Open mike 11/12/2022

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, December 11th, 2022 - 58 comments
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58 comments on “Open mike 11/12/2022 ”

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    • Francesca 1.1
      11 December 2022 at 3:41 pm

      Time this was finished with. Assange's life and that of his wife and children have been damaged enough .And yet not a peep from any politician here, bar Chris Leitch.

      Our leaders dutifully denounce adversaries of the US for human rights breaches and assaults on the press, but not a squeak about Assange.

      Pathetic!

      • aj 1.1.1
        11 December 2022 at 5:04 pm

        Time this was finished with. Assange's life and that of his wife and children have been damaged enough .And yet not a peep from any politician here, bar Chris Leitch.

        Albonese's lack of action regarding Assange points to exactly how subservient Australia is.

        The Munk Debates are a semi-annual series of debates on major policy issues held in Toronto.

        On Nov 30th Douglas Murray and Matt Taibbi argued that the MSN cannot be trusted, New Yorker contributor Malcolm Gladwell and columnist Michelle Goldberg of the New York defended the MSN. Murray and Taibbi won with the largest swing in the event’s history, moving from a 48%-52% voter deficit to a 67%-33% win. This debate is worth watching because Gladwell and Goldberg couldn't put up a defense worth a penny, but is long, takes 90 mins.

        It's relevant because of the media treatment of Assange case, and the revelation late last month that five of the world’s leading news outlets have sent an open letter to US President Joe Biden asking him to drop the charges against Australian Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, after effectively hanging him out to dry once the USA starting chasing him down.

        Two days ago Aaron Mate and Katie Halper had a great interview with Matt Kennard of Declassified UK, Kennard nails the complete corruption of the UK judiciary (and the media in my view) in this matter.

        “It’s a complete stitch up,” Matt Kennard, author and co-founder of Declassified UK, tells Useful Idiots about Julian Assange’s extradition case. “None of the rules of the game apply.” Assange, who has been jailed and tortured for nearly a decade for releasing documents which shed light on the crimes of the US government, now faces an extradition trial teeming with corruption. But after a crucial witness admitted to lying, the US government was caught plotting an assassination, and UK judges were revealed to have major conflicts of interest, the case is somehow still continuing on. “It doesn’t seem like anything can come out that will stop it.” Kennard says. “That for me is the scariest thing. If certain powerful forces within the deep structure of our country want to get you, they can, and none of the principles we’re taught at school apply. They will get you and you will be ruined and the message will be sent that you can’t play at this level again.”

  2. Peter 2
    11 December 2022 at 9:36 am

    I presume as well as cardiologists and paediatricians there are mental health staff involved or keeping a close eye on proceedings in Auckland:

    "Liz Gunn and the 'purebloods'."

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/130704550/liz-gunn-and-the-purebloods-how-the-baby-blood-donor-story-unfolded

    • weka 2.1
      11 December 2022 at 9:43 am

      mental health services are wholly unprepared for dealing with this phenomenon. Much like the rest of society.

    • Anne 2.2
      11 December 2022 at 11:00 am

      “A review of many hours of footage – much of which was generated by Gunn herself – shows how a private dispute became a public circus in online conspiracy groups, and ended with two parents, claiming to be prisoners in a children’s hospital, having their child taken from them in the night.”

      Liz Gunn is a deranged and deluded woman who is using her training and knowledge as a journalist to create false memes about her ‘targets’ – in this case the baby’s surgeons and the prime minster. She is telling bald faced lies and when things don’t go her way she falls into emotional victim mode and starts projecting her behaviour on to the targets.

      30 plus years ago, I was the victim of a similar individual but in my case she approached influential people in government and elsewhere whom she had met – or knew of – through a sibling (long deceased) who was a high level legal beagle with fingers in lots of pies.

      As someone who suffered fallout from my experience, I can claim that not enough attention is given to these types. They are narcissistic with sociopathic tendencies and are not beyond committing covert criminal activity.

      • RosieLee 2.2.1
        11 December 2022 at 12:55 pm

        Then, surely, the best thing to do is stop feeding their egos. No more attention, interviews and microphones in their faces, no more tabloid type fuss in the papers. Blank them.

        • Anne 2.2.1.1
          11 December 2022 at 4:26 pm

          I'm not meaning that sort of attention. I agree whole heartedly with your sentiments.

          I'm referring to those in authority charged with keeping the peace. Some of these types also have a tendency to commit unlawful acts but are very clever at covering their tracks. At present they almost always get away with it which is not helpful to those who have been victimised by them.

      • Mike the Lefty 2.2.2
        11 December 2022 at 1:43 pm

        Underneath the (very) thin veneer of professionalism, Liz Gunn is basically a nutter. That's all that really needs to be said about her.

    • mauī 2.3
      11 December 2022 at 1:29 pm

      Maybe it will be the psychologists that will finally get it through to them that wanting blood for a baby with a heart condition that is free from a drug with the ability to cause myocarditis/pericarditis is completely nuts?

      • Incognito 2.3.1
        11 December 2022 at 1:58 pm

        [Consider this your Mod note]

        I’ve just about had with you and your mis- and dis-information on this forum. You are entirely free to believe that fairies have landed on the moon. You are free to state your belief here as your belief. You are not allowed here to state it as a fact, which is what you have done again about blood from NZ donors obtained through NZBS.

        [46] Dr Morley’s evidence (including her reply affidavit) is that there is no scientific evidence there is any COVID-19 vaccine related risk from blood donated by donors previously vaccinated with any New Zealand approved COVID-19 vaccine, and there are no known or suspected harmful vaccine related effects of blood from a vaccinated individual to a recipient of any age, after millions of transfusions around the world. There is no evidence that trace amounts of vaccine in blood or blood products could cause myocarditis. If there is any spike protein at all in blood, it will be in the picogram range (one trillionth of a gram).

        https://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/assets/cases/2022/2022-NZHC-3283.pdf

        Points 45 and 47-50 are also highly pertinent.

        I note that spike protein is not included in the Covid-19 vaccine.

        I also note that the mechanism for myocarditis caused by Covid-19 and other non-mRNA vaccines, including vaccines against other diseases, is unclear.

        • mauī 2.3.1.1
          12 December 2022 at 10:18 pm

          How is what I've said misinformation? NZ's own COVID-19 Vaccine Independent Safety Monitoring Board has stated that the vaccine has the ability to cause myocarditis:

          • With the current available information, the Board has considered that the myocarditis was probably due to vaccination in this individual.

          https://covid19.govt.nz/news-and-data/latest-news/statement-from-the-covid-19-vaccine-independent-safety-monitoring-board/

          You also say there is no spike protein included in the vaccine, yet the judge in his decision states:

          • [48]… "However, it appears to be common ground and I do accept that mRNA vaccine-derived spikes could be detected in blood up until at least two weeks post-inoculation."

          [You claimed that blood [from NZBS] contains “a drug with the ability to cause myocarditis/pericarditis”. There is no evidence to back up this claim and thus you are spreading mis-information, at best. You should also re-read paragraph 46 of the Judgement, which I quoted verbatim in my previous comment. This is your final warning – Incognito]

    • Belladonna 2.4
      11 December 2022 at 1:33 pm

      I'm assuming that this isn't serious – because I'd hope that you know the crisis that the mental health professionals are dealing with right now.

      Mental health staff are utterly inundated with serious cases (people at imminent risk of harm to themselves and others) – and have neither time nor attention to spare for anything like this.

      People at moderate risk of harm are unable to get appointments in any reasonable timeframe.

      Nor would it be ethically appropriate for them to intervene without being requested to do so (self-referral, or referral after being sectioned).

  3. Ad 3
    11 December 2022 at 9:51 am

    Did anyone notice Auckland's climate change moment last night?

    We had three concerts going simultaneously that together invited 300,000 people to travel inward in the space of two hours.

    In those same two hours tropical downpours were so heavy that the Onehunga and Geeenlane rail lines were temporarily shut down, and rain volumes were such that traffic were down to 20kms coming in from both north and south.

    That is, at precisely the moment we needed all transport systems to work at highest efficiency, none of them worked, and it was because of heavy tropical systems hitting hard.

    There's really no work-around either. Quite a climate moment if one can see it.

    • Anne 3.1
      11 December 2022 at 11:08 am

      "Did anyone notice Auckland's climate change moment last night?"

      You bet. I was on my way home from an afternoon Xmas function and copped the load. Traffic was extremely heavy and we were reduced to a crawl for the entire journey. This is becoming the norm and is going to happen with rapidly increasing frequency. Yet there still does not seem to be any real comprehension of the enormous effect it is going to have on all our lives.

    • Sabine 3.2
      11 December 2022 at 11:08 am

      You get the services that you pay for and that you plan for. We neither plan for public transport, nor do we want to pay for it.

      And i am sure that the three mega events will have been mega super duper covid spreaders.

    • AB 3.3
      11 December 2022 at 11:21 am

      Add half a metre to a metre of sea-level rise and a full tide – then it's real fun. I worry about the centre-left urbanists who still want, in 2022, to do the work that should have been done and dusted in 1945-1970 – i.e. making Auckland a high-density, high PT-use, rail-based, non-car-dependent city. Long-term planning now should be about how on earth we abandon parts of the place, move it, break it up into smaller, more autonomous parts, etc.

      • Sabine 3.3.1
        11 December 2022 at 11:47 am

        And not only Auckland. Have a look at Papamoa and Tauranga. Wellington. Whakatane, Gisborne, and so on and so forth.

  4. Stephen D 4
    11 December 2022 at 10:29 am

    A centre right mate of mine asked me why not institute a wage/price freeze for a year, to stabilise inflation.

    So, why not?

    • weka 4.1
      11 December 2022 at 10:39 am

      because it disproportionately harms low income people and those living in poverty and thus compounds the problems with that. Even if you don't care about those people, there are still flow on effects in society eg increases in the costs of health care, mental health, WINZ, justice system and so on.

      • Sabine 4.1.1
        11 December 2022 at 11:16 am

        The issue that is still not addressed in all of that is the fact that you can not increases wages enough to ever catch up with price increases that may or may not be based on costs.

        You can have everyone on a wage of 2000 a week, but if your rent is 1750 you still don't make it.

        So essentially you will need to start with some freezes somewhere. People aren't spending in order to 'reduce' spending, they aren't spending as all their costs have increased to such an extend that no one has any dollars left to spend. It matters not what the RB or GR say in regards to inflation.

        Unless there is a concentrated effort to regulate basic living costs, regulate prices of shelter, food, electricity/internet and public transport nothing is going to change.

        We will always only play catch up and we be playing a really shitty and bad game to boot.

        • weka 4.1.1.1
          11 December 2022 at 11:29 am

          I don't understand why this isn't obvious to everyone. Honestly.

          • weka 4.1.1.1.1
            11 December 2022 at 11:30 am

            I mean, I guess it's harder to see if you own property and don't housing costs affected.

            • Sabine 4.1.1.1.1.1
              11 December 2022 at 11:46 am

              Most people don't own property, they own mortgages. They still have to pay weekly payments in order to keep that 'property'.

              I am one of these people, having bought a very small very cheap very rundown, very cold and very old property a few years ago when it came available. I don't own that property. The bank does. I own the costs of running the property, the cold, the rundown, the need to be fixed before winter bits, but that is all i own. And if i default on a payment I am as homeless as the person who can not afford to pay rent.

              The only difference is that the bank does not come knocking for a property inspections every other week.

          • Sabine 4.1.1.1.2
            11 December 2022 at 11:49 am

            It is not lucrative enough to be understood by the ones that would matter. Thus we get token increases in wages while everything else becomes unaffordable.

            And with every increase in cost a job is shelved somewhere else. a business closes down, but i guess that business just was no viable so it won't matter, a service cut here and there and suddenly, the world ain't that bright anymore.

            How many jobs need to be lost in order to get 'inflation' in order? And whose jobs would that be?

    • KJT 4.2
      11 December 2022 at 10:40 am

      Because inflation currently is not driven by local prices, or wage rises that haven't even happened yet.

      • Herodotus 4.2.1
        11 December 2022 at 12:03 pm

        Over the majority of this century inflation was Imported ie tradable eg cheaper tvs , international travel etc yet many were counting this as success !! Well the short comings are now apparent, well done to all those governments of which labour has dominated. But most here cannot or will not accept this – muppets 😱 if you cannot take ownership how can you find solutions ???
        And now what ? a designed recession as the solution !!!

        https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/hub/publications/speech/2022/speech2022-02-25

        • KJT 4.2.1.1
          11 December 2022 at 12:41 pm

          Whatever the last two Labour Governments have done, it would now be ten times worse if National had remained in.

          No plan, apart from increasing immigration, underfunding infrastructure and borrowing for tax cuts for the rich, and selling off everything that isn't nailed down.

          Unfortunately Labour have backed down, and, like National, expect ordinary people to take the inflation hit, rather than profit gouging corporates.

          http://werewolf.co.nz/2022/11/gordon-campbell-on-the-gaslighting-about-inflation/

          • Peter 4.2.1.1.1
            11 December 2022 at 12:45 pm

            Mind you National wouldn't have turned motels into housing estates in places like Rotorua. Umm… just a minute, let me think about that.

            • KJT 4.2.1.1.1.1
              11 December 2022 at 12:54 pm

              Maybe not.

              National preferred to support the second hand car trade, by tossing families on the street.

              • Herodotus …
                11 December 2022 at 7:25 pm

                Are you even noticing what is happening out there ?? People still live in cars – Even if the PM refutes it – It is still happening – Why are SO many Labour supporters unable to see how ineffective this govt is ?? Perhaps because as lawyers and other professionals they are not or ever have been exposed to the real world, They have spend all their lives in their upper middle class privileged lives. Go back and find some other reason to blindly argue that Labour is good – Because they are are a sham.

                https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/08/01/hundreds-living-in-cars-as-winter-chill-bites/

                • KJT …
                  11 December 2022 at 10:44 pm

                  I am very much in the working class real world, though admittedly, a well remunerated tradesman, I spend my time with workers and people who have been disadvantaged by years of callous indifference to their circumstances. I've seen first hand Labour/Greens starting to turn around some of the shit.

                  You underestimate the magnitude of the task. Reversing decades of destruction which started before many of the current Labour/Green MP's were even born. And the effectiveness of the opposition, from those who benefit from them, to reversing the "trickle up" policies that date back to the 80's.

            • Sabine 4.2.1.1.1.2
              11 December 2022 at 1:00 pm

              National would have done exactly the same, and the left would have complained about it, and rightly so.

              That is the only difference between the left and the right. The left will not complain about that shit when the housing of the homeless in rundown motels and other hovels is policy by Labour.

              And thus, here we are, people stacked like wood in rundown motels and other hovels without tenancy rights, without cooking facilities, without basic safety, and gang rule. And when the right does it in the near future – as the will to build housing for the poor is a bipartisan failure of epic proportions – the left will squeek up again, to no avail. After all if it is good for Labour it will be perfectly fine for National.

          • Sabine 4.2.1.1.2
            11 December 2022 at 12:55 pm

            Worse then what?

            Not having a house to live in? Not having food to eat? Not having affordable shoes and clothing available? Not being able to see a doctor – any doctor? Kids dying of tonsilitis in a hospital emergency room due to lack of emergency care?

            Define worse. Seriously, why is it so hard to admit that both Labour and National have been very good for some, and an absolute failure for many? With the many being the poor, the almost poor, the soon to be poor?

            • KJT 4.2.1.1.2.1
              11 December 2022 at 1:05 pm

              So much of what is happening now is due to right Wing failures, dating right back to the 1980's, and yes it was the Lange Government, Labour, that started it.

              At least the current Government are reversing many of those policy failures, even if way too slowly.

              However in fairness, the capacity to fix a lot of this stuff has been decimated to the extent that it will take decades, without a National/ACT Government fucking it up yet again, to sort it out.

              • weka …
                11 December 2022 at 4:32 pm

                My mum was social worker in the 90s. She said it was going to generations to sort out the damage being done. Here we are. Fucking grim.

              • Sabine …
                11 December 2022 at 5:08 pm

                No one denies that National is and has and will fuck up. Labours insistence in getting right however is not to be underestimated.

                In all these years of living in NZ i have seen rental prices only ever go up and until 5 years ago i was a renter. And fwiw, i can understand everyone that wants to buy a house, the bank is the best and the fairest landlord in the country.

                Maybe the government should act a bit more like a bank towards its citizens and keep the interest rates in check lest some more people end up on the homeless housed in a rundown motels somewhere train to nowhere.

    • Cricklewood 4.3
      11 December 2022 at 10:48 am

      Don't think you could call anyone advocating a wage/price freeze centre right

    • Sabine 4.4
      11 December 2022 at 11:12 am

      I would agree with a 'price' freeze on the following

      rents – private, council, state

      food – all supermarkets to not increase prices on basic items – remove GST

      basics – no increases for gasoline, electricity, internet,

      interest – a freeze on current interest rates, mandated by government, if the banks scream woe betide us, point to their profits

      public transport – free of charge – use some of that untaxed wealth and start taxing it to fund public transport, after all i hear that climate change is gonna have us all walking.

      Nothing however will happen, as profit must be made and some will pay in blood for these profits.

      The poor will be as always poor, the ones currently suffering are the middle of the middle class that is a pothole away from poverty.

    • UncookedSelachimorpha 4.5
      11 December 2022 at 1:20 pm

      A freeze or limit on company profits could also work, and would impact far fewer people, and those people much more likely to be able to manage compared to many people working for wages

      • Scott 4.5.1
        11 December 2022 at 8:36 pm

        Uncooked we don't want to freeze company profits.

        The more profit companies make the more tax they pay and the bigger companies grow the more people they employ.

        • KJT 4.5.1.1
          11 December 2022 at 10:48 pm

          Even the most ardent Capitalist will find it hard to defend companies that borrow against assets and future earnings, to pay dividends way in excess of current earnings, while neglecting investment in plant and employees.

        • UncookedSelachimorpha 4.5.1.2
          12 December 2022 at 12:51 am

          Seems that exactly the same arguments apply against a wage freeze.

          The more people get paid, the more tax they pay

          The more people have to spend, the more the economy will employ.

          Difference is that business owners (and share holders) are often better off than many wage earners.

      • Graeme 4.5.2
        11 December 2022 at 9:40 pm

        A progressive scale for company tax so that more is put back into the company, rather than paid in dividends or used to buy back the companies stock would be a good start. Was a feature of many jurisdictions' tax policy through 50's – 70's but went out the window in the neolib revolution.

  5. Jenny are we there yetaa 5
    11 December 2022 at 11:15 am

    BAU is over. Infrastructure will continue to be struck by extreme weather events until it becomes unsustainable to repair or maintain.
    Case in point the lunatics who want to excavate a tunnel under the Waitemata.
    Within the lifetime of people being born today the portals of this proposed tunnel will be swamped by a storm surge, and flooded beyond recovery.

  6. Adrian 6
    11 December 2022 at 4:18 pm

    Well bugger me, a heavy downpour in Auckland , it feels like just like 1952 all over again, or 32 or 22 or 1852 etc etc. It has rained like that in Suckland for 1000s of years it is a sub-tropical city ffs.

    • Tony Veitch 6.1
      11 December 2022 at 4:34 pm

      You've gotta love a climate change denier!

      • Mac1 6.1.1
        11 December 2022 at 6:37 pm

        Tony, you have to understand a view from a South Islander where the annual rainfall is traditionally about 700mm annually who also has a well developed sense of irony.

        For us, Auckland has always been associated with humid rainfall.

        We live in a grape-growing area. We know, because we are friends of local scientists, that the globe is indeed warming.The data from fifty years of grape research tells us that, incontrovertibly.

        I didn't need a scientist to tell me, a poor English grad. My asparagus bed produced spears in August. My potatoes planted in August were harvested in November.

        So, Adrian needs to be read as someone who is an erudite, very clever, singular entity who knows about wine, film-making and exaggeration.

        He is a friend, a plain speaker, and an engaging personality. I bet he and our Southland personality in Riverton would have much in common.

  7. Visubversa 7
    11 December 2022 at 5:17 pm

    Not denying anything, but these 3 events actually went ahead. People got to where they needed to be. Guns and Roses at Eden Park caused pensioners to remove their hearing aids from Avondale to Epsom, and from Newton to Mangere, someone I had never heard of made the appropriate amount of noise at Western Springs, and the usual fireworks from the Xmas in the Park at the Domain were heard as usual as far west as Kingsland.

    The transport systems coped. Maybe not as well as some people would have liked, but they coped.

  8. joe90 8
    11 December 2022 at 7:18 pm

    Despicable.

    A top MEP has been suspended from her party after police launched an investigation into alleged illicit lobbying activities by Qatar, in what threatens to blow up into a major crisis at the heart of the European Union.

    Belgian police searched 16 homes and detained at least four people in and around Brussels on Friday as part of an inquiry into what prosecutors called “criminal organization, corruption and money laundering,” as first reported by Belgian media and confirmed to POLITICO by Belgian federal police.

    European Parliament vice-president Eva Kaili, from the Greek socialist party Pasok, was said to be among those detained. She was suspended from the Socialists and Democrats group in the parliament “with immediate effect, in response to the ongoing investigations,” the EU-level group tweeted late Friday. Kaili was also expelled from the center-left Pasok party in Greece.

    […]

    Kaili, one of the parliament’s 14 vice-presidents, recently called Qatar a “frontrunner in labor rights” after meeting with the country’s labor minister, despite deep international concerns about conditions for stadium construction workers. She did not immediately reply to requests for comment Friday evening. POLITICO repeatedly tried to reach Kaili on her mobile phone but it was switched off.

    https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-police-raid-gulf-lobbying-eu-parliament/

  10. joe90 10
    11 December 2022 at 8:01 pm

    Happy 207th to Ada.

    https://twitter.com/SandiaLabs/status/1601593168059072518

    Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and to have published the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she is often regarded as the first computer programmer

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