74.1 per cent of Chinese voters voted National in 2014.
Chinese voter turnout in the 2014 General Elections was 78.5 per cent – higher than the national average of 76.8 per cent.
This has been a concern of mine for years now. It is not a racial problem as such , it seems to be based more about the ‘type’ of person our policy attracts.
For me it stands out most with the immigrants from a certain rugby playing nation.
I’ve noticed that our government seems to favour under educated people from countries that have high corruption and poor human rights in particular for women.
We already have high family violence rates in NZ, so as well as cutting most funding for the cause, the government has even found a way to try and make that worse in the future by adding people from worse off countries. They are like anti human rights magicians so no wonder many vote National. Or are they trying to get a cultural fit?
NZ was predicted to get a rise in GDP of 0.9% by 2030–less than 1%, in exchange for being made liable to be sued if our laws were changed and didn’t comply with TPP rules written by/for corporates.
A 20 yr old kid drove his boss’s fully laden bee truck and trailer into the back of a logging truck at 4 am, killing his workmate who was asleep in the passenger seat.
“An inspection of his work logbook and employment records revealed that Power had breached his cumulative work time and rest time hours on a regular basis between October 20 and November 21, 2015.
That included him making false statements about the start of his cumulative work day on 34 occasions, the summary of facts revealed.”
Well, either granny’s got it wrong again, or he worked 34 shifts in 32 days and regularly exceeded 14 hour days in that period. He would have been in zombie land by the time he crashed.
So, where’s the employer in all this? The boy wouldn’t be working those hours of his own volition, he would have been instructed to and the same with the log book violation.
They did mention the employer in the article – and I’m fairly sure a competent lawyer would have made sure that there was/wasn’t culpability on the part of the employer so as to mitigate the boys sentence.
Back when I used to regularly use forest roads in that area the word was they were not public roads so weight limits didn’t apply. Rumour was speed limits didn’t apply either, but that may have just been wishful thinking by young male hoons. Certainly there were some very large very heavily laden trucks (much more load than you’d ever see on state highways) going very fast.
Dunno if that was actually true back then or what the current legal status of those roads really is.
I travel between Whangarei and Auckland at least several times a month – it is becoming more and more of a safety gamble as more and more trucks clog up the roads, far too often speeding, overtaking each other and generally creating traffic mayhem. Many of these loads should, I’m sure, be on trains, and the awful state of the roads north are certainly not capable of sustaining the obvious increase of heavy vehicles. Many of the drivers are likely to be in similar situations to the young man who died – I see far too many trucks on the roads in the Waikato too when I’m there.
I drive a 5 tonne housebus and am theoretically restricted to 90kph. Very seldom am I not passed by a following juggernaut. Andre…still applies today even on main roads….the perception is that heavy vehicles have immunity from attention from the law enforcement brigade. I can’t remember the last time a roadside weighstation was having a blitz.
We travel regularly between Waikato and the Far North and can attest to the volume and the almost aggressiveness of some truck drivers. The Brynderwens, quite frankly, give me the shits when I’m trying to come down the south side of the hill with a huge truck pushing me to travel at a speed much faster than is safe. And I have a lead foot. Ken Shirley is an awesome spokeperson and lobbyist for the trucking industry and usually blames the daily accident involving a truck on the other road user.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
[lprent: WTF: this looks like some kind of stupid unexplained diversion at the top of a post. If I see you do anything like that in the near future, you will be banned until after the election. I don’t have time to deal with stupidity. ]
In Hawaii in 2000, for instance, the Supreme Court ruled that the doctrine demands “adequate provision for traditional and customary Hawaiian rights, wildlife, maintenance of ecological balance and scenic beauty, and the preservation and enhancement of the waters for various uses in the public interest”.
This kind of approach would work well in New Zealand, where public fury about the degradation of lakes, rivers, streams, springs and aquifers has reached a fever pitch. Kiwis are demanding their rights to the lawful enjoyment of these water bodies, and that their ecological health and scenic beauty are recognised.
Given these precedents, a Waterways Act that puts all water bodies in trust for future generations would be timely. As in Hawaii, this would include recognition of the relationships between iwi and their ancestral rivers, springs and lakes, within a framework that protects “te mana o te wai” and the health and wellbeing of all waterways for all citizens.
Russell and Baucher hope to fire up KiwiSavers to demand the tax system be made fairer, but also to spark a national debate about whether it is finally time for the wealthy to pay tax on their capital gains.
“When the public rebels against unfair taxation, governments can change.”
well put, it remains rather telling that no senior people in NZ Labour including President Haworth, seem to be able to bring themselves to support Jeremy Corbyn
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
[lprent: I am getting tired of having these kinds of personal attacks with no actual argument. Guess where it is going. BTW: I left my carefully framed observation as a comment in an expanded version of your own style. Enjoy. ]
Personally I’m finding it hard to find anything much to support with Jeremy Corbyn either.
Quite simply having deranged lefties ranting at me with no visible intelligence saying that I should support him for unspecified reasons out of some kind of faith based religiosity isn’t exactly a way to convince me. In fact it seems to be doing exactly the opposite.
After looking at the results on the local election in the UK this morning, I suspect that much of the Labour support seems to be reacting in a similar fashion.
I noticed exactly the same thing when I looked at Saunders. I suspect that the supporters of such candidates are their oppositions best weapon against them.
Personally I’m finding it hard to find anything much to support with Jeremy Corbyn either.
Really, Lin? What is it that you find hard to support? His commitment to the National Health Service? His commitment to decent, properly funded schooling? His commitment to international law? His opposition to Britain’s insane and ruinous “defence” policies?
After looking at the results on the local election in the UK this morning, I suspect that much of the Labour support seems to be reacting in a similar fashion.
Labour is in desperate straits in the United Kingdom. That’s not Corbyn’s fault, it’s the fault of Blair and his Kool-Aid Britannia mob, and no-hopers like Ed Miliband—the same people who are busy white-anting the party leader now.
I guess you like your Labour—sorry, New Labour—politicians to be like this bloke:
The funny thing is that I never hear anyone trying to explain any of these things. And in fact you didn’t explain them in your first para either.
What I hear a lot are comments like your second – which effectively are whining.
Usually followed by your third para, which is that of the usual attacking someone for not being faithful to something that they are incapable of explaining.
FFS Morrisey. I could give a pigs arse about UK politics. But I find fundamentalist fools like you and Tiger about as useful for picking up information as Christian nutters trying to explain the bible without ever apparently ever having read it more than selected sections of it.
Needless to say, people who act like that just tend to irritate me. I share the obvious human presumption that with supporters like this, why does that politician need any enemies?
Unfortunately I suspect this is increasingly the attitude of Labour voters in the UK. Certainly the results in the local elections overnight are dispiriting. The few brighter spots in the results were even more dispiriting. It appears that political survival at that level for Labour candidates is increasingly to be very very local and have nothing to do with Westminister Labour.
Broadly, he’s been advocating a return to social democratic governance. Ironically, much in line with what the SNP are already doing in Scotland, who he keeps having to bag as a party of austerity because Kezia.
@Morrissey +1
Labour NZ yet another traditional left western political party being destroyed by it’s ‘faith based’ religious adherence to a debunked and destructive ideology.
To be fair to Corbyn though, it’s hard to see how anyone in that situation would be doing well on voting day given that (a) half the UK Labour party have openly undermined him and hence voters probably don’t trust the party to be competent in govt, and (b) the MSM have been relatively biased against him. Not that he is without fault, but there are significant factors outside of his control.
Although it’s interesting to not that since the snap election was announced, UKLabour has gone up almost 5% in the trend of polls.
The tories have gone up too, but seem to be wobbling a bit at the top, and most of their support seems to have come from UKIP.
A Labour win is still very very much in doubt, but provided they don’t falter as the effect of the localbodies kicks in, UKLabour might still be able to give the tories a bloody nose.
Seems to be bang on when the snap election was announced.
#ifthistrendcontinues (lol) 35% wouldn’t be completely out of the question. But it it flattens for the next couple of weeks it would be game over.
Also, the tories need to start losing, rather than just plateauing. Either way, I don’t expect the lines to cross over, but if they’re close then the tories might have trouble getting their hard brexit and other agenda items through.
I suspect they already do. I mean, they’re actually campaigning pretty well and have a good polling track so far, I just don’t think it’ll be enough for us to see PM Corbyn. It might be enough to see May knifed in the back, though.
I suspect that it is largely the election effect allied to a lack of parties from a FFP system. When it gets closer to actually having to vote, then voting intentions firm up.
In this case the idea about actually voting for the Conservatives for another 5 year term compared to someone that they are unsure about.
I think that Labour will do better in this early election than many political observers expect. They have had the long term issue that many of their traditional supporters are looking for something to change. They are not seeing it as coming from UK Labour after the Blair years. So they have been drifting off to the SNP or UKIP or Lib-Dems (or Brexit) and splitting the vote. But I suspect that there is a bit too much change going on now.
The problem for the conservatives as far as I can see as an outside observer, is that outside of the southern suburbs and some of the leafier semirural areas of the UK – there isn’t much solid support for the tories either. They have been doing well from the loss of support from the other side(s). But it looks like it is very soft.
So when it gets back to being a two horse race (now that UKIP and Lib-Dems have largely disintegrated their accumulated support), then Labour is going to do better in the two horse races outside of Scotland.
But I don’t think that Labour there looks like it can get to the point of forming a government.
Of the 300-ish seats that Labour lost, just under half were lost in Scotland (130). A fair few in Wales went to independents.
Anyone with a half an ounce of nous knew that Labour were going to get trounced in Scotland – and that’s down to Labour previously jumping into bed with the Tories and the gobsmacking ‘leadership’ of Kezia “the Blairite” Dugdale.
So Labour didn’t do too badly – certainly not as badly as msm would have people believe.
That the Tories picked up the UKIP vote and that both the Tories and Scottish Labour allowed members of the fucking Orange Order to stand as Labour and Tory candidates…that’s what would be newsworthy in my world.
But then, I’m not a liberal msm forlornly manning the trenches against inevitable change – fuk! Was that a Bob Dylan earworm I just squished? I think it was 😉
Oh I’d agree that he has had issues outside of his control. Reminds me of the way Cunliffe had problems here.
However I have largely had to make up my decision about Corbyn from sources outside his supporter community, as they seem to spend all of their time whining about those issues outside of his control.
Try finding someone amongst his ardent supporters who can coherently discuss his policy areas and why they are being applied without someone trying to accuse you of not supporting them.
Which was the point that I’m making. Incidentally, this was part of the problem that Cunliffe had as well. Their most ardent supporters seem to make their life looking for someone to blame. They are often noisier than the actual enemies and tend to put a lot of people off.
It also tends to drown out the message of what they are wanting to do in a wash of blind and usually deluded faith. Who in the hell needs enemies when left politicians have supporters like these?
apologies for bungling “reply”, my comment referred directly to sanctuary’s first comment (which included a reference to Mr Corbyn) on ADVANTAGE’s “yes for Ardern” piece
no apology though, for my views on the lack of support for Jeremy Corbyn from NZ Labour tops and their minions, and don’t bother banning me–I have banned you!–this site became increasingly unreadable, imo, during the US Primary and Election debacle; a shame as I had been a Standard supporter from the start
I’m afraid, Tiger Mountain, that Labour’s team of clever strategists—the same people who instructed Labour candidates in 2014 to recite, like a catechism, “Oh, look, Dirty Politics is a distraction”—have decreed that Corbyn’s platform of moderate, traditional Labour Party policies and a progressive, moral foreign policy is absolutely verboten.
Brilliant Labour thinkers like Stephen “I Agree With Matthew” Mills have been strenuously distancing themselves from Corbyn for some time now….
Yeh first of all we had to put up with Mike Williams on RNZ, which made Monday morning politics a complete waste of time, and now Mills, although to be fair, I guess he agrees with Hooton so often because…well because he just does, that’s centrists politics for you.
It’s like listening or reading the gibberish from Nash and Lorck around here, who would know if you where listening or reading someone from National or Labour? I sure as hell can’t tell the difference most of the time.
FFS: I’m not a Labour strategist. I am (generally) a Labour supporter. Surely even you could explain why I or NZ Labour be that interested in UK politics from here?
The last of my family left the British isles a mere 150 years ago. NZ Labour’s job here is to represent citizens of this country. As far as I am concerned Nigel Haworth wasn’t elected to opine about affairs in another country. Especially when that country is 5th or 6th on our export trade and steadily becoming less relevant to NZ all of the time.
Perhaps you should explain your reasoning rather than acting like a spoilt child demanding that other people do what you want them to do.
As a moderator, as far as I could see there was nothing in your comment that related to the post. It barely seemed to have much relationship to Sanctuary’s comment, which was at least largely on topic, unlike Gosman’s comments which were at the top of the comments.. Which is why it got shunted to here.
The comment I replied to it expressed my frustration at the myopia of the faithful who seem to care more about delineating enemies than convincing others through rational argument and facts. Basically after several years of this recently I suspect that many of you would be at home in an Inquisition torture pit ‘explaining’ in your inimitable fashion why heathens should be converting to the gentle religion of Christ.
BTW: it was a reply to Sanctuary. The shift to OpenMike removes the parenting, but carries through any child comments.
Something rotten in the state of the German Green Party
When fanatics and dilettantes like Volker Beck are allowed to dominate and bully an organization, it is doomed. The Greens in Germany look like they’re a spent force….
Pike River families never shown video of men in drift, mother says
Carol Rose, the mother of one of the Pike River 29 and took notes of all the meetings in the months following the disaster, says families were never shown footage of men in the drift.”
They can’t both be right. Surely the Police can produce a minute detailing the what when where. Should be easy to do.
After all Bill English keeps repeating the “they were shown the videos.” “My Police team told me so and they are as reliable as my friend Keating.”
On the absurdity that education is the silver bullet to relieve existing poverty and magic away inequality.
. Education is not the best anti-poverty program, argues historian Harvey Kantor, and it’s long past time we acknowledged that…
[…]
Kantor: One of the consequences of making education so central to social policy has been that we’ve ended up taking the pressure off of the state for the kinds of policies that would be more effective at addressing poverty and economic inequality. Instead we’re asking education to do things it can’t possibly do. The result has been increasing support for the kinds of market-oriented policies that make inequality worse.
If we really want to address issues of inequality and economic insecurity, there are a lot of other policies that we have to pursue besides or at least in addition to education policies, and that part of the debate has been totally lost. Raising the minimum wage, or providing a guaranteed income, which the last time we talked seriously about that was in the late 1960’s, increasing workers’ bargaining power, making tax policies more progressive—things like that are going to be much more effective at addressing inequality and economic security than education policies. That argument is often taken to mean, *schools can’t do anything unless we address poverty first.* But that’s not what we were trying to say.
Education. Compulsory. Why? Because it’s good for citizens to be literate, and numerate and know about a raft of subjects. How will it be useful to them? Well they will be able to make their way in life, know about the world , the country and its systems, manage their affairs, know about opportunities, get jobs and make their individual lifestyle, and take their full, functioning place in society.
That’s roughly how the thinking has been in everyone’s minds. What good has education actually been in helping people to become fully functioning citizens enjoying their place in society? What do we see around us today to show us how useful the education has been, received since the beginning of the 1900’s?
Let’s unpick the above beliefs and look at reality.
* The government and the comfortably off (actually the wealthy and rich but they never use such direct language), unpick society so it is fragmented going towards tatters. Education has helped them in finding their individual wealth, and then how to siphon off to themselves more that others needed to make their individual way.
* Individual lifestyle, now becoming more precarious. May be without a permanent dwelling. Many forced to live like gypsies, worse than primitive hunter, gatherers who knew where the caves were and just had to turn out the lower animals to occupy, (or co-habit)
.
Many people are treated as litter on the streets, a dessicated leaf to be stepped on, or slipped on, and a target for street thieves, muggers, haters and the cold, superiority of elites.
* Get jobs, which are offered on whim for a few hours when required by employers, but such workers not free to do anything else in between by order of the government, who want you work-ready day or night. So you can’t have an individual lifestyle, it is the chess economy, and you are a black or white pawn, with nothing to pawn when you are out of funds.
* Opportunities – if you hear of them, you probably won’t be able to get to where they are being offered. You haven’t an address so they can’t be sent to you (do hey deliver to – usually end bench at the north corner of X Park). You haven’t the means to have a shower and get clean clothes to attend a competitive interview.
Or you have children that you are nurturing, but no-one in government who has helped create this diminished situation that has left you stranded has positive thoughts for you and wants to help you and your children. There is no-one to nurture parents, and having children, a basic human, normal, natural condition, is regarded as a private hobby, that no-one else is involved with or celebrates with you.
On your own you lose hope and also your cardboard layers that you slid away to provide a clean mat along with newspapers in which you read about last week’s opportunities, now passed. Or the opportunities presented are illusory, you are advised to shift away from the big city to somewhere else where there are said to be more chances. You do, and lose your network of contacts and soup caravan and handouts till you score another cash-paying job, because there is even less for you in the new location.
* Being able to read and write and manage your affairs. Well self-management is talked about and then the means to do it are withheld. Need temporary help from WINZ? The female guard outside the doors in uniform will need to see whether the department staff deign to see you. You have had to travel a long weary way and not anticipated how long it would take and you are late! Your appointment has been cancelled, you have wasted good people’s time. You have to beg for money to get back to your starting point.
Etc etc. The privileged people give you a thousand invisible kicks and look at the end result of someone bravely still standing and criticise how your hair is untidy, your children messy, your face sour, your manner uncouth, your car (if you have one) unwarranted. Actually all this negativity is unwarranted, but actually the wealthy give themselves the right to give you a WOF with just a once-over from appearance. They don’t look in your eyes, they never look at the achievements of the person just keeping going in such an arid, punitive human climate as cold to the soul as Antarctica is. Put a little love in your hearts went a song. The cold, say what would that cost?
Education. Compulsory. Why? Because it’s good for citizens to be literate, and numerate and know about a raft of subjects.
Actually, education became compulsory because the business community demanded it. Even in the 19th century ignorant and illiterate people could not work the machines available nor do other menial tasks such as serving at the counter.
I’m pretty sure that many capitalists at that time (I’m really not sure about to day – they really do seem to believe the myth of special people) realised that innovation is a numbers game. The more ideas you have that can be worked upon at the same time increases the number that will actually bring about something useful and educated people have more ideas.
In other words, free compulsory education was brought about as a massive subsidy to business who didn’t want to pay for all that training themselves.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that people being educated is a bad thing. In fact, I’d say that it was a positively good thing. The problem is that all the benefits of it are going to the bludging rich – exactly as designed.
Most of the education now needs to be spent on devising theories and then trying to make practical models of them, and then reviewing them to see what effect they will have on people, and the environment. Also learning civics and how hard it is to get people working together, and the goldilocks lesson of law making and supervision of behaviour; getting it at the right level isn’t easy.
And learning more manual stuff, how to do things for yourself instead of passively waiting for a machine to do it.
Human psychology and sociology should come first, along with literacy and basic numeracy. Everything else can be learned at tertiary level of polytechnic style. The intermediate level would take on the above matters and extend to four years, so up to the old fourth form level. Then the tertiary and career training. Learning about detail, say in geography later than earlier etc.
It’s no use to learn the facts of the world and not understand what being human is about. That is what is important in this technological age, with robots and AI looming. To be able to critique what are facts would be good!
And to sort out in one’s mind what things are interesting and what are just froth and conformism and escapism that isolates from the real and important for ‘good’ living. So there would be fewer car, gun and war and fewer men’s women’s magazines filled with photos of people elevated to Objects of Interest, objects of materialism, expensive watches, sophisticated booze, clothes, makeup techniques, feelings, exotic and rare animals, house decoration etc.
Yes, instead of becoming the bulwark of an informed and healthily functioning democracy, education, a few steps behind the fourth estate, is being slowly forced to tread the same path as the fourth estate: erosion of independent state-funded quality outlets; encouragement of privatisation and forced reliance upon commercialism, with the total exclusion from debate of any other (superior) forms of funding .
Some commentators now blatantly assume that commercial advertising is the only way that any news media should be funded. Blinkered idiots.
What struck me was the statement “Take the failed Whangaruru charter schools decision to spend most of their upfront funding purchasing a farm. Since Hekia Parata finally decided to close them down, as the Ministry of Education repeatedly recommended, that huge investment of public money was lost forever.”
I recall this being raised as a possibility right back when the charter schools initiative was getting underway, but from memory was dismissed as just partisan hyperbole. Is this true? Did anything get recovered from the private owners (furniture, office equipment, AV equipment, playground fittings, etc, etc)? Or is it all just a huge windfall for the private owners – being rewarded for an education failure?
Is it possible to find out how much the total spending from taxpayer funds was, and of that how much was spent on operating costs other than management fees, and how much recovered when the school was closed?
It astounds me that the operators of the failed Whangaruru School were allowed to keep their choice of school, a farm. I’m not sure if I should be protesting or starting a Cabin Crew school, I’d need a Boeing Dreamliner. Fortunately I know absolutely nothing about training cabin crew and I’m excellent at international travel.
It failed, ok. Why on earth are the assets not returned to the people that provided them. You and me.
The bloke next to me works long long hours, he’ll knock up homes for 10 families this year. I see his office light burning at 1am. He makes lots more money than I do, he’s what I’d call wealthy.
I don’t work many hours. I spend lots of time fishing, surfing, drinking, travelling around and entertaining myself commenting on blogs.
If the bloke next door and I were paid the same money, had the same boat, sqm of house etc…..why the hell would he work 100 hours a week? He’d be nuts not to hang out with me and cruise.
What a hoot we’d have. Alas, the Jones, Smiths, Browns and Black families will have to make do with a tarpaulin stretched between trees…and since we averaged things out, there’s only room on our boats for 2.
I’m a huge fan of equality. Splitting all the $ up so we have equal shares is ridiculous. If we do it on a global scale, it’s about $7.50 each. We’d all be surfing and eating feijoa jam, nothing would get done. I think the equality we need to be concerned with is an equality of opportunity and the associated benefits of embracing them.
Can you rephrase that in a way that it makes sense?
If the bloke next door and I were paid the same money, had the same boat, sqm of house etc…..why the hell would he work 100 hours a week?
Why is he working 100 hour weeks? That’s enough for two or even three full time jobs. And that amount of time at work is decreasing his productivity and probably to the point that he isn’t getting anywhere near as much done as actually needs to be done. He’s probably wasting 20 hours or more.
Define: Paid the same money
What a hoot we’d have. Alas, the Jones, Smiths, Browns and Black families will have to make do with a tarpaulin stretched between trees…and since we averaged things out, there’s only room on our boats for 2.
There’s quite a few people available who could be employed to ensure that everyone has a home but the capitalists, like your hero there, would complain because wages would go up.
Splitting all the $ up so we have equal shares is ridiculous.
And where have I ever suggested such a thing?
you seem to have this delusional idea that people are solely motivated by money whereas most people are motivated by anything but. In fact, it seems to me that only the sociopathic types are motivated by money and then there’s the reality of motivation and how paying people too much causes them fail badly:
Can you rephrase that in a way that it makes sense?
It is natural that the rewards, whatever form they take, gravitate towards the productive. I don’t think the guy next door is pushed along by money these days. He has a comfortable buffer. These days I think he just likes making homes for families and teaching kids to build. He’s in the habit of getting up with the sun.
You see his assets as a problem, a product of his greed. We are all guilty of greed, who the hell can have just 2 Toffee Pops and put the packet away? Yep you’re right, I see his fair and square rewards as a ‘Good on ya mate.’ I think most Kiwis would.
Of course we’re all motivated by money. To a degree. Few of us can do without electricity or clothing. I get the feeling you’d like to limit how productive/rewarded I’m allowed to be. I think to remove that choice from people severely hobbles aspiration and motivation.
It is natural that the rewards, whatever form they take, gravitate towards the productive.
The problem with that is that the majority of rich people aren’t productive at all – they’re just parasites living off the work of those who are. in other words, they’re nothing but bludgers. Probably more accurately called parasites as they will kill the host.
In other words, that sentence is pure bollocks. In fact, I’d call it an outright lie.
You see his assets as a problem, a product of his greed.
And they are on both counts. Excessive assets owned by one person leaves less for everyone else. That’s why capitalism always results first in ever increasing poverty and finally the collapse of the society that it arose in.
I get the feeling you’d like to limit how productive/rewarded I’m allowed to be.
And in that you’d be wrong. In fact what i want is to increase everyone’s creativity but to do that requires removing the nations resources from the control of the few.
Yeah…I think we could bounce a ping-pong ball between us all night Draco and be no closer to common ground. I like you all the same. I think you bring colour and thought provoking comments to this blog.
These fat neo-liberal huas you refer to Draco. Yep, unnecessary exploitive parasites of the highest order, I agree. They are a hindrance on us all leading rounded colourful lives. But there are only 100’s of them. The bogeyman is very thin. I don’t know any neo liberal life sucking bastards but I know quite a few people that are comfortable by way of applying themselves and getting stuck in.
There is no limit on opportunity Draco. There is not a defined quota out there for us to share between us. One person having what you deem too much is not hogging your share. There is plenty for everyone, but putting a bucket next to my couch and expecting it to fill up with money as I watch TV is an unrealistic expectation.
I thought I’d seen you make a comment along the lines of “Yep, everything over 100k is greed, anything over $100k pa, 100% tax on the excess.
Yeah, I don’t think those bogeymen are that thin and they really are causing serious problems. The same problems that feudalism caused in fact because that’s what capitalism is.
There is no limit on opportunity Draco.
Yes there is. If someone doesn’t have access to the resources to be creative then they have no opportunity.
And that true for most of the population of the world and it’s that way because so few people control all of the resources of the world.
There is plenty for everyone, but putting a bucket next to my couch and expecting it to fill up with money as I watch TV is an unrealistic expectation.
And yet rich people do that all the time through their ownership of resources and factories.
And I’m pretty sure you also do exactly the same thing with your savings account. you know, put money in the savings account and expect it to grow with no productive activity on your part at all.
Wow, conviction and discharge. Cool. We are taking a different line to criminality are we, public admission then put in stocks for a day in a public place? Having to clean public toilets with a toothbrush. Go and work at seasonal work and picking vegetables – that would be good, up early in the morning cutting lettuces for the supermarkets?
I wonder what punishment, retribution, re-education, sanctions have been imposed on him and Cameron Slater, who as everyone knows has a hard, grey shell and scuttles around in ingenious places. However I understand that beer is a favourite for pulling him from his hideyhole under decaying detritus.
Visit Southern Man at #16 above and look at that link. Slater is a pimple on a very large smelly backside. Wot me worry?!
“Cyclone Donna is now the strongest tropical storm to hit the South Pacific in May after reaching Category 5 this morning….
Weatherwatch.co.nz said Donna now had sustained winds of 215km/h gusting up to a ferocious 260km/h, making it the strongest May cyclone recorded in the Southern Hemisphere”.
“A climate scientist said Cyclone Donna’s lateness and intensity was a direct result of a changing climate.
Jim Salinger, from Otago University, said late cyclones such as Donna were rare, but not unheard of.
However, he said this one was unusual as the sea temperatures around Vanuatu and New Caledonia are what they would normally be in March.
“Well we’re not in an El Niño and we’re not in a La Niña, so you would not expect temperatures to be that warm, though they can be on occasions. So what we’re seeing happening here is, I’d say, there’s a bit of global warming going on,” Dr Salinger says.
Dr Salinger said scientific predictions of stronger, more intense cyclones over a longer season as a result of climate change were starting to be borne out”.
Personally, I think the precession of the earths’ axis, doing as it always does, has far more impact on the seasonal changes we are experiencing. After all, 26500 years happens gradually, so it’s not complete idiocy to imagine that seasonal changes would happen imperceptibly.
20 years ago, wouldn’t have had any issue planting out tomatoes on Labour Weekend. Now, it’s more likely to be first weekend of December such is the change in the seasonal patterns that have been experienced. Summer hasn’t followed the 1 December – 1 March “cycle” for nearly a decade now – it’s been more like March when Summer really hits it’s stride. Winter seems to be occurring from mid July – October.
I’m sure I’ll be howled down by the earth sciences graduates claiming that seasons never change and are completely immutable.
Bill English: …. ‘irresponsible’, ‘misleading’ Pike River families..
Playing the Blame game..
Speaking on NewsHub AM Show today “he continued to defend the Government’s reluctance to allow manned entry to the mine, where 29 people lost their lives in a 2010 explosion.
“It could be putting a significant number of lives in danger…and doing so for the worst of reasons – and that’s political reasons”.
And yet he would still not rule out agreeing to manned entry as a part of post-election coalition talks….
Bullshit. For most plants worldwide, their growth is limited by something else essential. For those plants, increased CO2 makes no difference or may even be a stressor. In a very few rare circumstances, almost always in controlled environments like greenhouses, CO2 will be the constraint to growth, so increasing CO2 will lead to increased growth. This an an example of the denier’s attempt to sow confusion by claiming a very rare specific case applies to the general case.
And if the oceans lose productivity due to increased acidification from increased CO2, then that loss will likely swamp any tiny increase from extra plant growth.
“For most plants worldwide, their growth is limited by something else essential. For those plants, increased CO2 makes no difference or may even be a stressor.”
Yet, satellite imaging shows the Earth has been getting greener.
“This an an example of the denier’s attempt to sow confusion by claiming a very rare specific case applies to the general case.”
Alternatively, it could just be an upside to the downside.
You appear to be genius at useless aphorisms. I guess that is what glib but scientifically ignorant are good at.
The world got gets ‘greener’ when we have green algae growing on oceans and waterways. It gets ‘greener’ when grassland replaces forest or swamp. It gets greener when snow and ice cover is replaced by plants.
However none of these mean nothing to providing increased sequestration on additional fossil carbon – they do the opposite. They don’t compensate for the increased adsorption of heat inside our planets volatiles that is performing the fastest climate change that this world has seen since the last major asteroid sea strike.
But I guess that saying such stupid aphorisms they satisfy your tongue and reduce your need to have have to use your brain for actual science eh?.
The article stated it (greening in the satellite imaging) was a consequence of the increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration measured by the leaf area index. Therefore, I don’t see how algae and grass fall into that category. Nevertheless, one would assume those occurrences (along with snow and ice cover over the period) would be accounted for.
Edmeades doesn’t appear to cite where those claims of increased leaf area index came from, so it’s hard to comment on how accurately he’s representing the source data and how credible that source is.
On the off chance it’s from his main cite, CO2 Science, here’s a backgrounder on them. They’re another one of these fossil-fuel funded organisations set up to sow confusion.
So it does at least include grass, then, and they expect the “upside” to be temporary anyway. And a lot of the dark green seems to be around the north pole, which has its own problems.
+1. Fat lot of good it will do once the droughts kick in too. And the big rains. And gale force winds. I guess when the forest gets knocked over the grass will grow there faster. Yay.
No, leaf cover, over the planet’s vegetated regions. The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees.
They say the benefits ‘may’ also be limited as plants have shown to acclimatize overtime, but no time frame was given. And given the use of the word ‘may’, it sounds as if that is still inconclusive.
Moreover, this study goes back 35 years, therefore it could be several decades before benefits cease, if the cease at all.
Tell me Chairman, since you look for encouraging news in those satellite pictures, how is the glacier retreat problem going? Any reports of glaciers generally making up their losses from over the recent 5 decades?
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Further temporary changes to NCEA and University Entrance (UE) will support senior secondary school students whose teaching and learning have been disrupted by COVID-19. “The wellbeing of students and teachers is a priority. As we are all aware, COVID-19 has created massive disruption to the school system, and the Government ...
Minister for Racing Winston Peters today announced that the terms for the directors of the Racing Industry Transition Agency (RITA) have been extended to 30 June 2021. Due to the COVID-19 crisis the transition period has been extended to ensure that the Racing Industry Bill can complete its progress through ...
The deadline for landlords to include detailed information in their tenancy agreements about how their property meets the Healthy Homes Standards, so tenants can see the home they are renting is compliant, has been extended from 1 July 2020 to 1 December 2020. The Healthy Homes Standards became law on 1 July 2019. The Standards are ...
Justice Minister Andrew Little today announced details of further appointments to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. “I am pleased to announce Paula Rose QSO OStJ as Deputy Chief Commissioner for a term of five years commencing on 15 June 2020,” said Andrew Little. “I am also pleased to announce the ...
The Targeted Training and Apprenticeships Fund (TTAF) will pay costs of learners of all ages to undertake vocational education and training The fund will target support for areas of study and training that will give learners better employment prospects as New Zealand recovers from COVID-19 Apprentices working in all industries ...
The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will finally start to cut New Zealand’s greenhouse gas pollution as it was originally intended to, because of changes announced today by the Minister for Climate Change, James Shaw. The changes include a limit on the total emissions allowed within the ETS, rules to ensure ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio says the Queen’s Birthday 2020 Honours List provides an abundance of examples that Pacific people’s leadership capability is unquestionable in Aotearoa. “The work and the individuals we acknowledge this year highlights the kind of visionary examples and dedicated community leadership that we need ...
The Government is backing a new $27 million project aimed at boosting sustainable horticulture production and New Zealand’s COVID-19 recovery efforts, says Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor. “Our horticulture sector has long been one of New Zealand’s export star performers, contributing around $6 billion a year to our economy. During and ...
Applications have opened for 2021 Ngā Karahipi Uru Rākau – Forestry Scholarships, which will support more Māori and women to pursue careers in forestry science, says Forestry Minister Shane Jones. “I’m delighted Te Uru Rākau is offering Ngā Karahipi Uru Rākau – Forestry Scholarships for the third year running. These ...
The Queen’s Birthday 2020 Honours List once again highlights the dedication by many to looking after our native plants and wildlife, including incredible work to restore the populations of critically endangered birds says Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage. Anne Richardson of Hororata has been made an Officer of the New ...
The Government will invest $10 million from the One Billion Trees Fund for large-scale planting to provide jobs in communities and improve the environment, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor and Forestry Minister Shane Jones have announced. New, more flexible funding criteria for applications will help up to 10 catchment groups plant ...
Organisations that support women are invited to apply to a new $1,000,000 fund as part of the Government’s COVID-19 response. “We know women, and organisations that support women, have been affected by COVID-19. This new money will ensure funding for groups that support women and women’s rights,” said Minister for ...
Healthier waterways are front and centre in a new project involving more than 300 King Country sheep, beef and dairy farmers. The Government is investing $844,000 in King Country River Care, a group that helps farmers to lift freshwater quality and farming practice, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor announced today. “Yesterday ...
A major funding package for libraries will allow them to play a far greater role in supporting their communities and people seeking jobs as part of the economic recovery from COVID-19. “Budget 2020 contains over $60 million of funding to protect library services and to protect jobs,” says Internal Affairs ...
A jobseekers programme for the creative sector and four new funds have been set up by the Government to help our arts and music industry recover from the blow of COVID-19. Thousands of jobs will be supported through today’s $175 million package in a crucial economic boost to support the ...
Minister for Veterans Ron Mark has welcomed the First Reading of a Bill that will make legislative changes to further improve the veterans’ support system. The Veterans’ Support Amendment Bill No 2, which will amend the Veterans’ Support Act 2014, passed First Reading today. The bill addresses a number of ...
Views sought on Order in Council to help fast track the reinstatement of the Christ Church Cathedral The Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Hon Poto Williams, will be seeking public written comment, following Cabinet approving the drafting of an Order in Council aimed at fast-tracking the reinstatement of the ...
The law setting out New Zealanders’ basic civil and human rights is today one step towards being strengthened following the first reading of a Bill that requires Parliament to take action if a court says a statute undermines those rights. At present, a senior court can issue a ‘declaration of ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today reiterated the deep concern of the New Zealand Government following confirmation by China’s National People’s Congress of national security legislation relating to Hong Kong. “New Zealand shares the international community’s significant and long-standing stake in Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability,” Mr Peters said. “New Zealand ...
Thousands of artists and creatives at hundreds of cultural and heritage organisations have been given much-needed support to recover from the impact of COVID-19, Prime Minister and Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Jacinda Ardern announced today. “The cultural sector was amongst the worst hit by the global pandemic,” Jacinda ...
Key New Zealand assets will be better protected from being sold to overseas owners in a way contrary to the national interest, with the passage of the Overseas Investment (Urgent Measures) Bill. The Bill, which passed its third reading in Parliament today, also cuts unnecessary red tape to help attract ...
Setting higher health standards at swimming spots Requiring urban waterways to be cleaned up and new protections for urban streams Putting controls on higher-risk farm practices such as winter grazing and feed lots Setting stricter controls on nitrogen pollution and new bottom lines on other measures of waterway health Ensuring ...
The Government is on the verge of reaching its target of state sector boards and committees made up of at least 50 percent women, says Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter and Minister for Ethnic Communities Jenny Salesa. For the first time, the Government stocktake measures the number of Māori, ...
ANALYSIS:By Denis Muller of theUniversity of Melbourne When a newspaper with the authority of The New York Times chooses to publish a party-political essay calculated to further inflame the violence wracking cities across America, serious questions arise. On June 3 the Times published in its opinion section an ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level two – read The Spinoff’s giant explainer about what that means here. For official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is made possible thanks to donations from Spinoff Members. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Noble, Education Policy Fellow, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University Three quarters of a million Australian children are likely to be experiencing employment stress in the family as a result of COVID-19. This is on top of around 615,000 children whose families were ...
Spice up the classic banana muffin with a subtle touch of star anise.These muffins came about one rainy Saturday when the cupboards were bare and there was nothing much left in the fruit bowl aside from some very sad-looking bananas. Fortunately we know sad bananas result in the best kind ...
For years, Work and Income has been telling New Zealanders they couldn’t get the benefit until their redundancy payments ran out. Turns out, it was wrong.What’s all this then?Work and Income has long told New Zealanders receiving redundancy payments that they weren’t eligible for the benefit until their redundancy money ...
New Zealand writer Anna Rankin reports from Los Angeles. Last Friday afternoon, I went downtown to a protest outside the enormous Los Angeles Police Department headquarters on 1st Street. The LAPD had set up cordons, placing orange cones across streets to block traffic. Arms crossed, they stood with a wide ...
Until the sudden closure of Bauer Media in April, Simon Farrell-Green was the editor of HOME, New Zealand’s oldest architecture magazine. Here he explains what comes next.Being the editor of a major architecture magazine was the best job I ever had. I got it in 2016, after a career spent ...
A global success story or an overly generous, unsustainable scheme that is doing lasting damage to our fish stocks? Ethan Neville looks at the ongoing debate over New Zealand’s fishing quota management system. The management of our fisheries is a touchy topic – and why wouldn’t it be? New Zealanders ...
By RNZ News Thousands of people were protesting across Australia today to oppose the deaths of Indigenous people in police custody. It comes as Black Lives Matter protests are held around the world after the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer in the US ...
Wrapping everyone in a blanket of love, whakapapa and mauri for Matariki is the brave, exuberant and generous fabric art of Maungarongo Te Kawa, writes Amanda Thompson.E te AtuaNau enei rau harakeke he taongaTukuna ki a matouKia tika o matou mahiKo Papatuanuku e takoto neiTuturu WhakamauaKia tina, tinaHui eTaiki e.‘Karakia ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level two – read The Spinoff’s giant explainer about what that means here. For official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is made possible thanks to donations from Spinoff Members. ...
One press statement from the Beehive yesterday sounded more like advertising – or a barker’s pitch – than a Government announcement. Another advised of two diplomatic appointment, one of them – has the woman who landed the post done something wrong? – to protest-troubled and politically volatile Hong Kong. And ...
It’s not often that someone graduates from university one year and becomes a senior economist commentating on national media the next. George Driver investigates the meteoric rise of the high-flying Brad Olsen.Google “senior economist Brad Olsen” and you’ll find him quoted in no fewer than 167 articles in the past ...
As public sentiment turned against Uber Eats, a new local operation emerged promising a more ethical alternative to help New Zealand’s struggling hospitality industry. But now Eat Local NZ has suspended trading after falling out with its Australian partner Mr Yum. So what happened?A dispute between local hospitality platform Eat ...
By Budi Sutrisno in Jakarta As the death of George Floyd, an African-American man who died while being arrested in the United States, sparks a global outcry, Indonesian rights advocates and young people have stepped forward to remind fellow citizens that racism has long been an issue at home as ...
Edward Cullen became a vampire to survive the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. Now a new Twilight novel looms and Laura Surynt, a New Zealander living in the UK, wants to live forever too. As I lay in bed this morning watching Instagram stories, Tayi Tibble told my reluctant little Capricorn ...
Over the lockdown period, thousands of people joined a Facebook group dedicated to remembering the nightlife of inner-city Auckland. Its creator Simon Grigg explains why it touched a chord in lockdown.Within a few days of The Lost Nightlife of Inner-city Auckland Facebook page accidentally going live on May 12, we ...
Throughout Anglo colonial states there is a constant habit of defining people who aren’t white as a problem, writes Aaron Smale in this personal essay. It was a balmy summer evening in the capital and cops were standing over a young brown man. I was walking down Courtenay Place on ...
"The countdown clock ticks 2, then 1, then the prime minister raises her drink": dystopia, by Ōtautahi writer Laura Borrowdale. You stand in the centre of the room, and around you, the guests seem to swirl and blend into one. There’s a mouth, gaping and red, filled with laughter. A ...
Martin Luther King Jr said in 1963: “America has given the Black people a bad cheque, a cheque which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds’." Six generations of egregious police violence later, the sentiment out of which those bad cheques were born could be shifting. In the wake of egregious police violence, ...
WATCH: In a candid interview on Sky Sport, Dame Susan Devoy talks on her concern for rising sports stars, the state of NZ squash, and the spectre of racism. Dame Susan Devoy is proudly still “a little terrier who fights for the underdog”. “I have been doing it all my life and ...
Of the huge funding boost coming for early childhood education, Playcentre has been left with just the crumbs, writes Kate Barber. Amidst all the celebration of the $430m funding boost for early childhood education (ECE) announced in this year’s budget, little attention was paid to the plight of Playcentre. The ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vikrant Minhas, PhD candidate, University of Adelaide Although bacteria are single-celled and microscopically small, they still need energy to survive, just like us. One of the most efficient ways of acquiring energy for bacteria is through sweet, soluble carbohydrates: sugars. In fact, ...
PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY:By David Robie Three cartoonists had especially poignant takes on the tragic and toxic political aftermath of martyr George Floyd’s brutal killing under the knee of a white American policeman in Minneapolis last week. The Boston Globe’s Christopher Weyant featured a split frame contrasting a red-capped “Make ...
Are central bankers jealous that epidemiologists are the rock stars of the current crisis?There is talk that both the British and New Zealand central banks might institute negative interest rates as part of the policy response to the Covid shock. While Sweden’s central bank ended its five year experiment ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Monika Sarder, Senior Strategic Analyst, Monash University Algorithmic decision-making has enormous potential to do good. From identifying priority areas for first response after an earthquake hits, to identifying those at risk of COVID-19 within minutes, their application has proven hugely beneficial. But ...
LISTEN: This week's Extra Time podcast discusses racism in sport and the role of athletes and organisations in making a stand for good. Former Silver Fern and Black Fern Louisa Wall believes today's sports stars must have a social conscience and stand up against discrimination and divisiveness. Sport and politics, once ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Thomas, Associate professor, Flinders University We have seen ten days of protests in the United States over the death of George Floyd. While thousands of people have gathered to express their outrage peacefully, some demonstrations have been marred by vandalism and ...
40 percent of millennials have one, and an increasing number of GenXers and Baby Boomers do too. Two Cents' Worth delves into the world of side hustles. ...
Auckland writer Caroline Barron has a terrific book out today called Ripiro Beach: A Memoir of Life After Near Death. Here, she writes about the memoirs that have been a balm, a lesson, or both. Throughout my life, I’ve sought solace between the covers of books, particularly memoirs. There, I’ve learnt ...
An exclusive interview with Steve McSteverson about his traumatic and tragic ordeal this week.Many New Zealanders are struggling with the news that a children’s book not commissioned or authorised by Jacinda Ardern was advertised in a newsletter for children’s books. This horrific attack on New Zealanders whose ears are permanently ...
Air New Zealand staff are dismayed and angered at the company’s announcement to cut a further $150 million from their wage bill. On Friday, the company’s Chief Executive Officer, Greg Foran, made the announcement to employees, who are still ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr. Bodean Hedwards, Lecturer, Monash University This week the leaders of India and Australia reaffirmed their mutual interest in closer diplomatic and economic ties. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison during their long-delayed Thursday “virtual summit”: ...
The Herald reported this morning that MediaWorks was on the verge of selling its TV assets to US TV giant Discovery – but an internal email and senior source suggest the story may have been premature.A senior MediaWorks source has emphatically denied a report in the NZ Herald that a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gery Karantzas, Associate professor in Social Psychology / Relationship Science, Deakin University Life in lockdown has been tough on many relationships. But negotiating the transition back to “normal” as restrictions continue to lift could also be a challenge for couples. So what ...
A slight bounce in the economy is brightening the outlook as the country heads into the winter months, Radio NZ reports. Retail spending is up and NZ shares rose on Thursday for a third day running. Key indicators have led some economists to point to a faster recovery than expected. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Hanmer, Adjunct Professor of Architecture, University of Adelaide HomeBuilder is a good idea gone bad. It is possibly the most complex and least equitable program the government could have devised to deliver construction jobs. It gives $25,000 to people who already ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Keller, Professor of Cognitive Science, Western Sydney University The coronavirus pandemic has silenced the world’s concert halls and opera theatres. Organisations specialising in live performance face an existential crisis under current restrictions on social gatherings, with up to 75% of people ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson, wearing his Sport and Recreation ministerial hat, can show he can be a big spender and draw voters’ attention to his largess each time he dispenses money from the funds under his control – or the control of an agency within his ministerial bailiwick. Yesterday he ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pi-Shen Seet, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Edith Cowan University Scott Morrison wants to overhaul the skills workforce to ensure a better post-COVID-19 recovery. But there may not be enough people with the necessary skills to do so. And travel restrictions, which ...
As we transition out of a Covid-focused world and prepare for what comes next, New Zealand’s ICT industry is gearing towards growth.From app development helping track the Covid-19 virus to website engineering keeping businesses in touch and online, ICT knowledge has been crucial to keeping New Zealand working over the ...
Analysis: As New Zealand eases restrictions, it no longer has international precedent to look towards and must decide on its own how to reopen the economy while reducing the risk of a second wave of infections, Marc Daalder reports While most of the country eagerly awaits a likely move to ...
Ten days is too long. That from insurance claimant advocate, Ali Jones. EQC has today made contact with homeowners via email after accidentally releasing confidential details of 8000 insurance claims on May 26. Jones says although she has not received ...
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 Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (Penguin Classics, $24)Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize. The other day, ...
Simon Day discovers how the voluntary carbon market allows both individuals and companies to offset their emissions at the same time as investing in native forest regeneration.When Celia Wade-Brown sold her first batch of carbon credits earned from the native forest on her Wairarapa farm, she had two customers: Z ...
Simon Day discovers how the voluntary carbon market allows both individuals and companies to offset their emissions at the same time as investing in native forest regeneration.When Celia Wade-Brown sold her first batch of carbon credits earned from the native forest on her Wairarapa farm, she had two customers: Z ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Keith Rankin. The conversation around the 2020 covid19 pandemic has been widely framed as ‘health versus the economy’. It has been quite political, with people leaning to the left emphasising ‘health’, and people leaning to the right emphasising ‘the economy’. A couple of weeks ago ...
Sam Brooks pays tribute to Alex Rider, and the new TV series that (finally) captures the spirit of the books.“What if James Bond was a teenager?”The concept for Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider series is so simple but so brilliant. There’s a reason why the franchise has managed to sustain 12 ...
Analysis - The PM resists pressure to move immediately to level 1, Winston Peters' tactics play into the hands of the Opposition and the government at last works out a commercial rent solution, writes Peter Wilson. ...
Source: Council on Hemispheric Affairs – Analysis-Reportage By COHAFrom Washington DC Federal charges against the four protectors of the Venezuelan Embassy, who defended the building in Washington DC against violent opposition crowds for several weeks between April 10 and May 16 of 2019, were completely dropped in a case that ...
Source: Council on Hemispheric Affairs – Analysis-Reportage By COHA Editorial TeamFrom Washington DC The Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) joins the Black Alliance for Peace[1] and other pro-democracy organizations throughout the world in calling for the United Nations to address the systemic violations of human rights by the police and ...
Being shot by police had a profound, transformational effect on Rob Mokaraka’s life in more ways than you’d expect. A new documentary, airing on Māori TV at 7.30pm on Sunday, explores the work he’s done to heal his own mind and to ensure nobody has to go through the same ...
Human rights watchdog TAPOL has condemned the demand by Indonesian prosecutors seeking 17 and five years imprisonment for West Papuan activists Buchtar Tabuni and Irwanus Uropmabin. On June 2, the Jayapura District Prosecutor’s Office issued 33 pages containing charges against the defendant Irwanus Uropmabin. In the document, the Public Prosecutor ...
The arrival of Dan Carter is far from the first time the ever-struggling Auckland team has hoped to turn around its fortunes with a star signing, writes Jamie Wall.New Zealand rugby Twitter is a generally desolate place, especially lately given that there’s been nothing to talk about ever since the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Senior Lecturer in New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity US President Donald Trump delivered an address this week in which he threatened military action on the nation. Then he walked to the nearby St John’s Episcopal Church ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vincent Ho, Senior Lecturer and clinical academic gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University Why do we burp? We sometimes also burp before meals, why does this happen? — Ahaana, age 7 That is a really interesting question, Ahaana! There ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justine Bell-James, Associate Professor, TC Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland After years of litigation, Australia’s highest court will today make a major decision on the fate of the controversial proposed expansion to the New Acland Coal mine in Queensland. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Williams, Associate Professor in Urban Ecology and Urban Horticulture, University of Melbourne Tomorrow is the first World Green Roof Day. Cities around the world will celebrate the well-documented environmental, economic and social benefits of green roofs. New ground-level green spaces are ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Senior Lecturer, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Robodebt isn’t the only measure the government should consider withdrawing. Late last Friday, after a long press conference from the prime minister which avoided any mention of the topic, the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW Harvard University’s Alberto Alesina died suddenly of a heart attack on May 23. He was 63. His long-time colleague and friend Larry Summers wrote that before him, “there was no academic field of political economy. Today, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Griffith University What keeps democracies together? As America burns, Brazilians die and Europe braces for another wave of the coronavirus, the question assumes an alarming immediacy. If the answer is complicated in one way, it is ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level two – read The Spinoff’s giant explainer about what that means here. For official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is made possible thanks to donations from Spinoff Members. ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Millions of dollars divvied up by Sport NZ, MSD’s problem with wrongly denied payments grows, and internal coalition battles emerge in time for election.It’s Friday, and there hasn’t been a lot of it recently, so we’re going to start with ...
The Government picks Waitomo caves as 'strategic tourism asset' and grants $4m to Tourism Holdings, boosting shares another 7.8 percent. Facebook staff and alumni revolt over Zuckerberg's inaction on Trump ...
This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan NZ bestseller list and described by ReadingRoom literary editor Steve Braunias.NON-FICTION 1 Vegful by Nadia Lim (Nude Food, $55) 2 Stop Surviving Start Fighting by Jazz Thornton (Penguin Random House, $38) 3 So Delish! by Simone Anderson ...
Anomalies in the policy for superannuitants with overseas pensions are an indictment on the justice process in New Zealand, write Susan St John and Dr Claire Dale Along with many others, the Retirement Policy and Research Centre has worked assiduously for more than a decade to alert the public, policy-makers ...
Open Mike 08/05/2017 
You’ve got to wonder why the New Zealand Police undertook an armed response teams (ARTs) trial in the first place? Of course there was the Christchurch mosque terrorism attack, but that was an isolated incident and therefore cannot be used as an excuse to arm Police. What this trial does ...2 hours ago
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, May 31 through Sat, June 6, 2020 Editor's Choice The world must seize this opportunity to meet the climate challenge As current and former central bankers, we believe the pandemic offers ...8 hours ago
The 60 Years of New Zealand Television celebrations, such as they were, seemed to rely heavily on the classics: here we go again with Lynn of Tawa, A Week of It and the Country Calendar spoofs. Wonderful highlights of our televisual past, to be sure, but after hearing Paul Holmes’ ...24 hours ago
The Two Americas Collide: You gotta love the Americans marching for George Floyd and the fragile promises of the US Constitution. But, you also gotta keep your eye on the pale rider in the White House, and understand that behind him Hell follows.THE FRAGILITY of democracy’s promise is becoming clearer ...1 day ago
Oliver Twist, famously asked for ‘more’. He did not challenge the system of workhouses – Dickens did – nor the authority of Beadle Bumble. He was only nine. I am often struck how critics of the current income maintenance system are like Oliver Twist. They ask for more, but they ...2 days ago
New Zealand’s history as a sheep-farming nation means the command “Get in behind!” has long had a particular resonance — but not usually for journalists. However, in late March, as panic over the coronavirus pandemic surged around the world, Dr Gavin Ellis — former editor-in-chief of the NZ Herald — ...2 days ago
When the New Zealand Police started using Armed Response Teams - gangs of heavily-armed police cruising Māori-Pacifica neighbourhoods in juiced-up gun-trucks - they told us it was a "trial". But it turns out that those armed police - who were mainly doing traffic stops and bail checks, rather than the ...2 days ago
Another study comparing effect in children from nonendemic areas (Dagang) and endemic fluorosis area (Jinghai) about 80km apart in the Tianjin area of China. Hardly sampling the same population. Anti-fluoride campaigners still use studies from ... 3 days ago
George Thomson, Nick Wilson, Richard Edwards This blog discusses the passing of the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Act last week. We briefly review some lessons from this legislation’s long journey and explore future smokefree possibilities in Aotearoa / New Zealand. A law ...3 days ago
Bernard Hickey is one of New Zealand’s leading financial journalists. His latest article, published by Newsroom, lays bare the cruel treatment of hundreds of thousands of workers stranded since the lockdown. Our Prime Minister is lauded overseas for her compassion, but her Cabinet is refusing to properly support tens of ...4 days ago
For a good part of my adult life I have studied civil-military relations. I have studied authoritarian and democratic variants, and I have studied them across countries and regions. I have also worked in and with several US security agencies and have lectured on the theme at a number of ...4 days ago
by The Spark “The system is broken”—the words of a young black man in Minneapolis watching flames destroy a police precinct demonstrators had torched. Broken? Yes, it is! What else could you say about a system whose police for nine minutes casually knelt on a black man’s neck, watching until ...5 days ago
Like the rest of the world, I have been aghast at what I have seen of, and read and heard about, what is happening currently in the United States. It seems incredible that a once great country should be suffering the worst effects and the highest number of deaths worldwide ...6 days ago
Image credit: Writing an Article vs. Writing a Blog Post: What’s the Difference? I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is ... 6 days ago
It’s almost painful to watch. Let’s be honest, maybe a pleasure too, in some quarters, but painful nonetheless. Because the fact is, for a democracy to function properly, any sitting Government does need honest and proper Opposition so that it doesn’t get ahead of itself. That’s what we should ...1 week ago
Well, we are out of lockdown, essentially. I did end up getting the wage subsidy while we were on levels 3 and 4 but I would have been fine if we didn’t. The first day of level 2, the Thursday, the office opened again for the people who weren’t able ...2 weeks ago
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today announced two diplomatic appointments: New Zealand’s High Commissioner to India and Consul-General to Hong Kong. “As New Zealand recovers from COVID-19, our diplomatic and trade networks are more important than ever. That is ...2 days ago
We started the week by announcing free apprenticeships to support Kiwis into work and to help get New Zealand moving again - and we ended the week by extending the wage subsidy to 40,000 more businesses, helping to protect businesses and workers alike. ...2 days ago
The Green Party is urging the New Zealand Police to rule out the use of Armed Response Teams, following their recent trial in communities around Aotearoa. ...2 days ago
This summer presents a great opportunity for New Zealanders to get out into nature with bookings on Great Walks for 2020/21 set to open next week, says Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage. Bookings for the Great Walks will open between 9 and 11 June, excluding Milford and Routeburn tracks which ...1 day ago
ANALYSIS: By Denis Muller of the University of Melbourne When a newspaper with the authority of The New York Times chooses to publish a party-political essay calculated to further inflame the violence wracking cities across America, serious questions arise. On June 3 the Times published in its opinion section an ...1 hour ago
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level two – read The Spinoff’s giant explainer about what that means here. For official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is made possible thanks to donations from Spinoff Members. ...2 hours ago
New Zealand writer Anna Rankin reports from Los Angeles. Last Friday afternoon, I went downtown to a protest outside the enormous Los Angeles Police Department headquarters on 1st Street. The LAPD had set up cordons, placing orange cones across streets to block traffic. Arms crossed, they stood with a wide ...9 hours ago
Tania Tapsell is replacing MP Anne Tolley as National's candidate for the East Coast. ...17 hours ago
One press statement from the Beehive yesterday sounded more like advertising – or a barker’s pitch – than a Government announcement. Another advised of two diplomatic appointment, one of them – has the woman who landed the post done something wrong? – to protest-troubled and politically volatile Hong Kong. And ...1 day ago
Throughout Anglo colonial states there is a constant habit of defining people who aren’t white as a problem, writes Aaron Smale in this personal essay. It was a balmy summer evening in the capital and cops were standing over a young brown man. I was walking down Courtenay Place on ...1 day ago
"The countdown clock ticks 2, then 1, then the prime minister raises her drink": dystopia, by Ōtautahi writer Laura Borrowdale. You stand in the centre of the room, and around you, the guests seem to swirl and blend into one. There’s a mouth, gaping and red, filled with laughter. A ...1 day ago
Martin Luther King Jr said in 1963: “America has given the Black people a bad cheque, a cheque which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds’." Six generations of egregious police violence later, the sentiment out of which those bad cheques were born could be shifting. In the wake of egregious police violence, ...1 day ago
WATCH: In a candid interview on Sky Sport, Dame Susan Devoy talks on her concern for rising sports stars, the state of NZ squash, and the spectre of racism. Dame Susan Devoy is proudly still “a little terrier who fights for the underdog”. “I have been doing it all my life and ...1 day ago
Are central bankers jealous that epidemiologists are the rock stars of the current crisis? There is talk that both the British and New Zealand central banks might institute negative interest rates as part of the policy response to the Covid shock. While Sweden’s central bank ended its five year experiment ...2 days ago
LISTEN: This week's Extra Time podcast discusses racism in sport and the role of athletes and organisations in making a stand for good. Former Silver Fern and Black Fern Louisa Wall believes today's sports stars must have a social conscience and stand up against discrimination and divisiveness. Sport and politics, once ...2 days ago
40 percent of millennials have one, and an increasing number of GenXers and Baby Boomers do too. Two Cents' Worth delves into the world of side hustles. ...2 days ago
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Some facts for your consideration.
74.1 per cent of Chinese voters voted National in 2014.
Chinese voter turnout in the 2014 General Elections was 78.5 per cent – higher than the national average of 76.8 per cent.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11851380
Yep – if you want to know why Natz still are in power… they are importing in voters in record numbers.
This has been a concern of mine for years now. It is not a racial problem as such , it seems to be based more about the ‘type’ of person our policy attracts.
For me it stands out most with the immigrants from a certain rugby playing nation.
And your comment could easily be referencing immigrants from Australia, the United Kingdom, South Africa…
I’ve noticed that our government seems to favour under educated people from countries that have high corruption and poor human rights in particular for women.
We already have high family violence rates in NZ, so as well as cutting most funding for the cause, the government has even found a way to try and make that worse in the future by adding people from worse off countries. They are like anti human rights magicians so no wonder many vote National. Or are they trying to get a cultural fit?
Who is Barry Soper paid by ?
Supporters of the TPP I sense.
And he calls himself a journalist.
‘Barry Soper: The days when people knew how to protest’
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11850972
And who is Stephen Jacobi paid by? The International Business Forum?
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201842970/trade-group-uses-videos-to-try-gain-public-backing-for-new-tpp
NZ was predicted to get a rise in GDP of 0.9% by 2030–less than 1%, in exchange for being made liable to be sued if our laws were changed and didn’t comply with TPP rules written by/for corporates.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11848118
A 20 yr old kid drove his boss’s fully laden bee truck and trailer into the back of a logging truck at 4 am, killing his workmate who was asleep in the passenger seat.
“An inspection of his work logbook and employment records revealed that Power had breached his cumulative work time and rest time hours on a regular basis between October 20 and November 21, 2015.
That included him making false statements about the start of his cumulative work day on 34 occasions, the summary of facts revealed.”
Well, either granny’s got it wrong again, or he worked 34 shifts in 32 days and regularly exceeded 14 hour days in that period. He would have been in zombie land by the time he crashed.
So, where’s the employer in all this? The boy wouldn’t be working those hours of his own volition, he would have been instructed to and the same with the log book violation.
They didn’t even mention the employer in the article!
I’m sure there was a great deal of pressure to work those hours too.
Employer was / is Arataki Honey Rotorua, mentioned in article, but nothing about prosecution of
They did mention the employer in the article – and I’m fairly sure a competent lawyer would have made sure that there was/wasn’t culpability on the part of the employer so as to mitigate the boys sentence.
The number that popped out for me from that article was the weight of the logging truck the lad rear ended…134 tonnes.
More than twice the legal limit.
Back when I used to regularly use forest roads in that area the word was they were not public roads so weight limits didn’t apply. Rumour was speed limits didn’t apply either, but that may have just been wishful thinking by young male hoons. Certainly there were some very large very heavily laden trucks (much more load than you’d ever see on state highways) going very fast.
Dunno if that was actually true back then or what the current legal status of those roads really is.
I travel between Whangarei and Auckland at least several times a month – it is becoming more and more of a safety gamble as more and more trucks clog up the roads, far too often speeding, overtaking each other and generally creating traffic mayhem. Many of these loads should, I’m sure, be on trains, and the awful state of the roads north are certainly not capable of sustaining the obvious increase of heavy vehicles. Many of the drivers are likely to be in similar situations to the young man who died – I see far too many trucks on the roads in the Waikato too when I’m there.
I drive a 5 tonne housebus and am theoretically restricted to 90kph. Very seldom am I not passed by a following juggernaut. Andre…still applies today even on main roads….the perception is that heavy vehicles have immunity from attention from the law enforcement brigade. I can’t remember the last time a roadside weighstation was having a blitz.
We travel regularly between Waikato and the Far North and can attest to the volume and the almost aggressiveness of some truck drivers. The Brynderwens, quite frankly, give me the shits when I’m trying to come down the south side of the hill with a huge truck pushing me to travel at a speed much faster than is safe. And I have a lead foot. Ken Shirley is an awesome spokeperson and lobbyist for the trucking industry and usually blames the daily accident involving a truck on the other road user.
Fortunately there a some in the industry that know better…and are willing to speak out…http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/regional/305027/truck-crashes-blamed-on-fatigue-and-inexperience
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/90752541/Linehaul-drivers-quit-due-to-dangerous-conditions-and-inexperienced-drivers
David Corbyn???
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
[lprent: WTF: this looks like some kind of stupid unexplained diversion at the top of a post. If I see you do anything like that in the near future, you will be banned until after the election. I don’t have time to deal with stupidity. ]
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11851348
Put waterways in trust for all New Zealanders
Do you remember the Foreshore and Seabed Act?
Seems reasonable.
Sowing the seeds of tax reform
Russell and Baucher hope to fire up KiwiSavers to demand the tax system be made fairer, but also to spark a national debate about whether it is finally time for the wealthy to pay tax on their capital gains.
“When the public rebels against unfair taxation, governments can change.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/92207613/kiwisavers-harshly-taxed-compared-to-property-investors-book-claims
well put, it remains rather telling that no senior people in NZ Labour including President Haworth, seem to be able to bring themselves to support Jeremy Corbyn
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
[lprent: I am getting tired of having these kinds of personal attacks with no actual argument. Guess where it is going. BTW: I left my carefully framed observation as a comment in an expanded version of your own style. Enjoy. ]
Personally I’m finding it hard to find anything much to support with Jeremy Corbyn either.
Quite simply having deranged lefties ranting at me with no visible intelligence saying that I should support him for unspecified reasons out of some kind of faith based religiosity isn’t exactly a way to convince me. In fact it seems to be doing exactly the opposite.
After looking at the results on the local election in the UK this morning, I suspect that much of the Labour support seems to be reacting in a similar fashion.
I noticed exactly the same thing when I looked at Saunders. I suspect that the supporters of such candidates are their oppositions best weapon against them.
Personally I’m finding it hard to find anything much to support with Jeremy Corbyn either.
Really, Lin? What is it that you find hard to support? His commitment to the National Health Service? His commitment to decent, properly funded schooling? His commitment to international law? His opposition to Britain’s insane and ruinous “defence” policies?
After looking at the results on the local election in the UK this morning, I suspect that much of the Labour support seems to be reacting in a similar fashion.
Labour is in desperate straits in the United Kingdom. That’s not Corbyn’s fault, it’s the fault of Blair and his Kool-Aid Britannia mob, and no-hopers like Ed Miliband—the same people who are busy white-anting the party leader now.
I guess you like your Labour—sorry, New Labour—politicians to be like this bloke:
The funny thing is that I never hear anyone trying to explain any of these things. And in fact you didn’t explain them in your first para either.
What I hear a lot are comments like your second – which effectively are whining.
Usually followed by your third para, which is that of the usual attacking someone for not being faithful to something that they are incapable of explaining.
FFS Morrisey. I could give a pigs arse about UK politics. But I find fundamentalist fools like you and Tiger about as useful for picking up information as Christian nutters trying to explain the bible without ever apparently ever having read it more than selected sections of it.
Needless to say, people who act like that just tend to irritate me. I share the obvious human presumption that with supporters like this, why does that politician need any enemies?
Unfortunately I suspect this is increasingly the attitude of Labour voters in the UK. Certainly the results in the local elections overnight are dispiriting. The few brighter spots in the results were even more dispiriting. It appears that political survival at that level for Labour candidates is increasingly to be very very local and have nothing to do with Westminister Labour.
Maybe when the actual policies are released…
You could sign up here if you’ve the interest beyond a pigs arse.
http://www.labour.org.uk/index.php/manifesto/2017
Broadly, he’s been advocating a return to social democratic governance. Ironically, much in line with what the SNP are already doing in Scotland, who he keeps having to bag as a party of austerity because Kezia.
I have to admit, Mr Prent, you’ve broken down my modus operandi in a compelling and scholarly fashion.
http://www.teacher-stamps.co.uk/image/cache/data/Bowtie-Cat-Well-Done-500×500.jpg
@Morrissey +1
Labour NZ yet another traditional left western political party being destroyed by it’s ‘faith based’ religious adherence to a debunked and destructive ideology.
But then that’s what you get with fundamentalists…just check out Helen Clark’s ‘no looking back’ rave yesterday on rnz.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/programmes/the-9th-floor/story/201842639/the-commander-helen-clark
To be fair to Corbyn though, it’s hard to see how anyone in that situation would be doing well on voting day given that (a) half the UK Labour party have openly undermined him and hence voters probably don’t trust the party to be competent in govt, and (b) the MSM have been relatively biased against him. Not that he is without fault, but there are significant factors outside of his control.
Although it’s interesting to not that since the snap election was announced, UKLabour has gone up almost 5% in the trend of polls.
The tories have gone up too, but seem to be wobbling a bit at the top, and most of their support seems to have come from UKIP.
A Labour win is still very very much in doubt, but provided they don’t falter as the effect of the localbodies kicks in, UKLabour might still be able to give the tories a bloody nose.
That’s a reasonably sharp swing up for Labour, what’s prompted that?
Seems to be bang on when the snap election was announced.
#ifthistrendcontinues (lol) 35% wouldn’t be completely out of the question. But it it flattens for the next couple of weeks it would be game over.
Also, the tories need to start losing, rather than just plateauing. Either way, I don’t expect the lines to cross over, but if they’re close then the tories might have trouble getting their hard brexit and other agenda items through.
Maybe UK Labour should have
“send the government a message’ slogan.
I suspect they already do. I mean, they’re actually campaigning pretty well and have a good polling track so far, I just don’t think it’ll be enough for us to see PM Corbyn. It might be enough to see May knifed in the back, though.
I suspect that it is largely the election effect allied to a lack of parties from a FFP system. When it gets closer to actually having to vote, then voting intentions firm up.
In this case the idea about actually voting for the Conservatives for another 5 year term compared to someone that they are unsure about.
I think that Labour will do better in this early election than many political observers expect. They have had the long term issue that many of their traditional supporters are looking for something to change. They are not seeing it as coming from UK Labour after the Blair years. So they have been drifting off to the SNP or UKIP or Lib-Dems (or Brexit) and splitting the vote. But I suspect that there is a bit too much change going on now.
The problem for the conservatives as far as I can see as an outside observer, is that outside of the southern suburbs and some of the leafier semirural areas of the UK – there isn’t much solid support for the tories either. They have been doing well from the loss of support from the other side(s). But it looks like it is very soft.
So when it gets back to being a two horse race (now that UKIP and Lib-Dems have largely disintegrated their accumulated support), then Labour is going to do better in the two horse races outside of Scotland.
But I don’t think that Labour there looks like it can get to the point of forming a government.
Of the 300-ish seats that Labour lost, just under half were lost in Scotland (130). A fair few in Wales went to independents.
Anyone with a half an ounce of nous knew that Labour were going to get trounced in Scotland – and that’s down to Labour previously jumping into bed with the Tories and the gobsmacking ‘leadership’ of Kezia “the Blairite” Dugdale.
So Labour didn’t do too badly – certainly not as badly as msm would have people believe.
That the Tories picked up the UKIP vote and that both the Tories and Scottish Labour allowed members of the fucking Orange Order to stand as Labour and Tory candidates…that’s what would be newsworthy in my world.
But then, I’m not a liberal msm forlornly manning the trenches against inevitable change – fuk! Was that a Bob Dylan earworm I just squished? I think it was 😉
Oh I’d agree that he has had issues outside of his control. Reminds me of the way Cunliffe had problems here.
However I have largely had to make up my decision about Corbyn from sources outside his supporter community, as they seem to spend all of their time whining about those issues outside of his control.
Try finding someone amongst his ardent supporters who can coherently discuss his policy areas and why they are being applied without someone trying to accuse you of not supporting them.
Which was the point that I’m making. Incidentally, this was part of the problem that Cunliffe had as well. Their most ardent supporters seem to make their life looking for someone to blame. They are often noisier than the actual enemies and tend to put a lot of people off.
It also tends to drown out the message of what they are wanting to do in a wash of blind and usually deluded faith. Who in the hell needs enemies when left politicians have supporters like these?
apologies for bungling “reply”, my comment referred directly to sanctuary’s first comment (which included a reference to Mr Corbyn) on ADVANTAGE’s “yes for Ardern” piece
no apology though, for my views on the lack of support for Jeremy Corbyn from NZ Labour tops and their minions, and don’t bother banning me–I have banned you!–this site became increasingly unreadable, imo, during the US Primary and Election debacle; a shame as I had been a Standard supporter from the start
I’m afraid, Tiger Mountain, that Labour’s team of clever strategists—the same people who instructed Labour candidates in 2014 to recite, like a catechism, “Oh, look, Dirty Politics is a distraction”—have decreed that Corbyn’s platform of moderate, traditional Labour Party policies and a progressive, moral foreign policy is absolutely verboten.
Brilliant Labour thinkers like Stephen “I Agree With Matthew” Mills have been strenuously distancing themselves from Corbyn for some time now….
Yeh first of all we had to put up with Mike Williams on RNZ, which made Monday morning politics a complete waste of time, and now Mills, although to be fair, I guess he agrees with Hooton so often because…well because he just does, that’s centrists politics for you.
It’s like listening or reading the gibberish from Nash and Lorck around here, who would know if you where listening or reading someone from National or Labour? I sure as hell can’t tell the difference most of the time.
FFS: I’m not a Labour strategist. I am (generally) a Labour supporter. Surely even you could explain why I or NZ Labour be that interested in UK politics from here?
The last of my family left the British isles a mere 150 years ago. NZ Labour’s job here is to represent citizens of this country. As far as I am concerned Nigel Haworth wasn’t elected to opine about affairs in another country. Especially when that country is 5th or 6th on our export trade and steadily becoming less relevant to NZ all of the time.
Perhaps you should explain your reasoning rather than acting like a spoilt child demanding that other people do what you want them to do.
As a moderator, as far as I could see there was nothing in your comment that related to the post. It barely seemed to have much relationship to Sanctuary’s comment, which was at least largely on topic, unlike Gosman’s comments which were at the top of the comments.. Which is why it got shunted to here.
The comment I replied to it expressed my frustration at the myopia of the faithful who seem to care more about delineating enemies than convincing others through rational argument and facts. Basically after several years of this recently I suspect that many of you would be at home in an Inquisition torture pit ‘explaining’ in your inimitable fashion why heathens should be converting to the gentle religion of Christ.
BTW: it was a reply to Sanctuary. The shift to OpenMike removes the parenting, but carries through any child comments.
Something rotten in the state of the German Green Party
When fanatics and dilettantes like Volker Beck are allowed to dominate and bully an organization, it is doomed. The Greens in Germany look like they’re a spent force….
http://normanfinkelstein.com/2017/05/07/finkelstein-under-attack-by-german-parliamentarian-and-self-styled-friend-of-israel-volker-beck-green-party-update/
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/201842837/pike-river-families-never-shown-video-of-men-in-drift-mother-says
Pike River families never shown video of men in drift, mother says
Carol Rose, the mother of one of the Pike River 29 and took notes of all the meetings in the months following the disaster, says families were never shown footage of men in the drift.”
So who is telling lies!!
They can’t both be right. Surely the Police can produce a minute detailing the what when where. Should be easy to do.
After all Bill English keeps repeating the “they were shown the videos.” “My Police team told me so and they are as reliable as my friend Keating.”
Painted themselves into a corner me thinks
The future of farming.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sponsored-stories/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503708&objectid=11842004
yep and then we will have enclaves of unwanted foreign labourers ,
Yep, and we can’t have that, so Natz will save, goodbye welfare system.
To the 19th century workhouse we go.
Veolia causing a stink in Wellington
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/wellington/92202533/stench-of-wellingtons-sewage-wafts-through-suburbia
Another day in a country gripped by neoliberalism. But literally the stench is starting to show.
Indeed. And when the stink hits the fan, it’s locals (not the offshore operators) that have to put up with the stench.
The no.1 threat to farming communities.
what is?
On the absurdity that education is the silver bullet to relieve existing poverty and magic away inequality.
.
Education is not the best anti-poverty program, argues historian Harvey Kantor, and it’s long past time we acknowledged that…
[…]
Kantor: One of the consequences of making education so central to social policy has been that we’ve ended up taking the pressure off of the state for the kinds of policies that would be more effective at addressing poverty and economic inequality. Instead we’re asking education to do things it can’t possibly do. The result has been increasing support for the kinds of market-oriented policies that make inequality worse.
If we really want to address issues of inequality and economic insecurity, there are a lot of other policies that we have to pursue besides or at least in addition to education policies, and that part of the debate has been totally lost. Raising the minimum wage, or providing a guaranteed income, which the last time we talked seriously about that was in the late 1960’s, increasing workers’ bargaining power, making tax policies more progressive—things like that are going to be much more effective at addressing inequality and economic security than education policies. That argument is often taken to mean, *schools can’t do anything unless we address poverty first.* But that’s not what we were trying to say.
http://haveyouheardblog.com/thepovertyfix/
Education. Compulsory. Why? Because it’s good for citizens to be literate, and numerate and know about a raft of subjects. How will it be useful to them? Well they will be able to make their way in life, know about the world , the country and its systems, manage their affairs, know about opportunities, get jobs and make their individual lifestyle, and take their full, functioning place in society.
That’s roughly how the thinking has been in everyone’s minds. What good has education actually been in helping people to become fully functioning citizens enjoying their place in society? What do we see around us today to show us how useful the education has been, received since the beginning of the 1900’s?
Let’s unpick the above beliefs and look at reality.
* The government and the comfortably off (actually the wealthy and rich but they never use such direct language), unpick society so it is fragmented going towards tatters. Education has helped them in finding their individual wealth, and then how to siphon off to themselves more that others needed to make their individual way.
* Individual lifestyle, now becoming more precarious. May be without a permanent dwelling. Many forced to live like gypsies, worse than primitive hunter, gatherers who knew where the caves were and just had to turn out the lower animals to occupy, (or co-habit)
.
Many people are treated as litter on the streets, a dessicated leaf to be stepped on, or slipped on, and a target for street thieves, muggers, haters and the cold, superiority of elites.
* Get jobs, which are offered on whim for a few hours when required by employers, but such workers not free to do anything else in between by order of the government, who want you work-ready day or night. So you can’t have an individual lifestyle, it is the chess economy, and you are a black or white pawn, with nothing to pawn when you are out of funds.
* Opportunities – if you hear of them, you probably won’t be able to get to where they are being offered. You haven’t an address so they can’t be sent to you (do hey deliver to – usually end bench at the north corner of X Park). You haven’t the means to have a shower and get clean clothes to attend a competitive interview.
Or you have children that you are nurturing, but no-one in government who has helped create this diminished situation that has left you stranded has positive thoughts for you and wants to help you and your children. There is no-one to nurture parents, and having children, a basic human, normal, natural condition, is regarded as a private hobby, that no-one else is involved with or celebrates with you.
On your own you lose hope and also your cardboard layers that you slid away to provide a clean mat along with newspapers in which you read about last week’s opportunities, now passed. Or the opportunities presented are illusory, you are advised to shift away from the big city to somewhere else where there are said to be more chances. You do, and lose your network of contacts and soup caravan and handouts till you score another cash-paying job, because there is even less for you in the new location.
* Being able to read and write and manage your affairs. Well self-management is talked about and then the means to do it are withheld. Need temporary help from WINZ? The female guard outside the doors in uniform will need to see whether the department staff deign to see you. You have had to travel a long weary way and not anticipated how long it would take and you are late! Your appointment has been cancelled, you have wasted good people’s time. You have to beg for money to get back to your starting point.
Etc etc. The privileged people give you a thousand invisible kicks and look at the end result of someone bravely still standing and criticise how your hair is untidy, your children messy, your face sour, your manner uncouth, your car (if you have one) unwarranted. Actually all this negativity is unwarranted, but actually the wealthy give themselves the right to give you a WOF with just a once-over from appearance. They don’t look in your eyes, they never look at the achievements of the person just keeping going in such an arid, punitive human climate as cold to the soul as Antarctica is. Put a little love in your hearts went a song. The cold, say what would that cost?
Actually, education became compulsory because the business community demanded it. Even in the 19th century ignorant and illiterate people could not work the machines available nor do other menial tasks such as serving at the counter.
I’m pretty sure that many capitalists at that time (I’m really not sure about to day – they really do seem to believe the myth of special people) realised that innovation is a numbers game. The more ideas you have that can be worked upon at the same time increases the number that will actually bring about something useful and educated people have more ideas.
In other words, free compulsory education was brought about as a massive subsidy to business who didn’t want to pay for all that training themselves.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that people being educated is a bad thing. In fact, I’d say that it was a positively good thing. The problem is that all the benefits of it are going to the bludging rich – exactly as designed.
Educate in the “Right” way though. Respect and obey authority and don’t tolerate original thought.
Most of the education now needs to be spent on devising theories and then trying to make practical models of them, and then reviewing them to see what effect they will have on people, and the environment. Also learning civics and how hard it is to get people working together, and the goldilocks lesson of law making and supervision of behaviour; getting it at the right level isn’t easy.
And learning more manual stuff, how to do things for yourself instead of passively waiting for a machine to do it.
Human psychology and sociology should come first, along with literacy and basic numeracy. Everything else can be learned at tertiary level of polytechnic style. The intermediate level would take on the above matters and extend to four years, so up to the old fourth form level. Then the tertiary and career training. Learning about detail, say in geography later than earlier etc.
It’s no use to learn the facts of the world and not understand what being human is about. That is what is important in this technological age, with robots and AI looming. To be able to critique what are facts would be good!
And to sort out in one’s mind what things are interesting and what are just froth and conformism and escapism that isolates from the real and important for ‘good’ living. So there would be fewer car, gun and war and fewer men’s women’s magazines filled with photos of people elevated to Objects of Interest, objects of materialism, expensive watches, sophisticated booze, clothes, makeup techniques, feelings, exotic and rare animals, house decoration etc.
Yes, instead of becoming the bulwark of an informed and healthily functioning democracy, education, a few steps behind the fourth estate, is being slowly forced to tread the same path as the fourth estate: erosion of independent state-funded quality outlets; encouragement of privatisation and forced reliance upon commercialism, with the total exclusion from debate of any other (superior) forms of funding .
Some commentators now blatantly assume that commercial advertising is the only way that any news media should be funded. Blinkered idiots.
I think Lottery games are vulgar and hurt poorer communities.
If that too confronting. Try cracked, they can sell you the idea
Ha, that was good 😈
Chris Hipkins has set out a reasonable response to Nat/ACT’s Charter Schools here:
http://www.chrishipkins.org.nz/labour_s_position_on_charter_schools
What struck me was the statement “Take the failed Whangaruru charter schools decision to spend most of their upfront funding purchasing a farm. Since Hekia Parata finally decided to close them down, as the Ministry of Education repeatedly recommended, that huge investment of public money was lost forever.”
I recall this being raised as a possibility right back when the charter schools initiative was getting underway, but from memory was dismissed as just partisan hyperbole. Is this true? Did anything get recovered from the private owners (furniture, office equipment, AV equipment, playground fittings, etc, etc)? Or is it all just a huge windfall for the private owners – being rewarded for an education failure?
Is it possible to find out how much the total spending from taxpayer funds was, and of that how much was spent on operating costs other than management fees, and how much recovered when the school was closed?
It astounds me that the operators of the failed Whangaruru School were allowed to keep their choice of school, a farm. I’m not sure if I should be protesting or starting a Cabin Crew school, I’d need a Boeing Dreamliner. Fortunately I know absolutely nothing about training cabin crew and I’m excellent at international travel.
It failed, ok. Why on earth are the assets not returned to the people that provided them. You and me.
exactly David Mac.
Robbing from the kids though is easy prey so a wonderful business opportunity for the smooth taking greedy.
To those wondering why Peter Thiel’s application for citizenship was fast tracked, the following article might provide some clues.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy?
The rich are the problem, not the solution.
We need the productive, the dollars chase them.
The bloke next to me works long long hours, he’ll knock up homes for 10 families this year. I see his office light burning at 1am. He makes lots more money than I do, he’s what I’d call wealthy.
I don’t work many hours. I spend lots of time fishing, surfing, drinking, travelling around and entertaining myself commenting on blogs.
If the bloke next door and I were paid the same money, had the same boat, sqm of house etc…..why the hell would he work 100 hours a week? He’d be nuts not to hang out with me and cruise.
What a hoot we’d have. Alas, the Jones, Smiths, Browns and Black families will have to make do with a tarpaulin stretched between trees…and since we averaged things out, there’s only room on our boats for 2.
I’m a huge fan of equality. Splitting all the $ up so we have equal shares is ridiculous. If we do it on a global scale, it’s about $7.50 each. We’d all be surfing and eating feijoa jam, nothing would get done. I think the equality we need to be concerned with is an equality of opportunity and the associated benefits of embracing them.
Can you rephrase that in a way that it makes sense?
Why is he working 100 hour weeks? That’s enough for two or even three full time jobs. And that amount of time at work is decreasing his productivity and probably to the point that he isn’t getting anywhere near as much done as actually needs to be done. He’s probably wasting 20 hours or more.
Define: Paid the same money
There’s quite a few people available who could be employed to ensure that everyone has a home but the capitalists, like your hero there, would complain because wages would go up.
And where have I ever suggested such a thing?
you seem to have this delusional idea that people are solely motivated by money whereas most people are motivated by anything but. In fact, it seems to me that only the sociopathic types are motivated by money and then there’s the reality of motivation and how paying people too much causes them fail badly:
“We need the productive, the dollars chase them.”
Can you rephrase that in a way that it makes sense?
It is natural that the rewards, whatever form they take, gravitate towards the productive. I don’t think the guy next door is pushed along by money these days. He has a comfortable buffer. These days I think he just likes making homes for families and teaching kids to build. He’s in the habit of getting up with the sun.
You see his assets as a problem, a product of his greed. We are all guilty of greed, who the hell can have just 2 Toffee Pops and put the packet away? Yep you’re right, I see his fair and square rewards as a ‘Good on ya mate.’ I think most Kiwis would.
Of course we’re all motivated by money. To a degree. Few of us can do without electricity or clothing. I get the feeling you’d like to limit how productive/rewarded I’m allowed to be. I think to remove that choice from people severely hobbles aspiration and motivation.
The problem with that is that the majority of rich people aren’t productive at all – they’re just parasites living off the work of those who are. in other words, they’re nothing but bludgers. Probably more accurately called parasites as they will kill the host.
In other words, that sentence is pure bollocks. In fact, I’d call it an outright lie.
And they are on both counts. Excessive assets owned by one person leaves less for everyone else. That’s why capitalism always results first in ever increasing poverty and finally the collapse of the society that it arose in.
And in that you’d be wrong. In fact what i want is to increase everyone’s creativity but to do that requires removing the nations resources from the control of the few.
Yeah…I think we could bounce a ping-pong ball between us all night Draco and be no closer to common ground. I like you all the same. I think you bring colour and thought provoking comments to this blog.
These fat neo-liberal huas you refer to Draco. Yep, unnecessary exploitive parasites of the highest order, I agree. They are a hindrance on us all leading rounded colourful lives. But there are only 100’s of them. The bogeyman is very thin. I don’t know any neo liberal life sucking bastards but I know quite a few people that are comfortable by way of applying themselves and getting stuck in.
There is no limit on opportunity Draco. There is not a defined quota out there for us to share between us. One person having what you deem too much is not hogging your share. There is plenty for everyone, but putting a bucket next to my couch and expecting it to fill up with money as I watch TV is an unrealistic expectation.
I thought I’d seen you make a comment along the lines of “Yep, everything over 100k is greed, anything over $100k pa, 100% tax on the excess.
Richest 62 people as wealthy as half of world’s population, says Oxfam
World’s eight richest people have same wealth as poorest 50%
Yeah, I don’t think those bogeymen are that thin and they really are causing serious problems. The same problems that feudalism caused in fact because that’s what capitalism is.
Yes there is. If someone doesn’t have access to the resources to be creative then they have no opportunity.
And that true for most of the population of the world and it’s that way because so few people control all of the resources of the world.
And yet rich people do that all the time through their ownership of resources and factories.
And I’m pretty sure you also do exactly the same thing with your savings account. you know, put money in the savings account and expect it to grow with no productive activity on your part at all.
Rachinger convicted of obtaining money by deception, claiming he was going to
infiltratehack the Standard and discharged.The judge was kind to him, I hope Rachinger sorts himself out and does something more constructive in future.
Wow, conviction and discharge. Cool. We are taking a different line to criminality are we, public admission then put in stocks for a day in a public place? Having to clean public toilets with a toothbrush. Go and work at seasonal work and picking vegetables – that would be good, up early in the morning cutting lettuces for the supermarkets?
I wonder what punishment, retribution, re-education, sanctions have been imposed on him and Cameron Slater, who as everyone knows has a hard, grey shell and scuttles around in ingenious places. However I understand that beer is a favourite for pulling him from his hideyhole under decaying detritus.
Visit Southern Man at #16 above and look at that link. Slater is a pimple on a very large smelly backside. Wot me worry?!
And now for the Weather…
“Cyclone Donna is now the strongest tropical storm to hit the South Pacific in May after reaching Category 5 this morning….
Weatherwatch.co.nz said Donna now had sustained winds of 215km/h gusting up to a ferocious 260km/h, making it the strongest May cyclone recorded in the Southern Hemisphere”.
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/strongest-may-cyclone-hit-south-pacific
“A climate scientist said Cyclone Donna’s lateness and intensity was a direct result of a changing climate.
Jim Salinger, from Otago University, said late cyclones such as Donna were rare, but not unheard of.
However, he said this one was unusual as the sea temperatures around Vanuatu and New Caledonia are what they would normally be in March.
“Well we’re not in an El Niño and we’re not in a La Niña, so you would not expect temperatures to be that warm, though they can be on occasions. So what we’re seeing happening here is, I’d say, there’s a bit of global warming going on,” Dr Salinger says.
Dr Salinger said scientific predictions of stronger, more intense cyclones over a longer season as a result of climate change were starting to be borne out”.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/330274/still-fierce,-cyclone-donna-moving-towards-new-caledonia
Personally, I think the precession of the earths’ axis, doing as it always does, has far more impact on the seasonal changes we are experiencing. After all, 26500 years happens gradually, so it’s not complete idiocy to imagine that seasonal changes would happen imperceptibly.
20 years ago, wouldn’t have had any issue planting out tomatoes on Labour Weekend. Now, it’s more likely to be first weekend of December such is the change in the seasonal patterns that have been experienced. Summer hasn’t followed the 1 December – 1 March “cycle” for nearly a decade now – it’s been more like March when Summer really hits it’s stride. Winter seems to be occurring from mid July – October.
I’m sure I’ll be howled down by the earth sciences graduates claiming that seasons never change and are completely immutable.
James … personally I think you need to plant different Tomatoes.. Here’s some reading fyi in the meantime…
http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/88224605/new-zealand-was-hotter-than-ever-in-2016-niwa-climate-summary-says
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/RisingCost/rising_cost5.php
Bill English: …. ‘irresponsible’, ‘misleading’ Pike River families..
Playing the Blame game..
Speaking on NewsHub AM Show today “he continued to defend the Government’s reluctance to allow manned entry to the mine, where 29 people lost their lives in a 2010 explosion.
“It could be putting a significant number of lives in danger…and doing so for the worst of reasons – and that’s political reasons”.
And yet he would still not rule out agreeing to manned entry as a part of post-election coalition talks….
FFS! How’s that for irresponsible and misleading!
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2017/05/bill-english-winston-peters-irresponsible-misleading-pike-river-families.html
The upside to increasing C02
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/opinion/92324200/doug-edmeades-carbon-dioxide–friend-or-foe
Bullshit. For most plants worldwide, their growth is limited by something else essential. For those plants, increased CO2 makes no difference or may even be a stressor. In a very few rare circumstances, almost always in controlled environments like greenhouses, CO2 will be the constraint to growth, so increasing CO2 will lead to increased growth. This an an example of the denier’s attempt to sow confusion by claiming a very rare specific case applies to the general case.
https://skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm
And if the oceans lose productivity due to increased acidification from increased CO2, then that loss will likely swamp any tiny increase from extra plant growth.
https://skepticalscience.com/ocean-acidification-global-warming.htm
“For most plants worldwide, their growth is limited by something else essential. For those plants, increased CO2 makes no difference or may even be a stressor.”
Yet, satellite imaging shows the Earth has been getting greener.
“This an an example of the denier’s attempt to sow confusion by claiming a very rare specific case applies to the general case.”
Alternatively, it could just be an upside to the downside.
You appear to be genius at useless aphorisms. I guess that is what glib but scientifically ignorant are good at.
The world got gets ‘greener’ when we have green algae growing on oceans and waterways. It gets ‘greener’ when grassland replaces forest or swamp. It gets greener when snow and ice cover is replaced by plants.
However none of these mean nothing to providing increased sequestration on additional fossil carbon – they do the opposite. They don’t compensate for the increased adsorption of heat inside our planets volatiles that is performing the fastest climate change that this world has seen since the last major asteroid sea strike.
But I guess that saying such stupid aphorisms they satisfy your tongue and reduce your need to have have to use your brain for actual science eh?.
The article stated it (greening in the satellite imaging) was a consequence of the increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration measured by the leaf area index. Therefore, I don’t see how algae and grass fall into that category. Nevertheless, one would assume those occurrences (along with snow and ice cover over the period) would be accounted for.
Edmeades doesn’t appear to cite where those claims of increased leaf area index came from, so it’s hard to comment on how accurately he’s representing the source data and how credible that source is.
On the off chance it’s from his main cite, CO2 Science, here’s a backgrounder on them. They’re another one of these fossil-fuel funded organisations set up to sow confusion.
https://www.desmogblog.com/center-study-carbon-dioxide-and-global-change
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
So it does at least include grass, then, and they expect the “upside” to be temporary anyway. And a lot of the dark green seems to be around the north pole, which has its own problems.
Yay. /sarc
+1. Fat lot of good it will do once the droughts kick in too. And the big rains. And gale force winds. I guess when the forest gets knocked over the grass will grow there faster. Yay.
“So it does at least include grass”
No, leaf cover, over the planet’s vegetated regions. The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees.
They say the benefits ‘may’ also be limited as plants have shown to acclimatize overtime, but no time frame was given. And given the use of the word ‘may’, it sounds as if that is still inconclusive.
Moreover, this study goes back 35 years, therefore it could be several decades before benefits cease, if the cease at all.
Grass is a plant.
The only grass I know with leaf cover is a noxious prohibited weed.
A blade of grass is a leaf.
A slightly broader view of what that study means…
http://grist.org/climate-energy/earth-is-getting-greener-heres-why-thats-a-problem/
Thanks.
Tell me Chairman, since you look for encouraging news in those satellite pictures, how is the glacier retreat problem going? Any reports of glaciers generally making up their losses from over the recent 5 decades?
Jail This Thug
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/330300/women-describe-'horror'-as-mp's-vehicle-struck
Even if he is found guilty I can’t see what purpose that would serve.
Surely it would deter other National Party thugs from driving their cars into people?
This lout—another National M.P.—should also have been jailed….
https://fmacskasy.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/shane-ardern-tractor-parliament-steps-september-2003.jpeg
Pie describes our world….