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Open mike 10/03/2019

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, March 10th, 2019 - 207 comments
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Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

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207 comments on “Open mike 10/03/2019 ”

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  1. bwaghorn 1
    10 March 2019 at 7:24 am

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12210513

    Something smells.
    Woman gets job . Woman complains about boss .
    Woman gets $100k and leaves to set up own business
    Boss still has job .

  2. WeTheBleeple 2
    10 March 2019 at 7:45 am

    Damien Grant, columnist:

    “If you refuse to consider uranium as a means of saving humanity because it is yucky then you have no right to be taken seriously. You are merely posing on a stage, waving at an adoring crowd of the vacuous and self-righteous. ”

    This is about the best the right have got. A vacuous twat with a poor understanding of basic geography.

    “so effective have these charlatans been in demonising atomic power”

    https://www.chernobyl-international.com/about-chernobyl/

    Radioactive fallout from Chernobyl disaster from europe

    People like Damian should be given a quiet ward somewhere so they can live out their pathetic lives discussing monocultural race fantasies and nuclear paradise without bothering the rest of us.

    I’m not going to link to the article. It’s rubbish.

    • Muttonbird 2.1
      10 March 2019 at 8:09 am

      He was given a ward somewhere. But they let him out.

      • tc 2.1.1
        10 March 2019 at 8:27 am

        Onto red neck rant radio and the other provided soapboxes from his backers on the right.

        DP v2.0 folks as slater and the others are a little overexposed currently due to prior indiscretions. I see the TPU not using Jordy to front their spin lately also.

    • Ad 2.2
      10 March 2019 at 8:47 am

      He might want to have a more thorough look at why Germany phased out of nuclear energy generation. There’s an outline here:

      https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-nuclear-phase-out-explained/a-39171204

      Germany has had one of the most aggressive energy production shifts for over 30 years.

      All of Germany’s nuclear generators will be down by 2022. Cheers to Angela Merkel.

      Germany has also started to close down the last of its coal mines.

      Back in the day, the favored place for a nuclear power plant was on the Kaipara Harbour. There are still good stories to be told of National Ministers personally buying land up there in anticipation.

      By 1965 planning was under way for a 1000-megawatt (MW) station in Northland, with a site on the Kaipara Harbour being favoured. Engineering staff of the NZED were enrolled on overseas training courses, and an undergraduate course in reactor engineering was established at the University of Canterbury. During the 1960s and early 70s, several staff of the National Radiation Laboratory undertook training in reactor safety and licensing.

      https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/nuclear-new-zealand/

      The discovery of Kapuni and Maui fields pretty much killed the idea here.

      • alwyn 2.2.1
        10 March 2019 at 10:26 am

        I guess that means we will have to go for Nuclear power in a few years as Maui runs out.
        After all our rather foolish PM has made a “captain’s call” to ban any further exploration for or development of natural gas fields.
        I await with interest the Green Party coming out for the building of a Nuclear Power station.

        • marty mars 2.2.1.1
          10 March 2019 at 10:33 am

          Yeah fuck global warming and the detrimental effects upon communities and nature – get a life alwyn – the exploitation of fossil fuels and their derivatives is OVER save for last gasps and desperate liars. Be a coward if you want cos that shows the best contrast with our hero PM.

          • alwyn 2.2.1.1.1
            10 March 2019 at 11:31 am

            My, my. You really have been hitting the juice pretty hard this morning haven’t you? Or something equally powerful but probably illegal.
            Do you actually have anything rational to say or should we wait until you sober up?

          • Observer Tokoroa 2.2.1.1.2
            10 March 2019 at 7:42 pm

            Marty

            Just who is the person who is wanting to build Nuclear Power Plants in Aotearoa. Do you happen to know ?

            Has Simon Bridges and his caucus authorised him to proceed? it sounds like the sort of thing David Farrar would encourage. The Herald too.

            Nuclear Power Plants are unbelievably expensive and could destroy vast areas of our productive land.

            Whoever he is – he says he has Plans and has discussed them in the Uk.
            .

            • marty mars 2.2.1.1.2.1
              10 March 2019 at 7:53 pm

              Dunno but I oppose it 100%. Would be too stupid for words so actions would have to do.

        • solkta 2.2.1.2
          10 March 2019 at 11:46 am

          I don’t know why you would call the ban on further permits for oil exploration a “captain’s call”. That is not how coalition governments work. The ban is the result of some hard work by the Greens in negotiating their contribution to the coalition.

          • alwyn 2.2.1.2.1
            10 March 2019 at 12:19 pm

            I can only suggest that you have a word with Ms Ardern.
            She is the one who makes “captain’s calls” as she labels them.
            https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11908838
            And I really think you are getting a little carried away when you credit it to the Green Party.
            The only party other than Labour to have any real influence on this Government is the de facto PM Tsar Winston the First.

            • solkta 2.2.1.2.1.1
              10 March 2019 at 12:25 pm

              That is a call not to rule something out before there was even a coalition. To rule something definitely in when in the coalition requires agreement of all three coalition parties.

              The Greens have had to eat some dead rats and Winston First have had to eat some dead rats. That the Greens got this past Winston shows that they are playing a very active part in the coalition.

        • joe90 2.2.1.3
          10 March 2019 at 12:04 pm

          So you condone this kind of exploration?

        • McFlock 2.2.1.4
          10 March 2019 at 4:29 pm

          Because we have the same generation technology as we had in the 1960s?

          We don’t need nuclear.

      • Heather Grimwood 2.2.2
        10 March 2019 at 10:54 am

        in corroboration Ad : yes this planning of nuclear power stations under Think Big policy of Muldoon was a reality. I was shown a plan by one NZED participant of the era.

        • alwyn 2.2.2.1
          10 March 2019 at 11:42 am

          Your dates are wrong I think.
          Nuclear Power in New Zealand was proposed, and being designed in the latter part of the 1960’s and possibly into the early 70’s. I did a bit of work on the proposal myself in the late 60s and I know people who went to Britain to prepare for the station being built. Nothing to do with reactors or such-like though.

          It was scrapped when the Maui deal was done with the Government in the early 70s. The only practical use for the amount of gas that would be produced was in Electricity Generation and a Nuclear Station was no longer required.
          That was long before Muldoon had significant power and long before “Think Big” which was at the beginning of the 80s.
          I have never heard of any intention of including Nuclear Power in the Think Big Agenda and I think I would have if it had been proposed at that time.

          • Heather Grimwood 2.2.2.1.1
            10 March 2019 at 11:58 am

            To Alwyn at 2.2.2 Guy who showed plans to me had gone to UK to work on it…don’t want to name him but he was an NZED manager. He showed me plans (blueprints) about end of ’70’s. Maybe the idea was being revived at that time, which was definitely the Think Big era.

            • alwyn 2.2.2.1.1.1
              10 March 2019 at 12:42 pm

              Did he say when he was in the UK? It may have been much earlier than he showed you plans. I am sure that people who were involved in the 60’s would have kept drawings as souvenirs.
              Also, if they revived the idea in the Think Big era they wouldn’t have got as far as having new drawings by 1979.

              • Heather Grimwood …
                10 March 2019 at 5:01 pm

                Too long ago for me to remember …just think Helensville area was the intended venue which guess equates with the Kaipara Harbour mentioned elsewhere. Incidentally this guy seemed against the proposition.

        • Gabby 2.2.2.2
          11 March 2019 at 9:40 am

          They’d put hydro stations on all the fault lines so there was no room left.

    • mikesh 2.3
      10 March 2019 at 8:55 am

      James Lovelock advocated using nuclear power to bridge the gap between our fossil fuel based economy and one that was fossil free. It would have provided breathing space which we don’t appear to have at present. However, it’s probably a bit late now given that nuclear power stations apparently take a long time to design and build.

      • Andre 2.3.1
        10 March 2019 at 9:47 am

        It’s a bit late for new land-based nuclear because wind and solar power have become so much lower in price that it’s outright economic madness to try to build a new nuke to supply utility electricity.

        But it’s a slightly different consideration when it comes to shutting down existing operational plants. Germany has committed to shutting its nukes by 2022 and its coal plants by 2038. It would be a lot better for the German and world environments if those timelines were swapped.

        The environmental costs of nukes are massively front-loaded in the construction and irradiation of their guts on initial startup, the ongoing marginal environmental costs of continued operation are relatively small. Whereas continued coal operation is massively environmentally damaging, from the CO2 emissions, fly ash which is either emitted and widely dispersed or concentrated into toxic dumping sites (and is also radioactive), and the ongoing environmental damage of mining and transporting the coal.

        The only industry I see the glimmerings of a possible future for nuclear fission power is in shipping. They’re an industry where there’s many more obstacles in the way of converting to zero-GHG operation, and have needs for compact power sources in the range of 5MW to 50MW – which can be easily provided by nukes. The smaller size means exponentially smaller risks of catastrophe from colossal cockups like Chernobyl or Fukushima, while the continuous availability of seawater coolant further reduces the risk. But there’s going to need to be a really hefty price put on carbon emissions before the idea of investing in nukes becomes remotely attractive to general shipping companies.

        • Ad 2.3.1.1
          10 March 2019 at 10:27 am

          There’s an outline of the German context at 2.2

          • Andre 2.3.1.1.1
            10 March 2019 at 10:36 am

            That article really doesn’t explain much at all. It just notes that Germans (and that really just seems to mean West Germans) haven’t much liked nukes since the 70s, and that dislike got a major boost from Fukushima. No discussion at all of the reasons for the genesis of that anti-nuke sentiment.

            It doesn’t even mention coal, which has to be a major part of any rational discussion of Germany’s energy mix.

            • RedLogix 2.3.1.1.1.1
              10 March 2019 at 11:06 am

              It’s my sense that the nuclear power industry was always had an element of sham about it; in reality they got stuck on technologies whose hidden purpose was more about weapons than power.

              Their insistence of sticking with designs that essentially date from the 50’s and 60’s, their obdurate refusal to properly research, much less prototype or license, much safer cleaner fourth generation designs has not only marginalised nuclear power, but closed the door on a good option to transition away from coal sooner.

              • Andre …
                10 March 2019 at 11:11 am

                Yup.

                That’s also more or less the opinion of a cousin of mine who started his career in the operations side of nuclear plants and finished up working on the Rocky Flats site cleanup.

            • Sabine 2.3.1.1.1.2
              10 March 2019 at 6:15 pm

              you might want to try Tschernobyl before jumping to Fukushima.

              and no there are a lot in europe that don’t like nukes, nuclear weapons and nuclear energy for that matter.

              https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/videoplayer/vi2922822169?ref_=tt_ov_vi

              you might want to watch this one here for giggles.

              • Andre …
                10 March 2019 at 7:16 pm

                My first paragraph was just a brief summary of the DW article Ad linked to at 2.2. Which surprisingly didn’t mention Chernobyl at all, even though fallout from Chernobyl did in fact affect Germany.

                Nevertheless, it appears that Chernobyl had surprisingly little actual effect in changing German government and industry direction on using nuclear power. Maybe it was a case of German engineers and pollies looking at the badly flawed designs, implementation and lack of safety features at Chernobyl and concluding it couldn’t happen with better engineered German reactors. In contrast, within days of Fukushima, Merkel’s government reversed course and accelerated the shutdown of German nukes.

                I don’t get giggles from contemplating nuclear shit going bad. But the point I keep trying to make is the shit we’re getting from fossil fuels is actually objectively much worse, but because it’s more dispersed and harder to see and has been an accepted part of life for a lot longer, it doesn’t get anywhere near the same opposition.

        • alwyn 2.3.1.2
          10 March 2019 at 10:34 am

          If you advocated Geothermal energy production I might agree with you.
          The trouble with wind power is deciding what you are going to do when the wind doesn’t blow.
          I happened to look at New Zealand’s power production yesterday. For most of the day wind power was running at about 2.5% of its plated capacity (that was 14 MW out of about 660 MW capacity) and producing about 0.3% of the power being used overall.
          Now what do you suggest we do? Crank up the Huntly station perhaps?

          • RedLogix 2.3.1.2.1
            10 March 2019 at 10:47 am

            alwyn

            The single biggest barrier to understanding that you are perpetuating here is that arguments like the one you outline above invariably omit the opportunity to integrate energy storage with renewables in order to smooth out the inevitable gaps between production and consumption.

            The simplistic answer to your question is that on the days when wind is running at close to it’s 660MW you reduce hydro to a minimum and fill the lake reservoirs behind the dams, and on the days when there is no wind, you let the hydro rip. No Huntly needed.

            In practice there will be more complex engineering considerations, but that is the basic idea. And there are plenty of good storage options other than hydro available these days.

            • alwyn 2.3.1.2.1.1
              10 March 2019 at 11:58 am

              That is pretty much the way they operate at the moment. The only power source that seems to operate at full capacity all the time is Geothermal.
              It is difficult to start and stop production from Geothermal or Gas fields because it apparently severely disrupts the field and production is badly affected. At least that is what I was told by some Geothermal, and later Petroleum Engineers I worked with for a while.
              It was way beyond me as to why that was the case. When a PhD carrying Petroleum Engineer who specialized in Reservoir engineering told me such things I certainly didn’t feel qualified to argue.

              • RedLogix …
                10 March 2019 at 12:08 pm

                Your Petroleum Engineer is almost certainly correct. I’m not familiar with the details, but I can broadly guess the reasons why; because there is little buffering of the steam flow from the reservoir to the turbine, any throttling of the flow to match rapid changes of power demand will impose substantial changes in temperature and pressure in the reservoir.

                Also steam is remarkably complex stuff to work with at high pressures and temperatures. While we’ve used it for centuries and sort of take it for granted, the reality is that whenever I’ve had to deal with it there has always been a steep learning curve involved. Take a quick look at this and don’t see if your eyes glaze over as mine do these days 🙂

                http://www.thermopedia.com/content/1150/

                But all this remains tangential to my core point; that any discussion about renewables cannot omit a parallel consideration of storage technologies. And they come in many different forms these days.

              • Sam …
                10 March 2019 at 12:12 pm

                Primary investments like Geothermal works in places where you can have secondary and tertiary investments like having an aluminium manufacturer nerby by or use excess hot water as a tourist attraction and turn it into a hot pools. But now adays architects want there monuments. Little consideration is given to prestinct developments.

          • Sam 2.3.1.2.2
            10 March 2019 at 10:48 am

            Your analysis is ass. 7 acres of solar panels is enough to harvest 4GWh that can be stored so if there’s no sunlight then there’s 3 days worth of stored solar energy. Anything less than 7 acres then it’s worth doing more solar at 5c per kWh. Anything over that then it’s worth doing wind turbines at 7c per kWh because when it’s not sunny, it’s usually windy.

            • alwyn 2.3.1.2.2.1
              10 March 2019 at 11:26 am

              “when it’s not sunny, it’s usually windy.”
              Well that is a very bold comment. Anything to back it up?
              You may, or may not, have noticed that it was raining in a very big chunk of the Country yesterday. Certainly the North Island was wet.
              Well I doubt if we would have got any Solar power all day and we didn’t get any Wind Power, as the Transpower numbers show.

              • Sam …
                10 March 2019 at 11:30 am

                Explain to me why I should even read your HIV ridden statements?

                • alwyn …
                  10 March 2019 at 12:03 pm

                  The only reason I would suggest is that a little bit of knowledge might penetrate that fevered mind.
                  Of course if we wish to remain an ignorant fool all your life that is your right.
                  By the way. In spite of what the things you may think about HIV you really can’t get infected just by reading things written about topics where you are ignorant.
                  HIV ridden statements indeed.

                  • Sam …
                    10 March 2019 at 12:23 pm

                    I’ll debate you on what ever you want, and you want to get slapped again on the same topic? Thermal vs renewables. That’s fine with me.

                    Maybe after I beat you again you can choose to debate me on Fission vs Fusion instead.

                • Anne …
                  10 March 2019 at 5:05 pm

                  Your comment Sam to alwyn was uncalled for.

                  alwyn made a valid point. Your statement: when it’s not sunny. it’s usually windy is a sweeping statement. If the cloud is preceding an incoming front then the wind speed will likely increase, but if it’s stratocumulous cloud associated with anti-cyclonic conditions then there is not likely to be any increase in the speed of the wind. In relatively weak low pressure systems where the isobars are not close together there will not be much wind but plenty of cloud and almost always rain.

                  • Sam …
                    10 March 2019 at 5:26 pm

                    That’s wonderful Anne.

                    [Last chance. TRP]

                    • Anne …
                      10 March 2019 at 7:08 pm

                      If I read you correctly Sam… you are being your usual supercilious, contemptuous self. This is not a site where we play games of intellectual prowess. So suggest you go play your childish games elsewhere.

                    • Sam …
                      10 March 2019 at 7:36 pm

                      Why should I wast my time on normies who are just projecting how sad and empty their lives are before you started acting like you have something to put you on some intellectual pedestal because you never had anything going for yourself. Wana get it in and throw some studies around then let’s go.

                      Some estimates put solar along the East Coast as able to meet 51%+ of all power needs, and from the cape, to the Bluff generate enough wind to meet something like 40% of all power generation. So we’d only need about one or maybe two hydro electric dams for peak or off peak use. Hydro electric can stay dormant for its entire 100 year shelf life and still be restarted in less than a minute, so when ever you’d like.

                      Designing a decent set up is no difficulty. The issue is getting the capital and the infrastructure in the right places because renewable energy is harvested in places where there aren’t many high voltage power lines and the current energy grid is designed to send power, not receive so with out a price on carbon or pollution that prices everything correctly, we’ll always be on the wrong tram.

              • David Mac …
                10 March 2019 at 1:21 pm

                We will get smarter with how we consume energy. Make minor alterations to our lifestyle in order to iron out the peaks and valleys of our current energy production/consumption.

                eg: A tiny icon on my phone that tells me when I can charge my car for half the price than if I plugged it in when demand peaks.

                As Red Logix says, we’ll get better at making unreliable generation useful. eg: Pumping water up to a mountain top reservoir. It doesn’t matter if the wind/solar pumps are only running half the time, we’ll just put in twice as many.

              • Jilly Bee …
                10 March 2019 at 4:46 pm

                Yep, it was very cloudy with intermittent rain all day in the Waikato. Despite this, our 10-panel solar rack started churning out power at 6.30am and continued until 7 pm last evening albeit at a reduced rate.

          • Andre 2.3.1.2.3
            10 March 2019 at 10:57 am

            My comment was related much more to a German and worldwide context, not specific to New Zealand. So yes, I neglected to mention a renewable that’s particularly important in New Zealand. Bite me.

            As RL mentions, we’ve already got lots of hydro that can be powered down and saved for when wind doesn’t blow. Looking ahead, pumped hydro storage is particularly suited to New Zealand’s geography and is a very low-loss means of storing energy.

            We’d have even more hydro if we told Rio Tinto to take a hike. Then they may well find it’s better economically for them to build a solar plant and potlines right next to where they mine their bauxite, rather than shipping it to faraway places and paying others for electricity.

            • Sam 2.3.1.2.3.1
              10 March 2019 at 11:04 am

              Alwyn starts out by saying Nuclear is better than gas then half way through modifies his premiss to allow geothermal and then at the end changes his premiss to cranking up Huntley which means his whole analysis is worth less than toilet paper.

              • alwyn …
                10 March 2019 at 12:26 pm

                I made a number of comments in reply to things other people have said.
                I don’t really see the need for every comment I make to include all the things I consider significant, and I certainly don’t accept that I am changing my opinions.
                For example in a discussion about energy supply I see no need to repeat my views on the stuffed up Census. Doesn’t mean that I no longer think Mr Shaw did well and shouldn’t be fired.

                • Sam …
                  10 March 2019 at 12:40 pm

                  Well there’s a difference between “teaching” and “explaining.”

                  I could train you by saying look at my finger and yelling look at it over and over so that the students get tunnel vision and they can stick there minds to something so it doesn’t move.

                  Or I can hold up a finger and explain that it is thin at the top and wide at the bottom and it’s a little lighter in colour on one side and it has segments and so on.

                  If you are a trained up educator then fine. How ever it is a falasy to say explaining is losing when one also claims they are not a professional educator.

            • RedLogix 2.3.1.2.3.2
              10 March 2019 at 11:24 am

              Looking ahead, pumped hydro storage is particularly suited to New Zealand’s geography and is a very low-loss means of storing energy.

              I’ve linked to this before, but it’s worth a repeat. Even Australia has a remarkable opportunity around all the enormous holes in the ground the mining industry has left behind:

              https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-20/solar-farm-integrate-pumped-hydro-storage-$500m-loan-aus-first/9890466

              https://www.genexpower.com.au/

              • Sam …
                10 March 2019 at 11:27 am

                Evaporation says hi pumped hydro 🙂

                • RedLogix …
                  10 March 2019 at 11:30 am

                  Well its something I have a particular affinity with having identified and implemented are rather successful project of this type some years back.

                  (OK it was a tiny 250kW, but had a remarkable 7 month ROI)

                  • Sam …
                    10 March 2019 at 11:39 am

                    I always got a bit sceptical about the hands off’ nature of managing pumped hydro that some try and sell it as. In my experience it’s a full time job having a pond. Made a few settling ponds myself and I’d say settling ponds would keep me up more at night than anything else.

                    • RedLogix …
                      10 March 2019 at 11:47 am

                      Nothing is ‘hands off’ as some people may imagine; there is always a lot more engineering going on around all sorts of structures and facilities than most people are aware of.

              • alwyn …
                10 March 2019 at 12:37 pm

                “I’ve linked to this before, but it’s worth a repeat. Even Australia has a remarkable opportunity around all the enormous holes in the ground the mining industry has left behind:”.
                They may be useful for storing water for an irrigation project but I can’t think of any I have seen that would be useful for pumped hydro.
                The water has to be stored above the turbines and the holes from mining are all well below ground level.
                The Kalgoorlie Superpit for example has a bottom that is about 150 metres below sea level.
                Are there some that are well above the surrounding terrain?

                • RedLogix …
                  10 March 2019 at 12:41 pm

                  Check out the links above alwyn. The concept is real and works. The idea is that you create a pond above the pit level, or in the case of Kidston you have two existing pits at different heights. All standard stuff, nothing special needed.

                  • alwyn …
                    10 March 2019 at 12:46 pm

                    I read it as being water running down from the actual pit. Now I see what you mean. I was misinterpreting where the water ran from and to.
                    Actually in you used the bottom 300 metres or so of the Superpit would would get a pretty good head. Now I understand what you meant.

                    • RedLogix …
                      10 March 2019 at 12:54 pm

                      The really cool thing is Australia has hundreds if not thousands of these things. Here another longer more detailed version:

                  • WeTheBleeple …
                    10 March 2019 at 7:43 pm

                    Nice. I’d tweak that system by placing the bank between the upper and lower ponds north facing, then run the solar on that face. In that way the winter sun will reflect off the lower pond up onto the solar array providing more light than without such placing. Plantings of light reflective trees might further enhance the site.

          • Bruce 2.3.1.2.4
            10 March 2019 at 2:24 pm

            old question, well and truly solved, posted this last year, there is always a solution for those prepared to look.

        • greywarshark 2.3.1.3
          10 March 2019 at 11:35 am

          That’s interesting Andre. You sound as if you know what you are talking about with nuclear as most of us wouldn’t.

          • Andre 2.3.1.3.1
            10 March 2019 at 12:12 pm

            I’ve never been directly involved in the industry, closest I’ve come is a cousin and a family friend in the industry. The last time I talked with the family friend was a few years back, and she mentioned a big talking point in the industry was their really bad public perception and how the industry wouldn’t survive another high-profile fuckup. That was before Fukushima.

            I’ve always kinda had an interest in where our power comes from, and what a zero-GHG future might look like. As part of that, it’s long seemed to me nukes have been unfairly demonised.

            Part of that is the industry’s own mistakes and association with weapons, part of it is activist groups overhyping issues to generate publicity (which is particularly easy to do when there is a little kernel of truth at the core), part of it is a similar problem to airliner crashes in that when things go bad they go very publicly and spectacularly bad even though the overall safety record is very very good and much better than most of the alternatives.

            By a standalone examination, generating electricity using nukes is an awful idea. But nukes shouldn’t be considered in isolation, they should be considered relative to alternative methods of satisfying our electricity wants and needs. In that context, efficiency improvements and conservation are the standouts, there’s no downside.

            When it comes to actually generating electricity, there’s all kinds of factors to consider. Injury and mortality rates per unit of electricity generated, land used and damaged, pollution. By those metrics, nuclear energy actually stands out as being a very low harm means of electricity generation (even including the harms done by Chernobyl and Fukushima), way better than any fossil fuel, better than hydro, not much worse than wind and solar. Add climate change and it furthers reinforces the picture.

            https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#4c248c25709b

            • RedLogix 2.3.1.3.1.1
              10 March 2019 at 12:37 pm

              part of it is a similar problem to airliner crashes in that when things go bad they go very publicly and spectacularly bad even though the overall safety record is very very good and much better than most of the alternatives.

              True. Not many people know that in 2017 the commercial airline industry achieve zero … yes zero … deaths. A remarkable engineering and technical outcome.

              And on an annual basis the nuclear industry looks pretty good too, yet over the years there have been far too many incidents.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents

              In particular the classic PWR design that depends on actively managed moderation AND a continuous flow of cooling water represents an unacceptable hazard in modern terms. All of these reactors need to be taken out of service in the foreseeable future.

              Incidentally back in the early 2000’s I found an open ftp site that had a report on an incident that is not mentioned in the above list, and I’ve seen no other reference to. It related IIRC to the 2003 East Coast blackout

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003

              This had an immediate impact on one of the major nuclear sites in Oklahoma, forcing all four reactors to scram shut immediately. However these reactors also demand at least 3 days of cooling water flow after shutdown to avoid irreversible damage of the type seen at Fukushima. To keep the pumps running there were eight large diesel gen sets that should have automatically kicked in.

              Here is the thing; of the 8 generators … all 8 refused to start. On reading the reports details on why each on failed I came to the conclusion that Homer Simpson really did work there. Fortunately they got one of them going reasonably quickly and this was enough to boot them up without damage and prevented a catastrophic meltdown of the entire plant.

              A very close shave that almost no-one seems to know about. Sadly I lost the pdf file over the years.

              • Andre …
                10 March 2019 at 1:01 pm

                Yeah, the need for active control systems to be functioning correctly and external power needed for cooling after shutdown is a seriously dumb way to operate something that can fail as catastrophically as a big nuke. Especially since there’s alternatives that don’t require active control and external power to shut down safely, they just use simple physics.

                From a safety and perception perspective, I think it’s a mistake how fkn enormous the reactors are. The risks of shit going bad and how bad the shit gets don’t scale linearly, it’s exponential. Kinda like how things change from 1 match head to 30,000 to 1,000,000 match heads (see Mythbusters if you don’t get the reference).

                Of course, the reason they do it is the regulatory burden and other fixed costs scale at quite a lot less than linearly so it’s cheaper per unit output to build huge reactors. The Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima reactors were all around 3000MW thermal/1000MW electrical each. For comparison, Huntly’s original four generators were a quarter that for a total of 1000MW total plant capacity.

              • Andre …
                10 March 2019 at 1:39 pm

                BTW, coupla reasons you might have had trouble digging up reports about that nuke plant in Oklahoma affected by the Northeast blackout is there aren’t any nuke power plants in Oklahoma (just nuke fuels processing facilities made famous by Silkwood), nor is Oklahoma on the same grid that the Northeast Blackout happened on. Might have been Ohio or Ontario …

                • RedLogix …
                  10 March 2019 at 1:49 pm

                  Yeah … I may well have gotten some details wrong. I recall reading the report quite clearly and some details stick firmly in my memory, but do you think I can accurately recall the actual plant?

                  A quick search suggests Indian Point as the most likely one:

                  http://www.safesecurevital.com/

      • AB 2.3.2
        10 March 2019 at 9:48 am

        Geo-engineering technology, or a least a lower risk examples of it like marine cloud brightening, might be safer and quicker bridging options now. They potentially allow a slightly longer transition time to renewables.

        • Andre 2.3.2.1
          10 March 2019 at 12:29 pm

          The problem is so severe and urgent I’m in favour of the “all of the above plus a few more” option.

    • solkta 2.4
      10 March 2019 at 9:30 am

      Is the guy an idiot? He says “Windmills are mainly decorative” and he doesn’t even mention solar. Perhaps the article was meant as satire.

      • alwyn 2.4.1
        10 March 2019 at 10:39 am

        I suggest you look at my comment at 2.3.1.2 just above.
        It is generating a bit more at the moment. Wind is running at about 20% of the plated capacity and is producing about 3% of our consumption. That is about one sixth of what Geothermal always produces.
        See
        https://www.transpower.co.nz/power-system-live-data

        • solkta 2.4.1.1
          10 March 2019 at 10:45 am

          We have only just started down the wind road. There are options for storing wind power such as pumped hydro and mass batteries. With battery backed solar going into homes there is room there also to store power.

          • One Two 2.4.1.1.1
            10 March 2019 at 2:37 pm

            http://www.smart-technologies.co.nz/books.html

            The most recent example of technological sound pollution comes from wind turbines. However, he is quick to stress that this is only one source of modern environmental sound pollution
            there are many others.

            Yet with the rapid expansion of wind turbines across the globe, this new technology is presenting us with increasing evidence of a serious threat to human health

            That certain types of sound can produce a cascade of hormones that result in the “fight or flight” response is a critical step forward in understanding the importance of sound as a pollutant as well as a health hazard.

            This conclusion is the result of 20 years of research
            by Dr. Rapley and his international research team,

            New Zealander Dr. Bruce Rapley is an applied biologist with a specialist interest and expertise in the area of environmental health, acoustics and cognition

        • solkta 2.4.1.2
          10 March 2019 at 10:53 am

          Also your figures look like bullshit:

          They [wind generators] supply around 6% of New Zealand’s annual electricity generation,

          http://www.windenergy.org.nz/wind-energy/nz-windfarms

          In the 2016 calendar year, wind power produced 2,303 GWh of electricity, 5.4 percent of the country’s electricity generation that year.[1]

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_New_Zealand#cite_note-EnergyQtr-1

          • greywarshark 2.4.1.2.1
            10 March 2019 at 11:40 am

            Why doesn’t this thread now go over to the end of oil exploration that Ad has put up? It would fit there.

          • alwyn 2.4.1.2.2
            10 March 2019 at 3:32 pm

            They are not “my” figures. They are the current numbers being reported by TransPower, who of course are distributing electricity around the country.
            If anyone knows what is going on right now I would suggest they do.
            If you think the numbers they are publishing are bullshit I suggest you take it up with them.
            I’m sure they will be happy to explain it to you.
            I’ll repeat the link for your benefit.
            https://www.transpower.co.nz/power-system-live-data
            As of 3.28 pm today Wind was 152 MW out of a total of 4310 MW, or about 3.5%

            • solkta 2.4.1.2.2.1
              10 March 2019 at 7:49 pm

              That is in real time and not an annual average. You are such a try-hard.

              • alwyn …
                10 March 2019 at 8:26 pm

                Well, miracles will never cease.
                I have mentioned this website several times. Every single time I said that it was live data.

                The first time (@2.3.1.2) I said
                “I happened to look at New Zealand’s power production yesterday. For most of the day wind power was running at about 2.5% of its plated capacity (that was 14 MW out of about 660 MW capacity) and producing about 0.3% of the power being used overall.”

                The second time I said
                “You may, or may not, have noticed that it was raining in a very big chunk of the Country yesterday. Certainly the North Island was wet.
                Well I doubt if we would have got any Solar power all day and we didn’t get any Wind Power, as the Transpower numbers show.”

                The next time I said
                “It is generating a bit more at the moment. Wind is running at about 20% of the plated capacity and is producing about 3% of our consumption. That is about one sixth of what Geothermal always produces.”

                Then I said
                “They are not “my” figures. They are the current numbers being reported by TransPower, who of course are distributing electricity around the country.”

                If anyone can read all of those remarks, and the repeated link to the website they came from and only now discover that they were real time numbers and not an annual average seems to be someone who is a bit thick or someone who simply bursts into song without even reading the comments they are replying to. You seem to qualify on both counts.

                • solkta …
                  10 March 2019 at 8:36 pm

                  Yes i admit it, i don’t usual pay much attention to the shit you write.

                  • alwyn …
                    10 March 2019 at 9:03 pm

                    Well that statement is probably truthful. It isn’t intellectually honest but then that is pretty typical of a Green supporter.
                    I have learn’t in the past that when a Green Party member says something like,
                    “I have never seen any evidence that GM is safe”
                    or
                    “I have never read anything that shows 1080 is effective and safe”
                    It doesn’t mean that such evidence doesn’t exist. It just means that they haven’t read it because it will show their prejudices have no scientific backing.

                    I guess it is not worth my replying to any of your comments in the future. After they are merely the meaningless flapping of your gums and have no connection at all to the matter you are supposedly commenting on.

                    By the way, I wouldn’t place to much trust in your link from the Wind Organisation.
                    They claim that in 2015 there was already 690 MW installed and lots planned
                    Even in 2019 Transpower can only count an extant 658 MW

                    • solkta …
                      10 March 2019 at 9:09 pm

                      Hey fucktard, you do know that the Greens support the use of 1080 eh?

                    • Robert Guyton …
                      10 March 2019 at 9:21 pm

                      “I have never seen any evidence that GM is safe”
                      I’ve read claims/evidence that it is, and claims/evidence that it isn’t.
                      What’s your point, Alwyn?

                    • alwyn …
                      10 March 2019 at 9:31 pm

                      Support 1080?
                      Well no, their attitude seems to be akin to opinions from the God Shiva.
                      On the one hand this, on the other that. On the third hand something else and on the fourth something different again.
                      I read the party policy from the last election and their attitude is impossible to decipher.

                      “The Green Party Environment policy aims to minimise the use of all persistent, environmentally damaging, or nonsustainably produced poisons, especially when using aerial distribution, and we strongly support research and promotion of other pest control methods. 1080 poison is widely used to control pest species as it degrades relatively rapidly and is not bioaccumulative. Nonetheless it is acutely toxic to a number of non-target animals including dogs and native wildlife, is considered inhumane by many, and there may be as yet undiscovered long-term toxicological effects arising from its widespread use.”

                      What on earth is that really saying?
                      https://www.greens.org.nz/sites/default/files/conservation_20170621_0.pdf

                    • Robert Guyton …
                      10 March 2019 at 9:38 pm

                      What can’t you understand in that, Alwyn?
                      It’s clear to me.

    • Incognito 2.5
      10 March 2019 at 11:34 am

      The Greens dogmatic rejection of nuclear energy begs the question, do they really believe in climate change?

      How’s that for an excerpt on the one of the landing pages of Stuff?

      It is obviously written by another ‘friend’ of the Greens who is almightily concerned about their credentials and whether they have lost their ‘faith’ in Climate Change and the environment. Since the green-Greens appeared on the firmament, coming from seemingly nowhere, the not-so-green-Greens should have embarked on a soul-searching quest to justify their existence (in Parliament). Or so the narrative from the Right goes. The only answer so far seems to lower the election threshold as an act of self-preservation. Or so the narrative on the Right goes, completely ignoring that this was a recommendation made by the Electoral Commission in its final report on 29 October 2012.

      It isn’t Dirty Politics and I’d call it Disingenuous Politics. I can’t wait till Simon Bridges and Vernon Tava come out in support of nuclear energy as a core election policy of National to combat CC. Tiwai Point, Simon and Vernon, the infrastructure and location are ideal. Alternatively, Taranaki, to offset the billions lost by banning oil exploration off the coast. I’m sure the locals will support you in every way they can.

      • RedLogix 2.5.1
        10 March 2019 at 11:57 am

        My reading is the global Greens became stuck in an anti-US, anti-warship, anti-weapons mindset that while commendable on it’s own terms; has closed them off from promoting new generations of nuclear power systems that would have been very useful in ramping down coal much sooner.

        • Incognito 2.5.1.1
          10 March 2019 at 12:24 pm

          True, but the NZ Greens are not quite like the global ones in that they have enjoyed a nation that (still?) is largely aligned with their anti-nuclear stance. In Europe, for example, nuclear power serviced a significant part of energy needs (and served a few other purposes as well).

          My somewhat limited understanding is that there are at least three major issues they and others object too: 1) waste; 2) health & safety; 3) weapons-grade by-products. The last issue may be a red herring if you were to believe the latest Mission Impossible instalment (Fallout).

        • David Mac 2.5.1.2
          10 March 2019 at 1:49 pm

          The tourist tour through the Forsmark reactor on the Baltic in Sweden, I studied a large cut away model and said to the guide. “It appears the reaction heats water.” The guide said “Yes, that is correct.” I was anticipating a huge complex process that I wouldn’t have a hope of wrapping my brain around. The reaction makes heat, they make steam, run the steam through turbines, just like at Wairakei. Simple as.

          Ancient safe process with a hot potato fuel.

          • RedLogix 2.5.1.2.1
            10 March 2019 at 2:14 pm

            The process is conceptually simple; but as with all things engineering the devil is in the details.

            The ‘core’ problems with Pressurised Water Reactors are:

            1. These rods are essential to the operation of the reactor, slowing down neutrons in order to increase the chance they will participate in the chain reaction. The reactor is actively controlled at all times by how much these rods are inserted into the core. In order to stop the reaction these rods have to be actively and fully inserted into the reactor; if anything prevents this you have lost control.

            2. Even when the moderating rods are inserted to stop the chain reaction, there remains a residual generation of ‘decay heat’ (initially around 6% of the rated power of the reactor) that will take at least 3 days to drop to a level that no longer requires active cooling. This is still more than enough ‘hot potato’ to melt the core if cooling is lost.

            3. The other clue is in the word ‘pressurised’. If the cooling water circuit loses pressure the water turns instantly from water to steam, and stops cooling the reactor. Also the huge pumps that do the circulating also stop working.

            4. The steam reacts with the zirconium cladding that is used to encapsulate and protect the fuel rods, to produce hydrogen gas. Either this causes a rapid rise of internal pressure that will rupture the containment dome (as happened at Fukushima) and/or it will be released and present a massive explosion hazard.

            5. And even if nothing goes wrong, the sheer intensity of the neutron flux just buggers up pretty much all the materials exposed to it over time.

            Again still grossly simplified from memory. It’s a tribute to how good modern engineering is that these things are as safe as they are; but there is no question they are fundamentally risky things, especially as Andre points out, at the scale of a 3000MW power plant.

            • David Mac 2.5.1.2.1.1
              10 March 2019 at 2:30 pm

              Ha, oh yes, there is a whole lot going on, this huge plant was doing much more than housing a fancy electric jug…. but….it’s the fancy heating of water hey.

              • RedLogix …
                10 March 2019 at 2:32 pm

                It’s when the kettle runs out of water and the element burns through the bottom that you have a problem.

                • David Mac …
                  10 March 2019 at 2:39 pm

                  The 8 Inch Island incident.

                  • RedLogix …
                    10 March 2019 at 2:53 pm

                    I assume you mean the Three Mile Island event. That incident had some interesting engineering outcomes. The root of the problem was a valve that should have been closed but was not.

                    In those days it was common for control systems to have no status feedback from actuated valves. In other words the control system would command a valve to open or close, and the physical state of the valve was assumed to the same.

                    One of the pressure release valves had stuck open even though the control system had commanded it closed and all the operators thought it was closed.

                    https://blog.thinkreliability.com/root-cause-analysis-case-study-three-mile-island

                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

                    The wiki page makes for compelling reading, and the whole incident now a classic case study. Crucially the problem was not correctly diagnosed until a fresh shift came in who did not have the mindset of the first shift of operators. By this time major damage had occurred.

                    As someone who has spent much of my working life in control rooms just reading this gives me the chills. It all happened so very easily; and I can well imagine the feelings of the guy who did spot the problem and saved the day.

                    The other big outcome of this event was that across all industries it became almost standard practice to have physical sensors on all valves to independently confirm the open/close state of the valve.

                    • alwyn …
                      10 March 2019 at 3:45 pm

                      I rather liked the story about the final “safety” feature for the first man-made nuclear reactor built in a squash court at the University of Chicago in December 1942.
                      One person there had a bucket of cadmium nitride solution, which is a neutron absorber He was to throw it over the pile in an emergency if the standard cadmium rods inserted in the pile didn’t stop the chain reaction.
                      Apparently you can see him standing on top of the pile in photographs of the occasion.
                      I’m glad I wasn’t on the streets of Chicago that day, even if one wouldn’t have known what was going on.

                    • RedLogix …
                      10 March 2019 at 4:26 pm

                      Yikes … that really was astonishingly ‘agricultural’ by modern standards.

                    • alwyn …
                      10 March 2019 at 7:03 pm

                      @Joe90
                      I knew about the first one but I had never heard of the Japanese accident. I’m not really sure I wanted to after having read about it.

                      Here is a painting of the pile going critical. The people with the buckets are on a platform behind the pile from which they were meant to jump onto its top and dump the solution. It looks as if there were 3 rather than the one I remembered hearing about.
                      The details of my story may be a bit sketchy, although the general thrust of it appears to be accurate.

                      https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/anniversary-first-controlled-nuclear-chain-reaction

                      I thought it was Cadmium Nitride. While looking for this photo I found references to Cadmium Nitride, Cadmium Nitrate, Cadmium Sulphate and plain Cadmium solution. God knows what it really was.

                    • marty mars …
                      10 March 2019 at 7:28 pm

                      @ alwyn – good stuff and this sounds accurate too.

                      “One of the officers at the explosion said, ‘My god. Those longhairs have let it get away from them.’”

                    • alwyn …
                      10 March 2019 at 8:40 pm

                      @Marty.
                      I hadn’t heard that one. I assume that when you say “the explosion” you mean the Trinity test of the bomb. I have a friend who saw a nuclear test. From what he says I am not surprised by the reaction, particularly since it was the very first and there had been nothing like it before.

                      There is a similar quote, supposedly by General Groves to a group at Los Alamos when it was operating that
                      “At a meeting of the military personnel there, Groves reported, “At great expense we have gathered on this mesa the largest collection of crackpots ever seen.”.

                    • marty mars …
                      10 March 2019 at 8:55 pm

                      @ alwyn – it was the last sentence of the article you linked to. A good read indeed.

                    • alwyn …
                      10 March 2019 at 11:58 pm

                      @marty.
                      So it is. I actually just tried to google something that had a clear picture of the painting that showed the people around the pile when it first went critical. Of the ones I found this was simply the first that had a clear reproduction of the picture so I chose it. I wasn’t really looking for, or at, the rest of the article.
                      I have just read it right through for the first time.
                      I’m glad you pointed out the quote. It is a good read isn’t it?

                    • David Mac …
                      11 March 2019 at 5:16 pm

                      Yes, dammit, I was trying to be Mr Witty Guy and got the numbers wrong. Yes, The Three Inch Island Incident.

                      It’s unfortunate the incident you had a record of appears to have been swept under the carpet. There appears to be much to be learned when it does go all pear-shaped. Real life calamities to study rather than equations.

                      The Forsmark plant in Sweden, the guide said ‘Every person could drop dead and the plant would quietly go into idle mode all by itself’. The most fascinating part was the bus trip down a spiraling tunnel cut from solid granite to where they kept the hot bits, deep inside a massive subterranean lump of granite. It’s minimal fractures had a lot to do with why they chose the site.

                      Taking out the garbage is such a mission with that method of generation.

    • Pat 2.6
      10 March 2019 at 1:06 pm

      Indeed it is rubbish.

      “Kevin Anderson, a senior research fellow at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said claims that nuclear power was the only way for Britain to meet demanding greenhouse gas targets were fundamentally wrong. He said: “That argument is way too simplistic. We can easily deal with climate change without nuclear power.”

      https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2006/jan/17/nuclearindustry.energy

      “Kevin also discusses various options, like nuclear; showing that even though nuclear would be a very low carbon solution, we would need – if we want nuclear to provide a significant fraction of our future energy needs – to be building many more reactors than we currently are. Kevin’s talk also illustrates – I think – why many are very reluctant to accept the basic situation. Given our current understanding, it seems as though it will be very difficult – if not impossible – to address this without making significant changes to our lifestyles and standards of living”

      https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/10/11/kevin-anderson-the-ostrich-or-the-phoenix/

      Nuclear provides a fraction of our energy requirements and we quite simply cannot build enough nuclear generation to replace existing even if we ignore any other arguments about its suitability.

      • RedLogix 2.6.1
        10 March 2019 at 2:31 pm

        There is no question that building enough PWR power plants of the current behemoth design was never going to be possible. That was always obvious and as I’ve made it clear above, I’m totally opposed to this kind of design.

        Especially in a country like NZ with it’s intrinsically high geo-technical hazards, tsunami, flood, earthquake and volcano. As the Japanese discovered to their terrible cost.

        But there are some good alternate designs (and I’m not a nuclear engineer so I’m not going to tout one over the other) that would be a lot more appropriate to NZ’s environment and safer than PWR’s:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor

        Having said that, I still think an intelligent mix of renewables, hydro, geothermal and storage would easily get our electricity to 100% carbon free if we put some political will to the matter.

        • Pat 2.6.1.1
          10 March 2019 at 2:41 pm

          Renewable energy not the issue in NZ as it is the the bulk of the rest of the world…the real question is why everyone promotes the most difficult and unrealistic solutions when the most obvious and easiest remains untested?

    • NZJester 2.7
      10 March 2019 at 7:46 pm

      If he will allow us to store all the waste produced and set up the reactors next to him and the rest of his mates that are advocating for this we will consider it.
      But they will be all NIMBYs and demand that the reactors and waste stay as far away from them as possible as they know how dangerous the reactors and waste storage is, especially is a country prone to earthquakes.

    • James 3.1
      10 March 2019 at 9:46 am

      In any other government he would be sacked or at least stood down – but whinny won’t allow that.

      Most transparent government ever huh? Unless it means Shane Jones answering questions honestly.

      • Skunk Weed 3.1.1
        10 March 2019 at 11:27 am

        James is a TROLL who pretends not to be a TROLL.

        Any one else of the same opinion ?

        He is an irritating little weasel IMHO ?

      • millsy 3.1.2
        10 March 2019 at 12:31 pm

        If NZF went with your lot, you can bet anything that you would be defending him,

        • Shadrach 3.1.2.1
          10 March 2019 at 12:39 pm

          Peters was never going to go with ‘James’ lot’. That’s what makes the concessions Labour made to NZF such a joke. Labour were royally screwed, and ultimately the taxpayer with them.

        • James 3.1.2.2
          10 March 2019 at 2:54 pm

          I’m happy we didn’t get him. I’ve been consistent with that.

      • Ad 3.1.3
        10 March 2019 at 2:57 pm

        If Shane Jones can’t get to be leader of a small party having been gifted $3 billion to vote-purchase for three years from every tiny town he rolls through, then he really doesn’t deserve to be in either Parliament or business full stop.

        I more and more agree with National that the job-yield-per-dollar of this fund is an egregious rort of my taxes.

        Not all the projects are bad, but all the projects on average are not delivering anywhere near enough for this country.

    • David Mac 3.2
      10 March 2019 at 2:19 pm

      Yeah, he’s a man with a billion dollars in his pocket and 125,000 relatives.

      What a great idea for Opononi. Hopefully such an enterprise would be part of an eventual Ngapuhi settlement. Maori is what makes NZ unique, we should be celebrating our heritage. Jones should be involved in the establishment of such a venture because of his conflicted interest, he has emotional skin in the game.

      I think Robertson was wise to indicate ‘I’m watching the money!’

      Far North Holdings are the commercial arm of the local council. If they run a transparent tender process independent of Jones and Bros and there is no $ angle for Jones, directorships etc, I think he should be involved. Of course he has a conflict of interest, unlike shares or property, we can’t sell our ancestors.

  4. te reo putake 4
    10 March 2019 at 9:38 am

    A first for me today: a spam email in te reo. Though apparently there’s no translation for ‘risk free’, which may be a subtle commentary on te Tiriti.

    E aroha ana a te reo putake

    Kua tukinohia te ipurangi e nga kaitoro me nga kainoro o te hunga e hiahia ana ki te whara. I te mea ko tetahi o Vanoosten, ko taua wa kaore tatou e tuku i te kino ki te patu i te kaha o te pakihi i roto i te pakihi pono, tena koa koa kia 100% Risk-free.

    […..]

    Ko koe I runga i te pono,
    Dr.Richard Graves.
    cb*****@****.com

  5. Ankerrawshark 5
    10 March 2019 at 10:00 am

    Yesterday James called OWT out on some homophobiac comments. I hadn’t read once were Tim’s comments because it was long and I tend to scroll past long comments.

    I went back very late last night and read them. I agree with James they are homophobic imho. Please don’t do this stuff (request to those that do).

    • Skunk Weed 5.1
      10 March 2019 at 11:44 am

      Maybe James is homosexual or bisexual ?

      • Incognito 5.1.1
        10 March 2019 at 12:25 pm

        Maybe you shouldn’t speculate on this, OK?

      • Ankerrawshark 5.1.2
        10 March 2019 at 1:05 pm

        Skunk weed whether James is gay or not is completely irrelevant

      • KJT 5.1.3
        10 March 2019 at 1:49 pm

        Doubt it. Almost all the gay people I know are caring and empathetic.

        • bwaghorn 5.1.3.1
          10 March 2019 at 6:32 pm

          You need to get out more . I’ve got card carrying nat who appears to hate those below him gay surgeon as a Facebook friend who’s favorite thing is to show off his and his wealth.

      • James 5.1.4
        10 March 2019 at 2:57 pm

        And what would that have to do with anything.

        Speculation on someone being gay or bisexual is none of your business. What makes you think this is ok?

        Why do we allow talk like this (appreciate the mods may not have seen this as yet)

        Thanks to others comments below / above

        • KJT 5.1.4.1
          11 March 2019 at 2:03 pm

          Do alien reptiles have sex?

          Yes. I agree. What consenting adults do in private is entirely their own business.

          But sorry, couldn’t resist the humour.

      • Stuart Munro. 5.1.5
        11 March 2019 at 12:43 am

        I think righties mostly reproduce asexually by budding, a bit like convolvulus. Some can regrow from severed tentacles.

    • OnceWasTim 5.2
      10 March 2019 at 10:41 pm

      Quite obviously, I should have ended the whole comment with a /sarc – as if it wasn’t already bleeding bloody obvious.

      And of course we could get into discussions about misogyny in the gay (male) community, or how WITHIN the gay community various terms such as faggot, queen and nancy boy etc are used (in jest or solidarity or otherwise) when referring to one another.
      I’m offended you are offended (not), but you’re making assumptions about my disposition.
      It’s all become a little precious but the point being I think many of us know what Jame’s motivations are.
      I do however appreciate that political correctness evolves over time.
      I’ve already reclaimed gay, queen, cunt and various other words (including ‘straight’ and ‘fluid’).

      Quite telling that you tend to just scroll past long comments.
      I’ll try to use bullet points in future and just give you the facts man

  6. Skunk Weed 6
    10 March 2019 at 11:16 am

    Another Meth Murder in South Auckland, the Meth Capital of NZ ?

    Joke of the Day

    Question – What does a Meth Addict become when he dies ?

    Answer – Methylated Spirits.

    When are Government and the NZ Police going to tidy up the Illicit Drug Trade in NZ it has flourished ever since Mr Asia Terry Clarke made a name for himself here and in Australia. Drugs and Gangs here in NZ are not taken seriously by the Government and NZ Police IMHO.

    • millsy 6.1
      10 March 2019 at 11:33 am

      It doesn’t help that successive government have run down addiction treatment services over the past 30 years or so (not to mention mental health services).

      It is at the point now that people bascially have to go to prison to get the help they need (as is the case for someone I personally know).

    • WeTheBleeple 6.2
      10 March 2019 at 12:42 pm

      My favorite P joke is from Mike King. Paraphrased:

      What’s the best thing about meth?

      Only three sleeps till Christmas.

    • joe90 6.3
      10 March 2019 at 1:04 pm

      South Auckland, the Meth Capital of NZ ?

      I’ve always thought the Meth Capital of NZ was up the road a bit?

  7. greywarshark 7
    10 March 2019 at 11:51 am

    How to get a free press? Let the USA to pay for it and help put bias towards the possibly friendly Middle Americans.

    https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018685516/journalism-courtesy-of-foreign-taxpayers

  8. greywarshark 8
    10 March 2019 at 11:58 am

    Cannabis – can we keep the profits in NZ? Do we dare give Maori the option of growing it? The gangs would get involved. Could they conquer their law-breaking habit? Things that have occurred to me. Here is something about it at the present that i haven’t listened to yet.

    https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/insight/audio/2018685566/growing-demand-nz-s-budding-cannabis-businesses

  9. millsy 9
    10 March 2019 at 12:41 pm

    Regarding the nuclear power debate up-thread — building such a power plant in NZ would be prohibitively expensive and would probably double power bills across the board.

    It probably wouldn’t get past the consent process anyway.

    And that is not mentioning the 1981-style unrest and divisions that it would cause.

    • dv 9.1
      10 March 2019 at 1:17 pm

      What happened to the trial tidal generation schemes proposed in 2009?

      Probably simpler and safer than nuclear.

      http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/397106/Trial-approved-for-Strait-tidal-power

      Cook Strait tides had the potential to generate 7000 megawatts of electricity – almost equal to New Zealand’s annual production

      Ha found it
      https://www.nzherald.co.nz/sustainable-business/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503533&objectid=11148072

      If it wasn’t electricity market uncertainty or lack of political will that killed them off, unco-operative power companies, councils and local communities get the blame.

      Other unknowns, Hopkins says, are the long-term impact of the Government’s partial privatisation of generators Mighty River Power, Meridian Energy and Genesis Energy, and the possibility that a change of government could see Labour and the Greens creating a single wholesale electricity buying body.

      Adding insult to injury is the relatively sudden diversion of investment from renewables into the likes of shale oil and gas made available by fracking, which has turned the US into a net energy exporter. “World carbon markets and world energy markets have been turned on their heads by fracking,” says Hopkins, who spent more than three years getting resource consent for the Kaipara project.

  10. Incognito 10
    10 March 2019 at 1:56 pm

    McKinsey was mentioned in the post by Advantage and last night I happened to come across this very long but also very good and insightful piece on McKinsey.

    https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/02/mckinsey-company-capitals-willing-executioners

  11. adam 11
    10 March 2019 at 1:57 pm

    For the Christians amongst us.

  12. greywarshark 12
    10 March 2019 at 4:21 pm

    This is the way of the world – the present one, not future. In California – very rich state of the USA.

    https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/384375/robot-video-link-death-diagnosis-we-fell-short-hospital

    Ernest Quintana, 78, was at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Fremont when a doctor – appearing on the robot’s screen – informed him that he would die within a few days. Mr Quintana died the next day.

    A family friend wrote on social media that it was “not the way to show value and compassion to a patient”.

    The hospital said it “regrets falling short” of the family’s expectations.

    That answer is what a corporate that makes a business out of processing people would say in a PR release. The business is a hospital but all business management is generic, the business grads are apparently told or led to believe. I wonder if they class sentient beings as different from curtain-rails of the same length.

    • McFlock 12.1
      10 March 2019 at 4:44 pm

      The flipside to that is you have dr consultations over the video link as things go downhill, then the doctor walks in the room and you know you’re done for. Like soldiers’ families getting telegrams. So then the nurses have to prepare you for the shock of seeing the doctor. But then the nurses get replaced by robots.

      We’re going to need an expanded chaplains’ / social worker service in hospitals just so patients don’t have a heart attack if they see another human.

  13. greywarshark 13
    10 March 2019 at 4:37 pm

    Shane Jones being got at. The Opposition doing such a good job of holding the government to account so they can’t spend any money just like National. Seymour being righteous and some other coffee stirrer, Paul Goldsmith.

    Shane doing his job for the regions. But the Nats interest is for the money to be spent in their electorates, or in Auckland or both.
    https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/384367/shane-jones-denies-conflict-of-interest-in-funding-decision

  14. lprent 14
    10 March 2019 at 4:44 pm

    Test comment. The TS raid is displaying as “auto-read-only” in a startup message.

    Nope it is ok. It was updating on a different RAID array (replaced a 56yo drive that was starting to show SMART errors) . The notification about the recovery happened before it started up the TS array.

  15. A 15
    10 March 2019 at 6:09 pm

    Check out Walk The World (Digital Finance Analytics) Yt channel if you are interested in what is really happening in the property market. Best avoid msm for this topic in particular.

    Here Martin North answers the question for Australia, “Just how much trouble are we in”?

    He believes the most likely scenario is 20-30% falls in Sydney/Melbourne (assuming no international crisis) over the next two years.

  16. Muttonbird 16
    10 March 2019 at 7:42 pm

    Fascinating. John Podesta says that GE 2020 is at risk from foreign interference. I can definitely see people the National Party associates with not shy of going down this road.

    We need to be really watchful.

    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/03/2020-new-zealand-election-a-juicy-target-for-major-hack-john-podesta.html

    • Sam 16.1
      10 March 2019 at 7:50 pm

      America spends more on defence than literally everyone else so for other nations projecting they just can’t project enough force to get what they want so everyone is resorting to soft power and influence. Our side would do well to develope there own soft power tools and responses.

  17. Fireblade 17
    10 March 2019 at 7:57 pm

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is on 60 Minutes tonight. There is also a story about turning plants into fuel. Prime TV at 9.30pm.

  18. BM 18
    10 March 2019 at 8:31 pm

    I reckon Labour would be quite happy if the Greens don’t make 5% in 2020.
    There’s a reason NZ First has always been Labours first choice

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/111168958/capital-gains-tax-should-be-just-the-start-says-green-coleader-marama-davidson

    • Muttonbird 18.1
      10 March 2019 at 8:38 pm

      That’s obviously not true. National might like to indulge in knifing their friends when it suits but I think Labour is a lot more supportive of friendly voices.

      • BM 18.1.1
        10 March 2019 at 8:47 pm

        Helen Clark, Greens last cab off the rank.
        Greens making up the numbers in this current government.

        I’m not really seeing the love, not that I blame Labour, The Greens are such delusional dorks, constantly airing their fuckwittery and weirdness.

        • Robert Guyton 18.1.1.1
          10 March 2019 at 9:19 pm

          It must really grind your corn to see The Greens in Government, BM!
          They’re so…in there!

        • Stuart Munro. 18.1.1.2
          10 March 2019 at 10:23 pm

          If you love the shifty reptilians of National, anything even vaguely mammalian is going to seem pretty disturbing – but it’s the future. Evolve or be left behind.

        • Sacha 18.1.1.3
          10 March 2019 at 11:00 pm

          Somehow I doubt they are chasing your vote.

    • solkta 18.2
      10 March 2019 at 8:49 pm

      Jeez you talk through your arse. The Greens and Labour had an MOU through the election. Times have changed since the days of Helen.

  19. Pat 19
    10 March 2019 at 11:29 pm

    Big is better???….

    “In 1990, small and medium-sized farms accounted for nearly half of all agricultural production in the US. Now it is less than a quarter.

    As the medium-sized family farms retreated, the businesses they helped support disappeared. Local seed and equipment suppliers shut up shop because corporations went straight to wholesalers or manufacturers. Demand for local vets collapsed. As those businesses packed up and left, communities shrank. Shops, restaurants and doctors’ surgeries closed. People found they had to drive for an hour or more for medical treatment. Towns and counties began to share ambulances.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/american-food-giants-swallow-the-family-farms-iowa

    And its not just farming, corporatisation is occurring in every sector…the inevitable result of unrestrained capitalism.

    • WeTheBleeple 19.1
      13 March 2019 at 7:25 pm

      They’ve done exactly the same in NZ only it happens slow so the impact is not readily apparent till you look around. All the abandoned rail stations, schools closed, hell, half the village I grew up in has just gone, bulldozed and not replaced. The clothes factory went and the mechanics and the grocers…

      But the dairy factory and meat works grew.

  20. Jenny - How to get there? 20
    11 March 2019 at 7:17 am

    The new naked imperialism

    “We will build a wall and the Mexicans will pay for it” Donald

    We will all pay for it.

    Trump invokes new demand for extracting billions of dollars from U.S. allies.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-invokes-new-de

    Read, ….from U.S. colonies

    Thank God we haven’t got any here.

  21. Gabby 21
    11 March 2019 at 10:16 am

    Subscriber drive?

  22. Eco Maori 22
    12 March 2019 at 8:29 am

    Kia The AM Show
    Orange sky is a cool charity that helps homeless people wash their clothes and give homeless people a shower Ka pai.
    You know what came over him that football fan who hit a player he was sucking on a bottle of ALCOHOL in the stands ((that’s what came over him))?

    I Back GREEN PEACE 100 % you can not burn carbon and try a talk about our future and talk about wellbeing of our future. It’s much better to have a clean environment than a shit one and a big pile of cash you can not breath in cash.
    There is a huge GREEN energy revolution that our superfund could invest in the climate change denier say holy smoke we have to invest 3 % of the Papatuanukue gross revenue to fight climate change thats nothing.
    The doctor strikes are a national party attack on our government peas in a pod I say .
    I say the negative talk about our relationship with China is payed for from someone who wants to damage our relationship with China.
    Its a fine balanceing act one has to balance our trade as well we have a lot in common with China. Ka kite ano

  23. Eco Maori 23
    12 March 2019 at 10:59 am

    Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.

  24. Eco Maori 24
    12 March 2019 at 11:32 am

    Climate change is a real threat to the 99.9 % of peoples haveing a happy healthy life .
    Eco Maori Backs The New Green Deal and School Students Striking for OUR Climate 100% Kia kaha

    Climate change will make a walk in the woods a much rarer pleasure
    CNN)If you like to take a walk in the woods in the United States or you prefer to decorate a Douglas fir at Christmas, you should know that climate change is making both of those activities a lot harder.
    Looking at two ecologically and economically important species — the Douglas fir and the Ponderosa pine — scientists found that fires and drought exacerbated by climate change make new growth difficult, especially in low-elevation forests, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
    The 2000 Canyon Ferry Complex Fire site in the Helena National Forest, Montana, 17 years later.
    Some forests in four regions in California, Colorado, the Northern Rockies and the southwestern part of the United States have crossed “a critical climate threshold for postfire tree generation,” the study says.

    Climate conditions over the past 20 years have accelerated changes that would have otherwise taken decades or even centuries to play out across broad regions of the country. This is leading to the abrupt decline of trees and making these lands increasingly unsuitable for tree regeneration.
    Climate change is endangering our forests now, not just in some distant future.
    “Maybe in areas where there are really abundant seed sources, there could be some trees, but it is becoming really hard to get these trees back due to climate change,” said study co-author Kim Davis, a postdoctoral research associate in the W.A. Franke College of Forestry & Conservation at the University of Montana.

    Global climate targets will be missed as deforestation rises, study says
    The scientists figured this out by examining tree rings to determine when nearly 3,000 trees were established in these regions, which saw 33 wildfires between 1988 and 2015.
    Seedlings and juvenile trees are vulnerable to climate change. “Seedlings are really sensitive,” Davis said.
    Adult trees have better survival mechanisms to deal with poor climate conditions, but intense wildfires are wiping out these Ponderosa pines and Douglas firs. The trees have thick bark that make them typically good at surviving surface level fires, but they can’t survive the more intense fires that move through the canopy, like this region has seen. Had there not been such intense fires, these trees may have lived for centuries.

    On Capitol Hill, new calls for rapid action on climate change
    The problem probably won’t get any better, as climate change is making intense wildfires much more common, studies show. Western foresters say there used to be a fire season, but devastating and costly fires have become a reality all year long. In 2018, fires cost California more than $9.05 billion, according to the state insurance commissioner, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire season in state history.
    Ka kite ano Links below.

    https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/11/health/climate-change-hurts-forests-scn/index.html

  25. Eco Maori 25
    12 March 2019 at 12:27 pm

    Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.

  26. Eco Maori 26
    12 March 2019 at 1:02 pm

    Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.

    Eco Maori has one M8 I would like to catch up with Red

  27. Eco Maori 27
    12 March 2019 at 6:24 pm

    Kia ora Newshub This is what happens when a shonky government national puts up doctors visits charges a virus outbreak. I don’t think the anti vaxers had much to do with the mesal virus outbreak.
    Wow the sniffer dogs are out there finding a fart and trying to turn it into the shits national have the money to pay for the sniffers. Kia kaha to our Coalition Government.
    There you go Paddy PEE is the biggest problem drug in New Zealand.
    Of course a company is never going to say they have done wrong and Forestry companies are the same protect themselves. They should just settle and pay the bills for the clean up mess in Tolaga Bay I like swimming in Tangaroa there they would rather waste money and time in COURT.
    Wow another Boeing air craft crash condolences to the people who lost there love you know Eco Maori doesn’t fly know more German wasp nest did you know that Bees and ants ansestor are wasp it good this nest has been found and destroyed . Ka kite ano

  28. Eco Maori 28
    12 March 2019 at 6:45 pm

    Kia ora Te ao Maori News Those forestry companies don’t realise the damage that is caused by there slash left over from harvesting the trees being washed down te awa into Tangaroa it ruins the beaches and fishing kina paua ect they should just pay the bills for the clean up.
    simon that’s what happens when you turn on your closest m8s they bit you on the ass Ana to kai .
    I seen that story on Radio NZ website that man driving a ute abusing our Wahine see eco Maori is not pissing in the wind when I write about racial racist discrimination in NZ that guy is like the ones hounding me I smelt something going down today Kia Kaha Mana Wahine you handled that fool very well. Paina Kia kaha yes protest for the loss of your land and it being developed before the issues is settled in tamiki makaru and make your tipuna proud of yous Ka kite ano

  29. Eco Maori 29
    12 March 2019 at 6:54 pm

    Te ao Maori News I agree that NZ people should be educated about NZ wars so they can see the reason we are so downtrodden and broke but not broken. Kia kaha Ka kite ano P.S they cannot go 2 days with out playing with their flute lol

  31. Eco Maori 31
    13 March 2019 at 7:30 am

    Kia ora The AM Show The wave scooter are onto it they let lime scooter test the water and now have speed limits on them in certain areas and have learnt lessons with no cost to them is the speed set at 25 km,s and 15 kms .
    That doesn’t sound good for Boeing Eco nolonger flys 2 reason why They should have invested in green energy hybrid planes . Big businesses lead the pollies buy the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
    Thats how the business world works heaps of conflict of interest chemicals company’s all the multi ational companies make up their own rules that’s why the Papatuanukue is in such a big mess look at brexit may is going to FAIL Miserably its only in the best interests of the multi ational business to leave Europe the 99.9% get a kick in the ASS from leaving Europe.
    I don’t think that our tourism will suffer in Aotearoa. judy is that it light bulb that’s a dumb attack on our government it would only cost $100 bucks to kit out a house with led bulbs why did you not ban incandescent light bulbs when you were in Government??????????????????.
    I no my grandmother made sure I was vaccinated we had Indian doctors as friends.
    Dick their you go Maori health reviews are need so that the system can changes our Mokopunas needed there Kau Matua to live longer so they can guide them up there ladders of life.
    simon got caught with his pants down lol.
    judys m8 whale oil has been held accountable for his trashing the privacy rights??????? of someone who he disagree with Ana to kai I looked at his site when I first started Eco Maori Post on Thestandard I just about lost my kai NOT for I.
    ((Brexit is a turd may is trying to sell it to the people as being gold)) the old saying KEEP Selling a lies long enough and MOST PEOPLE BELIEVES IT IS THE TRUTH Stay in Europe PEOPLE ITS Best for the MANY. Ka kite ano

  32. Eco Maori 32
    13 March 2019 at 7:40 am

    Get stuffed 20 % of people hog all the money 80 %are struggling so to be fair the 20 %, should pay more tax so that the 80% of people in NZ can have a good life you neoliberals neanderthal you can see logic through your cash mark you fool Ana to kai. If a poor person did that you would say throw them in jail puppets neanderthal Ka kite ano P.S your sandflys m8s number 1 tool intrapment they love setting people up and reel them in and get them to become a ASSET puppet actor’s

  33. Eco Maori 33
    13 March 2019 at 8:19 am

    Kia ora The AM Show mark did someone just teach you about the 80/20 princerpal I learnt that 20 years ago puppet Ana to kai

  34. Eco Maori 34
    13 March 2019 at 10:26 am

    ECO MAORI CAN SEE The OIL Barrons$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ have a huge hold on the media in New Zealand TWO day,s till the STUDENT STRIKE FOR CLIMATE
    and no online media platforms have the story on there front PAGE so much for (((((newzealand being the least CORRUPT CONTRY in the world YEA RIGHT)))))).
    Eco Maori will keep CHAMPIONING this Good cause of saving MY Mokopunas Futures
    NSW teacher loses shifts after urging students to join climate strike
    Greens’ Bega candidate Will Douglas being investigated by education department after complaint about his comments
    A relief teacher at a New South Wales high school, who is also a Greens candidate, is being investigated by the Department of Education over remarks made at a candidates’ forum about the upcoming student climate strike.
    Will Douglas, who has worked casually at Moruya high school on the state’s south coast since 2006, has been told he will not be offered any more shifts at the school while the investigation takes place.
    It comes as the principal of a Victorian Catholic school warned students that striking was an “unapproved” absence that could lead to a zero if they missed any official tests on the day.
    Inspired by Swedish student Greta Thunberg, the movement calls on students to partially strike from school to protest government inaction on fighting climate change. More than 50 rallies, in Australian capital cities and regional towns, are planned for 15 March.

    Greta Thunberg, schoolgirl climate change warrior: ‘Some people can let things go. I can’t’
    Read more

    Douglas, who is contesting the seat of Bega in the upcoming state election, appeared at a lunchtime candidates’ forum organised by Youth Action at the Moruya golf club last Thursday, alongside local Liberal MP Andrew Constance and Labor candidate Leanne Atkinson.
    Douglas said he attended the forum with the knowledge of his superiors at the school.
    During the forum, which was attended by students from a range of high schools, Douglas said “please don’t forget March 15 the climate strike … if there’s something happening at your school will you please get online and register because there’s a whole community out there wanting to support you guys, young people, in that strike”.

    The remarks were published in News Corp’s Daily Telegraph on Monday, in an article that also revealed a complaint had been made to the department and that an investigation was under way.
    Douglas told Guardian Australia he had no knowledge of any investigation until contacted by the newspaper and he did not know who had made the complaint.
    He said the principal told him this week he would not be working any more shifts at the school until the investigation was complete.
    “I was speaking on my own time in my lunch break as a Greens candidate at a youth forum,” he said. “Now I don’t have any work. It shouldn’t be this hard to speak up for climate action.”
    Douglas said Moruya high was a wonderful school, and that he had been treated with nothing but respect by the principal. However he believed the complaint itself was “politically motivated”.
    A spokeswoman for the department said they were making inquiries into the matter but that it would be inappropriate to comment on the employment status of an individual teacher.
    “While the department understands students may be passionate about a range of issues, all students who are enrolled at school are expected to attend
    Ka kite ano links below.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/13/nsw-teacher-loses-shifts-after-urging-students-to-join-climate-strike

  35. Eco Maori 35
    13 March 2019 at 12:36 pm

    Some Eco Maori Musci for the minute .
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgVVG5EknuI
    Whanau the are playing heaps games to day they even got my landlord to sell the flat I live in in 3 weeks I will be living in a car

  36. Eco Maori 36
    13 March 2019 at 1:37 pm

    Some Eco Maori Music for the minute
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94dBVPpymac
    Whanau These rental agents and Real Estatate agents under estamated Eco Maori O and the sandflys yesterday they had a team of actor people looking to by YEA RIGHT I show them my flat sweet no hasles one lady said I could keep the flat yesterday ka pai I thought today O no I did not say that she has a close relashionship to the owner of the flat . Yesterday they knocked on the door of the other flat it was locked.?????????????????.
    Today they only took photos of my flat and not next door .
    So Eco Maori TX them about that fact of no photos nextdoor SNAPPED she lied and said they took photos yesterday I pointed that FACT OUT that nextdoor was locked and they could not have taken photos scilence is what I got after I told them of that fact.
    Ka kite ano P.S I will let you know who the rental agints and real eastate is later whanau ANA TO KAI

  37. Eco Maori 37
    13 March 2019 at 1:57 pm

    Some Eco Maori Music for the minute

    Ma te wa Kiore

  38. Eco Maori 38
    13 March 2019 at 2:05 pm

    Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.

    The sandflys will have smoke coming out there ASS.s AT THE MINUTE

  39. Eco Maori 39
    13 March 2019 at 2:19 pm

    Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.

    Some more people to get subpoenaed for my Waitangi claimed for suppresion of Eco Maori and breaching my human rights I have bankers farmers lawyers judges sandflys doctors there are many is going to cost them millions ma te wa

  40. Eco Maori 40
    13 March 2019 at 2:56 pm

    Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.

    I was going to visit the Mokopunas and smell something STINK so I changed my mind half way there

  41. Eco Maori 41
    13 March 2019 at 4:02 pm

    Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWoDSGfSu6o
    Whanau about 2 years ago I noticed things going missing in this flat I asked the landlord to put a dead lock in nothing happened so I paid a locksmith to put a deadlock in when I went away I put a peace of paper in the door so as to know if someone had entered the flat when I came back it had moved so I went to the locksmith and got a new lock and put it in myself but to know avail the paper had moved again I came to the conclusion that the sandflys go straight to the locksmith and get a key. I asked the landlord to put lacthes on the windows whanau no nothing . One can tell if some one has jumped through a wooden window as I had figered a way to use a fork and the key to make the lock not open from the outside with a key things still went missing and I noticed that the wooden window frames developed cracks in the paint that is a tell tail sign that someone was climbing in through the window Thats is why I asked the landlord for the safe window latches but no conclusion he is mates with the sandflys
    Ka kite an P.S A wahine noticed her nickers going missing to Eco Maori Has the whole rotoura police force on my ASS. bring it on muppets

  42. Eco Maori 42
    13 March 2019 at 4:07 pm

    Eco Maoris favourite HAKA

  43. Eco Maori 43
    13 March 2019 at 5:08 pm

    Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.

    Don,t worry to much WHANAU Eco Maori Has the MANA and Wairua TO keep the good fight going for many years

  44. Eco Maori 44
    13 March 2019 at 6:33 pm

    Kia ora Newshub Ana to kai pal.
    That’s the safe way to handle the Boeing safety issues.
    That’s a cool auto self driving car I put my post out with Eco Maoris Huawei Phone.
    The elderly staff care shortage is all the previous Government fault I remember when I was young most of the anties were nurses now because of suppression of Maori there are hardly any Maori nurses??????????????.
    Cutting imagration needs to be balanced quite finely.
    Lloyd I had backed Britain staying in the European Union I have a sore face now.
    Yes Mike one must drive with the utmost care I practically taught my self how to drive when I brought my first car at 16 driving from Te tairawhiti to Ahurri I a excellent driver now.
    Ka kite ano

  45. Eco Maori 45
    13 March 2019 at 6:54 pm

    Kia ora Te ao Maori News
    Houseing NZ needs to pick its socks up I feel for the kuia who is wheelchair bound and blind she deserves dignity. My daughter has been robbed 4 times in a housing Corp house in Auckland I thought she would have been given another house but no she is stuck with the house she has.
    I’m waiting to see who gets vaccination first I say that Maori will get a 2 to 3 week wait compared to the European people.????????????????????.
    seenothing it just a pakiha who is trying to float his political toilet sorry Eco Maori will sink it ma te wa.
    Give him a Pukana Shane. I will do that and flip the titi have been doing that quite a bit as of late
    Kia ora thats the way get Asia investors to invest in Maori business to.
    Yes it a big mess that our Maori school children are in at the minute I will be living in a waka soon the European that are forceing this situation on me think its a big joke the landlord turned up ight on 600 pm why to interfair in my post and to rub salt into my wounds He knocked on the door I politely dismissed him as no written notice He is a sandflys puppet Ma te wa puppets. I did not even open the door
    Ka kite ano

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    When Todd Muller resigned as leader of the National Party and allowed for Judith Collins to assume command, you could tell the blue “team” was desperate and in search of past glories. After all, Crusher is towards the end of her political career and from a bygone era where dirty ...
    The Jackal
    2 days ago

  • Coronavirus: the road to vaccine roll-out is always bumpy, as 20th-century pandemics show
    Samantha Vanderslott, University of Oxford If you have been following the media coverage of the new vaccines in development for COVID-19, it will be clear that the stakes are high. Very few vaccine trials in history have attracted so much attention, perhaps since polio in the mid-20th century. A now ...
    SciBlogsBy Guest Author
    2 days ago

  • PREFU: The State of Government Accounts
    ‘The Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update’ (PREFU) tells us something about the future of the Public Sector but it requires careful analysis to assess how it is going. The 2020 PREFU is the most important economic statement during any election campaign. Unfortunately the commentariat tends to treat it briefly ...
    PunditBy Brian Easton
    3 days ago

  • Predatory delay
    Farmers are whining again about being expected to clean up their act: Canterbury farmers want politicians to stop painting them as climate change villains, listen to their needs and allow them more time to boost environmental standards. [...] “The targets are necessary for the environment, but do we ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    3 days ago

  • Flight to nowhere sends the wrong message in climate crisis
    Qantas Airlines’ 7-hour “flight to nowhere”, that sold out in 10 minutes with prices from A$787 to A$3787, seemed like a sick joke to climate advocates. Apart from the waste of fuel and the pointless emissions, passengers would be able to see first-hand, from a plane just like those that ...
    SciBlogsBy Robert McLachlan
    3 days ago

  • Speaker: The cannabis referendum – a doctor’s perspective
    Cannabis is part of our culture: 80% of adults have tried it sometime. Intuition tells us that legalising cannabis will increase use – science suggests that is not likely. Our Dunedin and Christchurch studies show that cannabis use peaks in our 20s. Older people are less frequent users whether it ...
    Public Address
    3 days ago

  • First steps: Jerry DeSilva on the evolution of bipedalism
    Yesterday morning I got up (at the rather early and unaccustomed hour of 3.30am) to listen to a webinar by paleoanthropologist Dr Jeremy DeSilva¹. Titled “First Steps”, his presentation was about the origins of bipedalism in the human lineage. It was a fascinating session & I thought I’d turn my ...
    SciBlogsBy Alison Campbell
    3 days ago

  • True Believers In A False God.
    Down The Rabbit Hole: "Social psychologists have found that when fearful people contemplate potential misfortunes, they tend to feel helpless and pessimistic, but when angry people contemplate the same, they feel a sense of optimism and control. And one simple way to transmute fear into anger is to perceive an evil ...
    Bowalley Road
    3 days ago

  • Majority Rule Requires Majorities That Are Real.
    Fifty Percent Plus One: New Zealand’s genuine-majority-delivering two-party system endured for five elections only (1938, 1943, 1946, 1949, 1951) a period of just 16 years. Very few New Zealanders alive today can boast of participating in an election which delivered a true majority to either Labour or National. Someone who ...
    Bowalley Road
    4 days ago

  • Labour super exploitation
    This is the second in the lecture series by Andy Higginbottom on superexploitation. Here he looks at Marini’s theory of labour super-exploitation and Capital ...
    RedlineBy Admin
    4 days ago

  • Small asteroid to make near-miss of Earth in NZ skies tonight
    Sorry for the late notice on this one, but I only just heard myself, in common with most of the human race. A small asteroid, somewhere between the size of a truck and the size of a house in dimensions, will hurtle past the Earth tonight, dipping closer to ...
    SciBlogsBy Duncan Steel
    4 days ago

  • This is not what accountability looks like
    When someone commits trespass, assault with a weapon, and kidnapping, you'd expect them to be prosecuted, right? But apparently the rules are different if you wear a blue uniform: A police investigation has found officers in Northland trespassed on a man's property, then unlawfully pepper sprayed him and arrested ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    4 days ago

  • Cycling: head injuries ignored because of entrenched macho culture
    Howard Hurst, University of Central Lancashire and Jack Hardwicke, University of Winchester Competitive road cycling is a demanding and unique sport. One where crashing is inevitable – especially at the professional level. While the risk of head injury is relatively low in cycling – approximately 5-13% – compared to contact ...
    SciBlogsBy Guest Author
    4 days ago

  • The coming US shitshow
    Today President Trump once again refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the US election. Coincidentally, The Atlantic has a long article on exactly what that means, from voter suppression by armed thugs in the name of "ballot security", to refusing to allow the vote ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    4 days ago

  • A moral void
    That's the only way to describe the SIS, who - like their British counterparts - decided to look the other way on child abuse: The SIS knew a young woman was being sexually abused by her father but failed to lodge a complaint with the police, effectively allowing the ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    4 days ago

  • When will Goldsmith resign?
    The National Party’s campaign has gone from bad to worse with a further two large miscalculations being uncovered in their alternative fiscal plan. Firstly, National’s economic spokesperson and list MP, Paul Goldsmith, used May's Budget figures instead of last week's PREFU numbers, and came up with a whopping $4.3 billion ...
    The Jackal
    4 days ago

  • The Adventures of Annalax: Part IX
    The initial session was a struggle. Annalax and Magni tried sorting out the details with the Isaac twins (the people pursuing the mountain trip). Annalax happened to mention his devotion to Lolth… whom the Isaacs, being ...
    A Phuulish FellowBy strda221
    4 days ago

  • This is bullshit
    On March 13, three plainclothes police officers kicked in Breonna Taylor's door under a no-knock warrant targeting another person. When a person inside reasonably assumed they were home invaders and (this being America) started shooting, they shot up the place and everyone around them - killing Taylor. Today, one of ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    4 days ago

  • Arctic sea ice is being increasingly melted from below by warming Atlantic water
    Tom Rippeth, Bangor University Arctic sea ice today (white) is covering a much smaller area than in 1980-2010 (orange line). National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, CC BY-SA Each September, scientists like me look out for the point when the Arctic’s meagre summer fizzles out and ...
    SciBlogsBy Guest Author
    4 days ago

  • The long-term health burden of COVID-19: further justification for NZ’s elimination strategy
    Prof John D. Potter* This blog briefly surveys the emerging scientific evidence on the longer-term burden of symptoms and disease in survivors of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these symptoms point to damage in the brain and heart. These long-term harms add to the wide range of other reasons for ...
    SciBlogsBy Public Health Expert
    5 days ago

  • Going High, Going Low: An Assessment Of The First Leaders’ Debate.
    Uncrushed: Jacinda Ardern knew exactly what was expected of her in the first Leaders' Debate. Labour’s dominant position, three weeks out from the general election, is constructed out of the admiration and gratitude of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who, more often than not, vote National.  Nothing she said ...
    Bowalley Road
    5 days ago

  • The smokefree policies of political parties: Do they care about people who smoke?
    George Thomson*, Nick Wilson, Janet Hoek, Andrew Waa, Richard Edwards In this time of Covid-19, helping people who smoke to quit their addiction has an even greater importance. Smokers are more vulnerable to many harmful health effects, including severe effects from the virus. Policies that support people who smoke to ...
    SciBlogsBy Public Health Expert
    5 days ago

  • The Fog Of Economic Policy Is Starting To Clear…
    Bryan Bruce, https://www.facebook.com/www.redsky.tv, 19 September 2020 National’s economic policy of temporary tax cuts yesterday proved, if proof be needed, that they are unapologetic neoliberals. While their claim that with more money in their pockets people will spend more might sound attractive, the reality is that tax cuts always benefit the ...
    Closing the GapBy Tracey Sharp
    5 days ago

  • Skeptical Science New Research for Week #38, 2020
    Highlighted article: Carbon pricing and planetary boundaries  Engström et al take what might be called a systems approach to evaluating carbon pricing, taking into a account various economic sectors affected by and affecting paying for emissions. The conclusions are overall a rare pleasant surprise— a feature predicated on cooperation.  Abstract: ...
    Skeptical Science
    5 days ago

  • Humans ignite almost every wildfire that threatens homes
    Nathan Mietkiewicz, National Ecological Observatory Network and Jennifer Balch, University of Colorado Boulder CC BY-ND Summer and fall are wildfire season across the western U.S. In recent years, wildfires have destroyed thousands of homes, forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate and exposed tens of millions to harmful ...
    SciBlogsBy Guest Author
    5 days ago

  • Climate Change: China steps up
    China has increased its climate change ambition, and set a target to be carbon-neutral by 2060: China will reach carbon neutrality before 2060 and ensure its greenhouse gas emissions peak in the next decade, Xi Jinping has told the UN general assembly. “China will scale up its intended nationally ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    5 days ago

  • Humans have dealt with plenty of climate variability
    Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz How much climate variability have humans dealt with since we ...
    SciBlogsBy Guest Author
    5 days ago

  • Indigenous perspectives on unrestricted access to genomic data
    By Genomics Aotearoa researcher Maui Hudson, University of Waikato It is vital that genomics research respects genomic data and genetic heritage from indigenous communities. Genomics research is a rapidly growing field of study, and there is a strong push to make the huge amount of data being produced open ...
    SciBlogsBy Genomics Aotearoa
    5 days ago

  • Terrible luck: lockdowns on learning and youth job prospects
    What is bad luck? Bad luck is spilling spaghetti sauce down your shirt right before an important meeting. When the person in front of you gets the last seat on the bus, that’s bad luck. Bad luck is when it’s sunny outside, so you leave the house without a coat, ...
    SciBlogsBy Guest Author
    5 days ago

  • Ian Powell: Does private healthcare threaten public healthcare in New Zealand?
    Is the private health system impacting negatively on the public health system? Health commentator Ian Powell evaluates a recent NZ Herald article by Natalie Akoorie (“Public v private healthcare: Moonlighting, skimming, duplication – should NZ do better”), and looks at how the dual system works, and concludes that the answer ...
    Democracy ProjectBy bryce.edwards
    6 days ago

  • A rabbit-hole election debate: So do you want more avocado orchards?
    We live in strange and unusual times. It’s been a century since we’ve endured a global pandemic like this, more than half a century since we’ve had economic woes like this. So maybe we got an opening election debate for the times - because that was a strange and unusual ...
    PunditBy Tim Watkin
    6 days ago

  • LIVE: Jacinda Ardern vs. Judith Collins, First Debate
    Tonight, The Civilian will be live-blogging the first of too many debates between Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and National Party leader Judith Collins, and also the last fifteen minutes of the news. Be sure to tune in from 6:45pm for regular updates, which can be accessed by refreshing this page ...
    The CivilianBy admin
    6 days ago

  • Hundreds of Aucklanders arrested after illegal mass gathering on Harbour Bridge
    An enormous drive-in party, shown here, was held this morning on Auckland’s Harbour Bridge, where police were forced to intervene. Hundreds of Aucklanders were arrested this morning on public health grounds, after an apparent illegal mass gathering on the city’s Harbour Bridge. Police say hundreds of Aucklanders gathered in their ...
    The CivilianBy admin
    6 days ago

  • The Looming Fight.
    Social Distancing Be Damned - It's Jacinda! Shortly after ascending to Labour’s leadership, Jacinda described herself as a “pragmatic idealist”. It was an inspired oxymoron – packing into just two words the essence of the social-democrat’s dilemma. It was good to know that she knew what lay ahead of her. ...
    Bowalley Road
    6 days ago

  • Climate Change: Moving faster
    Back in 2017, the UK announced that it would ban the sale of new fossil fuel vehicles by 2040. Its a basic climate change measure, aimed at reducing emissions by shifting the vehicle fleet to cleaner technologies. Now, in the wake of the pandemic, they're planning to bring it forward ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    6 days ago

  • The Australian courts have had enough of refugee detention
    For the past decade, Australia has had a racist, anti-refugee policy. Those claiming refugee status are imprisoned without trial and left to rot in the hope they would "voluntarily" return to be tortured and murdered. When the courts have granted them visas, the government has immediately revoked them on racial ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    6 days ago

  • Friction and the Anti-lock Braking System
    Yesterday afternoon I had to call on my car’s anti-lock braking system (ABS). For reasons best known to its driver, a car pulled out of a side road right in front of me while I was driving home after work, and I needed to stop in a hurry. I rather ...
    SciBlogsBy Marcus Wilson
    6 days ago

  • The Inside Word: New Zealand Quarantine
    There are a fair few misconceptions about conditions within New Zealand’s Quarantine Hotels. Madeline Grant’s misplaced accusations being one prominent example, though she is not alone. Today, I thought I’d share the inside word, so to speak. A friend of mine has recently returned to New Zealand from overseas, and ...
    A Phuulish FellowBy strda221
    6 days ago

  • Hard News: ASA: Let’s not talk about this
    Last week, major newspapers carried a full-page ad as part of the campaign for a "No" vote to the referendum question about supporting the Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill. The ad was authorised by the SAM NZ Coalition, which takes its name from a controversial American anti-cannabis group and includes ...
    Public Address
    6 days ago

  • This is not kind
    New Zealand has a serious homelessness problem, due to skyrocketing rents and a lack of state houses. One of the ways we stick a band-aid on it is to put people up in motels. Previously, they were charged full commercial rates, saddled with odious debt due to the government's failure ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    6 days ago

  • Wokies are the establishment
    by Ani O’Brien In the absence of a better word with which to refer to the rabid activists who claim progressivism while demanding adherence to an increasingly prescriptive set of political beliefs, I call them “woke”. With its roots in Black American slang, the term originally denoted a person or ...
    RedlineBy Daphna
    7 days ago

  • How to strengthen the post-isolation Covid rules
    Over the weekend, the Ministry of Health reported a case of Covid-19 in Auckland that is not related to the current Auckland cluster. Before we start to panic, here’s how I think the case happened and how we can strengthen our current border controls. The new Covid-19 case is someone ...
    SciBlogsBy Siouxsie Wiles
    1 week ago

  • Neuralink and You: A Human-AI Symbiosis
    Becky Casale Elon Musk reckons his Neuralink brain implant is much more than a medical device–that one day it will drive a symbiosis between humans and artificial intelligence. “Good morning! I’m Dr Benedict Egg and I’ll be supervising your Neuralink insertion today. Do you have any questions?” “Yes, Doc. ...
    SciBlogsBy Guest Author
    1 week ago

  • Liam Hehir: Our obsession with American politics
    Many New Zealanders take a strong interest in US politics, with the death of Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg being the latest example. Liam Hehir wonders if it very wise for New Zealanders to get so worked about it.   Many politically engaged New Zealanders are now furiously ...
    Democracy ProjectBy bryce.edwards
    1 week ago

  • COVID: Back to Level 1
    After stamping the Coronavirus out via strict lockdown between March and May, New Zealand went through a good three months without any community cases. Then a local outbreak in Auckland rather buggered things up last month. Auckland’s been in level 3 and level 2.5 for the past six weeks. ...
    A Phuulish FellowBy strda221
    1 week ago

  • Climate Change: Climate injustice
    Who's causing our skyrocketing emissions? As with most of our other problems, It's the rich: The wealthiest 1% of the world’s population were responsible for the emission of more than twice as much carbon dioxide as the poorer half of the world from 1990 to 2015, according to new ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    1 week ago

  • Good riddance
    The border closure and resulting lack of foreign slave-workers is driving the fishing industry out of business: One fishing company is effectively out of business while others are bracing for large financial hits as the deepwater New Zealand industry, unable to get skilled foreign workers into the country, have ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    1 week ago

  • 2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #38
    Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... The tipping points at the heart of the climate crisis Many parts of the Earth’s climate system have been destabilised by ...
    Skeptical Science
    1 week ago

  • Anyone for Collins?
    In the absence of national public opinion polls, we have had to make do in recent weeks with other guides to voter intentions. Those guides, such as the Auckland Central poll, the incidence of google enquiries and the responses to Vote Compass questions, have suggested, not unexpectedly, that Labour is ...
    Bryan GouldBy Bryan Gould
    1 week ago

  • Crusher’s fiscal malfunction
    Crusher Collins - National Party leaderWe all know that the National Party is desperate to gain some traction during this election campaign and have been throwing pretty much everything at the Labour Party in order to try and undermine Jacinda Ardern and what the Coalition Government has achieved. But unfortunately ...
    The Jackal
    1 week ago

  • Much of the commentariat’s reporting of the most recent GDP figure was misleading and unhelpful. The prize for the stupidest remark about the GDP figure for second quarter 2020 (2020Q2) released on Thursday (17 Sept) goes to Judith Collins, whose response to Grant Robertson’s comments indicated she did not ...
    PunditBy Brian Easton
    1 week ago

  • Love and Hate as Complementary Revolutionary Acts
    by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh goloing@gmail.com (19/09/2020) Che Guevara said that a true revolutionary is motivated by love i.e. love of the oppressed, the poor, the children dying from preventable illnesses. This phrase of his is true but has been used by reformists and their more hippy wing have taken advantage ...
    RedlineBy Admin
    1 week ago

  • 2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #38
    A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Sep 13, 2020 through Sat, Sep 19, 2020 Editor's Choice Get to Net-Zero by Mid-Century? Even Some Global Oil and Gas Giants Think it Can Be Done A report by a ...
    Skeptical Science
    1 week ago

  • Tax cuts for all!!! (except you, you, and you)
    With the National Party this week announcing a new policy of tax cuts to spice up the election campagin. MyThinks went along to the launch and afterwards we spoke to the party’s finance spokesperson Paul “Golden Touch” Goldsmith. MT: Thanks for speaking to us Mr Goldsmith. PG: No. Thank you. ...
    My ThinksBy boonman
    1 week ago

  • Great Waves Washing Over New Zealand
    Always to islanders danger Is what comes over the seas ‘Landfall in Unknown Seas’ (Allen Curnow)Six economic issues external to New Zealand, which will greatly impact upon us. 1.         The Diminishing Global Dominance of the US. Since 1941 America has dominated the world economically and politically. Probably it could ...
    PunditBy Brian Easton
    1 week ago

  • New Zealand has role to play in resolving crisis on ‘geopolitical fault line’, Helen Clark says
    By Geoffrey Miller New Zealand should continue to champion human rights in Belarus amidst an ongoing crackdown on protests by the country’s regime, former Prime Minister Helen Clark says. Protests in the country often referred to as ‘Europe’s last dictatorship’ erupted after the country’s disputed presidential elections on August 9 ...
    Democracy ProjectBy Geoffrey Miller
    1 week ago

  • Euthanasia referendum: How to cut through the emotions
    Jacqui Maguire, registered clinical psychologist This podcast episode highlights how difficult it is to have effective conversations about euthanasia due to how polarised people’s views are. I’m a clinical psychologist, with a passion for science communication. In early 2020 I founded the podcast Mind Brew, with an aim to make psychological ...
    SciBlogsBy Guest Author
    1 week ago

  • Why we need cameras on boats
    In case anyone needed further convincing, there's another example today of why we need cameras on fishing boats: reported seabird bycatch doubled during a camera trial: Commercial fishers operating off Auckland's coast around vulnerable seabirds are twice as likely to report accidentally capturing them when cameras are on ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    1 week ago

  • Graham Adams: The religious right’s campaign to spike the euthanasia referendum
    In the leadup to the euthanasia referendum, an array of conservative Christian political organisations is running an expensive campaign to sow doubt about the safety of assisted dying. Graham Adams argues that these religious forces know that Christian arguments aren’t convincing the public, but that it is in the public ...
    Democracy ProjectBy bryce.edwards
    1 week ago

  • Opportunistic looting
    The National Party has spent the last six months acting horrified at the cost of supporting people through the pandemic and banging on about how the debt must be repaid. So what was their economic policy released today? Massive tax-cuts for the rich, of course! National has walked back ...
    No Right TurnBy Idiot/Savant
    1 week ago

  • Uncomfortable Choices.
    Dangerous Times: This will be the choice confronting those coming of age in the 2020s. Embrace Neoliberalism’s belief in racial and sexual equality; adopt its secular and scientific world view; and cultivate the technocratic, multicultural, global outlook required of those who keep the machinery of hyper-capitalism humming. Or, throw your ...
    Bowalley Road
    1 week ago

  • Tony Burton: Covid and benefit payments
    It would be a great time to reform the benefit system, according to former Deputy Chief Economic Advisor at the Treasury, Tony Burton. He argues the complexity of benefit system means that it’s failing to achieve its difficult three core objectives, which form an “iron triangle”.   New Zealand’s benefit ...
    Democracy ProjectBy bryce.edwards
    1 week ago

  • Talking tax: How to win support for taxing wealth
    Tax Justice UK, September 2020 Serious tax reform is on the political agenda for the first time in decades due to the coronavirus crisis. As this debate hots up it is important to understand what people think about public spending, wealth and tax. Tax Justice UK, along with Survation and ...
    Closing the GapBy Tracey Sharp
    1 week ago

  • Getting Tough.
    Not Mucking Around: With upwards of 800 dead from the virus’s resurgence in the Australian state of Victoria, leniency is not on Premier Daniel Andrews’ agenda. The Victorian Police are cracking down hard on the protesters the Australian press has labelled "Covidiots".IMAGES OF POLICE, some in riot gear, others on ...
    Bowalley Road
    2 weeks ago

  • Media Link: Nuclear strategy, then and now.
    Although I had the fortune of being a graduate student of some of the foremost US nuclear strategists of the day (1970s) and later rubbed shoulders with Air Force and Naval officers who were entrusted with parts of the US nuclear arsenal, I seldom get to write or speak about ...
    KiwipoliticoBy Pablo
    2 weeks ago

Older posts

  • Job numbers up in August
    New data from Stats NZ today shows a rise of more than 9,000 filled jobs from July – driven mostly by the education and training sector, Grant Robertson says. Filled jobs were up 9,147 to 2.2 million in August 2020 compared with July – with 7,409 of those in education ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    7 hours ago

  • Māori development receives funding
    Māori development projects across the country will receive a total of $18.8 million from the Provincial Growth Fund that will create infrastructure and permanent jobs, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “These projects will support economic development in Northland, Bay of Plenty, Tairawhiti, Manawatū-Whanganui, Waikato and Southland to ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    10 hours ago

  • Hand-up for owners of earthquake-prone units
    From today, owner-occupiers of unit and apartments living in earthquake-prone buildings can apply for financial support to fix their homes, Minister for Building and Construction Jenny Salesa says. The Residential Earthquake-Prone Building Financial Assistance Scheme will help unit owners facing financial hardship over earthquake strengthening costs. “We understand how complicated ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    13 hours ago

  • PGF backing successful Māori enterprise
    Whanganui will benefit from a Provincial Growth Fund investment in a local food-processing company which will help the company increase production and create jobs, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones says. Kii Tahi Ltd, which is owned by South Taranaki iwi Ngaa Rauru Kiitahi, will receive a Provincial Growth Fund ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    17 hours ago

  • Hokitika Landmark earmarked for $22m restoration
    Seddon House in Hokitika, once a hub for government on the West Coast, has been earmarked for government use once again. “Today we’re announcing a $22 million investment from the Government’s $3 billion infrastructure fund for shovel ready projects for the purchase and restoration of Seddon House in the heart of ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    2 days ago

  • Town halls and war memorials in PGF renovation programme
    Town halls, war memorials and other community landmarks across the country will be renovated thanks to grants totalling just under $12.4 million from the Provincial Growth Fund. Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones says more than 1000 jobs are expected to be created during the renovation programme. “Town halls, other ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    3 days ago

  • Minister of Foreign Affairs makes two diplomatic appointments
    Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced two new diplomatic appointments: •         Michael Appleton as New Zealand’s first resident High Commissioner to Sri Lanka. •        Tredene Dobson as New Zealand’s next Ambassador to Viet Nam.  Sri Lanka “New Zealand is opening a post in Colombo in 2021 because we are ready ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    3 days ago

  • NZ’s most prestigious conservation award – Loder Cup presented to Graeme Atkins
    The Minister of Conservation Minister, Eugenie Sage, today presented Aotearoa New Zealand’s most prestigious conservation award, the Loder Cup, to the 2020 winner Graeme Atkins while in Gisborne/Tūranga-nui-a-Kiwa. “Graeme Atkins of Ngāti Porou is a Department of Conservation ranger whose contribution to conservation goes well above and beyond his employment,” ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    3 days ago

  • Early help for whānau who need extra support
    The Government is investing in a new, whānau-centred early intervention prototype designed to strengthen families and improve the safety and wellbeing of children. The new programme, Ngā Tini Whetū, is a collaboration between Oranga Tamariki, Te Puni Kōkiri, ACC and the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency (WOCA) and was announced today ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    3 days ago

  • Parliament to install solar and cut carbon
    Parliament is leading by example by taking action to cut its carbon footprint by installing solar and improving energy efficiency, the Minister for Climate Change, James Shaw said today. The Minister confirmed that Parliamentary Services will receive support through the Clean-Powered Public Service Fund to install solar PV and LED ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    3 days ago

  • Tuvalu Language Week theme promotes community resilience in the face of COVID-19
    The Minister for Pacific Peoples, Aupito William Sio says the 2020 Tuvalu Language Week theme of “Fakatili Te Kiloga Fou” which means “Navigating the changing environment” is a call on all Pacific peoples to be strong and resilient in the face of COVID-19. “This theme is a reminder to us ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    3 days ago

  • International sport back up and running in New Zealand
    The Government is welcoming today’s announcement that the West Indies and Pakistan cricket teams will tour New Zealand this summer.  “A lot of hard work has been undertaken by sports officials including New Zealand Cricket, Netball New Zealand and government officials to ensure that international sport can return safely to ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    3 days ago

  • 1BT funds for Northland forest taonga
    Northland’s indigenous tree canopy is set to grow for the benefit of mana whenua and the wider community thanks to nearly $2 million in One Billion Trees funding, Forestry Minister Shane Jones announced today. Te Komanga Marae Trust has received more than $1.54 million to restore and enhance the native ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    3 days ago

  • Better health care for West Coasters as Te Nikau Hospital officially opened
    The Government has delivered a new hospital for Greymouth and is starting work on a much needed new health centre in Westport, ensuring local communities will benefit from better access to high quality integrated health services. Today, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare officially open Te ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    3 days ago

  • Government backing local with PGF loan
    A West Coast distillery will benefit from a Provincial Growth Fund investment that will enable it to expand its operations and create jobs in the town of Reefton, Rural Communities Minister Damien O’Connor and Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones have announced. The Reefton Distilling Co will receive a $928,000 ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    4 days ago

  • Primary sector exports and jobs up again
    Primary sector exports and jobs are up again, demonstrating the sector’s underlying strength amid the COVID-19 global pandemic and US-China trade war, and supporting New Zealand’s economic recovery. Stats NZ today reported New Zealand’s merchandise exports in August were up 8.6% on a year ago, driven by an increase in ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    4 days ago

  • Clean energy future for more schools
    Schools across Aotearoa New Zealand will be supported by the Government to upgrade to run on clean energy, the Minister for Climate Change James Shaw announced today. The Minister has allocated $50 million from the Clean Powered Public Service Fund to replace, or convert, coal boilers in schools with clean ...
    BeehiveBy beehive.govt.nz
    4 days ago

  • Building business strength with digital tools
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  • New pest lures to protect nature
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  • Support for innovative Pacific education responses to COVID-19 needs
    Supporting new and creative Pacific education practices as part of our COVID-19 response and recovery is the focus of a new $28.5 million Pacific Education Innovation Fund announced today by Associate Minister of Education Jenny Salesa.  “There is already an incredible amount of innovative and creative work going on in ...
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  • Eligibility expanded for COVID-19 leave support
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  • Seasonal work visa available to more people
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  • More border exceptions for critical roles
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  • Crucial PGF investments for Northland
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  • $27million investment in global vaccine facility
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  • Government backing Māori landowners
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  • New tools to make nature more accessible
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  • PGF makes Māori history more accessible
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  • Making it official: The journey of te reo Māori | Kia whakapūmautia: Ngā piki me ngā heke o te r...
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  • Boost for COVID-19 related Pacific education needs
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  • More resources for kiwi conservation
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  • Improving access to affordable electricity
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  • Government achieves 50 percent women on state boards
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  • Record transport investment to help economic recovery and save lives
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  • Advancing clean energy technology
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  • Major milestone reached in Pike River Re-entry
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  • Iwi community hub opens in Murupara
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