Open mike 11/10/2024

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, October 11th, 2024 - 28 comments
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28 comments on “Open mike 11/10/2024 ”

  1. Jenny 1

    The wreck of the Monowai

    The elephant in the front room

    It's grey and it's big and it can't be missed or ignored.

    Thank God it is out of sight now!

    This may have been the thinking behind trying to get the ship off the reef rather than leaving it stranded there, as a major, highly visible embarrassment, that couldn't be ignored, no matter how hard you tried, right in front of a globally important international conference, attended by high profile dignatories, like Prince Charles, and global media.

    Where did the order come from to try and get the ship off the reef?

    Was it the captain's decision?

    Or was she ordered to by higher ups?

    When did the water start coming in?

    Before of after the ship was on the reef?

    Did the first attempt at the "arse covering", begin when the ship sank beneath the waves, instead of being left on the reef, for later recovery and refloating?

    From Tim Selwyn at the Daily Blog:

    https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2024/10/08/hmnzs-manawanui-new-zealands-reputation-sunk-with-her/#comment-885044

    (Well worth a read)

    …I checked both weather and tides after hearing the news on Sunday and discussed this with an ex-military contact on Twitter. He couldn’t understand why they did not wait for high tide which would have been at approximately 8:30pm before attempting to get off the reef.

    • Matiri 1.1

      Monowai? That was the previous survey ship decommissioned in the 1990's.

    • Macro 1.2

      I think you are repeating a lot of misinformation there Jenny. Be aware that a lot of what is being put out by people on this matter, who think they know better, is based on supposition rather than fact.

      By the way I was deeply involved in the training of all personal prior to the commissioning of HMNZS Monowai in the early 1980s. A revolutionary ship for her time and again a second hand vessel converted to a hydrographic survey ship on the Clyde. The last ship through their dockyards. The resulting fires during the conversion resulting in the completion date moving to the right by about a year. Thereby extending the workers pay for a year, before they were laid off. 😸

    • David 1.3

      Jenny you are being ridiculous. All ships have a captain on board. With naval vessels the Captain out ranks God. The naval officers know what to do, unlike armchair admirals such as yourself. Anyone who has ever been to sea knows the sea is a cruel mistress. By all means play with your boats in your bathtub. Please leave this to the experts.

    • KJT 1.4

      Selwyn's article is a mish mash of ill informed conjecture, as is your comment above, like most of the commentary on the Manawanui so far.

      "My experience as a mariner was primarily rowing a 12 foot fryan dinghy solo around Shoal Bay in the inner Waitemata harbour as a teenager". FFS.

      • Belladonna 1.4.1

        Based on that criteria, I too am an expert mariner /sarc/
        I've also rowed a dinghy (with passengers!) around Little Shoal Bay, as a teenager.

  2. adam 2

    12pm today if you are in Whangārei – come to the civic center on Rust Ave for a PROTEST RALLY!

    Disabled organised and Disabled led, to protest against the stupid economic policy of austerity.The impact it is already having on the lives of disabled people, the suffering, pain, and death. Come and stand in solidarity against the ideological fools who are wreaking our society by punching down.

    • Jenny 2.1

      Ingognito, has supplied us this link from Wikipedia:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

      "Argumentum ad populum"

      'Appeal to the people'

      Appeals to public opinion are valid in situations where consensus is the determining factor for the validity of a statement, such as linguistic usage and definitions of words.

      Adam, if your 'PROTEST RALLY' in Whangarei against austerity by the disabled, is ignored by the authorities, (As I expect it will be).

      You and your supporters need to make your appeal to the people.

      Turn up to the CTU rally on October 23 and aske the meeting of trade unionists to put a motion to oppose government cuts to disability assistance.

      Effect of Govt cuts on disabled people ‘cruel’ – report

      https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/05/29/effect-of-govt-cuts-on-disabled-people-cruel-report/

      The disability community was shocked when Whaikaha announced sudden changes to flexible support funding. But those rollbacks are just the tip of the iceberg.

      Avatar photoby Laura Walters 29/05/2024

  3. ianmac 3

    "Power companies’ spending on new renewables fell off a cliff," by David Williams.

    Anger making. David goes through the disastrous sell off of the Gentailers. Their plan is to keep prices up by limiting electricity supply and thereby increasing dividends to shareholders. Why build new producers of power when they can make huge profits without spending on capital works?

    Charts, graphs, data. Well done David, and my curses on the Key years.

    Edward Miller, a researcher at the Centre for International Corporate Tax and Accountability Research, says the figures show companies’ dividends skyrocketed while the rate of capital investment into new generation collapsed.

    “It is the same pot of money. The same dollars paid to invest in more renewable capacity are being paid as shareholder dividends to make investors happy. These are intentional choices made by the management of these companies.”

    https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/10/07/power-companies-spending-on-new-renewables-fell-off-a-cliff/?utm_source=Newsroom&utm_campaign=c7ca1398d6-Daily_Briefing+11.10.2024&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_71de5c4b35-c7ca1398d6-95522477&mc_cid=c7ca1398d6&mc_eid=88a3081e75

    • weka 3.1

      curses on Max Bradford and his colleagues too.

      • gsays 3.1.1

        TBF, while we are tossing curses about, every government since the Bradford reform.

        In particular the one that thinks a state funded subsidy for dividends winter energy payment is the answer.

    • Descendant Of Smith 3.2

      We warned this would happen. Borrowing to pay shareholder dividends.

      This had previously been seen in the practices of privatised water companies in the UK in particular.

      Labour oops sorry the Greens (cause Labour are neo-liberal), needs to remove from legislation that the primary responsibility is to shareholders and put it back to customers.

      Better still nationalise the whole lot of them like France has done.

      • ianmac 3.2.1

        If we, the power paying public, realised that our high power prices were the result of Key/National antics, would we protest strongly? How do we tell ourselves?

        Maybe there are too many moving targets.

        • gsays 3.2.1.1

          My reckons say it's an easy sell for Labour, explain why the electrity 'market' doesn't work for consumers, why they will nationalise it and how the citizenry will benefit.

    • SPC 3.3

      McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing because their shareholder first policy ruined their reputation. Unfortunately their intent was to continue on their course and now Boeing's reputation is at risk.

      This change, as per the power companies, came with the share sale by government.

    • Bruce 3.4

      Its not just the shareholders, its the 20+ high paid CEOs and execs, marketing departments and advertises all bludgeing off our need for power. I'm sure it would be cheaper to just reassign them to the dole.

  4. Subliminal 4

    From the NYT

    Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die. Thirteen in total.

    At the time, I assumed this had to be the work of a particularly sadistic soldier located nearby. But after returning home, I met an emergency medicine physician who had worked in a different hospital in Gaza two months before me. “I couldn’t believe the number of kids I saw shot in the head,” I told him. To my surprise, he responded: “Yeah, me, too. Every single day.”

    https://archive.is/O9p7F

    • aj 4.1

      Michael Bradley is a managing partner at Sydney firm Marque Lawyers and writes for Crikey.

      He's written a perceptive article about resolution pathways for this terrible situation, and shares my despair that this won't happen until they 'find a way to remember what they have in common: humanity'. And I have almost no hope this will happen.

      One of the things you can’t help but notice when you’re in Israel is the near-universal belief among Jewish Israelis that they are living on the edge of the next war, and that it will be a war, like the others were, for the survival of their country and people. Their history dictates that that is not an irrational belief.

      I can’t imagine what life is like for the Palestinian people, but I can understand why they consider themselves occupied by a hostile state and despair of any non-violent route to something better. Israel’s defence minister has placed Gaza’s 2.3 million people under siege — “no electricity, no food, no fuel … We are fighting human animals,” he declared. That is not self-defence.

      Neither side accepts the validity of the other’s position. As a result, they have no platform for mutual acceptance of what the law offers: an arbitrated resolution to the geopolitical conflict. Each believes fundamentally that it cannot survive alongside the other; therefore its solution necessitates the other’s suppression (or, for both sides’ extremists, eradication).

      For law to work, the rule of law has to be respected by the vast majority. The plurality in Israel and Palestine do not respect the rule of law in the international or regional sense (as opposed to locally within their own borders). So the law can’t do anything.

      In the law’s absence, only two pathways remain for resolution of the ongoing conflict — the parties continue their trial by combat, the brutally simplistic mediaeval mechanism for determining the winner of a legal dispute, or they find a way to remember what they have in common: humanity.

      The first offers no solution; the cycle of violent hatred continues and nobody wins. The second was thought impossible in Northern Ireland, until it wasn’t. It seems impossible in Israel/Palestine. Maybe it is.

      https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/10/10/laws-absence-resolution-pathways-israel-palestine/

  5. ianmac 5

    Perhaps the excuse is that those kids were actually Hamas soldiers in disguise. Sickening!

  6. SPC 6

    The Kiwi citizen exodus out of here continues apace.

    And migrant inflow numbers continue to fall.

    However, economists have noted that the dramatic decline in recent months could put the nation on track for zero net migration next year, if the trend continues.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/immigration-a-record-81200-kiwis-departed-in-year-to-august-as-fewer-migrants-arrived/E4L2PIZNYZAZDDDGVLD7OYY6VY/

  7. SPC 7

    The ability to digitally connect to the regions (establish a network that could interface with the hospital/health centre – this includes information systems and finance) was one of the main 21st C developments.

    As was professional to patient online interface – teleservices.

    Dis-established, two positions (means merger into another management oversight, not hired for their competence in either area).

    Leigh Donoghue held the role of Chief of Data and Digital while Andrew Slater was Health NZ’s Chief People Officer and had been with the organisation since April last year – joining from Telehealth Services.

    The Data and Digital role was described by Health NZ as “critically important” in changing systems to implement the health reforms, “in particular a greater use of digital services to provide more care in homes and communities.”

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/350448891/margie-apa-swings-axe-top-health-nz-two-executive-roles-gone

    • Psych Nurse 7.1

      One of the best plans of Te Whatu Ora was a unification of computer systems. At present not one of the former DHB,s computer systems can interact with any other DHB. Nor can one service within a DHB connect with another service within the same DHB. For instance if a consumer within Otago is admitted elsewhere and that DHB wants access to clinical notes you have to download, print, scan, email or fax the information. Third world stuff.

  8. Joe90 8

    Israel tweeted lots of videos of its own strikes on Gaza. @airwars looked at what they bombed and who they actually killed.


    https://idf-tweets-gaza.airwars.org/

    https://airwars.org/

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