No-one should qualify for ACC as a result of what happened in Chch. What happened was not an 'accident'. It was a deliberate act of evil by someone with a sick mind.
So people asked the question: “Why won’t you enforce the rules against parking on the verge?”
AT referred to a legal problem, while refusing to provide any details, and pointed people to the supposed need for a further law change, or additional signage everywhere.
Other councils didn’t require this change to take action. So when NZTA consulted about a change, many people rightly considered it unnecessary.
I have had a licensed vehicle parked and never moved outside my home for months. The Council can't do anything about it because it is licensed till September. I am thinking of checking with the police to see if it is reported stolen.
The streets are clogged with cars parked on the kerb, often because the owners can't be bothered maneouvring into their garages or car parks. At the kerb they sit, ready to go in seconds. Some have bigger vehicles than car parking provided. Some leave them there for days, then use them, returning to the same spot or nearby. Rarely is the street free of cars. When tradespeople, visitors want to park they have to search for a spot. It isn't satisfactory, and the streets are narrowed by cars on both sides. Some park out from the kerb by about 30 cm, which then reduces space for cyclists and cars using the space.
But cyclists don't mind really, they all use the footpath, swishing along behind you before you know they are there. Bells announce them so you can move out of their way. Does anyone think about them having to dismount and walk the bike round citizens using the path, for whom the paths were originally formed?
This fascinating documentary focuses primarily on the use of methamphetamines by the German military during World War II and Hitler's personal drug habits but it also mentions a fact I've found mentioned elsewhere, which is the allies (and Japan) preferred amphetamines which they gave to troops in millions of pills. Among those who were given them were allied troops in North Africa which would have included New Zealand soldiers. But I have never heard of any research etc into drug use among New Zealand soldiers during World War II. I wonder if New Zealand soldiers got addicted and if this might have contributed to alcoholism among New Zealand soldiers when they returned home (not having access to amphetamines). Amphetamine use by New Zealand soldiers during WWII would make interesting area for someone to research perhaps?
I'd heard about the USA giving LSD to airmen as it allowed them to undertake longer flights. (The doses would have to be carefully managed so they didn't forget that they were piloting a plane with a mission.)
LSD sounds odd (not a stimulant), but there was a case over Afghanistan where two US F16 pilots bombed and killed some Canadians. Part of their largely unsuccessful defense was that their amphetamine use for the mission made them more likely to identify unrelated actions as threats.
I remember a sequence in a Nicholas Monsarrat book (The Cruel Sea, probably) where the captain needed to out-wait a submerged Uboat so got the doctor to give him some uppers. The doctor kept them on a tight leash. Yes, fiction, but I mention it because Monsarrat is to WW2 convoy escort duty what Le Carre is to cold war esionage: a practitioner writing about what he knows.
The Alexander Skarsgård one? Yup, really well done.
Apparently Le Carre's written a brexit one – I'll be really interested to see the mix of tech and spycraft in that. So many ultra-modern spy things are gadgets beating gadgets rather than the human touch. Not to mention that they ignore the longer term goals for the immediate ones – e.g. Bond is just using a cover to stay undetected (even officially) long enough to kill someone, he never uses a cover for weeks or months.
Emergency rations for British soldiers in ww2 consisted of speed laced chocolate. It was an offence to consume them unless directed to by an officer. I would imagine, though of course I could be wrong, NZ, Aus and Canadian troops would have had similar provisions with the same level of control over their use.
The Wolves of War: Evidence of an Ancient Cult of Warrior Lycanthropy
"The legendary wine of Thrace was particularly potent through the addition of a psychoactive mushroom. The rituals of the women known as bacchants enacted the fantasies of root-cutters in commemoration of the deity in his persona that predated viticulture. This fungal persona represents the same intoxicant that was known to the Persians as haoma and represents the spread of an Indo-European sacrament into the Classical world, with its association of lycanthropy and the bonding of warriors into brotherhoods as packs of wolves, better known in its manifestation in late antiquity among the Nordic peoples as berserkers."
"According to Falk, Parsi-Zoroastrians use a variant of ephedra, usually Ephedra procera, imported from the Hari River valley in Afghanistan."
Haoma, soma… it's been a while and many interpretations of what the drug was. Some variations I think. From Vedic Hymns with recipes: poppies, weed, speed (Papaver, Cannabis, Ephedra). From other texts, fungi. I think they got folk shitfaced on whatever was convenient.
"There was a media frenzy when it was published at the dawn of the 1970s. This caused the publisher to apologize for issuing it and forced Allegro's resignation from his university position."
"In November 2009 The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross was reprinted in a 40th anniversary edition with 30-page addendum by Prof. Carl A. P. Ruck of Boston University." So could be that the time of conforming to orthodoxy in acadaemia is over, and we may actually see academics learning something new.
Why do we have a parliament and most here being climate change deniers ?
AS if actions really do speak about what people REALLY think then there would be some direct action, declaring an emergency is doing nothing. If we were really serious there would be an acceptance that the world pop. will have to reduce, living standards will decline. But perhaps the really macro effects are way too serious to contemplate about.
It's not nothing that's been done. The so called deniers you speak of reached bi-partisan consensus with James Shaw's work, diluted though it may be.
There is not nothing being done. You are concern trolling while ignoring facts.
Yes, you'd think more would be done… but if this lot are turfed out and Nats are back in we'd be in a considerably worse position right now. Don't forget there are a large portion of self-obsessed twats landlords in this country who think they're the only game in town. Give them power back we'll be truly fucked.
Not to mention the myriad of other problems the Coalition are currently trying to deal with.
For some people positive action is merely an excuse to start on the not enough mantra.
Count your blessings, positive change is occurring in an atmosphere of resistance and denial via media prostitutes. Those servicing that other mob that would crisp us for a buck.
Asking for more to be done is good and well. Claiming nothing is being done is bullshit.
The Labour and Green MP's most on this site, otherwise there would be strong demands to examine what NZ does. e.g. How do we promote tourism when the effects on the climate are so dramatic e.g air travel etc
Either this is a crisis that requires dramatic changes in everything we do on this planet or it is a nice to do as it makes "us" feel good.
WTH stopping oil exploration is great (What Crap ) if we then expect other countries to continue to supply us, nothing you have listed is dramatic., but it feels good.
With the changes that have been signalled e.g. many to become effective "after" the next election. The sea will be rising, who cares what the sky is doing 😜
I can be dramatic Herodotus. I can just get so depressed reading stuff from you and similar others that i can feel like killing myself.If you would not like even bringing that thought to anyone, then I suggest you don't come on here with your black mood and your allegations of nothing. I get blue, and sadder when I can't even see the Bill for euthanasia of people who are nearly dead get through. I would hope that I can give up one day soon, be resigned that I have achieved something small but worthwhile, and plan my passing ritual legally. But watching the meanness of so many rigid and uncaring is sad, and your approach makes it worse.
Tell us what YOU are doing and encourage us to take some specific action like you, protest, plant a tree etc. Whining and criticising is not going to get us where we need to go.
You could have a look at the vid at the bottom of the How to Get There last Sat post. It should be watched once a day by you to give you some hints about turning your negativity into something useful and supporting others trying to do good.
I do enough to feel that I am doing my bit. Visit a few Hauraki Gulf Islands or Hūnua ranges. Perhaps when you go behind a flax bush or a tree that was was planted by my hands, or you listen to the bird song perhaps I had a hand in the relocation or care.
Now I would like to hear what YOU are doing, many transfer their inaction by attacking others ?
Next time you hear the Greens or Labour spout off about what they are doing; feel good because that is all that the govt is doing and it feels SOOOOO good as long as you are not directly inconvenience.
Compared with Europe and the Americas plus India and much of the Northern hemisphere and Australia, we here in NZ surrounded by cooling heat absorbing ocean waters and the Antarctic to the south, though it's melting too, are not being affected in your face obviously except our glaciers are melting back and the Alps' snow pack is declining. Ignoring reality is a way to keep BAU going: we all do it me too! Earthquakes are a more frightening prospect for us e.g. Wellington central library is still closed for examination and repairs from the last Kaikoura shake.
Trotter's prescription for Labour: populism. He reckons "the really exciting thing is that a huge part of the campaign need not be visible. If Labour in New Zealand is not too proud to copy the extraordinary social-media campaigning techniques perfected by Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party in the recent European elections, then Jacinda should be able to avoid pretty much all of the blood-splatter."
Gabby suggested one of his supporters was. However I'm not convinced Nigel is a true patriot. He has twice failed to name his political parties Britain First. He hasn't even adopted Make Britain Great Again as his slogan.
Perhaps he wants to be a free spirit like the Don? Buzzing around creating frenzy. From what I have heard about Farage, he can be captured, bottled and held under glass. If so that would larn him to say the Right things.
Nope, that wasn't my intent. However, it's true that patriots have done that kind of thing for yonks (whenever they believe it's in the best interests of the nation)…
We already have a talented charismatic leader who is also the most popular politician in Australasia. And who has babies, gets the all-round guy, has a baby in office, and gets engaged.
2020 must surely be New Zealand Royal Wedding year.
If he were talking about the Labour Party of 2012 he would have a point.
To begin with, he knows the difference between Key's and Clark's former holidays and Ardern's trip to the Cook Islands. Key went to a gated community in Hawaii where privacy was guaranteed. Clark climbed faraway mountains and skied in faraway places like Norway. Her privacy was guaranteed by lack of access and distance. Jacinda and Clark have gone to a well known holiday spot where privacy is not guaranteed.
They also have their little girl whose privacy they rightly wish to protect.
And just to be sure we get his nasty message, he throws in a few jibes at the late David Lange.
I recommend the article as the latest reminder of the extent of right-wing vengeance when they don't get their own way – in this case political power and the money and prestige that flows from it for the media sycophants.
That might be true, but the value of the observation is somewhat diminished when it comes from someone who calls a politically motivated liar and calumniator a "hero".
It is from the NZ Herald whose spokeswoman heralded about the time they put up a paywall that the Herald is 'not a journal of record'. So apparently they don't have to try and live up to any standard of valuable reporting. Just drive-by jibes with a bit of gravitas for the business people about the most important matter of money – changing hands and the people in power that enable it.
"Why does Jacinda Ardern want to keep her holiday a secret?"
The PM has often talked about mental health in the country, the use of drugs and all sorts of prevalent maladies. Barry Soper shows the tragic state we've descended too.
A senior political journalist, an adult, a man who's kicked around planet earth for quite a few years getting precious about not knowing where Ardern's gone on holiday? Or that we, I, don't know?
Call an ambulance for Soper, not just for the fact that he was upset for not knowing where she was going, but for all the drivel he comes up with around his little episode.
I find it disturbing on the basis that someone paid him to write that utterly pointless garbage, not because I don’t think that the PM "can't handle" it – likely she just ignores it – or anything else that comes by way of her job. The uneasy feeling is that someone who was paid to write that and those with similar tendencies main intent would be to be the first with anything that remotely looks like "bad news" of some description and it is their fondest dream that that will happen. While they're not worth effort of considering how this is what some "journalism" has come to is really strange.
No of course I'm not surprised I couldn't bear listening to that or similar and can only say that radio via that awful magic talk has only become worse, a few were OK but now it is sickening. One "announcer" I heard referring to a "poll" they had run as relfecting their "listeners" and he was dead right and not I am no longer one of them.
I read the Soper piece as "I have to write something to get my money; I'm bored: I'll stir the pot – oh great, Ardern is in the Cook Islands and I did not know …" End of story -Soper style.
Here is a much more balanced item, IMO, probably much closer to the truth – Gayford is filming for his TV show Fish of the Day in the Cook Islands. Ardern and their daughter accompanied him for a short break – much deserved, and few and far between. Choice of destination boosts the local economy of one of our closest Pacifc neigbours, a former dependency with the main currency remaining NZ dollars, etc End of story – Reality.
'Corrections Association of New Zealand president Allan Whitley said a group of members asked the union to advocate for longer shifts about six years ago.'
Thank f**k, working 8-9 days straight is no joke (well it is a joke but its not a very funny one…)
'Waggott said more work was required before the revised system could be fully implemented and there was no finalised timeframe.'
Paula Bennett this morning talking about Labour Coalition climate change 'posturing'. What posture is this – I think it should become a recognisable badge of courage for those getting on with the mahi!
And then she condemns passing legislation relating to it by emergency. National didn't do this. We know Paula. And National only chose to do it when there was a real emergency – that would be when their funders became impatient to get their requested legislation passed enabling their desired business transactions.
Bennet was 'posturing' as a car-loving Westie, and a very poor imitation it was. She seemed completely unaware that vulgar selfishness doesn't make you look working class, it makes you look like a one-percenter.
Yes, she changes her persona according to the circumstances of the day. In the event of a leadership challenge, she's after the votes of the Blue Rinse Brigade?
Talking about posturing – if one is not careful then one might get eaten by a lion like young Albert. Paula had better stay away from the zoo in case she has not perfected her posture, from a lying-down lion's POV.
Its mid-year break for Parliament and politicians with a full three weeks between sittings of the House, Apart from the summer break (Christmas – late Jan/early Feb) the House sits in 2 to 3 week blocks with only 1 -2 week breaks in between.
The PM has also not been doing her usual weekly media stints so its not just Simon, and things should get back to usual next week when Cabinet/Caucus meetings and House sittings resume.
[On another subject, hope all is going well with the anti-bullying situation. ]
Not my car, Simon, I’d pay less for my car. Lots less. 🙂
Doing quite well, actually. Staying warm with the winter warmth payment as the sleety rain falls outside. Got a free repeat for my hearing aid batteries yesterday.
On Monday I get a free check for bladder cancer at three weeks notice from symptoms to specialist.
This government is working for us older citizens…….
The Human Rights Foundation issued a statement last week, calling for Minaj and other performers to pull out of the show. On Tuesday, the New York-based organization praised Minaj‘s decision to not perform at the concert.
“This is what leadership looks like. We are grateful to Nicki Minaj for her inspiring and thoughtful decision to reject the Saudi regime’s transparent attempt at using her for a public relations stunt,” said Thor Halvorssen, president of the Human Rights Foundation. “The July 18 festival in Saudi Arabia still shows Liam Payne as a performer. We hope that he follows Nicki Minaj’s lead. Minaj’s moral stance differs from celebrity performers like J-Lo and Mariah Carey, who in the past have chosen to line their pockets with millions of dollars and stand with dictatorial governments as opposed to with oppressed communities and imprisoned human rights activists.”
My cohort and I are labelled millennials because we came of age in the new millennium. We are also generation zero: the first generation that will live with the palpable effects of climate change throughout our adult lives. The generation invoked, at every business and climate change conference I attend, as the source of ingenuity that will help us deal with the current climate crisis. Yet few (if any) people under the age of 30 sit on the board of New Zealand’s biggest-emitting companies. Few of us are making significant decisions in politics or business. Looking to the next generation for solutions is just another delaying tactic. Instead of denialism, we now have delayism.
… The idea that we’re individually responsible for minimising plastic waste is the result of concerted lobbying, but manufacturers also played a key role in introducing plastic into the economy in the first place. Before corporate entities worked hard to replace existing arrangements, we had a circular economy for wrapping food or carrying liquids.
… If we frame the problem as one that individuals can solve, we ignore the fact that infrastructure, institutions and regulation continue to place real limits on what we can achieve, and work against our best efforts to live sustainably.
… Our dependence on fossil fuels and plastic has been constructed and reinforced by corporate interest and decades of lobbying that thwarted environmental regulation.
This is why racism should be challenged ,,, two ticks national is no excuse for encouraging our sicko's.
And how come no media in NZ …. apart from Nicky Hager ,,,, called out the blatant dishonesty and racism ,,, of the Brash Nats ' steal the beaches ' election propaganda,
I think Brash is still banging away at it …. … who would Hobson votes end up floating too
More pressure on Pharmac – they are damned if they do and damned if they don't
The Pharmac board was advised that the cost of funding OxyContin would be $1.2m by 2008 – it ended up being $3.5m and kept ballooning.
Doctors have told Stuff that after Pharmac agreed to fund OxyContin, Mundipharma began heavily promoting it, including for conditions such as arthritis.
Sales reps would visit GPs, and advertisements were placed in publications such as New Zealand Doctor.
Dr Alistair Dunn, a Whangarei addiction medicine specialist who was one of the first to raise concerns about OxyContin, says GPs would not previously have resorted to using morphine for arthritis.
It’s hard to help citizens who are dying to have addictions to various things. Lachlan Foote, 21, returned to his Blue Mountains home after celebrating New Year’s Eve in the early hours of 2018. He made himself a protein shake before bed, adding caffeine powder, and his parents found him dead on the bathroom floor the next morning.
This about what we are up against by opening up ourselves to the world business that is equivalent to drive-by smash and grab. Our government hasn't a chance in coping with sharp operators like this.
Such a nightmare scenario was not out of the ordinary for renters around the United States after Invitation Homes, a subsidiary of New York private equity firm Blackstone Group, began buying foreclosed homes on the cheap after the 2008 financial crisis. It quickly became the country’s largest owner of single-family homes. The firm soon earned a poor reputation as an absentee landlord that left houses in disrepair and ignored calls from tenants to fix pest infestations, electrical or plumbing problems, and other issues. Report after report by independent groups detail complaints about a lack of maintenance, swift evictions being carried out based on glitches or errors, and steep overcharging for rents….
Episodes like these are why there continues to be fierce debate about the merits of PE firms everywhere around the world – everywhere, seemingly, but in New Zealand. While the public and media remain fixated on the threat of foreign home buyers and property speculators, there has been comparatively little debate about the entrance of large, foreign PE firms into our economy.
According to the journalist and author Graeme Hunt, domestic intelligence and counter-subversion prior to the establishment of the SIS was primarily in the hands of the New Zealand Police Force (1919–1941; 1945–1949) and of the New Zealand Police Force Special Branch (1949–1956). Another predecessor to the SIS during the Second World War was the short-lived New Zealand Security Intelligence Bureau (SIB).[6] The SIB, modelled after the British MI5, was headed by Major Kenneth Folkes, a junior MI5 officer. The conman Syd Ross duped Major Folkes into believing that there was a "Nazi plot" in New Zealand. Due to this embarrassment, Prime Minister Peter Fraser dismissed Folkes in February 1943 and the SIB merged into the New Zealand Police. Following the end of World War II in 1945, the police force resumed responsibility for domestic intelligence.[7]
Being diagnosed early is vital to being cured, avoiding patient pain and suffering along with potential long term health costs in the process. MRI's are a vital diagnostic tool that should be GP referable and shouldn't require such long wait times.
"Is there any action being taken to address this?" [The Chairman @17]
Do you mean action to address the clinical decision not to offer Rachel Terrill an MRI scan? Both better clinical decision making, and more resources for publicly-funded MRI scans, would be one way to go.
Ministry of Health chief medical officer Andrew Simpson said national waiting times were carefully monitored.
"The performance indicator [or target] is that 90 per cent of people receive an MRI scan, within six weeks," he said.
"Capacity across the country has increased through improved efficiency and DHBs investing in new or additional machinery, and more scans are being performed now than in the past, but there are still challenges to be worked through," he said.
"The six week timeframe was introduced in 2012/13, based on advice from the National Radiology Advisory Group."
"In our region [Nelson Marlborough] we share MRI scanners with private healthcare providers which affects our capacity to scan and have plans this year to purchase a new MRI scanner for Nelson Hospital, solely for public healthcare use.
We acknowledge that waiting for a scan is not what people may want to do, but reassure people that this service is organised by order of priority – if you urgently need a scan you will get one quickly," Lexie O'Shea said.
I agree with The Chairman that, in general, public health funding should be prioritised over defense spending. Could there be bipartisan political action on this, once the National party has plugged its leaks?
Graeme Hunt, who died in 2010, was one of the most unpleasant right wing ideologues infecting public life in this country. He was a regular dark and pompous presence on Larry "Lackwit" Williams' joke of a show on NewstalkZzzzzB, where he made a point of bullying, ridiculing, and harassing lesser souls, like Tim Watkin and the ridiculous Josie Pagani.
Even worse than his radio performances was his writing. He wrote a substandard biography of Fintan Patrick Walsh, and this "history" Spies and Revolutionaries was another missed opportunity, muddying the waters for any serious journalist or academic who might have wished to write on the history of security in this country in the future.
In 2003 Hunt's crappy secret persona was outed on Google Groups, much to his mortification….
He would have been wiser and more principled to have made a clear call years ago, one way or the other. This frittering looks indecisive at best and cynically manipulative at worst.
Yet the report makes it evident that UK Labour have agreed to adopt a different position on the situation in campaigning for the next election. "In an interview with the BBC on Tuesday, he said there was no decision yet as to what Labour would argue for in a general election on Brexit. He said: “We will decide very quickly at the start of that campaign exactly what our position will be.”
"Pressed on whether Labour was now a party of leave or remain, Corbyn said: “We will give people the choice on this. That is something which is surely very important. We respect the result of the referendum. We’ve been through this whole long parliamentary process over the past three years and we’ve made it very clear we will do everything we can to take no deal off the table or stop a damaging deal of the sort Hunt and Johnson are proposing.”"
So it seems a nuanced principled position. No doubt spooked by the LibDem poll ratings, he's gotten agreement from his colleagues. I think he's done well.
That "nuance" has been a 15 point gift to the LibDems.
Corbyn needs to show he has to chops to actually pull back the voters he's lost to them. That is the measure of whether he's more than an idealistic maverick.
I do agree his lack of leadership has allowed the LibDems to get up past Labour. I was just pointing out that he secured a nicely-nuanced collective agreement from Labour in response. It encompasses a two-pronged strategy & seems coherent.
Getting consensus on both in a complex political context at the top level is a real accomplishment. We ought to acknowledge that. I've been critical of him several times the past few months but I feel he's redeemed himself somewhat.
Labour's political culture has been groupthink since the nineties, remember, here & in Oz as in Britain. Labour leaders only get tolerated if they genuinely represent group opinion. Thus hamstrung, it is rare for them to demonstrate individual flair or initiative. I think the evidence shows he has been successful in steering the groupthink to an appropriate result.
MAGA President Trump supporters are not sick of winning, there seems to be some consensus about among them.
Brexit supporters are….um……well……you know……errrr………still campaigning for their referendum, whatever that was about, of a few years back.
I'd say, to do it with any kind of momentum, & have it be momentous, it needs a no holds barred sack the cabinet, hard take it or leave it deal with the EU, proroguing the people's vote through parliament, strong solidarity with MAGA movement & President Trump on the world stage with an opening shot of a successful deal with the U.S.A.
Have you some recommendation – one or two – on what a forestry company can do for a quick ground cover on hills they have logged to prevent run-off when it rained heavily? I thought if they could fly over, perhaps with a drone, would dropping seed work well and enough come up even if the ground wasn't wet? This time of the year the dew is quite heavy.
If you let me know what you think would be viable for putting over quite a big area I could pass that on as there is concern about a logged area here and while it is being thought about, perhaps some sensible plan for fast growing beneficial weeds could be passed on and tried out (and then done as a regular sensible move. Fast and nitrogen fixing – would clover do it – chickweed?
I reckon forethought would go a long way. Damage control is harder.
You are looking for local fast growing legumes and ground covers that can handle the soil conditions left behind after pines. It might be you can aerial spray seeds but need to add lime. They could maybe get hold of the mountains of discarded oyster shells industry creates and crush and use them to facilitate things (if liming would help).
There's also the question of land use after harvest – another pine crop? A bush regeneration project? A fallow period?
For regeneration and even another crop of pines (why!) I'd be inclined to go in and innoculate stumps with oyster mushrooms, shitaake if they'll grow on pines, mulch down the slash and add Stropharia rugoso-annulata and other saprobes to generate some local crops/small business while turning the trunks and slash to topsoil.
If rapid ground cover is imperative you want something practically invasive to the conditions. Observation of the site will indicate which plants or close relatives of plants might work.
Driving back from the FFN the other day I was actually shocked to see entire hillsides covered with the stuff. Some large, but mostly it was plants of about 1.5 metres growing about 1 metre apart, covering entire hillsides.
I've pulled a few of these out from my place but it seems that they simply love to exploit bare land…too many trees at mine.
And strangely, while obviously it is the time of the year for spraying gorse…woolly nightshade growing alongside the sprayed and withering gorse was thriving.
Got me to thinking that perhaps we could grow the stuff to feed our bio diesel/ethanol plants.
Interesting Rosemary. Good observation. It is a prolific space invader right down to at least the Waikato. Noted as a pest plant, shade tolerance could be a problem where other pioneers typically do the nursery job then die back as other plants canopy forms over them.
Biofuels are impractical unless waste streams of crops/industry. We've gone that route (growing biofuel specifically) to the detriment of food security already. One day we might get the desired bacteria to live outside of certain insects guts but we're not there yet. Once we can crack lignin apart easily biofuels will lend a lot more energy for a lot less input.
Pretty shocking stuff Rosemary. Its spread indicates that some immediate ground cover plants are necessary to stop this relentless weed, and it is so nasty, bad for skin and smelly and the birds should be provided with a better weed that they can go to.
Medical cannabis needs to be accessed by sick people who need it.What I don't want to see is big companies getting a monopoly in the industry and charging the Papatuanuku for a product that people need to have a good life. I can see business manipulating the laws so that they can dominate the market.
What commercial operations is going to grow weed close to a school on the most expensive land not very wise they will grow it on farm land not in the city's????????????????????????????????.
I say that we will have the same problems that the United kingdom and other countries have. Our doctors are all elderly so they have a negative attitude and view on medical weed they will be very reluctant to prescribe it. The elderly have a very different view on our society's that the younger generations they have had it drummed into them over the years that alcohol is good and laughable that weed is bad.
Times are changing we have the internet now so we can find out the TRUTHS about our society the younger generation have a much clearer view on our society's problems.
This is a joke the billionaires get away with what ever they do to make money no matter the harm caused.
Facebook to be fined $5bn for Cambridge Analytica privacy violations – reports
The $5bn fine would be the largest ever levied by the Federal Trade Commission against a technology company
The FTC’s investigation was launched in March 2018 after the Guardian revealed that the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica had improperly obtained the private information of more than 50m Facebook users. Facebook had agreed under a 2012consent decree stemming from a previous FTC investigation into privacy concerns to better protect user privacy. The investigation centered on whether this decree .
Critics say the changes required of Facebook are not substantial enough, and the fine will hardly make a dent in Facebook’s bank account. The company had more than $15bn in revenue in the first three months of 2019.
“This isn’t a fine, it’s a favor to Facebook, a parking ticket which will clear them to conduct more illegal and invasive surveillance,” said Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Open Markets Institute who specializes in monopoly power. “Congress should start defunding the FTC and move the money to state enforcers like Karl Racine who believe in enforcing the law,” he added, referring to the attorney general of Washington DC, who is currently pursuing a lawsuit against Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica
David Cicilline, the Democratic congressman who chairs the House subcommittee on antitrust issues, reacted to the news on Twitter, saying: “The FTC just gave Facebook a Christmas present five months early. It’s very disappointing that such an enormously powerful company that engaged in such serious misconduct ka kite ano link below.
Eco Maori totally agrees with this Wahine view these guys think that they are leaders but NO they are just con artists fooling people that they put their te tangata best interests before their own wants YEA RIGHT.
Ruining a country near you soon: the beta males who think they’re alphas
What could be more insecure than a 55-year-old bragging about Latin, or a literal president tweeting his enemies on the bog
If the Tory leadership election unfolds as widely expected, the UK will basically be ruled by a Fathers4Injustice activist. Boris Johnson is the kind of guy who’d don Spider-Man pyjamas and scale a building in order to see less of his kids. Sorry, fewer. Even so, he remains a remarkably typical hero of our political times. “There are two kinds of women,” Harry explains at one point in When Harry Met Sally. “High maintenance and low maintenance.” “Which one am I?” Sally asks. “You’re the worst kind,” he says. “You’re high maintenance, but you think you’re low maintenance
See also gratefully submissive Donald Trump fanboy Nigel Farage, who has spent much of the past three years hanging wanly around Washington on the off-chance of a half-hour 6pm burger with the alpha male to his beta. And see also Donald Trump himself, the leader of the free world, who spent about 48 hours this week tweeting like some homicidal 11-year-old Justin Bieber fan about the leaked comments of the British ambassador. Who, apparently, we now let him pick. More on toxic insecurity’s poster boy shortly.
Great leaders show, rather than tell, their skills. Yet Johnson never lets up with telling people that he is not “defeatist”, that he will “put some lead in the collective pencil”, that “energy” is needed, that what the EU really fears is a big strong man like him. Mm. I hear they talk of little else in the 27 European capitals. “O Fates, please spare us the dreaded ‘positive energy’ of a guy internationally ridiculed as the worst foreign secretary in memory; and the unplayable charm of a surprisingly indifferent orator who knows the Latin for ‘can we just take out the backstop?’”
And Johnson does know Latin, as he never misses a chance to remind us. No one could accuse him of wearing his learning lightly – or, indeed, wearing any of it lightly. Witness his excruciating promise to reach out to something he pointedly referred to as “Oppidan Britain”. To which the increasingly despairing response has to be: YES YES! I KNOW WHAT SCHOOL YOU WENT TO! I KNOW WHAT HOUSE YOU WERE IN! I KNOW YOU GOT A SECOND CLASS CLASSICS DEGREE! I KNOW THIS SOMEHOW ENDS WITH YOU CONSIGNING OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY TO THE CATACOMBS THEN BEATING US TO DEATH WITH YOUR RELATIVELY MIDDLEBROW ACHIEVEMENTS! But mate: you are 55 – FIFTY-FIVE – years old. How, how can you possibly still be wanking on about any of this, in public, as though it was still the best thing you’ve ever done? Can it really be because it was? [Spoiler: yes ka kite ano link below.
Eco Maori thanks the wealthy US philanthropist for their tau toko of the Students Strikes and the extinction rebellion
A group of wealthy US philanthropists and investors have donated almost half a million pounds to support the grassroots movement Extinction Rebellion and school strike groups – with the promise of tens of millions more in the months ahead.
Trevor Neilson, an investor and philanthropist who has worked with some of the world’s richest families, has teamed up with Rory Kennedy – daughter of Robert Kennedy – and Aileen Getty, whose family wealth comes from the oil industry
Neilson said the three founders were using their contacts among the global mega-rich to get “a hundred times” more in the weeks and months ahead. “This might be the single best chance we have to stop the greatest emergency we have ever faced,” he told the Guardian.
The new fund has the author and environmentalist Bill McKibben, who set up 350.org, and David Wallace Wells, who wrote international best seller Uninhabitable Earth, on its advisory board.
Global heating: London to have climate similar to Barcelona by 2050
The money will initially be used to support school strike and Extinction Rebellion groups in the US, but will also be available to help “seed” similar groups around the world.
It offers tiers of funding to support different-sized groups, from teenage activists wanting money for leaflets and megaphones, to funding for salaries and offices for established groups in big cities. It has already committed some of the fund to support Extinction Rebellion groups in New York and Los Angeles Ka kite ano link below.
A big Hurricane is moving into the Mississippi river in America while the river is in flood cause trump climate change.
John haven't you been in that or around that type of organization. People like you only care about your own mana you are just sturing the Oranga tamariki stuff to use it to try and get the Auckland mayors job you don't care that you're moves could damage the government that does more for the common poor tangata than the last lot muppet Maori make up a large portion of them. You're backers are just using you to try and damage our humane Labour lead Government wake up fool.
I new a elderly couple who had a daughter on the Earabus flight.
That's a big explosion in Russia.
America sky lad 40 years today it crashed landed in the Australian outback the person describing the loud noise when it hit Papatuanuku Eco Maori knowns that feeling a meteor hit in Edgecome back in the day it was shaking the road the bank window in Opotiki was wobbling and a huge sonic boom .
Tiana turia why didn't you raise this problem about Oranga tamariki and sorte it out when you were in bed with NATIONAL they just stuffed up te tangata whenua.????????????????????. You were played by shonky and you are being played now fool
I have Already given my opinion of john tamahira in the above post.
Karen I oppose any Tangata whenua whenua being sold te Atua is not making anymore whenua they could have just used the whenua as security for a loan to do the development that they wanted in Papamore.
Ka pai to the Wahine who are getting bald heads to raise funds for housespice and the Rainbow community is a awesome cause.
I hit the justice department with a request for all the information that they have on Eco Maori to get JUSTICE. The muppets just stepped up their intimidation GAMES 10 fold lucky I'm Eco Maori I have others who have my Back
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
Open access notablesIce acceleration and rotation in the Greenland Ice Sheet interior in recent decades, Løkkegaard et al., Communications Earth & Environment:In the past two decades, mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated, partly due to the speedup of glaciers. However, uncertainty in speed derived from satellite products ...
Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Government’s official website – arrived in Point of Order’s email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
It's hard times try to make a livingYou wake up every morning in the unforgivingOut there somewhere in the cityThere's people living lives without mercy or pityI feel good, yeah I'm feeling fineI feel better then I have for the longest timeI think these pills have been good for meI ...
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
Every day now just seems to bring in more fresh meat for the grinder.In their relentlessly ideological drive to cut back on the “excessive bloat” (as they see it) of the previous Labour-led government, on the mountains of evidence accumulated in such a short period of time do not ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Megan Valére SosouMarket gardening site of the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè (Image credit: Megan Valère Sossou) For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough ...
Buzz from the Beehive Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ...
Morning in London Mother hugs beloved daughter outside the converted shoe factory in which she is living.Afternoon in London Travelling writer takes himself and his wrist down to A&E, just to be sure. Read more ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – The recent announcement of the University Advisory Group, chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, makes very clear where the Government’s focus and priorities lie. The remit of the Advisory Group is that Group members will consider challenges and opportunities for improvement in the university sector including: ...
Eric Crampton writes – The Reserve Bank of New Zealand desperately wants to find reasons to have workstreams in climate change. It makes little sense. They’ve run another stress test on the banks looking to see if they could find a prudential regulation case. They couldn’t. They ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Pundits from the left and the right are arguing that National’s Fast Track Bill that is designed to speed up infrastructure decisions could end up becoming mired in a cesspool of corruption. Political commentator ...
Looking at the headlines this morning it’s hard to feel anything other than pessimistic about the future of humanity.Note that I’m not speaking about the future of mankind, but the survival of our humanity. The values that we believe in seem to be ebbing away, by the day.Perhaps every generation ...
Swabbing mixed breed baby chicks to test for avian influenzaUh oh. Bird flu – often deadly to humans – is not only being transmitted from infected birds to dairy cows, but is now travelling between dairy cows. As of last Friday, Bloomberg News reports, there were 32 American dairy herds ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
What is it with the mining industry? Its not enough for them to pillage the earth - they apparently can't even be bothered getting resource consent to do so: The proponent behind a major mine near the Clutha River had already been undertaking activity in the area without a ...
Photo # 1 I am a huge fan of Singapore’s approach to housing, as described here two years ago by copying and pasting from The ConversationWhat Singapore has that Australia does not is a public housing developer, the Housing Development Board, which puts new dwellings on public and reclaimed land, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Reactions to news of the government’s readiness to make urgent changes to “the resource management system” through a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) suggest a balanced approach is being taken. The Taxpayers’ Union says the proposed changes don’t go far enough. Greenpeace says ...
I’m starting to wonder if Anna Burns-Francis might be the best political interviewer we’ve got. That might sound unlikely to you, it came as a bit of a surprise to me.Jack Tame can be excellent, but has some pretty average days. I like Rebecca Wright on Newshub, she asks good ...
Chris Trotter writes – Willie Jackson is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also ...
Graeme Edgeler writes – This morning [April 21], the Wellington High Court is hearing a judicial review brought by Hon. Karen Chhour, the Minister for Children, against a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal. This is unusual, judicial reviews are much more likely to brought against ministers, rather than ...
Both of Parliament’s watchdogs have now ripped into the Government’s Fast-track Approvals Bill. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s political economy and beyond on the morning of Tuesday, April 23 are:The Lead: The Auditor General,John Ryan, has joined the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah SpengemanPeople wait to board an electric bus in Pune, India. (Image credit: courtesy of ITDP) Public transportation riders in Pune, India, love the city’s new electric buses so much they will actually skip an older diesel bus that ...
The infrastructure industry yesterday issued a “hurry up” message to the Government, telling it to get cracking on developing a pipeline of infrastructure projects.The hiatus around the change of Government has seen some major projects cancelled and others delayed, and there is uncertainty about what will happen with the new ...
Hi,Over the weekend I revisited a podcast I really adore, Dead Eyes. It’s about a guy who got fired from Band of Brothers over two decades ago because Tom Hanks said he had “dead eyes”.If you don’t recall — 2001’s Band of Brothers was part of the emerging trend of ...
Buzz from the Beehive The 180 or so recipients of letters from the Government telling them how to submit infrastructure projects for “fast track” consideration includes some whose project applications previously have been rejected by the courts. News media were quick to feature these in their reports after RMA Reform Minister Chris ...
It would not be a desirable way to start your holiday by breaking your back, your head, or your wrist, but on our first hour in Singapore I gave it a try.We were chatting, last week, before we started a meeting of Hazel’s Enviro Trust, about the things that can ...
Calling all journalists, academics, planners, lawyers, political activists, environmentalists, and other members of the public who believe that the relationships between vested interests and politicians need to be scrutinised. We need to work together to make sure that the new Fast-Track Approvals Bill – currently being pushed through by the ...
Feel worried. Shane Jones and a couple of his Cabinet colleagues are about to be granted the power to override any and all objections to projects like dams, mines, roads etc even if: said projects will harm biodiversity, increase global warming and cause other environmental harms, and even if ...
Bryce Edwards writes- The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. ...
Michael Bassett writes – If you think there is a move afoot by the radical Maori fringe of New Zealand society to create a parallel system of government to the one that we elect at our triennial elections, you aren’t wrong. Over the last few days we have ...
Without a corresponding drop in interest rates, it’s doubtful any changes to the CCCFA will unleash a massive rush of home buyers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Monday, April 22 included:The Government making a ...
Sunday was a lazy day. I started watching Jack Tame on Q&A, the interviews are usually good for something to write about. Saying the things that the politicians won’t, but are quite possibly thinking. Things that are true and need to be extracted from between the lines.As you might know ...
In our Weekly Roundup last week we covered news from Auckland Transport that the WX1 Western Express is going to get an upgrade next year with double decker electric buses. As part of the announcement, AT also said “Since we introduced the WX1 Western Express last November we have seen ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 29 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Stats NZ releases its statutory report on Census 2023 tomorrow.Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers a pre-Budget speech at ...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 14, 2024 thru Sat, April 20, 2024. Story of the week Our story of the week hinges on these words from the abstract of a fresh academic ...
The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. The Government says this will ...
This is a column to say thank you. So many of have been in touch since Mum died to say so many kind and thoughtful things. You’re wonderful, all of you. You’ve asked how we’re doing, how Dad’s doing. A little more realisation each day, of the irretrievable finality of ...
Identifying the engine type in your car is crucial for various reasons, including maintenance, repairs, and performance upgrades. Knowing the specific engine model allows you to access detailed technical information, locate compatible parts, and make informed decisions about modifications. This comprehensive guide will provide you with a step-by-step approach to ...
Introduction: The allure of racing is undeniable. The thrill of speed, the roar of engines, and the exhilaration of competition all contribute to the allure of this adrenaline-driven sport. For those who yearn to experience the pinnacle of racing, becoming a race car driver is the ultimate dream. However, the ...
Introduction Automobiles have become ubiquitous in modern society, serving as a primary mode of transportation and a symbol of economic growth and personal mobility. With countless vehicles traversing roads and highways worldwide, it begs the question: how many cars are there in the world? Determining the precise number is a ...
Maintaining a safe and reliable vehicle requires regular inspections. Whether it’s a routine maintenance checkup or a safety inspection, knowing how long the process will take can help you plan your day accordingly. This article delves into the factors that influence the duration of a car inspection and provides an ...
Mazda Motor Corporation, commonly known as Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Fuchu, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. The company was founded in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd., and began producing vehicles in 1931. Mazda is primarily known for its production of passenger cars, but ...
Your car battery is an essential component that provides power to start your engine, operate your electrical systems, and store energy. Over time, batteries can weaken and lose their ability to hold a charge, which can lead to starting problems, power failures, and other issues. Replacing your battery before it ...
In most states, you cannot register a car without a valid driver’s license. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. Exceptions to the RuleIf you are under 18 years old: In some states, you can register a car in your name even if you do not ...
Mazda, a Japanese automotive manufacturer with a rich history of innovation and engineering excellence, has emerged as a formidable player in the global car market. Known for its reputation of producing high-quality, fuel-efficient, and driver-oriented vehicles, Mazda has consistently garnered praise from industry experts and consumers alike. In this article, ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
“Our exporters should, therefore, be deeply concerned that the Fast-track Approvals Bill was not assessed for consistency with any of our free trade commitments prior to being introduced to the House,” says Gary Taylor, Chief Executive of the Environmental ...
NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff is calling on all political parties to support the new Member’s Bill from Labour’s workplace relations and safety spokesperson Camilla Belich MP that would ensure negligent companies are held accountable when their employees ...
A historian with an uncanny track record of predicting US election winners tells RNZ's Sunday Morning that President Biden looks to be on track for another term, but things could still go very wrong for him. ...
A historian with a track record of predicting US election winners tells RNZ's Sunday Morning that President Biden looks to be on track for another term, but things could still go wrong for him. ...
Ngaio Marsh House is one of Christchurch’s best kept secrets – and contains more than a few mysteries of its own.Trust Ngaio Marsh to leave more than a few mysteries scattered through her house long after her departure. For a start, there’s the curious concrete portal in the garden, ...
Appointment viewing has been lost to the mists of time, but memories of Montana Sunday Theatre can still be conjured by hitting play on a particular piece of classical music. “You’re not going to be able to sell it.” Over 30 years on, Karen Bieleski still recalls how the task ...
Performance Review King Luxon sat behind His massive polished oak desk. It is Performance Review time. There is a knock on the door. “Enter!” says the King. In steps Minister of Disabilities and Carer Pedicures, Penny Simmonds. “I can explain everything …” she begins. “Fine,” says King Luxon, pressing the ...
The pair opened their first fully collaborative exhibition, Nina for Flowers, last Saturday. Gabi Lardies visited their studio to find out who Nina is and what working together was like.‘It didn’t start out like, ‘This is a show about Nina,’” says Josephine Jelicich, gripping a thermos of peppermint tea. ...
Thank you, Dr Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner, for your brilliant invention. I’m another mid-20s Kiwi who had an OE last year. I hopped on my bicycle where France meets the Atlantic and cycled east. I pedalled through the Loire Valley, down rivers lined with willows and ancient wisteria-draped chateaus. I relished ...
Asia Pacific Report From France to Australia, university pro-Palestine protests in the United States have now spread to several countries with students pitching on-campus camps. And students at Columbia and other US universities remain defiant as campuses have witnessed the biggest protests since the anti-Vietnam war and anti-apartheid eras in ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)New Zealand Government’s Fast Track legislation. Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government ...
Tara Ward talks to presenter Naomi Toilalo about the new TV show that turns food waste into a three course feast. Naomi Toilalo is standing in the warehouse at Good Neighbour Tauranga, helping unpack the two-and-a-half tonnes of rejected food that will arrive at the community support hub that day. ...
Scout is our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Scout’s human, Avril, for her support. Dog name: Scout (named after the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird – she inherited the independent spirit ...
Megan Alatini takes us through her life in TV, including ‘terrible’ daytime TV, the class of Carol Hirschfeld and her most embarrassing TrueBliss moment. When she responded to a vague newspaper ad asking “do you have what it takes to be a popstar?” 25 years ago, Megan Alatini never guessed ...
A new exhibition in Wellington showcases the faces behind your local goods and services. Back in 1977, when I was a fine arts student at the University of Canterbury, I took a series of photographs of Christchurch shopkeepers. The photos were for a calendar – a project for my end ...
Toomaj and his resistance to tyranny through his songs have become an icon for the youth of Iran, so his sentence has hit the nation hard. Toomaj Salehi is not the first artist to pay the price for standing with the people. ...
My cousin Dylan and I spotted these big eels under the bridge that summer. We watched them lounging under the dark weed, facing into the flow of water, their mouths frozen open. Dylan and I couldn’t stop thinking about those eels. The night we went down to the creek, we ...
Newsroom, home of satire. My long-running weekly satirical series The Secret Diary has moved to Newsroom and will appear every Saturday, with Victor Billot’s wildly popular satirical Odes continuing to appear every Sunday. Diaries, Odes – while serious political columnists toil at meaningful opinions and stroke their chins to an ...
Tara Ward unravels the many nuanced layers of a cartoon about talking dogs.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. It’s not often an episode of a children’s cartoon has adults sobbing into their sleeves, but that’s exactly what happened this week when ...
Working as a doctor in developing countries to help communities achieve better health outcomes is nothing short of a life goal for Jessica Tater. The University of Otago medical student has her sights firmly set on joining the international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) when she qualifies ...
There’s an island in the far reaches of Auckland’s territory, sitting off the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula, 30 minutes by air from the city or four hours on the slow boat. Aotea Great Barrier is off-grid, it has a population of fewer than a thousand people … and most ...
Asia Pacific Report An Australian author and advocate, Jim Aubrey, today led a national symbolic one minute’s silence to mark the “blood debt” owed to Papuan allies during the Second World War indigenous resistance against the invading Japanese forces. “A promise to most people is a promise,” Aubrey said in ...
Asia Pacific Report The Freedom Flotilla is ready to sail to Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. All the required paperwork has been submitted to the port authority, and the cargo has been loaded and prepared for the humanitarian trip to the besieged enclave. However, organisers received word of an “administrative ...
Pacific Media Watch Palestine solidarity protesters today demonstrated at the Auckland headquarters of Television New Zealand, accusing the country’s major TV network of broadcasting “propaganda” backing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. About 50 protesters targeted the main entrance to the TVNZ building near Sky Tower and also picketed a side ...
Opinion by Lynley Hood. Forty years on from my 1985 Fulbright Grant, my disquiet over the war in Gaza evoked some troubling questions. The answer to my first question – What is the primary purpose of the Fulbright Programme? – was on the Fulbright NZ website. It says: US Senator, ...
The ministers responsible for green-lighting major projects need to be open about potential conflicts of interest, says Transparency International. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University It has been a particularly distressing start to the year. There is little that can ease the current grief of individuals, families and communities who have needlessly lost a loved one to men’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Lichen, the first described example of symbiosis.AdeJ Artventure/Shutterstock Once known only to those studying biology, the word symbiosis is now widely used. Symbiosis is the intimate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Hemsley, Head, Childhood Dementia Research Group, Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University Olena Ivanova/Shutterstock “Childhood” and “dementia” are two words we wish we didn’t have to use together. But sadly, around 1,400 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University The government’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has just published its second report. It was set up by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth in 2022 to provide: ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne The Queensland state election will be held in October. A YouGov poll for The Courier Mail, conducted April 9–17 from a sample ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Naeni, PhD candidate at Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University There’s been much talk in recent months about what a possible second Donald Trump presidency in the United States could mean for Europe, Russia’s war in Ukraine, the ...
A brief round-up of submissions on the controversial proposed law. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week, submissions on the controversial Fast-track Approvals Bill closed just hours after the government released a list of stakeholder organisations who were sent letters advising how they could ...
A poem from Robin Peace’s new collection Detritus of Empire: feather / grass / rock. Cereal giving I see a woman’s hands, see her curious hands break a stalk as she walks through the tall prairie, the savannah, the steppe, wherever it was. See her idly bite the grass that ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)A handsomely produced (debossed cover, lovely ...
The Commissioner's decision validates the longstanding efforts of the local community and ensures that Awataha Marae will be managed to serve the needs of the local community, particularly for hosting tangihanga. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Salles, Associate professor, University of Sydney Examples of Australian landscapes.Unsplash Seventy thousand years ago, the sea level was much lower than today. Australia, along with New Guinea and Tasmania, formed a connected landmass known as Sahul. Around this time – ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Castagna, Lecturer, Creative Writing, Western Sydney University Day Day Market, ParramattaPhoto: Garry Trinh I live on the edge of Parramatta, Australia’s fastest-growing city, on the kind of old-fashioned suburban street that has 1950s fibros constructed in the post-war housing boom, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Ryan, Teaching Fellow in Economics, University of Waikato GettyImagesfatido/Getty Images There is an ongoing global debate over whether the high inflation seen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic can be lowered without a recession. New Zealand is not ...
The ‘Wicked Game’ heartthrob is in his late 60s now. That didn’t stop him putting on a lively, goofy and very sparkly show. Apart from ‘Wicked Game’, which graces a sultry playlist of mine simply called 💋, my last sustained Chris Isaak listening session took place when I was about ...
Analysis - Two ministers were stripped of portfolios in a warning to Cabinet, drama broke out at the Waitangi Tribunal, and the gang patch ban bill ran into opposition. ...
Tara Ward makes an impassioned plea for some vital pop culture merch. In April 1999, I became obsessed with a new reality television show called Popstars. Every Tuesday night, five strangers transformed into music royalty before my very eyes as Joe, Keri, Carly, Erika and Megan were chosen to form ...
PNG Post-Courier In the early hours of ANZAC Day, aerial photographs captured an impressive gathering of Australians and Papua New Guineans at Isurava in the Northern (Oro) Province. The solemn dawn service yesterday was held at a site steeped in history, where some of the fiercest battles of World War ...
The PSA is shocked that Oranga Tamariki has used the cost cutting drive to downgrade its commitment to Te Ao Māori and remove many specialist Māori roles. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland There can be no more powerful symbol of the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea than the prime ministers of these neighbouring countries walking together on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharon Robinson, Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director of ARC Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong Andrew Netherwood Over the last 25 years, the ozone hole which forming over Antarctica each spring has started to shrink. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Viktoria Kahui, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Economics, University of Otago Getty Images/Amy Toensing Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing. One emerging concept focuses on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Colin Bednall, Associate Professor in Management, Swinburne University of Technology marvent/Shutterstock Finding the best person to fill a position can be tough, from drafting a job ad to producing a shortlist of top interview candidates. Employers typically consider information from ...
Wondering where to host your next BYO? Whether its a small gathering or a massive party, we’ve got some recommendations. I was first introduced to the concept of BYOs at Dunedin’s India Gardens, a legendary but sadly defunct establishment, which purveyed enormous quantities of mango chicken to Aotearoa’s drunkest future ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julien Cooper, Honorary Lecturer, Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University Julien Cooper The hyper-arid desert of Eastern Sudan, the Atbai Desert, seems like an unlikely place to find evidence of ancient cattle herders. But in this dry environment, my new ...
The sector says it’s hopeful her replacement Paul Goldsmith will be able to throw it a lifeline, after six months with a minister deemed missing in action, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign ...
The government can't just rely on axing public sector jobs and has to do more to cut spending, says the chief economist at a free market think tank. ...
Rock The Vote NZ, known for its advocacy for minor party unity and its role within the Freedoms NZ Coalition during the 2023 General Election, celebrates this merger as a strategic enhancement of its operational strength and outreach. ...
Nearly everyone has experienced the frustration of something you use breaking and being difficult or expensive to fix. Proposed legislation could change that. It’s been raining on and off all Sunday afternoon but people are lining up outside a building in a corner of Gribblehirst Park in Sandringham, Auckland. In ...
Well-written article about how our govt decided not to cover all people harmed by the Chch mosque terror attacks:
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/07/09/674024/ministers-vetoed-acc-extension-for-terror-victims
No-one should qualify for ACC as a result of what happened in Chch. What happened was not an 'accident'. It was a deliberate act of evil by someone with a sick mind.
How Auckland Transport refuses to act against rogue car parking: https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2019/07/08/auckland-transports-parking-nonsense/
The core problem, that AT is probably aware of, that the law is largely unenforceable because there are more cars than carparks.
I have had a licensed vehicle parked and never moved outside my home for months. The Council can't do anything about it because it is licensed till September. I am thinking of checking with the police to see if it is reported stolen.
The streets are clogged with cars parked on the kerb, often because the owners can't be bothered maneouvring into their garages or car parks. At the kerb they sit, ready to go in seconds. Some have bigger vehicles than car parking provided. Some leave them there for days, then use them, returning to the same spot or nearby. Rarely is the street free of cars. When tradespeople, visitors want to park they have to search for a spot. It isn't satisfactory, and the streets are narrowed by cars on both sides. Some park out from the kerb by about 30 cm, which then reduces space for cyclists and cars using the space.
But cyclists don't mind really, they all use the footpath, swishing along behind you before you know they are there. Bells announce them so you can move out of their way. Does anyone think about them having to dismount and walk the bike round citizens using the path, for whom the paths were originally formed?
This fascinating documentary focuses primarily on the use of methamphetamines by the German military during World War II and Hitler's personal drug habits but it also mentions a fact I've found mentioned elsewhere, which is the allies (and Japan) preferred amphetamines which they gave to troops in millions of pills. Among those who were given them were allied troops in North Africa which would have included New Zealand soldiers. But I have never heard of any research etc into drug use among New Zealand soldiers during World War II. I wonder if New Zealand soldiers got addicted and if this might have contributed to alcoholism among New Zealand soldiers when they returned home (not having access to amphetamines). Amphetamine use by New Zealand soldiers during WWII would make interesting area for someone to research perhaps?
I'd heard about the USA giving LSD to airmen as it allowed them to undertake longer flights. (The doses would have to be carefully managed so they didn't forget that they were piloting a plane with a mission.)
Go pills are a thing.
LSD sounds odd (not a stimulant), but there was a case over Afghanistan where two US F16 pilots bombed and killed some Canadians. Part of their largely unsuccessful defense was that their amphetamine use for the mission made them more likely to identify unrelated actions as threats.
I remember a sequence in a Nicholas Monsarrat book (The Cruel Sea, probably) where the captain needed to out-wait a submerged Uboat so got the doctor to give him some uppers. The doctor kept them on a tight leash. Yes, fiction, but I mention it because Monsarrat is to WW2 convoy escort duty what Le Carre is to cold war esionage: a practitioner writing about what he knows.
LeCarre certainly captures all the tiniest details. Have you been watching the latest version of Little Drummer Girl on tv1?
The Alexander Skarsgård one? Yup, really well done.
Apparently Le Carre's written a brexit one – I'll be really interested to see the mix of tech and spycraft in that. So many ultra-modern spy things are gadgets beating gadgets rather than the human touch. Not to mention that they ignore the longer term goals for the immediate ones – e.g. Bond is just using a cover to stay undetected (even officially) long enough to kill someone, he never uses a cover for weeks or months.
Emergency rations for British soldiers in ww2 consisted of speed laced chocolate. It was an offence to consume them unless directed to by an officer. I would imagine, though of course I could be wrong, NZ, Aus and Canadian troops would have had similar provisions with the same level of control over their use.
The Wolves of War: Evidence of an Ancient Cult of Warrior Lycanthropy
"The legendary wine of Thrace was particularly potent through the addition of a psychoactive mushroom. The rituals of the women known as bacchants enacted the fantasies of root-cutters in commemoration of the deity in his persona that predated viticulture. This fungal persona represents the same intoxicant that was known to the Persians as haoma and represents the spread of an Indo-European sacrament into the Classical world, with its association of lycanthropy and the bonding of warriors into brotherhoods as packs of wolves, better known in its manifestation in late antiquity among the Nordic peoples as berserkers."
http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/view/898
"According to Falk, Parsi-Zoroastrians use a variant of ephedra, usually Ephedra procera, imported from the Hari River valley in Afghanistan."
Haoma, soma… it's been a while and many interpretations of what the drug was. Some variations I think. From Vedic Hymns with recipes: poppies, weed, speed (Papaver, Cannabis, Ephedra). From other texts, fungi. I think they got folk shitfaced on whatever was convenient.
You bet. Percolated on down the millennia from paleolithic times. I remember the kerfuffle in the media when one of the Dead Sea Scrolls team of scholars broke ranks & advocated heresy: "cult practices, such as ingesting visionary plants to perceive the mind of God, persisted into the early Christian era". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cross
"There was a media frenzy when it was published at the dawn of the 1970s. This caused the publisher to apologize for issuing it and forced Allegro's resignation from his university position."
"In November 2009 The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross was reprinted in a 40th anniversary edition with 30-page addendum by Prof. Carl A. P. Ruck of Boston University." So could be that the time of conforming to orthodoxy in acadaemia is over, and we may actually see academics learning something new.
Ethnobotany is helping. Also helping pharmaceutical companies to pillage as UNDRIP has no teeth.
Why do we have a parliament and most here being climate change deniers ?
AS if actions really do speak about what people REALLY think then there would be some direct action, declaring an emergency is doing nothing. If we were really serious there would be an acceptance that the world pop. will have to reduce, living standards will decline. But perhaps the really macro effects are way too serious to contemplate about.
So we say we agree but in reality we Deny.
Why do we have a parliament and most here being climate change deniers?
What do this relate to Herodotus? Who are 'most'…deniers?
It's not nothing that's been done. The so called deniers you speak of reached bi-partisan consensus with James Shaw's work, diluted though it may be.
There is not nothing being done. You are concern trolling while ignoring facts.
Yes, you'd think more would be done… but if this lot are turfed out and Nats are back in we'd be in a considerably worse position right now. Don't forget there are a large portion of self-obsessed
twatslandlords in this country who think they're the only game in town. Give them power back we'll be truly fucked.Not to mention the myriad of other problems the Coalition are currently trying to deal with.
For some people positive action is merely an excuse to start on the not enough mantra.
Count your blessings, positive change is occurring in an atmosphere of resistance and denial via media prostitutes. Those servicing that other mob that would crisp us for a buck.
Asking for more to be done is good and well. Claiming nothing is being done is bullshit.
The Labour and Green MP's most on this site, otherwise there would be strong demands to examine what NZ does. e.g. How do we promote tourism when the effects on the climate are so dramatic e.g air travel etc
Either this is a crisis that requires dramatic changes in everything we do on this planet or it is a nice to do as it makes "us" feel good.
WTH stopping oil exploration is great (What Crap ) if we then expect other countries to continue to supply us, nothing you have listed is dramatic., but it feels good.
"nothing you have listed is dramatic"
I see, you require drama.
Just go check out the Herald/Stuff/Shitpublication et. al. reactions to the above listed changes.
Apparently, the sky is falling.
With the changes that have been signalled e.g. many to become effective "after" the next election. The sea will be rising, who cares what the sky is doing 😜
I can be dramatic Herodotus. I can just get so depressed reading stuff from you and similar others that i can feel like killing myself.If you would not like even bringing that thought to anyone, then I suggest you don't come on here with your black mood and your allegations of nothing. I get blue, and sadder when I can't even see the Bill for euthanasia of people who are nearly dead get through. I would hope that I can give up one day soon, be resigned that I have achieved something small but worthwhile, and plan my passing ritual legally. But watching the meanness of so many rigid and uncaring is sad, and your approach makes it worse.
Tell us what YOU are doing and encourage us to take some specific action like you, protest, plant a tree etc. Whining and criticising is not going to get us where we need to go.
You could have a look at the vid at the bottom of the How to Get There last Sat post. It should be watched once a day by you to give you some hints about turning your negativity into something useful and supporting others trying to do good.
I do enough to feel that I am doing my bit. Visit a few Hauraki Gulf Islands or Hūnua ranges. Perhaps when you go behind a flax bush or a tree that was was planted by my hands, or you listen to the bird song perhaps I had a hand in the relocation or care.
Now I would like to hear what YOU are doing, many transfer their inaction by attacking others ?
Next time you hear the Greens or Labour spout off about what they are doing; feel good because that is all that the govt is doing and it feels SOOOOO good as long as you are not directly inconvenience.
So Herodotus, you have done as we have then? Did you vote wisely?
Yes, some changes are too slow. However, this Government knows that to move to fast is to alienate the voters.
When voters start to demand change and vote in large enough numbers for the proposed platform, Governments have a mandate.
At least this Government has made moves to improve our footprint where they have traction.
They are hoping for a greater mandate next time. We hope so as well!!
Compared with Europe and the Americas plus India and much of the Northern hemisphere and Australia, we here in NZ surrounded by cooling heat absorbing ocean waters and the Antarctic to the south, though it's melting too, are not being affected in your face obviously except our glaciers are melting back and the Alps' snow pack is declining. Ignoring reality is a way to keep BAU going: we all do it me too! Earthquakes are a more frightening prospect for us e.g. Wellington central library is still closed for examination and repairs from the last Kaikoura shake.
Trotter's prescription for Labour: populism. He reckons "the really exciting thing is that a huge part of the campaign need not be visible. If Labour in New Zealand is not too proud to copy the extraordinary social-media campaigning techniques perfected by Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party in the recent European elections, then Jacinda should be able to avoid pretty much all of the blood-splatter."
You think?? Labour as sophisticated political operatives? Pull the other leg, it's got bells on. http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2019/07/can-jacinda-give-national-kiss-of.html
Did I read that someone thought of Nigel Farage being behind the leaking of the Brit diplomat's confidential notes?
Gabby suggested one of his supporters was. However I'm not convinced Nigel is a true patriot. He has twice failed to name his political parties Britain First. He hasn't even adopted Make Britain Great Again as his slogan.
Perhaps he wants to be a free spirit like the Don? Buzzing around creating frenzy. From what I have heard about Farage, he can be captured, bottled and held under glass. If so that would larn him to say the Right things.
Are you suggesting that only a True Patriot would steal and leak diplomatic notes franko?
Nope, that wasn't my intent. However, it's true that patriots have done that kind of thing for yonks (whenever they believe it's in the best interests of the nation)…
How much more populist does he want?
We already have a talented charismatic leader who is also the most popular politician in Australasia. And who has babies, gets the all-round guy, has a baby in office, and gets engaged.
2020 must surely be New Zealand Royal Wedding year.
If he were talking about the Labour Party of 2012 he would have a point.
Not with Ardern.
Trotsker's increasingly coming across as a bit of a tosser franko.
He's been a tosser for a long time, in fact….
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/01/chris-trotter-reckons-zimmerman-jury.html
Barry Soper is a slimy creep:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12248158
To begin with, he knows the difference between Key's and Clark's former holidays and Ardern's trip to the Cook Islands. Key went to a gated community in Hawaii where privacy was guaranteed. Clark climbed faraway mountains and skied in faraway places like Norway. Her privacy was guaranteed by lack of access and distance. Jacinda and Clark have gone to a well known holiday spot where privacy is not guaranteed.
They also have their little girl whose privacy they rightly wish to protect.
And just to be sure we get his nasty message, he throws in a few jibes at the late David Lange.
I recommend the article as the latest reminder of the extent of right-wing vengeance when they don't get their own way – in this case political power and the money and prestige that flows from it for the media sycophants.
yep nasty creep is a pretty nice description for that human imo
That might be true, but the value of the observation is somewhat diminished when it comes from someone who calls a politically motivated liar and calumniator a "hero".
It is from the NZ Herald whose spokeswoman heralded about the time they put up a paywall that the Herald is 'not a journal of record'. So apparently they don't have to try and live up to any standard of valuable reporting. Just drive-by jibes with a bit of gravitas for the business people about the most important matter of money – changing hands and the people in power that enable it.
breen = who?
That observation would be more valuable coming from someone who was lesspissey morpissey.
Quite possibly true, Baggers. Be that as it may, we both agree that the Soper-DuPlessis-Allen partnership is a match made in hell, right?
They might well be jerks, but their relationship is none of our business.
It's entertaining though—like another marriage of NewstalkZzzzzB regulars ….
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2019/07/bill-ralstons-wife-has-go-at-him-on-air.html
Whatever, dude.
His wife is just as awful.
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/01/campbell-lives-sorry-replacement-cannot.html
"Why does Jacinda Ardern want to keep her holiday a secret?"
The PM has often talked about mental health in the country, the use of drugs and all sorts of prevalent maladies. Barry Soper shows the tragic state we've descended too.
A senior political journalist, an adult, a man who's kicked around planet earth for quite a few years getting precious about not knowing where Ardern's gone on holiday? Or that we, I, don't know?
Call an ambulance for Soper, not just for the fact that he was upset for not knowing where she was going, but for all the drivel he comes up with around his little episode.
Why does Soapy want to know? So he can criticise her ostentation, or sneer at her cheapness?
I find it disturbing on the basis that someone paid him to write that utterly pointless garbage, not because I don’t think that the PM "can't handle" it – likely she just ignores it – or anything else that comes by way of her job. The uneasy feeling is that someone who was paid to write that and those with similar tendencies main intent would be to be the first with anything that remotely looks like "bad news" of some description and it is their fondest dream that that will happen. While they're not worth effort of considering how this is what some "journalism" has come to is really strange.
You're surprised? Have you not listened to his radio station at some point during the last twenty years?
No of course I'm not surprised I couldn't bear listening to that or similar and can only say that radio via that awful magic talk has only become worse, a few were OK but now it is sickening. One "announcer" I heard referring to a "poll" they had run as relfecting their "listeners" and he was dead right and not I am no longer one of them.
Keep an eye out for my rushed transcript of Peter Williams' show on Monday. It was, as you may have guessed, simply awful. In fact….
https://tenor.com/view/its-an-absolute-shitshow-shitshow-horrible-mess-problematic-gif-13065118
Miserable Barry is living proof of that great line by Yeats:
"An aged man is but a paltry thing / A tattered coat upon a stick / Unless soul clap its hands and sing…"
Soul-less, whiny, paltry little Barry. Ignore the half-wit.
I read the Soper piece as "I have to write something to get my money; I'm bored: I'll stir the pot – oh great, Ardern is in the Cook Islands and I did not know …" End of story -Soper style.
Here is a much more balanced item, IMO, probably much closer to the truth – Gayford is filming for his TV show Fish of the Day in the Cook Islands. Ardern and their daughter accompanied him for a short break – much deserved, and few and far between. Choice of destination boosts the local economy of one of our closest Pacifc neigbours, a former dependency with the main currency remaining NZ dollars, etc End of story – Reality.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/07/jacinda-ardern-spotted-holidaying-in-cook-islands-with-neve.amp.html
….just out of interest, a commercial flight or RNZAF private jet?
Teleportation.
amphibious limo with heated seats.
The RNZAF has private jets indinana?
I think you're on the money vv.
The sulky childishness of the article by a grown man is hard to believe. He belongs in Trumpland.
Anne, after working such unsociable hours, family time should be private and precious.
Soper never got over mucking up the flights to Britain when Jacinda and Clarke were such a hit. He is a sour sad man.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/113578935/prison-officers-will-work-12-hour-shifts-in-new-roster
Its been talked about for a long time…
'Corrections Association of New Zealand president Allan Whitley said a group of members asked the union to advocate for longer shifts about six years ago.'
Thank f**k, working 8-9 days straight is no joke (well it is a joke but its not a very funny one…)
'Waggott said more work was required before the revised system could be fully implemented and there was no finalised timeframe.'
D'oh!
Paula Bennett this morning talking about Labour Coalition climate change 'posturing'. What posture is this – I think it should become a recognisable badge of courage for those getting on with the mahi!
And then she condemns passing legislation relating to it by emergency. National didn't do this. We know Paula. And National only chose to do it when there was a real emergency – that would be when their funders became impatient to get their requested legislation passed enabling their desired business transactions.
Bennet was 'posturing' as a car-loving Westie, and a very poor imitation it was. She seemed completely unaware that vulgar selfishness doesn't make you look working class, it makes you look like a one-percenter.
Sounds like trying to have her cake and eat it too. That would be something that she would like to achieve, believing she has the talent.
Bennet was 'posturing' as a car-loving Westie, and a very poor imitation it was.
Her current posturing as a blue-rinse conservative is no more convincing.
Has Bennett had speech lessons to give her more gravitas? She certainly sounded different in that interview! More blue-rinse conservative maybe…..
Yes, she changes her persona according to the circumstances of the day. In the event of a leadership challenge, she's after the votes of the Blue Rinse Brigade?
Quite a change from her original persona
Talking about posturing – if one is not careful then one might get eaten by a lion like young Albert. Paula had better stay away from the zoo in case she has not perfected her posture, from a lying-down lion's POV.
He lay in a som-no-lent posture with his face close to the bars.
Just a light moment for those who like Stanley Holloway. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaw-savyK0s
Prompted me to recall another cautionary tale about a lion (Ponto), a boy named Jim, and always keeping a-hold of nurse!
That's good. Stanley Holloway is still tops – his world-weary accent and cynical air are great.
Where is simon? That's two weeks in a row he hasn't given Wed morning interviews.
However he's active on the twitter today, and once again he's getting owned.
https://twitter.com/simonjbridges/status/1148705424801067008
Interesting. National Party policy must be to promote inefficient vehicles and build more roads.
National supports the polluters.
Its mid-year break for Parliament and politicians with a full three weeks between sittings of the House, Apart from the summer break (Christmas – late Jan/early Feb) the House sits in 2 to 3 week blocks with only 1 -2 week breaks in between.
The PM has also not been doing her usual weekly media stints so its not just Simon, and things should get back to usual next week when Cabinet/Caucus meetings and House sittings resume.
[On another subject, hope all is going well with the anti-bullying situation. ]
Not my car, Simon, I’d pay less for my car. Lots less. 🙂
Doing quite well, actually. Staying warm with the winter warmth payment as the sleety rain falls outside. Got a free repeat for my hearing aid batteries yesterday.
On Monday I get a free check for bladder cancer at three weeks notice from symptoms to specialist.
This government is working for us older citizens…….
Good one Nicki
actions speak louder than lyrics
Billy Blagg will no doubt be performing though?
God will punish you for that one
Actions do speak louder than lyrics, and credit where credit is due for her action on said topic.
However….. if she could be less skanky in her video's that would go a long way in helping females to not be objectified.
I'm not a fan of her personally – but I applaud her actions in rejecting this offer.
Do you buy firemen's calendars?
fantastic essay
This is why racism should be challenged ,,, two ticks national is no excuse for encouraging our sicko's.
And how come no media in NZ …. apart from Nicky Hager ,,,, called out the blatant dishonesty and racism ,,, of the Brash Nats ' steal the beaches ' election propaganda,
I think Brash is still banging away at it …. … who would Hobson votes end up floating too
More pressure on Pharmac – they are damned if they do and damned if they don't
The Pharmac board was advised that the cost of funding OxyContin would be $1.2m by 2008 – it ended up being $3.5m and kept ballooning.
Doctors have told Stuff that after Pharmac agreed to fund OxyContin, Mundipharma began heavily promoting it, including for conditions such as arthritis.
Sales reps would visit GPs, and advertisements were placed in publications such as New Zealand Doctor.
Dr Alistair Dunn, a Whangarei addiction medicine specialist who was one of the first to raise concerns about OxyContin, says GPs would not previously have resorted to using morphine for arthritis.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/111691539/pharmac-has-spent-tens-of-millions-on-oxycontin-blamed-for-americas-opioid-crisis
It’s hard to help citizens who are dying to have addictions to various things.
Lachlan Foote, 21, returned to his Blue Mountains home after celebrating New Year’s Eve in the early hours of 2018. He made himself a protein shake before bed, adding caffeine powder, and his parents found him dead on the bathroom floor the next morning.
A Coroner’s report has confirmed Lachlan died from caffeine toxicity when he included too much pure caffeine powder in his shake.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/114118208/a-teaspoon-will-kill-you-grieving-australian-father-warns-of-caffeine-powder
He comes home from a party, had he been drinking?
He makes himself a protein drink and then adds a stimulant to it just when he is going to sleep?
We need to stop advertising medicines.
Yes Mcflock
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson
Right, good stuff. I hadn't realised it was all about fox-hunting, but yes, ever so traditional and something any true conservative needs to excel at.
An old 2000 piece on CGT that might be of interest to some. By Robin Oliver then IRD General Manager
https://www.goodreturns.co.nz/article/976485506/capital-gains-tax-the-new-zealand-case.html
This about what we are up against by opening up ourselves to the world business that is equivalent to drive-by smash and grab. Our government hasn't a chance in coping with sharp operators like this.
https://www.noted.co.nz/money/business/what-are-private-equity-firms-really-doing-to-new-zealand/
This was from Branko Marcetic in 2017
Such a nightmare scenario was not out of the ordinary for renters around the United States after Invitation Homes, a subsidiary of New York private equity firm Blackstone Group, began buying foreclosed homes on the cheap after the 2008 financial crisis. It quickly became the country’s largest owner of single-family homes. The firm soon earned a poor reputation as an absentee landlord that left houses in disrepair and ignored calls from tenants to fix pest infestations, electrical or plumbing problems, and other issues. Report after report by independent groups detail complaints about a lack of maintenance, swift evictions being carried out based on glitches or errors, and steep overcharging for rents….
Episodes like these are why there continues to be fierce debate about the merits of PE firms everywhere around the world – everywhere, seemingly, but in New Zealand. While the public and media remain fixated on the threat of foreign home buyers and property speculators, there has been comparatively little debate about the entrance of large, foreign PE firms into our economy.
Yep. A recession is just a land grab to them.
A 'buyers market.'
Anathema to society.
Random Note: Reads like a thriller!
According to the journalist and author Graeme Hunt, domestic intelligence and counter-subversion prior to the establishment of the SIS was primarily in the hands of the New Zealand Police Force (1919–1941; 1945–1949) and of the New Zealand Police Force Special Branch (1949–1956). Another predecessor to the SIS during the Second World War was the short-lived New Zealand Security Intelligence Bureau (SIB).[6] The SIB, modelled after the British MI5, was headed by Major Kenneth Folkes, a junior MI5 officer. The conman Syd Ross duped Major Folkes into believing that there was a "Nazi plot" in New Zealand. Due to this embarrassment, Prime Minister Peter Fraser dismissed Folkes in February 1943 and the SIB merged into the New Zealand Police. Following the end of World War II in 1945, the police force resumed responsibility for domestic intelligence.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Security_Intelligence_Service
Cracker RNZ podcast about Syd Ross' escapades.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/black-sheep/story/201856357/nazi-hoax-the-story-of-syd-ross
https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/16-09-2017/nazi-hoax-the-story-of-syd-ross/
Thanx joe90 I've put it aside for pudding.
Unbelievable (read link below)
Big improvements required here.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/113542194/invercargill-nurse-collapses-in-australia-before-undergoing-surgery-to-remove-tumour.
Being diagnosed early is vital to being cured, avoiding patient pain and suffering along with potential long term health costs in the process. MRI's are a vital diagnostic tool that should be GP referable and shouldn't require such long wait times.
Is there any action being taken to address this?
"Is there any action being taken to address this?" [The Chairman @17]
Do you mean action to address the clinical decision not to offer Rachel Terrill an MRI scan? Both better clinical decision making, and more resources for publicly-funded MRI scans, would be one way to go.
I agree with The Chairman that, in general, public health funding should be prioritised over defense spending. Could there be bipartisan political action on this, once the National party has plugged its leaks?
Universal health funding does mean that the Defense Forces should be payed less. It means they are payed differently.
The ACC/Super funds could be used to build private radiologies and the government could focuse on building replacement hospital.
The ACC funds are meant to divest from sin stocks anyway and it's a lot of money just sitting there looking for a place in New Zealand.
Graeme Hunt, who died in 2010, was one of the most unpleasant right wing ideologues infecting public life in this country. He was a regular dark and pompous presence on Larry "Lackwit" Williams' joke of a show on NewstalkZzzzzB, where he made a point of bullying, ridiculing, and harassing lesser souls, like Tim Watkin and the ridiculous Josie Pagani.
Even worse than his radio performances was his writing. He wrote a substandard biography of Fintan Patrick Walsh, and this "history" Spies and Revolutionaries was another missed opportunity, muddying the waters for any serious journalist or academic who might have wished to write on the history of security in this country in the future.
In 2003 Hunt's crappy secret persona was outed on Google Groups, much to his mortification….
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-egregious-graeme-hunt-outed-on.html
I didnt know that – he got a good send off – used to edit NBR
Don't start me on NBR editors, Shark!
One of the worst of them was Nevil "Breivik" Gibson….
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/01/minecraft-chat-rooms-are-full-of-inane.html
I've read you hissing at that name.
UK Labour will now back remain if there's a further referendum:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/09/corbyn-says-labour-would-back-remain-in-brexit-referendum
Couple of years too late and 20 polling points down the tubes, Corbyn extracts from being self-impaled sitting on the policy fence.
Too little and far too late.
He would have been wiser and more principled to have made a clear call years ago, one way or the other. This frittering looks indecisive at best and cynically manipulative at worst.
Yes to Ad and McFlock.
It looks like he didn't have the nous to make a stand one way or another. A big disappointment.
he was probably too busy looking out for brutus at his back.
Yet the report makes it evident that UK Labour have agreed to adopt a different position on the situation in campaigning for the next election. "In an interview with the BBC on Tuesday, he said there was no decision yet as to what Labour would argue for in a general election on Brexit. He said: “We will decide very quickly at the start of that campaign exactly what our position will be.”
"Pressed on whether Labour was now a party of leave or remain, Corbyn said: “We will give people the choice on this. That is something which is surely very important. We respect the result of the referendum. We’ve been through this whole long parliamentary process over the past three years and we’ve made it very clear we will do everything we can to take no deal off the table or stop a damaging deal of the sort Hunt and Johnson are proposing.”"
So it seems a nuanced principled position. No doubt spooked by the LibDem poll ratings, he's gotten agreement from his colleagues. I think he's done well.
That "nuance" has been a 15 point gift to the LibDems.
Corbyn needs to show he has to chops to actually pull back the voters he's lost to them. That is the measure of whether he's more than an idealistic maverick.
I do agree his lack of leadership has allowed the LibDems to get up past Labour. I was just pointing out that he secured a nicely-nuanced collective agreement from Labour in response. It encompasses a two-pronged strategy & seems coherent.
Getting consensus on both in a complex political context at the top level is a real accomplishment. We ought to acknowledge that. I've been critical of him several times the past few months but I feel he's redeemed himself somewhat.
Labour's political culture has been groupthink since the nineties, remember, here & in Oz as in Britain. Labour leaders only get tolerated if they genuinely represent group opinion. Thus hamstrung, it is rare for them to demonstrate individual flair or initiative. I think the evidence shows he has been successful in steering the groupthink to an appropriate result.
MAGA President Trump supporters are not sick of winning, there seems to be some consensus about among them.
Brexit supporters are….um……well……you know……errrr………still campaigning for their referendum, whatever that was about, of a few years back.
I'd say, to do it with any kind of momentum, & have it be momentous, it needs a no holds barred sack the cabinet, hard take it or leave it deal with the EU, proroguing the people's vote through parliament, strong solidarity with MAGA movement & President Trump on the world stage with an opening shot of a successful deal with the U.S.A.
A people's uprising Brexit another words.
Wethe Bleeple
Have you some recommendation – one or two – on what a forestry company can do for a quick ground cover on hills they have logged to prevent run-off when it rained heavily? I thought if they could fly over, perhaps with a drone, would dropping seed work well and enough come up even if the ground wasn't wet? This time of the year the dew is quite heavy.
If you let me know what you think would be viable for putting over quite a big area I could pass that on as there is concern about a logged area here and while it is being thought about, perhaps some sensible plan for fast growing beneficial weeds could be passed on and tried out (and then done as a regular sensible move. Fast and nitrogen fixing – would clover do it – chickweed?
I reckon forethought would go a long way. Damage control is harder.
You are looking for local fast growing legumes and ground covers that can handle the soil conditions left behind after pines. It might be you can aerial spray seeds but need to add lime. They could maybe get hold of the mountains of discarded oyster shells industry creates and crush and use them to facilitate things (if liming would help).
There's also the question of land use after harvest – another pine crop? A bush regeneration project? A fallow period?
For regeneration and even another crop of pines (why!) I'd be inclined to go in and innoculate stumps with oyster mushrooms, shitaake if they'll grow on pines, mulch down the slash and add Stropharia rugoso-annulata and other saprobes to generate some local crops/small business while turning the trunks and slash to topsoil.
If rapid ground cover is imperative you want something practically invasive to the conditions. Observation of the site will indicate which plants or close relatives of plants might work.
Seed balls.
Thanks Robert i notice some useful stuff on the internet about this.
Seed balling – Kenyans show us the way.
http://www.seedballskenya.com/throw-grow/4592995996
Don't know which part of the rohe you're in GWS but up North, anywhere between the FFN and the Waikato by far the very bestest and fastest growing ground cover for recently cleared land is this…https://www.doc.govt.nz/globalassets/documents/getting-involved/students-and-teachers/plant-pest-factsheets/woolly-nightshade-factsheet.pdf
Driving back from the FFN the other day I was actually shocked to see entire hillsides covered with the stuff. Some large, but mostly it was plants of about 1.5 metres growing about 1 metre apart, covering entire hillsides.
I've pulled a few of these out from my place but it seems that they simply love to exploit bare land…too many trees at mine.
And strangely, while obviously it is the time of the year for spraying gorse…woolly nightshade growing alongside the sprayed and withering gorse was thriving.
Got me to thinking that perhaps we could grow the stuff to feed our bio diesel/ethanol plants.
Interesting Rosemary. Good observation. It is a prolific space invader right down to at least the Waikato. Noted as a pest plant, shade tolerance could be a problem where other pioneers typically do the nursery job then die back as other plants canopy forms over them.
Biofuels are impractical unless waste streams of crops/industry. We've gone that route (growing biofuel specifically) to the detriment of food security already. One day we might get the desired bacteria to live outside of certain insects guts but we're not there yet. Once we can crack lignin apart easily biofuels will lend a lot more energy for a lot less input.
Thanks all for your interest. I'll see what I can do with this to take it further.
Pretty shocking stuff Rosemary. Its spread indicates that some immediate ground cover plants are necessary to stop this relentless weed, and it is so nasty, bad for skin and smelly and the birds should be provided with a better weed that they can go to.
Kia ora Newshub Nation.
Medical cannabis needs to be accessed by sick people who need it.What I don't want to see is big companies getting a monopoly in the industry and charging the Papatuanuku for a product that people need to have a good life. I can see business manipulating the laws so that they can dominate the market.
What commercial operations is going to grow weed close to a school on the most expensive land not very wise they will grow it on farm land not in the city's????????????????????????????????.
I say that we will have the same problems that the United kingdom and other countries have. Our doctors are all elderly so they have a negative attitude and view on medical weed they will be very reluctant to prescribe it. The elderly have a very different view on our society's that the younger generations they have had it drummed into them over the years that alcohol is good and laughable that weed is bad.
Times are changing we have the internet now so we can find out the TRUTHS about our society the younger generation have a much clearer view on our society's problems.
Ka kite ano
This is a joke the billionaires get away with what ever they do to make money no matter the harm caused.
Facebook to be fined $5bn for Cambridge Analytica privacy violations – reports
The $5bn fine would be the largest ever levied by the Federal Trade Commission against a technology company
The FTC’s investigation was launched in March 2018 after the Guardian revealed that the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica had improperly obtained the private information of more than 50m Facebook users. Facebook had agreed under a 2012 consent decree stemming from a previous FTC investigation into privacy concerns to better protect user privacy. The investigation centered on whether this decree .
Critics say the changes required of Facebook are not substantial enough, and the fine will hardly make a dent in Facebook’s bank account. The company had more than $15bn in revenue in the first three months of 2019.
“This isn’t a fine, it’s a favor to Facebook, a parking ticket which will clear them to conduct more illegal and invasive surveillance,” said Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Open Markets Institute who specializes in monopoly power. “Congress should start defunding the FTC and move the money to state enforcers like Karl Racine who believe in enforcing the law,” he added, referring to the attorney general of Washington DC, who is currently pursuing a lawsuit against Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica
David Cicilline, the Democratic congressman who chairs the House subcommittee on antitrust issues, reacted to the news on Twitter, saying: “The FTC just gave Facebook a Christmas present five months early. It’s very disappointing that such an enormously powerful company that engaged in such serious misconduct ka kite ano link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/12/facebook-fine-ftc-privacy-violations
Eco Maori totally agrees with this Wahine view these guys think that they are leaders but NO they are just con artists fooling people that they put their te tangata best interests before their own wants YEA RIGHT.
Ruining a country near you soon: the beta males who think they’re alphas
What could be more insecure than a 55-year-old bragging about Latin, or a literal president tweeting his enemies on the bog
If the Tory leadership election unfolds as widely expected, the UK will basically be ruled by a Fathers4Injustice activist. Boris Johnson is the kind of guy who’d don Spider-Man pyjamas and scale a building in order to see less of his kids. Sorry, fewer. Even so, he remains a remarkably typical hero of our political times. “There are two kinds of women,” Harry explains at one point in When Harry Met Sally. “High maintenance and low maintenance.” “Which one am I?” Sally asks. “You’re the worst kind,” he says. “You’re high maintenance, but you think you’re low maintenance
See also gratefully submissive Donald Trump fanboy Nigel Farage, who has spent much of the past three years hanging wanly around Washington on the off-chance of a half-hour 6pm burger with the alpha male to his beta. And see also Donald Trump himself, the leader of the free world, who spent about 48 hours this week tweeting like some homicidal 11-year-old Justin Bieber fan about the leaked comments of the British ambassador. Who, apparently, we now let him pick. More on toxic insecurity’s poster boy shortly.
Great leaders show, rather than tell, their skills. Yet Johnson never lets up with telling people that he is not “defeatist”, that he will “put some lead in the collective pencil”, that “energy” is needed, that what the EU really fears is a big strong man like him. Mm. I hear they talk of little else in the 27 European capitals. “O Fates, please spare us the dreaded ‘positive energy’ of a guy internationally ridiculed as the worst foreign secretary in memory; and the unplayable charm of a surprisingly indifferent orator who knows the Latin for ‘can we just take out the backstop?’”
And Johnson does know Latin, as he never misses a chance to remind us. No one could accuse him of wearing his learning lightly – or, indeed, wearing any of it lightly. Witness his excruciating promise to reach out to something he pointedly referred to as “Oppidan Britain”. To which the increasingly despairing response has to be: YES YES! I KNOW WHAT SCHOOL YOU WENT TO! I KNOW WHAT HOUSE YOU WERE IN! I KNOW YOU GOT A SECOND CLASS CLASSICS DEGREE! I KNOW THIS SOMEHOW ENDS WITH YOU CONSIGNING OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY TO THE CATACOMBS THEN BEATING US TO DEATH WITH YOUR RELATIVELY MIDDLEBROW ACHIEVEMENTS! But mate: you are 55 – FIFTY-FIVE – years old. How, how can you possibly still be wanking on about any of this, in public, as though it was still the best thing you’ve ever done? Can it really be because it was? [Spoiler: yes ka kite ano link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/12/country-beta-males-alphas-latin-president-tweeting-enemies
Eco Maori thanks the wealthy US philanthropist for their tau toko of the Students Strikes and the extinction rebellion
A group of wealthy US philanthropists and investors have donated almost half a million pounds to support the grassroots movement Extinction Rebellion and school strike groups – with the promise of tens of millions more in the months ahead.
Trevor Neilson, an investor and philanthropist who has worked with some of the world’s richest families, has teamed up with Rory Kennedy – daughter of Robert Kennedy – and Aileen Getty, whose family wealth comes from the oil industry
Neilson said the three founders were using their contacts among the global mega-rich to get “a hundred times” more in the weeks and months ahead. “This might be the single best chance we have to stop the greatest emergency we have ever faced,” he told the Guardian.
The new fund has the author and environmentalist Bill McKibben, who set up 350.org, and David Wallace Wells, who wrote international best seller Uninhabitable Earth, on its advisory board.
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The money will initially be used to support school strike and Extinction Rebellion groups in the US, but will also be available to help “seed” similar groups around the world.
It offers tiers of funding to support different-sized groups, from teenage activists wanting money for leaflets and megaphones, to funding for salaries and offices for established groups in big cities. It has already committed some of the fund to support Extinction Rebellion groups in New York and Los Angeles Ka kite ano link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/12/us-philanthropists-vow-to-raise-millions-for-climate-activists
Kia ora Newshub.
A big Hurricane is moving into the Mississippi river in America while the river is in flood cause trump climate change.
John haven't you been in that or around that type of organization. People like you only care about your own mana you are just sturing the Oranga tamariki stuff to use it to try and get the Auckland mayors job you don't care that you're moves could damage the government that does more for the common poor tangata than the last lot muppet Maori make up a large portion of them. You're backers are just using you to try and damage our humane Labour lead Government wake up fool.
I new a elderly couple who had a daughter on the Earabus flight.
That's a big explosion in Russia.
America sky lad 40 years today it crashed landed in the Australian outback the person describing the loud noise when it hit Papatuanuku Eco Maori knowns that feeling a meteor hit in Edgecome back in the day it was shaking the road the bank window in Opotiki was wobbling and a huge sonic boom .
Ka kite ano
Kia ora te ao Maori news.
Tiana turia why didn't you raise this problem about Oranga tamariki and sorte it out when you were in bed with NATIONAL they just stuffed up te tangata whenua.????????????????????. You were played by shonky and you are being played now fool
I have Already given my opinion of john tamahira in the above post.
Karen I oppose any Tangata whenua whenua being sold te Atua is not making anymore whenua they could have just used the whenua as security for a loan to do the development that they wanted in Papamore.
Ka pai to the Wahine who are getting bald heads to raise funds for housespice and the Rainbow community is a awesome cause.
Ka kite ano.
https://youtu.be/qQfetkoGrpU
Some Eco Maori music for the minute.
https://youtu.be/wE4TpnYIsW4
I hit the justice department with a request for all the information that they have on Eco Maori to get JUSTICE. The muppets just stepped up their intimidation GAMES 10 fold lucky I'm Eco Maori I have others who have my Back
She made the mess and now she's blaming our Labour lead Coalition governments for the mess
https://youtu.be/a5peOzISOe0