Open mike 12/07/2021

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, July 12th, 2021 - 39 comments
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39 comments on “Open mike 12/07/2021 ”

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    • DukeEll 1.1
      12 July 2021 at 12:01 pm

      Not all gang members are criminals, just like not all mental health patients need critical support at vital times

      • Cricklewood 1.1.1
        12 July 2021 at 12:14 pm

        Well sure but lets be honest gangs do peddle and profit from meth, Mike King doesn’t profit from getting kids access to mental health proffesionals before they actually get to the bottom of the cliff to access the whole extra 5 crisis beds …

    • Incognito 1.2
      12 July 2021 at 12:28 pm

      Apples and oranges

      • DukeEll 1.2.1
        12 July 2021 at 3:09 pm

        Can you please back that comment up with an explanation?

        Is it because Mike Kings outfit does some actual good in the community and the mongrel mob are scumbags? or is there something i’m missing

        • Incognito 1.2.1.1
          12 July 2021 at 3:35 pm

          No, I’m sorry, but I cannot do the thinking for you. All I can say is that it appears to me, from the very little I can gather from the paywalled NZH piece, is that this about funding a meth rehabilitation programme from Proceeds of Crime funding, which must have been approved after an appropriate process of application and review. This is completely different from the purpose of Gumboot Friday and where that is getting its funding from or not, for that matter. Feel free to put forward your arguments, preferably supported ones, and maybe then we can talk although you appear not to have an entirely open mind either, I note.

          As an admission of my cultural ignorance, I had to look up this:

          https://etuwhanau.org.nz/get-involved/kahukura/

          But we can be fooled easily by misleading labels or headlines, can’t we?

          • Cricklewood 1.2.1.1.1
            12 July 2021 at 5:15 pm

            Yeah it is apples and oranges tbf… I get the mob can reach difficult segments of society do have some discomfort in that the gangs profit from peddling the shit. I guess if they actually cut out dealing with meth I would be less cynical….

            I also dont like how we can magically find pots of money for cycle bridges, put millions into mental healthcare for fuck all actual results but we cant find money to put into a program that is actually delivering on the ground. I get Mike King can be a bit polarising and is prone to shooting from the hip but the guy cares and he gets things done… we should fund him and see where he can take this initiative our youth mental health and suicide stats are appalling whats to lose really…

            • Incognito 1.2.1.1.1.1
              12 July 2021 at 5:46 pm

              Thanks, but I remain unconvinced of this ‘business case’. If it is as good as you think it is then why was it not funded by MOH?

              I’ve not heard a single piece of useful information that can shine any light on this, only confusing outrage about utterly irrelevant stuff such as cycling bridges and I’m just waiting for someone to throw up the whole NZ Defence Budget for the next 15 years (as has happened here in the past) as some kind of ‘reason’ as to why we should fund other stuff.

              • Cricklewood …
                12 July 2021 at 6:10 pm

                Well as to why MOH or govt wont fund it I dont know. Its just if we can fund these other things why not this one. I know thats a how long is a piece of string arguement but given our suicide rates etc amongst youth for me its a priority.

                As I understand it the charity is really efficient at getting kids mental healthcare far faster and without needing the child/teen to meet certain criteria that the under resourced public system require to allocate priority. My wife who is in a related field dealing with kids and their families in very stressful situations speaks very highly of it and recommends parents with kids who are struggling with mental health issues to contact the charity in the first instance as the public system is slow, under resourced and essentially acting as the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff (basically you need to attempt suicide to get seen quickly) where as gumboot friday is more like the fence at the top that stop kids jumping off.

                • Incognito …
                  13 July 2021 at 8:01 pm

                  Well as to why MOH or govt wont fund it I dont know. Its just if we can fund these other things why not this one.

                  Do you see the issue here? Before I’d comment on this apparent decision, I’d inform myself about the reasons behind it, the context, if you like. For some reason, you appeared to have not done this and thus you seem to be commenting from a position of ignorance. Similarly, and presumably, you don’t seem to know much either about that rehab programme. So, your comparison was inherently flawed from the outset (AKA apples and oranges).

                  None of the above has anything to do with the merits of Gumboot Friday. This is where you appear most confused. In short, it pays to be informed before you start a comment thread, particularly the first one of the day in OM 🙂

                  HTH

      • Foreign waka 1.2.2
        12 July 2021 at 8:04 pm

        No, gangs are gangs are gangs. Most are involved in criminal behavior, its how the make money. They don’t work in the usual sense like the Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer.

        https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/eleven-charged-in-head-hunters-gang-meth-and-guns-bust-auckland

        Believe me, everybody (!) I talk to is appalled at this. First a gang is being stripped of their ill gotten assets and then these are essentially given to another gang. Good lord, these guys must have a laughing cramp whilst going about their “business”.

        • Incognito 1.2.2.1
          12 July 2021 at 8:22 pm

          Of course, a spade is a spade, black is black, and white is white.

          You’ve got the wrong gang, but in your simplistic world that won’t matter, of course, which is ironic, because gangs are quite peculiar, shall we say, about their identity.

          It doesn’t surprise me that everyone you talk to is appalled. However, I cannot join your cosy circle of appalled and outraged. BTW, do you live in an echo chamber or a parrot cave?

          I must say, I quite like this initiative; more please.

          https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/125721619/pm-one-of-the-ministers-who-approved-275-million-funding-for-mongrel-mobled-rehab-programme

          • mac1 1.2.2.1.1
            12 July 2021 at 8:35 pm

            It occurred to me that $2.75 million is the amount of money required to keep 30 prisoners in NZ jails at $91,000 each per annum. It’s a good investment to keep people out of jails. Instead, that group of meths abusers getting treatment might even be earning income and paying taxes.

            • Incognito 1.2.2.1.1.1
              12 July 2021 at 9:20 pm

              The programme is over 4 years.

              I think one of the ideas behind it is that we cannot keep people locked up and away forever and there’s little point in releasing them without adequate rehabilitation or they will be back in jail before you know it, i.e. the vicious cycle of victimisation.

          • Foreign Waka 1.2.2.1.2
            13 July 2021 at 7:23 am

            You seem to take sides no matter what, reason is not featuring.

            Its amazing how many excuses can be found for drug induced violence in the home, every 2 months a dead child. But hey, its all good eh?

            I don’t care what party would propose such unbelievable facilitation of gangs. Mob members have been just recently found with a million of “revenue”. Gang members are now running the rehabilitation. Fox in the hen house comes to mind.

            I say to the powers to be, just keep going. The next election will for sure show what people who working more and more hours without constantly holding out the hand for something think.

            Meanwhile in the world of covid, there were 1000 younger people vaccinated in my neighborhood being believed as vulnerable but at the same time mothers of friends 88 and 92 years respectively do obviously not qualify. Maybe we should use the money to buy more vaccines?

            May I remind here, taxpayer money is NOT the property of any parliamentarian. It is in any democratic state the contribution to provide the infrastructure to a functioning society. Ooops, that ides is so outdated.

            And BTW, you don’t know anything about me and your comments are uncalled for.

            • Incognito 1.2.2.1.2.1
              13 July 2021 at 8:40 pm

              You seem to take sides no matter what, reason is not featuring.

              What or whose sides might that be? In this case, [my] reason is in the link I provided, which I subscribe to and support, as did the Prime Minister, Minister of Finance and Minister of Justice, the Ministry of Health, Corrections, Police, MSD and the local Hawke’s Bay Police. It was approved by “a panel consisting of senior representatives from the Ministry of Justice, Ara Poutama Aotearoa (Department of Corrections), Te Puni Kōkiri, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, New Zealand Police, The Treasury, Oranga Tamariki and the Chief Science Advisor.” Is that ‘the side’ you were referring to, by any chance?

              Its amazing how many excuses can be found for drug induced violence in the home, every 2 months a dead child. But hey, its all good eh?

              Your words, not mine. You obviously want to focus on the negative aspects and refuse to see any positives because they don’t fit with your narrative.

              Gang members are now running the rehabilitation.

              Deliberately disingenuous and misleading, but good headline for a tabloid

              I say to the powers to be, just keep going. The next election will for sure show what people who working more and more hours without constantly holding out the hand for something think.

              You sound like Judith Collins daydreaming about polls and becoming PM in 2023, i.e. tragically deluded.

              Meanwhile in the world of covid, there were 1000 younger people vaccinated in my neighborhood being believed as vulnerable but at the same time mothers of friends 88 and 92 years respectively do obviously not qualify. Maybe we should use the money to buy more vaccines?

              If you don’t believe (!) that those younger people qualified as vulnerable, take it up with your DHB. People over 60 will be vaccinated from 28 July onwards unless they’re vulnerable, in which case they already qualify. More money won’t get the vaccines on order here any sooner. BTW, this discussion thread is not about your hobby horse of your friends who have been ignored and overlooked for Covid vaccination.

              May I remind here, taxpayer money is NOT the property of any parliamentarian. It is in any democratic state the contribution to provide the infrastructure to a functioning society. Ooops, that ides is so outdated.

              Almost unintelligible comment. We have systems and processes in place to implement Government policies and decisions and distribute resources, i.e. funds.

              And BTW, you don’t know anything about me and your comments are uncalled for.

              If you don’t want to engage in robust debate, don’t comment here. FWIW, I find most of your comments are weak and irrelevant, but that won’t stop me pointing out those weaknesses and irrelevancies, from time to time. Too bad if you don’t like this; I was hoping we could be friends here.

    • SPC 2.1
      13 July 2021 at 8:45 am

      Employment status, National and its supporters routinely attack beneficiaries, (brown underclass) to justify their hardship and that of their children – hate speech to legitimise political oppression since 1991.

      The same also attack unskilled Kiwis as not as good a worker as a migrant worker (by definition someone who can be exploited and who cannot move to another job or get a benefit).

    • I Feel Love 3.1
      12 July 2021 at 9:02 am

      Unemployment at 4.5% (& dropping?), woo hoo!

    • mac1 3.2
      12 July 2021 at 10:05 am

      What a state we have got ourselves into! Since the Seventies I thought I’d never see the day that we’d hear complaints about unemployment being too low.

      Pat’s cited article says “But the Employers and Manufacturers Association argues it needs to be closer to 5 percent, to make it easier to recruit and retain staff, and constrain wage inflation”.

      ‘easier to recruit’.

      “Here’s a job. You have to take it, on my terms alone, since there are another 200,000 who are unemployed.”

      ‘and retain staff’

      “You don’t like it? You won’t find another. And you won’t be eligible for unemployment benefit for 13 weeks if you leave voluntarily……”

      ‘constrain wage inflation’

      “In other words, I don’t want to pay you more to buy your labour. Yeah, I know that house price inflation is not constrained, but that’s ‘market forces’ at work and people can take the largest profit they can. But no, it doesn’t apply to wages, though we employers are allowed to influence market forces by demanding an unemployment rate of 5% that suits our needs.”

      “What, you suggest that we should recruit and retain staff with decent wages, conditions and treatment? Wash your mouth out.”

      “Next you’ll be wanting to influence market forces with organised unions,” said the unspoken thoughts of the spokesperson for the Employers and Manufacturers Association.

    • Stuart Munro 3.3
      12 July 2021 at 2:10 pm

      Alan McDonald asserts “Two-thirds of those who are unemployed are essentially unemployable, he says, and the rest will be challenging”

      Having just come off the dole, in spite of the best efforts of the spavined HR hacks who see it as their mission to further emiserate those who have ever had the misfortune to work for an enterprise that was less than reasonably competent, I think Mc Donald ought to be held to an objective standard of proof – since the object of his assertion is clearly to drive down wages, and/or to restore employer access to exploitable masses of workers in third world countries.

      Competent companies have no difficulty recruiting, training, and retaining staff. If that’s too hard, it’s not the workers who are falling down on the job.

      • AB 3.3.1
        12 July 2021 at 3:36 pm

        “McDonald ought to be held to an objective standard of proof”

        McDonald’s statement comes from the same stable as Bill English’s gem about lots of kiwis being “pretty useless”. It’s part of the Tory mindscape and as such requires no evidence.

      • pat 3.3.2
        12 July 2021 at 4:25 pm

        “Competent companies have no difficulty recruiting, training, and retaining staff. If that’s too hard, it’s not the workers who are falling down on the job.”

        Aint that the truth

        • Cricklewood 3.3.2.1
          12 July 2021 at 5:25 pm

          Recruitment is actually getting really tight now, most employers are really working hard to retain existing staff so mobility is quite low and not to many applications for new positions currently so quite hard for growing businesses to upscale.

          Wages definitely rising now seeing increases over 10 percent in my industry of course that does add to inflationary pressure.

          • pat 3.3.2.1.1
            12 July 2021 at 5:41 pm

            good…considering the government and economists are claiming that our wages are too low, and we are seeing those with in demand skills being lured offshore again and the fact that housing prices are more than 12 times median wage in some locations (and the powers that be refuse to countenance price deflation) then business needs to adapt.

            • Cricklewood 3.3.2.1.1.1
              12 July 2021 at 6:22 pm

              Well yes, although what I suspect keeps the finance minister awake at night is the thought of inflation driving up interest rates.

              Our housing is now so heavily mortgaged that even a 1 percent rise will suck huge sums out of the economy as belts tighten to meet increased repayments plummeting the country into a recession.

              We really need to come up with a range of policies that stop house price increases for at least 10 years.

              • pat …
                12 July 2021 at 6:48 pm

                and so it should keep him awake at night….after all he chose this path.

                …and to be frank, without house price deflation his choice is wage inflation or revolution

    • Foreign waka 3.4
      12 July 2021 at 8:06 pm

      It would be the ones who got 16 Billion dollars and paid great dividends to their shareholders, would they?

  4. Siobhan 4
    12 July 2021 at 11:32 am

    Well, its an anniversary of sorts ..though given the almost total destruction of our clothing manufacturing industry…and our insistence on cheap clothing from whatever country has the cheapest labour thanks to Union suppression…I wouldn’t exactly call it a Happy Anniversary…

    https://www.nzhistory.govt.nz/page/first-womens-trade-union-formed?fbclid=IwAR3YFVa3Da8WoVgxly6ZhodpD4eEHgHOspQS0a12KXrteyYEu_r0xHkikCo

    ….perhaps we could take it as an opportunity to reassess our wardrobes..

    Depressingly the good people at Te Ara (Encyclopedia of NZ) need to update their somewhat over optimistic assessment of the NZ clothing industry…I see they still include this doozy of a quote ..

    Made in New ZealandThose making clothes in New Zealand often use this as a selling point. One example is Swazi Apparel of Levin. When the firm lost a contract to supply gear to the army in 2009, founder Davey Hughes spoke of the need for New Zealand to keep its clothing trade skills: ‘When the expertise of these people is gone, it won’t come back.’3

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/112971102/outdoorwear-company-swazi-moving-its-basic-fleece-production-to-thailand

    • weston 4.1
      12 July 2021 at 9:42 pm

      Yep how many times we heard lately how china magnificently lifted huge chunks of its citizens out of poverty what heros we are the ones paying for that expansion .China imo is like a giant leech sucking the life blood out of any and all that deal with her .

  5. Jenny how to get there 5
    12 July 2021 at 1:22 pm

    In space no one can hear you scream smell your stink

    Meanwhile, at the other end of the food chain.

    Carpeting the sea rocks were tens of thousands of mussels, clams, sea stars and snails, emitting a putrid odour that hung thick in the heat.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/intertidal-animals-ubc-research-1.6090774

    [TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]

    • Jenny how to get there 5.1
      12 July 2021 at 2:16 pm

      Space the final frontier, (for pollution)

      The ultimate in conspicuous consumption, the billionaire space race, may also become the ultimate high frontier of environmental destruction.

      https://www.illuminatemagazine.com/pollution/space-the-new-frontier-of-human-caused-pollution/

      The paper predicts that space travel might soon become impossible – or at very least, really dangerous.

      Space pollution

      Every time we launch a rocket, put a satellite into orbit around the Earth or decommission one that’s already orbiting, we leave behind bits of human-made material just floating around in space. Sometimes, satellites are literally exploded into thousands of pieces of debris when decommissioned.

  6. esoteric pineapples 6
    12 July 2021 at 4:02 pm

    This version is low key but great

    [TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]

  7. Jenny how to get there 7
    12 July 2021 at 6:49 pm

    ‘

    Like Branson, Auckland house prices have gone from stratospheric, to sub-orbital.

    [TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]