This analysis seems to suggest it's more of the same – Erdogan wanting to position Turkey as a middleman in the conflict – working (and trading) with both sides.
Filthy Erdogan, a lot have not forgotten his 2016 purge and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of teachers, public servants and political opponents.
On Monday morning, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters that Sweden’s membership of NATO should be linked to Turkey’s membership of the European Union.
“First, let’s clear Turkey’s way in the European Union, then let’s clear the way for Sweden, just as we paved the way for Finland,” Erdogan said.
Erdogan also emphasized that “Turkey has been waiting at the gate of the European Union for over 50 years now,” and “almost all NATO member countries are European member countries.
Turkey being first in the queue now, after joining it half a century back, pressures the process. Allowing Sweden to jump the queue not being a good look, I suspect a covert deal amongst the key players: unsuitable to announce that due to contingent factors.
Erdogan wants everyone to know Turkey isn't the sick man of Europe anymore. He is sending an unsubtle message of Russia's diminished power and status and Turkish aspiration as a big regional power not beholden to anyone particularly.
In my opinion, NATO should never have let Turkey join in the first place. Erdogan seeks to be the force of reason and restraint but his poor record on human rights and Turkey's flawed democratic system hardly seem appropriate amongst Europe's western democracies.
Turkey joined NATO in 1952. At the time Turkey was definitely on the Western side of the Cold War split and it was a fairly democratic and secular society. It had also sent troops to Korea to support the UN campaign there.
Other countries can hardly have been expected to anticipate the return to the Islamist state that has been going on 70 years after the welcome it received to NATO.
Russian President Vladimir Putin met Yevgeny Prigozhin five days after the Wagner mercenary boss led a failed mutiny, the Kremlin has revealed. The BBC's Russia Editor gets to grips with the latest twist in the Wagner saga. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66154912
Prigozhin, who heads the mercenary group, was among 35 Wagner commanders invited to the meeting in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added. He said that President Putin had given an "assessment" of the Ukraine war effort and the mutiny. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66154909
"The president gave an assessment of the company's actions on the front," Mr Peskov is quoted as saying by Interfax news agency. "He also gave assessment to the 24 June events. Putin listened to the commanders' explanations and suggested variants of their future employment and their future use in combat." According to the spokesman, Prigozhin told Mr Putin that Wagner unconditionally supported him.
The BBC tracked Prigozhin's private jet flying to Belarus in late June, and returning to Russia the same evening. Meanwhile Gen Gerasimov has been seen in public for the first time since the mutiny. The video suggests that President Vladimir Putin has kept both Mr Shoigu and Gen Gerasimov in their posts.
Just a spat between comrades. No big deal. Okay, some Wagnerians got offed by a rocket from behind, but that's just business as usual in Russia…
"Just a spat between comrades. No big deal"….I hate to say this, but it seemed obvious that the initial "coup" that the Western media and many on this site just couldn't help themselves from frothing at the mouth about…was an internal dispute that would have little to no effect on the battlefront…
But I guess it gave both those groups of people something to focus on, rather than having to acknowledge the depth and meaning of the disastrous Ukrainian counter offensive.
So what are polls actually useful for? What are their limitations? How are they actually conducted, and how do the political movers and shakers translate this data into rhetoric and actions?
Stuff’s daily podcast Newsable sat down with three experienced but very different operators in the polling ecosystem to gain an insight into these topics – and plenty more besides.
[Farrar] what ISN’T a poll is me walking down the street and asking 100 random people, because that’s going to be determined by who I happen to walk into.
The rightist is correct in the formal sense and incorrect in the informal. He would get reliable indication of the public mood on his random walk through the public. Depending on the framing he used (binary by default, tertiary if he got clever) he'd get a definite sense of the lie of the current political terrain.
Farrar describes Curia’s process as a ‘multi-mode model’, a pleasingly alliterative phrase meaning the firm uses a mixture of landlines, mobile phones and online panels to conduct polling.
See the triad there? Three tactical strategies. Curia grounds them within a coordinated system. That method combines them into an operational tetrad.
“One of the key tricky things is, how many different types of quotas do you have? If you have a quota for everything, you have to phone 10,000 people to find the 22 year-old left-handed Pacific Islander living on Waiheke Island … so you tend to do gender, age, area, income, sometimes ethnicity, to try and get that.”
Such methodic weighting of minorities is relative (strength ratios). Incorporating creative design into a system is pentadic (it adds in a 5th element).
" [Farrar] what ISN’T a poll is me walking down the street and asking 100 random people, because that’s going to be determined by who I happen to walk into.
The rightist is correct in the formal sense and incorrect in the informal.
He would get reliable indication of the public mood on his random walk through the public. Depending on the framing he used (binary by default, tertiary if he got clever) he'd get a definite sense of the lie of the current political terrain."
But, you'd get a very different sense of the lie of the current political terrain from 100 people randomly encountered during a walk in Epsom, compared to a walk in Manukau.
The whole point of polling, is to try to correct for these obvious biases.
Peter Dunne's point that political parties are both polling much more regularly, and not releasing their poll data – even to lower levels of the party internally – is also a useful perspective.
We have certainly seen a lot of policy points floated by Labour, only to be swiftly reversed, when (apparently) polling data indicates their unpopularity (cycling bridge over the Auckland harbour, for example).
Vance's point is that they are a snapshot in time – and should not be used as a predictive tool (despite the fact that this is just about how every journalist does use them).
All of them are saying that a poll is rarely useful in isolation – but it can indicate a trend. So it's a sequence that matters, not an individual result.
And, all of the polling for the last year – basically has the election too close to call…. So the excitement (or despair) generated on TS from a single poll result is rather pointless.
Yeah I agree with all that. Re the sample of 100 & local/regional variations in the result, that would be why stats usage converged on the standard thousand model – to reduce the effect down to a negligible amount.
And sometimes the aggregators are on entirely different tracks. FiveThirtyEight and Real Clear Politics are the big players in this arena. They both use different methods. FiveThirtyEight weighs polls on a variety of factors and gradually reduces how much a poll impacts the average. RealClearPolitics just aggregates recent polling data.
Yes – I use the Wiki graph and polling results as a baseline check everytime I see a new political poll. Is there a trend? Or are we continuing to bumble along with no clear advantage in any direction?
No clarity yet. We await the next msm poll but the leaks from Labour & National of their internal results may suggest a trend in the interim. First thing to look for is any confirmation of a rise for TMP since that would be a game-changer. Second thing is damage to Labour via repetitive own-goaling.
Pricks won't be satisfied with mining the big stuff. They'll leave plenty of surprises with the intent of killing and injuring lots of Ukrainian civilians, particularly children, for decades to come.
Russian forces have begun to mine critical infrastructure in occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorovreported via Telegram on July 9.
"The enemy endangers the residents of the occupied territories," Fedorov said.
The town of Melitopol was captured by Russians shortly after the start of the war and has since been occupied by Russian forces.
In his post, Fedorov said that Russians mined a water main that supplies the town with drinking water. He said electrical grids were also mined, leaving the town's power and water supplies vulnerable.
As usual your links are just straight misinformation and propaganda…does it ever occur to you to had least try and inform yourself with some even semi legitimate information?
…."Fedorov also said that Russian troops continue to mine the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, placing explosives in technical and machine rooms"
"There's no evidence that Russia has rigged Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya plant with explosives, nuclear watchdog says"
Whenever capitalist organisations feed upon consumers of their products, you get nirvana, plus a left-wing response:
A recent Commerce Commission market study into the grocery sector found New Zealand supermarkets were earning $1 million a day in excess profits. Appointing a Grocery Commissioner was one of the multiple recommendations made by the study's authors.
Labour's response is to do as the experts tell them: toss a bureaucrat at the problem.
The acting Prime Minister says the newly-appointed Grocery Commissioner will monitor unfair behaviour in the sector. But Carmel Sepuloni told AM on Tuesday she hadn't seen the work programme for the Commissioner, so couldn't say how quickly he could effect change.
How fast does a wizard do wizardry? As fast as the situation requires. A feasible flaw in the Labour strategy is that bureaucrats aren't necessarily wizards. How long to wait to see if the deployment works? As long as a piece of string is Labour's default stance.
"That allows us to have this particular person in place who is monitoring, shining a light, highlighting where this is anything that is unfair or unreasonable that is occurring. That information can then inform regulatory change or legislative change but also the watchdog will have a role in making sure there is the right level of competition in the grocery sector," Sepuloni said of the Commissioner.
The point is to simulate governance to create the impression in the minds of floating voters that Labour is solving the problem. Delegation via dickhead Don Quixote, tilting against the market cartel. Kicks the can down the road into the next electoral cycle.
A Grocery Commissioner is what you get when you believe that markets can serve the interests of everybody with a bit of tweaking to restore perfect competition. To think otherwise, you need to be able to see markets as cannibalistic, tending to disequilibrium and containing no in-built self-correcting mechanisms. That's a hell of a stretch for almost all of us.
Autism as a condition didn't exist until 1980, Aspergers until 1994, which means all those who were on the spectrum before those dates were labeled as suffering a multitude of other illnesses.
But this vain, over-privileged former junkie uses the evolution of diagnostic psychiatry to claim that there's been a huge outbreak of autism.
Dude’s a crank and a dangerous one at that.
.
If there is a madness, slight or otherwise, in Kennedy’s bid, it is not confined to his hubris. He is roiling with conspiracy theories: S.S.R.I.s like Prozac might be the reason for school shootings, vaccines cause autism. There are many. To prepare for the conversation, I listened to some of Kennedy’s podcast sessions with the likes of Bari Weiss, Jordan Peterson, Russell Brand, and Joe Rogan. I watched his marathon announcement speech and tuned in to all the hosannas he was getting from a peculiar amen corner that includes Steve Bannon, Jack Dorsey, and Tucker Carlson. In his 2021 book “The Real Anthony Fauci,” Kennedy accuses Fauci, who was then the nation’s top infectious-disease doctor, of helping to carry out “2020’s historic coup d’état against Western democracy.” (The book has blurbs from Carlson, Naomi Wolf, Alan Dershowitz, and Oliver Stone.)
Kennedy’s habits of mind are MAGA-adjacent, but his manner differs from that of his Republican doppelgänger. Donald Trump is a bully—rude, swaggering, out to flatten his questioner under an avalanche of lies and volume. Kennedy is not rude. Rather, he is serenely convinced of his virtue and his interlocutor’s pitiful susceptibility to conventional wisdom. The experience of interviewing him and listening to his previous interviews, I found, was like settling in for a long train ride with a seemingly amiable stranger in the next seat. You ask a straightforward question and, an hour later, as you race by Thirtieth Street Station, in Philadelphia, he is still going on about the fraud of COVID vaccines and how he was unfairly “deplatformed” for spouting conspiracy theories. By the time you’ve pulled into Wilmington, he might be talking about how drugs known as poppers helped cause the AIDS epidemic, or how “toxic chemicals” might contribute to “sexual dysphoria” in children. As you head south, he is talking about being “censored” by Instagram, the F.B.I., and the Biden White House. New technologies like 5G towers and digital currencies are totalitarian instruments that could “control our behavior.” Wi-Fi causes “leaky brain.” After a while, you begin to wonder why you bought a ticket. But it’s too late. You’re pinned into the window seat.
What Kennedy does undeniably desire is public attention, something his presidential campaign is delivering, with critical profiles in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time, the Atlantic and a particularly damning and comprehensive one by Rebecca Traister in New York magazine.
In just a couple of months, Kennedy has gone from “that anti-vaccine guy” to a staple of cable news coverage, making him The Top Kennedy for now, even if much of the publicity is bad.
It’s always been a competitive clan, so he’s got to be happy that he now occupies a larger presence in the public mind than his cousin Caroline Kennedy, an ambassador to Japan and now Australia
Rebel hotshot nowadays seems somewhat Trumpian. US media has noticed & been drawing the parallel for a while now.
The political gene, which often comes bundled with the one for narcissism, never adequately thrives until fed by some form of adulation. The current Kennedy moment will soon be swamped by the Biden machine.
banger, banger. banger. bxxger, bxxxer. The last two are very similar to bugxer.
My two bit critique makes me wonder if a key to a successful sounding swear word is a hard consonant in there somewhere…banger does not have this unless the ‘g’ is hard.
Oh dear! Mr Coughlan must have hated reporting on Labour' fall. Not.
Labour’s support has crashed to its lowest point in at least four years in the latest Talbot Mills corporate poll, tumbling five points to 31 per cent, its lowest rating in that poll since at least 2019.
National rose one point to 36 per cent, as did likely governing partner Act which is on 12 per cent.
The Greens are up one point too, on 8 per cent.
Chris Hipkins tumbling six points to 32 per cent in the Preferred Prime Minister poll.
Christopher Luxon was unable to capitalise on Hipkins’ malaise. His preferred prime minister polling was still 11 points behind Hipkins on 21 per cent, down one point on the last poll.
"For Labour's pollster to register a fall of that amount seems highly significant!"
Disingenuous comment. Talbot Mills polling company have a clientele which covers the political spectrum. My understanding is: most of them are high flying members of the business community who pay for the ability to keep their fingers on the pulse of the nation.
It is not unknown for these polls to be leaked to the media by the persons who commissioned them and not the polling company.
TM is always 'leaked' rather than officially released.
However, given that it's a consistent poll (based on the news reports – i.e. is polling the same numbers of people on the same issues) – and is 'leaked' virtually very time – it seems clear that the same organization is commissioning it, regularly.
Which organization that would be…. we can only speculate.
Preferred PM is one of the more irrelevant polls, not least because parliament elects the pm not the public, but because incumbents are always more popular than the opposition because of name recognition.
The only popular opposition leaders were Ardern and Key, and even Ardern lost most if not all, preferred Pm polls to the likes of Bill English.
The old phrase Oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them is looking truer every day for this government.
It looks out of steam, out of touch and too chaotic and the people are in a "throw the bums out" mood.
This government was elected, more than anything, to fix housing and make it affordable for all… Six years and a sole majority later it's done everything but radically address housing, which is worse than ever.
You can't run on let's do this, and not do a damn thing, even with a full majority and expect a high turn out from young and poor people.
Young people aren't stupid either, they aren't interested in Labour or national they are looking at top, green, Maori party and some at act … But many just won't vote.
The sad thing is, it probably would have been best if the greens had of sat in the crossbenches and attacked labour from the left for three years, they'd be polling as high as act.
Im hoping for the best, expecting the worst this election. I'm voting TOP and Green, I can't justify voting for do nothing NZ Labour in any capacity, every again after this sole majority.
We either get brutal free market capitalism without regulations and a punch in the face, or brutal free market capitalism without regulations and a hug. .
Luxon is a munter. Audience member complains about Maori language, Luxon does not have the balls to say something positive about Te Reo, instead he gives tacit support to racism. Not the sort of thing I would expect from a potential Prime Minister
Luxon is a blank slate and the more he hangs out at these boomer town halls the more reactionary he gets— antihobbes (@antihobbes) July 11, 2023
Deeply distressing to see aged New Zealanders so deeply concerned and angry about the use of Te Reo. My Grandfathers fought alongside Māori Battalion guys in Crete, North Africa and Italy and he would have been disgusted by the anti Māori bigotry National and Act are encouraging https://t.co/FRR3ecdoD9— allimsayingis (@hellomotorbike) July 11, 2023
After listening to Luxon I tweeted that I had learnt nothing.This is incorrect.I learnt that the old white people are terrified. They are scared of gangs, violence and Māori language & the saddest thing is they have tied these 3 things together in their heads. Please vote. https://t.co/p0boygV4aE— Kate ( ANTI anti co governance ) Davis (@kateinthebay) July 11, 2023
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Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
Workers at a major ASB contact centre in Auckland have voted to take strike action and withdraw their labour following disappointing pay negotiations with the employer and an "offer" to workers that would leave them worse off than the previous year. ...
The Labour Party is demanding Peters be stood down, saying "he's embarrassed the country" with a "totally unacceptable" attack on a prominent AUKUS critic. ...
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance, whose members were victims of a China-backed cyber attack, is discussing forming a standing committee to deal with foreign influence. ...
The PSA is concerned that the voluntary redundancies being offered to staff by Stats NZ will impact on the agency’s ability to deliver on its core functions. ...
Results ranged from surprisingly yum to soul-destroying. I love cooking. The kitchen is a hearth of culinary creation, of sensory delights, of gastronomic poetry. I also can’t afford anything nice. Why does a pack of instant noodles and some milk cost ten bucks? I love you, Aotearoa, but I miss ...
By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor Police in Solomon Islands are on high alert ahead of the election of the prime minister today. The two candidates for the top job are former foreign affairs minister Jeremiah Manele at the head of the Coalition for National Unity and Transformation, which is ...
He’s fine but it feels like I’m losing a friend and it’s making me bitter. How do I say ‘enough is enough’? Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzHey Hera,I’ve recently moved in with a girlfriend, her partner Steve, and his friend. We all live in a lovely little house. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Chartres, Senior Research Fellow, Faculty of Medicine & Health, University of Sydney shutterstockAhmet Misirligul/Shutterstock You go to the gym, eat healthy and walk as much as possible. You wash your hands and get vaccinated. You control your health. This is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacqueline Hendriks, Research Fellow and Lecturer, Curtin University Children and young people may be seeing news headlines about men murdering women or footage of people rallying to call for action. Perhaps they or their friends have even gone to the protests. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Balanzategui, Senior Lecturer in Media, RMIT University ABC “Bluey mania” shows no sign of abating. Bluey’s season finale, The Sign, was the most viewed ABC program of all time on iView. A “hidden” follow-up episode, aptly named The Surprise, created ...
Labour market figures came in softer than the Reserve Bank had forecast, but they won’t be enough to move the needle on interest rates, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Unemployment ...
The campaign will engage the community and encourage submissions on the bill to the New Zealand government by the closing submission deadline of Friday 31st of May 2024 4pm. ...
The paper raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand's political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency plays in that. ...
The Urban Habitat Collective was an attempt to built an innovative new form of apartment building in Wellington. Here’s why it failed, and why the idea could still work, writes co-founder Bronwen Newton. When we started the Urban Habitat Collective in November 2018, we thought we were starting a revolution, ...
Two decades ago this week, a controversial law that attempted to define ownership of the foreshore and seabed prompted a formidable display of outrage and kōtahitanga as 15,000 marched to parliament. Jamie Tahana looks back.‘Hīkoi, hīkoi,” they chanted by the thousands as the biggest Māori march in a generation ...
Why has New Zealand slipped from third to 12th on Quality of Death Indexes over the past decade or so? Hospice New Zealand Chief Executive Wayne Naylor has a list of reasons. “We don’t have a current national strategy – the Government hasn’t renewed our 2001 strategy, so we don’t ...
While women’s sport is exploding in Aotearoa and around the world, you still don’t hear a lot of talk about athletes and their periods, RED-S, breastfeeding and visible panty-lines. SASS (Suze and Sez Sports)Talk isn’t afraid to have that kōrero.LockerRoom founder Suzanne McFadden and Olympian broadcaster Sarah ...
On an unusually hot night in January 2019, a little boy’s lifeless body was found face up in a small town’s sewage oxidation pond. To the police, it was an open and shut case: three-year-old Lachlan Jones had run away from his home in the Southland town of Gore, climbed ...
A Labour Party Member’s Bill aims to plug a culpability gap between manslaughter and health and safety breaches The post New push for corporate killing laws appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Terence O’Brien had the rare and no doubt undesired distinction of rising to one of the most exalted positions in New Zealand diplomacy, then being unceremoniously recalled to Wellington without explanation just when his career was at its zenith. What is perhaps more surprising is that he appears to have ...
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Rongotai MP Julie Anne Genter has apologised in Parliament after National accused her of intimidating and attacking one of its ministers in the House. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Prime Minister and state and territory leaders met on Wednesday as the national cabinet to discuss a crisis gripping Australia – the horrific number of women murdered this year. The killings have shocked ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Radhika Raghav, Teaching Fellow, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Otago Netflix Indian director Sanjay Leela Bhansali is known for his big-budget Bollywood production, featuring grand sets, star casts, meticulously choreographed dance sequences and lavish costumes, jewellery and furnishings. ...
Sir Robert devoted his life to disability rights after living in institutions in his younger years, says Kaihautū Tika Hauātanga | Disability Rights Commissioner Prudence Walker. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University Violence against women is not a women’s problem to solve, it is a whole of society problem to solve; and men in particular have to take responsibility. Those were the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Allen, Senior Lecturer in Chemical and Renewable Energy Engineering, University of Newcastle Snapshot freddy/ShutterstockPlans to revive an old coal-fired power station using bioenergy are being considered in the Hunter region of New South Wales. Similar plans for the station ...
Responding to the long-awaited release of judges’ special allowances, including free air travel and hotels for spouses, generous sabbaticals, and access to limousines, Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Alex Murphy said: “In what world does your employer ...
Analysis - The United States has unveiled plans to boost the weapons trade with Australia and the UK, on the same day that Winston Peters is expected to sketch NZ's position on AUKUS. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Carson, Professor of Political Communication, Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy, La Trobe University Since Australia’s First Nations Voice to Parliament referendum in October 2023, diverse commentaries have sought to explain why it failed. But what does an analysis of media ...
Lawyers representing two iwi as well as the Māori Women’s Welfare League on Wednesday asked the Court of Appeal to overturn last week’s High Court decision on the Waitangi Tribunal’s decision to summons Children’s Minister Karen Chhour. The Tribunal is currently investigating the Government’s decision to repeal section 7AA of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Albanese government will introduce legislation to ban deepfake pornography and provide more funding for the eSafety Commission to pilot age-assurance technologies. The contribution of internet sites to gender-based violence was one major issue ...
Average ordinary time hourly earnings, as measured by the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES), increased 5.2 percent in the year to the March 2024 quarter, according to figures released by Stats NZ today. Annual wage cost inflation, as measured by the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dimitrios Salampasis, FinTech Capability Lead | Senior Lecturer, Emerging Technologies and FinTech, Swinburne University of Technology Clem Onojeghuo/Unsplash In the digital era, the job market is increasingly becoming a minefield – demanding and difficult to navigate. According to the Australian Bureau ...
As of the March 2024 quarter, we can now look back on 20 years of data related to youth not in employment, education, or training (NEET), as collected by the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS), according to figures released by Stats NZ today. "The ...
Thousands of workers attended public events in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch today to celebrate International Workers’ Day (May Day), but union representatives are urging caution and vigilance over the Government’s blatantly "anti-worker" ...
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 4.3 percent in the March 2024 quarter, compared with 4.0 percent in the previous quarter, according to figures released by Stats NZ today. ...
The PSA is warning the Government that the sensitive information of New Zealanders held by various agencies will fall into the wrong hands if the latest round of proposed cuts goes ahead. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Talitha Best, Professor of Psychology, CQUniversity Australia Victoria Rodriguez/Unsplash How do sugar rushes work? – W.H, age nine, from Canberra What a terrific question W.H! Let’s explore this, starting with some of the basics. What is sugar? ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karinna Saxby, Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne MART PRODUCTION/Pexels Increasing income support could help keep women and children safe according to new work demonstrating strong links between financial insecurity and domestic violence. ...
ANALYSIS:By Olli Hellmann, University of Waikato When New Zealanders commemorate Anzac Day today on April 25, it’s not only to honour the soldiers who lost their lives in World War I and subsequent conflicts, but also to mark a defining event for national identity. The battle of Gallipoli against ...
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Curious to see Turkey acceding to allow Sweden to join NATO, dropping previous demands, right on the eve of the NATO summit.
And also proposing that Ukraine start the membership process even while there is a hot war in process.
Anyone got any insight into what is changing within Erdogan's thinking?
This analysis seems to suggest it's more of the same – Erdogan wanting to position Turkey as a middleman in the conflict – working (and trading) with both sides.
https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/expressions/turkey-walking-tightrope-between-nato-russia-and-ukraine
Erdogan's pissed Russia's cramping his style militarily in Syria ?
Wiley old Erdogan would have used the utmost leverage to exchange his approval for being accepted into the EU (The EU has been holding back for years)
He'll be wanting Kurds extradited and the treacherous Swedes will turn them in quick as a wink.
You can bet plenty of other concessions were granted that NATO and the US will not want to be publicly known
And then down the track he'll be shafting the Americans and EU all over again
A fair summary indeed!
Filthy Erdogan, a lot have not forgotten his 2016 purge and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of teachers, public servants and political opponents.
There's clue here:
Turkey being first in the queue now, after joining it half a century back, pressures the process. Allowing Sweden to jump the queue not being a good look, I suspect a covert deal amongst the key players: unsuitable to announce that due to contingent factors.
Erdogan wants everyone to know Turkey isn't the sick man of Europe anymore. He is sending an unsubtle message of Russia's diminished power and status and Turkish aspiration as a big regional power not beholden to anyone particularly.
Poking Poots in the eye.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/8/ukraines-zelenskyy-returns-azov-commanders-released-to-turkey
In my opinion, NATO should never have let Turkey join in the first place. Erdogan seeks to be the force of reason and restraint but his poor record on human rights and Turkey's flawed democratic system hardly seem appropriate amongst Europe's western democracies.
Turkey joined NATO in 1952. At the time Turkey was definitely on the Western side of the Cold War split and it was a fairly democratic and secular society. It had also sent troops to Korea to support the UN campaign there.
Other countries can hardly have been expected to anticipate the return to the Islamist state that has been going on 70 years after the welcome it received to NATO.
Plot thickens:
Just a spat between comrades. No big deal. Okay, some Wagnerians got offed by a rocket from behind, but that's just business as usual in Russia…
"Just a spat between comrades. No big deal"….I hate to say this, but it seemed obvious that the initial "coup" that the Western media and many on this site just couldn't help themselves from frothing at the mouth about…was an internal dispute that would have little to no effect on the battlefront…
But I guess it gave both those groups of people something to focus on, rather than having to acknowledge the depth and meaning of the disastrous Ukrainian counter offensive.
On the public mood, and the sampling thereof:
The rightist is correct in the formal sense and incorrect in the informal. He would get reliable indication of the public mood on his random walk through the public. Depending on the framing he used (binary by default, tertiary if he got clever) he'd get a definite sense of the lie of the current political terrain.
See the triad there? Three tactical strategies. Curia grounds them within a coordinated system. That method combines them into an operational tetrad.
Such methodic weighting of minorities is relative (strength ratios). Incorporating creative design into a system is pentadic (it adds in a 5th element).
Speaking of which, did you notice the uncanny resemblance of Prigozhin to Gollum?
But, you'd get a very different sense of the lie of the current political terrain from 100 people randomly encountered during a walk in Epsom, compared to a walk in Manukau.
The whole point of polling, is to try to correct for these obvious biases.
Peter Dunne's point that political parties are both polling much more regularly, and not releasing their poll data – even to lower levels of the party internally – is also a useful perspective.
We have certainly seen a lot of policy points floated by Labour, only to be swiftly reversed, when (apparently) polling data indicates their unpopularity (cycling bridge over the Auckland harbour, for example).
Vance's point is that they are a snapshot in time – and should not be used as a predictive tool (despite the fact that this is just about how every journalist does use them).
All of them are saying that a poll is rarely useful in isolation – but it can indicate a trend. So it's a sequence that matters, not an individual result.
And, all of the polling for the last year – basically has the election too close to call…. So the excitement (or despair) generated on TS from a single poll result is rather pointless.
Yeah I agree with all that. Re the sample of 100 & local/regional variations in the result, that would be why stats usage converged on the standard thousand model – to reduce the effect down to a negligible amount.
Plus a nice graph here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2023_New_Zealand_general_election
Yes – I use the Wiki graph and polling results as a baseline check everytime I see a new political poll. Is there a trend? Or are we continuing to bumble along with no clear advantage in any direction?
No clarity yet. We await the next msm poll but the leaks from Labour & National of their internal results may suggest a trend in the interim. First thing to look for is any confirmation of a rise for TMP since that would be a game-changer. Second thing is damage to Labour via repetitive own-goaling.
Scorched earth. It's what Russia does.
Pricks won't be satisfied with mining the big stuff. They'll leave plenty of surprises with the intent of killing and injuring lots of Ukrainian civilians, particularly children, for decades to come.
@BruckenRuski
A Watery Thread on the economic loss to due to the destruction of Kakhovka Dam, HPP, Navigation Locks & Reservoir.
I can't begin to piece together all aspects of the devastation, but this is my attempt to identify the under-recognized assets & systems impacted.
1/x
https://twitter.com/BruckenRuski/status/1669801914303758337
Russian forces have begun to mine critical infrastructure in occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov reported via Telegram on July 9.
"The enemy endangers the residents of the occupied territories," Fedorov said.
The town of Melitopol was captured by Russians shortly after the start of the war and has since been occupied by Russian forces.
In his post, Fedorov said that Russians mined a water main that supplies the town with drinking water. He said electrical grids were also mined, leaving the town's power and water supplies vulnerable.
https://news.yahoo.com/melitopol-mayor-says-russians-mining-023640427.html
As usual your links are just straight misinformation and propaganda…does it ever occur to you to had least try and inform yourself with some even semi legitimate information?
…."Fedorov also said that Russian troops continue to mine the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, placing explosives in technical and machine rooms"
"There's no evidence that Russia has rigged Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya plant with explosives, nuclear watchdog says"
https://www.businessinsider.com/no-sign-russia-has-mined-zaporizhzhya-plant-nuclear-watchdog-says-2023-7
While the whole time Ukraine is shelling the Russian occupied and controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant…
test
test
Whenever capitalist organisations feed upon consumers of their products, you get nirvana, plus a left-wing response:
Labour's response is to do as the experts tell them: toss a bureaucrat at the problem.
How fast does a wizard do wizardry? As fast as the situation requires. A feasible flaw in the Labour strategy is that bureaucrats aren't necessarily wizards. How long to wait to see if the deployment works? As long as a piece of string is Labour's default stance.
The point is to simulate governance to create the impression in the minds of floating voters that Labour is solving the problem. Delegation via dickhead Don Quixote, tilting against the market cartel. Kicks the can down the road into the next electoral cycle.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2023/07/carmel-sepuloni-hopes-grocery-commissioner-will-make-a-difference-but-doesn-t-know-how.html
A Grocery Commissioner is what you get when you believe that markets can serve the interests of everybody with a bit of tweaking to restore perfect competition. To think otherwise, you need to be able to see markets as cannibalistic, tending to disequilibrium and containing no in-built self-correcting mechanisms. That's a hell of a stretch for almost all of us.
Left to themselves, markets often concentrate power and wealth.
What we need to see here is a big drop in business profits (supermarket profits, in this case). Not a message Labour or NAct will say out loud?
The narrative that soaring business profits indicates all is well in the world, is sometimes false.
Autism as a condition didn't exist until 1980, Aspergers until 1994, which means all those who were on the spectrum before those dates were labeled as suffering a multitude of other illnesses.
But this vain, over-privileged former junkie uses the evolution of diagnostic psychiatry to claim that there's been a huge outbreak of autism.
Dude’s a crank and a dangerous one at that.
.
If there is a madness, slight or otherwise, in Kennedy’s bid, it is not confined to his hubris. He is roiling with conspiracy theories: S.S.R.I.s like Prozac might be the reason for school shootings, vaccines cause autism. There are many. To prepare for the conversation, I listened to some of Kennedy’s podcast sessions with the likes of Bari Weiss, Jordan Peterson, Russell Brand, and Joe Rogan. I watched his marathon announcement speech and tuned in to all the hosannas he was getting from a peculiar amen corner that includes Steve Bannon, Jack Dorsey, and Tucker Carlson. In his 2021 book “The Real Anthony Fauci,” Kennedy accuses Fauci, who was then the nation’s top infectious-disease doctor, of helping to carry out “2020’s historic coup d’état against Western democracy.” (The book has blurbs from Carlson, Naomi Wolf, Alan Dershowitz, and Oliver Stone.)
Kennedy’s habits of mind are MAGA-adjacent, but his manner differs from that of his Republican doppelgänger. Donald Trump is a bully—rude, swaggering, out to flatten his questioner under an avalanche of lies and volume. Kennedy is not rude. Rather, he is serenely convinced of his virtue and his interlocutor’s pitiful susceptibility to conventional wisdom. The experience of interviewing him and listening to his previous interviews, I found, was like settling in for a long train ride with a seemingly amiable stranger in the next seat. You ask a straightforward question and, an hour later, as you race by Thirtieth Street Station, in Philadelphia, he is still going on about the fraud of COVID vaccines and how he was unfairly “deplatformed” for spouting conspiracy theories. By the time you’ve pulled into Wilmington, he might be talking about how drugs known as poppers helped cause the AIDS epidemic, or how “toxic chemicals” might contribute to “sexual dysphoria” in children. As you head south, he is talking about being “censored” by Instagram, the F.B.I., and the Biden White House. New technologies like 5G towers and digital currencies are totalitarian instruments that could “control our behavior.” Wi-Fi causes “leaky brain.” After a while, you begin to wonder why you bought a ticket. But it’s too late. You’re pinned into the window seat.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-alternative-facts-of-robert-f-kennedy-jr
We have a new Top Kennedy tho…
Rebel hotshot nowadays seems somewhat Trumpian. US media has noticed & been drawing the parallel for a while now.
Empire will strike back, and the moment will be peak Kennedy… https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/10/rfk-jr-has-already-won-00105442
Now here's a good reason to be competent in mathematics……you get to do fun stuff like this study.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/300925157/the-perfect-swear-word-has-been-discovered-thanks-to-mathematics
banger, banger. banger. bxxger, bxxxer. The last two are very similar to bugxer.
My two bit critique makes me wonder if a key to a successful sounding swear word is a hard consonant in there somewhere…banger does not have this unless the ‘g’ is hard.
Oh dear! Mr Coughlan must have hated reporting on Labour' fall. Not.
Labour’s support has crashed to its lowest point in at least four years in the latest Talbot Mills corporate poll, tumbling five points to 31 per cent, its lowest rating in that poll since at least 2019.
National rose one point to 36 per cent, as did likely governing partner Act which is on 12 per cent.
The Greens are up one point too, on 8 per cent.
Chris Hipkins tumbling six points to 32 per cent in the Preferred Prime Minister poll.
Christopher Luxon was unable to capitalise on Hipkins’ malaise. His preferred prime minister polling was still 11 points behind Hipkins on 21 per cent, down one point on the last poll.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/labour-and-chris-hipkins-crash-in-latest-poll-gap-with-national-widest-since-2017/R6MWQK2TQBGK5FY3ZKOEYGVYPU/
For Labour's pollster to register a fall of that amount seems highly significant! Also we have this news:
A lift for TPM but not confirming the RM result. Sceptics will abide awhile.
"For Labour's pollster to register a fall of that amount seems highly significant!"
Disingenuous comment. Talbot Mills polling company have a clientele which covers the political spectrum. My understanding is: most of them are high flying members of the business community who pay for the ability to keep their fingers on the pulse of the nation.
It is not unknown for these polls to be leaked to the media by the persons who commissioned them and not the polling company.
TM is always 'leaked' rather than officially released.
However, given that it's a consistent poll (based on the news reports – i.e. is polling the same numbers of people on the same issues) – and is 'leaked' virtually very time – it seems clear that the same organization is commissioning it, regularly.
Which organization that would be…. we can only speculate.
Which-ever is no problem if they are leaking them regularly. In a way – as I'm sure you will agree – they are performing a civic duty.
Preferred PM is one of the more irrelevant polls, not least because parliament elects the pm not the public, but because incumbents are always more popular than the opposition because of name recognition.
The only popular opposition leaders were Ardern and Key, and even Ardern lost most if not all, preferred Pm polls to the likes of Bill English.
The old phrase Oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them is looking truer every day for this government.
It looks out of steam, out of touch and too chaotic and the people are in a "throw the bums out" mood.
This government was elected, more than anything, to fix housing and make it affordable for all… Six years and a sole majority later it's done everything but radically address housing, which is worse than ever.
You can't run on let's do this, and not do a damn thing, even with a full majority and expect a high turn out from young and poor people.
Young people aren't stupid either, they aren't interested in Labour or national they are looking at top, green, Maori party and some at act … But many just won't vote.
The sad thing is, it probably would have been best if the greens had of sat in the crossbenches and attacked labour from the left for three years, they'd be polling as high as act.
Im hoping for the best, expecting the worst this election. I'm voting TOP and Green, I can't justify voting for do nothing NZ Labour in any capacity, every again after this sole majority.
We either get brutal free market capitalism without regulations and a punch in the face, or brutal free market capitalism without regulations and a hug. .
Luxon is a munter. Audience member complains about Maori language, Luxon does not have the balls to say something positive about Te Reo, instead he gives tacit support to racism. Not the sort of thing I would expect from a potential Prime Minister
https://twitter.com/StrayDogNZ/status/1678619038434598912?s=20
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