Open mike 11/05/2010

43 comments on “Open mike 11/05/2010 ”

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1. Gosman 1

   11 May 2010 at 6:31 am

   Where is the link to Kiwiblog in the links to other Blogs section?

   Edit : Just found it under David Farrar
2. lprent 2

   11 May 2010 at 7:28 am

   The only site we actively don’t have in the roll is whales. That is because none of the moderators can stand him. KB got stuck in as David Farrar when the site got started.

   Apart from that we put sites in if we read them, or if people ask.

   I scan the roll about every 3 months and move any inactive ones to private
3. Ron 3

   11 May 2010 at 7:40 am

   I think the the fact that he’s a dick is reason enough to keep whale off the list.
   • lprent 3.1

     11 May 2010 at 8:04 am

     He is a bit more than a dick.

     He has also speculated without any real evidence on the identities of the pseudonymous authors here. Essentially he gets some shreds of circumstantial evidence and then constructs a vast illogical theory on top of it. In that process he has named people who don’t write here – to my certain knowledge.

     His other “campaigns” have been marked with a similar lack of attention to evidence, and far more effort given into just making shit up – which he claims as “facts”.

     Basically Whale is, in my opinion, a simple attention seeking sociopath who is prepared to lie his arse off to get the rush effect of more attention. Generally it is a bad idea to feed such arseholes with attention…. Of course they will keep seeking the rush but eventually, as Whale is finding out, they will run into the legal system.
4. mach1 4

   11 May 2010 at 8:18 am

   But…but….Cam knows stuff…heck…he has his spies..

   The Whale’s con­fi­den­tial under­world sources tell me that Chris­tine Nixon called in a favour…..
5. BLiP 5

   11 May 2010 at 8:39 am

   Public servants – BEWARE – the political affiliations of your family and friends will now have an impact on your career.
   • Tigger 5.1

     11 May 2010 at 8:49 am

     Yes, was thinking of writing something on that…unless someone else is planning to.
6. marty mars 6

   11 May 2010 at 9:04 am

   The decision to take Te Urewera off the table and the way the government announced it, has the potential to bring down this government. Maori will not accept being treated like this.

   “The Maori Party is furious with the Government for ruling out handing over Urewera National Park to Tuhoe and has accused it of acting dishonourably.”

   Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia said last night the announcement was an outrage and issued a strongly worded statement saying that the Government should reconsider its position and Tuhoe had behaved with honour throughout the negotiating process only to face an 11th hour rejection of their key claim.

   Speaking on Radio New Zealand this morning she went further.

   “To have the rug pulled and take them back to square one I don’t think is very honourable actions, it doesn’t meet the fairness, equity and justice issues – it’s appalling and I am extremely disappointed… I just don’t really know the Crown which has committed these injustices in the past can actually create another one.”

   http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/3679521/Maori-Party-furious-over-Govts-Tuhoe-decision
   http://mars2earth.blogspot.com/2010/05/cowardly-gnats.html
   • mickysavage 6.1

     11 May 2010 at 9:13 am

     This is amazing and totally offensive. Talk about bad faith negotiation.

     Key’s management seems to involve pissing off each coalition partner in turn in the name of “balance”.

     This Government is looking more and more unstable. Without the buffer of a large majority I suspect they would be toast and I wonder if this is part of a cunning plan? Shed the Maori party next year as you go to the polls?
     • BLiP 6.1.1

       11 May 2010 at 10:01 am

       Its probably quite good timing, really. Now would be the time to piss of the Maori Party and move closer to ACT.
   • bill brown 6.2

     11 May 2010 at 9:21 am

     So Turia’s got fleas…quelle surprise!
     • Tigger 6.2.1

       11 May 2010 at 9:28 am

       Well the Maori Party are always dispensible. Key makes a big deal of how he included them even though he didn’t have to. That largesse is all well and good but it also comes with the danger of being dumped simply because you’re surplus to requirements. The MP will bend over backwards to stay in power, can hardly blame them for that, but it will create some deep cuts in the party.
7. BLiP 7

   11 May 2010 at 9:20 am

   Been in Oz for a while so sorry if this has already come up – but – have your say in Auckland before Friday.

   http://www.ourauckland.org.nz/

   Cheers.
   • lprent 7.1

     11 May 2010 at 11:14 am

     No it hasn’t, which is a bit odd because I did some late coding to get the survey up last week.
8. prism 8

   11 May 2010 at 10:41 am

   Very well informed speaker I thought, on Nat 9toNoon this morning talking about Europes debt crisis and how its proceeding.
   Hear – 9:20 The knock-on effects of Greece’s debt crisis
   Stephen Pope, Chief global equity strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald Europe
   http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/

   I thought I heard him say that Britain’s public-private partnerships do not show on the government’s accounting schedule for its debts. They are treated as a separate account, but this of course fudges the position when trying to calculate the taxpayers’ burden.
   • BLiP 8.1

     11 May 2010 at 11:09 am

     So far as Government is concerned, that’s the main attraction to PPPs – they transfer the cost from debt ledger over to the short-term operating expenses ledger and thus hide the full effect of the actual cost which, in turn, is being transferred onto future generations. In effect, the government can say that a new asset cost them nothing to set up . . . what they won’t say, of course, is that the assett will cost them a huge amount in the future. Its a bit like HP – you get the flatscreen tele now but you’ll be paying for it for ever.
     • prism 8.1.1

       11 May 2010 at 11:28 am

       Hi BliP good to see back. Like the flat screen tv, need one because of this change to digital. That HP, good thing or I might have to do without my new technology.

       Could I get it no deposit and no payments for 12 months do you think? That’s the sort of thing that has fuelled the consumer boom of recent years. I wonder if more stringent regulations that required deposits and no payment holidays would have prevented much of the unhappy debt spill we are now faced with cleaning up.
9. BLiP 9

   11 May 2010 at 11:13 am

   Yippeee . . . foreign owned big business must be rubbing their grubby hands together with National Ltd’s announcement of a $225 million technology subsidy designed to stealthily privatise what little government science research there is.
   • Draco T Bastard 9.1

     11 May 2010 at 2:02 pm

     Yeah, I was thinking that too. It’s just another transfer of NZs wealth to Nationals rich mates and foreigners and then expressed in such a way as to make it look good for NZ.
   • Jim Nald 9.2

     11 May 2010 at 2:19 pm

     At least there is some money. But not that much to make a joyful song and dance, and the jury is out about whether to the appropriate recipients who will ensure public investments in research come back proportionately and directly to benefit the public. Labour’s Fast Forward reached deeper and wider but was thrown out by the Nat Govt.
     My RS & T friends were skeptical and as they weren’t expecting any kind of significant announcement, it was just as well they did not wank themselves silly in anticipation.
     Sometimes I wonder if our PM and his cabinet colleagues are like practising for the Dance of the Seven Veils. But with an anti-climax ending.
10. prism 10

    11 May 2010 at 11:17 am

    A teacher is stabbed. More young people are taking terrorist type objects to school, screwdrivers and knives etc. There are so many influences on children today and parents’ voices get lost. Parents need more help and support in their efforts to guide their children from cradle to 25 (the age when government says they must take responsibility for them).

    A teenager dies from downing too much vodka . Not the first – maybe that it was a Kings College child, from a higher income background, will give more impetus for change than if it was just another ‘street kid’. Our youngsters are being encouraged to spend their money on legal alcohol – a dangerous drug and debauch themselves, with sad results.

    A supermarket supervisor talks about the difficulty of trying to enforce age regulations with foul-mouthed, aggressive customers while trying to provide service to the legitimate buyers from what was supposed to be a large grocery and hardware store.

    We should know better than to allow this to happen again. Alcohol is just mucking up our society. Support for people trying to be good citizens living a good life has been undermined by successive governments extending alcohol sales in the name of freedom and business opportunity – but the cost is high on everybody’s shoulders.

    A google heading shows the common double standard – let the drink be sold and then condemn those who fall prey to it.
    “by Hans Holbein the Younger (1527) …. while in Gin Lane they are scrawny, lazy and acting carelessly, including a drunk mother accidentally sending her …” and
    “Culture UK – Gin known as Mothers Ruin
    ‘Drunk for 1 penny, Dead drunk for tuppence, Straw for nothing’!! In London alone, there were more than 7000 ‘dram shops’, and 10 million gallons of gin …”

    The popular tipple now is alcopops, before it was sherry. Beer is always there mixed with machismo, that’s why it can’t be sold as low alcohol beverage because the customers don’t want it – it’s sissy. I like a beer, and have tried low alcohol and it seems to taste the same. Some practical, authoritarian laws are needed here, one of the times that they have a useful purpose.
    captcha – mans.
    • freedom 10.1

      11 May 2010 at 2:16 pm

      ‘More young people are taking terrorist type objects to school, screwdrivers and knives etc. ”

      to Prism, the media and pretty much everybody out there…
      the increaing use of weapons by youth, and others, is a valid concern but please don’t just parrot the media by throwing in meaningless associations to political ideology. Terrorism is an overused and increasingly meaningless term with sensationalist attatchments.

      It may seem like a small point but the incremental abuse of language and the denial of its true meaning is becoming one of the most insidious devices in the destruction of liberty.
      • prism 10.1.1

        11 May 2010 at 11:16 pm

        OK freedom – I agree it’s an unnecessary use of a sensationalist term. I am sick of hearing about terrorism too. It’s a weather subject – everyone talks about it but nobody tries hard to do anything about it. A few more statesmen and women would come in handy instead of the ‘we know it’s broke but there’s advantage in keeping it that way’ prevailing weather pattern.
    • JAS 10.2

      11 May 2010 at 6:29 pm

      And all we get is a cop out from Key ( a Kings parent himself) about how raising the drinking age would not have stopped the death. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10644237

      The letter refered to called for far more than raising the drinking age, but thats all thats focused on because its an easy way out. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10644213
      • JAS 10.2.1

        11 May 2010 at 6:30 pm

        argh one day I will get the tags right! *blush*
11. ianmac 11

    11 May 2010 at 12:21 pm

    At Scoop:.KiwiFM Audio: Wallace Chapman and Scoop’s Selwyn Manning discuss how Maxim Institute, a conservative think-tank, commissioned a survey asking New Zealanders whether they support an increase in GST, land tax, cuts in Government spending, including cuts to Working For Families, KiwiSaver, and free interest rates for student loans.
    result of Survey
12. ianmac 12

    11 May 2010 at 12:23 pm

    Scoop link failed me for above.
    http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1005/S00075.htm
13. NickS 13

    11 May 2010 at 2:31 pm

    http://www.pnas.org/site/misc/highlights.shtml#heat

    It turns out it’s not just the short and medium term impacts of climate change which pose significant political, economic and social problems, but given the current climate model, the predicted temperature increases by 2100 will likely render most of the planets surface uninhabitable for humans. As you’ll bake as your body wont be able to lose waste heat generated by metabolic processes in hot and humid conditions, leading to organ and brain failure as the enzymes needed to for these to function properly end up having their structures disrupted, or denatured.
    • NickS 13.1

      11 May 2010 at 2:42 pm

      Make that “by 2300”, although temperature increases under the conservative assumptions of the IPCC reports predict a global temperature raise of 7 degrees by 2100, which will make some tropical areas potentially uninhabitable.

      Nick needs more sleep…
      • Draco T Bastard 13.1.1

        11 May 2010 at 5:01 pm

        That’s the way I figured it. AGW will basically make the entire equatorial region uninhabitable so there’s going to be a few hundred million people wanting to move. Throw in declining food growing regions around the equator (too hot) and other areas (loss of oil based fertilisers as well as the loss of fuel for harvesting due to Peak Oil) and there’s going to be nowhere for them to go as nowhere will be able to feed them.
14. Tigger 14

    11 May 2010 at 4:06 pm

    Key made much of his ‘war on P’ in his conference speech on the weekend.
    “We’ve declared war on P.
    I’m delighted to say that our multi-pronged attack on methamphetamine is already yielding great results.
    At the border, Customs is on track to smash last year’s record amount of precursors intercepted, strangling the supply to those who would peddle P in our communities.”

    But a government report says that obtining P “may have become slightly easier” in the middle of last year compared to the year before.
    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/3678494/Strategy-struggles-to-keep-the-lid-on-P

    Is it a war if the P doesn’t notice you’re waging it?
15. mickysavage 15

    11 May 2010 at 5:43 pm

    The latest Roy Morgan poll is out.

    The tories are down 0.5 but so is Labour.

    The tories have shed 4 points this year so far.

    Greens are up 1 (yay) and Maori Party are down 1.5. It seems not much mana enhancement has been going on.

    The gap between Govt parties and opposition parties is now 7 percent.
    • gingercrush 15.1

      11 May 2010 at 10:09 pm

      What the fuck are you celebrating? The Greens never get the votes they poll at. Maori Party vote going down will only add to the overhang in parliament. And NZ First is unlikely to make it back into parliament meaning there is actually a 10% gap. I hardly think National being at 49% is something to panic about. The only thing you could possibly celebrate are the numbers in regards to the govt heading in the right direction.

      Anyway, if the left want to celebrate something they should look at what is happening in Australia. Where Kevin Rudd despite leading a government that has been a real success (never had a recession, unemployment at impressive numbers) has somehow found himself in a position where more people disapprove than approve of his leadership and where his party is neck and neck with the Liberals/National who should in essence be dead at the moment.

      As Rudd and Key share some of the same leadership qualities namely indecisiveness then what is happening in Australia could well happen to National and John Key here. Though, it won’t because Goff is just as indecisive.
      • mickysavage 15.1.1

        11 May 2010 at 10:22 pm

        Well I was noting the Greens were up. I was pleased the nats were down but not so pleased that Labour was also down.

        I was also pleased the nats had shed 4 points this year. But I was still perplexed that the figures were not better. It is not as if we are dealing with competent leadership here. We have a bunch of clowns in control of my country and I am really afraid about the damage they will cause.

        I am happy the gap is narrowing. NZ First may be irrelevant but the Maori Party is appearing to be increasingly so.

        Captcha irritating …
        • gingercrush 15.1.1.1

          11 May 2010 at 10:35 pm

          The Maori Party could get 1 party vote but as long as they keep their electorate seats then they are relevant. And right now I don’t see any strategy by Labour in regards to tackling the Maori Seats for 2011. What we’ll get is the same vote splitting by Maori that we’ve had since 2005.

          And surprise surprise not everyone in New Zealand agrees with mickey fucking savage.
      • lprent 15.1.2

        11 May 2010 at 10:35 pm

        Hey gc, remember our discussion a few weeks ago about the government confidence rating.

        It is sure looking like the last poll may have just been a polling blip.

        Roy Morgan GCR# 147.5, 151, 139, 140.5, 137, 125.5, 132, 125.5

        The next few are going to be interesting to see if they show plateauing at the new (low) level.
        • gingercrush 15.1.2.1

          11 May 2010 at 10:41 pm

          Yes its so devastating I can’t help but cry.
          • lprent 15.1.2.1.1

            11 May 2010 at 10:58 pm

            There, there, let it all out – the emotional release will be good for you….

            As I pointed out in our earlier looks at the GRC, it is the poll figures that I watch the most closely. It tends to indicate a forward look at polling trends. If you look back into 2005-2008, it was the one that indicated dissatisfaction well before the other polls numbers, and it doesn’t seem to be as affected by good PR work.
      • lprent 15.1.3

        11 May 2010 at 10:39 pm

        Everything else in the poll looks like it is well within the margin of error compared to the last few polls.
16. Lazy Susan 16

    11 May 2010 at 8:09 pm

    Anyone notice the hatchet job on KiwiRail in today’s Herald. Interesting to note it’s author was Luke Malpass, a policy analyst with ‘The Centre for Independent Studies’.

    Could that be the same ‘Center for Independent Studies’ whose former director was Peter Saunders. That’s the right wing nutter that Paula Bennett appointed to the Working Group on Welfare Reform.

    Unless of course there are two ‘Centers For Independent Studies’
    • Armchair Critic 16.1

      11 May 2010 at 9:29 pm

      A load of tripe if ever I read one. I’ve almost stopped reading the Herald altogether.
      Interesting to see the comments on it, though. There were ten, with nine being critical of the content of the article and one being ambivalent to positive.
      The only thing I will mention (and this was also raised in the comments on the article) is that no comparison with the subsidy made to road transport was made, which pretty much means no sensible conclusions are drawn. Gotta wonder where Granny finds these nutters.
17. The Voice of Reason 17

    11 May 2010 at 8:31 pm

    Sky News political reporter Adam Boulton implodes live on telly, losing an argument spectacularly with a remarkably calm Alastair Campbell, who looks like can’t believe his luck. Poor Boulton, his owner will not be best pleased. Malcolm Tucker would be laughing though.
    • Pascal's bookie 17.1

      11 May 2010 at 10:45 pm

      That’s awesome. 🙂

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