In his post, 2013 – the policy year. IRISHBILL, in what I thought was a generous and non sectarian gesture, befitting the season, asked Standardnistas of all parties, (or none) to put forward policy suggestions. IRISH suggested, as being a resource for the LECs, that this could also be a resource for other smaller parties.
IRISH wrote:
With this in mind I’d like to suggest that over the next few months we have those discussions and perhaps even provide a manifesto page on the site where generally agreed policies can be placed for LECs to use as a resource to inform remits.
I thought I would put forward my policy suggestion to combat climate change for further discussion. Hopefully, if people think it is a good idea, to be forwarded to the possible manifesto page to be created; My policy suggestion: A complete ban on coal exports.
As New Zealand only produces 0.2% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Our biggest contribution to stopping climate change would be for New Zealand to set an example that others could look too, to follow. If New Zealand put a ban on all coal exports, (and imports) our closest neighbor and closest international friend, Australia, (which is the biggest coal exporter in the world), would almost be guaranteed to follow.
Colonial Viper asked me; “Why would this be?”
I thought this might answer Colonial Viper’s question:
…..officials warn residents to prepare for what could be the worst fire danger day in New South Wales’ history on Tuesday.
A total fire ban will be in place across NSW on Tuesday with temperatures in the state’s far west predicted to hit 45C, while the mercury is forecast to climb to 43C in Sydney — the third highest on record.
NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell on Monday made an emphatic appeal to all state residents to be fully prepared for the worst.
“Tomorrow is not just going to be in the 40s, it will perhaps be the worst fire danger the state has ever faced,” he said.
“Do what emergency services tell you, particular the rural fire service. Act early.
“Don’t just think, ‘Tomorrow is another bush fire danger day, tomorrow is another summer’s day’. Tomorrow is going to be the worst fire danger day in parts of this state we’ve ever experienced in history.”
WEATHER forecasters are predicting the nation will experience its hottest ever day early in the week, the average national temperature set to climb above 40C.
Within reach is the current record of 40.17 degrees, set on December 21, 1972.
Heat records have tumbled across the country, including yesterday’s highest ever recorded temperature in Hobart (41.3C) and Thursday’s 48.2C scorcher in the Nullarbor border town of Eucla.
To give you an example of what that means;
– 50 degrees is the recommended top temperature for the hot tap in your house. Imagine that, and then you will know why Australians will be NZ’s first wave of Climate Change refugees.
In my opinion as well as putting a ban on all coal exports this could be accompanied by a ban on all Australian immigrants until Australia does the same.
I think wild-fires have been raging across Australia for millions of years, some of the native trees have evolved in such a way as to require fire to release their seeds so as to be able to regenerate,
i also think that the Australian temperature records have suffered so much ‘historic rounding’ in their collection over decades that they are unreliable,
To attempt to link Australian wild-fires to climate change then seems to me to be rather spurious…
Sad 12 the past winter drought and wild fires in most of the Australian out back are the worst in history!!
The result is that the build up of heat in central Australia is forcing the colder wetter weather to form over NZ!
Get your facts right sad12!
Got any proof of your wee claims there buck-wheat,like a link to some science that says that that New Zealands weather is on average colder and wetter this summer???,
Funnily enough, on RadioNZ National news this morning the Australians were saying that the HIGH rainfalls this winter have grown (a), more fuel in forests for fires to consume, and (b) the same has made grass growth more prevalent, summer having dried this excess of grass out so as to make it even more likely of igniting in lightening strikes,
Best you cite us some science for your assertion of the ‘winter drought’ as well…
To attempt to link Australian wild-fires to climate change then seems to me to be rather spurious…
Climate Change is causing these things to happen more frequently and with a greater intensity than before. Witness the devastating storms that are occurring… one in one hundred year storms that are now occurring more and more frequently. The general rise in the world temperatures are causing extreme weather patterns to develop, and the intense heat-wave currently affecting large parts of Australia is a good example. In other words, the unprecedented extent of the wild fires, rather than the wild fires themselves, are the inevitable result of C.C.
More likely, the awareness of climate change is making us take more notice of ‘these things’,
Have you got a link to the science that says Australian wild fires are happening more frequently or are more intense, history would tell us that during European occupancy of Australia such fires in the 1800’s burned millions of hectares and ash and smoke from them were evidenced in New Zealand,
Please provide a link to these 1 in 100 year storms that are occurring more frequently, the recent so called super storm that recently struck New York was just that, the last one of such magnitude to hit New York was 100 or so years ago….
I believe that any reasonable person would admit they cannot know everything, and that they, due to years of experience, will have come to understand that sometimes once the symptoms are upon us the disease is unstoppable. When the disease can cause havoc of global proportions, and many commentators (worthy) say the disease is upon us, the symptoms are all around. It strikes me that anyone who would consciously plan to undermine the risk, as not even plausible, to be rank stupidity. Sure nothing says you cannot say the evidence, the symptons, the loss of north arctic sea ice, the extended storm seasons in N.America, that strong more damaging storms (on the back of sea level rise), aren’t evident. But to then use your own ignorance, argue from ignorance, that the risk is just causing more people to notice. Surely not an argument, for example, how many have been told about sun damaged skin to check and so bring a cancer to their doctors attention. It is so common practice that when we see risk we will as a collective look for the signs, this is not evidence either way, this is just human behavior. So your blather, your ignorance, you false thinking, is all bunkum.
Thanks aero… I couldn’t be bothered. There’s so much reputable evidence out there… let him look it up for him/herself. But he/she presumably won’t because he/she has decided to take a fixed stand based on… deniability? Who knows.
Since you seem incapable of checking it out for yourself (like most grown-u are happy to do) here is something to help you on your way. Took me a few minutes to find:
Since 1910 the average temperature in Australia has risen by 0.7 degrees, yes climate changes, all the time, always has and always will,
Best you email those heretics and tell then to get with the story, the OZ temps having risen that .7 since 1910 would simply suggest a changing climate…
Yes, every individual event is insignificant in itself. The real point is the frequency of those individual events in a decade or a few decades.
all the time, always has and always will
OK, let’s use an analogy. Cars stop and go all the time, so suppose that climate is changing, so a change is something we can adapt to, just like a car stopping, right? Now suppose that you apply the brakes and the car slows to a stop. That’s fine, right? OK, now run your car into a wall. That’s stopping it too, but hang on, that way of stopping it is lethal.
Given millennia, nature might adapt. Maybe, but millions of years might be easier. Given decades, can civilisation adapt? Ah, well then…
Rhinoviper, climate changes all the time and civilizations have come and gone, those are 2 repeating themes of both ecological and human history,
I dare say tho that the human race having survived ice-ages before will survive albeit in a much reduced form than at present,
Economy???, disaster of any sort is the great social leveler, what use is there for millions of dollars of paper money if civilization is reduced to the level of hunter gatherer once more…
Pssst, scroll down the page a bit, i provide a link to a NASA satellite photo of wild fires burning in Western Australia in November 2012, not a heatwave in sight…
BLAH, Blah,Blah, another assertion, what is this blather,ignorance, false thinking, and bunkum you accuse me of,
Worst wild-fires ever, doubt it, as i pointed out above there have been wild fires during European occupancy of Australia that have burned millions of hectares and smoke and ash from these fires has been evident in New Zealand,
Wild fires in Australia have happened yearly, they are not a symptom of climate change…
Please provide the proof of ”the increased severity and propensity for such wildfires”,
The current fires burning in Tasmania at the moment are hardly severe in terms of previous fires,
One of those previous fires, from memory in the 1960’s, burned a far greater area of Tasmania than the present, killed 60 odd people and even burned parts of the States capital Hobart,
Sorry to aquaint you with an inconvenient truth in your abysmal attempts to link Australian wildfires with ‘climate change,
Your continued use of 4 year old’s language such as ‘blankie’ gives me an indication of your intelligence level, perhaps you should stick to debating with children at kindergarten, the other little kiddies with under-developed brains seem more your level…
CV, good twist,as usual, of what i actually said in my first comment, do i deny anywhere in that comment or later that parts of Australia are being effected by a ‘record heatwave’,
Well NO i fucking don’t, so it’s damn easy to spuriously put up assertions that i have not made and then tell me to prove the opposite, another pathetic form of debate unworthy of this site,
What i do say is that wildfires in Australia are nothing unusual, they have been occurring for millions of years, the fact that there are record high temperatures at present in soem parts of Australia hasn’t altered the facts of such fires one iota…
What i do say is that wildfires in Australia are nothing unusual, they have been occurring for millions of years
Humans have only been around a fraction of those millions of years, so when our species goes away permanently you can claim that it’s perfectly historically normal.
“Have you got a link to the science that says Australian wild fires are happening more frequently or are more intense, history would tell us that during European occupancy of Australia such fires in the 1800′s burned millions of hectares and ash and smoke from them were evidenced in New Zealand,”
Well, quite. Because the Europeans burnt the bush to ‘create’ farmland (as they also did in NZ). The 1800s is not a good time period to use as a comparison.
Clearing bush for farmland isn’t a wildfire, although i could imagine more than the odd bit of bush clearance got away on them,
1800,s, 1900’s it makes no difference, the areas that are currently burning, parts of Tasmania, and New South Wales are in fact the area of the highest rate of wildfires in e a Australia over a multi century time frame,
Crap. Biology 101 – the Eucalyptus tree and many other species evolved to take advantage of regular seasonal bush fires to spread their seeds. That’s why Eucalypts are full of volatile oils and why other Australian plants have seeds that only germinate after being baked. The Koori new this, which is why they periodically instigated burn-offs of their own. The problem came about post colonisation and was aggravated by the environmental movement’s protection of wilderness areas and the prevention of burn offs. The massive fires we now see are a direct result of that rather than climate change – though of course climate change is happening and may well exacerbate matters in the future.
Yep. In Christchurch that includes building suburbs in high liquefaction risk zones, and in Queensland, building suburbs on flood plains. But someone made money – at the time.
A record heatwave and fires might help convince the Australian government to give up billions in coal exports…not what we do with the piddly amounts we export. If NZ gives up exporting coal today the Australian producers will take up the slack tomorrow.
We should give up coal exports because we will need some of the coal for essential transition processes, and because it’s the right thing to do. The latter is more than symbolic. It demonstrates that we understand that CC is a global problem that affects all of life and that all humans must act in whatever ways they can. It’s about solidarity with the world and with other nations that will face harder futures than us in giving up fossil fuels.
The whole problem is we dug up trapped compounds and unabashedly burnt them. Now to get off the crack we have to fract the last drops oil, gas, and mine the last coal to transition to back to where we should have been had we not gone on our addiction to growth and profits without thinking of limits and consequences. Its like that mother in America, a gun whore, whose mentally hamstrung son killed her and then went on a wild murderous rampage in a school. We consent our own destruction by accepting banality as reasonable.
We dug up hydrocarbons on mass and dumped them into the biosphere, how could that not have consequences!!!
Yup. Ban coal exports/imports and all but whatever might be considered to be the most essential mining (and I’m thinking of a very high bar to determine that…probably including disbarring any economic argument from the decision)
Immediately legislate for car occupancy rates – issuing instant and punative fines to people driving without passengers for no compelling reason.
Immediately legislate that any new cars coming into the country must have carbon emissions of below 100g per km.
Immediately halt any non-essential lighting and heating of public places/spaces.
And shut down the gas fired power stations. I know they are needed for peak load times. But that’ll only remain a problem until we alter our consumption habits…which shouldn’t take long when the alternative is brown or black outs for us all for as long as we persist in pulling extra electicity at the same time every day.
1. Australia is seen as the last hope for many unemployed Kiwis.
2. They hardly notice us, let alone how much coal we export.
3. An immigrant war with Australia is the last thing we need.
Banning coal exports may be a good idea, but not because Australia would follow. The minerals sector has their government by the balls and they’d thank us for the increased market share.
Ceding market share to the Australians is not really going to demotivate them is it Jenny – that’s your dysfunctional logic.
Colonial Viper
I think we are talking about opinion here. My opinion is that a world first complete ban on coal exports will set an example and a bench mark for governments around the world to emulate.
Your opinion is that it will encourage other countries to fill the gap in the market left by New Zealand’s exit.
I might add that it has always been your opinion over many discussions on many threads of this site, that we should do nothing about climate change.
For this I have termed you a Climate Change Apologist.
No matter what the argument is you will always argue for doing nothing.
Don’t deny it, I don’t want to have to drag up all your CCA dreck.
How much is she paying for the dish washing and floor cleaning ? Dunno but it is chch where alot of the able and smart have departed and public transport to/from is a factor.
Approaching a polytech for graduates is fine if they’ve done a diploma in cleaning and are looking for their first leg up into the world of low paid jobs in franchises.
Yeah this kind of thing can be a problem. It often stems from youth who have left school and had an extended time unemployed without the benefit of immediate work experience with good role models. Or have been long term unemployed and simply deconditioned to work discipline. Being a bakery I also suspect that the hours of work may have been fairly extreme. Not that many people like 4:30am starts etc. However, advertising overseas to fill these positions seems a bit nuts. It did say the positions were above minimum wage.
On the evidence I’ve seen in the past, and given the current requirements for beneficiaries to be constantly looking for work, I’d expect the following:
* that some people would be responding to job ads who are unemployable for various reasons – such as having anti-social behaviour patterns; being unable to physically or mentally apply themselves to a job for a full day and/or week, etc.
* I’d also expect that some people will take any job going, especially if it was offering wages above the minimum.
So Ms McPherson got some of the unemployable, or marginally employable applying, but what about those that are capable and want any work going? Did she just conveniently forget to mention them? Is there something about McPherson, her job or her workplace that puts keen workers off? Or does she just want to recruit from overseas and is looking for an excuse not to employ locals?
Also, if WINZ stopped pressuring people who are unemployable, or incapable of working a full day/shift to job-seek, maybe Ms McPherson’s job of recruitment would be a lot easier.
– Business is about solving problems, not bitching to the media when things don’t go your way. Your business, your problem. Offer them free leftovers at the end of each day and you might pick up some savvy family looking to save $$$.
– If you can’t handle something, the beauty of a business is that you can hire someone else to do it on your behalf. Are we meant to believe there are no recruitment agencies in her area?
– So her answer is to look OVERSEAS? Duh. The vetting process and cost is likely to be even more unmanageable.
This is nothing more that a business owner who has taken on too much and prefers to spend her time whining rather than fixing things OR (more likely) the opening shot for the year of some more right wing spin meant to rark up the masses into more bene bashing for 2013.
Yeah, how many overseas people are going to want to shift to Chch of all places, where there is a housing shortage and high levels of stress across the population, for $14/hr?
She also doesn’t say if she is offering full time, regular hours jobs (an issue for any WINZ beneficiary because of the abatement process).
If you were to publicise this internationally you would get many many replies from people who will do anything to get away from their own environment into New Zealand, and will take any wages to start.
Yeah lazy employers. They should be doing the work for the employees and paying them. Imagine the cheek of a business owner who actually wants to find someone who wants to work!
Speaking of the employer, perhaps this one comes across as a toxic right wing shill or something, the sort of boss who would rather run right wing attack lines in the media rather than fix her staff shortage.
“Unskilled” but absolutely critical job…your food site gets a bad hygiene rating you’ll get closed down for a week to sort it out.
entitled indeed.
Don’t be a consistent shit head, $600 is barely a living wage and that’s for full time work that I presume starts from very early in the morning for a bakery.
and that is exactly the attitude you ‘tards promote isnt it… why would anyone be bothered to get out of bed before 11.00 am for a mere $600 a week! FFS.
Bakery work is awesome…finish early arvo and go hunting or to the beach.
back when I was working nights, it was relaxing to pop by a particular cafe/bakery at 6am and have b&e or pancakes before heading to bed. Only place open at that time, except the 24dairy of doom… 🙂
So $510 is not a living wage huh?
A mate of mine is living in ChCh at the mo for $200 a week full board.
So that is food and shelter taken care of.
$310 a week for transport ( a bike!) and clothes isnt bad is it?
“$600 pre tax is about $510 after tax? fucking site better than $170 on the dole.
But hey..yes you do need to actually want to work and get out of bed to better yourself.”
I think you will find that there are very few people on the dole in Chch receiving only $170/wk. Most will have accommodation supplement on top of that. Many people on the dole also have part-time, cash in hand jobs of various kinds, or use their time to mitigate the low income in other ways. If we’re talking about a 20 year old with no dependants who is fit and healthy, then yes the dole can be more attractive than an insecure, deadend, just above minimum wage job that’s structured to go no-where. The longer someone is on the dole, the harder it is to survive, but in the short and medium term, it’s possible.
My mate dont live whith his grandma either you charmer CV… he is a tradesman who likes to be able to feed his family so he works in ChCh rather than here…
Tho I fail to see why the tax paying NZers should subsidise someones life style choices… if your Gran can offer you a room near a basic job then you must move in … suck it up.
Colonial Weka…Yes you reinforce my point beautifully. The dole and subsidies are far too high when there are jobs availible. Why are we paying people so much to be lazy?
David, if your mate is a tradesman and only earning the pittance you claim he does, then I have a suggestion. Get your mate to join a union. Clearly your advice isn’t working out for him financially.
“Colonial Weka…Yes you reinforce my point beautifully. The dole and subsidies are far too high when there are jobs availible. Why are we paying people so much to be lazy?”
We’re not. We are paying people to be the sacrificial goats in a society that prefers to run an economy with an unemployment rate instead of full employment. You’ve also missed the bit about needing to be young and fit and healthy with no dependents (or debt or other financial commitments) in order for the dole to be attractive for a period of time.
Why should someone take a job with shit opportunity, conditions and wage, when they have another choice? Oh, that’s right, in your head, people should be forced into situations that make their lives worse. Like someone already said, serfdom.
The only time we get to talk about generic laziness in the unemployed is when we have more jobs than jobless. We haven’t had that since the 70s.
btw, you do realise that if all the people you call lazy were to get a job, your mate would be unemployed. Think about it.
My mate…a fridgie/sparkie bills around $8k a trip down south. $30K/yr wtf?
CV and I were having some banter about what constitutes a living wage…I objected to the fact that he cant run his Aston on a mere $510 a week.
felix…having a shit job is a really great way of maybe getting a not so shit job…its always easier to get a job if you already have one and want to better your position. People respect that drive.
Te Reo Putake..a Union? you are just taking the piss now arent you 🙂
Colonial Weka. How is a job in a bakery poor conditions or no opportunity or bad wages. ? Huh? explain.
and no if every other person in NZ got employed my mate would be busier as he is in a support industry as am I. Someone comming off the dole isnt going to take the job of a trademan with 20 years experience.
Joe90, I agree small bakery hours suck. But there are usually free pies 😉
David C…….an imperious wahanui…….bitterly holding on to his perennial “entitlement” to engage the ideological construct that poverty is just fine……for the unskilled. Poverty ? Bah ! What have they done not to deserve it ?
North…care you make a comment that actually says something meaningful?
But if your saying that the unskilled deserve to be poor then yes I agree.
Study, train , upskill in some way to better yourself but if you sit on the couch and wail that the world owes you a living (as commenters on here suggested you should do) I will fight tooth and nail that my taxes dont suppport you.
“Colonial Weka. How is a job in a bakery poor conditions or no opportunity or bad wages. ? Huh? explain.”
I’m guessing that she wasn’t offering a 40hr a week, permanent job, with increasing wages over time, and things like sick and holiday pay. As a tradie, you probably don’t realise how poor employment contracts for those on or near minimum wage can be now. If she is offering casual hours or part time work, anyone on the dole is going to get hit by the abatement process. That means that week by week they don’t know what their income is going to be, and some weeks it won’t be enough to live on.
“having a shit job is a really great way of maybe getting a not so shit job”
Yeah that can still be true at an individual level for some people, but you’re ignoring the big picture. In the new low wage economy, increasingly these jobs aren’t for kids ‘working their way up from the mailroom’. We’re talking about near-minimum wage jobs for life.
And for a huge sector of society there’s no job security any more. Everyone’s a ‘contractor’ when it comes to holidays and acc and health and safety, but mysteriously they’re suddenly employees when it comes to where, when, how and what you do. And you can be fired anytime for no reason at all – or rather for no fault of your own.
You’re living in the past if you think working in a franchise is a step on the ladder. In John Key’s New Zealand, it’s more like a step on the treadmill.
Pop, that statement flies directly in the face of neo lib orthodoxy, the whole thing is designed to lead to the lowest possible wage regardless of country. As an employer who does not wish to depress wages or prices AND wants some harmony in the workplace I can think of no better argument for compulsory unionism.
+1 Kiwis are lazy and SI dairy farmers are aren’t paying low wages to Filipinos.. just that kiwis like are all gonna be game designers like (or ganstas bro) and grow up to complain about unaffordable houses like as they sup bought coffees and like text like on lol smartphones.
Why is it that ‘moral lack’ is always brought out by the right when market signals aren’t in an employer’s favour?
I guess the argument from the right is that there should be no unemployment benefit as it ‘artificially’ raises wage expectations. These raised expectations then thwart the uptake of their ‘fair’ offers.
They don’t seem to like the ‘distortions’ of non-market factors, such as collective compassion.
“This, “For many poor students, leap to college ends in a hard fall” is a very well-executed piece in The New York Times. It follows three talented, but terribly disadvantaged, girl students who make it into university but then manage to go no further, and it shows why education doesn’t always lead to social mobility; in fact, it very often holds poor people down while further elevating middle-class and upper-class people.”
Thinking of all those Masters+ students, for whom this year holds particular challenge or possibly an end to their study. Obviously the above article isn’t referring to the post-grads for the most part but here in NZ the cutting of the student allowance for these people is evidence the wedge dividing socio-economic groups and education is being driven further into their working class flesh.
Education was a panacea for improving class and income mobility in a time of economic growth and increasing job complexity and specialisation.
Now however, complex manufacturing and scientific jobs in NZ have been cut and cut and cut. Most new jobs created pay less than $20/hr. Many science based positions are affected by 1-2 year funding regimes where continual re-application is necessary.
Basically if you come out into this environment with a Masters or PhD the chances are that you are going to have to go overseas for any chance at real work, or you can be a Masters or PhD student stacking shelves and serving fries here in NZ. With about $50,000 more student debt than the school leaver next to you being paid the same amount.
Good link, ASW. Thanks. Yes social capital is very important. It’s the social and economic inequalities underlying the education system that are the main causes of educational inequalities.
We need a return to free education and better allowances for all. Also, the content and approach of education provisions need to be more responsive to the requirements of the children of people on low incomes – especially at tertiary level. I think school teachers may be more responsive to such needs, but tertiary education is more focused on middle-class ambitions.
I say this having taught in schools (in the UK), in Unis (in NZ and Aussie) and in TAFE/Further education colleges in the UK and Aussie.
I also did a little bit of community/adult education in the east end of London. I had some working class women attend my class who were doing some uni courses. They seemed to be largely looking for some support in dealing with the, to them, alien middle class culture of the Uni. They talked in detail about the differences between their east end London home culture and that of the middle class Uni.
I see so many people like me who go to university and do really well academically but have absolutely no idea what it gets them, they don’t know or imagine what work might be available, or what their labour is worth. I think they are all sessional academics, because their imaginations were never expanded beyond getting to university; getting to university was the aim in itself.
As I’ve said before: The most important thing about education is teaching people how to think, to expand their imagination. Teaching the three r’s as National Standards does fails to achieve this.
Its worse surely than that. Its feedback. As we reward buying and selling homes, we depress the innovative sector, and this flows on to gifting universities with a more leisurely attitude to teaching (and charging more). The money becomes the modus operandi. Then the governments of the day demand that education pay its way, look the politicians say the graduates are racking up income, make them pay for their education too!!! This is yet another incentive to broaden the numbers going into education. In a global information world it doesn’t matter where you are when it comes to information, and so our position as a green summer during the northern winter should have many educational, corporations, and individuals wanting to spend time here. That means we need a service, culinary, techo, tourism fusion. Yet what we have is bulk transfer of foods overseas, lousy protections for tourists… …all to keep our corrupt housing sector afloat.
Noelle McCarthy’s patsy interview with Mark Bowden
“Summer Noelle”, National Radio, Tuesday 8 January 2013, 9:09 a.m.
Most National Radio listeners will know that Noelle McCarthy is a decent person. She has shown in the past that she has the courage to confront hypocrites and liars. She could barely repress her loathing for S.S. man Garth McVicar when she interviewed him in March 2011… http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-09032011/#comment-306178
This morning, she interviewed another advocate of extrajudicial killing—Mark Bowden, author of The Finish: The Killing of Osama. Perhaps because Bowden is far brighter than McVicar, she felt constrained and on edge, but it was still disappointing to hear her let Bowden get away with subtle evasions and distortions, and to hear her accept his use of euphemisms, and to even use them herself. Effectively, this amounts to cynical, willful distortion and apology for state crimes.
Sadly, Noelle McCarthy, who can be a penetrating and intelligent interviewer, was reduced to giving the sort of patsy interview we see on British State TV or Fox News.
More in sorrow than anger, I sent her the following e-mail….
Interview with Mark Bowden was disturbing, and disappointing
Dear Noelle,
It was interesting, and chilling, to hear your guest Mark Bowden try to explain away the use of torture by saying it is something that “was in the water”.
You also several times used the word “rendition” instead of calling it what it is: kidnapping. I am sure I was not the only listener disappointed to hear you had chosen to use this obfuscatory language.
Obviously Sascha Baron Cohen paid her off as part of his secret plan in collaboration with all of the other Jewish comedians in the world (Mel Brookes was their ringleader for years) to take over the world
Morrissey……seems like those so keen to yell (or at least imply) “anti-semite” are the ones more artful at defamation. Talks more about them than the subjects of their abuse perhaps ?
He and a couple of others have been at this for a while now. Although I do not think anyone would believe any of their smears and innuendoes, I don’t think that’s really their point. What they are trying to do is create a din and thereby turn the thread into a farce.
It’s something for Lin and the other administrators to keep an eye on. I’ll email the site formally and remind them to watch for this ongoing campaign of sabotage.
Of course Gaza isn’t funny – but Morrissey’s monomaniacal obsession with it on a site about left wing New Zealand politics is, and made moreso by his weird conspiracy rants about Zionist Jewish comedians. Now that’s a SCREAM!
…weird conspiracy rants about Zionist Jewish comedians.
Again, you are trying, ham-fistedly, to smear me. My commentary on Baron Cohen’s defamation of that Christian peace activist in occupied Hebron was just as critical of David Letterman, and the braying sycophants in the audience.
Your repeated attempts to portray my carefully argued points as a “conspiracy” are as inept as they are dishonest.
Appreciated RT – methinks Morissey picked his moniker well – I assume he hates it when his friends become successful. And if they’re northern, that makes it even worse…
I have a major beef with how companies can conduct themselves in litigation.
Too often I have observed companies sued, who then defend themselves and their directors, (I am talking civil not criminal cases) putting plaintiffs through the ringer making them expend on experts and lawyers only to reach the judgement, plaintiff wins and company is placed in liquidation.
In my own leaky home case the company through one of its directors derailed the mediation by taking a legally unsustainable position with lawyer on hand to peddle it), forced us to expend money on experts to refute their claims (which were baseless at law) and took us all the way to a hearing. It then transpired at the hearing that the director had, as we suspected, lied about giving over the names of people from his buidling company who had been onsite.
The hearing was 5 days.
Our out of pocket legal and expert expenses were over $130k. We won our judgement and put in an application for costs on the basis of his lying. The day their defence was due they filed for liquidation. We won our costs application but the tribunal decided that lying deliberately withholding important information was only worth $5000. In any event the company cant pay and cant pay its judgment.
This company should not be able to engage a lawyer and run up expenses for us if it knows as this company surely did) that if it lost it couldn’t pay. If they had not defended we would have gained a settlement from council at a far earlier point and saved over $50,000 in costs.
This is happening every day in this country across any variety of civil claims, not just mine and not just leaky homes.
Surely the ‘fix” is relatively simple, if there was any will. We could try and sue him under the companies act for dishonesty but it would cost us more money and is a notoriously hard case to win.
So why the huge lopsided bias toward directors and companies in this type of situation?
Criminal contempt of court proceedings should be filable against directors who have knowingly submitted false testimony or fraudulent evidence to a court.
I recall some years ago discussing with a lawyer employed by one of the big five commercial firms the reasons for his up and leaving, by all appearances suddenly and inexplicably. I mean, who wouldn’t wanna be in the frame for partnership in one of said firms. Six, seven hundy a year and more ?
The principal reason advanced was this: he had identified his essential role in this firm on behalf of its often multi-national, inexhaustibly wealthy clients as being to devise endless interlocutory applications to the High Court which had the effect of burning-off relatively financially weak opponents of said clients.
Repeated exercises of this nature finally had the little guy bruised, scared, and running out of the bucks necessary to last the distance. Easy meat for a settlement favourable to the big guy.
I always admired that guy for resolving that he could no longer stomach the amorality of it all. I hope he’s found happiness and professional fulfillment. Of course on Planet Key he was only ever a fuckwit.
It is also why I left the practice of law in the mid-90’s. It was just amoney-go-round witht he rich defendants quietly strangling the plaintiffs. Had two small business owners who died, one a massive heart attack, the other hung himself following our final attempt to get him the money he was owed.
Primary server had a glitch at ~11:40. Not sure why – will be having a look at the logs.
It got automatically restarted at ~11:50, but came back up with a read-only filesystem, something else I will have to force a check on (it obviously had something wrong in the file system).
I rebooted it manually, but it took me some time to get through the security I put in last night from my work system. Was back up at ~12:02
New server. There are always a few difficulties.
Last night I was increasing the CPU available. I didn’t expect it to take an hour.
This morning there was a just an unexplained crash.
I’d expect everything to stabilize soon.
But the nice things about the move are that the servers are now well and truly lost in the “cloud” (which makes them hard to legally shutdown), and the costs have dropped to between a third and a half of the previous costs depending on where it settles at the end of the process.
To Whom It May Concern,
I’d just like to say that I’m bored mulling around the berry plant picking up butts; speak, or hold your piece, nothing hard about it, after all, apparently I’m the “fool” 🙂
Thanks for the “friend” acceptance guys, nothing to fear, nothing to hide. I was chatting with a public servant this morning, he’s on to it, said he read a quote “F.B.I never had it so easy since the rise of FB” (federal bureau of information) Then, I get the latest copy of Best Practice delivered to my door with veges I planted this morning and guess what’s on the cover? Poppies!
I’ve grown them two years in a row, yet no need for them anymore; being informed’s gettin me high enough 🙂
It beggars belief, really. Not to mention beggaring consumers. Prime Minister John Key’s willingness to overrule the Commerce Commission’s reduction of wholesale broadband pricing is gobsmacking. Let’s count the ways.
John Key goes in to bat for the shareholders and not NZers.
When I heard that the slow uptake of broadband would require a price reduction I thought nice.
Having had the road recently being dug up and looking at the prices I might have taken a second look.
Thanks John Key, I don’t have to bother, the shareholders want only rich customers.
Why is that? Surely there’s more profit the more people use the service, you know the whole
give them tax cuts means more profitable activities boosting rather than reducing tax revenues.
Reduce the cost of broadband and more people will pay for it, more profits, more price reductions as more companies offer services, that’s the capitalist way.
But Key is not a capitalist, he’s a national socialist, who believes interfering to save the wealthy a harder life and ignoring and reducing protective regulation on the lower classes (because they need the spur to get off their back sides).
Just read this myself and was about to link to it. You beat me DTB! Gobsmacking to say the least. I have Facebooked this as it’s the best way I know how to get this kind of info out there. My friends and acquaintances’ may not take politics as ‘seriously’ as I do but at least I can try to get them to engage and be more informed.
The following own around 60% of the shares:
National Nominees New Zealand Limited –an Auckland investment house.
HSBC Nominees (New Zealand) Limited – Hong Kong Shanghai Bank NZ
JP Morgan Chase Bank
Now just who and what is our PM?
Also remember the Kiwisaver funds buy nominee shares etc…..also the government might have large holdings in these banks / companies and or a tangled web of bond obligations / bank debts etc.
Dear Judith,
Crushingly, all drug offenders, even minor one, must go through courts
-2800 imprisoned over last 6 years
-police oppose legaliZing pipes and needles
despite
-Law Commission criticisms of criminal focus on minor offences in recent review
-NZ drug foundation alarm (Hells Bells) at court focus on minor offences
(war is lost) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs
Hagel Chucks antagonistic attitude towards state of Israel
In the second U.S full-page broad-side, I mean sheet, in the Dom in a week, CIA minimize the use of Torture 31 Dark Zero
contrast with, ( a few sheets further in)
Chinese vocational students “PRESSED” into manufacturing roles
when actually (same article)
-wages RISING in their southern manufacturing sector and are an increasing component of their costs
-greater uptake of tertiary study, less labour migration to the south, one-child policy factors
-vocational school grads increase surge 26%
-only 2.7% of Foxconn workforce students
-only 8 hour days by law although 12 often worked (same here)
-they may be paid less, but in general receive the same
Stuff writes the killing off as a “domestic dispute”.
Meanwhile secure funding for violence prevention and women’s refuges have to go into >a href=”http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10816644″>crisis talks to secure funding after $700,000 was lopped off their funding in 2011.
David C, 170.000 unemployed and rising.
Having a degree or a certain skill can actually count against you if a prospective employer
feels you are too qualified for a position.
The new catch phrase for the right seem to be ‘upskill’, this is to mask the inability of
the Key govt to create the 170.000 jobs he promised before the last election, what Key
should have said is that there would be 170.000 + jobs lost in NZ as at the end of 2012,
perhaps he couldn’t remember what he should have said.
‘
The new catch phrase for the right seem to be ‘upskill’,
This at the same time as they are locking down uni funding, wrecking polytechs, and taking away loans and allowances from students. Typical Right Wing tomfuckery.
David C, 170.000 unemployed and rising.
I’m guessing that David C regards these people as 170,000 lazy, entitled, unqualified lefty fucktards.
Buzz from the Beehive Transport Minister Simeon Brown dutifully issued advice to all road users to keep safe on our roads during the Easter weekend. He encouraged them to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. ...
Oliver Hartwich writes – New Zealanders recently learned about a new feature film. It will be about former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – and taxpayers will subsidise it to the tune of NZ$800,000. Ardern had nothing personally to do with either the film or the subsidy. But her government’s ...
TL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above that was recorded yesterday afternoon above between and The Kākā’s climate correspondent : An independent review panel into the emergency response to Cyclone Gabrielle in Hawkes Bayconcluded “that ...
There are now only a few days left to give feedback on the Draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) on Land Transport 2024-34 (see our earlier post this week on GPS submission guides). As we’ve reported, the GPS is a disaster for Local Government, so we were particularly interested to hear ...
Willis has pledged to go ahead with the debt-funded tax cuts, despite growing opposition from her own supporters worried about appearing fiscally irresponsible. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for ...
Open access notables A survey of interventions to actively conserve the frozen North, van Wijngaarden et al., Climatic Change:The frozen elements of the high North are thawing as the region warms much faster than the global mean. The dangers of sea level rise due to melting glacier ice, increased ...
Bryce Edwards writes – New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure. The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On ...
In 2015, then-Prime Minister John Key announced plans for a huge ocean sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands, banning fishing and mining from 15% of Aotearoa's EEZ. It was bold, it was ambitious, and it suggested that National might actually care about the environment. Except they fucked it up: Key failed ...
1. Who has just been given the accolade New Zealander of the Year?a. The Kokakob. The Cook Strait Ferryc. Fair God. Dr Jim Salinger 2. Which of these is an affront to decent society?a. Dame Edna Everageb. Mrs Doubtfire c. Dr. Frank-N-Furterd. Brian 3. Who is Penny Simmonds?a. The aspiring actress in Big ...
New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure.The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On the face of it, the court found ...
Buzz from the Beehive Waves of rain are set to lash much of the North Island during Easter Weekend as a low-pressure system forms east of New Zealand, according to a weather forecast published in the past day or so. Niwa was warning of a “moisture-laden” long weekend, with rain expected ...
Look around us…Nicola Willis’ promises of balancing the books, of cutting spending without reducing services, and of delivering game changing tax cuts are disappearing before her eyes.Everyday we see stories of violent crime ending in horrific injuries, or worse. The cost of living worsens, whereas the PM claimed renters would ...
TL;DR: My top six news of note on the morning of Thursday, March 28 include:The Government will have to borrow between $10 billion to $15 billion more than previously expected in order to make up for a slowing economy and to pay for $14.9 billion of tax cuts, according to ...
This story by Naveena Sadasivam and Kate Yoder was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. The long-awaited jobs board for the American Climate Corps, promised early in the Biden administration, will open next month, according to details shared exclusively ...
Should landlords be able to deduct the interest on the loans they take out to bankroll their property speculation? The US Senate Budget Committee and Bloomberg News don’t think this is a good idea, for reasons set out below. Regardless, our coalition government has been burning through a ton of ...
Treasury’s first report on the economy since the change of government presents a damning indictment of Labour’s economic management. The problem for National is that it is so damning that logically, coupled with a rapidly slowing economy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis should respond to it by postponing or even cancelling ...
Budget tensions are becoming evident within the Coalition Government. Winston Peters made numerous political points in his speech to the NZF annual conference. But the attack on his own government’s fiscal policies raised issues of substance. ‘Today in the Sunday Star Times, journalist and former advisor to the Labour ...
Buzz from the Beehive The media – sure enough – have been binging on Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ release of the Budget Policy Statement and a statement headed Government announces Budget priorities This assures us – or rather, this parrots the Luxon team mantra – that the Budget “will deliver ...
The Ides of March brought me COVID followed by a bereavement. No wonder they tell you to be careful of them.I’m home now and have resumed the interrupted recuperation. Very much looking forward to getting back to regular things. Meanwhile, some thoughts…OneThis new Prime Minister guy just keeps getting more dire. ...
News that the Chinese ATP 40 cyber-hacking unit penetrated parliamentary internet networks in 2021 has renewed concerns about the PRC’s malign intentions in Aotearoa. But is the hack that significant given the length of time that has passed since its … Continue reading → ...
When Parliament passed the Intelligence and security Act in 2017, they assured us all that it was full of safeguards. Any intrusive surveillance of New Zealanders would be subject to a "triple lock", requiring the approval of the Minister and (supposedly independent) Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, as well as post-facto ...
Eric Crampton writes – Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter provides a bit of the context that ought to have been showing up in other media reports on potential reductions in public service staffing. Media has been reporting on staffing cuts on the order of about 7%. Is that ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many perceive free speech to have become the preserve of the politically right wing, the religiously conservative, the libertarian fringe, the anti-trans, the anti-Māori and…. well, just fill in with whatever groups or individuals you don’t like and don’t ...
Don Brash writes – As everybody who is not blind and deaf is aware, there is a huge political preoccupation with climate change at the moment, a widespread (though by no means unanimous) belief that global temperatures are rising mainly as a result of the greenhouse gases created ...
TL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, March 27 include:Chris Bishop laid out his vision for filling Aotearoa-NZ’s $100 billion infrastructure deficit in a speech yesterday, emphasising user pays and private funding, but failed to say how to achieve bipartisanship on population, public borrowing and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins have been conveying how unhappy they are with the tax system. Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax. And this week Hipkins ...
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 ...
Buzz from the Beehive China has loomed large in Beehive considerations over the past 24 hours, largely because of that country’s mischief-making in the cyber espionage department. Two media statements emerged on that subject hard on the heels of the PM baulking at questions put to him on RNZ’s Morning ...
Chris Trotter writes – WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s ...
Bryce Edwards writes – When she was campaigning to be Minister of Finance last year, Nicola Willis pledged that she would resign from the job if she failed to deliver tax cuts in her first Budget. Now, it’s that pledge, along with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s ...
Robert MacCulloch writes – The Reserve Bank has doubled staff numbers in five years to 510, with personnel costs rising to $80 million in 2023 from $32 million in 2018 – up by a whopping 150%. I guess when you print $50 billion and flood markets with liquidity, ...
The furore. In case you didn’t notice there was a controversy in the weekend involving dolphins in a little town off the South Island. Don’t panic, they haven’t declared independence and resumed whaling, this was simply a sailing event.The problem began when racing was cancelled on the opening day of ...
For 20 years or more, the case for a meaningful capital tax gains has been mulled over and analysed to death, including by the tax working group chaired by Sir Michael Cullen. More than once, the International Monetary Fund has said a CGT would be a good idea for New ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: The Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) call for urgent preventive action and a risk assessment survey of long covid in this briefing noteLocal scoop: NZ road deaths surpass OECD rates, so why is the govt reversing safety plans? ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising ...
This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The cruelty of short-term memory loss is that each time you ask where she is, you get the fresh shock and grief of the news. That was Dad's day yesterday.Comfortingly, it seems to be less so today. Last night he looked crumpled, today he seems more settled. There's a card ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
Opposition MPs and unions are criticising a proposal by New Zealand’s Ministry of Pacific Peoples to cut staff by 40 percent. The country’s largest trade union — The Public Service Association — says the ministry has informed staff that it is looking to shed 63 of 156 positions. Opposition MPs ...
A poem by Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024 featured poet Carin Smeaton. Daughtr of the 90s when she gets promoted to usherette a baby blu eel carries her all the way up to mothership she’s hovering high she lets the underaged in to see keanu reeves she lets the only lonely ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. My earlier article – Can ‘Good’ be the Greater Evil? – looked at the issue of how wars should end, and how Good versus Evil ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 AMMA by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press, $38)A stunning debut novel reviewed by Brannavan ...
From Steve Martin to Ricky Stanicky, a pick’n’mix of things worth watching and listening to this long weekend. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. If you’re at a loss for something to occupy yourself with this Easter, don’t panic: The Spinoff’s got ...
Jesus had dinner with his 12 disciples right before he died. Noted historian Madeleine Chapman finds out who really deserved to be there.First published in 2018 but let’s be honest, the subject is timeless. As you sit on your couch this Easter Sunday, eating a chocolate egg you know ...
The newly-promoted Northern League club is on a mission to return to the National League for the first time in two decades. Plenty about domestic football in New Zealand has changed in that time – but the sense that this amateur competition is not an entirely level playing field remains. ...
Comment: Every year on February 2, a dozen men in tuxedos and top hats approach the burrow of a groundhog in Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania and entice the beaver-like rodent to emerge and predict the weather. If the groundhog, named Punxsutawney Phil, sees its own shadow when it is summoned, legend ...
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Auckland Council has put a deadline on new weather-impacted property owners applying for categorisation as government funding looks set to run out. Councillors have voted to support a deadline of September 30 for property owners who haven’t accessed support to come forward and engage with the council’s recovery office. It ...
NONFICTION 1 BBQ Economics by Liam Dann (Penguin Random House, $40) “It’s official,” wrote Dann nine days ago in the Herald, where he works as business editor at large, “we’re in recession.” Yeah, great. He delivered the bad stats: “GDP fell 0.1 percent in the December 2023 quarter, compared with ...
By Anneke Smith, RNZ News political reporter A petition urging the New Zealand government to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people has been tabled in the House. More than 200 people gathered on Parliament’s forecourt today and they were met by MPs from Labour, the Greens and Te ...
Pacific Media Watch The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog RSF (Reporters Without Borders) has appealed for information about the “disappearance” of Palestinian journalist Bayan Abusultan. She was reportedly last seen on March 19 among people “sequestered” in this week’s raid and siege of Al Shifa hospital by Israeli troops in ...
EDITORIAL:The Jakarta Post It happens again and again; indigenous Papuans fall victim to Indonesian soldiers. This time, we have photographic evidence for the brutality, with videos on social media showing a Papuan man being tortured by a group of plainclothes men alleged to be the Indonesian Military (TNI) members. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity A strange and eclectic range of activities takes place across these few weeks of the year. Some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University It’s Easter weekend, which means many of us will be kicking back with the greatest hits on repeat. But whether you’re a boomer, or an ‘80s or ’90s kid, you might be ...
RNZ Pacific Fiji’s Acting Public Prosecutor has filed an appeal against the sentences of former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended police chief Sitiveni Qiliho in their corruption case. Bainimarama was granted an absolute discharge for attempting to pervert the course of justice while Qiliho received a conditional discharge with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arosha Weerakoon, Senior Lecturer and General Dentist, School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland Casezy idea/Shutterstock How does toothpaste work? What did people use before toothpaste was invented? – Amelia, age 7, Meanjin (Brisbane) Thanks for your ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Hallam, Associate professor, UNSW Sydney IM Imagery/Shutterstock Solar SunShot is well named. The Australian government announced today it would plough A$1 billion into bringing back solar manufacturing to Australia, boosting energy security, swapping coal and gas jobs for those ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Dix, Research Fellow in Nutrition & Dietetics, The University of Queensland Easter is the time for chocolate. The shops are full of fantastically packaged and shiny chocolates in all shapes and sizes, making trips to the supermarket with children more challenging ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Felton, Adjunct Senior Researcher, University of South Australia Even in a stubborn cost-of-living crisis, it seems there’s one luxury most Australians won’t sacrifice – their daily cup of coffee. Coffee sales have largely remained stable, even as financial pressures have ...
Mining company Trans-Tasman Resources has unexpectedly withdrawn its application for a consent to suck the valuable metals vanadium and titanium from the Taranaki seafloor, as it apparently wagers on the Government’s new fast-track process. It had spent two-and-a-half days putting its case to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision-making committee, at ...
Contrary to the Associate Minister of Education’s claims, analysis of Healthy School Lunches Programme - Ka Ora, Ka Ako assessments has revealed it provides excellent value for the taxpayer dollar, as a groundswell of public opposition to Government ...
Greenpeace says wannabe Taranaki seabed miner Trans-Tasman Resources is likely banking on Christopher Luxon’s fast-track process to side-step proper scrutiny of its Taranaki seabed mining proposal by bailing out of the Environmental Protection Agency hearing ...
Kiwis Against Seabed mining today slammed Australian owned would-be seabed miner Trans Tasman Resources (TTR) for abandoning its application to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to mine the seabed of the South Taranaki Bight. The company ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Attwell, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Months after COVID vaccines were introduced in 2021, governments and private organisations mandated them for various groups. Health and aged care workers were among the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dzurak, Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak, CEO and Founder of Diraq, UNSW Sydney Diraq For decades, the pursuit of quantum computing has struggled with the need for extremely low temperatures, mere fractions of a degree above absolute zero (0 Kelvin or ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne A national Essential poll, conducted March 20–24 from a sample of 1,150, gave the Coalition a 50–44 lead including undecided, a reversal ...
The Taxpayers’ Union has today made a formal request under the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information () for information held about how New Zealand Members of Parliament are spending taxpayer ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Nelson, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne A Byzantine depiction of the Eucharist in Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv.Jacek555/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA A nasty quarrel arose in the 11th century over what kind of bread should be used in holy ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Hesp, Professor, Flinders University Patrick Hesp In some parts of Australia, coastal dunes are retreating from the ocean at an alarming rate, as waves carve up the beach and wind blows the sand inland. But coastal communities are largely ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Heemsbergen, Senior Lecturer, Digital, Political, Media, Deakin University With an impressive 60% of the US smartphone market, Apple is undeniably big, but not a clear monopoly. Yet, years of innovation by Apple have effectively given the company its own exclusive ...
Whether you’re facing layoffs or are just an emotional junior staffer, it’s always a good idea to scout out a good crying place before you need it. It’s an incredibly hard time for Wellington. Across the city, thousands of public servants are hearing tough news about redundancies and layoffs. Government ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Miller-Jones, Professor, Curtin University Nuclear explosions on a neutron star feed its jets. Danielle Futselaar and Nathalie Degenaar, Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam, CC BY-SA How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology Sydney Earlier this week, independent MP Andrew Wilkie accused the AFL of conducting “off the books” illicit drug testing to identify players using substances of abuse, then inappropriately withdrawing them from matches ...
The Government’s announcement that it will scrap plans for a vast marine sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands is ‘shameful’ and will make it impossible for Aotearoa New Zealand to meet its international commitments, says the World Wide Fund for Nature ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland Shutterstock The federal government has bowed to pressure from the car industry, announcing it will relax proposed emissions rules for utes and vans and delay enforcement of the new standards ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suzanne Rutland, Professor Emerita, University of Sydney In his latest book, Jewish Life in Medieval Spain, Jonathan Ray focuses on the tumult of the 14th century in Spain – a time of the plague, civil strife and war between the two largest ...
While creating a slate of world-class shows, Whakaata Māori also developed a generation of world-class creatives. Television is an odd word. It mixes the Ancient Greek and Latin languages, and its most literal meaning is “far-off sight”. In the contemporary and living language of te reo Māori, “whakaata” as a ...
Yesterday the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. This significant step and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza prompted an urgent debate in the New Zealand Parliament. Leader ...
The Government’s decision to reduce access to continuous glucose monitors (CGM) not only threatens the lives of children with type 1 diabetes and increases the potential for ‘Dead in Bed’ syndrome, but also threatens the health of their parents an ...
Apples are available year-round, but the wide variety on offer involves intensive scientific research – and large-scale commercialisation. What’s beautiful, red, sweet and crunchy? Tony Martin’s favourite kind of apple: Sassy. The CEO of apple and pear breeding organisation Prevar, Martin’s fondness for Sassy represents professional success as well as ...
Family violence specialist service Shine is calling on employers to stop asking for proof of domestic violence in order for employees to access domestic violence leave. The call comes five years after the introduction of the Domestic Violence ...
The Deputy Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee is calling for public submissions on the Budget Policy Statement 2024. The Budget Policy Statement 2024 (BPS) sets out the Government's priorities for the 2024 Budget. It explains the approach ...
Brutal government spending cuts that will see the size of the Ministry for Pacific Peoples slashed by 40% will hit Pasifika communities hard, the PSA says. The Ministry has told staff that it is seeking voluntary redundancies, and to redeploy and reassign ...
I live with five people I mostly love, but our different ideas about generosity are starting to really irk me.Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,This is a bit of a random one but here goes. I’m 22 and work an OK job (OK meaning I get paid ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Nicholas, Senior Lecturer in Language and Literacy Education, Deakin University Earlier this month, the New South Wales government announced it would roll out programs for gifted students in every public school in the state. This comes amid concerns gifted school ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Rudge, Law lecturer, University of Sydney Massachusetts General Hospital In a world first, we heard last week that US surgeons had transplanted a kidney from a gene-edited pig into a living human. News reports said the procedure was a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tombs, Howard Paterson Chair of Theology and Public Issues, University of Otago The 5th-century Maskell panel showing Jesus in a loincloth.British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA When Jesus is shown on the cross, he is almost always depicted wearing a loincloth around ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University Shutterstock When you think about a red object, you might picture a red carpet, or the massive ruby in the Queen’s crown. Indeed, Western monarchies and marketing from brands such ...
COMMENTARY:Jewish Voice for Peace The UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza on Monday — and for the first time since the beginning of the Israeli military’s genocide of Palestinians, the United States abstained rather than vetoing it. Security Council resolutions are legally binding, ...
Asia Pacific Report A New Zealand investigative journalist and author says the US spy system hosted by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) appears to be a controversial intelligence system used in global capture-kill operations. Writing a commentary for RNZ News today, Nicky Hager, author of Secret Power, a 1996 ...
While Nicola Willis wouldn’t give any details on its size, she said a package of tax cuts is definitely still coming in this year’s budget, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming the investigation into the Department of Internal Affairs after it was revealed that the Department’s Chief Executive personally reached out to expedite a DJs passport application. Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns ...
Finance minister Nicola Willis delivers her first budget statement, and unwittingly helps Joel MacManus save his relationship. Nicola Willis strode into the Beehive Theatrette. Around me, on the green foldout seats, were the country’s top business and political journalists. They were all here to see her announce the Budget Policy ...
Twenty years ago today, Māori Television launched after much controversy. Jamie Tahana looks back on its survival and impact across two decades. Chad Chambers stepped onto the stage, the brim of his cap casting a shadow across his face. His smile beamed as bright as his white freezing works gumboots, ...
Tauranga, Rotorua, Wellsford, Onehunga, Westhaven marina – Gavin Strawhan walks the meanish streets of New Zealand in his entertaining debut novel The Call, almost sure to roar into the number 1 position on the Nielsen bestseller chart, its front cover bearing a rave from somebody: “A really good and genuinely ...
On a Thursday in February, at Wellington’s Conservation House, the Conservation Authority, a statutory body advising the eponymous department and minister, Tama Potaka, opened its 195th meeting. Under consideration that afternoon was an agenda item written by Tim Bamford, chief advisor in the Department of Conservation’s biodiversity, heritage and visitors ...
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A lengthy response to the recently released draft Government policy statement on transport will soon be delivered from Auckland Council to Minister of Transport Simeon Brown. A submission raising concerns about funding distribution and the plan’s treatment of Auckland passed through the council’s transport committee on Wednesday, despite some councillors ...
‘
In his post, 2013 – the policy year. IRISHBILL, in what I thought was a generous and non sectarian gesture, befitting the season, asked Standardnistas of all parties, (or none) to put forward policy suggestions. IRISH suggested, as being a resource for the LECs, that this could also be a resource for other smaller parties.
IRISH wrote:
I thought I would put forward my policy suggestion to combat climate change for further discussion. Hopefully, if people think it is a good idea, to be forwarded to the possible manifesto page to be created; My policy suggestion: A complete ban on coal exports.
http://thestandard.org.nz/2013-the-policy-year/comment-page-1/#comment-569735
As New Zealand only produces 0.2% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Our biggest contribution to stopping climate change would be for New Zealand to set an example that others could look too, to follow. If New Zealand put a ban on all coal exports, (and imports) our closest neighbor and closest international friend, Australia, (which is the biggest coal exporter in the world), would almost be guaranteed to follow.
Colonial Viper asked me; “Why would this be?”
I thought this might answer Colonial Viper’s question:
NSW told to prepare for the worst
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Australias_Hobart_experiences_hottest_day_999.html
Our toady MSM barely mentions it. Our gutless politicians don’t mention it at all. And so, I excuse CV for not noticing it.
Australia going through it’s worst heat wave ever.
To give you an example of what that means;
– 50 degrees is the recommended top temperature for the hot tap in your house. Imagine that, and then you will know why Australians will be NZ’s first wave of Climate Change refugees.
In my opinion as well as putting a ban on all coal exports this could be accompanied by a ban on all Australian immigrants until Australia does the same.
I think that might get the message across.
What do you think?
I think wild-fires have been raging across Australia for millions of years, some of the native trees have evolved in such a way as to require fire to release their seeds so as to be able to regenerate,
i also think that the Australian temperature records have suffered so much ‘historic rounding’ in their collection over decades that they are unreliable,
To attempt to link Australian wild-fires to climate change then seems to me to be rather spurious…
That says something about you, and nothing else whatsoever.
Really, can’t come up with FACTS, attack the commentor, what does it say about me buckwheat…
It says that you are clutching at any imagined comfort blankie you can. Oh, and “historic rounding” – citation needed.
PS: “Buckwheat” – keep your racist crap to yourself.
+1
Sad 12 the past winter drought and wild fires in most of the Australian out back are the worst in history!!
The result is that the build up of heat in central Australia is forcing the colder wetter weather to form over NZ!
Get your facts right sad12!
Got any proof of your wee claims there buck-wheat,like a link to some science that says that that New Zealands weather is on average colder and wetter this summer???,
Funnily enough, on RadioNZ National news this morning the Australians were saying that the HIGH rainfalls this winter have grown (a), more fuel in forests for fires to consume, and (b) the same has made grass growth more prevalent, summer having dried this excess of grass out so as to make it even more likely of igniting in lightening strikes,
Best you cite us some science for your assertion of the ‘winter drought’ as well…
Climate Change is causing these things to happen more frequently and with a greater intensity than before. Witness the devastating storms that are occurring… one in one hundred year storms that are now occurring more and more frequently. The general rise in the world temperatures are causing extreme weather patterns to develop, and the intense heat-wave currently affecting large parts of Australia is a good example. In other words, the unprecedented extent of the wild fires, rather than the wild fires themselves, are the inevitable result of C.C.
More likely, the awareness of climate change is making us take more notice of ‘these things’,
Have you got a link to the science that says Australian wild fires are happening more frequently or are more intense, history would tell us that during European occupancy of Australia such fires in the 1800’s burned millions of hectares and ash and smoke from them were evidenced in New Zealand,
Please provide a link to these 1 in 100 year storms that are occurring more frequently, the recent so called super storm that recently struck New York was just that, the last one of such magnitude to hit New York was 100 or so years ago….
I believe that any reasonable person would admit they cannot know everything, and that they, due to years of experience, will have come to understand that sometimes once the symptoms are upon us the disease is unstoppable. When the disease can cause havoc of global proportions, and many commentators (worthy) say the disease is upon us, the symptoms are all around. It strikes me that anyone who would consciously plan to undermine the risk, as not even plausible, to be rank stupidity. Sure nothing says you cannot say the evidence, the symptons, the loss of north arctic sea ice, the extended storm seasons in N.America, that strong more damaging storms (on the back of sea level rise), aren’t evident. But to then use your own ignorance, argue from ignorance, that the risk is just causing more people to notice. Surely not an argument, for example, how many have been told about sun damaged skin to check and so bring a cancer to their doctors attention. It is so common practice that when we see risk we will as a collective look for the signs, this is not evidence either way, this is just human behavior. So your blather, your ignorance, you false thinking, is all bunkum.
Thanks aero… I couldn’t be bothered. There’s so much reputable evidence out there… let him look it up for him/herself. But he/she presumably won’t because he/she has decided to take a fixed stand based on… deniability? Who knows.
So you make assertions without being able to provide a scrap of evidence, such a pathetic means of debate is unworthy of this web-site…
Since you seem incapable of checking it out for yourself (like most grown-u are happy to do) here is something to help you on your way. Took me a few minutes to find:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/feb/08/global-warming-weather-science
Google climate change/australian bush fires and you will find plenty more where that came from.
Edit function gone.
Oh and here’s another one.
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/climate-change/impacts.aspx
Want any more?
The other ones a bit of a laugh as well,
Since 1910 the average temperature in Australia has risen by 0.7 degrees, yes climate changes, all the time, always has and always will,
Best you email those heretics and tell then to get with the story, the OZ temps having risen that .7 since 1910 would simply suggest a changing climate…
Snigger, i am struck, (with laughter at you), by the first line of the news article you link to,(a real piece of scientific data),
”Scientists are RELUCTANT to link individual weather events to ‘climate change”, unquote,
I agree with the scientists, the current ‘record heatwave’ being experienced in parts of New South wales is exactly that, an individual weather event,
Should such ‘record heat waves’ continue every summer over a multi-decadal period they would then fit the definition of ‘climate change’…
ostrich12
Snigger CC’s little victim, milked that one for all it was worth…
Yes, every individual event is insignificant in itself. The real point is the frequency of those individual events in a decade or a few decades.
all the time, always has and always will
OK, let’s use an analogy. Cars stop and go all the time, so suppose that climate is changing, so a change is something we can adapt to, just like a car stopping, right? Now suppose that you apply the brakes and the car slows to a stop. That’s fine, right? OK, now run your car into a wall. That’s stopping it too, but hang on, that way of stopping it is lethal.
Given millennia, nature might adapt. Maybe, but millions of years might be easier. Given decades, can civilisation adapt? Ah, well then…
Can the economy adapt?
Ummm….
froginthepot12
Rhinoviper, climate changes all the time and civilizations have come and gone, those are 2 repeating themes of both ecological and human history,
I dare say tho that the human race having survived ice-ages before will survive albeit in a much reduced form than at present,
Economy???, disaster of any sort is the great social leveler, what use is there for millions of dollars of paper money if civilization is reduced to the level of hunter gatherer once more…
Pssst, scroll down the page a bit, i provide a link to a NASA satellite photo of wild fires burning in Western Australia in November 2012, not a heatwave in sight…
So you make assertions without being able to provide a scrap of evidence, such a pathetic means of debate is unworthy of this web-site…
Paging your badself:
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-07012013/comment-page-1/#comment-570950
BLAH, Blah,Blah, another assertion, what is this blather,ignorance, false thinking, and bunkum you accuse me of,
Worst wild-fires ever, doubt it, as i pointed out above there have been wild fires during European occupancy of Australia that have burned millions of hectares and smoke and ash from these fires has been evident in New Zealand,
Wild fires in Australia have happened yearly, they are not a symptom of climate change…
they are not a symptom of climate change…
How about the increasing temperatures that exacerbate the fire risk, and the consequent increased incidence and severity of wildfires?
Perhaps you need a pacifier to go with your blankie.
just like Clockwork
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1XqbopXH5M
Orange Crushed
Please provide the proof of ”the increased severity and propensity for such wildfires”,
The current fires burning in Tasmania at the moment are hardly severe in terms of previous fires,
One of those previous fires, from memory in the 1960’s, burned a far greater area of Tasmania than the present, killed 60 odd people and even burned parts of the States capital Hobart,
Sorry to aquaint you with an inconvenient truth in your abysmal attempts to link Australian wildfires with ‘climate change,
Your continued use of 4 year old’s language such as ‘blankie’ gives me an indication of your intelligence level, perhaps you should stick to debating with children at kindergarten, the other little kiddies with under-developed brains seem more your level…
Wikipedia lists 44 major bush fires since 1851. Nineteen of them occurred in the last decade.
PS: I didn’t make the link you allege, I merely noted that increased temperatures increase fire risk. Keep clutching that straw.
If you’re curious, feel free to provide evidence that the current record heatewave situation represents no change to the 1800’s.
Sydney Morning Herald claims that New South Wales is experiencing the greatest fire danger it has ever faced.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/live-nsw-braces-for-one-of-the-hottest-days-on-record-20130108-2cdfn.html
???
https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/68643_364798220285474_1797505133_n.jpg
CV, good twist,as usual, of what i actually said in my first comment, do i deny anywhere in that comment or later that parts of Australia are being effected by a ‘record heatwave’,
Well NO i fucking don’t, so it’s damn easy to spuriously put up assertions that i have not made and then tell me to prove the opposite, another pathetic form of debate unworthy of this site,
What i do say is that wildfires in Australia are nothing unusual, they have been occurring for millions of years, the fact that there are record high temperatures at present in soem parts of Australia hasn’t altered the facts of such fires one iota…
Humans have only been around a fraction of those millions of years, so when our species goes away permanently you can claim that it’s perfectly historically normal.
(which it is…)
“Have you got a link to the science that says Australian wild fires are happening more frequently or are more intense, history would tell us that during European occupancy of Australia such fires in the 1800′s burned millions of hectares and ash and smoke from them were evidenced in New Zealand,”
Well, quite. Because the Europeans burnt the bush to ‘create’ farmland (as they also did in NZ). The 1800s is not a good time period to use as a comparison.
Clearing bush for farmland isn’t a wildfire, although i could imagine more than the odd bit of bush clearance got away on them,
1800,s, 1900’s it makes no difference, the areas that are currently burning, parts of Tasmania, and New South Wales are in fact the area of the highest rate of wildfires in e a Australia over a multi century time frame,
Here have a read of the record,
the Google= History of Australian wildfires,
http://www.home,iprimus.com.au/foo7/fire.html
And heres a pic of wildfires burning in Western Australia from the Nasa satellite in November 2012…
The Google= Fires in Western Australia-Modis website,
http://www.modis.gsfc.nasa.gallery/individual.php?db_date=2012-11-13
That link doesn’t work, even when I fix the comma.
Not sure what’s with that, the original question i asked google= how many wildfires were burning in western australia in november 2012,
It is on the page that i get linked to after asking the above question…
“Clearing bush for farmland isn’t a wildfire,”
What’s the difference?
Actually, more like 70 years ago. There was a double storm system to hit in 1934 that was bigger than Sandy.
Crap. Biology 101 – the Eucalyptus tree and many other species evolved to take advantage of regular seasonal bush fires to spread their seeds. That’s why Eucalypts are full of volatile oils and why other Australian plants have seeds that only germinate after being baked. The Koori new this, which is why they periodically instigated burn-offs of their own. The problem came about post colonisation and was aggravated by the environmental movement’s protection of wilderness areas and the prevention of burn offs. The massive fires we now see are a direct result of that rather than climate change – though of course climate change is happening and may well exacerbate matters in the future.
There’s also the issue of suburbs being built in places that they shouldn’t be.
Yep. In Christchurch that includes building suburbs in high liquefaction risk zones, and in Queensland, building suburbs on flood plains. But someone made money – at the time.
‘Climate change’ has been happening forever, presumably for far longer than the millions of years that Australian wildfires have been igniting…
Yeah and species have been going extinct forever so maybe its us next, no worries eh mate.
12 healthy followers
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/540969_10151226621821297_1018837419_n.jpg
A record heatwave and fires might help convince the Australian government to give up billions in coal exports…not what we do with the piddly amounts we export. If NZ gives up exporting coal today the Australian producers will take up the slack tomorrow.
We should give up coal exports because we will need some of the coal for essential transition processes, and because it’s the right thing to do. The latter is more than symbolic. It demonstrates that we understand that CC is a global problem that affects all of life and that all humans must act in whatever ways they can. It’s about solidarity with the world and with other nations that will face harder futures than us in giving up fossil fuels.
This I can get onboard with. And the same rationale goes for our offshore oil and gas as well.
The whole problem is we dug up trapped compounds and unabashedly burnt them. Now to get off the crack we have to fract the last drops oil, gas, and mine the last coal to transition to back to where we should have been had we not gone on our addiction to growth and profits without thinking of limits and consequences. Its like that mother in America, a gun whore, whose mentally hamstrung son killed her and then went on a wild murderous rampage in a school. We consent our own destruction by accepting banality as reasonable.
We dug up hydrocarbons on mass and dumped them into the biosphere, how could that not have consequences!!!
Yup. Ban coal exports/imports and all but whatever might be considered to be the most essential mining (and I’m thinking of a very high bar to determine that…probably including disbarring any economic argument from the decision)
Immediately legislate for car occupancy rates – issuing instant and punative fines to people driving without passengers for no compelling reason.
Immediately legislate that any new cars coming into the country must have carbon emissions of below 100g per km.
Immediately halt any non-essential lighting and heating of public places/spaces.
And shut down the gas fired power stations. I know they are needed for peak load times. But that’ll only remain a problem until we alter our consumption habits…which shouldn’t take long when the alternative is brown or black outs for us all for as long as we persist in pulling extra electicity at the same time every day.
“Immediately legislate for car occupancy rates – issuing instant and punative fines to people driving without passengers for no compelling reason.”
How would that work? And wouldn’t my two trips to town a week with an empty car trump someone’s daily trips to town with one passenger?
1. Australia is seen as the last hope for many unemployed Kiwis.
2. They hardly notice us, let alone how much coal we export.
3. An immigrant war with Australia is the last thing we need.
Banning coal exports may be a good idea, but not because Australia would follow. The minerals sector has their government by the balls and they’d thank us for the increased market share.
Sorry to be the one to point it out, but I think you just might have a little bit of a dysfunctional logic thing going on here.
Can do better. I award you a D+ for effort.
Thank you for your contribution.
Please try again.
You can’t seriously be criticising others for dysfunctional logic.
What Murray seemed to be saying was that us stopping coal exports would simply result in some minor benefits for the Australian coal industry.
Ceding market share to the Australians is not really going to demotivate them is it Jenny – that’s your dysfunctional logic.
Does anyone actually believe this woman?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/8151831/Trying-to-find-staff-a-nightmare
How much is she paying for the dish washing and floor cleaning ? Dunno but it is chch where alot of the able and smart have departed and public transport to/from is a factor.
Approaching a polytech for graduates is fine if they’ve done a diploma in cleaning and are looking for their first leg up into the world of low paid jobs in franchises.
A diploma in cleaning? This world has gone mad.
Yeah this kind of thing can be a problem. It often stems from youth who have left school and had an extended time unemployed without the benefit of immediate work experience with good role models. Or have been long term unemployed and simply deconditioned to work discipline. Being a bakery I also suspect that the hours of work may have been fairly extreme. Not that many people like 4:30am starts etc. However, advertising overseas to fill these positions seems a bit nuts. It did say the positions were above minimum wage.
On the evidence I’ve seen in the past, and given the current requirements for beneficiaries to be constantly looking for work, I’d expect the following:
* that some people would be responding to job ads who are unemployable for various reasons – such as having anti-social behaviour patterns; being unable to physically or mentally apply themselves to a job for a full day and/or week, etc.
* I’d also expect that some people will take any job going, especially if it was offering wages above the minimum.
So Ms McPherson got some of the unemployable, or marginally employable applying, but what about those that are capable and want any work going? Did she just conveniently forget to mention them? Is there something about McPherson, her job or her workplace that puts keen workers off? Or does she just want to recruit from overseas and is looking for an excuse not to employ locals?
Also, if WINZ stopped pressuring people who are unemployable, or incapable of working a full day/shift to job-seek, maybe Ms McPherson’s job of recruitment would be a lot easier.
Great points Karol.
I dislike her feigned helplessness because:
– Business is about solving problems, not bitching to the media when things don’t go your way. Your business, your problem. Offer them free leftovers at the end of each day and you might pick up some savvy family looking to save $$$.
– If you can’t handle something, the beauty of a business is that you can hire someone else to do it on your behalf. Are we meant to believe there are no recruitment agencies in her area?
– So her answer is to look OVERSEAS? Duh. The vetting process and cost is likely to be even more unmanageable.
This is nothing more that a business owner who has taken on too much and prefers to spend her time whining rather than fixing things OR (more likely) the opening shot for the year of some more right wing spin meant to rark up the masses into more bene bashing for 2013.
Yeah, how many overseas people are going to want to shift to Chch of all places, where there is a housing shortage and high levels of stress across the population, for $14/hr?
She also doesn’t say if she is offering full time, regular hours jobs (an issue for any WINZ beneficiary because of the abatement process).
CW
If you were to publicise this internationally you would get many many replies from people who will do anything to get away from their own environment into New Zealand, and will take any wages to start.
Fartrain even henry ford knew the value of higher wages !
What kind of visa will they have Fortran?
She would be swamped with overseas applicants just as the cantabury farmers hire dairy labourers from overseas. Kiwis are lazy and entitled.
Cheap foreign labour for higher capitalist profits
It appears that your thinking is lazy and entitled, shit head.
agreed. Lazy and entitled employers, too.
Yeah lazy employers. They should be doing the work for the employees and paying them. Imagine the cheek of a business owner who actually wants to find someone who wants to work!
David C, if you can’t afford to pay your employees properly, you probably shouldn’t be in business in the first place.
David C, here is a list of bakeries in Christchurch who aren’t blaming a cherry-picked sample of job-seekers for staff shortages.
Are your opinions always this feeble?
Speaking of the employer, perhaps this one comes across as a toxic right wing shill or something, the sort of boss who would rather run right wing attack lines in the media rather than fix her staff shortage.
lol, when ‘cantabury farmers’ start paying for the water they use, I’ll take any claims about ‘entitlement’ a bit more seriously.
“Imagine the cheek of a business owner who actually wants to find someone who wants to work!”
Imagine the cheek of an employee wanting a fair days pay for a fair days work before they do!
Entitlement indeed! 😉
No, Kiwis live in an OECD country and expect competitive, commensurate wages, not serfdom
$600 a week for an unskilled job is sefdom?
entitled indeed.
throw an r into that sefdom willya…. why no edit?
“Unskilled” but absolutely critical job…your food site gets a bad hygiene rating you’ll get closed down for a week to sort it out.
Don’t be a consistent shit head, $600 is barely a living wage and that’s for full time work that I presume starts from very early in the morning for a bakery.
and that is exactly the attitude you ‘tards promote isnt it… why would anyone be bothered to get out of bed before 11.00 am for a mere $600 a week! FFS.
Bakery work is awesome…finish early arvo and go hunting or to the beach.
$600/week is not a living wage shit head
And its not an 11am start in a bakery its 4:00am or 5am, typically
Major difference between “before 11” and “before 4”.
And you’re not factoring in chch accommodation costs, either.
back when I was working nights, it was relaxing to pop by a particular cafe/bakery at 6am and have b&e or pancakes before heading to bed. Only place open at that time, except the 24dairy of doom… 🙂
‘It’s Doom alone that counts 🙂
$600 pre tax is about $510 after tax? fucking site better than $170 on the dole.
But hey..yes you do need to actually want to work and get out of bed to better yourself.
$510 in hand is not a living wage. I guess you are saying however that serfs should be grateful for crumbs and drippings.
So $510 is not a living wage huh?
A mate of mine is living in ChCh at the mo for $200 a week full board.
So that is food and shelter taken care of.
$310 a week for transport ( a bike!) and clothes isnt bad is it?
Entitled Leftard Fuckhead.
“$600 pre tax is about $510 after tax? fucking site better than $170 on the dole.
But hey..yes you do need to actually want to work and get out of bed to better yourself.”
I think you will find that there are very few people on the dole in Chch receiving only $170/wk. Most will have accommodation supplement on top of that. Many people on the dole also have part-time, cash in hand jobs of various kinds, or use their time to mitigate the low income in other ways. If we’re talking about a 20 year old with no dependants who is fit and healthy, then yes the dole can be more attractive than an insecure, deadend, just above minimum wage job that’s structured to go no-where. The longer someone is on the dole, the harder it is to survive, but in the short and medium term, it’s possible.
not everyone wants to live with their grandma, shit head.
My mate dont live whith his grandma either you charmer CV… he is a tradesman who likes to be able to feed his family so he works in ChCh rather than here…
Tho I fail to see why the tax paying NZers should subsidise someones life style choices… if your Gran can offer you a room near a basic job then you must move in … suck it up.
Colonial Weka…Yes you reinforce my point beautifully. The dole and subsidies are far too high when there are jobs availible. Why are we paying people so much to be lazy?
to be lazy
What of the 80,000-ish extra unemployed since 2008? Do you hate them too, or are you just feeble-minded?
The dole isn’t generous, David. It’s just that the jobs you’re comparing it to are really shit.
David, if your mate is a tradesman and only earning the pittance you claim he does, then I have a suggestion. Get your mate to join a union. Clearly your advice isn’t working out for him financially.
“Colonial Weka…Yes you reinforce my point beautifully. The dole and subsidies are far too high when there are jobs availible. Why are we paying people so much to be lazy?”
We’re not. We are paying people to be the sacrificial goats in a society that prefers to run an economy with an unemployment rate instead of full employment. You’ve also missed the bit about needing to be young and fit and healthy with no dependents (or debt or other financial commitments) in order for the dole to be attractive for a period of time.
Why should someone take a job with shit opportunity, conditions and wage, when they have another choice? Oh, that’s right, in your head, people should be forced into situations that make their lives worse. Like someone already said, serfdom.
The only time we get to talk about generic laziness in the unemployed is when we have more jobs than jobless. We haven’t had that since the 70s.
btw, you do realise that if all the people you call lazy were to get a job, your mate would be unemployed. Think about it.
well where to start here….
My mate…a fridgie/sparkie bills around $8k a trip down south. $30K/yr wtf?
CV and I were having some banter about what constitutes a living wage…I objected to the fact that he cant run his Aston on a mere $510 a week.
felix…having a shit job is a really great way of maybe getting a not so shit job…its always easier to get a job if you already have one and want to better your position. People respect that drive.
Te Reo Putake..a Union? you are just taking the piss now arent you 🙂
Colonial Weka. How is a job in a bakery poor conditions or no opportunity or bad wages. ? Huh? explain.
and no if every other person in NZ got employed my mate would be busier as he is in a support industry as am I. Someone comming off the dole isnt going to take the job of a trademan with 20 years experience.
Joe90, I agree small bakery hours suck. But there are usually free pies 😉
David C…….an imperious wahanui…….bitterly holding on to his perennial “entitlement” to engage the ideological construct that poverty is just fine……for the unskilled. Poverty ? Bah ! What have they done not to deserve it ?
Get a life you ugly fool.
North…care you make a comment that actually says something meaningful?
But if your saying that the unskilled deserve to be poor then yes I agree.
Study, train , upskill in some way to better yourself but if you sit on the couch and wail that the world owes you a living (as commenters on here suggested you should do) I will fight tooth and nail that my taxes dont suppport you.
“Colonial Weka. How is a job in a bakery poor conditions or no opportunity or bad wages. ? Huh? explain.”
I’m guessing that she wasn’t offering a 40hr a week, permanent job, with increasing wages over time, and things like sick and holiday pay. As a tradie, you probably don’t realise how poor employment contracts for those on or near minimum wage can be now. If she is offering casual hours or part time work, anyone on the dole is going to get hit by the abatement process. That means that week by week they don’t know what their income is going to be, and some weeks it won’t be enough to live on.
“having a shit job is a really great way of maybe getting a not so shit job”
Yeah that can still be true at an individual level for some people, but you’re ignoring the big picture. In the new low wage economy, increasingly these jobs aren’t for kids ‘working their way up from the mailroom’. We’re talking about near-minimum wage jobs for life.
And for a huge sector of society there’s no job security any more. Everyone’s a ‘contractor’ when it comes to holidays and acc and health and safety, but mysteriously they’re suddenly employees when it comes to where, when, how and what you do. And you can be fired anytime for no reason at all – or rather for no fault of your own.
You’re living in the past if you think working in a franchise is a step on the ladder. In John Key’s New Zealand, it’s more like a step on the treadmill.
Forbes: Careers are dead, welcome to your low wage, temp work future
The new economy is one which only needs disposable workers.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jmaureenhenderson/2012/08/30/careers-are-dead-welcome-to-your-low-wage-temp-work-future/
Pop, that statement flies directly in the face of neo lib orthodoxy, the whole thing is designed to lead to the lowest possible wage regardless of country. As an employer who does not wish to depress wages or prices AND wants some harmony in the workplace I can think of no better argument for compulsory unionism.
Exactly – hence I loathe neoliberalism
A tradesman on $30somethingK, WTF, is he a clothes line mechanic?.
btw, starts between midnight and 3am are the reason both bakers of my acquaintance are perpetually knackered.
+1 Kiwis are lazy and SI dairy farmers are aren’t paying low wages to Filipinos.. just that kiwis like are all gonna be game designers like (or ganstas bro) and grow up to complain about unaffordable houses like as they sup bought coffees and like text like on lol smartphones.
Well what is the fucking point of being in the OECD if we can’t? 🙂
“that is exactly the attitude you ‘tards promote isnt it… why would anyone be bothered to get out of bed before 11.00 am for a mere $600 a week! FFS.
Bakery work is awesome…finish early arvo and go hunting or to the beach.”
I’m guessing your loaves are always a few slices short.
Nope, she’s BSing.
I think she clearly needs to be more flexible around her employment conditions.
In a market, if you are not having success with an offering, you need to make a better one.
Excellent point.
Why is it that ‘moral lack’ is always brought out by the right when market signals aren’t in an employer’s favour?
I guess the argument from the right is that there should be no unemployment benefit as it ‘artificially’ raises wage expectations. These raised expectations then thwart the uptake of their ‘fair’ offers.
They don’t seem to like the ‘distortions’ of non-market factors, such as collective compassion.
Fundamentally
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attributional_bias
in error (Loved your wager Pg)
All I need now is a bookie.
Hope s/he’s as good as the one Pascal has – or maybe not 🙂
“This, “For many poor students, leap to college ends in a hard fall” is a very well-executed piece in The New York Times. It follows three talented, but terribly disadvantaged, girl students who make it into university but then manage to go no further, and it shows why education doesn’t always lead to social mobility; in fact, it very often holds poor people down while further elevating middle-class and upper-class people.”
http://bluemilk.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/education-is-a-political-issue-this-is-why/
Thinking of all those Masters+ students, for whom this year holds particular challenge or possibly an end to their study. Obviously the above article isn’t referring to the post-grads for the most part but here in NZ the cutting of the student allowance for these people is evidence the wedge dividing socio-economic groups and education is being driven further into their working class flesh.
Education was a panacea for improving class and income mobility in a time of economic growth and increasing job complexity and specialisation.
Now however, complex manufacturing and scientific jobs in NZ have been cut and cut and cut. Most new jobs created pay less than $20/hr. Many science based positions are affected by 1-2 year funding regimes where continual re-application is necessary.
Basically if you come out into this environment with a Masters or PhD the chances are that you are going to have to go overseas for any chance at real work, or you can be a Masters or PhD student stacking shelves and serving fries here in NZ. With about $50,000 more student debt than the school leaver next to you being paid the same amount.
+1
“Continual reapplication is necessary” Damn right! We are “worker units,” not people.
Remember Made In Taiwan?
http://www.asianewsnet.net/home/news.php?id=41086&sec=2
die cast
Good link, ASW. Thanks. Yes social capital is very important. It’s the social and economic inequalities underlying the education system that are the main causes of educational inequalities.
We need a return to free education and better allowances for all. Also, the content and approach of education provisions need to be more responsive to the requirements of the children of people on low incomes – especially at tertiary level. I think school teachers may be more responsive to such needs, but tertiary education is more focused on middle-class ambitions.
I say this having taught in schools (in the UK), in Unis (in NZ and Aussie) and in TAFE/Further education colleges in the UK and Aussie.
I also did a little bit of community/adult education in the east end of London. I had some working class women attend my class who were doing some uni courses. They seemed to be largely looking for some support in dealing with the, to them, alien middle class culture of the Uni. They talked in detail about the differences between their east end London home culture and that of the middle class Uni.
Thanks for the link.
Best piece of writing on poverty and education I’ve read in a long while.
This from the comments is awesome:
As I’ve said before: The most important thing about education is teaching people how to think, to expand their imagination. Teaching the three r’s as National Standards does fails to achieve this.
Its worse surely than that. Its feedback. As we reward buying and selling homes, we depress the innovative sector, and this flows on to gifting universities with a more leisurely attitude to teaching (and charging more). The money becomes the modus operandi. Then the governments of the day demand that education pay its way, look the politicians say the graduates are racking up income, make them pay for their education too!!! This is yet another incentive to broaden the numbers going into education. In a global information world it doesn’t matter where you are when it comes to information, and so our position as a green summer during the northern winter should have many educational, corporations, and individuals wanting to spend time here. That means we need a service, culinary, techo, tourism fusion. Yet what we have is bulk transfer of foods overseas, lousy protections for tourists… …all to keep our corrupt housing sector afloat.
Noelle McCarthy’s patsy interview with Mark Bowden
“Summer Noelle”, National Radio, Tuesday 8 January 2013, 9:09 a.m.
Most National Radio listeners will know that Noelle McCarthy is a decent person. She has shown in the past that she has the courage to confront hypocrites and liars. She could barely repress her loathing for S.S. man Garth McVicar when she interviewed him in March 2011…
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-09032011/#comment-306178
This morning, she interviewed another advocate of extrajudicial killing—Mark Bowden, author of The Finish: The Killing of Osama. Perhaps because Bowden is far brighter than McVicar, she felt constrained and on edge, but it was still disappointing to hear her let Bowden get away with subtle evasions and distortions, and to hear her accept his use of euphemisms, and to even use them herself. Effectively, this amounts to cynical, willful distortion and apology for state crimes.
Sadly, Noelle McCarthy, who can be a penetrating and intelligent interviewer, was reduced to giving the sort of patsy interview we see on British State TV or Fox News.
More in sorrow than anger, I sent her the following e-mail….
Interview with Mark Bowden was disturbing, and disappointing
Dear Noelle,
It was interesting, and chilling, to hear your guest Mark Bowden try to explain away the use of torture by saying it is something that “was in the water”.
You also several times used the word “rendition” instead of calling it what it is: kidnapping. I am sure I was not the only listener disappointed to hear you had chosen to use this obfuscatory language.
Yours sincerely,
Morrissey Breen
Northcote Point
I bathe in Summer Noelle some mornings when I cannot climb on top of the Hill
Obviously Sascha Baron Cohen paid her off as part of his secret plan in collaboration with all of the other Jewish comedians in the world (Mel Brookes was their ringleader for years) to take over the world
Y’know, your sense of humour is about as lame as your attempt to smear me.
Morrissey……seems like those so keen to yell (or at least imply) “anti-semite” are the ones more artful at defamation. Talks more about them than the subjects of their abuse perhaps ?
Justice the seed peace the flower !
He and a couple of others have been at this for a while now. Although I do not think anyone would believe any of their smears and innuendoes, I don’t think that’s really their point. What they are trying to do is create a din and thereby turn the thread into a farce.
It’s something for Lin and the other administrators to keep an eye on. I’ll email the site formally and remind them to watch for this ongoing campaign of sabotage.
well, I thought Pop was funny 🙂
History of the World, Part 1
http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/9200000/Marxism-marx-brothers-9268845-2050-2560.jpg
“A clown is like aspirin, only he works twice as fast”
-Marx
You’re right…….if Gaza’s funny.
Of course Gaza isn’t funny – but Morrissey’s monomaniacal obsession with it on a site about left wing New Zealand politics is, and made moreso by his weird conspiracy rants about Zionist Jewish comedians. Now that’s a SCREAM!
…weird conspiracy rants about Zionist Jewish comedians.
Again, you are trying, ham-fistedly, to smear me. My commentary on Baron Cohen’s defamation of that Christian peace activist in occupied Hebron was just as critical of David Letterman, and the braying sycophants in the audience.
Your repeated attempts to portray my carefully argued points as a “conspiracy” are as inept as they are dishonest.
Appreciated RT – methinks Morissey picked his moniker well – I assume he hates it when his friends become successful. And if they’re northern, that makes it even worse…
I have a major beef with how companies can conduct themselves in litigation.
Too often I have observed companies sued, who then defend themselves and their directors, (I am talking civil not criminal cases) putting plaintiffs through the ringer making them expend on experts and lawyers only to reach the judgement, plaintiff wins and company is placed in liquidation.
In my own leaky home case the company through one of its directors derailed the mediation by taking a legally unsustainable position with lawyer on hand to peddle it), forced us to expend money on experts to refute their claims (which were baseless at law) and took us all the way to a hearing. It then transpired at the hearing that the director had, as we suspected, lied about giving over the names of people from his buidling company who had been onsite.
The hearing was 5 days.
Our out of pocket legal and expert expenses were over $130k. We won our judgement and put in an application for costs on the basis of his lying. The day their defence was due they filed for liquidation. We won our costs application but the tribunal decided that lying deliberately withholding important information was only worth $5000. In any event the company cant pay and cant pay its judgment.
This company should not be able to engage a lawyer and run up expenses for us if it knows as this company surely did) that if it lost it couldn’t pay. If they had not defended we would have gained a settlement from council at a far earlier point and saved over $50,000 in costs.
This is happening every day in this country across any variety of civil claims, not just mine and not just leaky homes.
Surely the ‘fix” is relatively simple, if there was any will. We could try and sue him under the companies act for dishonesty but it would cost us more money and is a notoriously hard case to win.
So why the huge lopsided bias toward directors and companies in this type of situation?
Criminal contempt of court proceedings should be filable against directors who have knowingly submitted false testimony or fraudulent evidence to a court.
To protect the rich which is, from what I can make out, the basis for almost all our commercial laws.
I recall some years ago discussing with a lawyer employed by one of the big five commercial firms the reasons for his up and leaving, by all appearances suddenly and inexplicably. I mean, who wouldn’t wanna be in the frame for partnership in one of said firms. Six, seven hundy a year and more ?
The principal reason advanced was this: he had identified his essential role in this firm on behalf of its often multi-national, inexhaustibly wealthy clients as being to devise endless interlocutory applications to the High Court which had the effect of burning-off relatively financially weak opponents of said clients.
Repeated exercises of this nature finally had the little guy bruised, scared, and running out of the bucks necessary to last the distance. Easy meat for a settlement favourable to the big guy.
I always admired that guy for resolving that he could no longer stomach the amorality of it all. I hope he’s found happiness and professional fulfillment. Of course on Planet Key he was only ever a fuckwit.
It is also why I left the practice of law in the mid-90’s. It was just amoney-go-round witht he rich defendants quietly strangling the plaintiffs. Had two small business owners who died, one a massive heart attack, the other hung himself following our final attempt to get him the money he was owed.
Primary server had a glitch at ~11:40. Not sure why – will be having a look at the logs.
It got automatically restarted at ~11:50, but came back up with a read-only filesystem, something else I will have to force a check on (it obviously had something wrong in the file system).
I rebooted it manually, but it took me some time to get through the security I put in last night from my work system. Was back up at ~12:02
The joys of a new server…
This morning or last night? Last night I got introduced to the Cloud, with its offering of a two day old cached page and pretty layout error message.
New server. There are always a few difficulties.
Last night I was increasing the CPU available. I didn’t expect it to take an hour.
This morning there was a just an unexplained crash.
I’d expect everything to stabilize soon.
But the nice things about the move are that the servers are now well and truly lost in the “cloud” (which makes them hard to legally shutdown), and the costs have dropped to between a third and a half of the previous costs depending on where it settles at the end of the process.
To Whom It May Concern,
I’d just like to say that I’m bored mulling around the berry plant picking up butts; speak, or hold your piece, nothing hard about it, after all, apparently I’m the “fool” 🙂
Thanks for the “friend” acceptance guys, nothing to fear, nothing to hide. I was chatting with a public servant this morning, he’s on to it, said he read a quote “F.B.I never had it so easy since the rise of FB” (federal bureau of information) Then, I get the latest copy of Best Practice delivered to my door with veges I planted this morning and guess what’s on the cover? Poppies!
I’ve grown them two years in a row, yet no need for them anymore; being informed’s gettin me high enough 🙂
an unidentified Friedman object that flew my way this morning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanton_T._Friedman
-Klaatu
Was a spambot. I hadn’t put in the limitipconn module for apache.
Key’s stance on broadband decision gob-smacking
John Key goes in to bat for the shareholders and not NZers.
When I heard that the slow uptake of broadband would require a price reduction I thought nice.
Having had the road recently being dug up and looking at the prices I might have taken a second look.
Thanks John Key, I don’t have to bother, the shareholders want only rich customers.
Why is that? Surely there’s more profit the more people use the service, you know the whole
give them tax cuts means more profitable activities boosting rather than reducing tax revenues.
Reduce the cost of broadband and more people will pay for it, more profits, more price reductions as more companies offer services, that’s the capitalist way.
But Key is not a capitalist, he’s a national socialist, who believes interfering to save the wealthy a harder life and ignoring and reducing protective regulation on the lower classes (because they need the spur to get off their back sides).
Just read this myself and was about to link to it. You beat me DTB! Gobsmacking to say the least. I have Facebooked this as it’s the best way I know how to get this kind of info out there. My friends and acquaintances’ may not take politics as ‘seriously’ as I do but at least I can try to get them to engage and be more informed.
Who we ask might the shareholders include?
The following own around 60% of the shares:
National Nominees New Zealand Limited –an Auckland investment house.
HSBC Nominees (New Zealand) Limited – Hong Kong Shanghai Bank NZ
JP Morgan Chase Bank
Now just who and what is our PM?
Also remember the Kiwisaver funds buy nominee shares etc…..also the government might have large holdings in these banks / companies and or a tangled web of bond obligations / bank debts etc.
In that light is Keys willingness so gobsmacking?
Dear Judith,
Crushingly, all drug offenders, even minor one, must go through courts
-2800 imprisoned over last 6 years
-police oppose legaliZing pipes and needles
despite
-Law Commission criticisms of criminal focus on minor offences in recent review
-NZ drug foundation alarm (Hells Bells) at court focus on minor offences
(war is lost) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs
Hagel Chucks antagonistic attitude towards state of Israel
Support The Big Red Lycopene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycopene
In the second U.S full-page broad-side, I mean sheet, in the Dom in a week, CIA minimize the use of Torture 31 Dark Zero
contrast with, ( a few sheets further in)
Chinese vocational students “PRESSED” into manufacturing roles
when actually (same article)
-wages RISING in their southern manufacturing sector and are an increasing component of their costs
-greater uptake of tertiary study, less labour migration to the south, one-child policy factors
-vocational school grads increase surge 26%
-only 2.7% of Foxconn workforce students
-only 8 hour days by law although 12 often worked (same here)
-they may be paid less, but in general receive the same
These WOF / COF changes are gonna backfire imo
70% of NZers cybercrime phishes
The World Until Yesterday
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews/9756597/The-World-Until-Yesterday-by-Jared-Diamond-review.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tH8jOP98C0
hmmm
Another woman dies as a result of family violence and 2 more children are motherless – no telling how much violence they’ve witnessed before this.
Stuff writes the killing off as a “domestic dispute”.
Meanwhile secure funding for violence prevention and women’s refuges have to go into >a href=”http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10816644″>crisis talks to secure funding after $700,000 was lopped off their funding in 2011.
To David C above who says poverty is fine for the unskilled I say only this: one day, one day……karma for you and/or yours.
And I just know you’d be the snivelling moaner, blaming it all on someone else.
David C, 170.000 unemployed and rising.
Having a degree or a certain skill can actually count against you if a prospective employer
feels you are too qualified for a position.
The new catch phrase for the right seem to be ‘upskill’, this is to mask the inability of
the Key govt to create the 170.000 jobs he promised before the last election, what Key
should have said is that there would be 170.000 + jobs lost in NZ as at the end of 2012,
perhaps he couldn’t remember what he should have said.
‘
This at the same time as they are locking down uni funding, wrecking polytechs, and taking away loans and allowances from students. Typical Right Wing tomfuckery.
I’m guessing that David C regards these people as 170,000 lazy, entitled, unqualified lefty fucktards.
Totally agree with you CV, David C only turns right and the right give education the
two finger salute.
Epic Alex Jones rant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AtyKofFih8Y#!
And people say it’s unfair to judge people for linking to ‘infowars’. The guy is a fucking clown. End of. Get a better source.
Jeebers. The dude’s Eric Cartman.
Holy shit did you watch the second one!!?? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf-i3Y5iRYo
“I can talk in this accent too”