Bernard Hickey in the Herald.
‘There’ll be only yuan winner’
Key parts of the article…..
“We ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The revelation that Shanghai Pengxin is buying Lochinver Station should not be a surprise to anyone watching the capital flows out of China in the past few years.
It is only the beginning, and the scale of the flows will dwarf the $300 million-plus that Shanghai Pengxin’s property development billionaire owner Jiang Zhaobai has spent over the past three years building a portfolio of dairy and dairy-support farms in New Zealand.
New Zealanders debating their foreign ownership laws should understand the scale of the capital flows that are coming, and where they come from.
The first thing to know is that there is a wall of cash about to break out from inside China.
This is the key point. China’s new leadership under President Xi Jingping wants to relax those capital controls to remove some of the distortions in China’s economy and impose market disciplines. This will make it easier for some of that US$14t to get out and buy assets beyond China’s borders.
China’s state-owned banks are in the vanguard of facilitating these flows. State-owned China Construction Bank, chaired in New Zealand by Jenny Shipley, was registered as a New Zealand bank this year and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, chaired here by Don Brash, was registered as a New Zealand bank last year.
Bank of China has taken out a lease in Queen St, and is expected to also gain a licence here.”
Sobering stuff.
And note how ex members of the National and ACT parties are facilitating this.
Add to that the Herald story on most common last names of new borns in Auckland – nearly all Asian with a school photo of 10 kids with only 1 white face. Apparently that = ‘diversity’, it is more like ethnic cleansing.
Nothing. There is no connection to ethnicity and I have not made one.
I would have highlighted an article about US or UK corporates as well.
It’s the global elite that is the problem and our economic system, not any particular race, obviously.
It’s one thing to think that there’s nothing wrong with foreign immigration per se. That’s compatible with allowing a mix immigrants from diverse backgrounds. Allowing mass immigration from one source has different results.
The Maori woke up one morning and discovered that they now lived in a European country with European culture, laws and social mores. Would you like to wake up in a country that has moved towards the culture, laws and social mores of the PRC?
It is not about being “for” or “against” immigration. It is the un-had discussion regarding the amount and rate of immigration that is beneficial and that does not result in adverse effects on our physical infrastructure, environment, delivery of public services and social networks.
We simplify the discussion – to a “for” or “against” – for all the wrong reasons. Supposed economic benefit, fear of discussions becoming xenophobic or racist, refusal to consider that growth is no longer a prime motivator for policy.
If it could ever be discussed fully and impartially by all NZers – including recent immigrants who will have quality information about the difficulties they have faced and barriers to NZ lifestyle benefits – our immigration laws and quotas could be drafted to benefit all – both existing NZers and newcomers.
Wealth solves our social ills said Whyte. Then quickly added to his bait, the switch. So all economic growth was good for social ills.
The ignorance of the man!
The widening wealth gap is bad for the economy, bad for social problems, and we all ignore this at our peril, whether the poor, and more important the rich who have further to fall.
Growth can rise in N.Korea but it has no effect on its social backwardness.
Growth can rise in China and has everything to do with its widening of wealth to more people, and not because a few are staggeringly rich.
Growth can fall in the UK and social ills magnified.
Where on Earth does there exist a society where growth created greater social wealth, better environments, well where government is mindful to spread wealth like in the Scandinavian countries, or Singapore.
But Whyte thinks less government and more growth will heal social malaise magically. The guy is a complete fool.
It’s not like it’s confined to Western countries either. I know that concern about Chinese immigration also exists in other Asian countries.
But from my point of view, we should kick out all the saffers and poms. Rugby traitors the lot of them! Send ’em back! Noo Zillund for the Noo Zillunders!
Norman is a Australian. Norman is against, I believe, land sales to non-resident foreigners. So I’m guessing there are other foreign residents from China, UK, US, etc all who agree that selling land to non-resident foreigners is a bad idea. Worse, now we know in other countries they are not called xenophobic for introducing patriotic limits on land sales. Even National admitted to have tightened the rules.
So why did Dunne have just one thing to say about land sales, that we’re all racists xenophobics? Is he moronic? Is he stupid? Does he just like calling most of NZ racists? Yes, all of the above?
Norman Russel is a NZ Citizen (though he was born in Australia), as is his wife and child. But otherwise, I do agree with your point that; having a policy not selling land to non-resident foreigners is not necessarily xenophobic.
The weird thing is they don’t exactly vote left wing, the Asian people I hang out with tend to like National, love property investment, and think the country should be run like a business.
(Also I have observed people aren’t voting for policy, they are voting for JK, and against beneficiaries)
“The weird thing is they don’t exactly vote left wing, the Asian people I hang out with tend to like National, love property investment, and think the country should be run like a business.”
Anything to do with the fact that our immigration policy promotes business people/rich people over others? It’s not like they’re letting the Asian hippies in is it.
“The Maori woke up one morning and discovered that they now lived in a European country.”
That does rather discount the decades of both; peaceful & armed resistance, from; individual iwi, iwi alliances, and the Kingitangi movement which led to the development of Māori identity as a people. Similarly, it was what changed the “Ingarani” of Te Tiriti into the Pākehā of today: A sometimes contentious term; the best definition I’ve heard is that Pākehā are the descendants of settlers who have shed blood for the country (not necessarily their own), whereas Tauiwi are more recent arrivals. Though, I would include having an ancestor; who’d made a significant contribution, or even just being buried, in Aotearoa as enough to identify as Pākehā (regarding commitment to the country as metaphorical “blood”). Drifting a fair way off topic here…
Māori didn’t just wake “up one morning” to discover their Rangatiratanga usurped by settler Kāwanatanga, it was a gradual and sporadic process. The central nexus in my view was; the guesstimate census presented to the settler government in 1860, which indicated that settlers then outnumbered (the Tangata Whenua who were becoming) Māori. The next year, the Taranaki land wars started; heralding the influx of thousands of British Empire soldiers to enforce Settler authority.
Your point (or at least, concluding line) seemed to be:
Allowing mass immigration from one source has different results… Would you like to wake up in a country that has moved towards the culture, laws and social mores of the PRC?
My counterpoint was that such a cultural shift is not something that just happens overnight, and that one can struggle against it (though not necessarily prevail). However, change is the only constant, and our culture will change over time regardless.
Also, if you going to cite the colonial experience of Māori; then you should have some inkling of what you refer to.
In response to OAB’s; “Then what has their ethnicity got to do with it?”; TJ replied “Ask a Maori… [who] woke up one morning and discovered that they now lived in a European country “.
My argument against that is the historical record; where the tangata whenua did not have a pan-Māori identity until it was forged in the fires of resistance. I felt that TJs depiction of; Māori as uniform ignorami who didn’t realise their disposession until it was an accomplished fact, was disingenuous. Or:
“a cultural shift is not something that just happens overnight, and that one can struggle against it”
Which wasn’t mean to be read as advice to surrender to inevitable landsales to nonresident foreigners. However, we are always being re-colonised and it is the struggle against (and accommodations with) that process that determines our national character.
If you don’t find that useful, then my apologies; I tend to be more interested in truth than utility. Perhaps you should read another’s comments.
Apparently that = ‘diversity’, it is more like ethnic cleansing.
You’re sorta stupid, aren’t you. If you want coloured people to have a lower fertility rate, you have to give them more chances at higher education and higher incomes. Are you willing to do that.
“You’re sorta stupid, aren’t you. If you want coloured people to have a lower fertility rate, you have to give them more chances at higher education and higher incomes. Are you willing to do that.”
If you want people to have a lower fertility rate, you have to give them more chances at higher education and higher incomes. Are you willing to do that. FIFY
Good article from Bernanrd. Lets hope some of the more Nact inclined members of the nation understand the economic wake up call from this. China is artificially keeping it’s exchange rate down and attempting to buy real assets the world over. Colonisation in other words. Gives a good idea of how maori felt doesn’t it.
Yes unfortunately our Nact tribal leaders do want to sell the “iwi”out. Still we should think positive and look at how we can stop overseas land ownership and then make life uncomfortable with a lotta taxes (overseas domiciled get to pay a CGT each year -no clawbacks- but domestic CGT based on realisation only) until sale takes place.
Let’s turn this into an “iwi” gold mine.
Brash and Shipley don’t believe in society or community.
There are devoted followers of the Ayn Rand cult….listen to Jamie Whyte and you hear this vile doctrine.
If the Chinese really wanted to purchase assets offshore in the way you are suggesting they would be much better to inflate the value of their currency rather than keep it low.
What Rubbish goose you haven’t managed to get one economic fact right yet goose .
If China the great democratic country sorry dictatorship increased the value of its currency its surpluses would disappear and exports dry up!
China’s dictators have a longterm plan for their economy !
New Zealanders like your dumb arse selfish short term thinker only can see a 3 month reporting period!
Rod Oram points out that these companies take the commodities out of our country with out adding value even Fonterra hand over most of their milk powder for the likes of Nestle’ to add all the value!
Gooseman racial fermenter!
You need to take a good look at yourself and your silly snipes.
Travel like we have the globe and then tell the truth, unfortunately Bernard is correct Chinese money is now drowning the world in debt from your speculator mates who use cheap Chinese money.
This global economic crash is all down to you and your mates fast and easy flash in the pan speculations and you now are planning this continued policy will destroy our NZ economy?
best you look up the business registry of the top icon companies we had that now have been taken mostly over by Chinese, just for one is Fisher & paykel.
Policies you promote are dangerous. They call that a crime against the state, and the people you loathe as Kiwis..
Goose we are 58th on the list of countries adding value to our primary industry !
Until that changes we will continue to become closer to the bottom of the developed world!
build some more motorways so our commodity based economy can help all the overseas commodity value adders keep us poor!
3rd world thinking from a goose.
That’s a fascinating conclusion to draw from a single comment, in which the only point I made was that it’s gross for a man to push his personal political issues using women’s bodies.
Phillp ure.
if you cant contribute with constructive comments to help the country out of this spiralling drowning in debt and takeovers shut the fuck up you corrosive NatZ.
Err LK, phillip is very very far from being a nat. Please read many of his comments on many wide range of pages here at the standard. Also the left is about robust diverse voices, well maybe not the authoritarian left, but the rest of us. So please, if you don’t like Philips humour, don’t read his posts, self censorship is fine.
From yesterdays Herald, Franny O’Sullivan gives an elongated Tsk Tsk Tsk to all those young people for indulging in the recent InternetMana Party Party rave,
Little of it is worth repeating, pretty much akin to reading something printed off on an old Gestetner circa 1960’s and then comparing it with today’s zooo–ooom of internet communications,
Risible from O’Sullivan as She put forward Her ‘thoughts’ of what the Youf of today should be occupying their minds with in ‘election season’, Freedom didn’t get a look in from Fran, Party Party’s apparently are definitely a No No according to the gospel of O’Sullivan,
i think i can safely say to O’Sullivan that the young people attending InternetMana Party Party’s up and down our little islands would only have Two words, very descriptive, involving both sex and travel, in reply to Grannies Granny telling them to get a mortgage,
This attitude, epitomized in a recent debate on ‘decriminalizing abortion’ where you proposed that ”abortion might be a solution to child poverty” to me reeks of an attitude where eugenics would be the next step toward the slippery slope,
I have had a look at recent discussions of abortion at The Standard and surprisingly enough cannot find any comment I made which even vaguely correlates to your claim.
It’s a bit puzzling that you’d even raise the topic in the middle of a discussion about Ohariu, but since you’ve basically accused me of supporting eugenics, I insist you back it up or retract it.
Stephanie, how easily you forget, you made the comment in ‘Open Mike’ i do believe, about the same day, give or take a day or two either side, that the last actual Post discussing abortion appeared here a the Standard,(the discussion about the actual Green’s policy),
i have other things to do this morning, and, will hunt it out later, i will also comment later on why i raised such a comment vis a vis your obviously placed in some position within Labour’s Ohariu electorate campaign later…
i will amend the above, the original discussion occurred in ‘Open Mike’ on 09/06/2014, this was followed in the next couple of days by an actual ‘Post’ on the Green’s ‘new policy’,(the ‘Post’ may have even been the same day),
i have to be somewhere starting in 15 minutes, the comment you made Stephanie, was i now believe made within that specific ‘Post’ discussing the actual policy, i will hunt it out later…
It’s very easy to forget saying things which I have never said.
And I’m breathless with anticipation to know just how my (alleged and unproven) feelings about abortion decriminalisation are applicable to my statements about the strategic voting situation in Ohariu (none of which you’ve actually managed to rebut.)
Edited to add: it’s also interesting how in the 25 minutes between your two comments above you managed to remember the exact date of the post but not actually find the quote you have attributed to me.
Ah so smug Stephanie, you shouldn’t be, but, yes i will withdraw unreservedly my allegation that you used the word ‘Poverty’ in ‘Open Mike’ on 6 June 2014,
You will tho be getting no apology as the words you did use, and i quote:
”it seems fairly obvious that an early abortion of an unaware clump of cells is a heck of a lot better fate than being born into abuse and neglect” unquote,
Is in fact a direct reference to poverty, any fool, well perhaps in your case i may have to create a special category, would know that in the vast majority of cases where abuse and/or neglect is reported it is also evident in the family concerned an ongoing situation of Poverty,
So while your glib excuse making and outright smugness may come from not actually having used the word Poverty in your above quote it is obvious to anyone who has worked for any amount of time, large or small, in the area of the care of children, as i have, that Poverty, Neglect and/or Abuse in the family situation are inseparably intertwined,
IF Stephanie, you had a shred of concern for such children, born into Poverty and thus ‘at risk’ of suffering the myriad negative effects that are part and parcel of such Poverty, including Abuse and Neglect, you would be advocating the raising of the income of ALL such families instead of claiming as you do that their unborn children be ripped from their mothers wombs and effectively flushed down the sink as some form of ‘solution’ which smacks at the least of a gross lack of humanity on your part,
Your comment above is a massive step in the direction of Eugenics and thus abhorrent…
[lprent: Stephanie is always very precise in her choice of words. However she is also an author, so it is inadvisable to continue to attack her on the basis of what she did not say, or what you choose to place as the meaning on those words.
After all, I could start trolling through you comments and taking meanings from what you have said in the past. ]
Ropata, i did not say that, you have as i have just been ‘spanked’ for, read into my comment something that simply is not there,
As i point out, Neglect and/or Abuse is accompanied in the overwhelming majority of such cases by Poverty,
Therefor, and as the Moderator has pointed out, the commenter may have not intended to convey this, the opinion those words have formed in my psyche at least is that abortion has been proposed as a means to lower the obviously high amounts of abuse and neglect that occur within families,
Much the same as your link makes an assertion that abortion may reduce crime, i could, perhaps mistakenly, construe that by linking to such an assertion you support the point the link makes,
It’s a tough question. I abhor the picture you have described (late term abortion), but on balance I think the sum of human happiness is improved by reproductive choice. Just look at the impact of contraception on third world countries.
Ropata, i fail to understand your reference to ”late term abortion” has the inclusion of such a term in the discussion any relevance and if so can you elucidate that relevance,
Crime, by conviction, not necessarily by value, also has attached to it another demographic, exactly the same as the demographic attached to families where reported abuse and neglect is rife,
Poverty is that linkage, and, while there my be some small truth in claims that abortion would alleviate/lower rates of both crime and abuse/neglect this could not be achieved by ‘choice’,
In other words to achieve such aims through the use of abortion of the tool someone else would be doing the choosing,
Families where crime, and/or abuse/neglect occur still choose to have babies so while those proposing such ‘solutions’ are not at the same time proposing that someone other than ‘the mother’ exercise ‘choice’ to achieve a lowering of the statistics alluded to in this discussion would involve ‘choice’ at some stage being replaced by ‘force’,
Think tho wont you, why do we have poor people, poor workers especially are seen as a necessity of our economy,
If the unborn babies of such poor people where to be ‘knocked off’ in a generational manner so as to make a difference in the statistical areas we are discussing who will then be left to do the labour of the poor,
Now perhaps do you see the linkage i postulate between such ‘ideas’ and Eugenics, while no-one is overtly proposing Eugenics for such proposals as using abortion as a tool to say lower crime rates such proposals are one very large step in that direction…
LPrent, while i take on board your point that Stephanie is an author, this conversation as you can see is the result not of a ‘Post’ that Stephanie wrote but as a result of comments between the two of us in a previous ‘Open Mike’,
Everybody commenting here at the Standard continually ”reads into” comments from anywhere and everywhere, on-site and off-site ”meanings” into what is said by those commenting, those in the media, and, those involved in politics,
So really, i have to ask here what is the point of your moderation except to stifle my ability to debate,
i see no overt abuse in my comment to Stephanie and simply point out the facts vis a vis Poverty and such poverty’s connections to child Abuse and Neglect,
i do not usually bother to respond to ‘moderation’s comments’ as there is obviously little point to doing so as it appears to have only one inescapable conclusion in doing so…
That’s utterly pathetic, bad. Now you’re pretending that this is just about whether I used the word ‘poverty’ or not – when anyone can see by clicking on the links I have provided that you accused me very specifically of saying “abortion might be a solution to child poverty” – and then got really smarmy about “how easily I forget” saying such things.
Now you’ve accused me of not supporting moves to raise people’s incomes and get them out of situations where they feel abortion is the best option for them, which is a complete lie, and you’ve once again linked my opinions about abortion to eugenics.
And you still haven’t explained exactly what the hell this has to do with strategic voting!
I’m going to have to insist once again that you retract your accusations about what I said – not some sneaky, weaselly “did I use the word ‘poverty'” spin – apologise for saying I support eugenics, and explain your choice to introduce these lies in a completely different conversation.
Because right now the “opinion your words have formed in my psyche” is that you’re a sad little liar who can’t handle women disagreeing with him or making choices he doesn’t like.
My thinking was just to mill about outside with left party signage before candidates mtg and then have a rally depending on numbers afteward (and welcome anyone evicted from the hall by security).
Are you serious?
“Laila Harre and Hone Harawira will be missing”.
I understand why Hone won’t be there, as he isn’t a candidate in the electorate, but I didn’t think that Laila would run away. It certainly shows how Dotcom rules the roost doesn’t it.
I suppose she is scared that she is going to look like a complete prat and is looking for an excuse not to have to be there and be shown up by Key of course.
I did read the sentence in full.
Is being one of a group forming Kim Dotcom’s court in Invercargill really more important than attending the only candidate meeting in the electorate in which she is standing?
She is the one after all who claimed that she would be chasing John Key to hold him to account.
Instead when KDC tells her to follow him, as if he was the Pied Piper and she was one of the original followers in the story, she follows his orders.
I stand by my words. KDC is totally in charge isn’t he?
Whoops. Sorry. I mentally put a colon in the sentence as I read it.
I read it as being a statement that they would be missing and an explanation why.
I take it Laila will be present after all.
Yes. It was the fact that the word “missing” was at the end of the line in T.M’s original post and the next line started with the capital letter in “IMPs” that fooled me into thinking it was two statements. Can I blame TM for carefully arranging the length and construction of his sentences deliberately to trick me? No?
I thought that it could be taken as read. It was based on a false premise from misreading one sentence as two. On that basis any conclusions based on a misinterpretation of the facts are clearly not justified.
I still think Laila has been bought by someone who would appear to hold values that are completely different from anything that she has supported in the past of course.
Is the Herald once again leaving behind the impression that Liu gave lotsa money to labour. Why doesn’t he mention any donations the Nacts got? I seem to remmeber a court case some time back where a judge had some scathing remarks to make about a magazine that printed rumours about a public figure so it could also print a denial.
“A Herald investigation revealed that Maurice Williamson contacted police about the domestic violence inquiry on Liu’s behalf. He resigned his ministerial portfolios in May.
There was further political controversy in June over donations Liu said he had made to the Labour Party.”
Watching the Comedy that is the Epsom. On Q+A TV1. There’s Goldsmith denying that he wants to be a sitting MP only a List MP. And the Clown for ACT? What a train wreck. And now Goldsmith is sounding like the one to elect. And the Labour Guy Michael Wood well he is sounding really good too. Julie Anne Genter accepts that most speak to her over Transport. And Rankin? Well nice Earings
Labour, and hopefully Green voters in Epsom are bright enough to work it out for themselves. It is the Nats who have to be unsubtly reminded where their class interests lie.
Have another look at the Q+A program without the blinkers on Philip, the Green’s Julie Ann Genter, as much as i like Her, was saying much the same thing,
Blah Blah, Democracy, Democracy, seeking Party vote only, but, the people of Epsom must be left to choose their own electorate MP,
If Julie Ann wakes up the morning after with a healthy vote in both categories, party and electorate, with the ACT candidate still firmly ensconced in the Seat of Epsom allowing a 1 seat majority for the right to govern shall we all thank Her for the effort,
Reckon you’d have smelt it and seen it seeping across the floor if you’d been in that studio. Isn’t their some incontinence pad they advertise on the tele’ ? Send the poor thing a comp’ carton of same.
Ha ! Apparently the 2011 result was down to one ACT seat in parliament. What happened to the most magnificent electoral endorsement ever seeen in the history of New Zealand politics ?
Like you we are unimpressed by TV1 adaptation of Rachael Smalley.
She used to be a giant investigative journo, so objective by asking the Hard questions.
But now she sadly looks like another of the many natz clones at TV1, wasn’t TV1 a public TV channel not a Government election tool?
Almost all are Natz moles, and Mike Hosking’s????.
What have they done to Rachael?
Has she gotten to close to the spin doctor Joyce?
Something has taken her over at the Joyce/Goebells propaganda channel TV1? taken out her brain or brainwashed her?
Please wake up Rachael, we need you to be your real former balanced investigative journo type, smart, witty, and just what we need to dig under the pile of crap called “National”.
RNZ’s Monday morning political spot starting around 1110am will be well worth a listen. A word of warning: batten down your cerebral hatches because Matthew Hooton will be spinning like a Force 10 hurricane.
And wearing the royal purple again. On the very odd occasions I have seen her on the TV she always seems to have a lot of purple clothes on. Channeling a desire to be royalty perhaps?? -Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown…
She likes bright colours. Pinks, purples and blues. Maybe she thinks of herself as the Queen Mum’s NZ successor. She also went in for pinks, purples and blues.
How much marijuana did Arthur Baysting smoke before the Kim Hill interview? Saturday Morning, Radio New Zealand National, 9 August 2014
Anybody else listen to Kim Hill interviewing Arthur Baysting (AKA Neville Purvis) about the need for marijuana legalization? Much of what he said was perfectly sensible and reasonable, until right near the end, when he saw fit to praise President Barack “Bomber” Obama for his liberal attitude towards cannabis law reform.
So far, so good.
But then Baysting, in his blissed out zeal, went a little bit further than was sensible. Because it is now legal in several states, the jail population is going down dramatically, he claimed, and would mean Obama’s legacy would be “up there with Nelson Mandela’s”. That’s a stupid and ignorant and inflammatory thing to say, and is unforgivable, even for an old hippy musician who has obviously been toking daily for the last half-century.
If Arthur Baysting wants to be taken seriously, he needs to learn to speak with a degree of moderation and proportion. Comparing a smooth-talking, cynical product of the rotten, vicious Chicago Democrat Party machine to a revolutionary, principled peace activist that he would have defamed mercilessly if he had been president while the apartheid state was—like Pinochet’s Chile, Duvalier’s Haiti, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq—an American protégé, is utterly preposterous. It’s the kind of thing a stoned old stupid old muso would say during a session. A dope-smoking session, that is. Like the thirteenth gong of a cuckoo clock, it casts doubt on all that went before.
Meanwhile, now that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning peacemaker Barack Mandela has committed to another attack on Iraq, in contravention of his election promises, we can only speculate on how the U.S. soldiers will behave. Sadly, judging by their behaviour in Afghanistan, it’s not entirely promising….
US soldier pleads guilty to urinating on Afghan bodies
AFP DECEMBER 22, 2012 2:48AM
A US Marine was jailed for 30 days, fined and demoted after pleading guilty to participating in a video that showed soldiers urinating on the dead bodies of three Afghans.
Staff Sergeant Joseph Chamblin was charged with “alleged involvement in desecration and posing for unofficial photographs with human casualties,” a statement said.
He pleaded guilty to the charges, which included “wrongfully urinating on the body of a deceased enemy combatant,” as well as failing to supervise the young soldiers in his unit who also took part in the incident.
Chamblin’s rank will be bumped down to lance corporal, he will serve 30 days confinement, his pay will be docked $US500 ($477) a month for the next six months, and he was ordered to pay a $US2000 fine, the judge in the special court martial ruled.
Another soldier, Edward Deptola, is also facing military prosecution, while three others involved in the case have faced administrative sanctions. All five belong to an elite unit of snipers.
The incident came to public attention in January, when a video surfaced online that showed four US soldiers urinating on three bloodied corpses. One of the men, apparently aware he was being filmed, says: “Have a great day, buddy,” referring to one of the dead.
I agree with you, Phillip, and I share your—and Arthur Baysting’s—desire to see the absurd and cruel drug laws abolished. However, judging from what I’ve seen of your posts over the years, I don’t think you would ever be so foolish as to compare Barack Obama to Nelson Mandela.
My problem with Baysting is not his pro-marijuana views, it’s his addled comparison of a war criminal to a heroic peace activist.
You do know that Mandela was a convicted criminal, Moz? He co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC. Presumably he was a supporter of MK’s activities right through to democracy. I sincerely doubt he ever considered himself a peace activist, rather, he was a soldier in an armed struggle.
Meanwhile, now that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning peacemaker Barack Mandela has committed to another attack on Iraq, in contravention of his election promises
Its a response to the UN call,of which the Unanimous statement of the security council is that a response to ethnic cleansing in northern iraq and syria by isis is required.
Quite a few of us are left wondering @Morissey – what ya sed with the opening lines.
ooops – sincere apologies! Can I shove an additional ‘r’ up ya?
Kim needed coaching on how it was he was attempting to connect dots too.
She should have had Rik B and some other strugglers waiting in the wings – not that its all about Kim.
Get back to you’re gardening woman will ya!
Colmar Brunton Epsom poll results: [On Q and A this morning]
Who would you vote for with your electorate vote?
National Paul Goldsmith 44%
Act David Seymour 32%
Labour Michael Woold 10%
Green Julie Anne Genter 9%
Conservative Christine Rankin 4%
Internet Mana Pat O’Dea .08%
Independent Grace Haden 0.3%
Don’t know 8%
Were you aware John key is encouraging National Party supporters to give their electorate vote to the Act Party candidate?
Yes 70%
No 28%
Don’t know 2%
With this in mind, who would you now vote for with your electorate vote?
National Paul Goldsmith 31%
Act David Seymour 45%
Labour Michael Woold 9%
Green Julie Anne Genter 10%
Conservative Christine Rankin 4%
Internet Mana Pat O’Dea .08%
Independent Grace Haden 0.1%
Don’t know 13%
Do you support or oppose arrangements like the one John Key has made with the Act Party in Epsom?
Support 47%
Oppose 37%
Don’t know 16%
Which political party would you vote for?
National 60%
Green 16%
Labour 14%
NZ First 3.3%
Act 2.7%
Conservative 2.1%
Internet Mana 1.5%
Maori 0.6%
Don’t know 6%
Stunning numbers for the Green Party in what is obviously a right wing stronghold, InternetMana cannot be too disappointed with having 1.5% Party Vote support there,
Poor old Labour take yet another hit in a ‘poll’, perhaps the peeps in Epsom, or those ‘counting’ the numbers are taking the piss, trying to rain on Labour’s parade…
May be so. But on the other hand, it could also be that the traditional Nat supporters torn about the Key’s directive but reluctant to vote for ACT or Labour, are taking the mischievous option of giving their vote to the Greens knowing or hoping that the Greens will be or could be a pain in the arse for a Labour led coalition government with their exaggerated demands and sense of over entitlement for cabinet positions, uneconomic unemployment inducing policies and stuff or hoping that the Greens may go into a defacto relationship with the Nats after the election if the supposed ‘murmurs’ alluded to by Mike Sabin and as yet undenied by the Greens are correct! Who knows! Your guess is as good as mine!
And here we have the Labour Tribalist in its natural habitat. If you observe closely, you can see when threatened by a younger, more confident contender, the Tribalist will rear back and sprout out complete bullshit in the hope of defending itself.
Materia’s statement as quoted by Bad12 ‘with an underlying vein of sharpened and hardened steel in Her voice’ that
“IF Labour were forming the next Government the Green Party would be at the Cabinet Table In Numbers AND there would be a Comprehensive Coalition Agreement which covered ALL of the Green Parties policies”
Panelist Sabin on The Nation debate stated that ‘there have been murmurs’ within the Greens of going into coalition arrangement with National after the election if Labour is unable to support some of the Green policies such as the free transport for tertiary students etc! He also said that the Greens would deny this in public if asked.
I doubt he would make such claims unless there was some truth to that.
Neither Materia nor Norman have pulled up Sabin on this not categorically denied such talks took place within the Greens.
So, what are you on about about ‘tribalist’ and ‘bullshit’?
So, spit it out. What ‘tribal’ bullshit and spin are you now going to spout about those statements from/about the greens and the completely valid points I have made?
If you are this wide of the mark, Clem, then “bullshit” is a very good call.
You refer to Sabin’s very skewed version of something he heard from someone in The Greens, then spin it through your own misinterpretation.
You are supporting right wing wedge politics, aimed at fragmenting the left. We need more cross party support than all the smears you are dishing out.
You keep on repeating the same misinformation even after people keep pointing out how wrong you are – hands over your ears.
Firstly, if you are going to quote someone as a source, try to get their name right – it’s BROOK Sabin. Looks like you are not paying very much attention to the source.
The statements of Sabin’s that you keep referring to, are actually focused on how weak Labour is looking in terms of leading a government – and that the Greens must be disappointed because they need a stronger Labour if they want a Lab-green coalition.
LISA OWEN: We asked Metiria about whether she goes home and has a wee cry about how Labour is doing, she was dodging that one.
BROOK SABIN: Yeh, and I’ve got a fascinating insight actually, the Greens – there’s murmurs- policy concessions with National. In the Greens now about, if Labour don’t get through. Looking forward to the next term and what they may be able to get through. Things like that Green Card: free public transport – off-peak public transport for tertiary students. Solar – doing some deals – get the policy concessions with National. We’re starting to see that kind of thinking in the Greens. They’ll never admit it. But that’s what they’re thinking.
This would be in the realms of Memorandum of Understanding, and has nothing to do with contemplating forming a coalition with National.
You seem totally unaware that the Greens (under the Leadership of Jeanette Fitzsimons and Russel Norman) signed a MoU with the Nat government in 2009. They tried to extend this after the 2011 election, but there wasn’t enough common ground between the parties.
It’s part of the Greens approach that they will aim to work with any party on policies that they agree on.
“This has been our position since before the election. Our differences ruled out a confidence and supply arrangement, but we are committed to work co-operatively with National where possible. Pragmatism and principle are both important to our voters.”
“It is disappointing but it is probably a reflection of what happened after the election where National has taken more of a right-wing turn.
“I think that has made it harder to find common ground.”
The Greens had provided National with a list of projects it believed the two parties could work together on, he said.
[…]
“Our position was if you can find common ground and work together, you should.”
So, Brook Sabin’s comments are just about the Greens fall back position. They have strongly stated they want to play a significant role in a Lab-Green government. Sabin’s comments are spinning about Labour being too weak to govern, and the Greens starting to look at policies they could put to the Nats as an MoU. It’s not about a coalition or confidence and supply, but about selected policies. And, for all we know, it was just some idle chatter amongst a couple of Greens.
That is something the Greens have always been up front about doing – so nothing for Turei and Norman to deny.
Clem, do you really want to continue supporting Sabin’s comments about a Labour Party too weak to govern?
“Clem, do you really want to continue supporting Sabin’s comments about a Labour Party too weak to govern?”
Labour will be a strong party with a strong leader and a strong caucus. It will be a party with very strong well thought out economic, social and environmental policies for the good of all the people for the long term good of the country. While the smaller progressive parties like the Greens are welcome, I do not want to see these smaller parties to be too arrogant or cocky or too greedy and put their boot into the coalition’s political interest by exaggerated claims and demands far and above their limited party support from the voters. If that happens, I have no doubt that the voters will punish Labour and the coalition parties in 2017. I am sure no thinking progressive voter will want such an outcome. Slow and steady is the smart way to go for everyone’s long term success.
Nevertheless, a more reasoned comment from you, Clem, and more positive sounding.
It’s up to the voters to decide which parties they prefer. That’s what the election is for.
I’m happy if there’s a strong left coalition in government, and parties that will work for a return to truly left wing policies. It’s good we have a choice.
Not at all. Sure, they can get a little more than what their party support proportion says, just a little more, but not too much over and above that. Because, that will be unfair, resented and harmful to the main party, Labour in this case, its own policies, its own standing, the aspirations of its own voters and IT’S own caucus members many of whom are senior MPs with vast experience in administration of the country for much longer than the entire lot of green list members that the Greens will bring in.
I was and I am still very annoyed at Materia Turei’s over the top cocky statement quoted by bad 12.
Labour leadership and MPs have been very tolerant, decent, courteous, controlled and silent about the anti Labour rhetoric, snide remarks, cunning tactics, telling off, put downs, damaging criticisms from the left, right and centre. I don’t have to. I am just an ordinary Labour supporter. I like to express my opinion as I see it and as best as I can, hoping that REAL sanity and FAIR dealing prevails all around.
There is nothing over the top or cocky about Metiria’s statement aired on ‘the Nation’ Clem,
Metiria said that the Greens will be at the Cabinet table in numbers, you yourself postulated yesterday that you would see only 3 green Cabinet Ministers and maybe a number of Associate Ministers,(my later comment pointed at 4 Green Ministers and a number of Associate Ministers),
That Is Numbers Clem, there is nothing arrogant about it,
The Green party policy Platform, again i pointed out yesterday that the Greens in a coalition negotiation will want to go through their whole policy program with Labour, some of which both Parties will immediately agree on, some of which both Parties will somewhat agree on which can be safely left for later discussion and a few policies which might or might not be deal breakers,
i see nothing ‘over the top’ or ‘cocky’ about Metiria publicly pointing out how coalitions are hammered together and fail to see your point at continuing to rail against the Green Party in such a fashion…
Labour Green leadership and MPs have been very tolerant, decent, courteous, controlled and silent about the anti Labour Green rhetoric, snide remarks, cunning tactics, telling off, put downs, damaging criticisms from the left, right and centre.
It is a reasonably well known fact that many soft RW Nats do support the Greens.
Did you think that the Greens get their support only from the traditional Labour voters?
You would be wrong there I think.
They’d be the ones who are a bit like my neighborus. Into reccycling and cleaning up rivers right up until the time it becomes the slightest inconvenience – such as having to clean up their own shit after themselves.
Every little bit counts though eh? (as the old lady said as she spat into the Ocean)
Interesting numbers, fortunately Epsom voters won’t be getting that hint immediately before they cast their actual ballot. WTF is up with Epsom GP & LP voters though – your candidates have no hope of winning; persisting in voting for them would only ensure an ACT victory!
Yes, I agree, but early days yet. Key can let the cat among the pigeons by withdrawing Goldsmith out of the race altogether. He has till the 26th (or so) to do that! Will he or won’t he is the question!
Michelle Boag was certainly of the opinion that National should withdraw Goldsmith and I think that and her rather agitated performance on Q & A today is a further sign that National thinks this election is on a knife edge.
Yes, if Goldsmith does a premature withdrawal, lots of NATS vote may shift to Rankin rather than ACT, in which case the Nats vote may be divided between ACT and Rankin and some scattered to Labour and the Greens candidates. The strategic voting for Labour and Green voters will then become tricky and will depend upon what the local polls are saying around the first and second week of Sept, I think.
Quite. According to this, only 28% of Labour voters in Epsom are voting tactically, while 56% of Green supporters are.
Labour voters in Epsom seem to be asleep at the wheel. When told that National wants people to vote David Seymour, the National voters switch their votes, with Goldsmith losing 13% and Seymour gaining them.
But the Labour voters? They either don’t change their vote or give it to the Green candidate Julie Ann Genter, who rises by 1%. WTF difference do they think this is going to make?
My analysis is oversimplified and it’s impossible to tell what’s really happening without all the data. But that’s generally what it looks like.
When told that National want people to vote for Seymour, Goldsmith’s vote drops 13, Seymour’s rises 13. That looks like a straight transfer – National voters switching their votes from Goldsmith to Seymour in accordance with Key’s instructions.
Meanwhile, Labour’s Wood drops 1% and Julie Ann Genter from the Greens picks up 1%. But the don’t knows go from 8% to 13%, so it’s hard to tell what is actually going on.
lol I noticed that too – the Green vote is higher the second time the question is asked. Just realised what it probably is: Nat voters who can’t bare the thought of voting for Act have chosen Green instead – such behaviour provides the same outcome, because it takes a vote away from the most likely contender to win after Act, with out having to vote for Act.
I don’t know either – I assume Blue was making a comparison between the shift in voting and the party vote – but can’t be arsed working out if that is where they are derived from – it was the shift in the Green vote that I had noticed.
The party vote numbers show 14% support for Labour and 16% for the Greens.
The first round of candidate votes (before being told Key wants Seymour to win) show Labour’s Wood on 10% and Julie Ann Genter on 9%. I’m assuming that people usually give their candidate vote to the candidate from their party.
If the poll had 100 voters, that means 14 Labour people and 4 would vote for a candidate other than Wood. That’s a percentage of 28.57.
Similarly, there are 16 Green people, and 7 of them would vote for a candidate other than Genter. I have made an error here – the percentage for that is 43.75.
So more Green voters acting tactically and (hopefully) voting for Goldsmith.
Ok, Thanks. I get your maths. Makes sense. Very good! Your conclusion may be correct. (though it just shows that the diminished votes (between party vote Vs candidate vote) went elsewhere, not necessarily to Goldsmith. Any other assumption is just that)
However, these are early days and the voters haven’t yet made their firm decisions. I think a similar poll done about a week or so before the election will be more revealing.
Pasupial, I understand that it’s frustrating that Labour and Green voters won’t do what’s tactically and strategically the best option, I wish they would too. But you know what, I like even more that it seems there are around 30% of voters in Epsom who believe enough in Labour and the Greens to get out and vote for them on Election Day and in all honesty who can deny them the pleasure of ticking that box.
I can. This is too important to let go. If Act lose Epsom they are out of Parliament and they will likely implode, destroying the party completely. National will be without an important support partner and they can no longer blame Act for their choice to sneak in uncampaigned-for policy (e.g. charter schools).
If Labour and the Greens win the election (which is balanced on a knife edge and the seat of Epsom could be the difference between winning and losing) then we can get rid of coat-tailing altogether. That means Epsom can go back to being a normal electorate.
There’s too much at stake to have Labour and Green supporters blow this by voting for their own candidate. They need to vote for Goldsmith.
“WTF is up with Epsom GP & LP voters though – your candidates have no hope of winning; persisting in voting for them would only ensure an ACT victory!”
Some people don’t understand how MMP works. Others do but are unaware of the current issue. Others still will not vote on the right no matter what. Some people don’t believe in tactical voting. If the GP and/or Labour wanted their voters to vote National, they would have not stood a candidate in the electorate. Lots of people are probably confused too.
“The Greens always say they are campaigning for the party vote”
The party vote is CRUCIAL for EVERY party. Not just for the Greens.
It is even MORE crucial for LABOUR because they have strong National candidates fighting for their electorate seats against Labour candidates. The potential Labour PARTY votes get scattered among so many of the smaller parties on the left.
But in all but one or two electorates, the electorate vote doesn’t decide the number of MPs a party gets.
For a small or medium sized party, it’s a better use of their resources to focus on the party vote.
Clem, you really are showing a sense of entitlement by Labour to left wing votes. And you are the one that’s been using the “arrogant” word against others.
It’s up to voters to decide who and what party to vote for. A left party needs to earn the left wing votes.
No party can rest on its laurels. I was once a Labour voter. I will be more likely to vote Labour again if the return to strong left wing values. Right now, I see a couple of other parties having stronger left values, policies and processes. Cunliffe has made some very promising noises, but he has yet to show he will be able to follow through if in government. It will require strong left wing coalition parties to hold them to account.
Labour wasn’t always the main left wing party in NZ. They achieved that position by taking a strong left wing position. They lost ground when they moved away from that.
I don’t really care which party leads left wing politics. I will vote for which ever one does.
I am amazed that the Labour Party candidate does as well as this poll says.
After all even interested left-leaning commenters on this blog don’t seem to know who he is.
As a question for Clemgeopin and Tangled_up at 14.3.2 can you pleas tell me who this person Michael Woold you are talking about is? I thought the Labour candidate was named Michael Wood.
I am amazed that the Labour Party candidate does as well as this poll says.
What do you mean? I know Michael Wood well.
I believe that your problem is that you probably aren’t particularly close to the Epsom electorate. Michael is. He has been campaigning across the border from Epsom in Mt Roskill. Just as I have been while campaigning across the border in Mt Albert. It may be hard to understand, but neighbours who know the electorate especially the poorer parts will do well.
Given that the other parties have put complete nutty fuckwits up as candidates – Seymour, Rankin, and even Goldsmith (let me bend over to help..), I’m not surprised Michael is doing pretty well. Given that he knows the area from the local politics side, he will make sense.
This is the same Michael Wood who was presented as Labours candidate in the botany election?
If so he did well in leading a crap performance from labour in their display of contempt towards an electorate. He almost was a sole effort. I hope after botany now epsom Michael will be better treated by the labour hierarchy in future… But no, at 39 after standing for pakuranga,botany and now epson, talk about be dealt a bad hand and being under appreciated!!! Sometimes people deserve better and this is how labour looks after their own mmmmm
You may know Michael Wood very well, and he may in fact be a reasonable candidate.
The other people who are commenting obviously don’t though as they don’t even know what his name is. As I have said in the last two sentences, they seem to think his name is WOOLD, not WOOD. Did you get that far in what I wrote?
All you need to know about the Maori seats: Tai Hauauru.
So you’re on the Maori Roll? We’ll presume u R voting 4 a party that supports the Maori seats (this cuts out Act, National, NZ First).
Party vote
Your most powerful vote is your party vote. If you love the current govt, give your party vote to the Maori Party (John Key supports this 2).
To change the govt, give your Party vote to Labour, Green, or Internet Mana. You decide who has the korero that support your goals, and who’s more principled/organised.
Electorate vote
The electorate vote is important too. Tai Hauauru has some hard case things going on there:
Mana – do they have anyone’s name up yet? By now they should have a name up, out of respect for voters, and to show that they are organized.
Maori Party – like most Maori people in most parties, Chris is probably a nice guy. But his position says a lot about where te ao Maori is right now. Maori are getting poorer under the govt, under the system, but hey its fine, as ‘Maori are at the table’. There’s a disconnect here – people with skills r standing 4 a party that’s in cahoots with people doing [insert word to describe what National is doing here] things. There must b a psychological term for this level of disconnect.
Who on the hikoi in 2004 could imagine than four years later Tariana would be standing beside a bunch of greedy, dishonest mongrels?
Labour – crack up, this guy used to be the chairman for Tariana. This is the story of the Maori Party though. 90% of their door knockers from 2004 are now door knocking for someone else. Adrian is also a nice fulla with nice skills. His main point made so far: ‘we’re not the same Labour Party that stole the foreshores’ doesn’t really inspire.
Green – nice young rangatahi, again, the Green problem is they don’t have the relationship in the Maori seats that others have. Noone thinks ‘oh the greens have a chance of winning Maori seats.’ This doesn’t mean that Jack isn’t on to it though.
Where should the vote go?
If you want the current govt to continue, vote 4 Chris. If you want to change the govt, vote for Jack or Adrian, but like the other seats, you probably won’t feel inspired.
BUT you can inspire yourself in the knowledge that your party vote will swing this election. When the election will be won by a 1 or 2 percent of the vote, then guess what? The Maori seats hold the balance of power! Get excited about that please.
Post script: we’re annoyed with commentators that fail to make the connection between a Maori Party vote and the way that Maori communities have been hurt over the last 6 years. Our hunch is the commentators are doing OK thanks, winning the Whanau Ora contracts and setting up charter schools. The politics of the 1%.
Shame on the Maori party for having propped up a right wing Government dominated by NATIONAL, ACT and DUNNE of all people! What a complete disgrace to score some baubles and bull shit.
Kia Mattara!
Kia mataara me te inoi, kei uru ki te whakamatautauranga. He hihiko te wairua, ko te kikokiko ia he ngoikore.
you ARE correct. The Maori party and that cheap fool Dunne should have walked out against the asset sales issue, against the Charter school rort and the GCSB issue.
We paddle back ashore and as I leave, the one that got away is mentioned again. The former fisheries-spokesman-in-punishment asks how a 25cm snapper fished from a commercial boat is fine to sell, but a 28cm snapper off a recreational boat can’t be eaten. He mentions National heavyweight Peter Goodfellow’s links to the fishing industry. Cunliffe the Outdoorsman weighs his verdict: “It’s not fair”.
How can someone who was fisheries spokesperson not know that net fishing is going to get some smaller catch and that there’s nothing that you can do about it? Yes, you can make nets that allow smaller fish through but some will always get caught up with the rest of the fish. Once it’s caught and dead there’s only two choices – sell it or throw it away.
Thankfully, there’s been some government funded research going on that will help prevent smaller by catch while also making the fishing better.
Oh, and my families boats already require the fish caught to be 30cm. Some people remember that 50 years ago fishing brought in more and bigger catches than today and think that the government should be doing more to protect our fisheries both for the ‘recreational’ fishers and for commercial.
FYI – apologies for the length of this post, but think there will be quite some public interest ….
Penny Bright – Independent candidate for the Helensville electorate will now be attending the Helensville candidates meeting to be held at the Kumeu Baptist Church Monday 11 August 2014
REPLY RECEIVED 3.35pm SUNDAY 10 AUGUST 2014
Holly Ryan via yahoo.com 3:35 PM (2 hours ago)
to me
Penny,
As Kumeu Baptist Church prefers to avoid being embroiled in media or Court disputes, you may attend as a candidate tomorrow evening.
As sole organizer, I personally would stand against your bullying tactics and stick to my original and, until now, unaltered plan for the event.
You will need to seek me out when you arrive tomorrow evening. As all publicity material has been completed, nothing other than your attendance can be changed.
Holly Ryan
FYI – I sent this email first to Holly Ryan and to Samuel Schuurman, and rang both to try and ensure that they had received this email before sending it out widely to media and politicians at local and central government.
From the beginning – I have tried to deal with my (unlawful) exclusion from this one and only Helensville candidates meeting in a proper way, and have the ‘paper trail’ to prove this – in the hopefully unlikely event that it ends up in the Auckland High Court tomorrow, in the form of an application for an injunction ……
I look forward to my rights as an Independent candidate for Helensville being respected, and being able to address members of the voting public, on the same basis as candidates representing political parties, which thus respects the right of the voting public public to ‘cast an informed vote’.
Please remember that I have stood as an Independent candidate at both local and national government levels on a number of occasions, and know how to conduct myself at public electoral meetings.
Cheers!
Penny Bright
10 August 2014
‘Open Letter’ to the Organiser of the Helensville candidates meeting Holly Ryan and Senior Pastor of the Kumeu Baptist Church, Samuel Schuurman:
Dear Holly Ryan and Senior Pastor Samuel Schuurman of the Kumeu Baptist Church
Please be advised that I am now in possession of a recorded telephone conversation taken Wednesday 6 August 2014 at 12.15pm between Holly Ryan and an unidentified woman, regarding candidates who had been invited to speak at the upcoming Helensville meeting, and the reasons given for excluding myself, Penny Bright, as an Independent candidate.
(I was advised of this recording on Friday 8 August 2014, and received a copy on Saturday 9 August 2014. I had no prior knowledge of this recording beforehand.)
In this recording Holly Ryan states that I, Penny Bright am ‘a major activist’ and ‘will cause trouble one way or the other’, and it is clear that political bias against me, because of my political activist background that is the real reason for my exclusion from this meeting.
However, this was NOT the reason given by Holly Ryan, one day later, in response to my complaint to the Human Rights Commission about my exclusion from the Helensville candidates meeting being unlawful discrimination on the grounds of political opinion:
From: Lesley Ashworth-Lawson
Date: 7 August 2014 4:43:03 pm NZST
To: “‘waterpressure@gmail.com'”
Hello Penny
As per your request I confirm that you approached the Human Rights Commission complaining that you felt you had been discriminated against by Holly Ryan, organisor of a meeting of political party candidates.
You felt that in not being included in that meeting, you were being discriminated against on the basis of your political opinion.
Within the context of the Commission’s confidential dispute resolution process, I rang Holly to notify her of your complaint and to obtain a response to your complaint, in particular to request the basis on which you had not been included in the meeting.
Holly told me that she had wanted to arrange a meeting so that people could hear from candidates affiliated to parties who she considered had a possibility of gaining a seat in Parliament, from whom she considered the public may wish to hear.
She has organised the meeting on her own initiative.
Holly agreed for me to relay this information to you, as part of our process of assisting to resolve complaints.
She did wish to enter into mediation.
Kind regards,
Lesley Ashworth-Lawson
Mediator/Kaihohourongo
Human Rights Commission| Te Kahui Tika Tangata
T: +473 9981 Ext 720 | F: +64 4 471 6759
Toll free 0800 496 877
PO Box 12411, Thorndon, Wellington 6144
Level 1 – 44 The Terrace, Wellington 6011
New Zealand | http://www.hrc.co.nz
Please be reminded of s.11 of the Constitution of the Kumeu Baptist Church:
It should be noted that churches are subject to Acts of Parliament such as the Race Relations Act, Employment Relations Act, Privacy Act and Human Rights Act.
HUMAN RIGHTS AMENDMENT ACT 2001:
Prohibited grounds of discrimination
Heading: inserted, on 1 January 2002, by section 7 of the Human Rights Amendment Act 2001 (2001 No 96).
21Prohibited grounds of discrimination
(1)For the purposes of this Act, the prohibited grounds of discrimination are—
(j)political opinion, which includes the lack of a particular political opinion or any political opinion:
Please be advised that I have had discussions this morning with Graham McCready from the NZ Private Prosecution Service about this matter.
Graham McCready will assist me with the preparation of a High Court injunction to prevent the use of the Kumeu Baptist Church being used for this Helensville candidates meeting, if I Penny Bright, as an Independent candidate, am not given an equal opportunity to speak, as are other candidates standing for the above-mentioned political parties.
A full transcript of this above-mentioned telephone conversation will be made available, if required, for both the High Court and the media.
(FYI – I worked very closely with Graham McCready in the successful prosecution of former ACT Leader and MP for Epsom John Banks, for electoral fraud.
In fact – I was the ‘process server’ who hand-delivered the witness summonses that resulted in Kim Dotcom, his lawyer (Greg Towers), former bodyguard (Wayne Tempero) and the CEO of Sky City Casino (Nigel Morrison) appearing in the Auckland District Court to give pre-trial oral evidence.
Watchdogs claim biggest scalp as Banks found guilty
11:45 AM Friday Jun 6, 2014
Self-styled public watchdogs Penny Bright and Graham McCready claimed their biggest scalp yesterday as Act MP John Banks was found guilty of filing a false electoral return.
But police reluctance to pursue the affair has fuelled calls by Ms Bright and David Bain’s champion Joe Karam for an independent commission against corruption.
I sincerely hope that this will NOT be necessary, and the basic principles of natural justice, democracy, the ‘rule of law’ and commonsense will prevail, particularly given that this meeting, as I understand it, will the only one which Prime Minister John Key will be attending, and will continue to be the focus of significant election publicity.
Please be reminded that this was the original notice advertising this Helensville candidates meeting:
HELENSVILLE ELECTORATE / TE TAI TOKERAU CROSS PARTY CANDIDATES MEETING
MONDAY 11TH AUGUST at KUMEU BAPTIST CHURCH, Access Rd, Kumeu
8 political parties – National, Labour, Greens, Maori, Act, NZ First, Conservative, Internet Mana are invited to be represented by their candidates and up to 2 other party policy speakers.
Parties will have opportunity to set up stands in the church hall, with public welcome to attend from 6pm to chat casually.
The main meeting will commence in the church at 7pm. Seating for 230, with sound system. Each candidate will have 5 minutes to present themselves, followed by written questions from the public, drawn for order. At 9pm the meeting will end, with opportunity for everyone to return to the hall for informal discussion and refreshments.
The meeting will be tightly managed, with any interjectors removed after one warning.
Questions may be answered by the party policy supporters, seated behind the candidates.
RSVP to Holly Ryan, Convenor
…………………….
Please be further advised that there is significant and growing media and public interest in this matter.
I look forward to your confirmation by email, by 5pm today, Sunday 10 August 2014, that I have the same opportunity to address the public at this Helensville candidates meeting, as the other above-mentioned candidates.
Yours sincerely,
Penny Bright
‘Anti-corruption /anti-privatisation Public Watchdog’
I sympathise with Holly Ryan, you have engaged in bullying tactics. Just like a blog, freedom of speech doesn’t give you the right to gatecrash someone’s party and hector their guests.
Actually it the the standard’s mobile version that prevents replying to specific comments in-thread. You can switch the the desktop version on your phone and the reply buttons are there. Bit tedious though.
It is a pain. I have tried to get that problem fixed several times. Each time not quite succeeded before running out of time. The upgrades on that particular theme are pretty fast and quite extensive. So I usually have to restart each time.
Yeah I know. I got caught with some SQL that I had to get done (and still have bugs in). Lyn has a bug as well which has been minimising my work time with hacking coughs and obsessive TV watching.
You always sound like you are working too hard anyway, so there’s no hurry. It’s interesting that it’s taking me so long to remember to check the boxes each time. What tv are you obsessively watching?
As a political scientist, what a terrible bit of research by Colmar Brunton and then for TVNZ to publish it. So, they do one poll on electoral vote (which shows National candidate leading) and then remind/discuss voters John Key’s request for National supporters to vote for Act candidate and guess what? The poll results are very different (Act is now leading) – well of course! That’s not a poll…that’s a way to influence the outcome. Dumb, dumb, dumb!!!!!
I would have called it ‘corrupt’ or ‘bought’ rather than dumb – unless you mean it was dumb of them to come out and admit that is what they have been up to….
Saturday, August 30, 6pm, the Garden Room, Grey Lynn Community Centre, 510 Richmond Rd
Book Launch Invitation: Beyond the Free Market: Rebuilding a Just Society in New Zealand. Contributors include Nicky Hager, Sue Bradford, Peter Conway, Tim Hazledine, Mike Joy, Kevin Hague, Helen Kelly, John Minto, Bill Rosenberg, The Rt Hon Sir Edmund Thomas, Manuka Henare, Jane Kelsey, John O’Neill – what a wonderful cast! Edited by David Cooke, Claire Hill, Pat Baskett and Ruth Irwin; supported by funding from the Council for Trade Unions and the Tertiary Education Union; published by Dunmore http://www.dunmore.co.nz
“RNZ’s Monday morning political spot starting around 1110am will be well worth a listen.
A word of warning: batten down your cerebral hatches because Matthew Hooton will be spinning like a Force 10 hurricane”
Thanks for the tip, will watch. and record on my VCR that GCSB Key cant download or spy on.
I am an electronic engineer, and have discovered why they took us all rapidly off analogue and into the digital era,.
This was the only way we can be spied on with mass surveillance.
So now I keep taping video and audio only into the old magnetic tapes and store in a library outside a commuter on line source.
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 17, 2021 through Sat, Jan 23, 2021Editor's Choice12 new books explore fresh approaches to act on climate changeAuthors explore scientific, economic, and political avenues for climate action ...
This discussion is from a Twitter thread by Martin Kulldorff on 20 December 2020. He is a Professor at Harvard Medical School specialising in disease surveillance methods, infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety. His Twitter handle is @MartinKulldorff #1 Public health is about all health outcomes, not just a single ...
The Treasury forecasts suggest the economy is doing better than expected after the Covid Shock. John Kenneth Galbraith was wont to say that economic forecasting was designed to make astrology look good. Unfair, but it raises the question of the purpose of economic forecasts. Certainly the public may treat them ...
Q: Will the COVID-19 vaccines prevent the transmission of the coronavirus and bring about community immunity (aka herd immunity)? A: Jury not in yet but vaccines do not have to be perfect to thwart the spread of infection. While vaccines induce protection against illness, they do not always stop actual ...
Joe Biden seems to be everything that Donald Trump was not – decent, straightforward, considerate of others, mindful of his responsibilities – but none of that means that he has an easy path ahead of him. The pandemic still rages, American standing in the world is grievously low, and the ...
Keana VirmaniFrom healthcare robots to data privacy, to sea level rise and Antarctica under the ice: in the four years since its establishment, the Aotearoa New Zealand Science Journalism Fund has supported over 30 projects.Rebecca Priestley, receiving the PM Science Communication Prize (Photo by Mark Tantrum) Associate Professor ...
Nothing more from me today - I'm off to Wellington, to participate in the city's annual roleplaying convention (which has also eaten my time for the whole week, limiting blogging despite there being interesting things happening). Normal bloggage will resume Tuesday. ...
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weaponscame into force today, making the development, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons illegal in international law. Every nuclear-armed state is now a criminal regime. The corporations and scientists who design, build and maintain their illegal weapons are now ...
"Come The Revolution!" The key objective of Bernard Hickey’s revolutionary solution to the housing crisis is a 50 percent reduction in the price of the average family home. This will be achieved by the introduction of Capital Gains, Land, and Wealth taxes, and by the opening up of currently RMA-protected ...
by Daphna Whitmore Twitter and Facebook shutting down Trump’s accounts after his supporters stormed Capitol Hill is old news now but the debates continue over whether the actions against Trump are a good thing or not. Those in favour of banning Trump say Twitter and Facebook are private companies and ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Democrats now control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives for the first time in a decade, albeit with razor thin Congressional majorities. The last time, in the 111th Congress (2009-2011), House Democrats passed a carbon cap and trade bill, but it died ...
Session thirty-three was highly abbreviated, via having to move house in a short space of time. Oh well. The party decided to ignore the tree-monster and continue the attack on the Giant Troll. Tarsin – flying on a giant summoned bat – dumped some high-grade oil over the ...
Last night I stayed up till 3am just to see then-President Donald Trump leave the White House, get on a plane, and fly off to Florida, hopefully never to return. And when I woke up this morning, America was different. Not perfect, because it never was. Probably not even good, ...
Watching today’s inauguration of Joe Biden as the United States’ 46th president, there’s not a lot in common with the inauguration of Donald Trump just four destructive years ago. Where Trump warned of carnage, Biden dared to hope for unity and decency. But the one place they converge is that ...
Dan FalkBritons who switched on their TVs to “Good Morning Britain” on the morning of Sept. 15, 2020, were greeted by news not from our own troubled world, but from neighboring Venus. Piers Morgan, one of the hosts, was talking about a major science story that had surfaced the ...
Sara LutermanGrowing up autistic in a non-autistic world can be very isolating. We are often strange and out of sync with peers, despite our best efforts. Autistic adults have, until very recently, been largely absent from media and the public sphere. Finding role models is difficult. Finding useful advice ...
Doug JohnsonThe alien-like blooms and putrid stench of Amorphophallus titanum, better known as the corpse flower, draw big crowds and media coverage to botanical gardens each year. In 2015, for instance, around 75,000 people visited the Chicago Botanic Garden to see one of their corpse flowers bloom. More than ...
Getting to Browser Tab Zero so I can reboot the computer is awfully hard when the one open tab is a Table of Contents for the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and every issue has more stuff I want to read. A few highlights: Gugler et al demonstrating ...
Timothy Ford, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Charles M. Schweik, University of Massachusetts AmherstTo mitigate health inequities and promote social justice, coronavirus vaccines need to get to underserved populations and hard-to-reach communities. There are few places in the U.S. that are unreachable by road, but other factors – many ...
Israel chose to pay a bit over the odds for the Pfizer vaccine to get earlier access. Here’s The Times of Israel from 16 November. American government will be charged $39 for each two-shot dose, and the European bloc even less, but Jerusalem said to agree to pay $56. Israel ...
Orla is a gender critical Marxist in Ireland. She gave a presentation on 15 January 2021 on the connection between postmodern/transgender identity politics and the current attacks on democratic and free speech rights. Orla has been active previously in the Irish Socialist Workers Party and the People Before Profit electoral ...
. . America: The Empire Strikes Back (at itself) Further to my comments in the first part of 2020: The History That Was, the following should be considered regarding the current state of the US. They most likely will be by future historians pondering the critical decades of ...
Nathaniel ScharpingIn March, as the Covid-19 pandemic began to shut down major cities in the U.S., researchers were thinking about blood. In particular, they were worried about the U.S. blood supply — the millions of donations every year that help keep hospital patients alive when they need a transfusion. ...
Sarah L Caddy, University of CambridgeVaccines are a marvel of medicine. Few interventions can claim to have saved as many lives. But it may surprise you to know that not all vaccines provide the same level of protection. Some vaccines stop you getting symptomatic disease, but others stop you ...
Back in 2016, the Portuguese government announced plans to stop burning coal by 2030. But progress has come much quicker, and they're now scheduled to close their last coal plant by the end of this year: The Sines coal plant in Portugal went offline at midnight yesterday evening (14 ...
The Sincerest Form Of Flattery: As anybody with the intestinal fortitude to brave the commentary threads of local news-sites, large and small, will attest, the number of Trump-supporting New Zealanders is really quite astounding. IT’S SO DIFFICULT to resist the temptation to be smug. From the distant perspective of New Zealand, ...
RNZ reports on continued arbitrariness on decisions at the border. British comedian Russell Howard is about to tour New Zealand and other acts allowed in through managed isolation this summer include drag queen RuPaul and musicians at Northern Bass in Mangawhai and the Bay Dreams festival. The vice-president of the ...
As families around the world mourn more than two million people dead from Covid-19, the Plan B academics and their PR industry collaborator continue to argue that the New Zealand government should stop focusing on our managed isolation and quarantine system and instead protect the elderly so that they can ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 10, 2021 through Sat, Jan 16, 2021Editor's ChoiceNASA says 2020 tied for hottest year on record — here’s what you can do to helpPhoto by Michael Held on Unsplash ...
Health authorities in Norway are reporting some concerns about deaths in frail elderly after receiving their COVID-19 vaccine. Is this causally related to the vaccine? Probably not but here are the things to consider. According to the news there have been 23 deaths in Norway shortly after vaccine administration and ...
Happy New Year! No, experts are not concerned that “…one of New Zealand’s COIVD-1( vaccines will fail to protect the country” Here is why. But first I wish to issue an expletive about this journalism (First in Australia and then in NZ). It exhibits utter failure to actually truly consult ...
All nations have shadows; some acknowledge them. For others they shape their image in uncomfortable ways.The staunch Labour supporter was in despair at what her Rogernomics Government was doing. But she finished ‘at least, we got rid of Muldoon’, a response which tells us that then, and today, one’s views ...
Grigori GuitchountsIn November, Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific journals, made an attention-grabbing announcement: More than 30 of its most prestigious journals, including the flagship Nature, will now allow authors to pay a fee of US$11,390 to make their papers freely available for anyone to read ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gary Yohe, Henry Jacoby, Richard Richels, and Benjamin Santer Imagine a major climate change law passing the U.S. Congress unanimously? Don’t bother. It turns out that you don’t need to imagine it. Get this: The Global Change Research Act of 1990 was passed ...
“They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”WHO CAN FORGET the penultimate scene of the 1956 movie classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The wild-eyed doctor, stumbling down the highway, trying desperately to warn his fellow citizens: “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”Ostensibly science-fiction, the movie ...
TheOneRing.Net has got its paws on the official synopsis of the upcoming Amazon Tolkien TV series. It’s a development that brings to mind the line about Sauron deliberately releasing Gollum from the dungeons of Barad-dûr. Amazon knew exactly what they were doing here, in terms of drumming up publicity: ...
Since Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration in 1953, US presidents have joined an informal club intended to provide support - and occasionally rivalry - between those few who have been ‘leaders of the free world’. Donald Trump, elected on a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ and a constant mocker of his predecessors, ...
For over a decade commentators have noted the rise of a new brand of explicitly ideological politics throughout the world. By this they usually refer to the re-emergence of national populism and avowedly illiberal approaches to governance throughout the “advanced” democratic community, but they also extend the thought to the ...
The US House of Representatives has just impeached Donald Trump, giving him the dubious honour of being the only US President to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans voted for impeachement, making it the most bipartisan impeachment ever. The question now is whether the Senate will rise to the occasion, and ...
Kieren Mitchell; Alice Mouton, Université de Liège; Angela Perri, Durham University, and Laurent Frantz, Ludwig Maximilian University of MunichThanks to the hit television series Game of Thrones, the dire wolf has gained a near-mythical status. But it was a real animal that roamed the Americas for at least 250,000 ...
Tide of tidal data rises Having cast our own fate to include rising sea level, there's a degree of urgency in learning the history of mean sea level in any given spot, beyond idle curiosity. Sea level rise (SLR) isn't equal from one place to another and even at a particular ...
Well, some of those chickens sure came home bigly, didn’t they… and proceeded to shit all over the nice carpet in the Capitol. What we were seeing here are societal forces that have long had difficulty trying to reconcile people to the “idea” of America and the reality of ...
In the wake of Donald Trump's incitement of an assault on the US capitol, Twitter finally enforced its terms of service and suspended his account. They've since followed that up with action against prominent QAnon accounts and Trumpers, including in New Zealand. I'm not unhappy with this: Trump regularly violated ...
Peter S. Ross, University of British ColumbiaThe Arctic has long proven to be a barometer of the health of our planet. This remote part of the world faces unprecedented environmental assaults, as climate change and industrial chemicals threaten a way of life for Inuit and other Indigenous and northern ...
Susan St John makes the case for taxing a deemed rate of return on excessive real estate holdings (after a family home exemption), to redirect scarce housing resources to where they are needed most. Read the full article here ...
I’m less than convinced by arguments that platforms like Twitter should be subject to common carrier regulation preventing them from being able to decide who to keep on as clients of their free services, and who they would not like to serve. It’s much easier to create competition for the ...
The hypocritical actions of political leaders throughout the global Covid pandemic have damaged public faith in institutions and governance. Liam Hehir chronicles the way in which contemporary politicians have let down the public, and explains how real leadership means walking the talk. During the Blitz, when German bombs were ...
Over the years, we've published many rebuttals, blog posts and graphics which came about due to direct interactions with the scientists actually carrying out the underlying research or being knowledgable about a topic in general. We'll highlight some of these interactions in this blog post. We'll start with two memorable ...
Yesterday we had the unseemly sight of a landleech threatening to keep his houses empty in response to better tenancy laws. Meanwhile in Catalonia they have a solution for that: nationalisation: Barcelona is deploying a new weapon in its quest to increase the city’s available rental housing: the power ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters, PhD The 2020 global wildfire season brought extreme fire activity to the western U.S., Australia, the Arctic, and Brazil, making it the fifth most expensive year for wildfire losses on record. The year began with an unprecedented fire event ...
NOTE: This is an excerpt from a digital story – read the full story here.Tess TuxfordKo te Kauri Ko Au, Ko te Au ko Kauri I am the kauri, the kauri is me Te Roroa proverb In Waipoua Forest, at the top of the North Island, New ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Coming attraction: IPCC's upcoming major climate assessmentLook for more emphasis on 'solutions,' efforts by cities, climate equity ... and outlook for emissions cuts in ...
Ringing A Clear Historical Bell: The extraordinary images captured in and around the US Capitol Building on 6 January 2021 mirror some of the worst images of America's past.THERE IS A SCENE in the 1982 movie Missing which has remained with me for nearly 40 years. Directed by the Greek-French ...
To impact or not to impeach? I understand why some of those who are justifiably aghast at Trump’s behaviour over recent days might still counsel against impeaching him for a second time. To impeach him, they argue, would run the risk of making him a martyr in the eyes of ...
The Capitol Building, Washington DC, Wednesday, 6 January 2021. Oh come, my little one, come.The day is almost done.Be at my side, behold the sightOf evening on the land.The life, my love, is hardAnd heavy is my heart.How should I live if you should leaveAnd we should be apart?Come, let me ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 3, 2021 through Sat, Jan 9, 2021Editor's ChoiceAfter the Insurrection: Accountability, Reform, and the Science of Democracy The poisonous lies and enablers of sedition--including Senator Hawley, pictured ...
This article, guest authored by Prof. Angela Gallego-Sala & Dr. Julie Loisel, was originally published on the Carbon Brief website on Dec 21, 2020. It is reposted below in its entirety. Click here to access the original article and comments. Peatlands Peatlands are ecosystems unlike any other. Perpetually saturated, their ...
The assault on the US Capitol and constitutional crisis that it has caused was telegraphed, predictable and yet unexpected and confusing. There are several subplots involved: whether the occupation of the Michigan State House in May was a trial run for the attacks on Congress; whether people involved in the ...
On Christmas Eve, child number 1 spotted a crack in a window. It’s a double-glazed window, and inspection showed that the small, horizontal crack was in the outermost pane. It was perpendicular to the frame, about three-quarters of the way up one side. The origins are a mystery. It MIGHT ...
A growing public housing waiting list and continued increase of house prices must be urgently addressed by Government, Green Party Co-leader Marama Davidson said today. ...
[Opening comments, welcome and thank you to Auckland University etc] It is a great pleasure to be here this afternoon to celebrate such an historic occasion - the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This is a moment many feared would never come, but ...
The Government is providing $3 million in one-off seed funding to help disabled people around New Zealand stay connected and access support in their communities, Minister for Disability Issues, Carmel Sepuloni announced today. The funding will allow disability service providers to develop digital and community-based solutions over the next two ...
Border workers in quarantine facilities will be offered voluntary daily COVID-19 saliva tests in addition to their regular weekly testing, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. This additional option will be rolled out at the Jet Park Quarantine facility in Auckland starting on Monday 25 January, and then to ...
The next steps in the Government’s ambitious firearms reform programme to include a three-month buy-back have been announced by Police Minister Poto Williams today. “The last buy-back and amnesty was unprecedented for New Zealand and was successful in collecting 60,297 firearms, modifying a further 5,630 firearms, and collecting 299,837 prohibited ...
Upscaling work already underway to restore two iconic ecosystems will deliver jobs and a lasting legacy, Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “The Jobs for Nature programme provides $1.25 billion over four years to offer employment opportunities for people whose livelihoods have been impacted by the COVID-19 recession. “Two new projects ...
The Government has released its Public Housing Plan 2021-2024 which outlines the intention of where 8,000 additional public and transitional housing places announced in Budget 2020, will go. “The Government is committed to continuing its public house build programme at pace and scale. The extra 8,000 homes – 6000 public ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has congratulated President Joe Biden on his inauguration as the 46th President of the United States of America. “I look forward to building a close relationship with President Biden and working with him on issues that matter to both our countries,” Jacinda Ardern said. “New Zealand ...
A major investment to tackle wilding pines in Mt Richmond will create jobs and help protect the area’s unique ecosystems, Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor says. The Mt Richmond Forest Park has unique ecosystems developed on mineral-rich geology, including taonga plant species found nowhere else in the country. “These special plant ...
To further protect New Zealand from COVID-19, the Government is extending pre-departure testing to all passengers to New Zealand except from Australia, Antarctica and most Pacific Islands, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “The change will come into force for all flights arriving in New Zealand after 11:59pm (NZT) on Monday ...
Bay Conservation Cadets launched with first intake Supported with $3.5 million grant Part of $1.245b Jobs for Nature programme to accelerate recover from Covid Cadets will learn skills to protect and enhance environment Environment Minister David Parker today welcomed the first intake of cadets at the launch of the Bay ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
The commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Ruapekapeka represents an opportunity for all New Zealanders to reflect on the role these conflicts have had in creating our modern nation, says Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Kiri Allan. “The Battle at Te Ruapekapeka Pā, which took ...
A recent returnee has tested positive for Covid-19 after testing negative twice during her 14 days in managed isolation, Marc Daalder reports There is little information available about a new community case of Covid-19 identified by testing today - other than she is in Whangarei and used the Covid app ...
by Andi Cockroft Chairman Council of Outdoor Recreation Associations of NZ An Otago Daily Times report (23 January) that nearly two-thirds of Dunedin residents think public consultation is lacking at the Dunedin City Council, according to the latest ...
“If today’s probable case of Covid-19 in Northland turns out to be community transmission the Government’s overarching objective must be avoiding another lockdown,” says ACT Leader David Seymour. “The best news would be that this is a false alarm, ...
E tū Lifewise homecare members have been taking strike and picket action since December 2020 for basic improvements in their working conditions. Members are asking for increased sick and bereavement leave, a collective agreement, and more guaranteed ...
Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for January 24. Reach me on stewart@thespinoff.co.nz1.15pm: Suspected community case in NorthlandHealth officials are investigating a suspected community case of Covid-19 in Northland, related to someone who was recently released from managed isolation and quarantine, the NZ Herald is reporting.A spokesperson for Covid-19 response ...
We’re only a few weeks into the year, and already there are two new seasons of Drag Race. Are we in danger of reaching peak Drag Race? In the first month of this year, there’s been more RuPaul’s Drag Race than ever. The 13th season of the flagship US version debuted ...
In her first years of adulthood, Jai Breitnauer found herself living in a bold and hopeful nation. More than two decades on, she laments on how the Britain we know now came to be.Apparently, fish off the coast of the United Kingdom are happier because they’re British. This is what ...
Dunedin writer Victor Billot resumes his weekly odes to New Zealanders in the news. This week: the blogging firm of Michael Bassett, Don Brash and Rodney HideThree Men in a BoatIt sounds like a conveyancing firm in Levin.It sounds like TV funny guys who’ll ...
Under a thick layer of concrete at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacramentin Christchurch is a metal box likely containing hundreds of holy relics – a historical treasure trove set to be uncovered after 50 years of near total obscurity.As the earth shook and buildings crumbled, a statue of ...
Bananas are unequivocally the best fruit in the world, and there’s nothing you can say to change my mind, writes Alice Webb-Liddall.I was about 15 when I realised that halftime banana cake wasn’t a tradition outside of my family. On the day of an All Blacks game a banana cake ...
Summer reissue: Join Michèle A’Court, Alex Casey and Leonie Hayden as On the Rag looks at how the world around us has been built by men, for men. First published December 7, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is funded by its members ...
At an antagonistic hearing yesterday, the internet giant laid out the ‘worst case scenario’. And Facebook is also considering an ‘amputation’. Hal Crawford was watching.Google is poised to hit self-destruct in Australia according to a fractious Senate hearing into an unprecedented law that will force digital giants to pay money ...
It’s great to hear Phil Twyford celebrating a success. Not a personal ministerial success, it’s fair to say, but a success nevertheless related to arms control. The arms on which Twyford is focused, it should be noted, will make quite a mess if they are triggered. They tend to be ...
Duncan Greive and Leonie Hayden were young hip hop heads and music journalists during the era captured in a new documentary about the rise and fall of South Auckland hip hop label Dawn Raid. Here they discuss the film and their memories (what’s left of them) of that time. Warning: contains ...
Houses might be the most popular and inflated purchases in New Zealand, but there are plenty of other products that are seeing soaring demand and prices over the past few months. Here’s a list of what New Zealanders are spending their money on with international travel out of the picture.Used ...
"The young boy leaps, the muscles in his thighs tensing and twisting as he lifts from the handrail": the noble art of bombing, by Pātea writer Airana Ngarewa A beautifully muscled boy is posted on the side of a pool, his feet fixed to the top of a pair of ...
How Waiwera Hot Pools went from New Zealand’s most visited water park to dereliction and decay. Many who grew up in Auckland likely have fond memories of Waiwera Hot Pools. Like me, they remember summer days spent racing down the slides and playing in the naturally hot pools. But how did ...
A government contract for a P rehab programme was canned after half a million dollars of taxpayer money was given out. Aaron Smale investigates. The Ministry of Health spent over half a million dollars on a P Rehab contract before pulling the pin because there were no results or progress reports. ...
Kia Koropp and her husband John Daubeny have been cruising the Pacific, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean over the past decade with their two children onboard their 50ft yacht, Atea. Starting in 2011 from Auckland, New Zealand, they have sailed more than 64,000 kilometres and just completed their longest ...
We are drowning out the natural world with synthetic sounds, and it’s getting worse, writes Michelle Langstone.It used to be quiet once. Remember that? Remember the hush that settled over the cities like the silence that comes down in a snowstorm? It’s less than a year since Aotearoa first locked ...
Summer reissue: Join Michèle A’Court, Alex Casey and Leonie Hayden in the latest episode of On the Rag as they examine the topic of boobs from every possible angle. First published November 16, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is funded by its ...
Seventy-five years after the US detonated the first nuclear tests in the Pacific, New Zealand pledges its support to Joe Biden's first tentative step towards disarmament. Today, the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons comes into effect, making it illegal for New Zealand and the 50 other ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Terry, Professor of Psychology, University of Southern Queensland The challenge of bringing the world’s best tennis players and support staff, about 1,200 people in all, from COVID-ravaged parts of the world to our almost pandemic-free shores was always going to be ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoffrey Browne, Research Fellow in International Urban Development, University of Melbourne The Victorian government has committed to removing 75 road/rail level crossings across Melbourne by 2025. That’s the fastest rate of removal in the city’s history. The scale of the investment — ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW In an age of hyperpartisan politics, the Biden presidency offers a welcome centrism that might help bridge the divides. But it is also Biden’s economic centrism that offers a chance to cut through what has become ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Stevens, Lecturer in History, University of Waikato In a year of surprises, one of the more pleasant was the recent runaway viral popularity of 19th century sea shanties on TikTok. A collaborative global response to pandemic isolation, it saw singers and ...
The sudden departure of Graine Moss from her Chief Executive role at Oranga Tamariki is a vital first step in a sequence of changes that must take place at the Ministry according to a group of wahine Māori leaders. Dame Naida Glavish, Dame Tariana Turia, ...
A new poem from Dunedin poet Jenny Powell.Her uncle’s eyeShe introduced us to her uncle’s eye floating in a jar.Lost in an accident, he hadn’t wanted to lose it again. He left it to her in his will.We must have looked shocked. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I turn him to ...
The chief executive of Oranga Tamariki is quitting, leaving behind an agency she’s admitted suffers from structural racism. Justin Giovannetti looks at the future of Oranga Tamariki.Grainne Moss’s tenure as head of Oranga Tamariki has been untenable since November when the government’s senior Māori minister wouldn’t express any confidence in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Sainsbury, Senior Lecturer Composition, Australian National University Despite having different cultural backgrounds and experiences — Indigenous composers with an Indigenous mentor, and a pianist descended from Anglo-colonial history — it is nevertheless possible to create a project that can serve as ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Plank, Professor in Applied Mathematics, University of Canterbury With new, more infectious variants of COVID-19 detected around the world, and at New Zealand’s border, the risk of further level 3 or 4 lockdowns is increased if those viruses get into the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Hogg, Lecturer in Psychology, Charles Sturt University Horse racing is an ethical hotbed in Australia. The Melbourne Cup alone has seen seven horses die after racing since 2013, and animal cruelty protesters have become a common feature at carnivals. The latest ...
Right now, our most fiery national debate is over whether New Zealanders were nice to the singer Amanda Palmer in a café. Desperate to restore peace in our nation, Hayden Donnell went in search of the truth.Joe Biden had barely finished calling for unity when Amanda Palmer posted a tweet ...
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 When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut (Pushkin Press, $37)Maths, cyanide, suicide, gardening; ye ...
Wellington artist Estère isn’t just breaking boundaries, she’s dissecting them. Maddi Rowe spoke to her about her new album, Archetypes.“That’s the story of pelicans, they’ll stab themselves in the heart to feed their young.”Despite the somewhat dark subject matter, Estère Dalton’s eyes sparkle with fascination. We’ve met to discuss Archetypes, ...
Cycling advocates are welcoming new advice from the Transport Agency on safe cycling. "Cyclists hate it when drivers pass too close. That's scary and dangerous," said Patrick Morgan from Cycling Action Network. "So it's encouraging to see ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tilman Ruff, Honorary Principal Fellow, School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne Today, many around the world will celebrate the first multilateral nuclear disarmament treaty to enter into force in 50 years. The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear ...
The Public Service Association welcomes the creation of a Chief Executive role to lead the public service’s pay equity work, and the appointment of Grainne Moss to this position. "Unions and public service employers are currently working ...
The Council of Trade Unions is warning that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) figures out today illustrate that the cost of living is increasing disproportionately for those on lower incomes; resulting in the poor getting poorer. CTU Economist Craig ...
Why are there so many offensive comments on the New Zealand Police Facebook page and are they breaking the law? Janaye Henry investigates. New Zealand Police Facebook pages – there are a number of them, for different regional police districts around the country – are an interesting place to spend ...
Our guide to stopping procrastinating and actually (finally) getting on top of investing. Because there’s a good chance that if you’re reading this, you don’t know a single thing about it.In part one, we covered some of the basic things you need to know about investing – why do it? ...
Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft acknowledges the huge effort and commitment of departing Oranga Tamariki Chief Executive Grainne Moss and says her decision to resign today was principled. “The issues facing Oranga Tamariki are beyond individual ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Two Large Waves versus One Tsunami. Chart by Keith Rankin. Two Large Waves versus One Tsunami. Chart by Keith Rankin. With Covid19, Italy shows the classic European pattern, with its early outbreak, substantial recovery thanks to lockdowns and other public health measures, and resurgence thanks to complacency ...
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Bernard Hickey in the Herald.
‘There’ll be only yuan winner’
Key parts of the article…..
“We ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The revelation that Shanghai Pengxin is buying Lochinver Station should not be a surprise to anyone watching the capital flows out of China in the past few years.
It is only the beginning, and the scale of the flows will dwarf the $300 million-plus that Shanghai Pengxin’s property development billionaire owner Jiang Zhaobai has spent over the past three years building a portfolio of dairy and dairy-support farms in New Zealand.
New Zealanders debating their foreign ownership laws should understand the scale of the capital flows that are coming, and where they come from.
The first thing to know is that there is a wall of cash about to break out from inside China.
This is the key point. China’s new leadership under President Xi Jingping wants to relax those capital controls to remove some of the distortions in China’s economy and impose market disciplines. This will make it easier for some of that US$14t to get out and buy assets beyond China’s borders.
China’s state-owned banks are in the vanguard of facilitating these flows. State-owned China Construction Bank, chaired in New Zealand by Jenny Shipley, was registered as a New Zealand bank this year and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, chaired here by Don Brash, was registered as a New Zealand bank last year.
Bank of China has taken out a lease in Queen St, and is expected to also gain a licence here.”
Sobering stuff.
And note how ex members of the National and ACT parties are facilitating this.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11306580
Add to that the Herald story on most common last names of new borns in Auckland – nearly all Asian with a school photo of 10 kids with only 1 white face. Apparently that = ‘diversity’, it is more like ethnic cleansing.
Remind me, which country is “Asia”? What do they speak there? “Asian”?
The New Zealand Herald encourages bigotry. Why join in?
It is not bigotry to be opposed to wealthy corporates buying up land in countries across the world.
Then what has their ethnicity got to do with it?
Nothing. There is no connection to ethnicity and I have not made one.
I would have highlighted an article about US or UK corporates as well.
It’s the global elite that is the problem and our economic system, not any particular race, obviously.
Worth a read…
The Landgrabbers
http://www.randomhouse.com/book/216574/the-land-grabbers-by-fred-pearce
And this worth watching
My initial response was to Silverbullet. I agree that land is a daft thing to sell to overseas residents.
Ask a Maori.
It’s one thing to think that there’s nothing wrong with foreign immigration per se. That’s compatible with allowing a mix immigrants from diverse backgrounds. Allowing mass immigration from one source has different results.
The Maori woke up one morning and discovered that they now lived in a European country with European culture, laws and social mores. Would you like to wake up in a country that has moved towards the culture, laws and social mores of the PRC?
Agree, Tom.
It is not about being “for” or “against” immigration. It is the un-had discussion regarding the amount and rate of immigration that is beneficial and that does not result in adverse effects on our physical infrastructure, environment, delivery of public services and social networks.
We simplify the discussion – to a “for” or “against” – for all the wrong reasons. Supposed economic benefit, fear of discussions becoming xenophobic or racist, refusal to consider that growth is no longer a prime motivator for policy.
If it could ever be discussed fully and impartially by all NZers – including recent immigrants who will have quality information about the difficulties they have faced and barriers to NZ lifestyle benefits – our immigration laws and quotas could be drafted to benefit all – both existing NZers and newcomers.
+111111
Wealth solves our social ills said Whyte. Then quickly added to his bait, the switch. So all economic growth was good for social ills.
The ignorance of the man!
The widening wealth gap is bad for the economy, bad for social problems, and we all ignore this at our peril, whether the poor, and more important the rich who have further to fall.
Growth can rise in N.Korea but it has no effect on its social backwardness.
Growth can rise in China and has everything to do with its widening of wealth to more people, and not because a few are staggeringly rich.
Growth can fall in the UK and social ills magnified.
Where on Earth does there exist a society where growth created greater social wealth, better environments, well where government is mindful to spread wealth like in the Scandinavian countries, or Singapore.
But Whyte thinks less government and more growth will heal social malaise magically. The guy is a complete fool.
Agreed, GDP growth is a lie.
Why doesn’t the financial news report on HEWI, ISEW, or Gini coefficient ?
Well because its not in the interests of the people who are their audience and their owners.
Yup, the sponsors prefer the neoliberal narrative, mustn’t rock the boat.
Real journalism desperately needed: http://www.brucejesson.com/?p=402
Quite. Don’t rock the boat.
And there is no alternative.
So must put up and shut up.
/sarc
Is that what demographic trends are suggesting or the xenophobia the right is looking for? That’s a rhetorical question.
Well, it’s noticeable in Auckland.
It’s not like it’s confined to Western countries either. I know that concern about Chinese immigration also exists in other Asian countries.
But from my point of view, we should kick out all the saffers and poms. Rugby traitors the lot of them! Send ’em back! Noo Zillund for the Noo Zillunders!
“we should kick out all the poms”
Good luck with that.
don’t forget the seppos. lowering the IQ of both countries when they come here 😛
Norman is a Australian. Norman is against, I believe, land sales to non-resident foreigners. So I’m guessing there are other foreign residents from China, UK, US, etc all who agree that selling land to non-resident foreigners is a bad idea. Worse, now we know in other countries they are not called xenophobic for introducing patriotic limits on land sales. Even National admitted to have tightened the rules.
So why did Dunne have just one thing to say about land sales, that we’re all racists xenophobics? Is he moronic? Is he stupid? Does he just like calling most of NZ racists? Yes, all of the above?
Norman Russel is a NZ Citizen (though he was born in Australia), as is his wife and child. But otherwise, I do agree with your point that; having a policy not selling land to non-resident foreigners is not necessarily xenophobic.
aerobubblie, I think Dunne is just trying to justify the unjustifiable………….like Joyce………but its not a credible argument at all.
+1 Tom Jackson
The weird thing is they don’t exactly vote left wing, the Asian people I hang out with tend to like National, love property investment, and think the country should be run like a business.
(Also I have observed people aren’t voting for policy, they are voting for JK, and against beneficiaries)
“The weird thing is they don’t exactly vote left wing, the Asian people I hang out with tend to like National, love property investment, and think the country should be run like a business.”
Anything to do with the fact that our immigration policy promotes business people/rich people over others? It’s not like they’re letting the Asian hippies in is it.
It is ironic that a purportedly communist country exports so many randian capitalists and has worse inequality than neoliberal NZ
Tom J
“The Maori woke up one morning and discovered that they now lived in a European country.”
That does rather discount the decades of both; peaceful & armed resistance, from; individual iwi, iwi alliances, and the Kingitangi movement which led to the development of Māori identity as a people. Similarly, it was what changed the “Ingarani” of Te Tiriti into the Pākehā of today: A sometimes contentious term; the best definition I’ve heard is that Pākehā are the descendants of settlers who have shed blood for the country (not necessarily their own), whereas Tauiwi are more recent arrivals. Though, I would include having an ancestor; who’d made a significant contribution, or even just being buried, in Aotearoa as enough to identify as Pākehā (regarding commitment to the country as metaphorical “blood”). Drifting a fair way off topic here…
Māori didn’t just wake “up one morning” to discover their Rangatiratanga usurped by settler Kāwanatanga, it was a gradual and sporadic process. The central nexus in my view was; the guesstimate census presented to the settler government in 1860, which indicated that settlers then outnumbered (the Tangata Whenua who were becoming) Māori. The next year, the Taranaki land wars started; heralding the influx of thousands of British Empire soldiers to enforce Settler authority.
Sigh… that’s sort of irrelevant to the point I was making.
TJ
Your point (or at least, concluding line) seemed to be:
My counterpoint was that such a cultural shift is not something that just happens overnight, and that one can struggle against it (though not necessarily prevail). However, change is the only constant, and our culture will change over time regardless.
Also, if you going to cite the colonial experience of Māori; then you should have some inkling of what you refer to.
The point was, we are being re-colonised right now, so your history lesson isn’t much use.
As to your mad implication that we should surrender ourselves to some inevitable “cultural shift” … what a load of useless bollocks
ropata
In response to OAB’s; “Then what has their ethnicity got to do with it?”; TJ replied “Ask a Maori… [who] woke up one morning and discovered that they now lived in a European country “.
My argument against that is the historical record; where the tangata whenua did not have a pan-Māori identity until it was forged in the fires of resistance. I felt that TJs depiction of; Māori as uniform ignorami who didn’t realise their disposession until it was an accomplished fact, was disingenuous. Or:
“a cultural shift is not something that just happens overnight, and that one can struggle against it”
Which wasn’t mean to be read as advice to surrender to inevitable landsales to nonresident foreigners. However, we are always being re-colonised and it is the struggle against (and accommodations with) that process that determines our national character.
If you don’t find that useful, then my apologies; I tend to be more interested in truth than utility. Perhaps you should read another’s comments.
And you’re still off in the land of abstraction, but apology accepted 🙂
OAB you are very akin to nats’ who have no long term visions.
Try extending your self to a long term plan for this land for heaven sakes.
God help us with your short bursts of live snapshots of the money changing dynamics of this land.
With the most liberal open border Neo Liberal policies in the world don’t you know.
Wake up before the whole country is sold from under our feet..
You’re sorta stupid, aren’t you. If you want coloured people to have a lower fertility rate, you have to give them more chances at higher education and higher incomes. Are you willing to do that.
“You’re sorta stupid, aren’t you. If you want coloured people to have a lower fertility rate, you have to give them more chances at higher education and higher incomes. Are you willing to do that.”
If you want people to have a lower fertility rate, you have to give them more chances at higher education and higher incomes. Are you willing to do that. FIFY
Vile bigoted rubbish.
🙄
Good article from Bernanrd. Lets hope some of the more Nact inclined members of the nation understand the economic wake up call from this. China is artificially keeping it’s exchange rate down and attempting to buy real assets the world over. Colonisation in other words. Gives a good idea of how maori felt doesn’t it.
Economic colonisation of our nation, yes. And our ‘tribal leaders’ in Government seem to be all for selling their iwi (us) out.
Yes unfortunately our Nact tribal leaders do want to sell the “iwi”out. Still we should think positive and look at how we can stop overseas land ownership and then make life uncomfortable with a lotta taxes (overseas domiciled get to pay a CGT each year -no clawbacks- but domestic CGT based on realisation only) until sale takes place.
Let’s turn this into an “iwi” gold mine.
Brash and Shipley don’t believe in society or community.
There are devoted followers of the Ayn Rand cult….listen to Jamie Whyte and you hear this vile doctrine.
If the Chinese really wanted to purchase assets offshore in the way you are suggesting they would be much better to inflate the value of their currency rather than keep it low.
For these purposes, its own exchange rate is less relevant as China is divesting itself of its massive holdings of USD.
What Rubbish goose you haven’t managed to get one economic fact right yet goose .
If China the great democratic country sorry dictatorship increased the value of its currency its surpluses would disappear and exports dry up!
China’s dictators have a longterm plan for their economy !
New Zealanders like your dumb arse selfish short term thinker only can see a 3 month reporting period!
Rod Oram points out that these companies take the commodities out of our country with out adding value even Fonterra hand over most of their milk powder for the likes of Nestle’ to add all the value!
Gooseman racial fermenter!
Oh no the dreaded Chinese are coming!
Now where have seen that before?
Shanghai Pengxin are here.
Jiang Zhaobai is here.
China Construction Bank is here.
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is here.
Who are these “the Chinese” you keep going on about and when are they coming?
Gosman, the chameleon .
You need to take a good look at yourself and your silly snipes.
Travel like we have the globe and then tell the truth, unfortunately Bernard is correct Chinese money is now drowning the world in debt from your speculator mates who use cheap Chinese money.
This global economic crash is all down to you and your mates fast and easy flash in the pan speculations and you now are planning this continued policy will destroy our NZ economy?
best you look up the business registry of the top icon companies we had that now have been taken mostly over by Chinese, just for one is Fisher & paykel.
Policies you promote are dangerous. They call that a crime against the state, and the people you loathe as Kiwis..
Goose we are 58th on the list of countries adding value to our primary industry !
Until that changes we will continue to become closer to the bottom of the developed world!
build some more motorways so our commodity based economy can help all the overseas commodity value adders keep us poor!
3rd world thinking from a goose.
New Zealand.. the country of the the haves and have nots.
The NZ Herald’s editor seems to celebrate that fact by detailing the obscene amounts of wealth NZ’s wealthy have.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11306605
“..I Tried Cannabis Lube – and This is What My Vagina Felt Like..
..Oh what a feeling!
My journalistic investigation would be to see if my vagina could actually get high..”
(cont..)
(reason number 53 to legalise/regulate/tax the magic herb..eh..?
..new zealand women should be free to get their vaginas high..
..don’tchareckon..?..)
http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-relationships/i-tried-cannabis-lube-and-what-my-vagina-felt
It’s kind of grotty for a man to exploit women’s sexual pleasure to push a political issue.
(And not everyone who has a vagina is a woman, and not every woman has a vagina.)
Kind of grotty, but not as insincere and fake as using the sick and medical mj as a back door to pot legalisation for personal gratification.
we’ll need more (vegan) kit-kats..!
Or shame guards.
good grief..!
..and not everyone has a sense of humour..clearly..!
..(but maybe a special p.c-vigilance-award for you..?..should be in the offing..?)
..and i dunno about you..but ‘grotty’ isn’t a word-association that comes to mind..
..when the word ‘vagina’ comes up..
..and would the story be ok if it was about a pot-lube for men..?
..seriously..!
..get a grip!/have a kit-kat!..do something..!
🙄
He’s right. You’re coming across as a po faced puritan.
From you that could be considered a compliment.
That’s a fascinating conclusion to draw from a single comment, in which the only point I made was that it’s gross for a man to push his personal political issues using women’s bodies.
and the good news is that it works..!
“..As soon as the licking started – it hit me. There are the drugs.
It was an all-over buzzy tingly feeling that spreads the pleasure much further than wherever you’re being directly stimulated.
It pulsated like there was a delicate vibrator inside of me – but better.
Cloudier.
I hadn’t felt anything like it before – and I’ve had my share of sex after some hits from a J..”
whoar..!..eh..?
..’holy high vagina..!..batman..!’..
Slightly better than using sick kids as an excuse for personal gain… But not by much.
i..i can’t help myself..i’m having to script the infomercial:
“..are you lying in bed..looking at each other and going..’yeah..!..nah..!..eh..?..’
..have you done it every which way more times than you can count..?
..are the costumes/accessories mouldering away in a forgotten drawer..?
..even watching porn together doesn’t ‘do it’ for you both anymore..?
..introducing vag-hi..!..the new miracle marital aid for women..!
..(here’s a happy customer.:..
‘It pulsated like there was a delicate vibrator inside of me – but better..!’..)
..and of course..with vag-high..
..you just have to spray and walk away..!..’
..and vag-high is guaranteed to kick start yr love-life..
..but wait..!..there’s more..!..
..vag-hi will make your orgasms..’cloudier’…
..call 08001wantsome!..
..and today i’ll give you not one vag-hi..but two..!
..that’s 400 orgasms for only $39.99..!
….call 0800iwantsome!..now..!
..remember..!..pleasure is only a spritzer away..!
I think your post is very nice Phil………..great research.
chrs..i see it as almost a public service announcement.
..there will be a lot of women reading that and going..’cloudier..eh..?’…
Phillp ure.
if you cant contribute with constructive comments to help the country out of this spiralling drowning in debt and takeovers shut the fuck up you corrosive NatZ.
Err LK, phillip is very very far from being a nat. Please read many of his comments on many wide range of pages here at the standard. Also the left is about robust diverse voices, well maybe not the authoritarian left, but the rest of us. So please, if you don’t like Philips humour, don’t read his posts, self censorship is fine.
Did you mean nut or nat? This fool is embarrassing. Where are the men in white coats when we need them?
From yesterdays Herald, Franny O’Sullivan gives an elongated Tsk Tsk Tsk to all those young people for indulging in the recent InternetMana Party Party rave,
Little of it is worth repeating, pretty much akin to reading something printed off on an old Gestetner circa 1960’s and then comparing it with today’s zooo–ooom of internet communications,
Risible from O’Sullivan as She put forward Her ‘thoughts’ of what the Youf of today should be occupying their minds with in ‘election season’, Freedom didn’t get a look in from Fran, Party Party’s apparently are definitely a No No according to the gospel of O’Sullivan,
i think i can safely say to O’Sullivan that the young people attending InternetMana Party Party’s up and down our little islands would only have Two words, very descriptive, involving both sex and travel, in reply to Grannies Granny telling them to get a mortgage,
You can guess the rest…
FJK…FJK…FJK!
bad, I would like you to back up a quote you attributed to me on yesterday’s Open Mike.
Specifically where you said:
This attitude, epitomized in a recent debate on ‘decriminalizing abortion’ where you proposed that ”abortion might be a solution to child poverty” to me reeks of an attitude where eugenics would be the next step toward the slippery slope,
I have had a look at recent discussions of abortion at The Standard and surprisingly enough cannot find any comment I made which even vaguely correlates to your claim.
It’s a bit puzzling that you’d even raise the topic in the middle of a discussion about Ohariu, but since you’ve basically accused me of supporting eugenics, I insist you back it up or retract it.
Stephanie, how easily you forget, you made the comment in ‘Open Mike’ i do believe, about the same day, give or take a day or two either side, that the last actual Post discussing abortion appeared here a the Standard,(the discussion about the actual Green’s policy),
i have other things to do this morning, and, will hunt it out later, i will also comment later on why i raised such a comment vis a vis your obviously placed in some position within Labour’s Ohariu electorate campaign later…
i will amend the above, the original discussion occurred in ‘Open Mike’ on 09/06/2014, this was followed in the next couple of days by an actual ‘Post’ on the Green’s ‘new policy’,(the ‘Post’ may have even been the same day),
i have to be somewhere starting in 15 minutes, the comment you made Stephanie, was i now believe made within that specific ‘Post’ discussing the actual policy, i will hunt it out later…
It’s very easy to forget saying things which I have never said.
And I’m breathless with anticipation to know just how my (alleged and unproven) feelings about abortion decriminalisation are applicable to my statements about the strategic voting situation in Ohariu (none of which you’ve actually managed to rebut.)
Edited to add: it’s also interesting how in the 25 minutes between your two comments above you managed to remember the exact date of the post but not actually find the quote you have attributed to me.
Ah so smug Stephanie, you shouldn’t be, but, yes i will withdraw unreservedly my allegation that you used the word ‘Poverty’ in ‘Open Mike’ on 6 June 2014,
You will tho be getting no apology as the words you did use, and i quote:
”it seems fairly obvious that an early abortion of an unaware clump of cells is a heck of a lot better fate than being born into abuse and neglect” unquote,
Is in fact a direct reference to poverty, any fool, well perhaps in your case i may have to create a special category, would know that in the vast majority of cases where abuse and/or neglect is reported it is also evident in the family concerned an ongoing situation of Poverty,
So while your glib excuse making and outright smugness may come from not actually having used the word Poverty in your above quote it is obvious to anyone who has worked for any amount of time, large or small, in the area of the care of children, as i have, that Poverty, Neglect and/or Abuse in the family situation are inseparably intertwined,
IF Stephanie, you had a shred of concern for such children, born into Poverty and thus ‘at risk’ of suffering the myriad negative effects that are part and parcel of such Poverty, including Abuse and Neglect, you would be advocating the raising of the income of ALL such families instead of claiming as you do that their unborn children be ripped from their mothers wombs and effectively flushed down the sink as some form of ‘solution’ which smacks at the least of a gross lack of humanity on your part,
Your comment above is a massive step in the direction of Eugenics and thus abhorrent…
[lprent: Stephanie is always very precise in her choice of words. However she is also an author, so it is inadvisable to continue to attack her on the basis of what she did not say, or what you choose to place as the meaning on those words.
After all, I could start trolling through you comments and taking meanings from what you have said in the past. ]
I don’t particularly like or approve of it, but legalised abortion != eugenics. Nor does your slippery slope argument hold water.
Aside from the women’s rights argument, abortion may actually reduce crime
http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you-believe/
Ropata, i did not say that, you have as i have just been ‘spanked’ for, read into my comment something that simply is not there,
As i point out, Neglect and/or Abuse is accompanied in the overwhelming majority of such cases by Poverty,
Therefor, and as the Moderator has pointed out, the commenter may have not intended to convey this, the opinion those words have formed in my psyche at least is that abortion has been proposed as a means to lower the obviously high amounts of abuse and neglect that occur within families,
Much the same as your link makes an assertion that abortion may reduce crime, i could, perhaps mistakenly, construe that by linking to such an assertion you support the point the link makes,
Do you…
It’s a tough question. I abhor the picture you have described (late term abortion), but on balance I think the sum of human happiness is improved by reproductive choice. Just look at the impact of contraception on third world countries.
Ropata, i fail to understand your reference to ”late term abortion” has the inclusion of such a term in the discussion any relevance and if so can you elucidate that relevance,
Crime, by conviction, not necessarily by value, also has attached to it another demographic, exactly the same as the demographic attached to families where reported abuse and neglect is rife,
Poverty is that linkage, and, while there my be some small truth in claims that abortion would alleviate/lower rates of both crime and abuse/neglect this could not be achieved by ‘choice’,
In other words to achieve such aims through the use of abortion of the tool someone else would be doing the choosing,
Families where crime, and/or abuse/neglect occur still choose to have babies so while those proposing such ‘solutions’ are not at the same time proposing that someone other than ‘the mother’ exercise ‘choice’ to achieve a lowering of the statistics alluded to in this discussion would involve ‘choice’ at some stage being replaced by ‘force’,
Think tho wont you, why do we have poor people, poor workers especially are seen as a necessity of our economy,
If the unborn babies of such poor people where to be ‘knocked off’ in a generational manner so as to make a difference in the statistical areas we are discussing who will then be left to do the labour of the poor,
Now perhaps do you see the linkage i postulate between such ‘ideas’ and Eugenics, while no-one is overtly proposing Eugenics for such proposals as using abortion as a tool to say lower crime rates such proposals are one very large step in that direction…
arguing with a jellyfish would be more productive. can’t be bothered following your jumbled thoughts and reminding you what you already wrote ffs
LPrent, while i take on board your point that Stephanie is an author, this conversation as you can see is the result not of a ‘Post’ that Stephanie wrote but as a result of comments between the two of us in a previous ‘Open Mike’,
Everybody commenting here at the Standard continually ”reads into” comments from anywhere and everywhere, on-site and off-site ”meanings” into what is said by those commenting, those in the media, and, those involved in politics,
So really, i have to ask here what is the point of your moderation except to stifle my ability to debate,
i see no overt abuse in my comment to Stephanie and simply point out the facts vis a vis Poverty and such poverty’s connections to child Abuse and Neglect,
i do not usually bother to respond to ‘moderation’s comments’ as there is obviously little point to doing so as it appears to have only one inescapable conclusion in doing so…
That’s utterly pathetic, bad. Now you’re pretending that this is just about whether I used the word ‘poverty’ or not – when anyone can see by clicking on the links I have provided that you accused me very specifically of saying “abortion might be a solution to child poverty” – and then got really smarmy about “how easily I forget” saying such things.
Now you’ve accused me of not supporting moves to raise people’s incomes and get them out of situations where they feel abortion is the best option for them, which is a complete lie, and you’ve once again linked my opinions about abortion to eugenics.
And you still haven’t explained exactly what the hell this has to do with strategic voting!
I’m going to have to insist once again that you retract your accusations about what I said – not some sneaky, weaselly “did I use the word ‘poverty'” spin – apologise for saying I support eugenics, and explain your choice to introduce these lies in a completely different conversation.
Because right now the “opinion your words have formed in my psyche” is that you’re a sad little liar who can’t handle women disagreeing with him or making choices he doesn’t like.
Don’t forget “you know who’s” Kumeu Baptist Church Candidates Meeting 6pm tomorrow night (Mon Aug 11)–21 Access Rd. just off H16 before Huapai, lots of parking.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kumeu-Baptist-Church/747234255305216
https://www.google.com/maps/search/Kumeu+Baptist+Church+NZ/@-36.8057749,174.5491671,13z
Well worth going imo to keep the heat on Slippery the PM. Laila Harre´and Hone Harawira will be missing IMPs Invercargill Roadtrip mtg. to attend.
They reported that there was only room for about240 people at Kumeu I think. About 239 National supporters and one tame other?
My thinking was just to mill about outside with left party signage before candidates mtg and then have a rally depending on numbers afteward (and welcome anyone evicted from the hall by security).
Are you serious?
“Laila Harre and Hone Harawira will be missing”.
I understand why Hone won’t be there, as he isn’t a candidate in the electorate, but I didn’t think that Laila would run away. It certainly shows how Dotcom rules the roost doesn’t it.
I suppose she is scared that she is going to look like a complete prat and is looking for an excuse not to have to be there and be shown up by Key of course.
Fuck John Key.
And try reading this sentence slowly and in full:
“Laila Harre´and Hone Harawira will be missing IMPs Invercargill Roadtrip mtg. to attend”.
Better trools needed.
I did read the sentence in full.
Is being one of a group forming Kim Dotcom’s court in Invercargill really more important than attending the only candidate meeting in the electorate in which she is standing?
She is the one after all who claimed that she would be chasing John Key to hold him to account.
Instead when KDC tells her to follow him, as if he was the Pied Piper and she was one of the original followers in the story, she follows his orders.
I stand by my words. KDC is totally in charge isn’t he?
o dear 🙄
the stupid is strong in this one
Whoops. Sorry. I mentally put a colon in the sentence as I read it.
I read it as being a statement that they would be missing and an explanation why.
I take it Laila will be present after all.
lol .. you got it this time 🙂
Yes. It was the fact that the word “missing” was at the end of the line in T.M’s original post and the next line started with the capital letter in “IMPs” that fooled me into thinking it was two statements. Can I blame TM for carefully arranging the length and construction of his sentences deliberately to trick me? No?
Hi alwyn. An apology for being stupid is welcome but are you going to withdraw the rest of your self assured diatribe at 5.2?
I thought that it could be taken as read. It was based on a false premise from misreading one sentence as two. On that basis any conclusions based on a misinterpretation of the facts are clearly not justified.
I still think Laila has been bought by someone who would appear to hold values that are completely different from anything that she has supported in the past of course.
Thanks for that great look into the mirror mind of a denizen of Planet Key. Are you really that thick to completely misunderstand what was written?
Is the Herald once again leaving behind the impression that Liu gave lotsa money to labour. Why doesn’t he mention any donations the Nacts got? I seem to remmeber a court case some time back where a judge had some scathing remarks to make about a magazine that printed rumours about a public figure so it could also print a denial.
“A Herald investigation revealed that Maurice Williamson contacted police about the domestic violence inquiry on Liu’s behalf. He resigned his ministerial portfolios in May.
There was further political controversy in June over donations Liu said he had made to the Labour Party.”
what is it with far-right politicians and their weird staring politron 3 eyes..?
..both ‘moon-landing-denier’ craig..and ‘dweeb’ seymour..(he’s from act..)
..they both have that going on..
Watching the Comedy that is the Epsom. On Q+A TV1. There’s Goldsmith denying that he wants to be a sitting MP only a List MP. And the Clown for ACT? What a train wreck. And now Goldsmith is sounding like the one to elect. And the Labour Guy Michael Wood well he is sounding really good too. Julie Anne Genter accepts that most speak to her over Transport. And Rankin? Well nice Earings
I think we need a Reform Act – get rid of these Rotten Boroughs.
Not quite the same as those in Britian but they behave in almost the same way.
epsom candidates’ debate on q & a..
genter took it out..by a country-mile..
..wood from labour was (surprisingly) good..
..’dweeb’ seymour from act was a rude/arrogant prick..
..goldsmith was ever-unctuous..
..and rankin was reduced to babbling inanities from the sideline..
..all in all a good showing for the progressive-camp..
tim barnett..fucken braindead..’no..no..we won’t tell our supporters to vote tactically in epsom’..(!)
..w.t.f..!
..as boag pointed out..if banks had not won epsom by 2,500 last time..key wd not have even got a second term..
..w.t.f. is wrong with labour..?
..hell-bent on this antipodean/modern charge of the fucken light brigade..
..’we were defeated..but we flew our flag high..we died honourable men..!’
..fucken idiots..!
Labour, and hopefully Green voters in Epsom are bright enough to work it out for themselves. It is the Nats who have to be unsubtly reminded where their class interests lie.
the voting numbers from last time show that labour/green voters in epsom were not..
..’bright enough to work it out for themselves’..
..were they ‘bright enough’..act would not exist..
..key wd have been a one-term prime minister..
..and all those assets would not have been sold..
..what..the..fuck…is..so..hard..to..understand..about..that..?
..(should i say it again..?..slowly..?..
..and this is all why barnetts’ ignoring of this political-reality/history..
..has me grinding my forehead into the keyboard..)
and on this..genter was no better..
Have another look at the Q+A program without the blinkers on Philip, the Green’s Julie Ann Genter, as much as i like Her, was saying much the same thing,
Blah Blah, Democracy, Democracy, seeking Party vote only, but, the people of Epsom must be left to choose their own electorate MP,
If Julie Ann wakes up the morning after with a healthy vote in both categories, party and electorate, with the ACT candidate still firmly ensconced in the Seat of Epsom allowing a 1 seat majority for the right to govern shall we all thank Her for the effort,
i know i wont be…
Ain’t old Michelle shrill on Q + A ?
Reckon you’d have smelt it and seen it seeping across the floor if you’d been in that studio. Isn’t their some incontinence pad they advertise on the tele’ ? Send the poor thing a comp’ carton of same.
Ha ! Apparently the 2011 result was down to one ACT seat in parliament. What happened to the most magnificent electoral endorsement ever seeen in the history of New Zealand politics ?
Did Susan Wood host the show?
If so, was she her usual biased self?
smalley hosted the debate..
..and confirmed her previously-over-rated status..
..without an auto-cue..the glitter fades..
Phillip ure,.
Like you we are unimpressed by TV1 adaptation of Rachael Smalley.
She used to be a giant investigative journo, so objective by asking the Hard questions.
But now she sadly looks like another of the many natz clones at TV1, wasn’t TV1 a public TV channel not a Government election tool?
Almost all are Natz moles, and Mike Hosking’s????.
What have they done to Rachael?
Has she gotten to close to the spin doctor Joyce?
Something has taken her over at the Joyce/Goebells propaganda channel TV1? taken out her brain or brainwashed her?
Please wake up Rachael, we need you to be your real former balanced investigative journo type, smart, witty, and just what we need to dig under the pile of crap called “National”.
“..What have they done to Rachael?..”
i think she was upgraded from the mediatron3 to the mediatron4..
..the latter is a much more compliant tron..
..the awkward-question ‘faults’ ironed out of it..
..(it says as much in the manufacturers’-upgrade-guarantee..)
I hope Act is gone on 20 September. I do not like manipulative bossy candidates/parties.
In case you hadn’t noticed @ North – Michelle is ALWAYS shrill. She just drips with shrill
Nah… she was worse than ever on Q&A this morning. She’s panicking big time. It was funny to watch.
Talking of panicking…
RNZ’s Monday morning political spot starting around 1110am will be well worth a listen. A word of warning: batten down your cerebral hatches because Matthew Hooton will be spinning like a Force 10 hurricane.
And wearing the royal purple again. On the very odd occasions I have seen her on the TV she always seems to have a lot of purple clothes on. Channeling a desire to be royalty perhaps?? -Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown…
She likes bright colours. Pinks, purples and blues. Maybe she thinks of herself as the Queen Mum’s NZ successor. She also went in for pinks, purples and blues.
Calling the Queen of Thorns…
Are you coming back to the interwebs for the election campaign?
Kinda miss your input.
Quite understand if you have better ways of spending your time.
How much marijuana did Arthur Baysting smoke before the Kim Hill interview?
Saturday Morning, Radio New Zealand National, 9 August 2014
Anybody else listen to Kim Hill interviewing Arthur Baysting (AKA Neville Purvis) about the need for marijuana legalization? Much of what he said was perfectly sensible and reasonable, until right near the end, when he saw fit to praise President Barack “Bomber” Obama for his liberal attitude towards cannabis law reform.
So far, so good.
But then Baysting, in his blissed out zeal, went a little bit further than was sensible. Because it is now legal in several states, the jail population is going down dramatically, he claimed, and would mean Obama’s legacy would be “up there with Nelson Mandela’s”. That’s a stupid and ignorant and inflammatory thing to say, and is unforgivable, even for an old hippy musician who has obviously been toking daily for the last half-century.
If Arthur Baysting wants to be taken seriously, he needs to learn to speak with a degree of moderation and proportion. Comparing a smooth-talking, cynical product of the rotten, vicious Chicago Democrat Party machine to a revolutionary, principled peace activist that he would have defamed mercilessly if he had been president while the apartheid state was—like Pinochet’s Chile, Duvalier’s Haiti, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq—an American protégé, is utterly preposterous. It’s the kind of thing a stoned old stupid old muso would say during a session. A dope-smoking session, that is. Like the thirteenth gong of a cuckoo clock, it casts doubt on all that went before.
Meanwhile, now that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning peacemaker Barack Mandela has committed to another attack on Iraq, in contravention of his election promises, we can only speculate on how the U.S. soldiers will behave. Sadly, judging by their behaviour in Afghanistan, it’s not entirely promising….
US soldier pleads guilty to urinating on Afghan bodies
AFP DECEMBER 22, 2012 2:48AM
A US Marine was jailed for 30 days, fined and demoted after pleading guilty to participating in a video that showed soldiers urinating on the dead bodies of three Afghans.
Staff Sergeant Joseph Chamblin was charged with “alleged involvement in desecration and posing for unofficial photographs with human casualties,” a statement said.
He pleaded guilty to the charges, which included “wrongfully urinating on the body of a deceased enemy combatant,” as well as failing to supervise the young soldiers in his unit who also took part in the incident.
Chamblin’s rank will be bumped down to lance corporal, he will serve 30 days confinement, his pay will be docked $US500 ($477) a month for the next six months, and he was ordered to pay a $US2000 fine, the judge in the special court martial ruled.
Another soldier, Edward Deptola, is also facing military prosecution, while three others involved in the case have faced administrative sanctions. All five belong to an elite unit of snipers.
The incident came to public attention in January, when a video surfaced online that showed four US soldiers urinating on three bloodied corpses. One of the men, apparently aware he was being filmed, says: “Have a great day, buddy,” referring to one of the dead.
The incident had apparently occurred six months….
Read more….
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/breaking-news/us-soldier-pleads-guilty-to-urinating-on-afghan-bodies/story-e6freoo6-1226542198975?nk=a8ce7cecc5ade34f5bdba1b9378543f4
“..the jail population is going down dramatically, he claimed..”
the facts of the matter morrissey..are that in colorado..
..legalisation/regulation/taxation has led to both a drop in the consumption of the killer drug alcohol..
..and a marked drop in crime..
..coincidence..?..or cause/effect..?
I agree with you, Phillip, and I share your—and Arthur Baysting’s—desire to see the absurd and cruel drug laws abolished. However, judging from what I’ve seen of your posts over the years, I don’t think you would ever be so foolish as to compare Barack Obama to Nelson Mandela.
My problem with Baysting is not his pro-marijuana views, it’s his addled comparison of a war criminal to a heroic peace activist.
You do know that Mandela was a convicted criminal, Moz? He co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC. Presumably he was a supporter of MK’s activities right through to democracy. I sincerely doubt he ever considered himself a peace activist, rather, he was a soldier in an armed struggle.
He was a terrorist who was very very lucky that he wasn’t droned decades ago. Today, he would be, and we would never ever even know his name.
🙄
i agree it was a trainwreck of an interview..(and said so yesterday..)
..and an obama/mandela comparison/equivalence..?
..yeah..nah..eh..?
..but..he has ordered his attorney-general to order the national sentencing commission (?)
..to allow prisoners serving non-violent long sentences for cannabis..
..to be allowed to apply to the courts for a reduced sentence..
..(which is a major breakthrough..)
..i presume it is this that baysting is speaking of..
“..legalisation/regulation/taxation has led to – a marked drop in crime.”
Using your logic, puff heads are responsible for said quoted criminal activity?
And you want to reward them?
Armed bank robbers should just be given bundles of cash when they need it. Problem solved then lol.
How much dope have you smoked this morning, Al1en? Your message is as logical as an Arthur Baysting argument.
I couldn’t afford to even if I wanted a session.
And it’s not my logic, it’s pu’s.
No it’s not Phillip Ure’s “logic”, its your deliberate misconstruing of his argument.
Lolz, Phillip thinks at times erratically, He has a somewhat legitimate excuse for doing so,
What’s yours Alien, being to straight leads to brain damage translated through comment???..
So I take it from the personal insult your axe still grinds? Good show lol.
Like your commentary on radio programs?
you certainly sound like you need a joint !
or maybe a dab, much stronger mellowing effects !
Meanwhile, now that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning peacemaker Barack Mandela has committed to another attack on Iraq, in contravention of his election promises
Its a response to the UN call,of which the Unanimous statement of the security council is that a response to ethnic cleansing in northern iraq and syria by isis is required.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=48439#.U-a6S6MymXU
Pissing on a corpse of an enemy combatant,is insignificant in comparison of beheading,crucifixion and stoning to death.
Quite a few of us are left wondering @Morissey – what ya sed with the opening lines.
ooops – sincere apologies! Can I shove an additional ‘r’ up ya?
Kim needed coaching on how it was he was attempting to connect dots too.
She should have had Rik B and some other strugglers waiting in the wings – not that its all about Kim.
Get back to you’re gardening woman will ya!
But then what’s a dot or two between friends eh?
Colmar Brunton Epsom poll results: [On Q and A this morning]
Who would you vote for with your electorate vote?
National Paul Goldsmith 44%
Act David Seymour 32%
Labour Michael Woold 10%
Green Julie Anne Genter 9%
Conservative Christine Rankin 4%
Internet Mana Pat O’Dea .08%
Independent Grace Haden 0.3%
Don’t know 8%
Were you aware John key is encouraging National Party supporters to give their electorate vote to the Act Party candidate?
Yes 70%
No 28%
Don’t know 2%
With this in mind, who would you now vote for with your electorate vote?
National Paul Goldsmith 31%
Act David Seymour 45%
Labour Michael Woold 9%
Green Julie Anne Genter 10%
Conservative Christine Rankin 4%
Internet Mana Pat O’Dea .08%
Independent Grace Haden 0.1%
Don’t know 13%
Do you support or oppose arrangements like the one John Key has made with the Act Party in Epsom?
Support 47%
Oppose 37%
Don’t know 16%
Which political party would you vote for?
National 60%
Green 16%
Labour 14%
NZ First 3.3%
Act 2.7%
Conservative 2.1%
Internet Mana 1.5%
Maori 0.6%
Don’t know 6%
Stunning numbers for the Green Party in what is obviously a right wing stronghold, InternetMana cannot be too disappointed with having 1.5% Party Vote support there,
Poor old Labour take yet another hit in a ‘poll’, perhaps the peeps in Epsom, or those ‘counting’ the numbers are taking the piss, trying to rain on Labour’s parade…
The Greens are standing Genter there? Too much electoral candidate firepower IMO; at 9% her Green supporters need to turn more to Goldsmith.
May be so. But on the other hand, it could also be that the traditional Nat supporters torn about the Key’s directive but reluctant to vote for ACT or Labour, are taking the mischievous option of giving their vote to the Greens knowing or hoping that the Greens will be or could be a pain in the arse for a Labour led coalition government with their exaggerated demands and sense of over entitlement for cabinet positions, uneconomic unemployment inducing policies and stuff or hoping that the Greens may go into a defacto relationship with the Nats after the election if the supposed ‘murmurs’ alluded to by Mike Sabin and as yet undenied by the Greens are correct! Who knows! Your guess is as good as mine!
And here we have the Labour Tribalist in its natural habitat. If you observe closely, you can see when threatened by a younger, more confident contender, the Tribalist will rear back and sprout out complete bullshit in the hope of defending itself.
“Labour Tribalist” “sprout out complete bullshit’
Wrong on both counts. Doubly wrong.
Materia’s statement as quoted by Bad12 ‘with an underlying vein of sharpened and hardened steel in Her voice’ that
“IF Labour were forming the next Government the Green Party would be at the Cabinet Table In Numbers AND there would be a Comprehensive Coalition Agreement which covered ALL of the Green Parties policies”
Panelist Sabin on The Nation debate stated that ‘there have been murmurs’ within the Greens of going into coalition arrangement with National after the election if Labour is unable to support some of the Green policies such as the free transport for tertiary students etc! He also said that the Greens would deny this in public if asked.
I doubt he would make such claims unless there was some truth to that.
Neither Materia nor Norman have pulled up Sabin on this not categorically denied such talks took place within the Greens.
So, what are you on about about ‘tribalist’ and ‘bullshit’?
So, spit it out. What ‘tribal’ bullshit and spin are you now going to spout about those statements from/about the greens and the completely valid points I have made?
If you are this wide of the mark, Clem, then “bullshit” is a very good call.
You refer to Sabin’s very skewed version of something he heard from someone in The Greens, then spin it through your own misinterpretation.
You are supporting right wing wedge politics, aimed at fragmenting the left. We need more cross party support than all the smears you are dishing out.
You keep on repeating the same misinformation even after people keep pointing out how wrong you are – hands over your ears.
Firstly, if you are going to quote someone as a source, try to get their name right – it’s BROOK Sabin. Looks like you are not paying very much attention to the source.
The statements of Sabin’s that you keep referring to, are actually focused on how weak Labour is looking in terms of leading a government – and that the Greens must be disappointed because they need a stronger Labour if they want a Lab-green coalition.
At about 4.35 mins into the video.
This would be in the realms of Memorandum of Understanding, and has nothing to do with contemplating forming a coalition with National.
You seem totally unaware that the Greens (under the Leadership of Jeanette Fitzsimons and Russel Norman) signed a MoU with the Nat government in 2009. They tried to extend this after the 2011 election, but there wasn’t enough common ground between the parties.
It’s part of the Greens approach that they will aim to work with any party on policies that they agree on.
The 2009 MoU- insulation for homes; energy efficiency; health products.
Green Party Press Release on it said,
The news reports on the failure to expand the MoU in 2012, said this:
So, Brook Sabin’s comments are just about the Greens fall back position. They have strongly stated they want to play a significant role in a Lab-Green government. Sabin’s comments are spinning about Labour being too weak to govern, and the Greens starting to look at policies they could put to the Nats as an MoU. It’s not about a coalition or confidence and supply, but about selected policies. And, for all we know, it was just some idle chatter amongst a couple of Greens.
That is something the Greens have always been up front about doing – so nothing for Turei and Norman to deny.
Clem, do you really want to continue supporting Sabin’s comments about a Labour Party too weak to govern?
“Clem, do you really want to continue supporting Sabin’s comments about a Labour Party too weak to govern?”
Labour will be a strong party with a strong leader and a strong caucus. It will be a party with very strong well thought out economic, social and environmental policies for the good of all the people for the long term good of the country. While the smaller progressive parties like the Greens are welcome, I do not want to see these smaller parties to be too arrogant or cocky or too greedy and put their boot into the coalition’s political interest by exaggerated claims and demands far and above their limited party support from the voters. If that happens, I have no doubt that the voters will punish Labour and the coalition parties in 2017. I am sure no thinking progressive voter will want such an outcome. Slow and steady is the smart way to go for everyone’s long term success.
ie – small parties should know their place.
Nevertheless, a more reasoned comment from you, Clem, and more positive sounding.
It’s up to the voters to decide which parties they prefer. That’s what the election is for.
I’m happy if there’s a strong left coalition in government, and parties that will work for a return to truly left wing policies. It’s good we have a choice.
“ie – small parties should know their place.”
Not at all. Sure, they can get a little more than what their party support proportion says, just a little more, but not too much over and above that. Because, that will be unfair, resented and harmful to the main party, Labour in this case, its own policies, its own standing, the aspirations of its own voters and IT’S own caucus members many of whom are senior MPs with vast experience in administration of the country for much longer than the entire lot of green list members that the Greens will bring in.
I was and I am still very annoyed at Materia Turei’s over the top cocky statement quoted by bad 12.
Labour leadership and MPs have been very tolerant, decent, courteous, controlled and silent about the anti Labour rhetoric, snide remarks, cunning tactics, telling off, put downs, damaging criticisms from the left, right and centre. I don’t have to. I am just an ordinary Labour supporter. I like to express my opinion as I see it and as best as I can, hoping that REAL sanity and FAIR dealing prevails all around.
The choice is everyone’s.
There is nothing over the top or cocky about Metiria’s statement aired on ‘the Nation’ Clem,
Metiria said that the Greens will be at the Cabinet table in numbers, you yourself postulated yesterday that you would see only 3 green Cabinet Ministers and maybe a number of Associate Ministers,(my later comment pointed at 4 Green Ministers and a number of Associate Ministers),
That Is Numbers Clem, there is nothing arrogant about it,
The Green party policy Platform, again i pointed out yesterday that the Greens in a coalition negotiation will want to go through their whole policy program with Labour, some of which both Parties will immediately agree on, some of which both Parties will somewhat agree on which can be safely left for later discussion and a few policies which might or might not be deal breakers,
i see nothing ‘over the top’ or ‘cocky’ about Metiria publicly pointing out how coalitions are hammered together and fail to see your point at continuing to rail against the Green Party in such a fashion…
Where did you acquire the skill of polishing a turd?
Clem, not long after you started regurgitating said turds into the comments here at ‘Open Mike’…
LabourGreen leadership and MPs have been very tolerant, decent, courteous, controlled and silent about the antiLabourGreen rhetoric, snide remarks, cunning tactics, telling off, put downs, damaging criticisms from the left, right and centre.FIFY.
It is a reasonably well known fact that many soft RW Nats do support the Greens.
Did you think that the Greens get their support only from the traditional Labour voters?
You would be wrong there I think.
They’d be the ones who are a bit like my neighborus. Into reccycling and cleaning up rivers right up until the time it becomes the slightest inconvenience – such as having to clean up their own shit after themselves.
Every little bit counts though eh? (as the old lady said as she spat into the Ocean)
QED.
trust the good villagers of epsom to vote for entrenching their wealth and privilege at the expense of true democracy
Clemgeopin
Interesting numbers, fortunately Epsom voters won’t be getting that hint immediately before they cast their actual ballot. WTF is up with Epsom GP & LP voters though – your candidates have no hope of winning; persisting in voting for them would only ensure an ACT victory!
Yes, I agree, but early days yet. Key can let the cat among the pigeons by withdrawing Goldsmith out of the race altogether. He has till the 26th (or so) to do that! Will he or won’t he is the question!
Michelle Boag was certainly of the opinion that National should withdraw Goldsmith and I think that and her rather agitated performance on Q & A today is a further sign that National thinks this election is on a knife edge.
Yes, if Goldsmith does a premature withdrawal, lots of NATS vote may shift to Rankin rather than ACT, in which case the Nats vote may be divided between ACT and Rankin and some scattered to Labour and the Greens candidates. The strategic voting for Labour and Green voters will then become tricky and will depend upon what the local polls are saying around the first and second week of Sept, I think.
Add the Labour (Woold) + Green (Genter) 19% to the National (Goldsmith) 31% and ACT loses.
There will be some other close electorate contests which National beat Labour but wouldn’t if Green voters tactically voted for the Labour candidate.
Quite. According to this, only 28% of Labour voters in Epsom are voting tactically, while 56% of Green supporters are.
Labour voters in Epsom seem to be asleep at the wheel. When told that National wants people to vote David Seymour, the National voters switch their votes, with Goldsmith losing 13% and Seymour gaining them.
But the Labour voters? They either don’t change their vote or give it to the Green candidate Julie Ann Genter, who rises by 1%. WTF difference do they think this is going to make?
Not sure how you came to that mathematical conclusion? Can you explain how you did that calculation?
My analysis is oversimplified and it’s impossible to tell what’s really happening without all the data. But that’s generally what it looks like.
When told that National want people to vote for Seymour, Goldsmith’s vote drops 13, Seymour’s rises 13. That looks like a straight transfer – National voters switching their votes from Goldsmith to Seymour in accordance with Key’s instructions.
Meanwhile, Labour’s Wood drops 1% and Julie Ann Genter from the Greens picks up 1%. But the don’t knows go from 8% to 13%, so it’s hard to tell what is actually going on.
lol I noticed that too – the Green vote is higher the second time the question is asked. Just realised what it probably is: Nat voters who can’t bare the thought of voting for Act have chosen Green instead – such behaviour provides the same outcome, because it takes a vote away from the most likely contender to win after Act, with out having to vote for Act.
Where did the numbers, 28% and 56% come from in the calculation?
The vote only had 1% shift between 1st and 2nd poll between Labour and greens.
That can’t translate to 28% and 56% strategic voting as claimed, as far as I can see.
I don’t know either – I assume Blue was making a comparison between the shift in voting and the party vote – but can’t be arsed working out if that is where they are derived from – it was the shift in the Green vote that I had noticed.
The party vote numbers show 14% support for Labour and 16% for the Greens.
The first round of candidate votes (before being told Key wants Seymour to win) show Labour’s Wood on 10% and Julie Ann Genter on 9%. I’m assuming that people usually give their candidate vote to the candidate from their party.
If the poll had 100 voters, that means 14 Labour people and 4 would vote for a candidate other than Wood. That’s a percentage of 28.57.
Similarly, there are 16 Green people, and 7 of them would vote for a candidate other than Genter. I have made an error here – the percentage for that is 43.75.
So more Green voters acting tactically and (hopefully) voting for Goldsmith.
Ok, Thanks. I get your maths. Makes sense. Very good! Your conclusion may be correct. (though it just shows that the diminished votes (between party vote Vs candidate vote) went elsewhere, not necessarily to Goldsmith. Any other assumption is just that)
However, these are early days and the voters haven’t yet made their firm decisions. I think a similar poll done about a week or so before the election will be more revealing.
Pasupial, I understand that it’s frustrating that Labour and Green voters won’t do what’s tactically and strategically the best option, I wish they would too. But you know what, I like even more that it seems there are around 30% of voters in Epsom who believe enough in Labour and the Greens to get out and vote for them on Election Day and in all honesty who can deny them the pleasure of ticking that box.
I can. This is too important to let go. If Act lose Epsom they are out of Parliament and they will likely implode, destroying the party completely. National will be without an important support partner and they can no longer blame Act for their choice to sneak in uncampaigned-for policy (e.g. charter schools).
If Labour and the Greens win the election (which is balanced on a knife edge and the seat of Epsom could be the difference between winning and losing) then we can get rid of coat-tailing altogether. That means Epsom can go back to being a normal electorate.
There’s too much at stake to have Labour and Green supporters blow this by voting for their own candidate. They need to vote for Goldsmith.
I found the NAT and CONS candidates quite irritating. Am I prejudiced?
“WTF is up with Epsom GP & LP voters though – your candidates have no hope of winning; persisting in voting for them would only ensure an ACT victory!”
Some people don’t understand how MMP works. Others do but are unaware of the current issue. Others still will not vote on the right no matter what. Some people don’t believe in tactical voting. If the GP and/or Labour wanted their voters to vote National, they would have not stood a candidate in the electorate. Lots of people are probably confused too.
Parties stand candidates in the election because it helps get party votes. Every party vote counts, and they are too important.
The Greens always say they are campaigning for the party vote.
“The Greens always say they are campaigning for the party vote”
The party vote is CRUCIAL for EVERY party. Not just for the Greens.
It is even MORE crucial for LABOUR because they have strong National candidates fighting for their electorate seats against Labour candidates. The potential Labour PARTY votes get scattered among so many of the smaller parties on the left.
So, Labour voters should really give BOTH their votes to Labour.
But in all but one or two electorates, the electorate vote doesn’t decide the number of MPs a party gets.
For a small or medium sized party, it’s a better use of their resources to focus on the party vote.
Clem, you really are showing a sense of entitlement by Labour to left wing votes. And you are the one that’s been using the “arrogant” word against others.
It’s up to voters to decide who and what party to vote for. A left party needs to earn the left wing votes.
No party can rest on its laurels. I was once a Labour voter. I will be more likely to vote Labour again if the return to strong left wing values. Right now, I see a couple of other parties having stronger left values, policies and processes. Cunliffe has made some very promising noises, but he has yet to show he will be able to follow through if in government. It will require strong left wing coalition parties to hold them to account.
Labour wasn’t always the main left wing party in NZ. They achieved that position by taking a strong left wing position. They lost ground when they moved away from that.
I don’t really care which party leads left wing politics. I will vote for which ever one does.
You seem stuck in a FPtP mode.
Yep.
Despite JK’s efforts it seems 2/3 of National’s supporters would still vote for Goldsmith.
I am amazed that the Labour Party candidate does as well as this poll says.
After all even interested left-leaning commenters on this blog don’t seem to know who he is.
As a question for Clemgeopin and Tangled_up at 14.3.2 can you pleas tell me who this person Michael Woold you are talking about is? I thought the Labour candidate was named Michael Wood.
What do you mean? I know Michael Wood well.
I believe that your problem is that you probably aren’t particularly close to the Epsom electorate. Michael is. He has been campaigning across the border from Epsom in Mt Roskill. Just as I have been while campaigning across the border in Mt Albert. It may be hard to understand, but neighbours who know the electorate especially the poorer parts will do well.
Given that the other parties have put complete nutty fuckwits up as candidates – Seymour, Rankin, and even Goldsmith (let me bend over to help..), I’m not surprised Michael is doing pretty well. Given that he knows the area from the local politics side, he will make sense.
This is the same Michael Wood who was presented as Labours candidate in the botany election?
If so he did well in leading a crap performance from labour in their display of contempt towards an electorate. He almost was a sole effort. I hope after botany now epsom Michael will be better treated by the labour hierarchy in future… But no, at 39 after standing for pakuranga,botany and now epson, talk about be dealt a bad hand and being under appreciated!!! Sometimes people deserve better and this is how labour looks after their own mmmmm
You may know Michael Wood very well, and he may in fact be a reasonable candidate.
The other people who are commenting obviously don’t though as they don’t even know what his name is. As I have said in the last two sentences, they seem to think his name is WOOLD, not WOOD. Did you get that far in what I wrote?
“Colmar Brunton Epsom poll results: [On Q and A this morning]”
“Who would you vote for with your electorate vote?…
Were you aware John key is encouraging National Party supporters to give their electorate vote to the Act Party candidate?…
With this in mind, who would you now vote for with your electorate vote?”
How lovely of TVNZ to run a National Party voting tutorial for people who live in Epsom.
I was gobsmacked by that tutorial. I wonder if the coaching fees are totaled into the National campaign expenses as they should be?
My thoughts too.
All you need to know about the Maori seats: Tai Hauauru.
So you’re on the Maori Roll? We’ll presume u R voting 4 a party that supports the Maori seats (this cuts out Act, National, NZ First).
Party vote
Your most powerful vote is your party vote. If you love the current govt, give your party vote to the Maori Party (John Key supports this 2).
To change the govt, give your Party vote to Labour, Green, or Internet Mana. You decide who has the korero that support your goals, and who’s more principled/organised.
Electorate vote
The electorate vote is important too. Tai Hauauru has some hard case things going on there:
Mana – do they have anyone’s name up yet? By now they should have a name up, out of respect for voters, and to show that they are organized.
Maori Party – like most Maori people in most parties, Chris is probably a nice guy. But his position says a lot about where te ao Maori is right now. Maori are getting poorer under the govt, under the system, but hey its fine, as ‘Maori are at the table’. There’s a disconnect here – people with skills r standing 4 a party that’s in cahoots with people doing [insert word to describe what National is doing here] things. There must b a psychological term for this level of disconnect.
Who on the hikoi in 2004 could imagine than four years later Tariana would be standing beside a bunch of greedy, dishonest mongrels?
Labour – crack up, this guy used to be the chairman for Tariana. This is the story of the Maori Party though. 90% of their door knockers from 2004 are now door knocking for someone else. Adrian is also a nice fulla with nice skills. His main point made so far: ‘we’re not the same Labour Party that stole the foreshores’ doesn’t really inspire.
Green – nice young rangatahi, again, the Green problem is they don’t have the relationship in the Maori seats that others have. Noone thinks ‘oh the greens have a chance of winning Maori seats.’ This doesn’t mean that Jack isn’t on to it though.
Where should the vote go?
If you want the current govt to continue, vote 4 Chris. If you want to change the govt, vote for Jack or Adrian, but like the other seats, you probably won’t feel inspired.
BUT you can inspire yourself in the knowledge that your party vote will swing this election. When the election will be won by a 1 or 2 percent of the vote, then guess what? The Maori seats hold the balance of power! Get excited about that please.
Post script: we’re annoyed with commentators that fail to make the connection between a Maori Party vote and the way that Maori communities have been hurt over the last 6 years. Our hunch is the commentators are doing OK thanks, winning the Whanau Ora contracts and setting up charter schools. The politics of the 1%.
+100
“Who on the hikoi in 2004 could imagine than four years later Tariana would be standing beside a bunch of greedy, dishonest mongrels?”
Yeah, that’s freakin unbelievable bro.
Shame on the Maori party for having propped up a right wing Government dominated by NATIONAL, ACT and DUNNE of all people! What a complete disgrace to score some baubles and bull shit.
Kia Mattara!
Kia mataara me te inoi, kei uru ki te whakamatautauranga. He hihiko te wairua, ko te kikokiko ia he ngoikore.
Asset sales should have been the deal breaker… but I guess the $$$ were too good to pass up
you ARE correct. The Maori party and that cheap fool Dunne should have walked out against the asset sales issue, against the Charter school rort and the GCSB issue.
Fishing for votes with David Cunliffe
How can someone who was fisheries spokesperson not know that net fishing is going to get some smaller catch and that there’s nothing that you can do about it? Yes, you can make nets that allow smaller fish through but some will always get caught up with the rest of the fish. Once it’s caught and dead there’s only two choices – sell it or throw it away.
Thankfully, there’s been some government funded research going on that will help prevent smaller by catch while also making the fishing better.
Oh, and my families boats already require the fish caught to be 30cm. Some people remember that 50 years ago fishing brought in more and bigger catches than today and think that the government should be doing more to protect our fisheries both for the ‘recreational’ fishers and for commercial.
Epson poll??
Coleman Brunton is always a rigged right wing phoney rigged poll.
Especially now the NATZis have storm trooper Joyce/Geobbels who is running the Propaganda show there.
He is a liability on screen so he has the job of rigging polls now beginning with Epsom,
Then next Colman Bruton Political poll wait and see.
Since he looked so stupid on camera against David Parker he’s now behind the scenes pulling phoney polls to prop up the Fuehrer.
FYI – apologies for the length of this post, but think there will be quite some public interest ….
Penny Bright – Independent candidate for the Helensville electorate will now be attending the Helensville candidates meeting to be held at the Kumeu Baptist Church Monday 11 August 2014
REPLY RECEIVED 3.35pm SUNDAY 10 AUGUST 2014
Holly Ryan via yahoo.com 3:35 PM (2 hours ago)
to me
Penny,
As Kumeu Baptist Church prefers to avoid being embroiled in media or Court disputes, you may attend as a candidate tomorrow evening.
As sole organizer, I personally would stand against your bullying tactics and stick to my original and, until now, unaltered plan for the event.
You will need to seek me out when you arrive tomorrow evening. As all publicity material has been completed, nothing other than your attendance can be changed.
Holly Ryan
FYI – I sent this email first to Holly Ryan and to Samuel Schuurman, and rang both to try and ensure that they had received this email before sending it out widely to media and politicians at local and central government.
From the beginning – I have tried to deal with my (unlawful) exclusion from this one and only Helensville candidates meeting in a proper way, and have the ‘paper trail’ to prove this – in the hopefully unlikely event that it ends up in the Auckland High Court tomorrow, in the form of an application for an injunction ……
I look forward to my rights as an Independent candidate for Helensville being respected, and being able to address members of the voting public, on the same basis as candidates representing political parties, which thus respects the right of the voting public public to ‘cast an informed vote’.
Please remember that I have stood as an Independent candidate at both local and national government levels on a number of occasions, and know how to conduct myself at public electoral meetings.
Cheers!
Penny Bright
10 August 2014
‘Open Letter’ to the Organiser of the Helensville candidates meeting Holly Ryan and Senior Pastor of the Kumeu Baptist Church, Samuel Schuurman:
Dear Holly Ryan and Senior Pastor Samuel Schuurman of the Kumeu Baptist Church
Please be advised that I am now in possession of a recorded telephone conversation taken Wednesday 6 August 2014 at 12.15pm between Holly Ryan and an unidentified woman, regarding candidates who had been invited to speak at the upcoming Helensville meeting, and the reasons given for excluding myself, Penny Bright, as an Independent candidate.
(I was advised of this recording on Friday 8 August 2014, and received a copy on Saturday 9 August 2014. I had no prior knowledge of this recording beforehand.)
In this recording Holly Ryan states that I, Penny Bright am ‘a major activist’ and ‘will cause trouble one way or the other’, and it is clear that political bias against me, because of my political activist background that is the real reason for my exclusion from this meeting.
However, this was NOT the reason given by Holly Ryan, one day later, in response to my complaint to the Human Rights Commission about my exclusion from the Helensville candidates meeting being unlawful discrimination on the grounds of political opinion:
From: Lesley Ashworth-Lawson
Date: 7 August 2014 4:43:03 pm NZST
To: “‘waterpressure@gmail.com'”
Hello Penny
As per your request I confirm that you approached the Human Rights Commission complaining that you felt you had been discriminated against by Holly Ryan, organisor of a meeting of political party candidates.
You felt that in not being included in that meeting, you were being discriminated against on the basis of your political opinion.
Within the context of the Commission’s confidential dispute resolution process, I rang Holly to notify her of your complaint and to obtain a response to your complaint, in particular to request the basis on which you had not been included in the meeting.
Holly told me that she had wanted to arrange a meeting so that people could hear from candidates affiliated to parties who she considered had a possibility of gaining a seat in Parliament, from whom she considered the public may wish to hear.
She has organised the meeting on her own initiative.
Holly agreed for me to relay this information to you, as part of our process of assisting to resolve complaints.
She did wish to enter into mediation.
Kind regards,
Lesley Ashworth-Lawson
Mediator/Kaihohourongo
Human Rights Commission| Te Kahui Tika Tangata
T: +473 9981 Ext 720 | F: +64 4 471 6759
Toll free 0800 496 877
PO Box 12411, Thorndon, Wellington 6144
Level 1 – 44 The Terrace, Wellington 6011
New Zealand | http://www.hrc.co.nz
Please be reminded of s.11 of the Constitution of the Kumeu Baptist Church:
http://www.kumeubaptist.org.nz/assets/downloads/Baptist-Constitution.doc
It should be noted that churches are subject to Acts of Parliament such as the Race Relations Act, Employment Relations Act, Privacy Act and Human Rights Act.
THE BILL OF RIGHTS ACT 1990:
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1990/0109/latest/DLM225516.html
Non-discrimination and minority rights
19Freedom from discrimination
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1990/0109/latest/DLM225519.html
HUMAN RIGHTS AMENDMENT ACT 2001:
Prohibited grounds of discrimination
Heading: inserted, on 1 January 2002, by section 7 of the Human Rights Amendment Act 2001 (2001 No 96).
21Prohibited grounds of discrimination
(1)For the purposes of this Act, the prohibited grounds of discrimination are—
(j)political opinion, which includes the lack of a particular political opinion or any political opinion:
Please be advised that I have had discussions this morning with Graham McCready from the NZ Private Prosecution Service about this matter.
Graham McCready will assist me with the preparation of a High Court injunction to prevent the use of the Kumeu Baptist Church being used for this Helensville candidates meeting, if I Penny Bright, as an Independent candidate, am not given an equal opportunity to speak, as are other candidates standing for the above-mentioned political parties.
A full transcript of this above-mentioned telephone conversation will be made available, if required, for both the High Court and the media.
(FYI – I worked very closely with Graham McCready in the successful prosecution of former ACT Leader and MP for Epsom John Banks, for electoral fraud.
In fact – I was the ‘process server’ who hand-delivered the witness summonses that resulted in Kim Dotcom, his lawyer (Greg Towers), former bodyguard (Wayne Tempero) and the CEO of Sky City Casino (Nigel Morrison) appearing in the Auckland District Court to give pre-trial oral evidence.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/adam-bennett/news/article.cfm?a_id=263&objectid=11268946
Watchdogs claim biggest scalp as Banks found guilty
11:45 AM Friday Jun 6, 2014
Self-styled public watchdogs Penny Bright and Graham McCready claimed their biggest scalp yesterday as Act MP John Banks was found guilty of filing a false electoral return.
But police reluctance to pursue the affair has fuelled calls by Ms Bright and David Bain’s champion Joe Karam for an independent commission against corruption.
I sincerely hope that this will NOT be necessary, and the basic principles of natural justice, democracy, the ‘rule of law’ and commonsense will prevail, particularly given that this meeting, as I understand it, will the only one which Prime Minister John Key will be attending, and will continue to be the focus of significant election publicity.
Please be reminded that this was the original notice advertising this Helensville candidates meeting:
eventsworkshopsforums/10351-helensville-electorate–te-tai-tokerau-cross-party-candidates-meeting
HELENSVILLE ELECTORATE / TE TAI TOKERAU CROSS PARTY CANDIDATES MEETING
MONDAY 11TH AUGUST at KUMEU BAPTIST CHURCH, Access Rd, Kumeu
8 political parties – National, Labour, Greens, Maori, Act, NZ First, Conservative, Internet Mana are invited to be represented by their candidates and up to 2 other party policy speakers.
Parties will have opportunity to set up stands in the church hall, with public welcome to attend from 6pm to chat casually.
The main meeting will commence in the church at 7pm. Seating for 230, with sound system. Each candidate will have 5 minutes to present themselves, followed by written questions from the public, drawn for order. At 9pm the meeting will end, with opportunity for everyone to return to the hall for informal discussion and refreshments.
The meeting will be tightly managed, with any interjectors removed after one warning.
Questions may be answered by the party policy supporters, seated behind the candidates.
RSVP to Holly Ryan, Convenor
…………………….
Please be further advised that there is significant and growing media and public interest in this matter.
I look forward to your confirmation by email, by 5pm today, Sunday 10 August 2014, that I have the same opportunity to address the public at this Helensville candidates meeting, as the other above-mentioned candidates.
Yours sincerely,
Penny Bright
‘Anti-corruption /anti-privatisation Public Watchdog’
2014 Independent Candidate for Helensville
2013 Independent Auckland Mayoral Candidate (polled 4th 11,723 votes)
2009 Attendee: Australian Public Sector Anti-Corruption Conference
2010 Attendee: Transparency International Anti-Corruption Conference
2013 Attendee: Australian Public Sector Anti-Corruption Conference
2014 Attendee: G20 Anti-Corruption Conference
I sympathise with Holly Ryan, you have engaged in bullying tactics. Just like a blog, freedom of speech doesn’t give you the right to gatecrash someone’s party and hector their guests.
I am glad that you have been invited, being a candidate in that electorate. It is a shame that democracy is not served fairly or well in our country!
i am just relieved that phil isnt detailing his personal habits. now that would truly be gross
aarrgh stupid nokia phone, can’t reply properly to the thread …
Actually it the the standard’s mobile version that prevents replying to specific comments in-thread. You can switch the the desktop version on your phone and the reply buttons are there. Bit tedious though.
It is a pain. I have tried to get that problem fixed several times. Each time not quite succeeded before running out of time. The upgrades on that particular theme are pretty fast and quite extensive. So I usually have to restart each time.
Thanks. Minor bug, low impact, won’t chuck my phone out the window this time 🙂
the loss of name and email in the text boxes is probably more of a pain 😉
Yeah I know. I got caught with some SQL that I had to get done (and still have bugs in). Lyn has a bug as well which has been minimising my work time with hacking coughs and obsessive TV watching.
You always sound like you are working too hard anyway, so there’s no hurry. It’s interesting that it’s taking me so long to remember to check the boxes each time. What tv are you obsessively watching?
As a political scientist, what a terrible bit of research by Colmar Brunton and then for TVNZ to publish it. So, they do one poll on electoral vote (which shows National candidate leading) and then remind/discuss voters John Key’s request for National supporters to vote for Act candidate and guess what? The poll results are very different (Act is now leading) – well of course! That’s not a poll…that’s a way to influence the outcome. Dumb, dumb, dumb!!!!!
I would have called it ‘corrupt’ or ‘bought’ rather than dumb – unless you mean it was dumb of them to come out and admit that is what they have been up to….
It’s the Key effect. Do what you want and with a smile and pretend that it’s normal and no-one will bat an eyelid.
Intriguing tweet from Bryce Edwards – Nicky Hager launching a book on Wednesday – title unknown? Edwards wonders if it’s on surveillance:
I searched and couldn’t find any Hager book in the pipeline – only this compilation with a chapter by Hager:
Anne,
“RNZ’s Monday morning political spot starting around 1110am will be well worth a listen.
A word of warning: batten down your cerebral hatches because Matthew Hooton will be spinning like a Force 10 hurricane”
Thanks for the tip, will watch. and record on my VCR that GCSB Key cant download or spy on.
I am an electronic engineer, and have discovered why they took us all rapidly off analogue and into the digital era,.
This was the only way we can be spied on with mass surveillance.
So now I keep taping video and audio only into the old magnetic tapes and store in a library outside a commuter on line source.
Five eyes Key & co go f….ck off.
Do you wear a tinfoil hat as well?
I started my career in electronics too (these days I work in a closely related field) – and Local kiwi is perfectly correct.
Analogue could be always be snooped on – but mass surveillance was impossibly slow and cumbersome to implement.
By contrast digital communications is an open book.
No tinfoil hats needed Gosman.