Plans for a post titled, “How to get there” and intended as a platform for TS readers and commenters to display their ideas and aspirations for improving the chances for each and every one of us (humanity that is) to “get there” have been floated over the past couple of weeks and today might be, by the grace of the TS authors and tech people, the moment for it to surface, glistening and quivering, into the light of day. Fingers crossed.
Hey Stunned. Which ever you choose (I grow a high bush variety), grow them as a group, in a “block” rather than line, as they fruit far more prolifically that way. If you place them all about the garden, they’ll do less well (it’s a pollination thing). The birds, blackbirds in particular) will take them all, unless you net.
Apparently, the rabbiteye varieties are good for Auckland. Can’t remember where I read it, but was looking into the same issue a few weeks back before going nursery shopping.
The ‘water article’ I’m working on looks like it might need to be split up a little. A lot to cover even skimming over it. That pun was wet. What a drip. I’d stop it if I had a bung.
The book is shaping up nicely and several chapters will make relevant materials for ‘how to get there’. I’m very happy to announce I finished the n-fixer data base last night, so nice playing with good data. Categorised ground covers, shrubs and trees, then by North and South Islands, then by water requirements, habitat type, light requirements… I’ll keep juggling it about to see if anything interesting emerges, while I figure how to present the bulk data in digestible chunks. Icons and a key will be key to it I think… Although we don’t have a lot of endemic n-fixers, we have some really interesting and beautiful specimens.
I’ll also be paraphrasing some of the PDC course for how to get there. Many great topics as they arise. And my project for the PDC will be the book – so as to not get overstretched – see how it all organically fits together…
Have also been practicing not feeding the trolls. 2 days no bites! Hehe.
Imagine driving over the Auckland Harbour Bridge or down the Southern Motorway at rush hour, and other than service and delivery vans and trucks, finding yourself virtually the only private car on it.
Meanwhile thousands of commuters are whizzing by you on the dedicated bus lanes not needed for cars anymore.
Mass Appeal
The tiny European nation of Luxembourg has landed itself in the international spotlight.
On Wednesday the country’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel, was sworn in for his second term. At that time, his governing coalition announced a plan that would set Luxembourg apart from every other country in the world: by summer 2019, all public transport in the nation will be completely free.
Traffic Woes
Luxembourg is smaller than Rhode Island, and more people live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, than within the nation’s borders. In other words, it’s a tiny country — but that doesn’t prevent it from having a big traffic problem.
Yes it seems that the head trucking lobby group (RTA) are always operated by retired National and Act party MP like today (RTA) Chief is Ken Shirley who was an Act Pary MP. https://www.rtanz.co.nz/
In 2000 Tony Friedlander was the (RTA) ‘Road Transport Association’ boss, – so they are powerful with the oil companies behind them as oil companies make far more money from truck freight than rail does for them so they fight to save the road freight and always fight to kill rail as they use five to eight times less oil fuel product to haul ‘each tonne every one km’ than trucks do.
If Auckland had the collective wealth of Luxembourg we could consider it.
We don’t and we never will.
We are concentrating on CAPEX not OPEX in transport mode shift.
For example, only two years ago the whole length of Dominion Road was just a slow carpark. Then Waterview Tunnel opened, and Dominion Road is livable again.
And it was only because of that Waterview job being completed and alleviating Dominion Road that light rail can even be contemplated.
People admire a man who protects a woman and in this case, the woman is the very, very popular and much loved Jacinda. The man protecting her, Trevor, will be quietly thanked and supported by New Zealanders throughout the country. Good man, that Trevor.
You’re a sick wee puppy there james but we already know that.
The Prime Minister is doing a fantastic job and it is no wonder rwnj’s like you poo your pants daily with the prospect of many many many years of this leadership.
James Jacinda Ardern is so able hard working and informed, she is not vulnerable to the petty jabs from trolls like you. Your suggestions are uncouth and graceless
Presumably not the 46% who support National. They would not expect the Speaker to protect her.
In any event from what I see, she doesn’t need it. She is the best of the Labour MP’s. Even when she doesn’t have much of an answer to a question in the house, she manages an adequate answer. Most of her colleagues can’t do that.
You’re right about one thing, Wayne; she’s good. Your poll figure’s pretty suspect though (we’ve all heard 41% but in any case, it’s to low to be of any use). And I think you’ve mucked up your second sentence, but it’s Sunday and kinda early still, for some. I was up at 6:30 and have coffeed.
Edit: you spotted it yourself! Well done, Wayne. Have a coffee.
Wayne knows the real number is 38%. He has to dispute it publicly of course. But hey let him and the Nat supporters believe its 46% and that Santa is on his way. Its largely irrelevant for the govt going into the new year which with some high performing MP’s emerging will only get stronger.
Cheers Wayne.. I think that is big of you to say that.
I find Ms Ardern extremely clear and articulate.
I think Simon was trying to score some points over the sroubec issue, which is what an opposition tries to do.
He was trying to hold her to account for what Winston said about the ex working on behalf of the National party. As ardern plays fair, this put her in a tricky situation………while the intent was to catch her out, Simon didn’t…….She focused on when she first heard of the ex’s connection to National, which was on the news. She of course couldn’t answer the questions about the police, immigration and the ex address “was that ok …left ex feeling vulnerable “, because that was an operational matter. I remember she did the same with the roast busters, but asked for a police review.
I particularly remember John key being shocking at answering questions. Turning the oppositions questions into jokes, the one that sticks in my mind most was that when Cunliffe was asking key about the housing CRISIS and key flipped it into a retort about Cunliffe living in Herne Bay…….this is my mind is a disgrace. So was the complete inability to do anything about the escalating crisis under the key government until they were shamed into it by a news hub item on homelessness. As National achieved very little in9 years, other than creating a surplus by hiding a chronic underfunding in health, housing education and policing numbers, in my view any criticism from them on this govt falls on deaf ears……..and no Ms ardern neither needs nor gets Trevor’s protection. She is miles ahead of all is national……
Wayne yellow press 46% with mates Nationals internal polling 42% with leaking about the drip simple soimon who continues his popularity drop down the gurglar!
Fireblade So cool was that clip was so impressive as David carter was one of the most arrogant speakers of this 21st century I have had to suffer through.
Thanks for that brilliant compendium of the often nastiness side of David Carter as John Key’s Government..
Carter did that just about every time parliament sat. Sometimes blatantly. His way around things was to say that ‘the minister had *addressed* the question. Usually this meant that the minister hadn’t *answered* the question but didn’t need to as it had been addressed. Worst speaker ever. Did he get a gong?
Trevor doesn’t like Simon Bridges’ whiney nonsense. And neither does most of the country. Just look at the popularity polls. Jacinda – 1trillion, Simon – 0.
National may poll at 46% but without Mates that will leave them short of a majority every single time.
And it would do you well to remember that really your party, its “leader” and his backstabbers should not insult any other parties, no matter how small or unimportant you might think they are, cause with 46% National is and will always be 5% short of a majority. And considering that the No mates Party still has no friends, its 46% are not enough.
And that is the only thing that matters. Your party does not have enough support to win even a charity baking event.
well that may be so, but not for the next two years, and somehow i doubt the Greens will fall away. They have been called dead many many times, and yet they always show up.
In the meantime, the No Mates Party has not even got mates it could kill off. It did the killing the support parties so well the last time around that on election night the penny finally dropped. No mates, no coalition, no glory, no nothing but Mr. No Bridges, Paula Benefit, and Judith “oravida’ Collins. Sad!
Popularity is everything when you want popular support and Trevor will have popular support for caring for Jacinda (and Neve). Unpopular Simon will not win any popularity by whining about the man who’s protecting the lovely Jacinda from the likes of unpopular Simon. And *shudders, Paula.
Two polls, UMR and National’s internal poll came out at the same time and one was 41% and I believe UMR was either 41% or 42%. That makes a liar out of the CB poll which has been biased towards National for years.
I believe they conduct their polls at the Remuera Shopping Centre – not far from where most of them live.
In National’s latest internal Curia poll National was at 41%; and at 37% in Labour’s internal UMR poll. Hence the Colmar Brunton is really the outlier at 46%.
I have also heard, but cannot verify, that Colmar Brunton has also been experimenting with different mixes of landline/mobile polling, and now also a proportion of online polling. This may well affect the results they are getting.
My comment re- Remuera Shopping Centre was tongue-in-cheek.
If CB is experimenting then it could explain the difference. Working people don’t have the same amount of time as the idle rich to go surfing online. I’m idle because I’m retired.
As you probably well know Jimmy the 46% is highly debatable. Nationals own internal polling was 41% according to the leaker. Simons polling is heading to the negative. History in the making, what?
The speaker is not there to diss Simon. All good speakers cut a bit of slack to the main Leaders of each party. From what I can see Trevor doesn’t, but he needs to.
Simon’s pedantic, plodding speaking style would challenge the tolerance of any Speaker, I reckon. Trevor should ask him to make his questions a bit more interesting , perhaps pep them up a little with a bit of twinkle – anything but that prosecutor’s drone, or whatever it is Simon does!
Oh I don’t know @ Fireblade. Maggie Barry seems OK with it (i.e. commenting on appearances of the less fortunate possum), and I’m picking it was her that persuaded Paula to leave out the ugg boots (darling)
The speaker is not there to diss Simon. All good speakers cut a bit of slack to the main Leaders of each party. From what I can see Trevor doesn’t, but he needs to.
That is rubbish Wayne. If it appears that way, it is because Simon often traverses the line of what is acceptable conduct and what isn’t. Jacinda doesn’t. She always answers questions in a respectful way even when the question or questioner doesn’t deserve it. If she crossed that line she, too, would be pulled up by Speaker Mallard.
He’s trying to improve the standards even if he was once one of the transgressors. Everyone can change you know.
Carter wasn’t subtle. Wayne must know that. The nats complaining about Mallard is sickening after Carter’s performance during his four years or how ever long it was. His behaviour around Key’s “backing rapist” remarks and kicking the female MPs out of the House was disgraceful, but that wasn’t his worst. Carter was a disgrace to democracy over his whole time as Speaker. And now Bridges and his band of idiots feel hard done by. After what Carter did and got away with they can just fuck right off.
Some history – good article allowing some light through to illuminate.
When dates were being considered for the first Rā Maumahara commemorating the New Zealand Wars, one suggestion was December 3. That day doesn’t mark the anniversary of any particular battle or conflict. Instead, it’s the day in 1863 that Governor George Grey signed into law the New Zealand Settlements Act.
It’s an innocuous-sounding piece of legislation but it had devastating consequences for many Māori communities. The Settlements Act provided the primary legislative mechanism for raupatu — sweeping land confiscations that were supposedly intended to punish acts of “rebellion” while also recouping the costs of fighting the wars.
It declared that where “any Native Tribe or Section of a Tribe or any considerable number thereof” had committed acts of “rebellion against Her Majesty’s authority” since January 1, 1863, their lands could be declared subject to the Act and seized for the purposes of settlement.
It was part of a package of measures passed by the all-Pākehā parliament to crush Māori independence.
It was something I would have missed if you had not done so, and reading that and seeing the photo has left an indelible mark on me. Follow-up reading is now on my Summer Recess Watch and Read list.
It is a real pity that it does not seem to have been noticed much, but it was a busy day here yesterday. I am maintaining an open mind on the new regular post, and will be watching from the sidelines initially at least.
I did think about reposting your comment and link again today in the hopes others might at least read it and the link, but will leave you to decide whether to do so.
It did get an unintentional plug here, but without any response! Think he meant 5 not 4 …
Maybe go with the flow and stop trying to control stuff. It doesn’t matter really ed – life still happens, and out of control is actually the norm not an aberration.
Nicely put, Marty. Re trolls, it’s best, I reckon, to use the platform the’ve thoughtfully provided, to fold back their issue onto themselves and take a good-hearted swipe their gods and heroes at the same time – all for fun, mind, never unkindly
and if the distraction works then he has succeeded – fuck him ed he isn’t worth it – just a nobody gnat supporter who hides bad behaviour behind a facade of respectability – we know the type – they have to be real low riders to come and spend their days here – no mates just like simon. Laugh at them for they are weak examples of the species.
Hey Ed, don’t be distracted by that stuff, it’s just padding. If we only discuss pressing and critical matters, we’ll all be exhausted by day’s end. Fluff from trolls (troll fluff) gives us a chance to make them dance a little, lightening our moods and giving us a well deserved laugh. Taking them seriously, upbraiding them, only gives them substance; let’s hold them in their frothy state and bat them around the show for our own pleasure
It’s interesting, I count if someone genuine on here by whether they respond to challenging questions or just disappear. BM and James seem to disappear and James comments are often provocative eg after “good news” for National eg after the 46% polls result.
Wayne answers questions and also I think puts up with quite a lot. I think he might be generally interested in the debate and from the little I’ve seen of kiwiblog he ain’t going to get it there.
Punish, well he keeps it light hearted and is sometimes funny in his adoration of Judith, but it may become a little tedious like a friend who has a six month crush on someone.
Best response to James is “you comment is consistent with your purpose for commenting on this website”. I think if he always got this comment unless he made a decent contribution he might just get a little tired of us
Yes Ed but that is the way that the site operates, whether James provokes useful discussion that matches his negativity I don’t know – is it a net gain? You are worth having Ed so let’s keep hearing from you but with some slight adjustments as suggested.
I’m not sure it’s possible to ‘derail’ Open Mike. It’s intended to be fluid and nobody has to reply to anyone.
I’m also not sure that we get regular visited by RWNJ’s. Most of the commenters here who are from the other end of the political spectrum are rational and articulate and not outright trolls.
TS would be a dull place if we only had left wing opinions expressed here, so try thinking of our righty friends as the grit in the oyster of thought that helps produce the pearls of wisdom that make TS special.
With John Kelly departing the White House by the end of this year, it looks like the Mueller inquiry is leaving only core of family loyalists and trolls.
The 2020 White House after the trials is the Democrats’ to lose.
There are no trials before 2020. Look at Nixon and the work it took to get him out of the Presidency, and Trump is no Nixon. Heck Nixon is a choir boy compared to Trump.
As for Kelly leaving, good riddance. Don’t you get the warm and fuzzies knowing that Bolton is now the serious adult in the office, and that Kelly will be replaced with a spare part from Fox News? Maybe Tucker Carlson.
yep, i agree with you, but gosh i hope the Dems come up with someone younger then Biden. to fucking old, too white, too much baggage of assholery see Anita Hill.
Are the Democrats no longer allowed to have white male candidates for president, with the expectation that the Republicans only have white male candidates.
Surely in a democracy as diverse as the United States, or ours for that matter, ethnicity is not really an issue on whether a person can attain high office. For instance both National’s Leader and Deputy leader are Maori (though with other ethnicities as well). It goes almost completely unremarked.
Although the social and economic statistics still disadvantage Maori, there are probably hundreds of thousands of Maori who have suffered no particular disadvantage, and who are succeeding in a large number of fields. For instance forty years ago there were almost no Maori lawyers, with only two women Maori lawyers. Today there would be hundreds.
the democratic grass roots are people of colour. The democratic voters are people of colour.
If you care to have a look at the last exit polls posted on CNN that i have linked to at a previous thread you will see that the much vaunted white working class/middle class/upper class, all of them with economic anxiety – and men, voted for the Republicans.
so it would behoove the democratic party to choose leaders and even presidents that reflects their voting block, rather then chase the white evangelic male working class/middle class/upper class with economic anxiety voter who is not gonna vote democrats anywhich way and if it is only cause ‘abortions’ and such.
so yeah, Biden, too white – again if you could be bothered look at his past – Anita Hill and the Seating of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He can whinge and whine all to his hearts content, fact is he behaved like an entitled ass then, and to some extend still has not understood just what an entitled ass he is today. Just in case you don’t know what i speak of https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=biden+anita+hill&oq=Biden+Antia+H&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l3.4897j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
And at 75 he is too fucking old. Full stop here. IF you don’t have to live the consequences of your actions you should not be allowed to run for President, imo.
The world needs someone at the helm of that country that actually has to loose something when and if he/she fucks up By voting geriatrics in its only the world that is gonna loose.
As Bush the younger once famously said when asked how history will judge him : I will be dead then. And that is precisely the mindset that gave us Iraq Invasion two.
So yeah, too old, too white, too much bagage.
IF you can’t find people under seventy to represent your country your country is fucked.
“The world needs someone at the helm of that country that actually has to loose something when and if he/she fucks up By voting geriatrics in its only the world that is gonna loose.”
The reality has always been that the elites dont lose irrespective of the result and that is not age/gender/race dependent…..take any issue you care to consider and the poor are invariably the hardest hit.
well i hope that the new crop of ‘the elite’ that was just voted in will consider your points.
the poor are always invariably the hardest hit as they generally have nothing to shelter them. That does not mean that we have to continue to nominate and vote for old, white, rich people. As i said, the last midterm got the house back to the dems, and those that got elected for the largest part were as far removed from your elite as they could possibly be. Be it that young women from NY, or the native Indian from Kansas, or that native indian New Mexico and so on and so on.
As for losing, we are all going to lose if we don’t finally get our heads out of our asses and realize that the change must come from us, not from any elected overlord. It is up to us to opt out of the system to the point where it collapses. No strong man is gonna do that, no cheap slogan about making shit great again – it never was for some and it never will be for many – can do that. People need to opt out of capitalism, over consumption, cheap shits from dollar shops to make up for empty hearts and minds, crap food cause its “convenient” , etc. No one forces us to participate, like smoking, we will have to quit.
Unless people understand that nothing is gonna change and the same people continue to whinge about how nothing is changing.
” i hope the Dems come up with someone younger then Biden. to fucking old, too white”.
Ouch. Well it is pretty clear that Sabine is not going to support Bernie Sanders for President.
He is even older than Biden, after all.
My point?
Too old. The country needs someone who is younger, preferably much younger in their fifties no older. That way they actually have a stake in the future as the future will affect them.
Too old. Dementia, Alzheimers, Standard old age issues. Reagan comes to mind.
Too old, could keel over at any moment due to any reasons old people keel over and thus leave the job ot someone like Mike Pence and his wife Mother – who in my mind would be even worse then Trump – and I stated that before the election of the orange shitstain.
Too old. Why would anyone vote for someone who does not understand the issues of young people, people of colour, people who are not heterosexual vanilla, has a studentloan, wants to marry and have children, does not own their own home, has not got a job nor a chance of getting a job etc etc etc etcetc.
I have reasons for wanting a younger person, someone who more looks like the electorate, someone who looks more like the people getting the vote out, raising the funds, doing the door knocking, the phone banking and any other of hte myriads of ways to get people to vote.
And then comes the baggage. Clinton, Sanders, Biden all have lived their life in white privilege. And literally know very little other then white privilege. Biden has his with Anita Hill, Sanders went to one demonstration for civil rights and then lived his whole life in the whitest state of the US – Vermont, where the last black female lawmaker resigned due to incessant bullying https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/us/politics/kiah-morris-vermont.html – , and Hillary Clinton……emails, bengazi, cooties, female, clinton, blowjob, emails, lock her up blahblahblahblah.
So i really hope that the Democratic Party will have a come to god moment as did the Labour Party in NZ and choose a leader that actually can inspire more then just a small segment fo their voters, and above all get these voters in such large numbers to the polls that they will outvote any gerrymandering, voter suppression tactics and what nots. And considering the mid term elections i think i am on to something here.
Shit, moz, I know you like to lay it on with a trowel, but that’s pretty darned close to calling all Germans stupid (at best). And not in an “Aussies are koala-shaggers” sort of way, either.
No, of course there are thoughtful and intelligent Germans. Our friend Sabine is normally one of them.
Germany produced Beethoven, Goethe, Einstein, and [insert your favourite German genius here] but it also produced Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Hess and their terrible legacy. The baleful spectacle of the German legal system, academia, churches, and every other institution in the country being corrupted by that regime had a truly devastating effect on Germany’s intellectual and moral life—resulting in the distasteful phenomenon of moral imbeciles such as Uwe Becker.
Sabine’s contention that Hillary Clinton is not a suitable candidate for President because she is old and white is horribly wrong, and stupid—Beckerian, almost.
Morrissey
Hippo hit-the-fan stuff. All being included in your wide-ranging criticism, that is not on. Don’t be like this hippo –
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfnZMRRHrwI
After having the most qualified Presidential candidate in history it can only be a downgrade for the dems. They need to find a human skin coloured person who is not cis male, never run a Buisiness, never served in the military, vegan, uses the word comrade, solo parent in an open relationship, born in the US to illegal immigrants, a degree in social sciences, never had a real job, and White Ribbon ambassador.
“No impeachment since no Senate majority.”.
You don’t need anyone at all in the Senate for an impeachment to take place.
The Senate doesn’t actually impeach anyone. The Impeachment is the responsibility of the House of Representatives where the Democrats have a majority.
The Senate then try anyone who has been impeached. They certainly aren’t going to find him guilty of course. That requires a 2/3 majority of the Senators.
Thus both Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached but at their trial by the Senate they were not convicted.
Donald Trumps taxes as a corporate are continually assessed by the IRS. How the hell you come to the conclusion he is committing tax fraud is beyond me. If you think the most scrutinised person on the planet is knowingly committing tax fraud you have a clear case of TDS.
Trials for what?
Having Buisiness in foreign nations.
The meeting with the Russian women lying she had info on Clinton was not an offence.
The Moskow business deals have extensively been examined and there is no collusion.
I myself are looking forward to the prosecution of the desperate Mueller for extorting people into making false statements. He’s got form.
Why haven’t the people who did conspire with foreign nationals to interfere in the elections being prosecuted. Like Clinton and her golden shower political assassination. If rigging the debate is a test of Clintons willingness to cheat, it’s no supprised she deleted her emails and smashed her hard drives. She’s got form.
The sooner this TDS nonsense from the cry baby snowflake revenge filled Clinton supporters ends the better. Then the democrates can get on with writing a book with another 200 reasons why, that nobody can be bothered reading.
Why rush things anyway. It’s not like the democrates have any candidates that people actually like, or are genuinely Presidential.
Last time the Democrates had power Obama promised change. I was a supporter. I liked what he was saying and McCain would have made Bush Jr look like someone that deserved the peace prize. But when you become President the real world and rhetoric meet. Obama was a disappointment.
Trump is actually making change. He is confronting long standing issues that traditional politics has failed to address. Obama will be forgotten, Trump will leave a legacy of fighting and achieving for the people he represents. The citizens of the US.
For example Obama a socialist helped the car industry with a bailout. Obama fixed nothing and large job loses have just occurred. Trump attacked China on trade and China has conceded, agreeing to drop the 40% Tarif on US vehicles. The socialist (other people’s money) approach vs that’s bullshit, let’s do a deal, or else.
If a person with the drive and style of Trump was in charge of fixing Climate Change we would see a revolution on that subject. Sadly his position on that issue is his biggest fault. Don’t be supprised however if he pulls the rug out from under the Democrates election chances with a capitalist style solution out of “left” field. IE pro US worker.
It’s his personal tax returns that will get Trump into jail not his corporate ones.
The rule you need to familiarize yourself with is:
“The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.”
The offenses of whether he or his team were infected by the Russian state are now well documented by the evidence in US courts that multiple persons have already pleaded guilty to. You can now look them up yourself.
Trump is certainly making change, in the same way that gangrene makes change to a limb with an open wound.
If a person with the “drive and style of Trump was in charge of fixing climate change” we would probably have a plan for climate change. Instead we have Trump.
But what they won’t tell you is that the reason INZ, the Labour Inspectorate and the IAA has been such a fuckup is because for 9 years they were under-funded, under-resourced, politicised by way of ‘whispers’, and brought under a Ministry for everything that has a commercial and business focus. Same thing true of NZQA of course.
Some history and great symbolism. I really struggle with christianity – I like individuals but I have major difficulties with most other bits including the part christianity played in stealing the land.
On Saturday, though, in Tauranga, the serious work of putting things right entered a new, profound and personal dimension.
Because the church — our church, the Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia — said sorry, publicly, for its part in dispossessing Tauranga Moana people of their birthright.
With heads hung low, two of the most senior bishops of the Anglican Church apologised for an 1866 decision by the Church Missionary Society to give the Crown most of 1333 acres of land which had been entrusted to them by two Tauranga Moana hapū — Ngāti Tapu and Ngāi Tamarāwaho.
True, the CMS had come under intolerable pressure from the Crown to sell out. But that land was not CMS’s to sell, nor to give away. But, once given, it was gone forever, and the hapū were thrown into poverty.
Yesterday’s apology was read, slowly, in te reo by Pīhopa Ngarahu Katene, and in English by Archbishop Philip Richardson.
Then the day reached its pivotal, unscripted, and most solemn moment — when Archbishop Philip sank to his knees in the grass.
He raised the General Synod-mandated apology above his head and, with eyes down, he offered the document, which is sealed with the Primate’s seal, to Ngāti Tapu kaumātua Puhirake Ihaka and Ngāi Tamarāwaho kaumātua Peri Kohu.
Agree totally with this article. Creativity, problem solving, communication, persistance and resilience will beat learning a narrow range of, soon to be, outdated, skills.
Old style metalwork, woodwork and cooking taught me those things. Not coding.
In German last week the biggest ‘right wing “Grand coalition” party have just elected who will be the next chancellor for Germany, – who is reported to be a hard right woman who resembles the character of Adolf Hitler we hear.
Experts believe there are a handful of possible replacements, ranging from Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the new general secretary of the CDU who shares a lot of Merkel’s practical approach to politics (earning her the nickname of “Merkel’s mini-me”)
“I think she’ll carry on for another 18 months to two years but her authority and popularity is lower now, so what will decide her future is not the state of the coalition but the state of her party — that’s where the revolt will come from.”
The CDU is nothing without the CSU, they are two pods of the same plant and the CDU needs it Coalition Partner. The CSU is literally only found in Bavaria, nowhere else in Germany – it is a single state Party and literally the only one in the country like that. Keep also in mind that Bavaria is a ‘free state’ within the federation of germany and thus has a status quite different from the other states within the federation.
Also Seehoefer is a too old white man and an ass who should go and retire already.
Also the poll referred to in this publication was by the “Handelsblatt” which is a very conservative commercial interest newspaper. So i can see why their respondents would be unhappy if Merkel is not gonna spend all that tax money surplus on some big business projects, cause they would be very unhappy were she to spend it on social welfare and the likes.
As for that comment that she hangs on for another 18 month or so? Hopefull wishing by someone who wants that tax surplus spend on big business projects.
The CSU is never gonna be anything but a Bavarian Party, has never been anything else. Augsburg, a city my family hails from, one of the three cities in Germany created by the Romans is notoriously conservative even if it were to kill them. And in the times fo my coming of age the 80.s, this city was a dead fish in the water until the Bavarian government finally started to spend some money on it, lest they completely go over to Die Gruenen and SPD. Due to its ‘free state’ status Bavaria is one of the highest income, highest business density and highest cost of living places in Germany. And guess what, that is what is ailing Bavaria. The workers so badly
needed can’t afford to live there. Sounds like something we know something of?
So i put my money on Merkel for now. She wants to make people happy? She will loosen the string of the purse a bit, and go ‘social’ and ‘green’.
As for the migrant problem? Worldwide, and this includes us here, we will have to make a decision. Cause with global warming, raising sea levels, increasing droughts, fires etc we will have migrants. Millions of migrants everywhere, anywhere, at all times. Add in a bit of war for water, land and food, and voila, time to realise that we will never resolve the migrant problem unless we are happy to watch them die in their boats, in locked up shipping containers, or shoot them on sight. Cause they will keep on coming, as that is all they can do to stay alive. And why? Because we will never change, not give up our nice life without a fight and someone somewhere will whinge that is Dad pulled his boat three hundred kilometers to some lake somewhere and then back, and gosh darn it, it is my right and i too shall do that cause its my right! And the same is true for Germany, the US, Italy, France, England, OZ and NZ and anywhere else.
Thanks for the link, Moz. Like you, I totally trust everything the Daily Mail promotes, particularly their sensible support for that Austrian chap, Herr Hitler. Hurrah for the Blackshirts!
I certainly did watch it. How does the fact that the coverage of this Clinton failure was from the Wail invalidate it?
Hell, even Noam Chomsky, who with Ed Herman definitively analysed the propaganda function of the New York Times, says that most of the stuff it prints is good, solid, reliable journalism.
Same goes for the Wail and the Grauniad, surely. In spite of employing such second- and third-rate talents as Cathy Newman, James Ball and Luke Harding, most of what is printed in those propaganda sheets is unexceptionable.
Or, to bring it back to a Kiwi example: it’s like Mike Hosking, or Leighton Smith: probably 90 per cent of what they say is fine; it’s that last ten per cent where the trouble starts….
In an interview with the Observer, Cohn-Bendit, now a friend and adviser to President Emmanuel Macron, said: “This movement is very different to May 68. Back then, we wanted to get rid of a general (Charles de Gaulle); today these people want to put a general in power,” he said, referring to calls by certain gilets jaunes for the former chief of defence staff General Pierre de Villiers, who resigned after falling out with Macron in July 2017, to be made prime minister.
“And nobody in 68 made death threats against those who want to talk. This is the power of force. All those on the left thinking this is a leftwing revolution are wrong: it’s veering to the right. To hear that gilets jaunes who want to negotiate are receiving death threats is evidence of this authoritarian right.
“I hear people from la France Insoumise (hard left), talking about this being a great people’s revolt and how the people are speaking, but these are the same ordinary people who pushed Trump into power.
“We saw in Germany in 1933 what ‘ordinary’ people did. Not all ordinary people are good … it’s not an accident that this movement has proposed General de Villiers as an alternative leader.”
i believe for both to be active atm. The movement that is popular, i.e. people put on their gilet jaune and protest – a day, a week, a few hours, and agent provocateurs.
I still have family and friends in france – i lived there for quite a few years before moving to NZ with my kiwi husband – and the movement is based on the issue mentioned, i.e. Gasoline to expensive, cuts to all services, increase in living costs, essentially the same malaise that we have here in NZ. To some extend the movement is supported by Police, Fire fighters, Ambulance drivers etc, so not really those that would cause a ruckus.
i have heard nothing about installing a General, but one of the most often named points is to go to a system as in Switzerland where laws are voted for in popular referendums.
I have heard of he abolition of any retirement payments to ex politicos that are still of working age, or have income.
I have heard of the demand to fire Macron and send him packing.
But this is the first time i hear about the general. I will ask my friends to see what this is about.
Google translation of a statement from what appears to be a broad cross section of French people.
The yellow vests movement puts the entire social policy of the government in public debate. More broadly, the neoliberal policies implemented by successive governments for decades are at stake. More and more difficult months of the month, increased precariousness of work, tax injustice, expensive housing, deteriorating living conditions, such is the situation faced by the majority of the population. This particularly affects women, very many to mobilize in this movement. At the same time, tax evasion has never been so important and the richest have been offered multiple tax breaks: the elimination of the ISF, flat tax of 30% for capital income that is not more subject to progressive tax, lower corporate tax … In these circumstances, the increase in fuel taxes appeared as “the last straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Despite an attempt by the far right to take control of the movement, it is characterized by its horizontal self-organization and the demand for real democracy against an authoritarian and contemptuous presidency. At a time when COP 24 is taking place in Poland and where the fight against global warming is urgent, this movement also highlights the link between the social issue and ecological imperatives: the biggest polluters are exempt from any effort, the main causes of global warming are not dealt with, the breakdown of public services and local shops and urban sprawl continue, alternatives to public transport are not developed. The model of social housing in France is endangered by its commodification for the benefit of large private groups. In these circumstances, it is certainly not up to the middle and lower classes to pay for the ecological transition.
Government policy does not respond to social anger or ecological imperatives. The government is letting the multinationals and the productivist lobbies do their best by always favoring their own interests and those of their shareholders to the detriment of the greatest number and the future of the planet. For days, the government stuck on an uncompromising stance, refusing any action and claiming that it was staying the course, despite the fact that a huge majority of the population supported this movement. This attitude has led to increasing exasperation that has led to acts of violence that the government could hope to take advantage of. This was not the case and the support of the population remained massive.
The government has announced, among other things, the freeze and subsequent cancellation of the fuel tax increase. This is a first step backwards but it is too little, too late, because it is the whole social policy and its economic and ecological consequences that must be discussed. Even though youth has decided to set out to challenge the educational choices of power, it is a change of course that must be imposed. To begin, we must respond to union demands by increasing the minimum wage and returning to the cap of the increase in pensions to 0.3%, restore the ISF and tax multinationals, including Total, Gafa and banks that finance fossil fuels to invest heavily in thermal insulation of buildings and renewable energies.
This is why the undersigned, trade unionists, associative and political leaders, researchers, academics, artists, etc., support the demands of fiscal and social justice brought by the movement of yellow vests. They call on the population to mobilize to impose a policy that allows better living, and to demonstrate peacefully in the street massively December 8, international mobilization day for climate justice, in convergence with the fourth day of mobilization of yellow vests.
as for now, this is going to be a European wide movement. As the gilet jaune signifies, this is an accident and we are securing the site to keep people safe. That is why you have to have one of these jackets in the car, by law, and that is why they wear them.
I hope that the Bannon Brigade will very quickly overstay their welcome.
It is a text that should never have existed. When they arrived at the headquarters of the CFDT to discuss the social news on Thursday morning, two days before the fourth act of the yellow vests, the secretaries general of major trade unions had not planned to take the pen. However, coming out of this informal meeting which, explains one of them, “should not have been public”, the CFDT, the CGT, FO, the CFE-CGC, the CFTC, the Unsa, and the FSU have adopted a joint statement. “Writing this text has become obvious,” says François Hommeril of the GSC, the union of executives, who welcomes “this strong signal to the government.”
“Out
ground”
In this statement of about fifteen lines, the signatories are worried about the “very degraded climate” and point the responsibility of the executive, remained deaf for “months” to their call for more “social justice”. Taking note, however, of a change of tone with, on Tuesday, the promise of the Prime Minister to launch a dialogue, the power plants undertake to participate in this dialogue, “each with [their] own demands and proposals, in common whenever it will be possible. But no matter how.
Cooled by nineteen months of complex relations with a president who pretended to listen to them without paying much attention to their opinions, the unions demand something else: “real” negotiations, both “broad, open and transparent” on the purchasing power, wages, housing, transportation and utilities. But they do not give more indications on the calendar and the method wanted for this eventual Grenelle version 2018. Nor do they make strong proposals or calls to act in concert. “Everyone has their culture. We focused on the essential, what we could say together today, “says Luc Bérille, Unsa. Not very much, retorts Eric Beynel, spokesperson for Solidaires, present at the meeting but did not want to initial the text, considered “off the ground”. Signatory, however, the appeal initiated by Attac and the Copernicus Foundation for a convergence of mobilizations of yellow vests and the march for the climate (read above), it annoys: “Our responsibility of trade unionists n ‘ is not to write an incantatory text, but to call to be present in the street. ”
The common statement is, on the contrary, very cautious towards yellow vests. While their mobilization is described as “legitimate anger,” the signatories also denounce “all forms of violence in the expression of claims.” A sentence that follows the request to “launch a call for calm” that had sent them, the day before, the executive. Not a word on the other hand on police management, sometimes violent, mobilizations. What ended to convince Solidaires not to sign. And led the CGT, which calls for a day of action on December 14, to draft a statement denouncing an “inadmissible repression”, including youth: “The CGT can not accept that the power strikes and tape our children. ”
“Grand
gap ”
The power station of Philippe Martinez, also a signatory of the appeal launched by Attac, also calls for “the immediate opening of negotiations on the social emergency”. In passing, the CGT also announces that it will not participate in the meeting proposed by the Minister of Labor, this Friday, to launch the project of the consultation. What to disconcert his co-signatories of the joint statement. “This shows the big internal gap that the CGT is doing,” notes a secretary general.
Transis, the others wait for clarifications of the executive. “We will see if what is proposed is acceptable. It would be simpler if we could move together in this framework, “says one at the CFDT. But caution remains in place. “When we hear some people in the government say that we have to stay the course, there is enough to doubt,” says François Hommeril of the GSC. The following ? “Every day is enough for him,” he breathes. After the excesses of Saturday, the eyes are on the day 8. “We do day to day, notes the head of Unsa. On the razor wire.”
Amandine Cailhol
National and Simon counting all the money that Labour is spending on gathering information, consulting, etc. Labour is not considered to be doing anything, just being told by others what to do. Hahahahahah – just what National knows most about! Labour’s bad is first reference on the news. https://www.radionz.co.nz/programmes/news-bulletin/story/2018674795/radio-new-zealand-news
The figures are contested @ geywarshark, but in light of my comments above that relate to immigration, and others the other day, it does show that they’re increasingly desperate to find something to hang their credentials (such as they) on.
Sroubek is not going to work
MPI is not going to work
NZTA is not going to work
DHB’s circumstance is not going to work
HCNZ is not going to work,
And we’ve not even started on Krekshuns or Soshul ‘Development’ (going forward) despite the claims of best practice in each/all of the above.
and all that is GIVEN the under-resourcing and under-funding in all the above, AND allowing for complete and utter muppetry and senior levels in each of those enetities.
(and they supposedly advocated for performance pay ffs).
It’s actually amusing to watch in a black humour sort of way
The Waiwera Pools are a local asset that should be owned by a local Trust as with so many of our resources! Are Waiwera Properties Ltd local? It seems that at present it is a pocket-plaything for overseas bastards.
arbitration between the former managers and the property owners will take place in February.
That will mean no waterslides or swims at Waiwera until at least then.
Local businesses that rely on tourists who visit the pools have also told RNZ that Waiwera is a key part of their summer trade.
Waiwera Thermal Resort Limited has owned the lease to use the resort since 2010.
It is owned by California-based diamond tycoon Leon Fingerhut, who earlier this month bought the shares of his business partner, the Russian billionaire Mikhail Khimich.
The property owners, Waiwera Properties Limited, previously said they had expressions of interest by potential new managers for the pools.
Tauranga DHB unable and unwilling to provide modern services to the big city people flocking to the area. They have refused to provide surgical abortion services.
To deny humanity of an unborn child is appalling. That’s the opinion of pro-life advocates who are applauding the Bay of Plenty District Health Board for not providing a surgical abortion service in Tauranga.
The conversation comes after The Weekend Sun published a story on November 23 discussing whether there is a need for surgical abortion services in Tauranga.
Right to Life spokesman Ken Orr says pregnancy is not a disease, and abortions should not be used as a form of health care for women.
“We take no pleasure in seeing women inconvenienced,” says Ken. “However, because we see abortion as a violation of the human rights of the child, we support the DHB refusing to provide a killing service.”
He says nobody has the right to kill another human being because their continued living is an inconvenience.
“The unborn child is a patient that should be respected and protected,” he says. “Women who are faced with an unplanned pregnancy, that is imposing a burden on the mother, deserve all the help and support from the community they need to choose life for their child.”
Too true Janice. One who is bound by rectitude and safe from the dangers of falling into the slippery puddle of unwanted motherhood, can feel so superior and noble and didactic. That also applies to some women who get their jollies in life finding fault with other, lesser, women.
Why would a farming group be doing responsible, positive things to prepare for a sustainable farming future and clean, efficient farming practices? National thinks they must have been weakened by Labour’s bad influence into doing the right thing. And brings up that dirty, polluting word ‘tax’, as a scare taxtic!
National’s agriculture spokesperson Nathan Guy said Landcorp must have been told to submit as it was advocating for a water tax, nitrogen fertiliser tax and was not opposed to a capital gains tax in its submission.
“They’ve obviously been leaned on. This government wants to bring in environmental taxes. They want to tax the hell out of hardworking farmers in New Zealand.”
But a spokesperson for Mr Jones rejected that, saying he was not even aware a submission had been made until it was reported by media on 28 November.
Pratchett wrote one of his Discworld books centred on Australia called The Last Continent or the Lost can’t remember. I’ve yet to read it,; getting round to it.
Thanks, Sabine and Grey for your response. I will get that book to read. Also thanks for the other sites you have listed to visit I have read several Discworld novels, One of the best bits was the BIG BANG Theory. in “Mort” I think
The problem I have is, There are so many good books I want to read and now beginning to run out of years to read them in, so I have to be selective and cannot waste time on ones that may not be good. I know it is a matter of choice but have selected some duds lately though I did enjoy Iggulden’s novels on the War of the Roses and the Genghis Khan Dynasty.
Thank you all and compliments of the season
Compliments too halfcrown and fellow reader
Love that bit of getting more books for tight timing to read. Let’s say while you can read you will stay on top of the brain fade and so you will never leave us. Perhaps it could be said ‘Old readers never die they just can’t turn the page’.
James is paid $10 for every bite that he can muster on The Standard. The National Party do pay for this from their own funds.
Today he has earned over $300 and is sniggering all the way to his favourite shop.
Remember this as each time you respond to his bait he gets richer.
A Moscow court on Wednesday sentenced a 77-year-old rights activist to 25 days in jail for calling for protests against a growing crackdown on young people.
Lev Ponomaryov, one of Russia’s most respected activists, told AFP that the powerful FSB security service was behind his detention.
“They are taking revenge against me because I am waging a war against the FSB,” the head of the For Human Rights movement told AFP by phone as he was being driven to a detention centre.
“The country is gradually inching towards mass political repressions,” he said, referring to the peak of Stalin-era purges.
Kia ora the Am Show Chris its is cool that we have a lot more people giving help to the poor people who need it.
simon what about all the money shonky took from the poor and gave to the rich that will equate into millions a day into the rich hip pocket I will not raise gst.
land line polls are not a accurate take on the views of all kiwis run a poll on your religious views based on landline users and you will get a totally different result.
Rodger the buff kangaroo condolences to all the people whom cared for him.
Andrew we all no the trickle down effect is non existent as some wealthy people use any move they can to keep all the lollies to them selves .
duncan you would not see any of the improvement of poor peoples lives with your head high up in that ——– you never see the poor people Trust me I can see the common poor people with smile’s on there faces that tells a big story there Te tangata whenua culture and tangata and minority cultures are receiving the respect we deserve .
Aotearoa is one of the safes places on Papatuanuku to live and the greatest risk is strangers. This is the capitalist society have the people feel unsafe to worried to see the big picture that is our democracy is being undermined from the wealthy.
Ka kite ano P.S I see
Eco Maori is about leavening behind our grandchildren a healthy prosperous future
hence my post educating the tangata about our worlds reality’s and trumps reality .
The Republican Congress absolutely tried to shield the president,” he said. “The new Congress will not try to shield the president. It will try to get to the bottom of this in order to serve the American people and stop this massive fraud on the American people.”New court filings show Donald Trump was “at the center of a massive fraud” against the American people, the incoming chair of the House judiciary committee said on Sunday.
Mob mentality: how Mueller is working to turn Trump’s troops
Read more
Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat set to take over the panel in January, said Trump would have committed impeachable offenses if it is proven that he ordered his lawyer to make illegal payments to women to keep quiet about alleged sexual encounters.
“What these indictments and filings show is that the president was at the center of a massive fraud – several massive frauds against the American people,” Nadler said on CNN’s “State of the Union There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the justice department may indict him – that he may be the first president in quite some time to face the very real prospect of jail time,” Schiff said on CBS’s Face the Nation.
The California Democrat said the “powerful case” prosecutors made for Cohen to serve a prison sentence would apply “equally” to the man identified in filings as “Individual 1”: the president.
“To have the justice department basically say that the president of the United States not only coordinated but directed an illegal campaign scheme that may have had an election-altering impact is pretty breathtaking,” he said. Ana to kai links below.
Lets not let the worlds media turn one tragedy into a double whammy that will damage Aotearoa reputation as a safe place to come for a holiday there are citys the size of Aotearoa in America that have 500 murders a year .
Positive we have a Lady prime minister we have turned the corner to Equality our lady sports stars are getting more good publicity and some are getting payed for there great effords Maori and Pacific cultures people are getting more respect than we did in the past we have a government that is committed to fight Climate Change and inequality there are many more positive phenomenons happening in Aotearoa now than in the past .Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland: New Zealand’s bizarre landscape that’s ‘hell on earth ka kite ano link below .
Get back, stay back, at work and you unions don’t start that neo lib nonsense that has brought so much despair to a mass of ordinary people when used by business and consultative government (with useful business cronies). There has been crookedness in government, so don’t let us have it occurring in unions too that show no community with the other workers in the nation. If that happens, then we are completely encircled by grasping people with dollars for eyeballs, unworthy of respect and support.
There should be no strikes held at times that upset people’s lives and time for getting together with family or children; the important times that we all live and breathe for. There is no excuse for this holiday threat, by the airline and other sector engineers who are not on the bones of their bums. But now seem to care nothing about others, some of whom are on the edge, and union behaviour like this shows they are prepared to put the nation’s economic functions under stress at their whim.
Unions that want fairer wages and conditions, must respect the meaning of fairness themselves, and when they put stress on the word and meaning of ‘fair’ they must follow and respect that understanding.
Its good that a lot of business can see past the veil of deceit money and lies to see that if we don’t dump carbon our Descendants Papatuanuku will turn into a nightmare on epic proportions.
The group of 414 institutional investors with $31 trillion under management say governments must take serious steps to cut emissions The largest ever group of institutional investors has called on governments around the world to urgently increase their efforts to meet the Paris climate change agreement goals.
The 414 global investors – which represent US$31 trillion of assets-under-management – say they are deeply concerned about the “ambition gap” that exists between governments’ commitments and what is needed to limit the global temperature increase to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels.
They say that gap is increasing the physical risks from climate change and hampering investors’ ability to properly allocate trillions of dollars needed to support the much-needed transition to a low carbon economy.
They have signed a “Global Investor Statement” to be handed to world leaders this week at the COP24 – the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Poland.
Sign up to the Green Light email to get the planet’s most important stories
Read more
The signatories include some of the world’s largest pension funds, asset managers and insurance companies, including Australian investors BT Financial Group, Australian Super, Cbus, HESTA, IFM Investors, Local Government Super, and VicSuper.
I could see that putin was playing the popular card on climate change this oil baron don’t give a ——– about our descendants future all he wants to do is turn back time to were Russia was a super power as for Saudi Arabia they are in the same waka they were playing the popular card to till the last minute and showing there true colors a power hungry regime who will let there descendants burn for that power
US and Russia ally with Saudi Arabia to water down climate pledge
The US and Russia have thrown climate talks into disarray by allying with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to water down approval of a landmark report on the need to keep global warming below 1.5C.
After a heated two-and-a-half-hour debate on Saturday night, the backwards step by the four major oil producers shocked delegates at the UN climate conference in Katowice as ministers flew in for the final week of high-level discussions.
It has also raised fears among scientists that the US president, Donald Trump, is going from passively withdrawing from climate talks to actively undermining them alongside a coalition of climate deniers.
‘We live in a lobstocracy’: Maine town is feeling the effects of climate change
Read more
Two months ago, representatives from the world’s governments hugged after agreeing on the 1.5C report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), commissioned to spell out the dire consequences should that level of warming be exceeded and how it can be avoided. Links below ka kite ano .P.S the rest of the world need to be strong and the will of the people will prevail he tangata he tangat he tangata that count in 2018.
Kia ora Newshub Ka pai to our Prime minister for apologizing for the murder of that young lady holidaying in Aotearoa.
I totally agree with Lizzy men needs respect Wahine I will give a story on this later.
simon this show me that national is use to having the police dance to there tune with shonky tack ticks.
Yes most of the movie we watch promote alcohol way to much for my liking .
The NZ Transport agency CEO has stepped down I still say six monthly WOF should not have been scrapped for modem vehicles.
There you go if it smells like one look’s like one & behaves like one than he’s a cheating bulling lair .
Mike that’s working outside the square box in advertising to OUR Guest what they are doing wrong in NZ is being a respectful responsible host country Ka pai.
Here we go another man disrespecting Wahine jarod hanes .
shonky & bills poverty tsunami effect is still rolling in the trickle down effect is a big con job being played out on a world scale buy capitalist.
Ken is a good kiwi bloke and Kati Kati is a beautiful little place.
Ka kite ano
Kia ora James & Mulls from the Crows Goes Wild our cricketers all have a sore face ka pai
Our winter sports stars are having a great time at world events .
Our Allblacks 7 team don’t have to worry about that minor hickup in South Africa .
She is amazing that young Asian girl singing there national anthem James
Steven is a good coach all the best to the Warriors.
Looks like some one is damaging the brand of America.
Ka kite ano
Kia ora the Am Show may brexit is doom to fail now everyone knows who created it to distract Europe on climate change and Equality for all foreigners interfering in Europe.
I say that all boards should have maori & Wahine representation on them I see some people were making fun of our ancient story’s and culture the big picture is our culture respects the ancestors and the decedents and Papatuanuku unlike some who live for the now and only respect themselves with that grain of thought they are stuffing up OUR future.
That’s the Chrismas spirit Jacinda you have achieved a enormous feat against the tide of neo capitalist money that distorts reality to conform with there elitist greedy short sighted view’s .
I say our government is thinking long term at least we have started changing the law so people who need medical weed will be able to use it legally.
The whole world needs to show the Wahine more respect .
There you go duncan automatically giving a tohu to a man over wahine if he had the best brain why is he leaving A. because his party made a big mess of Aotearoa with his votes chris finlayson .
All the best to Marina on her new Journey in life.
Ka kite ano
To scotty morrison you will need a big box of tissues after the Australian elections next year carbon pro fool running around after another fool trump scotty cannot even see some thing if it was right under his nose
Australia has reaffirmed its commitment to coal – and its unwavering support for the United States – by appearing at a US government-run event promoting the use of fossil fuels at the United Nations climate talks in Poland.
Australia was the only country apart from the host represented at the event, entitled “US innovative technologies spur economic dynamism”, designed to “showcase ways to use fossil fuels as cleanly and efficiently as possible, as well as the use of emission-free nuclear energy”.
Its panel discussion was disrupted for several minutes by dozens of protesters who stood up suddenly during speeches, unfurling a banner reading “Keep it in the ground” while singing and chanting “Shame on you”.
How America’s clean coal dream unravelled
Read more
Patrick Suckling, Australia’s ambassador for the environment, and the head of the country’s negotiating delegation at the climate talks, spoke on the panel. His nameplate bore a US flag. Ka kite ano link below P.S the sandfly have been stuffing with my computer again muppets
The big picture is the kocoal brothers have trump on a string like a puppet and he is dancing to there tune.
US undermining ‘last chance’ climate talks, experts charge
The American delegation came to promote coal.
And the kids laughed in their faces.
That was the bizarre and symbolic scene that unfolded Monday at the UN COP24 climate talks at a spaceship-shaped conference center in Polish coal country.
Here you go our truth seeking scientist have been intimidated & suppressed by some state agency’s and big business groups they have been warning us about our wai and awa becoming to toxic to swim in we need to look after our wai .There are very strong disincentives for speaking out,” Death said.
“For those of us who do speak out, our funding is clearly impacted, and we don’t get as much funding as we would get [if we didn’t] speak out about various industry bodies in New Zealand.
“We do have to speak out, and we are allowed to speak out, but we speak out at our peril and our cost.”
In his address, Death said New Zealand’s water quality was not “something to be overly proud about,” citing its rate of endangered native freshwater species – which was the highest in the world – and its rate of waterborne disease, which was among the highest in the western world.
He also cited deaths related to contaminated drinking water, as seen in the Havelock North disaster in 2016, in which an outbreak New Zealand’s freshwater scientists had done valuable, at times world-leading research, Death said, but scientists – as well as the Society itself, for which he had been a member for 30 years – needed to stand up and push aggressively for their science to be practically applied.
“I think we really do need to do better,” Death said. “We are the expert body of freshwater science in New Zealand, and we are the people that can have an effect.
“I like to think we could be a little more supportive of those of us who speak out. I think Mike Joy in particular has been vilified for speaking out – a lot of us congratulate him for doing it because we’re scared to do it ourselves. ka kite ano links below
Kia ora Newshub yes we need everyone to give our wahine more respect I have a story about the police’s response to one complainant.
There you go this is just a start to the cannabis reforms its a pity we did not get it passed to limit Helen Kellys pain ????? .
seenothing the regions have been farmed and starved of money from the goverment you supported for the last nine years they poured the money into bill south island M8 to the tune of hundreds on millions .
Yes a warming tangaroa is bad for our fishes we have seen big changes in fisheries over seas red algae blooms killing of fishes to and still we have climate change deniers .
Samantha yes trumps smocking gun well its is affecting America quite negatively the last time a go oil party president got the wheel he caused a world financial crises this one is doing more damage in a quarter of the time.
That is great news to stop company’s bottling our water and exporting it with little financial gain for Aotearoa.
Its good to see that the IPCA is doing its job finding that the first police investigation of that 13 year old girl and a teacher from Gisborne was differently not on you see what it tell me that the law is dish out unfairly its who you know Ka kite ano
Kia ora James & Mulls good waiata with Marina James it sounds like our tennis stars need more Tau toko.
That was a awesome try that won the Wahine 7 gold medal at the games guy Ka pai.
I see Hartley has Porse backing him for there E racing team he said there was a lot of politics in Formal 1 racing ECO Maori could see that he has a quick lap times. Electric cars are the future I see some big car companies did not jump on the bandwagon of Ecar why because they make more profits off enternal combustion car parts than they make off there cars.
Storm the snoop sports reporter the net ball Wahine stars will shine bright.
Steven Adams is cool showing the aroha to the children on a good day I can hear a Haka from some of his biggest fans.
Ka kite ano P.S I have to switch device you know why
It’s one thing for military personnel to hone skills with first-person view (FPV) drones in racing competitions. It’s quite another for them to transition to the complexities of the battlefield. Drone racing has become a ...
Seymour says there will be no other exemptions granted to schools wanting to opt out of the Compass contract. Photo: Lynn GrievesonLong stories shortest:David Seymour has denied a request from a Christchurch school and any other schools to be exempted from the Compass school lunch programme, saying the contract ...
Russian President Boris Yeltsin, U.S. President Bill Clinton, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, and British Prime Minister John Major signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in ...
Edit: The original story said “Palette Cleanser” in both the story, and the headline. I am never, ever going to live this down. Chain me up, throw me into the pit.Hi,With the world burning — literally and figuratively — I felt like Webworm needed a little palate cleanser at the ...
Myanmar was a key global site for criminal activity well before the 2021 military coup. Today, illicit industry, especially heroin and methamphetamine production, still defines much of the economy. Nowhere, not even the leafiest districts ...
What've I gotta do to make you love me?What've I gotta do to make you care?What do I do when lightning strikes me?And I wake up and find that you're not thereWhat've I gotta do to make you want me?Mmm hmm, what've I gotta do to be heard?What do I ...
Here’s my selection1 of scoops, breaking news, news, analyses, deep-dives, features, interviews, Op-Eds, editorials and cartoons from around Aotearoa’s political economy on housing, climate and poverty from RNZ, 1News, The Post-$2, The Press−$, Newsroom3, NZ Herald, Stuff, BusinessDesk-$, NBR-$, Reuters, FT-$, WSJ-$, Bloomberg-$, New York Times-$, The Atlantic-$, The Economist-$ ...
Australia, Britain and European countries should loosen budget rules to allow borrowing to fund higher defence spending, a new study by the Kiel Institute suggests. Currently, budget debt rules are forcing governments to finance increases ...
The NZCTU remains strongly committed to banning engineered stone in New Zealand and implementing better occupational health protections for all workers working with silica-containing materials. In this submission to MBIE, the NZCTU outlines that we have an opportunity to learn from Australia’s experience by implementing a full ban of engineered ...
The Prime Minister has announced a big win in trade negotiations with India.It’s huge, he told reporters. We didn't get everything we came for but we were able to agree on free trade in clothing, fabrics, car components, software, IT consulting, spices, tea, rice, and leather goods.He said that for ...
I have been trying to figure out the logic of Trump’s tariff policies and apparent desire for a global trade war. Although he does not appear to comprehend that tariffs are a tax on consumers in the country doing the tariffing, I can (sort of) understand that he may think ...
As Syria and international partners negotiate the country’s future, France has sought to be a convening power. While France has a history of influence in the Middle East, it will have to balance competing Syrian ...
One of the eternal truths about Aotearoa's economy is that we are "capital poor": there's not enough money sloshing around here to fund the expansion of local businesses, or to build the things we want to. Which gets used as an excuse for all sorts of things, like setting up ...
National held its ground until late 2023 Verion, Talbot Mills & Curia Polls (Red = Labour, Blue = National)If we remove outlier results from Curia (National Party November 2023) National started trending down in October 2024.Verion Polls (Red = Labour, Blue = National)Verian alone shows a clearer deterioration in early ...
In a recent presentation, I recommended, quite unoriginally, that governments should have a greater focus on higher-impact, lower-probability climate risks. My reasoning was that current climate model projections have blind spots, meaning we are betting ...
Daddy, are you out there?Daddy, won't you come and play?Daddy, do you not care?Is there nothing that you want to say?Songwriters: Mark Batson / Beyonce Giselle Knowles.This morning, a look at the much-maligned NZ Herald. Despised by many on the left as little more than a mouthpiece for the National ...
Employers, unions and health and safety advocates are calling for engineered stone to be banned, a day before consultation on regulations closes. On Friday the PSA lodged a pay equity claim for library assistants with the Employment Relations Authority, after the stalling of a claim lodged with six councils in ...
Long stories shortest in Aotearoa’s political economy:Christopher Luxon surprises by announcing trade deal talks with India will start next month, and include beef and dairy. Napier is set to join Whakatane, Dunedin and Westport in staging a protest march against health spending restraints hitting their hospital services. Winston Peters ...
At a time of rising geopolitical tensions and deepening global fragmentation, the Ukraine war has proved particularly divisive. From the start, the battle lines were clearly drawn: Russia on one side, Ukraine and the West ...
Here’s my selection1 of scoops, breaking news, news, analyses, deep-dives, features, interviews, Op-Eds, editorials and cartoons from around Aotearoa’s political economy on housing, climate and poverty from RNZ, 1News, The Post-$2, The Press−$, Newsroom3, NZ Herald, Stuff, BusinessDesk-$, Newsroom-$, Politik-$, NBR-$, Reuters, FT-$, WSJ-$, Bloomberg-$, New York Times-$, The Atlantic-$, ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 9, 2025 thru Sat, March 15, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. We are still interested ...
Max Harris and Max Rashbrooke discuss how we turn around the right wing slogans like nanny state, woke identity politics, and the inefficiency of the public sector – and how we build a progressive agenda. From Donald Trump to David Seymour, from Peter Dutton to Christopher Luxon, we are subject to a ...
The Government dominated the political agenda this week with its two-day conference pitching all manner of public infrastructure projects for Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāLong stories shortest in our political economy this week: The Government ploughed ahead with offers of PPPs to pension fund managers ...
You know that it's a snake eat snake worldWe slither and serpentine throughWe all took a bite, and six thousand years laterThese apples getting harder to chewSongwriters: Shawn Mavrides.“Please be Jack Tame”, I thought when I saw it was Seymour appearing on Q&A. I’d had a guts full of the ...
So here we are at the wedding of Alexandra Vincent Martelli and David Seymour.Look at all the happy prosperous guests! How proud Nick Mowbray looks of the gift he has made of a mountain of crap plastic toys stuffed into a Cybertruck.How they drink, how they laugh, how they mug ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is waste heat from industrial activity the reason the planet is warming? Waste heat’s contribution to global warming is a small fraction of ...
Some continue to defend David Seymour on school lunches, sidestepping his errors to say:“Well the parents should pack their lunch” and/or “Kids should be grateful for free food.”One of these people is the sitting Prime Minister.So I put together a quick list of why complaint is not only appropriate - ...
“Bugger the pollsters!”WHEN EVERYBODY LIVED in villages, and every village had a graveyard, the expression “whistling past the graveyard” made more sense. Even so, it’s hard to describe the Coalition Government’s response to the latest Taxpayers’ Union/Curia Research poll any better. Regardless of whether they wanted to go there, or ...
Prof Jane Kelsey examines what the ACT party and the NZ Initiative are up to as they seek to impose on the country their hardline, right wing, neoliberal ideology. A progressive government elected in 2026 would have a huge job putting Humpty Dumpty together again and rebuilding a state that ...
See I try to make a differenceBut the heads of the high keep turning awayThere ain't no useWhen the world that you love has goneOoh, gotta make a changeSongwriters: Arapekanga Adams-Tamatea / Brad Kora / Hiriini Kora / Joel Shadbolt.Aotearoa for Sale.This week saw the much-heralded and somewhat alarming sight ...
Here’s my selection1 of scoops, breaking news, news, analyses, deep-dives, features, interviews, Op-Eds, editorials and cartoons from around Aotearoa’s political economy on housing, climate and poverty from RNZ, 1News, The Post-$2, The Press−$, Newsroom3, NZ Herald, Stuff, BusinessDesk-$, NBR-$, Reuters, FT-$, WSJ-$, Bloomberg-$, New York Times-$, The Atlantic-$, The Economist-$ ...
By international standards the New Zealand healthcare system appears satisfactory – certainly no worse generally than average. Yet it is undergoing another redisorganisation.While doing some unrelated work, I came across some international data on the healthcare sector which seemed to contradict my – and the conventional wisdom’s – view of ...
When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he knew that he was upending Europe’s security order. But this was more of a tactical gambit than a calculated strategy ...
Mountain Tui is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Over the last year, I’ve been warning about Luxon’s pitch to privatise our public assets.He had told reporters in October that nothing was off the cards:Schools, hospitals, prisons, and ...
When ASPI’s Cyclone Tracy: 50 Years On was published last year, it wasn’t just a historical reflection; it was a warning. Just months later, we are already watching history repeat itself. We need to bake ...
1. Why was school lunch provider The Libelle Group in the news this week?a. Grand Winner in Pie of The Yearb. Scored a record 108% on YELP c. Bought by Oravida d. Went into liquidation2. What did our Prime Minister offer prospective investors at his infrastructure investment jamboree?a. The Libelle ...
South Korea has suspended new downloads of DeepSeek, and it was were right to do so. Chinese tech firms operate under the shadow of state influence, misusing data for surveillance and geopolitical advantage. Any country ...
Previous big infrastructure PPPs such as Transmission Gully were fiendishly complicated to negotiate, generated massive litigation and were eventually rewritten anyway. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesLong stories shortest: The Government’s international investment conference ignores the facts that PPPs cost twice as much as vanilla debt-funded public infrastructure, often take ...
Woolworths has proposed a major restructure of its New Zealand store operating model, leaving workers worried their hours and pay could be cut. Public servants are being asked how productive their office is, how much they use AI, and whether they’re overloaded with meetings as part of a “census”. An ...
Robert Kaplan’s book Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis paints a portrait of civilisation in flux. Drawing insights from history, literature and art, he examines the effect of modern technology, globalisation and urbanisation on ...
Sexuality - Strong and warm and wild and freeSexuality - Your laws do not apply to meSexuality - Don't threaten me with miserySexuality - I demand equalitySong: Billy Bragg.First, thank you to everyone who took part in yesterday’s survey. Some questions worked better than others, but I found them interesting, ...
Hi,I just got back from a week in Japan thanks to the power of cheap flights and years of accumulated credit card points.The last time I was in Japan the government held a press conference saying they might take legal action against me and Netflix, so there was a little ...
The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts & talking about the week’s news with regular and special guests, including: on the week in geopolitics, including Donald Trump’s wrecking of the post-WW II political landscape; andHealth Coalition Aotearoa co-chair Lisa ...
Hi,I just got back from a short trip to Japan, mostly spending time in Tokyo.I haven’t been there since we shot Dark Tourist back in 2017 — and that landed us in a bit of hot water with the Japanese government.I am glad to report I was not thrown into ...
I’ve been on Substack for almost 8 months now.It’s been good in terms of the many great individuals that populate its space. So much variety and intelligence and humour and depth.I joined because someone suggested I should ‘start a Substack,’ whatever that meant.So I did.Turning on payments seemed like the ...
Open access notables Would Adding the Anthropocene to the Geologic Time Scale Matter?, McCarthy et al., AGU Advances:The extraordinary fossil fuel-driven outburst of consumption and production since the mid-twentieth century has fundamentally altered the way the Earth System works. Although humans have impacted their environment for millennia, justification for ...
Australia should buy equipment to cheaply and temporarily convert military transport aircraft into waterbombers. On current planning, the Australian Defence Force will have a total of 34 Chinook helicopters and Hercules airlifters. They should be ...
Indonesia’s government has slashed its counterterrorism (CT) budgets, despite the persistent and evolving threat of violent extremism. Australia can support regional CT efforts by filling this funding void. Reducing funding to the National Counterterrorism Agency ...
A ballot for a single Member's Bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn: Resource Management (Prohibition on Extraction of Freshwater for On-selling) Amendment Bill (Debbie Ngarewa-Packer) The bill does exactly what it says on the label, and would effectively end the rapacious water-bottling industry ...
Twilight Time Lighthouse Cuba, Wigan Street, Wellington, Sunday 6 April, 5:30pm for 6pm start. Twilight Time looks at the life and work of Desmond Ball, (1947-2016), a barefooted academic from ‘down under’ who was hailed by Jimmy Carter as “the man who saved the world”, as he proved the fallacy ...
Foreign aid is being slashed across the Global North, nowhere more so than in the United States. Within his first month back in the White House, President Donald Trump dismantled the US Agency for International ...
Nicola Willis has proposed new procurement rules that unions say will lead to pay cuts for already low-paid workers in cleaning, catering and security services that are contracted by government. The Crimes (Theft by Employer) Amendment Bill passed its third reading with support from all the opposition parties and NZ ...
Most KP readers will not know that I was a jazz DJ in Chicago and Washington DC while in grad school in the early and mid 1980s. In DC I joined WPFW as a grave shift host, then a morning drive show host (a show called Sui Generis, both for ...
Long stories shortest: The IMF says a capital gains tax or land tax would improve real economic growth and fix the budget. GDP is set to be smaller by 2026 than it was in 2023. Compass is flying in school lunches from Australia. 53% of National voters say the new ...
Last year in October I wrote “Where’s The Opposition?”. I was exasperated at the relative quiet of the Green Party, Labour and Te Pati Māori (TPM), as the National led Coalition ticked off a full bingo card of the Atlas Network playbook.1To be fair, TPM helped to energise one of ...
This is a re-post from The Climate BrinkGood data visualizations can help make climate change more visceral and understandable. Back in 2016 Ed Hawkins published a “climate spiral” graph that ended up being pretty iconic – it was shown at the opening ceremony of the Olympics that year – and ...
An agreement to end the war in Ukraine could transform Russia’s relations with North Korea. Moscow is unlikely to reduce its cooperation with Pyongyang to pre-2022 levels, but it may become more selective about areas ...
This week, the Government is hosting a grand event aimed at trying to interest big foreign capital players in financing capital works in New Zealand, particularly its big rural motorway programme. Financing vs funding: a quick explainer The key word in the sentence above is financing. It is important ...
In a month’s time, the Right Honourable Winston Peters will be celebrating his 80th birthday. Good for him. On the evidence though, his current war on “wokeness” looks like an old man’s cranky complaint that the ancient virtues of grit and know-how are sadly lacking in the youth of today. ...
As noted, early March has been about moving house, and I have had little chance to partake in all things internet. But now that everything is more or less sorted, I can finally give a belated report on my visit to the annual Regent Booksale (28th February and 1st March). ...
Information operations Australia has banned cybersecurity software Kaspersky from government use because of risks of espionage, foreign interference and sabotage. The Department of Home Affairs said use of Kaspersky products posed an unacceptable security ...
The StrategistBy Linus Cohen, Astrid Young and Alice Wai
One of the best understood tropes of screen drama is the scene where the beloved family dog is barking incessantly and cannot be calmed. Finally, somebody asks: What is it, girl? Has someone fallen down a well? Is there trouble at the old John Key place?One is reminded of this ...
The ’ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, plays a significant role in the global cocaine trade and is deeply entrenched in Australia, influencing the cocaine trade and engaging in a variety of illicit activities. A range of ...
In the US, the Trump regime is busy imposing tariffs on its neighbours and allies, then revoking them, then reimposing them, permanently poisoning relations with Canada and Mexico. Trump has also threatened to impose tariffs on agricultural goods, which will affect Aotearoa's exports. National's response? To grovel for an exemption, ...
Troy Bowker’s Caniwi Capital’s Desmond Gittings, former TradeMe and Warehouse executive Simon West, former anonymous right wing blogger / Labour attacker & now NZ On Air Board member / Waitangi Tribunal member Philip Crump, Canadian billionaire Jim Grenon who used to run vaccine critical, Treaty of Waitangi critical, and trans-rights ...
The free school lunch program was one of Labour's few actual achievements in government. Decent food, made locally, providing local employment. So naturally, National had to get rid of it. Their replacement - run by Compass, a multinational which had already been thrown out of our hospitals for producing inedible ...
New draft government procurement guidelines will remove living wage protections for thousands of low-paid workers in Aotearoa New Zealand, said NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi President Richard Wagstaff. “The Minister of Finance Nicola Willis has proposed a new rule saying that the Living Wage no longer needs to be paid in ...
The Trump administration’s effort to divide Russia from China is doomed to fail. This means that the United States is destroying security relationships based on a delusion. To succeed, Russia would need to overcome more ...
Living Strong, Aging Well There is much discussion around the health of our older New Zealanders and how we can age well. In reality, the delivery of health services accounts for only a relatively small percentage of health outcomes as we age. Significantly, dry warm housing, nutrition, exercise, social connection, ...
Shane Jones’ display on Q&A showed how out of touch he and this Government are with our communities and how in sync they are with companies with little concern for people and planet. ...
Labour does not support the private ownership of core infrastructure like schools, hospitals and prisons, which will only see worse outcomes for Kiwis. ...
The Green Party is disappointed the Government voted down Hūhana Lyndon’s member’s Bill, which would have prevented further alienation of Māori land through the Public Works Act. ...
The Labour Party will support Chloe Swarbrick’s member’s bill which would allow sanctions against Israel for its illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territories. ...
The Government’s new procurement rules are a blatant attack on workers and the environment, showing once again that National’s priorities are completely out of touch with everyday Kiwis. ...
With Labour and Te Pāti Māori’s official support, Opposition parties are officially aligned to progress Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick’s Member’s Bill to sanction Israel for its unlawful presence in Palestine. ...
Te Pāti Māori extends our deepest aroha to the 500 plus Whānau Ora workers who have been advised today that the govt will be dismantling their contracts. For twenty years , Whānau Ora has been helping families, delivering life-changing support through a kaupapa Māori approach. It has built trust where ...
Labour welcomes Simeon Brown’s move to reinstate a board at Health New Zealand, bringing the destructive and secretive tenure of commissioner Lester Levy to an end. ...
This morning’s announcement by the Health Minister regarding a major overhaul of the public health sector levels yet another blow to the country’s essential services. ...
New Zealand First has introduced a Member’s Bill that will ensure employment decisions in the public service are based on merit and not on forced woke ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ targets. “This Bill would put an end to the woke left-wing social engineering and diversity targets in the public sector. ...
Police have referred 20 offenders to Destiny Church-affiliated programmes Man Up and Legacy as ‘wellness providers’ in the last year, raising concerns that those seeking help are being recruited into a harmful organisation. ...
Te Pāti Māori welcomes the resignation of Richard Prebble from the Waitangi Tribunal. His appointment in October 2024 was a disgrace- another example of this government undermining Te Tiriti o Waitangi by appointing a former ACT leader who has spent his career attacking Māori rights. “Regardless of the reason for ...
Police Minister Mark Mitchell is avoiding accountability by refusing to answer key questions in the House as his Government faces criticism over their dangerous citizen’s arrest policy, firearm reform, and broken promises to recruit more police. ...
The number of building consents issued under this Government continues to spiral, taking a toll on the infrastructure sector, tradies, and future generations of Kiwi homeowners. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Prime Minister to rule out joining the AUKUS military pact in any capacity following the scenes in the White House over the weekend. ...
The Green Party is appalled by the Government’s plan to disestablish Resource Teachers of Māori (RTM) roles, a move that takes another swing at kaupapa Māori education. ...
The Government’s levies announcement is a step in the right direction, but they must be upfront about who will pay its new infrastructure levies and ensure that first-home buyers are protected from hidden costs. ...
The Government’s levies announcement is a step in the right direction, but they must be upfront about who will pay its new infrastructure levies and ensure that first-home buyers are protected from hidden costs. ...
After months of mana whenua protecting their wāhi tapu, the Green Party welcomes the pause of works at Lake Rotokākahi and calls for the Rotorua Lakes Council to work constructively with Tūhourangi and Ngāti Tumatawera on the pathway forward. ...
New Zealand First continues to bring balance, experience, and commonsense to Government. This week we've made progress on many of our promises to New Zealand.Winston representing New ZealandWinston Peters is overseas this week, with stops across the Middle East and North Asia. Winston's stops include Saudi Arabia, the ...
Green Party Co-Leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick have announced the party’s plans to deliver a Green Budget this year to offer an alternative vision to the Government’s trickle-down economics and austerity politics. ...
At this year's State of the Planet address, Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick announced the party’s plans to deliver a Green Budget this year to offer an alternative vision to the Government’s trickle-down economics and austerity politics. ...
There may be a lot of acronyms, but caring for an electric vehicle, and getting the most out of it, can be very simple.You’ve brought home a shiny new treat. It’s got two darling little ears, four rubbery feet, multiple glowing eyes and oh! – no tail at the ...
A new report suggests a focus on export industries will provide the best opportunity for growth in an expanding Māori economy.The Māori economy is at a turning point, with rapid growth, a diversifying asset base and untapped export potential creating new opportunities. But despite nearly doubling in five years ...
“If Brooke van Velden is genuine when she calls for an evidence-based approach to this issue, then she must support a full ban on engineered stone products,” said NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff. ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a ‘broke’ volunteer and former policy adviser explains how he gets by. Want to be part of The Cost of Being? Fill out the questionnaire here.Gender: Man. Age: 31. Ethnicity: Mixed ethnicity. Role: Unemployed (ex-policy ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Randall Wayth, SKA-Low Senior Commissioning Scientist and Adjunct Associate Professor, Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy, Curtin University The first image from an early working version of the SKA-Low telescope, showing around 85 galaxies.SKAO Part of the world’s biggest mega-science facility – ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Galyna Piskorska, Associate Professor, Faculty of Journalism, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University (Ukraine) and Honorary Principal Fellow at the Advanced Centre for Journalism, The University of Melbourne Three years into Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, Ukrainian journalists are facing enormously difficult challenges to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeannie Marie Paterson, Professor of Law (consumer protections and credit law), The University of Melbourne Late last week, corporate watchdog the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) issued a warning to lenders that provide high-fee small-amount loans – known as payday lenders ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marc C-Scott, Associate Professor of Screen Media | Deputy Associate Dean of Learning & Teaching, Victoria University Shutterstock This month marks a decade since Netflix – the world’s most influential and widely subscribed streaming service – launched in Australia. Since ...
Around 70% of New Zealanders find their homes too hot at least some of the time in summer. Those in townhouses are suffering much more than most, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. A summer of broiling ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa M. Katerina Asher, Retail Academic Researcher, PhD Candidate & Sessional Academic, University of Sydney non c/Shutterstock New Zealand’s concentrated supermarket sector is back in the spotlight after Finance Minister Nicola Willis said she was open to offering “VIP treatment” to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justin Stebbing, Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University Lightspring/Shutterstock Imagine a world where bacteria, typically feared for causing disease, are turned into powerful weapons against cancer. That’s exactly what some scientists are working on. And they are beginning to unravel ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gary K. Waite, Professor Emeritus, Early Modern European History, University of New Brunswick In this etching from Dutch theologian Lambertus Hortensius’ 1614 book ‘Van den oproer der weder-dooperen,’ Anabaptists warn the residents of Amsterdam of the coming vengeance of Christ in 1535. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Allyn Dale, Director of the MA in Climate and Society program at the Columbia Climate School, Columbia University After the devastating 1994 genocide, Rwandans returning from the violence established homes and began farming where they could find land. Since then, ...
It started with a hug.On the steps of Hyderabad House in Delhi, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon leaned in first. Once Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi embraced his new friend, the pair walked the flag-adorned lawn, and Luxon patted Modi on the back one, two, three, four times. .wp-block-newspack-blocks-homepage-articles article .entry-title ...
Whangārei District Council reaffirmed its defiance of the government’s fluoridation order on Monday, despite mounting costs, legal threats and a bitterly divided chamber.Whangārei District Council (WDC) spent Monday afternoon in what may be one of the most chaotic and heated council meetings in recent memory. After months of defiance ...
Media strategist, advisor and author Kevin Chesters joins Duncan Greive for a deep dive into advertising, creativity and the demise of the monoculture ahead of his appearance at AXIS Speaks in Tāmaki Makaurau. Kevin Chesters has 30 years of experience leading strategy on both agency and client sides, serving ...
Professor David McGiffin knows his trade. A top Australian heart-lung researcher and a retired head of cardiothoracic and transplant surgery at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, McGiffin has seen huge advances in his field over a long and distinguished career.Listen to the podcast But one thing that remains unsolved ...
Comment: Russia’s four-yearly training exercises have become genuinely dangerous events The post Putin’s dangerous war games appeared first on Newsroom. ...
MediaRoom column: A wider play for the Herald owner is possible; Plus, machines take over the Herald site. And a new media trust survey. The post Will a white knight ride to the Herald’s rescue? appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Two months into US President Donald Trump’s presidency, leaders around the world are picking their battle strategies: butter him up, or speak truth to power?To date, New Zealand has largely steered clear entirely, treading a careful line. Earlier this month, Winston Peters fired Phil Goff from his position as High ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('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, Tuesday 18 March appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Mark Forman’s exemplary new biography, Tony Fomison: Life Of The Artist, has been published after 12 years of research and writing – and over those long years I’ve diligently answered Mark’s emails on his subject. Between 1985–1989, I was Tony Fomison’s friend/gofer/lackey/ Sancho Panza/Sundance Kid/Boswell/Baldrick.I look back on my time ...
Seven people have died on the Wellington waterfront since 2006. What should be done about it? In 2021, 30-year-old Sandy Calkin died in Wellington Harbour after a night drinking with friends in the city centre. A coroner’s report into Calkin’s death, released last week, confirmed the cause of death was ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Themiya Nanayakkara, Lead Astronomer at the James Webb Australian Data Centre, Swinburne University of Technology The Big Wheel alongside some of its neighbours. Weichen Wang et al. (2025) Deep observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed an exceptionally ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has won facetime and favour with global heavyweight Narendra Modi on a frenetic full day in India, where both pledged greater military cooperation. ...
Plans for a post titled, “How to get there” and intended as a platform for TS readers and commenters to display their ideas and aspirations for improving the chances for each and every one of us (humanity that is) to “get there” have been floated over the past couple of weeks and today might be, by the grace of the TS authors and tech people, the moment for it to surface, glistening and quivering, into the light of day. Fingers crossed.
Blueberry recommendations Robert?
I’m wanting to put in around 15 up Auckland way and wanted any advice on best variety.
Hey Stunned. Which ever you choose (I grow a high bush variety), grow them as a group, in a “block” rather than line, as they fruit far more prolifically that way. If you place them all about the garden, they’ll do less well (it’s a pollination thing). The birds, blackbirds in particular) will take them all, unless you net.
Apparently, the rabbiteye varieties are good for Auckland. Can’t remember where I read it, but was looking into the same issue a few weeks back before going nursery shopping.
The ‘water article’ I’m working on looks like it might need to be split up a little. A lot to cover even skimming over it. That pun was wet. What a drip. I’d stop it if I had a bung.
The book is shaping up nicely and several chapters will make relevant materials for ‘how to get there’. I’m very happy to announce I finished the n-fixer data base last night, so nice playing with good data. Categorised ground covers, shrubs and trees, then by North and South Islands, then by water requirements, habitat type, light requirements… I’ll keep juggling it about to see if anything interesting emerges, while I figure how to present the bulk data in digestible chunks. Icons and a key will be key to it I think… Although we don’t have a lot of endemic n-fixers, we have some really interesting and beautiful specimens.
I’ll also be paraphrasing some of the PDC course for how to get there. Many great topics as they arise. And my project for the PDC will be the book – so as to not get overstretched – see how it all organically fits together…
Have also been practicing not feeding the trolls. 2 days no bites! Hehe.
It’s time to bring out the jazz hands
Cool (keeping to the water theme).
If you are good at leaks….
Here at TS we absorb leaks like dry sponges
Goodbye Gridlock
Imagine driving over the Auckland Harbour Bridge or down the Southern Motorway at rush hour, and other than service and delivery vans and trucks, finding yourself virtually the only private car on it.
Meanwhile thousands of commuters are whizzing by you on the dedicated bus lanes not needed for cars anymore.
Why?
Because everyone loves something if it is free!
Luxembourg Just Made Public Transportation Free for Everyone
Kristin Houser – Futurism, December 6, 2018
Hi Jenny,
Yes it seems that the head trucking lobby group (RTA) are always operated by retired National and Act party MP like today (RTA) Chief is Ken Shirley who was an Act Pary MP. https://www.rtanz.co.nz/
In 2000 Tony Friedlander was the (RTA) ‘Road Transport Association’ boss, – so they are powerful with the oil companies behind them as oil companies make far more money from truck freight than rail does for them so they fight to save the road freight and always fight to kill rail as they use five to eight times less oil fuel product to haul ‘each tonne every one km’ than trucks do.
If Auckland had the collective wealth of Luxembourg we could consider it.
We don’t and we never will.
We are concentrating on CAPEX not OPEX in transport mode shift.
For example, only two years ago the whole length of Dominion Road was just a slow carpark. Then Waterview Tunnel opened, and Dominion Road is livable again.
And it was only because of that Waterview job being completed and alleviating Dominion Road that light rail can even be contemplated.
HDPA on Trev the protector:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12172869
He needs to raise his game.
No he doesn’t. National does.
Do you believe everything Duplicity-Allan writes?
People admire a man who protects a woman and in this case, the woman is the very, very popular and much loved Jacinda. The man protecting her, Trevor, will be quietly thanked and supported by New Zealanders throughout the country. Good man, that Trevor.
Nice you agree that he’s protecting her?
Why is it so you think she needs protection?
Not up to the job?
Or perhaps Trev is sweet on her?
You’re a sick wee puppy there james but we already know that.
The Prime Minister is doing a fantastic job and it is no wonder rwnj’s like you poo your pants daily with the prospect of many many many years of this leadership.
I don’t know, given the quality of the Soyman’s questions it would seem more reasonable to argue that the Speaker was protecting him.
+ 100 solkta…….I like it!
me too Solkta; – 100%
James Jacinda Ardern is so able hard working and informed, she is not vulnerable to the petty jabs from trolls like you. Your suggestions are uncouth and graceless
Presumably not the 46% who support National. They would not expect the Speaker to protect her.
In any event from what I see, she doesn’t need it. She is the best of the Labour MP’s. Even when she doesn’t have much of an answer to a question in the house, she manages an adequate answer. Most of her colleagues can’t do that.
You’re right about one thing, Wayne; she’s good. Your poll figure’s pretty suspect though (we’ve all heard 41% but in any case, it’s to low to be of any use). And I think you’ve mucked up your second sentence, but it’s Sunday and kinda early still, for some. I was up at 6:30 and have coffeed.
Edit: you spotted it yourself! Well done, Wayne. Have a coffee.
Wayne knows the real number is 38%. He has to dispute it publicly of course. But hey let him and the Nat supporters believe its 46% and that Santa is on his way. Its largely irrelevant for the govt going into the new year which with some high performing MP’s emerging will only get stronger.
Cheers Wayne.. I think that is big of you to say that.
I find Ms Ardern extremely clear and articulate.
I think Simon was trying to score some points over the sroubec issue, which is what an opposition tries to do.
He was trying to hold her to account for what Winston said about the ex working on behalf of the National party. As ardern plays fair, this put her in a tricky situation………while the intent was to catch her out, Simon didn’t…….She focused on when she first heard of the ex’s connection to National, which was on the news. She of course couldn’t answer the questions about the police, immigration and the ex address “was that ok …left ex feeling vulnerable “, because that was an operational matter. I remember she did the same with the roast busters, but asked for a police review.
I particularly remember John key being shocking at answering questions. Turning the oppositions questions into jokes, the one that sticks in my mind most was that when Cunliffe was asking key about the housing CRISIS and key flipped it into a retort about Cunliffe living in Herne Bay…….this is my mind is a disgrace. So was the complete inability to do anything about the escalating crisis under the key government until they were shamed into it by a news hub item on homelessness. As National achieved very little in9 years, other than creating a surplus by hiding a chronic underfunding in health, housing education and policing numbers, in my view any criticism from them on this govt falls on deaf ears……..and no Ms ardern neither needs nor gets Trevor’s protection. She is miles ahead of all is national……
Wayne yellow press 46% with mates Nationals internal polling 42% with leaking about the drip simple soimon who continues his popularity drop down the gurglar!
Are you trying to protect the National brand, Wayne? You have your job cut out for you
“…Here comes the protection” is the one thing Bridges can’t say of anyone behind him.
true that.
He might check his back every night for needles and other sharp objects that might be sticking out.
Ad lol++++++ that’s hilarious.
David Carter protecting John Key.
Fireblade So cool was that clip was so impressive as David carter was one of the most arrogant speakers of this 21st century I have had to suffer through.
Thanks for that brilliant compendium of the often nastiness side of David Carter as John Key’s Government..
Carter did that just about every time parliament sat. Sometimes blatantly. His way around things was to say that ‘the minister had *addressed* the question. Usually this meant that the minister hadn’t *answered* the question but didn’t need to as it had been addressed. Worst speaker ever. Did he get a gong?
Trevor doesn’t like Simon Bridges’ whiney nonsense. And neither does most of the country. Just look at the popularity polls. Jacinda – 1trillion, Simon – 0.
Even you know Robert that the popularity numbers mean nothing.
National are polling at 46% – higher than labour.
That’s the number that matters.
Nzf are under 5% and the loopy greens are only 1% away from falling under as well.
National may poll at 46% but without Mates that will leave them short of a majority every single time.
And it would do you well to remember that really your party, its “leader” and his backstabbers should not insult any other parties, no matter how small or unimportant you might think they are, cause with 46% National is and will always be 5% short of a majority. And considering that the No mates Party still has no friends, its 46% are not enough.
And that is the only thing that matters. Your party does not have enough support to win even a charity baking event.
You forget that (under current polling) should the greens drop 1% then labour has no mates either.
And labour poll behind national.
well that may be so, but not for the next two years, and somehow i doubt the Greens will fall away. They have been called dead many many times, and yet they always show up.
In the meantime, the No Mates Party has not even got mates it could kill off. It did the killing the support parties so well the last time around that on election night the penny finally dropped. No mates, no coalition, no glory, no nothing but Mr. No Bridges, Paula Benefit, and Judith “oravida’ Collins. Sad!
Popularity is everything when you want popular support and Trevor will have popular support for caring for Jacinda (and Neve). Unpopular Simon will not win any popularity by whining about the man who’s protecting the lovely Jacinda from the likes of unpopular Simon. And *shudders, Paula.
James,
Watch the next poll; – and you will see a swing away from your beloved National ‘sell all’ party.
Folks are now awake to see “a kinder gentler Labour coalition Government who will stop the ‘selloff’ your mob have been doing to NZ for nine years.
NZ has stopped the ‘John key”NZ Inc’ selloff.’
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/7637382/The-business-of-NZ-Inc
“Watch the next poll”. – lefties have been saying that for 10 years.
Still not happened.
Except they’re not polling at 46%.
Two polls, UMR and National’s internal poll came out at the same time and one was 41% and I believe UMR was either 41% or 42%. That makes a liar out of the CB poll which has been biased towards National for years.
I believe they conduct their polls at the Remuera Shopping Centre – not far from where most of them live.
In National’s latest internal Curia poll National was at 41%; and at 37% in Labour’s internal UMR poll. Hence the Colmar Brunton is really the outlier at 46%.
I have also heard, but cannot verify, that Colmar Brunton has also been experimenting with different mixes of landline/mobile polling, and now also a proportion of online polling. This may well affect the results they are getting.
My comment re- Remuera Shopping Centre was tongue-in-cheek.
If CB is experimenting then it could explain the difference. Working people don’t have the same amount of time as the idle rich to go surfing online. I’m idle because I’m retired.
Realised that re the Remuera Shopping Centre, LOZ: but wanted to point out that the UMR was down at 37%.
I am also retired but don’t feel idle!
I think Colmar Brunton is protecting the National Party, as always.
Despite all their protestations to the contrary, I also suspect there’s an element of pro-National bias in their processes.
As you probably well know Jimmy the 46% is highly debatable. Nationals own internal polling was 41% according to the leaker. Simons polling is heading to the negative. History in the making, what?
The speaker is not there to diss Simon. All good speakers cut a bit of slack to the main Leaders of each party. From what I can see Trevor doesn’t, but he needs to.
Simon’s pedantic, plodding speaking style would challenge the tolerance of any Speaker, I reckon. Trevor should ask him to make his questions a bit more interesting , perhaps pep them up a little with a bit of twinkle – anything but that prosecutor’s drone, or whatever it is Simon does!
That’s what Bennets there for. Providing the entertainment with her facial gymnastics. Well worth watching. I’m expecting a full on haka soon.
I know it’s not really appropriate to comment on someone’s appearance, but Ms Bennett looks very Parliamentary in her leopard print trouser suit.
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSZ0lIAkNVngWliigkvi3mxxzsqyFFM80pTZbqGEPs9Vf782UVHvp-j3urY
Oh I don’t know @ Fireblade. Maggie Barry seems OK with it (i.e. commenting on appearances of the less fortunate possum), and I’m picking it was her that persuaded Paula to leave out the ugg boots (darling)
Ms Bennett looks as if she has just eaten.
Look in the Eye of the Tiger.
Westies rock. A tight westie pal will back you to the hilt.
The leopard won’t be quick to knife Simon. She might step over his corpse but Westies treat loyalty to the living with the utmost respect.
“I’m expecting a full on haka soon”
Classic!
But shouldn’t leaders be setting a good example and showing the greatest respect for Parliament?
Give examples Wayne, if you are going to say speaker not there to diss Simon…..that implies he does withou backing your statement up.
@ Wayne
You do bullshit yourself. He’s let the Simon get away with murder since he became leader.
The speaker is not there to diss Simon. All good speakers cut a bit of slack to the main Leaders of each party. From what I can see Trevor doesn’t, but he needs to.
That is rubbish Wayne. If it appears that way, it is because Simon often traverses the line of what is acceptable conduct and what isn’t. Jacinda doesn’t. She always answers questions in a respectful way even when the question or questioner doesn’t deserve it. If she crossed that line she, too, would be pulled up by Speaker Mallard.
He’s trying to improve the standards even if he was once one of the transgressors. Everyone can change you know.
How do you rate John Carter? In your book was he straight down the middle fair to both sides?
Speakers are the referees that run onto the field wearing the jumper of the home team.
A subtle bias comes with the role.
It’s a formula that favours getting things done, moving forward. Most of us are cool with that.
To the victor the spoils.
Carter wasn’t subtle. Wayne must know that. The nats complaining about Mallard is sickening after Carter’s performance during his four years or how ever long it was. His behaviour around Key’s “backing rapist” remarks and kicking the female MPs out of the House was disgraceful, but that wasn’t his worst. Carter was a disgrace to democracy over his whole time as Speaker. And now Bridges and his band of idiots feel hard done by. After what Carter did and got away with they can just fuck right off.
Some history – good article allowing some light through to illuminate.
https://e-tangata.co.nz/history/a-dark-tale-of-dispossession-and-greed/
Thank you so much for posting this, marty mars.
It was something I would have missed if you had not done so, and reading that and seeing the photo has left an indelible mark on me. Follow-up reading is now on my Summer Recess Watch and Read list.
It is a real pity that it does not seem to have been noticed much, but it was a busy day here yesterday. I am maintaining an open mind on the new regular post, and will be watching from the sidelines initially at least.
I did think about reposting your comment and link again today in the hopes others might at least read it and the link, but will leave you to decide whether to do so.
It did get an unintentional plug here, but without any response! Think he meant 5 not 4 …
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-09-12-2018/#comment-1560313
We can choose to allow rwnjs to derail this thread or we can ignore them.
Seriously?
Maybe go with the flow and stop trying to control stuff. It doesn’t matter really ed – life still happens, and out of control is actually the norm not an aberration.
Nicely put, Marty. Re trolls, it’s best, I reckon, to use the platform the’ve thoughtfully provided, to fold back their issue onto themselves and take a good-hearted swipe their gods and heroes at the same time – all for fun, mind, never unkindly
Your fun is another’s unkind robert and vice versa
I just find the distraction that James creates prevents discussion of the important issues.
and if the distraction works then he has succeeded – fuck him ed he isn’t worth it – just a nobody gnat supporter who hides bad behaviour behind a facade of respectability – we know the type – they have to be real low riders to come and spend their days here – no mates just like simon. Laugh at them for they are weak examples of the species.
Hey Ed, don’t be distracted by that stuff, it’s just padding. If we only discuss pressing and critical matters, we’ll all be exhausted by day’s end. Fluff from trolls (troll fluff) gives us a chance to make them dance a little, lightening our moods and giving us a well deserved laugh. Taking them seriously, upbraiding them, only gives them substance; let’s hold them in their frothy state and bat them around the show for our own pleasure
good grief, let it be.
Please, post a video or something. But let it be.
Let people be.
I tired but I just couldn’t resist the obvious…
Yes, but you find anyone discussing anything other than your three issues an intolerable distraction.
I agree about James.
It’s interesting, I count if someone genuine on here by whether they respond to challenging questions or just disappear. BM and James seem to disappear and James comments are often provocative eg after “good news” for National eg after the 46% polls result.
Wayne answers questions and also I think puts up with quite a lot. I think he might be generally interested in the debate and from the little I’ve seen of kiwiblog he ain’t going to get it there.
Punish, well he keeps it light hearted and is sometimes funny in his adoration of Judith, but it may become a little tedious like a friend who has a six month crush on someone.
Best response to James is “you comment is consistent with your purpose for commenting on this website”. I think if he always got this comment unless he made a decent contribution he might just get a little tired of us
“adoration of Judith”
Is it that obvious, I thought I was being subtle
Ha ha PR. No I have to say your not too subtle when it comes to your adoration of Judith.
I enjoy your presence on this website even if we likely disagree on ……..well everything
“I enjoy your presence on this website even if we likely disagree on ……..well everything”
Challenge excepted
From where I sit Ed, there seems to be more aggro and ‘playing the man not the ball’s from folk who would identity as ‘lefties’.
I agree with the idea of letting them be or ignoring them.
Yes Ed but that is the way that the site operates, whether James provokes useful discussion that matches his negativity I don’t know – is it a net gain? You are worth having Ed so let’s keep hearing from you but with some slight adjustments as suggested.
I’m not sure it’s possible to ‘derail’ Open Mike. It’s intended to be fluid and nobody has to reply to anyone.
I’m also not sure that we get regular visited by RWNJ’s. Most of the commenters here who are from the other end of the political spectrum are rational and articulate and not outright trolls.
TS would be a dull place if we only had left wing opinions expressed here, so try thinking of our righty friends as the grit in the oyster of thought that helps produce the pearls of wisdom that make TS special.
Damn straight!
Ed, thank you. I have missed you.
With John Kelly departing the White House by the end of this year, it looks like the Mueller inquiry is leaving only core of family loyalists and trolls.
The 2020 White House after the trials is the Democrats’ to lose.
There are no trials before 2020. Look at Nixon and the work it took to get him out of the Presidency, and Trump is no Nixon. Heck Nixon is a choir boy compared to Trump.
As for Kelly leaving, good riddance. Don’t you get the warm and fuzzies knowing that Bolton is now the serious adult in the office, and that Kelly will be replaced with a spare part from Fox News? Maybe Tucker Carlson.
so yeah, the republican party is not done yet.
The trials will be for Manafort, Cohen, Kushner, and Trump jr.
Looking forward to it.
No impeachment since no Senate majority.
D TRump will stay in there and ensure Biden has a pretty easy path in.
Once President Trump goes however, the IRS will take him down on tax fraud.
yep, i agree with you, but gosh i hope the Dems come up with someone younger then Biden. to fucking old, too white, too much baggage of assholery see Anita Hill.
Trials for Trump jr is a bit premature.
“Too white”, what does that mean?
Are the Democrats no longer allowed to have white male candidates for president, with the expectation that the Republicans only have white male candidates.
Surely in a democracy as diverse as the United States, or ours for that matter, ethnicity is not really an issue on whether a person can attain high office. For instance both National’s Leader and Deputy leader are Maori (though with other ethnicities as well). It goes almost completely unremarked.
Although the social and economic statistics still disadvantage Maori, there are probably hundreds of thousands of Maori who have suffered no particular disadvantage, and who are succeeding in a large number of fields. For instance forty years ago there were almost no Maori lawyers, with only two women Maori lawyers. Today there would be hundreds.
two white means too white.
the democratic grass roots are people of colour. The democratic voters are people of colour.
If you care to have a look at the last exit polls posted on CNN that i have linked to at a previous thread you will see that the much vaunted white working class/middle class/upper class, all of them with economic anxiety – and men, voted for the Republicans.
so it would behoove the democratic party to choose leaders and even presidents that reflects their voting block, rather then chase the white evangelic male working class/middle class/upper class with economic anxiety voter who is not gonna vote democrats anywhich way and if it is only cause ‘abortions’ and such.
so yeah, Biden, too white – again if you could be bothered look at his past – Anita Hill and the Seating of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He can whinge and whine all to his hearts content, fact is he behaved like an entitled ass then, and to some extend still has not understood just what an entitled ass he is today. Just in case you don’t know what i speak of https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=biden+anita+hill&oq=Biden+Antia+H&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l3.4897j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
And at 75 he is too fucking old. Full stop here. IF you don’t have to live the consequences of your actions you should not be allowed to run for President, imo.
The world needs someone at the helm of that country that actually has to loose something when and if he/she fucks up By voting geriatrics in its only the world that is gonna loose.
As Bush the younger once famously said when asked how history will judge him : I will be dead then. And that is precisely the mindset that gave us Iraq Invasion two.
So yeah, too old, too white, too much bagage.
IF you can’t find people under seventy to represent your country your country is fucked.
“The world needs someone at the helm of that country that actually has to loose something when and if he/she fucks up By voting geriatrics in its only the world that is gonna loose.”
The reality has always been that the elites dont lose irrespective of the result and that is not age/gender/race dependent…..take any issue you care to consider and the poor are invariably the hardest hit.
well i hope that the new crop of ‘the elite’ that was just voted in will consider your points.
the poor are always invariably the hardest hit as they generally have nothing to shelter them. That does not mean that we have to continue to nominate and vote for old, white, rich people. As i said, the last midterm got the house back to the dems, and those that got elected for the largest part were as far removed from your elite as they could possibly be. Be it that young women from NY, or the native Indian from Kansas, or that native indian New Mexico and so on and so on.
As for losing, we are all going to lose if we don’t finally get our heads out of our asses and realize that the change must come from us, not from any elected overlord. It is up to us to opt out of the system to the point where it collapses. No strong man is gonna do that, no cheap slogan about making shit great again – it never was for some and it never will be for many – can do that. People need to opt out of capitalism, over consumption, cheap shits from dollar shops to make up for empty hearts and minds, crap food cause its “convenient” , etc. No one forces us to participate, like smoking, we will have to quit.
Unless people understand that nothing is gonna change and the same people continue to whinge about how nothing is changing.
Barak Obama
” i hope the Dems come up with someone younger then Biden. to fucking old, too white”.
Ouch. Well it is pretty clear that Sabine is not going to support Bernie Sanders for President.
He is even older than Biden, after all.
I don’t.
I also don’t support Clinton for that same matter.
Too white, too old. Too much baggage. What was your point? OH, you don’t have one.
Too white, too old.
That’s an utterly invalid and inane reason to reject Clinton. She is a terrible person, but it has nothing to do with her ethnicity or her age.
My point?
You are rejecting someone for completely irrelevant reasons.
What are your sensible reasons? Oh, you don’t have any.
My point?
Too old. The country needs someone who is younger, preferably much younger in their fifties no older. That way they actually have a stake in the future as the future will affect them.
Too old. Dementia, Alzheimers, Standard old age issues. Reagan comes to mind.
Too old, could keel over at any moment due to any reasons old people keel over and thus leave the job ot someone like Mike Pence and his wife Mother – who in my mind would be even worse then Trump – and I stated that before the election of the orange shitstain.
Too old. Why would anyone vote for someone who does not understand the issues of young people, people of colour, people who are not heterosexual vanilla, has a studentloan, wants to marry and have children, does not own their own home, has not got a job nor a chance of getting a job etc etc etc etcetc.
I have reasons for wanting a younger person, someone who more looks like the electorate, someone who looks more like the people getting the vote out, raising the funds, doing the door knocking, the phone banking and any other of hte myriads of ways to get people to vote.
And then comes the baggage. Clinton, Sanders, Biden all have lived their life in white privilege. And literally know very little other then white privilege. Biden has his with Anita Hill, Sanders went to one demonstration for civil rights and then lived his whole life in the whitest state of the US – Vermont, where the last black female lawmaker resigned due to incessant bullying https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/us/politics/kiah-morris-vermont.html – , and Hillary Clinton……emails, bengazi, cooties, female, clinton, blowjob, emails, lock her up blahblahblahblah.
So i really hope that the Democratic Party will have a come to god moment as did the Labour Party in NZ and choose a leader that actually can inspire more then just a small segment fo their voters, and above all get these voters in such large numbers to the polls that they will outvote any gerrymandering, voter suppression tactics and what nots. And considering the mid term elections i think i am on to something here.
She comes from Germany, alwyn. That’s Ground Zero for Stupid.
Even the Greens in Germany are moral reprobates.
Shit, moz, I know you like to lay it on with a trowel, but that’s pretty darned close to calling all Germans stupid (at best). And not in an “Aussies are koala-shaggers” sort of way, either.
No, of course there are thoughtful and intelligent Germans. Our friend Sabine is normally one of them.
Germany produced Beethoven, Goethe, Einstein, and [insert your favourite German genius here] but it also produced Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Hess and their terrible legacy. The baleful spectacle of the German legal system, academia, churches, and every other institution in the country being corrupted by that regime had a truly devastating effect on Germany’s intellectual and moral life—resulting in the distasteful phenomenon of moral imbeciles such as Uwe Becker.
https://jewishjournal.com/analysis/243133/mayor-frankfurt-leads-german-pro-israel-activism/
Sabine’s contention that Hillary Clinton is not a suitable candidate for President because she is old and white is horribly wrong, and stupid—Beckerian, almost.
Oh, so some of them are good people. How very dolt-45 of you.
Bless you dear.
Morrissey
Hippo hit-the-fan stuff. All being included in your wide-ranging criticism, that is not on. Don’t be like this hippo –
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfnZMRRHrwI
After having the most qualified Presidential candidate in history it can only be a downgrade for the dems. They need to find a human skin coloured person who is not cis male, never run a Buisiness, never served in the military, vegan, uses the word comrade, solo parent in an open relationship, born in the US to illegal immigrants, a degree in social sciences, never had a real job, and White Ribbon ambassador.
JA only just misses out. Damn.
“No impeachment since no Senate majority.”.
You don’t need anyone at all in the Senate for an impeachment to take place.
The Senate doesn’t actually impeach anyone. The Impeachment is the responsibility of the House of Representatives where the Democrats have a majority.
The Senate then try anyone who has been impeached. They certainly aren’t going to find him guilty of course. That requires a 2/3 majority of the Senators.
Thus both Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached but at their trial by the Senate they were not convicted.
Apologies for the shorthand – I went for the trial bit.
That’s a complete load of rubbish.
Donald Trumps taxes as a corporate are continually assessed by the IRS. How the hell you come to the conclusion he is committing tax fraud is beyond me. If you think the most scrutinised person on the planet is knowingly committing tax fraud you have a clear case of TDS.
Trials for what?
Having Buisiness in foreign nations.
The meeting with the Russian women lying she had info on Clinton was not an offence.
The Moskow business deals have extensively been examined and there is no collusion.
I myself are looking forward to the prosecution of the desperate Mueller for extorting people into making false statements. He’s got form.
Why haven’t the people who did conspire with foreign nationals to interfere in the elections being prosecuted. Like Clinton and her golden shower political assassination. If rigging the debate is a test of Clintons willingness to cheat, it’s no supprised she deleted her emails and smashed her hard drives. She’s got form.
The sooner this TDS nonsense from the cry baby snowflake revenge filled Clinton supporters ends the better. Then the democrates can get on with writing a book with another 200 reasons why, that nobody can be bothered reading.
Why rush things anyway. It’s not like the democrates have any candidates that people actually like, or are genuinely Presidential.
Last time the Democrates had power Obama promised change. I was a supporter. I liked what he was saying and McCain would have made Bush Jr look like someone that deserved the peace prize. But when you become President the real world and rhetoric meet. Obama was a disappointment.
Trump is actually making change. He is confronting long standing issues that traditional politics has failed to address. Obama will be forgotten, Trump will leave a legacy of fighting and achieving for the people he represents. The citizens of the US.
For example Obama a socialist helped the car industry with a bailout. Obama fixed nothing and large job loses have just occurred. Trump attacked China on trade and China has conceded, agreeing to drop the 40% Tarif on US vehicles. The socialist (other people’s money) approach vs that’s bullshit, let’s do a deal, or else.
If a person with the drive and style of Trump was in charge of fixing Climate Change we would see a revolution on that subject. Sadly his position on that issue is his biggest fault. Don’t be supprised however if he pulls the rug out from under the Democrates election chances with a capitalist style solution out of “left” field. IE pro US worker.
It’s his personal tax returns that will get Trump into jail not his corporate ones.
The rule you need to familiarize yourself with is:
“The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.”
The offenses of whether he or his team were infected by the Russian state are now well documented by the evidence in US courts that multiple persons have already pleaded guilty to. You can now look them up yourself.
Trump is certainly making change, in the same way that gangrene makes change to a limb with an open wound.
If a person with the “drive and style of Trump was in charge of fixing climate change” we would probably have a plan for climate change. Instead we have Trump.
It was only a matter of time…………..
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-09/labor-government-would-dump-plan-to-outsource-visa-processing/10597606
Watch for the gNats here try and do something similar if we’re ever unlucky enough to see them back in government.
And they’ll do so on the basis that the private sector can’t do any worse than INZ has done, and because of the likes of this:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/09/company-director-who-underpaid-staff-is-approved-as-an-immigration-adviser.html
But what they won’t tell you is that the reason INZ, the Labour Inspectorate and the IAA has been such a fuckup is because for 9 years they were under-funded, under-resourced, politicised by way of ‘whispers’, and brought under a Ministry for everything that has a commercial and business focus. Same thing true of NZQA of course.
Some history and great symbolism. I really struggle with christianity – I like individuals but I have major difficulties with most other bits including the part christianity played in stealing the land.
https://e-tangata.co.nz/history/with-heads-hung-low/
And then handed over their property portfolio?
No?
Well I never.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/12/against-teaching-kids-to-code-creativity-problem-solving.html?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits
Agree totally with this article. Creativity, problem solving, communication, persistance and resilience will beat learning a narrow range of, soon to be, outdated, skills.
Old style metalwork, woodwork and cooking taught me those things. Not coding.
In German last week the biggest ‘right wing “Grand coalition” party have just elected who will be the next chancellor for Germany, – who is reported to be a hard right woman who resembles the character of Adolf Hitler we hear.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/12/angela-merkels-power-is-weakening-who-could-be-germanys-next-leader.html
Experts believe there are a handful of possible replacements, ranging from Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the new general secretary of the CDU who shares a lot of Merkel’s practical approach to politics (earning her the nickname of “Merkel’s mini-me”)
“I think she’ll carry on for another 18 months to two years but her authority and popularity is lower now, so what will decide her future is not the state of the coalition but the state of her party — that’s where the revolt will come from.”
The CDU is nothing without the CSU, they are two pods of the same plant and the CDU needs it Coalition Partner. The CSU is literally only found in Bavaria, nowhere else in Germany – it is a single state Party and literally the only one in the country like that. Keep also in mind that Bavaria is a ‘free state’ within the federation of germany and thus has a status quite different from the other states within the federation.
Also Seehoefer is a too old white man and an ass who should go and retire already.
Also the poll referred to in this publication was by the “Handelsblatt” which is a very conservative commercial interest newspaper. So i can see why their respondents would be unhappy if Merkel is not gonna spend all that tax money surplus on some big business projects, cause they would be very unhappy were she to spend it on social welfare and the likes.
As for that comment that she hangs on for another 18 month or so? Hopefull wishing by someone who wants that tax surplus spend on big business projects.
The CSU is never gonna be anything but a Bavarian Party, has never been anything else. Augsburg, a city my family hails from, one of the three cities in Germany created by the Romans is notoriously conservative even if it were to kill them. And in the times fo my coming of age the 80.s, this city was a dead fish in the water until the Bavarian government finally started to spend some money on it, lest they completely go over to Die Gruenen and SPD. Due to its ‘free state’ status Bavaria is one of the highest income, highest business density and highest cost of living places in Germany. And guess what, that is what is ailing Bavaria. The workers so badly
needed can’t afford to live there. Sounds like something we know something of?
So i put my money on Merkel for now. She wants to make people happy? She will loosen the string of the purse a bit, and go ‘social’ and ‘green’.
As for the migrant problem? Worldwide, and this includes us here, we will have to make a decision. Cause with global warming, raising sea levels, increasing droughts, fires etc we will have migrants. Millions of migrants everywhere, anywhere, at all times. Add in a bit of war for water, land and food, and voila, time to realise that we will never resolve the migrant problem unless we are happy to watch them die in their boats, in locked up shipping containers, or shoot them on sight. Cause they will keep on coming, as that is all they can do to stay alive. And why? Because we will never change, not give up our nice life without a fight and someone somewhere will whinge that is Dad pulled his boat three hundred kilometers to some lake somewhere and then back, and gosh darn it, it is my right and i too shall do that cause its my right! And the same is true for Germany, the US, Italy, France, England, OZ and NZ and anywhere else.
17,000 empty seats in a 20,000 seat arena.
“Could the Clintons be bigger assholes?”
“They can’t fill a stadium but they sure can fill a graveyard.”
Thanks for the link, Moz. Like you, I totally trust everything the Daily Mail promotes, particularly their sensible support for that Austrian chap, Herr Hitler. Hurrah for the Blackshirts!
The Daily Mail? This was Jimmy Dore—a far more intelligent commentator than anyone at the Wail or the Grauniad.
Do you think there were 20,000 people there? Dressed as empty seats, maybe?
I take it you didn’t even watch the video. Sad!
I certainly did watch it. How does the fact that the coverage of this Clinton failure was from the Wail invalidate it?
Hell, even Noam Chomsky, who with Ed Herman definitively analysed the propaganda function of the New York Times, says that most of the stuff it prints is good, solid, reliable journalism.
Same goes for the Wail and the Grauniad, surely. In spite of employing such second- and third-rate talents as Cathy Newman, James Ball and Luke Harding, most of what is printed in those propaganda sheets is unexceptionable.
Or, to bring it back to a Kiwi example: it’s like Mike Hosking, or Leighton Smith: probably 90 per cent of what they say is fine; it’s that last ten per cent where the trouble starts….
Only on RT. Haven’t seen Ad do a post on how successful Macron has been lately..
Well, only if the Chekist thug’s personal propaganda outlet is your only source.
/
Seems some of the more balanced coverage comes from the thug. What other propaganda factory was live streaming the protests?
A 90 second video clip isn’t a live stream.
Where does the source footage in the video clip come from Joe28?
and on
https://www.politico.eu/article/paris-yellow-jackets-fuel-tax-police-arrest-hundreds-as-yellow-jackets-protest-again/
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/08/europe/france-protests-paris-intl/index.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/paris-braces-new-riots-yellow-jacket-protests-sweep-france-n945561
BBC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw-9o0GXrns
our own TVNZ
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/violent-protest-engulfs-central-paris-worst-riot-in-decade
brussels
https://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-braces-for-yellow-jacket-protest/
https://www.apnews.com/3bd372ee667d4605a6cf22f10f39e792
https://www.independent.ie/world-news/belgian-police-and-yellow-jacket-protesters-clash-in-brussels-37581828.html
Bannon’s and big data’s stickies are all over this.
In an interview with the Observer, Cohn-Bendit, now a friend and adviser to President Emmanuel Macron, said: “This movement is very different to May 68. Back then, we wanted to get rid of a general (Charles de Gaulle); today these people want to put a general in power,” he said, referring to calls by certain gilets jaunes for the former chief of defence staff General Pierre de Villiers, who resigned after falling out with Macron in July 2017, to be made prime minister.
“And nobody in 68 made death threats against those who want to talk. This is the power of force. All those on the left thinking this is a leftwing revolution are wrong: it’s veering to the right. To hear that gilets jaunes who want to negotiate are receiving death threats is evidence of this authoritarian right.
“I hear people from la France Insoumise (hard left), talking about this being a great people’s revolt and how the people are speaking, but these are the same ordinary people who pushed Trump into power.
“We saw in Germany in 1933 what ‘ordinary’ people did. Not all ordinary people are good … it’s not an accident that this movement has proposed General de Villiers as an alternative leader.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/08/daniel-cohn-bendit-gilets-jaunes-macron-may-68-paris-student-protest
i believe for both to be active atm. The movement that is popular, i.e. people put on their gilet jaune and protest – a day, a week, a few hours, and agent provocateurs.
I still have family and friends in france – i lived there for quite a few years before moving to NZ with my kiwi husband – and the movement is based on the issue mentioned, i.e. Gasoline to expensive, cuts to all services, increase in living costs, essentially the same malaise that we have here in NZ. To some extend the movement is supported by Police, Fire fighters, Ambulance drivers etc, so not really those that would cause a ruckus.
i have heard nothing about installing a General, but one of the most often named points is to go to a system as in Switzerland where laws are voted for in popular referendums.
I have heard of he abolition of any retirement payments to ex politicos that are still of working age, or have income.
I have heard of the demand to fire Macron and send him packing.
But this is the first time i hear about the general. I will ask my friends to see what this is about.
Google translation of a statement from what appears to be a broad cross section of French people.
The yellow vests movement puts the entire social policy of the government in public debate. More broadly, the neoliberal policies implemented by successive governments for decades are at stake. More and more difficult months of the month, increased precariousness of work, tax injustice, expensive housing, deteriorating living conditions, such is the situation faced by the majority of the population. This particularly affects women, very many to mobilize in this movement. At the same time, tax evasion has never been so important and the richest have been offered multiple tax breaks: the elimination of the ISF, flat tax of 30% for capital income that is not more subject to progressive tax, lower corporate tax … In these circumstances, the increase in fuel taxes appeared as “the last straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Despite an attempt by the far right to take control of the movement, it is characterized by its horizontal self-organization and the demand for real democracy against an authoritarian and contemptuous presidency. At a time when COP 24 is taking place in Poland and where the fight against global warming is urgent, this movement also highlights the link between the social issue and ecological imperatives: the biggest polluters are exempt from any effort, the main causes of global warming are not dealt with, the breakdown of public services and local shops and urban sprawl continue, alternatives to public transport are not developed. The model of social housing in France is endangered by its commodification for the benefit of large private groups. In these circumstances, it is certainly not up to the middle and lower classes to pay for the ecological transition.
Government policy does not respond to social anger or ecological imperatives. The government is letting the multinationals and the productivist lobbies do their best by always favoring their own interests and those of their shareholders to the detriment of the greatest number and the future of the planet. For days, the government stuck on an uncompromising stance, refusing any action and claiming that it was staying the course, despite the fact that a huge majority of the population supported this movement. This attitude has led to increasing exasperation that has led to acts of violence that the government could hope to take advantage of. This was not the case and the support of the population remained massive.
The government has announced, among other things, the freeze and subsequent cancellation of the fuel tax increase. This is a first step backwards but it is too little, too late, because it is the whole social policy and its economic and ecological consequences that must be discussed. Even though youth has decided to set out to challenge the educational choices of power, it is a change of course that must be imposed. To begin, we must respond to union demands by increasing the minimum wage and returning to the cap of the increase in pensions to 0.3%, restore the ISF and tax multinationals, including Total, Gafa and banks that finance fossil fuels to invest heavily in thermal insulation of buildings and renewable energies.
This is why the undersigned, trade unionists, associative and political leaders, researchers, academics, artists, etc., support the demands of fiscal and social justice brought by the movement of yellow vests. They call on the population to mobilize to impose a policy that allows better living, and to demonstrate peacefully in the street massively December 8, international mobilization day for climate justice, in convergence with the fourth day of mobilization of yellow vests.
The petitioners
https://www.liberation.fr/debats/2018/12/06/justice-sociale-justice-climatique-c-est-un-changement-de-cap-qu-il-faut-imposer_1696384
Yes, this is more what my friends talk about.
As i said, that thing with Le General….thats new.
as for now, this is going to be a European wide movement. As the gilet jaune signifies, this is an accident and we are securing the site to keep people safe. That is why you have to have one of these jackets in the car, by law, and that is why they wear them.
I hope that the Bannon Brigade will very quickly overstay their welcome.
Joint trade union statement translation.
It is a text that should never have existed. When they arrived at the headquarters of the CFDT to discuss the social news on Thursday morning, two days before the fourth act of the yellow vests, the secretaries general of major trade unions had not planned to take the pen. However, coming out of this informal meeting which, explains one of them, “should not have been public”, the CFDT, the CGT, FO, the CFE-CGC, the CFTC, the Unsa, and the FSU have adopted a joint statement. “Writing this text has become obvious,” says François Hommeril of the GSC, the union of executives, who welcomes “this strong signal to the government.”
“Out
ground”
In this statement of about fifteen lines, the signatories are worried about the “very degraded climate” and point the responsibility of the executive, remained deaf for “months” to their call for more “social justice”. Taking note, however, of a change of tone with, on Tuesday, the promise of the Prime Minister to launch a dialogue, the power plants undertake to participate in this dialogue, “each with [their] own demands and proposals, in common whenever it will be possible. But no matter how.
Cooled by nineteen months of complex relations with a president who pretended to listen to them without paying much attention to their opinions, the unions demand something else: “real” negotiations, both “broad, open and transparent” on the purchasing power, wages, housing, transportation and utilities. But they do not give more indications on the calendar and the method wanted for this eventual Grenelle version 2018. Nor do they make strong proposals or calls to act in concert. “Everyone has their culture. We focused on the essential, what we could say together today, “says Luc Bérille, Unsa. Not very much, retorts Eric Beynel, spokesperson for Solidaires, present at the meeting but did not want to initial the text, considered “off the ground”. Signatory, however, the appeal initiated by Attac and the Copernicus Foundation for a convergence of mobilizations of yellow vests and the march for the climate (read above), it annoys: “Our responsibility of trade unionists n ‘ is not to write an incantatory text, but to call to be present in the street. ”
The common statement is, on the contrary, very cautious towards yellow vests. While their mobilization is described as “legitimate anger,” the signatories also denounce “all forms of violence in the expression of claims.” A sentence that follows the request to “launch a call for calm” that had sent them, the day before, the executive. Not a word on the other hand on police management, sometimes violent, mobilizations. What ended to convince Solidaires not to sign. And led the CGT, which calls for a day of action on December 14, to draft a statement denouncing an “inadmissible repression”, including youth: “The CGT can not accept that the power strikes and tape our children. ”
“Grand
gap ”
The power station of Philippe Martinez, also a signatory of the appeal launched by Attac, also calls for “the immediate opening of negotiations on the social emergency”. In passing, the CGT also announces that it will not participate in the meeting proposed by the Minister of Labor, this Friday, to launch the project of the consultation. What to disconcert his co-signatories of the joint statement. “This shows the big internal gap that the CGT is doing,” notes a secretary general.
Transis, the others wait for clarifications of the executive. “We will see if what is proposed is acceptable. It would be simpler if we could move together in this framework, “says one at the CFDT. But caution remains in place. “When we hear some people in the government say that we have to stay the course, there is enough to doubt,” says François Hommeril of the GSC. The following ? “Every day is enough for him,” he breathes. After the excesses of Saturday, the eyes are on the day 8. “We do day to day, notes the head of Unsa. On the razor wire.”
Amandine Cailhol
https://www.liberation.fr/france/2018/12/06/gilets-jaunes-les-syndicats-a-mots-prudents_1696465
They – le gilet jaune – did raise a guillotine in Paris. Just in case they – the nobles and rich – forgot
National and Simon counting all the money that Labour is spending on gathering information, consulting, etc. Labour is not considered to be doing anything, just being told by others what to do. Hahahahahah – just what National knows most about! Labour’s bad is first reference on the news.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/programmes/news-bulletin/story/2018674795/radio-new-zealand-news
The figures are contested @ geywarshark, but in light of my comments above that relate to immigration, and others the other day, it does show that they’re increasingly desperate to find something to hang their credentials (such as they) on.
Sroubek is not going to work
MPI is not going to work
NZTA is not going to work
DHB’s circumstance is not going to work
HCNZ is not going to work,
And we’ve not even started on Krekshuns or Soshul ‘Development’ (going forward) despite the claims of best practice in each/all of the above.
and all that is GIVEN the under-resourcing and under-funding in all the above, AND allowing for complete and utter muppetry and senior levels in each of those enetities.
(and they supposedly advocated for performance pay ffs).
It’s actually amusing to watch in a black humour sort of way
NZ business going gangbusters. Or? Perhaps we need to bust the ‘business gangs’ actually?
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/country/377726/farmer-launches-petition-to-save-tip-top-ice-cream
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/377817/waiwera-pools-to-stay-closed-for-most-of-summer
The Waiwera Pools are a local asset that should be owned by a local Trust as with so many of our resources! Are Waiwera Properties Ltd local? It seems that at present it is a pocket-plaything for overseas bastards.
arbitration between the former managers and the property owners will take place in February.
That will mean no waterslides or swims at Waiwera until at least then.
Local businesses that rely on tourists who visit the pools have also told RNZ that Waiwera is a key part of their summer trade.
Waiwera Thermal Resort Limited has owned the lease to use the resort since 2010.
It is owned by California-based diamond tycoon Leon Fingerhut, who earlier this month bought the shares of his business partner, the Russian billionaire Mikhail Khimich.
The property owners, Waiwera Properties Limited, previously said they had expressions of interest by potential new managers for the pools.
Tauranga DHB unable and unwilling to provide modern services to the big city people flocking to the area. They have refused to provide surgical abortion services.
https://www.theweekendsun.co.nz/news/5403-abortion-topic-sparks-prolife-response.html
To deny humanity of an unborn child is appalling. That’s the opinion of pro-life advocates who are applauding the Bay of Plenty District Health Board for not providing a surgical abortion service in Tauranga.
The conversation comes after The Weekend Sun published a story on November 23 discussing whether there is a need for surgical abortion services in Tauranga.
Right to Life spokesman Ken Orr says pregnancy is not a disease, and abortions should not be used as a form of health care for women.
“We take no pleasure in seeing women inconvenienced,” says Ken. “However, because we see abortion as a violation of the human rights of the child, we support the DHB refusing to provide a killing service.”
He says nobody has the right to kill another human being because their continued living is an inconvenience.
“The unborn child is a patient that should be respected and protected,” he says. “Women who are faced with an unplanned pregnancy, that is imposing a burden on the mother, deserve all the help and support from the community they need to choose life for their child.”
Why am I surprised that is yet another man (who will never need abortion services) spouting this crap?
Too true Janice. One who is bound by rectitude and safe from the dangers of falling into the slippery puddle of unwanted motherhood, can feel so superior and noble and didactic. That also applies to some women who get their jollies in life finding fault with other, lesser, women.
Why would a farming group be doing responsible, positive things to prepare for a sustainable farming future and clean, efficient farming practices? National thinks they must have been weakened by Labour’s bad influence into doing the right thing. And brings up that dirty, polluting word ‘tax’, as a scare taxtic!
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/377590/landcorp-apologises-for-not-telling-minister-of-tax-submission
The Tax Working Group accepted Landcorp’s submission anyway, which talks of the agriculture sector needing to take a strong lead on reducing New Zealand’s environmental footprint.
National’s agriculture spokesperson Nathan Guy said Landcorp must have been told to submit as it was advocating for a water tax, nitrogen fertiliser tax and was not opposed to a capital gains tax in its submission.
“They’ve obviously been leaned on. This government wants to bring in environmental taxes. They want to tax the hell out of hardworking farmers in New Zealand.”
But a spokesperson for Mr Jones rejected that, saying he was not even aware a submission had been made until it was reported by media on 28 November.
Changes needed by climate-aware scientists.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/376269/new-zealand-scientists-call-on-government-to-move-faster-on-climate-change
Changes not needed by advantage-aware educator.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/377807/headmaster-slams-radical-proposals-for-schools
Australia having criminal troubles. Surprising?
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/377830/police-in-aus-spent-4-point-5m-to-keep-informer-secret
And now something completely different.
Has anyone read Pratchett’s book “Good Omens”? If so is it worth reading?
I see Amazon is bringing out a video of it next year but I sooner read than see.
Thanks
All of Pratchetts books are good reading.
Good Omen is good. And i am very much looking forward to the series. It will be epic.
Pratchett wrote one of his Discworld books centred on Australia called The Last Continent or the Lost can’t remember. I’ve yet to read it,; getting round to it.
He is/was a wonderful whimsical author with reality always at his fantastical elbow.
Here is a great summary of his style.
https://theconversation.com/a-beginners-guide-to-terry-pratchetts-discworld-55220
Going postal is great entertainment on any rainy, sunny or foggy day
Thanks, Sabine and Grey for your response. I will get that book to read. Also thanks for the other sites you have listed to visit I have read several Discworld novels, One of the best bits was the BIG BANG Theory. in “Mort” I think
The problem I have is, There are so many good books I want to read and now beginning to run out of years to read them in, so I have to be selective and cannot waste time on ones that may not be good. I know it is a matter of choice but have selected some duds lately though I did enjoy Iggulden’s novels on the War of the Roses and the Genghis Khan Dynasty.
Thank you all and compliments of the season
Compliments too halfcrown and fellow reader
Love that bit of getting more books for tight timing to read. Let’s say while you can read you will stay on top of the brain fade and so you will never leave us. Perhaps it could be said ‘Old readers never die they just can’t turn the page’.
James is paid $10 for every bite that he can muster on The Standard. The National Party do pay for this from their own funds.
Today he has earned over $300 and is sniggering all the way to his favourite shop.
Remember this as each time you respond to his bait he gets richer.
Ten bucks!!!
Let’s starve him!
Can you cut and paste your comment under each of his posts, ianmac?
It’ll cost $10, but it’ll be worth it
Pffft $300 would go nowhere in my favourite shop.
H&F?
B&D
At 4 I wrote
“We can choose to allow rwnjs to derail this thread or we can ignore them.”
I could see the way things were panning out.
You can read the responses to my suggestion.
Top work to Greg Presland for being awarded his Labour Party life membership this afternoon.
Well deserved after so many campaigns, so many decades of hard political work.
Congrats to the Labour Party for recognising quality when they see it.
The authoritarian thug quashes any dissent.
A Moscow court on Wednesday sentenced a 77-year-old rights activist to 25 days in jail for calling for protests against a growing crackdown on young people.
Lev Ponomaryov, one of Russia’s most respected activists, told AFP that the powerful FSB security service was behind his detention.
“They are taking revenge against me because I am waging a war against the FSB,” the head of the For Human Rights movement told AFP by phone as he was being driven to a detention centre.
“The country is gradually inching towards mass political repressions,” he said, referring to the peak of Stalin-era purges.
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/russia-jails-elderly-activist-protest-call-173726882.html
Stuart Munro, are you still about? I miss you.
Banned till 3 Feb.
Ahh, ta, that’ll do it.
Only the passionate get banned.
Do you Incognito have a link or knows when it was – i like reading what happened.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-14-11-2018/#comment-1550029 and scroll down from there.
One suggestion though or friendly request rather, please don’t re-open or re-litigate any moderation issues; it does nobody nor the TS any favours.
Thanks that was cool. No; I like the moderation – tough job though, thank goodness them and not me.
Kia ora the Am Show Chris its is cool that we have a lot more people giving help to the poor people who need it.
simon what about all the money shonky took from the poor and gave to the rich that will equate into millions a day into the rich hip pocket I will not raise gst.
land line polls are not a accurate take on the views of all kiwis run a poll on your religious views based on landline users and you will get a totally different result.
Rodger the buff kangaroo condolences to all the people whom cared for him.
Andrew we all no the trickle down effect is non existent as some wealthy people use any move they can to keep all the lollies to them selves .
duncan you would not see any of the improvement of poor peoples lives with your head high up in that ——– you never see the poor people Trust me I can see the common poor people with smile’s on there faces that tells a big story there Te tangata whenua culture and tangata and minority cultures are receiving the respect we deserve .
Aotearoa is one of the safes places on Papatuanuku to live and the greatest risk is strangers. This is the capitalist society have the people feel unsafe to worried to see the big picture that is our democracy is being undermined from the wealthy.
Ka kite ano P.S I see
Some Eco Maori music for the minute
Eco Maori is about leavening behind our grandchildren a healthy prosperous future
hence my post educating the tangata about our worlds reality’s and trumps reality .
The Republican Congress absolutely tried to shield the president,” he said. “The new Congress will not try to shield the president. It will try to get to the bottom of this in order to serve the American people and stop this massive fraud on the American people.”New court filings show Donald Trump was “at the center of a massive fraud” against the American people, the incoming chair of the House judiciary committee said on Sunday.
Mob mentality: how Mueller is working to turn Trump’s troops
Read more
Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat set to take over the panel in January, said Trump would have committed impeachable offenses if it is proven that he ordered his lawyer to make illegal payments to women to keep quiet about alleged sexual encounters.
“What these indictments and filings show is that the president was at the center of a massive fraud – several massive frauds against the American people,” Nadler said on CNN’s “State of the Union There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the justice department may indict him – that he may be the first president in quite some time to face the very real prospect of jail time,” Schiff said on CBS’s Face the Nation.
The California Democrat said the “powerful case” prosecutors made for Cohen to serve a prison sentence would apply “equally” to the man identified in filings as “Individual 1”: the president.
“To have the justice department basically say that the president of the United States not only coordinated but directed an illegal campaign scheme that may have had an election-altering impact is pretty breathtaking,” he said. Ana to kai links below.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/09/donald-trump-michael-cohen-payments-impeachment-jerrold-nadler P.S the go oil party are all idiots who are so short sighted
Lets not let the worlds media turn one tragedy into a double whammy that will damage Aotearoa reputation as a safe place to come for a holiday there are citys the size of Aotearoa in America that have 500 murders a year .
Positive we have a Lady prime minister we have turned the corner to Equality our lady sports stars are getting more good publicity and some are getting payed for there great effords Maori and Pacific cultures people are getting more respect than we did in the past we have a government that is committed to fight Climate Change and inequality there are many more positive phenomenons happening in Aotearoa now than in the past .Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland: New Zealand’s bizarre landscape that’s ‘hell on earth ka kite ano link below .
https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/destinations/nz/109219315/waiotapu-thermal-wonderland-new-zealands-bizarre-landscape-thats-hell-on-earth
Deciding on a possible strike on 21 December?: Shades of the unconscionable Cooks and Stewards strikes on the Cook Strait ferries.
NO! Not now, later get tough if you are sure you are justified.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/377896/air-nz-unions-begin-urgent-talks-as-strike-looms
Get back, stay back, at work and you unions don’t start that neo lib nonsense that has brought so much despair to a mass of ordinary people when used by business and consultative government (with useful business cronies). There has been crookedness in government, so don’t let us have it occurring in unions too that show no community with the other workers in the nation. If that happens, then we are completely encircled by grasping people with dollars for eyeballs, unworthy of respect and support.
There should be no strikes held at times that upset people’s lives and time for getting together with family or children; the important times that we all live and breathe for. There is no excuse for this holiday threat, by the airline and other sector engineers who are not on the bones of their bums. But now seem to care nothing about others, some of whom are on the edge, and union behaviour like this shows they are prepared to put the nation’s economic functions under stress at their whim.
Unions that want fairer wages and conditions, must respect the meaning of fairness themselves, and when they put stress on the word and meaning of ‘fair’ they must follow and respect that understanding.
GWS get off Eco Maori’s coat tail use your own mana to float your views puppet muppet. because we have nothing incommon.
Its good that a lot of business can see past the veil of deceit money and lies to see that if we don’t dump carbon our Descendants Papatuanuku will turn into a nightmare on epic proportions.
The group of 414 institutional investors with $31 trillion under management say governments must take serious steps to cut emissions The largest ever group of institutional investors has called on governments around the world to urgently increase their efforts to meet the Paris climate change agreement goals.
The 414 global investors – which represent US$31 trillion of assets-under-management – say they are deeply concerned about the “ambition gap” that exists between governments’ commitments and what is needed to limit the global temperature increase to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels.
They say that gap is increasing the physical risks from climate change and hampering investors’ ability to properly allocate trillions of dollars needed to support the much-needed transition to a low carbon economy.
They have signed a “Global Investor Statement” to be handed to world leaders this week at the COP24 – the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Poland.
Sign up to the Green Light email to get the planet’s most important stories
Read more
The signatories include some of the world’s largest pension funds, asset managers and insurance companies, including Australian investors BT Financial Group, Australian Super, Cbus, HESTA, IFM Investors, Local Government Super, and VicSuper.
It is the single largest intervention from investors on climate change, surpassing even the one issued in Paris. Links Below ka kite ano. P.S green energy creates more jobs than carbon based energy.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/10/largest-ever-group-of-global-investors-call-for-more-action-to-meet-paris-targets
I could see that putin was playing the popular card on climate change this oil baron don’t give a ——– about our descendants future all he wants to do is turn back time to were Russia was a super power as for Saudi Arabia they are in the same waka they were playing the popular card to till the last minute and showing there true colors a power hungry regime who will let there descendants burn for that power
US and Russia ally with Saudi Arabia to water down climate pledge
The US and Russia have thrown climate talks into disarray by allying with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to water down approval of a landmark report on the need to keep global warming below 1.5C.
After a heated two-and-a-half-hour debate on Saturday night, the backwards step by the four major oil producers shocked delegates at the UN climate conference in Katowice as ministers flew in for the final week of high-level discussions.
It has also raised fears among scientists that the US president, Donald Trump, is going from passively withdrawing from climate talks to actively undermining them alongside a coalition of climate deniers.
‘We live in a lobstocracy’: Maine town is feeling the effects of climate change
Read more
Two months ago, representatives from the world’s governments hugged after agreeing on the 1.5C report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), commissioned to spell out the dire consequences should that level of warming be exceeded and how it can be avoided. Links below ka kite ano .P.S the rest of the world need to be strong and the will of the people will prevail he tangata he tangat he tangata that count in 2018.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/09/us-russia-ally-saudi-arabia-water-down-climate-pledges-un
Kia ora Newshub Ka pai to our Prime minister for apologizing for the murder of that young lady holidaying in Aotearoa.
I totally agree with Lizzy men needs respect Wahine I will give a story on this later.
simon this show me that national is use to having the police dance to there tune with shonky tack ticks.
Yes most of the movie we watch promote alcohol way to much for my liking .
The NZ Transport agency CEO has stepped down I still say six monthly WOF should not have been scrapped for modem vehicles.
There you go if it smells like one look’s like one & behaves like one than he’s a cheating bulling lair .
Mike that’s working outside the square box in advertising to OUR Guest what they are doing wrong in NZ is being a respectful responsible host country Ka pai.
Here we go another man disrespecting Wahine jarod hanes .
shonky & bills poverty tsunami effect is still rolling in the trickle down effect is a big con job being played out on a world scale buy capitalist.
Ken is a good kiwi bloke and Kati Kati is a beautiful little place.
Ka kite ano
Kia ora James & Mulls from the Crows Goes Wild our cricketers all have a sore face ka pai
Our winter sports stars are having a great time at world events .
Our Allblacks 7 team don’t have to worry about that minor hickup in South Africa .
She is amazing that young Asian girl singing there national anthem James
Steven is a good coach all the best to the Warriors.
Looks like some one is damaging the brand of America.
Ka kite ano
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute
Kia ora the Am Show may brexit is doom to fail now everyone knows who created it to distract Europe on climate change and Equality for all foreigners interfering in Europe.
I say that all boards should have maori & Wahine representation on them I see some people were making fun of our ancient story’s and culture the big picture is our culture respects the ancestors and the decedents and Papatuanuku unlike some who live for the now and only respect themselves with that grain of thought they are stuffing up OUR future.
That’s the Chrismas spirit Jacinda you have achieved a enormous feat against the tide of neo capitalist money that distorts reality to conform with there elitist greedy short sighted view’s .
I say our government is thinking long term at least we have started changing the law so people who need medical weed will be able to use it legally.
The whole world needs to show the Wahine more respect .
There you go duncan automatically giving a tohu to a man over wahine if he had the best brain why is he leaving A. because his party made a big mess of Aotearoa with his votes chris finlayson .
All the best to Marina on her new Journey in life.
Ka kite ano
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
To scotty morrison you will need a big box of tissues after the Australian elections next year carbon pro fool running around after another fool trump scotty cannot even see some thing if it was right under his nose
Australia has reaffirmed its commitment to coal – and its unwavering support for the United States – by appearing at a US government-run event promoting the use of fossil fuels at the United Nations climate talks in Poland.
Australia was the only country apart from the host represented at the event, entitled “US innovative technologies spur economic dynamism”, designed to “showcase ways to use fossil fuels as cleanly and efficiently as possible, as well as the use of emission-free nuclear energy”.
Its panel discussion was disrupted for several minutes by dozens of protesters who stood up suddenly during speeches, unfurling a banner reading “Keep it in the ground” while singing and chanting “Shame on you”.
How America’s clean coal dream unravelled
Read more
Patrick Suckling, Australia’s ambassador for the environment, and the head of the country’s negotiating delegation at the climate talks, spoke on the panel. His nameplate bore a US flag. Ka kite ano link below P.S the sandfly have been stuffing with my computer again muppets
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/11/australia-only-nation-to-
join-us-at-pro-coal-event-at-cop24-climate-talks
Eco Maori agrees with this cartoon
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/10/global-commitment-to-climate-change-dies-on-the-floor-of-a-committee-and-australia-is-silent
Ka kite ano
The big picture is the kocoal brothers have trump on a string like a puppet and he is dancing to there tune.
US undermining ‘last chance’ climate talks, experts charge
The American delegation came to promote coal.
And the kids laughed in their faces.
That was the bizarre and symbolic scene that unfolded Monday at the UN COP24 climate talks at a spaceship-shaped conference center in Polish coal country.
The nations of the world are meeting here to hash out a “rulebook” to help ensure the viability of humanity — preventing runaway global warming from causing even greater calamity in the form of superstorms, searing droughts and deadly heat waves.
Ka kite ano links below.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/10/world/climate-change-us-coal-cop24/index.htmlhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClU3fctbGls
Here you go our truth seeking scientist have been intimidated & suppressed by some state agency’s and big business groups they have been warning us about our wai and awa becoming to toxic to swim in we need to look after our wai .There are very strong disincentives for speaking out,” Death said.
“For those of us who do speak out, our funding is clearly impacted, and we don’t get as much funding as we would get [if we didn’t] speak out about various industry bodies in New Zealand.
“We do have to speak out, and we are allowed to speak out, but we speak out at our peril and our cost.”
In his address, Death said New Zealand’s water quality was not “something to be overly proud about,” citing its rate of endangered native freshwater species – which was the highest in the world – and its rate of waterborne disease, which was among the highest in the western world.
He also cited deaths related to contaminated drinking water, as seen in the Havelock North disaster in 2016, in which an outbreak New Zealand’s freshwater scientists had done valuable, at times world-leading research, Death said, but scientists – as well as the Society itself, for which he had been a member for 30 years – needed to stand up and push aggressively for their science to be practically applied.
“I think we really do need to do better,” Death said. “We are the expert body of freshwater science in New Zealand, and we are the people that can have an effect.
“I like to think we could be a little more supportive of those of us who speak out. I think Mike Joy in particular has been vilified for speaking out – a lot of us congratulate him for doing it because we’re scared to do it ourselves. ka kite ano links below
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/109213762/we-speak-out-at-our-peril-science-on-water-quality-has-been-ignored-scientist-says
Kia ora Newshub yes we need everyone to give our wahine more respect I have a story about the police’s response to one complainant.
There you go this is just a start to the cannabis reforms its a pity we did not get it passed to limit Helen Kellys pain ????? .
seenothing the regions have been farmed and starved of money from the goverment you supported for the last nine years they poured the money into bill south island M8 to the tune of hundreds on millions .
Yes a warming tangaroa is bad for our fishes we have seen big changes in fisheries over seas red algae blooms killing of fishes to and still we have climate change deniers .
Samantha yes trumps smocking gun well its is affecting America quite negatively the last time a go oil party president got the wheel he caused a world financial crises this one is doing more damage in a quarter of the time.
That is great news to stop company’s bottling our water and exporting it with little financial gain for Aotearoa.
Its good to see that the IPCA is doing its job finding that the first police investigation of that 13 year old girl and a teacher from Gisborne was differently not on you see what it tell me that the law is dish out unfairly its who you know Ka kite ano
Kia ora James & Mulls good waiata with Marina James it sounds like our tennis stars need more Tau toko.
That was a awesome try that won the Wahine 7 gold medal at the games guy Ka pai.
I see Hartley has Porse backing him for there E racing team he said there was a lot of politics in Formal 1 racing ECO Maori could see that he has a quick lap times. Electric cars are the future I see some big car companies did not jump on the bandwagon of Ecar why because they make more profits off enternal combustion car parts than they make off there cars.
Storm the snoop sports reporter the net ball Wahine stars will shine bright.
Steven Adams is cool showing the aroha to the children on a good day I can hear a Haka from some of his biggest fans.
Ka kite ano P.S I have to switch device you know why