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?
In a moment we explore the question: What is Andrew Bayly wanting to tell ACC, and will it involve enjoying a small wine tasting and then telling someone to fuck off? But first, for context, a broader one: What do we look for in a government?Imagine for a moment, you ...
As expected, Donald Trump just threw Ukraine under the bus, demanding that it accept Russia's illegal theft of land, while ruling out any future membership of NATO. Its a colossal betrayal, which effectively legitimises Russia's invasion, while laying the groundwork for the next one. But Trump is apparently fine with ...
This is a guest post by George Weeks, reviewing a book called ‘How to Fly a Horse’ by Kevin AshtonBook review: ‘How to Fly a Horse’ by Kevin Ashton (2015) – and what it means for Auckland. The title of this article might unnerve any Greater Auckland ...
This story was originally published by Capital & Main and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. Within just a week, the sheer devastation of the Los Angeles wildfires has pushed to the fore fundamental questions about the impact of the climate crisis that have been ...
In this world, it's just usYou know it's not the same as it wasSongwriters: Harry Edward Styles / Thomas Edward Percy Hull / Tyler Sam JohnsonYesterday, I received a lovely message from Caty, a reader of Nick’s Kōrero, that got me thinking. So I thought I’d share it with you, ...
In past times a person was considered “unserious” or “not a serious” person if they failed to grasp, behave and speak according to the solemnity of the context in which they were located. For example a serious person does not audibly pass gas at Church, or yell “gun” at a ...
Long stories short, the top six things in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Thursday, February 13 are:The coalition Government’s early 2024 ‘fiscal emergency’ freeze on funding, planning and building houses, schools, local roads and hospitals helped extend and deepen the economic and jobs recession through calendar ...
For obvious reasons, people feel uneasy when the right to be a citizen is sold off to wealthy foreigners. Even selling the right to residency seems a bit dubious, when so many migrants who are not millionaires get turned away or are made to jump through innumerable hoops – simply ...
A new season of White Lotus is nearly upon us: more murder mystery, more sumptuous surroundings, more rich people behaving badly.Once more we get to identify with the experience of the pampered tourist or perhaps the poorly paid help; there's something in White Lotus for all New Zealanders.And unlike the ...
In 2016, Aotearoa shockingly plunged to fourth place in the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. Nine years later, and we're back there again: New Zealand has seen a further slip in its global ranking in the latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). [...] In the latest CPI New Zealand's score ...
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Transforming New Zealand: Brian EastonBrian Easton will discuss the above topic at 2/57 Willis Street, Wellington at 5:30pm on Tuesday 26 February at 2/57 Willis Street, WellingtonThe sub-title to the above is "Why is the Left failing?" Brian Easton's analysis is based on his view that while the ...
Salvation Army’s State of the Nation 2025 report highlights falling living standards, the highest unemployment rates since the 1990s and half of all Pacific children going without food. There are reports of hundreds if not thousands of people are applying for the same jobs in the wake of last year’s ...
Mountain Tui is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Correction: On the article The Condundrum of David Seymour, Luke Malpass conducted joint reviews with Bryce Wilkinson, the architect of the Regulatory Standards Bill - not Bryce Edwards. The article ...
Tomorrow the council’s Transport, Resilience and Infrastructure Committee meet and agenda has a few interesting papers. Council’s Letter of Expectation to Auckland Transport Every year the council provide a Letter of Expectation to Auckland Transport which is part of the process for informing AT of the council’s priorities and ...
All around in my home townThey're trying to track me down, yeahThey say they want to bring me in guiltyFor the killing of a deputyFor the life of a deputySongwriter: Robert Nesta Marley.Support Nick’s Kōrero today with a 20% discount on a paid subscription to receive all my newsletters directly ...
Hi,I think all of us have probably experienced the power of music — that strange, transformative thing that gets under our skin and helps us experience this whole life thing with some kind of sanity.Listening and experiencing music has always been such a huge part of my life, and has ...
Business frustration over the stalled economy is growing, and only 34% of voters are confidentNicola Willis can deliver. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Wednesday, February 12 are:Business frustration is growing about a ...
I have now lived long enough to see a cabinet minister go both barrels on their Prime Minister and not get sacked.It used to be that the PM would have a drawer full of resignations signed by ministers on the day of their appointment, ready for such an occasion. But ...
This session will feature Simon McCallum, Senior Lecturer in Engineering and Computer Science (VUW) and recent Labour Party candidate in the Southland Electorate talking about some of the issues around AI and how this should inform Labour Party policy. Simon is an excellent speaker with a comprehensive command of AI ...
The proposed Waimate garbage incinerator is dead: The company behind a highly-controversial proposal to build a waste-to-energy plant in the Waimate District no longer has the land. [...] However, SIRRL director Paul Taylor said the sales and purchase agreement to purchase land from Murphy Farms, near Glenavy, lapsed at ...
The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been a vital tool in combatting international corruption. It forbids US companies and citizens from bribing foreign public officials anywhere in the world. And its actually enforced: some of the world's biggest companies - Siemens, Hewlett Packard, and Bristol Myers Squibb - have ...
December 2024 photo - with UK Tory Boris Johnson (Source: Facebook)Those PollsFor hours, political poll results have resounded across political hallways and commentary.According to the 1News Verizon poll, 50% of the country believe we are heading in the “wrong direction”, while 39% believe we are “on the right track”.The left ...
A Tai Rāwhiti mill that ran for 30 years before it was shut down in late 2023 is set to re-open in the coming months, which will eventually see nearly 300 new jobs in the region. A new report from Massey University shows that pensioners are struggling with rising costs. ...
As support continues to fall, Luxon also now faces his biggest internal ructions within the coalition since the election, with David Seymour reacting badly to being criticised by the PM. File photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate ...
Not since 1988 when Richard Prebble openly criticised David Lange have we seen such a challenge to a Prime Minister as that of David Seymour to Christopher Luxon last night. Prebble suggested Lange had mental health issues during a TV interview and was almost immediately fired. Seymour hasn’t gone quite ...
Three weeks in, and the 24/7 news cycle is not helping anyone feel calm and informed about the second Trump presidency. One day, the US is threatening 25% trade tariffs on its friends and neighbours. The reasons offered by the White House are absurd, such as stopping fentanyl coming in ...
This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Wherever you look, you'll hear headlines claiming we've passed 1.5 degrees of global warming. And while 2024 saw ...
Photo by Heather M. Edwards on UnsplashHere’s the key news, commentary, reports and debate around Aotearoa’s politics and economy in the week to Feb 10 below. That’s ahead of live chats on the Substack App and The Kākā’s front page on Substack at 5pm with: on his column in The ...
Is there anyone in the world the National Party loves more than a campaign donor? Why yes, there is! They will always have the warmest hello and would you like to slip into something more comfortable for that great god of our age, the High Net Worth Individual.The words the ...
Waste and fraud certainly exist in foreign aid programs, but rightwing celebration of USAID’s dismantling shows profound ignorance of the value of soft power (as opposed to hard power) in projecting US influence and interests abroad by non-military/coercive means (think of “hearts and minds,” “hugs, not bullets,” “honey versus vinegar,” ...
Health New Zealand is proposing to cut almost half of its data and digital positions – more than 1000 of them. The PSA has called on the Privacy Commissioner to urgently investigate the cuts due to the potential for serious consequences for patients. NZNO is calling for an urgent increase ...
We may see a few more luxury cars on Queen Street, but a loosening of rules to entice rich foreigners to invest more here is unlikely to “turbocharge our economic growth”. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate ...
Let us not dance daintily around the elephant in the room. Our politicians who serve us in the present are not honest, certainly not as honest as they should be, and while the right are taking out most of the trophies for warping narratives and literally redefining “facts”, the kiwi ...
A few weeks ago I took a look at public transport ridership in 2024. In today’s post I’m going to be looking a bit deeper at bus ridership. Buses make up the vast majority of ridership in Auckland with 70 million boardings last year out of a total of 89.4 ...
Oh, you know I did itIt's over and I feel fineNothing you could say is gonna change my mindWaited and I waited the longest nightNothing like the taste of sweet declineSongwriters: Chris Shiflett / David Eric Grohl / Nate Mendel / Taylor Hawkins.Hindsight is good, eh?The clarity when the pieces ...
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on UnsplashHere’s what we’re watching in the week to February 16 and beyond in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty:Monday, February 10The Kākā’s weekly wrap-up of news about politics and the economy is due at midday, followed by webinar for paying subscribers in Substack’s ...
A listing of 23 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, February 2, 2025 thru Sat, February 8, 2025. This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if ...
Today, I stumbled across a Twitter Meme: the ending of The Lord of the Rings as a Chess scenario: https://x.com/mellon_heads/status/1887983845917564991 It gets across the basic gist. Aragorn and Gandalf offering up ‘material’ at the Morannon allows Frodo and Samwise to catch Sauron unawares – fair enough. But there are a ...
Last week, Kieran McAnulty called out Chris Bishop and Nicola Willis for their claims that Kāinga Ora’s costs were too high.They had claimed Kāinga Ora’s cost were 12% higher than market i.e. private devlopersBut Kāinga Ora’s Chair had already explained why last year:"We're not building to sell, so we'll be ...
Stuff’s Political Editor Luke Malpass - A Fellow at New Zealand IniativeLast week I half-joked that Stuff / The Post’s Luke Malpass1 always sounded like he was auditioning for a job at the New Zealand Initiative.Mountain Tui is a reader-supported publication. For a limited time, subscriptions are 20% off. Thanks ...
At a funeral on Friday, there were A4-sized photos covering every wall of the Dil’s reception lounge. There must have been 200 of them, telling the story in the usual way of the video reel but also, by enlargement, making it more possible to linger and step in.Our friend Nicky ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is methane the ...
The Government’s idea is that the private sector and Community Housing Providers will fund, build and operate new affordable housing to address our housing crisis. Meanwhile, the Government does not know where almost half of the 1,700 children who left emergency housing actually went. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong ...
Oh, home, let me come homeHome is wherever I'm with youOh, home, let me come homeHome is wherever I'm with youSongwriters: Alexander Ebert / Jade Allyson CastrinosMorena,I’m on a tight time frame this morning. In about an hour and a half, I’ll need to pack up and hit the road ...
This is a post about the Mountain Tui substack, and small tweaks - further to the poll and request post the other day. Please don’t read if you aren’t interested in my personal matters. Thank you all.After oohing-and-aahing about how to structure the Substack model since November, including obtaining ...
This transcript of a recent conversation between the Prime Minister and his chief economic adviser has not been verified.We’ve announced we are the ‘Yes Government’. Do you like it?Yes, Prime Minister.Dreamed up by the PR team. It’s about being committed to growth. Not that the PR team know anything about ...
The other day, Australian Senator Nick McKim issued a warning in the Australian Parliement about the US’s descent into fascim.And of course it’s true, but I lament - that was true as soon as Trump won.What we see is now simply the reification of the intention, planning, and forces behind ...
Among the many other problems associated with Musk/DOGE sending a fleet of teenage and twenty-something cultists to remove, copy and appropriate federal records like social security, medicaid and other supposedly protected data is the fact that the youngsters doing the data-removal, copying and security protocol and filter code over-writing have ...
Jokerman dance to the nightingale tuneBird fly high by the light of the moonOh, oh, oh, JokermanSong by Bob Dylan.Morena folks, I hope this fine morning of the 7th of February finds you well. We're still close to Paihia, just a short drive out of town. Below is the view ...
It’s been an eventful week as always, so here’s a few things that we have found interesting. We also hope everyone had a happy and relaxing Waitangi Day! This week in Greater Auckland We’re still running on summer time, but provided two chewy posts: On Tuesday, a guest ...
Queuing on Queen St: the Government is set to announce another apparently splashy growth policy on Sunday of offering residence visas to wealthy migrants. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories short, the top six things in our political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Friday, February 7:PM Christopher ...
The fact that Waitangi ended up being such a low-key affair may mark it out as one of the most significant Waitangi Days in recent years. A group of women draped in “Toitu Te Tiriti” banners who turned their backs on the politicians’ powhiri was about as rough as it ...
Hi,This week’s Flightless Bird episode was about “fake seizure guy” — a Melbourne man who fakes seizures in order to get members of the public to sit on him.The audio documentary (which I have included in this newsletter in case you don’t listen to Flightless Bird) built on reporting first ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Karin Kirk The 119th Congress comes with a price tag. The oil and gas industry gave about $24 million in campaign contributions to the members of the U.S. House and Senate expected to be sworn in January 3, 2025, according to a ...
Early morning, the shadows still long, but you can already feel the warmth building. Our motel was across the road from the historic homestead where Henry Williams' family lived. The evening before, we wandered around the gardens, reading the plaques and enjoying the close proximity to the history of the ...
Thanks folks for your feedback, votes and comments this week. I’ll be making the changes soon. Appreciate all your emails, comments and subscriptions too. I know your time is valuable - muchas gracias.A lot is happening both here and around the world - so I want to provide a snippets ...
Data released today by Statistics NZ shows that unemployment rose to 5.1%, with 33,000 more people out of work than last year said NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi Economist Craig Renney. “The latest data shows that employment fell in Aotearoa at its fastest rate since the GFC. Unemployment rose in 8 ...
The December labour market statistics have been released, showing yet another increase in unemployment. There are now 156,000 unemployed - 34,000 more than when National took office. And having thrown all these people out of work, National is doubling down on cruelty. Because being vicious will somehow magically create the ...
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This week Kiwirail and Auckland Transport were celebrating the completion of the summer rail works that had the network shut or for over a month and the start of electric trains to Pukekohe. First up, here’s parts of the press release about the shutdown works. Passengers boarding trains in Auckland ...
Through its austerity measures, the coalition government has engineered a rise in unemployment in order to reduce inflation while – simultaneously – cracking down harder and harder on the people thrown out of work by its own policies. To that end, Social Development Minister Louise Upston this week added two ...
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Catching you up on the morning’s global news and a quick look at the parallels -GLOBALTariffs are backSharemarkets in the US, UK and Europe have “plunged” in response to Trump’s tariffs. And while Mexico has won a one month reprieve, Canada and China will see their respective 25% and 10% ...
This post by Nicolas Reid was originally published on Linked in. It is republished here with permission. Gondolas are often in the news, with manufacturers of ropeway systems proposing them as a modern option for mass transit systems in New Zealand. However, like every next big thing in transport, it’s hard ...
The Whangarei District Council being forced to fluoridate their local water supply is facing a despotic Soviet-era disgrace. This is not a matter of being pro-fluoride or anti-fluoride. It is a matter of what New Zealanders see and value as democracy in our country. Individual democratically elected Councillors are not ...
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The Salvation Army’s State of the Nation report is a bleak indictment on the failure of Government to take steps to end poverty, with those on benefits, including their children, hit hardest. ...
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New Zealand First has introduced a Member’s Bill aimed at preventing banks from refusing their services to businesses because of the current “Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Framework”. “This Bill ensures fairness and prevents ESG standards from perpetuating woke ideology in the banking sector being driven by unelected, globalist, climate ...
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The Green Party is calling for the Prime Minister to show leadership and be unequivocal about Aotearoa New Zealand’s opposition to a proposal by the US President to remove Palestinians from Gaza. ...
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Despite being confronted every day with people in genuine need being stopped from accessing emergency housing – National still won’t commit to building more public houses. ...
The Green Party says the Government is giving up on growing the country’s public housing stock, despite overwhelming evidence that we need more affordable houses to solve the housing crisis. ...
Before any thoughts of the New Year and what lies ahead could even be contemplated, New Zealand reeled with the tragedy of Senior Sergeant Lyn Fleming losing her life. For over 38 years she had faithfully served as a front-line Police officer. Working alongside her was Senior Sergeant Adam Ramsay ...
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In her first announcement as Economic Growth Minister, Nicola Willis chose to loosen restrictions for digital nomads from other countries, rather than focus on everyday Kiwis. ...
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New Zealand’s strong commitment to the rights of disabled people has continued with the response to an important United Nations report, Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston has announced. Of the 63 concluding observations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), 47 will be progressed ...
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Firstly I want to thank OceanaGold for hosting our event today. Your operation at Waihi is impressive. I want to acknowledge local MP Scott Simpson, local government dignitaries, community stakeholders and all of you who have gathered here today. It’s a privilege to welcome you to the launch of the ...
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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….
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-18012016/#comment-1119733
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….