i arrived by the backdoor, my usual method gets me to ‘the page’, but, clicking on nything after the ‘Google’ has put ‘the Standard page’ up simply creates a blank white screen,
The backdoor, Google up a comment that is specific to your username,(you might be able to use any username), this brings up an old page of ie: ‘Open Mike’,
Click on the ‘comments rss’ icon at the top right of the page,
This takes you to a strange looking page with a series of comments that are obviously from the Standard,
Click on the comment with the closest date to today and hey presto you land here…
vto: just another boy who believes his hurt feelings take priority over sexual violence.
All the things we say about men, all the ways we use the word ‘man’, all the things we expect boys to do to become men, all the roles and norms we arrange for men – all of this is what ‘being a man’ is about.
Why? That is a complex and intensely personal question. The violence takes psychological and verbal form, rarely physical. It is these other two forms which cause more damage though imo. How to stop it without leaving? Dunno.
If the ‘pattern’ of the relationship is set and has been so over a long period then ‘leaving’ i would suggest is pretty much the only option,
Obviously, depending upon the level that ‘the relationship’ can be discussed leaving with a codicil of what changes need be made,(from both perspectives), might allow it to continue after a cooling down period…
Just firstly, a little nit pick. If it is psychological/verbal abuse then it isn’t “violence” because violence refers to a physical act of abuse.
Secondly, your situation sucks. There are no two ways about it. To me (because I’ve been there as well), there are a couple of ways of dealing with it and one of them isn’t actually airing it in a public forum during a discussion of physical violence towards women because it gets you either branded as disingenuous or attempting to distract from the discussion at hand.
The statement of “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them” typifies this situation because, despite the emotional suffering, your physical safety seems to still be intact. No woman has that luxury.
despite the emotional suffering, your physical safety seems to still be intact.
Which misstates the issue horribly. After all what is the difference between breaking a leg skiing and having it broken because your partner threw you out the first floor window?
I’m confused at what conclusion you are trying to draw here RedLogix? I was merely stating that within the context of his relationship, vto seems to still (at least) be safe from physical abuse by his partner. I was then using that to point out that women are always under threat of physical abuse.
If the conclusion you were trying to draw was that his suffering within his relationship is somehow equatable to domestic violence victims, then I have to beg to disagree because often they are also being subjected to the same emotional/psychological abuse that he claims to suffer as well as wearing their partners fist upon their face.
Many domestic violence/abuse help centers don’t make the distinction between physical and psychological abuse that is being made here. For example, North Harbour Living Without Violence includes verbal abuse, the use of social isolation, humiliation, name calling and other forms of emotional abuse under the rubric of Domestic Violence.
So we agree that the emotional trauma is the core of the matter. So how does it help vto to be told that ‘at least his physical safety is intact’. That isn’t what is important to him.
Instead I read it as an indirect way of minimising the situation.
Isn’t that bit of a ‘Godwin’ tho,”One of them isn’t actually airing it in a public forum during a discussion of physical violence toward women etc”
Why shouldn’t He air what He sees as violence, albeit verbal/psychological violence, in an open forum,
Are you afraid that the other side of the equation will paint women in a less than glowing light,
Simply trying to erase verbal/psychological violence from the conversation is to say the least extremely unhelpful as such violence, the verbal/psychological type, is often the precursor to physical violence,
In the complex mix of the causes of violence,(setting aside for the moment sexual violence), verbal/psychological violence can be shown to lead to physical violence committed by either the male or the female in a relationship…
@NZ Femme – fair enough. Also, thank you for providing that important information.
If I’m to be honest, my issue with vto’s posts is that they are single one liners along the lines of “men suffer abuse too” using himself as an example. I think everyone is on the same page that no-one should suffer abuse of any kind in our society.
Maybe I am bringing a little too much baggage to this conversation because I have been dealing a lot with diversionary tactics in social media over the last few days from people using the “men suffer too” line in order to derail legitimate conversation about the gender violence that overwhelmingly affects women. Often these people make arguments based on a belief that there are no services available for men (despite all government run services being 100% available to all) and feel that the services like Womens Refuge should be open to men as well. This is without them knowing that they were created out of a need by the community and are only partly funded by our government.
I will add this on here because I feel it is accurate, will be interesting to see what people say. These cries of “men suffer too” feel similar to cries of “reverse racism” or “misandry” and an attempt to deflect the discussion from the important issue of what the hell are we going to do about a country full of men who can’t keep their fists to themselves.
Zorr, that’s rather weak do you not think, ”A tongue can cut but fists can kill”, what you are doing is concentrating upon the end result of what may well have started long ago as a verbally/psychologically abusive relationship while ignoring the genesis of such violence…
@bad12 – I should have probably made it more bland so it didn’t come off silly. The point I was trying to make is that we are all responsible for our actions. No matter the provocation, violence should never be an answer.
As horrible as emotional/psychological abuse is (and I have come from that place having been raised in such a household), it is still no excuse (in my mind) for raising your fists against someone.
I understand your point around diversionary/distraction tactics Zorr; I hesitated to post for that reason. And I’ve had my own issues with VTO previously during the roast busters blow up here – before VTO disclosed that he was in what sounds like a toxic/abusive domestic situation a wee while ago.
So…I erred on the side of caution today, and am taking VTO’s disclosures as truthful. While the one-liners could be read as distraction/diversionary tactics because of the current context, I’m more inclined (now) to view them as coming/lashing out from a place of pain. I think it’s possible to acknowledge the pain of male victims of DV/abuse, and simultaneously acknowledge the horrific statistics for DV and sexual violence against women.
I’m also in the slightly weird situation of having previously experienced DV from a female partner that culminated over a period of six years and ultimately had me physically fearing for my life. So, I guess there’s also a part of me that gets the “but what about me?” stuff that seems to explode whenever we try and discuss one (very large and horrible) gendered experience of DV from the male perp/female victim spectrum. I absolutely understand and agree with needing to prioritize. I just wish there was some way of doing that which doesn’t result in minimzing the effects of DV on other groups.
I had not been aware of any previous disclosures by vto and have only seen them usually post things that I view as diversionary when taken in the context of an active political blog. With that additional information, it makes it less so and I wouldn’t have been so quick to fire my mouth. I’ve never been good at keeping my mouth shut though and dealing with the male privilege/rape culture discussion has begun rubbing raw as I’m constantly having to rehash ground with people I had thought should know better. Deconstructing #notallmen because people are wrong on the internet is possibly one of the things that has contributed to a short fuse on this issue…
My personal opinion (on this specific issue) is that domestic violence is never acceptable no matter who is involved and in what role. My favorite comment regarding humans is that we are rationalizing creatures, not rational ones. We are emotional actors and sometimes we cannot control our behaviors and actions in the ways we wish. However, if we don’t hold ourselves accountable for our actions, then who? The worst thing we can do with domestic violence is continue to sweep the pieces under the carpet and the least we can do is apologize to the victims.
Thanks for all the considered responses. It was a genuine question to vto. Puddleglum expressed it so clearly, that ‘being a man’ is a social construct that has multiple, overlapping and often mutually exclusive meanings.
All grown up. Emotionally mature? I shudder to realise that women have to see us as threats. McCully ‘did a McCully’. So do most of us.
I don’t know where in NZ you are VTO, but North Harbour Living Without Violence are an organization that can work with men experiencing domestic violence. They don’t have specific programs for male victims/survivors but from what I understand, can work one on one.
Noted NZ femme thanks. It is real, and damaging. You seem very astute in this area.
(had to bow out of the rest of that conversation – too close to the bone)
Yes it’s real and damaging – also very confusing. Abusers of all stripes are very good at keeping their target off balance. Love alternating with awful and harmful actions. I think many people experiencing abuse in a relationship find it difficult to leave for that reason. (I know I did) At some point, we’re faced with the reality that the love that (may) still remain is out-weighed by the harm experienced to our psyches. I wish you well vto. Don’t be afraid to seek help, or leave – there is still joy to be had – as unlikely as that may seem.
Lolz North, it helps if you havn’t got a clue what your doing,(my Ha Ha Ha of the day was when i thought of Googling up an old Standard comment of mine to try and get in through the backdoor, Lo and behold, there’s a whole page of 🙄 PG, i think on His own website, whining like a beaten dog about comments i had made to Him, as if anyone were interested)…
will echo that as well! 🙂
Seems a lot quicker as well. Thought about you dealing with the issues (what ever they were) yesterday lprent – many many thanks.
Note: the ‘right side’ of the Standard is now showing everything except the feed which links to other sites like the daily blog,
When posting a comment, the comment is appearing in the correct position,but after posting the comment i am being sent back to the blank page,(a true reflection of the inner workings of my mind?),
Access back is being gained from ”most visited” in my tool-bar…
try pressing CTRL+F5 a couple if times. this will refresh the browser cache. you could also try opening a windows command prompt (if you are on windows) and typing:
ipconfig /flushdns
I think some part of the site might have been moved yesterday and so your computers DNS cache might be looking in the wrong place. Although it should have sorted itself out by now.
Thanks for that Andrew, i much prefer the ”should have sorted itself out by now” method of trouble shooting, i find that this method doesn’t get me into so much trouble,
i well remember the great fun i had when i first used one of these things,(laptop), connected via Teleconned wireless aircard and being one of those who have the habit of diving in without reading the instructions first i threw in the floppy disk and proceeded to connect myself to the web,
i kicked myself later for not writing down a copy of all the steps this connection took via my new found skill as an ungenius, But, the Teleconned tech bloke assured me that my efforts had cooked the innards of the nearest cell tower,(as He begged me to stop and follow the precise instructions He gave)…
..partial-nationalise all of them..!..(kiwibank excepted..)
No, just stop them creating money and then have the government create it and make 0% interest loans. That would sort out our banking situation and make NZ far better off than what we are under the present system.
Profit is theft is that what you are saying?
The 26,000 highly paid staff and anyone in kiwi saver sharing in that profit might disagree,
so would millions of Kiwis who don’t want to lose their deposits.
So, is that the sum total of learning’s you garnered from this university education Phillip, or can we expect a gush, splash, or, spray of pearls of wisdom in such a vein,
Seriously tho, Rattus behavior is usually more deep seated in the psyche than a mere web-site outage is likely to expose…
You two are comedy geniuses phillip. It’s a bit like Laurel and Hardy type though where the slapstick got a bit physical and one was quite sick. One of them put a light globe in the other’s mouth and slapped his cheeks sharply. Luckily you two are apart and the carry-on can always be ignored phillip. It’s the only way with such a mentality.
Espiner fails to hold National cabinet members to account for not fronting to discuss important issues
Wednesday… Bennett…inequality
Thursday ….McCully…..Tania Billingsley statement.
By comparison Campbell Live make pointed comments about Parata not fronting to discuss Education policy on Monday.
Our undemocratic government is being facilitated by a public broadcaster which appears to have fallen into rogue hands.
Espiner is a total disgrace.
The appointment team are at fault primarily. They knew what they were choosing. I fear that we will see little change in Guy Le Spinner. But he did apologise the other day for making a second thrust across a comment or explanation, with a repeated question that was probably quite good. It sounded then more of a searching interview for a time, rather than a bombastic rant by some autocratic school principal.
On May 18 Australia had mass protests across the country. Friends of mine (in Perth even) only let me know now with a facebook link – and no I’m not going to promote facebook. The only thing I found in the MSM is this http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/18/tens-of-thousands-across-the-country-march-in-in-protest mmmmmmm. So big ups to our cousins across the ditch. So silly question, did people know about this? One hundred and eighty thousand people hit the streets and the media ignore it – a serious push back – and a serious issue ignored.
Meanwhile who hear knows that the last few days of Israeli bombardment (including air strikes and naval shelling FFS) has now killed and injured over 400 Palestinian civilians?
You heard about the Neo-Nazi killings in the Ukraine CV? Have a link to video – but I don’t think I want to put up – I don’t think it is appropriate to just put up for anyone to view. These are par-military groups aligned and train by the Ukraine army. Most of it is happening in the ethnically Russian parts of Ukraine. I threw up after 20 minutes in, and had to stop watching – I read the accompanying report. A Ukrainian friend I talk to in another forum said it gets worse after I stopped watching. They sat through all the footage, and helped edit it – they are now in hiding. Both side don’t want to it to get out they are targeting civilian’s. So yeah Palestine is a mess, Syria is a Mess and now Ukraine is a bloody mess as well. I think the old saying applies – we are descending to hell in a hand basket…
We in the west are the most propagandized people on the planet – usually through what we are not shown, what we are not made aware of, and perspectives that we never hear.
Every so often on telly they play some recent Chinese movies with subtitles – usually medieval/fantasy, visually impressive with bold colours, casts of thousands, occasionally lots of wire work…
The subtexts seem to almost exclusively revolve around the desirability of stable society and the hero’s duty to sacrifice their own interests for the greater good. Sometimes I find them downright disturbing.
I suppose you mean the Odessa Trade Union Building fire – which, as I recall, while the Pro-Ukraine protestors were in the wrong for throwing molotov cocktails (you remember, same as the “harmless” ones that Tame Iti and friends were partly charged over in 2007), having, I might add, been fired upon by the Pro-Russian faction first, the deaths among the Pro-Russian mob was largely because the barricated themselves in the top floors of the building and refused to leave.
This RT bullshit kneejerk calling the Pro-Ukraine element neo-Nazi is moronic. The far-right element is at best a minority of a coalition government (sort of like Internet-Mana will hopefully be following the election) and if they really were being massively funded by some secret US-EU cabal, one would like to think they would have managed a bit more influence than the Agricultural Ministry. It’s actually pretty insultig to suggest that the Pro-Ukraine faction have no legitimate agency after a generation of self-rule. That’s basically ignoring that on the one hand closer relations with the EU opens up the possibility of access to wealthy foreign markets, better employment prospects and increased social liberalisation, whereas closer ties with Russia, is a collapsing economy, and, well, Tsar Putin. You would have to be utterly stupid not to see that most Ukrainians wouldn’t particularly need much arm twisting.
This is a Ukraine activists filming the action of their own. They are not pro-Russian. And a minority who is killing civilian’s your going to compare with internet/Mana what sort of wanker are you Populuxe1? If you can justify that position in your head – sorry for you. No your proof that, neo-liberalism is so desperate to justify it debasement of humanity it would rather lie, lie, lie, to push it’s agenda. So for you Populuxe1 a few neo-nazis killing a few Russian and Ukrainians civilians’ is OK. As long as Ukraine becomes part of EU and they have western type freedom?
I see. So the Kalishnikovs just magically materialised out of the downstairs cupboard? Dear me. So tell me, Adam, if you had a choice, where would you rather live? Russia or the EU?
And if National was basically being puppeted by a foreign power behind a populist mandate and ineffectual democracy,with no real change in sight, while Key was stealing vast ammounts of public money to build a privat palace and zoo, you might get a little cross, no? smiling even more sweetly
NZ media is owned by large Australian corporates.
They don’t want us to know about this.
It’ll get in the way of their planned carve up of the country.
If you look closely, you’ll see that in fact the website is divided up into sections. It’s probably a mistake to look for NEWS in the ENTERTAINMENT section.
The ‘ownership’ of New Zealand’s media goes far further than Australia, various arms of ‘International Capital’ have large stakes in our media and thus the power to impose ‘editorial control’,
i suspect, with no actual hard evidence, that John Campbell was smart enough to wrestle from Media Works,(apparently just out of insolvency),a contract that gives Him editorial independence from the other arms of that particular mouth-piece promoting the views of International Capital…
National Nominees Limited 23.1%
Independent News & Media (Australia) Limited 17.6%
Citicorp Nominees Pty Limited 11.7%
News & Media NZ Limited 11.3%
JP Morgan Nominees Australia Limited 8.7%
Some detail on some of these shareholders.
The Irish company Independent News & Media has a large stake in the company. Two of INM’s largest shareholders are Irish businessman Denis O’Brien and financier Dermot Desmond. Dermot Desmond is an Irish businessman, financier and tax exile. He is estimated to be worth €1.35 billion and is ranked by the Sunday Independent as the seventh-richest person in Ireland.
Citicorp Nominees Pty Ltd was incorporated in 1970 and is based in Sydney, Australia. Citicorp Nominees Pty Ltd operates as a subsidiary of Citigroup Pty Limited.This is a foreign-owned subsidiary bank of Citigroup. Citigroup Inc. or Citi is an American multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Manhattan, New York City. Citigroup was formed from one of the world’s largest mergers in history by combining the banking giant Citicorp and financial conglomerate Travelers Group in October 1998 (announced on April 7, 1998).Citi is currently the third largest bank holding company in the United States by assets. Its largest shareholders include funds from the Middle East and Singapore.
JP Morgan Chase & Co. is an American multinational banking and financial services holding company. It is the largest bank in the United States, with total assets of US$2.515 trillion. It is a major provider of financial services, and according to Forbes magazine is the world’s third largest public company based on a composite ranking.
A great quote from Adam Brandt (Green Party, Victoria) in that Guardian piece, to which every politician counting themselves as on the left should take heed; “It takes guts and courage to stand up to the powerful and wealthy but a coward to take an axe to the young, the sick and the poor,”
Very true. It makes me sick when politicians talk about having the courage to take the hard decisions, then make another attack on the poor and disadvantaged. Both NAct and Labour suffer from this. The raising of the retirement age is evidence that Labour can only take easy decisions, as demanded by capital.
Have we reached saturation point, sport being the ‘opium of the masses’ perhaps us that are now bored with it all,(even the the super14 thugby has me yawning these days), are the precursors to a mass OD as far as televised sport goes,
Televised sport, the perfect replacement for that older opium of religion, allows the masters to control the conversations that occur in the smoko rooms across the nation on a daily basis…
I think the penalty shoot out system should be abolished the way it is done now and instead, after full time the game should continue in increments of 10 minutes with one less player on each side during each of those 10 minute periods. What do you think?
The game will look like this :
First half, 40 minutes, goalie+10 players [Subs allowed as per existing rules]
Second half, Swap sides, 40 mins, goalie+10 players.
If draw, then…extra time…
Period one : 9 minutes, goalie+9 players
Period Two, Swap sides : 9 minutes, goalie+9 players
If draw, then…extra time….
Period one : 8 minutes, goalie+8 players
Period Two, Swap sides : 8 minutes, goalie+8 players
If draw, then…extra time….
Period one : 7 minutes, goalie+7 players
Period Two, Swap sides : 7 minutes, goalie+7 players
If draw, then…extra time….
Period one : 6 minutes, goalie+6 players
Period Two, Swap sides : 6 minutes, goalie+6 players
If draw, then…extra time….
Period one : 5 minutes, goalie+5 players
Period Two, Swap sides : 5 minutes, goalie+5 players
If still draw, ONLY THEN do the penalty shoot out.
Someone I know has suggested that both extra time and the penalty shoot out could be replaced by a six-a-side half-hour, which seems to follow a similar line of thought. It would be very dramatic, to see all the defenders apart from the goalies leaving the field, but it would not burden individual players so heavily.
The penalty shoot out as used now is too drastic and too unfair a method of deciding which is a superior side. Often, the penalty save is not much of a skill display but a matter of luck, more often depending upon which side the goalie decides to move to!
‘I think the penalty shoot out system should be abolished the way it is done now and instead, after full time, the game should continue in reduced time and reduced player numbers as shown below.’
It would make the game more exciting and fairer, I think. What do you think?
Yes, your idea too would have its drama, and would allow room for strategies as to the order in which the players would leave the field. I agree that the penalty shoot out is both drastic and unfair, and doesn’t reliably reflect the strengths of the two sides. Not so much in agreement with you about the luck of goalies though. I have seen some dazzling saves in this world cup, and think that goalies are often the unsung heroes.
Of course goalies do great. I am not at all putting them down about their abilities during the normal course of the game, except to say that during a penalty shoot out, there is an element of chance/intuition/luck involved as to which way the goalie moves, no matter how good a goalie one is. That is the nature of the penalty shoot out, not a negative reflection on the goalie as such.
There is then the boring possibility of the team with the initial shoot out ‘win’ playing a completely defensive ‘win’-protecting-game to preserve their advantage. For that reason alone I would not support your suggestion.
Besides, the shoot out losing team and their goalie in particular would be starting their ‘real’ game in a state of shame, fear, anxiety and be somewhat demoralized to give off their best from then on.
That is an interesting idea worthy of debate and consideration, but I don’t like it too much because a game without a goalie does not seem right,…….(unless the goals are kicked high ‘above’ the goal bar somewhat like that bastardisation of soccer, the game of rugby!..lol..A joke!)
Way back when, corners awarded used to be used to differentiate in the case of a draw. I guess the rationale was that corners indicated more attacking play. Anyway, that was dumped many years back and extra time was introduced. And at the end of extra time, if the game was still drawn, play continued until either side scored a goal. Dunno why they dumped that. Far better than the lottery of penalty kicks.
I was very pleased to notice the self-checkout machine at New World greeting me with a cherry “Kia ora” yesterday. Hopefully it’s a permanent thing rather than just being in anticipation of Maori Language Week.
Hmmm, my view is that the machine should have greeted you with ‘tena koe’ and cheerily given you the ‘kia ora’ after having swallowed your hard earned coin…
And my view is that you should have smashed the machine and demanded to be served by a human. I prefer my money goes in part to keeping my neighbours in employment.
Like jobs servants used to do in middle and upperclass households? With today’s domestic technologies, most of those jobs are now done by household members, or one or two servants in place of the whole team of servants some households use to have.
I said “we”. And by that I don’t mean political parties – or at least not on their own.
Politicians will only work to change things if we pressure them to. Trying to pressure businesses to change their system and MOs really won’t end them putting profits before people.
We wash our dishes by hand and use a clothes line – many use technology but I’d ask why? Save time? For what? Save money? Nah. It actually is fun to wash and dry the dishes imo you get to practice the tea towel flick for instance, the dryer can race the washer and enjoy putting back an unsatisfactory wash – it is what my brothers and I did growing up and it is what I want to bring into our family. Some may argue that there are better things to be doing but interacting with others in relative happiness is up there in my book – the same for checkout workers too – especially if they have the inclination. Too often nowdays they work longer hours and don’t have the time to take 20 or 30 seconds to say gidday and smile – luckily in the bay we haven’t got to that point yet.
Dishwashers are late to the game. I wash dishes by hand, too.
Until I was about 15 or 16, my mother used to do the washing for the family without a washing machine. That involved boiling up a copper, scrubbing really dirty stuff like rugby outfits, and turning a handle of the wringer.
She also used to make clothes and knit, organise to get the grocery shopping without a car, arrange for food to be fresh without a fridge, cooked food without any of the mod cons many expect to use today. Housework was a very time-consuming and energy-sapping activity. And this was when middleclass families no longer had servants as a general practice.
In past times households also coped without flush toilets or water on tap…. technologies keep being developed. Life adapts.
What needs to change, is that all people should have a living income, and jobs and enterprises need to more more focused on serving society, rather than generating profits for the (usually already) wealthy.
We wash our dishes by hand and use a clothes line – many use technology but I’d ask why? Save time? For what? Save money? Nah. It actually is fun to wash and dry the dishes imo you get to practice the tea towel flick for instance, the dryer can race the washer and enjoy putting back an unsatisfactory wash – it is what my brothers and I did growing up and it is what I want to bring into our family. Some may argue that there are better things to be doing but interacting with others in relative happiness is up there in my book – the same for checkout workers too – especially if they have the inclination. Too often nowdays they work longer hours and don’t have the time to take 20 or 30 seconds to say gidday and smile – luckily in the bay we haven’t got to that point yet.
I’m of the opinion that we’ve got better things for those people to do than sit at checkouts. Of course, our privatised system only sees those people as an expense rather than an asset that needs to be supported and cared for and thus won’t do anything to get those people doing those more important jobs.
The point i would have eventually got around to in my discussion below Draco, first we need alter the tax system so that everyone is receiving the minimum,(preferably the living), wage,
After that society can find lots of ‘work’ for people to take up, monitoring the farming industry will become a necessity in the future, just to think of one,
Workplace safety inspectors by the 100’s to think of another, the list is endless…
Yep. The problem is the competitive, private business, profit system. A better system of one that results in providing jobs beneficial to society. And we also should be working towards a shorter working week – 6 hours per day/5 days a week per person, as a first goal for fulltime workers.
But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!
And you TRP have ‘smashed’ how many of these machines so far???, smashing said machnes would seem to be the perfect ‘make-work’ scheme for the plods, the judicial system, and the 1000’s of lazy sods currently employed as key janglers in the prison system,
Far from smashing the machines, would you not be better off advocating for ‘true equality’ in the vein of paying all those reliant upon the benefit system the ‘living wage’…
“Far from smashing the machines, would you not be better off advocating for ‘true equality’ in the vein of paying all those reliant upon the benefit system the ‘living wage’…”
What’s the cause of the laughter TRP, modernization of people bases systems such as the check-out operation of a supermarket are always going to leave a lag between old jobs and new jobs being created,
Your laughter instead of an actual answer to the question is suggestive of you having no belief in equality what-so-ever,
You would prefer to strike a ‘pose’ as evidenced by your absurd ”smash the machines” than pay the workers made redundant a living wage,
Arnie came across as the brainless wonder in the series of movies, your comments are beginning to portray the same…
Thanks for that TPR, it reads like the forward to ”The idiots guide to structural poverty”,
i could ask you the same about the word poverty TRP, while you continue on your blind little tiptoe down the path of ”work will set you free” you are simply a supporter and applauder of the current situation of structural poverty,
With Labour as the lead member of a coalition we will never have across the board a living wage for all workers, why don’t you try honesty for once,
What are the unemployed other than workers kept deliberately out of work…
Thank you TRP, in a word, as deserving of it as that ‘wing-nut’ below, Bullshit,
i have at this time of night better things to do with my time than play either Tic Tac Toe or dance on the head of a pin with one of the Standards resident experts in both forms,
Your whole focus of debate is to continually run away from what you publish spreading bullshit as you go…
I’m not running away from anything, Bad, but feel free to scarper if you must. I’m sure nobody will feel any less of you for bottling out of your own lost argument.
Don’t be simple McFlock I said everyone I know that wants to work finds a job within a few months. People do loose their jobs from time to time often through no fault of their own. Yes my friends and many others who want to work all found jobs within a few months. A few people that are not friends of mine and don’t want to work are as you would expect still unemployed.
you missed the point – if everyone got work they wanted, none of your friends would be unemployed for weeks, let alone months. Unless your friends wanted to loaf around dong nothing for months on end, collecting the dole. Mybe they were familiar enough with you to pretend they were looking and just couldn’t find anything.
They still would have been in the tens of thousands of unemployed that quarter.
you missed the point – if everyone got work they wanted, none of your friends would be unemployed for weeks, let alone months. Unless your friends wanted to loaf around dong nothing for months on end, collecting the dole. Mybe they were familiar enough with you to pretend they were looking and just couldn’t find anything.
They still would have been in the tens of thousands of unemployed that quarter.
That’s it exactly and why the rich have been getting all the gains from increased productivity for the last thirty years. Why we have increasing inequality.
“Our economy is based on having a permanent 5-7% unemployed. Any more leads to riots, any less leads to pay rises.”
I have been an employer in the past and when the business grew I needed more staff, I approached staff from another company and offered them more money than they were getting. It was no problem to pay good staff a premium wage, many companies do it. That might not apply to unskilled staff who tend to get replaced by machines.
Naki man was talking about his ethics in poaching staff from another company, who apparently willingly quit to go work for an arsehole for an extra $1/hr
Well said TRP. When we go to the supermarket and some nice lady “invites” us to use these machines we always refuse., and I always say to them “I will not use that thing as I am trying to preserve a rare thing called your employment.”(a bit of a Tollpuddle martyr in me”)
The sad bit is, they really don’t get the point I am trying to make.
”The sad bit is, they really don’t get the point I am trying to make”, said the condescending middle class to the poor uneducated peasants,
How the fuck would you know if they get the point or not, the people employed there are ‘watched’, they’re paid to do exactly what they do, not engage in bagging their employers to any dick that wanders in who for all they know might be the managers cousin…
True halfcrown, me too – I did use the airport one the other day although i didn’t have a bag or my code number – the machine and lovely person helping was able to find my code from my licence which was a little freaky. The one that also gets me is laptops – I remember when they came in oh the extra free time we would all have – now they are used at night, on weekends, at the beach, on the plane! Biggest have those laptops – just increased work not decreased it lol.
I’m more in agreement with bad. I use the self serve checkout machines – and am usually one who keeps the supervisor busy – especially at pak n save where it’s necessary to get a staff member approval to use your own bag. In any Auckland supermarket we need to ask a staff member, at both self-service and operator checkouts. to provide us with council rubbish bags – we aren’t allowed to get them off shelves ourselves.
The machines free up humans to do other work. Remember, barcode scanners at checkouts, saved operators time, meaning less staff needed, and ultimately, less customers for small independent supermarkets. That’s the way with technological change. If it means fewer jobs, then we need to focus more on a living wage for all, and getting people doing jobs that can be most easily done by humans- jobs that are useful and valuable to society.
Also, I’ve never really seen more/longer queues at self-checkouts than operator checkouts. Often the self-checkout moves more quickly because there are several machines for one queue.
especially at pak n save where it’s necessary to get a staff member approval to use your own bag.
Never had that happen to me.
In any Auckland supermarket we need to ask a staff member, at both self-service and operator checkouts. to provide us with council rubbish bags – we aren’t allowed to get them off shelves ourselves.
That really pisses me off but I suppose that an increasing number of people were stealing the in this rockstar economy where only the rich get better off.
and getting people doing jobs that can be most easily done by humans- jobs that are useful and valuable to society.
Well, getting the people freed up from doing jobs that machines can do to doing jobs that machines can’t. Jobs such as R&D, art, health care etc.
Where I live we have one supermarket and no self serve option but I’ve lived in the cities and i can pack my own reusable bag or use bags/boxes when necessary but i refuse to put the stuff through myself – I just cannot support that practice it really seems obviously like providing evidence why a job isn’t needed when I really think it is needed and less dropping of humans for profit is what is not needed.
Not exactly worthless but not worth a hell of a lot and there really is more important work that needs doing.
It’s actually Real Economics rather than the delusional monetary BS we normally hear about. We free up people from some work so that they can do other work that the society finds worthwhile. It’s how I know that NZ can afford a space program with tens of thousands of people involved in it.
I think the person should find the work worthwhile not just that society considers it worthwhile – otherwise we are back at the same point we are today. ‘Worthwhile’ is pretty subjective too and more important things to do – well important to whom. Anyway apart from the space race i agree with you mostly – I’d get people planting and growing food everywhere so others can eat it for free that is important and worthwhile imo.
i have to ask each time for rolly papers, and, have to admit i, after an initial ”fucking machines” response, quite enjoy the do it yourself nature of checking out my weekly shopping), specially at Pak’n’Slave where i used to end up having to bag it myself anyway,
Lolz i haven’t used Council rubbish bags for years, between my recycle bin and my garden, along with putting the shopping bags to a second use by,(deleted), i have no need of them,
The moot, often aired here at the Standard, and by plenty of politicians, of inequality is pretty much kneecapped by the majority of those, in my opinion, discussing this not doing so from the position of wanting real equality,
It would seem, and again this is my opinion, that the majority either want slightly less inequality, or, simply play lip service to such an ideal…
I got use to bagging my own groceries in England – it was the way things were done there in the 70s-90s, in the pre-barcode days. When I came back here, at first I got quite irritated at the quaint way supermarkets preferred to bag my shopping for me, – and irritated that, until the last couple of years, they were resistant to me bringing my own re-cycled shopping bags.
It saves me time at the checkout to bag it myself, and I have my own ways of packing the bags – designed to making the unpacking and putting away process easier at the other end.
It is a beat up. Here is the official text from the policy:
“Labour will allow the Law Commission to complete its review on alternative trial mechanisms, including the establishment of a specialist sexual violence court and consider reforms that provide real justice to survivors while protecting the right to be presumed innocent, including: cross examination rules, alternative trial processes, establishment of sexual violence support, specialist training including on the dynamics of violence, support services during justice processes, and changes to the definition of consent.”
IS is relying on a press release. The language is less elegant. The official text of the policy is what should be referred to and relied on.
He is not relying on a press release. This is what Andrew Little said. I heard it:
“”The Crown has to prove more than just sex; the issue of consent has to be raised by the Crown, they have to prove the identity of the offender. They would have to bear that burden of proof before a switch to the defence to prove consent,” Mr Little said.”
It’s not a precedent at all, Phil. The proposal is to use an inquisitive process (ie establish the agreed facts). That’s the way it’s done in a lot of countries already, France for one.
I agree, how is it that the left fear the GCSB and police surveillance and are quite happy to be guilty of rape until they are proven innocent. Is this why Cunners apologised for being a man.
I’ve been following this fairly closely. And I have to say, I think Little is doing a crappy job of speaking to the discussions/work/research that culminated in the Law Commissions inquiry, subsequently brushed aside by Collins.
A bit of background: in 2007, the Commission of Enquiry into Police Conduct Report by Margaret Bazley was released. Undertaken after the Louise Nicholas debacle, it led to a further investigation by the Law Commission into evidential law.
Following recommendations within that report, the Government set up a “Taskforce for Action on Sexual Violence”. Different specialist groups and Government Departments researched specific areas, resulting in a number of suggestions and recommendations, including that the Law Commission undertake an inquiry into alternative trial processes.
It’s important I think, to point out that the submission made during the Taskforce enquiry to reverse the burden of proof was not proposed, and was not further investigated by the following Law Commission enquiry.
” 94. This has not been proposed as an option because a review of the burden of proof would raise major Bill of Rights concerns, such as the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.” (from the above link)
Below is a link to the background and scope of the Law Commission’s enquiry into alternative trial procedures, and information on inquisitorial as opposed to adverserial trial procedures. It was to Simon Powers credit that the work begun years earlier, was continued under his watch in 2010. He was of the belief that an inquisatorial trial model would be more effective in sexual abuse cases, and possibly DV cases as well. (the jury is still out on that – the conviction rates are similar for both styles worldwide – but it is thought that the process is less brutal for victims/survivors)
The written policy is the correct one. Humans are error prone and tend to say the wrong thing while in interviews while meaning what the written policy says.
I am concerned that men could be an easy target. Its one persons word against another. If any women wanted to set up their ex for revenge or custody or any other reason it would be easy.
The reversal of the burden of proof is batshit crazy.
so you prefer women to be the “easy target” of one person’s word against another (with a rough rate of a quarter of all women), as opposed to a false reporting rate of the minority of cases that even get reported to the police.
Moot point, because the tory hype isn’t what Labour’spolicy is, but interesting where you want the suffering of innocents to lie.
xox
National Radio is on the skids. Going the way of TVNZ. The government have frozen funding and bought in yes men and women on the board to dumb it down. Nothing direct, just mates and toadies. Sad and disturbing.
xox
Attended an informative talk by Ecologist Mike Joy, who is currently on a national tour. I recommend it to Kiwis concerned about our water quality, natural environment and democracy. You can see the video from the Royal Society of NZ website, when get it on line. Shocking, disturbing and disgraceful.
Graham Bell, Wild Bull of the Whump-Ass, continues to run amok The Panel, Radio NZ National, Tuesday 1 July 2014
Jim Mora, Graham Bell, Denise L’Estrange-Corbet, Zara Potts
PART TWO OF TWO
After the four o’clock news, not much happens for a long time. There are the interminable reintroductions of each Panelist, which often mean it’s well after 4:15 before the first topic of the day is discussed. Today there’s not a lot to talk about—actually, there is a lot to talk about, but the producers have steered well away from anything substantial. There is, however, some superficial chat about depression….
JIM MORA: Uh, the Black Dog Project—there’s been reportage of this in Slate magaz— GRAHAM BELL: That reminds me. What’s black and looks good on a criminal? A Doberman. Ho ho ho ho ho! MORA: Graham that’s a terrible joke! I REFUSE to laugh at it.
The show drifts on, aimlessly and witlessly, until the 4:30 news. Then it’s time for the “Soapbox” segment. Remember, this is where the guests are expected to talk about something they have spent some time thinking about. Listeners might be forgiven, therefore, to expect something thoughtful, something serious, something interesting….
MORA: Denise L’Estrange-Corbet, what have you been thinking about? DENISE L’ESTRANGE-CORBET: Well I went to a restaurant the other night, and I was just so ANNOYED by all the people who were texting non-stop! I’m just wondering: do people not TALK any more? ….[continues ranting about texting for several minutes]….
To stop her, Mora interrupts and reads out some texts and emails about various frivolities raised during the preshow. Then it’s on to the thoughts of Dixon of Dock Green….
MORA: Okay, Graham Bell, what’s been on YOUR mind? GRAHAM BELL: I want to talk about Lucan Battison and his hair. The Battisons and the school should be ashamed of themselves. …That over-inflated CODSWALLOP that his lawyer spouted in court, comparing this case to Kate Sheppard and Martin Luther King. The only winners were the lawyers! The only LOSER is the kid himself. No employer will take him on. He’s the heir apparent to John Minto! MORA:[nervously] A lot of people think “good on him.” GRAHAM BELL:[snarling] I doubt it. Perhaps the Internet Mana Party can employ him! It’s CRAZY! DENISE L’ESTRANGE-CORBET: Ridiculous! Ridiculous! MORA: He said he was arguing for a principle. GRAHAM BELL: R-r-r-r-r-rubbish! Codswallop!
….[Extended awkward silence]….
MORA: Graham Bell and Denise L’Estrange-Corbet on the Panel! It’s ten minutes to five. I want to talk about Rolf Harris. GRAHAM BELL: Rolf Harris. I’ve always thought he was odd. REALLY odd! MORA: Really? GRAHAM BELL: Wobbling a saw and singing along with it. He’s a little bit unusual. MORA: Ummm… Stripped of his BAFTA and his CBE. DENISE L’ESTRANGE-CORBET: Good! Lock him up and throw away the key! He deserves NOTHING! He deserves NO SYMPATHY at all! MORA: We’re joined now by Dr. Ian Lambie from Auckland University. DR. IAN LAMBIE: Good afternoon Jim and listeners. MORA: Uh, it’s well known that celebrities are ego-driven and narcissistic. Why do people like this think they can get away with it? Why do they think they have this kind of invincibility? DR. IAN LAMBIE: They have a lot of money, a lot of power, a lot of prestige. Awards from the Queen. It takes an enormous amount of courage to speak out. GRAHAM BELL: It’s a hallmark of many sexual offenders that they would select their victims. Some sex offenders are capable of thinking right through to the trial. DENISE L’ESTRANGE-CORBET: They select them very carefully. MORA: There’s that level of malign strategy. The other thing is, Ian, that the times have been on trial haven’t they, the sixties and seventies, with Jimmy Savile, haven’t they. The times have been categorized and besmirched…. DENISE L’ESTRANGE-CORBET: I mean it surrounded Michael Jackson for years didn’t it. All sorts of different people coming forward and he’d just pay them off. And maybe people do think that if people come forward they’re just after the money. MORA: Thanks Ian. Actually, people in the seventies were just as moral as they are now. GRAHAM BELL: Oh absolutely. MORA: I mean, the times have been categorized and besmirched….
Somewhere during this borefest, Graham Bell had a go at smearing the dissident journalist Julian Assange. As always, Mora said nothing to contradict him. If somebody can track down his gouty rant, I would appreciate you transcribing it. I just can’t bear to wade through any more of it.
if bell were doing a comedy-routine..it could be (kinda) funny..in a reactionary-clown piss-take sorta way..
..but he isn’t..and it isn’t..
..but brilliant casting..!
..bell and corbet together…!..(i call her by her birth name..corbett..pre-affectation..)
..those two wd be neck and neck for thickest-panel-panellist-award..
..an antipodean-take on dumb and dumber…
(mora was grasping/struggling with their concerted-inanities..there was seperate humour to be had from that..)
..(one of the ‘circles of hell’..?..a dinner party lasting forever..with bell/corbet..and a brace of those other ignorant fuckwits they have on that panel..
..that obese beer-pusher..?..and all those other rightwing-arsewipes they trot out there too..?
The great pity, Phillip, is that when Bell is contradicted, he always folds like a pack of cards. Gordon Campbell gave him an on-air spanking a few years ago….
bell has stockholm syndrome.
he has been hanging round low lifes for so long now that he thinks like them.
i.e. fantasies of omnipotence and contempt for the rule of law.
Plods have long had a bit of a fetish about licensed premises, perhaps transference of what goes on in their home base watering holes.
Team Policing in the 80s/90s broke laws and heads with gay abandon and not just in ‘booze barns’ either. Keep the coppers out of law abiding citizens socialising please.
Top pub, Phil, if it’s the one I’m thinking of. Used to be a compulsory stop for my fellow workers after union stopwork meetings. Sometimes before them, too! I remember seeing a photo behind the bar of Jimmy Carter knocking back a beer there when he was here on a visit.
Carter must have done a pub crawl while here then TRP! because his photo was on the wall in the early opener (8am, name escapes me, had a back entrance through to bus depot) round the corner from Queen St on Quay St just down from the Seafarer’s union office.
Snake Pit was in the basement of the South Pacific Hotel near the old Post Office and where Britomart is now. Was rough, but fights were not compulsory.
Yep, that’s the one, felix. I also remember the Britomart being a good spot for a quiet one, but the Schooner had a vibe all of its own. The Prince Arthur was my favourite downtown drinker, though. A den of inequity; the rooms upstairs could tell a tale or two.
Have to admit it was “plod”, in the form of the wharf police, that saved us when our tiny Welsh engineer just had to pick a fight with the biggest Fijian in the bar.
tiny Welsh engineer just had to pick a fight with the biggest Fijian in the bar.
Amazing what beer does to some people. A few years back four of us walked into a Courtenay Place bar and some wee short -arse started to pick one with us within seconds of getting there.
Now I was twice his size and the other three with me made me look weedy. We just couldn’t believe he was doing this. His mates showed no sign of backing him. It was like brushing a humping dog off your leg to get rid of him.
Another very interesting excursion into the human/lizard brain.
Sounds like the South Pacific, as 17 year olds new to the big smoke it didn’t take us long to master the art of staying out of trouble – scarper for the corner to avoid the big boys fights, duck, preserve your drink at all costs and at the first inkling of the arrival of a team policing unit decamp with haste.
@joe90 6.17pm
I note the tram lines and overhead wires, and remember at the end of a route waiting on the slatted seats inside the tram while the driver climbed down to the street, hauled down one pole, fastened it, then raised the pole at the other end, climbed into the forward cabin and we were off again. A very different approach to public transport, visible, reliable and fairly frequent.
I saw a car like the small one in the middle of the photo the other day. People restore them lovingly.
You might be right greywarbler, but I took the photo to be the bottom of Queen St, Auckland, and the overhead wires were the trolley bus wires. I remember they didn’t remove the tram-lines for a long time after the replacement trolleys. Those drivers were much fitter than today’s bus drivers. It was impossible to make a trip into the city from the suburbs and back again without the wire contraption attached to the bus roof coming off the overhead wires usually several times a trip. The driver would jump out of the bus…run around to the front where he (always a he) would re-attach it then back round… up the stairs into his seat and off we’d go again. The game was to predict exactly where it would next happen. Kept us endlessly amused.
@Anne7.24
Thanks for that shared memory. I thought of trolley buses first and then thought that no they must have been trams, wrongly. It was the trams I particularly remembered, they were fun.
I enjoyed some years ago riding in the Melbourne ones when I was living there. And I did ride on John Britten’s ones in Chch and they have some part going again there I think. Going up the Kelburn cablecar in Wellington is a little like the old tram experience.
Nowadays I have decided to go regularly to talk to the afficionados at the train restoration and trundle trip down at the local park. These are good guys and women who have put in hours and done wonders with the old skills and knowledge. There is a charm about them and nostalgia that is a different feeling than the one I get while looking at the tall metal vehicles on big tyres that dwarf me which are the peculiar fashion in the dying days of personal vehicles.
I think it shows character when a politician admits a mistake, rather than doubling down or trying to let it slide. However, it should have been apparent to Harawira last week that cases alleging attempted rapes are big deals and trying to diminish the impact of such crimes is not a good thing.
Ok the site is fixed for the moment. It appears to have been a excessively complex set of SQL queries for the RSS Feeds on the mid-right of the site displaying information about posts from other sites. It appears to have been setting up a mutex deadlock condition under some conditions, triggered by one of the feeds from a union site.
Quite how that deadlock was triggered I still don’t know for sure. I’m going to have a look at the code over the weekend.
For the moment I have fixed it with much tighter timeouts on mutexes, shortening the idle timeouts on the connections to the database, and removing all of the union feeds until I figure out exactly which one was the issue.
What it did bring home to me was how many queries were hitting that database. Normal day to day operation was causing a several thousand queries a second all day – after many of them were forestalled by cached database results. So there is clearly some optimization that I’m going to have to put into some of the queries performed by some of the plugin code.
Sorry for having to fix this on the live site. However I couldn’t see the error happening at all on the test site, even after I piped the queries to it from the live site.
Alex from the daily telegraph decrying the unfortunate way that kinder, more socially responsible rules in the financial world don’t apply to all. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/alex/
The Panel is worse, more heartless and stupid than ever
Radio NZ National, Thursday 10 July 2014
Jim Mora, Ali Jones, Ellen Read, Julie Moffett
JULIE MOFFETT: The Israelis have an app. that predicts incoming rockets! ALI JONES: It’s AMAZING what you can do with a smart-phone now!
Judging by the assenting grunts of the others, not one of them saw anything bizarre about that. If these people had been on a vacuous radio chat show sixty years ago, no doubt they would have been impressed by measures taken by the concerned citizens of the Deep South to protect themselves from the Negro menace.
The depravity continued….
JULIE MOFFETT: Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia is removing the Confederate flag from its campus. I’m a bit mixed about that. JIM MORA: It’s historical, surely. It’s not as though they’re espousing the beliefs of the Confederacy. ELLEN READ: I’d keep it. MORA: What do you think, Ali? ALI JONES: I think I’d keep it.
I sent Jim a quick email before 4 o’clock…..
It’s the Palestinians that need the app that predicts rocket attacks
Dear Jim,
Surely it’s the Palestinian victims of Israel’s illegal attacks that need the app that predicts rocket attacks. So far, in the latest escalation of violence, Israel has killed more than fifty Palestinians—most of them civilians.
Not one Israeli has been killed or even injured.
Yet you and your Panelists pretend that it’s the Israelis that need this app.
Yours sincerely,
Morrissey Breen
Northcote Point
I’m pleased to announce that many others did too. He even read one remonstration out on air.
I dashed it down in disbelieving fury. I no doubt missed a few words here and there, but I got her vacant and amoral tone exactly right. Clearly I wasn’t the only listener to be upset by the callousness and the deliberate ignorance displayed by Moffett, Mora and the other two.
….and not actually what the Yo app does.
So what DOES it do? And more to the point: why were they pretending that Israelis need any app. to guard against rockets?
But other than that, up to your usual standards of accuracy, Moz.
It was accurate, if not word-perfect. Please provide a 100 per cent transcript to show if I have somehow misconstrued their brutal indifference to the deaths of scores of Palestinians.
I dashed it down in disbelieving fury. I no doubt missed a few words here and there, but I got her vacant and amoral tone exactly right. Clearly I wasn’t the only listener to be upset by the callousness and the deliberate ignorance displayed by Moffett, Mora and the other two.
….and not actually what the Yo app does.
So what DOES it do? And more to the point: why were they pretending that Israelis need any app. to guard against rockets?
But other than that, up to your usual standards of accuracy, Moz.
It was accurate, if not word-perfect. Please provide a 100 per cent transcript to show if I have somehow misconstrued their brutal indifference to the deaths of scores of Palestinians.
I dashed it down in disbelieving fury. I no doubt missed a few words here and there, but I got her vacant and amoral tone exactly right. Clearly I wasn’t the only listener to be upset by the callousness and the deliberate ignorance displayed by Moffett, Mora and the other two.
….and not actually what the Yo app does.
So what DOES it do? And more to the point: why were they pretending that Israelis need any app. to guard against rockets?
But other than that, up to your usual standards of accuracy, Moz.
It was accurate, if not word-perfect. Please provide a 100 per cent transcript to show if I have somehow misconstrued their brutal indifference to the deaths of scores of Palestinians.
No I like Jim’s programme except when he has Farrar on and then I switch off.
You are suggesting Farrar is worse than Stephen Franks, Neil Miller, Nevil Breivik Gibson, Julia Heartless Moore, Richard Griffin, Barry Corbett or any of the other mindlessly reflexive right wing drips that dominate this programme?
Otherwise its light, interesting educational entertainment.
the guy compares a half-arsed local tory propagandist with a hands-on mass murderer
It was not me but another writer who pointed out the similarity of Nevil Gibson’s and Anders Breivik’s thinking. It was after an insane editorial by Gibson in the NBR a couple of years ago, in which he asserted that all—i.e., every single one—of the world’s terrorists were Muslims. Even the Bush/Blair axis at its most dishonest never actually stated such an absurd lie. But Anders Breivik did. And so did Nevil Gibson.
Now I guess you will try to prove that Gibson’s words should not be held against him.
That answer point 2 for you?
Nothing wrong with light. There’s everything wrong with pretending you’re serious and then making a (feeble) joke out of nearly everything. For instance: any moral person would find something wrong with the idea of hooting with laughter at someone taking refuge from a vicious state vengeance campaign. But on The Panel it’s a source of never-ending hilarity….
“It was after an insane editorial by Gibson in the NBR a couple of years ago, in which he asserted that all—i.e., every single one—of the world’s terrorists were Muslims.”
Cite, Moz? Gibson may be regularly offensive, but he’s not an idiot. I’m picking the only person to have made that claim is actually you. Looking forward to being proven wrong, of course.
I’ve spent the last hour trawling through old NBR editorials by the great man, but I still haven’t found the one that started it all. I remember it had a few comments on it, with the most trenchant being the one comparing his rabid views to Breivik’s. I’ll track it down for you, though, and post it up as soon as I locate it.
Gibson may be regularly offensive, but he’s not an idiot.
I didn’t say he was an idiot. The old Maoist is irrational and dishonest, and possibly insane. But you’re right—he’s not an idiot, though he obviously treats the rest of us like we are.
I’m picking the only person to have made that claim is actually you.
You are wrong. I picked up on the Breivik comparison from a disgusted commenter on the NBR blog.
I wasn’t saying that you claimed he was an idiot. Rather that he’d be an idiot if he said it. And the ‘claim’ isn’t the Breivek comparison it’s the ‘all terrorists are muslim’. So far, it appears you’re the one saying that, not Gibson.
Anyhoo, good luck finding the non-existent quote. You could save some time by just admitting you exaggerated.
I’m picking the actual line you’ve distorted is this:
“But not all deaths in conflict are equal. Much of the world’s violence emanates from a single source – jihadist followers of the Islamic religion – and rarely does a news bulletin (at least on the BBC) pass without a bombing or people being killed somewhere in the name of martyrdom.”
I wasn’t saying that you claimed he was an idiot. Rather that he’d be an idiot if he said it.
He WROTE it in an “editorial” for his crummy business paper.
And the ‘claim’ isn’t the Breivek comparison it’s the ‘all terrorists are muslim’. So far, it appears you’re the one saying that, not Gibson.
No, he wrote it. Another reader picked him up on it, and compared him directly to Breivik. The comparison was apt, and I have used it ever since.
Your flippant, disrespectful attitude and your taunting does you no credit, Te Reo. Gibson said what I said he did; I did not make it up, and I did not distort anything.
I will find that moronic Breivikian editorial—unlike you, I do care about getting things right—and put it on this site. Not that that will satisfy you of course—I note you’re already putting up other irrelevant quotes and constructing an attack against me based on those.
I hope you do not conduct yourself in this unethical fashion when you are going about your Labour Party business. I recall the likes of Michael Cullen telling lies about Keith Locke in the House, and those thugs Mallard and Benson-Pope yelling “Send him home!” during debates on the mistreatment of the fugitive Algerian parliamentarian Ahmed Zaoui; your behaviour is very similar.
I wasn’t saying that you claimed he was an idiot. Rather that he’d be an idiot if he said it.
He WROTE it in an “editorial” for his crummy business paper.
And the ‘claim’ isn’t the Breivek comparison it’s the ‘all terrorists are muslim’. So far, it appears you’re the one saying that, not Gibson.
No, he wrote it. Another reader picked him up on it, and compared him directly to Breivik. The comparison was apt, and I have used it ever since.
Your flippant, disrespectful attitude and your sarcastic taunting does you no credit, Te Reo. Gibson said what I said he did; I did not make it up, and I did not distort anything.
I will find that moronic Breivikian editorial—unlike you, I do care about getting things right—and put it on this site. Not that that will satisfy you of course—I note you’re already putting up other irrelevant quotes and constructing an attack against me based on those.
I hope you do not conduct yourself in this unethical fashion when you are going about your Labour Party business. I recall the likes of Michael Cullen telling lies about Keith Locke in the House, and those thugs Mallard and Benson-Pope yelling “Send him home!” during debates on the mistreatment of the fugitive Algerian parliamentarian Ahmed Zaoui; your behaviour is very similar.
“No, he wrote it. Another reader picked him up on it, and compared him directly to Breivik. The comparison was apt, and I have used it ever since.”
Compared him directly to Breivik. That should make it a bit easier to find.
At the moment, Moz, I’m the only one of us to find a quote even remotely like your claim. And, weirdly, the second comment under the article that quote is from starts thus:
“Any introduction that starts by attributing, in unconscious homage to Anders Behring Breivik, …”
Thanks, Te Reo! Not only are you a gentleman, but you’re a first-rate scholar. That is precisely the article I have been looking for. And yes, you are correct, and I am wrong—Gibson didn’t say ALL of the world’s terrorists were Muslims, as I had claimed he did.
By the way, note the modest little contribution by commenter no. 4….
Very gracious of you, Mozza. Can you now point out the bit where Gibson wrote that “all—i.e., every single one—of the world’s terrorists were Muslims” as you claimed?
Not at all, Te Reo. And please disregard all that horrible stuff where I compared you to the gruesome twosome of Mallard and Benson-Pope. That was gutter politics on my part.
Can you now point out the bit where Gibson wrote that “all—i.e., every single one—of the world’s terrorists were Muslims” as you claimed?
To, er, quote myself from this very thread: “And yes, you are correct, and I am wrong—Gibson didn’t say ALL of the world’s terrorists were Muslims, as I had claimed he did.”
Cheers.
Cheers to YOU, my friend. You are a bracing corrective, and I appreciate your efforts to keep this writer (i.e., moi) up to speed.
1.What I’m saying is not what you are saying I’m suggesting.
You said you switch off when David Farrar is on. I pointed out that he is merely one of a whole raft of right wing and extreme right wing guests on the show. If you find him repellent for some other valid reason which excludes the others, please let us know.
2. So? light =sinful?
Making light of the persecution of journalists and dissidents is certainly sinful. Did YOU think it was funny when Chris Trotter put on a funny voice to mimic the besieged Julian Assange?
….not arguing about being a “war criminal” though……..the Left keep on producing them.
You dope. What does “right” and “left” have to do with this? Straw recycled lies about WMDs—even though he no doubt did not believe what he was saying—which puts him in the company of the extreme right, not the Left.
ABC News tells viewers that scenes of destruction in Gaza are in Israel
Submitted by Rania Khalek on Wed, 07/09/2014 – 21:49
More than fifty Palestinians have been killed and another 450 wounded since Monday in Israel’s ongoing assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, dubbed “Operation Protective Edge” by the Israeli army.
As usual, mainstream media outlets are straining to paint Israel as the victim, defending its people against irrational Palestinian rocket fire.
There is no equating the killing and maiming of dozens of innocent Palestinians with scared Israelis seeking shelter from crude rockets that rarely cause damage. But that hasn’t stopped media outlets from trying, and in some cases, outright lying, to distort the violence.
In one stark example, ABC News’ Diane Sawyer misidentifies scenes of the aftermath of Israeli missile strikes in Gaza as destruction caused by Palestinian rocket fire.
As Sawyer segues into the segment, she says, “We take you overseas now to the rockets raining down on Israel today as Israel tried to shoot them out of the sky.” Next to her is video footage not of Israelis or even Israel, but of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.
Sawyer then incorrectly describes an image of a Palestinian family gathering belongings in the smoking debris of a missile-hit home in Gaza as “an Israeli family trying to salvage what they can.”
Sawyer then describes an image of a Palestinian woman surrounded by destroyed homes as “one woman standing speechless among the ruins,” with the implication that she is Israeli.
Sawyer’s bald misreporting reflects either a deliberate lie by ABC News or willful ignorance so severe that Palestinian death and misery is invisible even when it’s staring ABC producers right in the face.
The more startling news is that our Government, with almost 50 other countries, is negotiating another secret deal in the shadows of the World Trade Organisation. They are calling to negotiate a Trade in Services Agreement (Tisa).
It is part of a troika: along with the TPP and the deal the US is negotiating with the European Union, it aims to create a new set of global rules that are designed exclusively to serve commercial interests.
This is no exaggeration. Last week US corporates held a launch for what they call Team Tisa. The co-chairs are Citigroup, Liberty Mutual, IBM, MetLife, UPS and Walmart. Leading members of Congress and the US Trade Representative were invited to speak.
This is especially scary, because it aims to extend the model of liberalised and deregulated financial markets that brought us the global financial crisis.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
We see it all the time where economists and politicians just won’t let go of the failed economic hypothesis that brought us the GFC and increased poverty and inequality.
Why don’t we, the citizens of this country, declare that any secret deals signed without due notification and transparency to be null and void.
Tim Groser has not been given the authority to commit our country to rules that have been deliberately kept secret.
How successful would it be to set up a petition about this? Why should our country be lumbered with crappy rules written by US corporates ???
Secrecy is not legitimacy, Tim Groser! It is wrong and completely unethical, (which is par for the course for this morally bereft government.)
who listened to the claptrap on Radio New Zealand this arvo.
It is becoming more and more infantilised and puerile by the day.
and the tripe about rap music.
this is vanity publishing by criminal crack dealers but here in New Zealand it is taken to be a genuine cultural phenomenon.
I suppose it is if you are into criminality, drugs and gangs.
I know many of us like to poke sticks at Chris Trotter, but have a listen to what he had to say today about, well, the patriarchy I guess: http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Audio.aspx
Go to the 2PM Thursday segment, starts about 9 mins in.
Yes. Thanks, felix. I’m a little surprised by Trotter there as well.
Rodney Hide – “it’s all about me and I’m not a bad person” – and Cunliffe’s apology is not going to go down well with male voters.. He clearly didn’t listen attentively to what Trotter said.
Trotter about the long history and legacy of men being schooled to think women should listen respectfully to them, and give more weight to their voice than to that of women.
Some time back, someone documented Key’s lies. It was an impressive list, and clearly lots more could be added from over recent times.
I have searched archived files but cannot find the link. Could some kind person give me the link.
Thank you Joe90.
My search for Key + lies highlighted just how far the NZ public has been deceived by his blatant lying. Cunliffe is hammered for a series of minor transgressions, but Smile and Wave and Lie thrives on them. Team Key is the ultimate set up for the Emperor’s New Clothes story where the the weavers (the Media) promise the wonderful clothes which are invisible to the incompetent and stupid. But the weavers and the Emperor get their beans!
I have my fingers crossed that Team Key will lose its gloss!
We seek a 50% reduction in New Zealand’s carbon-equivalent net emissions, as compared to 1990 levels, by 2050. 50 by 50. We will write the target into law.
the price of goods and services has risen by 6 percent since the last election, while the after-tax average wage has actually gone up by 16 percent
no, although its a week ago and here I am being interviewed on television about them, I havn’t seen Gerry Brownlee’s comments regarding demolitions in Christchurch and which caused such outrage, but I can talk all about them
oh, maybe our SAS soldiers were in the Kabul hotel gun fight but they weren’t wounded by friendly fire
New Zealand has lost $12 billion from GDP due to the Christchurch earthquake . . . oh, it might actually be around $15 billion from GDP due to the Christchurch earthquake . . . Blinglish said what?
the GCSB needs to spy on New Zealanders because of the terrorist threat, even though official reports released over my signature say there is no risk and the SIS has the matter in hand
National Ltd™ has been working on a number of things with New Zealand First on a number of things one of which has a financial component but I can’t talk about it
the money from the sale of state assets will not be used to prop up Solid Energy
I don’t see a place for a Winston Peters-led New Zealand First in a government that I lead. It’s not a matter of political convenience, it’s a matter of political principle.
This summer is the most active season ever for oil and gas exploration, with the industry spending up to $750 million. At the same time, the Government is strengthening the regulations that govern drilling, particularly in deep water.
Labour is trying to mislead people about eligibility for Best Start because they don’t get the payment while they also get paid parental leave.
A mountain of evidence shows that the quality of teaching – inside the classroom – is the biggest influence on kids’ achievement
Governor General Jerry Mateparae has been jostled while walking onto Te Tii Marae at Waitangi .
Cameron Slater, who I speak to regularly and who told me about Winston meeting Kim Dot Com, has got absolutely nothing to do with the National Party.
The Cabinet Office has cleared Collins of a conflict of interest after it translated comments on Oravida’s website which stated that she had praised its products
My Justice Minister, Judith Collins, didn’t lie to Parliament, she just didn’t understand the question.
The [MFAT] paperwork shows right through this that not only did the Minister have a very busy programme, all on judicial and justice issues, but, secondly, all the way through it talks about a private dinner.
The economic mess inherited by the Abbott government in Australia can be likened to the economic mess inherited by National Ltd™ when it came into office in 2008.
tonights tv news.
we have the dumbest smart meters in the world.
the power companies can monitor the customers but customers dont seem to have the right to monitor their own electricity usage.
Privatisation isn’t working. We were promised a shareholding democracy, competition, falling costs and better services. A generation on, most people’s experience has been the opposite. From energy to water, rail to public services, the reality has been private monopolies, perverse subsidies, exorbitant prices, woeful under-investment, profiteering and corporate capture.
And we’ve seen the same here. Privatisation has made things worse for the majority of people while a few people have creamed it usually via subsidies from the poorest.
One wonders whether Abbott and his government really understand what has happened in the US? Does he realize that since the era of deregulation and liberalization began in the late 1970s, GDP growth has slowed markedly, and that what growth has occurred has primarily benefited those at the top? Does he know that prior to these “reforms,” the US had not had a financial crisis – now a regular occurrence around the world – for a half-century, and that deregulation led to a bloated financial sector that attracted many talented young people who otherwise might have devoted their careers to more productive activities? Their financial innovations made them extremely rich but brought America and the global economy to the brink of ruin.
Foreign credit is the most obvious yet also most needless form of Australian dependency today. It is created without cost on computer keyboards in Japan, the United States and Britain and lent out at LIBOR rates as low as 1% to arbitrageurs buying Australian securities yielding at least 4.50% and rising. The 2 or 3% arbitrage gain is a free ride for speculators – at Australia’s expense.
Over and above being a domestic expense, it must be paid in foreign exchange. This repayment will cause future pressure to drive the A$ back down, perpetuating Australia’s roller-coaster exchange rate cycle.
There is a widespread impression that if Australia created a similar amount of credit at home, this would be inflationary. That may be true – but it is more inflationary to allow foreigners to manufacture credit and add an interest charge that domestic credit creation could avoid.
xox
Thanks Morissey. So glad I missed Jim Mora and the half twits. I have given up emailing him about the manure on his program. The standard has fallen so far. We deserve much higher standards from our ‘National’ broadcaster.
I used to vote nationalbut they have disgraced themselves and played fast and loose with the law and have nasty brown stains round their mouths from too much arse kissing.
I am going to vote for the Labour Party this election and they will kick the tories arses in September and restore decency and honesty to a body politic that sorely needs it.
. . Blogger Martyn Bradbury has won his case against unreasonable search and surveillance against the NZ Police; and subsequent Police attempts to produce evidence in secrecy, in a closed Court. His case highlights a disturbing growing trend in Aotearoa New Zealand for State power to be used against ...
The Committee of Disobedient Women has intercepted an email from Dr Emma Eejut, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Massey University to the university’s Vice-Chancellor, Jan Thomas. Dear Jan, Thank you for your courageous move. I think 10 pages of blether** should tie any of the students game enough to try holding ...
That's the only response to the findings of the Ombudsman's investigation into LGOIMA practices at the Christchurch City Council:My investigation identified serious concerns about the Council’s leadership and culture, and its commitment to openness and transparency. In particular, Council staff raised concerns with me about various methods employed by some ...
NZ First seems to be nakedly trying to enrich itself from public office:A powerful New Zealand First figure helped establish a forestry company that then pushed for money from two key funding streams controlled by a New Zealand First Minister. An RNZ investigation has found Brian Henry, lawyer for Winston ...
Behrouz Boochani is an award winning author and journalist. He is also a refugee, who for the past six years has been detained in Australia's offshore gulag on Manus Island, and in Papua New Guinea. But last night, with the cooperation of the WORD Christchurch festival and Amnesty International, he ...
Different Strokes: If a multicultural immigration policy imposes no obligation on immigrant communities to acknowledge and ultimately embrace their host nation’s most cherished traditions and values, then how is that nation to prevent itself from being reduced to a collection of inward-looking and self-replicating ethnic and cultural enclaves?THE COALITION GOVERNMENT’S ...
Protective Zone: Reading the rules and guidelines released by Massey University, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that its governing body considers the whole concept of free speech a disruptive threat to the orderly imparting of orthodox academic knowledge.IN TRUE ORWELLIAN fashion, Massey University has announced its commitment to ...
Farmers held a hate-march on Parliament today, complete with MAGA hats, gun-nut signs, and gendered insults. While supposedly about a grab-bag of issues - including, weirdly, mental health - it was clear that the protest was about one thing, and one thing only: climate change. And specifically, forestry "destroying" rural ...
The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security released their annual report today, and I've been busy reading through it. In amongst the usual review of what they've been doing all year, there's a few interesting bits. For example, a discussion on "agency retention and disposal of information", which points out that ...
Recently more than 150 post-graduate students and young scientists presented an open letter to the Green Party via The Spinoff, encouraging them to reconsider their position on genetic modification. Their target is tackling climate change issues.[1] Can any party continue to be dismissive about genetic modification (GM) contributing to ...
by Deirdre O’Neill Under Thatcher and then Blair and continuing up until our contemporary moment, the working class has seen its culture slowly and progressively destroyed. The change from an industrial society to a service society produced a marked shift in focus from the working class as the backbone of ...
Since 2013, the Australian government has detained refugees without trial in Pacific gulags, where they are abused, tortured, and driven to suicide. The policy is not just an abuse of human rights and possible crime against humanity; it has also had a corrosive effect on the states Australia uses as ...
It seems fair to say that we currently live in a problematic political moment in world history. Democracies are in decline and dictatorships are on the rise. Primordial, sectarian and post-modern divisions have re-emerged, are on the rise or have been accentuated by political evolutions of the moment such as ...
Last month, Greenpeace head Russel Norman surrendered his speaking slot at an EPA conference to student climate activist Sorcha Carr, who told the EPA exactly what she thought of them. It was a bold move, which confronted both regulators and polluters (or, as the EPA calls them, "stakeholders") with the ...
The core principle supposedly underlying New Zealand's electoral finance regime is transparency: parties can accept large donations from rich people wanting to buy policy, but only if they tell the public they've been bought. Most parties abide by this, so we know that TOP was wholly-owned by Gareth Morgan, and ...
Today is a Member's Day, probably the second-to-last one of the year, and its a big one, with the Third Reading of David Seymour's End of Life Choice Bill. last Member's Day it was reported back from committee, after MPs voted narrowly to make it subject to a (rules TBA) ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzThe growth of the human population over the last 70 ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women In her excellent oral submission to the Abortion reform select committee on 31st October on behalf of Otago University’s Department of Public Health, historian and public health researcher Hera Cook stated: “We would ask that the committee not use the term ‘pregnant persons’ and ...
by Don Franks In 1957, E M Forster wrote, of his greatest work: “The India described in ‘A Passage to India’ no longer exists either politically or socially. Change had begun even at the time the book was published ( 1924) and during the following quarter of a century it ...
The Referendums Framework Bill was due back from select committee today. But there's no report on it. Instead, the bill has been bounced back to the House under Standing order 29593) because the Committee didn't bother to produce one. They probably tried. But given the membership of the committee (which ...
Two years into New Zealand’s Labour-led government, the long-delayed Zero Carbon Bill became law on 7 November. Passed essentially unanimously, the lengthy public debates and political manoeuvring faded away until the final passage was even anticlimactic: Flipping through the @nzstuff@DomPost I was starting to wonder if I’d dreamt ...
Now the Zero Carbon Bill is law, what's next? Obviously, the ETS changes currently before select committee are going to be the next battleground. But we're also going to get a good idea of where we're going, and if the progress the Zero Carbon Act promises is good enough, during ...
Grant PearceThe effects of the current Australian bushfires in New South Wales and Queensland (and also again in California) are devastating and far-reaching. To date, the fires have resulted in several lives being lost and many homes and properties destroyed. Here in New Zealand, the impacts have been only ...
A passing comment in a post the other day about the labour force participation rates of older people prompted me to pull down the fuller data and see what we could see about various participation rates over the decades since the HLFS began in 1986. As it happens, the ...
Distract And Divert: The rise of what we have come to call “Identity Politics” represents the ideological manifestation of the ruling class’s objective need to destroy class politics, and of the middle-class’s subjective need to justify their participation in the process.THE RELIEF of the ruling class can only be imagined. ...
"I saw a newspaper picture,From the political campaignA woman was kissing a child,Who was obviously in pain.She spills with compassion,As that young child'sFace in her hands she gripsCan you imagine all that greed and avariceComing down on that child's lips?" ...
Dr Matt Boyd, Prof Michael Baker, Prof Nick WilsonThe Global Health Security Index which considers pandemic threats has just been published. Unfortunately, NZ scores approximately half marks (54/100), coming in 35th in the world rankings – far behind Australia. This poor result suggests that the NZ Government needs to ...
The Zero Carbon Act is inadequate, with a weak methane target designed to give farmers a free ride. But it turns out it could have been worse: Climate Change Minister James Shaw was so desperate to get National on board, he wanted to gut that target, and leave it in ...
The Herald reprints an Australian story on a couple of tragic deaths in Bali from drinking cocktails that had methanol in them. The story argues that methanol is likely the result of home distillation. But what the young tourists were experiencing was far from a hangover. They’d consumed a toxic cocktail ...
Last month, the police announced a trial of specialist roaming armed units, which would drive round (poor, brown) areas in armoured SUVs, armed to the teeth. When they announced the trial, they told us it was about having armed police "ready to attend major incidents at any time if needed". ...
Spain went to the polls today in the second elections this year, after the Socialists (who had come to power in a confidence vote, then gone to the polls in April) rejected the offer of a coalition with the left-wing PoDemos, and instead decided to gamble n a better outcome ...
A couple of days ago I attended (and spoke at) the University of Waikato’s “LearnFest” event. There were lots of talks and sessions on very diverse aspects of teaching, mostly at tertiary level. One was by Myra Williamson from Te Piringa Faculty of Law here at Waikato, on Contract Cheating ...
There will be a transit of Mercury – the planet Mercury will pass across the face of the Sun – taking place at sunrise in New Zealand on Tuesday, 12th November. It was by observing such an event 250 years ago that James Cook and his scientist colleagues were able ...
Since becoming the world’s first openly transexual mayor and member of parliament, Georgina Beyer has been recognised as a trailblazer for trans rights. Daphna Whitmore talks with her about where she sees the current trans movement We start out talking about legislation the government put on hold that would have ...
If FFNZ really put their faith in “Top Medical Journals” they would now be amending their billboards to recognise new research results. Image from FFNZ but updated to agree with the latest research. ...
National Messiah? Chris Luxon identifies himself as an evangelical Christian. If he is genuine in this self-characterisation, then he will take every opportunity his public office provides to proselytise on behalf of his faith. He will also feel obliged to bear witness against beliefs and practices he believes to be ...
I'm going to make a Reckless Prediction™ that the Tories have 'topped out' in the 'poll of polls' / Britain Elects multipoll tracker at about 38%, and in the next week we will start to see Labour creep up on them.In fact, we might just be seeing the start of ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women Lizzie Marvelly: “I may have missed this… has @afterellen gone all terf-y? Or am I reading something incorrectly? “ https://twitter.com/LizzieMarvelly/status/1191840059105742849 After Ellen is a lesbian website that is unashamedly pro-lesbian, as you’d expect. So why is Ms Marvelly so bothered about lesbians having their ...
Did you know there once was a time when it was illegal to be a gypsy (aka Romani) in Britain?That was between 1530, when the Egyptians Act was passed, and 1856, when it was repealed.Amongst other things, the act forbade the entry of 'Egyptians' into England, ordered those already there ...
Some days I sit and think, “what will I write…?” What do you say when you get to 1000 posts? Maybe you just start where you are, diverge to where this all began, then offer a collection of reader’s favourite posts, and a few of your own? (And throw in ...
Counter-Puncher: The “activists” and “radicals” (his own words) from the Indian community who took such strong exception to Shane Jones’ remarks about Immigration NZ’s treatment of arranged marriages, may end up bitterly regretting their intervention. Jones is not the sort of person who turns the other cheek to his critics.SHANE ...
In the spirit of Remember, remember the fifth of November, let's keep this in mind FOREVER.
Oh dear. Extraordinary interview on PM with Andrew Bridgen and @EvanHD just now. Bridgen was defending Jacob Rees Mogg’s Grenfell comments. Evan asked him if JRM had meant to say he would have left ...
Collision Course? In conditions of ideological white-out, the international bankers’ “Woop-Woop! Pull Up!” warning may have come too late to save global capitalism.WHAT DOES IT MEAN when international bankers are more willing to embrace radical solutions than our politicians and their electors? At both the International Monetary Fund and the ...
Pertussis (whooping cough) is a conundrum. It is a disease that was described hundreds of years ago and the bacteria that causes it (Bordetella pertussis) isolated in 1906. We have had vaccines for about 80 years but this disease is defiant in the face of human immunity. I wanted to ...
The Zero Carbon Bill has just passed its third reading, uanimously. In the end, National supported it - but we all know they'll turn around and gut it the moment they regain power. Meanwhile, I guess ACT's David Seymour didn't even bother to show up. I am on record as ...
Dr Lindsay Robertson, Dr Jerram Bateman, Professor Janet HoekMembers of the public health community hold divergent views on how access to vaping products or electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) products should be arranged. Some believe ENDS should be as widely available as smoked tobacco and argue for liberal ...
When the Police were trying to cover up for the National Party over Dirty Politics, they went all-in with their abuses of power. They illegally search Nicky Hager's house, violating his journalistic privilege and invading his privacy. They unlawfully acquired Hager's bank records. They did the same to left-wing blogger ...
Last month, in response to a wave of protests by Extinction Rebellion, the British government purported to ban their protests from the whole of London. It was a significant interference with the freedoms of expression and assembly, and another sign of the country's decline into tyranny. But now, a court ...
Last year, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security reported on significant problems with the intelligence warrant system. While they were unwilling to declare any warrant "irregular" (meaning unlawful) due to the recent law change, they were also not willing to give the system a clean bill of health. Now, they've ...
The National Party has come out in support of encouraging greater vaccination uptake. But it sure isn’t the way I’d do it. National’s suggested docking the benefits of those on benefit whose kids aren’t keeping up with their vaccinations. Some in National have suggested extending that to payments under Working ...
Feeding The Flames: It is simply not enough to demand an end to “corruption”, or “inequality”, or the overbearing influence of the authorities in Beijing. These are just “lowest common denominator” demands: the sort of slogans that pull people onto the streets. They are not a plan.WHERE’S THE PLAN? Across ...
The labour market statistics have been released, and unemployment has risen to 4.2%. There are 115,000 unemployed - 11,000 fewer than when Labour took office. In that time the minimum wage has gone up by $2 an hour, which shows that the right's fears about increases causing unemployment are simply ...
The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee has called for submissions on Andrew Little's tyrannicalTerrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill. Normally I encourage participation in the democratic process. I am not doing so in this case. Instead, I encourage all of you to boycott this submissions process, and to post ...
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Aviation is one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and within it, one of the fastest sources is elite travel: billionaires flitting around the world in their private jets, spewing excessive pollution into the atmosphere just so they can avoid mixing with us dirty peasants. But in ...
That's what we face if we don't stop climate change, according to a warning from 11,000 scientists:The world’s people face “untold suffering due to the climate crisis” unless there are major transformations to global society, according to a stark warning from more than 11,000 scientists. “We declare clearly and unequivocally ...
by Phil Duncan Here’s just a few of the kind of threats issued day in and day out against gender-critical women – feminists, marxists, etc – overwhelmingly by MEN (albeit men identifying as women). “Kill all Terfs”. “Shoot a Terf today”. “All terfs deserve to be shot in the head”. ...
This is the third of the synopses of parts of the opening chapter of John Smith’s Imperialism in the 21st Century (New York, Monthly Review Press, 2016). The synopsis and commentary below is written by Phil Duncan. Unlike the humble cup of coffee and t-shirt that we looked at in ...
Tom MooreTraditionally a food source and cutting tool, freshwater mussels/kākahi are now widely valued as water filters that help clean our waterbodies and maintain ecosystem health throughout Aotearoa. The improvement they provide in water quality can make it easier for other animals to live in streams and rivers, as ...
And to think he gave all the potential goodwill away with that moronic, cult-like statement (repeated ad nauseam by many National hardliners) that Key is quite simply “the greatest PM we ever had”…Installation complete: this was nothing ...
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Winston Peters is in court today, suing a bunch of former Minister and civil servants over their pre-election leak of his superannuation repayment. He's characterised the leak as malicious, and said that it is repugnant that his information was passed on to Ministers to use for political advantage. And he's ...
Murray CoxDo I have to finish my favourite genome? That’s an often-asked question. Geneticists generally strive to produce high-quality genomes that sequence every last gene, making full use of the state-of-the-art technologies coming on stream. Sequencing DNA means determining the order of the four chemical building blocks – called ...
Transformative Politics: The idea is to turn each recipient into an unwitting accomplice in their own transformation. From interested observer to hyped-up activist, sharing our messages promiscuously with ‘friends’. You’ll be part of an ever-expanding circulatory system, Jennifer, for the ideas that will win us the election.”JENNIFER SKITTERED her chair ...
The boycott is a fundamental tool of protest. By choosing who we buy from, we can send a message, and hopefully change corporate behaviour. Historically, boycotts have been effective, for example over apartheid in South Africa and Israel, in forcing divestment from Myanmar, and in ending bus segregation in the ...
Jan Rivers spoke at the Abortion Legislation Select Committee in favour of the bill, but in opposition to calls from other submitters to exchange the word ‘woman’ for ‘person’ throughout the bill. Jan is a supporter of the feminist group Speak Up For Women and has recently written an excellent ...
I checked my traffic stats:I was intrigued by 'monica29' - who was this very dedicated individual? I clicked on the link, to be greeted with ...Ho, hum.Spreadin' the word, spreadin' the word. Doesn't matter who hears it, as long as it gets out there. ...
There have been three polls since the election was announced, and I will shamelessly steal YouGov / UK Polling Report's Anthony Wells' summary of them:Survation – CON 34%, LAB 26%, LDEM 19%, BREX 12%, GRN 1% Ipsos MORI – CON 41%, LAB 24%, LDEM 20%, BREX 7%, GRN 3% YouGov ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First backs the public to decide on the End of Life Choice Bill via a referendum at the 2020 General Election. The Bill, with New Zealand First’s referendum provision incorporated, passed its final reading in Parliament this evening. New Zealand First Spokesperson for ...
Darroch Ball, Spokesperson for Justice New Zealand First is proud that a key Coalition Agreement commitment which will provide for a more transparent and effective criminal justice system has been realised. Legislation to establish the Criminal Cases Review Commission, an independent body focused on identifying and responding to possible miscarriages of ...
"Today we have made a choice that will leave a legacy... I hope that means that future generations will see that we, in New Zealand, were on the right side of history." - Jacinda Ardern, Third Reading of the Zero Carbon Bill ...
Darroch Ball, New Zealand First List MP A Member’s bill has been proposed that would provide income tax exemptions for all New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel while on operational deployment overseas. The Income Tax (Exemption for Salary or Wages of NZDF Members on Active Deployment) Amendment Bill proposed by New Zealand First ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First is proud to have brought common sense to the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill, which passed its final reading in Parliament today. Party Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters says months of hard work went into negotiating a balanced ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First has listened to calls to recognise paramedics as registered health professionals under the Health Practitioners’ Competence Assurance Act (the Act).Today, the Coalition Government announced plans for paramedics to be registered as health practitioners under the Act, and the establishment of a ...
We began the week by commemorating the New Zealand Wars and celebrating a major increase in the number of teachers. Then, we were busy supporting offenders into work and getting our rail back on track after years of underinvestment. And that's just the start! ...
In October I was sworn in as the Mayor of Lower Hutt.It’s the privilege of my life to serve Hutt people as their Mayor. There is something really special to be able to serve the community where I was raised, and where I live. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Racing Racing Minister Winston Peters met with Korea Racing Authority Chairperson Nak Soon Kim in Seoul today to discuss closer cooperation between the New Zealand and Korean horse racing industries. As part of the visit to the Seoul Racecourse, Mr Peters witnessed ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is investing $10 million to establish Otago as the centre of New Zealand’s creative digital industry over the next ten years, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “The initiative will bring us closer to the vision of ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF)’s skills and employment programme will help young Otago people into long-term forestry careers, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. Te Ara Mahi will invest $63,000 in the 2020 school year to support eight 17 and 18 ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) will support local plans to revitalise and stimulate economic development opportunities in Otago, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. The four Regional Economic Development Ministers have approved an in-principle investment of $19.9 million towards the region’s ...
Mark Patterson, Spokesperson for Primary Industries New Zealand First is pleased to have received the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) report on the Coalition Government’s Mycoplasma bovis eradication efforts, which shows significant progress in the fight against the disease. New Zealand First Spokesperson for Primary Industries, Mark Patterson, says the report’s findings ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development Hon David Parker, Minister for Trade and Export Growth The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is investing to support economic growth opportunities for Otago’s engineering and manufacturing sectors, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones and Trade and Export Minister David Parker announced today. Almost $20 million ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Minister Winston Peters and his South Korean counterpart, Kang Kyung-wha, discussed in Seoul today opportunities to work more closely in the Pacific and the situation on the Korean Peninsula. Mr Peters and Minister Kang confirmed New Zealand and the ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development Hon Nanaia Mahuta, Minister for Māori Development The three marae in the historic Parihaka Pa complex in Taranaki have been upgraded to high speed broadband with the support of the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF), Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “Connecting the ...
Hon Ron Mark, Minister of Defence Minister of Defence Ron Mark will today launch the Advancing Pacific Partnerships 2019 Defence Assessment during a speech at Te Papa. The Assessment outlines how Defence will partner with our Pacific Island neighbours and invest in Pacific regional security architecture. The Plan aligns with the Coalition ...
A new Provincial Growth Fund investment could create about 80 new jobs in Gisborne over the next two years, turning a local small business into a “beacon of employment” in the process. Regional Economic Development Parliamentary Under-Secretary Fletcher Tabuteau said the PGF’s Te Ara Mahi funding stream would provide $1.6m ...
The Government is asking the food industry to step up work to tackle obesity including reducing sugar, fat and salt in their products, better information for consumers, and tighter restrictions on advertising to children. Health Minister David Clark and Food Safety Minister Damien O’Connor have responded to a ...
ew, modern emergency department and outpatient facilities at Queenstown’s Lakes District Hospital mean better emergency care for the growing tourist mecca’s visitors and locals, says Health Minister David Clark. Today Dr Clark officially opened the hospital’s redeveloped Emergency Department and Outpatient facilities. The new facilities include: • An extended Emergency Department ...
Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter says today’s release of sexual and reproductive health data reinforces the significance of the Government’s commitment to providing free or very low-cost contraception. The Ministry of Health today published statistics from the Ministry of Health’s 2014/15 Health Survey. “It is important people can make ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced that at the request of the Samoan Government, New Zealand will be providing further support to Samoa as it faces a worsening measles outbreak. “In response to a request from the people of Samoa, New Zealand is providing 3000 measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) ...
“The new Disability Action Plan 2019–2023 moves us towards the inclusive and accessible New Zealand that this government has committed to,” Minister for Disability Issues Carmel Sepuloni announced today. “The Action Plan was designed by disabled people, their family and supporters, the disability sector and government agencies. It will ensure ...
Third Singapore-New Zealand Defence Ministers’ Meeting 14 November 2019 Joint Statement 1. Defence Ministers Ron Mark and Dr Ng Eng Hen today conducted their third annual Singapore-New Zealand Defence Ministers’ Meeting in Singapore. 2. Building on the Enhanced Partnership signed between both countries in May this year, this annual meeting ...
A Bill to improve the court system’s response to sexual violence has passed its first reading in Parliament today. Justice Minister Andrew Little says the Sexual Violence Legislation Bill will reduce the trauma sexual violence complainants experience in court, while maintaining defendants’ fundamental rights and making sure the trial process ...
Streamlined payment practices are a step closer for Kiwi businesses with the formal launch of New Zealand’s e-Invoicing framework. Small Business Minister Stuart Nash says the government has now established the structure to enable automated and direct data exchange between the accounting systems of buyers and sellers. “The move to ...
Another 51 quarantine officers and four new biosecurity detector dog teams will help protect New Zealand from invasive pests and diseases this summer, says Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor. “The Government is delivering on its commitment to strengthen New Zealand’s biosecurity system and support our valuable primary sector “New Zealand’s flora, fauna ...
A new report has found New Zealand’s space sector contributed $1.69 billion to the economy in the last financial year and employs 12,000 people, Minister for Economic Development Phil Twyford announced today. The report by Deloitte was commissioned by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and shows New Zealand ...
Judge Coral Shaw has been appointed as the new Chair of the Royal Commission into Historical Abuse in State Care and in the Care of Faith-based Institutions, Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin announced today. "Judge Shaw, who is currently one of the inquiry commissioners, is extremely well qualified for the ...
The Government has confirmed its third major mental health facility upgrade since the Budget, this time at Palmerston North Hospital. The Prime Minister and Health Minister today visited MidCentral DHB to announce that $30 million has been allocated to upgrade its acute mental health facility. It follows earlier announcements in ...
The roll out of the National Bowel Screening Programme has reached the halfway mark, with 10 out of 20 District Health Boards now part of the programme. MidCentral DHB, which covers Palmerston North, Manawatu and surrounding districts, this week became the latest to DHB to offer free bowel screening to ...
The Government welcomes PHARMAC’s decision to fund a vaccine to protect young people from meningococcal disease from 1 December this year. “Meningococcal disease is a serious threat which people at higher risk should be protected from,” says Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter. “The combined pharmaceutical budget was increased by ...
Groups involved with innovative fisheries research projects are encouraged to apply for government support in the latest funding round from the Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures programme. Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash says the SFF Futures funding is designed to be flexible enough to support small or large projects across a ...
The Government has fixed an issue affecting how Immigration New Zealand has processed visa applications for culturally arranged marriages, which will now see a consistent process applied which ensures people with legitimate arranged marriages can visit New Zealand while also preventing any rorting of the system. Earlier this year Immigration ...
The Royal Commission into the Attacks on Christchurch Mosques will report back on 30 April 2020 to give it more time to hear submissions and consider information, Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin announced today. The Royal Commission was originally scheduled to report back to Government by 10 December 2019. “There has ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Washington DC today to attend a ministerial meeting focused on defeating ISIS, and to continue pursuing New Zealand’s trade opportunities. Mr Peters will participate in a meeting of Foreign and Defence Ministers from key countries contributing to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. ...
The recently crowned Bird of the Year, the hoiho/yellow eyed penguin, is getting a much needed helping hand alongside more than 168 other community conservation projects announced Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage today. 168 community conservation projects throughout New Zealand are benefiting from $8 million in government grants, including $500,000 ...
Controls on assault rifles and semi-automatic firearms are to be broadened to include some types of pistols, under changes to a bill currently making its way through Parliament. Police Minister Stuart Nash has tabled a Supplementary Order Paper to the Arms Legislation Bill, which is currently before a Select Committee ...
Minister of Defence Ron Mark will travel to Singapore today to conduct a counterpart visit and to co-chair the third annual Singapore-New Zealand Defence Ministers’ Meeting with his counterpart, Minister for Defence Dr Ng Eng Hen. “Singapore is one of our most important defence partners in the region, and our ...
Nelson’s Salisbury School is to be rebuilt, creating a modern and suitable learning environment for students at the residential special school, Education Minister Chris Hipkins and Associate Education Minister Tracey Martin announced today. The school for girls aged 8-15, in Richmond, was earmarked for closure by National until the process ...
The panel undertaking a comprehensive review of the Resource Management Act has identified the main issues to be addressed and options for reform and is calling for feedback to inform its final report. In July the Government announced the comprehensive review of the resource management system, including the RMA - ...
An important safety valve has been added to New Zealand’s criminal justice system with the third reading of the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill today. The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) will investigate claimed miscarriages of justice. “We’ve seen how our justice system can very occasionally get things spectacularly wrong, ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters welcomes the tabling of the Racing Industry Transition Agency (RITA) 2019 Annual Report in Parliament today. He says the 2019 Annual Report marks the point when New Zealand’s racing industry’s decline was arrested and a turnaround started. RITA’s 2019 Annual Report recorded an industry net profit ...
The New Zealand Government is today sending 21 firefighters to help fight the ongoing catastrophic Australian bushfires. “The fires in Australia are in some of the toughest, most challenging conditions ever,” says Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin. “As of yesterday morning, there were 100 active bushfire-related incidents across Queensland and ...
More frontline support for schools through a new education agency, as part of a redesigned Ministry of Education More support for principals and school boards including through a new centre of leadership and local leadership advisor roles New independent disputes panels for parents and students Management of school property ...
The Government’s reform of the Tomorrow’s Schools system is a watershed moment in education and an opportunity to create meaningful change for ākonga Māori and their whānau, Associate Education Minister Kelvin Davis said today. “Last year through Kōrero Mātauranga | Education Conversation, Māori teachers, parents, ākonga, whānau, hapū and iwi ...
Infrastructure Minister is welcoming the first of many updated project pipelines from the newly established New Zealand Infrastructure Commission today. The New Zealand Infrastructure Commission, Te Waihanga, has released an expanded pipeline of major capital projects – another crucial step towards delivering better infrastructure outcomes. “The first iteration of the ...
Tougher gun laws designed to improve public safety through firearms prohibition orders are proposed in a new document released for public input. Police Minister Stuart Nash says firearms prohibition orders (FPOs) would give new powers to Police to ensure high-risk individuals come nowhere near firearms. “We have already prohibited the ...
Andy Coupe has been confirmed as TVNZ’s new Board Chair. “Mr Coupe has strong commercial and capital markets experience and TVNZ has benefited from his technical knowledge of business and finance, as well as his extensive governance experience,” the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media Kris Faafoi said. Andy ...
Associate Minister of Transport Julie Anne Genter today officially opened a separated pathway, following the completion of the Kaiwharawhara Stream bridge, which will improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians along Hutt Road. The $6.8m Hutt Road project provides a separated path for cycling and pedestrians, the replacement of informal parking ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today announced the appointment of career diplomat Si’alei van Toor as New Zealand’s next Ambassador to Russia. “I’m pleased to appoint Ms van Toor to this position. She brings a wealth of experience to the role having previously served as Senior Trade Adviser to the ...
The Treasury’s 2019 Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) will be released on Wednesday December 11, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. The Coalition Government will publish the 2020 Budget Policy Statement at the same time, outlining the priorities for Budget 2020. Further details on arrangements for the release will ...
A new initiative to better support small businesses through hands-on mentoring and advice has been launched by the Minister for Small Business. The first event in the Kiwi Business Boost series of regional workshops and online tools has been launched in Wairoa by Stuart Nash. “The Business Boost initiative combines ...
The latest Quarterly Connectivity Report shows that more and more New Zealanders are moving to Ultra-fast Broadband (UFB), with Rolleston having the highest uptake at 74 per cent, as at the end of September. “This means that nearly three quarters of Rolleston’s households and businesses have moved to ultra-fast services. ...
The passing of the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill will help ensure a safe planet for our kids and grandkids, the Minister for Climate Change James Shaw said today. The landmark legislation which provides a framework to support New Zealanders to prepare for, and adapt to, the effects ...
The review of Oranga Tamariki practice around the planned uplift of a Hastings baby in May shows significant failings by the Ministry and that the planned and funded changes to shift from a child crisis service to a proper care and protection service need to be accelerated, Children’s Minister Tracey ...
Education Minister Chris Hipkins has wished students the best of luck for this year’s NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship exams which start tomorrow. Around 140,000 students will have participated in 119 NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship exams by the end of the exam period on 3 December. “I want to ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today announced the appointment of Bede Corry as New Zealand’s next High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. “The appointment of a senior diplomat to this important role underlines the significance New Zealand places on our relationship with the United Kingdom,” said Mr Peters. “The United ...
As a follow-up to our post about police station office hours for the public and in the cause of balance, we bring positive news – or rather, we are passing on the positive news which the police delivered in a press statement, It’s all about the productivity gains achieved – it ...
Books editor Catherine Woulfe follows Wellington author Lawrence Patchett into his extraordinary story of heat and humanity and history repeating. The Burning River begins like the best kind of yarn. “Someone had been there. Someone strange. In the centre of his camp, a new circle of sooted rocks. A campfire, with ...
SPECIAL REPORT: By Philip Cass in BrisbaneMelanesian Media Freedom Forum – Day two –The second day of the Melanesian Media Freedom Forum began with praise for the work of young Pacific journalists by Professor David Robie and ended with a warning that threats to journalism in the ...
In this special episode of The Real Pod, brought to you by Nando’s, we chat to the champions of My Restaurant Rules NZ 2019.In the afterglow of Rustic Kitchen’s historic win on My Restaurant Rules NZ, Duncan and Alex got on the blower with Tyson and Denise. Then we forgot ...
Hannah Kronast attends a women’s empowerment panel focused on the huge disparities in training and employment within science and technology. In the far back left-hand corner of a women’s equality and empowerment event, a male stuck up his hand. “What can men do to help?” he asked.It was at a panel ...
Our recent Spinoff Art survey provided a snapshot on gender equality in the local art scene, but it wasn’t the full story. Anna Knox continues the conversation by asking some gallery owners and directors for their responses to our findings.The Spinoff’s survey of gender bias in visual arts found that ...
Based on their study of trans wellbeing Aotearoa, the research team at Counting Ourselves find six data points that highlight the strength of our trans and non-binary community.Last month the first comprehensive national survey on transgender health and wellbeing in Aotearoa was published by the academics and researchers at Counting ...
The SpinoffBy Dr Jaimie Veale, Jack Byrne and Ahi Wi-Hongi
Ten thousand years ago, roasted hares and figs were flat-layed on Levantine flax leaves. Now, we drape prosciutto over strawberries on computer desks. Josie Adams mourns the death of the platter.Three days ago I stumbled on an accidental recreation of a 1950s platter: a giant ham, a cake that was ...
India’s decision not to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership promoted by China is politically significant. But its impact on trade and prosperity is more nuanced, as Bloomberg explains.It avoids some market opening on both sides (India to agriculture; others to services) that would have been economically beneficial. But ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra [embedded content]University of Canberra Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Geoff Crisp discusses the the week in politics the government’s response to the bush fires as well as the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action. They also talk about ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The proposed acquisition of infant formula producer Bellamy’s Australia Ltd by China Mengniu Dairy Company Limited has been given approval by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Strict, legally enforceable conditions, have been set by the treasurer, which ...
The Council of Trade Unions (CTU) is condemning the All Saints Day evening raid on 31 October. With the arrest of over 60 union organisers, human rights defenders and activists in the Philippines province of Negros. The 16th of November is an international ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Assistant professor, University of Canberra What’s happening? Suddenly, at the level of central banks, Australia is regarded as an investment risk. On Wednesday Martin Flodén, the deputy governor of Sweden’s central bank, announced that because Australia and Canada were “not ...
SPECIAL REPORT: By Philip Cass in Brisbane Opening session – Day OneThe problems of operating in the Pacific and the impact of online news and the emergence of ‘citizen journalists’ were common concerns for all delegates to this week’s Melanesian Media Freedom Forum.The forum, held at Griffith ...
Standoff between protesters and the police at Yeung Uk Road, Hong Kong. Image by Studio Incendo – 20190825 Tsuen Wan March. CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81751531.The recent surge in social protests world-wide is quantitatively and qualitatively different than in previous ages. The advent of individualised mass communications technologies and the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is going to start asking internet service providers to block certain offshore gambling websites. The decision follows former New South Wales premier ...
The Zero Carbon Act (ZCA) is over a week old, but it’s still being heavily debated and analysed. After all, depending on who you listen to, it’s the most significant new law of the year, of this Government, or even of some people’s lifetime. And it deals with a giant ...
Green MP and refugee Golriz Ghahraman was there last night when the former Manus Island detainee and acclaimed writer arrived in New Zealand.Last night, quietly and without fanfare a small group made up of human rights activists, literary folk, and just two journalists, came together at Auckland Airport to welcome ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sandra D’urso, Researcher, The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne To perform an exit is not as simple as it sounds. In fact, exiting a situation can be almost impossible for some. Exit Strategies is a new production by indie performer and theatre ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Niro Kandasamy, Tutor, University of Melbourne Sri Lanka’s presidential election on Saturday comes at a critical time for the country. The government has been in turmoil since President Maithripala Sirisena sacked the prime minister last year and replaced him with former strongman ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Hansen, Chief of Staff, The Conversation If you have kids, chances are you’ve worried about their presence on social media. Who are they talking to? What are they posting? Are they being bullied? Do they spend too much time on it? ...
New Zealand Police has won a prestigious World Class Policing Award for its ‘more street than station approach’ Mobility programme, which has saved millions of hours of officers’ time. ...
SEA-Unite SkyCity workers are expected to strike this weekend after 50 called in sick with symptoms linked to smoke inhalation from the convention centre fire. ...
In a powerful rebuff to critics who question whether the prime minister is willing to use her political capital, this morning she powerfully demonstrated her commitment to New Zealand culture.For two years, my professional life has been devoted to winning respect for the lowbrow, beaten-up, off-brand artefacts that truly define ...
MPs and staffers will likely begin moving out of their Bowen House offices over the next six months, so the building can undergo earthquake strengthening work. ...
The party that sold off the BNZ, NZ Rail, Petrocorp, Postbank, the Shipping Corporation, Air New Zealand, the State Insurance Office, the Tourist Hotel Corporation and a host of other New Zealand assets is at it again – with the assistance of its coalition ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trent Penman, Associate professor, University of Melbourne As sure as night follows day, this week’s bushfires prompted inevitable debate about whether fire authorities should have carried out more hazard reduction burning, and whether opposition from conservationists prevented this. There are two key ...
A new poem by writer and performer Freya Daly Sadgrove.TURDUCKEN I blow my body around like the huge clump of brown hairthat I once saw blowing up Cuba StreetI follow its movements with interestI put a video of it on the internet my favourite bragis that a groundskeeper ...
PHARMAC has backed down on a controversial drug brand switch affecting patients with epilepsy and mental health conditions after three people died following the change. ...
Tara Ward reviews Goodnight Kiwi, a new series that features well-known New Zealanders reading bedtime stories to kids. It’s strange to think that New Zealand television wasn’t always the 24-hour, infomercial-tastic extravangza that it is today. Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, our televisions used to go dark every night at ...
FIRST Union members at Countdown have ratified a new agreement that will set their supermarket team on a path towards a living wage, and significantly raise the pay of 15,000 workers across the country. ...
13 moments that prove the music awards are so much > than all other award showsBENEE cleaned up, every performance was somewhere between an eight and a ten, there was an unfeasible quantity of award presenter awkwardness and many nights ended very late. The music awards are over 50 and ...
While the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights Commission are examining whether New Zealand laws properly balance the issues of freedom of speech and hate speech (whatever that might be), taxpayers are helping to finance Chinese propaganda. Hateful propaganda, we suggest. The Screen Production Grant has handed a $243,000 subsidy to a ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.Media Peter Thompson (Stuff): A new model for public media – but have the old ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout (Viking Penguin $35)“Olive struggles to figure herself out, and has an urgent ...
After more than seven months of trying to end a tenancy to protect neighbours, a Rotorua property manager has finally received approval from the High Court to end the tenancy. ...
We agree with the Ombudsman Peter Boshier in his new report on councils QUOTE ; “leaders, officials lack of action to "ensure an approach is adopted that is consistent with openness and transparency" Un-quote. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1911/S00186/chief-ombudsman-new-report-wakeup-call-for-council-leaders.htm ...
Māori food systems are rich with potential, and whānau-based food producers across the country are looking to traditional ways to ensure their communities thrive in the future. Alice Neville reports from the Eat New Zealand Food Hui.In recent years there has been much talk – in food business, hospitality, tourism ...
Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) commends the Government’s proposal to take school zoning responsibilities out of the hands of school boards and principals and instead have these taken up by a new Education Service Agency. ...
SINGAPORE, Nov 15, 2019 - (ACN Newswire) - Global BioLife Inc, the U.S. subsidiary of Singapore eDevelopment Ltd (SeD), will present its 3F Antimicrobial Fragrance as a new method to prevent and treat Tuberculosis at the ASM Biothreats Conference, ...
The National Party is calling for the Auditor General to investigate a bid for tax payer money made by a forestry company set up by a senior New Zealand First figure; and an award-winning author detained on Manus Island by Australia for six years has touched down in Auckland ...
Responding to news that the Screen Production Grant handed a $243,000 subsidy to a propaganda film produced by Chinese state-owned enterprises, New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union Executive Director Louis Houlbrooke says: “Taxpayers have all been made complicit ...
The campaign to take more colour coded bins into the regions has been developed by The Packaging Forum which promotes recycling under the Government’s Love NZ brand and The Auckland Litter Prevention Steering Group which manages the Be a Tidy Kiwi ...
Shane Jones calls protesting farmers 'rednecks' following rowdy march on Parliament; and top council staff 'manipulated' reports to hide bad news from councillors and public. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jodie Bradby, Professor of Physics, Australian National University There’s a lot of uncertainty in a research career. Most funding – and most jobs – are doled out by the project, or in chunks of a few years at a time. Recently, however, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wanning Sun, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Technology Sydney The Australian government has indicated that “diaspora communities” are crucial to Australia’s public diplomacy mission to promote the country abroad. It has also identified online and social media as essential ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Bright, Senior Lecturer of Addiction, Edith Cowan University For many parents whose teenage children are completing Year 12, this time of year means mixed emotions. Parents might feel proud, exhausted and excited. And as young people start heading to schoolies and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Heiko Timmers, Associate Professor of Physics, School of Science, UNSW Canberra, UNSW Much is made of the “next generation” of nuclear reactors in the debate over nuclear power in Australia. They are touted as safer than older reactors, and suitable for helping ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fran Gale, Senior Lecturer, Social Work and Community Welfare, School of Social Science and Psychology, Western Sydney University Children are too rarely asked their perspectives on public spaces. Traditionally, adults make choices for children, particularly about how they live and play. In ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW What do a billionaire, a former vice president, and a US democratic socialist have to do with Australia’s nearly three-decade run of economic growth? More than you might think. The race for the Democratic Party’s 2020 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lydia Edwards, Fashion historian, Edith Cowan University Eyebrows can turn a smile into a leer, a grumpy pout into a come hither beckoning, and sad, downturned lips into a comedic grimace. So, it’s little wonder these communicative markers of facial punctuation have ...
The rules around use of parliamentary TV are set to be liberalised and MPs will no longer have to give permissions for clips of them to be used in political advertising. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra When five former fire chiefs held a news conference on Thursday to urge the federal government to take more action on climate change, it was a challenging moment for Scott Morrison. Those who fronted the ...
A powerful New Zealand First figure helped establish a forestry company that then pushed for money from two key funding streams controlled by a New Zealand First Minister. ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Farmers square off with Shane Jones at parliament, tax rebates for Chinese propaganda film criticised, and ructions over future shape of public media.Now first of all, I just want to make it clear rednecks isn’t the term I’d use. But it was ...
The biggest shakeup in the country’s broadcasting history looks to be looming as the Government gets serious about its options for strengthening public service broadcasting. ...
Support for the Zero Carbon Bill shows our action on climate will have to disrupt the status quo, writes Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton. That will mean new opportunities - and costs. ...
Football Ferns captain Ali Riley is making the most of her opportunity to play for German giants Bayern Munich, harbouring a dream to represent NZ at her fifth World Cup ...
'Policing' is increasingly falling to private security and citizen-led initiatives. Yet the wages and the training don't match the responsibility. So what can we do? ...
Yesterday, Stuff reported that the 2017 Chinese-made propaganda blockbuster Wolf Warrior 2 was partially made in New Zealand. Sam Brooks watched it and – spoiler alert – found it weird as hell.About halfway through Wolf Warrior 2 on Netflix, the unnamed leader of a revolution in an unnamed African country marches up ...
Rather than get distracted by the stadium debate, we need to urgently acknowledge that unlocking this land now for future integration into the CBD is critical for Auckland’s future, aruges Paul Winstanley.Don’t be fooled. This is not just another story about the waterfront stadium. Well, not really. Like the mayor ...
The Period Poverty Solution Petition: The Health and Wellbeing Implications was presented by the Positive Periods campaign team, of which The Period Place is a part of, at a cross-party breakfast, thanks to Louisa Wall MP and Joanne Hayes MP in Parliament ...
Open mike 10/07/2014 
Open mike is your post.
. . Blogger Martyn Bradbury has won his case against unreasonable search and surveillance against the NZ Police; and subsequent Police attempts to produce evidence in secrecy, in a closed Court. His case highlights a disturbing growing trend in Aotearoa New Zealand for State power to be used against ...4 hours ago
The Committee of Disobedient Women has intercepted an email from Dr Emma Eejut, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Massey University to the university’s Vice-Chancellor, Jan Thomas. Dear Jan, Thank you for your courageous move. I think 10 pages of blether** should tie any of the students game enough to try holding ...18 hours ago
That's the only response to the findings of the Ombudsman's investigation into LGOIMA practices at the Christchurch City Council:My investigation identified serious concerns about the Council’s leadership and culture, and its commitment to openness and transparency. In particular, Council staff raised concerns with me about various methods employed by some ...23 hours ago
Different Strokes: If a multicultural immigration policy imposes no obligation on immigrant communities to acknowledge and ultimately embrace their host nation’s most cherished traditions and values, then how is that nation to prevent itself from being reduced to a collection of inward-looking and self-replicating ethnic and cultural enclaves?THE COALITION GOVERNMENT’S ...1 day ago
Recently more than 150 post-graduate students and young scientists presented an open letter to the Green Party via The Spinoff, encouraging them to reconsider their position on genetic modification. Their target is tackling climate change issues.[1] Can any party continue to be dismissive about genetic modification (GM) contributing to ...2 days ago
It seems fair to say that we currently live in a problematic political moment in world history. Democracies are in decline and dictatorships are on the rise. Primordial, sectarian and post-modern divisions have re-emerged, are on the rise or have been accentuated by political evolutions of the moment such as ...3 days ago
by The Council of Disobedient Women In her excellent oral submission to the Abortion reform select committee on 31st October on behalf of Otago University’s Department of Public Health, historian and public health researcher Hera Cook stated: “We would ask that the committee not use the term ‘pregnant persons’ and ...4 days ago
4 days ago
If FFNZ really put their faith in “Top Medical Journals” they would now be amending their billboards to recognise new research results. Image from FFNZ but updated to agree with the latest research. ... 6 days ago
And to think he gave all the potential goodwill away with that moronic, cult-like statement (repeated ad nauseam by many National hardliners) that Key is quite simply “the greatest PM we ever had”…
Installation complete: this was nothing ... 2 weeks ago
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First backs the public to decide on the End of Life Choice Bill via a referendum at the 2020 General Election. The Bill, with New Zealand First’s referendum provision incorporated, passed its final reading in Parliament this evening. New Zealand First Spokesperson for ...2 days ago
"Today we have made a choice that will leave a legacy... I hope that means that future generations will see that we, in New Zealand, were on the right side of history." - Jacinda Ardern, Third Reading of the Zero Carbon Bill ...1 week ago
The Government is asking the food industry to step up work to tackle obesity including reducing sugar, fat and salt in their products, better information for consumers, and tighter restrictions on advertising to children. Health Minister David Clark and Food Safety Minister Damien O’Connor have responded to a ...4 hours ago
As a follow-up to our post about police station office hours for the public and in the cause of balance, we bring positive news – or rather, we are passing on the positive news which the police delivered in a press statement, It’s all about the productivity gains achieved – it ...2 hours ago
Books editor Catherine Woulfe follows Wellington author Lawrence Patchett into his extraordinary story of heat and humanity and history repeating. The Burning River begins like the best kind of yarn. “Someone had been there. Someone strange. In the centre of his camp, a new circle of sooted rocks. A campfire, with ...2 hours ago
SPECIAL REPORT: By Philip Cass in Brisbane Melanesian Media Freedom Forum – Day two – The second day of the Melanesian Media Freedom Forum began with praise for the work of young Pacific journalists by Professor David Robie and ended with a warning that threats to journalism in the ...2 hours ago
"I rang the ambulance service then went to the shed": a new short story by a master of the form, Oamaru writer Owen Marshall. ...5 hours ago
India’s decision not to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership promoted by China is politically significant. But its impact on trade and prosperity is more nuanced, as Bloomberg explains. It avoids some market opening on both sides (India to agriculture; others to services) that would have been economically beneficial. But ...11 hours ago
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Fingers crossed the gremlins have been sorted out.
And to Tania Billingsley all I can say is RESPECT!
+1 on both counts.
I hope as as well!
Would be when I got tied down for job interviews.
A huge thank you for all your efforts lprent.
Nope, they haven’t. Still getting blank pages most times I go to a page but a reload will usually get it.
Nope, they haven’t. Still getting blank pages most times I go to a page but a reload will usually get it.
Single click, double post.
Rape culture is: describing an alleged assault as a “sex case”.
Nice to see someone is prepared to tell the truth about our bored insincere Prime Minister and his incompetent lackeys.
To add insult to injury:
“I deeply regret the distress caused to the woman at the centre of this incident…”
Can someone tell John Allen to apologise for his department’s failings or shut the fuck up? Hardly surprising that McCully’s creature doesn’t get it.
100+
Tania Billingsley. One brave young women.
YOU’RE BACK!!!
(and here was me thinking you didn’t love me any more…)
Thank you thank you thank you thank you
Now save me from the tedium that is this bullshit writing:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/10250511/Cunliffes-apology-patting-himself-on-the-back
i arrived by the backdoor, my usual method gets me to ‘the page’, but, clicking on nything after the ‘Google’ has put ‘the Standard page’ up simply creates a blank white screen,
The backdoor, Google up a comment that is specific to your username,(you might be able to use any username), this brings up an old page of ie: ‘Open Mike’,
Click on the ‘comments rss’ icon at the top right of the page,
This takes you to a strange looking page with a series of comments that are obviously from the Standard,
Click on the comment with the closest date to today and hey presto you land here…
Almost all techies are men and for the outage it must be said that I am sorry for being a man
vto: just another boy who believes his hurt feelings take priority over sexual violence.
Puddleglum at TDB./a>
No I really am genuinely sorry for being a man, even though it was my female partner who ladled out the violence last night.
What does “being a man” mean to you? I’m picking faux victimhood.
No, faux allegations in this setting. What about you?
What does “being a man” mean to you, vto, since you feel qualified to apologise for being one?
“it was my female partner who ladled out the violence last night.”
Sorry to read that, go to the authorities, lay a complaint and keep yourself safe.
Why would anyone stay in a violent relationship, no matter what side of the gender divide you were born into,
Fear of loneliness???, wanting to appear ‘normal’???, the family unit, the most dangerous place for anyone to be…
Why? That is a complex and intensely personal question. The violence takes psychological and verbal form, rarely physical. It is these other two forms which cause more damage though imo. How to stop it without leaving? Dunno.
If the ‘pattern’ of the relationship is set and has been so over a long period then ‘leaving’ i would suggest is pretty much the only option,
Obviously, depending upon the level that ‘the relationship’ can be discussed leaving with a codicil of what changes need be made,(from both perspectives), might allow it to continue after a cooling down period…
Just firstly, a little nit pick. If it is psychological/verbal abuse then it isn’t “violence” because violence refers to a physical act of abuse.
Secondly, your situation sucks. There are no two ways about it. To me (because I’ve been there as well), there are a couple of ways of dealing with it and one of them isn’t actually airing it in a public forum during a discussion of physical violence towards women because it gets you either branded as disingenuous or attempting to distract from the discussion at hand.
The statement of “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them” typifies this situation because, despite the emotional suffering, your physical safety seems to still be intact. No woman has that luxury.
despite the emotional suffering, your physical safety seems to still be intact.
Which misstates the issue horribly. After all what is the difference between breaking a leg skiing and having it broken because your partner threw you out the first floor window?
Clue – it’s not the broken leg.
Well it’s a very fine line with very wide, grey borders.
I’m confused at what conclusion you are trying to draw here RedLogix? I was merely stating that within the context of his relationship, vto seems to still (at least) be safe from physical abuse by his partner. I was then using that to point out that women are always under threat of physical abuse.
If the conclusion you were trying to draw was that his suffering within his relationship is somehow equatable to domestic violence victims, then I have to beg to disagree because often they are also being subjected to the same emotional/psychological abuse that he claims to suffer as well as wearing their partners fist upon their face.
CV – hence why I said it was a nitpick. However, to most in my experience, violence is considered an act of physical aggression.
shrug
A small nit pick with what you’ve written Zorr,
Many domestic violence/abuse help centers don’t make the distinction between physical and psychological abuse that is being made here. For example, North Harbour Living Without Violence includes verbal abuse, the use of social isolation, humiliation, name calling and other forms of emotional abuse under the rubric of Domestic Violence.
http://www.livingwithoutviolence.org.nz/dv/index.php
So we agree that the emotional trauma is the core of the matter. So how does it help vto to be told that ‘at least his physical safety is intact’. That isn’t what is important to him.
Instead I read it as an indirect way of minimising the situation.
Isn’t that bit of a ‘Godwin’ tho,”One of them isn’t actually airing it in a public forum during a discussion of physical violence toward women etc”
Why shouldn’t He air what He sees as violence, albeit verbal/psychological violence, in an open forum,
Are you afraid that the other side of the equation will paint women in a less than glowing light,
Simply trying to erase verbal/psychological violence from the conversation is to say the least extremely unhelpful as such violence, the verbal/psychological type, is often the precursor to physical violence,
In the complex mix of the causes of violence,(setting aside for the moment sexual violence), verbal/psychological violence can be shown to lead to physical violence committed by either the male or the female in a relationship…
@NZ Femme – fair enough. Also, thank you for providing that important information.
If I’m to be honest, my issue with vto’s posts is that they are single one liners along the lines of “men suffer abuse too” using himself as an example. I think everyone is on the same page that no-one should suffer abuse of any kind in our society.
Maybe I am bringing a little too much baggage to this conversation because I have been dealing a lot with diversionary tactics in social media over the last few days from people using the “men suffer too” line in order to derail legitimate conversation about the gender violence that overwhelmingly affects women. Often these people make arguments based on a belief that there are no services available for men (despite all government run services being 100% available to all) and feel that the services like Womens Refuge should be open to men as well. This is without them knowing that they were created out of a need by the community and are only partly funded by our government.
I will add this on here because I feel it is accurate, will be interesting to see what people say. These cries of “men suffer too” feel similar to cries of “reverse racism” or “misandry” and an attempt to deflect the discussion from the important issue of what the hell are we going to do about a country full of men who can’t keep their fists to themselves.
@bad12 – a tongue can cut but fists can kill.
Zorr, that’s rather weak do you not think, ”A tongue can cut but fists can kill”, what you are doing is concentrating upon the end result of what may well have started long ago as a verbally/psychologically abusive relationship while ignoring the genesis of such violence…
@bad12 – I should have probably made it more bland so it didn’t come off silly. The point I was trying to make is that we are all responsible for our actions. No matter the provocation, violence should never be an answer.
As horrible as emotional/psychological abuse is (and I have come from that place having been raised in such a household), it is still no excuse (in my mind) for raising your fists against someone.
I understand your point around diversionary/distraction tactics Zorr; I hesitated to post for that reason. And I’ve had my own issues with VTO previously during the roast busters blow up here – before VTO disclosed that he was in what sounds like a toxic/abusive domestic situation a wee while ago.
So…I erred on the side of caution today, and am taking VTO’s disclosures as truthful. While the one-liners could be read as distraction/diversionary tactics because of the current context, I’m more inclined (now) to view them as coming/lashing out from a place of pain. I think it’s possible to acknowledge the pain of male victims of DV/abuse, and simultaneously acknowledge the horrific statistics for DV and sexual violence against women.
I’m also in the slightly weird situation of having previously experienced DV from a female partner that culminated over a period of six years and ultimately had me physically fearing for my life. So, I guess there’s also a part of me that gets the “but what about me?” stuff that seems to explode whenever we try and discuss one (very large and horrible) gendered experience of DV from the male perp/female victim spectrum. I absolutely understand and agree with needing to prioritize. I just wish there was some way of doing that which doesn’t result in minimzing the effects of DV on other groups.
I had not been aware of any previous disclosures by vto and have only seen them usually post things that I view as diversionary when taken in the context of an active political blog. With that additional information, it makes it less so and I wouldn’t have been so quick to fire my mouth. I’ve never been good at keeping my mouth shut though and dealing with the male privilege/rape culture discussion has begun rubbing raw as I’m constantly having to rehash ground with people I had thought should know better. Deconstructing #notallmen because people are wrong on the internet is possibly one of the things that has contributed to a short fuse on this issue…
My personal opinion (on this specific issue) is that domestic violence is never acceptable no matter who is involved and in what role. My favorite comment regarding humans is that we are rationalizing creatures, not rational ones. We are emotional actors and sometimes we cannot control our behaviors and actions in the ways we wish. However, if we don’t hold ourselves accountable for our actions, then who? The worst thing we can do with domestic violence is continue to sweep the pieces under the carpet and the least we can do is apologize to the victims.
‘…having to re-hash ground…”
That’s the case for any issue.
Thanks for all the considered responses. It was a genuine question to vto. Puddleglum expressed it so clearly, that ‘being a man’ is a social construct that has multiple, overlapping and often mutually exclusive meanings.
All grown up. Emotionally mature? I shudder to realise that women have to see us as threats. McCully ‘did a McCully’. So do most of us.
Time for a change.
I don’t know where in NZ you are VTO, but North Harbour Living Without Violence are an organization that can work with men experiencing domestic violence. They don’t have specific programs for male victims/survivors but from what I understand, can work one on one.
http://www.livingwithoutviolence.org.nz/dv/index.php PH 09 489 3770
Noted NZ femme thanks. It is real, and damaging. You seem very astute in this area.
(had to bow out of the rest of that conversation – too close to the bone)
@vto
Yes it’s real and damaging – also very confusing. Abusers of all stripes are very good at keeping their target off balance. Love alternating with awful and harmful actions. I think many people experiencing abuse in a relationship find it difficult to leave for that reason. (I know I did) At some point, we’re faced with the reality that the love that (may) still remain is out-weighed by the harm experienced to our psyches. I wish you well vto. Don’t be afraid to seek help, or leave – there is still joy to be had – as unlikely as that may seem.
i should qualify this comment with, ”the Dysfunctional family unit, the most dangerous place for anyone to be”…
‘Feedburner’ appears to be the ‘site’ that lets me back onto the Standard,
Note: while the comment above appears on the page, after i posted the comment above i disappeared back to the blank white page,
i then accessed ‘feedburner’ through the ‘most visited’ icon on my laptop and hey presto i was back to yesterday’s ‘Open Mike’,
From there i clicked on ‘Open Mike’ which gave me access to today’s ‘Open Mike’
Don’t know if any of that helps or just makes things more confusing…
A day without The Standard is hard to bear. Glad you are back and a big thank you to lprent.
+1000
That “hard to bear” bit. True. It’s worrying. Thanks lprent. Bad……such ingenuity ! Not wired for that myself.
Lolz North, it helps if you havn’t got a clue what your doing,(my Ha Ha Ha of the day was when i thought of Googling up an old Standard comment of mine to try and get in through the backdoor, Lo and behold, there’s a whole page of 🙄 PG, i think on His own website, whining like a beaten dog about comments i had made to Him, as if anyone were interested)…
+2,000
NZ politics is a miserable place without the sunshine that is The Standard
(all hail lprent!!!)
Luckily I have a brand new kitten to occupy my free time at the moment.
And I’ll raise you a thousand on TS being BIG and irreplacable. There is no other like it.
+2,000
NZ politics is a miserable place without the sunshine that is The Standard
(all hail lprent!!!)
will echo that as well! 🙂
Seems a lot quicker as well. Thought about you dealing with the issues (what ever they were) yesterday lprent – many many thanks.
Not getting the recent comment box appearing in chrome.
Yeah true, the whole right side of ‘the Standard’ is just blank white space here, up top right there are the icons:
Login>
Donate>
Contribute>
Articles RSS>
Comments RSS>
The rest is blank, just added this in case it helps….
Yerp, confirmed what I’m seeing, or not, as is the case.
Note: the ‘right side’ of the Standard is now showing everything except the feed which links to other sites like the daily blog,
When posting a comment, the comment is appearing in the correct position,but after posting the comment i am being sent back to the blank page,(a true reflection of the inner workings of my mind?),
Access back is being gained from ”most visited” in my tool-bar…
try pressing CTRL+F5 a couple if times. this will refresh the browser cache. you could also try opening a windows command prompt (if you are on windows) and typing:
ipconfig /flushdns
I think some part of the site might have been moved yesterday and so your computers DNS cache might be looking in the wrong place. Although it should have sorted itself out by now.
Thanks for that Andrew, i much prefer the ”should have sorted itself out by now” method of trouble shooting, i find that this method doesn’t get me into so much trouble,
i well remember the great fun i had when i first used one of these things,(laptop), connected via Teleconned wireless aircard and being one of those who have the habit of diving in without reading the instructions first i threw in the floppy disk and proceeded to connect myself to the web,
i kicked myself later for not writing down a copy of all the steps this connection took via my new found skill as an ungenius, But, the Teleconned tech bloke assured me that my efforts had cooked the innards of the nearest cell tower,(as He begged me to stop and follow the precise instructions He gave)…
+1
Banksters love New Zealand.
And Aussie ones particularly adore Kiwis?
NZ banks post record profit of $4 billion
“New Zealand’s banks collectively posted a record profit in the year to April.
“The country’s eight main banks together made almost $4.3 billion which is up 22% on the previous year, according to KPMG.”
http://tvnz.co.nz/business-news/nz-banks-post-record-profit-4-billion-6023659
$1000 profit per person, man women and child.
and they are complaining that mortgage-deposit requirements..
..are restricting them..
..they are like fucken farmers..those bankers..
..no matter the event/circumstance..
..it’s always an excuse for a good moan..
..about how hard done by they are..
..partial-nationalise all of them..!..(kiwibank excepted..)
..take 51% control/profits from the bankster-bastards..!
..clearly nothing else will work..
..we have one in four nz children living in poverty..
..we have 15,000 men/women/children sleeping rough just in auckland..
..and we have these bastards increasing their profits by 22% in the last year..taking billions in profit off-shore..
..and moaning with it..
..what’s wrong with that picture..?
No, just stop them creating money and then have the government create it and make 0% interest loans. That would sort out our banking situation and make NZ far better off than what we are under the present system.
just for clarification, you understand
+1
$1000 THEFT per person, man women and child.
“just for clarification, you understand”
Profit is theft is that what you are saying?
The 26,000 highly paid staff and anyone in kiwi saver sharing in that profit might disagree,
so would millions of Kiwis who don’t want to lose their deposits.
Long day with no TheStandard yesterday..
Welcome back 🙂
Yep a real long day.
No Standard- disgusting. I was a Labour supporter but now I’m going to vote National or Act or something. (joke).
having a life-diploma in addictions..
..and knowing how withdrawal-signs/symptoms manifest..
..yesterday i found out i have a standard-habit..
..(it came as a bit of a shock..i was like a rat with its’ cocaine-feeder suddenly switched off..constantly batting at the lever..but to no avail..)
..should i use the daily blog as a form of methadone..?
Have you got citation Phillip, for the bit about being like a rat because of your lack of access to ‘the Standard’…
an education could have taught u what a simile is..eh..?
..and what it is used for..
So, is that the sum total of learning’s you garnered from this university education Phillip, or can we expect a gush, splash, or, spray of pearls of wisdom in such a vein,
Seriously tho, Rattus behavior is usually more deep seated in the psyche than a mere web-site outage is likely to expose…
You two are comedy geniuses phillip. It’s a bit like Laurel and Hardy type though where the slapstick got a bit physical and one was quite sick. One of them put a light globe in the other’s mouth and slapped his cheeks sharply. Luckily you two are apart and the carry-on can always be ignored phillip. It’s the only way with such a mentality.
Are you claiming to be addicted to cannabis, Phil? I didn’t think that was possible. Habit forming, yes, but addictive, no.
nah..!
..i was thinking more heroin/cocaine/crack..
..cannabis is a healing-agent..
..that can help you kick those nasties..
..and should be available/offered as a salve to all of those trying to kick anything..
..it distracts you from and eases you thru physical/mental-addiction withdrawals..
..in my experiences..
Sweet, gotta be better than the other alternatives. Glad you’re rid of them.
heh..!..chrs..so am i…
onya phil – what a journey life is…
chrs..
..and as a point of information/warning..crack is the most addictive/obsessive of all the drugs i tried/used..
(don’t ever be ‘tempted’..people..)
..it horrified/scared me so much..how quickly i became so wired/fucked-up.. i physically ran away from it..to jamaica..
..and healed myself staying with a bunch of vegetarian rastafarian pot-growers/exporters..
..and once again..strong pot was what eased me over the bumps…
..it has been a bit of a ‘journey’..this ‘life’..
..i look back at myself at times..and go..’w.t.f. were you thinking..?’
..and when i see crack-addicts on tv/wherever..my heart goes out to them..
..i know the grip that gorilla has on them…
..and there but for etc etc…
Espiner fails to hold National cabinet members to account for not fronting to discuss important issues
Wednesday… Bennett…inequality
Thursday ….McCully…..Tania Billingsley statement.
By comparison Campbell Live make pointed comments about Parata not fronting to discuss Education policy on Monday.
Our undemocratic government is being facilitated by a public broadcaster which appears to have fallen into rogue hands.
Espiner is a total disgrace.
espiner has always been a rightwing-trout..
..he is performing as expected..
..i won’t go near it/him..
..far too annoying..
It is the editors who fail to instruct Espiner to say that National ministers are not fronting that are also at fault.
Agreed
The appointment team are at fault primarily. They knew what they were choosing. I fear that we will see little change in Guy Le Spinner. But he did apologise the other day for making a second thrust across a comment or explanation, with a repeated question that was probably quite good. It sounded then more of a searching interview for a time, rather than a bombastic rant by some autocratic school principal.
On May 18 Australia had mass protests across the country. Friends of mine (in Perth even) only let me know now with a facebook link – and no I’m not going to promote facebook. The only thing I found in the MSM is this http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/18/tens-of-thousands-across-the-country-march-in-in-protest mmmmmmm. So big ups to our cousins across the ditch. So silly question, did people know about this? One hundred and eighty thousand people hit the streets and the media ignore it – a serious push back – and a serious issue ignored.
I heard about it only via my Twitter feed…
I heard about it only via my Twitter feed…
Meanwhile who hear knows that the last few days of Israeli bombardment (including air strikes and naval shelling FFS) has now killed and injured over 400 Palestinian civilians?
Damn my system is doing double entries…
You heard about the Neo-Nazi killings in the Ukraine CV? Have a link to video – but I don’t think I want to put up – I don’t think it is appropriate to just put up for anyone to view. These are par-military groups aligned and train by the Ukraine army. Most of it is happening in the ethnically Russian parts of Ukraine. I threw up after 20 minutes in, and had to stop watching – I read the accompanying report. A Ukrainian friend I talk to in another forum said it gets worse after I stopped watching. They sat through all the footage, and helped edit it – they are now in hiding. Both side don’t want to it to get out they are targeting civilian’s. So yeah Palestine is a mess, Syria is a Mess and now Ukraine is a bloody mess as well. I think the old saying applies – we are descending to hell in a hand basket…
We in the west are the most propagandized people on the planet – usually through what we are not shown, what we are not made aware of, and perspectives that we never hear.
LOL, as opposed to countries that don’t even have unfettered internet access you mean?
aye.
Every so often on telly they play some recent Chinese movies with subtitles – usually medieval/fantasy, visually impressive with bold colours, casts of thousands, occasionally lots of wire work…
The subtexts seem to almost exclusively revolve around the desirability of stable society and the hero’s duty to sacrifice their own interests for the greater good. Sometimes I find them downright disturbing.
I suppose you mean the Odessa Trade Union Building fire – which, as I recall, while the Pro-Ukraine protestors were in the wrong for throwing molotov cocktails (you remember, same as the “harmless” ones that Tame Iti and friends were partly charged over in 2007), having, I might add, been fired upon by the Pro-Russian faction first, the deaths among the Pro-Russian mob was largely because the barricated themselves in the top floors of the building and refused to leave.
This RT bullshit kneejerk calling the Pro-Ukraine element neo-Nazi is moronic. The far-right element is at best a minority of a coalition government (sort of like Internet-Mana will hopefully be following the election) and if they really were being massively funded by some secret US-EU cabal, one would like to think they would have managed a bit more influence than the Agricultural Ministry. It’s actually pretty insultig to suggest that the Pro-Ukraine faction have no legitimate agency after a generation of self-rule. That’s basically ignoring that on the one hand closer relations with the EU opens up the possibility of access to wealthy foreign markets, better employment prospects and increased social liberalisation, whereas closer ties with Russia, is a collapsing economy, and, well, Tsar Putin. You would have to be utterly stupid not to see that most Ukrainians wouldn’t particularly need much arm twisting.
This is a Ukraine activists filming the action of their own. They are not pro-Russian. And a minority who is killing civilian’s your going to compare with internet/Mana what sort of wanker are you Populuxe1? If you can justify that position in your head – sorry for you. No your proof that, neo-liberalism is so desperate to justify it debasement of humanity it would rather lie, lie, lie, to push it’s agenda. So for you Populuxe1 a few neo-nazis killing a few Russian and Ukrainians civilians’ is OK. As long as Ukraine becomes part of EU and they have western type freedom?
I see. So the Kalishnikovs just magically materialised out of the downstairs cupboard? Dear me. So tell me, Adam, if you had a choice, where would you rather live? Russia or the EU?
So you are suggesting that the ”Pro-Ukraine faction” as you call them did not overthrow a democratically elected Government then Populuxe1,
This Pro-Ukraine faction then holding a quick ‘election’ which they were in complete control of then makes all this legitimate right???…
You mean the Pro-Ukraine faction did exactly what you long to do to a corrupt National government, Bas? smiles sweetly
Uh I think we’re going to do that on Sept 20, by conducting a constitutionally valid election that follows NZ electoral law precisely.
So not really the same as the thugs who took over the Ukrainian state machinery.
And if National was basically being puppeted by a foreign power behind a populist mandate and ineffectual democracy,with no real change in sight, while Key was stealing vast ammounts of public money to build a privat palace and zoo, you might get a little cross, no? smiling even more sweetly
@ CV See if it works on your pay system.
Haha…shall I now go into a description of how banks create money in the economy by typing in deposits into bank accounts lol
@colonial viper
Yees. That would be a great trick for me, just paid my house insurance.
NZ media is owned by large Australian corporates.
They don’t want us to know about this.
It’ll get in the way of their planned carve up of the country.
Instead they want you to know this stuff.
http://i.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/10252296/Could-the-Kardashians-win-an-Emmy
If you look closely, you’ll see that in fact the website is divided up into sections. It’s probably a mistake to look for NEWS in the ENTERTAINMENT section.
@Pop
But not unknown to find ENTERTAINMENT in the NEWS section. Do you capisce?
The ‘ownership’ of New Zealand’s media goes far further than Australia, various arms of ‘International Capital’ have large stakes in our media and thus the power to impose ‘editorial control’,
i suspect, with no actual hard evidence, that John Campbell was smart enough to wrestle from Media Works,(apparently just out of insolvency),a contract that gives Him editorial independence from the other arms of that particular mouth-piece promoting the views of International Capital…
Some background on the real owners of New Zealand’s media.
The NZ Herald is owned by APN News & Media Limited. APN News & Media Limited.is an Australian and New Zealand media company.
APN’s top 5 shareholders..the people who pay Mr Murphy and Mr Roughan’s bills and tell them what to write.
http://apn2013.annual-report.com.au/financial-report/shareholder-information
National Nominees Limited 23.1%
Independent News & Media (Australia) Limited 17.6%
Citicorp Nominees Pty Limited 11.7%
News & Media NZ Limited 11.3%
JP Morgan Nominees Australia Limited 8.7%
Some detail on some of these shareholders.
The Irish company Independent News & Media has a large stake in the company. Two of INM’s largest shareholders are Irish businessman Denis O’Brien and financier Dermot Desmond. Dermot Desmond is an Irish businessman, financier and tax exile. He is estimated to be worth €1.35 billion and is ranked by the Sunday Independent as the seventh-richest person in Ireland.
Citicorp Nominees Pty Ltd was incorporated in 1970 and is based in Sydney, Australia. Citicorp Nominees Pty Ltd operates as a subsidiary of Citigroup Pty Limited.This is a foreign-owned subsidiary bank of Citigroup. Citigroup Inc. or Citi is an American multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Manhattan, New York City. Citigroup was formed from one of the world’s largest mergers in history by combining the banking giant Citicorp and financial conglomerate Travelers Group in October 1998 (announced on April 7, 1998).Citi is currently the third largest bank holding company in the United States by assets. Its largest shareholders include funds from the Middle East and Singapore.
JP Morgan Chase & Co. is an American multinational banking and financial services holding company. It is the largest bank in the United States, with total assets of US$2.515 trillion. It is a major provider of financial services, and according to Forbes magazine is the world’s third largest public company based on a composite ranking.
A great quote from Adam Brandt (Green Party, Victoria) in that Guardian piece, to which every politician counting themselves as on the left should take heed; “It takes guts and courage to stand up to the powerful and wealthy but a coward to take an axe to the young, the sick and the poor,”
Very true. It makes me sick when politicians talk about having the courage to take the hard decisions, then make another attack on the poor and disadvantaged. Both NAct and Labour suffer from this. The raising of the retirement age is evidence that Labour can only take easy decisions, as demanded by capital.
this soccer game both sucks and blows..
..it’s like that ancient simpsons’ piss-take on soccer..
It’s called football, and yes, a borefest.
Well, neither team was likely to leave themselves open to Brazil’s fate. But the penalty shoot out was heart-in-mouth stuff.
Have we reached saturation point, sport being the ‘opium of the masses’ perhaps us that are now bored with it all,(even the the super14 thugby has me yawning these days), are the precursors to a mass OD as far as televised sport goes,
Televised sport, the perfect replacement for that older opium of religion, allows the masters to control the conversations that occur in the smoko rooms across the nation on a daily basis…
The only people who can afford to go to these events are the wealthy.
The Cricket is way better.
Couldn’t play the game to save myself, only got interested when the limited overs games started way back,
Pity they stopped airing most of them on free to air, if there’s one thing that can keep me watching the box its the one day cricket matches…
i want germany to win..
(my son is half-german..and germany played attacking soccer..that’s enough reasons to support them..)
..if the final is the crap-shoot of a penalty shoot-out..?
..after one of those ‘safe’-games..?
..meh..!
I think the penalty shoot out system should be abolished the way it is done now and instead, after full time the game should continue in increments of 10 minutes with one less player on each side during each of those 10 minute periods. What do you think?
The game will look like this :
First half, 40 minutes, goalie+10 players [Subs allowed as per existing rules]
Second half, Swap sides, 40 mins, goalie+10 players.
If draw, then…extra time…
Period one : 9 minutes, goalie+9 players
Period Two, Swap sides : 9 minutes, goalie+9 players
If draw, then…extra time….
Period one : 8 minutes, goalie+8 players
Period Two, Swap sides : 8 minutes, goalie+8 players
If draw, then…extra time….
Period one : 7 minutes, goalie+7 players
Period Two, Swap sides : 7 minutes, goalie+7 players
If draw, then…extra time….
Period one : 6 minutes, goalie+6 players
Period Two, Swap sides : 6 minutes, goalie+6 players
If draw, then…extra time….
Period one : 5 minutes, goalie+5 players
Period Two, Swap sides : 5 minutes, goalie+5 players
If still draw, ONLY THEN do the penalty shoot out.
What do you think?
Someone I know has suggested that both extra time and the penalty shoot out could be replaced by a six-a-side half-hour, which seems to follow a similar line of thought. It would be very dramatic, to see all the defenders apart from the goalies leaving the field, but it would not burden individual players so heavily.
The penalty shoot out as used now is too drastic and too unfair a method of deciding which is a superior side. Often, the penalty save is not much of a skill display but a matter of luck, more often depending upon which side the goalie decides to move to!
That first paragraph should read :
‘I think the penalty shoot out system should be abolished the way it is done now and instead, after full time, the game should continue in reduced time and reduced player numbers as shown below.’
It would make the game more exciting and fairer, I think. What do you think?
Yes, your idea too would have its drama, and would allow room for strategies as to the order in which the players would leave the field. I agree that the penalty shoot out is both drastic and unfair, and doesn’t reliably reflect the strengths of the two sides. Not so much in agreement with you about the luck of goalies though. I have seen some dazzling saves in this world cup, and think that goalies are often the unsung heroes.
Of course goalies do great. I am not at all putting them down about their abilities during the normal course of the game, except to say that during a penalty shoot out, there is an element of chance/intuition/luck involved as to which way the goalie moves, no matter how good a goalie one is. That is the nature of the penalty shoot out, not a negative reflection on the goalie as such.
OK. I read your piece a bit too hastily, sorry, and ended up making a straw man of what you said.
If its a draw at full time I think the goalies should leave and let the game continue without them Shoot outs seem to leave too much to chance.
How about the penalty shoot out first and then play to see if they should count it?
i like yr idea..dv..
..it wd add an extra frisson to the game..
..and wd end those boring safe-pass-fests..
i like yr idea..dv..
..it wd add an extra frisson to the game..
..and wd end those boring safe-pass-fests..
the multiple-copies virus..
There is then the boring possibility of the team with the initial shoot out ‘win’ playing a completely defensive ‘win’-protecting-game to preserve their advantage. For that reason alone I would not support your suggestion.
Besides, the shoot out losing team and their goalie in particular would be starting their ‘real’ game in a state of shame, fear, anxiety and be somewhat demoralized to give off their best from then on.
That is an interesting idea worthy of debate and consideration, but I don’t like it too much because a game without a goalie does not seem right,…….(unless the goals are kicked high ‘above’ the goal bar somewhat like that bastardisation of soccer, the game of rugby!..lol..A joke!)
Way back when, corners awarded used to be used to differentiate in the case of a draw. I guess the rationale was that corners indicated more attacking play. Anyway, that was dumped many years back and extra time was introduced. And at the end of extra time, if the game was still drawn, play continued until either side scored a goal. Dunno why they dumped that. Far better than the lottery of penalty kicks.
Try getting a job then phil, instead of sitting on your ass all day smoking pot.
@ infused..
..not sure which comment u r responding to..
..but i do have ‘a job’ actually..
..every day i aggregate/compile a local/global news-snapshot/grab..
..at a website called whoar.co.nz
(..something that pisses all over anything else in this part of the world in that news-gathering context..)
..should i be getting some ‘reward’ from/for doing this..?
..is that what you are saying..?
..i agree..!..i agree..!
..but just sitting on my arse smoking pot all day..?
..nah..!..too boring..!..eh..?
..been there..dun that..
and it’s ‘arse’..not ‘ass’..
..an ‘ass’ is a member of the donkey family..around these parts…
test 5
I was very pleased to notice the self-checkout machine at New World greeting me with a cherry “Kia ora” yesterday. Hopefully it’s a permanent thing rather than just being in anticipation of Maori Language Week.
Hmmm, my view is that the machine should have greeted you with ‘tena koe’ and cheerily given you the ‘kia ora’ after having swallowed your hard earned coin…
And my view is that you should have smashed the machine and demanded to be served by a human. I prefer my money goes in part to keeping my neighbours in employment.
You do that to ATMs too?
Used to do some creative vandalism when they first arrived, for sure.
Cool – anytime I can I use people not these machines.
Six jobs lost at a local countdown cos they’ve put in the self check out aisles. Won’t use them.
Same, for the same reason, plus prices aren’t reduced to match less operating costs.
And to queue up to check your own groceries, what a laugh.
And the “lost” jobs are still there.They’re just being done by customers, for free.
Like jobs servants used to do in middle and upperclass households? With today’s domestic technologies, most of those jobs are now done by household members, or one or two servants in place of the whole team of servants some households use to have.
…and the rest of them are now sitting in supermarkets.
I get that there are better things people could be doing, but I don’t see anyone offering it.
And that is the problem we should be working on…. changing the work system.
Do you see any political party anywhere with any proposals to change “the work system”?
I said “we”. And by that I don’t mean political parties – or at least not on their own.
Politicians will only work to change things if we pressure them to. Trying to pressure businesses to change their system and MOs really won’t end them putting profits before people.
That, believe it or not, is the governments job. The private sector won’t do it because then unemployment won’t exist to lower wages.
We wash our dishes by hand and use a clothes line – many use technology but I’d ask why? Save time? For what? Save money? Nah. It actually is fun to wash and dry the dishes imo you get to practice the tea towel flick for instance, the dryer can race the washer and enjoy putting back an unsatisfactory wash – it is what my brothers and I did growing up and it is what I want to bring into our family. Some may argue that there are better things to be doing but interacting with others in relative happiness is up there in my book – the same for checkout workers too – especially if they have the inclination. Too often nowdays they work longer hours and don’t have the time to take 20 or 30 seconds to say gidday and smile – luckily in the bay we haven’t got to that point yet.
Dishwashers are late to the game. I wash dishes by hand, too.
Until I was about 15 or 16, my mother used to do the washing for the family without a washing machine. That involved boiling up a copper, scrubbing really dirty stuff like rugby outfits, and turning a handle of the wringer.
She also used to make clothes and knit, organise to get the grocery shopping without a car, arrange for food to be fresh without a fridge, cooked food without any of the mod cons many expect to use today. Housework was a very time-consuming and energy-sapping activity. And this was when middleclass families no longer had servants as a general practice.
In past times households also coped without flush toilets or water on tap…. technologies keep being developed. Life adapts.
What needs to change, is that all people should have a living income, and jobs and enterprises need to more more focused on serving society, rather than generating profits for the (usually already) wealthy.
Yep your last paragraph sums it up well.
And a democratic say in the organisations that they work in/work for.
We wash our dishes by hand and use a clothes line – many use technology but I’d ask why? Save time? For what? Save money? Nah. It actually is fun to wash and dry the dishes imo you get to practice the tea towel flick for instance, the dryer can race the washer and enjoy putting back an unsatisfactory wash – it is what my brothers and I did growing up and it is what I want to bring into our family. Some may argue that there are better things to be doing but interacting with others in relative happiness is up there in my book – the same for checkout workers too – especially if they have the inclination. Too often nowdays they work longer hours and don’t have the time to take 20 or 30 seconds to say gidday and smile – luckily in the bay we haven’t got to that point yet.
I’m of the opinion that we’ve got better things for those people to do than sit at checkouts. Of course, our privatised system only sees those people as an expense rather than an asset that needs to be supported and cared for and thus won’t do anything to get those people doing those more important jobs.
The point i would have eventually got around to in my discussion below Draco, first we need alter the tax system so that everyone is receiving the minimum,(preferably the living), wage,
After that society can find lots of ‘work’ for people to take up, monitoring the farming industry will become a necessity in the future, just to think of one,
Workplace safety inspectors by the 100’s to think of another, the list is endless…
Yep. The problem is the competitive, private business, profit system. A better system of one that results in providing jobs beneficial to society. And we also should be working towards a shorter working week – 6 hours per day/5 days a week per person, as a first goal for fulltime workers.
Agree with the shorter working week but I’d go for 8 hours per day and a four day week.
I hate mornings – gimme 5 hours a day six days a week 🙂
Can’t say I’m overly fond of them either 😈
Can’t say I’m overly fond of them either 😈
Can’t say I’m overly fond of them either 😈
Alright, alright! we heard you the first time! (actually that just happened to me on another thread :D)
Alright, alright! we heard you the first time! (actually that just happened to me on another thread :D)
lol …that’ll teach me…
lol
Mr Keynes reckoned fifteen in five would do.
But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/1930/our-grandchildren.htm
And you TRP have ‘smashed’ how many of these machines so far???, smashing said machnes would seem to be the perfect ‘make-work’ scheme for the plods, the judicial system, and the 1000’s of lazy sods currently employed as key janglers in the prison system,
Far from smashing the machines, would you not be better off advocating for ‘true equality’ in the vein of paying all those reliant upon the benefit system the ‘living wage’…
“Far from smashing the machines, would you not be better off advocating for ‘true equality’ in the vein of paying all those reliant upon the benefit system the ‘living wage’…”
Well, that made me laugh, Bad. Well done.
What’s the cause of the laughter TRP, modernization of people bases systems such as the check-out operation of a supermarket are always going to leave a lag between old jobs and new jobs being created,
Your laughter instead of an actual answer to the question is suggestive of you having no belief in equality what-so-ever,
You would prefer to strike a ‘pose’ as evidenced by your absurd ”smash the machines” than pay the workers made redundant a living wage,
Arnie came across as the brainless wonder in the series of movies, your comments are beginning to portray the same…
Nah, the laughter was at your naivety. How about we get the living wage for workers first, eh? Btw, what do you think the word ‘wage’ implies?
Thanks for that TPR, it reads like the forward to ”The idiots guide to structural poverty”,
i could ask you the same about the word poverty TRP, while you continue on your blind little tiptoe down the path of ”work will set you free” you are simply a supporter and applauder of the current situation of structural poverty,
With Labour as the lead member of a coalition we will never have across the board a living wage for all workers, why don’t you try honesty for once,
What are the unemployed other than workers kept deliberately out of work…
Good of you to narrow your original claim down to just the unemployed. Hope you didn’t get any splinters in your fingers as you moved the goalposts.
Good of you to not make a relevant point in the debate Arnie, what the hell is that supposed to mean…
You originally wanted all beneficiaries to get the living wage. Now you’re down to just the unemployed. Geddit, now?
Thank you TRP, in a word, as deserving of it as that ‘wing-nut’ below, Bullshit,
i have at this time of night better things to do with my time than play either Tic Tac Toe or dance on the head of a pin with one of the Standards resident experts in both forms,
Your whole focus of debate is to continually run away from what you publish spreading bullshit as you go…
I’m not running away from anything, Bad, but feel free to scarper if you must. I’m sure nobody will feel any less of you for bottling out of your own lost argument.
“What are the unemployed other than workers kept deliberately out of work”
No government wants to have unemployed people. Everyone I know that wants to work finds a job within a few months.
One word Nakahi-man, Bullshit….(its all your worth)…
So your friends wanted to be unemployed for weeks upon weeks upon weeks?
Nobody I know wants to be unemployed, period.
Don’t be simple McFlock I said everyone I know that wants to work finds a job within a few months. People do loose their jobs from time to time often through no fault of their own. Yes my friends and many others who want to work all found jobs within a few months. A few people that are not friends of mine and don’t want to work are as you would expect still unemployed.
Nakiman, how many people who aren’t your friends do your curtains twitch for?
lol
you missed the point – if everyone got work they wanted, none of your friends would be unemployed for weeks, let alone months. Unless your friends wanted to loaf around dong nothing for months on end, collecting the dole. Mybe they were familiar enough with you to pretend they were looking and just couldn’t find anything.
They still would have been in the tens of thousands of unemployed that quarter.
lol
you missed the point – if everyone got work they wanted, none of your friends would be unemployed for weeks, let alone months. Unless your friends wanted to loaf around dong nothing for months on end, collecting the dole. Mybe they were familiar enough with you to pretend they were looking and just couldn’t find anything.
They still would have been in the tens of thousands of unemployed that quarter.
McFlock, you’re asking a tory to factor time into an equation. You know they can’t.
People are this or that, and things are this or that, and that’s all there is to this.
Our economy is based on having a permanent 5-7% unemployed. Any more leads to riots, any less leads to pay rises.
+1
That’s it exactly and why the rich have been getting all the gains from increased productivity for the last thirty years. Why we have increasing inequality.
“Our economy is based on having a permanent 5-7% unemployed. Any more leads to riots, any less leads to pay rises.”
I have been an employer in the past and when the business grew I needed more staff, I approached staff from another company and offered them more money than they were getting. It was no problem to pay good staff a premium wage, many companies do it. That might not apply to unskilled staff who tend to get replaced by machines.
in the past?
when was that – about ten years ago?
Naki man was talking about his ethics in poaching staff from another company, who apparently willingly quit to go work for an arsehole for an extra $1/hr
Well said TRP. When we go to the supermarket and some nice lady “invites” us to use these machines we always refuse., and I always say to them “I will not use that thing as I am trying to preserve a rare thing called your employment.”(a bit of a Tollpuddle martyr in me”)
The sad bit is, they really don’t get the point I am trying to make.
”The sad bit is, they really don’t get the point I am trying to make”, said the condescending middle class to the poor uneducated peasants,
How the fuck would you know if they get the point or not, the people employed there are ‘watched’, they’re paid to do exactly what they do, not engage in bagging their employers to any dick that wanders in who for all they know might be the managers cousin…
True halfcrown, me too – I did use the airport one the other day although i didn’t have a bag or my code number – the machine and lovely person helping was able to find my code from my licence which was a little freaky. The one that also gets me is laptops – I remember when they came in oh the extra free time we would all have – now they are used at night, on weekends, at the beach, on the plane! Biggest have those laptops – just increased work not decreased it lol.
I’m more in agreement with bad. I use the self serve checkout machines – and am usually one who keeps the supervisor busy – especially at pak n save where it’s necessary to get a staff member approval to use your own bag. In any Auckland supermarket we need to ask a staff member, at both self-service and operator checkouts. to provide us with council rubbish bags – we aren’t allowed to get them off shelves ourselves.
The machines free up humans to do other work. Remember, barcode scanners at checkouts, saved operators time, meaning less staff needed, and ultimately, less customers for small independent supermarkets. That’s the way with technological change. If it means fewer jobs, then we need to focus more on a living wage for all, and getting people doing jobs that can be most easily done by humans- jobs that are useful and valuable to society.
Also, I’ve never really seen more/longer queues at self-checkouts than operator checkouts. Often the self-checkout moves more quickly because there are several machines for one queue.
Never had that happen to me.
That really pisses me off but I suppose that an increasing number of people were stealing the in this rockstar economy where only the rich get better off.
Well, getting the people freed up from doing jobs that machines can do to doing jobs that machines can’t. Jobs such as R&D, art, health care etc.
pak n sav at Henderson – I think it’s because they charge you for using their plastic bags.
Ah, you’r using standard plastic bags whereas I use a ‘reusable’ shopping bag.
Where I live we have one supermarket and no self serve option but I’ve lived in the cities and i can pack my own reusable bag or use bags/boxes when necessary but i refuse to put the stuff through myself – I just cannot support that practice it really seems obviously like providing evidence why a job isn’t needed when I really think it is needed and less dropping of humans for profit is what is not needed.
The profit motive is the problem, not the destruction of worthless jobs.
The profit motive is the problem, not the destruction of worthless jobs.
Yes exactly and the jobs are also not worthless imo not even slightly.
Not exactly worthless but not worth a hell of a lot and there really is more important work that needs doing.
It’s actually Real Economics rather than the delusional monetary BS we normally hear about. We free up people from some work so that they can do other work that the society finds worthwhile. It’s how I know that NZ can afford a space program with tens of thousands of people involved in it.
I think the person should find the work worthwhile not just that society considers it worthwhile – otherwise we are back at the same point we are today. ‘Worthwhile’ is pretty subjective too and more important things to do – well important to whom. Anyway apart from the space race i agree with you mostly – I’d get people planting and growing food everywhere so others can eat it for free that is important and worthwhile imo.
i have to ask each time for rolly papers, and, have to admit i, after an initial ”fucking machines” response, quite enjoy the do it yourself nature of checking out my weekly shopping), specially at Pak’n’Slave where i used to end up having to bag it myself anyway,
Lolz i haven’t used Council rubbish bags for years, between my recycle bin and my garden, along with putting the shopping bags to a second use by,(deleted), i have no need of them,
The moot, often aired here at the Standard, and by plenty of politicians, of inequality is pretty much kneecapped by the majority of those, in my opinion, discussing this not doing so from the position of wanting real equality,
It would seem, and again this is my opinion, that the majority either want slightly less inequality, or, simply play lip service to such an ideal…
I got use to bagging my own groceries in England – it was the way things were done there in the 70s-90s, in the pre-barcode days. When I came back here, at first I got quite irritated at the quaint way supermarkets preferred to bag my shopping for me, – and irritated that, until the last couple of years, they were resistant to me bringing my own re-cycled shopping bags.
It saves me time at the checkout to bag it myself, and I have my own ways of packing the bags – designed to making the unpacking and putting away process easier at the other end.
Same with libraries
http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/2014/07/time-to-defend-presumption-of-innocence.html
Yes it is. One of the rare occasions Idiot/Savant gets it so right.
It is a beat up. Here is the official text from the policy:
“Labour will allow the Law Commission to complete its review on alternative trial mechanisms, including the establishment of a specialist sexual violence court and consider reforms that provide real justice to survivors while protecting the right to be presumed innocent, including: cross examination rules, alternative trial processes, establishment of sexual violence support, specialist training including on the dynamics of violence, support services during justice processes, and changes to the definition of consent.”
IS is relying on a press release. The language is less elegant. The official text of the policy is what should be referred to and relied on.
He is not relying on a press release. This is what Andrew Little said. I heard it:
“”The Crown has to prove more than just sex; the issue of consent has to be raised by the Crown, they have to prove the identity of the offender. They would have to bear that burden of proof before a switch to the defence to prove consent,” Mr Little said.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11289979
“before a switch to the defence to prove consent”. He was very clear.
this is the worrying part in yr quote..m.s..
‘..alternative trial processes..’
..w.t.f. does that mean exactly..?
..and switching the burden of proof to the accused..
..is a terrifying precedent to set…
It’s not a precedent at all, Phil. The proposal is to use an inquisitive process (ie establish the agreed facts). That’s the way it’s done in a lot of countries already, France for one.
i have no problems with the ‘inquisitive process’..
..reversal of burden of proof is entirely different from that..
I agree, how is it that the left fear the GCSB and police surveillance and are quite happy to be guilty of rape until they are proven innocent. Is this why Cunners apologised for being a man.
I’ve been following this fairly closely. And I have to say, I think Little is doing a crappy job of speaking to the discussions/work/research that culminated in the Law Commissions inquiry, subsequently brushed aside by Collins.
A bit of background: in 2007, the Commission of Enquiry into Police Conduct Report by Margaret Bazley was released. Undertaken after the Louise Nicholas debacle, it led to a further investigation by the Law Commission into evidential law.
http://www.lawcom.govt.nz/sites/default/files/publications/2008/06/Publication_136_405_Disclosure_of_Previous_Convictions_Report_103_WEB.pdf
Following recommendations within that report, the Government set up a “Taskforce for Action on Sexual Violence”. Different specialist groups and Government Departments researched specific areas, resulting in a number of suggestions and recommendations, including that the Law Commission undertake an inquiry into alternative trial processes.
http://www.justice.govt.nz/policy/supporting-victims/sexual-violence/improvements#23
It’s important I think, to point out that the submission made during the Taskforce enquiry to reverse the burden of proof was not proposed, and was not further investigated by the following Law Commission enquiry.
” 94. This has not been proposed as an option because a review of the burden of proof would raise major Bill of Rights concerns, such as the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.” (from the above link)
Below is a link to the background and scope of the Law Commission’s enquiry into alternative trial procedures, and information on inquisitorial as opposed to adverserial trial procedures. It was to Simon Powers credit that the work begun years earlier, was continued under his watch in 2010. He was of the belief that an inquisatorial trial model would be more effective in sexual abuse cases, and possibly DV cases as well. (the jury is still out on that – the conviction rates are similar for both styles worldwide – but it is thought that the process is less brutal for victims/survivors)
http://www.lawcom.govt.nz/content/section-1-introduction
The following link contains submissions and feedback to the above:
http://www.lawcom.govt.nz/sites/default/files/publications/2012/12/alternative_trial_and_pre-trial_processes_submissions_summary.pdf
chrs 4 clarifying that..
The written policy is the correct one. Humans are error prone and tend to say the wrong thing while in interviews while meaning what the written policy says.
Little Andrew is going to have innocent men in prison if he has things his way.
So do you currently stick your penis in women when you’re not objectively certain (beyond reasonable doubt) that consent has been granted?
Now he’s concerned about innocent people going to prison.
I am concerned that men could be an easy target. Its one persons word against another. If any women wanted to set up their ex for revenge or custody or any other reason it would be easy.
The reversal of the burden of proof is batshit crazy.
Soft on rapists. If you’ve nothing to hide you’ve nothing to fear.
A bit of free advice, Naki man – when she says no, don’t do it. If you stick to this rule, you will be fine.
“The reversal of the burden of proof is batshit crazy.”
It’s not on the agenda, Little’s incorrect understanding of the actual issues notwithstanding. See above.
so you prefer women to be the “easy target” of one person’s word against another (with a rough rate of a quarter of all women), as opposed to a false reporting rate of the minority of cases that even get reported to the police.
Moot point, because the tory hype isn’t what Labour’spolicy is, but interesting where you want the suffering of innocents to lie.
xox
National Radio is on the skids. Going the way of TVNZ. The government have frozen funding and bought in yes men and women on the board to dumb it down. Nothing direct, just mates and toadies. Sad and disturbing.
xox
Attended an informative talk by Ecologist Mike Joy, who is currently on a national tour. I recommend it to Kiwis concerned about our water quality, natural environment and democracy. You can see the video from the Royal Society of NZ website, when get it on line. Shocking, disturbing and disgraceful.
Graham Bell, Wild Bull of the Whump-Ass, continues to run amok
The Panel, Radio NZ National, Tuesday 1 July 2014
Jim Mora, Graham Bell, Denise L’Estrange-Corbet, Zara Potts
PART TWO OF TWO
After the four o’clock news, not much happens for a long time. There are the interminable reintroductions of each Panelist, which often mean it’s well after 4:15 before the first topic of the day is discussed. Today there’s not a lot to talk about—actually, there is a lot to talk about, but the producers have steered well away from anything substantial. There is, however, some superficial chat about depression….
JIM MORA: Uh, the Black Dog Project—there’s been reportage of this in Slate magaz—
GRAHAM BELL: That reminds me. What’s black and looks good on a criminal? A Doberman. Ho ho ho ho ho!
MORA: Graham that’s a terrible joke! I REFUSE to laugh at it.
The show drifts on, aimlessly and witlessly, until the 4:30 news. Then it’s time for the “Soapbox” segment. Remember, this is where the guests are expected to talk about something they have spent some time thinking about. Listeners might be forgiven, therefore, to expect something thoughtful, something serious, something interesting….
MORA: Denise L’Estrange-Corbet, what have you been thinking about?
DENISE L’ESTRANGE-CORBET: Well I went to a restaurant the other night, and I was just so ANNOYED by all the people who were texting non-stop! I’m just wondering: do people not TALK any more? ….[continues ranting about texting for several minutes]….
To stop her, Mora interrupts and reads out some texts and emails about various frivolities raised during the preshow. Then it’s on to the thoughts of Dixon of Dock Green….
MORA: Okay, Graham Bell, what’s been on YOUR mind?
GRAHAM BELL: I want to talk about Lucan Battison and his hair. The Battisons and the school should be ashamed of themselves. …That over-inflated CODSWALLOP that his lawyer spouted in court, comparing this case to Kate Sheppard and Martin Luther King. The only winners were the lawyers! The only LOSER is the kid himself. No employer will take him on. He’s the heir apparent to John Minto!
MORA: [nervously] A lot of people think “good on him.”
GRAHAM BELL: [snarling] I doubt it. Perhaps the Internet Mana Party can employ him! It’s CRAZY!
DENISE L’ESTRANGE-CORBET: Ridiculous! Ridiculous!
MORA: He said he was arguing for a principle.
GRAHAM BELL: R-r-r-r-r-rubbish! Codswallop!
….[Extended awkward silence]….
MORA: Graham Bell and Denise L’Estrange-Corbet on the Panel! It’s ten minutes to five. I want to talk about Rolf Harris.
GRAHAM BELL: Rolf Harris. I’ve always thought he was odd. REALLY odd!
MORA: Really?
GRAHAM BELL: Wobbling a saw and singing along with it. He’s a little bit unusual.
MORA: Ummm… Stripped of his BAFTA and his CBE.
DENISE L’ESTRANGE-CORBET: Good! Lock him up and throw away the key! He deserves NOTHING! He deserves NO SYMPATHY at all!
MORA: We’re joined now by Dr. Ian Lambie from Auckland University.
DR. IAN LAMBIE: Good afternoon Jim and listeners.
MORA: Uh, it’s well known that celebrities are ego-driven and narcissistic. Why do people like this think they can get away with it? Why do they think they have this kind of invincibility?
DR. IAN LAMBIE: They have a lot of money, a lot of power, a lot of prestige. Awards from the Queen. It takes an enormous amount of courage to speak out.
GRAHAM BELL: It’s a hallmark of many sexual offenders that they would select their victims. Some sex offenders are capable of thinking right through to the trial.
DENISE L’ESTRANGE-CORBET: They select them very carefully.
MORA: There’s that level of malign strategy. The other thing is, Ian, that the times have been on trial haven’t they, the sixties and seventies, with Jimmy Savile, haven’t they. The times have been categorized and besmirched….
DENISE L’ESTRANGE-CORBET: I mean it surrounded Michael Jackson for years didn’t it. All sorts of different people coming forward and he’d just pay them off. And maybe people do think that if people come forward they’re just after the money.
MORA: Thanks Ian. Actually, people in the seventies were just as moral as they are now.
GRAHAM BELL: Oh absolutely.
MORA: I mean, the times have been categorized and besmirched….
Somewhere during this borefest, Graham Bell had a go at smearing the dissident journalist Julian Assange. As always, Mora said nothing to contradict him. If somebody can track down his gouty rant, I would appreciate you transcribing it. I just can’t bear to wade through any more of it.
PART ONE…. /open-mike-04072014/#comment-844334
if bell were doing a comedy-routine..it could be (kinda) funny..in a reactionary-clown piss-take sorta way..
..but he isn’t..and it isn’t..
..but brilliant casting..!
..bell and corbet together…!..(i call her by her birth name..corbett..pre-affectation..)
..those two wd be neck and neck for thickest-panel-panellist-award..
..an antipodean-take on dumb and dumber…
(mora was grasping/struggling with their concerted-inanities..there was seperate humour to be had from that..)
..(one of the ‘circles of hell’..?..a dinner party lasting forever..with bell/corbet..and a brace of those other ignorant fuckwits they have on that panel..
..that obese beer-pusher..?..and all those other rightwing-arsewipes they trot out there too..?
..(shudder..!..)
The great pity, Phillip, is that when Bell is contradicted, he always folds like a pack of cards. Gordon Campbell gave him an on-air spanking a few years ago….
bell has stockholm syndrome.
he has been hanging round low lifes for so long now that he thinks like them.
i.e. fantasies of omnipotence and contempt for the rule of law.
Oh yes that’s what our society needs – undercover cops hanging out in bars. Nothing to hide nothing to fear…
Plods have long had a bit of a fetish about licensed premises, perhaps transference of what goes on in their home base watering holes.
Team Policing in the 80s/90s broke laws and heads with gay abandon and not just in ‘booze barns’ either. Keep the coppers out of law abiding citizens socialising please.
in the seventies i saw some spectacular police/patrons brawls in ‘the snake-pit’?..
..a bar downstairs in a hotel down the bottom of queen st..
..it was the favoured watering hole of seamen/ship-girls/prostitutes..and the various denizens of aucklands underworld at that time..
..it was kinda ‘rough’..
..and chairs/jugs of beer were often employed as a weapon of choice..
Top pub, Phil, if it’s the one I’m thinking of. Used to be a compulsory stop for my fellow workers after union stopwork meetings. Sometimes before them, too! I remember seeing a photo behind the bar of Jimmy Carter knocking back a beer there when he was here on a visit.
Carter must have done a pub crawl while here then TRP! because his photo was on the wall in the early opener (8am, name escapes me, had a back entrance through to bus depot) round the corner from Queen St on Quay St just down from the Seafarer’s union office.
Snake Pit was in the basement of the South Pacific Hotel near the old Post Office and where Britomart is now. Was rough, but fights were not compulsory.
No, right you are. It was the early opener I was thinking of, I’ll be up all night trying to remember its name!
Doh–The Britomart!
The early-opener with the back-entrance through to the bus depot was The Schooner.
Yep, that’s the one, felix. I also remember the Britomart being a good spot for a quiet one, but the Schooner had a vibe all of its own. The Prince Arthur was my favourite downtown drinker, though. A den of inequity; the rooms upstairs could tell a tale or two.
@Te Reo Putake den of inequity? Were the patrons in the public bar charged more than in the lounge bar upstairs?
Ha, very good. Iniquity of course.
Prince Arthur was another early morning one, wasn’t it? 7 oclock if memory serves.
Starting to see a pattern there TRP… 😉
and… felix takes tonites pub spotter award
The pub on Tatooine in Star Wars.
Looked exactly like a sailors pub.
Even the Aliens looked familiar.
Have to admit it was “plod”, in the form of the wharf police, that saved us when our tiny Welsh engineer just had to pick a fight with the biggest Fijian in the bar.
Ah yes the Mos Eisley space port Cantina
tiny Welsh engineer just had to pick a fight with the biggest Fijian in the bar.
Amazing what beer does to some people. A few years back four of us walked into a Courtenay Place bar and some wee short -arse started to pick one with us within seconds of getting there.
Now I was twice his size and the other three with me made me look weedy. We just couldn’t believe he was doing this. His mates showed no sign of backing him. It was like brushing a humping dog off your leg to get rid of him.
Another very interesting excursion into the human/lizard brain.
Sounds like the South Pacific, as 17 year olds new to the big smoke it didn’t take us long to master the art of staying out of trouble – scarper for the corner to avoid the big boys fights, duck, preserve your drink at all costs and at the first inkling of the arrival of a team policing unit decamp with haste.
The South Pacific.
i enjoyed the healthy disregard for authority..
..that was so prevalent..
..(and then there was the durban-poison..off the straat-boats..
..now that was pot that wd cause yr ears to curl…
..and pot that shows claims that modern pot is much stronger than pot of yore..
..to be complete and utter bullshit..)
This time?.
http://muse.aucklandmuseum.com/databases/image/-92310-728545.jpg?826×600.
@joe90 6.17pm
I note the tram lines and overhead wires, and remember at the end of a route waiting on the slatted seats inside the tram while the driver climbed down to the street, hauled down one pole, fastened it, then raised the pole at the other end, climbed into the forward cabin and we were off again. A very different approach to public transport, visible, reliable and fairly frequent.
I saw a car like the small one in the middle of the photo the other day. People restore them lovingly.
You might be right greywarbler, but I took the photo to be the bottom of Queen St, Auckland, and the overhead wires were the trolley bus wires. I remember they didn’t remove the tram-lines for a long time after the replacement trolleys. Those drivers were much fitter than today’s bus drivers. It was impossible to make a trip into the city from the suburbs and back again without the wire contraption attached to the bus roof coming off the overhead wires usually several times a trip. The driver would jump out of the bus…run around to the front where he (always a he) would re-attach it then back round… up the stairs into his seat and off we’d go again. The game was to predict exactly where it would next happen. Kept us endlessly amused.
@Anne7.24
Thanks for that shared memory. I thought of trolley buses first and then thought that no they must have been trams, wrongly. It was the trams I particularly remembered, they were fun.
I enjoyed some years ago riding in the Melbourne ones when I was living there. And I did ride on John Britten’s ones in Chch and they have some part going again there I think. Going up the Kelburn cablecar in Wellington is a little like the old tram experience.
Nowadays I have decided to go regularly to talk to the afficionados at the train restoration and trundle trip down at the local park. These are good guys and women who have put in hours and done wonders with the old skills and knowledge. There is a charm about them and nostalgia that is a different feeling than the one I get while looking at the tall metal vehicles on big tyres that dwarf me which are the peculiar fashion in the dying days of personal vehicles.
Climate voter is nudging close to 20,000 supporters after only three weeks.
Last count: 19,936>/b>
Make sure you add your name to the list.
http://www.climatevoter.org.nz/
Closing in on twenty grand
19,981
Just when Nationals on the ropes someone from the left comes along and saves them:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10252967/Harawira-U-turn-in-diplomat-sex-case
Thank goodness you can always rely on a left-wing brain explosion
I think it shows character when a politician admits a mistake, rather than doubling down or trying to let it slide. However, it should have been apparent to Harawira last week that cases alleging attempted rapes are big deals and trying to diminish the impact of such crimes is not a good thing.
So national was on the ropes then?
Good to know.
So national was on the ropes then?
Good to know.
Ok the site is fixed for the moment. It appears to have been a excessively complex set of SQL queries for the RSS Feeds on the mid-right of the site displaying information about posts from other sites. It appears to have been setting up a mutex deadlock condition under some conditions, triggered by one of the feeds from a union site.
Quite how that deadlock was triggered I still don’t know for sure. I’m going to have a look at the code over the weekend.
For the moment I have fixed it with much tighter timeouts on mutexes, shortening the idle timeouts on the connections to the database, and removing all of the union feeds until I figure out exactly which one was the issue.
What it did bring home to me was how many queries were hitting that database. Normal day to day operation was causing a several thousand queries a second all day – after many of them were forestalled by cached database results. So there is clearly some optimization that I’m going to have to put into some of the queries performed by some of the plugin code.
Sorry for having to fix this on the live site. However I couldn’t see the error happening at all on the test site, even after I piped the queries to it from the live site.
Chrome occasionally reports that it receives no data from the site prompting a reload.
Alex from the daily telegraph decrying the unfortunate way that kinder, more socially responsible rules in the financial world don’t apply to all.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/alex/
If I can add – this is a world cup quiz tha tells you the answers easy peasy
http://www.alexcartoon.co.uk/worldcupquiz.html
The Panel is worse, more heartless and stupid than ever
Radio NZ National, Thursday 10 July 2014
Jim Mora, Ali Jones, Ellen Read, Julie Moffett
JULIE MOFFETT: The Israelis have an app. that predicts incoming rockets!
ALI JONES: It’s AMAZING what you can do with a smart-phone now!
Judging by the assenting grunts of the others, not one of them saw anything bizarre about that. If these people had been on a vacuous radio chat show sixty years ago, no doubt they would have been impressed by measures taken by the concerned citizens of the Deep South to protect themselves from the Negro menace.
The depravity continued….
JULIE MOFFETT: Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia is removing the Confederate flag from its campus. I’m a bit mixed about that.
JIM MORA: It’s historical, surely. It’s not as though they’re espousing the beliefs of the Confederacy.
ELLEN READ: I’d keep it.
MORA: What do you think, Ali?
ALI JONES: I think I’d keep it.
I sent Jim a quick email before 4 o’clock…..
It’s the Palestinians that need the app that predicts rocket attacks
Dear Jim,
Surely it’s the Palestinian victims of Israel’s illegal attacks that need the app that predicts rocket attacks. So far, in the latest escalation of violence, Israel has killed more than fifty Palestinians—most of them civilians.
Not one Israeli has been killed or even injured.
Yet you and your Panelists pretend that it’s the Israelis that need this app.
Yours sincerely,
Morrissey Breen
Northcote Point
I’m pleased to announce that many others did too. He even read one remonstration out on air.
“JULIE MOFFETT: The Israelis have an app. that predicts incoming rockets!
ALI JONES: It’s AMAZING what you can do with a smart-phone now!
Judging by the assenting grunts of the others, not one of them saw anything bizarre about that.”
Not actually what Moffat said and not actually what the Yo app does. But other than that, up to your usual standards of accuracy, Moz.
Not actually what Moffat said…
I dashed it down in disbelieving fury. I no doubt missed a few words here and there, but I got her vacant and amoral tone exactly right. Clearly I wasn’t the only listener to be upset by the callousness and the deliberate ignorance displayed by Moffett, Mora and the other two.
….and not actually what the Yo app does.
So what DOES it do? And more to the point: why were they pretending that Israelis need any app. to guard against rockets?
But other than that, up to your usual standards of accuracy, Moz.
It was accurate, if not word-perfect. Please provide a 100 per cent transcript to show if I have somehow misconstrued their brutal indifference to the deaths of scores of Palestinians.
Not actually what Moffat said…
I dashed it down in disbelieving fury. I no doubt missed a few words here and there, but I got her vacant and amoral tone exactly right. Clearly I wasn’t the only listener to be upset by the callousness and the deliberate ignorance displayed by Moffett, Mora and the other two.
….and not actually what the Yo app does.
So what DOES it do? And more to the point: why were they pretending that Israelis need any app. to guard against rockets?
But other than that, up to your usual standards of accuracy, Moz.
It was accurate, if not word-perfect. Please provide a 100 per cent transcript to show if I have somehow misconstrued their brutal indifference to the deaths of scores of Palestinians.
Not actually what Moffat said…
I dashed it down in disbelieving fury. I no doubt missed a few words here and there, but I got her vacant and amoral tone exactly right. Clearly I wasn’t the only listener to be upset by the callousness and the deliberate ignorance displayed by Moffett, Mora and the other two.
….and not actually what the Yo app does.
So what DOES it do? And more to the point: why were they pretending that Israelis need any app. to guard against rockets?
But other than that, up to your usual standards of accuracy, Moz.
It was accurate, if not word-perfect. Please provide a 100 per cent transcript to show if I have somehow misconstrued their brutal indifference to the deaths of scores of Palestinians.
No I like Jim’s programme except when he has Farrar on and then I switch off. Otherwise its light, interesting educational entertainment.
No I like Jim’s programme except when he has Farrar on and then I switch off.
You are suggesting Farrar is worse than Stephen Franks, Neil Miller, Nevil Breivik Gibson, Julia Heartless Moore, Richard Griffin, Barry Corbett or any of the other mindlessly reflexive right wing drips that dominate this programme?
Otherwise its light, interesting educational entertainment.
Yes it’s certainly light.
1.What I’m saying is not what you are saying I’m suggesting.
2. So? light =sinful?
the guy compares a half-arsed local tory propagandist with a hands-on mass murderer.
That answer point 2 for you?
the guy compares a half-arsed local tory propagandist with a hands-on mass murderer
It was not me but another writer who pointed out the similarity of Nevil Gibson’s and Anders Breivik’s thinking. It was after an insane editorial by Gibson in the NBR a couple of years ago, in which he asserted that all—i.e., every single one—of the world’s terrorists were Muslims. Even the Bush/Blair axis at its most dishonest never actually stated such an absurd lie. But Anders Breivik did. And so did Nevil Gibson.
Now I guess you will try to prove that Gibson’s words should not be held against him.
That answer point 2 for you?
Nothing wrong with light. There’s everything wrong with pretending you’re serious and then making a (feeble) joke out of nearly everything. For instance: any moral person would find something wrong with the idea of hooting with laughter at someone taking refuge from a vicious state vengeance campaign. But on The Panel it’s a source of never-ending hilarity….
“It was after an insane editorial by Gibson in the NBR a couple of years ago, in which he asserted that all—i.e., every single one—of the world’s terrorists were Muslims.”
Cite, Moz? Gibson may be regularly offensive, but he’s not an idiot. I’m picking the only person to have made that claim is actually you. Looking forward to being proven wrong, of course.
Cite, Moz?
I’ve spent the last hour trawling through old NBR editorials by the great man, but I still haven’t found the one that started it all. I remember it had a few comments on it, with the most trenchant being the one comparing his rabid views to Breivik’s. I’ll track it down for you, though, and post it up as soon as I locate it.
Gibson may be regularly offensive, but he’s not an idiot.
I didn’t say he was an idiot. The old Maoist is irrational and dishonest, and possibly insane. But you’re right—he’s not an idiot, though he obviously treats the rest of us like we are.
I’m picking the only person to have made that claim is actually you.
You are wrong. I picked up on the Breivik comparison from a disgusted commenter on the NBR blog.
Looking forward to being proven wrong, of course.
You are wrong, and you know it.
Cheers, Moz, I know you won’t let me down!
I wasn’t saying that you claimed he was an idiot. Rather that he’d be an idiot if he said it. And the ‘claim’ isn’t the Breivek comparison it’s the ‘all terrorists are muslim’. So far, it appears you’re the one saying that, not Gibson.
Anyhoo, good luck finding the non-existent quote. You could save some time by just admitting you exaggerated.
I’m picking the actual line you’ve distorted is this:
“But not all deaths in conflict are equal. Much of the world’s violence emanates from a single source – jihadist followers of the Islamic religion – and rarely does a news bulletin (at least on the BBC) pass without a bombing or people being killed somewhere in the name of martyrdom.”
http://m.nbr.co.nz/opinion/when-war-hero-not-one
I wasn’t saying that you claimed he was an idiot. Rather that he’d be an idiot if he said it.
He WROTE it in an “editorial” for his crummy business paper.
And the ‘claim’ isn’t the Breivek comparison it’s the ‘all terrorists are muslim’. So far, it appears you’re the one saying that, not Gibson.
No, he wrote it. Another reader picked him up on it, and compared him directly to Breivik. The comparison was apt, and I have used it ever since.
Your flippant, disrespectful attitude and your taunting does you no credit, Te Reo. Gibson said what I said he did; I did not make it up, and I did not distort anything.
I will find that moronic Breivikian editorial—unlike you, I do care about getting things right—and put it on this site. Not that that will satisfy you of course—I note you’re already putting up other irrelevant quotes and constructing an attack against me based on those.
I hope you do not conduct yourself in this unethical fashion when you are going about your Labour Party business. I recall the likes of Michael Cullen telling lies about Keith Locke in the House, and those thugs Mallard and Benson-Pope yelling “Send him home!” during debates on the mistreatment of the fugitive Algerian parliamentarian Ahmed Zaoui; your behaviour is very similar.
I wasn’t saying that you claimed he was an idiot. Rather that he’d be an idiot if he said it.
He WROTE it in an “editorial” for his crummy business paper.
And the ‘claim’ isn’t the Breivek comparison it’s the ‘all terrorists are muslim’. So far, it appears you’re the one saying that, not Gibson.
No, he wrote it. Another reader picked him up on it, and compared him directly to Breivik. The comparison was apt, and I have used it ever since.
Your flippant, disrespectful attitude and your sarcastic taunting does you no credit, Te Reo. Gibson said what I said he did; I did not make it up, and I did not distort anything.
I will find that moronic Breivikian editorial—unlike you, I do care about getting things right—and put it on this site. Not that that will satisfy you of course—I note you’re already putting up other irrelevant quotes and constructing an attack against me based on those.
I hope you do not conduct yourself in this unethical fashion when you are going about your Labour Party business. I recall the likes of Michael Cullen telling lies about Keith Locke in the House, and those thugs Mallard and Benson-Pope yelling “Send him home!” during debates on the mistreatment of the fugitive Algerian parliamentarian Ahmed Zaoui; your behaviour is very similar.
“No, he wrote it. Another reader picked him up on it, and compared him directly to Breivik. The comparison was apt, and I have used it ever since.”
Compared him directly to Breivik. That should make it a bit easier to find.
At the moment, Moz, I’m the only one of us to find a quote even remotely like your claim. And, weirdly, the second comment under the article that quote is from starts thus:
“Any introduction that starts by attributing, in unconscious homage to Anders Behring Breivik, …”
http://m.nbr.co.nz/opinion/when-war-hero-not-one
Thanks, Te Reo! Not only are you a gentleman, but you’re a first-rate scholar. That is precisely the article I have been looking for. And yes, you are correct, and I am wrong—Gibson didn’t say ALL of the world’s terrorists were Muslims, as I had claimed he did.
By the way, note the modest little contribution by commenter no. 4….
Very gracious of you, Mozza. Can you now point out the bit where Gibson wrote that “all—i.e., every single one—of the world’s terrorists were Muslims” as you claimed?
Cheers.
Very gracious of you, Mozza.
Not at all, Te Reo. And please disregard all that horrible stuff where I compared you to the gruesome twosome of Mallard and Benson-Pope. That was gutter politics on my part.
Can you now point out the bit where Gibson wrote that “all—i.e., every single one—of the world’s terrorists were Muslims” as you claimed?
To, er, quote myself from this very thread: “And yes, you are correct, and I am wrong—Gibson didn’t say ALL of the world’s terrorists were Muslims, as I had claimed he did.”
Cheers.
Cheers to YOU, my friend. You are a bracing corrective, and I appreciate your efforts to keep this writer (i.e., moi) up to speed.
1.What I’m saying is not what you are saying I’m suggesting.
You said you switch off when David Farrar is on. I pointed out that he is merely one of a whole raft of right wing and extreme right wing guests on the show. If you find him repellent for some other valid reason which excludes the others, please let us know.
2. So? light =sinful?
Making light of the persecution of journalists and dissidents is certainly sinful. Did YOU think it was funny when Chris Trotter put on a funny voice to mimic the besieged Julian Assange?
🙄
🙄
You mean the besieged rapist Julian Assange?
Fool, you were stupid enough to quote a war criminal to try to bolster a case you were making a few months ago…..
Your recycling of official lies shows you haven’t learned a thing.
Too easy………not arguing about being a “war criminal” though……..the Left keep on producing them.
Too easy…
WHAT is “too easy”?
….not arguing about being a “war criminal” though……..the Left keep on producing them.
You dope. What does “right” and “left” have to do with this? Straw recycled lies about WMDs—even though he no doubt did not believe what he was saying—which puts him in the company of the extreme right, not the Left.
ABC News tells viewers that scenes of destruction in Gaza are in Israel
Submitted by Rania Khalek on Wed, 07/09/2014 – 21:49
More than fifty Palestinians have been killed and another 450 wounded since Monday in Israel’s ongoing assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, dubbed “Operation Protective Edge” by the Israeli army.
As usual, mainstream media outlets are straining to paint Israel as the victim, defending its people against irrational Palestinian rocket fire.
There is no equating the killing and maiming of dozens of innocent Palestinians with scared Israelis seeking shelter from crude rockets that rarely cause damage. But that hasn’t stopped media outlets from trying, and in some cases, outright lying, to distort the violence.
In one stark example, ABC News’ Diane Sawyer misidentifies scenes of the aftermath of Israeli missile strikes in Gaza as destruction caused by Palestinian rocket fire.
As Sawyer segues into the segment, she says, “We take you overseas now to the rockets raining down on Israel today as Israel tried to shoot them out of the sky.” Next to her is video footage not of Israelis or even Israel, but of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.
Sawyer then incorrectly describes an image of a Palestinian family gathering belongings in the smoking debris of a missile-hit home in Gaza as “an Israeli family trying to salvage what they can.”
Sawyer then describes an image of a Palestinian woman surrounded by destroyed homes as “one woman standing speechless among the ruins,” with the implication that she is Israeli.
Sawyer’s bald misreporting reflects either a deliberate lie by ABC News or willful ignorance so severe that Palestinian death and misery is invisible even when it’s staring ABC producers right in the face.
The segment in its entirety can be seen here….
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/israel-hit-150-rockets-targeting-10-cities-24477752?tab=9482930§ion=1206853&playlist=24185255
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/abc-news-tells-viewers-scenes-destruction-gaza-are-israel
Jane Kelsey: Secret talks bring threat of financial crises
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
We see it all the time where economists and politicians just won’t let go of the failed economic hypothesis that brought us the GFC and increased poverty and inequality.
Why don’t we, the citizens of this country, declare that any secret deals signed without due notification and transparency to be null and void.
Tim Groser has not been given the authority to commit our country to rules that have been deliberately kept secret.
How successful would it be to set up a petition about this? Why should our country be lumbered with crappy rules written by US corporates ???
Secrecy is not legitimacy, Tim Groser! It is wrong and completely unethical, (which is par for the course for this morally bereft government.)
who listened to the claptrap on Radio New Zealand this arvo.
It is becoming more and more infantilised and puerile by the day.
and the tripe about rap music.
this is vanity publishing by criminal crack dealers but here in New Zealand it is taken to be a genuine cultural phenomenon.
I suppose it is if you are into criminality, drugs and gangs.
I know many of us like to poke sticks at Chris Trotter, but have a listen to what he had to say today about, well, the patriarchy I guess: http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Audio.aspx
Go to the 2PM Thursday segment, starts about 9 mins in.
Pleasantly surprised I was.
Yes. Thanks, felix. I’m a little surprised by Trotter there as well.
Rodney Hide – “it’s all about me and I’m not a bad person” – and Cunliffe’s apology is not going to go down well with male voters.. He clearly didn’t listen attentively to what Trotter said.
Trotter about the long history and legacy of men being schooled to think women should listen respectfully to them, and give more weight to their voice than to that of women.
Trotter wasn’t so empathetic with young women when he spoke out in defence of Willy and J.T. last year…
I haven’t heard what he said then (your link doesn’t show it).
But yes, it seems his thinking on such matters has been evolving. Hence the surprise.
I agree with you Felix. Chris Trotter is usually an astute and compassionate commentator.
He gets a hard time around here, and sometimes deservedly, but it would be foolish to ever write him off.
Some time back, someone documented Key’s lies. It was an impressive list, and clearly lots more could be added from over recent times.
I have searched archived files but cannot find the link. Could some kind person give me the link.
Thank you Joe90.
My search for Key + lies highlighted just how far the NZ public has been deceived by his blatant lying. Cunliffe is hammered for a series of minor transgressions, but Smile and Wave and Lie thrives on them. Team Key is the ultimate set up for the Emperor’s New Clothes story where the the weavers (the Media) promise the wonderful clothes which are invisible to the incompetent and stupid. But the weavers and the Emperor get their beans!
I have my fingers crossed that Team Key will lose its gloss!
Still an honest man?
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Current unedited raw list – any and all suggestions, comments, testing, and additions are more than welcome.
tonights tv news.
we have the dumbest smart meters in the world.
the power companies can monitor the customers but customers dont seem to have the right to monitor their own electricity usage.
The tide is turning against the scam that is privatisation
And we’ve seen the same here. Privatisation has made things worse for the majority of people while a few people have creamed it usually via subsidies from the poorest.
EDIT:
American Delusions Down Under
Australia’s Needless Foreign Borrowing
And the same is true of NZ.
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http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11220886&ref=nextstory
xox
Thanks Morissey. So glad I missed Jim Mora and the half twits. I have given up emailing him about the manure on his program. The standard has fallen so far. We deserve much higher standards from our ‘National’ broadcaster.
I used to vote nationalbut they have disgraced themselves and played fast and loose with the law and have nasty brown stains round their mouths from too much arse kissing.
I am going to vote for the Labour Party this election and they will kick the tories arses in September and restore decency and honesty to a body politic that sorely needs it.