+ 1 for only mild use of mansplaining when there is plenty of opportunity to use it more
+10 for OP’s proving beyond doubt that we do in fact live in a rape culture
+ 7 for all those posters who declare that a drunk woman is partially, if not fully responsible for any subsequent rape that occurs while she is intoxicated (curiously no mention of any men having their dicks cut off while passed out drunk being entirely responsible for the loss of their manly member)
+2 for the poster who declares that, “you will get more credibility here if you post under your ‘usual’ name”. It’s only plus two because frankly it’s getting old and isn’t even intellectually offensive anymore because it’s not like anyone is actually going to use their real names because OP implied they needed more credibility in the first place. An intelligent argument should do just fine actually.
And +20 for this little gem from ratherbefishin, otherwise known as Greg from Waitakere City.
Occupation: Getting well from a serious car accident.
Hmmmm. Probably run down by a pissed off feminist.
Sure, there are predators out there, but your dauhgters [sic] are presenting themselves as bait. Look most rapes, not all, the girls are drunk or on drugs, dressed over provocatively, act like fools, put themselves in situations that is condusive to making the situation worse. It’s the parents fault for not naking them safe and teaching them the right values about mixing in the ‘right’ cirlces….you can’t get rabbits from rats.
“Sure, there are predators out there, but your dauhgters [sic] are presenting themselves as bait.”
There are predators out there, no doubting that, but whatever conduct or dress (lack of) sense, the ‘bait’ argument can only comes from those excusing or mitigating the ‘hunter’.
“Look most rapes, not all, the girls are drunk or on drugs, dressed over provocatively, act like fools, put themselves in situations that is condusive to making the situation worse.”
Doesn’t matter if women are drunk, drugged, in short skirts, boob tubes and give a guy the come on. The self control still remains with the male of the species. Always has, always will… Unless you’re a chimp.
“It’s the parents fault for not naking them safe and teaching them the right values about mixing in the ‘right’ cirlces”
Blame the parents of the victim of sex crimes. Nice work, idiot.
Yeah, I adopted a rating system from http://www.annalsofonlinedating.com/ where either the profiles of daters or their attempts at snagging someone via messaging are rated according to how bad they are.
But the handle ratherbefishin explains volumes about this guy. Some thickheaded kiwi bloke douchebag who wants to string gays up with piano wire and sees women as sub human.
Greg. I promise you, come the revolution, you will be sorry.
Anyone that can write that about rape must have a real struggle stopping themselves from attacking young women. I suggest preventative custody to safeguard society. If the guy hasn’t raped already, I bet he will.
It’s interesting that the commenting gets worse over time, and watching rape culture proponents work hard to prevail. I didn’t read the comments to the end because the thread was becoming ever-more demoralising to read. I assume the pro-rape-culture team continued to dominate the discussion through aggression and insults, seldom making any genuine effort to address the arguments of the protestors.
Still, I believe there has been real progress made in the public consciousness, since I was helped to join the dots to an understanding of rape culture, a few years ago.
The LGBT rights movement is always an inspiration in what can be achieved, but I’m only too aware of the personal brunt of public contempt and derision, and other kinds of psychological and physical violence borne hardest and most continuously by those at the forefront of the movement from the beginning. It was hard and dangerous work, and the fight continues today, but from a position of relative strength. But progress can happen in the teeth of seemingly overwhelming resistance.
The trademe boards are up their with major gaming forums for the level of burning stupid and outright sexist, echo-room bullshit. Nothing that a little “gentle” moderating couldn’t fix, but trademe lacks teh spine to do so, afraid that they’ll loose customers.
To this day I get pageviews from the Trademe forums to a post I wrote about Pippa Wetzell/Paul Henry/Breakfast, apparently from people who can’t spot the fact that my blog isn’t a news site and that the post in question is satire.
A couple of learnings for NZ; Labour is underacheiving (the Cameron Government is nowhere near as hopeless as Key’s lot) and if NZ First go into coalition with the tories after the next election, they can look forward to ceasing to exist 3 years later.
Sort of makes me glad the lib dems failed to get rid of first past the post.
One can only imagine how shockingly poor the conservative party would be if backed by the loonies and racists of the right to hold on to power.
Yep, Al1en, that’s exactly what Ashcroft wants. However, the results don’t help him turn them in that direction. If the poll had shown losses at, say, 20 seats, he could have got traction to move policy to the right; to strengthen the appeal to vavering traditional tory voters who have shifted to the anti-european UKIP. However, what this poll shows is that the electorate wants middle of the road or even left policies. So Cameron has to move to the centre to shore up the tory vote. That’s got to piss off Ashcroft more than just a bit.
Calamity and complacency aside, Labour, as unpopular as can be in government, will be back after only one term out, and whilst not the Labour party many here would prefer it to be, it’s got a well spoken leader that holds to core left principles. The people respond.
Camp mallard should have looked further afield for a game plan than the blinding light of our pm that so clearly bedazzles them and sets their agenda.
A month ago you were saying everything is fine and Shearer will lead Labour to victory and now you are saying that Labour is underachieving. What is happening?
Nothing gives, MS. I was making the comparison with UK Labour, who also started from a poor election result and are lead by someone who is still working to convince his own party of his merits, yet have gone on to gain enough support to govern alone. The NZLP caucus are underacheiving in comparison.
It comes down to attitude mickysavage. At present the caucus catechism is:
our (read ABC club) side is good.
the other side is bad.
We will only take notice of our side.
We will ignore everything the other side says and does.
Today I received my electorate’s first newsletter for the year. It contained a letter (no indication where it came from) from an unnamed new, young member who attended his/her first conference last November.. It was essentially a eulogy to David Shearer and contained such language as…working for a brighter future (now where have I heard that before), more progressive and more inclusive society… this is the Labour way and all of it was achieved at the Conference.
Why am I suspicious of this letter? Well, it has an [insert name here] quality about it.
“Drought gripping the North Island is the most severe in history, with the crisis far from over both for now and in years to come, scientists say.
“Long, dry spells are forecast to double by 2040 as temperatures continue to rise and New Zealand heads towards a more Mediterranean climate.
“Experts warn it could spell the end for farming as we know it and may cost the country billions of dollars in drought relief each year before practices are adjusted.”
“Experts warn it could spell the end for farming as we know it and may cost the country billions of dollars in drought relief each year before practices are adjusted.”
Actually, the best thing we could do would be to have the government buy enough farms to feed everybody and put in place practices (Heaps of R&D at the universities) to farm in the new environment. Then you let all the rest continue or fall upon their own – just as capitalism calls for.
I agree, the best research is being done outside of universities. The unis could get in behind though.
I’ll reiterate what others have said here recently – drought is being created by conventional farming as much as (if not more so) than by climate change.
This TED talk (20 mins) shows how to graze animals so you don’t end up in a drought (both locally and from climate change). Alan Savory has been doing this on the ground research for over 50 years, and developed systems of mob grazing that reverse desertification and sequester carbon and restore local microclimates on such a large scale that they probably would effect macro climate if adopted en masse.
At the end the TED host calls the presentation truly astonishing, but these farm technologies, based on mimicking natural cycles, are well known in sustainably land management circles and are even being used successfully in NZ.
John Liu’s work is worthy too, here he looks at the restoration of the severely damaged huge Loess Plateau in China back into a food producing oasis, as well as restoration in other parts of the world (50mins)
And a quick look (5mins) at the Greening the Desert project in Jordan (one of the driest places on earth supporting humans). Geoff Lawton took 10 acres of salinated man-made desert and had it starting to produce food from trees within four months.
Exactly. For instance, modern farming has destroyed tens of thousands of hectares of tussock land, which were crucial for feeding atmospheric moisture into the land.
At the end the TED host calls the presentation truly astonishing, but these farm technologies, based on mimicking natural cycles, are well known in sustainably land management circles and are even being used successfully in NZ.
That’s one thing that’s been bugging me for years. Academia in NZ is unwilling to accept knowledge gained outside of academia in NZ and that needs to change.
Maybe that happens in some specific branches of academia, DTB, but it couldn’t be applied in Physics, for example. I’m part of academia whether I like the label or not, and apart from Hitler’s attempt at introducing Aryan Physics, I’ve never seen evidence of what you suggest.
Which areas would you say this unwillingness applies to?
You need research working with real farmers on their own land.
Well, if the universities are doing their job, then they are. The simple fact of the matter is that the farmer is unlikely to be able to do the research but once the research has been done can help come up with better methods of implementation and the university owned farms would probably have farm managers on them as well.
“The simple fact of the matter is that the farmer is unlikely to be able to do the research”
Why do you say that? Many farmers practice empirical science anyway, and any farmer with either a good working knowledge of the scientific method, or support with that, can do research on their own property. It’s not rocket science 😉
Universities in NZ aren’t leading the way on developing sustainable practice, they’re following. And the way that universities are structured and operate, the hard sciences in particular, is inherently reductionist, making studying whole systems harder and less likely. This is why we are in the ridiculous situation of trying to solve river/waterway pollution from industrial dairying by chemically treating paddocks to prevent increases in nitrogen, instead of changing farming practices to prevent excess nitrogen in the first place. The inability to see natural cycles in their whole and to work with them is the big stumbling block, that and greed economics/capitalism. Universities are going to research conventional farming, because that’s what we do. They’re not focusing (enough*) on the kind that is making a difference.
Crown research is just as bad. Restructuring that happened in the 80s and 90s prevented the early adoption of sustainable practices, and many of the field researchers lost their jobs. From what I can tell focus was on economics and practices that created financial wealth.
*there are some notable exceptions eg the long-standing Biological Husbandry Unit at Lincoln has been pioneering organics for over 3 decades.
Seriously DTB, watch some of those videos and then compare what they are talking about with what is being done in universities, then you will get what I mean.
Because the farmers are more likely to be using land to make a profit with what they know. If they were doing anything else our waterways wouldn’t be as polluted as they are.
It’s not rocket science
No, it’s a hell of a lot more complex.
The inability to see natural cycles in their whole and to work with them is the big stumbling block, that and greed economics/capitalism.
That I can agree with but i also think that they’re changing. As I said, a number of them now have their own farms to work with and when you’ve got that then you must start to see the entire system rather than just the pieces.
This is why we are in the ridiculous situation of trying to solve river/waterway pollution from industrial dairying by chemically treating paddocks to prevent increases in nitrogen, instead of changing farming practices to prevent excess nitrogen in the first place.
“Because the farmers are more likely to be using land to make a profit with what they know. If they were doing anything else our waterways wouldn’t be as polluted as they are.”
We’re talking at cross purposes. I’m talking about farmers who are doing the cutting edge work on sustainable land management. They’re doing their own research, and being successful at creating new models of farming that don’t wreck the land (or quite as fast). Universities are lagging behind this.
” ” It’s not rocket science”
No, it’s a hell of a lot more complex.”
No, it’s not. Working with biological systems that mimic nature to grow food requires expertise, but you do not need an advanced science degree to understand it, not implement it. Nor study it.
“That I can agree with but i also think that they’re changing. As I said, a number of them now have their own farms to work with and when you’ve got that then you must start to see the entire system rather than just the pieces.”
Why? If you’ve been trained all your working life to look at the isolated detail and not the systems, and if your work situation demands that that is how you do research, and that kind of research is what gets the funding, why would you get to see it differently. Having one’s own farm doesn’t make one see differently – to use your example, if it did then farmers wouldn’t be polluting the environment.
“Or they could be doing both.”
Treating excess nitrogen by applying chemicals to a paddock is equivalent to the old lady that swallowed the fly. It’s just daft. If you manage land holistically in the first place, you don’t need to do that kind of disruptive intervention (or very rarely). I’m guessing you’re not that familiar with the kinds of technologies I’m talking about and don’t really understand the paradigm differences and why they matter. Maybe someone else can explain it?
“The new rules impose “compulsory competitive markets” on the entire health service.
The changes are planned under the overhaul launched by Tory former Health Secretary Andrew Lansley. He claimed there was nothing in it to “promote or permit the transfer of NHS activities to the private sector”.
But now all services are to be offered to the highest bidder from April 1.
The move would allow “any qualified provider” including giants such as Virgin Care to outbid local hospitals.
Critics fear the rules will let companies asset-strip NHS facilities. Labour have warned firms could cherry-pick the easiest, most profitable, procedures, leaving the NHS to pick up the tab for tricky and expensive surgery.”
“This intended ‘privatisation’ will mean a short term of financial gain for
the Tory Party followed by higher costs as shareholders have their hands out for their profit. Charing X Hospital is stuffed with new equipment, but understaffed – I wonder why! This government from what I deduce are thieves and profiteers. How much do they expect to make from our Schools and ‘Academies'”
Rodney Hide explains that since most business owners make less than the minimum wage (why the hell else would anyone run a business!) the pinkos shouldn’t expect a living wage. So there.
Rodney discretely omits any mention of the ability of business owners to sell their business and pay no capital gains tax, assuming that stupid lefties ” think running a business is easy. That’s because they have never done it.”
Good luck trying to sell a business not making money.
You’ll also find, unless a business has locked in contracts apart from stock and plant the business really has no value at all.
Mighty river power is a great investment, hopefully it will stimulate more interest in stocks and away from property
.Apart from property there’s no where else for people to invest there money and get any form of return.
Bait-and-switch is a form of fraud used in retail sales but also practised in other contexts. First, customers are “baited” by merchants’ advertising products or services at a low price; then customers discover the advertised goods are not available. Other products are “switched” for them; however, these items are often costlier. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait-and-switch
I don’t see the link with encouraging people to invest in the share market?
If there were already a lot of good share ‘products’ on the NZX …. then we would hardly need the government to be ‘baiting’ interest in the sharemarket with the float of MRP. Would we?
Given that the float is going to be well over-subscribed, or that there will be lots of people making a quick profit on the deal, the expectation you’ve raised is that there will be plenty of euphoric cash sloshing about looking for another deal. Hence the ‘switch’.
That’s pretty much the scenario you’ve raised is it not?
How about instead of spending your days posting on the interwebs, you get out there and show them how to do it.
With your abilities and ideas you’d be worth billions within the year.
How about instead of buying shares in a state controlled company so that the state can spend that money on state stuff, you invest in a private company?
Or do you think the state has better ideas about what to do with your capital than you do?
Sure will do, but this is not about me. It’s about how shitty private sector and corporate leadership has been in NZ that they’ve barely created any new worthwhile assets to invest in and so have to go poaching public ones.
Then stop talking about it and get out there and show them how it’s done.
Throwing shit from the bleachers isn’t really that helpful, especially some one with your business acumen and total awesomeness.
NZ need you to get out there and for you to lead the way.
It’s about the $100B in savings deposits in this country where people haven’t bothered to invest that money in jobs, busineses or industry, and have instead just sat that money on the sidelines.
That’s anti-business and anti-growth.
No wonder they have to poach public assets; there’s no imagination there.
” they’ve barely created any new worthwhile assets to invest in”
Well they have… but the worthwhile ones all get bought up by overseas interests. If they were on the stock market they then get de-listed. Just like the State assets will be.
Well yes they have, some small and medium businesses worth say $20M or $100M. Sam Morgan’s Trademe being about the only exception with a value much higher than that.
But on the industrial scale of an MRP? Nothing; absolutely nothing.
Apart from property there’s no where else for people to invest there money and get any form of return.
The whole point of capitalism is that there are massive amounts of ideas around just begging for capital investment and that such capital investment is done in a very highly efficient manner through the stock exchange. If that’s not happening then I’d say that the capitalist ideal just doesn’t work.
Basically, I figure that the ideas are out there but that the rich (who are the only ones with enough accumulated wealth) aren’t investing in them because they want guaranteed returns and not to actually take any risk. This is proven by the way that they’re lining up to buy power shares which they know they can’t lose on as the government can’t let power crash and burn. Basically, the people lining up to buy power company shares are just looking to bludge for the rest of their lives off of the hard work of the rest of NZ.
Monopoly and dictatorship is the natural end point of capitalism and that is what we’re seeing. The accumulation into fewer hands and the governments then passing policies, such as selling state assets, that benefit only those few.
Im over people like Rodney who think that workers should, pretty much, have their wages and conditions slashed.
If he came round to my house telling me that I shouldnt be getting the money that I get from my job, he would be on the floor getting the shit kicked out of him.
“If he came round to my house telling me that I shouldnt be getting the money that I get from my job, he would be on the floor getting the shit kicked out of him.”
He ran away from me when I challenged him in the Environment Waikato building in Hamilton a few weeks after his holiday rort was exposed.
Yellow by party, yellow by nature.
Think of the floor, Millsy. Do it outside. Really, I share your sentiments. How the hell did such naked greed and loathsome thinking ever get taken seriously outside of textbooks on forensic psychiatry?
Maybe we should be happy with a minimum wage that allows us to fly around the world for holidays, have a couple of cars, a few houses, and constantly rising capital value. To come up with this rubbish, Hide really is contemptuous of his readers. One more corrupt self-serving orc who should do us all a favour and just disappear.
Why Israeli Apartheid is Worse Than South Africa’s Version
Is Palestinian Solidarity an Occupied Zone?
by GILAD ATZMON March 09, 2013
Once involved with Palestinian Solidarity you have to accept that Jews are special and so is their suffering; Jews are like no other people, their Holocaust is like no other genocide and anti Semitism is the most vile form of racism the world has ever known and so on and so forth.
But when it comes to the Palestinians, the exact opposite is the case. For some reason we are expected to believe that the Palestinians are not special at all – they are just like everyone else. Palestinians have not been subject to a unique, racist, nationalist and expansionist Jewish nationalist movement, instead, we must all agree that, just like the Indians and the Africans, the Palestinian ordeal results from run-of-the-mill 19th century colonialism – just more of the same old boring Apartheid.
So, Jews, Zionists and Israelis are exceptional, like no one else, while Palestinians are always somehow ordinary, always part of some greater political narrative, always just like everyone else. Their suffering is never due to the particularity of Jewish nationalism, or Jewish racism, or even AIPAC dominating USA foreign policy no, the Palestinian is always a victim of a dull, banal dynamic – general, abstract and totally lacking in particularity.
This raises some serious questions.
Can you think of any other liberation or solidarity movement that prides itself in being boring, ordinary and dull? Can you think of any other solidarity movement that downgrades its subject into just one more meaningless exhibit in a museum of materialist historical happenings? I don’t think so! Did the black South Africans see themselves as being like everyone else? Did Martin Luther King believe his brothers and sisters to be inherently undistinguishable?
I don’t think so. So how come Palestinian solidarity has managed to sink so low that their spokespersons and supporters compete against each other to see who can best eliminate the uniqueness of the Palestinian struggle into just part of a general historical trend such as colonialism or Apartheid?
The answer is simple. Palestinian Solidarity is an occupied zone and, like all such occupied zones must dedicate itself to the fight against ‘anti Semitism’. Dutifully united against racism, fully engaged with LGBT issues in Palestine and in the movement itself, but for one reason or another, the movement is almost indifferent towards the fate of millions of Palestinians living in refugee camps and their Right of Return to their homeland.
But all this can change. Palestinians and their supporters could begin to see their cause for what it is, unique and distinctive. Nor need this be all that difficult. After all, if Jewish nationalism is inherently exceptional as Zionists proclaim, is it not only natural that the victims of such a distinctive racist endeavor are at least, themselves, just as distinctive.
So far, Palestine solidarity has failed to liberate Palestine, but it has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams in creating a Palestine Solidarity Industry, and one largely funded by liberal Zionists. We have been very productive in schlepping activists around the world promoting ‘boycotts’ and ‘sanctions’ meanwhile Israel trade with Britain is booming and Hummus Tzabar is clearly apparent in every British grocery store.
All those attempts to reduce Palestinian ordeal into a dated, dull, generalised materialist narrative should be exposed for what they are – an attempt to appease liberal Zionists. Palestinian suffering is actually unique in history at least as unique as the Zionist project.
Yesterday I came across this from South African minister Ronnie Kasrils. In a comment on Israeli Apartheid he said : “This is much worse than Apartheid…Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had jets attacking our townships; we never had sieges that lasted month after month. We never had tanks destroying houses.”
Kasrils is dead right. It is much worse than Apartheid and far more sophisticated than colonialism. And why? Because what the Zionists did and are doing is neither Apartheid nor is it colonialism. Apartheid wanted to exploit the African, Israel wants the Palestinian gone. Colonialism is an exchange between a mother and a settler state. Israel never had a mother State, though it may well have had a few ‘surrogate mothers’.
Now is the time to look at the unique ordeal of the Palestinian people. Similarly, now is the time to look at the Zionist crime in the light of Jewish culture and identity politics.
Can the solidarity movement meet this challenge? Probably, but like Palestine, it must first, itself, be liberated.
Gilad Atzmon’s latest book is The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics
Israel has constitutional democracy and a free press. Those are the important things for Pop. He’s a caricature.
Meanwhile, what worries me most about Israel and the hardcore Zionists is how they have managed to refine anti-semitism as being anything they don’t like. Their efforts to rewrite the history of Palestine are heroic in their magnitude. They are writing the Palestinians out of existence.
The one and only thing that Goff ever did that I liked was to tell Tel Aviv that they didn’t decide who he could visit and go ahead with a visit to Arafat. I can’t see either Shearer or Key doing anything comparable.
The one and only thing that Goff ever did that I liked was to tell Tel Aviv that they didn’t decide who he could visit and go ahead with a visit to Arafat.
Fair comment, Murray, but even then, Goff did not have the integrity or the courage to meet with the Hamas leadership.
I can’t see either Shearer or Key doing anything comparable.
Neither can I. I don’t believe any of the talk about how Shearer used to “stare down warlords” in Iraq.
“I don’t believe any of the talk about how Shearer used to “stare down warlords” in Iraq.”
Me neither. Mainly because the country concerned is Somalia. If you have any evidence that Shearer lied about his work and experiances in Lebanon, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Serbia and Somalia, and, latterly, Iraq, then by all means front up with it. Or just admit you’re just making shit up, as usual.
I made nothing up. I simply quoted one of the most common factoids (or, more accurately, falsoids) put into the media at the time Shearer was making his run for the leadership.
Based on his inability to say anything coherently, even when faced with a friendly interviewer, I doubt that he “stared down warlords in Iraq”, as his spin-doctors claimed repeatedly.
You seem to have an emotional investment in Shearer; I wonder if you were one of the ones involved in the spinning of this patently absurd legend.
So, no proof then, Mozza? Why am I not surprised? If you have any reason to doubt Shearer’s work history, now would be a good time to pony up. Otherwise, you tend to look like a bit of a sad sack. BTW, what was it like for you when you did your humanitarian work? Y’know, when you put your life at risk to help others? Do, tell, mate, I’m sure your backstory will be fascinating.
Were you there with Shearer when he did his *humanitarian work*, or when he *stared down warlords*…
If you were not there with him, then your support, like the fantastical words of the PR spin behind Shearer, and Key etc, are simply endorsing the puppets of those who simply, made shit up!
Sad diversion BTW Voice, Mozza is not Trojan horse leader of the LP selling himself as giving a toss about NZ, or its people (include the Africans in that), using a fantastical back story, the rival of the *great self made businessman*, John Key!
Obama got a Nobel prize for peace, yeah, shit gets manufactured to suit a purpose!
Any proof the stories aren’t true, Muz? No? Then bollox to you too. Just another keyboard warrior, sans the balls to actually face reality as it is lives. Y’know, the real difference between you and Moz and David Shearer is that he can’t talk the talk and you two phonies can’t walk the walk.
Voice – So you were not with Shearer on his UN adventures then, we have established that!
Talk of reality, and walk or talk, is foolish, you have no idea about my situations/contributions, than you do of Shearers, thats the reality sport!
As I’ve said on here a long time back, your personal efforts to the LP etc, will not be any less meaningful, in reality, at the time it becomes even more obvious than it already is, David Shearer exposed as yet another parachuted sham traitor pretending to be a Kiwi!
Shearer’s humanitarian work (and personal courage) is well documented and recognised. It long predates his decision to run for Labour leader, or even stand in Mt Albert. (for example, his office was bombed in Baghdad, and yes, he had to deal with warlords in Somalia).
The fact that Shearer is poor at his current job doesn’t mean we have to belittle his previous one(s).
Fair enough. So is it to much to ask for this. I want to see that personal courage on display right up front and centre as Labour Leader standing explicitly for Labour values.
Somalia, knee capping your own colleagues, promising private house building corporates windfall profits, whatever doesn’t count. In this game, you’re only as good as your last sales pitch, not the one you successfully made 10 years ago.
You would think after the Pike River disaster this kind of thing couldn’t happen? What Kiwi Rail’s General Manager Rick Vanerveld has to say is a bloody disgrace & he should be sacked!
If I recall correct this bloke was in the papers axing nearly 200 Track jobs about this time & then I heard he got in contractors. Yip that sounds right as they were contractors in that tunnel, untrained in gas emergency evacuation etc. This mug is backing one of his Managers, who rather then
take the gassed workers for immediate medical treatment, instead takes them for a feed like they had too much to drink…”that’s shocking he should have been fired for that ¬ seeing they were trained.”
It will never happen the bosses always back their own & fudge things over after the pricks!
I wonder if the media are following this story up? I smell a cover up & bet there is a lot more to this story!
Our industrial landscape is starting to resemble third world environments with a govt willingly undermining health, safety and backing management all the way.
Kiwi rail is a classic example as its got slipperys henchmen kicking it at every turn and a puppet CEO natty boy.
OSH and ACC should be claiming a few scalps over this. And this is business as usual when companies axe staff and hire external contractors and sub-contractors, as currently all the health and safety risk is moved onto the external contractors, who usually try and cut corners to save money…
(I’ve done temping, and all we got was a very basic H&S video, while working directly for a company I’ve been given pretty decent H&S)
As I’ve said before, I know two senior H&S people who’ve both confirmed to me that ‘contracting out the risk’ is the major motivation.
The entire trend towards contracting, temping and casualisation is exceedingly bad. It’s damaging at every level. Contracting has a place, but only in certain specific scenarios. Where it is plainly being used to replace full-time employment, this practise must be stamped out.
Looking forward to hearing David Shearer announce strong policy aimed squarely towards at fixing this.
notes not handy, but, the article on TV ONE on cannabis use and opiate use in the NZ workplace blew my mind (but didn’t surprise me). When I dug ditches / drove a dump-truck, a quarter to a third of the crew were stoned or fried. 🙂
Another comment my acquaintances have made is that it’s been more than 20 yrs since the passing of the 1992 H&S Act ….but serious harm injuries have scarcely declined at all. Still hovering around the 5000-7000 pa mark.
Some employers (like my one) do take their H&S responsibilities very seriously; far too many others simply parasite off the system doing the least they can possibly get away with doing. Or less. And their employees (or contractors) simply pick up on the lack of leadership.
It’s not hard. If everyone knows that certain H&S breaches are automatic dismissal offences … then everyone very quickly plays the game.
personally, and objectively Red, I agree with the comment made earlier this week re: we just don’t have the political class (the liquidity or investment) to reverse up the decline; I talk to a wide range of people, from the giftedly “insane” to the lucidly “sane” on these sociological / geographical matters and the outlook seems to be “Gimme Shelter”
(+ thanks to TS and wider directed reading, there is plenty of confirmation on the ‘net if one is not a caught up playing “games” or looking for things to buy) btw, thanks for your endorsement of the influence of “faiths” in all this calamity in your postings.
yet, we could always Welcome China, but then, there is always that great wall, (i don’t think the Chinese will ever forget the Nanking Massacre / RAPE of Nanking either).People are people (for example, all these pissed diplomat / negotiators at UN conferences) and what was sown by the majority of the West (grass for example) will be mown down in time. There is an “eclectic” prophecy for ya; it has all gone too far, in my humble opinion.
Yeap, and the the business hiring temp’s know also they’re getting a shit deal, as usually the workers aren’t that capable due or even interested and so poor work results. As I’ve heard oft from commercial businesses I’ve worked for via student job search.
[insert shoddy contracting via lowest-bidder stories here]
Looking forward to hearing David Shearer announce strong policy aimed squarely towards at fixing this.
O_o
From Captain Mubblefuck?…
We’re more likely to get a complete reversal on asset sales by Key than such a piece of policy from Labour at present /cough
There sure is a lot more to it. http://i.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/7290292/Union-fears-KiwiRail-cuts-threaten-workers-safety This rank and file Union guy blew the whistle on serious Health & Safety issues at Kiwi Rail, including the Kaimai tunnel incident. Those bastards running the railways tried to use the job cuts to get get rid of him. Last I heard he got forced to move up to the far North or be made redundant. In other words ‘sacked’.
I would have thought whistle blowers were protected by law and the Employer would be skating on thin ice if he took a personal grievance?
The following link is to Rod Oram’s comments on Govt proposals to change the RMA. Govt is holding public meetings over next couple of weeks to “explain” their discussion paper. Oram suggests Govt is leaving out vital facts, and just using surveys as factual reasons to change the RMA.
Oram suggests Govt is leaving out vital facts, and just using surveys as factual reasons to change the RMA.
That would be normal for this government. Paint a pretty picture but leave out the facts so that people don’t realise the truth and thus can’t make informed decisions. It’s all part of the We know best syndrome of National and the ideological ignoring of reality.
Granting considerable new powers to central Government such as the ability to take individual consent decisions out of local councils and place them in a new national body; and inserting provisions in local council plans without any consultation.
Yep, more dictatorial control from this government.
Fingers crossed it bloody well works as this would allow us to kick our coal habit within a couple of decades at least. Mainly as you need the infrastructure for harvesting and delivering deuterium on very large scales + manufacture the reactors.
There’s actually a lot of research going on in fusion power sources. The “always 50 years away” really refers to the big tokamak reactors that will eventually get there, but obviously not for a long time and at such a cost that they’re not truly feasible as a source of power.
In the mean time, we may see one of these ‘alternative’ methods take off.
Tokamak’s are problematic mainly due to the fluid physics of the plasma, lots of eddies that reduce fusion output and require large amounts of computing power to model and iron out. ITER will probably provide better data on whether or not Tok’s can ever produce enough power for commercial viability.
And yeah, tok’s and laser-based interial confinement fusion systems have pretty much taken the lion’s share of available funding. ICF particularly as it provides useful data for nuclear weapons, but mainly it’s been international treaties and science politics that’s kept these two methods in the forefront in my opinion*.
The other main alternative runner is the Polywell, which has achieved fusion, but they’ve lost US Naval funding as of 2012 so are trying to get private funding.
As for cold fusion – load of crap at present, too little non-problematic data, in particular Bubble Fusion is another shining example of how science can go wrongzors.
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*Could make for a fun history of science area actually… Generally you see a pattern of older, established scientists holding sway over an area and so it becomes difficult to bring in new ideas unless they have a lot of empirical evidence behind them. Seems to affect physics more.
I’ve been following pollywell for 5 or so years now, didn’t know they lost their navel funding though, that sucks. Alternatively, it seemed like the government wasn’t really giving it the funding it deserved and kept everything Top Secret, so this could be an improvement.
Mind you, the basics of the polywell are actually pretty cheap to build and test, though more research is needed to test it’s viability as there’s still some issues with the physics of the plasma confinement and pressure going off the details available.
Anyhow, it’s good to see that Lockheed-Martin’s actually putting the funds from it’s horribly overpriced military hardware to a much more useful technology and letting Skunk Works go nuts :3
I reckon that these developments are about 25 years too late to have a big impact on the energy future of the world, and I’m thinking about India and China here, two massive coal users. The best case I see is for a relatively small number of fusion generators to be built in time for VIP and high priority uses.
Unless of course the dream of having a suitcased size generator putting out a MW of energy comes true, but that’s the stuff of Star Trek.
But remember the circumstances under which the Enterprise crew first met “Q”…it was a desolate picture of earth in the 21st century after the next global war.
furthermore, Wonders of Wonders for you LGBT folk out there 😉 ; at S.A service this morning an extended testimony by a Gay man, artist, novelist, trained pianist, tertiary teacher, about his journey and acceptance. Very moving (although a few Trads. seemed a little bemused, still, that’s progress for you.kinda like how being tr*lld makes ya stronger, iron sharpening Iron and all that stainless. 🙂
I don’t think so, China at least accepts climate change is a very serious issue, and if this reactor is viable, they’ll probably cancel the coal plants waiting to be built and redirect funding towards building these reactors. Heck, depending on how the energy from the reactor is being turned into electricity, you could retrofit current coal burning plant’s with them and drive the in place steam turbine power generators. Saving a lot of infrastructure costs in the process.
And your forgetting just how much shear industrial capacity is present, given the drive, it can easily be redeployed towards producing just about anything, and the FRC reactor Skunk Work’s is proposing is far less complex that a tokamak. Mainly due to the confinement of the plasma via a magnetic bottle which doesn’t need a huge array of powerful electromagnets to run, and so doesn’t need entirely special lining as there’s no plasma eroding it.
It will obviously take time to build and set up using current carbon-based energy sources, but if Skunk Works can get it to produce a large net energy from a self-sustaining fusion reaction, the possibilities are literally mind-boggling. For one, human civilisation might just have enough energy to start mining the air for carbon at an industrial scale and reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Along with no longer needing to dam so many rivers for energy production, allowing for the rehabilitation of certain river systems and removal of dams in very tectonically active areas.
Then there’s the obvious advantages in terms of electrification in the developing world for food and medicine preservation and storage. All from a reactor that is highly portable compared to the nuclear* and carbon-based alternatives.
Are we still stuffed climate and resource wise? Yeap, but this is the sort of technology that when combined with other green-methods would allow us to adapt, survive and even reduce global temperatures. Albeit, a rather problematic set of “if” statements are still involved, mainly as democratic governments can be bloody stupid and some powerful non-state actors (i.e. corporations) have their heads firmly stuck in the short-term, despite the looming crises…
Oh, and it makes SPAAAAAAACE a lot easier to move around in, as this reactor can be used to generate thrust directly, or used to run an ion-based drive array :3
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*well, pebble-bed reactors show some promise for portability and safety, but there’s a whole range of issues, including all the usual ones…
This is the absolute tech-solution best case, not saying it won’t happen but I wouldn’t rate it at a higher than 10% chance right now.
The Skunk Works is not going to release this tech to the world (or to China) for a very long time. It would be too much of a strategic advantage for the USA.
Once the technology has a pilot which can produce say 100MW sustained, I’ll believe that it is on the way.
Right now, I’m tempted to put it in the category of civilisation saving solutions requiring “Unobtanium” to work.
Yeap, but this is the sort of technology that when combined with other green-methods would allow us to adapt, survive and even reduce global temperatures
😛
As for this not being available to China, lets just say this tech isn’t exactly hard to replicate (based off currently published research on FRC and other reactors) and Lockhead-Martin might suck deeply and greedily on the teat of US Defence contracts. But this is a major money spinner that would give them a far more secure line of funding than the US DoD contracts. Which is going to get cut to the bone as American politicians are now beginning to stop holding it’s budget as sacrosanct.
Although the moronic right are a significant issue that may cause problems.
Worth bearing in mind that Lockheed Martin could also make a tonne of money exporting the F-22 Raptor, but it’s banned from doing so through national security legislation and technology export restrictions.
True, but that’s mainly because they’re getting government funding to develop and build the F22 airframe, internals and computer systems.
And while certain political douchebags might push for Skunk Works’ FRC reactor tech to not be exported to China and Russia, the shear need for this technology will hopefully hammer those idiots out of sight. Otherwise China’s gotten very good at industrial espionage 😉
Sometimes humanity prevails against it’s more stupid, short-sighted impulses.
They’re still trying the tokamak route, though the stuff being trailed is very interesting. Main issue with the tokamaks is that so far, they appear to need to be rather large to provide significant power (scalability being teh term). Along with the turbulence issues with eddies in the plasma that can cause power spikes/drops. Also China’s part of the ITER project.
But I suspect the Chinese aren’t standing still on other alternatives and their fusion research will be keeping an eye on anything out of Skunk Works.
As for this not being available to China, lets just say this tech isn’t exactly hard to replicate (based off currently published research on FRC and other reactors)
Yep, and other governments, except ours, probably have their research already looking in to it – especially after the release of that video.
Yeap, but this is the sort of technology that when combined with other green-methods would allow us to adapt, survive and even reduce global temperatures
😛
As for this not being available to China, lets just say this tech isn’t exactly hard to replicate (based off currently published research on FRC and other reactors) and Lockhead-Martin might suck deeply and greedily on the teat of US Defence contracts. But this is a major money spinner that would give them a far more secure line of funding than the US DoD contracts. Which is going to get cut to the bone as American politicians are now beginning to stop holding it’s budget as sacrosanct.
Although the moronic right are a significant issue that may cause problems.
Yeap, but this is the sort of technology that when combined with other green-methods would allow us to adapt, survive and even reduce global temperatures
😛
As for this not being available to China, lets just say this tech isn’t exactly hard to replicate (based off currently published research on FRC and other reactors) and Lockhead-Martin might suck deeply and greedily on the teat of US Defence contracts. But this is a major money spinner that would give them a far more secure line of funding than the US DoD contracts. Which is going to get cut to the bone as American politicians are now beginning to stop holding it’s budget as sacrosanct.
Although the moronic right are a significant issue that may cause problems.
When you get a 500 error on a comment just go to the front page and then reload the page that you were on. Your comment is usually there. I also suggest, if you’re really paranoid, a ctrl-a, ctrl-c before hitting submit.
In theory (as in I will believe it when I don’t see it), I should have largely eliminated the main cause of those this afternoon just before 1700 hours. There was a SEO plugin with a bad habit of locking the whole post table when it pulled all 11777 public posts for an analysis. It particularly caused a problem when a re-edit tried to start it a second time while the first was still running (for some obscure reason). Eliminated it, changed it for a less clueless plugin doing the same thing, and couldn’t see the reproducible effect afterwards.
I won’t know for sure until I see some new posts going up when the system is loaded. Ditto for finding out how well the new plugin keeps the search engines updated on comments. This one has less visible controls.
The log hasn’t shown any 500 responses since I restarted the apache server to start analysing the lag at about 2000 (been out)
The tech isn’t coming out of the “Skunk Works” – it’s mostly private sector, or possible government funded projects in France and Japan. The Polywell is pretty well understood, and I think you seriously underestimate China’s tech state of the art.
CV
While thinking about India there was a good update on Radionz this morning on how it is thinking and acting which might put recent vicious attacks on women in the picture among other matters.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday
11:44 Wayne Brittenden’s Counterpoint
Wayne Brittenden has been Radio New Zealand’s correspondent in several capital cities over the years. Each week he gives fresh insights into a wide variety of topics of national and international concern, followed by Chris Laidlaw’s discussion of the issue with guests. Today, while India is now seen as belonging to the middle economic bracket countries, new Oxford University research reveals what critics within India have known all along — that the last 20 years of unfettered market forces haven’t reduced the vast number of those living in dire poverty. Wayne looks at today’s neo-liberal consumerist India, and Chris follows up with Dharmendra Kumar, the Director of the Indian Campaign Group, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Watch. (14′49″)
Download: Ogg Vorbis MP3 | Embed
A less polluting and more efficient power source certainly opens up a lot of opportunities. If it’s used by the public sector to provide cheap power and save natural resources, it could be a great advance. If it ends up in the hands of the same greedy corporates, the price of power probably wouldn’t even go down. The technological solutions are always possible, but we need the social organisation which allows them to be used for more than the benefit of a small minority.
Turning Japanese http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10870285
so in Christchurch.
tail-end of an RNZ article on cancer treatment, along with Stress, Resentment is a significant etiological factor. (best to unload the sack on our back as we tramp through life; His yoke is Light
😉 )
And this is what National’s possibly looking at going into a coalition with? Ye gads, it’s almost enough to make me want to keep ACT’s undead corpse around. Notice too, how he conveniently doesn’t cite any polling evidence.
Well, he has a point. If you take “public support is shifting towards a traditional view of marriage” to mean “by lying to people about the current law and scaremongering about issues that don’t exist and also lying about the process being followed, we’ve created a lot of confusion and then carefully worded our polling questions so they almost get the answers we want”. Craig’s just being more concise, is all.
TV One News has just announced Joyce has committed to fixing Novopay within three months. An education sector person was hailing it on the news on tele as great to hear and that it was about time. But that’s not what Joyce said. He did say that he wanted as much done as possible to fix things within three months. That’s very different. In fact, does this mean that Joyce accepts not as much as possible was done over the past few months? Probably, but people need to listen to these slippery characters. When the three months is up and nothing’s been done Joyce will simply say that he did not give a commitment to fix Novopay within three months, and he’ll be right.
Of course it buys Joyce time and by that time the heat will have gone out and maybe the population will be bored by the story. Trust Mr Joyce? Sure can.
Native Affairs was on tonight (Maori TV) and featured an interview with David Shearer. I didn’t see it, because – not for the first time – it was poorly publicised. Some reaction here …
I never know whether Labour’s media reticence is deliberate strategy or just incompetence. Is it so hard to use social media and other outlets to say: “Today the leader will be on bFM, Maori TV, etc (as happened today). Why not issue a bulletin every day, announcing the day ahead? Too simple?
I learn far more from Google and Twitter than I ever do from the people who are PAID to publicise their party, their polcies, and their people. What on earth do they do all day?
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For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Pacific Media Watch Earthwise hosts Lois and Martin Griffiths. Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths on Plains FM 96.9 community radio talk to Dr David Robie, a New Zealand author, independent journalist and media educator with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region. David talks about the struggle to raise awareness ...
Pacific Media Watch Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was held for 12 hours at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, says Israeli forces rounded up Palestinian journalists at the facility and made them kneel on the ground for hours, while naked and blindfolded. “The occupation forces handcuffed and blindfolded us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute chinasong, Shutterstock Electricity customers in four Australian states can breathe a sigh of relief. After two years in a row of 20% price increases, power prices have finally stabilised. In many places they’re ...
Chumbawamba have reportedly issued the deputy PM a cease-and-desist notice after he used their song 'Tubthumping' before his state of the nation speech. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
Auckland Council is opposing a fast-track development backed by Sir John Kirwan and Spark NZ, because it doesn’t meet stringent new climate adaptation requirements The post Surf-data centre faces new 3.8C climate warming rules appeared first on Newsroom. ...
When the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was introduced in 2009 it was firmly targeted at gangs and drugs. The legislation means police no longer need a conviction to seize assets that criminals can’t prove were paid for legitimately, as long as their alleged offences are punishable by more than a ...
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+ 1 for only mild use of mansplaining when there is plenty of opportunity to use it more
+10 for OP’s proving beyond doubt that we do in fact live in a rape culture
+ 7 for all those posters who declare that a drunk woman is partially, if not fully responsible for any subsequent rape that occurs while she is intoxicated (curiously no mention of any men having their dicks cut off while passed out drunk being entirely responsible for the loss of their manly member)
+2 for the poster who declares that, “you will get more credibility here if you post under your ‘usual’ name”. It’s only plus two because frankly it’s getting old and isn’t even intellectually offensive anymore because it’s not like anyone is actually going to use their real names because OP implied they needed more credibility in the first place. An intelligent argument should do just fine actually.
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Community/MessageBoard/Messages.aspx?id=1222972&topic=5
And +20 for this little gem from ratherbefishin, otherwise known as Greg from Waitakere City.
Occupation: Getting well from a serious car accident.
Hmmmm. Probably run down by a pissed off feminist.
Sure, there are predators out there, but your dauhgters [sic] are presenting themselves as bait. Look most rapes, not all, the girls are drunk or on drugs, dressed over provocatively, act like fools, put themselves in situations that is condusive to making the situation worse. It’s the parents fault for not naking them safe and teaching them the right values about mixing in the ‘right’ cirlces….you can’t get rabbits from rats.
You +20 that?
“Sure, there are predators out there, but your dauhgters [sic] are presenting themselves as bait.”
There are predators out there, no doubting that, but whatever conduct or dress (lack of) sense, the ‘bait’ argument can only comes from those excusing or mitigating the ‘hunter’.
“Look most rapes, not all, the girls are drunk or on drugs, dressed over provocatively, act like fools, put themselves in situations that is condusive to making the situation worse.”
Doesn’t matter if women are drunk, drugged, in short skirts, boob tubes and give a guy the come on. The self control still remains with the male of the species. Always has, always will… Unless you’re a chimp.
“It’s the parents fault for not naking them safe and teaching them the right values about mixing in the ‘right’ cirlces”
Blame the parents of the victim of sex crimes. Nice work, idiot.
“you can’t get rabbits from rats.”
Or reasoned debate from trade me.
Yeah, I adopted a rating system from http://www.annalsofonlinedating.com/ where either the profiles of daters or their attempts at snagging someone via messaging are rated according to how bad they are.
I didn’t understand the +
Now I do 😉
+ Tard
🙂
Absolutely disgusting.
But the handle ratherbefishin explains volumes about this guy. Some thickheaded kiwi bloke douchebag who wants to string gays up with piano wire and sees women as sub human.
Greg. I promise you, come the revolution, you will be sorry.
Thats not a very nice way to talk about your mother
Anyone that can write that about rape must have a real struggle stopping themselves from attacking young women. I suggest preventative custody to safeguard society. If the guy hasn’t raped already, I bet he will.
It’s interesting that the commenting gets worse over time, and watching rape culture proponents work hard to prevail. I didn’t read the comments to the end because the thread was becoming ever-more demoralising to read. I assume the pro-rape-culture team continued to dominate the discussion through aggression and insults, seldom making any genuine effort to address the arguments of the protestors.
Still, I believe there has been real progress made in the public consciousness, since I was helped to join the dots to an understanding of rape culture, a few years ago.
The LGBT rights movement is always an inspiration in what can be achieved, but I’m only too aware of the personal brunt of public contempt and derision, and other kinds of psychological and physical violence borne hardest and most continuously by those at the forefront of the movement from the beginning. It was hard and dangerous work, and the fight continues today, but from a position of relative strength. But progress can happen in the teeth of seemingly overwhelming resistance.
And there are some hopeful signs:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10870210
” rape culture proponents”
Who are they? Can you cite anyone who says rape culture is great and needs to be maintained?
“rape culture” is a concept which only belongs to feminist ideology, it is not generally accepted.
You are trying to smear anyone who doesn’t pedal feminist doctrine as rape supporters.
You are like those rightwing yanks who accuse anyone who opposes them as being terrorists supporters or sympathisers.
People like you who claim that rape culture doesn’t exist despite all the evidence that it does.
Ask the NZ Police force, they wrote the book on it!
194 million results for “rape culture” on Google. Only 6.5 mil for “deconstructionist Marxist feminist”.
js, thanks for the tautoko yesterday 🙂
Urge to summon Cthulhu rising….
The trademe boards are up their with major gaming forums for the level of burning stupid and outright sexist, echo-room bullshit. Nothing that a little “gentle” moderating couldn’t fix, but trademe lacks teh spine to do so, afraid that they’ll loose customers.
To this day I get pageviews from the Trademe forums to a post I wrote about Pippa Wetzell/Paul Henry/Breakfast, apparently from people who can’t spot the fact that my blog isn’t a news site and that the post in question is satire.
O_o
Well, trademe board users aren’t the brightest bunch at times…
(May the elder things grant me the mighty banhammer of troll-halla to smack the unworthy back unto the wretched lands of talkback, ramen)
Lord Ashcroft spends some more money, doesn’t get the result he hoped for:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/mar/09/labour-election-win-tory-poll
A couple of learnings for NZ; Labour is underacheiving (the Cameron Government is nowhere near as hopeless as Key’s lot) and if NZ First go into coalition with the tories after the next election, they can look forward to ceasing to exist 3 years later.
Sort of makes me glad the lib dems failed to get rid of first past the post.
One can only imagine how shockingly poor the conservative party would be if backed by the loonies and racists of the right to hold on to power.
I wonder if the Lord was using the “research” as a cunning way to direct the Tories in the direction that he wanted. Scare tactics?
Lurch to the right, play to baser instinct. What could go wrong?
Worked so well for JK, even NZ Labour are at it.
Yep, Al1en, that’s exactly what Ashcroft wants. However, the results don’t help him turn them in that direction. If the poll had shown losses at, say, 20 seats, he could have got traction to move policy to the right; to strengthen the appeal to vavering traditional tory voters who have shifted to the anti-european UKIP. However, what this poll shows is that the electorate wants middle of the road or even left policies. So Cameron has to move to the centre to shore up the tory vote. That’s got to piss off Ashcroft more than just a bit.
Calamity and complacency aside, Labour, as unpopular as can be in government, will be back after only one term out, and whilst not the Labour party many here would prefer it to be, it’s got a well spoken leader that holds to core left principles. The people respond.
Camp mallard should have looked further afield for a game plan than the blinding light of our pm that so clearly bedazzles them and sets their agenda.
NZ First will not go into coalition with National. The 1990s are over, everyone out of the pool.
Never predict winston 🙂
What gives TRP?
A month ago you were saying everything is fine and Shearer will lead Labour to victory and now you are saying that Labour is underachieving. What is happening?
Nothing gives, MS. I was making the comparison with UK Labour, who also started from a poor election result and are lead by someone who is still working to convince his own party of his merits, yet have gone on to gain enough support to govern alone. The NZLP caucus are underacheiving in comparison.
So what changes need to be made to Caucus, asked in the most neutral way possible …
It comes down to attitude mickysavage. At present the caucus catechism is:
our (read ABC club) side is good.
the other side is bad.
We will only take notice of our side.
We will ignore everything the other side says and does.
Today I received my electorate’s first newsletter for the year. It contained a letter (no indication where it came from) from an unnamed new, young member who attended his/her first conference last November.. It was essentially a eulogy to David Shearer and contained such language as…working for a brighter future (now where have I heard that before), more progressive and more inclusive society… this is the Labour way and all of it was achieved at the Conference.
Why am I suspicious of this letter? Well, it has an [insert name here] quality about it.
I sincerely hope I’m wrong.
“Drought gripping the North Island is the most severe in history, with the crisis far from over both for now and in years to come, scientists say.
“Long, dry spells are forecast to double by 2040 as temperatures continue to rise and New Zealand heads towards a more Mediterranean climate.
“Experts warn it could spell the end for farming as we know it and may cost the country billions of dollars in drought relief each year before practices are adjusted.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/8405004/North-Island-drought-worst-in-history
Actually, the best thing we could do would be to have the government buy enough farms to feed everybody and put in place practices (Heaps of R&D at the universities) to farm in the new environment. Then you let all the rest continue or fall upon their own – just as capitalism calls for.
University R&D can’t help in this situation. It’s the wrong approach to modifying and applying existing knowledge.
I agree, the best research is being done outside of universities. The unis could get in behind though.
I’ll reiterate what others have said here recently – drought is being created by conventional farming as much as (if not more so) than by climate change.
This TED talk (20 mins) shows how to graze animals so you don’t end up in a drought (both locally and from climate change). Alan Savory has been doing this on the ground research for over 50 years, and developed systems of mob grazing that reverse desertification and sequester carbon and restore local microclimates on such a large scale that they probably would effect macro climate if adopted en masse.
At the end the TED host calls the presentation truly astonishing, but these farm technologies, based on mimicking natural cycles, are well known in sustainably land management circles and are even being used successfully in NZ.
http://www.ted.com/speakers/allan_savory.html
John Liu’s work is worthy too, here he looks at the restoration of the severely damaged huge Loess Plateau in China back into a food producing oasis, as well as restoration in other parts of the world (50mins)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J3WisjXYik4
And a quick look (5mins) at the Greening the Desert project in Jordan (one of the driest places on earth supporting humans). Geoff Lawton took 10 acres of salinated man-made desert and had it starting to produce food from trees within four months.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sohI6vnWZmk
Exactly. For instance, modern farming has destroyed tens of thousands of hectares of tussock land, which were crucial for feeding atmospheric moisture into the land.
That’s one thing that’s been bugging me for years. Academia in NZ is unwilling to accept knowledge gained outside of academia in NZ and that needs to change.
Maybe that happens in some specific branches of academia, DTB, but it couldn’t be applied in Physics, for example. I’m part of academia whether I like the label or not, and apart from Hitler’s attempt at introducing Aryan Physics, I’ve never seen evidence of what you suggest.
Which areas would you say this unwillingness applies to?
The horticultural arms of universities tend to have farms where they research better methods of farming.
Too much of it is the wrong kind of research. You need research working with real farmers on their own land.
Well, if the universities are doing their job, then they are. The simple fact of the matter is that the farmer is unlikely to be able to do the research but once the research has been done can help come up with better methods of implementation and the university owned farms would probably have farm managers on them as well.
“The simple fact of the matter is that the farmer is unlikely to be able to do the research”
Why do you say that? Many farmers practice empirical science anyway, and any farmer with either a good working knowledge of the scientific method, or support with that, can do research on their own property. It’s not rocket science 😉
Universities in NZ aren’t leading the way on developing sustainable practice, they’re following. And the way that universities are structured and operate, the hard sciences in particular, is inherently reductionist, making studying whole systems harder and less likely. This is why we are in the ridiculous situation of trying to solve river/waterway pollution from industrial dairying by chemically treating paddocks to prevent increases in nitrogen, instead of changing farming practices to prevent excess nitrogen in the first place. The inability to see natural cycles in their whole and to work with them is the big stumbling block, that and greed economics/capitalism. Universities are going to research conventional farming, because that’s what we do. They’re not focusing (enough*) on the kind that is making a difference.
Crown research is just as bad. Restructuring that happened in the 80s and 90s prevented the early adoption of sustainable practices, and many of the field researchers lost their jobs. From what I can tell focus was on economics and practices that created financial wealth.
*there are some notable exceptions eg the long-standing Biological Husbandry Unit at Lincoln has been pioneering organics for over 3 decades.
Seriously DTB, watch some of those videos and then compare what they are talking about with what is being done in universities, then you will get what I mean.
Because the farmers are more likely to be using land to make a profit with what they know. If they were doing anything else our waterways wouldn’t be as polluted as they are.
No, it’s a hell of a lot more complex.
That I can agree with but i also think that they’re changing. As I said, a number of them now have their own farms to work with and when you’ve got that then you must start to see the entire system rather than just the pieces.
Or they could be doing both.
“Because the farmers are more likely to be using land to make a profit with what they know. If they were doing anything else our waterways wouldn’t be as polluted as they are.”
We’re talking at cross purposes. I’m talking about farmers who are doing the cutting edge work on sustainable land management. They’re doing their own research, and being successful at creating new models of farming that don’t wreck the land (or quite as fast). Universities are lagging behind this.
” ” It’s not rocket science”
No, it’s a hell of a lot more complex.”
No, it’s not. Working with biological systems that mimic nature to grow food requires expertise, but you do not need an advanced science degree to understand it, not implement it. Nor study it.
“That I can agree with but i also think that they’re changing. As I said, a number of them now have their own farms to work with and when you’ve got that then you must start to see the entire system rather than just the pieces.”
Why? If you’ve been trained all your working life to look at the isolated detail and not the systems, and if your work situation demands that that is how you do research, and that kind of research is what gets the funding, why would you get to see it differently. Having one’s own farm doesn’t make one see differently – to use your example, if it did then farmers wouldn’t be polluting the environment.
“Or they could be doing both.”
Treating excess nitrogen by applying chemicals to a paddock is equivalent to the old lady that swallowed the fly. It’s just daft. If you manage land holistically in the first place, you don’t need to do that kind of disruptive intervention (or very rarely). I’m guessing you’re not that familiar with the kinds of technologies I’m talking about and don’t really understand the paradigm differences and why they matter. Maybe someone else can explain it?
Golly. Yep. Jim
“David Cameron a liar a cheat a criminal in public office”
The artist taxi driver
Don’t forget Cameron and John Yankee are chums.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hEU9uN-bo0&list=UUGThM-ZZBba1Zl9rU-XeR-A&index=1
This government looks to the U$K for ideas to apply here. 🙁
Tories’ hidden privatisation plan revealed
25 Feb 2013 00:00
The massive step towards full privatisation of the NHS is being made in regulations sneaked out earlier this month – exposed by the Daily Mirror
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nhs-tories-hidden-privatisation-plan-1729681
“The new rules impose “compulsory competitive markets” on the entire health service.
The changes are planned under the overhaul launched by Tory former Health Secretary Andrew Lansley. He claimed there was nothing in it to “promote or permit the transfer of NHS activities to the private sector”.
But now all services are to be offered to the highest bidder from April 1.
The move would allow “any qualified provider” including giants such as Virgin Care to outbid local hospitals.
Critics fear the rules will let companies asset-strip NHS facilities. Labour have warned firms could cherry-pick the easiest, most profitable, procedures, leaving the NHS to pick up the tab for tricky and expensive surgery.”
“This intended ‘privatisation’ will mean a short term of financial gain for
the Tory Party followed by higher costs as shareholders have their hands out for their profit. Charing X Hospital is stuffed with new equipment, but understaffed – I wonder why! This government from what I deduce are thieves and profiteers. How much do they expect to make from our Schools and ‘Academies'”
Heh the Daily Mirror proving that it’s (a little) more than just T&A.
Rodney Hide explains that since most business owners make less than the minimum wage (why the hell else would anyone run a business!) the pinkos shouldn’t expect a living wage. So there.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10870282
Rodney discretely omits any mention of the ability of business owners to sell their business and pay no capital gains tax, assuming that stupid lefties ” think running a business is easy. That’s because they have never done it.”
Or extract living and other expenses from the business’s effectively living directly from its funds.
A rort that rortney would be all too familiar with
He probably also counts poorly paid contractors as sole trader businesses.
Good luck trying to sell a business not making money.
You’ll also find, unless a business has locked in contracts apart from stock and plant the business really has no value at all.
That must be why Rortney and co. are so keen to buy our power generators.
Mighty river power is a great investment, hopefully it will stimulate more interest in stocks and away from property
.Apart from property there’s no where else for people to invest there money and get any form of return.
hopefully it will stimulate more interest in stocks
So it’s a bait and switch then?
Not sure how you get bait and switch?
Not sure how you miss it…
Bait-and-switch is a form of fraud used in retail sales but also practised in other contexts. First, customers are “baited” by merchants’ advertising products or services at a low price; then customers discover the advertised goods are not available. Other products are “switched” for them; however, these items are often costlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait-and-switch
I don’t see the link with encouraging people to invest in the share market?
If there were already a lot of good share ‘products’ on the NZX …. then we would hardly need the government to be ‘baiting’ interest in the sharemarket with the float of MRP. Would we?
Given that the float is going to be well over-subscribed, or that there will be lots of people making a quick profit on the deal, the expectation you’ve raised is that there will be plenty of euphoric cash sloshing about looking for another deal. Hence the ‘switch’.
That’s pretty much the scenario you’ve raised is it not?
That’s because private sector money has proven shitty, unimaginative and non-entrpreneurial.
Because they have created fuck all worth while new ones, they have to invest in assets which are 40 or more years old.
How about instead of spending your days posting on the interwebs, you get out there and show them how to do it.
With your abilities and ideas you’d be worth billions within the year.
“With your abilities and ideas you’d be worth billions within the year.”
You’d be in need of a bailout within minutes 😉
How about instead of buying shares in a state controlled company so that the state can spend that money on state stuff, you invest in a private company?
Or do you think the state has better ideas about what to do with your capital than you do?
Sure will do, but this is not about me. It’s about how shitty private sector and corporate leadership has been in NZ that they’ve barely created any new worthwhile assets to invest in and so have to go poaching public ones.
Then stop talking about it and get out there and show them how it’s done.
Throwing shit from the bleachers isn’t really that helpful, especially some one with your business acumen and total awesomeness.
NZ need you to get out there and for you to lead the way.
But it’s not about me and it’s not about you.
It’s about the $100B in savings deposits in this country where people haven’t bothered to invest that money in jobs, busineses or industry, and have instead just sat that money on the sidelines.
That’s anti-business and anti-growth.
No wonder they have to poach public assets; there’s no imagination there.
” they’ve barely created any new worthwhile assets to invest in”
Well they have… but the worthwhile ones all get bought up by overseas interests. If they were on the stock market they then get de-listed. Just like the State assets will be.
Well yes they have, some small and medium businesses worth say $20M or $100M. Sam Morgan’s Trademe being about the only exception with a value much higher than that.
But on the industrial scale of an MRP? Nothing; absolutely nothing.
Why not put their money in a bank, instead of getting rich from sky rocketing power prices that hurt the poor?
Those who are going to buy shares in MRP are no different than those who own rental property in Christchurch. Both will feed on human misery.
Middle class types will demand higher and higher dividends, and power prices will go higher and higher.
The whole point of capitalism is that there are massive amounts of ideas around just begging for capital investment and that such capital investment is done in a very highly efficient manner through the stock exchange. If that’s not happening then I’d say that the capitalist ideal just doesn’t work.
Basically, I figure that the ideas are out there but that the rich (who are the only ones with enough accumulated wealth) aren’t investing in them because they want guaranteed returns and not to actually take any risk. This is proven by the way that they’re lining up to buy power shares which they know they can’t lose on as the government can’t let power crash and burn. Basically, the people lining up to buy power company shares are just looking to bludge for the rest of their lives off of the hard work of the rest of NZ.
What’s happening now is more and more resembling the later stages of every game of Monopoly that has ever been played.
Nothing to do with investing or creating, all about the consolidation of existing wealth and resources into fewer and fewer hands.
+1
Monopoly and dictatorship is the natural end point of capitalism and that is what we’re seeing. The accumulation into fewer hands and the governments then passing policies, such as selling state assets, that benefit only those few.
Old Kent Road, do not pass Go…
Im over people like Rodney who think that workers should, pretty much, have their wages and conditions slashed.
If he came round to my house telling me that I shouldnt be getting the money that I get from my job, he would be on the floor getting the shit kicked out of him.
“If he came round to my house telling me that I shouldnt be getting the money that I get from my job, he would be on the floor getting the shit kicked out of him.”
He ran away from me when I challenged him in the Environment Waikato building in Hamilton a few weeks after his holiday rort was exposed.
Yellow by party, yellow by nature.
Like so many paid shills, all tough and righteous behind a media article.
lacking any intelligence to argue the issue in public, Banks being especially thick. It’s almost as if they never wrote it themselves……
I wonder what sort of thrill Rodney gets from taking the food out of the mouths of the children of poor workers.
Probably as good as the one he got buying a trophy wife on a ministerial salary.
You mean man The Allen !
If I were truly mean I would have mentioned how Rodney must’ve earned more than Murray.
He could only afford an April.
Think of the floor, Millsy. Do it outside. Really, I share your sentiments. How the hell did such naked greed and loathsome thinking ever get taken seriously outside of textbooks on forensic psychiatry?
Maybe we should be happy with a minimum wage that allows us to fly around the world for holidays, have a couple of cars, a few houses, and constantly rising capital value. To come up with this rubbish, Hide really is contemptuous of his readers. One more corrupt self-serving orc who should do us all a favour and just disappear.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34224.htm
Why Israeli Apartheid is Worse Than South Africa’s Version
Is Palestinian Solidarity an Occupied Zone?
by GILAD ATZMON March 09, 2013
Once involved with Palestinian Solidarity you have to accept that Jews are special and so is their suffering; Jews are like no other people, their Holocaust is like no other genocide and anti Semitism is the most vile form of racism the world has ever known and so on and so forth.
But when it comes to the Palestinians, the exact opposite is the case. For some reason we are expected to believe that the Palestinians are not special at all – they are just like everyone else. Palestinians have not been subject to a unique, racist, nationalist and expansionist Jewish nationalist movement, instead, we must all agree that, just like the Indians and the Africans, the Palestinian ordeal results from run-of-the-mill 19th century colonialism – just more of the same old boring Apartheid.
So, Jews, Zionists and Israelis are exceptional, like no one else, while Palestinians are always somehow ordinary, always part of some greater political narrative, always just like everyone else. Their suffering is never due to the particularity of Jewish nationalism, or Jewish racism, or even AIPAC dominating USA foreign policy no, the Palestinian is always a victim of a dull, banal dynamic – general, abstract and totally lacking in particularity.
This raises some serious questions.
Can you think of any other liberation or solidarity movement that prides itself in being boring, ordinary and dull? Can you think of any other solidarity movement that downgrades its subject into just one more meaningless exhibit in a museum of materialist historical happenings? I don’t think so! Did the black South Africans see themselves as being like everyone else? Did Martin Luther King believe his brothers and sisters to be inherently undistinguishable?
I don’t think so. So how come Palestinian solidarity has managed to sink so low that their spokespersons and supporters compete against each other to see who can best eliminate the uniqueness of the Palestinian struggle into just part of a general historical trend such as colonialism or Apartheid?
The answer is simple. Palestinian Solidarity is an occupied zone and, like all such occupied zones must dedicate itself to the fight against ‘anti Semitism’. Dutifully united against racism, fully engaged with LGBT issues in Palestine and in the movement itself, but for one reason or another, the movement is almost indifferent towards the fate of millions of Palestinians living in refugee camps and their Right of Return to their homeland.
But all this can change. Palestinians and their supporters could begin to see their cause for what it is, unique and distinctive. Nor need this be all that difficult. After all, if Jewish nationalism is inherently exceptional as Zionists proclaim, is it not only natural that the victims of such a distinctive racist endeavor are at least, themselves, just as distinctive.
So far, Palestine solidarity has failed to liberate Palestine, but it has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams in creating a Palestine Solidarity Industry, and one largely funded by liberal Zionists. We have been very productive in schlepping activists around the world promoting ‘boycotts’ and ‘sanctions’ meanwhile Israel trade with Britain is booming and Hummus Tzabar is clearly apparent in every British grocery store.
All those attempts to reduce Palestinian ordeal into a dated, dull, generalised materialist narrative should be exposed for what they are – an attempt to appease liberal Zionists. Palestinian suffering is actually unique in history at least as unique as the Zionist project.
Yesterday I came across this from South African minister Ronnie Kasrils. In a comment on Israeli Apartheid he said : “This is much worse than Apartheid…Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had jets attacking our townships; we never had sieges that lasted month after month. We never had tanks destroying houses.”
Kasrils is dead right. It is much worse than Apartheid and far more sophisticated than colonialism. And why? Because what the Zionists did and are doing is neither Apartheid nor is it colonialism. Apartheid wanted to exploit the African, Israel wants the Palestinian gone. Colonialism is an exchange between a mother and a settler state. Israel never had a mother State, though it may well have had a few ‘surrogate mothers’.
Now is the time to look at the unique ordeal of the Palestinian people. Similarly, now is the time to look at the Zionist crime in the light of Jewish culture and identity politics.
Can the solidarity movement meet this challenge? Probably, but like Palestine, it must first, itself, be liberated.
Gilad Atzmon’s latest book is The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34224.htm
It’s that bloody Borat again, isn’t it.
Lol
Gosh you’re a funny guy. And you’re serious.
And you’re not right wing. Oh no.
Israel has constitutional democracy and a free press. Those are the important things for Pop. He’s a caricature.
Meanwhile, what worries me most about Israel and the hardcore Zionists is how they have managed to refine anti-semitism as being anything they don’t like. Their efforts to rewrite the history of Palestine are heroic in their magnitude. They are writing the Palestinians out of existence.
The one and only thing that Goff ever did that I liked was to tell Tel Aviv that they didn’t decide who he could visit and go ahead with a visit to Arafat. I can’t see either Shearer or Key doing anything comparable.
The one and only thing that Goff ever did that I liked was to tell Tel Aviv that they didn’t decide who he could visit and go ahead with a visit to Arafat.
Fair comment, Murray, but even then, Goff did not have the integrity or the courage to meet with the Hamas leadership.
I can’t see either Shearer or Key doing anything comparable.
Neither can I. I don’t believe any of the talk about how Shearer used to “stare down warlords” in Iraq.
“I don’t believe any of the talk about how Shearer used to “stare down warlords” in Iraq.”
Me neither. Mainly because the country concerned is Somalia. If you have any evidence that Shearer lied about his work and experiances in Lebanon, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Serbia and Somalia, and, latterly, Iraq, then by all means front up with it. Or just admit you’re just making shit up, as usual.
How about Keys back story, comfortable with that, and his career timeline, and claiming to have not been involved in the attcck on the NZ$ etc?
Such a nice man, from a state home , you know, self made *business man*, he just wants to do whats best and right for his own country….etc, blah!
Yeah, stories, they get made up, then molded to what suits the agenda.
What will it mean for your self worth once you realise you have been taken for yet another ride by the team with the *gay coloured* shirts on!
I made nothing up. I simply quoted one of the most common factoids (or, more accurately, falsoids) put into the media at the time Shearer was making his run for the leadership.
Based on his inability to say anything coherently, even when faced with a friendly interviewer, I doubt that he “stared down warlords in Iraq”, as his spin-doctors claimed repeatedly.
You seem to have an emotional investment in Shearer; I wonder if you were one of the ones involved in the spinning of this patently absurd legend.
So, no proof then, Mozza? Why am I not surprised? If you have any reason to doubt Shearer’s work history, now would be a good time to pony up. Otherwise, you tend to look like a bit of a sad sack. BTW, what was it like for you when you did your humanitarian work? Y’know, when you put your life at risk to help others? Do, tell, mate, I’m sure your backstory will be fascinating.
Were you there with Shearer when he did his *humanitarian work*, or when he *stared down warlords*…
If you were not there with him, then your support, like the fantastical words of the PR spin behind Shearer, and Key etc, are simply endorsing the puppets of those who simply, made shit up!
Sad diversion BTW Voice, Mozza is not Trojan horse leader of the LP selling himself as giving a toss about NZ, or its people (include the Africans in that), using a fantastical back story, the rival of the *great self made businessman*, John Key!
Obama got a Nobel prize for peace, yeah, shit gets manufactured to suit a purpose!
Any proof the stories aren’t true, Muz? No? Then bollox to you too. Just another keyboard warrior, sans the balls to actually face reality as it is lives. Y’know, the real difference between you and Moz and David Shearer is that he can’t talk the talk and you two phonies can’t walk the walk.
Voice – So you were not with Shearer on his UN adventures then, we have established that!
Talk of reality, and walk or talk, is foolish, you have no idea about my situations/contributions, than you do of Shearers, thats the reality sport!
As I’ve said on here a long time back, your personal efforts to the LP etc, will not be any less meaningful, in reality, at the time it becomes even more obvious than it already is, David Shearer exposed as yet another parachuted sham traitor pretending to be a Kiwi!
You’ve established nothing but your own self deluded twatitude, muzza. What a gutless wonder.
Shearer’s humanitarian work (and personal courage) is well documented and recognised. It long predates his decision to run for Labour leader, or even stand in Mt Albert. (for example, his office was bombed in Baghdad, and yes, he had to deal with warlords in Somalia).
The fact that Shearer is poor at his current job doesn’t mean we have to belittle his previous one(s).
Fair enough. So is it to much to ask for this. I want to see that personal courage on display right up front and centre as Labour Leader standing explicitly for Labour values.
Somalia, knee capping your own colleagues, promising private house building corporates windfall profits, whatever doesn’t count. In this game, you’re only as good as your last sales pitch, not the one you successfully made 10 years ago.
Tuning into RNZ this morning I caught the tail end of a news item about a near gassing of workers in the Kaimai tunnel link here; http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/130074/kiwirail-revises-training-after-workers-exposed-to-gas
You would think after the Pike River disaster this kind of thing couldn’t happen? What Kiwi Rail’s General Manager Rick Vanerveld has to say is a bloody disgrace & he should be sacked!
If I recall correct this bloke was in the papers axing nearly 200 Track jobs about this time & then I heard he got in contractors. Yip that sounds right as they were contractors in that tunnel, untrained in gas emergency evacuation etc. This mug is backing one of his Managers, who rather then
take the gassed workers for immediate medical treatment, instead takes them for a feed like they had too much to drink…”that’s shocking he should have been fired for that ¬ seeing they were trained.”
It will never happen the bosses always back their own & fudge things over after the pricks!
I wonder if the media are following this story up? I smell a cover up & bet there is a lot more to this story!
Our industrial landscape is starting to resemble third world environments with a govt willingly undermining health, safety and backing management all the way.
Kiwi rail is a classic example as its got slipperys henchmen kicking it at every turn and a puppet CEO natty boy.
T_T
OSH and ACC should be claiming a few scalps over this. And this is business as usual when companies axe staff and hire external contractors and sub-contractors, as currently all the health and safety risk is moved onto the external contractors, who usually try and cut corners to save money…
(I’ve done temping, and all we got was a very basic H&S video, while working directly for a company I’ve been given pretty decent H&S)
As I’ve said before, I know two senior H&S people who’ve both confirmed to me that ‘contracting out the risk’ is the major motivation.
The entire trend towards contracting, temping and casualisation is exceedingly bad. It’s damaging at every level. Contracting has a place, but only in certain specific scenarios. Where it is plainly being used to replace full-time employment, this practise must be stamped out.
Looking forward to hearing David Shearer announce strong policy aimed squarely towards at fixing this.
notes not handy, but, the article on TV ONE on cannabis use and opiate use in the NZ workplace blew my mind (but didn’t surprise me). When I dug ditches / drove a dump-truck, a quarter to a third of the crew were stoned or fried. 🙂
Another comment my acquaintances have made is that it’s been more than 20 yrs since the passing of the 1992 H&S Act ….but serious harm injuries have scarcely declined at all. Still hovering around the 5000-7000 pa mark.
Some employers (like my one) do take their H&S responsibilities very seriously; far too many others simply parasite off the system doing the least they can possibly get away with doing. Or less. And their employees (or contractors) simply pick up on the lack of leadership.
It’s not hard. If everyone knows that certain H&S breaches are automatic dismissal offences … then everyone very quickly plays the game.
And big fines for directors…and jail time for them if someone actually dies due to management negligence.
personally, and objectively Red, I agree with the comment made earlier this week re: we just don’t have the political class (the liquidity or investment) to reverse up the decline; I talk to a wide range of people, from the giftedly “insane” to the lucidly “sane” on these sociological / geographical matters and the outlook seems to be “Gimme Shelter”
(+ thanks to TS and wider directed reading, there is plenty of confirmation on the ‘net if one is not a caught up playing “games” or looking for things to buy) btw, thanks for your endorsement of the influence of “faiths” in all this calamity in your postings.
yet, we could always Welcome China, but then, there is always that great wall, (i don’t think the Chinese will ever forget the Nanking Massacre / RAPE of Nanking either).People are people (for example, all these pissed diplomat / negotiators at UN conferences) and what was sown by the majority of the West (grass for example) will be mown down in time. There is an “eclectic” prophecy for ya; it has all gone too far, in my humble opinion.
/nod
Yeap, and the the business hiring temp’s know also they’re getting a shit deal, as usually the workers aren’t that capable due or even interested and so poor work results. As I’ve heard oft from commercial businesses I’ve worked for via student job search.
[insert shoddy contracting via lowest-bidder stories here]
O_o
From Captain Mubblefuck?…
We’re more likely to get a complete reversal on asset sales by Key than such a piece of policy from Labour at present /cough
“Looking forward to hearing David Shearer announce strong policy aimed squarely towards at fixing this.”
I’m in danger of toppling over from all this looking forward to things David Shearer should’ve already done.
There sure is a lot more to it. http://i.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/7290292/Union-fears-KiwiRail-cuts-threaten-workers-safety This rank and file Union guy blew the whistle on serious Health & Safety issues at Kiwi Rail, including the Kaimai tunnel incident. Those bastards running the railways tried to use the job cuts to get get rid of him. Last I heard he got forced to move up to the far North or be made redundant. In other words ‘sacked’.
I would have thought whistle blowers were protected by law and the Employer would be skating on thin ice if he took a personal grievance?
Another, more relevant link: http://i.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/business/7530534/Contractors-forced-to-work-long-hours
The following link is to Rod Oram’s comments on Govt proposals to change the RMA. Govt is holding public meetings over next couple of weeks to “explain” their discussion paper. Oram suggests Govt is leaving out vital facts, and just using surveys as factual reasons to change the RMA.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/8400307/Oram-A-naked-power-grab
Yes an excellent read.
That would be normal for this government. Paint a pretty picture but leave out the facts so that people don’t realise the truth and thus can’t make informed decisions. It’s all part of the We know best syndrome of National and the ideological ignoring of reality.
This is a great article by Oram & really exposes National for scare mongering!
And then there’s this bit:
Yep, more dictatorial control from this government.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122573-Clean-Fusion-Power-Could-Be-Feasible-by-2017
Basically this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-reversed_configuration For more detailed info, check this: http://www.frascati.enea.it/ProtoSphera/ProtoSphera%202001/1.%20General%20framework.htm
Fingers crossed it bloody well works as this would allow us to kick our coal habit within a couple of decades at least. Mainly as you need the infrastructure for harvesting and delivering deuterium on very large scales + manufacture the reactors.
There’s actually a lot of research going on in fusion power sources. The “always 50 years away” really refers to the big tokamak reactors that will eventually get there, but obviously not for a long time and at such a cost that they’re not truly feasible as a source of power.
In the mean time, we may see one of these ‘alternative’ methods take off.
Tokamak’s are problematic mainly due to the fluid physics of the plasma, lots of eddies that reduce fusion output and require large amounts of computing power to model and iron out. ITER will probably provide better data on whether or not Tok’s can ever produce enough power for commercial viability.
And yeah, tok’s and laser-based interial confinement fusion systems have pretty much taken the lion’s share of available funding. ICF particularly as it provides useful data for nuclear weapons, but mainly it’s been international treaties and science politics that’s kept these two methods in the forefront in my opinion*.
The other main alternative runner is the Polywell, which has achieved fusion, but they’ve lost US Naval funding as of 2012 so are trying to get private funding.
As for cold fusion – load of crap at present, too little non-problematic data, in particular Bubble Fusion is another shining example of how science can go wrongzors.
________________________________________
*Could make for a fun history of science area actually… Generally you see a pattern of older, established scientists holding sway over an area and so it becomes difficult to bring in new ideas unless they have a lot of empirical evidence behind them. Seems to affect physics more.
I’ve been following pollywell for 5 or so years now, didn’t know they lost their navel funding though, that sucks. Alternatively, it seemed like the government wasn’t really giving it the funding it deserved and kept everything Top Secret, so this could be an improvement.
That’s typical behaviour from the US Navy, but yeah, without a decent funding line and most investors seemingly rallying around what google likes and now with Lockheed-Martin’s Skunk Works out with an FRC reactor that seems very likely will work, Polywell’s sadly going to struggle :/
Mind you, the basics of the polywell are actually pretty cheap to build and test, though more research is needed to test it’s viability as there’s still some issues with the physics of the plasma confinement and pressure going off the details available.
Anyhow, it’s good to see that Lockheed-Martin’s actually putting the funds from it’s horribly overpriced military hardware to a much more useful technology and letting Skunk Works go nuts :3
derp, forgot the tag /facepalm
I reckon that these developments are about 25 years too late to have a big impact on the energy future of the world, and I’m thinking about India and China here, two massive coal users. The best case I see is for a relatively small number of fusion generators to be built in time for VIP and high priority uses.
Unless of course the dream of having a suitcased size generator putting out a MW of energy comes true, but that’s the stuff of Star Trek.
Howdy Hombre’, “Q” could (he could do just about anything)
haha!
But remember the circumstances under which the Enterprise crew first met “Q”…it was a desolate picture of earth in the 21st century after the next global war.
when you wiki him he’s “omnipotently in white”.
btw, ya don’t say Steven
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10870341
I hear they’re doing a Boy called Sue to the Education Ministry
an important demographic
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10869880
furthermore, Wonders of Wonders for you LGBT folk out there 😉 ; at S.A service this morning an extended testimony by a Gay man, artist, novelist, trained pianist, tertiary teacher, about his journey and acceptance. Very moving (although a few Trads. seemed a little bemused, still, that’s progress for you.kinda like how being tr*lld makes ya stronger, iron sharpening Iron and all that stainless. 🙂
I don’t think so, China at least accepts climate change is a very serious issue, and if this reactor is viable, they’ll probably cancel the coal plants waiting to be built and redirect funding towards building these reactors. Heck, depending on how the energy from the reactor is being turned into electricity, you could retrofit current coal burning plant’s with them and drive the in place steam turbine power generators. Saving a lot of infrastructure costs in the process.
And your forgetting just how much shear industrial capacity is present, given the drive, it can easily be redeployed towards producing just about anything, and the FRC reactor Skunk Work’s is proposing is far less complex that a tokamak. Mainly due to the confinement of the plasma via a magnetic bottle which doesn’t need a huge array of powerful electromagnets to run, and so doesn’t need entirely special lining as there’s no plasma eroding it.
It will obviously take time to build and set up using current carbon-based energy sources, but if Skunk Works can get it to produce a large net energy from a self-sustaining fusion reaction, the possibilities are literally mind-boggling. For one, human civilisation might just have enough energy to start mining the air for carbon at an industrial scale and reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Along with no longer needing to dam so many rivers for energy production, allowing for the rehabilitation of certain river systems and removal of dams in very tectonically active areas.
Then there’s the obvious advantages in terms of electrification in the developing world for food and medicine preservation and storage. All from a reactor that is highly portable compared to the nuclear* and carbon-based alternatives.
Are we still stuffed climate and resource wise? Yeap, but this is the sort of technology that when combined with other green-methods would allow us to adapt, survive and even reduce global temperatures. Albeit, a rather problematic set of “if” statements are still involved, mainly as democratic governments can be bloody stupid and some powerful non-state actors (i.e. corporations) have their heads firmly stuck in the short-term, despite the looming crises…
Oh, and it makes SPAAAAAAACE a lot easier to move around in, as this reactor can be used to generate thrust directly, or used to run an ion-based drive array :3
________________________________________
*well, pebble-bed reactors show some promise for portability and safety, but there’s a whole range of issues, including all the usual ones…
This is the absolute tech-solution best case, not saying it won’t happen but I wouldn’t rate it at a higher than 10% chance right now.
The Skunk Works is not going to release this tech to the world (or to China) for a very long time. It would be too much of a strategic advantage for the USA.
Once the technology has a pilot which can produce say 100MW sustained, I’ll believe that it is on the way.
Right now, I’m tempted to put it in the category of civilisation saving solutions requiring “Unobtanium” to work.
😛
As for this not being available to China, lets just say this tech isn’t exactly hard to replicate (based off currently published research on FRC and other reactors) and Lockhead-Martin might suck deeply and greedily on the teat of US Defence contracts. But this is a major money spinner that would give them a far more secure line of funding than the US DoD contracts. Which is going to get cut to the bone as American politicians are now beginning to stop holding it’s budget as sacrosanct.
Although the moronic right are a significant issue that may cause problems.
Worth bearing in mind that Lockheed Martin could also make a tonne of money exporting the F-22 Raptor, but it’s banned from doing so through national security legislation and technology export restrictions.
True, but that’s mainly because they’re getting government funding to develop and build the F22 airframe, internals and computer systems.
And while certain political douchebags might push for Skunk Works’ FRC reactor tech to not be exported to China and Russia, the shear need for this technology will hopefully hammer those idiots out of sight. Otherwise China’s gotten very good at industrial espionage 😉
Sometimes humanity prevails against it’s more stupid, short-sighted impulses.
Heh.
And it’s not like China is standing still in the field either
http://npre.illinois.edu/news/fusion-reactors-innovation-be-tested-china
They’re still trying the tokamak route, though the stuff being trailed is very interesting. Main issue with the tokamaks is that so far, they appear to need to be rather large to provide significant power (scalability being teh term). Along with the turbulence issues with eddies in the plasma that can cause power spikes/drops. Also China’s part of the ITER project.
But I suspect the Chinese aren’t standing still on other alternatives and their fusion research will be keeping an eye on anything out of Skunk Works.
Yep, and other governments, except ours, probably have their research already looking in to it – especially after the release of that video.
😛
As for this not being available to China, lets just say this tech isn’t exactly hard to replicate (based off currently published research on FRC and other reactors) and Lockhead-Martin might suck deeply and greedily on the teat of US Defence contracts. But this is a major money spinner that would give them a far more secure line of funding than the US DoD contracts. Which is going to get cut to the bone as American politicians are now beginning to stop holding it’s budget as sacrosanct.
Although the moronic right are a significant issue that may cause problems.
😛
As for this not being available to China, lets just say this tech isn’t exactly hard to replicate (based off currently published research on FRC and other reactors) and Lockhead-Martin might suck deeply and greedily on the teat of US Defence contracts. But this is a major money spinner that would give them a far more secure line of funding than the US DoD contracts. Which is going to get cut to the bone as American politicians are now beginning to stop holding it’s budget as sacrosanct.
Although the moronic right are a significant issue that may cause problems.
/facepalm – damn 500 error… Clean up please?
When you get a 500 error on a comment just go to the front page and then reload the page that you were on. Your comment is usually there. I also suggest, if you’re really paranoid, a ctrl-a, ctrl-c before hitting submit.
In theory (as in I will believe it when I don’t see it), I should have largely eliminated the main cause of those this afternoon just before 1700 hours. There was a SEO plugin with a bad habit of locking the whole post table when it pulled all 11777 public posts for an analysis. It particularly caused a problem when a re-edit tried to start it a second time while the first was still running (for some obscure reason). Eliminated it, changed it for a less clueless plugin doing the same thing, and couldn’t see the reproducible effect afterwards.
I won’t know for sure until I see some new posts going up when the system is loaded. Ditto for finding out how well the new plugin keeps the search engines updated on comments. This one has less visible controls.
The log hasn’t shown any 500 responses since I restarted the apache server to start analysing the lag at about 2000 (been out)
The tech isn’t coming out of the “Skunk Works” – it’s mostly private sector, or possible government funded projects in France and Japan. The Polywell is pretty well understood, and I think you seriously underestimate China’s tech state of the art.
Skunk Works is LM’s R&D department 😉
CV
While thinking about India there was a good update on Radionz this morning on how it is thinking and acting which might put recent vicious attacks on women in the picture among other matters.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday
11:44 Wayne Brittenden’s Counterpoint
Wayne Brittenden has been Radio New Zealand’s correspondent in several capital cities over the years. Each week he gives fresh insights into a wide variety of topics of national and international concern, followed by Chris Laidlaw’s discussion of the issue with guests. Today, while India is now seen as belonging to the middle economic bracket countries, new Oxford University research reveals what critics within India have known all along — that the last 20 years of unfettered market forces haven’t reduced the vast number of those living in dire poverty. Wayne looks at today’s neo-liberal consumerist India, and Chris follows up with Dharmendra Kumar, the Director of the Indian Campaign Group, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Watch. (14′49″)
Download: Ogg Vorbis MP3 | Embed
A less polluting and more efficient power source certainly opens up a lot of opportunities. If it’s used by the public sector to provide cheap power and save natural resources, it could be a great advance. If it ends up in the hands of the same greedy corporates, the price of power probably wouldn’t even go down. The technological solutions are always possible, but we need the social organisation which allows them to be used for more than the benefit of a small minority.
A test run with a view to having our very own twelve golden men?.
A lot of posters on here have indicated their displeasure at the Clifford Bay ferry terminal/port.
Youll probably even be less pleasured by the fact the Dictator of Christchurch has said that the govenment does not want to own it.
So it will be privately owned, because the government doesnt belive in public ownership of things like ports, etc.
Cool.
*digs through wikipedia’s fusion power articles*
*finds part of the US Strategic Defence Initiative, aka “Star Wars”*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARAUDER
I can haz ion cannon?
Pretty Please?
Excellent. Our first catch of the day…
Go to 6.50 into video. Max suggests tying minimum wage to money supply (that’s how bankers are paid!)
http://maxkeiser.com/2013/03/07/breakingtheset-max-keiser-on-bitcoin-hugo-chavez-myths-latin-american-socialism/
Yoink:
http://www.vice.com/read/the-history-of-scabby-the-rat
Yes, that Rat 😉
Turning Japanese
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10870285
so in Christchurch.
tail-end of an RNZ article on cancer treatment, along with Stress, Resentment is a significant etiological factor. (best to unload the sack on our back as we tramp through life; His yoke is Light
😉 )
Another one from Molly Crabapple:
http://www.vice.com/read/new-york-cops-will-arrest-you-for-carrying-condoms
/sigh
The US is on a slow slide back to absolutism.
Still Allies
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/world/asia/china-says-it-will-not-abandon-north-korea.html?_r=0
Interesting.
Not especially. If China doesn’t continue to prop it up, it will have to deal with the hot mess that result. Sounds like realpolitik to me.
Yep. And after all is said and done, North Korea is still a piece (albeit a rather risky, unreliable one) on China’s side of the playing board.
http://tvnz.co.nz/politics-news/marriage-equality-bill-loses-public-support-says-colin-craig-5364683
And this is what National’s possibly looking at going into a coalition with? Ye gads, it’s almost enough to make me want to keep ACT’s undead corpse around. Notice too, how he conveniently doesn’t cite any polling evidence.
Well, he has a point. If you take “public support is shifting towards a traditional view of marriage” to mean “by lying to people about the current law and scaremongering about issues that don’t exist and also lying about the process being followed, we’ve created a lot of confusion and then carefully worded our polling questions so they almost get the answers we want”. Craig’s just being more concise, is all.
Oh yeah, forgot about this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/06/el-salvador-iraq-police-squads-washington
/shudder
TV One News has just announced Joyce has committed to fixing Novopay within three months. An education sector person was hailing it on the news on tele as great to hear and that it was about time. But that’s not what Joyce said. He did say that he wanted as much done as possible to fix things within three months. That’s very different. In fact, does this mean that Joyce accepts not as much as possible was done over the past few months? Probably, but people need to listen to these slippery characters. When the three months is up and nothing’s been done Joyce will simply say that he did not give a commitment to fix Novopay within three months, and he’ll be right.
Joyce can’t promise anything except behind the scenes bullying.
A guaranteed fix is returning to the working Datacom system these clowns know SFA about the actual detailed technical and process issues.
Of course it buys Joyce time and by that time the heat will have gone out and maybe the population will be bored by the story. Trust Mr Joyce? Sure can.
Sure, but hope the teachers see how disingenuous his remarks are.
Ok not seeing any 500 errors for valid pages apart from at the wp-admin side looking at edit-comment pages. That looks like a simple timeout issue.
Should have fixed the time limit.
Native Affairs was on tonight (Maori TV) and featured an interview with David Shearer. I didn’t see it, because – not for the first time – it was poorly publicised. Some reaction here …
https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=%23NativeAffairs&src=hash
I never know whether Labour’s media reticence is deliberate strategy or just incompetence. Is it so hard to use social media and other outlets to say: “Today the leader will be on bFM, Maori TV, etc (as happened today). Why not issue a bulletin every day, announcing the day ahead? Too simple?
I learn far more from Google and Twitter than I ever do from the people who are PAID to publicise their party, their polcies, and their people. What on earth do they do all day?
Note to self … it helps if you can read the date on the thread. Sorry.
(insert “embarrassed” smiley here)