Im not sure that we as a nation have much choice. If our FM toned down the rhetoric and we got ourselves off the Russian list of unfriendly nations could we really expect to be able to buy cheap Russian oil? We would then face sanctions ourselves.
Can we nationalise our oil and gas reserves? Would this be enough? As things stand at present the only real immediate answer is to understand that the resources in your country are now absolutely a nations primary source for survival. Even the aluminium smelter should now be looked at as a national resource as aluminium prices rise.
The extraordinary thing is that the US still seems to think that money has some sort of intrinsic value divorced from reality. They really seem to think that a nation that is a net energy exporter can be brought to its knees by cutting it off from Swift. It didnt work for Iran. With Russia it will blow up in their face.
Steering a path through this will be very challenging. We have already seen with covid how difficult national unity for the public good is but also that we are one of the better nations at getting this right. It really is time to start looking at what we can do for ourselves and our immediate neighbours in the Pacific. If we can get actual physical help from larger nations we should be prepared to look at it on a case by case basis. We don't indulge in continual hand wringing about US wars of aggression every time we engage with them and should be prepared to do the same with Russia and China in any offers of help in especially energy infrastructure. If we want pumped hydro, we could talk to them about help, or Russia or Iran to upgrade a nationalised Marsden Point? Its definitely time to think outside the box. We will need all the help we can get.
"We don't indulge in continual hand wringing about US wars of aggression every time we engage with them and should be prepared to do the same with Russia and China in any offers of help in especially energy infrastructure."
We engage in voluminous hand wringing about US wars of aggression particularly when we are asked to join them. As we should.
"If we want pumped hydro, we could talk to them about help, or Russia or Iran to upgrade a nationalised Marsden Point?"
For pumped hydro I would turn to Australian and Irish examples that have been operational for a while.
I certainly agree that this is asking the right questions about our own energy resilience at the right time.
Hearing Luxon this morning saying the "ute tax" will go because there are no current electric alternatives in-market is just folly.
Smart companies should use this war to price shifting their whole fleets much faster.
Companies like rentals, construction and taxis who are less oil dependent are going to be sitting pretty while the rest in their combustion engines are screaming.
It’s a brutal mechanism but 91 Petrol is the climate change lever we all need.
It would be a climate change mechanism if we all had the luxury of being able to afford to move over to electric, work local or from home. But most don't so the more likely scenario is an uplift in social unrest. Even Germany has been unable to resist the primacy of fossil fuel energy, the lack of which will drive right wing nationalism. If we don't come up with an immediate answer to rising fuel costs while we work on future energy shifts then it is likely that social cohesion will break down. Russia understands this and it is part of their decision process on why now is a good time. They may not have all the bells and whistles but will have the social cohesion that abundent energy resources bring. How are we going to mitigate this or are the recent scenes in Wellington just a gentle rehersal on the future?
Yes it will be the corporate fleets, taxis, local government, and central government Departments that will be able to put in orders for electric vehicles – which in turn starts a proper secondary market for the majority of New Zealanders. We still haven't seen enough government procurement support for this.
It was in 2019 that nearly 3% of the entire population of New Zealand marched up and down the country seeking much stronger action for climate change.
In May this year the full plan is supposed to come out that shows how we will fulfill that promise.
So May would be a really good time for those who want more to start preparing the kind of creative protest that got the 2021 tractor protest so much airtime.
If we get a petrol spike to $4 the political pressure from consumers to do less will be hard to resist – and that is when the government will need its supporters the most.
Absolute environmental madness for government to invest in whole fleets of electric vehicles, with all the carbon used to create them, when there are hundreds of thousands of good quality, serviceable vehicles, ripe for conversion.
If the money is there for a fleet, it's more than there to get deals on batteries, engines and motors and train the people to do it. If you want trickle down to affect us poor people, get the tech and process sorted and cheap enough for the countries top 10 best selling models by testing on the rich pricks and let us have at it. Got to better than waiting for new electric fleets to age, decay, and be passed on to the little people.
If you want to be all radical and revolutionary, you could keep it all in house and make parts with home grown aluminium from Tiwai, and when were done and gas free, mothball it.
I didn't realise it but apparently NZ was importing approx 15% of fuel from Russia this was almost totally oil for refining – with the refinery scheduled to close in April I would imagine forward contracts for refined fuel would already be in place I believe in my ferreting around that I saw that of our imports of fuel from Russia only about 1% was refined product. I would anticipate that our forward contracts for refined fuel would have barely included any from Russia – NZ will certainly be paying a lot more for it's fuel due to the international market conditions but any NZ ban on Russian product I think would be mainly symbolic. Any thoughts Ad?
I don't know enough about New Zealand fuel importing to comment specifically.
I do see though that we are going through a spike that will last at least as long as the Yom Kippur War, which started off the Muldoon government seeking as much energy independence as possible.
I want to see the petrol price rise debated in Parliament as soon as possible, so that Dr Woods can start revealing more plans than simply her confidence in forward contracts out of Singapore. The Comm Comm already went through the fuel company books two years ago and made fuck-all difference.
Pretty weird to see the future rushing at us when we're clearly not ready.
Government revenue from fuel excise is around 2 billion per year at an appropriate point politically they could announce a halving of the excise to "assist the country in dealing with the disruption caused by worldwide issues" or doubtlessly some better constructed phrase to maximise the political benefit of their actions cost 1 billion per annum.
Why not eliminate all the excise? Leave yourself the option so that you actually have an option.
When National demands all excise is removed …"but roading still has to be paid for and it is important for an element of the user paying to remain. Of course this remains an exercisable option if the international oil market……"
When the trucking lobby demands a subsidy for diesel costs….. " unfortunately in New Zealand the general public has been subsidising the trucking industry already for many years as the heavy transport industry does not and has not paid their fair share of roading costs. We are announcing a commission to investigate the fairest structure of revenue collection for roading costs going forward….."
Perhaps a levy on all new and used imports with solely ICE power and apply that levy to subsidise new and used electric and hybrid vehicle imports.
Perhaps embracing Efeso Collins plan for free public transport in Auckland – reducing the congestion costs to the economy in Auckland and the reduction in costs for the less well off would likely make it a winner from the economic point of view.
The government is hopefully looking at ideas like these as well as better measures thought of by people well paid to develop them.
Ad at sparrow fart: “We’re now in an inflation v morality war”
Money trumps morality. That's capitalism.
Michael Hudson has written a sobering article on the economic consequences of recent events
Empires often follow the course of a Greek tragedy, bringing about precisely the fate that they sought to avoid. That certainly is the case with the American Empire as it dismantles itself in not-so-slow motion.
The basic assumption of economic and diplomatic forecasting is that every country will act in its own self-interest. Such reasoning is of no help in today’s world. Observers across the political spectrum are using phrases like “shooting themselves in their own foot” to describe U.S. diplomatic confrontation with Russia and allies alike.
There will be no transition, to many people are addicted to this life style.
I'm with those who say there will be a complete breakdown of the current system by 2030. We are fast running out of the ability to maintain this stupidity.
Well unsustainable policy from the government ie policy for biofuels was one of the main contributing factor in the food riots and arab spring.Here it was the underlying forcing beneath speculative bubbles and bursts.
“The Sustainable Biofuels Mandate will prevent around one million tonnes of emissions from cars, trucks, trains and ships over the next three years and up to 10 million tonnes by 2035 to help us meet our climate commitments.
Three weeks in and we're so short of nurses that we are now talking about having covid positive nurses back on wards, on the same day we're told that rest during infection is the best way to avoid long covid… doesnt make much sense does it, basically asking nurses to take an even bigger risk in sacrificing their long term health.
Perhaps we should be asking those unvaxxed nurses if they'd like to come back to work please…
Healthcare Workers Are 7 Times More Likely To Develop Severe COVID-19
Why Healthcare Workers Are at Higher Risk
It likely comes down to exposure, Richard Watkins, MD, an infectious disease physician and and associate professor of internal medicine at the Northeast Ohio Medical University, tells Verywell. Healthcare workers have “higher levels of viral exposure” and are “in close contact with infected patients,” he points out.
It certainly poses some questions about 'sense.' Just like making sense of unvaxxed nurses.
They'd be administering medication to patients and carrying out procedures with the air of, "Trust me, I know what I'm doing. Trust me, I know exactly what's in this, how it was arrived at, all about the company that made it, and how your body is going to respond to it."
Much like you when you used your computer just now. Vast knowledge of computer science, physics, math, and micro-engineering. Or would you even turn it on – dilemma!
That post was unclear at best. I did ponder, after my ten minutes was up, if I'd interpreted it wrong.
I agree. Unvaxed nurses have no place in hospitals or any public facing role. But we all know the cliche by now, unprecedented times, aye.
We don't see it, but if you talk to public facing medical workers, it's really hard and has been for some time. Not just the increased work and work requirements, but the increase in crazy they're having to deal with. Putting unvaxed colleagues in that environment adds insult to injury.
If by crazy, you mean: othering, simplifying complex issues with pejoratives, deliberate misrepresenting of someone’s position then hell yes. Off the scale.
So rather than contribute to the discussion we have this non sequitur.
Why do you think it would be a good policy to employ unvaccinated nurses in front facing roles?
I agree. Unvaxed nurses have no place in hospitals or any public facing role. But we all know the cliche by now, unprecedented times, aye.
We don't see it, but if you talk to public facing medical workers, it's really hard and has been for some time. Not just the increased work and work requirements, but the increase in crazy they're having to deal with. Putting unvaxed colleagues in that environment adds insult to injury.
How are unvaccinated nurses supposed to function effectively and with the respect of their colleagues when they are not taking basic steps to protect themselves and others?
Crazy is all the ideas around for not having the vaccinations that are based on 'woo' and not medical reasons. I have absolutely no problem with people not having the vaccination if it is medically advised not to. Asking us to respect a decision based on
'doan wanna'
is a bit much.
Then there are the multitude of CTs that are advanced to 'rationalise/justify' a decision. Why do you defend these and tried to shift the opprobrium onto those who call them out? ie call them out by commonplace references, shorthand to the type of thinking behind them.
I am sure that if I had made up my mind not to have the vax for medical purposes or because I was troubled by the mRNA aspect there is no way in the world I would be allying myself with people whose reasons are because of 5G trackers, magnets, Aids or Covid giving especially if my concerns were related to the mRNA aspect. We have alternatives to this now.
You obviously did not read my reply to your previous posts about people being nasty, according to you. Plus another from me and one from Incognito
Until the vaccines were available, medical staff around the globe developed protocols to minimise infection.
We need to balance the success of such protocols against the need for medical personnel.
(Don't have either of those factors quantified, but I think that's the question that should be asked, and re-asked, as demand grows and available medical resources/personnel dwindle).
It's actually a pretty good analogy – any numpty can turn on a computer and work a desktop with a given margin for error, just like any numpty can change sheets or bandage a wound with a given margin for error.
But managing an ICU bed? Knowing when to call a doctor before all the alarms start going off? Administering drugs properly, recognising errors or drug interactions that dr and pharmacy might have missed? With someone who feels they can pick and choose which protocols they should follow because their own research overrules the specialist guidelines?
Yeah, that's like a computer progammer who thinks a b-tree is the only way to store data or insists on using deprecated library modules. Sooner or later it will end in tears.
i commented here a while ago that they should never have terminated nurses employment for not being vaxxed. I made some suggestions about how these nurses might be redeployed to non contact roles, freeing up other nurses to be on the front line.
I think the situation is so desperate for nurses now, the unvaxxed should be re-instated and have daily rapid anti gen testing before and even during shifts. Many of these nurses will be youngish and fit and probably won't get omicron badly, then will recover. Given nurses with covid are needed to continue to keep the hospitals functioning, what difference is it going to make having an unvaxxed nurse working?
I think the situation is so desperate for nurses now, the unvaxxed should be re-instated and have daily rapid anti gen testing before and even during shifts
RAT inaccuracy during the early days of infection heightens the risk of having having infectious staff working.
Hosted by the University of Auckland, it formed to coordinate experts with a grasp of the science of complexity, to provide insights into how it elucidates the interactions between ourselves and our world.
Here's an example of how it demonstrates relevance:
"All of the people who are part of [New Zealand's misinformation community] are now proposing and promoting a very pro-Kremlin content frame. The second-greatest signature when the protest was on – which is quite extraordinary really, when you think about it – apart from what was happening in front of the Beehive, was Ukraine."
Sanjana Hattotuwa, who monitors more than 100 Telegram channels and dozens of Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter accounts run by New Zealand's motley anti-vax movement on a daily basis for Te Pūnaha Matatini, told Newsroom the rapid emergence of Ukraine as a major narrative is like nothing he's seen before.
"RT News has distribution channels on Telegram, which are in the hundreds of thousands, and it has a global ecology that amplifies it to hundreds of thousands more," Hattotuwa said.
These intertwined disinformation and misinformation networks have also formed something of an ouroboros, with the Russian government now amplifying conspiracy theories from the QAnon and anti-vax fringe on its own official channels.
For example, a conspiracy theory which falsely posits Russia invaded Ukraine to take out US-run bioweapons labs developing the next pandemic pathogen is being embraced by Russia. On Monday, Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted that Russian forces had found evidence of a "military-biological programme" financed by the United States Department of Defense.
Ecology is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystems, and biosphere level.
The word "ecology" ("Ökologie") was coined in 1866 by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel, and it became a rigorous science in the late 19th century.
So whereas economics provides a world-view based on money, ecology gives us a world-view based on how nature works. That's why politics and governance is based on economics. The political left & right have always agreed that money is more important than nature – which is why Green politics had to be neither left nor right.
Memes are catchy, and informational memes aren't necessarily more contagious than disinformational memes. Social media is an encompassing arena containing a multitude of component social ecosystems (networks) made vibrant via the interflow of infectious memes. As self-organising systems, these will learn to moderate the toxic effects of disinfo to ensure collective survival and health. Or they won't, and will either die or get warped by an uncontrolled infection.
So you can see how social media challenges us to transcend the habitual prioritisation of economics in our political focus, lest we get taken out by toxic invader memes. Just another form of pollution to worry about…
Of course they are. They've got their heads so far up their own asses their only means of taking in information is if it is diametrically opposed to common narrative.
It's all about leadership.
We have been lucky to have a government we can trust during the pandemic. In my opinion, more than anything else majority trust in the leadership of New Zealand's Left of Centre government has helped keep this country's death rate from covid-19 relatively low.
Those MIGs from Poland (all of Poland's MIGs) are going to get delivered to Ukraine. A couple of dozen or more. They gave them to US so US can deliver them thereby fudging the rules around NATO involvement?
I'm not sure Putin's going to see Poland as an innocent party here. But really, screw that guy.
The extended 60-kilometre parade of Russian armoured vehicles, tanks and towed artillery headed from the north on a path towards Kyiv has both alarmed and befuddled watchers of this expanding war. It's not just its sheer size. It's also because that for days, it has not appreciably been moving.
US officials attribute the apparent stall in part to logistical failures on the Russian side, including as a result of food and fuel shortages, that have slowed Moscow's advance through various parts of the country.
“Our assessment is that it's largely meant for resupply – but I can't rule out that there aren't combat vehicles,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Monday. “We can't even say that it's all one convoy and not several.”
Still, the convoy's progress – or lack thereof – continues to capture popular fascination, thanks to a steady stream of satellite images and video recorded and disseminated by Maxar Technologies, a space technology and intelligence company.
The images have put the business of tracking Russian supply lines, normally the occupation of secretive government agencies, into the public sphere, making them staples of TV news broadcasts and inspiring armchair generals around the world to offer their advice on how to attack the column.
Stuck or stopped? And if stopped why stopped? First, a stopped convoy of this size shows the absolute dominance in the air and on the land of Russian forces. Second, a stopped convoy of this size demonstrates a possible destructive scenario while allowing those that want to leave to do so. The more people that leave the city, the more likely either surrender without fighting or at least fighting that lessens civilian casualties.
Transcript of that part of the interview where the Labour MP apparently says that the definition of ‘woman’ changes depending on which legislation you are referring to at the time 🤡
‘Dysphoric’ is a four-part documentary series on the rise of Gender Identity Ideology, its effects on women and girls – especially in developing countries. Synopsis: In this dystopian world where misogyny is rampant, and womanhood is commodified, being female comes at a cost. Corporates capitalise on women's bodies blurring the lines of biological sex, and profiting from the emperically untested pseudo-science of queer theory. This gaslighting is aided by the complicity of media, academia, legal and the political world. It is no surprise that young girls are fleeing womanhood like a house on fire. The past decade has seen a steep rise in the number of young girls seeking to transition by undergoing life threatening, irreversible procedures. ‘Dysphoric’ is a four-part documentary series on the rise of Gender Identity Ideology, its effects on women and girls – especially in developing countries. The film explores gender transition, the permanent medical side-effects of hormones and surgeries, the propaganda by 'woke' corporations that glorifies thousands of stereotypical gender presentations coalesced as fashion, a surge in pronoun policing; language hijacking that calls women ‘menstruators’, and the many hurdles women face while trying to question this modern-day misogyny.
The film amplifies the voices of detransitioners, clinicians, psychiatrists, sociologists, feminists, academics and concerned citizens.
‘Dysphoric’ was made over the course of a year during COVID lockdown, amid cancellations.
Satire in regards to this issue had a double radical masectomy, a hysterectomy, a vagina ectomy and now is waiting for an leg meat roll to be sewn onto their pubic bone so as no longer be the thing that men don't want to define, but believe any man can be.
I can't read that, it's locked, so I don't know the details of his argument. But why is it astonishing? Someone born female no longer wishes to be identified as such but hasn't had surgery. Continuing to call that person a woman is wrong, imo.
It's an issue because as a result of the ideology, women are now being called cervix havers, even when we don't want to be and when it harms us (think public health campaigns like cervical screening removing the word 'woman' from their material. Not all women know what a cervix is, or English is their second language, so this creates barriers for women who need clear communication around their bodies. It's fucked up to have to be even explaining this).
Trans women and trans men's needs can be met in various ways without dehumanising women (females). Only female bodied people have a cervix, the word we generally use to refer to those people is women. Not wanting to be called a woman is fine, wanting to change the language and concepts of a whole class of people so you can cope or feel included isn't when that class of people object on the basis of their own oppression and wellbeing.
The only way Starmer is right is if the word woman has no meaning. Hence 🤡 MP above.
yep and when that person then dies of cervical cancer because they pretended to be a man than that is just oops. to bad?
You can identify as humpty dumpty, but that does not make you a twin egg in striped trousers.
And the male who had his penis/scrotum inverted into something resembling a 'vulva' and who needs to daily dilate his 'vagina' hole in order to keep depth and keep the hole open – after all their male body wants to shut and heal that hole- does not have a cervix. At the end of the ‘vagina’ hole he has some penile left over tissue or some intestinal tissue. Non of that is a cervix, as that part of the female body has a very clear reason for being. Namely keeping the uterus sterile and being able to open up to let a baby be born.
That man would never die of cervical cancer, but he would still die of penile cancer if he were unlucky enough to get it.
But yes, it is so unkind to pretend that a women on T does not have a cervix, and if it kills them.
edit: https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/ian-duncan-deputy-speaker-house-lords-interview-brother-died-ovarian-cancer-1125221
this is actually a rather sad article, but his brother died not because the language is not correct, but because his brother deluded themselves into thinking that they changed ‘sex’ which sadly they did not. They changed the outside of their bodies, and that was that. A lot of surgery and a lot of T but still a women, and killed by a disease that only women have.
So to some extend you could say that kindness kills transpeople.
and it's worth pointing out the long and horrendous history women have of medical mistreatment via sexism and misogyny, we have bloody good reasons for not giving up our hard won rights or our right to name ourselves in the way that is necessary for us.
"Continuing to call that person a woman is wrong, imo."
Continuing to call that person a 'woman' is factually correct. If we wish to respect that persons wishes by calling them a 'woman' on a personal level, we can do so if we wish. But changing the meaning of a word that defines the reality for the vast majority of adult female humans actually demeans their identity.
I think the solution for public health campaigns is for trans people to politically organise and come up with an overarching term that will include TM, NB females, and any of the other identities, so then we can say "women and [new term] people need to get a cervical smear every three years" or whatever.
(There’s an unclarity here because if we say ‘trans people’ then you get a subset of trans women wanting cervical smears so they feel like a woman despite them not having a cervix (the affirmation need or demand). In some cases there is an medical access issue to sort out, and there’s also a colonisation issue to resolve societally, where some trans women’s wants are unreasonable eg having fake pregnancies and wanting to be part of ante-natal women’s groups)
The problem remains of how to engage with a class of people (trans men) around their female bodies when they have dysphoria to an extent that they cannot tolerate reference to female bodies. This is a separate issue that needs addressing, and shouldn't be used to remove women's language and concepts.
works real well, is explicit in its meaning and need not to be created.
We have accurate language to name things. We just have a group that wants to remove any meaning of he word women and associated functions with that, i.e. the word Mother.
This is a removal of rights from women, to all of their rights they won over the last centuries, down to he 'are they actual humans'.
women, trans men, non-binary, genderfluid, third gender, etc
I think three categories is too many for good public health messaging. It's also clunky. Given this is primarily and identity issue, coining a new term that makes it easy to include people with a gender identity makes sense to me, and keeps things simple.
Transmen and female non binary are sub categories of women.
Transwomen and male non binary are sub categories of men.
Everything else is porkies, and so far these porkies are killing trans/non binary people by witholding hte truth from them. Namely that they can not, ever – with todays medical advances – change their sex. That means transmen can get pregnant, can die of cervical, ovarian, uterine cancers, and transwomen can die of penile, testicular and prostate cancer. Cause in the end biology don't have any fucks to give about our need to be kind to the point of killing people thanks to lies.
It also means that children who grow up trans( puperty blockers, wrong sex hormones, castration, neo vag and leg/arm roll penis surgeries) have all the issues their sexed bodies have, minus the reproduction facilities, issues with arousal/orgasms etc. But it would not be kind to talk honestly about these issues.
As confronting as some might find what you state – I agree with it all.
To allow the words relating to biological sex to be appropriated so as to be meaningless is more than problematic, it is deliberate obfuscation and gaslighting.
Seemingly, 'small' concessions will often have large repercussions. This adoption of alternative language definitions has already shown itself to be one of those instances.
Sorry my first sentence should have read "Continuing to call that person a 'woman' is factually incorrect."
I am more than happy to call a man who identifies as a woman 'she' at a personal and voluntary level. But official recognition of that term is not only a delusion of biological reality, it is to demean biological women.
As you have pointed out, the problem is the ideological results that matter. The reaction to simple statements of fact by JKR is a case in point.
If I wanted to be identified as an idiot, and if I asked you to call me an idiot, then you would be welcome to. But equally, not being an idiot, calling me one would still be factually incorrect.
i commented here a while ago that they should never have terminated nurses employment for not being vaxxed. I made some suggestions about how these nurses might be redeployed to non contact roles, freeing up other nurses to be on the front line.
I think the situation is so desperate for nurses now, the unvaxxed should be re-instated and have daily rapid anti gen testing before and even during shifts. Many of these nurses will be youngish and fit and probably won't get omicron badly, then will recover. Given nurses with covid are needed to continue to keep the hospitals functioning, what difference is it going to make having an unvaxxed nurse working?
Anker, I have recently come out of hospital after elected surgery. I would have been horrified to learn there were unvaccinated nurses in the building. At a time when the country is still to reach its Omicron peak, it is not the time to ease up on current policies. There are other ways that hospitals can reduce the effect of nursing shortages. The obvious one which I expect most are adopting is to cease all elective and other non urgent medical surgeries. My surgery was delayed 15 months due to Covid but I fully accepted there was no alternative.
Once we are tracking back downward which is hopefully only some 2 or 3 weeks away, then it could be appropriate to reconsider employing unvaccinated people but not now.
I have relatives in the Defence Force that were working in the MIQ facilities.
The number of nurses at one such facility was 26, for an MIQ capacity of 50.
They spent all day there, occasionally performing a COVID test. Times that waste of medical resources by the 80 MIQ facilities and you should then reasonably be asking – Could this be handled more efficiently?
This government could have – and still could – do better at allocating medical resources.
Oh yes, the government was caught with its pants down. But of course the current situation has been many years in the making and, as others have pointed out, you can't train nurses overnight.
I think it can be said of most governments whatever their stripes… there is nothing like a full scale emergency to expose the inherent weakness of some government policies.
Firstly Anne, I am very glad you got your surgery and I hope it has gone well.
I have proposed that unvaxxed nurses could be re-deployed to non contact roles and that would involve working from home on secure tele health platforms.
There may come a time when the choice is having covid and being treated with an unvaxxed nurse who has had a RATs test (20% chance of false negatives). Or not getting treatment. Of course if you are in hospital with Covid, then you already have it.
I am very puzzled as to whether people think that a vaxxed nurse who has tested positive but is symptomless or has very mild symptoms should be allowed to work versus an unvaxxed nurse with a RAT test who has tested negative.
I have proposed that unvaxxed nurses could be re-deployed to non contact roles and that would involve working from home on secure tele health platforms.
It would depend entirely on the reason why they are unvaxxed. If its because they are immunocompromised in some way then your idea is an excellent one. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if its happening in some locations already.
But if they are unvaxxed because they have disappeared down rabbit holes then it is a different story. By the very nature of their poor choice I would not want to see any nurse or doctor who has rejected Covid vaccinations on spurious or conspiratorial grounds being associated with a medical practice of any kind.
I know there are others with a different view, but I don’t believe there is any room for compromise on the matter of Covid vaccinations.
"Accurate, targeted counter-messaging from the global health community is important but insufficient, as is public pressure on social-media companies. The United Nations and the highest levels of governments must take direct, even confrontational, approaches with Russia, and move to dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States.
Efforts must expand into the realm of cyber security, law enforcement, public education and international relations. A high-level inter-agency task force reporting to the UN secretary-general could assess the full impact of anti-vaccine aggression, and propose tough, balanced measures. The task force should include experts who have tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear armament, because anti-science is now approaching similar levels of peril. It is becoming increasingly clear that advancing immunization requires a counteroffensive."
Some really awesome high-calibre Māori reached out to me over summer.
– Chris Luxon
Just shooting off at the mouth like he did in the boardroom of Air NZ. Sad thing is this kind of phrasing will go down well with the political right because to them it shows his high aspiration for all Maori to be “high calibre”. This kind of unthinking corp-speak highlights Luxon’s inexperience.
Some comments:
"What the f**k is 'high calibre' Maori? Are you saying the rest are low calibre?" one person asked.
"Just another awkward or demeaning comment from Luxon. WTF are 'high-calibre Māori'? I suspect they are Māori people who have tertiary educations and own multiple houses," another said.
"What constitutes a high calibre Māori, Mr luxon we need the criteria now," someone else said.
Should have said people, and further down the article he tries to explain that's what he meant.
If that's what he meant then why not just say that?
It was a rookie error and a telling slip. Thankfully highlighted by social media and now media.
Probably what he actually meant was wealthy, successful National-voting Maori because to Chris, wealth, success and voting National go hand in hand. While poor, unsuccessful people vote Labour.
But they must have been very Big Guns being such High Calibre.
Mind you what more could one expect coming from an ex CEO of Air NZ where the whole culture and emphasis of the organisation (probably as a result of its ex CEO) is focused on bowing and scraping its "elite" customers.
Sorry Mutton but I can't agree. As a non-journalist, my first question to someone who said "high-calibre people" would be to ask him to describe what low-calibre people are like. Is he talking about early proto-hominids and have we just time-travelled into a 19th Century anthropology lecture?
But calibre, of course, is just one measure in the analogy. I, for example, would be more of a medium calibre low velocity pakeha with a progressive left-hand twist in my lands and grooves.. .
If you replace 'maori' with women, pacifica, people etc. would it cause a similar amount of angst ?
It would be exactly the same for me. Firstly, "awesome, high-calibre" is dickhead corporate language that means fuck all, and represents a clunky, transparent attempt to connect with 'average' people, who are incapable of thinking precisely and therefore beneath one; if he actually thinks it does mean something (which is not to be ruled out), then it's even worse, because it shows that he has trouble distinguishing between the content of his thoughts and the meaning of the words he is uttering. Secondly, regardless of the minority group he is referring to, it implicitly divides that minority group up into the worthy and the unworthy, and exudes the arrogant assumption that he is a fitting arbiter of which is which; it throws up the question as to whether he would even have bothered listening to their ideas if they hadn't met his worthiness criteria. That is the sort of call one can make on the fly if one is just a person on the street; less so if one is aspiring to govern a nation for all of its diverse people.
If he were talking about members of what he considered to be the dominant group in society, the connotations would be slightly different, but there's no real need to go into that here.
You have to actually read the whole article Mutton.
"On an annual basis, national price increases had slowed to 22.9 per cent in February, down from 26.8 per cent the month before."
So, contrary to the misleading framing of the statistics, house prices have gone up an incredible 22.9% from prices that were already mindlessly high a year ago.
There is a constant theme in the media to pretend that house prices are falling when the opposite is true which I don't understand-any theories out there?
What's starting to shock me is how this governments rhetoric has changed.
When asked about a problem this government used to say it would be looking into it and commited to fixing /changing the problem coming off as flexible and reactive if there was a crisis they would admit there was a crisis
Nowadays, the government gets defensive, point blank refuses to answer questions and gets into debates about the wording or definition of the problem and refuses to accept things are a problem. Instead of comiting to change or looking into something it usually lists why they can't do anything on x y z.
This is becoming an issue. They are becoming the can't, shan't , won't party.
Take for instance the cost of living crisis it's clear we're in one and have been in one for some time instead of saying yes it's a crisis because of global issues and we're going to try to address some of these in the budget to soften the blow the pm rejects the word crisis.
Or tax brackets. Tax brackets haven't been adjusted for 12 years, NZs tax system is broken and unfair and focuses far too much on sucking money out of the bottom, tax bracket creep is hurting people many min wage workers are wrongly about to be put in higher tax brackets, a reactive, flexible, energetic government would commit to adjusting tax brackets, it would be popular, instead the government rules out doing so with no argument. Too hard. Meanwhile the opposition commits to do doing so, keys govt would have blunted this by comiting to adjusting them Labour just scoffs. This is going to hurt them.
The government is coming off as tired and stuck in their ways and with some severely hard times coming up this winter problems on tax, housing,rents, fuel,food are falling on death ears it doesn't seem to care about a third term.
They could at the very least adjust tax brackets and drop gst to pre key levels of about 10% to line it up with Australias gst and to offset the 5% inflation.
I fear the govt is walking into its own winter if discontent. I'm not sure if it's arrogance or being captured by their ministries or just plane out of touch but there refusal to even admit problems or commit to simple changes is a big problem and they seem more like a fourth term govt than a govt in it's fifth year.
They desperately need a cabinet shake up and to start reading the room and getting back to a can do govt before the country sees them as out of touch and a govt of can't , shan't won't
I was thinking the same thing. The emerging denial is very john key – like. Jk always denied a housing crisis, inequality crisis and child poverty etc… Labour now starting to sound the same.
The authorities of the Republic of Poland, after consultations between the President and the Government, are ready to deploy – immediately and free of charge – all their MIG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base and place them at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America.
At the same time, Poland requests the United States to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions of purchase of the planes.
The Polish Government also requests other NATO Allies – owners of MIG-29 jets – to act in the same vein.
They gotta have plausible deniability. Use an anonymous middleman is the usual way to finesse this situation. Poland gives planes to X while receiving replacements from Y (USA or agent). X gets planes to Ukraine AF.
Money talks so offer the deal to sympathetic govts for an enable fee. All you need is a team of trained-up pilots. If they are two-seaters, an experienced co-pilot could advise a trainee who is experienced with different planes.
. If they are two-seaters, an experienced co-pilot could advise a trainee who is experienced with different planes.
And spend a couple of hundred hours obtaining a type rating in an aircraft travelling at more than twice the speed of sound with an unrefuelled range of 3,000km or so. Nah.
Young guns rise to such challenges! Anyone serious about helping Ukraine will have to use lateral thinking to finesse the mental blocks erected by old guys controlling the various hierarchies. History shows us this is how such challenges usually get dealt with. Forget business as usual and the bureaucratic slowdowns it normally imposes…
Poland has good quality Mig 29's Ukraine has more than enough people experienced in flying those planes but they would have none experienced in flying US manufactured planes like the F16
So, JKR rightfully uses her institutionally and societally gifted power to talk the feminism she wants. I on the other hand am dropping IWD tweets in OM because I know that if I put up any of this as a post I will suffer social sanctions that unlike JKR I cannot afford, and today I don't have the spoons for it.
That's fucked up. And this is why feminists call JKR a queen.
It's hard enough writing as feminist in this very blokey space, as an author and/or as a commenter, for a range of reasons to do with society and the culture of TS in particular. No Debate and the sex/gender war make it actually risky. Many women cannot even express an opinion using their real life names because of fear of real life sanctions.
We're losing ground. Women, and society. Half of the left doesn't know what we're talking about and the other half thing we're bigots for demanding that being female is an actual thing and that it matters. It's imperative we find ways to name what is happening.
Here's Suzanne Moore,
As a feminist, though, I would indeed like the world to be a better place for women – and by the world, I don’t mean north London or a campus in California; I mean Herat, Tigray, Guatemala. For all the arguments about equality for women amount to nothing if we lose an international perspective. Feminism is global, or it is simply an exercise in consumer power dressed up as politics. That is exactly what happened to Western feminism in the 1990s, when everything from brunching to boob jobs was “empowering”.
If International Women’s Day means anything, it means facing up to what is happening to women everywhere. We have gone backwards, not forwards. The pandemic is part of this, but not the only factor.
…
In short, without a continual fight, no headway is made. The biggest surprise to me, though, has been that the backlash against feminism has come not from the Right, but from the Left. The whole inflated debate around trans issues is so often not about the small number of people who are gender dysphoric, and need care and dignity; it is about the rights of women to keep what we already have. It has produced an avalanche of repulsive misogyny.
The new religion of gender identity (is it a soul, an essence, a made-up concept?) has meant a fundamental denial of women’s experience: menstruation, birth, breastfeeding, menopause. These are not feelings in ladies’ heads, but things that happen to real bodies. As does rape, objectification, FGM, as well as all the societal expectations women deal with on a daily basis.
Which is the point of all that exercise. Achieve 'equality' by dismantling it, calling for 'equity' and thus a fonterra board with 6 male and 6 transwomen or male non binaries or male gender fluids or any made up woo woo is suddenly not a 100% male board.
Have a womans team comprised of only transwomen. ! Equity!
Have transwomen dilute the women pool on women lists, jobs awards etc. And in the end, have these same trans identified males who appropriate womanhood make rules under which things who can no longer be named have to live.
I don't think many of the things who can no longer be named have thoughts about the practical implications, or for those in academia with government jobs maybe they believe that they will not be affected by the shit storm that is about to rain down on us.
The Ferengi Nation comes to mind. Womb rental and all.
Weka, I so endorse all you are saying………..I have been surprized how gender ideology has captured so many, especially the media, the public service, a raft of other organisations and The Labour and Green Parties.
Debate is shut down, people are called bigots and transphobes, lesbian woman tresspassed from Pride last year and had the police called to enforce the tresspass.
I spoke out recently on a group I am a member of FB page and had my post cancelled. I was drawing attention to the 25,000 detransitioners on Reddit. I know many in the group agree with me, but were too scared to speak up. One had previously spoken up and the gender ideologues rang their employee and they nearly lost their job……………..
We are close to a time where we will no longer be able to speak up without risking hate speech laws being used against us. This is the work of the left (whom I have always been aligned with)
An ideology empowered by leftists driven by pc is how I'd frame it (from my observer position). Viewing the situation with the lens of civil rights, the solution seems achievable via solidarity based on accurate identification of minority rights. Then traditional organising, using leverage & framing in a lobby group. Then, if necessary a class action.
Sharing aspirations is usually how such things originate – often combined with a common grievance based on perception of injustice. Then defining the common interest shared, then using that definition to construct a political action group. Keep membership rules simple, making it easy to join. Voluntary leadership by activists originates – then things get tricky (elections may be necessary at a critical threshold).
So best to focus on getting such a movement up & running. Success will be proportion to numbers joining in the origin phase. Recruitment based on networking, likemindedness. The pool is adult women, the pitch is non-partisan, so the only design challenge is framing. That must address the threat to civil rights. The learning curve will probably lie around what social factors insulate some women from seeing the problem. Incentives to shift their view have to be used in the framing.
Being uninvolved I offer this summary of technique due to a personal history of similar experiential situations & learning curves. Plus altruism.
Viewing the situation with the lens of civil rights, the solution seems achievable via solidarity based on accurate identification of minority rights.
I have a horrible feeling you are meaning natal women.
The minority is the transwomen community.
Many women would happily help them find a place, develop policies where they are no discriminated against that does not involve natal women having their rights and born identity sidelined.
Agree that was why I was curious as to who the people with minority rights were that Dennis mentioned. It surely could not be women as figures show that depending on when the count is taken we make up usually slightly more or very slightly less than 50% and in some age groups are the majority.
Agree that transwomen are transwomen, and are also men and transmen are transmen and are also women.
There is a lot of wool over eyes pulling and sleight of hand that brings to mind sayings of my youth 'I'm not as green as I am cabbage-looking, meaning, “I may look new to this, but I'm not.” and 'I did not come down in the last shower' used to indicate that someone is not foolish or gullible
When it is looked at simplyI wonder why more men are not coming out against this word twisting.
The concept that transwomenhood is a male rights agenda seems to explain this.
Scientists in the Netherlands therefore analyzed data on 31,118 patients who received red blood cell transfusions from 2005 to 2015. Most of the donors (88 percent) were male; 6 percent were women who had been pregnant at least once (regardless of outcome), and 6 percent were women who had not been, according to the national blood supply agency, Sanquin. The sex imbalance is because men are allowed to donate blood more often than women and because donations from women with an unknown pregnancy history were excluded from the analysis.
Recipients, ages 42 to 77, were followed for a median of 245 days. Within that time, 3,969, or 13 percent of recipients, died, Sanquin’s Rutger Middelburg and colleagues reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The risk of dying was about the same after getting blood from a man or a never-pregnant women, regardless of the recipient’s sex. But every unit of blood that a man got from a woman who had been pregnant raised his chance of dying 13 percent.
Far be it for a male to presume to answer that. All I can offer is suggestions! On that limited basis, my answer would hew to the simple formula of women who care enough to work together to solve the problem.
That said, I know it gets complicated. The formula of ready, willing and able is a good one to apply if those complaining about the situation default into assuming that they ought to solve it. Not all such people are willing. Some will be unable (due to personal circumstances such as prior commitments or disabilities). Some may want to help but are currently unready to do so.
So what tends to happen is a zeitgeist effect – all those who synch into the same collective space/time/attitude are the right ones!
Shifting from the generic to the particular, I wonder if it is appropriate to frame it as feminism with a number attached – to invoke the power of tradition. The new number defines progress as the agenda. So it becomes automatically progressive! This framing device works on a mutual recognition basis. Only viable if feminism as ideology is seen as non-toxic in essence by the majority of women, I suspect, and I can't comment on that issue…
thanks for clarifying, I wasn't quite sure what you meant.
There's an awesome grassroots feminist movement in the UK that we've not seen the like of in many a decade. Very heartening. It's arisen because of the impact on women's rights from gender ideology movements, and it's making good progress both in organising and in political gains. Some women have paid a hefty price with jobs, careers, abuse, and police attention.
In NZ there is that potential, but I don't know what the deal is with activism in NZ now. We all seem to be in a holding pattern of some sort (not just women).
Re naming, feminism is a good term on its own. Feminism has always had disagreement and different branches. For clarity currently we can talk about radical feminism, liberal feminism, 2nd and 3rd wave, gender critical feminism and so on.
If this wave is too amorphous to define as yet, then it will eventually crest. That means the time is ripe for those who seek to ride it. Doing so would be the best way to give it collective identity & form…
I must say this appealed to me…..Am I wrong to see it as a men's rights group?
The strategies, bulldozing through, sidelining those who disagree, wanting an end result that comes about by force of will rather than discussion, seem more like stereotypic male thinking.
I think that some of the most vociferous on this topic (irrespective of gender identity), are misogynists who have found a new publicly and politically sanctioned way to harass and harm women.
The failure to recognise and reprimand such actions harms both women and transgender people.
I am not sure why non misogynistic men are not coming out in support of women. Or is the loyalty of a man to a fellow man greater than their loyalty to fairness.
Mind you it is a brave man who will stand with women.
'A number of New Zealand’s leading male politicians, including John Hall, Robert Stout, Julius Vogel, William Fox and John Ballance, supported women’s suffrage'.
Why yes Virginia, that is exactly what they are. 🙂 And they enjoy every it every bit.
It never ceases to amuse me that some people really believe that the men of the right and the left are not driven by the exact same misogyny. It is just couched in different terms, but the end effect is the same.
Transgenderism/Trans ideology is misogyny. Pure and unadulterated.
Gender Non Conforming Men are not broken beings that need to be shoved into womens places, pretending to be women to the point where they get to dictate women how to women. And that is MRA in the nutshell. They are men.
You are putting words in my mouth that i don't say. I would like you to consider this for a moment.
Maybe it is not what i said that is the issue but how you interpretate it. I am not even considering William "lia' Thomas as a 'MRA', even tho he benefits greatly from the MRA that comes with TRA.
You can not seperate the MAN from Trans. Otherwise they would be women and then we would not have this issue to talk about.
Gender Non conforming men are not the fault of women and are not a problem for women. They should be an issue for Men and Men should be accomodating them in the male spaces, jobs, awards, and changing rooms. And in fact, i would venture a guess where Michael "lia' Thomas to be the 420 ranked swimmer in the Mens as an out and proud transwomen he would get way more support then he is getting now. But for some reason that is not what Michael "Lia" Thomas is doing. But i guess as someone ranked 420 – i.e. average – would not get to stand on a podium with the winning women ranked below him. And that is MRA in a nutshell. Maybe you need to consider that the two philosophies are intertwined and to some extend feed of each others.
Secondly, i don't consider the swimmer, or the surfer, or even Eddie Izzard a 'transwomen'. I consider them transvestites. Maybe already there we need to identify of whom we speak.
But i take your bigot, and i would add Terf, and Femnazi, and men hater, and i have no issues with that. In the end these words are meaningless and the actions for TRA's are standing on their own as do their words.
And just to re-enforce the idea once more, i do not speak about Transwomen per se, i speak about the movement, the political clout that movement has compared to say 'feminism' , the money behind it, big pharma, big surgery, and so on.
But again, i will wear that 'bigottry' t-shirt. It states that Women are adult human females.
You are putting words in my mouth that i don't say. I would like you to consider this for a moment.
I asked you a specific question,
sorry, are you saying that all trans women are MRAs?
You responded by saying,
Transgenderism/Trans ideology is misogyny. Pure and unadulterated.
Gender Non Conforming Men are not broken beings that need to be shoved into womens places, pretending to be women to the point where they get to dictate women how to women. And that is MRA in the nutshell. They are men.
I took that as you saying that you know what trans women are and you linked this again to MRAs, but you didn't actually answer my question directly, so I parsed it from your recent comments.
I see eventually you clarified that there is a difference between being trans, and trans ideology,
And just to re-enforce the idea once more, i do not speak about Transwomen per se, i speak about the movement, the political clout that movement has compared to say 'feminism' , the money behind it, big pharma, big surgery, and so on.
So my question and assumption served a purpose, of getting you to just say what you meant in relation to my query.
Honestly I didn't read the rest of your comment, because I was asking for a simple thing and as you know I get weary of the lectures at times.
no, trans women are not a men's rights group. Trans women are a group of gender non-conforming males, who just like every other group of people have varying needs and politics.
Gender identity activism (sometimes called trans rights activism) has strong parallels with MRAs. Lots of trans women aren't doing either of those two things. There are some that definitely are.
I also get the view of Magdalen Burns in Molly's link above that why is it that women have to take the big breath of acceptance and why is it that that he is 'widening the bandwidth for women'. He should be widening the bandwidth for men.
The reason i did not answer your question to your satisfaction is very simple.
I am not speaking of transwomen. I am speaking of the movement and only the movement. I can separate the two. So i am not going to answer your questions as your question is quite out of line and accusatory at best.
Its like with men and being a rapist. Not all man are rapists, but most rapists are men. There is quite a nuance in there. Ditto with Transwomen, Non binaries, genderfluid and any of the other 90+ made up 'genders' may not be themselves MRA's but they profit of the MRA tactics employed by TRAs that serve only to shut down women.
And frankly, you, Molly, Anker, Shangreah and others we have had more then one discussion on this subject and it seems that only you saw it fit to declare bigotry where there is none, implied or otherwise.
Transideology is at its heart deeply mysogynistic, starting with the idea that a women gives birth to a child 'with a wrong body'. Humans have one body, once that body is used up we die. We can modify that body with wrong sex hormones, puberty blockers, plastic surgery, fillers, silicon, make up, full body silicon suits, tattoos, implants and what not, but it is still the same body and it is still sexed exactly the same way it was on the day of it emerging from a womans vagina. Yet, here we ask women to make way for men into their spaces, jobs, awards, camps, changing rooms, sports on the ground of these men living in the 'wrong' body. Lol. And as the beautiful clip of the Sainted Magdalene Berns stated, that dude with a beard and horrible dressing sense is now a women and we have to affirm this dude as a women cause kindness and otherwise bigotry. IF that is not MRA tactics in action i must have a different definition of MRAs then you. And fwiw, that dude might not see it as that, but then he is the one that wants to be in places where women are in various stages of undress and he is the one that now has that right, and any women who is uncomfortable with him being in a changing room with her is a ‘terf’ ‘bigot’ ‘transphope’ ‘cissy’ and other assorted bs. The insults change the premise for them stays the same.
Understand that i generally don't go after people and pretend they are something, and if i were to do that, i would have absolutely no qualms and issue in naming the person and stating why i would do so. I am only discussing the movement, the philosophy the legal aspects and the rights that women are losing thanks to this movement that elevates men feels above the rights women earned through hard work, beatings, forced feedings, and ridicule. This may make you uncomfortable, maybe you even think i should be kinder, softer and more accommodating, but to that i only have a 'No, thank you' to give you. I rather be rude then a liar and someone who then must continuously affirm that lie. I personally can't be bothered with that. It would be too exhausting to be honest.
Sabine, while I agreed with weka above, I considered it a response to Shanreagh who seems to be exploring this topic more in recent days, and might not be aware of the distinction between the activism around the gender identity ideology, and the people who are living as transgender. That was only my take, could be wrong.
I understand your position, and agree with it as well.
It is the gender identity ideology that is problematic, and the refusal to put that belief system under the same scrutiny and objectivity that any other belief system would undergo.
The medical interventions promoted for children and young people, the removal of single sex spaces of all kinds (physical and otherwise), the distortion of language, the negative impact on women's sports, the indoctrination of institutions and services, the elimination of lesbians, and gays from their own movement, and the complete failure to ask for empirical evidence is a dangerous movement.
I know that is not the limit of the negative effects, but you get my drift.
Anyway, was cheered up by watching this week's The Mess We're In, in celebration of Women's International Day. If you are wanting something to watch, it's here:
All of us that have been talking about this for ages now are on the same page: it's the ideology and activism that is the problem.
It's really important that we don't lump all trans people in with that. For one thing, it will step over the line in terms of TS debate rules. We have trans people here, they have a right to be here. If people are going to be casual in their rhetoric about transness, and not clear, and they sound like bigots, then it's unfair on trans people, it creates an atmosphere that inhibits debate.
It will also be harder to then argue that feminists have any rights to not be exposed to such when debate women's rights.
For another, it's wrong and not fair.
We cannot expect to have our own arguments respected if we won't make an effort to separate out trans people from the problematic ideology.
weka, if you haven't done so. Watch the link posted above – my daughter and I enjoyed the whole hour, and the display of humour and understanding between the women. I hope you do as well.
I think there exists the same energy – for the most part – between female commentators on here. I hope I'm right about that.
(Edit: Thinking of writing a post about the damage of the medicalised response (and social transitioning) of children, based on the recent changes to that after evidential reviews in the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and France. Having just watched the Dysphoria series on Youtube, its a timely conversation for NZ, that has an “affirmation health care” model.)
Yes, it was a nice 'beer' hour in good albeit physically distanced ways, excellent company and as far as i can crush on ladies, oh do i have a crush on Helen Joyce. To the Queen her Ladies!
I am not speaking of transwomen. I am speaking of the movement and only the movement. I can separate the two. So i am not going to answer your questions as your question is quite out of line and accusatory at best.
Sabine, this is literally what I was asking you to clarify. You've done that now, but it took far more work than was necessary imo. A simple clarification would have sufficed.
If you can't handle someone calling your position bigotry, then maybe take more care with how you express it. I'm not the only one who sometimes misunderstands what you say. I'm not saying be kind, I'm saying pay attention to who you are talking to and listen to what they are saying. My original question was incredibly clear and simple to answer. But you didn't.
I don't think you are a bigot now that you have made it clear what you mean. It definitely wasn't clear from your first comment (which is why I asked) or your second.
Again, didn't read most of your comment because am sick of the patronising lectures, as if I don't already know all that stuff.
I tend to abstain from words such as bigotry or any insults to anyone generally specifically insults as generally that always says more about the one using these words then those against whom they are deployed. ,
I am sorry that you thought that my second or first comment was a lecture, i honestly believed that i had to make myself even clearer in my thoughts and words.
My problem is when you don't listen. I didn't need long posts of explanation, I already know what you think about trans ideology, and we are generally on the same page. All I needed was clarification on that one point. See my comment to Molly below for the reasons why. It matters how we talk about trans people here, in the same way it matters how men talk about women. Making it clear that it is the ideology that is being critiqued is a good way to do this 👍
I enjoy reading Suzanne Moore – kicked off the Guardian for.. continuing to be herself – a clear writer.
…The official theme is #breakthebias, which is as innocuous as it is futile. People – not women, because the word ‘women’ is now controversial – are asked to pose, hands crossed upwards, to share as a selfie on social media. This is supposed to be part of imagining a “gender-equal world”, one free of “bias, stereotypes and discrimination”.
…
It renders the term ‘woman’ somewhat pointless, as this is essentially self-ID. That’s a pose.
Still, what is a real woman? I have always been the wrong kind myself: too stroppy, too outspoken, too graceless. But now, though, I am strangely convinced that because I have female biology, I am an actual woman. (The gender rules of femininity that I have considered innately dumb my entire life make me neither a wannabe man, or non-binary, or anything special.)
As a feminist, though, I would indeed like the world to be a better place for women – and by the world, I don’t mean north London or a campus in California; I mean Herat, Tigray, Guatemala. For all the arguments about equality for women amount to nothing if we lose an international perspective. Feminism is global, or it is simply an exercise in consumer power dressed up as politics. That is exactly what happened to Western feminism in the 1990s, when everything from brunching to boob jobs was “empowering”.
…
Forgive me, then, if I do not celebrate International Women’s Day when so many political parties are kowtowing to this woman-hating religion. Forgive me if I think “non-binary” is just another way of creating a new binary, and saying “I am special” and you are not in my tribe. Forgive me if I think that, in so much of the virtue-signalling we will witness today, it will likely be that there is little “international” about any of this.
Sure, I will strike a pose and do the hand gesture – but it will not be a benign, flappy cross: it will be rude and unfeminine.
And it won’t be a pose. For being a woman means living in the real world, in female bodies.
The BBC has spoken to the defence ministries of Estonia, Sweden and Denmark, all of whom confirmed their weapons supplies had been tracked and successfully reached Ukraine in recent weeks.
Britain and America had provided weapons to Ukraine before the invasion began on 24 February, with the UK delivering 2,000 light anti-tank missiles (Nlaws). Most countries though only started to send weapons in response to the Russian invasion. In all, 14 nations have supplied arms. They include Sweden and Finland, both of which have a long history of neutrality and are not members of Nato. But both have sent thousands of anti-tank weapons to Ukraine.
Germany has supplied 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles. The Baltic states have also delivered thousands of weapons including Stingers and Javelin missiles, one of the world's most effective anti-tank weapons with a range of 2.5km (1.5 miles). Ukraine says it has already successfully destroyed several Russian T-72 tanks.
Recent weapons deliveries also include tens of thousands of assault rifles and machine guns, anti-tank mines and hundreds of tonnes of ammunition, as well as body armour and helmets, and medical supplies.
Justin Bronk, a research fellow on airpower at the Royal United Services Institute, says there's been visual confirmation of at least 20 Russian aircraft shot down in Ukraine so far – both helicopters and jets. That's significantly fewer than claimed by Ukraine's ministry of defence, which says it has downed 48 Russian planes and 80 helicopters. Yet even the lower number shows Russia's struggled to gain supremacy in the skies.
Ukraine has suffered losses too. But UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told the BBC that Russia had so far not been successful in destroying the country's air defences and air force. Before the war began, Ukraine's military aircraft were outnumbered at least three-to-one by those that had been amassed on the border by Russia.
So the imbalance may be gradually evening out. I couldn't find any update on the Ukraine army situation online.
. I couldn't find any update on the Ukraine army situation online.
Because Ukrainian operation security will be as tight as a drum while every tool the West has works to crack Russia's, and publicise every last detail.
Likewise a third of the Nat caucus is down with omicron. An accurate statistical match with the tunnellers, huh? Probably due to the function of boring that both share…
So censorship is the new normal. Funny how the whole legacy media is complaining about censorship in Russia, then are deathly quite whilst the tech companies shut down alternative news in the west. In particular anti-war voices, it's frightening.
If you have the time worth hearing the whole thing. I say hear as I just play like a podcast, and do other work.
The Opposition is getting better at following their themes eg adjusting tax brackets. (Which the Budget may be already getting ready to do that.
1.CHRISTOPHER LUXON to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by her statement, “The debate is not whether inflation has increased and is impacting people. The debate is what we should do about it”; if so, will she adjust the income tax brackets to account for the last four years of inflation?
Putin has offered Ukraine peace, for recognition of the annexation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine areas in Luhansk and Donetsk occupied since 2014 and declaring neutrality (not joining NATO).
The generous offer is indicative of Putin's real agenda.
The end of sanctions on Russia for the annexation of Crimea (and occupation in eastern Ukraine) – this only occurs when an independent and internationally recognised sovereign Ukraine consents.
Ukraine should, in my opinion agree, provided Russia takes over a proportion of the national debt of Ukraine equivalent to the land and resources transferred to Russia.
And also agree to neutrality, provided it retains an independent defence capability. And that it can still join the EU at or by the time the EU and Russia have an FTA. From this a positive Ukraine and Russian economic relationship, in which Russia and the EU would assist with Ukraine's reconstruction.
The increase of sanctions on Russia applied recently would have sharpened focus on the importance of a negotiated settlement.
While Putin would still be free to negotiate a reduced NATO presence in former WP nations, via a military build up threat of securing a land bridge to Kaliningrad via Lithuania – developing a co-operative relationship between the EU and Russia over Ukraine's economic revival would reduce the risk of NATO-Russian conflict
After Ukraine this is where the Russian military will exercise, and while they exercise Putin will seek guarantees of NATO withdrawal of forward capability in former WP nations.
This is why there needs to be a deal over Ukraine, rather than a sacrifice of Ukraine to revitalise NATO. The revitalised NATO they seek only comes from a new Cold War with a heavily sanctioned and bitter Russia.
This leaves the USA vulnerable to Chinese opportunism (annexation of Taiwan post 2025 – they are giving chip manufacturers time to relocate offshore to reduce the economic risk to the West, so make it more of a fait accompli).
The Russian military appears to be overcommitted in Ukraine.
At least to the point that the Belarusian military are throwing sickies rather than join them.
With the mass of their heavy equipment set to be abandoned in the coming rout, it will be Ukraine that decides where the borders lie, as Russian conventional forces are defanged and disgraced, and no economy exists to rebuild them for decades.
Putin must have thought he was the god of intelligence, turning the former US president, but as another US president noted, you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
I didn't realise all those planes that fly in and out of New Zealand airports were Air New Zealand planes in disguise.
I didn't realise that planes labelled as being owned by Qantas, Air China, Etihad Airways, EVA Air, Singapore Airlines, United and Jetstar were actually part of Air New Zealand.
[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.]
I am not sure you really want to bring peoples attention to this. The link you provide is dated 20/01/2020. It talks about Air New Zealand putting up its fares when Jetstar stopped flying domestically.
The withdrawal was announced on 25 September 2019 and took effect in November 2019. Well Luxon resigned from Air NZ in June 2019 and left the company on 25 September that year. Hence the increase in fares being complained about took place after his successor took over. It wasn't Luxon's doing at all, was it? After all, would he really be setting the future policy for the airline on his last day in the office?
Legalistic pedant? I think not. I just like to see the truth being told.
You’re missing the point yet again. If you want to talk about Luxon and National’s shambolic financial analyses, then fine, comment under Micky’s Post all you like and give the other side a tough debate. If you want to talk about ANZ, use OM.
You were out by 8 days with the link date; you may value “the truth”, but you obviously don’t value accuracy in and of your statements.
Quite right. It was 28/02/2020. I notice you don't question the rest of my comment though. Pity the fare rises were after his time in the chair isn't it?
No need to respond any further to your diversions – I just like to keep convos more or less on track. Others may want to waste their time, if they so wish – they may even get something useful out of your comments, but I doubt it.
Will this end up being the scandal of the century?
"regular use of ivermectin as a prophylactic agent was associated with significantly reduced COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality rates," based on an observational study of 159,561 residents ages 18 and over in Itajaí, Brazil.
'After adjusting for variables, the authors said, they found a 67% reduction in hospitalization rate and a 70% reduction in mortality rate for ivermectin users.'
"Conclusion: In this large PSM study, regular use of ivermectin as a prophylactic agent was associated with significantly reduced COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality rates."
Even if ivermectin comes out of the wash as being as effective as its premature proponents have claimed for however long, so what? A decision based on insufficient evidence is still a gamble, even if one happens to win.
A gamble was taken by us all in the greatest real-time human experiment! I'm vaccinated. And I'm very concerned we were all duped by the least trusted company in the least trusted industry in modern times, with government/societal 'aid'.
@McFlock its maybe time to confront all the lies your told to believe are fact. I know its not easy as it will shake your version of an 'augmented' reality we've all bought in too.
Serious question: what actual clinical trials has ivermectin gone through compared to the pfizer vaccine regarding efficacy against covid?
This study is promising, shame it took them a year to process and publish their results. It has more participants, but was not blind. Intereference of other treatments was not documented. Absence of adverse events seems to have been assumed rather than actually examined.
Committing oneself to a course of action before sufficient evidence is in might have a desired result, but it doesn't win at science. It could just as easily be an error.
I'm very concerned that absolute morons have undermined effective public health measures to the point that NZ seems to have decided to accept several deaths a day just so some cafe owner can bitch that not enough people are walking through the door.
Stick your augmented reality in your rear usb port, your CPU is throwing a critical runtime error.
I'm not sure what you think your links demonstrate, but they just go to show that what you regard as "experimental" has been more thoroughly studied against covid than ivermectin. And seems to have better results.
You enjoyed the cancel joke… It's all the rage at present, I knew you'd love it
"has been more thoroughly studied against covid than ivermectin". Really? Please do provide the ‘evidence’, because it seems to be blurred more and more for ‘some reason or another’.
Both the Oxford trial on efficacy and 'real world' study from Brazil looking at effectiveness, have no value at all. May rock the boat of augmented reality we're all clinging to too much?
If you take that from my comments, especially the one that was a simple list of questions about the links already provided, then expecting you to understand even your own links is an exercise in futility.
Or you didn't actually take that from my comments, but these are the lengths you'll go to in order to avoid addressing simple questions to which you might not like the answers.
"pointed out potential conflicts of interest with the study’s authors. They noted that although the preprint version of the study mentions that two of its authors received money from a pharmaceutical company that manufactures ivermectin, the published version leaves that detail out.'
In Brazil even before covid , Ivermectin was a commonly prescribed anti parasite drug and what portion the citys inhabitants were already using the drug and of course covid vaccines were also used – which the authors say was still the best protection
But of course for the facebook epidemiologists its of no concern why no real experts will take much notice of the other evidence
Note: this blog post has been put together over the course of the week I followed the happenings at the conference virtually. Should recordings of the Great Debates and possibly Union Symposia mentioned below, be released sometime after the conference ends, I'll include links to the ones I participated in. ...
The following was my submission made on the “Fast Track Approvals Bill”. This potential law will give three Ministers unchecked powers, un-paralled since the days of Robert Muldoon’s “Think Big” projects.The submission is written a bit tongue-in-cheek. But it’s irreverent because the FTAB is in itself not worthy of respect. ...
One Could Reduce Child Poverty At No Fiscal CostFollowing the Richardson/Shipley 1990 ‘redesign of the welfare state’ – which eliminated the universal Family Benefit and doubled the rate of child poverty – various income supplements for families have been added, the best known being ‘Working for Families’, introduced in 2005. ...
Buzz from the Beehive A few days ago, Point of Order suggested the media must be musing “on why Melissa is mute”. Our article reported that people working in the beleaguered media industry have cause to yearn for a minister as busy as Melissa Lee’s ministerial colleagues and we drew ...
1. What was The Curse of Jim Bolger?a. Winston Peters b. Soon after shaking his hand, world leaders would mysteriously lose office or shuffle off this mortal coilc. Could never shake off the Mother of All Budgetsd. Dandruff2. True or false? The Chairman of a Kiwi export business has asked the ...
Jack Vowles writes – New Zealand is said to be suffering from ‘serious populist discontent’. An IPSOS MORI survey has reported that we have an increasing preference for strong leaders, think that the economy is rigged toward the rich and powerful, and political elites are ignoring ‘hard-working people’. ...
Chris Trotter writes – MELISSA LEE should be deprived of her ministerial warrant. Her handling – or non-handling – of the crisis engulfing the New Zealand news media has been woeful. The fate of New Zealand’s two linear television networks, a question which the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications ...
TL;DR: The podcast above features co-hosts and , along with regular guests Robert Patman on Gaza and AUKUS II, and on climate change.The six things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the ...
Policymakers rarely wish to make plain or visible their desire to dismantle environmental policy, least of all to the young. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above between Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent ...
I like to keep an eye on what’s happening in places like the UK, the US, and over the ditch with our good mates the Aussies. Let’s call them AUKUS, for want of a better collective term. More on that in a bit.It used to be, not long ago, that ...
TL;DR: The global economy will be one fifth smaller than it would have otherwise been in 2050 as a result of climate damage, according to a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and published in the journal Nature. (See more detail and analysis below, and ...
New Zealand is said to be suffering from ‘serious populist discontent’. An IPSOS MORI survey has reported that we have an increasing preference for strong leaders, think that the economy is rigged toward the rich and powerful, and political elites are ignoring ‘hard-working people’. The data is from February this ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is understood to be planning a major speech within the next fortnight to clear up the confusion over whether or not New Zealand might join the AUKUS submarine project. So far, there have been conflicting signals from the Government. RNZ reported the Prime Minister yesterday in ...
Life throws curveballs, and sometimes, those curveballs necessitate wiping your iPhone clean and starting anew. Whether you’re facing persistent software glitches, preparing to sell your device, or simply wanting a fresh start, knowing how to factory reset iPhone without a computer is a valuable skill. While using a computer with ...
Gone are the days when communication was limited to landline phones and physical proximity. Today, computers have become powerful tools for connecting with people across the globe through voice and video calls. But with a plethora of applications and methods available, how to call someone on a computer might seem ...
Open access notables Glacial isostatic adjustment reduces past and future Arctic subsea permafrost, Creel et al., Nature Communications:Sea-level rise submerges terrestrial permafrost in the Arctic, turning it into subsea permafrost. Subsea permafrost underlies ~ 1.8 million km2 of Arctic continental shelf, with thicknesses in places exceeding 700 m. Sea-level variations over glacial-interglacial cycles control ...
The operating system (OS) is the heart and soul of a computer, orchestrating every action and interaction between hardware and software. But have you ever wondered where on a computer is the operating system generally stored? The answer lies in the intricate dance between hardware and software components, particularly within ...
Laptops have become essential tools for work, entertainment, and communication, offering portability and functionality. However, with rising energy costs and growing environmental concerns, understanding a laptop’s power consumption is more important than ever. So, how many watts does a laptop use? The answer, unfortunately, isn’t straightforward. It depends on several ...
Screen recording has become an essential tool for various purposes, such as creating tutorials, capturing gameplay footage, recording online meetings, or sharing information with others. Fortunately, Dell laptops offer several built-in and external options for screen recording, catering to different needs and preferences. This guide will explore various methods on ...
A cracked or damaged laptop screen can be a frustrating experience, impacting productivity and enjoyment. Fortunately, laptop screen repair is a common service offered by various repair shops and technicians. However, the cost of fixing a laptop screen can vary significantly depending on several factors. This article delves into the ...
Gaming laptops represent a significant investment for passionate gamers, offering portability and powerful performance for immersive gaming experiences. However, a common concern among potential buyers is their lifespan. Unlike desktop PCs, which allow for easier component upgrades, gaming laptops have inherent limitations due to their compact and integrated design. This ...
The annual inventory report of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions has been released, showing that gross emissions have dropped for the third year in a row, to 78.4 million tons: All-told gross emissions have decreased by over 6 million tons since the Zero Carbon Act was passed in 2019. ...
Experiencing a locked computer can be frustrating, especially when you need access to your files and applications urgently. The methods to unlock your computer will vary depending on the specific situation and the type of lock you encounter. This guide will explore various scenarios and provide step-by-step instructions on how ...
While the world has largely transitioned to digital communication, faxing still holds relevance in certain industries and situations. Fortunately, gone are the days of bulky fax machines and dedicated phone lines. Today, you can easily send and receive faxes directly from your computer, offering a convenient and efficient way to ...
In our increasingly digital world, home computers have become essential tools for work, communication, entertainment, and more. However, this increased reliance on technology also exposes us to various cyber threats. Understanding these threats and taking proactive steps to protect your home computer is crucial for safeguarding your personal information, finances, ...
In the ever-evolving world of technology, server-based computing has emerged as a cornerstone of modern digital infrastructure. This article delves into the concept of server-based computing, exploring its various forms, benefits, challenges, and its impact on the way we work and interact with technology. Understanding Server-Based Computing: At its core, ...
The absolute brass neck of this guy.We want more medical doctors, not more spin doctors, Luxon was saying a couple of weeks ago, and now we’re told the guy has seven salaried adults on TikTok duty. Sorry, doing social media. The absolute brass neck of it. The irony that the ...
Buzz from the Beehive Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones relishes spatting and eagerly takes issue with environmentalists who criticise his enthusiasm for resource development. He relishes helping the fishing industry too. And so today, while the media are making much of the latest culling in the public service to ...
Having written, taught and worked for the US government on issues involving unconventional warfare and terrorism for 30-odd years, two things irritate me the most when the subject is discussed in public. The first is the Johnny-come-lately academics-turned-media commentators who … Continue reading → ...
Eric Crampton writes – Kainga Ora is the government’s house building agency. It’s been building a lot of social housing. Kainga Ora has its own (but independent) consenting authority, Consentium. It’s a neat idea. Rather than have to deal with building consents across each different territorial authority, Kainga Ora ...
Muriel Newman writes – The Coalition Government says it is moving with speed to deliver campaign promises and reverse the damage done by Labour. One of their key commitments is to “defend the principle that New Zealanders are equal before the law.” To achieve this, they have pledged they “will not advance ...
Chris Trotter writes – The absence of anything resembling a fightback from the public servants currently losing their jobs is interesting. State-sector workers’ collective fatalism in the face of Coalition cutbacks indicates a surprisingly broad acceptance of impermanence in the workplace. Fifty years ago, lay-offs in the thousands ...
Mariupol, on the Azov Sea coast, was one of the first cities to suffer almost complete destruction after the start of the Ukraine War started in late February 2022. We remember the scenes of absolute destruction of the houses and city structures. The deaths of innocent civilians – many of ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – Ten years ago, I wrote the following in a Listener column: Every year around one in five new-born babies will be reliant on their caregivers benefit by Christmas. This pattern has persisted from at least 1993. For Maori the number jumps to over one in three. ...
Climate change is expected to generate more and more extreme events, delivering a sort of structural shock to inflation that central banks will have to react to as if they were short-term cyclical issues. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s ...
It’s a simple deal. We pay taxes in order to finance the social services we want and need. The carnage now occurring across the public sector though, is breaking that contract. Over 3,000 jobs have been lost so far. Many are in crucial areas like Education where the impact of ...
Hi,A friend had their 40th over the weekend and decided to theme it after Curb Your Enthusiasm fashion icon Susie Greene. Captured in my tiny kitchen before I left the house, I ending up evoking a mix of old lesbian and Hillary Clinton — both unintentional.Me vs Hillary ClintonIf you’re ...
This is a re-post from Andrew Dessler at the Climate Brink blogIn 2023, the Earth reached temperature levels unprecedented in modern times. Given that, it’s reasonable to ask: What’s going on? There’s been lots of discussions by scientists about whether this is just the normal progression of global warming or if something ...
The schools are on holiday and the sun is shining in the seaside village and all day long I have been seeing bunches of bikes; Mums, Dads, teens and toddlers chattering, laughing, happy, having a bloody great time together. Cheers, AT, for the bits of lane you’ve added lately around the ...
Today in our National-led authoritarian nightmare: Shane Jones thinks Ministers should be above the law: New Zealand First MP Shane Jones is accusing the Waitangi Tribunal of over-stepping its mandate by subpoenaing a minister for its urgent hearing on the Oranga Tamariki claim. The tribunal is looking into the ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Politicians across the political spectrum are implicated in the New Zealand media’s failing health. Either through neglect or incompetent interventions, successive governments have failed to regulate, foster, and allow a healthy Fourth Estate that can adequately hold politicians and the powerful to account. ...
Citizen Science writes – Last week saw two significant developments in the debate over the treatment of trans-identifying children and young people – the release in Britain of the final report of Dr Hilary Cass’s review into gender healthcare, and here in New Zealand, the news that the ...
One night while sleeping in my bed I had a beautiful dreamThat all the people of the world got together on the same wavelengthAnd began helping one anotherNow in this dream, universal love was the theme of the dayPeace and understanding and it happened this wayAfter such an eventful day ...
This is a guest post by Oscar Simms who is a housing activist, volunteer for the Coalition for More Homes, and was the Labour Party candidate for Auckland Central at the last election. ...
Turning what Labour called the “holiday highway” into a four-lane expressway from Auckland to Whangarei could bring at least an economic benefit of nearly two billion a year for Northland each year. And it could help bring an end to poverty in one of New Zealand’s most deprived regions. The ...
Tonight’s six-stack includes: launching his substack with a bunch of his previous documentaries, including this 1992 interview with Dame Whina Cooper. and here crew give climate activists plenty to do, including this call to submit against the Fast Track Approvals bill. writes brilliantly here on his substack ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
You're in the mall when you hear it: some kind of popping sound in the distance, kids with fireworks, maybe. But then a moment of eerie stillness is followed by more of the fireworks sound and there’s also screaming and shrieking and now here come people running for their lives.Does ...
Karl du Fresne writes – There’s a crisis in the news media and the media are blaming it on everyone except themselves. Culpability is being deflected elsewhere – mainly to the hapless Minister of Communications, Melissa Lee, and the big social media platforms that are accused of hoovering ...
I don’t normally send out two newsletters in a day but I figured I’d say something about… the news. If two newsletters is a bit much then maybe just skip one, I don’t want to overload people. Alternatively if you’d be interested in sometimes receiving multiple, smaller updates from me, ...
Buzz from the Beehive David Seymour and Winston Peters today signalled that at least two ministers of the Crown might be in Wellington today. Seymour (as Associate Minister of Education) announced the removal of more red tape, this time to make it easier for new early learning services to be ...
Politicians across the political spectrum are implicated in the New Zealand media’s failing health. Either through neglect or incompetent interventions, successive governments have failed to regulate, foster, and allow a healthy Fourth Estate that can adequately hold politicians and the powerful to account. Our political system is suffering from the ...
David Farrar writes – The Broadcasting Standards Authority ruled: Comments by radio host Kate Hawkesby suggesting Māori and Pacific patients were being prioritised for surgery due to their ethnicity were misleading and discriminatory, the Broadcasting Standards Authority has found. It is a fact such patients are prioritised. ...
PRC and its proxies in Solomons have been preparing for these elections for a long time.A lot of money, effort and intelligence have gone into ensuring an outcome that won’t compromise Beijing’s plans. Cleo Paskall writes – On April 17th the Solomon Islands, a country of ...
Is speeding up the trip to and from Wellington airport by 12 minutes worth spending up more than $10 billion? Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The six news items that stood out to me in the last day to 8:26 am today are:The Lead: Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced ...
You're a fraud, and you know itBut it's too good to throw it all awayAnyone would do the sameYou've got 'em goingAnd you're careful not to show itSometimes you even fool yourself a bitIt's like magicBut it's always been a smoke and mirrors gameAnyone would do the sameForty six billion ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections The June general election in Mexico could mark a turning point in ensuring that the country’s climate policies better reflect the desire of its citizens to address the climate crisis, with both leading presidential candidates expressing support for renewable energy. Mexico is the ...
2024, it feels, keeps presenting us with ever more challenges, ever more dismay.Do you give up yet? It seems to ask.No? How about this? Or this?How about this?When I say 2024 I really mean the state of humanity in 2024.Saturday night, we watched Civil War because that is one terrifying cliff we've ...
Buzz from the Beehive A pet project and governmental tunnel vision jump out from the latest batch of ministerial announcements. The government is keen to assure us of its concern for the wellbeing of our pets. It will be introducing pet bonds in a change to the Residential Tenancies Act ...
A recent report generated from a Growing Up in New Zealand (GUiNZ) survey of 1,224 rangatahi Māori aged 11-12 found: Cultural connectedness was associated with fewer depression symptoms, anxiety symptoms and better quality of life. That sounds cut and dry. But further into the report the following appears: Cultural connectedness is ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: From the gory details of job-cuts news, you’d think the public service was being eviscerated. While the media’s view of the cuts is incomplete, it’s also true that departments have been leaking the particulars faster than a Wellington ...
Remember the good old days, back when New Zealand had a PM who could think and speak calmly and intelligently in whole sentences without blustering? Even while Iran’s drones and missiles were still being launched, Helen Clark was live on TVNZ expertly summing up the latest crisis in the Middle ...
Costello did not pass on analysis of the benefits of the smokefree reforms to Cabinet, emphasising instead the extra tax revenues of repealing them. Photo: Hagen Hopkins, Getty Images TL;DR: The six news items that stood out to me at 7:26 am today are:The Lead: Casey Costello never passed on ...
True loveYou're the one I'm dreaming ofYour heart fits me like a gloveAnd I'm gonna be true blueBaby, I love youI’ve written about the job cuts in our news media last week. The impact on individuals, and the loss to Aotearoa of voices covering our news from different angles.That by ...
While commentators, including former Prime Minister Helen Clark, are noting a subtle shift in New Zealand’s foreign policy, which now places more emphasis on the United States, many have missed a key element of the shift. What National said before the election is not what the government is doing now. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 7, 2024 thru Sat, April 13, 2024. Story of the week Our story of the week is about adults in the room setting terms and conditions of ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
The Government’s newly announced review of methane emissions reduction targets hints at its desire to delay Aotearoa New Zealand’s urgent transition to a climate safe future, the Green Party said. ...
The Government must commit to the Maitai School building project for students with high and complex needs, to ensure disabled students from the top of the South Island have somewhere to learn. ...
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey and his Government colleagues have made a meal of their mental health commitments, showing how flimsy their efforts to champion the issue truly are, says Labour Mental Health spokesperson Ingrid Leary. ...
Māori are yet to see anything from this Government except cuts, reversals and taking our people backwards, Māori Development spokesperson Willie Jackson said. ...
The Coalition Government’s refusal to commit to ongoing funding for social housing is seeing the sector pull back on developments and families watch their dreams of securing a home fade away, says Labour Housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty. ...
Changes to minimum wage and benefit indexation means many New Zealanders will get less this year, as the Government gives a big tax break to landlords instead. ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
The Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...
Changes to the Resource Management Act will align consenting for coal mining to other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The inconsistent treatment of coal mining compared with other extractive activities is burdensome red tape that fails to acknowledge ...
Trade, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay has concluded productive discussions with ministerial counterparts in Beijing today, in support of the New Zealand-China trade and economic relationship. “My meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao reaffirmed the complementary nature of the bilateral trade relationship, with our Free Trade Agreement at its ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today paid tribute to Singapore’s outgoing Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Meeting in Singapore today immediately before Prime Minister Lee announced he was stepping down, Prime Minister Luxon warmly acknowledged his counterpart’s almost twenty years as leader, and the enduring legacy he has left for Singapore and South East ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. While in Singapore as part of his visit to South East Asia this week, Prime Minister Luxon also met with Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and will meet with Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has made further appointments to the Board of Antarctica New Zealand as part of a continued effort to ensure the Scott Base Redevelopment project is delivered in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The Minister has appointed Neville Harris as a new member of the Board. Mr ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis will travel to the United States on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the Five Finance Ministers group, with counterparts from Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. “I am looking forward to meeting with our Five Finance partners on how we can work ...
The coalition Government has today announced purrfect and pawsitive changes to the Residential Tenancies Act to give tenants with pets greater choice when looking for a rental property, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Pets are important members of many Kiwi families. It’s estimated that around 64 per cent of New ...
State Highway 1 (SH1) through Wellington City is heavily congested at peak times and while planning continues on the duplicate Mt Victoria Tunnel and Basin Reserve project, the Government has also asked NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) to consider and provide advice on a Long Tunnel option, Transport Minister Simeon Brown ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters have condemned Iran’s shocking and illegal strikes against Israel. “These attacks are a major challenge to peace and stability in a region already under enormous pressure," Mr Luxon says. "We are deeply concerned that miscalculation on any side could ...
Hundreds of people in little over a week have turned out in Northland to hear Regional Development Minister Shane Jones speak about plans for boosting the regional economy through infrastructure. About 200 people from the infrastructure and associated sectors attended an event headlined by Mr Jones in Whangarei today. Last ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti has today thanked outgoing Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora Chair Dame Karen Poutasi for her service on the Board. “Dame Karen tendered her resignation as Chair and as a member of the Board today,” says Dr Reti. “I have asked her to ...
The NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has signalled their proposed delivery approach for the Government’s 15 Roads of National Significance (RoNS), with the release of the State Highway Investment Proposal (SHIP) today, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Boosting economic growth and productivity is a key part of the Government’s plan to ...
New Zealand is renewing its connections with a world facing urgent challenges by pursuing an active, energetic foreign policy, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Our country faces the most unstable global environment in decades,” Mr Peters says at the conclusion of two weeks of engagements in Egypt, Europe and the United States. “We cannot afford to sit back in splendid ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has announced the Australian Governor-General, His Excellency General The Honourable David Hurley and his wife Her Excellency Mrs Linda Hurley, will make a State visit to New Zealand from Tuesday 16 April to Thursday 18 April. The visit reciprocates the State visit of former Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced that Medsafe has approved 11 cold and flu medicines containing pseudoephedrine. Pharmaceutical suppliers have indicated they may be able to supply the first products in June. “This is much earlier than the original expectation of medicines being available by 2025. The Government recognised ...
New Zealand and the United States have recommitted to their strategic partnership in Washington DC today, pledging to work ever more closely together in support of shared values and interests, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The strategic environment that New Zealand and the United States face is considerably more ...
April 11, 2024 Joint Declaration by United States Secretary of State the Honorable Antony J. Blinken and New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs the Right Honourable Winston Peters We met today in Washington, D.C. to recommit to the historic partnership between our two countries and the principles that underpin it—rule ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced further New Zealand cooperation with the United States in the Pacific Islands region through $16.4 million in funding for initiatives in digital connectivity and oceans and fisheries research. “New Zealand can achieve more in the Pacific if we work together more urgently and ...
COMMENTARY:By Eugene Doyle Helen Clark, how I miss you. The former New Zealand Prime Minister — the safest pair of hands this country has had in living memory — gave a masterclass on the importance of maintaining an independent foreign policy when she spoke at an AUKUS symposium held ...
The government's released the list of organisations provided with information on how to apply - just hours before public submissions on the bill close. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milton Speer, Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney Before climate change really got going, eastern Australia’s flash floods tended to concentrate on our coastal regions, east of the Great Dividing Range. But that’s changing. Now ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Finkel, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University Sia Duff / South Australian Museum In February, the South Australian Museum “re-imagined” itself. In the face of rising costs and inadequate government funds, CEO David Gaimster, who took the reins last June, declared ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Pearce, Professor, School of Allied Heath, Human Services & Sport, La Trobe University, La Trobe University This week, Collingwood AFL player Nathan Murphy announced his retirement, brought on by his concussion history and ongoing issues. The 24-year-old’s seemingly sudden retirement, ...
The Mental Health Foundation provides support and resources for those facing the loss of their job, so it’s wrong in the very week the Government adds another 1000 jobs to its tally of cuts, that this is happening. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company Decay, terror, revulsion. These are three of the central themes of Thomas Bernhard’s rarely performed play The President. The Austrian is one of the greatest ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says threats by ministers Shane Jones and David Seymour to reform or close down the Waitangi Tribunal were “ill-considered”, as legal experts say the ministers may have breached Cabinet Manual conventions. “I think those comments are ill-considered and we expect all ministers to actually exercise good ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ye In (Jane) Hwang, Postdoctoral Research Associate at School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney Shutterstock You’d be hard pressed to find any aspect of daily life that doesn’t require some form of digital literacy. We need only to look back ten ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Newton, Professor of Exercise Medicine, Edith Cowan University Pexels/RDNE stock project You’re not in your 20s or 30s anymore and you know regular health checks are important. So you go to your GP. During the appointment they measure your waist. ...
A new poem by Evangeline Riddiford Graham. Mitochondrial Problem I. It was long drive to Kansas for the man and his dog but you have to understand he said She doesn’t fly. Which calls to mind not carsick shitting barking or whining but a dog who chooses not to as ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)Hot off the press, this debut ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Wajnryb McDonald, PhD candidate in Criminology, University of Sydney Less than 24 hours after Ashlee Good was murdered in Bondi Junction, her family released a statement requesting the media take down photographs they had reproduced of Ashlee and her family without ...
Chief executive Shaun Robinson said it has not had any government funding cut, but government-funded contracts have not kept pace with rising costs. ...
The Ministry of Health has delayed the release of its evidence brief on the safety, reversibility and mental health and wellbeing outcomes for puberty blockers. While we wait, Julia de Bres speaks to those with firsthand experience. Best practice gender-affirming healthcare is based on trans people’s self-determination and agency. The ...
Barcelona’s city streets have gone from traffic-clogged to pedestrian-friendly. How? Superblocks. Ellen Rykers explains. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week I read a great interview with renowned urbanist Janette Sadik-Khan by The Spinoff’s Wellington editor Joel MacManus: “You can reimagine streets, ...
Student groups ‘Climate Action VUW’, Schools Strike 4 Climate and VUWSA will be on the street in Wellington today, the last day for submissions on the Fast-track Approvals Bill, with a message that the fight against the Government’s ‘War on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sofia Ammassari, Research Fellow, Griffith University Since 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity has grown exponentially – and so has the formidable organisational machine of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). These two factors will be key to delivering the BJP a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon Hyndman, Associate Professor of Education (Adjunct) & Senior Manager (BCE), Charles Sturt University During COVID almost all Australian students and their families experienced online learning. But while schools have long since gone back to in-person teaching, online learning has not gone ...
Yes, they’re better for the environment. No, that’s not a good enough reason for me to use them. Once every 26 days or so, my period arrives, and if struck by an act of God, I am caught red-crotched without products. How, after 17 years of this, do I still ...
“It will cause significant harm to our environment and communities. It is completely at odds with New Zealanders’ relationship with nature and our need for a low-carbon, sustainable economic future." ...
The Chair of the National Maori Authority, Matthew Tukaki, has warned a Parliamentary Select Committee that fast-tracking legislation is a perilous practice that undermines the core tenets of democracy, transparency, and accountability. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Tenbensel, Associate Professor, Health Policy, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Getty Images Since coming into power, the coalition government has adopted a simple but shrewd see-how-fast-we-can-move political strategy. However, in the health sector this need for speed entails ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Hronis, Clinical Psychologist, University of Technology Sydney Darya Sannikova/Pexels Whether you’re watching TV, attending a footy game, or eating a meal at your local pub, gambling is hard to escape. Although the rise of gambling is not unique to Australia, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Wong, Forrest Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia Have you ever wondered if there are more insects out at night than during the day? We set out to answer this question by combing through the scientific ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carol T Kulik, Research Professor, University of South Australia IR Stone/Shutterstock In Australia, it’s not the done thing to know – let alone ask – what our colleagues are paid. Yet, it’s easy to see how pay transparency can make pay ...
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is sounding a warning to migrants, that running foul of the law may see them leaving the country prematurely. ...
The government’s plan to get 50,000 people off jobseeker support by 2030 has had a rocky start, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Beneficiary numbers are up – and so are ...
Raglan Roast is a staple of Wellington coffee culture. But with five branches across the capital, which one is the best? I am a die-hard Raglan Roast fan. It’s consistently the most affordable cafe in Wellington, and one of the only places you can get a coffee after 3pm. So, ...
Residents of University of Auckland halls are being urged to withhold their accommodation fees from May 1, in a bid to force the university to take student concerns over rent hikes seriously.The University of Auckland is facing a strike from students over the cost of on-campus accommodation. The Students ...
The thousands of government “back-office” job cuts are causing widespread pain in the capital city. In today’s episode of The Detail, we speak to three journalists and a think tank researcher, looking at the larger picture around the cuts and what effect it will have on Wellington, a city that’s ...
Opinion: The famed American architect and urban designer Daniel Burnham once said, “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood!” Burnham wouldn’t have been referring to the transport plans in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past five years; projects so big they hadn’t the credibility to ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Friday 19 April appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Opinion: With maths understanding at 42 percent for Year 8 students, there’s no doubt something has to be done. But how? The post Financial literacy should be on all of us appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Hineaupounamu ‘Missy’ Nuku has been scaling mountains in Canada for her college basketball team, the Lakeland Rustlers. Alberta is currently home for the 20-year-old point guard, who is in her first year of a scholarship at Lakeland College, where she is studying for a business degree. She has certainly made ...
New Zealand and the Philippines have signed a new maritime security agreement and stated their concerns over activity in the South China Sea, as Chinese vessels continue to flout international law. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Philippines President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos committed to signing a Mutual Logistics Supporting Arrangement by ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra When ASIO boss Mike Burgess delivered his annual threat assessment earlier this year, he stressed the rising danger posed by espionage and foreign interference. “In 2024, threats to our way of life have surpassed ...
The Tribunal had called on Minister for Children Karen Chhour to provide evidence at an urgent inquiry into the repeal of Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By T.J. Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT University Midjourney image by T.J. Thomson As more than half of Australian office workers report using generative artificial intelligence (AI) for work, we’re starting to see this technology affect every ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Nicole Sharwood, Injury epidemiologist | Expert Witness, UNSW Sydney Sergey Novikov/Shutterstock Injuries are the leading cause of disability and death among Australian children and adolescents. At least a quarter of all emergency department presentations during childhood are injury-related. Injuries can ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Di Winkler, Adjunct Associate Professor, Living with Disability Research Centre, La Trobe University Shutterstock/Ground PictureMany Australians with disability feel on the edge of a precipice right now. Recommendations from the disability royal commission and the NDIS review were released late ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Salman Shooshtarian, Senior Lecturer, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University Salman Shooshtarian Asbestos has been found in mulch used for playgrounds, schools, parks and gardens across Sydney and Melbourne. Local communities naturally fear for the health of their ...
Family First says that the latest abortion statistics make grim and upsetting reading, with a 25% increase in abortions since the decriminalisation of abortion in March 2020. According to an Official Information Act request received by Right to Life ...
Ipsos New Zealand's inaugural participation in a global study on populism reveals a pervasive sense of societal and economic decline among New Zealanders. MORE DETAILS AND FULL REPORT HERE Ipsos New Zealand's inaugural participation in a global study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Harcourt, Industry Professor and Chief Economist, University of Technology Sydney Steve Smith, one of this generation’s finest batters, has conquered much of the cricketing world during his career, and he now has set his sights on a new frontier: the United ...
Madeleine Ballard reviews the debut novel from romesh dissanayake.when I open the shop, the debut novel by Naarm-based Aotearoa writer romesh dissanayake (Sri Lankan, Koryo Saram), is a narrative of grief. Devendra loses his mother, opens a noodle shop on The Terrace, grieves, and emerges changed. But just as ...
"Theres no such thing as a free lunch"
or so the saying goes…what does that mean to you?
Depends on context:
1. Somewhere, someone, somehow is paying.
2. You've taken on an obligation for reciprocity that at some point will have to be discharged.
It means they don't know the policies of this Labour government very well.
Labour has delivered hundreds of thousands of free lunches per day for several years now.
Which fits under:
1. Somewhere, someone, somehow is paying.
Adding to Molly's idea while it may not be you at the exact time it will be you later on
Wiki has some ideas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch
The adding to the confusion is another saying…..
'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth'?
The proverbial saying 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth' means don't be ungrateful when you receive a gift.
So don't be ungrateful when you receive your free lunch that you may have to pay for sometime in the future.
… or find yourself doing the dishes…
At what price per litre of 91 is continuing an oil embargo of Russian oil still a good idea?
$2.80? $3? $3.50? $5?
We're now in an inflation v morality war
Im not sure that we as a nation have much choice. If our FM toned down the rhetoric and we got ourselves off the Russian list of unfriendly nations could we really expect to be able to buy cheap Russian oil? We would then face sanctions ourselves.
Can we nationalise our oil and gas reserves? Would this be enough? As things stand at present the only real immediate answer is to understand that the resources in your country are now absolutely a nations primary source for survival. Even the aluminium smelter should now be looked at as a national resource as aluminium prices rise.
The extraordinary thing is that the US still seems to think that money has some sort of intrinsic value divorced from reality. They really seem to think that a nation that is a net energy exporter can be brought to its knees by cutting it off from Swift. It didnt work for Iran. With Russia it will blow up in their face.
Steering a path through this will be very challenging. We have already seen with covid how difficult national unity for the public good is but also that we are one of the better nations at getting this right. It really is time to start looking at what we can do for ourselves and our immediate neighbours in the Pacific. If we can get actual physical help from larger nations we should be prepared to look at it on a case by case basis. We don't indulge in continual hand wringing about US wars of aggression every time we engage with them and should be prepared to do the same with Russia and China in any offers of help in especially energy infrastructure. If we want pumped hydro, we could talk to them about help, or Russia or Iran to upgrade a nationalised Marsden Point? Its definitely time to think outside the box. We will need all the help we can get.
"We don't indulge in continual hand wringing about US wars of aggression every time we engage with them and should be prepared to do the same with Russia and China in any offers of help in especially energy infrastructure."
We engage in voluminous hand wringing about US wars of aggression particularly when we are asked to join them. As we should.
"If we want pumped hydro, we could talk to them about help, or Russia or Iran to upgrade a nationalised Marsden Point?"
For pumped hydro I would turn to Australian and Irish examples that have been operational for a while.
I certainly agree that this is asking the right questions about our own energy resilience at the right time.
Hearing Luxon this morning saying the "ute tax" will go because there are no current electric alternatives in-market is just folly.
Smart companies should use this war to price shifting their whole fleets much faster.
Companies like rentals, construction and taxis who are less oil dependent are going to be sitting pretty while the rest in their combustion engines are screaming.
It’s a brutal mechanism but 91 Petrol is the climate change lever we all need.
It would be a climate change mechanism if we all had the luxury of being able to afford to move over to electric, work local or from home. But most don't so the more likely scenario is an uplift in social unrest. Even Germany has been unable to resist the primacy of fossil fuel energy, the lack of which will drive right wing nationalism. If we don't come up with an immediate answer to rising fuel costs while we work on future energy shifts then it is likely that social cohesion will break down. Russia understands this and it is part of their decision process on why now is a good time. They may not have all the bells and whistles but will have the social cohesion that abundent energy resources bring. How are we going to mitigate this or are the recent scenes in Wellington just a gentle rehersal on the future?
Yes it will be the corporate fleets, taxis, local government, and central government Departments that will be able to put in orders for electric vehicles – which in turn starts a proper secondary market for the majority of New Zealanders. We still haven't seen enough government procurement support for this.
It was in 2019 that nearly 3% of the entire population of New Zealand marched up and down the country seeking much stronger action for climate change.
In May this year the full plan is supposed to come out that shows how we will fulfill that promise.
So May would be a really good time for those who want more to start preparing the kind of creative protest that got the 2021 tractor protest so much airtime.
If we get a petrol spike to $4 the political pressure from consumers to do less will be hard to resist – and that is when the government will need its supporters the most.
Absolute environmental madness for government to invest in whole fleets of electric vehicles, with all the carbon used to create them, when there are hundreds of thousands of good quality, serviceable vehicles, ripe for conversion.
If the money is there for a fleet, it's more than there to get deals on batteries, engines and motors and train the people to do it. If you want trickle down to affect us poor people, get the tech and process sorted and cheap enough for the countries top 10 best selling models by testing on the rich pricks and let us have at it. Got to better than waiting for new electric fleets to age, decay, and be passed on to the little people.
If you want to be all radical and revolutionary, you could keep it all in house and make parts with home grown aluminium from Tiwai, and when were done and gas free, mothball it.
I didn't realise it but apparently NZ was importing approx 15% of fuel from Russia this was almost totally oil for refining – with the refinery scheduled to close in April I would imagine forward contracts for refined fuel would already be in place I believe in my ferreting around that I saw that of our imports of fuel from Russia only about 1% was refined product. I would anticipate that our forward contracts for refined fuel would have barely included any from Russia – NZ will certainly be paying a lot more for it's fuel due to the international market conditions but any NZ ban on Russian product I think would be mainly symbolic. Any thoughts Ad?
I don't know enough about New Zealand fuel importing to comment specifically.
I do see though that we are going through a spike that will last at least as long as the Yom Kippur War, which started off the Muldoon government seeking as much energy independence as possible.
I want to see the petrol price rise debated in Parliament as soon as possible, so that Dr Woods can start revealing more plans than simply her confidence in forward contracts out of Singapore. The Comm Comm already went through the fuel company books two years ago and made fuck-all difference.
Pretty weird to see the future rushing at us when we're clearly not ready.
Government revenue from fuel excise is around 2 billion per year at an appropriate point politically they could announce a halving of the excise to "assist the country in dealing with the disruption caused by worldwide issues" or doubtlessly some better constructed phrase to maximise the political benefit of their actions cost 1 billion per annum.
Why not eliminate all the excise? Leave yourself the option so that you actually have an option.
When National demands all excise is removed …"but roading still has to be paid for and it is important for an element of the user paying to remain. Of course this remains an exercisable option if the international oil market……"
When the trucking lobby demands a subsidy for diesel costs….. " unfortunately in New Zealand the general public has been subsidising the trucking industry already for many years as the heavy transport industry does not and has not paid their fair share of roading costs. We are announcing a commission to investigate the fairest structure of revenue collection for roading costs going forward….."
Perhaps develop (or accelerate already existing plans for) vehicle charging network in NZ
Perhaps a levy on all new and used imports with solely ICE power and apply that levy to subsidise new and used electric and hybrid vehicle imports.
Perhaps embracing Efeso Collins plan for free public transport in Auckland – reducing the congestion costs to the economy in Auckland and the reduction in costs for the less well off would likely make it a winner from the economic point of view.
The government is hopefully looking at ideas like these as well as better measures thought of by people well paid to develop them.
I agree that the future is rushing at us
Ad at sparrow fart: “We’re now in an inflation v morality war”
Money trumps morality. That's capitalism.
Michael Hudson has written a sobering article on the economic consequences of recent events
The American Empire Self-Destructs
But nobody thought that it would happen this fast
fasthttps://www.unz.com/mhudson/the-american-empire-self-destructs/
Liking it. Bring on the bigger oil prices, time it was what it really cost us all to burn carbon.
yep. And best we get on with recreating society so that we don't get inundated with the fall out from that. Just transition.
There will be no transition, to many people are addicted to this life style.
I'm with those who say there will be a complete breakdown of the current system by 2030. We are fast running out of the ability to maintain this stupidity.
I prefer boycotting stuff I wasn't going to use anyway.
Well unsustainable policy from the government ie policy for biofuels was one of the main contributing factor in the food riots and arab spring.Here it was the underlying forcing beneath speculative bubbles and bursts.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/powering-nz%E2%80%99s-future-biofuels
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1413108112#fig01
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1413108112
Three weeks in and we're so short of nurses that we are now talking about having covid positive nurses back on wards, on the same day we're told that rest during infection is the best way to avoid long covid… doesnt make much sense does it, basically asking nurses to take an even bigger risk in sacrificing their long term health.
Perhaps we should be asking those unvaxxed nurses if they'd like to come back to work please…
Not knowing how long it is going to take for the Covid wave to peak and then drop is also a concern for nurses.
Not to mention the dangers of viral load.
It certainly poses some questions about 'sense.' Just like making sense of unvaxxed nurses.
They'd be administering medication to patients and carrying out procedures with the air of, "Trust me, I know what I'm doing. Trust me, I know exactly what's in this, how it was arrived at, all about the company that made it, and how your body is going to respond to it."
Much like you when you used your computer just now. Vast knowledge of computer science, physics, math, and micro-engineering. Or would you even turn it on – dilemma!
Well done, much impressed.
But you have to train to be a nurse, you don't have to train to use a computer.
The concern about unvaxxed nurses is they will, in that environment, inevitably and quickly become the cared-for, rather than the carers.
That post was unclear at best. I did ponder, after my ten minutes was up, if I'd interpreted it wrong.
I agree. Unvaxed nurses have no place in hospitals or any public facing role. But we all know the cliche by now, unprecedented times, aye.
We don't see it, but if you talk to public facing medical workers, it's really hard and has been for some time. Not just the increased work and work requirements, but the increase in crazy they're having to deal with. Putting unvaxed colleagues in that environment adds insult to injury.
Has there being a noticeable rise in crazy here?
Yes.
oh hell yes
"Oh hell yes"
That is unfortunate. A small, but SOO vocal, group.
At least we can laugh.
Groundswell have been quiet lately. Hope they're not in Waiouru pinching tanks.
If by crazy, you mean: othering, simplifying complex issues with pejoratives, deliberate misrepresenting of someone’s position then hell yes. Off the scale.
So rather than contribute to the discussion we have this non sequitur.
Why do you think it would be a good policy to employ unvaccinated nurses in front facing roles?
How are unvaccinated nurses supposed to function effectively and with the respect of their colleagues when they are not taking basic steps to protect themselves and others?
Crazy is all the ideas around for not having the vaccinations that are based on 'woo' and not medical reasons. I have absolutely no problem with people not having the vaccination if it is medically advised not to. Asking us to respect a decision based on
'doan wanna'
is a bit much.
Then there are the multitude of CTs that are advanced to 'rationalise/justify' a decision. Why do you defend these and tried to shift the opprobrium onto those who call them out? ie call them out by commonplace references, shorthand to the type of thinking behind them.
I am sure that if I had made up my mind not to have the vax for medical purposes or because I was troubled by the mRNA aspect there is no way in the world I would be allying myself with people whose reasons are because of 5G trackers, magnets, Aids or Covid giving especially if my concerns were related to the mRNA aspect. We have alternatives to this now.
You obviously did not read my reply to your previous posts about people being nasty, according to you. Plus another from me and one from Incognito
https://thestandard.org.nz/real-protestors-do-not-burn-kids-playgrounds/#comment-1871448
Until the vaccines were available, medical staff around the globe developed protocols to minimise infection.
We need to balance the success of such protocols against the need for medical personnel.
(Don't have either of those factors quantified, but I think that's the question that should be asked, and re-asked, as demand grows and available medical resources/personnel dwindle).
Oh bugger! All those years spent in teaching computer science – a complete an utter waste of time.
You definitely have to train to teach about and fix them.
That's a tiny part of computer science.
It's actually a pretty good analogy – any numpty can turn on a computer and work a desktop with a given margin for error, just like any numpty can change sheets or bandage a wound with a given margin for error.
But managing an ICU bed? Knowing when to call a doctor before all the alarms start going off? Administering drugs properly, recognising errors or drug interactions that dr and pharmacy might have missed? With someone who feels they can pick and choose which protocols they should follow because their own research overrules the specialist guidelines?
Yeah, that's like a computer progammer who thinks a b-tree is the only way to store data or insists on using deprecated library modules. Sooner or later it will end in tears.
i commented here a while ago that they should never have terminated nurses employment for not being vaxxed. I made some suggestions about how these nurses might be redeployed to non contact roles, freeing up other nurses to be on the front line.
I think the situation is so desperate for nurses now, the unvaxxed should be re-instated and have daily rapid anti gen testing before and even during shifts. Many of these nurses will be youngish and fit and probably won't get omicron badly, then will recover. Given nurses with covid are needed to continue to keep the hospitals functioning, what difference is it going to make having an unvaxxed nurse working?
RAT inaccuracy during the early days of infection heightens the risk of having having infectious staff working.
ermbiggened
Despite the training the medical profession is as prone to poor decision making as any other group.
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/17/887590699/doctors-and-dentists-still-flooding-u-s-with-opioid-prescriptions
Yes indeed …the same with teachers…..being educated does not stop them from falling into illogical traps.
Several of those leading the scientific explanation of the pandemic in our media are principle investigators for this org: https://www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/about-us/
https://www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/siouxsie-wiles/
https://www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/shaun-hendy/
https://www.math.canterbury.ac.nz/~m.plank/
Hosted by the University of Auckland, it formed to coordinate experts with a grasp of the science of complexity, to provide insights into how it elucidates the interactions between ourselves and our world.
Here's an example of how it demonstrates relevance:
The big picture view derives from ecology.
So whereas economics provides a world-view based on money, ecology gives us a world-view based on how nature works. That's why politics and governance is based on economics. The political left & right have always agreed that money is more important than nature – which is why Green politics had to be neither left nor right.
Memes are catchy, and informational memes aren't necessarily more contagious than disinformational memes. Social media is an encompassing arena containing a multitude of component social ecosystems (networks) made vibrant via the interflow of infectious memes. As self-organising systems, these will learn to moderate the toxic effects of disinfo to ensure collective survival and health. Or they won't, and will either die or get warped by an uncontrolled infection.
So you can see how social media challenges us to transcend the habitual prioritisation of economics in our political focus, lest we get taken out by toxic invader memes. Just another form of pollution to worry about…
"Uniformly pro-Putin"
Of course they are. They've got their heads so far up their own asses their only means of taking in information is if it is diametrically opposed to common narrative.
It's All About Trust
We have been lucky to have a government we can trust during this pandemic
The difference in the death rate in Hong Kong pop. 7 mil. compared to New Zealand pop. 5mil. is dramatic, where trust in the government is low.
Many have put it down to distrust of the Communist government of Hong Kong by the elderly.
It's all about leadership.
We have been lucky to have a government we can trust during the pandemic. In my opinion, more than anything else majority trust in the leadership of New Zealand's Left of Centre government has helped keep this country's death rate from covid-19 relatively low.
Those MIGs from Poland (all of Poland's MIGs) are going to get delivered to Ukraine. A couple of dozen or more. They gave them to US so US can deliver them thereby fudging the rules around NATO involvement?
I'm not sure Putin's going to see Poland as an innocent party here. But really, screw that guy.
https://www.gov.pl/web/diplomacy/statement-of-the-minister-of-foreign-affairs-of-the-republic-of-poland-in-connection-with-the-statement-by-the-us-secretary-of-state-on-providing-airplanes-to-ukraine
Bah. Pentagon knocked it back.
Stuck Russian convoy has grown somewhat:
Stuck or stopped? And if stopped why stopped? First, a stopped convoy of this size shows the absolute dominance in the air and on the land of Russian forces. Second, a stopped convoy of this size demonstrates a possible destructive scenario while allowing those that want to leave to do so. The more people that leave the city, the more likely either surrender without fighting or at least fighting that lessens civilian casualties.
Just one daisy cutter bomb should do it.
https://www.history.com/videos/worlds-largest-conventional-bomb
Will one of these be the West’s next export to the Ukraine?
Yes, women are still and increasingly fucked off about having our words and concepts suppressed and being told to shut the fuck up.
JKR on fire this week. International Women’s Day
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1501181554948775938?s=21
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1501192047633608707?s=21
Transcript of that part of the interview where the Labour MP apparently says that the definition of ‘woman’ changes depending on which legislation you are referring to at the time 🤡
long past time to sort this mess out.
https://twitter.com/obsolesence/status/1501279108969517064?s=21
Unbelievable. A major political party in a modern democracy who can’t define “woman”. When is this crap going to end?
Not a major political party, most major political parties.
Currently watching documentary series available on Youtube: Dysphoria
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRU9NIX0AA143z2QKukQcOqS96qriKGyw
Is this what Labour is proposing, or is it emotional rhetoric?
It’s satire. Read the room.
If you want to talk to feminists on IWD I’d suggest not leading with calling their politics emotional.
Satire in regards to this issue had a double radical masectomy, a hysterectomy, a vagina ectomy and now is waiting for an leg meat roll to be sewn onto their pubic bone so as no longer be the thing that men don't want to define, but believe any man can be.
Of course it's satire, but Keir Starmer did make the astonishing claim that it was wrong to say only women have a cervix.
he's not the only one. So much of this nonsense now.
I can't read that, it's locked, so I don't know the details of his argument. But why is it astonishing? Someone born female no longer wishes to be identified as such but hasn't had surgery. Continuing to call that person a woman is wrong, imo.
It's an issue because as a result of the ideology, women are now being called cervix havers, even when we don't want to be and when it harms us (think public health campaigns like cervical screening removing the word 'woman' from their material. Not all women know what a cervix is, or English is their second language, so this creates barriers for women who need clear communication around their bodies. It's fucked up to have to be even explaining this).
Trans women and trans men's needs can be met in various ways without dehumanising women (females). Only female bodied people have a cervix, the word we generally use to refer to those people is women. Not wanting to be called a woman is fine, wanting to change the language and concepts of a whole class of people so you can cope or feel included isn't when that class of people object on the basis of their own oppression and wellbeing.
The only way Starmer is right is if the word woman has no meaning. Hence 🤡 MP above.
Starmer article is here https://archive.ph/LC1G2
yep and when that person then dies of cervical cancer because they pretended to be a man than that is just oops. to bad?
You can identify as humpty dumpty, but that does not make you a twin egg in striped trousers.
And the male who had his penis/scrotum inverted into something resembling a 'vulva' and who needs to daily dilate his 'vagina' hole in order to keep depth and keep the hole open – after all their male body wants to shut and heal that hole- does not have a cervix. At the end of the ‘vagina’ hole he has some penile left over tissue or some intestinal tissue. Non of that is a cervix, as that part of the female body has a very clear reason for being. Namely keeping the uterus sterile and being able to open up to let a baby be born.
That man would never die of cervical cancer, but he would still die of penile cancer if he were unlucky enough to get it.
But yes, it is so unkind to pretend that a women on T does not have a cervix, and if it kills them.
edit: https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/ian-duncan-deputy-speaker-house-lords-interview-brother-died-ovarian-cancer-1125221
this is actually a rather sad article, but his brother died not because the language is not correct, but because his brother deluded themselves into thinking that they changed ‘sex’ which sadly they did not. They changed the outside of their bodies, and that was that. A lot of surgery and a lot of T but still a women, and killed by a disease that only women have.
So to some extend you could say that kindness kills transpeople.
and it's worth pointing out the long and horrendous history women have of medical mistreatment via sexism and misogyny, we have bloody good reasons for not giving up our hard won rights or our right to name ourselves in the way that is necessary for us.
"Continuing to call that person a woman is wrong, imo."
Continuing to call that person a 'woman' is factually correct. If we wish to respect that persons wishes by calling them a 'woman' on a personal level, we can do so if we wish. But changing the meaning of a word that defines the reality for the vast majority of adult female humans actually demeans their identity.
I think the solution for public health campaigns is for trans people to politically organise and come up with an overarching term that will include TM, NB females, and any of the other identities, so then we can say "women and [new term] people need to get a cervical smear every three years" or whatever.
(There’s an unclarity here because if we say ‘trans people’ then you get a subset of trans women wanting cervical smears so they feel like a woman despite them not having a cervix (the affirmation need or demand). In some cases there is an medical access issue to sort out, and there’s also a colonisation issue to resolve societally, where some trans women’s wants are unreasonable eg having fake pregnancies and wanting to be part of ante-natal women’s groups)
The problem remains of how to engage with a class of people (trans men) around their female bodies when they have dysphoria to an extent that they cannot tolerate reference to female bodies. This is a separate issue that needs addressing, and shouldn't be used to remove women's language and concepts.
women, transmen, and non binary.
men, transwomen and non binary.
works real well, is explicit in its meaning and need not to be created.
We have accurate language to name things. We just have a group that wants to remove any meaning of he word women and associated functions with that, i.e. the word Mother.
This is a removal of rights from women, to all of their rights they won over the last centuries, down to he 'are they actual humans'.
women, trans men, non-binary, genderfluid, third gender, etc
I think three categories is too many for good public health messaging. It's also clunky. Given this is primarily and identity issue, coining a new term that makes it easy to include people with a gender identity makes sense to me, and keeps things simple.
They are perfect as they are true.
We have two groups
Men – Women
Transmen and female non binary are sub categories of women.
Transwomen and male non binary are sub categories of men.
Everything else is porkies, and so far these porkies are killing trans/non binary people by witholding hte truth from them. Namely that they can not, ever – with todays medical advances – change their sex. That means transmen can get pregnant, can die of cervical, ovarian, uterine cancers, and transwomen can die of penile, testicular and prostate cancer. Cause in the end biology don't have any fucks to give about our need to be kind to the point of killing people thanks to lies.
It also means that children who grow up trans( puperty blockers, wrong sex hormones, castration, neo vag and leg/arm roll penis surgeries) have all the issues their sexed bodies have, minus the reproduction facilities, issues with arousal/orgasms etc. But it would not be kind to talk honestly about these issues.
@Sabine.
As confronting as some might find what you state – I agree with it all.
To allow the words relating to biological sex to be appropriated so as to be meaningless is more than problematic, it is deliberate obfuscation and gaslighting.
Seemingly, 'small' concessions will often have large repercussions. This adoption of alternative language definitions has already shown itself to be one of those instances.
Sorry my first sentence should have read "Continuing to call that person a 'woman' is factually incorrect."
I am more than happy to call a man who identifies as a woman 'she' at a personal and voluntary level. But official recognition of that term is not only a delusion of biological reality, it is to demean biological women.
As you have pointed out, the problem is the ideological results that matter. The reaction to simple statements of fact by JKR is a case in point.
Calling you an idiot is also factually correct. Am I ok to continue doing so?
/satire
that's not satire, it's trolling by someone who can't formulate an argument, and as you know, I will moderate such.
Only if "idiot" was a biological state that could not be changed, and Gypsy belonged to it.
But it is not is it?
Just like your comment was not '/satire'.
If I wanted to be identified as an idiot, and if I asked you to call me an idiot, then you would be welcome to. But equally, not being an idiot, calling me one would still be factually incorrect.
It will be a change anyway.
With our current Government every other day of the year is, to paraphrase the immortal Horace Rumpole, "We who must be obeyed day".
So we must stop questioning these things that are decided by those above our pay grade and get on with the obeying bit.
Some of us have a suitable response to that. It consists of 2 words. The first begins with F. The second word is 'that'.
i commented here a while ago that they should never have terminated nurses employment for not being vaxxed. I made some suggestions about how these nurses might be redeployed to non contact roles, freeing up other nurses to be on the front line.
I think the situation is so desperate for nurses now, the unvaxxed should be re-instated and have daily rapid anti gen testing before and even during shifts. Many of these nurses will be youngish and fit and probably won't get omicron badly, then will recover. Given nurses with covid are needed to continue to keep the hospitals functioning, what difference is it going to make having an unvaxxed nurse working?
Anker, I have recently come out of hospital after elected surgery. I would have been horrified to learn there were unvaccinated nurses in the building. At a time when the country is still to reach its Omicron peak, it is not the time to ease up on current policies. There are other ways that hospitals can reduce the effect of nursing shortages. The obvious one which I expect most are adopting is to cease all elective and other non urgent medical surgeries. My surgery was delayed 15 months due to Covid but I fully accepted there was no alternative.
Once we are tracking back downward which is hopefully only some 2 or 3 weeks away, then it could be appropriate to reconsider employing unvaccinated people but not now.
I have relatives in the Defence Force that were working in the MIQ facilities.
The number of nurses at one such facility was 26, for an MIQ capacity of 50.
They spent all day there, occasionally performing a COVID test. Times that waste of medical resources by the 80 MIQ facilities and you should then reasonably be asking – Could this be handled more efficiently?
This government could have – and still could – do better at allocating medical resources.
Oh yes, the government was caught with its pants down. But of course the current situation has been many years in the making and, as others have pointed out, you can't train nurses overnight.
I think it can be said of most governments whatever their stripes… there is nothing like a full scale emergency to expose the inherent weakness of some government policies.
Repetitive failure to acknowledge issues, and correct accordingly is a problem regardless of which government is in charge.
Current government seems to have this problem.
Firstly Anne, I am very glad you got your surgery and I hope it has gone well.
I have proposed that unvaxxed nurses could be re-deployed to non contact roles and that would involve working from home on secure tele health platforms.
There may come a time when the choice is having covid and being treated with an unvaxxed nurse who has had a RATs test (20% chance of false negatives). Or not getting treatment. Of course if you are in hospital with Covid, then you already have it.
I am very puzzled as to whether people think that a vaxxed nurse who has tested positive but is symptomless or has very mild symptoms should be allowed to work versus an unvaxxed nurse with a RAT test who has tested negative.
this is a good proposal imo. I'm not sure that MoH or DHBs are resilient and adaptable enough to manage that.
We should be looking hard at aged care for this issue too.
It would depend entirely on the reason why they are unvaxxed. If its because they are immunocompromised in some way then your idea is an excellent one. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if its happening in some locations already.
But if they are unvaxxed because they have disappeared down rabbit holes then it is a different story. By the very nature of their poor choice I would not want to see any nurse or doctor who has rejected Covid vaccinations on spurious or conspiratorial grounds being associated with a medical practice of any kind.
I know there are others with a different view, but I don’t believe there is any room for compromise on the matter of Covid vaccinations.
https://twitter.com/SophieXY44/status/1501288144146104320
Rowling tends to choose her causes fairly well, I think.
JK Rowling joins royals and celebrities in donating millions to Ukraine relief (msn.com)
COVID vaccines: time to confront anti-vax aggression
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01084-x
"Accurate, targeted counter-messaging from the global health community is important but insufficient, as is public pressure on social-media companies. The United Nations and the highest levels of governments must take direct, even confrontational, approaches with Russia, and move to dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States.
Efforts must expand into the realm of cyber security, law enforcement, public education and international relations. A high-level inter-agency task force reporting to the UN secretary-general could assess the full impact of anti-vaccine aggression, and propose tough, balanced measures. The task force should include experts who have tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear armament, because anti-science is now approaching similar levels of peril. It is becoming increasingly clear that advancing immunization requires a counteroffensive."
Pretty sure nothing will actually happen.
– Chris Luxon
Just shooting off at the mouth like he did in the boardroom of Air NZ. Sad thing is this kind of phrasing will go down well with the political right because to them it shows his high aspiration for all Maori to be “high calibre”. This kind of unthinking corp-speak highlights Luxon’s inexperience.
Some comments:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/03/national-leader-christopher-luxon-defends-high-calibre-m-ori-comment-after-criticism.html
What a daft thing for people to be upset about.
If you replace 'maori' with women, pacifica, people etc. would it cause a similar amount of angst ?
Should have said people, and further down the article he tries to explain that's what he meant.
If that's what he meant then why not just say that?
It was a rookie error and a telling slip. Thankfully highlighted by social media and now media.
Probably what he actually meant was wealthy, successful National-voting Maori because to Chris, wealth, success and voting National go hand in hand. While poor, unsuccessful people vote Labour.
Some really awesome high-calibre Māori reached out to me over summer.
– Chris Luxon
Yeah, I used to use that expression – high calibre – years ago when I was an immature, naive idiot who fancied herself. 😉
Oh dear, oh dear – what a chump call!
But they must have been very Big Guns being such High Calibre.
Mind you what more could one expect coming from an ex CEO of Air NZ where the whole culture and emphasis of the organisation (probably as a result of its ex CEO) is focused on bowing and scraping its "elite" customers.
If I have interpreted your comment correctly, don't you think Luxon is a naive chump to have expressed himself in such a way?
Sorry Mutton but I can't agree. As a non-journalist, my first question to someone who said "high-calibre people" would be to ask him to describe what low-calibre people are like. Is he talking about early proto-hominids and have we just time-travelled into a 19th Century anthropology lecture?
But calibre, of course, is just one measure in the analogy. I, for example, would be more of a medium calibre low velocity pakeha with a progressive left-hand twist in my lands and grooves.. .
It would be exactly the same for me. Firstly, "awesome, high-calibre" is dickhead corporate language that means fuck all, and represents a clunky, transparent attempt to connect with 'average' people, who are incapable of thinking precisely and therefore beneath one; if he actually thinks it does mean something (which is not to be ruled out), then it's even worse, because it shows that he has trouble distinguishing between the content of his thoughts and the meaning of the words he is uttering. Secondly, regardless of the minority group he is referring to, it implicitly divides that minority group up into the worthy and the unworthy, and exudes the arrogant assumption that he is a fitting arbiter of which is which; it throws up the question as to whether he would even have bothered listening to their ideas if they hadn't met his worthiness criteria. That is the sort of call one can make on the fly if one is just a person on the street; less so if one is aspiring to govern a nation for all of its diverse people.
If he were talking about members of what he considered to be the dominant group in society, the connotations would be slightly different, but there's no real need to go into that here.
yep, Luxon has become Captain Dufus…
looking forward to the many foot-in-mouth's to come haha
House prices falling. Thanks Jacinda!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/real-estate/127987960/housing-market-correction-under-way-but-masked-by-last-years-price-increases
You have to actually read the whole article Mutton.
"On an annual basis, national price increases had slowed to 22.9 per cent in February, down from 26.8 per cent the month before."
So, contrary to the misleading framing of the statistics, house prices have gone up an incredible 22.9% from prices that were already mindlessly high a year ago.
There is a constant theme in the media to pretend that house prices are falling when the opposite is true which I don't understand-any theories out there?
Many in the media are idiots that stop thinking after the headline?
The actual purpose of our "news" papers is to spruik the property market?
no problem, it is the way you are despite all your obfuscation
so fucking boring haven't you got anything better to do?
[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.]
What's starting to shock me is how this governments rhetoric has changed.
When asked about a problem this government used to say it would be looking into it and commited to fixing /changing the problem coming off as flexible and reactive if there was a crisis they would admit there was a crisis
Nowadays, the government gets defensive, point blank refuses to answer questions and gets into debates about the wording or definition of the problem and refuses to accept things are a problem. Instead of comiting to change or looking into something it usually lists why they can't do anything on x y z.
This is becoming an issue. They are becoming the can't, shan't , won't party.
Take for instance the cost of living crisis it's clear we're in one and have been in one for some time instead of saying yes it's a crisis because of global issues and we're going to try to address some of these in the budget to soften the blow the pm rejects the word crisis.
Or tax brackets. Tax brackets haven't been adjusted for 12 years, NZs tax system is broken and unfair and focuses far too much on sucking money out of the bottom, tax bracket creep is hurting people many min wage workers are wrongly about to be put in higher tax brackets, a reactive, flexible, energetic government would commit to adjusting tax brackets, it would be popular, instead the government rules out doing so with no argument. Too hard. Meanwhile the opposition commits to do doing so, keys govt would have blunted this by comiting to adjusting them Labour just scoffs. This is going to hurt them.
The government is coming off as tired and stuck in their ways and with some severely hard times coming up this winter problems on tax, housing,rents, fuel,food are falling on death ears it doesn't seem to care about a third term.
They could at the very least adjust tax brackets and drop gst to pre key levels of about 10% to line it up with Australias gst and to offset the 5% inflation.
I fear the govt is walking into its own winter if discontent. I'm not sure if it's arrogance or being captured by their ministries or just plane out of touch but there refusal to even admit problems or commit to simple changes is a big problem and they seem more like a fourth term govt than a govt in it's fifth year.
They desperately need a cabinet shake up and to start reading the room and getting back to a can do govt before the country sees them as out of touch and a govt of can't , shan't won't
I was thinking the same thing. The emerging denial is very john key – like. Jk always denied a housing crisis, inequality crisis and child poverty etc… Labour now starting to sound the same.
Tax lawyer stickies all over this.
https://twitter.com/SvarnUlfPol/status/1501272826413727746
The authorities of the Republic of Poland, after consultations between the President and the Government, are ready to deploy – immediately and free of charge – all their MIG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base and place them at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America.
At the same time, Poland requests the United States to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions of purchase of the planes.
The Polish Government also requests other NATO Allies – owners of MIG-29 jets – to act in the same vein.
https://www.gov.pl/web/diplomacy/statement-of-the-minister-of-foreign-affairs-of-the-republic-of-poland-in-connection-with-the-statement-by-the-us-secretary-of-state-on-providing-airplanes-to-ukraine
And that's a no.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/08/poland-mig-29-jets-us-ukraine
They gotta have plausible deniability. Use an anonymous middleman is the usual way to finesse this situation. Poland gives planes to X while receiving replacements from Y (USA or agent). X gets planes to Ukraine AF.
Money talks so offer the deal to sympathetic govts for an enable fee. All you need is a team of trained-up pilots. If they are two-seaters, an experienced co-pilot could advise a trainee who is experienced with different planes.
And spend a couple of hundred hours obtaining a type rating in an aircraft travelling at more than twice the speed of sound with an unrefuelled range of 3,000km or so. Nah.
Young guns rise to such challenges! Anyone serious about helping Ukraine will have to use lateral thinking to finesse the mental blocks erected by old guys controlling the various hierarchies. History shows us this is how such challenges usually get dealt with. Forget business as usual and the bureaucratic slowdowns it normally imposes…
Poland has good quality Mig 29's Ukraine has more than enough people experienced in flying those planes but they would have none experienced in flying US manufactured planes like the F16
https://twitter.com/WomenReadWomen/status/1501318675592204292
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1501291633165357056
So, JKR rightfully uses her institutionally and societally gifted power to talk the feminism she wants. I on the other hand am dropping IWD tweets in OM because I know that if I put up any of this as a post I will suffer social sanctions that unlike JKR I cannot afford, and today I don't have the spoons for it.
That's fucked up. And this is why feminists call JKR a queen.
It's hard enough writing as feminist in this very blokey space, as an author and/or as a commenter, for a range of reasons to do with society and the culture of TS in particular. No Debate and the sex/gender war make it actually risky. Many women cannot even express an opinion using their real life names because of fear of real life sanctions.
We're losing ground. Women, and society. Half of the left doesn't know what we're talking about and the other half thing we're bigots for demanding that being female is an actual thing and that it matters. It's imperative we find ways to name what is happening.
Here's Suzanne Moore,
Read the whole thing,
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1501155484593704962
https://archive.ph/p1POV link from out behind the paywall.
Which is the point of all that exercise. Achieve 'equality' by dismantling it, calling for 'equity' and thus a fonterra board with 6 male and 6 transwomen or male non binaries or male gender fluids or any made up woo woo is suddenly not a 100% male board.
Have a womans team comprised of only transwomen. ! Equity!
Have transwomen dilute the women pool on women lists, jobs awards etc. And in the end, have these same trans identified males who appropriate womanhood make rules under which things who can no longer be named have to live.
I don't think many of the things who can no longer be named have thoughts about the practical implications, or for those in academia with government jobs maybe they believe that they will not be affected by the shit storm that is about to rain down on us.
The Ferengi Nation comes to mind. Womb rental and all.
Weka, I so endorse all you are saying………..I have been surprized how gender ideology has captured so many, especially the media, the public service, a raft of other organisations and The Labour and Green Parties.
Debate is shut down, people are called bigots and transphobes, lesbian woman tresspassed from Pride last year and had the police called to enforce the tresspass.
I spoke out recently on a group I am a member of FB page and had my post cancelled. I was drawing attention to the 25,000 detransitioners on Reddit. I know many in the group agree with me, but were too scared to speak up. One had previously spoken up and the gender ideologues rang their employee and they nearly lost their job……………..
We are close to a time where we will no longer be able to speak up without risking hate speech laws being used against us. This is the work of the left (whom I have always been aligned with)
the work of the left
An ideology empowered by leftists driven by pc is how I'd frame it (from my observer position). Viewing the situation with the lens of civil rights, the solution seems achievable via solidarity based on accurate identification of minority rights. Then traditional organising, using leverage & framing in a lobby group. Then, if necessary a class action.
Sharing aspirations is usually how such things originate – often combined with a common grievance based on perception of injustice. Then defining the common interest shared, then using that definition to construct a political action group. Keep membership rules simple, making it easy to join. Voluntary leadership by activists originates – then things get tricky (elections may be necessary at a critical threshold).
So best to focus on getting such a movement up & running. Success will be proportion to numbers joining in the origin phase. Recruitment based on networking, likemindedness. The pool is adult women, the pitch is non-partisan, so the only design challenge is framing. That must address the threat to civil rights. The learning curve will probably lie around what social factors insulate some women from seeing the problem. Incentives to shift their view have to be used in the framing.
Being uninvolved I offer this summary of technique due to a personal history of similar experiential situations & learning curves. Plus altruism.
A movement of what exactly?
But who are these people
I have a horrible feeling you are meaning natal women.
The minority is the transwomen community.
Many women would happily help them find a place, develop policies where they are no discriminated against that does not involve natal women having their rights and born identity sidelined.
Clarity in language is important.
Natal women are women. Unless half the world's population has agreed otherwise.
Transwomen are transwomen, and are also men.
Agree that was why I was curious as to who the people with minority rights were that Dennis mentioned. It surely could not be women as figures show that depending on when the count is taken we make up usually slightly more or very slightly less than 50% and in some age groups are the majority.
Agree that transwomen are transwomen, and are also men and transmen are transmen and are also women.
There is a lot of wool over eyes pulling and sleight of hand that brings to mind sayings of my youth 'I'm not as green as I am cabbage-looking, meaning, “I may look new to this, but I'm not.” and 'I did not come down in the last shower' used to indicate that someone is not foolish or gullible
When it is looked at simply I wonder why more men are not coming out against this word twisting.
The concept that transwomenhood is a male rights agenda seems to explain this.
Medical differences between men and women matter too.
I hadn't heard of this before but if true, should change protocols for both donating and receiving blood products:
https://www.statnews.com/2017/10/17/blood-transfusions-pregnant-women/
A movement of what exactly?
Far be it for a male to presume to answer that. All I can offer is suggestions! On that limited basis, my answer would hew to the simple formula of women who care enough to work together to solve the problem.
That said, I know it gets complicated. The formula of ready, willing and able is a good one to apply if those complaining about the situation default into assuming that they ought to solve it. Not all such people are willing. Some will be unable (due to personal circumstances such as prior commitments or disabilities). Some may want to help but are currently unready to do so.
So what tends to happen is a zeitgeist effect – all those who synch into the same collective space/time/attitude are the right ones!
Shifting from the generic to the particular, I wonder if it is appropriate to frame it as feminism with a number attached – to invoke the power of tradition. The new number defines progress as the agenda. So it becomes automatically progressive! This framing device works on a mutual recognition basis. Only viable if feminism as ideology is seen as non-toxic in essence by the majority of women, I suspect, and I can't comment on that issue…
thanks for clarifying, I wasn't quite sure what you meant.
There's an awesome grassroots feminist movement in the UK that we've not seen the like of in many a decade. Very heartening. It's arisen because of the impact on women's rights from gender ideology movements, and it's making good progress both in organising and in political gains. Some women have paid a hefty price with jobs, careers, abuse, and police attention.
In NZ there is that potential, but I don't know what the deal is with activism in NZ now. We all seem to be in a holding pattern of some sort (not just women).
Re naming, feminism is a good term on its own. Feminism has always had disagreement and different branches. For clarity currently we can talk about radical feminism, liberal feminism, 2nd and 3rd wave, gender critical feminism and so on.
And more than that too. I just read the wiki for 4th wave. There isn't one for the 5th wave yet but this popped up:
https://gayexpress.co.nz/2021/03/international-womens-day-what-will-fifth-wave-feminism-look-like/
If this wave is too amorphous to define as yet, then it will eventually crest. That means the time is ripe for those who seek to ride it. Doing so would be the best way to give it collective identity & form…
I must say this appealed to me…..Am I wrong to see it as a men's rights group?
The strategies, bulldozing through, sidelining those who disagree, wanting an end result that comes about by force of will rather than discussion, seem more like stereotypic male thinking.
https://twitter.com/KarenSeabrooke1/status/1501328594320207874
I think that some of the most vociferous on this topic (irrespective of gender identity), are misogynists who have found a new publicly and politically sanctioned way to harass and harm women.
The failure to recognise and reprimand such actions harms both women and transgender people.
Yes that is right….misogynists too.
I am not sure why non misogynistic men are not coming out in support of women. Or is the loyalty of a man to a fellow man greater than their loyalty to fairness.
Mind you it is a brave man who will stand with women.
'A number of New Zealand’s leading male politicians, including John Hall, Robert Stout, Julius Vogel, William Fox and John Ballance, supported women’s suffrage'.
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/womens-suffrage/brief-history
In the UK
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/HgXhTLahLDp8Lg
In the US
https://suffragistmemorial.org/7-suffragist-men-and-the-importance-of-allies/
A couple of examples of male "allies" responding to a tweet by J K Rowling:
https://twitter.com/o_clis/status/1501319314414075904
https://twitter.com/Bearwhale/status/1501228714373173248
https://twitter.com/Bearwhale/status/1501229560670523393
,,, and the screenshot of the bravest…
Why yes Virginia, that is exactly what they are. 🙂 And they enjoy every it every bit.
It never ceases to amuse me that some people really believe that the men of the right and the left are not driven by the exact same misogyny. It is just couched in different terms, but the end effect is the same.
sorry, are you saying that all trans women are MRAs?
Transgenderism/Trans ideology is misogyny. Pure and unadulterated.
Gender Non Conforming Men are not broken beings that need to be shoved into womens places, pretending to be women to the point where they get to dictate women how to women. And that is MRA in the nutshell. They are men.
"Widening the bandwidth of being a male" perhaps?
https://youtu.be/JkK7zisjoDk
to me this is just bigotry. Trans women =/= trans ideology. There are many trans women who reject the ideology.
MRA is a specific set of philosophies. To equate all trans women with that is similar to saying that all feminists hate men.
You are putting words in my mouth that i don't say. I would like you to consider this for a moment.
Maybe it is not what i said that is the issue but how you interpretate it. I am not even considering William "lia' Thomas as a 'MRA', even tho he benefits greatly from the MRA that comes with TRA.
You can not seperate the MAN from Trans. Otherwise they would be women and then we would not have this issue to talk about.
Gender Non conforming men are not the fault of women and are not a problem for women. They should be an issue for Men and Men should be accomodating them in the male spaces, jobs, awards, and changing rooms. And in fact, i would venture a guess where Michael "lia' Thomas to be the 420 ranked swimmer in the Mens as an out and proud transwomen he would get way more support then he is getting now. But for some reason that is not what Michael "Lia" Thomas is doing. But i guess as someone ranked 420 – i.e. average – would not get to stand on a podium with the winning women ranked below him. And that is MRA in a nutshell. Maybe you need to consider that the two philosophies are intertwined and to some extend feed of each others.
Secondly, i don't consider the swimmer, or the surfer, or even Eddie Izzard a 'transwomen'. I consider them transvestites. Maybe already there we need to identify of whom we speak.
But i take your bigot, and i would add Terf, and Femnazi, and men hater, and i have no issues with that. In the end these words are meaningless and the actions for TRA's are standing on their own as do their words.
And just to re-enforce the idea once more, i do not speak about Transwomen per se, i speak about the movement, the political clout that movement has compared to say 'feminism' , the money behind it, big pharma, big surgery, and so on.
But again, i will wear that 'bigottry' t-shirt. It states that Women are adult human females.
I asked you a specific question,
You responded by saying,
I took that as you saying that you know what trans women are and you linked this again to MRAs, but you didn't actually answer my question directly, so I parsed it from your recent comments.
I see eventually you clarified that there is a difference between being trans, and trans ideology,
So my question and assumption served a purpose, of getting you to just say what you meant in relation to my query.
Honestly I didn't read the rest of your comment, because I was asking for a simple thing and as you know I get weary of the lectures at times.
no, trans women are not a men's rights group. Trans women are a group of gender non-conforming males, who just like every other group of people have varying needs and politics.
Gender identity activism (sometimes called trans rights activism) has strong parallels with MRAs. Lots of trans women aren't doing either of those two things. There are some that definitely are.
That's a clearer statement than mine.
Thanks, weka. I agree with every word.
Yes I get this.
I also get the view of Magdalen Burns in Molly's link above that why is it that women have to take the big breath of acceptance and why is it that that he is 'widening the bandwidth for women'. He should be widening the bandwidth for men.
Magdalen Burns has another video at this link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O65OL7k0jXg
The reason i did not answer your question to your satisfaction is very simple.
I am not speaking of transwomen. I am speaking of the movement and only the movement. I can separate the two. So i am not going to answer your questions as your question is quite out of line and accusatory at best.
Its like with men and being a rapist. Not all man are rapists, but most rapists are men. There is quite a nuance in there. Ditto with Transwomen, Non binaries, genderfluid and any of the other 90+ made up 'genders' may not be themselves MRA's but they profit of the MRA tactics employed by TRAs that serve only to shut down women.
And frankly, you, Molly, Anker, Shangreah and others we have had more then one discussion on this subject and it seems that only you saw it fit to declare bigotry where there is none, implied or otherwise.
Transideology is at its heart deeply mysogynistic, starting with the idea that a women gives birth to a child 'with a wrong body'. Humans have one body, once that body is used up we die. We can modify that body with wrong sex hormones, puberty blockers, plastic surgery, fillers, silicon, make up, full body silicon suits, tattoos, implants and what not, but it is still the same body and it is still sexed exactly the same way it was on the day of it emerging from a womans vagina. Yet, here we ask women to make way for men into their spaces, jobs, awards, camps, changing rooms, sports on the ground of these men living in the 'wrong' body. Lol. And as the beautiful clip of the Sainted Magdalene Berns stated, that dude with a beard and horrible dressing sense is now a women and we have to affirm this dude as a women cause kindness and otherwise bigotry. IF that is not MRA tactics in action i must have a different definition of MRAs then you. And fwiw, that dude might not see it as that, but then he is the one that wants to be in places where women are in various stages of undress and he is the one that now has that right, and any women who is uncomfortable with him being in a changing room with her is a ‘terf’ ‘bigot’ ‘transphope’ ‘cissy’ and other assorted bs. The insults change the premise for them stays the same.
Understand that i generally don't go after people and pretend they are something, and if i were to do that, i would have absolutely no qualms and issue in naming the person and stating why i would do so. I am only discussing the movement, the philosophy the legal aspects and the rights that women are losing thanks to this movement that elevates men feels above the rights women earned through hard work, beatings, forced feedings, and ridicule. This may make you uncomfortable, maybe you even think i should be kinder, softer and more accommodating, but to that i only have a 'No, thank you' to give you. I rather be rude then a liar and someone who then must continuously affirm that lie. I personally can't be bothered with that. It would be too exhausting to be honest.
Sabine, while I agreed with weka above, I considered it a response to Shanreagh who seems to be exploring this topic more in recent days, and might not be aware of the distinction between the activism around the gender identity ideology, and the people who are living as transgender. That was only my take, could be wrong.
I understand your position, and agree with it as well.
It is the gender identity ideology that is problematic, and the refusal to put that belief system under the same scrutiny and objectivity that any other belief system would undergo.
The medical interventions promoted for children and young people, the removal of single sex spaces of all kinds (physical and otherwise), the distortion of language, the negative impact on women's sports, the indoctrination of institutions and services, the elimination of lesbians, and gays from their own movement, and the complete failure to ask for empirical evidence is a dangerous movement.
I know that is not the limit of the negative effects, but you get my drift.
Anyway, was cheered up by watching this week's The Mess We're In, in celebration of Women's International Day. If you are wanting something to watch, it's here:
https://youtu.be/LO43BU_OqW8
All of us that have been talking about this for ages now are on the same page: it's the ideology and activism that is the problem.
It's really important that we don't lump all trans people in with that. For one thing, it will step over the line in terms of TS debate rules. We have trans people here, they have a right to be here. If people are going to be casual in their rhetoric about transness, and not clear, and they sound like bigots, then it's unfair on trans people, it creates an atmosphere that inhibits debate.
It will also be harder to then argue that feminists have any rights to not be exposed to such when debate women's rights.
For another, it's wrong and not fair.
We cannot expect to have our own arguments respected if we won't make an effort to separate out trans people from the problematic ideology.
weka, if you haven't done so. Watch the link posted above – my daughter and I enjoyed the whole hour, and the display of humour and understanding between the women. I hope you do as well.
I think there exists the same energy – for the most part – between female commentators on here. I hope I'm right about that.
(Edit: Thinking of writing a post about the damage of the medicalised response (and social transitioning) of children, based on the recent changes to that after evidential reviews in the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and France. Having just watched the Dysphoria series on Youtube, its a timely conversation for NZ, that has an “affirmation health care” model.)
Will see if I can get something coherent drafted.
👍👍
Sent email with draft post, .
👍
Yes, it was a nice 'beer' hour in good albeit physically distanced ways, excellent company and as far as i can crush on ladies, oh do i have a crush on Helen Joyce. To the Queen her Ladies!
Yes, I'm tempted to get that audio book just to listen to Helen Joyce for hours.
that's a good idea! I have the hard back but haven't gotten far through yet.
Sabine, this is literally what I was asking you to clarify. You've done that now, but it took far more work than was necessary imo. A simple clarification would have sufficed.
If you can't handle someone calling your position bigotry, then maybe take more care with how you express it. I'm not the only one who sometimes misunderstands what you say. I'm not saying be kind, I'm saying pay attention to who you are talking to and listen to what they are saying. My original question was incredibly clear and simple to answer. But you didn't.
I don't think you are a bigot now that you have made it clear what you mean. It definitely wasn't clear from your first comment (which is why I asked) or your second.
Again, didn't read most of your comment because am sick of the patronising lectures, as if I don't already know all that stuff.
I tend to abstain from words such as bigotry or any insults to anyone generally specifically insults as generally that always says more about the one using these words then those against whom they are deployed. ,
I am sorry that you thought that my second or first comment was a lecture, i honestly believed that i had to make myself even clearer in my thoughts and words.
My problem is when you don't listen. I didn't need long posts of explanation, I already know what you think about trans ideology, and we are generally on the same page. All I needed was clarification on that one point. See my comment to Molly below for the reasons why. It matters how we talk about trans people here, in the same way it matters how men talk about women. Making it clear that it is the ideology that is being critiqued is a good way to do this 👍
I enjoy reading Suzanne Moore – kicked off the Guardian for.. continuing to be herself – a clear writer.
Helping the underdog fight better:
So the imbalance may be gradually evening out. I couldn't find any update on the Ukraine army situation online.
Because Ukrainian operation security will be as tight as a drum while every tool the West has works to crack Russia's, and publicise every last detail.
https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1500916082630172682
https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500946339886247940
Giddy with excitement over all this 'war porn' arent you.
Probably using the garmin hand held taped to the cockpit if the Russian Glonasss GPS system is jammed while over Ukraine
Says TS's #1 hasbarah warrior for the autocratic warmonger calling the shots.
/
Thats defamatory . Ive said its a terrible war as they always are including those by the US and friends 'good wars' and a massive mistake by Putin.
Omicron has just shut down a major infrastructure project, temporarily.
Omicron brings Auckland tunnelling machine to a halt (1news.co.nz)
A third of workers are down as 'close contacts' or infected.
This will be a shockwave through the construction industry, which is one of New Zealand's largest employers.
Likewise a third of the Nat caucus is down with omicron. An accurate statistical match with the tunnellers, huh? Probably due to the function of boring that both share…
https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/03/07/around-11-national-mps-isolating-or-with-covid-willis/
Ha ha very smart Dennis
High calibres require a lot of boring.
And, as Reginald Perrin notes: "Praise the Lord for small bores, for small bores get bigger every day,"
"Let it rip" huh?
Certainly 'ripping' at the moment.
Hipkin seems to have his Ted Bundy hat on,with the unscientific rationale of reduced isolation to 7 days.
https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1480954038137016320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1480954038137016320%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublish.twitter.com%2F%3Fquery%3Dhttps3A2F2Ftwitter.com2Fyaneerbaryam2Fstatus2F1480954038137016320widget%3DTweet
"A third of the National Party has either been infected with Covid-19 or is isolating with someone who has, as the Omicron wave hits Parliament.?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300535648/covid19-nz-national-hit-hardest-as-omicron-reaches-parliament
If they can't keep themselves safe, how can they keep the rest of us safe??
they've all just got colds
/sarc
So censorship is the new normal. Funny how the whole legacy media is complaining about censorship in Russia, then are deathly quite whilst the tech companies shut down alternative news in the west. In particular anti-war voices, it's frightening.
If you have the time worth hearing the whole thing. I say hear as I just play like a podcast, and do other work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUVxdM5giKE
https://twitter.com/jelle_simons/status/1501260045505466368
The Opposition is getting better at following their themes eg adjusting tax brackets. (Which the Budget may be already getting ready to do that.
https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/order-paper-questions/list-of-oral-questions/oral-questions-9-march-2022/
One does get the sneaking suspicion …
Putin has offered Ukraine peace, for recognition of the annexation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine areas in Luhansk and Donetsk occupied since 2014 and declaring neutrality (not joining NATO).
The generous offer is indicative of Putin's real agenda.
The end of sanctions on Russia for the annexation of Crimea (and occupation in eastern Ukraine) – this only occurs when an independent and internationally recognised sovereign Ukraine consents.
Ukraine should, in my opinion agree, provided Russia takes over a proportion of the national debt of Ukraine equivalent to the land and resources transferred to Russia.
And also agree to neutrality, provided it retains an independent defence capability. And that it can still join the EU at or by the time the EU and Russia have an FTA. From this a positive Ukraine and Russian economic relationship, in which Russia and the EU would assist with Ukraine's reconstruction.
The increase of sanctions on Russia applied recently would have sharpened focus on the importance of a negotiated settlement.
While Putin would still be free to negotiate a reduced NATO presence in former WP nations, via a military build up threat of securing a land bridge to Kaliningrad via Lithuania – developing a co-operative relationship between the EU and Russia over Ukraine's economic revival would reduce the risk of NATO-Russian conflict
The Russian military appears to be overcommitted in Ukraine.
At least to the point that the Belarusian military are throwing sickies rather than join them.
With the mass of their heavy equipment set to be abandoned in the coming rout, it will be Ukraine that decides where the borders lie, as Russian conventional forces are defanged and disgraced, and no economy exists to rebuild them for decades.
Putin must have thought he was the god of intelligence, turning the former US president, but as another US president noted, you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
A monopoly? Really?
I didn't realise all those planes that fly in and out of New Zealand airports were Air New Zealand planes in disguise.
I didn't realise that planes labelled as being owned by Qantas, Air China, Etihad Airways, EVA Air, Singapore Airlines, United and Jetstar were actually part of Air New Zealand.
[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.]
Don’t be a legalistic pedant.
https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/audio/kevin-ward-warnings-over-air-new-zealand-monopoly-as-price-for-domestic-flights-rises/
Not only that but ANZ has a dominant position with either weak opposition or are in cahoots with the foreign carrier on many routes
Especially for most lucrative in regrads numbers of travellers and business segment
https://www.qantas.com/nz/en/qantas-experience/network-and-partner-airlines/air-new-zealand.html
That might be the case, but this Post is not about ANZ as such. Why is it so hard for some here to stay on topic, even loosely?
I am not sure you really want to bring peoples attention to this. The link you provide is dated 20/01/2020. It talks about Air New Zealand putting up its fares when Jetstar stopped flying domestically.
The withdrawal was announced on 25 September 2019 and took effect in November 2019. Well Luxon resigned from Air NZ in June 2019 and left the company on 25 September that year. Hence the increase in fares being complained about took place after his successor took over. It wasn't Luxon's doing at all, was it? After all, would he really be setting the future policy for the airline on his last day in the office?
Legalistic pedant? I think not. I just like to see the truth being told.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/399566/jetstar-to-pull-out-of-regional-flying-in-nz-at-end-of-november
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/116075634/luxons-last-stand-air-nz-chief-executive-steps-down-at-annual-meeting
You’re missing the point yet again. If you want to talk about Luxon and National’s shambolic financial analyses, then fine, comment under Micky’s Post all you like and give the other side a tough debate. If you want to talk about ANZ, use OM.
You were out by 8 days with the link date; you may value “the truth”, but you obviously don’t value accuracy in and of your statements.
Have a nice day.
Quite right. It was 28/02/2020. I notice you don't question the rest of my comment though. Pity the fare rises were after his time in the chair isn't it?
No need to respond any further to your diversions – I just like to keep convos more or less on track. Others may want to waste their time, if they so wish – they may even get something useful out of your comments, but I doubt it.
As the world fractures in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine what chance the global co operation vital to addressing climate change?
Will this end up being the scandal of the century?
"regular use of ivermectin as a prophylactic agent was associated with significantly reduced COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality rates," based on an observational study of 159,561 residents ages 18 and over in Itajaí, Brazil.
'After adjusting for variables, the authors said, they found a 67% reduction in hospitalization rate and a 70% reduction in mortality rate for ivermectin users.'
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35070575/
"Conclusion: In this large PSM study, regular use of ivermectin as a prophylactic agent was associated with significantly reduced COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality rates."
https://www.cureus.com/articles/82162-ivermectin-prophylaxis-used-for-covid-19-a-citywide-prospective-observational-study-of-223128-subjects-using-propensity-score-matching
Those numbers are similar to 2 x shots plus booster(3) in regards to Omricon!
Obviously the Oxford trial is still on-going, but there seems to be a picture forming around this very cheap and safe drug.
Scandal of the century my arse.
Even if ivermectin comes out of the wash as being as effective as its premature proponents have claimed for however long, so what? A decision based on insufficient evidence is still a gamble, even if one happens to win.
"so what"?
"insufficient evidence"
A gamble was taken by us all in the greatest real-time human experiment! I'm vaccinated. And I'm very concerned we were all duped by the least trusted company in the least trusted industry in modern times, with government/societal 'aid'.
@McFlock its maybe time to confront all the lies your told to believe are fact. I know its not easy as it will shake your version of an 'augmented' reality we've all bought in too.
Serious question: what actual clinical trials has ivermectin gone through compared to the pfizer vaccine regarding efficacy against covid?
This study is promising, shame it took them a year to process and publish their results. It has more participants, but was not blind. Intereference of other treatments was not documented. Absence of adverse events seems to have been assumed rather than actually examined.
Committing oneself to a course of action before sufficient evidence is in might have a desired result, but it doesn't win at science. It could just as easily be an error.
I'm very concerned that absolute morons have undermined effective public health measures to the point that NZ seems to have decided to accept several deaths a day just so some cafe owner can bitch that not enough people are walking through the door.
Stick your augmented reality in your rear usb port, your CPU is throwing a critical runtime error.
“Serious question: what actual clinical trials has ivermectin gone through compared to the pfizer vaccine regarding efficacy against covid?”
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-06-23-ivermectin-be-investigated-possible-treatment-covid-19-oxford-s-principle-trial
It's still going….. takes time to get this information on trials and studies at the end of a global pandemic right?!!
https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-provide-update-ongoing-studies-covid-19
Cancelling and ignoring your usual ‘attacks and distractions’ @Mcflock
omagerd I bin cancelled. 🙄
I'm not sure what you think your links demonstrate, but they just go to show that what you regard as "experimental" has been more thoroughly studied against covid than ivermectin. And seems to have better results.
You enjoyed the cancel joke… It's all the rage at present, I knew you'd love it
"has been more thoroughly studied against covid than ivermectin". Really? Please do provide the ‘evidence’, because it seems to be blurred more and more for ‘some reason or another’.
I'm sure it will all come out in the wash eventually right….? https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/wait-what-fda-wants-55-years-process-foia-request-over-vaccine-data-2021-11-18/
P.S. Demonstrating what you asked for.
Read the links again.
Look at:
Maybe you're right?
Both the Oxford trial on efficacy and 'real world' study from Brazil looking at effectiveness, have no value at all. May rock the boat of augmented reality we're all clinging to too much?
Nothing to see, look away, back to meta kids.
https://www.medsafe.govt.nz/safety/Alerts/ivermectin-covid19.htm
I trust consensus expert medical opinion. If you trust ivermectin, then go for it, but please get vaccinated against COVID-19 too.
In NZ , so far 1 in 77000 people have tragically lost their lives to COVID-19; in Brazil it's roughly 1 in 330. I don't trust ivermectin to keep me safe from COVID. Three doses of the mRNA vaccine are all I need for now, and that's not just the placebo talking.
Vaccination status of new hospitalisations per 100,000 of population segment: Boosted – 1; Unvaccinated – 5.5.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/450874/covid-19-data-visualisations-nz-in-numbers
Hmmm.
If you take that from my comments, especially the one that was a simple list of questions about the links already provided, then expecting you to understand even your own links is an exercise in futility.
Or you didn't actually take that from my comments, but these are the lengths you'll go to in order to avoid addressing simple questions to which you might not like the answers.
"pointed out potential conflicts of interest with the study’s authors. They noted that although the preprint version of the study mentions that two of its authors received money from a pharmaceutical company that manufactures ivermectin, the published version leaves that detail out.'
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/28/facebook-posts/study-brazil-ivermectin-covid-19-prevention-flawed/
In Brazil even before covid , Ivermectin was a commonly prescribed anti parasite drug and what portion the citys inhabitants were already using the drug and of course covid vaccines were also used – which the authors say was still the best protection
But of course for the facebook epidemiologists its of no concern why no real experts will take much notice of the other evidence
If you have worms go for Ivermectin all you like
lol big worming got to 'em, huh.