and out.
I'm disgusted at how the "publish or perish" of decades ago seems to have morphed into something like "you're only as good as the overhead portion of your latest grant" and it came out as a personal dig at Ward.
As far as benzene goes, I really can't see a scientific purpose for including that waffle. Hell, even the American Petroleum Institute way back in 1948 said the only safe exposure level to benzene is zero. At a time when tetraethyllead was still the wonder additive.
So the only purpose I can see is to slip it in there is in support of a potential grant application as a "see, here's another substance where there were inconclusive results, so that's why we need to do more studies".
That tactic ignores the vast body of evidence of harm from benzene, which is obvious as soon as anyone looks into it. There's just no plausible equivalence about risks from benzene, and risks from glyphosate (which are very very low if not zero).
The evidence to date suggests that glyphosate exposure poses at worst a very slight, and at best an insignificant cancer risk to humans – apart from tonight I'm certainly not losing any sleep over it here in NZ, although maybe I should be.
In 2015 an International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) report classified glyphosate as “2A probably carcinogenic”. Other things that fall under that same classification include hot drinks (over 65degC) and acrylamide – which are the crispy burned proteins from the barbecue or chips.
Glossing over the known toxicity of those lovely "crispy burned proteins" does make you wonder about the scientific integrity of the NZEPA, and that's coming from someone who loves his chippies.
It's interesting (to me) that a very recent review of the available literature claims there is a paucity of data on actual human exposure to glyphosate, i.e. studies that measure glyphosate levels in humans remain quite limited in number.
I believe the point Ward was making by referencing benzene is that our understanding of the risk of (different types of) cancer due to benzene exposure has enlarged over 30+ years, from early studies in the 80s, through a review in 1997, and a further review in 2007, to a 'final' WHO review in 2012 (all referenced in Ward's editorial).
In short, it's best (scientific) practice not to jump to conclusions, nor to clutch at convenient answers – that can be left to the market. I don't personally believe that it's prudent to conclude that glyphosate poses no significant risk to human health, but don't worry about it because that multi-billion dollar horse (est. US$7.8 billion in 2020) has bolted.
Down on the farm glyphosate is becoming less effective – time for another herbicide? Why not just use more – we've all gotta eat!
That piece you've linked doesn't show any evidence that dietary acrylamide poses any risk. It merely asserts that, in several different ways. Although it looks like it is linked to references in that paragraph where it repeated asserts this, all those links just go back to itself.
As for the substance of the paper, it's excellent fodder for anyone wanting to have a crack at scientists for wasting huge amounts of time and money to demonstrate the bleedin' fucken obvious, The bleedin' fucken obvious being demonstrated is that a fried potato dish contains wildly different amounts of acrylamide depending on how it's prepared. IgNobel level stuff, if it weren't so banal.
Back to whether acrylamide is indeed a risk via dietary administration in dietary quantities, it seems that there actually is significant dispute over whether there are risks. The piece below from Harvard is the most readable overview that came up on a quick search, there's plenty in a similar vein from more recently but they weren't as readable:
It appears to be another case where acrylamide is a chemical with industrial uses, so it's quite reasonable for workers exposed to massive amounts to query its safety. As it turns out, at massive exposures it is outright toxic as well hints of carcinogenicity. But it's a helluva stretch to go from there to claiming ill effects from the tiny quantities in food.
But if anyone is taken in by the scaremongering, that's fine. They can easily make dietary choices to avoid acrylamides without affecting anyone else. If they decide the only cooking method they're comfortable with is boiling, it doesn't limit anyone else's choices. Well, not unless they turn into rabid zealots about it and insist that everyone else do the same.
Thing is, I'd wager a dedicated scaremonger could take just about any food, and drill down to find some constituent that is harmful at massive exposures, complete with lab animals studies to "prove" it. The "banana equivalent dose" for radioactivity illustrates this.
If your explanation of Ward's reason for mentioning benzene is close, it is still deeply deceptive. Benzene has long been known as bad bad shit to keep well away from. The understanding of the precise nature of some of the edges of that badness has evolved a bit over time, in ways of interest only to a very small subset of epidemiologists, toxicologists and cancer specialists. That evolution in understanding hasn't in the slightest changed the general understanding of benzene as bad shit to keep well away from. Including benzene in a discussion about glyphosate, where the question is whether risk is effectively zero for everybody or whether there may be a small risk for the small number of highest exposed workers, is disingenuous at best and more likely deliberately deceptively trying to paint a false equivalence.
Polyacrylamide's very useful in the lab, but we do apply the precautionary principle and treat the monomer with respect, largely out of concern for its neurotoxic effects. Can't imagine that there's any risk from regularly ingesting tiny quantities (although I wouldn't swear to it) – maybe it could even ward off the COVID
There are (a small number of) irresponsible scientists, in both public and private sectors, and it’s best to keep an open mind on who the worst offenders might be. But when it comes to industrial-scale scientific misconduct, always "follow the money".
The past suppression of industry knowledge of the toxicity of benzene to humans and potential bias in future benzene research Petrochemical industry representatives often withhold information and misinterpret positive evidence of toxicity of benzene, even from their own research, also discouraging or delaying disclosure of findings of adverse effects to the public. They now appear to be attempting to influence study results in industry's favor by offering predetermined conclusions about study results as part of an effort to draw financial support for the studies. The American Petroleum Institute is currently raising funds for benzene research being conducted in China for which it has already announced the intended conclusions.
Benzene-induced Cancers: Abridged History and Occupational Health Impact Further to Peter Infante’s excellent investigative exposé of the truth behind some of the benzene industry’s malpractices and abuses (e.g., withholding incriminating data) and resultant OSHA standard-setting issues, there were similar shenanigans surrounding the experimental findings from benzene-exposed animals. Following a series of early, albeit patently inadequate, bioassay experiments on benzene—too few animals, lack of control animals, low and short-term exposures, incomplete pathology often looking only for leukemias – the more modern animal bioassay data clearly confirm and extend the possible cancer hazards of worker and consumer exposures to benzene.
I do try to keep an open mind regarding the possibility that some scientists are scaremongering for personal gain, just as I try to keep an open mind on the risks associated with the deliberate release of huge quantities of unnatural chemicals into the environment. I urge you (and others) to do the same, but understand that it’s a personal choice.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
– Santayana
I would like to alert those looking for economic answers/viable alternatives to the recently published book by yanis varoufakis..
varoufakis was the finance minister in greece when the greek govt melted down..
this book is called 'another now' (subtitle) 'dispatches from an alternative present'..
and that subtitle explains the premise of the book..(230 pages)
it is set in 2025…and posits that after the gfc in 2008..the world underwent serious reform..leading to a world almost unrecognisable…it is so different to the neoliberal tyranny we suffer under..
varoufakis presents a clear brace of ideas/formula for change..
but this is no weighty/dry tome..
the conceit used is conversations between people from our neoliberal future..and those living in this much better/changed world..
and this is how varoufakis explains his ideas…and I found his ideas both exciting and viable…
I am totally smitten with/by this tome..
to the extent I got it out from the library..and am doing a version of the returning rich/ex-backpacker tourist..
..in that I am going to purchase my own copy..(that I can loan to interested parties)
and I am sure that many on this forum will find his ideas 'interesting' to say the least..
and I am looking forward to hearing the reactions from other readers..
I went to hear Colin James' address at Wellington's Baptist Church last evening. He pointed out that, when Keynesianism collapsed, there was Milton Friedman sitting on the shelf with ideas waiting for adoption. He asked who was sitting on the shelf now that neoliberalism was collapsing – nobody as far as he could see. Perhaps he should have considered Syriza's former finance minister.
Idea categorised as ‘extreme political stance’ equivalent to endorsing illegal activity Department for Education (DfE) guidance issued on Thursday for school leaders and teachers involved in setting the relationship, sex and health curriculum categorised anti-capitalism as an “extreme political stance” and equated it with opposition to freedom of speech, antisemitism and endorsement of illegal activity.
This sounds as if they are aligned with the Labour officials who resiled from supporting their leader as they should have. Psychologically thinking, it is an example of the Karpman triangle where at any one time someone can be moving between three positions which makes it impossible to argue for a point, as you will always be wrong from another two POV. The UK seems to be getting very sly with extreme concern about some people’s sensitivities which will mean in the end that matters will not be revealed on the excuse it would be upsetting. Sort of we can’t tell the people about something or it would start a riot.
Not that keen on Yanis after he dropped his bundle when negotiating with the EU on austerity measures, though that is easy to say from a distance and there was rather a lot of pressure on him. Academics are well known for vacillating, but in Greece OXI should mean OXI.
Should check out his book regardless to keep up, as many people still rate him.
I hate subsidising Bezos as much as anyone, but if a production brings in $5, they take back $1, doesn't that leave the country with $4 in hand? Is the author suggesting that the prod's would come here without subsidies (if so, why wouldn't he say that)? How can the subsidies 'cost' us, when they attract four times as much as they pay? Or is it that those $4 just go into private accounts, not the government's, i.e. is it the tax on that $4 that we should be counting?
Goldman Sachs loan shark vulture capitalist corruption of the Greek political elite is what lead to Greeces economic collapse.
Yet after Goldman Sachs were also deeply involved in most of the Ponzi scheme collapses 2008 one of their chief executives was made governor of EU finance .
Nothing changed Trump reprieved all the safe guards against bank under capitalization allowing ponzi schemes to flourish again.
These vulture capitalists have more power than any govt and no amount of legislation or reform in NZ can undo it.
The big trading blocks are all in it together protecting the power brokers print money to bail them out while they have their money hidden away in corrupt tax havens.
The panama papers only scratched the surface the whistle blower ends up in jail while the proceeds of crime are laundered back through the big international banks where nobody has been prosecuted.
That is for the working class, not the investor class. Bezos wants and gets hit tax hand outs and his tax incentives and his negative tax rates and his tax returns. Thank eew very much.
It's an absolute rort. We are subsidising the richest man in the world to make fantasies for adult children.
Cos living in fantasy land has worked out great so far. All my peers who are more concerned with a film franchise than the planet. Screw this industry it's part of the keep em distracted with nonsense strategy.
Take the $4 and tax it. What does govt get? Less than they're spending. And all that spending is to make profits, not art.
Why do you think this is causing concern? It's not because it's a gravy train. We are being rorted, and nobody's got the nuts to stand up to the rich.
So? Can we make money from it. And keep on the world's mind-map. Down 'Here at the End of the World we Learn to Dance' sort of thing. We will have less tourists here soonish and out of sight is out of mind so often. Don't get in a tizz about Peter please Standardistas – he seems a man people love to hate. There are plenty of Slytherins around as alternatives.
I have no idea if NZ is contracted in as a shareholder of profit in these enterprises. I've found no evidence that we profit from any of this.
What is the cost of these big players?
Sinking tremendous resources into light entertainment as the world burns is utter nonsense. Propping up the richest people on the planet while our people are homeless.
There's no job security these are contractors here to make a buck, and when the tap's turned off they'll leave. Then there'll be a press release about how Bezos has been picked on and unfairly denied the ability to shower us with his blessings.
"Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says she would like to see small increases in houses prices, acknowledging most people “expect” the value of their most valuable asset to keep rising."
"According to the latest 1 News-Colmar Brunton poll (conducted between November 28 and December 2), Labour is up seven percentage points since the last poll on October 15, with 53% support, while National is down six percentage points to 25%.
Ardern is also up three points in the preferred prime minister ranks to 58%."
Well and here in Rotorua a rental manager called 'renting a privilege'. Who needs National when you can have a majority Labour Government. Same homelessness and misery, but kinder and gentler.
Jacinda Ardern has responded to a surge in house prices, concerns about carbon emissions and calls for action on child poverty by pledging to care more about these issues. The pledge comes after a week of harsh criticism and opposition attacks, and in response to them Ardern has promised to drastically raise the already high levels at which she cares.
…
Some economists and political commentators question whether these levels of care are sustainable, predicting that Ardern will risk straining her neck and run out of adorable children to do Facebook livestreams with long before she reaches her new goals, while others have suggested Ardern’s majority government should do actual things to reduce house prices and carbon emissions and improve the lives of children, a suggestion Ardern has dismissed as anti-caring.
‘This will be the kind and compassionate caring that New Zealanders expect from their government,” a statement from Ardern’s office read. “As prime minister for all New Zealanders I will put caring at the heart of everything I do. I make no apologies for that.”
Sabine a problem in the making for 40 years the low tax mantra is the problem no body wants to pay more tax to fix the problem.
Bringing in people to fill gaps in our work force because we make education unaffordable when we have had shortages for decades and no sign of those shortages being locally filled because the education system doesn't have the capacity to train specialist's .
IT,teachers,builders,doctors surgeons other medical professionals Nurses.Builders electricians plumbers engineers road construction workers etc.
No longterm planning by successive govts just election to election thinking.
It's cheaper to steal workers from other countries than to fix a longterm problem.
Here is a good piece on Obama that makes me wonder if a similar piece will be written on Ardern in a few years, who like all Liberals can never ever deliver the changes they promise because it always becomes a conflict of ideology, and the Liberal ideology has NO empathy for Humans or the Planet if it becomes a case of picking one or the other, the extreme centrist liberal will always conform to the market before considering people or the planet…every time.
"Over the next five years, Obama administration officials vigorously fought a Senate investigation into Bush torture abuses, and Obama personally defended the CIA after it was caught illegally spying on the Senate to thwart the inquiry. The Obama administration also torpedoed every lawsuit by a torture victim in U.S. court."
Adrian Obama as any president is only a figure head who can veto or make a meaningless executive orders.
The Power lies in the house of Representatives and the Senate with the supreme court having some power as well.
The republicans controlled those houses 6 out of 8 years of his presidency and filibustered the other 2 years so blaming Obama for failures is a failure to understand how US politics works.
A quick google would quickly tell you why that came about. It's not a failing of Obama's. You would really do well to develop a few fact-checking skills of your own instead of lazily jumping to conclusions.
Judges have to be confirmed by the senate. For the first two years of Obama's term, Dems had a supermajority and were mostly able to confirm judges. Then they lost their supermajority in 2010, and Repugs used the filibuster to block all judges.
Finally in November 2013, Dems in the senate get frustrated enough by the Repug blockade that they nuked the filibuster for judicial appointments below Supreme Court level, and they were able to confirm a few more.
Then the Repugs took a senate majority in 2014, and refused to confirm any judges from that point onwards.
Since 2016, the Reepugs have had a senate majority, so have been able to push appointment confirmations through. Even Supreme Court appointments after they nuked the filibuster for Supreme appointments that the Dems had left in place.
Obama's enters the White House on the back of promises of Hope and Change and then after eight years of his utter failure to deliver or even seem like he wanted to deliver = straight line to Trump….simple, and then to prove how narcissistic the Democrats are, they don't learn even one lesson from their historic loss in 2016…oh no they make up some bullshit about the Russians to divert attention and avoid any self reflection whatsoever instead….and almost lose a second time.
All that relates to the simple problem of things don't happen when you you don't have enough votes … exactly how?
Also, Mueller was a lifelong Republican, appointed by a lifelong Republican (Rosenstein), who was appointed by by Donnie Dorko himself. Dunno why you're completely obsessed by the false idea that the Russia investigation is a Dem thing when all the key players are Republicans. Did Sean or Rupert set up your news feed for you?
NZ Labour won’t set a course to port willingly. Efforts must obviously be made however in the material interests of the working class. It is torture watching an unencumbered Govt. with the power to build thousands of state houses and apartments, and to make all the sadists at WINZ/MSD reapply for their own jobs, not do it.
Long time Labour loyalists say it is too soon, and hint knowingly that us “maddies” should “wait and see”. I say lets start door knocking all the new Labour MPs, picketing MSD offices, and running united campaigns among the NGOs that do some of the Govts job for them. Jeeze, in Whangarei the Hare Krishna kitchen provides several thousand lunches per week to local schools.
The largely middle class professionals and neo liberal managerialists that make up much of NZ Labour Wellington staff and MPs seem to have less idea of the lot of the underclass and working class as the years since 1984 roll on.
Roger Douglas used to bully unionist Sonia Davies and call her “granny” as an MP, union MPs still get deselected like happened to Sue Moroney, who NZ women can thank for improvements to PPL. There used to be a joint Council of Labour where the FOL would meet directly on workers issues with the Labour Party, till Douglas and Prebble got to work! So really Labour tops have effectively tried to weaken if not sever the relationship with organised Labour, only a handful of unions remain affiliated.
Jacinda and Robbo have only ever known the monetarist, contract out, governance, flog it off, model–so don’t look to them to retire neo liberal hegemony. The NZ People, grass roots, and boomer* replacement generations are going to have to do that! At least we have three years to get busy and not deal with National attacks, but if this Govt. stays passive, the right will be back–likely in a populist Trumpish form.
* I’m in the boomer ‘cohort’, but have been a life long socialist, not a grumpy reactionary tory.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
[lprent: if you want to write about a topic that is completely different to the post topic, then do it here. Don’t waste my time. ]
I hadn't, gsays, till now and am thinking, thanks to your suggestion, of a lovely set of wind-chimes I was given that have an especially melodious sound to them that perhaps might make a good sound back-drop 🙂
The tree that is outside my place is annoying. It is always dropping little cones with sharp points. I have picked up 200 at one time so I can mow the berm without dulling the blades, and anyway they break up and would leave sharp bits that when children run across the grass would hurt them.
It has largish leaves with pointy edges like a star, they look so fresh and green in spring and turn delicate shades of pale lemon or ruddy red in winter. Then they fall and I sweep up the ones on the road and call for the road sweeper to make sure our street is on their route. The others I pop in the compost with a few in the Greenwaste. It is time consuming but they demand attention because of their numbers – how many? Hundreds of thousands?
It keeps the hot early morning sun from heating the house in summer, and in winter is bare and doesn't block the welcome light and warmth. I want some of the horizontal branches trimmed so its more compact and doesn't drop leaves in guttering and on the footpath which many pedestrians and folks with wheels use. The council person does not take my request for more soil seriously and suggests I organise it myself. I am taking umbrage at the idea that they impose the care for it on me. After Christmas I plan to make a move to encourage co-operative not autocratic behaviour from them. If I have the energy.
It has a sort of yellow bleeding coming from high up in the trunk and I have looked it up on google. It is a liquidambar, (sweetgum) and prone to this it seems if I have understood it right. I have mentioned this to the contractors and will have to see if it is in their contract to take an interest and how much time their money allocation allows for, to attend to such matters.
This is an example of how government can just limit its work and responsibilities, get someone else to do a prescribed list of things, and other matters fall between the cracks. When the cracks are wide as after the Christchurch earthquake, bigger more important matters causing great distress can fall in the bigger cracks. That is why we should try and get our governments back again to do directly what they are paid to do and with direct accountability.
I like my tree but nothing is ever simple and straightforward in this marvellous modern age.
When it comes to feeding your liquidambar tree, any all-purpose fertilizer or manure should do the trick, but there's one thing more important than plant food that will help your tree thrive. Adding an inch or two of mulch to the top of the soil in which your liquidambar tree is planted will help maintain the proper water levels needed for your tree to grow. https://homeguides.sfgate.com/care-for-a-liquid-amber-tree-13429278.html
I had a storm damaged sweetgum drop a massive branch a couple of years ago to reveal the heartwood infected by fungi. It had to go. Now it's trying to resprout off the root system which was extensive. I trim them back. In it's place so far are many coprosmas and karo popping up naturally, and a few exotics planted by myself.
I used the branches to make garden beds, landscape features, birdbaths, seats and benches. I used to the mulch to fill the garden beds. It was a windfall for the section.
I will not miss the sharp objects on the ground, but having a massive tree on the property was a source of joy. We congregated under it, made swings and huts, collected leaves and watched the birds who used it as a lookout in winter.
It took me months to get over losing that tree. I nurture the new trees growing where it was. I look out with pride at the many species now growing from the recycling of one.
Definitely a windfall! I noted that the wood was good though it said it was hard to work or something. How very productive you are with your carpentry.
The white supremacist who massacred dozens of worshippers at two Christchurch mosques was treated in hospital in the months leading up to the terrorist attack after accidentally shooting himself.
Stuff understands the accidental shooting happened because the bullet was not quite chambered, the shooter was trying to dislodge it, and it discharged when the firing pin connected with the bullet.
There was damage to the ceiling of his rental property, later requiring repairs by his landlord.
Unfortunately this will be the part of the story which outrages most New Zealanders.
Surely it is reasonable for NZrs to be ropeable at a system that can enable a crazed man or woman to dabble in guns, and give him medical attention for a gunshot, for free? – he is Australian – and shoot a hole in the ceiling of his dwelling. It is so lax not reporting it to the police, who then one would hope, would have followed up and checked on him and his activities.
They certainly did with a Russian ex-military type who came into their radar in Christchurch in a number of ways; for legal infractions, breaking road rules, and he also had guns, and was I think affected by PTSD. The police came down hard on him so much that when he was dying his wife and son were not allowed to speak to him.
At one time the Russian used an imitation pistol – the mosque shooter had a number of real guns. If the police had known about the hospital and house damage incidents they would have had warning bells after their experience of nutty male psychology with the Aramoana affair and David Gray coldly shooting them and others.
According to the E3, “If Iran is serious about preserving a space for diplomacy, it must not implement these steps. Such a move would jeopardise our shared efforts to preserve the JCPoA and risks compromising the important opportunity for a return to diplomacy with the incoming US Administration. A return to the JCPoA would also be beneficial for Iran. We will address Iran’s non-compliance within the framework of the JCPoA.” The Guardian.
This from the mongrels who have not complied in any material sense with their side of the JCPoA. Worse still, they have in the most cowardly way, demurred in the face of the threats of US sanction which to all intents and purposes as applied to Iran, should be regarded as war crimes. Up until recently, Iran has been fully compliant and ratcheted up the measures they have every entitlement to do under the JCPoA.
Commission for Financial Capability's Jane Wrightson told Morning Report those in precarious situations would need to show flexibility and a willing to train, while building financial resilience over the next year or so….(I wonder if they are to be given an education grant not a loan, that will pay for their childcare, and transport, and with an opportunity for payment for more than one training period as it may require a number of skills to be worked on?)
found working families in blue and "pink-collar", or working women occupations, were among the hardest hit…. The highest percentage of households suffering smaller incomes were those where the main person being surveyed was aged between 55 and 64.
Wrightson said the survey found the situations of couples aged between 18-54 with children most vulnerable. "The category that we were most concerned with was, generally speaking, couples between the ages of 18 and 54 with children.
This is another woman who is a good little performer in following the norm. The epitome of the university-trained receiving every word as from the God of All-Knowing and never deviating from The Knowledge. Sounds sour I know. But that is my knee jerk reaction to the advice from Commission for Financial Capability's Jane Wrightson.
There was or is another one on about Retirement and Superannuation who was recommending that the age should go up to 67, The knee jerk reaction of the herd follower who follows the mainstream thinking that we can't afford super and so limiting the age of attainment is the best thing to do.
The compliant educated well-dressed affluent woman without a hint of rebellious difference from the accepted norm, seems to be the epitome of the female advancement that has arisen from the effort that feminists put in to improve women's lot.
However, poor mothers are despised, working women with low educational attainment are unworthy of having time at home with their children – away to work at entry-level jobs without the option of having a weekend to see family, friends, community activity. Single women are still paying market price for everything, while receiving an 80% calculation of men's wages; similar to a special higher price for the undeserving woman. And the poor treatment of maternity these days – almost a hate of the irresponsible female, not having babies to order, being humanly feckless which means responding to life as an average female, unlike the calculating, careful ladies who behave 'properly'. And children are not treasured and cared about by the women with power over parents, who almost have adopted the old-fashioned ideas of lords who were said not to bother with their children till they were about three and able to talk.
Parents might have to neglect their children's health to go to work either because WINZ says so, or because they need to keep their job and keep up their income. They should be able to stay home with young children, and do a little part-time work to keep in the workforce and retain that bit of extra money. But be free to leave working when it is necessary to help their youngest.
Norovirus is highly contagious, and just one child with the illness can spread it to many other children, staff and their families at home, Dr Harrower said.
"While most people make a quick and full recovery, very young children can become unwell enough to need hospital care.
"It can be difficult for whānau to take time off work when they have sick children, but it is important to remind parents and caregivers that tummy bugs are very contagious. It is highly likely your child will infect others, and outbreaks can lead to centre closures."
Why can't we love and nurture our young parents, to enable them to pass on the same feelings to their children. A society of cold, callous, demanding people will find that the children under this regime will develop similarly. Isn't that what we are often seeing now. It's time for a change.
Many told the commission the direct aftermath caused more grief and trauma as they were not told where their loved ones were. Some resorted to watching the terrorist's video of the attack to try and figure out if their loved ones were alive or dead.
"An acquaintance of my parents said that she had seen [my brother] in operating theatre," a relative told the commission. "Mum and dad rushed to the hospital with this news and after waiting outside Al-Noor Mosque for four hours, they then proceeded to wait at Christchurch Hospital for another six hours. "After this, they found out that the person my parents were waiting for, patient number 13, was not at all [my brother]. They were finally told my brother was unaccounted for."..
Many victims raised questions about the police's response on the day. They told the commission the fact medical staff were not allowed inside the mosques straight away due to police cordons led to more deaths.
Since 15 March, victims and families have struggled to get help, telling the commission they had to recount their experience of the attack over and over to different agencies… "Where there should have been active listening, there is a deluge of information, where there should be advocacy there are endless meetings," a victim told the commission.
Some witnesses told the commission they were not eligible for financial support from the Accident Compensation Corporation as they had not suffered any physical injuries…. "Witnesses to the attack have suffered severe mental trauma, which some describe as a feeling of physically debilitating pain."
But, but this is not us. We aren't like that. We are however good at feeling short periods of grief and emotion, and then 'get on with our lives' and expect the traumatised to do so also.
Having to deal with different government agencies or the same one over and over again is draining for anyone who has a mental injury. The grief process is complicated by how loved ones died. When it comes to the coronial inquests this will be a long process due to how slow the coroners office is. With some hope the coronial inquests can be managed in such a way to reduce distress.
The 1982 – 1992 ACC Act had cover for mental injury when no physical force occurred. This act is online. There are other articles on the subject of taking cover away as well. It is not my intention to inflame the situation. I am pointing out that ACC is not fit for purpose when it comes to exceptional circumstances which need to be covered.
I think you are indicating that we have a serious problem with ACC. The more stressful the government makes life, the more it diminishes living conditions for people, the more it takes away what supports used to be provided in better times. It is a pernicious process and amoral.
Yes serious problems with ACC for a mental injury.
I left a reply to your 2.1111 comment late last night on open mike with some of the concerns I have about ACC. I have a lot more.
The average person has got no idea on how ACC determine what and what not to include when it comes to cover for a mental injury.
The government is going to get a wake up call from the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care on how shit ACC are for a mental injury and the damage done from organisatonal failure.
Barrister Gary Judd KC’s complaint to the Regulatory Review Committee has sparked a fierce debate about the place of tikanga Māori – or Māori customs, values and spiritual beliefs – in the law.Judd opposes the New Zealand Council of Legal Education’s plans to make teaching tikanga compulsory in the legal curriculum.AUT ...
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TL;DR: Here’s six links that stood out to me in the last day in Aotearoa’s political economy to 6:06am on Sunday, May 19:Aotearoa-NZ is the seventh worst in the OECD’s homelessness rankings, just behind the United States and just ahead of Australia. BlackRock thinks rate hikes actually worsen inflation because ...
Halfway up a historic tower in York, we are neither up nor down. At the top you will have views of a city steeped in antiquity, made and remade by Romans, Normans, Vikings, Tescos. Below, you will find a retired minister happy to tell you all about this most astonishing ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Does breathing contribute to CO2 ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: KiwiRail’s seemingly endless requests for more money is damning. At one point, KiwiRail assured Robertson when he was the Finance Minister that the worst-case scenario would be an extra $300 million before requesting $1.2 billion a few months later. Not what most people ...
No one knows what it's likeTo be the bad manTo be the sad manBehind blue eyesNo one knows what it's likeTo be hatedTo be fatedTo telling only liesHave you ever wondered what life must be like for Mike Hosking? Seeing things in black and white through blue tinted specs? In ...
Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past two week’s editions.Share More Than A FeildingBike bling, London Read more ...
Hi,I think we all made it through another week — congratulations. I’ve been digesting the new Arab Strap record, which is astonishing. In other news, I’m going to be doing a Webworm popup in Auckland, New Zealand on Saturday July 13. I’ll bring a bunch of merch, and some other ...
The Fast-Track Approvals Bill enables cabinet ministers to circumvent key environmental planning and protection processes for infrastructure projects. Its difficulties have been well canvassed. This column suggests a different way of thinking about the proposal. I am going to explore the Bill from the perspective of its proponents with their ...
New Zealand First Cabinet Minister Shane Jones has become the best advertisement against the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill. In selling the radical new resource consenting processes, in which ministers can green light any mine, dam, or other major development, Jones seems to be shooting the proposal in the foot. ...
Buzz from the Beehive Associate Education Minister David Seymour is urging the PostPrimary Teachers Association to put learning ahead of ideology. He wants the union leaders to call off their teachers meetings around the country where they hope to muster the strength to undo the government’s plans to establish several ...
What are police for? "Fighting crime" is the obvious answer. If there's a burglary, they should show up and investigate. Ditto if there's a murder or sexual assault. Speeding or drunk or dangerous driving is a crime, so obviously they should respond to that. And obviously, they should respond to ...
Michael Reddell writes – I got curious yesterday about how the Australia/New Zealand real exchange rate had changed over the last decade, and so dug out the data on the changes in the two countries’ CPIs. Over the 10 years from March 2014 to March 2024, New Zealand’s ...
Graham Adams writes that 20 years after the land march, judges are quietly awarding a swathe of coastal rights to iwi. Early this month, an hour-long documentary was released by TVNZ to mark the 20th anniversary of the land-rights march to oppose Helen Clark’s Foreshore and Seabed Act. The account ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: Suspended Green MP Darleen Tana has passed an unpleasant milestone: she has now been absent for as many parliamentary sitting days as she has been present for this year. Tana is on full pay while she is suspended, and will benefit from a ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is no coincidence that two Labour should-have-been MPs are making the most noise about public sector cuts. As assistant general secretary of the Public Service Association, Fleur Fitzsimons has been at the forefront of revealing where the next round of state sector job ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a ...
This is one of the (extra) weekly columns on music or movies. Plenty of solid analyses of Possession exist online and most of them – inevitably – contain spoilers. This column is more in the way of a first-timer’s aid to getting your initial bearings. You don’t need to have ...
I am painting in oil, a portrait of a manWho has taken all the heart aches,And all the pain he can stand.I am using all the colors of blue,I have here on my stand.I am painting in oil, a portrait of a man.This has been an interesting week for me. ...
Helen Clark joins the Hoon as a special guest talking whether Aotearoa should join Aukus II, and her views on the fast track legislation and how Luxon and the new Government are performing. File Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts ...
With an election due in less than nine months, Britain’s embattled PM, Rishi Sunak, gave a useful speech earlier this week. He made a substantial case for his government, perhaps as compelling as is possible in the current environment. Quite an achievement. His overall theme was security, first pulling ...
Open access notablesPublicly expressed climate scepticism is greatest in regions with high CO2 emissions, Pearson et al., Climatic Change:We analysed a recently released corpus of climate-related tweets to examine the macro-level factors associated with public declarations of climate change scepticism. Analyses of over 2 million geo-located tweets in the U.S. showed that climate ...
You can be all negative about these charter schools if you want, but I’m here to accentuate the positive. You can get all worked up, if you want to, by the contradiction of Luxon saying We’re going to make sure that every school in the country is teaching exactly the same ...
Losing The Room: One can only speculate about what has persuaded the Coalition Government that it will pay no electoral price for unreasonably pushing ahead with policies that are so clearly against the national interest. They seem quite oblivious to the risk that by doing so they will convince an increasing ...
Name suppression decisions can be tough sometimes. No matter your views on free speech, you have to be hard-hearted not to be torn by the tug of the competing arguments. I think you can feel the Supreme Court wrestling with that in M v The King. The case for ...
The Merchants of Menace: The Coalition Government has convinced itself that the “Brahmins’” emollient functions have become much too irksome and expensive. Those who see themselves as the best hope of rebuilding New Zealand’s ailing capitalist system, appear to have convinced themselves that a little bit of blunt trauma is what their mollycoddled ...
When National first proposed its Muldoonist "fast-track" law, they were warned that it would inevitably lead to corruption. And that is exactly what has happened, with Resources Minister Shane Jones taking secret meetings with potential applicants:On Tuesday, in a Newsroom story, questions were raised about a dinner Jones ...
Buzz from the Beehive One day – hopefully – we will push that Russian rascal, Vladimir Putin, beyond breaking point. Perhaps it will happen today, when he learns that Foreign Minister Winston Peters is again tightening the thumbscrews. Peters announced further sanctions, this time on 28 individuals and 14 entities ...
How Labour’s and National’s failure to move beyond neoliberalism has brought New Zealand to the brink of economic and cultural chaos.TO START LOSING, so soon after you won, requires a special kind of political incompetence. At the heart of this Coalition Government’s failure to retain, and build upon, the public ...
“Members of Parliament don’t work for us, they represent us, an entirely different thing. As with so much that has turned out badly, the re-organising of MPs’ responsibilities began with the Fourth Labour Government. That’s when they began to be treated like employees – public servants – whose diaries had ...
It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a third medical school in New Zealand, ...
Time To Choose: Like it or not, the Kiwis are either going into AUKUS’s “Pillar 2” – or they are going to China.HAD ZHENG HE’S FLEET sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks ...
Henry Ergas writes – When in Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, a college president is accused of being a hypocrite, the novel’s narrator retorts that the description is grossly unfair. After all, the man is still far from the stage of moral development at which the charge ...
David Farrar writes – Radio NZ reports: The Education Review Office says too many new teachers feel poorly prepared for their jobs. In a report published on Monday, the review office said 60 percent of the principals it interviewed said their new teachers were not ready. ...
New Zealand’s economic performance and the PM’s vision Michael Reddell writes – When I wrote yesterday morning’s post, highlighting how poorly both New Zealand and its Anglo peer countries have been doing in respect of productivity in recent times (ie, in the case of New ...
Hi all,Firstly - thank you! You guys are awesome. The response I’ve received to last night’s mail has been quite overwhelming. It’s a ghastly day outside, but there are no clouds in here.In case you didn’t read my email and are wondering what on earth I’m talking about you can ...
If there was still any doubt as to who is actually running this government – and it isn’t the buffoon from Botany – then this week’s announcement of a huge spend up on charter schools has settled the matter. While jobs and public services continue to be cut in the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gaye Taylor As widespread drought raises expectations for a repeat of last year’s ferocious wildfire season, response teams across Canada are grappling with the rapidly changing face of fire in a warming climate. No longer quenched by winter, nor quelled by the ...
Half of Christchurch City Holdings Ltd’s directors and its chair resigned en masse last night in protest at Christchurch City Council’s demand to front-load dividends File Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The chair of Christchurch City Council’s investment company and four of its independent directors resigned in protest last ...
The University of Waikato has reworded an advertisement that begins the tender process for its new $300 million-plus medical school even though the Government still needs to approve it. However, even the reworded ad contains an architect’s visualisations of what the school might look like. ACT leader David Seymour told ...
As a follow-up to the Rings of Power trailer discussion, I thought I needed to add something. There has been some online mockery about the use of the same actor for both the Halbrand and Annatar incarnations of Sauron. The reasoning is that Halbrand with a shave and a new ...
This isn’t quite as dramatic as the title might suggest. I’m not going anywhere, but there is something I wanted to talk to you about.Let’s start with a typical day.Most days I send out a newsletter in the morning. If I’ve written a lot the previous evening it might be ...
Buzz from the Beehive The promise of tax relief loomed large in his considerations when the PM delivered a pre-Budget speech to the Auckland Business Chamber. The job back in Wellington is getting government spending back under control, he said, bandying figures which show that in per capita terms, the ...
Yesterday de facto Prime Minister David Seymour announced that his glove puppet government would be re-introducing charter schools, throwing $150 million at his pet quacks, donors and cronies and introducing an entire new government agency to oversee them (the existing Education Review Office, which actually knows how to review schools, ...
Seeing that, in order to discredit the figures and achieve moral superiority while attempting to deflect attention away from the military assault on Rafa, Israel supporters in NZ have seized on reports that casualty numbers in Gaza may be inflated … Continue reading → ...
David Farrar writes – Newstalk ZB report: The man responsible for a horror hit and run in central Wellington last year was on a suspended licence and was so drunk he later asked police, “Did I kill someone?” Jason Tuitama injured two women when he ran a red ...
Muriel Newman writes – Former US President Ronald Reagan once said, “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation.” The fight for ...
Why Courts should have said Waitangi Tribunal could not summons Karen Chhour Gary Judd writes – In the High Court, Justice Isacs declined to uphold the witness summons issued by the Waitangi Tribunal to compel Minister for Children, Karen Chhour, to appear before it to be ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The number of voices raising concerns about the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill is rapidly growing. This is especially apparent now that Parliament’s select committee is listening to submissions from the public to evaluate the proposed legislation. Twenty-seven thousand submissions have been made to Parliament ...
An average of 166 New Zealand citizens left the country every day during the March quarter, up 54% from a year ago.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The economy and housing market is sinking into a longer recession through the winter after a slump in business and consumer confidence in ...
The government has made it abundantly clear they’re addicted to the smell of new asphalt. On Tuesday they introduced a new term to the country’s roading lexicon, the Roads of Regional Significance (RoRS), a little brother for the Roads of National (Party) Significance (RoNS). Driving ahead with Roads of Regional ...
School is outAnd I walk the empty hallwaysI walk aloneAlone as alwaysThere's so many lucky penniesLying on the floorBut where the hell are all the lucky peopleI can't see them any moreYesterday morning, I’d just sent out my newsletter on Tama Potaka, and I was struggling to make the coffee. ...
Hi,I wanted to check in and ask how you’re doing.This is perhaps a selfish act, of attempting to find others feeling a similar way to me — that is to say, a little hopeless at the moment.Misery loves company, that sort of deal.Some context.I wish I could say I got ...
I have hitherto been fairly quiet on the new season of Rings of Power, on the basis that the underwhelming first season did not exactly build excitement – and the rumours were fairly daft. The only real thing of substance to come out has been that they have re-cast Adar ...
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 ...
“The thing is,” Chris Luxon says, leaning forward to make his point, “this has always been my thing.”“This goes all the way back to the first multinational I worked for. I was saying exactly the same thing back then. The name of our business needs to be more clear; people ...
Buzz from the Beehive It’s been a momentous few days for Children’s Minister Karen Chhour. The Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court decision which blocked a summons order from the Waitangi Tribunal for her. And today she has announced the Government is putting children first by introducing to ...
In 2014 former Australian army lawyer David McBride leaked classified military documents about Australian war crimes to the ABC. Dubbed "The Afghan Files", the documents led to an explosive report on Australian war crimes, the disbanding of an entire SAS unit, and multiple ongoing prosecutions. The journalist who wrote the ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – According to the respected Pew Research Centre, “In seven of eight [European] countries surveyed, the most trusted news outlet asked about is the public news organization in each country”. For example, “in Sweden, an overwhelming majority (90%) say they trust the public broadcaster SVT”. ...
David Farrar writes – Kata MacNamara reports: Details of Tony Blakely’s involvement in the New Zealand Government’s response to the pandemic raise serious questions about the work of the Covid-19 Royal Commission of Inquiry over which he presides. It has long been clear that Blakely, a ...
Chris Trotter writes – Are you a Brahmin or a Merchant? Or, are you merely one of those whose lives are profoundly influenced by the decisions of Brahmins and Merchants? Those are the questions that are currently shaping the politics of New Zealand and the entire West. ...
RNZ reports – It’s supposed to be a haven of healing and spiritual awakening but residents of the Kawai Purapura community say they’ve been hurt and deceived. It’s the successor to the former Centrepoint commune, and has been on the bush block opposite Albany shopping centre since 2008. It ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. Usually we have a video chat to go with this wrap, but were unable to do one this week. We’ll be back next week.Several reports ...
The Transport Minister has set a hard 'fiscal envelope' of $6.54 billion for transport capital spending. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The economy is settling into a state of suspended animation as the Government’s funding freezes and job cuts chill confidence and combine with stubbornly high interest rates to ...
Treasury officials have outlined many ways in which the Fast Track Approvals Bill is deeply flawed, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking says. ...
Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick used this year's State of the Planet to call on the Government to prioritise people and planet as the delivery of the Budget approaches. A full transcript of their speeches can be found below. ...
Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick have used their State of the Planet speeches to challenge the Government to prioritise people and planet over profit as the delivery of the Budget approaches. ...
The Government’s introduction of legislation that would enable landlords to end tenancies with no reason marks a dark day for the 1.4 million people who rent their home in Aotearoa. ...
The Minister for Mental Health has found the Suicide Prevention Office and mental health support for 111 calls slipping through his fingers, says Labour spokesperson for Mental Health Ingrid Leary. ...
Today’s justification from the Minister for Children for scrapping protections for our tamariki was either a case of ignorance or deliberate deception. ...
The Green Party says the Government’s misguided policy on gangs will fail, following the announcement of the establishment of a national gang unit and district gang disruption units to target gang activities. ...
“With Police pay negotiations still unresolved after six months in Government, Mark Mitchell has today rolled the Commissioner out for a rebrand of their approach to gang crime,” Labour police spokesperson Ginny Andersen said. ...
The Government bringing back 50 charter schools will not increase achievement and is a distraction from the core mission of the education system, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Te Pāti Māori is showing extreme concern over the Environment Select Committees adoption of a lucky dip draw to determine hearings for the Fast Track Approvals bill. Of the 27,000 submissions, 2,900 requested to present. All organisations will be heard; however, the remaining 2,350 submitters will be subject to a ...
Today New Zealand First will introduce a Member’s Bill that will protect women’s spaces. The ‘Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill’ will require, primarily in the interest and safety of women and girls, that all new non-domestic publicly accessible buildings provide separate, clearly demarcated, unisex and single sex bathrooms. This Bill ...
The Green Party is welcoming Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ continuation of Hon. James Shaw’s cross-party work on climate adaptation, now in the form of a Finance and Expenditure Committee Inquiry. ...
The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
The Government has been caught in opposition to evidence once again as it looks to usher in tried, tested and failed work seminar obligations for job-seeking beneficiaries. ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
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 ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced that the Government will make it easier for lines firms to take action to remove vegetation from obstructing local powerlines. The change will ensure greater security of electricity supply in local communities, particularly during severe weather events. “Trees or parts of trees falling on ...
Wairarapa Moana ki Pouakani were the top winners at this year’s Ahuwhenua Trophy awards recognising the best in Māori dairy farming. Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka announced the winners and congratulated runners-up, Whakatōhea Māori Trust Board, at an awards celebration also attended by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister ...
"On the 27th of March, I sought assurances from the Chief Executive, Department of Internal Affairs, that the Department’s correct processes and policies had been followed in regards to a passport application which received media attention,” says Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden. “I raised my concerns after being ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins has announced the appointment of three new District Court Judges, to replace Judges who have recently retired. Peter James Davey of Auckland has been appointed a District Court Judge with a jury jurisdiction to be based at Whangarei. Mr Davey initially started work as a law clerk/solicitor with ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour is calling on the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) to put ideology to the side and focus on students’ learning, in reaction to the union holding paid teacher meetings across New Zealand about charter schools. “The PPTA is disrupting schools up and down the ...
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly today announced the appointment of Craig Stobo as the new chair of the Financial Markets Authority (FMA). Mr Stobo takes over from Mark Todd, whose term expired at the end of April. Mr Stobo’s appointment is for a five-year term. “The FMA plays ...
Surf Life Saving New Zealand and Coastguard New Zealand will continue to be able to keep people safe in, on, and around the water following a funding boost of $63.644 million over four years, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Associate Transport Minister Matt Doocey say. “Heading to the beach for ...
New Zealand and Tuvalu have reaffirmed their close relationship, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand is committed to working with Tuvalu on a shared vision of resilience, prosperity and security, in close concert with Australia,” says Mr Peters, who last visited Tuvalu in 2019. “It is my pleasure ...
New Zealand is gravely concerned about the situation in New Caledonia, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The escalating situation and violent protests in Nouméa are of serious concern across the Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “The immediate priority must be for all sides to take steps to de-escalate the ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon met today with Samoa’s O le Ao o le Malo, Afioga Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II, who is making a State Visit to New Zealand. “His Highness and I reflected on our two countries’ extensive community links, with Samoan–New Zealanders contributing to all areas of our national ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has announced that he has approved Waiheke Island ferry operator Island Direct to be eligible for SuperGold Card funding, paving the way for a commercial agreement to bring the operator into the scheme. “Island Direct started operating in November 2023, offering an additional option for people ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters today announced further sanctions on 28 individuals and 14 entities providing military and strategic support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Russia is directly supported by its military-industrial complex in its illegal aggression against Ukraine, attacking its sovereignty and territorial integrity. New Zealand condemns all entities and ...
A year on from the tragedy at Loafers Lodge, the Government is working hard to improve building fire safety, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “I want to share my sincere condolences with the families and friends of the victims on the anniversary of the tragic fire at Loafers ...
Ka nui te mihi kia koutou. Kia ora and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for having me here in the lead up to my Government’s first Budget. Before I get started can I acknowledge: Simon Bridges – Auckland Business Chamber CEO. Steve Jurkovich – Kiwibank CEO. Kids born ...
New Zealand and Vanuatu will enhance collaboration on issues of mutual interest, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “It is important to return to Port Vila this week with a broad, high-level political delegation which demonstrates our deep commitment to New Zealand’s relationship with Vanuatu,” Mr Peters says. “This ...
Minister for Land Information, Chris Penk will travel to Peru this week to represent New Zealand at a meeting of trade ministers from the Asia-Pacific region on behalf of Trade Minister Todd McClay. The annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Ministers Responsible for Trade meeting will be held on 17-18 May ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford will head to the United Kingdom this week to participate in the 22nd Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) and the 2024 Education World Forum (EWF). “I am looking forward to sharing this Government’s education priorities, such as introducing a knowledge-rich curriculum, implementing an evidence-based ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford has today thanked outgoing New Zealand Qualifications Authority Chair, Hon Tracey Martin. “Tracey Martin tendered her resignation late last month in order to take up a new role,” Ms Stanford says. Ms Martin will relinquish the role of Chair on 10 May and current Deputy ...
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and President Emmanuel Macron of France today announced a new non-governmental organisation, the Christchurch Call Foundation, to coordinate the Christchurch Call’s work to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. This change gives effect to the outcomes of the November 2023 Call Leaders’ Summit, ...
Distinguished public servant and former diplomat Sir Maarten Wevers will lead the independent review into the disability support services administered by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. The review was announced by Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston a fortnight ago to examine what could be done to strengthen the ...
Today’s announcement by Police Commissioner Andrew Coster of a National Gang Unit and district Gang Disruption Units will help deliver on the coalition Government’s pledge to restore law and order and crack down on criminal gangs, Police Minister Mark Mitchell says. “The National Gang Unit and Gang Disruption Units will ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today expressed regret at North Korea’s aggressive rhetoric towards New Zealand and its international partners. “New Zealand proudly stands with the international community in upholding the rules-based order through its monitoring and surveillance deployments, which it has been regularly doing alongside partners since 2018,” Mr ...
Air Vice-Marshal Tony Davies MNZM is the new Chief of Defence Force, Defence Minister Judith Collins announced today. The Chief of Defence Force commands the Navy, Army and Air Force and is the principal military advisor to the Defence Minister and other Ministers with relevant portfolio responsibilities in the defence ...
Legislation to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act has been introduced to Parliament. The Bill’s introduction reaffirms the Coalition Government’s commitment to the safety of children in care, says Minister for Children, Karen Chhour. “While section 7AA was introduced with good intentions, it creates a conflict for Oranga ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins will this week travel to the UK and Italy to meet with her defence counterparts, and to attend Battles of Cassino commemorations. “I am humbled to be able to represent the New Zealand Government in Italy at the commemorations for the 80th anniversary of what was ...
The upcoming Budget will include funding for up to 50 charter schools to help lift declining educational performance, Associate Education Minister David Seymour announced today. $153 million in new funding will be provided over four years to establish and operate up to 15 new charter schools and convert 35 state ...
“The results of the public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has now been received, with results indicating over 13,000 submissions were made from members of the public,” Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “We heard feedback about the extended lockdowns in ...
Foreign Minister, Defence Minister, other Members of Parliament Acting Chief of Defence Force, Secretary of Defence Distinguished Guests Defence and Diplomatic Colleagues Ladies and Gentlemen, Good afternoon, tēna koutou, apinun tru It’s a pleasure to be back in Port Moresby today, and to speak here at the Kumul Leadership ...
Health, infrastructure, renewable energy, and stability are among the themes of the current visit to Papua New Guinea by a New Zealand political delegation, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Papua New Guinea carries serious weight in the Pacific, and New Zealand deeply values our relationship with it,” Mr Peters ...
The coalition Government is launching Roads of Regional Significance to sit alongside Roads of National Significance as part of its plan to deliver priority roading projects across the country, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The Roads of National Significance (RoNS) built by the previous National Government are some of New Zealand’s ...
A high-level New Zealand political delegation in Honiara today congratulated the new Government of Solomon Islands, led by Jeremiah Manele, on taking office. “We are privileged to meet the new Prime Minister and members of his Cabinet during his government’s first ten days in office,” Deputy Prime Minister and ...
New Zealand voted in favour of a resolution broadening Palestine’s participation at the United Nations General Assembly overnight, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The resolution enhances the rights of Palestine to participate in the work of the UN General Assembly while stopping short of admitting Palestine as a full ...
Introduction Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here at the 2024 Infrastructure Symposium. I was extremely happy when the Prime Minister asked me to be his Minister for Infrastructure. It is one of the great barriers holding the New Zealand economy back from achieving its potential. Building high ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced the upcoming Budget will include new funding of $571 million for Defence Force pay and projects. “Our servicemen and women do New Zealand proud throughout the world and this funding will help ensure we retain their services and expertise as we navigate an increasingly ...
New Zealand’s ability to cope with climate change will be strengthened as part of the Government’s focus to build resilience as we rebuild the economy, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “An enduring and long-term approach is needed to provide New Zealanders and the economy with certainty as the climate ...
Jobseeker beneficiaries who have work obligations must now meet with MSD within two weeks of their benefit starting to determine their next step towards finding a job, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “A key part of the coalition Government’s plan to have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker ...
A new standalone Social Investment Agency will power-up the social investment approach, driving positive change for our most vulnerable New Zealanders, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis says. “Despite the Government currently investing more than $70 billion every year into social services, we are not seeing the outcomes we want for ...
Check against delivery Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you to outline the Coalition Government’s approach to our first Budget. Thank you Mark Skelly, President of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce, together with your Board and team, for hosting me. I’d like to acknowledge His Worship ...
Your Excellency Ambassador Meredith, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Ambassadors from European Union Member States, Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and other distinguished guests, Thank you everyone for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen - In diplomacy, we often speak of ‘close’ and ‘long-standing’ relations. ...
The Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will be repealed this year so that a better regime can be put in place to provide New Zealanders safe and timely access to medicines, medical devices and health products, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello announced today. “The medicines and products we are talking about ...
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Kiss all concern for life goodbye. Water now trading as a commodity.
This will bring violence and desperation like never before. Time to invest in crowd control armaments?
Time to eat the rich.
“Sellers are water districts with surplus supply, for example farmers and municipalities in other parts of the state.”
Very bad.
P.S. It’s not like the rich could send up weather satellites and rig the whole game. Right?
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/07/investing/water-futures-trading/index.html
"Water now trading as a commodity."
Now??? It has been for a long long time. The only surprising thing about a futures market starting up is that it didn't happen a long long time ago.
When it comes to California and other western states, as far as I'm concerned a massive price increase in water would actually be a good thing. It might get them to be a bit more careful in how much they use.
Twenty years ago on return to NZ, I was shocked at how high Auckland's water prices were compared to San Diego's. But I should have been shocked in retrospect at how low San Diego's price was. Considering a lot of San Diego's water comes from the Colorado River, around 500km and a mountain range away.
This piece takes a look at how much water cost is embodied in food from California:
https://news.berkeley.edu/berkeley_blog/the-cost-of-irrigation-water-and-urban-farming/
More about how much water goes into food:
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts-crazy-stats-charts/
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres-californias-water-going/
Err, you're assuming to educate me on water use? That's rich.
As prices rise (that which you think is a good thing) guess who gets to have water, and who does not?
This is ridiculous. What they need is a future, not a fucking futures market.
In your case, the knowledge deficit appears to be in the area of water law, water economics, and the engineering of water supply in western US states.
For a lot of other readers though, an occasional reminder of how much water actually goes into food supply might be useful. Particularly when that food supply comes from places where adequate water doesn't just fall from the sky. For instance, the 150g bag of almonds I just bought represents as much water as I use in my house in three weeks.
So when prices rise in western states, the first things to go will be the low value crops with disproportionately high water demand. Cotton. Alfalfa to be shipped to Saudi Arabia. Rice. Other water users producing higher value crops will adopt ways of using less water.
Cities will also adapt to lower water use, through means such as discouraging lawns and swimming pools by regulation and and progressive pricing structures and reusing treated sewage water for applications that don't require drinking water. That's already happening, for instance in San Diego the first 11 cubic metres per month costs about $1.90/cu m, over 50 cubic metres per month the charge is $4.22/cu m. But realistically, personal water use is pretty small compared to the vast amounts agriculture consumes.
Of course, how stupid of me, the market will fix everything.
What's gonna happen when investors buy water and hold onto it till it's scarce? Fair play?
I saw a company in US yesterday selling what was basically a roof mounted solar powered dehumidifier that pulled in only a few litres per day – for drinking water. The cost was up around 4K per unit. The interesting bit was what drove them to make it. Many Americans do not have safe, or secure, drinking water.
Agriculture/hort has very high use, but also very high land area for water collection. But do we see them making simple earthworks to retain water? Do we see in areas of low rainfall crops suited to the area?
Business is solving nothing till impending (financial) doom forces their hand. Impending planetary doom not a concern.
You buy almonds? Boo. Grow some macadamias. They’re free and require no maintenance.
Investors and speculators have a long history in water supply issues. Owens Valley in California provides just one example of the sordid dealings that have gone on. But just a quick google turns up plenty of info that suggests they aren't currently considered much of a problem, and may even be stabilisers.
eg, looking at the Murray-Darling system in Australia: https://theconversation.com/investors-and-speculators-arent-disrupting-the-water-markets-69492
Outta curiosity, what kind of water allocation and distribution would you set up, and how would it be paid for, if you were handed the magic wand?
The problem of lack of access to safe drinking water for personal use is much more an infrastructure cost issue. Because personal water needs are so tiny, compared to agricultural use. That's where spending 4K for a system to pull water from the air (a link for that assertion would be useful BTW) can make more sense than paying tens of thousands to get a pipe laid to your house. It's possible that was also in a state where collecting rainwater from your roof was illegal, because someone else has been allocated rights to that water.
What would I do. I've neither the time or inclination to write that book here and now.
I'd make landowners collect and store water in the ground.
I'd demolish any nonsense e.g. rainwater belongs to someone else. Then I'd encourage home collection including sections.
I'd have street and impervious surfaces of water running into land storage with only overflow making it into waterways.
I'd establish rules around what can/cannot grow in specific rain zones.
I'd have a whip and take to these money grubbing charlatans.
…and nationalise NZ's electricity industry…
every new build has to have water collection.
The govt has relaxed the rules on how much water you are allowed to store on your property .
But it has to meet the building code plus the water would have to be filtered and your collection system kept clean for potable water.
With the amount of pollution in built up areas it would be expensive for individuals to keep a clean safe water supply.
Dust would be a much bigger problem than you would expect I have worked in the building industry for most of my life and as the number of cars trucks etc have increased over the years the amount of dust ending up on roofs and in spoutings is unbelieveable the closer you get to high traffic areas the bigger the dust build up so much so that spoutings need cleaning every year just to work properly.
Fair points. At the least, any property that has plants on it needs its own water catchment system. We're going to need urban farms as well as home gardens.
There will be solutions to the dust issue: plant more trees and wind brakes. We should be transitioning to less traffic anyway.
That's all very nice. It might even have some effect on groundwater levels in built-up areas and improve water quality in the waterways draining those built-up areas. I can't see how that results in secure supply for industrial users, let alone agricultural. Nor do I see any proposed mechanism for paying for it or pricing supply to industrial and agriculture.
Do that in California, and the Central Valley and Imperial Valley will revert back to the dusty near-deserts they were before the massive importation of water from elsewhere (mostly the Colorado River), instead of being the massively productive area it is now. Because there simply isn’t enough water supply falling from the sky and running off the surrounding hills to sustain water-needy agriculture there.
edit
Andre @11.55am
A NZr Wendy Campbell Purdie got fired up by St Barbe Baker (who lived in NZ later to his death in 1982). She ended up planting many trees which enabled crops to grow with protection from the hard sun.
She wrote: “Trees I planted in Tiznit, Morocco, in January and December 1960 are now twice as tall as a man. One of the thousand trees I planted near Bou Saada in March 1964 is now taller than the large Conservator of Forests in Algeria. He was startled.” https://internationaltreefoundation.org/women-heart-men-trees/
And I think that the system she used was to space the trees so they formed a canopy giving an umbrella overstory and then crops were planted in rows underneath in the understory, and evaporation and sun scald was limited.
And there is much work that has been done to recover from desertification and alleviate drought which seems to have largely been ignored by developed nations like the USA who allow business to decimate the land if its cheaper than following the right practices for agriculture.
Such as (from a report from Food and Agriculture Organisation in their work against desertification and in facilitating food growing #84, 1967. – http://www.fao.org/3/55408e/55408e0a.htm)
Denmark. – The countryside of Middle Jutland has been completely changed over the last century: large stretches of heathland have disappeared. Protective shelterbelts divide the land into squares, and there are small and large plantations everywhere. Average production on sandy fields in Jutland is now on a level with production in the rest of the country.
Experience has shown that, depending on the density, protective and forest plantations reduce by 20 to 40 percent the force of the wind which blows eastward across Jutland.
The right kind of protection around a field reduces, for example, evaporation: 1 mm less evaporation means that about 32 million cubic meters more water is available for the crops. (HAR SKODSHØJ).
@greywarshark – if you've got the answers on how to make that land productive without a shitload of imported water, then there's a fuckload of money to be made doing it.
Without access to imported water, you can buy land there for under a thousand bucks an acre. $1500 an acre if you want a natural streambed running through the middle of it. But if it's got access to imported water, the land is worth ten times as much.
https://www.landsofamerica.com/Imperial-County-CA/all-land/
You are so ecologically illiterate engaging any further is a waste of my time. Also an opportunity for you to talk more nonsense which we'd be better off without.
Storing groundwater will revert ecosystems to dusty near deserts? FFS.
You do not see the things you wish to see because I can't be fucked with your nonsense.
Dunno Bleeple, it is kind of useful to see the thinking laid bare. Money is the premier driver, and the degree of ecological illiteracy is probably not even recognised. Which tbf is pretty much why we're in the situation we're in.
Andre @ 1.41pm I was not talking about real estate values in the deserts in California that have flourished with imported water. It is taken for granted that cannot carry on.
I was saying that all is not lost for growing something there. It may be a different crop grown in a different way. But one thing is certain, that the previous profitability has gone. Are you a USA born person? You seem obsessed with the politics there and more interested in the goings on there than ours.
@ greywarshark The thread starter was about water markets in California. The differential in real estate value depending on access to water is an integral part of the whole water system in western US.
Yes, I was born in the US, spent about a third of my adult life working there, and still have extended family there. Some of whom are involved in farming in western states. Also, one of my rellies made his living for a while in western water law, and is now practicing at the intersection of water law and engineering.
So western US farming and water supply and US politics are all topics on which I do have some insight beyond just keyboard warrioring from a remote small island in the middle of a big ocean.
Allocating rain water that falls on someone else's is peak insanity and comes from the capitalist mindset that refuses to work with nature but instead treats it as a resource and/or commodity.
Bleeple pointed to the solution above: transition to ag that intentionally holds water in the soil. This is the basis of regenerative agricultures.
Also peak insanity: growing milk in dry climates like Otago and Canterbury via water extraction from the water table or rivers, shipping that milk to a factory and using coal to burn off all the water, then shipping the powder overseas, all to make money. We're also a net exporter of soil fertility that will take time to reinstate once we are forced into regenag.
Making Fonterra or farmers pay for the right to farm so destructively is what society does when it can't regulate itself. Letting people make water an item of the financial sector's greed frenzy doubles down on all the issues and makes things like conservation, just transition, regeneration so much harder.
I don't think NZ has a better example of the failure of capitalism and democracy than that, and later generations will look at us with bafflement and anger.
That's interesting Andre, but you do realise that nothing in that negates what Bleeple said?
Your points are useful for the vegan zealots who think we can substitute NZ beef and lamb for imported almond milk and soy.
@weka..
as opposed to those flesh–addictcd 'zealots'..
who don't give a fuck about the cruelties/environmental damage caused by their addictions to flesh/fat..
and who claim to be 'green'..?
pausing only to wipe the animal fat from their lips ..?
'cos that really is the mark of the 'zealot '…isn't it..?
not caring a jot about the harms done.
in the following of their 'beliefs'..
how in this day and age…at this crossroads..they just don't care…
the force of their addiction denies/flys in the face of green-logic..
"as opposed to those flesh–addictcd 'zealots'.."
No, as opposed to local food people who say that it's not what we eat that matters but how it is produced. That includes but isn't limited to animal welfare.
By all means make an ethical argument for eating almonds imported from California over mutton from the farmer down the road, I'm all ears. You can save yourself the trouble if it's just killing animals is always wrong/eating plants is always right.
you really just don't care about the suffering of the animals..?
have you ever been to an abbattoir…and seen what is done in your name..?
Love eating well-done chicken (and Xmas turkey), pork (hmm, bacon), lamb (shanks for the memories) and (what's the) beef, moreso now I've cut down, but "vegan zealots" seems tad pejorative. Live and let live I reckon, unless you're a production animal of course.
It’s amusing to see push back against promoting a lifestyle choice such as veganism (and to a lesser extent vegetarianism) – after all it's not compulsory, although Thunberg apparently 'persuaded' her father into it.
Fwiw, eating plants is always right – I eat fewer veges than is healthy, but it's tough, you know. Wonder if almond trees would crop OK in NZ.
You know I wasn't talking about vegans but the vegans who are zealots, right? The ones who do want everyone to be vegan even if it means ecocidal almond orchards or monsantoed soy fields.
many of them around..?
I have been vegan for quite a long time..and I have met many other vegans..
not once have I heard advocacy for 'monsanto soy'..
nor for 'ecocidal almond orchards'…
know a lot of vegans do you..?
what percentage of all these vegans you know..pimp for 'ecocidal almond orchards'..?
in fact have you ever heard a vegan do that. .?
or is this just a chimera you have whipped up in yr head…?
(it sure walks and barks like it is..)
to in some way excuse your constant slighting of vegans..?
did you get a bad lentil-burger one time..?
and have found it hard to forgive/forget..?
what to explain your virulence..
toward those who are only trying to end the suffering of animals..and to help save the environment..?
and you sit there chewing flesh..and hurling abuse..
why does that mess with you so much…
it takes over 6,000 litres of water to make one litre of almond milk….
it is the most ungreen drink you can buy..
Thanks Weka – no, I didn't know that you weren't talking about all vegans, but rather only about vegans who are zealots and "who do want everyone to be to be vegan even if it means ecocidal almond orchards or monsantoed soy fields."
I thought you'd made your opinion of those who, for whatever reason, promote the benefits of a vegan diet quite clear. To me, it even comes across in the above quote, but maybe I'm guilty of a little too much reading between the lines
Or maybe projecting? Why would you assume that 'vegan zealots' = all vegans?
I'm good with people making personal choices to be vegan where that doesn't impact on others. I was vegetarian for a long time, so I appreciate the ethical positioning. There is however a big difference between individual choice and a movement that is actively working against actions needed to get us out of the massive climate and ecological crisis. And the zealots who support that.
"Projecting" – meaning I might subconsciously consider (all) vegans to be zealots? It's possible – certainly wouldn't 'convert' voluntarily.
I don't consciously consider (the growth of) NZ veganism a threat, nor share your opinion that the 'vegan movement' "is actively working against actions needed to get us out of the massive climate and ecological crisis". And, if you're right, there's still a good chance there are even greater threats to a sustainable future for humanity than vegan zealots.
I've yet to meat one of these rare beasts – they'd tell me, right?
https://treecrops.org.nz/crops/nut/almond/almond-factsheet/
Thanks solkta (and Stuart), I see from the link that one variety, ‘Fabrin’, is suitable for dry climates only; explains “ex Manawatu”
There is so much more that we could grow here with all the micro-climates and soil types we have. So much wasted on cows.
Macadamia nuts are back in season at the Whangarei Growers Market and will be my Saturday breakfast while they are (way yummier than almonds).
Hazelnuts and walnuts are the nuts of choice further south. Recently harvested hazelnuts are another world compared to the long stored ones we usually can buy.
I have a friend in the Waikato who grows walnuts semi-commercially. He used to give me a whole big box full each year when i lived there, mmmm. Can get them also at the market here which i do sometimes as well as the macadamia.
Agree that all nuts are heaps better when not stored too long.
They grow like weeds around Nelson/Marlborough.
My nursery is swelling with sweet chestnut seedlings, as the nuts I collected and planted in autumn grow and show themselves in their beds for me to transfer them to pots and grow-on. I'd like to see them planted extensively throughout the region/rohe, along with hazels, similarly grown (it's too, too easy!). Imagine a "thin-forest" of nut-trees across Southland/Otago/Canterbury etc…
I'm encouraging gevuina as well; I've just 10 or so, but learning…
Did WTB make any points beyond expressing generalised horror at the idea of markets for water? It sure didn't look like it to me.
If vegans want to argue against irrigating unsuitable areas for beef and dairy, where that irrigation lowers water tables and dries up watercourses, and the cows fill what's left full of nitrates and fecal lurgies, I'll be right with them. But over most of New Zealand, enough water falls from the sky to allow reasonable stocking rates with minimal additional water. If vegans want to argue against overstocking because of the resulting environmental damage, I'll be right with them on that, too.
If people want almond milk, that's totally fine with me. Whatever their motivations may be. But if almond growers has to pay a reasonable price for water, the price of almond milk would go waaay up.
When it comes to soy, well, yes, vegans do in fact have a good argument that much less land and other inputs would be needed to feed humans if humans ate the soy directly instead of wasting most of the nutrients in the soy by converting most of it to cow shit and cow piss and just a tiny bit of cow meat. IIRC, only about 1/20th of the inputs would be needed if humans ate the soy directly, instead of eating it in the form of dead cow. For me personally, though, the taste and texture etc of soy products are just so wrong that it's too high a price to pay.
Oh do shut up don't speak about what I have to say if you're too stupid to follow it.
You need to show that you actually have something useful to add to the topic of discussion. Otherwise you're just an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
[lprent: should we find you two a room to work it out in? Pretty boring listening. ]
Do you not understand I am utterly bored trying to inform a fool with his fingers in his ears.
I'm also not here to trot out information at your request.
Nobody has answers that satisfy anything you disagree with, ever. You just take part of a sentence and run up many paragraphs of nonsense then demand answers to your garbage.
[lprent: should we find you two a room to work it out in? Pretty boring listening. ]
Mmmmmmmm, how to win friends and influence people, not. The fact that we may not all share your views or even your particular knowledge base makes us all the more interesting I would have thought and doesn't deserve a 'shut-up' or telling someone they are 'stupid'.
Actually Shanreagh Bleeple is flat out getting information, developing ideas etc to ameliorate climate change. He is fully extended studying, thinking, worrying and can get annoyed when people miss the urgency of the matter, and we as a country and elsewhere, are so slow to get started on new methods and argue instead. If we don't share his views then we probably don't understand what is actually going on.
So getting a bit tetchy goes with the situation and it would be good if you don't start taking people to task because you don't 'share their views' or approach. We are into more than interesting, idle discussion here, we are trying to gather information and get a handle on what we can do to survive in the world. As adults here most recognise the serious commenters and we need to be a bit tolerant when tempers flare. remembering that thoughtful people are under a lot of stress.
The most learned and thoughtful people in the world are the ones who are able to multi-task ie express their views plus not getting snarly at others…On here it is just a matter of proof reading and we all do that don't we?
I understand perfectly what is going on. I don't need it coated with a heap of grumpy to understand it better. No exceptions are needed for the so-called ‘serious commentators’ as that is all of us isn't it?
To go much further down your track is close to the old 'ends justify the means trick'…..you are allowing an exception because you agree with the subject matter.
I sense a bit of head patting here and that is definitely not needed.
Andre a fault in your economics of water the flat playing field why do residents pay more than farmers.
Look at what's happened in our electricity market prices just keep going up to where they are unaffordable for most.
Domestic water costs much much more than agricultural water because of the cost to treat it to make it safe and taste ok, and the massive cost of piping it to every house.
Similarly, for domestic electricity, the cost of the wiring to get it to every house is a large component of the electricity price. Between Transpower and local lines charges, getting it to the house is a bigger component of the bill than the actual electricity. Similarly, domestic customers get rorted for huge marketing and administrative costs for all the different retailers.
Andre your almonds or almond milk will be highly tainted by glyphosate.
Then the bees needed to pollinate the almonds are dying out because of widespread use of glysophate.
So your almonds could be a very expensive luxury given the rapid increase in temperature in the growing areas in the US.
The free market needs Welfare every 10 years to survive .
So anyone who pushes this free market theory cause that's all it is, Is making shit up no where in this world does the free market exist it's a myth pushed by the wealthy to keep the poor poorer .
https://www.mpi.govt.nz/food-safety-home/safe-levels-of-chemicals-in-food/fertilisers-pesticides-hormones-and-medicines-in-food/glyphosate-in-food/
Well now, glyphosate is waaaay down the list of concerns in almonds. Even for those that have bought into the false demonising of glyphosate.
Personally, I'd be more worried about my almonds coming from a batch that for some reason had regressed to a natural high amygdalin content that has been genetically modified out of the ancestors to almonds. (My concern level about that is indistinguishable from zero).
Neonicotinoid insecticides on the other hand …
Just outta curiosity, if you've got a problem with a market model for water allocation in areas where it's a scarce resource, what kind of allocation and cost recovery model would you impose if you were handed a magic wand?
Andre they use glyphosate to keep the grass and weeds down between the almond trees.there are only a small number of organic growers.
…those that have bought into the false demonising of glyphosate.
Right.
Like these numpties…https://www.nzma.org.nz/journal-articles/carcinogenicity-ofa-glyphosate-why-isa-newa-zealand-sa-epaa-losta-in-the-weeds
But hey, if it floats your boat to stand with the poisoners.
If you're a worker spending all day every day exposed to it, then you should probably be concerned enough to take some rudimentary precautions to reduce exposure. At massive levels of exposure, there aren't many substances that aren't likely to cause harm of one kind or another.
In terms or what the risk really is, a few studies suggest workers at the highest levels of exposure may have a slightly increased risk of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. (Other credible studies find no increased risk). Like maybe 30% increased risk of a rare-ish cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Reminder, these are workers with the highest exposure, they're the ones spending all day mixing and spraying it. But realistically, the absolute numbers of people involved in the studies are so low that there remains a high chance the claimed elevated risk (reminder, it's only the small number of workers with the highest exposure level that show any elevated risk) is just noise rather than true signal.
If the risk is so low for workers with the highest levels of exposure to the stuff, what does that mean for the rest of us whose exposure is many orders of magnitude less? It means that while it may indeed be unwise to take a weekly swig from the bottle of Roundup in the garage, but if you can refrain from that, there really isn't anything to be concerned about.
Something that amuses me (in a black humour way) about the glyphosate demonisation is that most growers that feel pressured to not use it then go on to substitute something else. Often that something else is something that has much more significant questions against its use, such as dicamba. But for the growers, the pressure is off until the whatever else they've changed to catches the attention of the loony brigade.
Assessing the effects of glyphosate on animals must be quite tricky, don't you think – so many potential effects to consider.
Best to keep an open mind, and I wonder about the utility of the "loony brigade" label – after all, while our collective knowledge is increasing in leaps and bounds, it's evident that behavioural and ‘institutional’ quirks can delay optimal responses to some new knowledge.
Not to mention that 'unknowns' will always outnumber 'knowns'.
It may this, it may that … Arguing like that is just making up one's mind that they don't like something and are making up all kinds of shit that may be true, but don't really care whether or not it is true as long as the fear and doubt created is enough to create opposition to whatever it is they don't like.
Meanwhile, many large studies have been done which have found zero evidence that glyphosate causes harm in the vast majority of people exposed to it, with a very weak possibility of slightly increased risk of a rare harm in the very small portion of the population with extremely high exposure to it.
I'd call that very good reason to continue using it until something else comes along that has received equal scrutiny and been found to have a better effectiveness/risk profile. That's going to be tough because the actual demonstrated risk of glyphosate is somewhere between very very very low and zero.
Right now, the specious fear,uncertainty, doubt whipped up by the loony glyphosate antis have the effect of increasing the use of alternatives that are much higher risk of harm. That's just dumb.
From the study abstract:
"A conservative estimate from our results shows that 54% of species in the core human gut microbiome are sensitive to glyphosate"
The results are interesting in that some gut species are resistant (to glyphosate), while others are sensitive – imbalances in the gut microbiome will very likely result. Evolution baby, happens fast for microbes, way slower for humans.
Science uses terms like may, could, likely… until further evidence is at hand. Conclusions should not be grabbed at, nor should possibilities be ignored.
The human gut microbiome has a profound effect on human development, health and disease outcomes.
But we could always pretend everything's fine because glyphosate is very useful and convenient. Should it turn out to be altering the evolution of the human gut, no biggie right?
Thanks Andre; the use of glyphosate has many benefits.
When planning, conducting and analysing the results of scientific research, really does pay to keep an open mind, IMHO and experience. I hope that doesn’t make me a ‘loony‘, or ‘dumb‘ in your eyes, but even if it does it’s too late for me to change now. Maybe too late for us both.
In this case, plenty of studies of actual humans exposed to the substance of interest have been done from which a reasonable conclusion can be drawn.
That reasonable conclusion is that for the vast majority of exposure scenarios, there is zero evidence of harm. For the worst exposure case, there might be a tiny blip of risk, or the numbers are so small that's it's also fairly likely to be a statistical artefact from how widely the net was cast.
A reasonable open mind is also capable of accepting when enough has been investigated to come to a conclusion that there really is nothing there. Until new good evidence of a different conclusion becomes available.
Glyphosate is certainly in the category of enough investigations have been done to conclude it is safe, with maybe a tiny question mark against highest exposure workers. In any reasonable world, the burden of proof would now shift to those asserting (currently without evidence) that it is harmful to those exposed to tiny residual amounts.
There’s a vast body of historical scientific research on the safety of glyphosate in animals, including research that was conducted carefully by scientists with no conflicts of interest. All research has limitations – IMHO it's prudent to remain open-minded about potential and/or as yet poorly recognised side effects of such a large-scale (global) experiment. Such concerns may prove to be unfounded, but that previous quote sums things up (for me), and we can agree to disagree.
DDT was highly effective in keeping the mosquito vector of malaria in check, and that wasn’t its only use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT
DDT was originally used and tested for spraying on surfaces as a contact poison, and it's highly effective and low risk used that way.
Had it stayed within that method of application and use, it would likely never have developed the bad name it now has. The problems came about when they started spraying enormous quantities of it indiscriminately outdoors more or less anywhere a flying insect might be, before any investigations had been done of what its effects in the wider ecosystem might be.
When the problems became obvious, it was banned. At the cost of enormous human suffering from malaria that could have been reduced had it been reverted to its original use on indoor surfaces.
But DDT is now making a bit of a comeback, strictly limited to application to indoor surfaces. Which is a good thing. It will alleviate a lot of suffering from malaria, at least until the local mosquito populations develop resistance.
Dunno why the problems from spraying massive amounts of DDT into the environment without prior testing is relevant to glyphosate. They are totally different situations. Glyphosate has been extensively studied across humans and many other lifeforms, and negligible harm has been detected, except to the targeted pest plants and nearby plants that cop unintended overspray.
@Andre
…plenty of studies of actual humans exposed to the substance of interest have been done
"Plenty", and yet you cite absolutely none.
Funny that.
@Rosemary the conversation with DMK was philosophical in nature around the relationship of results from studies and the acceptance (or not) of vague hypothetical undemonstrated risks from those substances after tests have been done.
But if you want links, here's just the first one that popped up from my search:
Note that the "some evidence" was for a different kind of cancer than the non-Hodgkin's lymphoma cited elsewhere. The one-off appearance of weak evidence for different effects in different studies is a strong indication of statistical noise rather than real effects. That statistical noise should be expected when dredging large data sets, which is effectively what these studies are doing when looking for evidence of some previously unknown harm from a substance.
This piece from The Conversation has a good walk through the evidence, and what the different organisation statements really mean and how they should be interpreted.
https://theconversation.com/stop-worrying-and-trust-the-evidence-its-very-unlikely-roundup-causes-cancer-104554
Relevance? "Problems from spraying massive amounts of DDT into the environment" were recognised only after the event. 'We' are learning, but there's always room for improvement, if the spirit is willing.
Would you be oppsed to “Future long-term studies examining physiologically relevant doses in both healthy and genetically susceptible populations“?
No I wouldn't be opposed to doing more studies.
I'm just of the opinion that the evidence from the large number of studies already done on actual humans is sufficient to conclude the risk of harm is negligible (except maybe for the highest exposure workers).
So now, as far as I'm concerned, the burden of proof has clearly shifted to those that continue to baseless assert risk against the huge amount of evidence of negligible harm that has already been gathered. And that it's quite appropriate to continue using it in the meantime.
Note that glyphosate was first introduced in 1974, and has been very extensively used since the 90s. The complete lack of field evidence of harm so far is quite strong evidence for safety.
It's also a clear point of difference with DDT where the harms became evident from the field quite quickly, and were quickly and easily confirmed in lab studies.
Excellent! A brief, balanced and appropriately cautious editorial opinion (in JNCI) on the 2017 study you cited about a possible association between glyphosate exposure and (only) cancer. Worth a read.
Translation: We didn't find anything, but give us more money to keep looking because we think it's important. BTW doing this stuff is hard coz there's lots of factors, so we need more money to keep trying to figure it out.
Is that the best way to bolster your position? To be fair to the author, I doubt she's after more money, but maybe you know her circumstances better than I?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_M._Ward
Figuring and not figuring things out is what people, including scientists, do. Sometimes that takes money – go figure!
There's nothing in that piece that argues against my position. They didn't find anything suggesting harm from glyphosate. They included a lot of waffle about benzene (a well-known serious risk), for some reason that's not at all clear to me, but didn't attribute any harm to glyphosate. None.
It's just a collection of maybe this, maybe that … we need to keep looking to be sure.
Ward is an epidemiologist. The piece argues for more epidemiological studies. Studies need funding. If that funding comes through, it may create more employment for Ward and/or her colleagues.
A lot of my immediate family are and were academics. That funding treadmill is one of the many reasons I had zero interest in following them into academia.
edit: although in hindsight maybe I should have followed up my interest in Paul Callahan’s MRI machine a bit more, at Massey. That was a seriously interesting bit of kit, and the math to work out what it could tell us was really fascinating too.
Seemed to me that you were having a go at the author (Ward) for her money grubbing ways, but maybe I misread.
Ward is indeed an epidemiologist, with some expertise in the epidemiology of cancers – that's probably why she was considered an appropriate scientist to write an editorial on a primary research paper that might be expected to have real-world implications.
Presumably that particular expert on cancer epidemiology (Ward) believed it was relevant, but if the reason for the benzene ‘waffle‘ genuinely eludes you then there's really little point in further discussion. Over and out.
Sorry about the crap wording on my part.
I'm disgusted at how the "publish or perish" of decades ago seems to have morphed into something like "you're only as good as the overhead portion of your latest grant" and it came out as a personal dig at Ward.
As far as benzene goes, I really can't see a scientific purpose for including that waffle. Hell, even the American Petroleum Institute way back in 1948 said the only safe exposure level to benzene is zero. At a time when tetraethyllead was still the wonder additive.
So the only purpose I can see is to slip it in there is in support of a potential grant application as a "see, here's another substance where there were inconclusive results, so that's why we need to do more studies".
That tactic ignores the vast body of evidence of harm from benzene, which is obvious as soon as anyone looks into it. There's just no plausible equivalence about risks from benzene, and risks from glyphosate (which are very very low if not zero).
The evidence to date suggests that glyphosate exposure poses at worst a very slight, and at best an insignificant cancer risk to humans – apart from tonight I'm certainly not losing any sleep over it here in NZ, although maybe I should be.
An Oct 2019 NZEPA article on Use of Glyphosate in NZ states:
Glossing over the known toxicity of those lovely "crispy burned proteins" does make you wonder about the scientific integrity of the NZEPA, and that's coming from someone who loves his chippies.
It's interesting (to me) that a very recent review of the available literature claims there is a paucity of data on actual human exposure to glyphosate, i.e. studies that measure glyphosate levels in humans remain quite limited in number.
I believe the point Ward was making by referencing benzene is that our understanding of the risk of (different types of) cancer due to benzene exposure has enlarged over 30+ years, from early studies in the 80s, through a review in 1997, and a further review in 2007, to a 'final' WHO review in 2012 (all referenced in Ward's editorial).
In short, it's best (scientific) practice not to jump to conclusions, nor to clutch at convenient answers – that can be left to the market. I don't personally believe that it's prudent to conclude that glyphosate poses no significant risk to human health, but don't worry about it because that multi-billion dollar horse (est. US$7.8 billion in 2020) has bolted.
Down on the farm glyphosate is becoming less effective – time for another herbicide? Why not just use more – we've all gotta eat!
Oh boy, now we come around to acrylamide.
That piece you've linked doesn't show any evidence that dietary acrylamide poses any risk. It merely asserts that, in several different ways. Although it looks like it is linked to references in that paragraph where it repeated asserts this, all those links just go back to itself.
As for the substance of the paper, it's excellent fodder for anyone wanting to have a crack at scientists for wasting huge amounts of time and money to demonstrate the bleedin' fucken obvious, The bleedin' fucken obvious being demonstrated is that a fried potato dish contains wildly different amounts of acrylamide depending on how it's prepared. IgNobel level stuff, if it weren't so banal.
Back to whether acrylamide is indeed a risk via dietary administration in dietary quantities, it seems that there actually is significant dispute over whether there are risks. The piece below from Harvard is the most readable overview that came up on a quick search, there's plenty in a similar vein from more recently but they weren't as readable:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/acrylamide-no-longer-such-a-hot-potato
It appears to be another case where acrylamide is a chemical with industrial uses, so it's quite reasonable for workers exposed to massive amounts to query its safety. As it turns out, at massive exposures it is outright toxic as well hints of carcinogenicity. But it's a helluva stretch to go from there to claiming ill effects from the tiny quantities in food.
But if anyone is taken in by the scaremongering, that's fine. They can easily make dietary choices to avoid acrylamides without affecting anyone else. If they decide the only cooking method they're comfortable with is boiling, it doesn't limit anyone else's choices. Well, not unless they turn into rabid zealots about it and insist that everyone else do the same.
Thing is, I'd wager a dedicated scaremonger could take just about any food, and drill down to find some constituent that is harmful at massive exposures, complete with lab animals studies to "prove" it. The "banana equivalent dose" for radioactivity illustrates this.
If your explanation of Ward's reason for mentioning benzene is close, it is still deeply deceptive. Benzene has long been known as bad bad shit to keep well away from. The understanding of the precise nature of some of the edges of that badness has evolved a bit over time, in ways of interest only to a very small subset of epidemiologists, toxicologists and cancer specialists. That evolution in understanding hasn't in the slightest changed the general understanding of benzene as bad shit to keep well away from. Including benzene in a discussion about glyphosate, where the question is whether risk is effectively zero for everybody or whether there may be a small risk for the small number of highest exposed workers, is disingenuous at best and more likely deliberately deceptively trying to paint a false equivalence.
As for keeping an open mind, that's a circle back to where we were in the thread back here: https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-08-12-2020/#comment-1770148
Polyacrylamide's very useful in the lab, but we do apply the precautionary principle and treat the monomer with respect, largely out of concern for its neurotoxic effects. Can't imagine that there's any risk from regularly ingesting tiny quantities (although I wouldn't swear to it) – maybe it could even ward off the COVID
There are (a small number of) irresponsible scientists, in both public and private sectors, and it’s best to keep an open mind on who the worst offenders might be. But when it comes to industrial-scale scientific misconduct, always "follow the money".
I do try to keep an open mind regarding the possibility that some scientists are scaremongering for personal gain, just as I try to keep an open mind on the risks associated with the deliberate release of huge quantities of unnatural chemicals into the environment. I urge you (and others) to do the same, but understand that it’s a personal choice.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
– Santayana
I have steered clear of almond milk…
after learning how much water is used to make 1 litre of the stuff ..
I would like to alert those looking for economic answers/viable alternatives to the recently published book by yanis varoufakis..
varoufakis was the finance minister in greece when the greek govt melted down..
this book is called 'another now' (subtitle) 'dispatches from an alternative present'..
and that subtitle explains the premise of the book..(230 pages)
it is set in 2025…and posits that after the gfc in 2008..the world underwent serious reform..leading to a world almost unrecognisable…it is so different to the neoliberal tyranny we suffer under..
varoufakis presents a clear brace of ideas/formula for change..
but this is no weighty/dry tome..
the conceit used is conversations between people from our neoliberal future..and those living in this much better/changed world..
and this is how varoufakis explains his ideas…and I found his ideas both exciting and viable…
I am totally smitten with/by this tome..
to the extent I got it out from the library..and am doing a version of the returning rich/ex-backpacker tourist..
..in that I am going to purchase my own copy..(that I can loan to interested parties)
and I am sure that many on this forum will find his ideas 'interesting' to say the least..
and I am looking forward to hearing the reactions from other readers..
I went to hear Colin James' address at Wellington's Baptist Church last evening. He pointed out that, when Keynesianism collapsed, there was Milton Friedman sitting on the shelf with ideas waiting for adoption. He asked who was sitting on the shelf now that neoliberalism was collapsing – nobody as far as he could see. Perhaps he should have considered Syriza's former finance minister.
Yanis Varoufakis – one of my heroes. Smart guy.
I'm with you there. He is big enough and robust enough to look at the Great Pretenders trying to dominate the world.
I thought this was an interesting piece in the list under the link about a clamp on economic discussion in UK education. From September 2020.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/sep/27/uk-schools-told-not-to-use-anti-capitalist-material-in-teaching
Schools in England told not to use material from anti-capitalist groups
Idea categorised as ‘extreme political stance’ equivalent to endorsing illegal activity
Department for Education (DfE) guidance issued on Thursday for school leaders and teachers involved in setting the relationship, sex and health curriculum categorised anti-capitalism as an “extreme political stance” and equated it with opposition to freedom of speech, antisemitism and endorsement of illegal activity.
This sounds as if they are aligned with the Labour officials who resiled from supporting their leader as they should have. Psychologically thinking, it is an example of the Karpman triangle where at any one time someone can be moving between three positions which makes it impossible to argue for a point, as you will always be wrong from another two POV. The UK seems to be getting very sly with extreme concern about some people’s sensitivities which will mean in the end that matters will not be revealed on the excuse it would be upsetting. Sort of we can’t tell the people about something or it would start a riot.
I watched the Colin James/Tamatha Paul/Fabian stream. Very encouraging.
Local and organised was the take home for me.
Local solutions to our problems. As a workforce we need to organize. Join a union.
Not that keen on Yanis after he dropped his bundle when negotiating with the EU on austerity measures, though that is easy to say from a distance and there was rather a lot of pressure on him. Academics are well known for vacillating, but in Greece OXI should mean OXI.
Should check out his book regardless to keep up, as many people still rate him.
The Greek word for "no" should be "ohi" when transcribed into English. The Greek "X" is actually a sort of gutteral "h".
yes, a Greek guy I know told me that, and gave a demo, but I just liked the look of the X on the signs at demos etc.
my understanding is that he was the finance minister….
and that all around him in cabinet caved to the demands around any bailout..that he argued against 'till the end..
he has also written a book about how all that went down..
While Yanis was the Greek leader he could only do incremental change sound familiar
He was held to ransom by the EU and Goldman Sachs who defrauded Greece so the Fox was left in control of the henhouse.
So what solutions does Yanis Varoufakis to undo the monopolistic hegemony.
Can anyone help explain?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300176880/taxpayer-grants-to-lord-of-the-rings-represent-significant-fiscal-risk-to-government-finances
I hate subsidising Bezos as much as anyone, but if a production brings in $5, they take back $1, doesn't that leave the country with $4 in hand? Is the author suggesting that the prod's would come here without subsidies (if so, why wouldn't he say that)? How can the subsidies 'cost' us, when they attract four times as much as they pay? Or is it that those $4 just go into private accounts, not the government's, i.e. is it the tax on that $4 that we should be counting?
star-struck politicians..
(of all stripes)..?
Goldman Sachs loan shark vulture capitalist corruption of the Greek political elite is what lead to Greeces economic collapse.
Yet after Goldman Sachs were also deeply involved in most of the Ponzi scheme collapses 2008 one of their chief executives was made governor of EU finance .
Nothing changed Trump reprieved all the safe guards against bank under capitalization allowing ponzi schemes to flourish again.
These vulture capitalists have more power than any govt and no amount of legislation or reform in NZ can undo it.
The big trading blocks are all in it together protecting the power brokers print money to bail them out while they have their money hidden away in corrupt tax havens.
The panama papers only scratched the surface the whistle blower ends up in jail while the proceeds of crime are laundered back through the big international banks where nobody has been prosecuted.
tax?
That is for the working class, not the investor class. Bezos wants and gets hit tax hand outs and his tax incentives and his negative tax rates and his tax returns. Thank eew very much.
It's an absolute rort. We are subsidising the richest man in the world to make fantasies for adult children.
Cos living in fantasy land has worked out great so far. All my peers who are more concerned with a film franchise than the planet. Screw this industry it's part of the keep em distracted with nonsense strategy.
Take the $4 and tax it. What does govt get? Less than they're spending. And all that spending is to make profits, not art.
Why do you think this is causing concern? It's not because it's a gravy train. We are being rorted, and nobody's got the nuts to stand up to the rich.
So? Can we make money from it. And keep on the world's mind-map. Down 'Here at the End of the World we Learn to Dance' sort of thing. We will have less tourists here soonish and out of sight is out of mind so often. Don't get in a tizz about Peter please Standardistas – he seems a man people love to hate. There are plenty of Slytherins around as alternatives.
I have no idea if NZ is contracted in as a shareholder of profit in these enterprises. I've found no evidence that we profit from any of this.
What is the cost of these big players?
Sinking tremendous resources into light entertainment as the world burns is utter nonsense. Propping up the richest people on the planet while our people are homeless.
There's no job security these are contractors here to make a buck, and when the tap's turned off they'll leave. Then there'll be a press release about how Bezos has been picked on and unfairly denied the ability to shower us with his blessings.
"Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says she would like to see small increases in houses prices, acknowledging most people “expect” the value of their most valuable asset to keep rising."
https://www.interest.co.nz/property/108301/pm-jacinda-ardern-says-sustained-moderation-remains-governments-goal-when-it-comes
"According to the latest 1 News-Colmar Brunton poll (conducted between November 28 and December 2), Labour is up seven percentage points since the last poll on October 15, with 53% support, while National is down six percentage points to 25%.
Ardern is also up three points in the preferred prime minister ranks to 58%."
Well and here in Rotorua a rental manager called 'renting a privilege'. Who needs National when you can have a majority Labour Government. Same homelessness and misery, but kinder and gentler.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/24-11-2020/ardern-pledges-to-care-9-more-by-2030/
Danyl Mclauchlan with some good satire.
heh..!
Sabine a problem in the making for 40 years the low tax mantra is the problem no body wants to pay more tax to fix the problem.
Bringing in people to fill gaps in our work force because we make education unaffordable when we have had shortages for decades and no sign of those shortages being locally filled because the education system doesn't have the capacity to train specialist's .
IT,teachers,builders,doctors surgeons other medical professionals Nurses.Builders electricians plumbers engineers road construction workers etc.
No longterm planning by successive govts just election to election thinking.
It's cheaper to steal workers from other countries than to fix a longterm problem.
Do they supply thick cardboard cartons in the shop doorways for the homeless to use? Thoughtful.
Here is a good piece on Obama that makes me wonder if a similar piece will be written on Ardern in a few years, who like all Liberals can never ever deliver the changes they promise because it always becomes a conflict of ideology, and the Liberal ideology has NO empathy for Humans or the Planet if it becomes a case of picking one or the other, the extreme centrist liberal will always conform to the market before considering people or the planet…every time.
Barack Obama & the Death of Idealism
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/12/07/barack-obama-the-death-of-idealism/
" Over the next five years, Obama administration officials vigorously fought a Senate investigation into Bush torture abuses, and Obama personally defended the CIA after it was caught illegally spying on the Senate to thwart the inquiry. The Obama administration also torpedoed every lawsuit by a torture victim in U.S. court."
Adrian Obama as any president is only a figure head who can veto or make a meaningless executive orders.
The Power lies in the house of Representatives and the Senate with the supreme court having some power as well.
The republicans controlled those houses 6 out of 8 years of his presidency and filibustered the other 2 years so blaming Obama for failures is a failure to understand how US politics works.
Obama has to follow not lead the people who control the US have more power than any politician to stay in power you have to be a lapdog .
Similar in NZ if you go to far from the Neo liberal ideology you will be targeted by the powers that control the media .
one of the major fails of obama – aside from Libya – was his failure to appoint judges when he had the chance ..
I was quite shocked to find he had only appointed 85 judges during his term of office..
leaving trump to fill all those vacancies with his people..
I mean..w.t.f..?…obama..?
I'm sure this has come up before. Perhaps in the archives?
A quick google would quickly tell you why that came about. It's not a failing of Obama's. You would really do well to develop a few fact-checking skills of your own instead of lazily jumping to conclusions.
Judges have to be confirmed by the senate. For the first two years of Obama's term, Dems had a supermajority and were mostly able to confirm judges. Then they lost their supermajority in 2010, and Repugs used the filibuster to block all judges.
Finally in November 2013, Dems in the senate get frustrated enough by the Repug blockade that they nuked the filibuster for judicial appointments below Supreme Court level, and they were able to confirm a few more.
Then the Repugs took a senate majority in 2014, and refused to confirm any judges from that point onwards.
Since 2016, the Reepugs have had a senate majority, so have been able to push appointment confirmations through. Even Supreme Court appointments after they nuked the filibuster for Supreme appointments that the Dems had left in place.
Obama's enters the White House on the back of promises of Hope and Change and then after eight years of his utter failure to deliver or even seem like he wanted to deliver = straight line to Trump….simple, and then to prove how narcissistic the Democrats are, they don't learn even one lesson from their historic loss in 2016…oh no they make up some bullshit about the Russians to divert attention and avoid any self reflection whatsoever instead….and almost lose a second time.
All that relates to the simple problem of things don't happen when you you don't have enough votes … exactly how?
Also, Mueller was a lifelong Republican, appointed by a lifelong Republican (Rosenstein), who was appointed by by Donnie Dorko himself. Dunno why you're completely obsessed by the false idea that the Russia investigation is a Dem thing when all the key players are Republicans. Did Sean or Rupert set up your news feed for you?
NZ Labour won’t set a course to port willingly. Efforts must obviously be made however in the material interests of the working class. It is torture watching an unencumbered Govt. with the power to build thousands of state houses and apartments, and to make all the sadists at WINZ/MSD reapply for their own jobs, not do it.
Long time Labour loyalists say it is too soon, and hint knowingly that us “maddies” should “wait and see”. I say lets start door knocking all the new Labour MPs, picketing MSD offices, and running united campaigns among the NGOs that do some of the Govts job for them. Jeeze, in Whangarei the Hare Krishna kitchen provides several thousand lunches per week to local schools.
The largely middle class professionals and neo liberal managerialists that make up much of NZ Labour Wellington staff and MPs seem to have less idea of the lot of the underclass and working class as the years since 1984 roll on.
Roger Douglas used to bully unionist Sonia Davies and call her “granny” as an MP, union MPs still get deselected like happened to Sue Moroney, who NZ women can thank for improvements to PPL. There used to be a joint Council of Labour where the FOL would meet directly on workers issues with the Labour Party, till Douglas and Prebble got to work! So really Labour tops have effectively tried to weaken if not sever the relationship with organised Labour, only a handful of unions remain affiliated.
Jacinda and Robbo have only ever known the monetarist, contract out, governance, flog it off, model–so don’t look to them to retire neo liberal hegemony. The NZ People, grass roots, and boomer* replacement generations are going to have to do that! At least we have three years to get busy and not deal with National attacks, but if this Govt. stays passive, the right will be back–likely in a populist Trumpish form.
* I’m in the boomer ‘cohort’, but have been a life long socialist, not a grumpy reactionary tory.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
[lprent: if you want to write about a topic that is completely different to the post topic, then do it here. Don’t waste my time. ]
Good comment and analysis there TM…+1
I wrote a poem for an evening poetry event in the village; perhaps someone here will enjoy it.
Trees aren’t people
Trees aren’t people
It’s pretty obvious.
They don’t have, say, mouths and breathe the way we do,
Though I suppose the tiny holes under their leaves, stomata, their “little mouths”, do breathe,
But not deeply, into lungs, as people breathe.
Nor do they have a brain, complex and multi-branched like the amazing organ inside of our heads,
Though you might see a resemblance to their root-systems, complex and multi-branched;
But if you accept that as a brain; sure, it passes chemical messages the way ours does, but in the soil??
A brain without a skull? How is that possible?
If that were true, it would mean the tree is upside-down; head in the ground, body in the air!
Or that we were upside down, I suppose…
But trees can’t talk; communicate with each other.
Well, other than through their roots, as scientists claim they can;
Warning each other of approaching herbivores or clouds of hungry leaf-eating insects.
But they don’t have complex family relationships like people do;
Though foresters do say there are grandparent trees in the old-growth forests that nurture vulnerable saplings,
Sending nutrients and water through those same root-networks,
Keeping them alive through droughts and restoring them to health following fires;
But it’s not real family though, is it?
Not like ours.
Trees do reproduce though, don’t they?
And their “bits”; their reproductive parts, flowers with their stamens and pistils, anthers and ovaries, for goodness sake, they’re so much like ours,
Ovaries! Really!
But that’s most likely coincidence,
Because trees aren’t people.
Trees can’t hear, of course; they have no ears,
Though vibrations, well, okay, yes, they do detect and respond to vibrations;
The sensitive mimosa shows us that,
But that’s not hearing, is it?
Vibration-detection?
Is that hearing?
Perhaps it might be,
At a stretch.
A blood-stream?
A network of tiny tubes that carry their life-fluids throughout their body?
I suppose they do have that,
Sap, where we have blood.
But a heart, that rhythmically beats,
Trees have no heart,
True, it has been found that trees pulse, in a rhythm that confounds researchers
But we don’t know yet where that comes from.
Yep.
I’m fairly confident in saying,
That trees aren’t people.
It’s pretty obvious.
Thanks Robert, informative and fun, with a nice rhythm – hope it goes/went well aloud.
I did, Drowsy, read it aloud and it was very well received, thanks!
Thought of recording that Robert?
Spoken word or with a mellow musical accompaniment.
Perhaps the wind moving thru branches and leaves…
I hadn't, gsays, till now and am thinking, thanks to your suggestion, of a lovely set of wind-chimes I was given that have an especially melodious sound to them that perhaps might make a good sound back-drop 🙂
The tree that is outside my place is annoying. It is always dropping little cones with sharp points. I have picked up 200 at one time so I can mow the berm without dulling the blades, and anyway they break up and would leave sharp bits that when children run across the grass would hurt them.
It has largish leaves with pointy edges like a star, they look so fresh and green in spring and turn delicate shades of pale lemon or ruddy red in winter. Then they fall and I sweep up the ones on the road and call for the road sweeper to make sure our street is on their route. The others I pop in the compost with a few in the Greenwaste. It is time consuming but they demand attention because of their numbers – how many? Hundreds of thousands?
It keeps the hot early morning sun from heating the house in summer, and in winter is bare and doesn't block the welcome light and warmth. I want some of the horizontal branches trimmed so its more compact and doesn't drop leaves in guttering and on the footpath which many pedestrians and folks with wheels use. The council person does not take my request for more soil seriously and suggests I organise it myself. I am taking umbrage at the idea that they impose the care for it on me. After Christmas I plan to make a move to encourage co-operative not autocratic behaviour from them. If I have the energy.
It has a sort of yellow bleeding coming from high up in the trunk and I have looked it up on google. It is a liquidambar, (sweetgum) and prone to this it seems if I have understood it right. I have mentioned this to the contractors and will have to see if it is in their contract to take an interest and how much time their money allocation allows for, to attend to such matters.
This is an example of how government can just limit its work and responsibilities, get someone else to do a prescribed list of things, and other matters fall between the cracks. When the cracks are wide as after the Christchurch earthquake, bigger more important matters causing great distress can fall in the bigger cracks. That is why we should try and get our governments back again to do directly what they are paid to do and with direct accountability.
I like my tree but nothing is ever simple and straightforward in this marvellous modern age.
Just a note for myself and interested others about roots: https://www.burkesbackyard.com.au/fact-sheets/in-the-garden/gardening-tips-books-techniques-and-tools/liquidambar-roots/
The trunk is oozing moistly. Apparently it could be slime flux or bacterial wetwood. https://www.extension.iastate.edu/news/2007/jun/070801.htm .
Cankers – liquidambars are susceptible and can rot the tree from inside: https://www.hunker.com/12256839/liquid-amber-tree-diseases .
and – https://counties.agrilife.org/cooke/files/2018/05/White-flux-disease-7-2017.pdf
When it comes to feeding your liquidambar tree, any all-purpose fertilizer or manure should do the trick, but there's one thing more important than plant food that will help your tree thrive. Adding an inch or two of mulch to the top of the soil in which your liquidambar tree is planted will help maintain the proper water levels needed for your tree to grow. https://homeguides.sfgate.com/care-for-a-liquid-amber-tree-13429278.html
I had a storm damaged sweetgum drop a massive branch a couple of years ago to reveal the heartwood infected by fungi. It had to go. Now it's trying to resprout off the root system which was extensive. I trim them back. In it's place so far are many coprosmas and karo popping up naturally, and a few exotics planted by myself.
I used the branches to make garden beds, landscape features, birdbaths, seats and benches. I used to the mulch to fill the garden beds. It was a windfall for the section.
I will not miss the sharp objects on the ground, but having a massive tree on the property was a source of joy. We congregated under it, made swings and huts, collected leaves and watched the birds who used it as a lookout in winter.
It took me months to get over losing that tree. I nurture the new trees growing where it was. I look out with pride at the many species now growing from the recycling of one.
Definitely a windfall! I noted that the wood was good though it said it was hard to work or something. How very productive you are with your carpentry.
Carpentry? Chainsaw…
The materials will break down over time but in the interim it builds soil, and holds things in place as new tree roots grow.
Unfortunately this will be the part of the story which outrages most New Zealanders.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/christchurch-shooting/123623166/march-15-terrorist-accidentally-shot-himself-months-before-mosque-attack
Surely it is reasonable for NZrs to be ropeable at a system that can enable a crazed man or woman to dabble in guns, and give him medical attention for a gunshot, for free? – he is Australian – and shoot a hole in the ceiling of his dwelling. It is so lax not reporting it to the police, who then one would hope, would have followed up and checked on him and his activities.
They certainly did with a Russian ex-military type who came into their radar in Christchurch in a number of ways; for legal infractions, breaking road rules, and he also had guns, and was I think affected by PTSD. The police came down hard on him so much that when he was dying his wife and son were not allowed to speak to him.
At one time the Russian used an imitation pistol – the mosque shooter had a number of real guns. If the police had known about the hospital and house damage incidents they would have had warning bells after their experience of nutty male psychology with the Aramoana affair and David Gray coldly shooting them and others.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/111622101/russian-man-found-dead-after-christchurch-police-standoff-was-intimidating-and-cold – In 2000, Dubovskiy was jailed for four years after a burglary in which the returning householders, who recognised him, disarmed him of an imitation pistol.
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/108297/john-mauldin
How long is this BS going to continue?
According to the E3, “If Iran is serious about preserving a space for diplomacy, it must not implement these steps. Such a move would jeopardise our shared efforts to preserve the JCPoA and risks compromising the important opportunity for a return to diplomacy with the incoming US Administration. A return to the JCPoA would also be beneficial for Iran. We will address Iran’s non-compliance within the framework of the JCPoA.” The Guardian.
This from the mongrels who have not complied in any material sense with their side of the JCPoA. Worse still, they have in the most cowardly way, demurred in the face of the threats of US sanction which to all intents and purposes as applied to Iran, should be regarded as war crimes. Up until recently, Iran has been fully compliant and ratcheted up the measures they have every entitlement to do under the JCPoA.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/432364/debt-reduction-and-saving-crucial-over-next-year-says-cfc
Commission for Financial Capability's Jane Wrightson told Morning Report those in precarious situations would need to show flexibility and a willing to train, while building financial resilience over the next year or so….(I wonder if they are to be given an education grant not a loan, that will pay for their childcare, and transport, and with an opportunity for payment for more than one training period as it may require a number of skills to be worked on?)
found working families in blue and "pink-collar", or working women occupations, were among the hardest hit….
The highest percentage of households suffering smaller incomes were those where the main person being surveyed was aged between 55 and 64.
Wrightson said the survey found the situations of couples aged between 18-54 with children most vulnerable.
"The category that we were most concerned with was, generally speaking, couples between the ages of 18 and 54 with children.
This is another woman who is a good little performer in following the norm. The epitome of the university-trained receiving every word as from the God of All-Knowing and never deviating from The Knowledge. Sounds sour I know. But that is my knee jerk reaction to the advice from Commission for Financial Capability's Jane Wrightson.
There was or is another one on about Retirement and Superannuation who was recommending that the age should go up to 67, The knee jerk reaction of the herd follower who follows the mainstream thinking that we can't afford super and so limiting the age of attainment is the best thing to do.
The compliant educated well-dressed affluent woman without a hint of rebellious difference from the accepted norm, seems to be the epitome of the female advancement that has arisen from the effort that feminists put in to improve women's lot.
However, poor mothers are despised, working women with low educational attainment are unworthy of having time at home with their children – away to work at entry-level jobs without the option of having a weekend to see family, friends, community activity. Single women are still paying market price for everything, while receiving an 80% calculation of men's wages; similar to a special higher price for the undeserving woman. And the poor treatment of maternity these days – almost a hate of the irresponsible female, not having babies to order, being humanly feckless which means responding to life as an average female, unlike the calculating, careful ladies who behave 'properly'. And children are not treasured and cared about by the women with power over parents, who almost have adopted the old-fashioned ideas of lords who were said not to bother with their children till they were about three and able to talk.
Parents might have to neglect their children's health to go to work either because WINZ says so, or because they need to keep their job and keep up their income. They should be able to stay home with young children, and do a little part-time work to keep in the workforce and retain that bit of extra money. But be free to leave working when it is necessary to help their youngest.
Norovirus is highly contagious, and just one child with the illness can spread it to many other children, staff and their families at home, Dr Harrower said.
"While most people make a quick and full recovery, very young children can become unwell enough to need hospital care.
"It can be difficult for whānau to take time off work when they have sick children, but it is important to remind parents and caregivers that tummy bugs are very contagious. It is highly likely your child will infect others, and outbreaks can lead to centre closures."
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/432371/spike-in-norovirus-outbreaks-at-auckland-early-learning-services-under-investigation
Why can't we love and nurture our young parents, to enable them to pass on the same feelings to their children. A society of cold, callous, demanding people will find that the children under this regime will develop similarly. Isn't that what we are often seeing now. It's time for a change.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/432397/mosque-attacks-report-families-let-down-by-agencies-in-aftermath
…Death certificates with spelling errors, family members having to work as translators for police interviews and widows being advised to put their children in care to apply for jobs are just some of the problems highlighted in the commission's report…
Many told the commission the direct aftermath caused more grief and trauma as they were not told where their loved ones were.
Some resorted to watching the terrorist's video of the attack to try and figure out if their loved ones were alive or dead.
"An acquaintance of my parents said that she had seen [my brother] in operating theatre," a relative told the commission. "Mum and dad rushed to the hospital with this news and after waiting outside Al-Noor Mosque for four hours, they then proceeded to wait at Christchurch Hospital for another six hours.
"After this, they found out that the person my parents were waiting for, patient number 13, was not at all [my brother]. They were finally told my brother was unaccounted for."..
Many victims raised questions about the police's response on the day.
They told the commission the fact medical staff were not allowed inside the mosques straight away due to police cordons led to more deaths.
Since 15 March, victims and families have struggled to get help, telling the commission they had to recount their experience of the attack over and over to different agencies…
"Where there should have been active listening, there is a deluge of information, where there should be advocacy there are endless meetings," a victim told the commission.
Some witnesses told the commission they were not eligible for financial support from the Accident Compensation Corporation as they had not suffered any physical injuries….
"Witnesses to the attack have suffered severe mental trauma, which some describe as a feeling of physically debilitating pain."
But, but this is not us. We aren't like that. We are however good at feeling short periods of grief and emotion, and then 'get on with our lives' and expect the traumatised to do so also.
Having to deal with different government agencies or the same one over and over again is draining for anyone who has a mental injury. The grief process is complicated by how loved ones died. When it comes to the coronial inquests this will be a long process due to how slow the coroners office is. With some hope the coronial inquests can be managed in such a way to reduce distress.
The 1982 – 1992 ACC Act had cover for mental injury when no physical force occurred. This act is online. There are other articles on the subject of taking cover away as well. It is not my intention to inflame the situation. I am pointing out that ACC is not fit for purpose when it comes to exceptional circumstances which need to be covered.
I think you are indicating that we have a serious problem with ACC. The more stressful the government makes life, the more it diminishes living conditions for people, the more it takes away what supports used to be provided in better times. It is a pernicious process and amoral.
NZ Government, Queen says something about you:
Yes serious problems with ACC for a mental injury.
I left a reply to your 2.1111 comment late last night on open mike with some of the concerns I have about ACC. I have a lot more.
The average person has got no idea on how ACC determine what and what not to include when it comes to cover for a mental injury.
The government is going to get a wake up call from the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care on how shit ACC are for a mental injury and the damage done from organisatonal failure.