Expect to see more of this tactic through the 2020 election. Voting in the USA is such a pain-in-the-ass time-suck that it's awfully tempting to not bother when you're unenthusiastic about the candidate at the top of the ticket. Which then flows on to reduced support for other candidates further down the ballot such as the Senate, House and locl government.
and wikileakjs exposed her as a revolting war criminal drenched in blood …
you can read about Blumfeild and her spreading false viagra and mass rape claims about Gaddafis fictional ' black mercenerys.
And her results from that are all over the internet …
You can read about the black men ending up on meathooks, lynched or slave traded … you can read about black libyan women kidnapped, sex trafficked or murdered.
But I bet you already knew that Andre … Your demo gal
She went … she murdered …. she destroyed …. tee hee hee
Actually You should go to Israel with no regrets Wayne …
Waynes a real zionist .. he may not be full uber ,,, but he's definatly no under- Palastinian either
The link is about how outright lying to smear a murder victim was used as a successful political ploy. And about how convergence moonbats and second-option bias idiots happily took the smear and amplified it. And how they probably have learned nothing from the experience so will probably do so again.
edit: (“they” that have learned nothing being the convergence moonbats and second-option bias idiots: the perps will have learned that it works quite well and are probably full of ideas how to do it better next time)
Clinton lost the most winnable election in post war US history to a fucking moronic imbecile, and even after cheating! Clinton stood for everything shit in the Democratic party and US politics in general that is why she lost, and now Obama's legacy is Trump…thanks liberalism, job well done.
My memory of the polls taken at the time is that would have lost. Basically too far left. Ironically he would do better this time since the Dems have shifted a bit. But he won’t be the candidate.
… and then there's the comprehension-challenged that can't respond to the actual content of an article, instead diverting to well-worn simplistic slogans they've been repeating for years. Maybe someone needs to read it to them as an audio or video clip.
Maybe some people need to really understand that the way to win elections going forward isn't by forcing the same old bullshit down peoples throats. I mean, come on seriously, do you really think that Seth story had any effect on the US elections?
I think there's basically a Pavlov's dog response from some people to any mention of the word "Clinton." Must be a pain in the arse for people who actually come from Clinton, not being able to say their home town's name without Morrissey going on about his Hillary videos for the 40,396th time.
And she cites the very same full of shit Isikoff ,who broke the Steele dossier news then later recanted from the most lurid allegations, having unleashed
a murky fake story on the gullible that never had legs.
They'll definitely repeat the tactic, but Clinton was uniquely vulnerable – repugs had literally spent decades inventing lies and scandals (to the degree that the ones WJC should have faced became lost in all the repug bullshit).
Seth Rich wasn't the first death repugs lied about for political gain. Before him there was Vince Foster.
So whomever gets the nomination probably won't have a track record of a generation being conditioned to believe something is corrupt about them. Especially if Biden doesn't get it.
I do think FOX CNN and the rest of the media industrial complex is to blame for spreading the conspiracy theory/theories. Y'know I also think Seths supervisor was being a little too proud to be a Hillary supporter, making Seth work late knowing he'd have to walk through one of the more dangerous areas of Washington well known for armed hold ups, homelessness and poverty.
Looks like you've hit the limits of your intelligence. What exactly did I make up?
why don't you cry to one of the moderators to help you find an argument and win a debate, McTrash.
[Thanks for drawing my attention although this willy-waving contest was hard to miss so early in OM. I wish you two were having a debate but as it stands you are just having a fight in the sandpit throwing sand in each other’s eyes. There are no winners, only losers (plural) and these are mainly everybody else who has to scroll past this pathetic exchange. In the interest of TS, I think I should send you two away on a wee holiday so that the rest of the TS community can enjoy this space. The only two questions for me are when and for how long? Incognito]
Links to online conspiracy theories is not an excuse for wrong doing. It's not clear from what you said exactly what claims you are making but it is entirely about intentional behaviour.
Seth was on punish duties at work for some FOX news conspiracy theory. I think his work supervisor was being over zealous and if I'm not mistaken Seths parents are suing FOX. Now that I'v restated my position do you have a counter argument?
Every link I've found so far claims he was walking home from a bar. None claimed that part of his work duties involved being at a sports bar until it shut on a saturday night/sunday morning.
Therefore your unsubstantiated rumours about his work are irrelevant to his death.
Therefore you're just repeating lies and innuendo about a murder in order to sully people you oppose politically.
Therefore you are a piece of shit.
And your still failed to explain just what you found "unclear" about "He was walking home from a bar in the wee small hours of a Sunday morning."
I was implying that the conspiracy theories was coming from CNN and FOX news. The only one talking about online conspiracy theories was you. That's why I said something. It's got nothing to do with some sort of imaginary outrage in your own mind. It's was all produced by Fox News not some imaginary republican smear campaign. Clinton smeared herself, get over it. This bullshit is fucking years old and you're still crying about it.
Y'know I also think Seths supervisor was being a little too proud to be a Hillary supporter, making Seth work late knowing he'd have to walk through one of the more dangerous areas of Washington well known for armed hold ups, homelessness and poverty.
as an example of the sort of lies that were spread, rather than meaning to imply that you actually believed it?
You're just geared for it aren't ya. You just have to signal how virtuous and outrage you can be don't you. You're so fucken ideological you can't even see the trees from the forest.
Y'know it happened in the middle of Clintons Presidential campaign. DNC staffers don't get weekends during presidential campaigns. Y'know I looked at all this stuff years ago, it should be like accepted truth by now. But you just keep denying that Trump won fair and square.
nope. Not rather. Just not caring very much about your hurt feelings. Why on earth would I go through any effort for a low iq specimen to try and unfuck your own confusion. Why should I when I'm having so much fun with your emotions.
If my regarding you as a stupid piece of shit who spreads contemptible lies (and then lies about his lies) is a source of joy to you, then you have succeeded beyond your wildest dreams.
No, McTrash. It's not about me, and it's not about you either.
Seth was working late, he stopped at a local bar, got drunk and got murdered on his way home. Theres no conspiracies here, no hidden agenda. There's no hidden outrage. Trump didn't steal anything. It was a media beat up.
Yknow so what if Seth leaked something, it was just an accident.
No McTrash. There was no lies. That's just in your own head. From what I remember Kim Dotcom was willing to testify for the Muller investigation that Seth did hand Wikileaks something. Their only one in denial is you, McTrash. That Seth was Mudrered probably has nothing to do with anything you're on about.
What you remember rarely overlaps with what you provide evidence for and that itself rarely overlaps with reality. KDC has similarly been caught out once or twice. So you talking about what KDC promised is like someone claiming that their spirit guide told them that unicorns claim to fart rainbows.
I love the way you're on first name terms with the guy whose murder you're shamelessly exploiting for your own deranged purposes. That's probably meant to be a distraction from the fact that you haven't backed up a single one of your claims. Any of them.
Nope. It's not about love because I'm not going to provide you with anything. If you want to be more cooperative you're going to have to learn to be civil. Or I could just rubbish you all the time.
You can't even accept simple truths. DNC staffers don't get weekends off during presedintial races. There was no conspiracy theory to begin with. You just wanted to signal how virtuous you are. So go right ahead.
You assert these things as "facts", but they're just assumptions you make to support your desire to use a robbery gone wrong as a weapon against the dems.
And, in my experience, people who use the term "virtue signalling" do so only to avoid explicitly declaring that they have no concept of empathy or humanity. It is the penultimate refuge of the unregenerate scoundrel.
Clinton certainly had had decades of smears targeted directly at her – hell, the curtains in the White House had barely been changed in '93 before the bumper stickers and graffitti appeared saying "Impeach Clinton. And her husband".
Then while Vince Foster conspiracy theories were certainly a thing, what I saw of it was confined to definite Repug circles. While I was certainly acquainted with a few people with convergence moonbat tendencies, they didn't buy into the Vince Foster thing.
I'm not sure about the "uniquely vulnerable" bit, though. Kerry got successfully swiftboated. If Shrub hadn't made himself so fkn unpopular, it's possible the shit about that Kenyan, Barack Hussein Obama, might have got more traction. It's a worry that neither Sanders, Warren or Harris have ever before gone up against an opponent that simply doesn't have a bottom for how low he will go. Let's face it, elections are pretty cruisy, genteel things for liberals in Vermont, Massachusetts and California.
Thanks to the link provided by KJT, I'm posting an insight into the Greek leftist self-immolation that has played out over the past four years:
"The moment I walked into the office of Alexis Tsipras, he told me he had decided to fold, to ignore the people’s No, and to side with New Democracy in order to pass through parliament the bills by which Greece would, again, surrender to the troika. After I failed to dissuade him, I resigned as minister of finance. A few hours later, Mr Tsipras convened a meeting with the acting leader of New Democracy, and the leaders of the other pro-troika parties, whose votes he needed in parliament to pass the third bailout. It was at that moment that New Democracy was retrieved from history’s dustbin and placed on a track leading, with mathematical precision, to election victory."
"Since that night, Greece’s parliament has been the stage for a four-year long tragicomedy: Syriza MPs passed austerity and fire-sale bills with which they disagreed, while, on the other side, New Democracy MPs voted them down — in spite of agreeing with them. How my former colleagues convinced themselves that this would end in anything other than a devastating defeat for Syriza is beyond my comprehension."
What gets me about this reveal by one of the key players is that the top leftist unilaterally decided to betray the people: it was not a collective decision of the government. That strikes me as extremely weird. Imagine any PM of ours making a decision on behalf of our government, and it being implemented without consulting the cabinet. It's possible that the author of the New Statesman reveal simply chose not to mention that the decision to betray the people was subsequently ratified by the government.
If so, I assume he doesn't want to acknowledge that his resignation was an admission of defeat – instead of fighting the battle with his colleagues against his leader. Perhaps he is ashamed of his cowardice. Perhaps he is signalling the reader that he believes consensus is too irrelevant to mention. Leftist politics has traditionally operated in defiance of the consensus principle, which is why splitting has always been endemic on the left. He may have thought the notion too sophisticated for his colleagues to comprehend.
I suspect it did go through a collective decision making process, but of course someone has to start it all. That would be the PM.
In any event Syriza has had 10 years, which is pretty decent amount of time in government. Inevitably they were eventually going to lose to the right. It is the nature of democracy.
More like the nature of those who control the purse strings. Wayne. And that is most definitely not the Greek government.
Tsipras certainly did not help his cause with a lot of the decisions his government made, so they should really have stepped aside. But once again, power for powers sake.
Varoufakis was the only one with any conscience out of all of them.
Much more likely the Greek people just got tired of having the same government for 10 without things getting much better. They certainly weren’t going to go more left. Varoufakis was in the contest but got nowhere.
So it is logical the Greeks were going to shift to the major conservative party.
Just as New Zealand will at some point go back to National. It won’t be as a result of international capital or international media, more as a result that people will feel safe with National (as indeed they do at present with Labour).
That was a strange affair. We later discovered that Lange had been subjected to some bizarre behaviour during that period both in NZ and when he was on a visit to the USA.
The one that comes to mind was the 'bogus' alarm sent to his Office (and presumably Foreign affairs) about a "missile attack” heading for the USA. They expected them to arrive in 20 mins. Lange sat in his office helpless because what can one do in 20 mins. It came and went and nothing happened. A further message arrived that it was just a flock of birds mistaken for a missile attack. I can’t recall hearing whether any other allied nation received the message.
When you look at what goes on in the US today, it doesn't take much to figure out the game they were playing. Whatever, it might have had a bearing on Lange's decision making. He took that secret to the grave with him.
It hardly matters wether Varoufakis was or wasn't a "coward" the fact remains that the Syriza party under the leadership of Alexis Tsipras acted completely against the very mandate that they were voted in for by the people, Tsipras will now be a name of ignominy for those on the Left in Greece for ever, as is Lange is to those who support an actual strong progressive and proudly Left wing labour in NZ.
Although I have some misgiving's about Varoufakis's credibility on a few issues myself, I followed the debacle of Syriza closely at the time of it's election through to it's rather quick and unsightly capitulation to the radical austerity ideology being foisted upon it from abroad. Through that time of watching interviews with many of Varoufakis's detractors,from within and without Syriza, I don't remember anyone saying or implying that he would have made any difference to keeping the party on track had he remained, though that being said, you could well be right, I don't profess to be an expert on the subject….maybe he is just an ashamed coward trying to cover his tracks ( I have never thought that of him myself, slightly dodgy maybe)..who knows.
" Imagine any PM of ours making a decision on behalf of our government " Muldoon at the height of his powers comes to mind, who at times (I have read) had a cabinet that would pretty much bend to any of his whims or fancies.
Roger Douglas it also seemed at times, held our government in a state trance, most willing and enabling to install his nefarious ideological madness..with only a couple of notable exceptions, sort of like in Greece.
Parachuting in the generic manager from offshore into senior positions when they do not yet understand (or have experienced) NZ society and culture always seems to end in tears, and it usually just goes on to serve the neo-lib' agenda.
My partner and I had to attend a meeting with three mangers from the Waikato DHB after we had made a complaint.
All three either simply stared blankly, or deftly deflected our issues by implying we were somehow in the wrong. Even with written evidence of the agency's failings and with an advocate from the Health and Disability Commission in tow we not only got nowhere close to resolving the issues but the situation was made much worse.
All three of these managers were English, of about the same age and were fairly recent arrivals.
Not long after Peter and I shouted ourselves to the movies to see I, Daniel Blake.
Yep. The thing that gets me is that it's NOT that they're English, or even from somewhere else. It's that they are parachuted in without any understanding of NZ kulcha and society, and they can't be expected to know or understand it. They're recruited as though they're almost God-like in their expertise – often that expertise is most relevant to where they've come from. They then begin to produce and frame policy based on that.
Tariana Turia said something that struck me on Q+A the other night – that Maori appear to have lost faith in themselves. SO too have others. (The more I hear about OT, AND having been a part of TPK in the past, the more I understand what I see as public service and politician 'capture' by it all)
What we're doing is simply perpetuating and fast tracking all that 'periphery to core' concept (Immanual W), and increasingly becoming more and more culturally insecure. One sees it in everyday life (whether its the way some recent arrival has 'shown us' the way to paint our various emergency service vehicles – the pastel yellow and green ambulances, fire appliances and pleece), to the way we're handling our immigration policy and lack of action (until recently) over worker exploitation of brown people. Really quite pathetic in many ways.
The thing I like most about The Great Big Whurl is its diversity and ongoing cultural mixes. What we're doing is just continuing to roll over and succumb to our various colonial masters whether its the Old Country, the USA (and what fuckups both those are proving to be), or the emerging ones..
I feel a @ Wayne coming on soon – probably with accusations of naivety. But no worries – I see him as a relic from the 50s, 60s and 70s.
Anyway, I'm more interested at the mo' in seeing contributors' responses
Is it a lack of confidence in our Kulcha and the collective Kiwi inferiority complex or is it a calculated effort to import these managers who are kind of related to some of us but come from a country that is much further down the track of instituting state sanctioned bullying of the vulnerable an marginalised?
When we sat across the table from Pom 1, Pom 2 and Pom 3 we were struck how, well, not quite us they were. And they were a team. They all spoke the same language of bureaucracy and seemed not to see us as totally of the same species.
(For the record. I came to New Zealand as a child in the early 1970s. Though living south of the border in the UK, we were culturally Scots. I saw those parachuted in managers as complete foreigners. )
Well there's another example by the way: "They all spoke the same language of bureaucracy ……….. " (going forward, of course), and apparently it's all "Best Practice", "on the back of" their various external experiences.
"Ultimately……………….", etc.
They'd make good used car salesmen some of them.
Gtg for the mo'
EDIT: before I do, it’s increasingly evident that over the past decade or so, the Peter Principle, or variations on that theme are alive and well
I saw your link re generic and imported managers on TDB and read it – agree with what was said. Between getting imported managers probably with impressive degrees (to the lower echelons of NZ) and those who have climbed to the higher levels from within NZ, where the air is sweeter and refined, and you have the key to your own washroom, we seem to be being fleeced by these confident chiefs who are looking to feather their own nests, like shining cuckoos who have rolled the greywarblers over the edge.
I had noticed that item about the new UK manager from Brum? And spent a fascinating time reading the back history of Chch Council and Marryatt, Parker et al. It didn't build confidence in Chch's advancement, going forward.
"Many corporations and State or private enterprises run despite management, not because of them. In fact the constant parade of new brooms trying to make a name for themselves, with rapid changes and cost cutting, cause competent staff to resign and demoralise the rest"
That should be framed and put on the desk of every human resource well-paid yoik so it faces them. Get it off-screen where it can be screened out and onto something physical and lasting and in-zone so to speak.
Most offenders, like myself, have trauma and mental health issues that are often unaddressed in a society that spends far too little on preventative and protective factors. Mental illness, trauma, adversity, homelessness — these all correlate with offending, yet we keep cutting vital services and housing that could help address these issues.
This inside story confirms what I've long said, that probably 80% or so of people in our prisons need not have been there. If this govt's focus on mental health starts to turn this horrible stat around it will become a landmark achievement.
With crime there is no magic wand that untangles the complex knots of personal accountability and social dysfunction from which it is woven. Tackle one end of the problem while ignoring the other, the knot only tightens.
Our present system has not progressed it's fundamental tenents in centuries, yet it routinely fails victims, families and even offenders alike. If mental health was a stigmatised concern, forever marginalised … crime remains firmly at the bottom of our priorities. Yet the manifest failure remains intolerable.
We need to examine the roots of the system, recasting the problem with redemption as the ultimate goal. We need to see crime in terms of a chain of events, starting with personal temperament, family stability, the socialisation of the child, the building of conscience and shame, an understanding of how brain injury derails behaviour, instilling the courage to take opportunities, dealing resiliently with failures, and most critically finding a place to stand as part of a healthy community. Each one points of these is a stack of books in it's own right.
Yet we need a framework that stops the 'soft on crime' narrative dead; we cannot erase or minimise personal accountability, because without it there can be no forgiveness, no reconciliation and no redemption.
"We need to examine the roots of the system," I completely agree, the system of free market liberalism has proved itself not to work well for most humans.Funny thing is humans,as it turns out, need more in their lives than a system that demands a never ending need for more ( of what no one can define exactly) a system based on combativity with your fellow citizens to get ahead or even maintain, a system that relentlessly commodifies absolutely everything, the steam off your shit if it could…suicide is at critical levels, my friend cut a neighbors 14 year old son down from the rafters in the garage two weeks ago, I walk to work and their are homeless people huddled in groups on the streets to keep warm, all the motels in town are always full, not with out of town visitors, with homeless people..it;s fucked up that's for sure..and badly
And while all this is going on, we now import cheap labour to build our roads, build our building, pick our fruit, maintain our power networks,farm our land, something is very very broken in this model, and it doesn't take an economist to figure that out, infact that is probably the last person you want on the job!..it seems that the only human emotion that liberal economists seem to understand and cater too is greed, one of the very worse human traits and motivators..
So yes I agree we need to examine this broken system and then radically change our course.
If we on the progressive Left in NZ can't get our shit together and offer a viable alternative soon (as Sanders and Corbyn) then you can be sure that the Right will, and when people are hurting, they will reject and punish the status quo, and turn to whom ever has the strongest message, are we going to wait for a nutter like Collins to take the initiative, we must act….and I have to say that sorry, but I just don't believe that Ardern or her brand of centrist pragmatism is that type of transformative leader or brand of political ideology the Left need for this looming moment in NZ history.
Edit:
It's not greed alone, Adrian that drives economists, it's their employers' greed, whom economists serve by achieving better results from efficiencies. All economists aren't the same, but some are more equal than others; those economists who believe in efficiency before all, adopt the morals and principles that drove Ayn Rand to the top of the RW hit parade.
It's more efficient to bring in overseas people for high-skilled jobs as their education has been paid for where they came from. I am thinking of Phillipine workers because they are desperate to maintain a life, and been brought up, no doubt, under the aegis of the Catholic religion and taught the precepts of obedience and to supplicate to God and Mary for help in their travails. One of our commenters who employed them was fulsome in his praise of them and their characters and work standards (which was opposite to the workers he could obtain in NZ.) That is no doubt why my phone call was directed to someone in Manila, Philippines about why my paper wasn’t delivered to my home in New Zealand.
Maori have been thrown into unemployment by the efficiency drive of the money-mad, those who have destroyed our domestic economy so they can increase their wealth through exporting. When you export but don't import the country has an imbalance of trade. It was a nice efficient solution to sell to other countries, and bring in their products made more cheaply than we could for ourselves. Ergo, a neat efficient system for the wealthy, the wannabees, and the c-ooff. Not for those who were happy to work and have a life and who would expect that these things would be enhanced by their government, not destroyed.
Maori believed in gods and had precepts too but it was respect for their community and working together on their land and water, which underpinned their humanity and being. They didn't have money, and they didn't have alcohol. They were combative, but were held together by loyalty and aroha to their whanau and hapu. They adopted Christianity often, but found that pakeha didn't practice what they preached. Their culture was eroded, with the remnants determinedly and fiercely held so as to preserve a worthy way of life which enabled all, without turning communist which too easily sets into state authoritarianism.
The Maori story is the story of most of NZs eventually. As the money-mad advance on their crazed, obsessive way we will all be pushed, or thrown, aside. The rising suicide numbers are a feature of this situation. The government and elites concern about people, suicide, violence, baby deaths is a feature of an addled tainted society that wants to look satisfactory to an indiscriminate glance, but actually wants to exclude and ignore the reality of the shambles that the system has manufactured for itself.
We need to recycle our caring, human citizenship. There will be no room for individual graves soon for the numbers that fall from disease and suicide, and un-natural disasters, though at present we are buried with ritual niceties. Land will be limited; it will not be efficient to have large areas set aside for burials, even cremations will have to wait for a monthly ceremony for the ashes to be interred in a common grave.
We who are not individuals of wealth or note will be disregarded more and more. Unless we stand for people-caring-community that adopts respect and practicality as keystones of systems, and freedom of thought and to be heard, our society will continue to deteriorate. Lastly is the need to control the money-mad and their desire for growth and consumer society for their profit and their sickness of eternally wanting and being never satisfied.
We agree on the causes of social dysfunction, but struggle with what to do about it. After the litany of Marxist catastrophies from the last century I find it tiresome that various ill-defined forms of Marxism still seem to hold a default monopoly on left wing thinking.
To give Marx is very real due, there was much that he said about our present system that was useful. He was really the first to detail why competitive market economies would create a small minority of spectacular winners and a vast lumpen of losers. This is a deep problem that all societies have struggled with; the more prosperity a society generates the more it tends to be unequally distributed. It's called the Matthew Effect and pre-dates capitalism by … forever.
Marx proposed essentially that the losers in this competition should simply rise up by sheer force of numbers, overthrow the winners, and then replace the system with one that was not competitive but co-operative. For reasons of conciseness I won't expand on why this doesn't work; Marx's analysis was essentially materialistic and the authoritarian regimes needed to impose this constraint on the human spirit were intolerable.
Modern socialists, like this centrist govt, therefore position themselves as a balancing countervailing force to the inequality problem all social systems generate, without too much challenge to them. Yet still far too many people … like your friends … experience the heart stopping grief of a world going terrible wrong for them in ways that all to often were entirely avoidable. In my view each one of these speaks in a deep way to the failure of the left to advocate effectively for the vulnerable, the dispossessed and all those trapped by poverty of expectations.
I'm by no means the only leftie to sense, however dimly, the need to rebuild the left wing argument on a fresh basis; one that doesn't seem so intent on tearing down the successful, so intent on repeating past mistakes … but one that pays real attention to the poor we profess to care about. Because until we know how to change for the better the life of even just one person we care for, how can we possibly claim to know how to change the world?
Because that's perhaps the deeper point of the article I linked to above; it's about one young person, horribly derailed by life, yet one other person persisted with her, and slowly and patiently over many years turned her life around. There was no magic wand moment; their victory was gentle and incremental.
Most ideas don't come with hermetic boundaries, there is often a quite fluid interchange going on. There is no big red box labelled "Marxism" into which we can stuff a bunch of ideas, lock the lid and throw away the key.
In most modern economies we run a mix of private credit creation, quite tightly controlled by government Reserve Banks. Almost anyone expert in this area would argue the present system is excessively tilted in favour of private credit creation and from a global perspective there is lot we can do to further optimise how the system works.
The problem is that strictly government controlled credit creation has a terrible track record of being hijacked for venal and destructive political purposes. Until we've learned how to solve that problem, it's going to be a case of the devil we know I'm afraid.
To me it's not about tearing down the successful at all. It's tearing down the corruption, the non-contribution, the war-mongering, the false-narratives – of the 'successful.' The bleeding of the planet and its people for profit. The corporate hand-outs. The two sets of rules. The minimal jail sentences for heinous crimes. The victimisation of the vulnerable. The myopia concerning real costs of these planet destroying scum in suits.
These are no 'happened-to-do-wells.' They are fucking dirt. Either our rules apply to them, or they can fuck right off and hide under a rock cos the public have had a gutsful.
They deserve every pitchfork wielding lunatic hammering at their doors. Then some.
But somehow it’s the left’s failure… Nonsense. it’s the right’s acquiescence and obeisance to scummy humans all because they have money.
Edit
…one that doesn't seem so intent on tearing down the successful, so intent on repeating past mistakes … but one that pays real attention to the poor we profess to care about. Because until we know how to change for the better the life of even just one person we care for, how can we possibly claim to know how to change the world?
Oh we have to start somewhere – and it is essential that we start with our over-blown ideas of ourselves. One that pays real attention to the poor we profess to care about. And remember that there, for the grace of God, go I….and try and shine with some reflection of that God, that goodness, because we are on a different level to that poor person because they didn't have what we did.
Sometimes they can find that different life quite satisfying though, everyone doesn't have to be the same. But the hard thing is to put some effort into helping others who have missed out, and even more important is making sure that when they are babies, toddlers and terrible-three-year-olds, they get the same good start we had. Let them have firm, regular childhoods with decent food, clothes and some coaching in how to defend themselves against bullying, the most important bit of education they can get. Learn to present themselves with humour and understand others motivations, the E-Q rather than the I-Q – I reckon the first raises the second.
And not dividing the world into Superior, deserving Me, and Receivers of Charity and Good Works them because they are lesser. Look for the soul in people, the honesty in their words and minds, and there is the goodness – start with giving a busker a gold or silver coin, keep a supply with you so you can. Bring satisfaction into their lives, and keep doing that plus a brief thumbs up, that's great, look them in the eye, acknowledge them as people, they are doing something for the world and themselves, that would be a good start.
We are connected by our sameness, even as we diverge in our lives, our interests. Understand yourself, be humble a bit – not too much, and then you can connect for a few seconds at least, with someone and know a bit about where they are coming from, what life is like for them.
I used that saying 'There but for the Grace of God go I', in a routine on homelessness in a performance this week.
At one point: 'you can't hate on the homeless, that's not hate, it's fear. But you know who really does hate the homeless?
Winter.'
Some miniature peacock comes up after the show. "I hate the homeless, I think they've already got too much money"… thought he was hilarious. I told him he didn't know what the fuck he was talking about and dressed him down in front of his wife and friends.
People who take pleasure in the misfortune of others, who think humor is about punching down – less than worthless no matter how much gold is dripping off them.
To me it's not about tearing down the successful at all.
And then the rest of your comment is an exercise in contradicting this claim.
The problem this approach has is that if cannot distinguish between the 'happen to do well's' with those who through 'a combination of talent, hard work and some good luck have done well'. Both exist, no-one is proposing that any system us flawed and limited humans can create will be perfect, we will always produce a mix of good, bad and very ugly. At root the evil is not wealth in itself, nor 'success' in whatever dimension you care to define it, but in who we are. And money merely makes us more of who we are.
Kicking down doors and impaling the rich on pitchforks changes nothing if they're replaced with people no better. Except the new people in charge have just bonfired their moral authority which usually turns out for the worse.
Nonsense. It's rather easy to determine who avoids taxes, who denigrates minorities etc.
Listing the ills of the world perpetrated by rich people very clearly shows how and why the mess.
Two sets of rules is unacceptable but clear as day.
This is not the angry mobs doing. The angry mob is the rich's doing.
I'd rather the corruption is dealt with, corporate power over people is stripped. But they wedge their own laws in, their own media and narrative, they police everyone but themselves. Cruel indifference.
Then they whine when they find a riot in their yard.
Hypocritical bullshit. Wake up and smell the cheapass instant coffee.
Listing the ills of the world perpetrated by rich people
Yet nowhere do you attempt to list the manifold benefits very successful people bring to the world.
All people are a complex mix; it isn't as simple as you think to unravel the good and the bad we all do. Everyone is flawed in some dimension, we can all be cast onto pitchforks for some reason.
Your complaint is real, I have no quibble with that. What if the answer to it was quite different to the one you have reached for. What if we all became better people? Like all of us, and we all started to sincerely think of ways to help each other?
We can put in place all the rules and authoritarian processes you could dream of, and more. But none of it will help unless we simply require of ourselves to turn away from resentment, anger and vengeance, and look to fixing our own lives.
And that I think is all RedLogix has to say. It's been more than a decade now, and I want to thank you all for being so generous with your time and energy.
I regard you as one of the more astute, principled & clear-sighted participants here, RL. And I greatly appreciated your moral support regarding the situation my Parents have found themselves in.
From time to time, you've been the victim of a pretty nasty & self-righteous mob mentality that tends to be closely associated with the ID Politics faction … so I know it hasn't always been a bed of roses for you … but you've consistently displayed a great deal of dignity & patience under fire.
I'll be very sorry if this is your last ever comment here.
I am 100% behind this comment. I’d like to think that RedLogix tends to make excellent, well-considered, well-explained, and concise arguments about very complex, sensitive, and personal issues that affect us all to a more or lesser degree. The more heat was put on him, the better his arguments, which is one reason why I never stepped in as moderator. He may not have swayed the usual ‘lynch mob’ but for each commenter there are many silent readers of TS. Those people can read the arguments and form their own opinions. We don’t know what impact it has on the silent majority but I’d like to think that, on balance, it has been positive. I thank RedLogix for his resilience and perseverance, which may have come at a personal cost to him.
A profound point. I've often commented on evil here – usually in an attempt to rectify the delusional thinking produced by postmodern denial that it exist – so I agree it's in human nature & money empowers it.
The satanic focus of christian fundamentalists ought to be replaced by Jungian theory. Too bad psychologists seem collectively unable to learn Jung's lessons. If evil is conceived as an archetype lurking in the collective unconscious, activated in some lives by subconscious prompts, and personified by a few people who seem captive to it sufficiently for it to displace other normal dimensions of human nature such as empathy and the moral compass, then we make sense of it. That's better than collective evasion of the topic, or denial.
The whole idea that we can help those at the bottom, without giving up something ourselves, has proven to be a fallacy. "A rising tide" does not lift all boats", which is what you are actually getting at.
The right wing, apart from their foolish followers, know that memes like the above, "economic growth, and "trickle down" are totally false, but they serve, to bamboozle the thick.
The "successful" do have to contribute more to the common pot, so everyone can have a share. If you add it up we would not have to contribute much, on top marginal tax rates, to lift everyone out of poverty. Even less if we tax finance and Queen Street capital gains tax farmers, dead in the water, unfortunately!
On Jan. 2, 2018, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta released a statement commemorating the beginning of Human Trafficking Awareness Month, recommitting his department’s mission to “ending practices that harm individuals, families, and communities.”
“We must act to end exploitation and abusive labor practices at home and abroad,” the statement said.
Absent from that statement was the fact he had already tried to cut a program by nearly 80 percent inside the Department of Labor dedicated to combating human trafficking, along with child and forced labor, internationally. And two months later, he would return to Congress to advocate for a second budget to cut the program just as deeply.
Just a touch of good news this morning: Congratulations to Kane Williamson and the cricket team for their semi-final win over India overnight.
An against the odds win against the best cricket nation. A match that had tension, excitement and spectacular cricket skills: Boult's manipulating Kohli into LBW, Santner restricting the run rate, Guptill's run out and Williamson's canny captaincy.
Bring on either Australia or England for another late night on Sunday.
After the previous night's abandonment due to the mizzle….we were not going to repeat yet another night with the trannie barely audibly broadcasting the play. Prevents that deep sleep that has the necessary restorative benefits. However, when by 11pm the odds had gone for a Kiwi win from 2% to 78%, the trannie got another sub audible run, and I managed to properly wake in time to catch the last four overs.
India are the best cricket team at the tournament, bad luck India however
Black Caps have been best value ambassadors of cricket matches in the tournament and also well deserved their place in the final.
Use to be our NZ staple with the rugby but great to have it back with the cricket, great advertisements for the full naunces and complexities of the sport while bringing the singular sum of the NZ game to the party.
I would put the value of this run at a world cup, similarities & up there with what the AB team of the time represented & bought to the South African rugby wc in representing NZ's sporting interests to add in the mix, giving top shelve value.
The Apartheid state of Israel has devolved into the biggest and most murderous right wing hate movement in the world.
Even 48% of usa Jews thought Israel was not interested in peace …. a remarkably well informed percentage …. given the bias and anti Palestinian reporting … from usa main media
Two weeks ago, the British for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) adopted the academic boycott of Israeli universities over their complicity in planning, implementing and justifying Israel’s grave human rights violations.
Cricket is a tool of the elite. First Class, Lords, Tea, Drinks… Though it is no surprise yourself and the broken down horse prefer this so called "Gentleman's game".
Hmmm, very racist and stereotyping of you I know and have many Maori and Polynesian friends and colleagues who enjoyed the cricket and are talking about it today Maybe get out of your cellar and off your keyboard and into the sunlight What do these 3 things have in common Maui, The Grinch and Scrooge 😊
Not angry at all Maui I am not one of the perpetual offended that’s why I gave you a emoji to help your one brain cell to comprehend You make no sense at all re self reflection on context about being happy a nz team made a World Cup final You simply mirror my point I put to you. I can only surmise your a moron or severely dim so I will go easy on you Now a happy fk off and wriggle back to your place of malcontent 😊😊😊😊👍
Staggering arrogance. Sneering Bewildered is not offended ? Why sneer then? Call someone a moron, typing 'your a moron' in the act? It should be "you're" you semi-literate dimwit. It is you who are in the place of dimness. I don't need to tell you to wriggle off to anywhere: you could hardly wriggle any lower than the position you have already reached by your own efforts.
Relying on a few top performers, not really believing in the team or its ethics, inadequate preparation, lack of familiarity with different wickets, pitch preparation favouritism, home crowds and ‘impressionable’ umpires, compliant media……. yep, a bit like politics.
Now watch the inadequate players hive off into commentary, radio and TV 'journalism' and into business sinecures where a bit of a name helps impress the punters, maybe an Honour or even a job in politics!
So the content matters less than the fact of the leak. Someone – maybe a civil servant, maybe a minister – seems to be after the ambassador, Kim Darroch. The contents were leaked to Isabel Oakeshott, the journalist who acts as the de-facto communications office of Aaron Banks, Nigel Farage's donor. The Brexit party leader quickly popped up to demand Darroch be sacked. And their Leave.EU outfit then stepped up to launch its campaign to make sure Farage replaced him. Incredible timing.
Darroch is facing the usual fate of the non-believers, those have not achieved full Brexit transcendance and therefore must be ejected from their position before they can keep asking critical questions.
But the story also shows something else: When you scratch at the surface of this movement for total British sovereignty, you quite often find servility to the US lying underneath.
Oh look, the Italian far-right has a new sugar daddy.
The six men — three Russians, three Italians — gathered beneath the spectacular painted glass ceiling in the hotel lobby last October had their eyes on history too. Their nominal purpose was an oil deal; their real goal was to undermine liberal democracies and shape a new, nationalist Europe aligned with Moscow.
[…]
BuzzFeed News has obtained an explosive audio recording of the Metropol meeting in which a close aide of Europe’s most powerful far-right leader — Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini — and the other five men can be heard negotiating the terms of a deal to covertly channel tens of millions of dollars of Russian oil money to Salvini’s Lega party.
The recording reveals the elaborate lengths the two sides were willing to go to conceal the fact that the true beneficiary of the deal would be Salvini’s party — a breach of Italian electoral law, which bans political parties from accepting large foreign donations — despite the comfort with which he and Europe’s other far-right leaders publicly parade their pro-Kremlin political sympathies.
Using mercury for gold extraction is illegal pretty much everywhere, and all legal and legitimate miners deplore it's use deeply. It's a failure of government to enforce their own laws which let this appalling shit still happen.
Interesting that RL is concerned about the technical aspects of the Yanomami story. The main point is that they are being invaded by thousands of men who are forcing the people from their lands, injuring and killing the people and spoiling their land.
The Yanomami are the largest relatively isolated tribe in South America. They live in the rainforests and mountains of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela. Davi Kopenawa, Yanomami leader and shaman surrounded by children, Demini, Brazil.
Clinton lost because the media made Trump much more entertaining, interesting, and yes loathsome. Trump was running for decades, household name, jerk in your fired, etc. Trump will win because stupidity isn't exposed by the media, it's consent manufacture all Trumps way.
Another example of trickle down opportunities and creative solutions and projects that are never allowed to occur.
In Christchurch on red-zoned land some young guys got together and shovelled humps and hollows and made a bike circle track for themselves. It has been destroyed on the basis that it was a 'hazard'.
Christchurch again – damn the spending fitting the ideas of hide-bound officials and conservatives. They are thinking of spending $15 million on a memorial to the fallen at the mosque (and ultimately lax administration at the borders and low-lifes and guns in NZ). Trickling down in small drops of awhi and mercy that is strained and measured.
What would be good is if they put that same money into a small building that is attractive and runs Humanities programs on culture, ours and others, philosophies and why we need religions and precepts of behaviour etc. Humanities helps us to understand our own and others human persona. It could be in the grounds of Canterbury University and be an adjunct of whatever humanities programs they have there.
And for general public experience and memorial, there could be a series of flag poles with all the flags of the countries from where the fallen in Christchurch, both at the mosque and in the earthquakes. Every day at say between midday and 5 minutes after, one of the flags would be put at half-mast, and the previous day's flag would be hoisted again. Make a thing of it like Ypres in Belgium – they have been doing this since the Wars.It would be a moving memorial, literally, as the colourful flags hung or lifted in the breeze, not passive solid forms.
At present in Christchurch they are mulling over designs for a memorial bridge that they have had for years. One being considered was particularly artistic – a bridge in the clouds caused by a fine spray of water as you climbed up steps no doubt. Just what you would want, to be damped down, as you crossed a stream to keep dry. One sounded great – I liked the sound of it – it was a golden bridge made out of brass I think. But practicality here – I also have read recently of a murdered man who was a scrap metal dealer, and often dealing with people who were on the criminal fringe. No doubt in time if it was possible, bits of the bridge would have been removed and sold with consequences to strength. safety and appearance. So practicality has definitely to be considered, but also give people the opportunity to look for more than expensive monuments to disasters. Beauty would be also in how it remembers the past and enhances and improves the future.
And I am thinking again about trickle down. The Kiwibuild idea as the only one going under the 1st Labour Coalition shows up their limitations – their distance from ordinary people of lower income. I have noticed amongst the successful middle class that they think they have life sussed and know all there is to know, and can make better decisions for the strugglers than they can. Then the m-class do that, without asking what the strugglers would prefer out of what is available, instead of giving them time to have a brainstorm session, go wild with ideas. Then think how each one could be practically done, or possibly one or two done as a trial.
The building houses program might have come up with a communal suburb of mixed colour tiny houses, some of which could be connected by a closed in walkway to enable extended families to live close together. Then the young people could be trained to work on these along with reliable (non-leaky-homes) builders. That would have been trickle-up.
Let's give people more opportunities, incentives and rewards to come up with ideas, group together for viable projects and facilitate doing while they are being. Not have everything planned by the big-people who live in 'It's too difficult, never-never land', because they are stunted by their own limitations of conformity – it ends up paralysis by analysis!
In Christchurch on red-zoned land some young guys got together and shovelled humps and hollows and made a bike circle track for themselves. It has been destroyed on the basis that it was a 'hazard'.
Bluddy disgraceful. Too hard to mow? Too hard to spray weeds? No resource consent? Enterprising lads should have been given a medal or better, they should have been left alone to get on with it!
I've just been reading an excoriating opinion piece on Christchurch which the writer says has been dysfunctional since 1989 amalgamation. It is written by a dyed-in-the-wool RW money-maker, but will have some truth and probably sheds light on how the faulty buildings there got signed off.
The opinion was that good people had left and the remaining administration ran it to the beat of their own drum.
It was published today at 5.30am and at 7 pm there were 191 comments which have now been closed so people felt strongly about it. Our lives are being narrowed, our ability to branch out and explore with open spaces limited by the dreaded health and safety issue.
Real – Under this logic there should be a warning sign at every entrance on the the roading network warning of the danger on the roads.
Timid, no rights – people" are the Government. My kids are doing something similar but are starting with a petition and then going to the council rather than just assuming they can do what they please.
Real life danger and boldness – And they wonder why kids are sitting at home playing computer games. Seems it's the only safe thing to do these days. In the 1950s in England boys like my brother and his friends were playing on bombed sites and clambering over piles of rubble! Here's an idea – why don't councils provide safe courses for boys to ride their mountain bikes then? They may have the odd scrape when they fall off now and again but that will always happen. If they're worried about a crumbling cliff then put up fencing and a warning sign to keep away from cliff edge. Too hard? I commend those boys for using their imagination and doing what boys have always done.
Whingers who don't like children being active and creative –
I’m not surprised, the same thing happened to my son ( then 12) and his friends built a cycle track on an unused riverside area on council land which was waste land that no one used, they spent hours making a few jumps.
On this occasion the neighbours complained to the police who confiscated their spades
It seemed that comments under women's names were likely to be about getting permission, complying with rules, not about whether those rules were necessary or OTT. Femmes are too compliant methinks, need to stand and object to being overloaded with nos, let's have a more permissive society.
Apart from the fact that some funds should be diverted to family members that are struggling – I thought that both mosques have propertites nearby that can be made a purchase offer on, and have islamic designed gardens installed that integrated them with the mosques themselves.
The gardens could be open to the public whenever the mosques wanted to, and could be designed in such a way to provide a level of security. The gardens should be given to the ownership of the islamic community, but a volunteer group of gardeners could continue newly built community relationships to be sustained and strengthened into the future.
Any memorial should prioritise the healing for the islamic community, rather than the boundaries of the secular supporters.
Yes I agree. My idea I guess. was to extend the mental boundaries by doing some philosophy and look at the different ways that we build our idea of our world that we tend to have and hold tight to with some carrying this to extremes.
I imagine that was the silent thought passing through some people's skulls.
'I wonder if Roger would like to put forward a design? We can talk it over when we meet for our …dinner party or at the box when we have a drink after the sports occasion.'?
This follows on from a pilot that funded five important building Standards and a handbook in 2017.
The standards presently range in cost from $5.50 to $550.
Building and Construction Minister Jenny Salesa said these standards helped ensure New Zealand buildings and homes were safe and well-constructed.
"They will help building professionals and homeowners with methods for designing and constructing timber framing in buildings and selecting appropriately treated timber used in building work.
"They will also help engineers with earthquake loads on buildings."
Ms Salesa said the government was dismantling road blocks in the building sector.
"I have listened to the building and construction sector, and professional groups who access these standards regularly, and to New Zealand's homeowners.
I am against putting fees up for ordinary people as a disincentive to some so that they change their ways. I didn't like tip fees being raised to discourage people from throwing things out, which Environment Minister Sage has done.
Now she is reported as insisting that the SI West Coast pay for the rubbish tip spread, while they say rightly they have a small tax base and low population. Which is true. They have been doing what many Councils have done with rubbish. Her response to their plight:
"The Westland District Council said it couldn't cope and it was calling down a short-term loan to pay for some of the costs involved. That shows a degree of problems with financial management I think, with that particular council," she said.
There is a place for disincentives, but after a while they can cease to be effective, for instance as with tax on cigarettes. Now they are desirable goods for theft. Too hard and high, makes poor people's life harder. Punish those naughty people! Hit them till it hurts. You can't do that to children but who cares for the adults who are vulnerable?
Seriously one of New Zealand's laziest local governments: have prepared zero for climate change other than build another sliver on a seawall, inspired their population to continually leave, diversified their economy about zero, and can't even build a road.
This isn't a tax on cigarettes.
This is doing one of the most basic job in local government: rubbish collection. And they swear they don't have enough money for even that. Hey Coasters: boot this lot out!
I agree Willie this is true institutional racism is a true phenomenon and a fact .
Good on France for a tax on big technology companies.
judy if your lot stopped the raid on the poor peoples money cutting benefits making it a miserable experience applying for a benefit shorting the housing market a tax system that cost the poor common people more lowering paye tax a rising gst poverty is a major driver of family Violence .
I say a gas guzzling vehicle tax is NEEDED to get people into clean energy efficient electric cars and out of cars into public transportation and the money used to subsidize clean energy cars.
The big point is the rangatahi are the ones that will have to live with the bad effects of climate change Eco Maori say it is there right to protect their future Humanity is so short sighted with the blinds that the billionaire oil barons put on us by manipulating the media paying for false studies all to line there pocket with more money than anyone NEEDS.
Ryan why not talk about the people who have the biggest carbon footprint the billionaire private planes heaps of excessive waste of carbon being burned to keep up their lavish lifestyle.
Good on Sharndre for creating a huge educational company education is needed so that the billionaire can not FOOL us with their LIES.
Whanau more extreme weather caused by our climate warning because of the greed of a few wealthy people. Times are going to change.
Warning of more severe weather after storm kills seven in Greece
Two children among dead after series of incidents in Halkidiki region, with dozens injured
Greece: 20-minute storm kills six tourists in Halkidiki – video report
Greek meteorologists have warned that more harsh weather could be on the way after seven people died and dozens were injured when a freak storm ripped through beachfronts in a popular tourist region in the north of the country.
Panic-stricken holidaymakers were caught on camera fleeing as the 20–minute late-night storm uprooted trees, overturned cars and caused mudslides in waterfront resorts
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Tuesday, March 19:Kāinga Ora’s dry rot The Spinoff DailyBill McKibben on ‘Climate Superfunds’ making Big Oil pay for climate damage The Crucial YearsPreston Mui on returning to 1980s-style productivity growth NoahpinionAndy Boenau on NIMBYs needing unusual bedfellows Urbanism SpeakeasyNed Resnikoff's case ...
Negative yesterday, negative today. Negative all year, according to one departing reader telling me I’ve grown strident and predictable. Fair enough. If it’s any help, every time I go to write about a certain topic that begins with C and ends with arrrrs, I do brace myself and ask: Again? Are ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support ...
Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.“Somebody must have been telling lies about ...
Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds vs Emperor Justinian I- Nolo Contendere: False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity ...
It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka KotahiThe fact that a ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st CenturyThe SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims StuffSteve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
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I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
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Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
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Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
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Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
The government’s attack on Māori health this week is committing tangata-whenua to a premature death, says Te Pāti Māori. “The government have begun their onslaught on Māori health with the abolishment of the Māori Health Authority and smokefree laws in the same day” said health spokesperson and co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Pacific Media Watch Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was held for 12 hours at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, says Israeli forces rounded up Palestinian journalists at the facility and made them kneel on the ground for hours, while naked and blindfolded. “The occupation forces handcuffed and blindfolded us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute chinasong, Shutterstock Electricity customers in four Australian states can breathe a sigh of relief. After two years in a row of 20% price increases, power prices have finally stabilised. In many places they’re ...
Chumbawamba have reportedly issued the deputy PM a cease-and-desist notice after he used their song 'Tubthumping' before his state of the nation speech. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
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Amanda Marcotte takes a look the Seth Rich saga and how that all tied in to the campaign to smear Clinton and suppress Dem-leaning votes.
https://www.salon.com/2019/07/10/how-the-seth-rich-conspiracy-theory-put-trump-in-the-white-house/
Expect to see more of this tactic through the 2020 election. Voting in the USA is such a pain-in-the-ass time-suck that it's awfully tempting to not bother when you're unenthusiastic about the candidate at the top of the ticket. Which then flows on to reduced support for other candidates further down the ballot such as the Senate, House and locl government.
and wikileakjs exposed her as a revolting war criminal drenched in blood …
you can read about Blumfeild and her spreading false viagra and mass rape claims about Gaddafis fictional ' black mercenerys.
And her results from that are all over the internet …
You can read about the black men ending up on meathooks, lynched or slave traded … you can read about black libyan women kidnapped, sex trafficked or murdered.
But I bet you already knew that Andre … Your demo gal
She went … she murdered …. she destroyed …. tee hee hee
Actually You should go to Israel with no regrets Wayne …
Waynes a real zionist .. he may not be full uber ,,, but he's definatly no under- Palastinian either
She's a lovely person. Just like her wonderful husband.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0uCrA7ePno&t=22s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlz3-OzcExI
"Amanda Marcotte takes a look the Seth Rich saga and how that all tied in to the campaign to smear Clinton and suppress Dem-leaning votes."
The link contributes precisely zero to our understanding of what happened to Seth Rich
The link is about how outright lying to smear a murder victim was used as a successful political ploy. And about how convergence moonbats and second-option bias idiots happily took the smear and amplified it. And how they probably have learned nothing from the experience so will probably do so again.
edit: (“they” that have learned nothing being the convergence moonbats and second-option bias idiots: the perps will have learned that it works quite well and are probably full of ideas how to do it better next time)
Agreed!…. You have learned nothing from the experience so will probably do so again.
She lost. Her campaign managers shafted the far more popular, and electable, Bernie Sanders.
You need to move on, buddy. You're almost as sad as an MSNBC talking head.
Clinton lost the most winnable election in post war US history to a fucking moronic imbecile, and even after cheating! Clinton stood for everything shit in the Democratic party and US politics in general that is why she lost, and now Obama's legacy is Trump…thanks liberalism, job well done.
True. Sanders probably would have won, Warren probably would have won (they at least would have visited more states) yet they selected Clinton…
My memory of the polls taken at the time is that would have lost. Basically too far left. Ironically he would do better this time since the Dems have shifted a bit. But he won’t be the candidate.
In my view it will be Harris.
… and then there's the comprehension-challenged that can't respond to the actual content of an article, instead diverting to well-worn simplistic slogans they've been repeating for years. Maybe someone needs to read it to them as an audio or video clip.
This meets Einstein's definition of insanity
Yeah, he wasn't a fan of quantum physics lol
Maybe some people need to really understand that the way to win elections going forward isn't by forcing the same old bullshit down peoples throats. I mean, come on seriously, do you really think that Seth story had any effect on the US elections?
Talk about clutching at straws.
I think there's basically a Pavlov's dog response from some people to any mention of the word "Clinton." Must be a pain in the arse for people who actually come from Clinton, not being able to say their home town's name without Morrissey going on about his Hillary videos for the 40,396th time.
And she cites the very same full of shit Isikoff ,who broke the Steele dossier news then later recanted from the most lurid allegations, having unleashed
a murky fake story on the gullible that never had legs.
This might be a tough one to grasp, but most people don't assess the merits of an article based on your opinions of one of the people involved.
Given that the article simply repeats dogma what else is there?
They'll definitely repeat the tactic, but Clinton was uniquely vulnerable – repugs had literally spent decades inventing lies and scandals (to the degree that the ones WJC should have faced became lost in all the repug bullshit).
Seth Rich wasn't the first death repugs lied about for political gain. Before him there was Vince Foster.
So whomever gets the nomination probably won't have a track record of a generation being conditioned to believe something is corrupt about them. Especially if Biden doesn't get it.
I do think FOX CNN and the rest of the media industrial complex is to blame for spreading the conspiracy theory/theories. Y'know I also think Seths supervisor was being a little too proud to be a Hillary supporter, making Seth work late knowing he'd have to walk through one of the more dangerous areas of Washington well known for armed hold ups, homelessness and poverty.
Case in point. Anything to blame the dems, even if it involves making shit up. You're a real piece of crap, sam.
Looks like you've hit the limits of your intelligence. What exactly did I make up?
why don't you cry to one of the moderators to help you find an argument and win a debate, McTrash.
[Thanks for drawing my attention although this willy-waving contest was hard to miss so early in OM. I wish you two were having a debate but as it stands you are just having a fight in the sandpit throwing sand in each other’s eyes. There are no winners, only losers (plural) and these are mainly everybody else who has to scroll past this pathetic exchange. In the interest of TS, I think I should send you two away on a wee holiday so that the rest of the TS community can enjoy this space. The only two questions for me are when and for how long? Incognito]
That bit. Complete invention on your part.
Are you aware that Seth died of gunshot wounds walking home from work?
You are, once again, incapable of reading links and demonstrably wrong. He was walking home from a bar in the wee small hours of a Sunday morning.
Links to online conspiracy theories is not an excuse for wrong doing. It's not clear from what you said exactly what claims you are making but it is entirely about intentional behaviour.
It’s not clear from what you said exactly what claims you are making
"He was walking home from a bar in the wee small hours of a Sunday morning."
What part of that do you have difficulty understanding?
Seth was on punish duties at work for some FOX news conspiracy theory. I think his work supervisor was being over zealous and if I'm not mistaken Seths parents are suing FOX. Now that I'v restated my position do you have a counter argument?
Says you.
Every link I've found so far claims he was walking home from a bar. None claimed that part of his work duties involved being at a sports bar until it shut on a saturday night/sunday morning.
Therefore your unsubstantiated rumours about his work are irrelevant to his death.
Therefore you're just repeating lies and innuendo about a murder in order to sully people you oppose politically.
Therefore you are a piece of shit.
And your still failed to explain just what you found "unclear" about "He was walking home from a bar in the wee small hours of a Sunday morning."
I was implying that the conspiracy theories was coming from CNN and FOX news. The only one talking about online conspiracy theories was you. That's why I said something. It's got nothing to do with some sort of imaginary outrage in your own mind. It's was all produced by Fox News not some imaginary republican smear campaign. Clinton smeared herself, get over it. This bullshit is fucking years old and you're still crying about it.
So, just to be clear, you wrote:
as an example of the sort of lies that were spread, rather than meaning to imply that you actually believed it?
You're just geared for it aren't ya. You just have to signal how virtuous and outrage you can be don't you. You're so fucken ideological you can't even see the trees from the forest.
Y'know it happened in the middle of Clintons Presidential campaign. DNC staffers don't get weekends during presidential campaigns. Y'know I looked at all this stuff years ago, it should be like accepted truth by now. But you just keep denying that Trump won fair and square.
So rather than simply clarify whether you were making shit up, you go off on another tangent. Again.
Blessed be the Way of Sam.
nope. Not rather. Just not caring very much about your hurt feelings. Why on earth would I go through any effort for a low iq specimen to try and unfuck your own confusion. Why should I when I'm having so much fun with your emotions.
If my regarding you as a stupid piece of shit who spreads contemptible lies (and then lies about his lies) is a source of joy to you, then you have succeeded beyond your wildest dreams.
No, McTrash. It's not about me, and it's not about you either.
Seth was working late, he stopped at a local bar, got drunk and got murdered on his way home. Theres no conspiracies here, no hidden agenda. There's no hidden outrage. Trump didn't steal anything. It was a media beat up.
Yknow so what if Seth leaked something, it was just an accident.
More lies and innuendo from a transparent scumbucket.
No McTrash. There was no lies. That's just in your own head. From what I remember Kim Dotcom was willing to testify for the Muller investigation that Seth did hand Wikileaks something. Their only one in denial is you, McTrash. That Seth was Mudrered probably has nothing to do with anything you're on about.
KDC offered another moment of truth, huh?
What you remember rarely overlaps with what you provide evidence for and that itself rarely overlaps with reality. KDC has similarly been caught out once or twice. So you talking about what KDC promised is like someone claiming that their spirit guide told them that unicorns claim to fart rainbows.
Prove what exactly? Seth is dead. You need to move on.
I love the way you're on first name terms with the guy whose murder you're shamelessly exploiting for your own deranged purposes. That's probably meant to be a distraction from the fact that you haven't backed up a single one of your claims. Any of them.
Nope. It's not about love because I'm not going to provide you with anything. If you want to be more cooperative you're going to have to learn to be civil. Or I could just rubbish you all the time.
Blessed indeed is the Way of Sam.
Nope. It's not about me my boy,
"It" keeps changing as you shift the goalposts, dear boy.
Nope. The goal post didn't change.
And yet someone went from walking home after working late because of their demanding supervisor to simply walking home from a bar.
Do campaign staffers get the weekends off where you are from?
lol see.
You just pull shit out of your arse and wear it as a crown.
You can't even accept simple truths. DNC staffers don't get weekends off during presedintial races. There was no conspiracy theory to begin with. You just wanted to signal how virtuous you are. So go right ahead.
But he wasn't at work in a bar, was he.
You assert these things as "facts", but they're just assumptions you make to support your desire to use a robbery gone wrong as a weapon against the dems.
And, in my experience, people who use the term "virtue signalling" do so only to avoid explicitly declaring that they have no concept of empathy or humanity. It is the penultimate refuge of the unregenerate scoundrel.
nope. Nothing to do with assumptions, empathy or the Democratic Party at this point.
See my Moderation note @ 3:37 PM under Sam’s comment.
Just saw this. Fair enough.
Thank you.
Hello Incognito
Good morning, Sam.
See my Moderation note @ 3:37 PM.
Clinton certainly had had decades of smears targeted directly at her – hell, the curtains in the White House had barely been changed in '93 before the bumper stickers and graffitti appeared saying "Impeach Clinton. And her husband".
Then while Vince Foster conspiracy theories were certainly a thing, what I saw of it was confined to definite Repug circles. While I was certainly acquainted with a few people with convergence moonbat tendencies, they didn't buy into the Vince Foster thing.
I'm not sure about the "uniquely vulnerable" bit, though. Kerry got successfully swiftboated. If Shrub hadn't made himself so fkn unpopular, it's possible the shit about that Kenyan, Barack Hussein Obama, might have got more traction. It's a worry that neither Sanders, Warren or Harris have ever before gone up against an opponent that simply doesn't have a bottom for how low he will go. Let's face it, elections are pretty cruisy, genteel things for liberals in Vermont, Massachusetts and California.
Fair call.
Thanks to the link provided by KJT, I'm posting an insight into the Greek leftist self-immolation that has played out over the past four years:
"The moment I walked into the office of Alexis Tsipras, he told me he had decided to fold, to ignore the people’s No, and to side with New Democracy in order to pass through parliament the bills by which Greece would, again, surrender to the troika. After I failed to dissuade him, I resigned as minister of finance. A few hours later, Mr Tsipras convened a meeting with the acting leader of New Democracy, and the leaders of the other pro-troika parties, whose votes he needed in parliament to pass the third bailout. It was at that moment that New Democracy was retrieved from history’s dustbin and placed on a track leading, with mathematical precision, to election victory."
"Since that night, Greece’s parliament has been the stage for a four-year long tragicomedy: Syriza MPs passed austerity and fire-sale bills with which they disagreed, while, on the other side, New Democracy MPs voted them down — in spite of agreeing with them. How my former colleagues convinced themselves that this would end in anything other than a devastating defeat for Syriza is beyond my comprehension."
https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2019/07/09/how-syrizas-capitulations-allowed-the-greek-right-to-escape-the-dustbin-of-history-the-new-statesman/
What gets me about this reveal by one of the key players is that the top leftist unilaterally decided to betray the people: it was not a collective decision of the government. That strikes me as extremely weird. Imagine any PM of ours making a decision on behalf of our government, and it being implemented without consulting the cabinet. It's possible that the author of the New Statesman reveal simply chose not to mention that the decision to betray the people was subsequently ratified by the government.
If so, I assume he doesn't want to acknowledge that his resignation was an admission of defeat – instead of fighting the battle with his colleagues against his leader. Perhaps he is ashamed of his cowardice. Perhaps he is signalling the reader that he believes consensus is too irrelevant to mention. Leftist politics has traditionally operated in defiance of the consensus principle, which is why splitting has always been endemic on the left. He may have thought the notion too sophisticated for his colleagues to comprehend.
I suspect it did go through a collective decision making process, but of course someone has to start it all. That would be the PM.
In any event Syriza has had 10 years, which is pretty decent amount of time in government. Inevitably they were eventually going to lose to the right. It is the nature of democracy.
More like the nature of those who control the purse strings. Wayne. And that is most definitely not the Greek government.
Tsipras certainly did not help his cause with a lot of the decisions his government made, so they should really have stepped aside. But once again, power for powers sake.
Varoufakis was the only one with any conscience out of all of them.
Much more likely the Greek people just got tired of having the same government for 10 without things getting much better. They certainly weren’t going to go more left. Varoufakis was in the contest but got nowhere.
So it is logical the Greeks were going to shift to the major conservative party.
Just as New Zealand will at some point go back to National. It won’t be as a result of international capital or international media, more as a result that people will feel safe with National (as indeed they do at present with Labour).
David Lange banning the USS Buchanan visit?
You could be right. And of course pulling the plug on Roger Douglas is likewise a viable example…
David Lange banning the USS Buchanan visit?
That was a strange affair. We later discovered that Lange had been subjected to some bizarre behaviour during that period both in NZ and when he was on a visit to the USA.
The one that comes to mind was the 'bogus' alarm sent to his Office (and presumably Foreign affairs) about a "missile attack” heading for the USA. They expected them to arrive in 20 mins. Lange sat in his office helpless because what can one do in 20 mins. It came and went and nothing happened. A further message arrived that it was just a flock of birds mistaken for a missile attack. I can’t recall hearing whether any other allied nation received the message.
When you look at what goes on in the US today, it doesn't take much to figure out the game they were playing. Whatever, it might have had a bearing on Lange's decision making. He took that secret to the grave with him.
It hardly matters wether Varoufakis was or wasn't a "coward" the fact remains that the Syriza party under the leadership of Alexis Tsipras acted completely against the very mandate that they were voted in for by the people, Tsipras will now be a name of ignominy for those on the Left in Greece for ever, as is Lange is to those who support an actual strong progressive and proudly Left wing labour in NZ.
Although I have some misgiving's about Varoufakis's credibility on a few issues myself, I followed the debacle of Syriza closely at the time of it's election through to it's rather quick and unsightly capitulation to the radical austerity ideology being foisted upon it from abroad. Through that time of watching interviews with many of Varoufakis's detractors,from within and without Syriza, I don't remember anyone saying or implying that he would have made any difference to keeping the party on track had he remained, though that being said, you could well be right, I don't profess to be an expert on the subject….maybe he is just an ashamed coward trying to cover his tracks ( I have never thought that of him myself, slightly dodgy maybe)..who knows.
" Imagine any PM of ours making a decision on behalf of our government " Muldoon at the height of his powers comes to mind, who at times (I have read) had a cabinet that would pretty much bend to any of his whims or fancies.
Roger Douglas it also seemed at times, held our government in a state trance, most willing and enabling to install his nefarious ideological madness..with only a couple of notable exceptions, sort of like in Greece.
Sorry to keep banging on about the state of our public service, but Easton nails it:
https://www.pundit.co.nz/content/how-important-is-local-knowledge
Parachuting in the generic manager from offshore into senior positions when they do not yet understand (or have experienced) NZ society and culture always seems to end in tears, and it usually just goes on to serve the neo-lib' agenda.
My partner and I had to attend a meeting with three mangers from the Waikato DHB after we had made a complaint.
All three either simply stared blankly, or deftly deflected our issues by implying we were somehow in the wrong. Even with written evidence of the agency's failings and with an advocate from the Health and Disability Commission in tow we not only got nowhere close to resolving the issues but the situation was made much worse.
All three of these managers were English, of about the same age and were fairly recent arrivals.
Not long after Peter and I shouted ourselves to the movies to see I, Daniel Blake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8jbVGKICso
IOM: Insight to thought processes
Hi Rosemary…
Well over 100 pages of a meeting held almost 20 years ago.
The thinking , process , pressure and influence behind the meeting may resemble some of your experiences with MOH etc.
Top down.
Yep. The thing that gets me is that it's NOT that they're English, or even from somewhere else. It's that they are parachuted in without any understanding of NZ kulcha and society, and they can't be expected to know or understand it. They're recruited as though they're almost God-like in their expertise – often that expertise is most relevant to where they've come from. They then begin to produce and frame policy based on that.
Tariana Turia said something that struck me on Q+A the other night – that Maori appear to have lost faith in themselves. SO too have others. (The more I hear about OT, AND having been a part of TPK in the past, the more I understand what I see as public service and politician 'capture' by it all)
What we're doing is simply perpetuating and fast tracking all that 'periphery to core' concept (Immanual W), and increasingly becoming more and more culturally insecure. One sees it in everyday life (whether its the way some recent arrival has 'shown us' the way to paint our various emergency service vehicles – the pastel yellow and green ambulances, fire appliances and pleece), to the way we're handling our immigration policy and lack of action (until recently) over worker exploitation of brown people. Really quite pathetic in many ways.
The thing I like most about The Great Big Whurl is its diversity and ongoing cultural mixes. What we're doing is just continuing to roll over and succumb to our various colonial masters whether its the Old Country, the USA (and what fuckups both those are proving to be), or the emerging ones..
I feel a @ Wayne coming on soon – probably with accusations of naivety. But no worries – I see him as a relic from the 50s, 60s and 70s.
Anyway, I'm more interested at the mo' in seeing contributors' responses
/endrave
.
Is it a lack of confidence in our Kulcha and the collective Kiwi inferiority complex or is it a calculated effort to import these managers who are kind of related to some of us but come from a country that is much further down the track of instituting state sanctioned bullying of the vulnerable an marginalised?
When we sat across the table from Pom 1, Pom 2 and Pom 3 we were struck how, well, not quite us they were. And they were a team. They all spoke the same language of bureaucracy and seemed not to see us as totally of the same species.
(For the record. I came to New Zealand as a child in the early 1970s. Though living south of the border in the UK, we were culturally Scots. I saw those parachuted in managers as complete foreigners. )
Probably a bit of both?
Well there's another example by the way: "They all spoke the same language of bureaucracy ……….. " (going forward, of course), and apparently it's all "Best Practice", "on the back of" their various external experiences.
"Ultimately……………….", etc.
They'd make good used car salesmen some of them.
Gtg for the mo'
EDIT: before I do, it’s increasingly evident that over the past decade or so, the Peter Principle, or variations on that theme are alive and well
OwT
I saw your link re generic and imported managers on TDB and read it – agree with what was said. Between getting imported managers probably with impressive degrees (to the lower echelons of NZ) and those who have climbed to the higher levels from within NZ, where the air is sweeter and refined, and you have the key to your own washroom, we seem to be being fleeced by these confident chiefs who are looking to feather their own nests, like shining cuckoos who have rolled the greywarblers over the edge.
I had noticed that item about the new UK manager from Brum? And spent a fascinating time reading the back history of Chch Council and Marryatt, Parker et al. It didn't build confidence in Chch's advancement, going forward.
https://kjt-kt.blogspot.com/2011/04/kia-ora-corporatism-and-neo-liberalism.html
"Many corporations and State or private enterprises run despite management, not because of them. In fact the constant parade of new brooms trying to make a name for themselves, with rapid changes and cost cutting, cause competent staff to resign and demoralise the rest"
kjt
That should be framed and put on the desk of every human resource well-paid yoik so it faces them. Get it off-screen where it can be screened out and onto something physical and lasting and in-zone so to speak.
By the way Rosemary – here we go again:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/114147627/birmingham-chief-to-take-up-reins-at-christchurch-city-council
Funnily enough, my son and family just landed in Birmingham less than 24 hours ago. Already the feedback is streaming back/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-10/tax-cuts-could-starve-social-services-increase-crime/11293336
This inside story confirms what I've long said, that probably 80% or so of people in our prisons need not have been there. If this govt's focus on mental health starts to turn this horrible stat around it will become a landmark achievement.
With crime there is no magic wand that untangles the complex knots of personal accountability and social dysfunction from which it is woven. Tackle one end of the problem while ignoring the other, the knot only tightens.
Our present system has not progressed it's fundamental tenents in centuries, yet it routinely fails victims, families and even offenders alike. If mental health was a stigmatised concern, forever marginalised … crime remains firmly at the bottom of our priorities. Yet the manifest failure remains intolerable.
We need to examine the roots of the system, recasting the problem with redemption as the ultimate goal. We need to see crime in terms of a chain of events, starting with personal temperament, family stability, the socialisation of the child, the building of conscience and shame, an understanding of how brain injury derails behaviour, instilling the courage to take opportunities, dealing resiliently with failures, and most critically finding a place to stand as part of a healthy community. Each one points of these is a stack of books in it's own right.
Yet we need a framework that stops the 'soft on crime' narrative dead; we cannot erase or minimise personal accountability, because without it there can be no forgiveness, no reconciliation and no redemption.
"We need to examine the roots of the system," I completely agree, the system of free market liberalism has proved itself not to work well for most humans.Funny thing is humans,as it turns out, need more in their lives than a system that demands a never ending need for more ( of what no one can define exactly) a system based on combativity with your fellow citizens to get ahead or even maintain, a system that relentlessly commodifies absolutely everything, the steam off your shit if it could…suicide is at critical levels, my friend cut a neighbors 14 year old son down from the rafters in the garage two weeks ago, I walk to work and their are homeless people huddled in groups on the streets to keep warm, all the motels in town are always full, not with out of town visitors, with homeless people..it;s fucked up that's for sure..and badly
And while all this is going on, we now import cheap labour to build our roads, build our building, pick our fruit, maintain our power networks,farm our land, something is very very broken in this model, and it doesn't take an economist to figure that out, infact that is probably the last person you want on the job!..it seems that the only human emotion that liberal economists seem to understand and cater too is greed, one of the very worse human traits and motivators..
So yes I agree we need to examine this broken system and then radically change our course.
If we on the progressive Left in NZ can't get our shit together and offer a viable alternative soon (as Sanders and Corbyn) then you can be sure that the Right will, and when people are hurting, they will reject and punish the status quo, and turn to whom ever has the strongest message, are we going to wait for a nutter like Collins to take the initiative, we must act….and I have to say that sorry, but I just don't believe that Ardern or her brand of centrist pragmatism is that type of transformative leader or brand of political ideology the Left need for this looming moment in NZ history.
Turn Labour Left!
Edit:
It's not greed alone, Adrian that drives economists, it's their employers' greed, whom economists serve by achieving better results from efficiencies. All economists aren't the same, but some are more equal than others; those economists who believe in efficiency before all, adopt the morals and principles that drove Ayn Rand to the top of the RW hit parade.
Aldous Huxley commented to Orwell this: 'the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. ' https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/huxley-to-orwell-my-dystopia-is-better-than-yours/508769/
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/aldous_huxley_391055
It's more efficient to bring in overseas people for high-skilled jobs as their education has been paid for where they came from. I am thinking of Phillipine workers because they are desperate to maintain a life, and been brought up, no doubt, under the aegis of the Catholic religion and taught the precepts of obedience and to supplicate to God and Mary for help in their travails. One of our commenters who employed them was fulsome in his praise of them and their characters and work standards (which was opposite to the workers he could obtain in NZ.) That is no doubt why my phone call was directed to someone in Manila, Philippines about why my paper wasn’t delivered to my home in New Zealand.
Maori have been thrown into unemployment by the efficiency drive of the money-mad, those who have destroyed our domestic economy so they can increase their wealth through exporting. When you export but don't import the country has an imbalance of trade. It was a nice efficient solution to sell to other countries, and bring in their products made more cheaply than we could for ourselves. Ergo, a neat efficient system for the wealthy, the wannabees, and the c-ooff. Not for those who were happy to work and have a life and who would expect that these things would be enhanced by their government, not destroyed.
Maori believed in gods and had precepts too but it was respect for their community and working together on their land and water, which underpinned their humanity and being. They didn't have money, and they didn't have alcohol. They were combative, but were held together by loyalty and aroha to their whanau and hapu. They adopted Christianity often, but found that pakeha didn't practice what they preached. Their culture was eroded, with the remnants determinedly and fiercely held so as to preserve a worthy way of life which enabled all, without turning communist which too easily sets into state authoritarianism.
The Maori story is the story of most of NZs eventually. As the money-mad advance on their crazed, obsessive way we will all be pushed, or thrown, aside. The rising suicide numbers are a feature of this situation. The government and elites concern about people, suicide, violence, baby deaths is a feature of an addled tainted society that wants to look satisfactory to an indiscriminate glance, but actually wants to exclude and ignore the reality of the shambles that the system has manufactured for itself.
We need to recycle our caring, human citizenship. There will be no room for individual graves soon for the numbers that fall from disease and suicide, and un-natural disasters, though at present we are buried with ritual niceties. Land will be limited; it will not be efficient to have large areas set aside for burials, even cremations will have to wait for a monthly ceremony for the ashes to be interred in a common grave.
We who are not individuals of wealth or note will be disregarded more and more. Unless we stand for people-caring-community that adopts respect and practicality as keystones of systems, and freedom of thought and to be heard, our society will continue to deteriorate. Lastly is the need to control the money-mad and their desire for growth and consumer society for their profit and their sickness of eternally wanting and being never satisfied.
We agree on the causes of social dysfunction, but struggle with what to do about it. After the litany of Marxist catastrophies from the last century I find it tiresome that various ill-defined forms of Marxism still seem to hold a default monopoly on left wing thinking.
To give Marx is very real due, there was much that he said about our present system that was useful. He was really the first to detail why competitive market economies would create a small minority of spectacular winners and a vast lumpen of losers. This is a deep problem that all societies have struggled with; the more prosperity a society generates the more it tends to be unequally distributed. It's called the Matthew Effect and pre-dates capitalism by … forever.
Marx proposed essentially that the losers in this competition should simply rise up by sheer force of numbers, overthrow the winners, and then replace the system with one that was not competitive but co-operative. For reasons of conciseness I won't expand on why this doesn't work; Marx's analysis was essentially materialistic and the authoritarian regimes needed to impose this constraint on the human spirit were intolerable.
Modern socialists, like this centrist govt, therefore position themselves as a balancing countervailing force to the inequality problem all social systems generate, without too much challenge to them. Yet still far too many people … like your friends … experience the heart stopping grief of a world going terrible wrong for them in ways that all to often were entirely avoidable. In my view each one of these speaks in a deep way to the failure of the left to advocate effectively for the vulnerable, the dispossessed and all those trapped by poverty of expectations.
I'm by no means the only leftie to sense, however dimly, the need to rebuild the left wing argument on a fresh basis; one that doesn't seem so intent on tearing down the successful, so intent on repeating past mistakes … but one that pays real attention to the poor we profess to care about. Because until we know how to change for the better the life of even just one person we care for, how can we possibly claim to know how to change the world?
Because that's perhaps the deeper point of the article I linked to above; it's about one young person, horribly derailed by life, yet one other person persisted with her, and slowly and patiently over many years turned her life around. There was no magic wand moment; their victory was gentle and incremental.
Hey Red would you say sovereign Govts being in control of a nations money supply,as opposed to private central bankers(Fed)constitutes…Marxism?
Most ideas don't come with hermetic boundaries, there is often a quite fluid interchange going on. There is no big red box labelled "Marxism" into which we can stuff a bunch of ideas, lock the lid and throw away the key.
In most modern economies we run a mix of private credit creation, quite tightly controlled by government Reserve Banks. Almost anyone expert in this area would argue the present system is excessively tilted in favour of private credit creation and from a global perspective there is lot we can do to further optimise how the system works.
The problem is that strictly government controlled credit creation has a terrible track record of being hijacked for venal and destructive political purposes. Until we've learned how to solve that problem, it's going to be a case of the devil we know I'm afraid.
No big red box of 'Marxism',just as there is no big blue box of 'Capitalism,I venture.
'after the litany of Marxist catastrophies from the last century'
'after the litany of Capitalist catastrophies from the last century'.
As for the 'devil we know',why would that devil relinquish control,given his ubiquitous influence and dedication to the status quo?
To me it's not about tearing down the successful at all. It's tearing down the corruption, the non-contribution, the war-mongering, the false-narratives – of the 'successful.' The bleeding of the planet and its people for profit. The corporate hand-outs. The two sets of rules. The minimal jail sentences for heinous crimes. The victimisation of the vulnerable. The myopia concerning real costs of these planet destroying scum in suits.
These are no 'happened-to-do-wells.' They are fucking dirt. Either our rules apply to them, or they can fuck right off and hide under a rock cos the public have had a gutsful.
They deserve every pitchfork wielding lunatic hammering at their doors. Then some.
But somehow it’s the left’s failure… Nonsense. it’s the right’s acquiescence and obeisance to scummy humans all because they have money.
Edit
…one that doesn't seem so intent on tearing down the successful, so intent on repeating past mistakes … but one that pays real attention to the poor we profess to care about. Because until we know how to change for the better the life of even just one person we care for, how can we possibly claim to know how to change the world?
Oh we have to start somewhere – and it is essential that we start with our over-blown ideas of ourselves. One that pays real attention to the poor we profess to care about. And remember that there, for the grace of God, go I….and try and shine with some reflection of that God, that goodness, because we are on a different level to that poor person because they didn't have what we did.
Sometimes they can find that different life quite satisfying though, everyone doesn't have to be the same. But the hard thing is to put some effort into helping others who have missed out, and even more important is making sure that when they are babies, toddlers and terrible-three-year-olds, they get the same good start we had. Let them have firm, regular childhoods with decent food, clothes and some coaching in how to defend themselves against bullying, the most important bit of education they can get. Learn to present themselves with humour and understand others motivations, the E-Q rather than the I-Q – I reckon the first raises the second.
And not dividing the world into Superior, deserving Me, and Receivers of Charity and Good Works them because they are lesser. Look for the soul in people, the honesty in their words and minds, and there is the goodness – start with giving a busker a gold or silver coin, keep a supply with you so you can. Bring satisfaction into their lives, and keep doing that plus a brief thumbs up, that's great, look them in the eye, acknowledge them as people, they are doing something for the world and themselves, that would be a good start.
We are connected by our sameness, even as we diverge in our lives, our interests. Understand yourself, be humble a bit – not too much, and then you can connect for a few seconds at least, with someone and know a bit about where they are coming from, what life is like for them.
I used that saying 'There but for the Grace of God go I', in a routine on homelessness in a performance this week.
At one point: 'you can't hate on the homeless, that's not hate, it's fear. But you know who really does hate the homeless?
Winter.'
Some miniature peacock comes up after the show. "I hate the homeless, I think they've already got too much money"… thought he was hilarious. I told him he didn't know what the fuck he was talking about and dressed him down in front of his wife and friends.
People who take pleasure in the misfortune of others, who think humor is about punching down – less than worthless no matter how much gold is dripping off them.
To me it's not about tearing down the successful at all.
And then the rest of your comment is an exercise in contradicting this claim.
The problem this approach has is that if cannot distinguish between the 'happen to do well's' with those who through 'a combination of talent, hard work and some good luck have done well'. Both exist, no-one is proposing that any system us flawed and limited humans can create will be perfect, we will always produce a mix of good, bad and very ugly. At root the evil is not wealth in itself, nor 'success' in whatever dimension you care to define it, but in who we are. And money merely makes us more of who we are.
Kicking down doors and impaling the rich on pitchforks changes nothing if they're replaced with people no better. Except the new people in charge have just bonfired their moral authority which usually turns out for the worse.
Nonsense. It's rather easy to determine who avoids taxes, who denigrates minorities etc.
Listing the ills of the world perpetrated by rich people very clearly shows how and why the mess.
Two sets of rules is unacceptable but clear as day.
This is not the angry mobs doing. The angry mob is the rich's doing.
I'd rather the corruption is dealt with, corporate power over people is stripped. But they wedge their own laws in, their own media and narrative, they police everyone but themselves. Cruel indifference.
Then they whine when they find a riot in their yard.
Hypocritical bullshit. Wake up and smell the cheapass instant coffee.
Listing the ills of the world perpetrated by rich people
Yet nowhere do you attempt to list the manifold benefits very successful people bring to the world.
All people are a complex mix; it isn't as simple as you think to unravel the good and the bad we all do. Everyone is flawed in some dimension, we can all be cast onto pitchforks for some reason.
Your complaint is real, I have no quibble with that. What if the answer to it was quite different to the one you have reached for. What if we all became better people? Like all of us, and we all started to sincerely think of ways to help each other?
We can put in place all the rules and authoritarian processes you could dream of, and more. But none of it will help unless we simply require of ourselves to turn away from resentment, anger and vengeance, and look to fixing our own lives.
And that I think is all RedLogix has to say. It's been more than a decade now, and I want to thank you all for being so generous with your time and energy.
"Successful people", in the form of those who bring the greatest benefits to the world, are rarely, wealthy!
I regard you as one of the more astute, principled & clear-sighted participants here, RL. And I greatly appreciated your moral support regarding the situation my Parents have found themselves in.
From time to time, you've been the victim of a pretty nasty & self-righteous mob mentality that tends to be closely associated with the ID Politics faction … so I know it hasn't always been a bed of roses for you … but you've consistently displayed a great deal of dignity & patience under fire.
I'll be very sorry if this is your last ever comment here.
I am 100% behind this comment. I’d like to think that RedLogix tends to make excellent, well-considered, well-explained, and concise arguments about very complex, sensitive, and personal issues that affect us all to a more or lesser degree. The more heat was put on him, the better his arguments, which is one reason why I never stepped in as moderator. He may not have swayed the usual ‘lynch mob’ but for each commenter there are many silent readers of TS. Those people can read the arguments and form their own opinions. We don’t know what impact it has on the silent majority but I’d like to think that, on balance, it has been positive. I thank RedLogix for his resilience and perseverance, which may have come at a personal cost to him.
A profound point. I've often commented on evil here – usually in an attempt to rectify the delusional thinking produced by postmodern denial that it exist – so I agree it's in human nature & money empowers it.
The satanic focus of christian fundamentalists ought to be replaced by Jungian theory. Too bad psychologists seem collectively unable to learn Jung's lessons. If evil is conceived as an archetype lurking in the collective unconscious, activated in some lives by subconscious prompts, and personified by a few people who seem captive to it sufficiently for it to displace other normal dimensions of human nature such as empathy and the moral compass, then we make sense of it. That's better than collective evasion of the topic, or denial.
The whole idea that we can help those at the bottom, without giving up something ourselves, has proven to be a fallacy. "A rising tide" does not lift all boats", which is what you are actually getting at.
The right wing, apart from their foolish followers, know that memes like the above, "economic growth, and "trickle down" are totally false, but they serve, to bamboozle the thick.
The "successful" do have to contribute more to the common pot, so everyone can have a share. If you add it up we would not have to contribute much, on top marginal tax rates, to lift everyone out of poverty. Even less if we tax finance and Queen Street capital gains tax farmers, dead in the water, unfortunately!
In an unfair system, the "successful" achieve that level at the expense of others, usually more by luck rather than merit.
https://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/bankers-cost-each-one-of-us-8-40-for-every-1-they-produce-so-do-politions/
Bunga bunga!
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/women-sent-mar-a-lago-vip-calendar-girl-party-trump-epstein.html?via=homepage_taps_top
The British Ambassador's words "It will end in disgrace" may well prove both prescient and accurate.
It might end up quite an extensive A to Z of disgrace.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/jeffrey-epstein-bill-clinton-donald-trump-alan-dershowitz.html?via=homepage_recirc_engaged
They just can't help themselves.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/07/10/trump-national-doral-resort-shadow-cabaret-strip-club-golf-tournament/1698231001/
From James Patterson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4nc-tvJ2OA
The plot sickens…
https://twitter.com/erikhalvorsen18/status/1148235218102493184
On Jan. 2, 2018, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta released a statement commemorating the beginning of Human Trafficking Awareness Month, recommitting his department’s mission to “ending practices that harm individuals, families, and communities.”
“We must act to end exploitation and abusive labor practices at home and abroad,” the statement said.
Absent from that statement was the fact he had already tried to cut a program by nearly 80 percent inside the Department of Labor dedicated to combating human trafficking, along with child and forced labor, internationally. And two months later, he would return to Congress to advocate for a second budget to cut the program just as deeply.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/labor-secretary-alex-acosta-who-cut-deal-with-epstein-tried-to-slash-anti-trafficking-budget
Just a touch of good news this morning: Congratulations to Kane Williamson and the cricket team for their semi-final win over India overnight.
An against the odds win against the best cricket nation. A match that had tension, excitement and spectacular cricket skills: Boult's manipulating Kohli into LBW, Santner restricting the run rate, Guptill's run out and Williamson's canny captaincy.
Bring on either Australia or England for another late night on Sunday.
I'm in Melbourne, so slightly friendlier time zone. Stayed up and watched until the final ball – fantastic effort by the boys. Go the Black caps!
After the previous night's abandonment due to the mizzle….we were not going to repeat yet another night with the trannie barely audibly broadcasting the play. Prevents that deep sleep that has the necessary restorative benefits. However, when by 11pm the odds had gone for a Kiwi win from 2% to 78%, the trannie got another sub audible run, and I managed to properly wake in time to catch the last four overs.
We have just watched the highlights….
Ockies getting beaten like they stole something would cap off the week nicely. Shame bothe sides can't lose though.
India are the best cricket team at the tournament, bad luck India however
Black Caps have been best value ambassadors of cricket matches in the tournament and also well deserved their place in the final.
Use to be our NZ staple with the rugby but great to have it back with the cricket, great advertisements for the full naunces and complexities of the sport while bringing the singular sum of the NZ game to the party.
I would put the value of this run at a world cup, similarities & up there with what the AB team of the time represented & bought to the South African rugby wc in representing NZ's sporting interests to add in the mix, giving top shelve value.
The Apartheid state of Israel has devolved into the biggest and most murderous right wing hate movement in the world.
Even 48% of usa Jews thought Israel was not interested in peace …. a remarkably well informed percentage …. given the bias and anti Palestinian reporting … from usa main media
https://bdsmovement.net/news/bds-14-hope-face-israeli-apartheid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3dn-VV3czc
How long until the demands that they be investigated for antisemitism.
Outstanding victory for nz in the cricket last night
Sport not really important barring it’s one of the few things that tends to unite us as a country where so many forces seek to divide
Yep, a unifying force. The only ones bewildered were the Indians who have yet to figure it out.
A pitch with a bit in it for the bowlers sorts out the flat track whackers and those with issues of technique. A bit like politics, really………
Yep Indian cricket team all froth not a lot of substance, lack of depth, did not deliver on hype, a bit like politics……😊👍
Cricket is a tool of the elite. First Class, Lords, Tea, Drinks… Though it is no surprise yourself and the broken down horse prefer this so called "Gentleman's game".
Sigh! What a miserable existence it must be inside your head
Watched the game with your polynesian and Māori brothers and sisters did you? Was it that kind of unifying experience for you….
Hmmm, very racist and stereotyping of you I know and have many Maori and Polynesian friends and colleagues who enjoyed the cricket and are talking about it today Maybe get out of your cellar and off your keyboard and into the sunlight What do these 3 things have in common Maui, The Grinch and Scrooge 😊
" I know and have many Maori and Polynesian friends and colleagues who enjoyed the cricket"
lol, let me guess… they are also raving right wingers and like what ACT has to say. Truly believable BS.
Hey Maui with respect fk off to the miserable joyless cesspit you love to paddle in😊
Time to look outside yourself bewildred.. this isn't all about you. Perhaps some self reflection is in order? You sound angry…
Not angry at all Maui I am not one of the perpetual offended that’s why I gave you a emoji to help your one brain cell to comprehend You make no sense at all re self reflection on context about being happy a nz team made a World Cup final You simply mirror my point I put to you. I can only surmise your a moron or severely dim so I will go easy on you Now a happy fk off and wriggle back to your place of malcontent 😊😊😊😊👍
Staggering arrogance. Sneering Bewildered is not offended ? Why sneer then? Call someone a moron, typing 'your a moron' in the act? It should be "you're" you semi-literate dimwit. It is you who are in the place of dimness. I don't need to tell you to wriggle off to anywhere: you could hardly wriggle any lower than the position you have already reached by your own efforts.
Ka pai Maui
The cricketers I know will be tickled to know that they're elite.
But hey, pissing one someone else's fun is what bleating malcontents do.
/
The best and cleanest way to defeat anyone is to play them at their own game and win.
You would do you your cause way more good by putting on pads than spitting in the faces of sportspeople.
Relying on a few top performers, not really believing in the team or its ethics, inadequate preparation, lack of familiarity with different wickets, pitch preparation favouritism, home crowds and ‘impressionable’ umpires, compliant media……. yep, a bit like politics.
Now watch the inadequate players hive off into commentary, radio and TV 'journalism' and into business sinecures where a bit of a name helps impress the punters, maybe an Honour or even a job in politics!
Great game. Losing team could source a ‘player’ from China – “one’s worth two“, etc.
Sure, until the next time they thrash us beewee.
Loss me Gabbs, by the way can I have your permission to take your beewee as my new handle It’s a lot easier to type with my fat thumbs
Kim Darroch, UK ambassador to US resigns, proving the adage 'the truth hurts.' Well, telling the truth hurts.
Conveniently, Farage is the main beneficiary.
So the content matters less than the fact of the leak. Someone – maybe a civil servant, maybe a minister – seems to be after the ambassador, Kim Darroch. The contents were leaked to Isabel Oakeshott, the journalist who acts as the de-facto communications office of Aaron Banks, Nigel Farage's donor. The Brexit party leader quickly popped up to demand Darroch be sacked. And their Leave.EU outfit then stepped up to launch its campaign to make sure Farage replaced him. Incredible timing.
Darroch is facing the usual fate of the non-believers, those have not achieved full Brexit transcendance and therefore must be ejected from their position before they can keep asking critical questions.
But the story also shows something else: When you scratch at the surface of this movement for total British sovereignty, you quite often find servility to the US lying underneath.
https://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2019/07/08/trump-ambassador-revelations-brexiters-reveal-the-trump-love
Oh look, the Italian far-right has a new sugar daddy.
The six men — three Russians, three Italians — gathered beneath the spectacular painted glass ceiling in the hotel lobby last October had their eyes on history too. Their nominal purpose was an oil deal; their real goal was to undermine liberal democracies and shape a new, nationalist Europe aligned with Moscow.
[…]
BuzzFeed News has obtained an explosive audio recording of the Metropol meeting in which a close aide of Europe’s most powerful far-right leader — Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini — and the other five men can be heard negotiating the terms of a deal to covertly channel tens of millions of dollars of Russian oil money to Salvini’s Lega party.
The recording reveals the elaborate lengths the two sides were willing to go to conceal the fact that the true beneficiary of the deal would be Salvini’s party — a breach of Italian electoral law, which bans political parties from accepting large foreign donations — despite the comfort with which he and Europe’s other far-right leaders publicly parade their pro-Kremlin political sympathies.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/albertonardelli/salvini-russia-oil-deal-secret-recording
Not Russians, surely not. Morpissey! Defend the poor Russian oligarch kleptocrat victims of vicious smears!
March of the greedy continues.
https://twitter.com/Survival/status/1145662114067079168
https://www.survivalinternational.org/news/12158
Images of the damage caused by mercury.
https://lavozdeldespertar.com/?p=7609
Using mercury for gold extraction is illegal pretty much everywhere, and all legal and legitimate miners deplore it's use deeply. It's a failure of government to enforce their own laws which let this appalling shit still happen.
"For the love of money is the root of all evil" – Timothy 6:10
It's greed that drives this & so much more apalling shit. Governments, and governance organisations aren't immune.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/03/12/guest-blog-bryan-bruce-thousands-protest-water-bottling-in-christchurch/
Interesting that RL is concerned about the technical aspects of the Yanomami story. The main point is that they are being invaded by thousands of men who are forcing the people from their lands, injuring and killing the people and spoiling their land.
The Yanomami are the largest relatively isolated tribe in South America. They live in the rainforests and mountains of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela. Davi Kopenawa, Yanomami leader and shaman surrounded by children, Demini, Brazil.
Yanomami – Survival International
Clinton lost because the media made Trump much more entertaining, interesting, and yes loathsome. Trump was running for decades, household name, jerk in your fired, etc. Trump will win because stupidity isn't exposed by the media, it's consent manufacture all Trumps way.
Another example of trickle down opportunities and creative solutions and projects that are never allowed to occur.
In Christchurch on red-zoned land some young guys got together and shovelled humps and hollows and made a bike circle track for themselves. It has been destroyed on the basis that it was a 'hazard'.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/114139882/levelling-boys-bike-park-sad-testament-to-public-administration
Christchurch again – damn the spending fitting the ideas of hide-bound officials and conservatives. They are thinking of spending $15 million on a memorial to the fallen at the mosque (and ultimately lax administration at the borders and low-lifes and guns in NZ). Trickling down in small drops of awhi and mercy that is strained and measured.
What would be good is if they put that same money into a small building that is attractive and runs Humanities programs on culture, ours and others, philosophies and why we need religions and precepts of behaviour etc. Humanities helps us to understand our own and others human persona. It could be in the grounds of Canterbury University and be an adjunct of whatever humanities programs they have there.
And for general public experience and memorial, there could be a series of flag poles with all the flags of the countries from where the fallen in Christchurch, both at the mosque and in the earthquakes. Every day at say between midday and 5 minutes after, one of the flags would be put at half-mast, and the previous day's flag would be hoisted again. Make a thing of it like Ypres in Belgium – they have been doing this since the Wars.It would be a moving memorial, literally, as the colourful flags hung or lifted in the breeze, not passive solid forms.
At present in Christchurch they are mulling over designs for a memorial bridge that they have had for years. One being considered was particularly artistic – a bridge in the clouds caused by a fine spray of water as you climbed up steps no doubt. Just what you would want, to be damped down, as you crossed a stream to keep dry. One sounded great – I liked the sound of it – it was a golden bridge made out of brass I think. But practicality here – I also have read recently of a murdered man who was a scrap metal dealer, and often dealing with people who were on the criminal fringe. No doubt in time if it was possible, bits of the bridge would have been removed and sold with consequences to strength. safety and appearance. So practicality has definitely to be considered, but also give people the opportunity to look for more than expensive monuments to disasters. Beauty would be also in how it remembers the past and enhances and improves the future.
And I am thinking again about trickle down. The Kiwibuild idea as the only one going under the 1st Labour Coalition shows up their limitations – their distance from ordinary people of lower income. I have noticed amongst the successful middle class that they think they have life sussed and know all there is to know, and can make better decisions for the strugglers than they can. Then the m-class do that, without asking what the strugglers would prefer out of what is available, instead of giving them time to have a brainstorm session, go wild with ideas. Then think how each one could be practically done, or possibly one or two done as a trial.
The building houses program might have come up with a communal suburb of mixed colour tiny houses, some of which could be connected by a closed in walkway to enable extended families to live close together. Then the young people could be trained to work on these along with reliable (non-leaky-homes) builders. That would have been trickle-up.
Let's give people more opportunities, incentives and rewards to come up with ideas, group together for viable projects and facilitate doing while they are being. Not have everything planned by the big-people who live in 'It's too difficult, never-never land', because they are stunted by their own limitations of conformity – it ends up paralysis by analysis!
Bluddy disgraceful. Too hard to mow? Too hard to spray weeds? No resource consent? Enterprising lads should have been given a medal or better, they should have been left alone to get on with it!
I've just been reading an excoriating opinion piece on Christchurch which the writer says has been dysfunctional since 1989 amalgamation. It is written by a dyed-in-the-wool RW money-maker, but will have some truth and probably sheds light on how the faulty buildings there got signed off.
The opinion was that good people had left and the remaining administration ran it to the beat of their own drum.
It was published today at 5.30am and at 7 pm there were 191 comments which have now been closed so people felt strongly about it. Our lives are being narrowed, our ability to branch out and explore with open spaces limited by the dreaded health and safety issue.
I’m not surprised, the same thing happened to my son ( then 12) and his friends built a cycle track on an unused riverside area on council land which was waste land that no one used, they spent hours making a few jumps.
On this occasion the neighbours complained to the police who confiscated their spades
It seemed that comments under women's names were likely to be about getting permission, complying with rules, not about whether those rules were necessary or OTT. Femmes are too compliant methinks, need to stand and object to being overloaded with nos, let's have a more permissive society.
15 million for a memorial?
Apart from the fact that some funds should be diverted to family members that are struggling – I thought that both mosques have propertites nearby that can be made a purchase offer on, and have islamic designed gardens installed that integrated them with the mosques themselves.
The gardens could be open to the public whenever the mosques wanted to, and could be designed in such a way to provide a level of security. The gardens should be given to the ownership of the islamic community, but a volunteer group of gardeners could continue newly built community relationships to be sustained and strengthened into the future.
Any memorial should prioritise the healing for the islamic community, rather than the boundaries of the secular supporters.
Yes I agree. My idea I guess. was to extend the mental boundaries by doing some philosophy and look at the different ways that we build our idea of our world that we tend to have and hold tight to with some carrying this to extremes.
Why waste 15 mill on the murdered families when you can dole it out to architects, designers, consultants and associated ticket clippers.
I imagine that was the silent thought passing through some people's skulls.
'I wonder if Roger would like to put forward a design? We can talk it over when we meet for our …dinner party or at the box when we have a drink after the sports occasion.'?
Good news for how to make better housing. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/394155/building-standards-now-available-online-for-free
This follows on from a pilot that funded five important building Standards and a handbook in 2017.
The standards presently range in cost from $5.50 to $550.
Building and Construction Minister Jenny Salesa said these standards helped ensure New Zealand buildings and homes were safe and well-constructed.
"They will help building professionals and homeowners with methods for designing and constructing timber framing in buildings and selecting appropriately treated timber used in building work.
"They will also help engineers with earthquake loads on buildings."
Ms Salesa said the government was dismantling road blocks in the building sector.
"I have listened to the building and construction sector, and professional groups who access these standards regularly, and to New Zealand's homeowners.
I am against putting fees up for ordinary people as a disincentive to some so that they change their ways. I didn't like tip fees being raised to discourage people from throwing things out, which Environment Minister Sage has done.
Now she is reported as insisting that the SI West Coast pay for the rubbish tip spread, while they say rightly they have a small tax base and low population. Which is true. They have been doing what many Councils have done with rubbish. Her response to their plight:
"The Westland District Council said it couldn't cope and it was calling down a short-term loan to pay for some of the costs involved. That shows a degree of problems with financial management I think, with that particular council," she said.
There is a place for disincentives, but after a while they can cease to be effective, for instance as with tax on cigarettes. Now they are desirable goods for theft. Too hard and high, makes poor people's life harder. Punish those naughty people! Hit them till it hurts. You can't do that to children but who cares for the adults who are vulnerable?
Ain't nothing worth stealing out of that trash.
Sage should kick them harder.
Bad enough they need bailing out by NZDF.
Ad I hope that you don't get into local or central government with an approach like that.
Seriously one of New Zealand's laziest local governments: have prepared zero for climate change other than build another sliver on a seawall, inspired their population to continually leave, diversified their economy about zero, and can't even build a road.
This isn't a tax on cigarettes.
This is doing one of the most basic job in local government: rubbish collection. And they swear they don't have enough money for even that. Hey Coasters: boot this lot out!
Bolton, Pompeo and Pence meet with Hong Kong democracy activist Jimmy Lai.
That's an extended finger like the Chinese Premier meeting with Julian Assange or Bernie Sanders.
Excellent signal Mr Trump.
Has he got a hotel in Hongkong yet.
Kia ora The Am Show.
Ryan it looks like you have shifted to the right.
I agree Willie this is true institutional racism is a true phenomenon and a fact .
Good on France for a tax on big technology companies.
judy if your lot stopped the raid on the poor peoples money cutting benefits making it a miserable experience applying for a benefit shorting the housing market a tax system that cost the poor common people more lowering paye tax a rising gst poverty is a major driver of family Violence .
I say a gas guzzling vehicle tax is NEEDED to get people into clean energy efficient electric cars and out of cars into public transportation and the money used to subsidize clean energy cars.
The big point is the rangatahi are the ones that will have to live with the bad effects of climate change Eco Maori say it is there right to protect their future Humanity is so short sighted with the blinds that the billionaire oil barons put on us by manipulating the media paying for false studies all to line there pocket with more money than anyone NEEDS.
Ryan why not talk about the people who have the biggest carbon footprint the billionaire private planes heaps of excessive waste of carbon being burned to keep up their lavish lifestyle.
Good on Sharndre for creating a huge educational company education is needed so that the billionaire can not FOOL us with their LIES.
Ka kite ano
Whanau more extreme weather caused by our climate warning because of the greed of a few wealthy people. Times are going to change.
Warning of more severe weather after storm kills seven in Greece
Two children among dead after series of incidents in Halkidiki region, with dozens injured
Greece: 20-minute storm kills six tourists in Halkidiki – video report
Greek meteorologists have warned that more harsh weather could be on the way after seven people died and dozens were injured when a freak storm ripped through beachfronts in a popular tourist region in the north of the country.
Panic-stricken holidaymakers were caught on camera fleeing as the 20–minute late-night storm uprooted trees, overturned cars and caused mudslides in waterfront resorts
Ka kite ano link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/11/six-tourists-killed-fierce-storms-northern-greece-halkidiki
Some Eco Maori music for the minute.
https://youtu.be/QrY9eHkXTa4