Judge seems to have tried to apply the "wisdom of Solomon" to the situation but I wonder if this is the end of the matter? I can see both parties' viewpoints as being culturally valid in their own way.
Seems he can up with a reasonable solution in what was a very difficult situation.
The behavior of Oranga Tamariki seems to have been pretty abhorrent and the fact that CEO and 2 high ranking judges attempted to interfere on an ongoing case well outside our guidelines for judicial conduct was staggering. The presiding judge did the right thing.
Having govt heads attempting to influence ongoing court cases is a really slippery slope.
Cricklewood, I agree with all you are saying. The Judge has come up with a worthy solution to the issue, by including. the caregivers in Wellington and the biological mother into the picture while keeping the little girl with the Pakeha family who care about this child enough to go to court and fight for her (there are perhaps better indications that the couple have cared well for the little girl).
The interference in the trial is highly dubious.
Although it appears that the social workers in this case were domonstrably inadequate, I would give a shout out to the social workers at OT. I know some personally and I know them to be dedicated, committed to the children and compassionate to the families of those children. They get a lot of flack eg the social workers who uplifted the baby in Hawkes Bay. Apparently they were identifiable from the video and received death threats.
While of course it is advisable that Maori families preferrable whanau are found for Maori babies, that may not always be possible as was the case for this little girl. The idea of distrupting the bond that had been established betwenn her and her current caregivers troubles me greatly.
Yeah Social work is a very difficult career to take on, amazing people who always do their best. I dont doubt for a second that many of the 'inadequacies' in this case are the result of upper management scrambling to cover arse and putting pressure on Social workers on the ground.
Then more poor descisions from upper management that ended up with the whole thing in court. Then made entirely worse for the individual Social workers in question when an attempt was made to interfere in the trial suddenly making it newsworthy.
As usual those at the coal face bare the brunt of the actions of people with comfy chairs and massive salaries.
The govt really needs to get a handle on the leadership and direction in our big social agencies its pretty poor atm.
As a former (34.5 years) public servant whose 2nd department was subjected to constant restructurings, "realignments", "refocuses", & completely new "corporate" management teams, many of whose executives were completely new to the "business" every 3 – 5 years, I can identify with those remarks completely.
It's reasonably normal for staff to whinge I know but in Head Office we frequently ended up top-heavy with make-workers & with the occasional truly hopeless managers, some of whom knew even less about their job when they left at the next restructuring than when they started.
Front line staff were chronically under-resourced & stressed. I can recall there being a 3 year period when we had a particularly good "customer-service business model" introduced that was applied across the board, externally & internally, & where a continuous improvement committee process was adopted & met regularly to consider staff suggestions, evaluate & either reject or implement them.
The General Manager & the Policy Manager worked hand in glove & visited & talked to the staff at all levels, & the department eventually hummed like well-oiled machine.
The GM & then the CEO retired. The new CEO came in & decided there was to be a moratorium on all changes, introduced a top down review by an outside consultant, got rid of the old management to stamp his authority on the org. And completely broke it.
They're still being regularly reorganised & still haven't recovered.
I realise this is a Labour-friendly blog & this may not go down well, but from my perspective many of the current crop of Labour Ministers just don't have the experience or in some cases the intellectual equipment to control & direct their departments, as many actually did in the Clark & Key administrations.
It seems that you have a skewed idea of Ministers ‘controlling & directing’ their ‘departments’. If your premise is off, not much useful will come out at the other end. Do you know how government works in NZ or do you think you know?
No, I know how government works. I was intimately involved in policy development, appeals (working with Appeal Authorities), & operational systems implementation work for most of my career. I even have some personal Ministerial commendations for some of my work.
I was also a PSA rep for a short time, after we had a national walkout & my manager returned from overseas & walked in to find everybody leaving the premises. There was no Head Office rep. He had no idea what was happening. Fuck him the staff said. I felt guilty & went back in & told him where things were at with the pay & conditions review. And took the role on on to represent our staff on the negotiating team. There wasn’t much negotiation. It was a take it or leave it situation. They wanted to move as many staff off the Collective Agreement & onto personal contracts with a bit more pay but inferior redundancy conditions as they could
They eventually used to contract out recruitment for senior management positions to professional recruitment companies. They didn't know the business. This resulted in a couple of senior management appointments of folk from the private sector who were utterly useless. I remember one who'd previously worked in management for the biggest Korean airline.
He was flown down from Auckland to Wellington every week to run his unit. He'd go into his office & shut the door & the staff couldn't get a decision out of him all week. He was completely out-of-his depth. It was a vital role. The staff had to pick up his job. They were flat out & alternated between despair & being ropable.
It eventually became apparent why he was on the market. He'd been useless in his previous job too, they'd got rid of him via the classic scheme of giving him a glowing reference during the recruitment company's referee checks.
In the olden days of the strictly in house public service promotions when sackings were unheard of the equivalent was promoting someone sideways into a new role where they couldn't do any harm.
I tend to think that some ministers who maybe don't have adequate sector knowledge is an obstacle that can be overcome (especially if they're not morons and senior advisors/management can act as translators into the minister's conceptual framework), but even one management level full of "professional managers" with no sector experience is lethal.
Agreed. And when new Ministers are appointed they get a BIM (briefing for incoming Minister) which aims to give them a reasonably comprehensive overview of their department, & summaries of its policies, operations, legislation, reporting lines etc.
They are then completely reliant on the quality, knowledge, communication abilities & personal relationship management skills of their GM & the senior managers they meet with & who prepare their Cabinet Papers.
Most of them managed fine, even with the occasional misfit manager as there was a good Chief Legal Adviser & sufficient experienced management talent in the Senior Executive Group or the next layer down who prepped their Execs, had mutual trust & good working relationships & could accompany them to the Minister's Office.
I had probably over a dozen Ministers & Associate Ministers in my time there. There were one or two plodders who never really got up to speed & just shuffled papers & kept their heads down as far as possible till they were moved to another porfolio or didn't get re-elected.
Most Ministers were good friendly folk, not fools, learned quickly on the job in about 3-6 months, & did solid, dependable, if not stellar work.
And there were a few who were standout: sharp as a knife, read their briefing papers thoroughly, & would call their execs over, ask questions, query things they didn't understand, send papers back for further work if they weren't satisfied.
Most Ministers & Associates had several portfolios. I guess some people think they have a pretty cruisy time, but the hours they all worked were punishing, they'd be taking work home over the weekends, during long holidays, often in the House working late, & the constant travelling would have been too much for me. I turned down a couple of invitations to be seconded to the Minister's office as departmental private secretary. I just had too many responsibilities at home.
The 'link within your link' (to the earlier article) lays out the failures of OT, and the condition the child came to the caregivers in. "When she arrived with them, Moana's teeth were rotten, she had an untreated club foot, and she showed all the symptoms of a traumatised child."
Any judge considering this case is going to need the wisdom of Solomon.
Tuns out the BBC is just as dodgy as we suspected….imagine that, the same news source that gets on board for every western war and intervention, dishonestly skewing their Syria story in the service of more intervention…I wonder when was the last time the BBC, or any other western MSM outlet dishonestly skewed a story for the benefit of less western war and intervention?
BBC admits Syria gas attack report had serious flaws
'Adjudicators agreed it had failed to meet ECU's editorial standards for accuracy'
Most commenters had little faith in the current BBC
Some of them think the BBC is leftist!!
It's campaign against Corbyn (along with the Guardian) says otherwise
Corbyn lost that 2019 election, not because of his left wing policies which had wide popularity, but because of his non committal stand re Brexit, and the unrelenting and ill founded charges of anti semitism.(Thanks BBC and Guardian , you did a sterling job in helping to put the idiot Boris at the steering wheel)
And now we have the quisling Starmer swinging the wrecking ball .
Corbyn was the target of unrelenting ridicule and lies by the Blairite rump of his own party, as well as by its media accomplices, the Grauniad, the Murdoch and Desmond filth outlets, and the state broadcaster…..
This never happened.
Invented by the Tories to divert your attention from a child having to lie on a hospital floor; reported by media that didn’t bother to check if it was true.
Well Judge Peter Callinicos appears to have what could be described politely as some deeply unfashionable views on custody issues. Still, he is the presiding judge I would suspect it isn't a bad thing to apply the occasional bromide to prevailing orthodoxy.
I read those bits, but since it was clearly spin, I took it to show Callinicos attitude to people missrepresenting to the court. He seems to take that as a trigger to ask the hardest questions of those witnesses, which seems fair enough to me. Bending the truth to courts frequently results in false convictions and rulings.
What do we make of the Oranga Tamariki lawyers claim that, failing to raise a Maori child as Maori, is physically harmful. Does this go on to explain David Seymour?
I think "failing to raise a Maori child as Maori, is physically harmful" is contestable.
For one thing it broadens the definition of what physical harm is and I think that in itself is problematic. We would need some very good research to unpick the issue.
Dunedin study is always my go to.
Speaking as someone whose spouse is Maori and who was raised by adoptive parents as Pakeha, I wouldn't support what the OT lawyer is saying. I think we have very good ideas of what a baby infant child, teen needs. Secure attachment figures, who offer unconditional love, but are able to set good boundaries. I would add parents who are mature enough to tune into the individual their child is and allow that to flourish. Someone who isn't afraid to be the big person and safeguard the child.
My brother-in-law (married to my kid sister [60] ) has a Maori dad & a Pakeha mum. Sis has all his whakapapa (Taranaki nga iwi) & keeps the genealogies for our side too. He & his late dad are "Kiwi 1st, Maori 2nd" types. They don't identify as Maori per se although they're justifiably proud of their whakapapa & look Maori & one of my 2 nephews (theirs) opted for the Maori roll. They're both ambitious & hard working, started out at the bottom & ended up having successful careers in management in their fields of work.
I get my roof moss-proofed every two years. Four years back the two sprayers who turned up were Maori. As is my habit, I was home, & I called out to them that I was making coffee, would they like one when they finished? It was a nice day & we had a chat in my covered patio & I asked what the taller, chattier one's iwi was. He said his folks hailed from Kaitaia, (Nga Puhi, I think), but they'd moved to Porirua for work & he was born there.
He had a couple of kids to his partner & I asked if they were married. He just grinned & said "No, that's a Pākehā thing where I come from! We've been together for years & don't see any need to spend money on a wedding."
I asked the quiet one where his turangawaewae was. He said he'd been adopted as a child by a Pākehā couple & he hadn't been brought up as a Maori. I asked if he knew his birth parents' nga iwi & he said no, & he wasn't that interested in finding out. He'd had a happy childhood & he loved his adopted parents & that was all he needed & cared about. He'd have been around 18 – 20 at a guess. I was surprised he hadn't bothered to find out; I think I would've wanted to in his situation.
They both got on well together & did something classically Maori. When they finished their coffee & bikkies they said they still had a lot of spray left over & before they left for their next job they sprayed all the lichen on my visitors' car park & driveway for free.
My point is … I know Maori who are staunchly Maori & embrace their culture & local marae, Te Reo, & kapa haka, taiaha martial arts etc. They see themselves as Maori 1st, Kiwi 2nd. And I know others who are happy enuf on the General Roll & just regard themselves as Kiwis of Maori & Pākehā descent in equal measure.
Either works for me. I'm happy for people to choose for themselves. I wish I did have some Maori lineage. And that I'd learned Te Reo Maori & French instead of Latin & French at school.
I see there are pictures and even a video going around on various platforms of Siouxse Wiles breaking her own advice under level 4. I bet this wont make the main news channels if they want more government funding.
[link added with video and showing Wiles didn’t break any level four rules]
[next time, post a link, or something else to back up your assertions. This is especially important for public figures, because 1) it avoids defamation and putting the site owners at risk, and 2) it stops you looking like a troll. We’re here for the robust, informed debate, not rumour mongering – weka]
Crikey! No one I know has ever broken their own advice and I know I certainly never have, especially the advice I give myself about writing inane things on blogs!!
This ia an article I wondered if you had seen Robert. This NZ Geographic story on wilding pines;sounds a bit wonky. First they drop them en masse and then are dedicated to removing the same.
Thanks, grey. Yes, I had seen it and recklessly engaged in a prolonged debate with the author (nice bloke) and others about alternate ways of looking at the issue 🙂 with a pinch of "don't use gmo's" thrown in 🙂
But given its Covid and people are getting pretty over level 4 having such a public advocate of restrictions meet a spinoff journalist apparently in breach level 4 isnt exactly helpful.
Gives the anti lockdown folk more fuel to stoke the fire…
What are you referring to, Jester? You provide no links or details, so it is impossible to ascertain the validity of your words. Cricklewood seems to think it has something to do with a Spinoff interview, but I couldn't see anything like that there. This is the most recent for her (as contributing author):
The video is all over social media and on YouTube.
It shows Wiles sitting on a beach (Judges Bay – 5km away from her home), alongside what is claimed to be a reporter. Neither are wearing masks. Neither are social distancing.
The video then goes on to show Wiles paddling in the water with a swimmer a short distance away.
The video was 'released' by the BFD – Cameron Slater's blog. In case you don't want to go there, they quote Wiles as saying:
“I was with someone from my bubble, who lives in the area… Judges Bay is about 5km from my home which is pretty local when on a bicycle.”
That was very much a Slater occupation. Stalking people. He stalked David Shearer and caught him having a coffee with a well known union official. He got photos n' all to prove it was true. 😡
The very first time Cameron Slater addressed this writer, i.e. moi, he told me to “fuck off.” Despite that tense initial contact, this writer kept posting at Whaleoil Beef Hooked, that dog of a site, for a good few years before flaming out with this post…..
Morrissey to Molon Labe:
Don’t want to pay your taxes and don’t believe in government? Go to Somalia, halfwit.
[MOD this person is now blocked for trolling and personal insults. CAUTION: Do not reply. REMINDER: Anyone who responds to trolls is likely to be blocked as well as the response generally inflames the situation. Be glad all I did was delete your comment. Now, move on. ]
pretty much. Not even going to watch the video. When they take hours to post a link to what they're tying their undies in knots over, it's a good sign it's fuckall anyway.
The angle's not great, but I guess 'close' is relative. I wasn't passing judgement, quite the contrary. I'm not exactly the model citizen with the walks I'm taking!
As nothing was made in the MSM of the National Party breaking rules dining together in Wellington that Reti admitted to, you may well be right that they won't report on Siouxse Wiles, and if it's not in the Media, maybe you could link to your source. Please tell me its not Coltheman? To blame it on Government funding is bollocks, or is the constant griping from TV3 only because Joyce gave them money. Can't have it both ways bud.
The political problem facing the right wing right now is the massively popular and competent government response to covid has forced the right further and further down the rabbit hole, until people like Jester here can't understand why the media won't run character assassinations and smear campaigns by nasty pricks as "news" and can't understand why they make reasonable people want to vomit.
Do you know what social media Jester is referring to Sanctuary, Twitter maybe? I avoid that almost as much as Reddit. Google hasn't helped much except this piece from April (from NZH, but ODT not paywalled).
Calling out bullies on social media was not a bid for sympathy, Wiles said. Rather it was an attempt to stop it happening again – to her or anyone else.
Wiles said she now realised that bullies may have something going on in their own lives that was making them behave that way and often they needed help rather than punishment.
However, if Wiles is breaking the rules, then she should be as liable for condemnation as David Clark was when he was Minister of Health. But if it is footage out of context for purposes of smearing health communicators in the midst of a pandemic then that's fairy despicable.
Cameron Slater! Didn't realize that when I clicked on your link, a heads up would have been nice; Gypsy. Hard to tell how far away the filmer was, but certainly more than a few metres.
Bloomfield didn't seem too worried in today's press conference, and if it's a choice between his opinion and Slater's, then I am on the side of reason. Slater's best point was that TVNZ refused to run the story, but I don't think that amounts to; "this story was suppressed by an editor at 1News". It's almost as if there was a more pressing news story on September the 3rd that gobbled up all the air time.
OMG. I've just read what Collins said. She's not just hypocrtical: she's utterly crass & completely artless. She's clearly got a blind spot in the mirror. That's just nasty schoolgirl stuff. Absolutely bizarre that she can't see the damage she's just done to herself & her party. I don't think she engages the brain before she opens her mouth, & I don't think she actually hears what she's saying.
only sense I can make of it is that National are still running a trumpian politics agenda. They want a more divisive society, because in the medium term that's the only way they can get some traction against Ardern.
She probably thinks she's scored a Trumpian-style king hit. Her EQ & IQ are both highly suspect.
I suspect Collins has offended probably the vast majority of voters in this country with that totally unnecessary personal denigration of Wiles. Ardern’s fan club journos will flay her.
She's as dumb as a sack of hammers. Wonder when the next polls are due out? Hope they aren't busy collating & analysing them already. I’d like to see a couple more working days roll around before someone starts doing the polling.
I don't think she is dumb. I think she's got a certain personality that doesn't really give a shit about people, and she's in a role where her choices are very limited.
There's a sizeable portion of people that either don't know who Wiles is, or actively dislike her. That's who Collins is talking to.
It's a mistake imo to right Collins off as stupid. She's on track with trumpian pol. It's not about king hits, it's about undermining democracy over the long term.
I'm not particularly fond of Siouxsie, but those remarks of Collins' are so far below the belt I'm gobsmacked.
I'd never say I'd never vote National (although I never have to date). But I don't think Collins is attracting any more voters than the current crop.
I think she's an unimpressive, awkward communicator & doesn't strike me as having anything like a coherent policy programme. With such lean pickings for spokespeople & her still at helm the Nats are in no current danger of picking up a candidate or party vote from me.
Ardern’s got time to counter or pirate & tailor policy anywhere they might be getting some traction. And Labour’s in its 2nd term now. Their newby Ministers have now got experience.
I really am wondering how she'll score next poll. She's done some serious media foot-shooting lately.
again, trumpian pol isn't about short term poll gains. It's about creating a social and political milieu where division advantages the right.
National have nothing atm that can touch Ardern, this is a long term strategy. They could of course rebuild their party around values again, but it doesn't look like the people in power want that. Proto-fascism is a drug, and Key was the one that really brought National into this position. Irrespective of what Collins does or doesn't do in terms of voters this year, she is on point for the bigger agenda.
"Irrespective of what Collins does or doesn't do in terms of voters this year, she is on point for the bigger agenda."
My view is she did a deal with her party and caucus last year. She is a 'place holder', and is throwing stones until a younger, most likely female with a softer and more reasoned approach takes over later in 2022. My pick is Nicola Willis.
A short (10 min) video about Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, the nine-year old whose 2013 death was attributed to air pollution in London.
For me, it also speaks of the wider and more complex issues of social justice and inequity not being considered, let alone adequately addressed, by planning, transport, health or environmental monitoring institutions.
Although when you listen to the full audio track it looks like a relatively minor blip that isn't really the "gazumper" the Opposition might try to make it out to be if they're aware of it. Will try & see if it comes up at Question Time.
Maybe. On the other hand, if you go to sections 163 & 164 of the Immigration Act (just as a start) and then click on EVERY linked provision & all their cross links, & then go looking for the relevant provisions & links to every likely section & subsection covering every other element of this guy's immigration history & relevant provisons around permanent residence & deportation, & appeal rights & Ministerial powers that have been mentioned to date – it doesn't take too long to realise it's an excruciatingly complex legal situation & those who think there's been a simple solution at various key points or milestones imo hasn't really understood ALL the relevant requirements & processes that must be covered off before any ONE of them could have suceeded.
I'm not surprised that nobody wanted to do a knee jerk rush to a quick solution that conceivably might have failed on Judicial Review. As he in the end refused to engage to pursue the revocation he said he wanted, the point is moot.
The Review hopefully will unentangle all the many strands in some intelligible way.
It is not good news to hear of someone with the seeming inclination. It is good news to hear of the arrest.
It will be interesting to see if recent events have a 'worst case scenario' applied to the individual to look after the community or the paramount perspective is to look after the individual and his rights.
All those from whatever agencies dealing with him, up to the judge, should paint their children or spouses into a scenario where he has his way.
I am hopeful that the Muslim Association & Muslim Women's Council might be approached early to see if they think they can help & what assistance they might need in supporting this individual & deterring him from this possible path – & perhaps support & help his family as well. Lonely or isolated Teenagers are so easy to radicalise.
This surely can't just have come out of nowhere. And the LynnMall attacker has probably raised the temperature of anti-Muslim sentiment. If any of that's been directed at him or he's seen it on social media, or he feels the attacker was simply executed, it could have set him off.
I also can't help wondering if Allah granting the Taliban such a stunning victory, while the West is railing against them, threatening to deny them money, & calling them liars, is a factor. Fundamentalists everywhere have been celebrating, from the reports I've seen.
Well, our totally dumb USA policy-makers asked for this years ago, didn't they?
Just deserts, and we backed them all the way. No point in moaning now.
I remember just after the 911 disaster, a History teacher was standing next work day morning with other staff at the school, and someone said something like, “Isn’t it terrible?”
“Yes,” he said, “and a lot of people are going to die now.” Looks of surprise. He added, “And they will probably be the wrong ones.”
Prescient, unlike the US policymakers, who just pretty well repeated their Vietnam blunder.
They really learned how to kill over there by remote control. And in their last days during the evacuation mission they killed a suspected IS suicide attacker, again by remote control. They announced on tv that they'd got the terrorist(s), & that the explosion was huge, so they were clearly suicide bombers, and that there were no civilian casualties.
I was watching AlJazeera tv newshour, looking at a civilian man on top of a single story house building, running to the edge, looking over at where the black smoke was rising, then running back while others also appeared, bringing a bucket of water which he threw down into the smoke. It made no difference.
They’d rocketed the car in a very narrow street, right outside that house, killing 11 people, 10 in one family, including several children and their father, who'd just arrived home from work. They were running out to meet him.
A Pentagon spokesman doing a live standup on tv as I watched not long afterwards was asked by a reporter had he heard that there were civilian casualties and he replied that they were aware of this claim but it hadn't been verified.
They've now killed thousands of innocent civilians as "collateral damage" in this way, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and numerous other countries, taking out Taliban, Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Al Shabab and other "terrorists" in rocket assassinations via Predator drones flown by young operators who're trained and skilled in computer gaming.
It's bizarre how this simply doesn't register in the US consciousness or the Military Commands. Non-American lives just don't matter. It's why they're so hated in many of these places.
What did they 'ask for'? Oh the US have made huge foreign policy mistakes, but Islamic terrorism is centuries old, so let's not fall for the old 'great satan' narrative for everything that is happening.
Since Islamic terrorism is centuries old, one would have expected that by now US 'Intelligence' would have thought of much more effective policies for dealing with it..
Repeating most of the blunders they made in Vietnam then leaving in utter humiliation is probably worse than appeasement, which was your silly suggestion, not mine.
Vietnam? Not sure when that was run by islamic extremists, but if you're off on a tangent, how about the soviet occupations of Korea, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan just to name a few. Or the Chinese involvement in Korea, Tibet, Vietnam and of course their present day treatment of the Uyghurs.
Soviets were gone from Korea by 1948: more like liberation from Japanese and setting up of Govt with little suppression – hardly a long-term supressive occupation like Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
You don't get to decide what a thread is about: American behaviour applies to more than just Islam – the anti-Communist campaigns invite valid comparisons.
Typical rightie evasion – oh, everybody else made a mistake too. Not on the scale of roughly 20 years in Vietnam then Afghanistan as well.
If you mean the mujahedeen, it was the US, Saudi Arabia and China. Of course the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up a communist government there. And it would appear China will now bankroll the Taliban. So they've all got their fingers dirty.
The Mujahideen were tribal warlords funded and armed by the US to oppose the Soviet invaders. The Taliban are religious fundamentalists, formed during the post-soviet civil war to oppose the Mujahideen, funded indirectly by the US via US military aid to Pakistan.
The marxist regime in Afghanistan in the '70's led to Afghanistan being called a Soviet 'client regime'. The soviets were up to their eyeballs in Afghanistan, which is why they invaded Afghanistan when the marxist government was on the verge of collapse.
No I didn't. I'm not making judgements or excuses. The superpowers have all behaved badly. They see it as part of protecting their geo-political interests. So singling out the US for criticism is intellectual dishonest. As is blaming them for islamic radicals murdering their way to their religio/political interests. It's been happening for centuries.
You're now being dishonest. I said 'singling out', not criticising.
"By the way you should have said religious radicals. Not Islamic. That is also intellectually dishonest."
No, it's historically accurate in the context of this conversation, of this thread. When a white supremisist goes around killing people in a mosque we call it out. When Christian radicals bomb abortion clinics, we call it out. There should be no fear or favour.
Decades of bombing, murder of civilians, removal of elected Governments and replacing them with tyrants, saunctions that starve whole countries of food and medicines, not to mention drone strikes on weddings and people going about their everyday lives.
Is "Foriegn policy stuffups"? When the USA does it.
When "Islamists" or China "does it, you have rather a different description.
All 'fingers' are dirty, but some are dirtier than others.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean the government isn’t playing dirty.[Sept 2014] After the revelations of Dirty Politics, it might have been assumed these practices were halted. It seems that they haven’t been. Cameron Slater said to me last week on Twitter ‘wait until you see Dirtier Politics’. The worst, it would seem, is yet to come.
Wonder no longer about why repugs (and our very own big biz shills) are working to spanner public health.
Leaders all over the South were scrambling to find a cure for the dreaded pellagra until they discovered what that cure might cost them. That’s when the campaign of denial began. A century-old fight over public health feels fresh as a morning headline as we wrestle with a new threat, with equally simple remedies that upset Southern values. Disease is personal. Pandemic is politics.
Joseph Goldberger was sent to the South in 1914 on a mission from the US Department of Public Health to investigate an outbreak of pellagra. Pellagra is a terrible illness, starting with skin lesions, then advancing to diarrhea, dementia and in about 40% of cases, death. The disease, already well known among poorer populations in Southern Europe, had been documented in the South in 1908. By 1912, more than 30,000 cases had been identified in South Carolina alone.
[…]
Goldberger was initially welcomed. Southern leaders expected him to blame the disease on an infection, or even better, on a contaminant in corn imported from the Yankee Midwest. Instead, his experiments backed up his initial suspicion that pellagra was a nutritional deficiency. Goldberg published his findings in 1915, demonstrating that pellagra was a consequence of a poorly diversified corn diet, and could be remedied by adding a few fresh foods. His conclusion wasn’t novel, matching the recommendations of earlier researchers in Europe, but his report sparked angry denials.
An earlier commission of Southern researchers in 1909 had reached an erroneous conclusion more welcome to Southern planters and mill owners – pellagra was an infectious disease, spread either by flies or adulterated corn. It could, therefore, be remedied by educating the poor toward better sanitary habits and/or regulating imports from the hated North. Goldberg’s discoveries instead tied the disease to Southern economic practices that were producing wealth for a few powerful people. Wealthy Southerners worked to promote their preferred diagnosis.
As PM Chris Hipkins says, it’s a “no brainer” to extend the fuel tax cut, half price public subsidy and the cut to the road user levy until mid-year. A no braoner if the prime purpose is to ease the burden on people struggling to cope with the cost of ...
Buzz from the Beehive Cost-of-living pressures loomed large in Beehive announcements over the past 24 hours. The PM was obviously keen to announce further measures to keep those costs in check and demonstrate he means business when he talks of focusing his government on bread-and-butter issues. His statement was headed ...
Poor Mike Hosking. He has revealed himself in his most recent diatribe to be one of those public figures who is defined, not by who he is, but by who he isn’t, or at least not by what he is for, but by what he is against. Jacinda’s departure has ...
New Zealand is the second least corrupt country on earth according to the latest Corruption Perception Index published yesterday by Transparency International. But how much does this reflect reality? The problem with being continually feted for world-leading political integrity – which the Beehive and government departments love to boast about ...
Transport Minister and now also Minister for Auckland, Michael Wood has confirmed that the light rail project is part of the government’s policy refocus. Wood said the light rail project was under review as part of a ministerial refocus on key Government projects. “We are undertaking a stocktake about how ...
Sometime before the new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced that this year would be about “bread and butter issues”, National’s finance spokesperson Nicola Willis decided to move from Wellington Central and stand for Ohariu, which spreads across north Wellington from the central city to Johnsonville and Tawa. It’s an ...
They say a week is a long time in politics. For Mayor Wayne Brown, turns out 24 hours was long enough for many of us to see, quite obviously, “something isn’t right here…”. That in fact, a lot was going wrong. Very wrong indeed.Mainly because it turns ...
One of the most effective, and successful, graphics developed by Skeptical Science is the escalator. The escalator shows how global surface temperature anomalies vary with time, and illustrates how "contrarians" tend to cherry-pick short time intervals so as to argue that there has been no recent warming, while "realists" recognise ...
A new Prime Minister, a revitalised Cabinet, and possibly revised priorities – but is the political and, importantly, economic landscape much different? Certainly some within the news media were excited by the changes which Chris Hipkins announced yesterday or – before the announcement – by the prospect of changes in ...
Currently the government's strategy for reducing transport emissions hinges on boosting vehicle fuel-efficiency, via the clean car standard and clean car discount, and some improvements to public transport. The former has been hugely successful, and has clearly set us on the right path, but its also not enough, and will ...
Buzz from the Beehive Before he announced his Cabinet yesterday, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced he would be flying to Australia next week to meet that country’s Prime Minister. And before Kieran McAnulty had time to say “Three Waters” after his promotion to the Local Government portfolio, he was dishing ...
The quarterly labour market statistics were released this morning, showing that unemployment has risen slightly to 3.4%. There are now 99,000 people unemployed - 24,000 fewer than when Labour took office. So, I guess the Reserve Bank's plan to throw people out of work to stop wage rises "inflation", and ...
* Dr Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Chris Hipkins continues to be the new broom in Government, re-setting his Government away from its problem areas in his Cabinet reshuffle yesterday, and trying to convince voters that Labour is focused on “bread and butter” issues. The ministers responsible for unpopular ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins continues to be the new broom in Government, re-setting his Government away from its problem areas in his Cabinet reshuffle yesterday, and trying to convince voters that Labour is focused on “bread and butter” issues. The ministers responsible for unpopular reforms in water and DHB centralisation ...
Completed reads for January Lilith, by George MacDonald The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (poem), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Christabel (poem), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok, by Anonymous The Lay of Kraka (poem), by Anonymous 1066 and All That, by W.C. Sellar and R.J. ...
Pity the poor Brits. They just can’t catch a break. After years of reporting of lying Boris Johnson, a change to a less colourful PM in Rishi Sunak has resulted in a smooth media pivot to an end-of-empire narrative. The New York Times, no less, amplifies suggestions that Blighty ...
On that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth.Genesis 6:11-12THE TORRENTIAL DOWNPOURS that dumped a record-breaking amount of rain on Auckland this anniversary weekend will reoccur with ever-increasing frequency. The planet’s atmosphere is ...
Buzz from the Beehive There has been plenty to keep the relevant Ministers busy in flood-stricken Auckland over the past day or two. But New Zealand, last time we looked, extends north of Auckland into Northland and south of the Bombay Hills all the way to the bottom of the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters When early settlers came to the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers before the California Gold Rush, Indigenous people warned them that the Sacramento Valley could become an inland sea when great winter rains came. The storytellers described water filling the ...
Dr Bryce Edwards writes – Last night’s opinion polls answered the big question of whether a switch of prime minister would really be a gamechanger for election year. The 1News and Newshub polls released at 6pm gave the same response: the shift from Jacinda Ardern to Chris Hipkins ...
Last night’s opinion polls answered the big question of whether a switch of prime minister would really be a gamechanger for election year. The 1News and Newshub polls released at 6pm gave the same response: the shift from Jacinda Ardern to Chris Hipkins has changed everything, and Labour is back ...
Over the last few years, it’s seemed like city after city around the world has become subject to extreme flooding events that have been made worse by impacts from climate change. We’ve highlighted many of them in our Weekly Roundup series. Sadly, over the last few days it’s been Auckland’s ...
A ‘small target’ strategy is not going to cut it anymore if National want to win the upcoming election. The game has changed and the game plan needs to change as well. Jacinda Ardern’s abrupt departure from the 9th floor has the potential to derail what looked to be an ...
When Grant Robertson talks about how the economy might change post-covid, one of the things he talks about is what he calls an unsung but interesting white paper on science. “It’s really important,” he says. The Minister in charge of the White Paper — Te Ara Paerangi, Future Pathways ...
The news media were at one ceremony by the looks of things. The Governor-General, the Prime Minister and his deputy were at another. The news media were at a swearing-in ceremony. The country’s leaders were at an appointment ceremony. The New Zealand Gazette record of what transpired says: Appointment of ...
I n some alternative universe, Auckland mayor Efeso Collins readily grasped the scale of Friday’s deluge, and quickly made the emergency declaration that enabled central government to immediately throw its resources behind the rescue and remediation effort. As Friday evening became night, Mayor Collins seemed to be everywhere: talking with ...
They called it an “atmospheric river”, the weather bombardment which hit NZ’s northern region at the weekend. It exacted a terrible toll on metropolitan Auckland and the rest of the region. Few living there may have noted a statement from electricity generator Mercury Energy labelled “WET, WET, WET!” This was ...
I know, that is a pretty corny title but given the circumstances here in the Auckland region, I just had to say it. The more oblique reference embedded in the title is to the leadership failures exhibited by Mayor Wayne Brown and his so-called leadership team when confronted by the ...
How much confidence should the public have in authorities managing natural disasters? Not much, judging by the farcical way in which the civil defence emergence in Auckland has played out. The way authorities dealt with Auckland’s extreme weather on Friday illustrated how hit-and-miss our civil defence emergency system is. In ...
Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The recent leadership change in the governing Labour party resulted in a very strange response from National’s (current) leader, Christopher Luxon. Mr Luxon berated Labour for it’s change of leader, citing no actual change.As ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 22, 2023 thru Sat, Jan 28, 2023. Story of the Week New Study Reveals Arctic Ice, Tracked Both Above and Below, Is Freezing LaterClimate change is affecting the timing of both ...
Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.It was another ‘SHOCK! HORROR!’ headline from a media increasingly venturing into tabloid-style journalism:Andrea Vance’s article seemed to focus on the "million dollar sums from the Government as the country grapples with a housing ...
Dr Brian Easton writes: It’s the summer break. Everyone settles down with family, books, the sun and some fishing. But the Prime Minister has a pile of briefing papers prepared just before Christmas, which have to be worked through. I haven’t seen them. Here is my guess at some ...
What Was the Prime Minister Reading in the Runup to Election Year?It’s the summer break. Everyone settles down with family, books, the sun and some fishing. But the Prime Minister has a pile of briefing papers prepared just before Christmas, which have to be worked through. I haven’t seen them. ...
In case you hadn't noticed, FYI, the public OIA request site, has been used to conduct a significant excavation into New Zealand's intelligence agencies, with requests made for assorted policies and procedures. Yesterday in response to one of these requests the GCSB released its policy on New Zealand Purpose and ...
Farming leaders are watching closely whether Damien O’Connor keeps the key portfolios of Agriculture and Trade when Prime Minister Chris Hipkins restructures his Cabinet. O’Connor has been one of the few ministers during Labour’s term in office who has won broad support for what he has done ...
South Islands farmers are whining about another drought, the third in three years. If only we knew what was causing this! If only someone had warned them that they faced a drying climate! But we do know what is causing it: climate change. And they have been warned, repeatedly, for ...
Ok, there’s good news and bad news in this week’s inflation figures, but bad > good. Our inflation rate held steady but hey, at a level below the inflation rate in Australia. The main reason for the so/so result here? A fall in petrol prices of 7.2% offset the really ...
Dr Bryce Edwards writes: Since her shock resignation announcement, Jacinda Ardern has been at pains to point out that she isn’t leaving because of the toxicity directed at her on social media and elsewhere, rebutting journalists who suggested misogyny and hate may have driven her from office. Yet ...
Since her shock resignation announcement, Jacinda Ardern has been at pains to point out that she isn’t leaving because of the toxicity directed at her on social media and elsewhere, rebutting journalists who suggested misogyny and hate may have driven her from office. Yet there have been dozens of columns ...
The Clinical Magus: Of particular relevance to New Zealanders struggling to come to terms with the sudden departure of their prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, is Jung’s concept of the anima. Much more than what others have called the feminine principle, the anima is what the human male has made out ...
The Select Committee, considering the proposed RNZ-TVNZ merger, has come back with a report conceding many of the criticisms that were made of the original legislation. In what is one of the most comprehensive demolitions of a Bill submitted to a Select Committee, the Economic Development, Science and Innovation ...
Such are the 2020s, the age when no-one, it seems, actually respects the basic underpinnings of democracy. Even in New Zealand. This week, I stumbled across a pair of lengthy and genuinely serious articles, that basically argue that Something is Rotten in the state of New Zealand democracy. One ...
Buzz from the Beehive Hurrah. Today we found something fresh on the Beehive website, Beehive.govt.nz, which claims to be the best place to find Government initiatives, policies and Ministerial information. It wasn’t from Finance Minister Grant Robertson, whose reaction to the latest inflation figures would have been appreciated. So, too, ...
Smiling And Waiving A Golden Opportunity: Chris Hipkins knew that the day at Ratana would be Jacinda’s day – her final opportunity to bask in the unalloyed love and support of her followers. He simply could not afford to be seen to overshadow this last chance for his former boss ...
Extremism Consumes Itself: The plot of “Act of Oblivion” concerns the relentless pursuit of the “regicides” Edward Whalley and William Goffe – two of the fifty-nine signatories to King Charles I’s death warrant. As with his many other works of historical fiction, Robert Harris’s novel brings to life a period ...
To challenge the Government’s promotion of co-governance, to share power between Maori and public authorities and agencies, is to invite accusations of racism. An example: this article by Martyn Bradbury on The Daily Blog headed Luxon’s race baiting hypocrisy at Ratana. The article was triggered by National leader Christopher Luxon, ...
A very informative video discussion: Are we getting the whole story about Ukraine? | Robert Wright & Ivan Katchanovski Getting objective information on the situation in Ukraine and the cause of this current war is not easy. There is the current censorship and blatant mainstream media bias – which ...
Yesterday the Herald ran an op-ed from Mayor Wayne Brown titled “The case for light rail is lighter than ever” and a few things stood out. However, it’s getting more and more tricky to make a strong economic case for spending up to $29 billion on a single route of ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Samantha Harrington Imagine it’s a cold February night and your furnace breaks. You want to replace it with an electric heat pump because you’ve heard that tax credits will help pay for the switch. And you know that heat pumps can reduce ...
In 2005, then-National Party leader based his entire election campaign on racism, with his infamous racist Orewa speech and racist iwi/kiwi billboards. Now, Christopher Luxon seems to want to do it all again: Fresh off using his platform at this week's Rātana celebrations to criticise the government's approach to ...
Inflation is showing little sign of slowing down, posing a problem for freshly minted PM Chris Hipkins. According to that old campaigner Richard Prebble, Hipkins should call a snap election. If he waits till October, he risks being swept away. The dilemma for the new leader is that fighting an election ...
Buzz from the Beehive A great deal has happened since January 19. Among other things, a new Prime Minister and deputy have been sworn in and our leaders (past, present and aspiring) have delivered speeches at Ratana. Newshub reported that politicians of all stripes had descended upon Rātana for the ...
It’s a big day for New Zealand; our 41st Prime Minister has taken office and the new, “Chippy” era of politics is underway. Or, on the other hand, the Labour Party continues to govern with an overall majority and much the same leadership team in place. Life goes on and ...
New Zealand has another Prime Minister who does not have a basic grasp of the three articles of the Treaty of Waitangi. THOMAS CRANMER writes: It is simply astonishing that New Zealand’s next Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, is unable to give even a brief explanation of the three articles ...
A statue of a semi-naked Nick Smith puts the misogyny debate into perspective. GRAHAM ADAMS writes … In the wake of Ardern’s abrupt resignation, the mainstream media are determined to convince us she was hounded from office mainly because she is a woman and had to fall on her sword ...
A Different Kind Of Vibe: In the days and weeks ahead, as the Hipkins ministry takes shape, the only question that matters is whether New Zealand’s new prime minister possesses both the wisdom and the courage to correct his party’s currently suicidal political course. If Chris “Chippy” Hipkins is ...
An editorial in the NZ Herald last week, titled “Nimbyism goes bananas as housing intensifies“, introduced Herald readers to a couple of acronyms that go along with the now-familiar NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard): “bananas” (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone) “cave” dwellers (citizens against virtually everything). The editorial ...
Back in the dark autumn of 2020, when the prospect of Covid was freaking the country out, Finance Minister Grant Robertson set himself and Treasury a series of questions about what a post-Covid economy might look like. Those were fearful days, and the questions in part reflected a series ...
Buzz from the Beehive Yet another day has passed without Ministers of the Crown posting something to show they are still working for us on the Beehive website. Nothing new has been posted since January 17. Perhaps the ministers are all engaged in the bemusing annual excursion ...
Incoming Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has already indicated he intends making the tax system “fairer”. That points to the route a government facing an election could take to tilt the odds towards winning in its favour, given Labour’s support in the last months of the Ardern era had been ...
NewsHub has a poll on the cost-of-living crisis, which has an interesting finding: the vast majority of kiwis prefer wage rises to tax cuts: When asked whether income has kept up with the cost of living, 54.8 percent of people surveyed said no and according to 58.6 percent of ...
Labour has begun 2023 with the centre-left bloc behind in the polls and losing ground. That being so, did his colleagues choose Chris Hipkins as the replacement for Jacinda Ardern because they think he has a realistic shot at leading them to victory this year, or because he‘s the best ...
Two Flags, Two Masters? Just as it required a full-scale military effort to destroy the first attempt at Māori self-government in the 1850s and 60s (an effort that divided Maoridom itself into supporters and opponents of the Crown) any second attempt to establish tino rangatiratanga, based on the confiscatory policies ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to provide direct support to low-income households and to stop subsidising fossil fuels during a climate crisis. ...
The tools exist to help families with surging costs – and as costs continue to rise it is more urgent than ever that we use them, the Green Party says. ...
The Government is unlocking an additional $700,000 in support for regions that have been badly hit by the recent flooding and storm damage in the upper North Island. “We’re supporting the response and recovery of Auckland, Waikato, Coromandel, Northland, and Bay of Plenty regions, through activating Enhanced Taskforce Green to ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has welcomed the announcement that Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, will visit New Zealand this month. “Princess Anne is travelling to Aotearoa at the request of the NZ Army’s Royal New Zealand Corps of Signals, of which she is Colonel in Chief, to ...
A new Government and industry strategy launched today has its sights on growing the value of New Zealand’s horticultural production to $12 billion by 2035, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor said. “Our food and fibre exports are vital to New Zealand’s economic security. We’re focussed on long-term strategies that build on ...
25 cents per litre petrol excise duty cut extended to 30 June 2023 – reducing an average 60 litre tank of petrol by $17.25 Road User Charge discount will be re-introduced and continue through until 30 June Half price public transport fares extended to the end of June 2023 saving ...
The strong economy has attracted more people into the workforce, with a record number of New Zealanders in paid work and wages rising to help with cost of living pressures. “The Government’s economic plan is delivering on more better-paid jobs, growing wages and creating more opportunities for more New Zealanders,” ...
The Government is providing a further $1 million to the Mayoral Relief Fund to help communities in Auckland following flooding, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced today. “Cabinet today agreed that, given the severity of the event, a further $1 million contribution be made. Cabinet wishes to be proactive ...
The new Cabinet will be focused on core bread and butter issues like the cost of living, education, health, housing and keeping communities and businesses safe, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has announced. “We need a greater focus on what’s in front of New Zealanders right now. The new Cabinet line ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins will travel to Canberra next week for an in person meeting with Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. “The trans-Tasman relationship is New Zealand’s closest and most important, and it was crucial to me that my first overseas trip as Prime Minister was to Australia,” Chris Hipkins ...
The Government is providing establishment funding of $100,000 to the Mayoral Relief Fund to help communities in Auckland following flooding, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced. “We moved quickly to make available this funding to support Aucklanders while the full extent of the damage is being assessed,” Kieran McAnulty ...
As the Mayor of Auckland has announced a state of emergency, the Government, through NEMA, is able to step up support for those affected by flooding in Auckland. “I’d urge people to follow the advice of authorities and check Auckland Emergency Management for the latest information. As always, the Government ...
Ka papā te whatitiri, Hikohiko ana te uira, wāhi rua mai ana rā runga mai o Huruiki maunga Kua hinga te māreikura o te Nota, a Titewhai Harawira Nā reira, e te kahurangi, takoto, e moe Ka mōwai koa a Whakapara, kua uhia te Tai Tokerau e te kapua pōuri ...
Carmel Sepuloni, Minister for Social Development and Employment, has activated Enhanced Taskforce Green (ETFG) in response to flooding and damaged caused by Cyclone Hale in the Tairāwhiti region. Up to $500,000 will be made available to employ job seekers to support the clean-up. We are still investigating whether other parts ...
The 2023 General Election will be held on Saturday 14 October 2023, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today. “Announcing the election date early in the year provides New Zealanders with certainty and has become the practice of this Government and the previous one, and I believe is best practice,” Jacinda ...
Jacinda Ardern has announced she will step down as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party. Her resignation will take effect on the appointment of a new Prime Minister. A caucus vote to elect a new Party Leader will occur in 3 days’ time on Sunday the 22nd of ...
The Government is maintaining its strong trade focus in 2023 with Trade and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor visiting Europe this week to discuss the role of agricultural trade in climate change and food security, WTO reform and New Zealand agricultural innovation. Damien O’Connor will travel tomorrow to Switzerland to attend the ...
The Government has extended its medium-scale classification of Cyclone Hale to the Wairarapa after assessing storm damage to the eastern coastline of the region. “We’re making up to $80,000 available to the East Coast Rural Support Trust to help farmers and growers recover from the significant damage in the region,” ...
The Government is making an initial contribution of $150,000 to the Mayoral Relief Fund to help communities in Tairāwhiti following ex-Tropical Cyclone Hale, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced. “While Cyclone Hale has caused widespread heavy rain, flooding and high winds across many parts of the North Island, Tairāwhiti ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University As we enter the fourth year of living with COVID, we are all asking the predictable question: when will the pandemic be over? To answer this question, it’s worth reminding ourselves that a pandemic involves ...
The twitter account for the mayor of Auckland, Wayne Brown, has posted and deleted an image showing the prime minister, Chris Hipkins, pointing at Brown, who stares back in a tableau that at first glance appears combative. The tweet, which came with a caption describing a meeting between the two ...
The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, will visit New Zealand later this month, taking in the sights of Palmerston North. Prime minister Chris Hipkins announced the royal will attend the 100th anniversary celebrations for the NZ Army’s Royal New Zealand Corps of Signals, of which she is Colonel in Chief. These ...
PM Anthony Albanese has announced changes to help protect New Zealand-born residents of Australia from deportation, following years of outcry about the toll on so-called ‘501s’. Don Rowe looks at why the policy is so widely reviled. A major shift in Australian immigration policy means the government will now consider ...
King Charles has sent a message to New Zealand following the floods that hit the top of the North Island over the past few days. In a letter shared via the governor general, the monarch said he had been following the news with the “deepest concern” and wanted to pass ...
Dunedin – Following news that the Scottish city of Edinburgh has become Europe’s first capital to sign the Plant Based Treaty, animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has sent a letter to the mayor of Edinburgh’s ...
New figures reveal just how much living costs increased for households in 2022. Last year was dominated politically by the cost of living crisis, which has carried over into 2023 with inflation sky high and a looming recession on the horizon. According to Stats NZ, the cost of living for ...
Ramari Jackson-Paniora is the daughter of one of the main faces of the 1972 Māori Language Petition – but her relationship with te reo Māori is more complicated than people may assume.My whānau’s journey with reo Māori is typical of many Māori whānau across Aotearoa. Looking at my parents’ ...
After Monday night, the accepted narrative around rugby, sexuality and masculinity will never be quite the same, writes Sam Brooks. If you tuned into Seven Sharp on Monday night, you probably did so unaware that you were about to watch a history-making interview. After a wholesome segment with two ...
Auckland mayor Wayne Brown has apologised for his “drongo” comment about journalists, but defended his decision to stop other councillors speaking out on the night of the devastating floods. In an interview with Newshub’s AM this morning, Brown admitted he shouldn’t have called the media drongos, adding that he will ...
Buller Electricity (BEL), the community owned lines network company that supplies the majority of electricity consumers in the Buller district on the South Island’s West Coast, has lodged a formal legal challenge opposing a 427% price increase in ...
Chris Hipkins says Aotearoa has "some tough calls to make as a country" regarding the future of communities in places vulnerable to extreme weather events. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pii-Tuulia Nikula, Principal Academic, Eastern Institute of Technology GettyImages An increasing number of businesses in Aotearoa New Zealand are changing how they operate to reduce their overall climate impact. These measures, which include reducing carbon emissions, are largely voluntary outside of ...
Increasing prices continued to affect all household groups in the 12 months to December 2022, Stats NZ said today. The cost of living for the average household (as measured by the household living-costs price indexes) increased by 8.2 percent in the 12 months ...
“The recent flooding in Auckland, Northland and the Bay of Plenty has caused chaos and has put people, homes and businesses at risk. It has also decimated huge crops of fruit and vegetables at a time when we are already paying significantly more than ...
The devastating deluge has highlighted the need for urgent climate action – but how likely is that under our current mayor?As a proud, unashamed JAFA, the recent floods literally hit home. Sirens blared nonstop all night Friday and all morning Saturday as a mighty torrent raged outside my window. ...
ANZ has said it will drop home loan interest rates by up to 55 basis points. It comes after yesterday’s employment data was released which showed that unemployment rose to 3.4% in the December, and pay did not rise as much as some economists had expected. Bank economists now expect the official cash rate ...
It’s a popular policy – and we are in an election year after all – but the government’s decision to extend the fuel tax cuts until the end of June has provoked a fair amount of criticism since being announced. Greenpeace told Today FM that while the government had good ...
Likely it be most expensive non-earthquake disaster in New Zealand, a picture is beginning to form about the long term implications of the flooding that will impact the entire country, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Birger Rasmussen, Adjunct Professor, The University of Western Australia Saul Shepstein, Author provided The Pilbara region of Western Australia is home to one of the most ancient surviving pieces of Earth’s crust, which has been geologically unchanged since its creation ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Dickie, PhD Candidate in Public Health Nutrition, Deakin University Shutterstock For years, the term “junk food” has been used to refer to foods considered bad for you, and not very nutritious. But junk can mean different things to different ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Daniel, Tutor / Lecturer in Film and Media Studies, Western Sydney University Columbia Pictures “What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?” ...
Empathetic leadership is not some magical superpower – it’s a necessary skill in a time of crisis.It’s more ironic than rain on your wedding day that we’re having to contemplate the qualities of good leadership two weeks after the formal resignation of Jacinda Ardern. In assessments of the former ...
An international human rights group has called on NZ to raise the age of criminal responsibility to at least 14. Don Rowe explains what’s going on.What’s all this then? The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has criticised the New Zealand government for failing to raise ...
Books editor Claire Mabey and poetry consultant Louise Wallace analyse this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards long (really quite long) list.Here are the books longlisted for the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards (for books published between 1 January 2022 and 31 December 2022). We’ve listed them all ...
Ockham longlist announced Once again the dear old Ockhams are the shockhams. The longlist of the 2023 Ockham New Zealand national book awards was announced this morning and much of it is quite crazy, which is to say adventurous and unusual, as well as showing a commitment to deeply boring ...
The humble egg is in short supply - The Detail looks at the reasons why it's so hard to get your hands on a carton Online auctions for chickens have attracted double the usual number of clicks in recent weeks, amid a nationwide egg shortage. Supermarket shelves have been empty and ...
'Where once the Karepiro chenier hosted dotterel and oystercatcher nests there could soon be sandcastles, and how many cats?' Pat Baskett looks at our ongoing contribution to the Sixth Extinction. It’s tempting to describe this breeding season of the tūturiwhatu (NZ dotterel) at Karepiro Bay on Auckland’s North Shore as a ...
We need to reduce our energy consumption and embrace 'degrowth’, in which we redesign the economy to put human and environmental wellbeing at its centreOpinion: In years gone by, you may have heard the words ‘peak oil’, often intoned with a sense of foreboding, warning us that before long oil ...
Wayne Brown's repeated defences of the radio silence from council offices on Friday night miss the point that communications is a fundamental part of an emergency response. ...
Lisa Cross' life has had many twists and turns in her almost 40 years. Now the mum of two says she's never felt better running at the world cross country champs for the first time. When Lisa Cross was an apprentice jockey, she became attuned to the puffs and blows of the ...
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It’s the biggest week in Real Pod history! Jane made her debut in Treasure Island: Fans v Faves and we grill her all about the drama from week one. Why did she put up Micah? How brutal was the wrestling challenge IRL? And what were her concerns about joining Lance’s ...
Treasure Island is back, baby, and so are our power rankings. Tara Ward recaps all the big plays from the dramatic first week of Fans v Faves. Treasure Island: Fans v Faves has finally washed ashore, and after hoovering down the first three action-packed episodes, I’m fuller than a weatherman ...
By Felix Chaudhary in Suva New Zealand-based Fijian academic Professor Steven Ratuva says that if the coalition government is strong, resilient and lasts, “this will reflect well as a future model for coalitions in Fiji”. “It’s a learning process for a new government and a new democracy and we expect ...
By Finau Fonua, RNZ Pacific journalist Many Pasifika families affected by the flash floods and torrential rainfall that have lashed New Zealand’s North Island over the past few days were braced for more bad weather overnight. With four people dead and hundreds forced out of their homes over the weekend ...
RNZ Pacific A New Zealand-based professor in comparative politics says the Fiji constitution needs to clear up the role of the military. Dr Jon Fraenkel of Victoria University, formerly of the University of the South Pacific, says the 2013 constitution revived the provision that existed in the 1990 constitution which ...
By Repeka Nasiko in Lautoka Fiji’s Media Industry Development Act will soon be reviewed over the next few weeks. Speaking to The Fiji Times in Lautoka on Monday, Minister for Communications Manoa Kamikamica said the review was one of the main objectives of the coalition government when it came to ...
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Judge dismisses Oranga Tamariki's attempt to remove Māori girl from Pakeha couple.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/126334548/judge-dismisses-oranga-tamarikis-bid-to-remove-mori-girl-from-pkeh-couple
Judge seems to have tried to apply the "wisdom of Solomon" to the situation but I wonder if this is the end of the matter? I can see both parties' viewpoints as being culturally valid in their own way.
Seems he can up with a reasonable solution in what was a very difficult situation.
The behavior of Oranga Tamariki seems to have been pretty abhorrent and the fact that CEO and 2 high ranking judges attempted to interfere on an ongoing case well outside our guidelines for judicial conduct was staggering. The presiding judge did the right thing.
Having govt heads attempting to influence ongoing court cases is a really slippery slope.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/126152961/judge-lauded-for-rebuking-his-seniors-in-oranga-tamariki-case
Cricklewood, I agree with all you are saying. The Judge has come up with a worthy solution to the issue, by including. the caregivers in Wellington and the biological mother into the picture while keeping the little girl with the Pakeha family who care about this child enough to go to court and fight for her (there are perhaps better indications that the couple have cared well for the little girl).
The interference in the trial is highly dubious.
Although it appears that the social workers in this case were domonstrably inadequate, I would give a shout out to the social workers at OT. I know some personally and I know them to be dedicated, committed to the children and compassionate to the families of those children. They get a lot of flack eg the social workers who uplifted the baby in Hawkes Bay. Apparently they were identifiable from the video and received death threats.
While of course it is advisable that Maori families preferrable whanau are found for Maori babies, that may not always be possible as was the case for this little girl. The idea of distrupting the bond that had been established betwenn her and her current caregivers troubles me greatly.
Yeah Social work is a very difficult career to take on, amazing people who always do their best. I dont doubt for a second that many of the 'inadequacies' in this case are the result of upper management scrambling to cover arse and putting pressure on Social workers on the ground.
Then more poor descisions from upper management that ended up with the whole thing in court. Then made entirely worse for the individual Social workers in question when an attempt was made to interfere in the trial suddenly making it newsworthy.
As usual those at the coal face bare the brunt of the actions of people with comfy chairs and massive salaries.
The govt really needs to get a handle on the leadership and direction in our big social agencies its pretty poor atm.
As a former (34.5 years) public servant whose 2nd department was subjected to constant restructurings, "realignments", "refocuses", & completely new "corporate" management teams, many of whose executives were completely new to the "business" every 3 – 5 years, I can identify with those remarks completely.
It's reasonably normal for staff to whinge I know but in Head Office we frequently ended up top-heavy with make-workers & with the occasional truly hopeless managers, some of whom knew even less about their job when they left at the next restructuring than when they started.
Front line staff were chronically under-resourced & stressed. I can recall there being a 3 year period when we had a particularly good "customer-service business model" introduced that was applied across the board, externally & internally, & where a continuous improvement committee process was adopted & met regularly to consider staff suggestions, evaluate & either reject or implement them.
The General Manager & the Policy Manager worked hand in glove & visited & talked to the staff at all levels, & the department eventually hummed like well-oiled machine.
The GM & then the CEO retired. The new CEO came in & decided there was to be a moratorium on all changes, introduced a top down review by an outside consultant, got rid of the old management to stamp his authority on the org. And completely broke it.
They're still being regularly reorganised & still haven't recovered.
I realise this is a Labour-friendly blog & this may not go down well, but from my perspective many of the current crop of Labour Ministers just don't have the experience or in some cases the intellectual equipment to control & direct their departments, as many actually did in the Clark & Key administrations.
It seems that you have a skewed idea of Ministers ‘controlling & directing’ their ‘departments’. If your premise is off, not much useful will come out at the other end. Do you know how government works in NZ or do you think you know?
No, I know how government works. I was intimately involved in policy development, appeals (working with Appeal Authorities), & operational systems implementation work for most of my career. I even have some personal Ministerial commendations for some of my work.
I was also a PSA rep for a short time, after we had a national walkout & my manager returned from overseas & walked in to find everybody leaving the premises. There was no Head Office rep. He had no idea what was happening. Fuck him the staff said. I felt guilty & went back in & told him where things were at with the pay & conditions review. And took the role on on to represent our staff on the negotiating team. There wasn’t much negotiation. It was a take it or leave it situation. They wanted to move as many staff off the Collective Agreement & onto personal contracts with a bit more pay but inferior redundancy conditions as they could
Good personal history there Gazza thanks.
They eventually used to contract out recruitment for senior management positions to professional recruitment companies. They didn't know the business. This resulted in a couple of senior management appointments of folk from the private sector who were utterly useless. I remember one who'd previously worked in management for the biggest Korean airline.
He was flown down from Auckland to Wellington every week to run his unit. He'd go into his office & shut the door & the staff couldn't get a decision out of him all week. He was completely out-of-his depth. It was a vital role. The staff had to pick up his job. They were flat out & alternated between despair & being ropable.
It eventually became apparent why he was on the market. He'd been useless in his previous job too, they'd got rid of him via the classic scheme of giving him a glowing reference during the recruitment company's referee checks.
In the olden days of the strictly in house public service promotions when sackings were unheard of the equivalent was promoting someone sideways into a new role where they couldn't do any harm.
I tend to think that some ministers who maybe don't have adequate sector knowledge is an obstacle that can be overcome (especially if they're not morons and senior advisors/management can act as translators into the minister's conceptual framework), but even one management level full of "professional managers" with no sector experience is lethal.
Agreed. And when new Ministers are appointed they get a BIM (briefing for incoming Minister) which aims to give them a reasonably comprehensive overview of their department, & summaries of its policies, operations, legislation, reporting lines etc.
They are then completely reliant on the quality, knowledge, communication abilities & personal relationship management skills of their GM & the senior managers they meet with & who prepare their Cabinet Papers.
Most of them managed fine, even with the occasional misfit manager as there was a good Chief Legal Adviser & sufficient experienced management talent in the Senior Executive Group or the next layer down who prepped their Execs, had mutual trust & good working relationships & could accompany them to the Minister's Office.
I had probably over a dozen Ministers & Associate Ministers in my time there. There were one or two plodders who never really got up to speed & just shuffled papers & kept their heads down as far as possible till they were moved to another porfolio or didn't get re-elected.
Most Ministers were good friendly folk, not fools, learned quickly on the job in about 3-6 months, & did solid, dependable, if not stellar work.
And there were a few who were standout: sharp as a knife, read their briefing papers thoroughly, & would call their execs over, ask questions, query things they didn't understand, send papers back for further work if they weren't satisfied.
Most Ministers & Associates had several portfolios. I guess some people think they have a pretty cruisy time, but the hours they all worked were punishing, they'd be taking work home over the weekends, during long holidays, often in the House working late, & the constant travelling would have been too much for me. I turned down a couple of invitations to be seconded to the Minister's office as departmental private secretary. I just had too many responsibilities at home.
Wants the decision appealed:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/126341067/iwi-leader-disagrees-with-judges-call-to-leave-mori-girl-with-pkeh-caregivers
Not entirely unexpected.
The 'link within your link' (to the earlier article) lays out the failures of OT, and the condition the child came to the caregivers in. "When she arrived with them, Moana's teeth were rotten, she had an untreated club foot, and she showed all the symptoms of a traumatised child."
Any judge considering this case is going to need the wisdom of Solomon.
Tuns out the BBC is just as dodgy as we suspected….imagine that, the same news source that gets on board for every western war and intervention, dishonestly skewing their Syria story in the service of more intervention…I wonder when was the last time the BBC, or any other western MSM outlet dishonestly skewed a story for the benefit of less western war and intervention?
BBC admits Syria gas attack report had serious flaws
'Adjudicators agreed it had failed to meet ECU's editorial standards for accuracy'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9958679/BBC-admits-Syria-gas-attack-report-flaws-complaint-Peter-Hitchens.html
The comments are hilarious!
Most commenters had little faith in the current BBC
Some of them think the BBC is leftist!!
It's campaign against Corbyn (along with the Guardian) says otherwise
Corbyn lost that 2019 election, not because of his left wing policies which had wide popularity, but because of his non committal stand re Brexit, and the unrelenting and ill founded charges of anti semitism.(Thanks BBC and Guardian , you did a sterling job in helping to put the idiot Boris at the steering wheel)
And now we have the quisling Starmer swinging the wrecking ball .
Agreed francesca. If they had MMP in the UK Corbyn would have started his own party by now.
ooooohhh Jeremy Corrrrrrbyn!ooooohhh Jeremy Corrrrrrbyn!
Corbyn was the target of unrelenting ridicule and lies by the Blairite rump of his own party, as well as by its media accomplices, the Grauniad, the Murdoch and Desmond filth outlets, and the state broadcaster…..
Well Judge Peter Callinicos appears to have what could be described politely as some deeply unfashionable views on custody issues. Still, he is the presiding judge I would suspect it isn't a bad thing to apply the occasional bromide to prevailing orthodoxy.
PS this is in reply to Gezza…
I read those bits, but since it was clearly spin, I took it to show Callinicos attitude to people missrepresenting to the court. He seems to take that as a trigger to ask the hardest questions of those witnesses, which seems fair enough to me. Bending the truth to courts frequently results in false convictions and rulings.
What do we make of the Oranga Tamariki lawyers claim that, failing to raise a Maori child as Maori, is physically harmful. Does this go on to explain David Seymour?
Ha ha re your comment about David Seymour.
I think "failing to raise a Maori child as Maori, is physically harmful" is contestable.
For one thing it broadens the definition of what physical harm is and I think that in itself is problematic. We would need some very good research to unpick the issue.
Dunedin study is always my go to.
Speaking as someone whose spouse is Maori and who was raised by adoptive parents as Pakeha, I wouldn't support what the OT lawyer is saying. I think we have very good ideas of what a baby infant child, teen needs. Secure attachment figures, who offer unconditional love, but are able to set good boundaries. I would add parents who are mature enough to tune into the individual their child is and allow that to flourish. Someone who isn't afraid to be the big person and safeguard the child.
My brother-in-law (married to my kid sister [60] ) has a Maori dad & a Pakeha mum. Sis has all his whakapapa (Taranaki nga iwi) & keeps the genealogies for our side too. He & his late dad are "Kiwi 1st, Maori 2nd" types. They don't identify as Maori per se although they're justifiably proud of their whakapapa & look Maori & one of my 2 nephews (theirs) opted for the Maori roll. They're both ambitious & hard working, started out at the bottom & ended up having successful careers in management in their fields of work.
I get my roof moss-proofed every two years. Four years back the two sprayers who turned up were Maori. As is my habit, I was home, & I called out to them that I was making coffee, would they like one when they finished? It was a nice day & we had a chat in my covered patio & I asked what the taller, chattier one's iwi was. He said his folks hailed from Kaitaia, (Nga Puhi, I think), but they'd moved to Porirua for work & he was born there.
He had a couple of kids to his partner & I asked if they were married. He just grinned & said "No, that's a Pākehā thing where I come from! We've been together for years & don't see any need to spend money on a wedding."
I asked the quiet one where his turangawaewae was. He said he'd been adopted as a child by a Pākehā couple & he hadn't been brought up as a Maori. I asked if he knew his birth parents' nga iwi & he said no, & he wasn't that interested in finding out. He'd had a happy childhood & he loved his adopted parents & that was all he needed & cared about. He'd have been around 18 – 20 at a guess. I was surprised he hadn't bothered to find out; I think I would've wanted to in his situation.
They both got on well together & did something classically Maori. When they finished their coffee & bikkies they said they still had a lot of spray left over & before they left for their next job they sprayed all the lichen on my visitors' car park & driveway for free.
My point is … I know Maori who are staunchly Maori & embrace their culture & local marae, Te Reo, & kapa haka, taiaha martial arts etc. They see themselves as Maori 1st, Kiwi 2nd. And I know others who are happy enuf on the General Roll & just regard themselves as Kiwis of Maori & Pākehā descent in equal measure.
Either works for me. I'm happy for people to choose for themselves. I wish I did have some Maori lineage. And that I'd learned Te Reo Maori & French instead of Latin & French at school.
I see there are pictures and even a video going around on various platforms of Siouxse Wiles breaking her own advice under level 4. I bet this wont make the main news channels if they want more government funding.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/09/ashley-bloomfield-defends-siouxsie-wiles-maskless-beach-visit-as-judith-collins-labels-her-hypocrite.html
[link added with video and showing Wiles didn’t break any level four rules]
[next time, post a link, or something else to back up your assertions. This is especially important for public figures, because 1) it avoids defamation and putting the site owners at risk, and 2) it stops you looking like a troll. We’re here for the robust, informed debate, not rumour mongering – weka]
Crikey! No one I know has ever broken their own advice and I know I certainly never have, especially the advice I give myself about writing inane things on blogs!!
Hi Robert. I wondered if you'd seen this?:
.https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-09-09-2021/#comment-1814584
Thank you, Gezza, I hadn't but I'm glad I have now. Good, useful comment.
This ia an article I wondered if you had seen Robert. This NZ Geographic story on wilding pines;sounds a bit wonky. First they drop them en masse and then are dedicated to removing the same.
https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-march-of-the-pines/
Thanks, grey. Yes, I had seen it and recklessly engaged in a prolonged debate with the author (nice bloke) and others about alternate ways of looking at the issue 🙂 with a pinch of "don't use gmo's" thrown in 🙂
Its like my dad used to say…
'Do as I say not as I do'
But given its Covid and people are getting pretty over level 4 having such a public advocate of restrictions meet a spinoff journalist apparently in breach level 4 isnt exactly helpful.
Gives the anti lockdown folk more fuel to stoke the fire…
Rules for thee, but not for me
What are you referring to, Jester? You provide no links or details, so it is impossible to ascertain the validity of your words. Cricklewood seems to think it has something to do with a Spinoff interview, but I couldn't see anything like that there. This is the most recent for her (as contributing author):
https://thespinoff.co.nz/science/03-09-2021/siouxsie-wiles-toby-morris-how-the-world-sped-to-the-covid-vaccine-summit/
But wouldn't a science communicator talking to a journalist during a pandemic be essential work even under delta-PAL4 anyway?
The video is all over social media and on YouTube.
It shows Wiles sitting on a beach (Judges Bay – 5km away from her home), alongside what is claimed to be a reporter. Neither are wearing masks. Neither are social distancing.
The video then goes on to show Wiles paddling in the water with a swimmer a short distance away.
The video was 'released' by the BFD – Cameron Slater's blog. In case you don't want to go there, they quote Wiles as saying:
“I was with someone from my bubble, who lives in the area… Judges Bay is about 5km from my home which is pretty local when on a bicycle.”
Stalking prominent women. Charming.
That was very much a Slater occupation. Stalking people. He stalked David Shearer and caught him having a coffee with a well known union official. He got photos n' all to prove it was true. 😡
The very first time Cameron Slater addressed this writer, i.e. moi, he told me to “fuck off.” Despite that tense initial contact, this writer kept posting at Whaleoil Beef Hooked, that dog of a site, for a good few years before flaming out with this post…..
https://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2012/12/saturday-general-debate-21/
What did he think was wrong with David Shearer having coffee with a union official? Honestly is that a crime now?
That was the point. There's nothing wrong with being seen with an union official. Just DP – trying to suggest he was a Commie I suppose.
pretty much. Not even going to watch the video. When they take hours to post a link to what they're tying their undies in knots over, it's a good sign it's fuckall anyway.
Would've been a random member of the public sent in the video who happened to be there (probably with their mask on?).
Siousxe fronted up on One ZB to try and explain so good on her for that at least she fronted.
Jude and Cam put the band back together and boom, National's dealing in creepshots. So fucking on-brand.
//
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/what-are-creepshots-and-what-can-we-do-about-them/A5OE7JYZX43BQYDSI3YSQ2EXOE/
The swimmer a short distance away? 😕
The angle's not great, but I guess 'close' is relative. I wasn't passing judgement, quite the contrary. I'm not exactly the model citizen with the walks I'm taking!
As nothing was made in the MSM of the National Party breaking rules dining together in Wellington that Reti admitted to, you may well be right that they won't report on Siouxse Wiles, and if it's not in the Media, maybe you could link to your source. Please tell me its not Coltheman? To blame it on Government funding is bollocks, or is the constant griping from TV3 only because Joyce gave them money. Can't have it both ways bud.
The political problem facing the right wing right now is the massively popular and competent government response to covid has forced the right further and further down the rabbit hole, until people like Jester here can't understand why the media won't run character assassinations and smear campaigns by nasty pricks as "news" and can't understand why they make reasonable people want to vomit.
Imagine if it had been a backbench National MP, do you think the media would have run the story then?
Do you know what social media Jester is referring to Sanctuary, Twitter maybe? I avoid that almost as much as Reddit. Google hasn't helped much except this piece from April (from NZH, but ODT not paywalled).
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/new-zealander-year-calls-out-social-media-bullies
However, if Wiles is breaking the rules, then she should be as liable for condemnation as David Clark was when he was Minister of Health. But if it is footage out of context for purposes of smearing health communicators in the midst of a pandemic then that's fairy despicable.
This was Wiles response:
“I was with someone from my bubble, who lives in the area… Judges Bay is about 5km from my home which is pretty local when on a bicycle.”
[the unmasked link:
https://thebfd.co.nz/2021/09/09/new-zealander-of-the-year-siouxsie-wiles-unmasked/
For the sake of transparency and reader
convenienceawareness]I'm more than happy to give her the benefit of the doubt until and unless someone can prove she is not being truthful.
Cameron Slater! Didn't realize that when I clicked on your link, a heads up would have been nice; Gypsy. Hard to tell how far away the filmer was, but certainly more than a few metres.
Bloomfield didn't seem too worried in today's press conference, and if it's a choice between his opinion and Slater's, then I am on the side of reason. Slater's best point was that TVNZ refused to run the story, but I don't think that amounts to; "this story was suppressed by an editor at 1News". It's almost as if there was a more pressing news story on September the 3rd that gobbled up all the air time.
Slater!? Suppose he believes he's doing us, or at least someone, a favour
Yeah, sorry I should have put a warning with that link!
Some Stuff headline writer will be going to the grab bag, frothing at the mouth as I write. Oh the choices!
"Fiasco, failure, catastrophe, disaster, debacle, screw-up, botch-up, fail, cock-up, fuck-up, balls-up, shambles, mess, muddle, bungle, muck-up, foul-up, screw-up …"
The world is going to end …
mod note for you Jester. Please acknowledge.
Another Collins shambles, fat shaming now, she just gets worse.
really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
OMG. I've just read what Collins said. She's not just hypocrtical: she's utterly crass & completely artless. She's clearly got a blind spot in the mirror. That's just nasty schoolgirl stuff. Absolutely bizarre that she can't see the damage she's just done to herself & her party. I don't think she engages the brain before she opens her mouth, & I don't think she actually hears what she's saying.
Man, that is SO dense it beggars belief !
She's gone. Just a matter of time now, imo.
only sense I can make of it is that National are still running a trumpian politics agenda. They want a more divisive society, because in the medium term that's the only way they can get some traction against Ardern.
She probably thinks she's scored a Trumpian-style king hit. Her EQ & IQ are both highly suspect.
I suspect Collins has offended probably the vast majority of voters in this country with that totally unnecessary personal denigration of Wiles. Ardern’s fan club journos will flay her.
She's as dumb as a sack of hammers. Wonder when the next polls are due out? Hope they aren't busy collating & analysing them already. I’d like to see a couple more working days roll around before someone starts doing the polling.
I don't think she is dumb. I think she's got a certain personality that doesn't really give a shit about people, and she's in a role where her choices are very limited.
There's a sizeable portion of people that either don't know who Wiles is, or actively dislike her. That's who Collins is talking to.
It's a mistake imo to right Collins off as stupid. She's on track with trumpian pol. It's not about king hits, it's about undermining democracy over the long term.
I hear you.
I'm not particularly fond of Siouxsie, but those remarks of Collins' are so far below the belt I'm gobsmacked.
I'd never say I'd never vote National (although I never have to date). But I don't think Collins is attracting any more voters than the current crop.
I think she's an unimpressive, awkward communicator & doesn't strike me as having anything like a coherent policy programme. With such lean pickings for spokespeople & her still at helm the Nats are in no current danger of picking up a candidate or party vote from me.
Ardern’s got time to counter or pirate & tailor policy anywhere they might be getting some traction. And Labour’s in its 2nd term now. Their newby Ministers have now got experience.
I really am wondering how she'll score next poll. She's done some serious media foot-shooting lately.
again, trumpian pol isn't about short term poll gains. It's about creating a social and political milieu where division advantages the right.
National have nothing atm that can touch Ardern, this is a long term strategy. They could of course rebuild their party around values again, but it doesn't look like the people in power want that. Proto-fascism is a drug, and Key was the one that really brought National into this position. Irrespective of what Collins does or doesn't do in terms of voters this year, she is on point for the bigger agenda.
Ah, yes. thanks. I see your point now.
Seymour & she might end up a double act if it works.
Indeed. Act are doing their own version of trumpian politics.
"Irrespective of what Collins does or doesn't do in terms of voters this year, she is on point for the bigger agenda."
My view is she did a deal with her party and caucus last year. She is a 'place holder', and is throwing stones until a younger, most likely female with a softer and more reasoned approach takes over later in 2022. My pick is Nicola Willis.
This makes sense to me (no idea if it's true, but a useful theory to consider)
She knows her people and feeds them what they want.
yep.
Yes I would have put up the Newshub Link if I could, but the story wasn't there when I posted original comment at 8:50am this morning.
Well done NZ ! Vaccination rates and adherence to the levels.
Hang in akl almost there, awesome effort everyone especially the frontline workers.
The govt should throw a big load of cash out to Auckland especially when their lockdown reduces to boost mental well being and help the economy.
"The endgame is to suppress the virus,” – Dr Fauci.
A short (10 min) video about Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, the nine-year old whose 2013 death was attributed to air pollution in London.
For me, it also speaks of the wider and more complex issues of social justice and inequity not being considered, let alone adequately addressed, by planning, transport, health or environmental monitoring institutions.
Still another puzzle piece of a thoroughly confusing history:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/451190/terrorist-tried-to-revoke-nz-residence-but-his-request-was-not-progressed
Although when you listen to the full audio track it looks like a relatively minor blip that isn't really the "gazumper" the Opposition might try to make it out to be if they're aware of it. Will try & see if it comes up at Question Time.
Oh. 😰
Friday. No QT.
ImmigrationNZ appear to be culturally welded to the principle of inertia. Do nothing even when it requires great effort.
Maybe. On the other hand, if you go to sections 163 & 164 of the Immigration Act (just as a start) and then click on EVERY linked provision & all their cross links, & then go looking for the relevant provisions & links to every likely section & subsection covering every other element of this guy's immigration history & relevant provisons around permanent residence & deportation, & appeal rights & Ministerial powers that have been mentioned to date – it doesn't take too long to realise it's an excruciatingly complex legal situation & those who think there's been a simple solution at various key points or milestones imo hasn't really understood ALL the relevant requirements & processes that must be covered off before any ONE of them could have suceeded.
I'm not surprised that nobody wanted to do a knee jerk rush to a quick solution that conceivably might have failed on Judicial Review. As he in the end refused to engage to pursue the revocation he said he wanted, the point is moot.
The Review hopefully will unentangle all the many strands in some intelligible way.
I'm not surprised either. I'm sure much time was saved by not bothering, and now they needn't.
Bugger. This is NOT good news:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-teenager-in-court-charged-with-threatening-to-kill-non-muslims/BJX2XDBTIVNE34DTWTS5BMMKOU/
It is not good news to hear of someone with the seeming inclination. It is good news to hear of the arrest.
It will be interesting to see if recent events have a 'worst case scenario' applied to the individual to look after the community or the paramount perspective is to look after the individual and his rights.
All those from whatever agencies dealing with him, up to the judge, should paint their children or spouses into a scenario where he has his way.
I am hopeful that the Muslim Association & Muslim Women's Council might be approached early to see if they think they can help & what assistance they might need in supporting this individual & deterring him from this possible path – & perhaps support & help his family as well. Lonely or isolated Teenagers are so easy to radicalise.
This surely can't just have come out of nowhere. And the LynnMall attacker has probably raised the temperature of anti-Muslim sentiment. If any of that's been directed at him or he's seen it on social media, or he feels the attacker was simply executed, it could have set him off.
I also can't help wondering if Allah granting the Taliban such a stunning victory, while the West is railing against them, threatening to deny them money, & calling them liars, is a factor. Fundamentalists everywhere have been celebrating, from the reports I've seen.
Well, our totally dumb USA policy-makers asked for this years ago, didn't they?
Just deserts, and we backed them all the way. No point in moaning now.
I remember just after the 911 disaster, a History teacher was standing next work day morning with other staff at the school, and someone said something like, “Isn’t it terrible?”
“Yes,” he said, “and a lot of people are going to die now.” Looks of surprise. He added, “And they will probably be the wrong ones.”
Prescient, unlike the US policymakers, who just pretty well repeated their Vietnam blunder.
They really learned how to kill over there by remote control. And in their last days during the evacuation mission they killed a suspected IS suicide attacker, again by remote control. They announced on tv that they'd got the terrorist(s), & that the explosion was huge, so they were clearly suicide bombers, and that there were no civilian casualties.
I was watching AlJazeera tv newshour, looking at a civilian man on top of a single story house building, running to the edge, looking over at where the black smoke was rising, then running back while others also appeared, bringing a bucket of water which he threw down into the smoke. It made no difference.
They’d rocketed the car in a very narrow street, right outside that house, killing 11 people, 10 in one family, including several children and their father, who'd just arrived home from work. They were running out to meet him.
A Pentagon spokesman doing a live standup on tv as I watched not long afterwards was asked by a reporter had he heard that there were civilian casualties and he replied that they were aware of this claim but it hadn't been verified.
They've now killed thousands of innocent civilians as "collateral damage" in this way, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and numerous other countries, taking out Taliban, Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Al Shabab and other "terrorists" in rocket assassinations via Predator drones flown by young operators who're trained and skilled in computer gaming.
It's bizarre how this simply doesn't register in the US consciousness or the Military Commands. Non-American lives just don't matter. It's why they're so hated in many of these places.
What did they 'ask for'? Oh the US have made huge foreign policy mistakes, but Islamic terrorism is centuries old, so let's not fall for the old 'great satan' narrative for everything that is happening.
Since Islamic terrorism is centuries old, one would have expected that by now US 'Intelligence' would have thought of much more effective policies for dealing with it..
Such as? I mean appeasement is such a successful strategy, right?
Repeating most of the blunders they made in Vietnam then leaving in utter humiliation is probably worse than appeasement, which was your silly suggestion, not mine.
Vietnam? Not sure when that was run by islamic extremists, but if you're off on a tangent, how about the soviet occupations of Korea, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan just to name a few. Or the Chinese involvement in Korea, Tibet, Vietnam and of course their present day treatment of the Uyghurs.
The Soviet occupation of Korea?? History is not your strong point, is it?
I never said Islam had anything to do with Vietnam – I said the Americans made much the same blunders there. Read up about it all.
"They did it too" is not an excuse.
I expect murderous arseholery from totalitarian regimes.
I expect better from our "Friends" who purport to be principled democracies. And from our own Governments.
"The Soviet occupation of Korea?? History is not your strong point, is it?"
It is, actually.
"I never said Islam had anything to do with Vietnam…"
This entire conversation has been about the history of Islamic terrorist activity.
"I said the Americans made much the same blunders there. "
Yep, they did. And China and Russia/USSR have made mistakes too. Plenty of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_Korea#Soviet_occupation_of_northern_Korea
Soviets were gone from Korea by 1948: more like liberation from Japanese and setting up of Govt with little suppression – hardly a long-term supressive occupation like Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
You don't get to decide what a thread is about: American behaviour applies to more than just Islam – the anti-Communist campaigns invite valid comparisons.
Typical rightie evasion – oh, everybody else made a mistake too. Not on the scale of roughly 20 years in Vietnam then Afghanistan as well.
"Soviets were gone from Korea by 1948: "
Indeed. Good on you for looking it up.
Murdering millions with forced changes of Government, saunctions, bombs, drones, et al. are "Foriegn policy mistakes"?
That is objectionably mealy mouthed as the term "collateral damage".
Don't forget who supported and armed, the Talibans precursers.
If you mean the mujahedeen, it was the US, Saudi Arabia and China. Of course the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up a communist government there. And it would appear China will now bankroll the Taliban. So they've all got their fingers dirty.
The Mujahideen were tribal warlords funded and armed by the US to oppose the Soviet invaders. The Taliban are religious fundamentalists, formed during the post-soviet civil war to oppose the Mujahideen, funded indirectly by the US via US military aid to Pakistan.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/28/afghanistan-mujahideen-taliban
The Mujahideen were also supported by the Chinese and the saudi's. Now the Chinese are going to back the Taliban. And the wheels turn.
The U.S. regime was arming and supporting and praising extreme Muslim groups in Afghanistan BEFORE the Soviets intervened in late 1979.
The marxist regime in Afghanistan in the '70's led to Afghanistan being called a Soviet 'client regime'. The soviets were up to their eyeballs in Afghanistan, which is why they invaded Afghanistan when the marxist government was on the verge of collapse.
In other words. Mujahideen!
Yet the Afghani author of the linked piece notes that their similarities are skin-deep.
""They did it too" is not an excuse."
I never argued it was. I'm just balancing your anti-us rhetoric.
You "never argued that". But you just did.
No I didn't. I'm not making judgements or excuses. The superpowers have all behaved badly. They see it as part of protecting their geo-political interests. So singling out the US for criticism is intellectual dishonest. As is blaming them for islamic radicals murdering their way to their religio/political interests. It's been happening for centuries.
Who is singling out the USA.
If the idea that criticising the USA is intellectually dishonest. Then the total USA good, China/Russia bad, that occurs constantly is even more so.
By the way you should have said religious radicals. Not Islamic. That is also intellectually dishonest.
"If the idea that criticising the USA…"
You're now being dishonest. I said 'singling out', not criticising.
"By the way you should have said religious radicals. Not Islamic. That is also intellectually dishonest."
No, it's historically accurate in the context of this conversation, of this thread. When a white supremisist goes around killing people in a mosque we call it out. When Christian radicals bomb abortion clinics, we call it out. There should be no fear or favour.
But yet, you object to me "calling out" US state terrorism. FIFY.
"But yet, you object to me "calling out" US state terrorism. FIFY."
No, to you 'singling out' US foreign policy stuff ups.
Sure.
Your choice of words is rather a giveaway.
Decades of bombing, murder of civilians, removal of elected Governments and replacing them with tyrants, saunctions that starve whole countries of food and medicines, not to mention drone strikes on weddings and people going about their everyday lives.
Is "Foriegn policy stuffups"? When the USA does it.
When "Islamists" or China "does it, you have rather a different description.
"When "Islamists" or China "does it, you have rather a different description."
Where have I labelled China 'terrorists'?
Not "for everything" (of course), but for many things.
"Great Satan", "evil empire", "axis of evil" – birds of a feather, or two in the Bush?
All 'fingers' are dirty, but some are dirtier than others.
I'm not quite sure what that has to do with this conversation, but ok.
Dirtier Politics; just my hobby – carry on
Wonder no longer about why repugs (and our very own big biz shills) are working to spanner public health.
Leaders all over the South were scrambling to find a cure for the dreaded pellagra until they discovered what that cure might cost them. That’s when the campaign of denial began. A century-old fight over public health feels fresh as a morning headline as we wrestle with a new threat, with equally simple remedies that upset Southern values. Disease is personal. Pandemic is politics.
Joseph Goldberger was sent to the South in 1914 on a mission from the US Department of Public Health to investigate an outbreak of pellagra. Pellagra is a terrible illness, starting with skin lesions, then advancing to diarrhea, dementia and in about 40% of cases, death. The disease, already well known among poorer populations in Southern Europe, had been documented in the South in 1908. By 1912, more than 30,000 cases had been identified in South Carolina alone.
[…]
Goldberger was initially welcomed. Southern leaders expected him to blame the disease on an infection, or even better, on a contaminant in corn imported from the Yankee Midwest. Instead, his experiments backed up his initial suspicion that pellagra was a nutritional deficiency. Goldberg published his findings in 1915, demonstrating that pellagra was a consequence of a poorly diversified corn diet, and could be remedied by adding a few fresh foods. His conclusion wasn’t novel, matching the recommendations of earlier researchers in Europe, but his report sparked angry denials.
An earlier commission of Southern researchers in 1909 had reached an erroneous conclusion more welcome to Southern planters and mill owners – pellagra was an infectious disease, spread either by flies or adulterated corn. It could, therefore, be remedied by educating the poor toward better sanitary habits and/or regulating imports from the hated North. Goldberg’s discoveries instead tied the disease to Southern economic practices that were producing wealth for a few powerful people. Wealthy Southerners worked to promote their preferred diagnosis.
https://www.politicalorphans.com/hookworm-pellagra-and-covid-diseases-of-dysfunction/