His numbers are not accurate but the gist and ultimate question remain to be confronted…
"The one thing they will not do, however, is confront the brutal, but inescapable, truth that there is only one way this planet will be saved from the effects of the 9 billion human-beings living upon its surface; and that is for more than 8 billion of them to disappear. How that might be achieved, and who should take responsibility for achieving it, are questions which, to date, only novelists and science fiction writers have attempted to answer."
Inspired by weka's "Totally Shit Farming" post, here's a quick look at the status of non-cow dairy efforts.
tl;dr, one company has made and sold batches of icecream made from lab-grown whey and casein, and there's others not too far behind. To be sure, the tiny quantities involved make it a publicity stunt rather than a real product. But it's still a big milestone on the way to a real alternative to a cow.
That gives the farming lobby a reason to keep on with practices that can not be supported and avoid improving their approach. I like the idea of having milk from happy cows, given proper conditions and feed, it is a natural way of getting good food. But the ability to force-feed the animals, and manipulate them to the nth degree, take their colostrum, take the calves away from the mothers at an early age etc etc has warped the dairy system.
Having dairy replaced by tech is another step away from the needs of the populace; there is money to be made by making business from spoiling the planet and our traditional systems. It is happening with meat, milk, and further, our money exchange being replaced by electrified cards, and on.
Sure you've got a preference. And you've probably got a price differential point at which you're willing to pay extra to indulge that preference. But the vast majority of consumers? Not so much.
When lab-grown synthesised milk becomes an actual thing, something that's going to get a lot more publicity is how engineered the milk we buy already is. Between the cow and bottle, it's cooked, separated into its constituents, then reformulated back to just barely meet the minimum requirements of whatever category it's sold as. Lab-grown constituents will be just a minor change in that context.
When lab-grown synthesised milk becomes an actual thing, something that's going to get a lot more publicity is how engineered the milk we buy already is. Between the cow and bottle, it's cooked, separated into its constituents, then reformulated back to just barely meet the minimum requirements of whatever category it's sold as. Lab-grown constituents will be just a minor change in that context.
Cooking and pasteurisation aren't quite the same thing, but either can be done in a home kitchen. Full fat milk doesn't get much else done to it afaik, but do share because it's this kind of conflation that leads to people not trusting science.
Full fat milk gets the same separation then add back in treatment reduced fat and skim milk get.
Dairy giant Fonterra has two milk processing plants for local consumption, Palmerston North and in Auckland's Takanini suburb.
Fonterra's general manager of manufacturing operations Brendon Hurst said the first step was the separation of the cream or fat from the milk to add it back in later to ensure every glass of milk tastes the same.
The point is the milk we buy in the supermarket is a manipulated engineered product. It's had a shit load more done to it than just squirted out of a cow, made safe, and put in a bottle.
Forty-odd years ago as a kid doing a milk run I got a tour through the Palmy milk treatment plant. Part of that was tasting a small sample at each step along the way. And every step made a big difference. I'd imagine what was happening then is primitive compared to how it's manipulated now.
pasteurisation and separating cream from milk can be done at home. Homogenisation is a more industrial process but even that I think is a long step from lab dairy.
It's like people who think that splicing genes is the same as selective breeding. If it doesn't matter to you, that's great, you can eat lab dairy. But it will matter to many, and pretending those are all the same kind of tech will create confusion, division and resentment.
Looking back,it seems complex diets from simpler foods,greater (longer work) days, seem to have been a recipe for good health for the working class.
Mid-Victorian working class men and women consumed between 50% and 100% more calories than we do, but because they were so much more physically active than we are today, overweight and obesity hardly existed at the working class level. The working class diet was rich in seasonal vegetables and fruits; with consumption of fruits and vegetables amounting to eight to 10 portions per day. This far exceeds the current national average of around three portions, and the government-recommended five-a-day. The mid-Victorian diet also contained significantly more nuts, legumes, whole grains and omega three fatty acids than the modern diet. Much meat consumed was offal, which has a higher micronutrient density than the skeletal muscle we largely eat today [59]. Prior to the introduction of margarine in the late Victorian period, dietary intakes of trans fats were very low. There were very few processed foods and therefore little hidden salt, other than in bread (Recipes suggest that significantly less salt was then added to meals. At table, salt was not usually sprinkled on a serving but piled at the side of the plate, allowing consumers to regulate consumption in a more controlled way.). The mid-Victorian diet had a lower calorific density and a higher nutrient density than ours. It had a higher content of fibre (including fermentable fibre), and a lower sodium/potassium ratio. In short, the mid-Victorians ate a diet that was not only considerably better than our own, but also far in advance of current government recommendations. It more closely resembles the Mediterranean diet, proven in many studies to promote health and longevity; or even the ‘Paleolithic diet’ recommended by some nutritionists [60].
My uncle (born around WW1 I think) used to do that with his salt, got a lot of ribbing about it that he ignored. I have a context to put his habit in now.
I'll be reading the article. The nutrient density doesn't surprise me, the low levels of animal fat does.
Sure. I'd imagine in a possible future, those who find the distinction important will still be able to buy the boutique product from a cow at enormous price with emission fees, pollution fees, animal welfare fees and so on.
And those that don't care at all, or only care about nutritional value and taste, or can't afford the boutique stuff out of a cow, will end up eating cheese and yoghurt and maybe even directly drinking the stuff that comes from industrial vats.
What I'd like to see is more honesty about lab dairy. That it needs to be presented as being the same as cow's milk suggests there isn't as much acceptance of it as you believe.
Humans are omnivores, we can luckily survive by eating clay.
To me lab grown is the other extreme to industrial farming. As far removed from nature and natural occurance as can be giving a false sense of food security while the planet still is being treated as a rubbish bin.
so yes, ethical farming, less eating, paying the full price of food, paying even the full price of gasoline, and such. Cause us here in the spoiled western world we have not paid the full price on anything in a long time. We like the stuff that we eat, that we wrap our selfs in, that we use to enterain us, that houses us all to be cheap.
Just because humans can eat animal flesh doesn't mean they should.
I am genuinely interested in the ethics of killing an animal to eat it (or paying someone else indirectly to do it), which I'm sure the animal doesn't want, and which is unnecessary given humans can exist perfectly well on a plant-based diet.
The documentary evidence I've seen of animals going to slaughter kind of shows me they are not choosing to have their throats cut. They are sentient beings who feel terror just like we do.
And a balanced plant-based diet is healthy, nutricious and good for the planet. What's not to like about that?
As for the "documentary evidence", yeah nah. Persistent abstract memory, self awareness, reasoned anticipation of future events, and the ability to communicate abstract ideas are all part of a fundamentally different consciousness than biological impulse.
We shouldn't be cruel, but to equate a cow with a human is a moral equivalence that lacks any reasonable foundation.
Humans and all other living things must 'consume' nutrients to live. Some humans have an (over-)abundance of dietary choices, and so we have omnivores, vegetarians, vegans et al.
The known risks associated with 'veganism by choice' are easily mitigated, hence the paucity of reports of human health being compromised by veganism in the OECD.
If human civilisation reverts to a pre-industrial state, then veganism may be a less heathly ‘option’, but at the moment it seems a pretty good OECD option for the health of humans and the planet.
Not a choice I could make (yet), because I enjoy eating bacon, chicken, cheese et al. [dribble drool, slaver slobber] It's a delicious habit that is (on balance) bad for my health, and for the planet, but 'from my cold, dead mouth' and all that, although I’m eating less meat than I used to.
"Vegetarians should take some solace from the fact that meat consumption is declining in half of the countries listed above. Between 2002 and 2009 the amount consumed by US residents fell from 124.8 kilos per person to 120.2, for example, in Luxembourg from 141.7 to 107.9, in New Zealand from 142.1 to 106.7[kilos per person per year] and in Denmark (previously the world's biggest consumers of meat) from 145.9kg to 95.2kg."
Plants don't want to be eaten either, Grey Area. Many go to considerable evolutionary efforts to make it harder to eat them, up to and including making themselves toxic to animals. If you want to live without killing things, you'd better learn how to photosynthesise.
for some reason it brings to mind this lyric and song for me
We walked out – tentacle in hand
You could sense that the earthlings would not understand
They'd go.. nudge nudge …when we got off the bus
Saying it's extra-terrestial – not like us
And it's bad enough with another race
But fuck me… a monster …from outer space
I believe that the ecological cost of mass producing meat is OTT. I think that our western diets are unsustainable. People make their choices to do what they want and they accept their choices – personally I no longer care what anyone else eats – we all make choices. It is a fairness of argument for me re my comment.
Re ethics of argument, Grey Area's argument was that killing animals to eat them is wrong as animals don't want to be killed, so people should eat plants. My counter-argument was that plants also don't want to be killed and it's impossible for humans to live without killing things. In what sense do you consider that counter-argument unfair?
@ PM I think when you said, "If you want to live without killing things, you'd better learn how to photosynthesise." was my tipping point. Extrapolating for effect just a little too far for me. So that's why I responded.
@ Pat – yeah – I believe the inevitability of the changes will make choice moot down the track – still we can future proof by diversifying while we can and moving to as sustainable as we can be. The dietary lifestyle we enjoy now is pretty decadent and the cost so high imo.
@ PM I think when you said, "If you want to live without killing things, you'd better learn how to photosynthesise." was my tipping point.
I think it's a reasonable response. Even if you reject the idea that plants object to being killed, is it wrong to kill a chicken so you can eat it but OK to kill a shitload of mice when you turn your combine harvesters loose on the wheat crop? It isn't currently possible for humans to live without killing things.
that countries import food doesn't mean they have to or that they can't produce food locally. Local food production is largely a function of the relationship between population, geography and climate. Capitalism doesn't care about that because it has fossil fuels and can import and export food at will.
Do you also think that natures predators are also undesirable?…we are nothing more than mammals and we are omnivores, are we to be condemned any more than sharks or lions?…or any other species that ends the existence of another life form
we are nothing more than mammals and we are omnivores, are we to be condemned any more than sharks or lions?
I wouldn't say "nothing more than," but we for sure are omnivorous primates and that means we have a taste for eating other critters, much like sharks or lions.
It's worth keeping in mind that plants are also in evolutionary competition with each other and doing their best to ensure their own survival at the expense of other plant species, same as animals. It just all happens a hell of a lot slower and without all the clawing, biting, bludgeoning etc.
@Weka.lol…didnt you know everything is measured in dollars?….but we can can still infer …and as said that dosnt account for CC nor failed states…which are only going to increase.
The question was are we to be condemned?….your answer didnt address that….so I shall offer one on your behalf…yes we are, as a result of our success we are destined to out compete everything including our environment.
Pat, lol, yes dollars rule. I wondered if one is measuring commodity dollars how useful that is because it will include things like chocolate, coffee and wine.
That CC and war are going to force big changes in food production is an argument for shifting to local food production sooner rather than later.
Why is it not doable? We know that the end of fossil fuels will make transporting food harder. We know that we need more resilient systems. Both those things are within our reach irrespective of how bad CC gets.
Addressing industrial dairying isn't a petty dispute, it's literally about whether humans get to survive in the future, possibly even you and I. Those big, industrial, nature ignoring, FF burning systems are going to crash. How is relocalising food production not a good response to that?
… yes we are, as a result of our success we are destined to out compete everything including our environment.
It does sure look like having self-awareness and the ability to think in abstracts doesn't outweigh being just an upmarket bunch of omnivore primates when it comes down to it. I'll hold off the condemnations until it's clear whether or not we've played ourselves, though.
Its petty because we are creating unnecessary divisions in a society that has little chance of achieving a positive outcome…and it certainly wont if its divided.
The problem is so complicated that the only possible way to address it requires widespread buy in…that is not achieved by attack and demonisation.
Societies are too easily fragmented and as said in other posts long before we are seriously challenged by the physical impacts of CC we will have to avoid the societal conflicts (if we can)
How do we know this is true? Science is demonstrating that plants in forests communicate with each other, including by using other species. They tend and protect via this communication as well as repel. Maybe that's not sentience as we understand it, or maybe we're locked into particular ideas about sentience that stop us seeing other kinds.
It really is an amazing rabbit hole to dive into for a while. It starts to screw with our concepts of "communication" and even what constitutes an "organism" or a "mind", our role in the world and even whether there is a being of "humanity" that is made up of all the interactions of us people. At the root of it all is the conundrum of the observer who sits behind our eyes and other sensory organs.
John Varley's "The Ophiuchi Hotline" has a plotline in which aliens discover the Earth and identify Homo Sapiens not as a fellow sentient species but as a cancerous growth and eradicate it, leaving the occupants of a base on the moon as the last humans. In the novel, the aliens consider whales and dolphins to be Earth's sentient life forms (perhaps reflecting the fact it was written in the 1970s), but it would be equally plausible that they'd consider plants the sentient life forms, given that aliens could be evolved from any kind of life.
I know. I love it. It really stretches my mind. I find myself going 'that can't be right', then going 'well yeah, it could be'. In the end my position is that there are plenty of good reasons to err on the side of caution and not be cruel to anything unnecessarily. We don't have to know for sure if forests are sentient to decide that cutting one down is something serious.
I feel sorry for humans sometimes with our big brains trying to figure out how to be with our particular capacity for perception.
I'm suggesting that living things don't want to be killed, but we don't have much choice about killing them if we want to remain alive ourselves and that applies to eating plants as much as it does to eating animals. If you personally want to designate "has a central nervous system" as a threshold beyond which you won't kill to eat, by all means act on it and eat accordingly. But that designation is as arbitrary as anyone else's.
And in reply to Pyscho Milt upstream (as I don't see a reply button) aboiut mice being killed by a combine harvester Earthling Ed would ask: "Morally, is there a difference between accidentally hitting a dog with your car and purposefully hitting a dog with your car?”. If you say yes, "then by that logic is there morally a difference between an animal accidentally being killed in crop production and an animal purposefully being killed in a slaughterhouse?”.
If it were impossible to drive your car without accidentally hitting a bunch of dogs on your way to your destination, I expect many of us would be put off driving. People give less of a shit about mice and other field critters, on the out-of-sight-out-of-mind principle.
I didn't answer your question, no. The question was essentially a reframing of McFlock's comment further up:
We shouldn't be cruel, but to equate a cow with a human is a moral equivalence that lacks any reasonable foundation.
You've swapped out "cow/human" with "broccoli/chicken" but are making essentially the same argument. I notice that your response to that argument from McFlock was "Totally disagree but let's leave it there." Given that response, why do you assume we'd answer your question?
I wasn't assuming anything. I was busy at work and didn't have the time to challenge the statement that I don't accept. I happened to see some activity around the issue and decided to re-enter the fray.
And anyway that was in response to him this afternoon not you this evening.
Seeing as you have a bit more time, then. My shorthand on the issue for a while now has been "could [animal X] write an essay entitled what I did on my holidays?"
Some mammals and cephalopodes probably could, given the right communication interface. Not all of them, though.
Cows and sheep, I doubt it. And if they can't, even if there's a type of impulse-driven or momentary sentience, it wouldn't exist without farming. If we can give them a reasonably happy life and end it without their anticipation or pain, by several methods of moral accounting (utilitarianism or whatever) I'm not seeing a net negative.
Contrast with slavery, or cannibalism of captive humans. Lots of negatives and suffering for a simple meal or delaying mechanisation.
I mean, theoretically the math might add up, but Kevin would have to make a lots-better-than-Michelin dinner for that to happen. 🙂
My shorthand position is that killing other sentient beings to use them as a food source is immoral, cruel and for those of us in the "West" unnecessary.
I see cows, pigs, sheep, etc as someone, not something. Especially not something for us to use.
They are creatures often with personalities and intelligence and with a capacity to feel emotions like we do.
Humans seem to have such huge capacity to f*ck things up. We use and abuse everything around us and the climate crisis we are in the middle of is mostly the result of that.
So taking off my vegan hat and putting on my climate change one, animal agriculture is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and if we are to have any chance of at least slowing climate collapse animal agriculture needs to be hugely reduced and better still eliminated.
I see cows, pigs, sheep, etc as someone, not something.
And if I shared that perspective, I'd probably agree. Or eat people. But I've been around livestock of various types, and didn't see the same spark of humanity that you did.
As for climate change, the main event will always be fossil fuels. Substitutiopn is necessary, and if it's not sufficient then global vegetarianism probably won't be, either.
So limit meat intake in the same way we stop using plastic straws – it might encourage people more powerful than us to address the elephant.
yes the line is arbitrary – because you can live within the choices – so the question is then, what are the factors driving the choices – that is where the morals get really interesting
fairness is another driver – I'm anti capitalism and exploitation
truth also is when I became a vegetarian 39 years ago it was because I couldn't handle the suffering inflicted on the animals – I suppose my species boundary and what falls out of that, is different to science and normal western thought.
I don't think it's all that different. Vegetarianism is hardly rare in the West, or amongst scientists.
It's a line that is philosophical, spiritual, logical, emotional, practical… everyone draws it in their own place. I'm not sure anyone is in a place to judge anyone else's placement of that line – just whether they're being dicks about it 🙂
Yep I spose the reals dicks will be the meat eaters who chose to not reduce their meat especially when reports like the one below come out. The vegans are the good guys although shrill and annoying.
“We don’t want to tell people what to eat,” says Hans-Otto Pörtner, an ecologist who co-chairs the IPCC’s working group on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. “But it would indeed be beneficial, for both climate and human health, if people in many rich countries consumed less meat, and if politics would create appropriate incentives to that effect.”
fairness is another driver – I'm anti capitalism and exploitation"
Pretty much mine too. Interesting we come to different conclusions about what that means.
"truth also is when I became a vegetarian 39 years ago it was because I couldn't handle the suffering inflicted on the animals – I suppose my species boundary and what falls out of that, is different to science and normal western thought."
I was vegetarian around the same time. I don't think being vegetarian is at odds with western thought especially in a country like NZ where lots of people care about animals. I do think we are behind in the science though and that care for the wellbeing of ecosystems as a right (rather than just how they serve humans) is going to become more mainstream off the back of the leading edge science.
i find lab 'grown' as gross as the practices of industrial dairy farming.
One of the TV news's had an item last night on an Aus company that's just grown kangaroo meat in a lab – story here.
It was pitched as being a way for billions of humans to have a meat diet without affecting the environment (bullshit detector going off big-time at that point). The process takes stem cells from kangaroo meat, puts them in a "nutrient-rich solution" and waits for the stem cells to make kangaroo meat out of the solution.
So, if billions of people are going to eat this stuff, that's shit-tonnes of "nutrient-rich solution" that has to turn up from somewhere – industrial farming, I hear you say? Surely not…
My wife's only comment: "Wouldn't you cut out the middle-man and just eat the "nutrient-rich solution?”
Hmmm. Matrix comes to mind, where steak was an example of why cypher(?) wanted to live in the machine rather than eat the protein gruel in the "real world".
I guess they won't have kangaroo stem cells in the future…
Would also see off all those boring "Make sure you eat food when you're drinking, never drink alcohol on an empty stomach, etc" messages. Two birds with one stone…
Yeah it'll take a lot of nutrient-rich solution. But most of that nutrient goes into growing the flesh cells we end up eating, rather than most of it going into just keeping a hulking great host alive and walking around and only a tiny bit goes into muscle growth in a live animal. So growing the nutrient feedstock should require a lot less space and inputs than growing all the vegetable matter a live animal needs to produce the same amount of edible "flesh".
Then there's the matter of eliminating the methane emissions from live ruminants. Although roos aren’t ruminants and are pretty low emission critters.
Personally I'll probably be quite happy with just a moderately realistic facsimile of mince for burgers, sausages, salami, spag bol etc. But bacon is going to have to be fkn convincing before the pigs are out of trouble.
Yes, it would certainly make way more sense than growing crops to feed to livestock – but that has to be the stupidest form of agriculture ever invented.
I guess it just irks me that people talk about replacing meat with plant-based alternatives (which is presumably where this nutrient solution comes from – I sure as shit hope they're not getting it by grinding up sea critters) as though creating industrial-scale crop monocultures were some kind of improvement on grazing livestock. If it is an improvement, the improvement's marginal at best.
To a large extent, the potential for improvement comes from eliminating the methane emissions and effluent problems of live animals.
But cows and sheep are also incredible inefficient at turning the calories and protein they're fed into calories and protein available to humans eating them. Around 1% conversion efficiency for calories and maybe 4% for protein. Pork and poultry do a lot better, around 10% for calories and 15 to 20% for protein (as well as emitting a lot less methane).
If vats didn't do a whole lot better, say at least 30% conversion efficiency, then yeah you'd question the point. But since cells in a vat only have to grow, and not sustain a whole bunch of other metabolic processes, the potential has to be there.
As for where the feed comes from, yeah, ground sea critters would be disastrous. But seaweed could be interesting.
Then there's the whole question around the merits of grazing animals in hilly ground not suitable for cropping. Dunno, maybe if the cell vats become a reality, hill country will be where the boutique "real meat" gets produced.
It's fkn hard finding hard info that isn't obviously pushing some sort of barrow. But the numbers presented in these two pieces are about what seems to be the consensus of stuff I've seen elsewhere.
If the vat-grown whey and casein efforts linked above actually come to fruition, what's going to happen to Fonterra?
I'm guessing the commodity milk-powder business – gone. Commodity cheese for pizzas and burgers – gone. What will be left? Boutique products where the customers will really want to believe they come from happy cows lovingly tended to in green grassy pastures. And that business is extremely vulnerable to the kind of shit highlighted today by weka and lprent.
Commodity milk powder exists because milk cant be stored in its natural form and milk powder can. Cows are milked everyday and the fresh milk has to be processed the following day
The commodity milk powder provides the dairy products for 30 mill people outside NZ for all sorts of reasons.
Just a note about Fonterras loss , they are just book keeping writedowns of assets.
Its not a cash loss as they are awash in it , like the paddocks the cows are stuck in over winter
Perhaps you are demonstrating to us that we are alike the cows in that we are awash with money in this country but stuck up to our knees in debt incurred as we just try to get regular food and find a place to lie down.
If my life was wrapped up in Fonterra I think the aspect worthy of attention in the info is the amount of the write down that relates to market share erosion. Start-ups doing it better than NZ's biggest company.
The rise of domestic competition and abroad.
We don't hold many picture cards. That's one of them, we should be leading the world in the milk fields. If Fonterra were the All Blacks, they couldn't beat Mount Albert Grammar.
Great big Brontosaurus that can barely get out of it's own way. So many desks and so few udders. Subsidiaries struggling in prospering centres around the globe.
We should be brilliant at this. We're not even average.
I paid a premium for cheese in Sweden, about 50% more than here. I visited a Swedish dairy farm. For half the year each cow is hand fed in it's own stall in a heated barn. They had their names on their stall doors.
We don't know how lucky we are. We should be creaming it.
The Swedes are cunning socialists. I think it's because they spend 4 months of the year sitting around fires in the freezing dark slamming shots of rocket fuel, sharing their hearts, dreams and Spring plans.
Dairy farmers felt the winter pinch. Many crop farmers face 5 months of a permafrozen farm. They found a solution that works for everybody. It's easy to push a log around on ice, farmers drop trees, trim them, spray their code on the end and leave them beside the road. The co-op truck with a Hiab grapple stopped at the end of the drive, loaded the logs up and took them to the co-op owned processing plant.
Crop farmers on Graso were as concerned about growing Pines as they were corn.
we are worried about this as it seems that the Chinese are unndermining Fonterra so the share price fall will give them the soluution to buy Fonterra as a luididated bussiness asset.
China are playing us to take over our entire farming industry.
Earthquakes are worrying me too as napier had some too recently and we wonder if this is .could be the heating of the 'earth's crust; – and the tectonic plates? https://www.the-science-site.com/crustal-plates.html
I am mostly in the hills above Gisbrone near BOP border, and was born in Auckland in 1944 and raised in Napier 1951 to 1964, didn't you read my posts on the Fox river debarkle?
All us 'Napierites' have very keen knowledge of when the usual swarms of earthquakes do occur with annual frequencies.
This time last week when we were there, it was very odd when the earthquake hit us.
It was at a time when we don't usually expeirience 'swams' of quakes' so that is our concern.
Thanks for your concern.
Shit if I wanted to move from earthquakes I would;
go back to Canada
or my last home Florida
as they don’t have earthquakes,
But Canada's weather is shit
Florida has hurricanes.
So I am good at present above the pollution, noise, and truck gridlock, here in the hinterland of rural NZ hill country.
That reminds me of the promises made when big tobacco excecs were all linned up in front of a congressonal inquiry promising that smokng was safe???
According to the National Research Council, no toxicity data are available for over 39,000 commercially available used chemicals.
And this also;
Approximately 80 million people or three out of every 10, in the United States can expect to contract some form of cancer in their lifetime. The National Cancer Institute has estimated in at least one communique’ that at least 98% of all cancers may be linked to chemical exposures,
According to Lynn Montandon, founder of the Response team for the chemically injured.
Until recently, the Federal Government has concentrated most of its resources on researching cancer and the effects of acute chemical exposures, paying very little attention to the effects of long term low level chemical exposures, or to the neurological, reproductive, developmental, or immunological effects that chemicals may cause. The government is just beginning to look into these non-cancer health risks and the existing research into these other health matters is, on the whole, inadequate and non-existent.
I understand that deep earthquakes in the subducting Pacific Plate such as this one are outside the forecast area which applies only to the (relatively) near surface – approximately to top 20 to 30 km.
The Snares earthquakes are associated with the Puysegur Trench subduction zone where the Australian Plate is descending below the Pacific Plate.
Seddon earhtquakes are likely continuing aftershocks of the 2013 Grassmere quake and/or 2016 Kaikoura quake (several faults in the Cape Campbell area ruptured at the surface in the Kaikoura quake).
Given there are ~20,000 record quakes per year in NZ, its not unusual to have several in a week that are felt to some degree.
If you're interested in where the known acitve faults (on land) are, check out GNS's active faults map: http://data.gns.cri.nz/af
Capitalism finally weaponizes ignorance, and being ignorance, shoots itself. Media moguls setting up fast tracking promedia nra, cc, and now the trifecta, tv personality president, have they no sense. Why are Act members always turning up on tv? first they attacked Greens for not getting into bed with big polluters, now Greens are power starved like 6% down from 10% was a means to demand more. Now I get that we do need balance in tv but just right-wing talking heads, and disgruntaled former Greens, really, is that all they dan find. Seems to me when the ecology, climate, resource limits are hit, or whatever, the media will be the culprits.
Sounds like a good mystery tv series – what was the one with Gillian Anderson in it? Like that. We can put everything on tv like a real Reality Show. Sit and watch things like on The Truman Show. Tonight we are going to have a prison break – who will get away and who will be shot?
The SFO can be dressed like Sherlock Holmes with really giant magnifying glasses and computer nerds tracing people on grids all round town with Tumpson and Clerk giving directions. The miscreants would have the choice of being in the show, or going to Court and paying their own legal fees whether they are found guilty or not.
I can't wait for his next post, probably wanting to ban women licking icecream in the workplace.
And if, in some insane universe that he inhabits, he is actually right, what does that tell us about women wearing black or purple lipstick? I shudder at his possible explanation!
"In the government’s first major piece of legislation mapping out post-EU policy, Environment and Food Secretary Michael Gove is set to present sweeping changes Wednesday to the agriculture sector. Gove's plan will phase out the EU’s sacrosanct direct payment scheme under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which props up farmers' wages based on the amount of land they own, and instead link farmers' payments to environmental standards.
Its a common fallacy that most of the things the EU does are somehow fine and dandy
Theres opportunity under a new Fisheries policy after Brexit to make well overdue changes as well
A new ruling on the ban on prisoner voting delivers a fierce reminder of the need for urgent change. Now it’s over to the government: put up or shut up, writes Andrew Geddis.
In some ways, it tells us nothing we didn’t already know: the legislative ban on prisoners voting enacted in 2010 by National and Act Party MPs is a terrible law that shouldn’t ever have been passed. But in laying out how poorly conceived this law was and just how negatively it affects Māori in particular, He Aha Perā Ai? The Māori Prisoners’ Voting Report, which has just been released by the Waitangi Tribunal, presents us with a fierce reminder of the need for change.
…
So, let’s recap where we are. In the near-decade since its passage, the legislation banning prisoner voting has been called “constitutionally outrageous” by a High Court judge, formally declared to be inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act by the Supreme Court, and now held to be in breach of Treaty principles by the Waitangi Tribunal. And that’s without considering what less impressive people like mere legal academics have said about it.
The law has the formal effect of barring thousands of New Zealanders (disproportionately Māori) from voting at each election, and the practical effect of knocking hundreds from the electoral roll, which they then are highly unlikely to rejoin in the future…
Well if the criminals’ and con-artists that run Corporations are found guilty and not jailed for ’embezlement, cheating, extortion and other offences under (the list below; – some exeptions as it is a US list); then are still allowed to vote, why should we ban any prisoners from voting? https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/view-all-criminal-charges.html
[Deleted long list that was straight from the link provided. Remember that some people read TS on their phone and have to scroll through – Incognito]
Wage theft and the hospitality industry. I think it goes much deeper than that and is across many industries, especially those employing low skilled labour and migrant labour.
The Minister for Regional Economic Development has launched a stinging attack on urban liberals, accusing them of trying to take the fishing industry down….
He said the attacks came from people who did not always understand what was at stake, and the industry had to fight back to protect itself.
Mr Jones said it was not just the fishing industry that was threatened, Māori who had invested much of their economic heritage in the business were threatened too.
"Those of us such as me as a Māori, who have our legacy interests via the treaty in the fishing industry, need to gird our loins and protect ourselves," Mr Jones said.
"Rest assured, there is a largely metropolitan-based power culture, which seeks to do damage to our industry."
Mr Jones said this was a very serious problem to people who had stored their full and final wealth from Treaty settlements in this industry.
Can Shane Jones walk and chew calamari at the same time?
That'd be the same Jones who took Sealord from being NZ's biggest seafood company to no. three or four? Not an expert on fishing by any stretch of the imagination – just a parachutist.
had to larf at Neal Jones dealing to the nationals party squealer Mathew Hooton on 9-noon this morning.
Jones had Hooton on the back foot right from the start and the more he got backed into a corner the more hooton squealed as all his right wing memes and tropes came flying out of his gob unbidden to show the real hooton. not nice.
A report from link picked up from TDB about Indonesia with help from USA JK and Australia (NZ?) and the killing of up to million people, and imprisonment of about million, of 9 August 2019,
Can someone please explain why I see a Reply button on most but not all posts? I've tried three different browsers and get the same result. On my Android mobile I seem to see reply on every post.
Its great to see more attention for OUR Mokopuna future environment but to have a clean environment one needs to clean up poverty aswell no use having a clean environment in one hand and thousands living under the bridge. national made a big mess of our environment and caused a housing short in Aotearoa in 9 years I have see miles of forest turned into Dairy Farm in the central North Island that is not good for the environment. All prosecution for effluent entering our waterways stop .To many things national did negatively to our environment to itemize
. Its great to see alot of Tangata Whenua challenging local council elections post in Hawksbay kia kaha times are changing it happening all around the Motu.
That was a huge beautiful crocodile on the roof of a house during the India monsoon floods great picture.
That is a great phenomenon getting thousands more to give blood awesome Sir Henry
Great To see a shopping mall Goldsmith in America doing things to save our mokopuna future environment.
Nothing wrong with being nice some people think Im weak because I nice .?????.
Great to see the Eco Maori affect is still getting reka .
Ka pai to the Wahine who wrote this story and Kia kaha to the Students Strikes to champion a clean environment for their mokopuna grandchildren .
We will be striking again for climate change
OPINION: Students are taking to the streets, beaches and parks on 27 September, and we're inviting everyone to join us. That's right, this is an intergenerational issue, and you're all invited to put pressure on politicians worldwide to pass bills which will take action to reduce the impacts of climate change.
We want our government and governments worldwide to do everything in their power to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by ending the use of fossil fuels and investing in a regenerative and renewable economy. Additionally, we are asking the government to acknowledge the severity of climate change and declare a climate emergency.
On 24 May, we walked out of school alongside hundreds of thousands of students around the globe. We won't sit and watch our futures disintegrate, and we invite you to join us to strengthen our movement. That's you, reading this column; that's the next person you talk to; that's the waiter who gives you your coffee and the woman sitting in front of you in the car/bus/train, it really is everyone
Climate change isn't just a youth problem, even though it'll hit us the hardest. It's everyone's problem. Everyone has a responsibility to act, in both practical ways and through joining the strike movement on 27 September.
If you have a child, niece, nephew or young person you care about, it's your problem. Do you think they look into their future and imagine travelling to various islands and cities, bays and beaches? Or do they wonder if the sea will have swallowed them by the time they're your age ka kite ano link below.
A avalanche at Mount Cook lets hope that the 5 people caught in the avalanche are all good.
A tornado hit the water front in Tamaki Makau flipping 30 ton yachts tawhirimate is a powerful entity.
Mike the Pigeon Valley fire was huge you say it started by a farmer plowing his paddock with heavy disks which created sparks.
The People of Papatuanuku need to combat climate change to help our Pacific Island cousins it is their biggest threat to a happy healthy future.
The New Zealand Airforce needs to have the equipment to patrol the Pacific Ocean we have a huge Tangata area to patrol the new Aircraft being delivered in 2023 is needed to protect our fisheries and tangata who end up in strife in Tangaroa.
I do think that the commercial mussels spat catches need to respect the environment that they catch their spat from they should have vehicles that have tyers that spread their load to save our tuatua . This is how the neanderthal capitalist work they thrash a resource till it collapses this happened to tuatua wet fish fisheries I also have great concern about the Manuka honey industry on the East Coast there are hives everywhere on the coast they wonder why they have had 2 to 3 bad seasons it because they are over exploiting the resource.
Awesome that the Coalition Government is investing to fixing Rotoruas museum there would be some great taonga in their care to display to the public.
In Porirua the state housing they pull down functional whare to cramm flash new housing any intelligent person will know that the rents will go up too cover the cost of the building of the whare capitalism ways are most salespeople tell you what you want to here .
Lyndon PEE is a powerful poison that takes control of the user who can be manipulated to do just about anything we need more advertising to educate te tangata about the crap it great that this program is happening in Te Taiwhiti the crap is making a big mess up there.
A lot of people don't understand that A warm whare is a healthy whare Eco Maori say a education program needs to be run about the effects of a cold damp whare has on te tamariki respiratory system it's not good Eco Maori always has a warm WHARE.
The statistic mess is from simons time in Parliament along with many others kia ora.
The Australian idiot who stabbed people they are being empowered by people who use hate to gain power.
People who go to WAR often suffer mental trauma .The Pilots whos autobiography book that the Wahine was describing him being cold in nature no hugging ect.
I see all the moves that you try to manipulate me just wasting your time and money.
You would think that a organization like Cambridge Analytical would use the data they harvest off the internet would be used for good purposes like governments planning for the future .
You know its ridiculous that humanity has not learnt by its mistakes we discovered a resource and exploit it till it collapses or nearly collapses thrown our arms in the AIR and make all the excuses in the Papatuanuku to push the blame to others as to WHY the resources collapse. I have seen it with fishing farming Honey many other valuable species and resources are over exploiting by humanity. What should happen is when a resource is discovered the planing should be put in place to harvest it sustainably from the START not the AMBULANCES at the bottom of the hill that we have going down at the MINUTE. You see we might be still catching fishes but the amount of diesel burned to catch te ika will have gone up 50 % from 30 years ago the fishermen wanted to have horses power limits to control the fisherys instead of the quota system that would have limited the catch effort on the fishery you see it is basically horse power that catches fish .The fishermen would be able to buy and sell the right to the use of horses power to catch fish that system would have limited the pressure on our fisheries to what it was 30 years ago.
But the corrupted money men got their way and a dump ass Quoter system was implemented that can be exploited very easily by the crooked MAN big fail Aotearoa Quoter management system .
The bureaucrats, for whose convenience it was introduced, will stick to it come hell or highwater of course, but it seems that both are coming fairly soon now.
I say a national statement to protect our precious whenua that produces our food from housing development good on you David Te Atua is not making anymore.
That is the way people with power have to be held accountable for their abuse of power and abuseing people The opera singer Placido Domingo.
That shows that Aotearoa was a land of the giants with another discovery of a giant penguin in Aotearoa .
A nuclear accident in Russia we should not be wasting precious resources on weapons of mass destruction but I get it yin yan it's about the balance of power.
Good Idea having a online petition to get Jacinda to visit Ihumatao I think it's about time Tangata Whenua O Aotearoa got a win
I don't think that there should be a problem in The Tauranga whenua Waitangi treaty settlement's Its a fact that Tangata Whenua O Aotearoa lost millions of hectares of whenua.
I am sure that the mussel spat harvester are just chasing the $$$$$$$ without considering the effects that there actions have on the environment I know someone who is in that industry.
I think it's good that our Armed personnel the Army and Navy are covered by Accident Compensation Corporation who paid for their accidents before the Army and Navy that is stupid they are KIWIs that is the reason why we have some ex personnel not getting the correct help they needed.
Kia Ora to the Tangata Whenua O Aotearoa living in Australia awesome that you are keeping our culture going strong in Australia Te manawa ora teaching te raku ka pai I know those whanau names We need to keep our cultural pumping and pass it on to our mokopuna in a stronger state that is one of my main goals .ka pai to Jess in Uawa winning the Great Ideas for life Awesome Ideas Mana Wahine
Lets hope that they come up with smart simple solutions in the Pacific Island form Government meeting in Tuvalu to help them survive prosperously on their own whenua that means coming up with solutions for them to create their own wealth to teach a person to ika is better than giving the person a ika
Its called showing respect for our biggest tradeing partner that is what Jacinda is doing she not stupid. But Eca Maori wants Australia to be committed to slow down and stop their use of COAL.
The tide has changed on Global warming sea level rising human caused climate change. Russell the Bird shoe man gave a excellent opinion. Once Business Figure Out that the Green Industry is the next big Gold rush The changes we need to make as a society will speed up real fast thats part of capitalism The tipping point is just around the corner but WHANAU don’t let up keep championing for a Clean Green Environment for Our Mokopuna. Yes Australia needs to do more once they figure out that a bet on Carbon is a losing bet. The Green Energy Revolution has Started they will be rushing to catch up to Aotearoa we need to embrace 5 G technology to help generate a Clean Green society.
Pukana man is doing great in Cricket its was great that Aotearoa Cricket and Pukana man managed to sort out their differences and keep him playing for us Mark.
I think it's stupid that the prison system is giving that Idiot more publicity trying to get a new law that will take rights away from all the other prisoners when they have laws to control the Christchurch idiots communications this stuff up is just giving him more publicity.
If you want to be treated respectfully one must do the same it's not rocket science Newshub.
Herbs Song For Freedom movie gets Nation Wide Release Today I will go and watch the movie. Music is great for the Wairua I have to set me up a 12 volt radio system. Those dawn raids of the past in Papatuanuku was a politican trying to use HATE to gain votes he didn't care about the lives he ruined Ilolahia ka pai great name Herbs original manager.
Kia kaha Greta we all know whom is a puppet in Reality keep up your great mahi championing a clean healthy environment for our next generation
Greta Thunberg sets sail for New York on zero-carbon yacht
Climate activist begins voyage from Plymouth to Trump’s US with father and two-man crew
On white-crested swells under leaden skies, the teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has set sail from Plymouth on arguably her most daunting challenge yet.
A two-week crossing of the Atlantic during hurricane season in a solar-powered yacht is the first obstacle, but it is unlikely to be the toughest in an odyssey through the Americas over many months
This will be both the ultimate gap year and a journey into the heart of climate darkness: first to the United States of president Donald Trump, who has promised to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, and then down to South America, possibly including Brazil where president Jair Bolsonaro is overseeing a surge of Amazon deforestation.
In between, the 16-year-old Swede will add her increasingly influential voice to appeals for deeper emissions cuts at two crucial global gatherings: the Climate Action Summit in New York on 23 September and the the UN climate conference in Santiago in early December.
The reception awaiting her on the other side is likely to be mixed, with the climate issue a polarising point in US politics
In a taste of the hostility that is likely to come from supporters of the fossil fuel industry, Steve Milloy, a Fox News contributor and former member of the Trump transition team, described Thunberg on Twitter earlier this week as “the ignorant teenage climate puppet
The Minister has apologized to the Papatuanuku because some of the prison staff drop the ball and let this idiot post inappropriate letters. The Prison Director should resign anyone with a brain will know that any letters that he writes and gets to post could gain publicity I agree prison guards are corrupt.
trump playing the bully with the might of the USA behind him is a cause for concern the stock market dropping.
Its great that our government has stepped in to clean up another national mess The Christchurch earthquake shambles repairs giving the people money to fix the shoddy repairs made when national was in government so there whare can pass a inspection to get insurance.
Allan Jones is just a neanderthal he is trying to boost his ratings making statements like that he should retired and let someone from the next generation have his mic ma te wa he probably has a lump of coal under his bed.
The Casson Whanau its hard to figure out and find people who you can trust there are people who are just hustlers and don't care about the damage they do to others whanau.
That's wise The Provenance Growth Fund investing in giving tangata whenua Technology skills that is the low carbon industry that could quite easily beat the dairy industry in export income.
Its cool to see the hearing impaired getting taught tangata whenua O Aotearoa te reo and cultural awesome.
Ka kite ano my device cursor starts jumping all over the place when I write too Te Ao Maori News the sandflys are trying to stop me posting to Maori TV
I think we can all agree that the mainstream media in New Zealand has a very different set of rules for the right wing compared to the left. While Labour and Green Party politicians don’t seem to be able to fart without it becoming a sackable offence, National and Act ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, June 28 through Sat, July 4, 2020Editor's Choice'2040': A funny, entertaining, upbeat climate documentaryA timely Australian documentary takes a 'solutions' approach, with the filmmaker inspired by visions of ...
Racist National MP Hamish WalkerEven before Todd Muller's coup ousted Simon Bridges by a single vote, it was patently obvious that the National Party promotes and stands for white privilege. In fact they’ve always worked to ensure the discriminatory status quo in New Zealand doesn’t change.So it’s no surprise that ...
Dave HeatleyZero community transmission. Just a handful of active cases, all in quarantine. New Zealand is in an attractive situation, at least compared to much of the world. The situation could be robust and enduring – or it might be fragile, just one border incursion away from a “second ...
Is the consequence of the Simpson Report proposals for restructuring the health system poorer accountability to people? When in doubt, centralise‘ has been a persistent theme in New Zealand public policy throughout our history. The current government is no exception. Here are some examples. - The regional polytechs have been ...
I wrote earlier in the week about the Scientology front organisations Drug Free World and Drug Free Ambassadors and their quite prominent role in anti-cannabis reform "coalition" assembled by Family First and a newloca branch of the American prohibitionist organisation SAM.It turns out Family First aren't the only ones helping ...
Nik GreenMuch of the public debate about the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has focused on the extent to which government regulations have restricted personal and business activity.Oxford University Blavatnik School of Government Here in New Zealand, the question of when to change Alert Levels dominated the ...
Raising The Bar: Would that the Prime Minister and her colleagues would listen as intently to what the people – as opposed to the power elites – are saying as the Greens. Were they so disposed, the popular clamour for a transformational post-Covid reset would be loud in their ears. ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzDo you think the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown will slow or ...
A bit like a letter home. I have now been full-time at the University of Melbourne since 2019. Before that, I was 20 years at the University of Otago, Wellington. Indeed, I set up this very Public Health Expert Blog with Nick Wilson ten years ago. Now I am your ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections House Democrats have released a comprehensive report showing how – if they control the White House and both the Senate and the House of Representatives – they might move forward on climate change. Their “Climate Crisis Action Plan,” released June 30 by the ...
Not Ready: Todd Muller’s lack-lustre and self-contradictory performances offer conclusive proof that a political leader cannot be managed into competence. National’s new boss has Janet Wilson handling his media and Matthew Hooton writing his speeches. Both are highly professional political and public relations specialists, and Muller is lucky to have ...
Unfortunately, due to a medical emergency, I have landed in hospital so am not able to do a current update on the NZ blog statistics. Let’s hope I can get back to this in good time. ...
It started as a family story, about a step-father who went out one night to break into an embassy in Wadestown, Wellington. John Daniell wanted to understand what his family had been part of when his mother and then step-father work for New Zealand’s Security Intelligence. He wanted to know ...
The Greens have shaken up the election campaign with the announcement of their radical poverty and action plan to reform welfare provision and introduce a new wealth tax for millionaires. It’s a big-thinking, controversial policy and has generated a lot of disagreement over how radical it is, whether it could ...
My house is currently supplied electricity by Meridian. As soon as I can change I will because Meridian spilled water to hike electricity prices. They got consumers to spend an extra $80 million on power unnecessarily. Clever them. The Electricity Authority has called their behaviour an “undesirable trading situation”, or ...
When Jacinda Ardern unexpectedly became the Labour Party leader shortly before the 2017 general election, she promised to lead a government of transformation. After nearly three years occupying the Treasury benches, health professionals working in public hospitals have been keenly waiting for transformational progress, including in the capacity and quality ...
Last night, One News ran a follow-up story to its Colmar Brunton poll results on the cannabis referendum, headed here as Government accuses big American anti-cannabis group of interfering in NZ politics.In truth it wasn't just the government: Justice minister Andrew Little, National's Shane Reti and the Greens' Chloe Swarbrick ...
When the government refused to put cameras on fishing boats to ensure fishers obeyed the law, Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash claimed that coalition partner NZ First (which has received large donations from the fishing industry) was not responsible for the decision. He has repeated that claim repeatedly since then. But ...
Heroic Evasions: Labour needs to be unequivocal in its communications with the electorate. Either it has a plan to prevent their fellow New Zealanders from falling off the economic cliff, or it doesn’t. Either it has a fiscal policy equal to the task of funding that plan, or it hasn’t. ...
Prof John Potter*Elimination has been an effective strategy for New Zealand in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic virus (SARS-CoV-2). Most other countries have not pursued this goal and are ignoring the opportunity even now. SARS-CoV-2 is not manageable by the influenza playbook; its longer incubation period makes tracing ...
This is a re-post from Weather Underground by Bob HensonAbove: This rainbow appears unusually low in the sky because it has formed early in the afternoon, rather than toward sunset. For a rainbow to form, water droplets must be present in the air in front of an observer ...
On Monday, Todd Muller gave an important speech to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce, He spoke firmly about his belief in the need for foreign investment, for the public sector to partner with the private sector rather than boss it around and, crucially, demanded the government deliver a clear strategy ...
Todd Muller's first act on become party leader was to appoint an all-white front bench. This understandably raised eyebrows, so he is now apparently reconsidering caucus and list rankings. Which is obviously necessary, but there's still the underlying problem: National doesn't have a lot of Māori MP's. And the reason ...
Meridian energy has been caught manipulating the electricity market for fun and profit: Meridian Energy pushed up power prices by unnecessary spilling water from its south dams in December that could have been used for generation, the Electricity Authority has ruled in a preliminary decision. The authority said the ...
When the Christchurch murderer pleaded guilty to 51 counts of murder and a number of other violent assault charges a few months ago, he effectively closed the door on what the public will know about the lead up to and commission of the event. His plea means that no evidence ...
Daphna Whitmore The Philippines is enduring one of the longest lockdowns in the world. For President Duterte the lockdown provides an opportunity to garner more powers and to push through a brazen assault on human rights. A new law called the Anti-Terror Bill has been passed under urgency and it ...
Hearing the Prime Minister castigate the Warehouse for laying off 1,000 workers after receiving $52 million in wage subsidies reminds me of the fabled frog who agreed to carry a scorpion across a river. The scorpion stings the frog halfway across, dooming both to drown. The frog cries “Why on ...
Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Amanda Kvalsvig, Prof Michael BakerCompared with other OECD countries NZ is a stand-out success story by ending community transmission of COVID-19. While there have been some well-publicised recent deficiencies (eg, quarantine organisation), there has still been no evidence of community transmission for many weeks. Nevertheless, ...
It’s June 30th, marked as Asteroid Day by many people of an astronomical bent around the globe. On this date in 1908, early in the morning in a remote part of central Siberia, the sky fell in. Well, not literally. What happened is a substantially-sized lump of cosmic detritus ...
There really is not much about Paula Bennett concerning her career trajectory, the policies she promoted, and most importantly, the socio-economic effect this had upon New Zealand (and particularly the most vulnerable in this, our oft-cited “egalitarian” society of this country) that can be said now that hasn’t already been ...
Don Franks Poverty, inequality – really – aren’t politicians paid to sort that stuff ? Why can’t they just get it together and come up with something fair and sensible? A cold rainy 2020 morning, a headline showed promise. “Green Party’s $8b plan would guarantee an income of $325 a ...
A guest repost by Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) staff attorney Augusta Wilson. Fundraising is not the objective of this article but readers may wish to know that CSLDF is currently conducting a summer fundraiser to support defense of research scientists and research integrity from anti-science interference by politicians and industrial interests. The COVID-19 pandemic ...
Helloy… My name is Todd Muller and I am the leader of the National Party of New Zealand. Many people come up to me on the street and ask me who I am. I’m often walking through Tauranga, or in a mall in suburban Auckland, or maybe even a farmers’ ...
The US state of Mississippi has finally voted to remove the Confederate emblem from its state flag. Good. Its appalling that it was put there in the first place, but even more appalling that it took so long to remove it. Its basicly as if a German Länder still had ...
No one could have predicted when David Seymour’s End of Life Choice Bill was passed by Parliament last November that the referendum required to bring the legislation into force would be held against the backdrop of a deadly global pandemic. Since then, the mounting tally of casualties around the world ...
Paul GoldsmithYou can often tell just how effective a progressive policy proposal will be by how much the right wing criticise it. The more socially beneficial, the more vitriolic and unhinged they seem to become.That was the case when the Green Party announced their Poverty Action Plan yesterday. The response ...
Back at the beginning of April, when we had much else on our minds, I wrote this post urging some caution in interpreting the results of the latest Horizon poll, conducted in February, on voting intentions in this year's cannabis referendum, which was paid for by Helius Therapeutics.I wrote that ...
Over the weekend the Greens made their first election policy announcement, and promised transformational change: a more progressive tax system, with new rates applying to incomes of $100,000 and $150,000; a new wealth tax on net wealth over $1 million; and a guaranteed minimum income to eliminate poverty. Its bold, ...
Story of the Week... El Niño/La Niña Update... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Global Warming Is Melting Our Sense of Time Satellite image of smoke from active fires burning near the ...
. . Plague town? There are two things right now in Aotearoa New Zealand that are guaranteed to piss people off. Firstly, it’s National playing silly-bugger politics with the covid-19 pandemic. This cost Simon Bridges his job as National’s Leader. Lately, Michael Woodhouse has been playing fast and loose with ...
Tertiary fees in New Zealand versus Australia: Fees Are Important, but not as Important as Financing In Australia, the Education Minister Dan Tehan has proposed an overhaul of the existing higher education funding system to offer 39,000 additional study places by 2023 and 100,000 by 2030. The proposal has been ...
The latest opinion poll forecasts a landslide win by Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party, but when taken alongside other polling, it illustrates New Zealand politics remains volatile and the contest is still very open. According to the Colmar Brunton poll published by TVNZ last night, Labour would easily romp back ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, June 21 through Sat, June 27, 2020Editor's ChoiceFacebook creates fact-checking exemption for climate deniers Facebook is "aiding and abetting the spread of climate misinformation,” said Robert Brulle, an ...
The images and reports delivered to us by the world’s media leave us in no doubt that the rest of the world is still in the grip of a coronavirus pandemic that shows no signs of slackening, but is actually uncontrolled and picking up pace in many countries; and even ...
Minister of Health - David ClarkIf you follow politics at all in New Zealand, David Clark is likely a name you’re a bit familiar with. The current Minister of Health is perhaps the most disliked Member of Parliament at the moment, which amongst very stiff competition is really saying something. ...
SUNDAY JUNE 28Beat the Chasers (TVNZ 1, 8.30pm). Judging by the tweets, which is probably a bad idea, over lockdown, all of New Zealand found itself in front of The Chase every night at 5pm. It is a brilliant fomat: hardly anyone wins any money ...
SATURDAY JUNE 27Banksy and the Rise of Outlaw Art (Sky Arts, Sky 017, 8.00pm). There was graffiti before Banksy, but perhaps his pungent political messages hit home a bit harder. Anyways, a doco about his influence on street art featuring a bunch of cool people.SUNDAY JUNE 28Beat the Chasers (TVNZ 1, ...
We have been assailed by Fox News-style headlines, lurid stories of “a breach!”. An almost nuclear level disaster on the horizon scream, “Fiasco!” here, “Hero to Zero!” there… Oh quick, panic everyone!This has fueled an unbelievably stupid environment of panic among some, and spurred useless, counterproductive political ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters A massive dust storm formed over the Sahara Desert last week and invaded the Caribbean over the June 20-21 weekend, bringing dangerous levels of air pollution and low visibility to the islands. The dust is accompanied by a large amount ...
Will the Covid Crisis lead to a dramatic redirection for New Zealand and the World? A hinge in history occurs where the past and present are connected but they point in different directions. Big hinges are rare but crucial in the development of humankind. Not in Narrow Seas identifies six. ...
RNZ reports that Refining NZ is considering shutting down Marsden Point and effectively turning itself into a fuel distribution service. The problem they're immediately trying to address is that running a refinery is expensive, and it is cheaper just to import processed fuel. But there's a longer-term problem too: climate ...
We all know that the COVID-19 virus is a terrible infectious disease that has already caused untold misery and numerous deaths around the world. Nearly half a million people have already died, and those are just the cases we know about.But how bad could things actually get exactly?Today, the NZ ...
This essay by Alex Hochuli examines the global phenomena of BLM protests . He is a freelance writer and research consultant based in São Paulo, Brazil. He is the co-host of the global politics podcast, Aufhebunga Bunga, and co-author of the forthcoming Politics at the End of the End of History (Zero ...
Are You Still Here? Just like his colleague, Phil Twyford – of KiwiBuild fame – David Clark juts out his chin and shamelessly apportions blame to everybody but himself. Even worse, he has turned viciously on Ashley Bloomfield, the nearest approximation to a competent, decent, humble and accountable public servant ...
. . 20 June The bad news: Aotearoa New Zealand has two new cases of covid-19. The good news: the two cases were picked up at an Auckland quarantine facility. The terrifying news: had the story of the two women leaving quarantine without testing not broken four days ...
Willing Victims: What would all those Americans in MAGA hats be left with if they abandoned Trump? Just the sick feeling of having been cheated. Just the knowledge that the man in the White House is nothing more than a shape-shifting New York grifter; and that they have always been ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Like an earthquake rumbling down the San Andreas Fault, Jeff Gibbs’ and Michael Moore’s controversial film “Planet of the Humans” tore a rift through the environmental movement, a rift its leaders would not yearn for in an election year. After activists have spent ...
There have been a number of articles written about the voting in the final statges of the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill, during which National MPs voted alongside the Green Party to force a change that would prevent the removal of sentenced prisoners from the Electoral Roll. You can ...
Last night should have been a cause for muted celebration in Parliament. The Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Bill’s final passage through the House partially erases a stain on New Zealand’s democratic system. It’s a drum I’ve been beatingfor thepast decade, but denying all sentenced prisoners the right to vote is a ...
Jordan WilliamsIt’s pretty obvious to all and sundry that the Taxpayers Union, run by Jordan Williams, isn’t really a union at all. Instead it’s a small lobby group for privileged white folk, namely the old fools behind the scenes of the corrupt and largely defunct Act Party.With an incorrectly attributed ...
Last year, I highlighted a secrecy problem with the government's Infrastructure Funding and Financing Bill. The Bill would establish a new class of public entity, "special purpose vehicles", to hide debt from local government balance sheets fund infrastructure such as roads and sewers in "high-growth" councils. The SPVs would collect ...
Both the leader of the opposition Todd Muller and University of Auckland Professor Des Gorman have gone on the record as saying they suspect Covid-19 is spreading in the community in New Zealand once again. Let me explain why I don’t agree with them. As best I can tell there ...
By Geoffrey Miller A former MP and Associate Minister of Defence says that New Zealand’s Covid-19 border and quarantine issues illustrate why a new dedicated national security agency is needed. Heather Roy, a former deputy leader of the Act Party who held the associate defence portfolio from 2008-10, told the ...
Annual fishing report It's been about a year since we swapped out the Research News deckhand. It seems longer— particularly the past 4 months— and not because of this particular work. Over the course of the year somewhere in the neighborhood of 17,500 articles have been caught in our net, ...
This article on Feminist Current by Meghan Murphy looks at the Karen/Becky meme and argues it has officially gone too far The male centered progressive left has successfully made woman-hating trendy. Today, yet another “Karen” video went viral online. This time, it seems a woman flipped off a male driver, ...
New Zealanders deserve healthy rivers and lakes that are safe to swim in - but they have been getting worse for decades. That's why, with our latest announcement, we're investing in projects that will help clean up our rivers and lakes and restore them to health, within a generation. ...
This week we moved into the second half of 2020 - and our Government delivered another week of big changes and major progress for New Zealanders. Read below for a wrap of the key things moments from the week - from extending paid parental leave, to making major investments in ...
The Green Party has opposed the COVID-19 Recovery Fast-track Consenting Bill which shortcuts normal consenting processes under the Resource Management Act (RMA), reduces public participation and narrows environmental considerations. ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister of Regional Economic Development A regional freight hub for the lower North Island will be built just northeast of Palmerston North, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. The Government is investing $40 million through the Provincial Growth Fund to designate and buy land and design ...
Green Party Co-leader Marama Davidson is calling for the introduction of a Guaranteed Minimum Income to lift hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty and prevent more families entering into further debt with the Ministry of Social Development. ...
There has been renewed focus on New Zealand First acting as a handbrake on the Government after our decision to not support Auckland light rail. We are a handbrake for bad ideas, that istrue, but our track record since 2017 has seen New Zealand First constructively also serve as an ...
Mark Patterson MP, New Zealand First List MP New Zealand First’s Fair Residency for Superannuation Bill passed its First Reading in Parliament today. The Bill makes a significant change to NZ Super by raising the minimum residency requirement from 10 to 20 years, after age 20. “Currently, a migrant of ...
Darroch Ball MP, Spokesperson for Law and Order A New Zealand First member’s bill in the name of Darroch Ball introducing a six-month minimum prison sentence for assaults on first responders has passed its second reading in Parliament. The new offence of "injuring a first responder or corrections officer with ...
Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Deputy Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand First welcomes the launch of the new Criminal Cases Review Commission, gifted with the name from Waikato-Tainui - Te Kāhui Tātari Ture, announced in Hamilton today by Justice Minister Andrew Little. “New Zealand First has long believed in and ...
The Green Party is celebrating over $800m in new funding for green projects, which will get people into jobs while solving New Zealand’s long-term challenges. ...
Mark Patterson MP, Spokesperson for Primary Industries New Zealand First is appalled that Meridian seems to have been unnecessarily spilling water from its dams to drive up its profits."While New Zealanders have been coming together in some of our darkest hours, we don’t expect power gentailers to waste water and ...
We wrapped up the first half of 2020 with a busy month, taking additional steps to support New Zealanders as we continue with our economic recovery. We rolled out targeted packages to support key industries like tourism and construction, helped create jobs in the environmental and agriculture sectors, and set ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Infrastructure Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones has welcomed the appointment of Maurice Davis and his deep infrastructure and construction experience to the board of the Infrastructure Commission. Mr Davis (Ngāti Maniapoto), is the seventh and final appointment to the board led by former Reserve Bank Governor ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand’s click bait journalism is taking a turn for the worse, with yet another example of sensationalist, wilful-misrepresentation of the facts. “New Zealand First has worked constructively with its Coalition partner on hundreds of pieces of legislation and policy, and ...
The Green Party is today unveiling its Poverty Action Plan, which includes a Guaranteed Minimum Income to ensure people have enough to live with dignity. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Rotorua Museum redevelopment and Whakarewarewa and Tokorangi Forest projects will be accelerated thanks to a $2.09 million Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) boost, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher ...
This week, we rolled out the next steps of our recovery plan, with new infrastructure investment, extra support for tourism operators, and a new programme to get Kiwis into agriculture careers. The global economic consequences of COVID-19 will continue to be a challenge, but we have a detailed plan to ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First welcomes the passage of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission Bill through its final reading in Parliament today fulfilling a coalition agreement commitment. “This is an important step in saving the lives of New Zealanders and delivers a key coalition commitment ...
Whakatāne has been given a $2.5 million boost to speed up previously funded projects and create more than 450 jobs in the next decade. Of those, the equivalent of 160 full-time jobs could be delivered in the next six weeks. Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters is in town to make ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is investing $2.5 million to accelerate three infrastructure projects in Whakatāne, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. “This package is about ...
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones is throwing his weight behind a bid by the Auckland Council to fast-track the more than doubling of the city's water allowance from the Waikato River. And he's coming out strongly against anyone who plans on getting in the way of this campaign. "It is my ...
The Green Party is thrilled to see changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that mean consents for large projects can be declined if they will have significant climate change implications that are inconsistent with the Zero Carbon Act and Aotearoa New Zealand’s Paris Agreement obligations. ...
Hon Ron Mark, Minister of Defence The Royal New Zealand Navy’s new ship, Aotearoa, set sail for New Zealand on 10 June from the Republic of Korea, and is due to arrive in Auckland tomorrow, announced Minister of Defence Ron Mark. “Aotearoa is the Royal New Zealand Navy’s new fleet ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Racing Racing Minister Winston Peters has today welcomed the Racing Industry Bill passing its third reading, creating the legislative framework for revitalising the racing industry while limiting the need for future government intervention. “For too long our domestic racing industry has ...
The Green Party has today put forward an amendment to the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill to ensure all people in prisons can vote in general elections. ...
The Green Party welcomes the decision to not proceed with Public Public Investment (PPI) delivery of Auckland’s light rail project and to instead run the process through the public service. ...
Hon Ron Mark, New Zealand First List MP based in the Wairarapa New Zealand First List MP Hon Ron Mark welcomes the announcement of Provincial Growth Funding investment of $1.4 million to help secure the Wairarapa’s water supply. The funding boost will allow the Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC), and ...
New Zealand First list MP Mark Patterson has been selected to represent the party in the newly formed Taieri electorate at the upcoming election. Mr Patterson, his wife Jude and two daughters farm sheep and beef at Lawrence and Waitahuna. He previously stood in the Clutha-Southland electorate however boundary changes ...
Hon Shane Jones, Associate Minister for State Owned Enterprises A new ‘super depot’ to be built for NZ Post in Wellington will create around 350 jobs during construction, Associate Minister for State Owned Enterprises Shane Jones says. Shane Jones today attended a ground-breaking and blessing ceremony for the parcel-processing depot ...
Our strong economic management prior to COVID-19 - with surpluses, low debt and near-record-low unemployment - put us in a good position to weather the impact of the virus and start to rebuild our economy much earlier than many other countries.Now we're putting our plan to recover and rebuild ...
Darroch Ball MP, New Zealand First Spokesperson for Law and Order Recently released Police fleeing driver statistics have shown yet another increase in incidents with another record-high in the latest quarter. “This new quarterly record-high is the latest in a string of record-high numbers since 2014. The data shows incidents ...
New Zealand First MP Fletcher Tabuteau is pleased to be confirmed today as the party’s candidate for the Rotorua electorate. Speaking at the Rotorua AGM for New Zealand First, Mr Tabuteau said this is an election that is incredibly important for the people of Rotorua. “The founding principles of New ...
The Human Rights Commission’s PRISM report on the issues impacting people based on their sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) provides an excellent programme of work for future governments to follow, say the Greens. ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said the trans-Tasman bubble had not been jeopardised after aborder botch-upresulted in New Zealand having two active cases of COVID-19. On Friday, Mr Peters told RNZ's Morning Report he had heard from Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison that borders for trans-Tasman travel would open by ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said today he was pleased the army was now running the quarantine and isolation process - up until now it has been the Ministry of Health. Peters told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking that the army knew how to introduce and follow protocols and instil discipline. ...
Hon Ron Mark, New Zealand First List MP based in the Wairarapa New Zealand First MP and Minister for Defence and Veteran’s Affairs Ron Mark has confirmed his bid for the Wairarapa seat.“The Coalition Government has done a lot of good work throughout the Wairarapa, but many constituents have told ...
New Zealand First is pleased to release the names of its next tranche of candidates for the 2020 election. We’re proud to announce these hardworking New Zealanders that have put their hand up to fight for a commonsense and resilient future.Jamie Arbuckle – Kaikoura Mark Arneil – Christchurch Central Jackie ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Hon Ron Mark, Minister of Defence A massive joint effort between New Zealand Government agencies, employers, and the Vanuatu Government is underway to repatriate over 1000 Vanuatu nationals stranded in New Zealand, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Ron ...
Small businesses are getting greater certainty about access to finance with an extension to the interest-free cashflow loan scheme to the end of the year. The Small Business Cashflow Loan Scheme has already been extended once, to 24 July. Revenue and Small Business Minister Stuart Nash says it will be ...
A package of 23 projects across the country will clean up waterways and deliver over 2000 jobs Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Environment Minister David Parker announced today. The $162 million dollar package will see 22 water clean-up projects put forward by local councils receiving $62 million and the Kaipara ...
Tena koutou katoa Nga tangata whenua o tenei rohe o Pōneke, tena koutou Nau mai, haere mai ki te hui a tau mo te roopu reipa Ko tatou! Ko to tatou mana! Ko to tatou kaupapa kei te kokiri whakamua Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena tatou katoa Welcome. I ...
A new programme, which sets a firm course for the Building and Construction sector to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, has been announced by the Minister for Building and Construction Jenny Salesa. “A significant amount of New Zealand’s carbon emissions come from the building and construction sector. If we’re serious ...
The Provincial Growth Fund is investing more than $7.5 million in Northland ventures to combat the economic impact of the COVID-19 virus, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones have announced. The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) investment is going to the Northern Adventure Experience and ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Education Minister Chris Hipkins today announced significant funding for Auckland’s Northcote College as part of the first wave of a new nationwide school redevelopment programme to upgrade schools over the next 10 years. The $48.5 million project brings the total investment in Northcote College to ...
The Government has opened an urgent response fund to support schools and early learning services to get children and young people back on track after the Covid-19 lockdown. “While we are seeing improvements in attendance under Alert Level 1 Ministry of Education data shows that attendance rates in our schools ...
The law to boost the economic recovery from the impact of COVID-19 by speeding up resource consenting on selected projects has passed its second and third readings in the House today. “Accelerating nationwide projects and activities by government, iwi and the private sector will help deliver faster economic recovery and ...
Five port-related projects in Whanganui will receive a $26.75 million Provincial Growth Fund investment to support local economic recovery and create new opportunities for growth, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This is a significant investment that will support the redevelopment of the Whanganui Port, a project governed ...
Whanganui’s Sarjeant Gallery will receive an investment of up to $12 million administered by the Provincial Growth Fund to support its redevelopment, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. The project is included in a $3 billion infrastructure pipeline announced by Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Shane Jones yesterday. ...
The Provincial Growth Fund is investing nearly $2.5 million into three Te Ara Mahi programmes to support Manawatū-Whanganui jobseekers and employees to quickly train and upskill, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “Up to 154 local people will be supported into employment within the first year by these ...
This morning I have formally tendered my resignation as Minister of Health, which was accepted by the Prime Minister. Serving as Minister of Health has been an absolute privilege – particularly through these extraordinary last few months. It’s no secret that Health is a challenging portfolio. I have given ...
Scholarships for 57 early-career agricultural emissions scientists from 20 developing countries is another example of New Zealand’s international leadership in primary sector sustainability, says Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor. Mr O’Connor, announcing the scholarships today, says hundreds of applications were received for this fourth round of the CLIFF-GRADS programme (Climate, Food ...
A project to help rejuvenate the Horowhenua town of Foxton will receive a Provincial Growth Fund investment of $3.86 million, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This funding for the Foxton Regeneration project will be used to make the well-known holiday town even more attractive for visitors and ...
Moa bones and other sub-fossil remains of extinct species are set to have improved protection with proposals to prevent the trade in extinct species announced the Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage today. “We have lost too many of our native species, but these lost species, such as moa, remain an ...
The Government’s free and healthy school lunches programme moves south for the first time creating jobs for around 30 people in Otago and Southland. “Eighteen schools with 3000 students are joining the programme – 11 have already begun serving lunches, and seven are preparing to start during Term 3. This is ...
Thousands of Kiwi jobs and investment in New Zealand productions will be protected through a screen sector support package announced today by Associate Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage Carmel Sepuloni, Minister for Economic Development Phil Twyford and Minister for Broadcasting Kris Faafoi. The package also includes investment in broadcasting ...
The Government has established a new $10 million fund for the domestic events sector to help save jobs and protect incomes as it recovers from the impacts of COVID-19, Minister of Economic Development Phil Twyford announced today. This funding from Budget 2020 follows talks with the event sector designed to ...
The Government has taken another step in its commitment to making sure New Zealanders get a fairer deal at the petrol pump with the introduction of legislation to improve competition in the retail fuel market, says Energy and Resources Minister Megan Woods. “The fuel market study that this Government ordered ...
New Zealand has joined a global initiative that aims to enable all countries to access a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters announced today. The COVAX Facility was recently launched by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The Alliance includes the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank ...
From today new legislation takes effect to both restore the right to legal representation at the start of a Care of Children (CoCA) dispute in the Family Court, and allow parties to those proceedings to access legal aid where eligible. During a visit to the Family Court in Auckland today, ...
Home-based early childhood education (ECE) subsidised by the government will transition to a fully qualified workforce by 2025 to ensure better and more consistent quality, Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. “Quality early learning helps provide children with a strong foundation for their future,” Chris Hipkins said. From 1 January ...
The new Criminal Cases Review Commission | Te Kāhui Tātari Ture (CCRC) has started work and can now independently investigate claimed miscarriages of justice. “Even though we have appeal rights and safeguards against unsafe convictions, from time to time our justice system does get things wrong. The design of the ...
E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā karangatanga maha, tēnā koutou Ki a koutou Te Āti Awa, Taranaki Whānui, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, ngā mana whenua o te rohe nei, tēnā koutou Ko Te Whare Wānanga o Aotearoa ki ngā take o te Ao (NZIIA), Ko te Rōpū Tohu Tono ...
The Government’s increase to paid parental leave kicks in today with another 4 weeks taking New Zealand up to a full 6 months (26 weeks, up from 22 weeks) leave for new parents, and the maximum weekly payment will increase by $20pw, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. ...
A new package of infrastructure investments will help kick-start the post-COVID rebuild by creating more than 20,000 jobs and unlocking more than $5 billion of projects up and down New Zealand. Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones today outlined how the $3 billion infrastructure fund in the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today expressed the New Zealand Government’s deep disappointment at the passage by China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee of a national security law for Hong Kong. “New Zealand has consistently emphasised its serious concern about the imposition of this legislation on Hong Kong without inclusive ...
More jobs and more family time with newborns are the centrepiece of a suite of Government initiatives coming into effect today. July 1 is a milestone day for the Government as a host of key policies take effect, demonstrating the critical areas where progress has been made. “The Coalition Government ...
Environment Minister David Parker has today “called in” Auckland’s application to the Waikato Regional Council to take an extra 200 million litres of water a day from the lower reaches of the Waikato River for Auckland drinking water and other municipal uses. The call-in means the application has been referred ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker announced today that New Zealand’s hosting of APEC in 2021 will go ahead using virtual digital platforms. Mr Peters said the global disruption caused by COVID-19, including resultant border restrictions, had been the major factor in the ...
The start of construction on a new link road between Matakana Road and State Highway 1 will create jobs and support the significant population growth expected in the Warkworth area, Transport Minister Phil Twyford and Mayor Phil Goff announced today. Transport Minister Phil Twyford said construction of the Matakana Link ...
The Government is prioritising its latest investment in PPE for frontline health workers, including staff at managed isolation and quarantine facilities, Health Minister David Clark says. “With no community transmission of COVID-19 our response now has a firm focus on keeping our border safe and secure. “We must ensure that ...
The Parihaka Papakāinga Trust in Taranaki will receive up to $14 million for a new visitor centre and other improvements at the historic settlement that will boost the local economy and provide much-needed jobs, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones and Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Andrew Little have ...
Protections for workers who are employees of one employer but working under the direction of another business or organisation have come into force, closing a gap in legislation that made the personal grievance process inaccessible for some workers, says Workplace Relations Minister Iain Lees-Galloway. “This Government is working hard to ...
A range of improvements are already underway to address issues identified in the rapid review of the Managed Isolation and Quarantine system released today, Housing Minister Megan Woods said. The review was commissioned just over a week ago to identify and understand current and emerging risks to ensure the end-to-end ...
The important brown kiwi habitat around Whakatāne will receive added protection through an Iwi-led predator free project announced by Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage and Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau. “The Government is investing nearly $5 million into Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Awa’s environmental projects with $2.5 ...
An extra 4,000 tonnes of offcuts and scraps of untreated wood per year will soon be able to be recycled into useful products such as horticultural and garden mulch, playground safety surfacing and animal bedding as a result of a $660,000 investment from the Waste Minimisation Fund, Associate Environment Minister ...
The Governor-General has referred Scott Watson’s convictions for murder back to the Court of Appeal, Justice Minister Andrew Little announced today. Mr Watson was convicted in 1999 of the murders of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope. His appeal to the Court of Appeal in 2000 was unsuccessful, as was his ...
A new five-year funding agreement for the Reserve Bank will mean it can boost its work to protect New Zealanders’ finances, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. “New Zealand has a strong and stable financial system. Financial stability is an area that we are not prepared to cut corners for, particularly ...
A law change has been introduced to make it easier for forgotten funds in institutional accounts to be returned more easily to their rightful owners. Revenue Minister Stuart Nash has introduced an amendment to the Unclaimed Money Act 1971. It will update the rules controlling forgotten sums of money held ...
Political editor Justin Giovannatti reports from Te Papa, where the prime minister today addressed Labour’s 2020 Congress.Jacinda Ardern looked to slap a Labour sticker on the team of five million with the launch today of the party’s Covid-19 recovery plan, at an event which serves as the unofficial kickoff to ...
Kelvin Davis stole the show at Labour’s 2019 conference with a hilarious speech about the formation of the coalition government. The party’s oft-underestimated deputy leader was again in the spotlight this year, but with a more solemn yet at times impassioned address outlining the country’s Covid-19 sacrifices. Here is the text: Anne Guenole. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Russo, Associate Professor, Director Cabrini Monash University Department of Nursing Research, Monash University The Victorian government’s decision to “close and contain” nine public housing towers in Flemington and North Melbourne represents a significant escalation in the fight against COVID-19. Under the ...
By Grace Auka-Salmang in Port Moresby Key findings from the 2016 to 2018 Papua New Guinea Demographic and Health Survey reveals that 56 percent of women aged 15 to 49 in PNG have experienced physical violence around the age of 15. And 28 percent have experienced sexual violence. Also 18 ...
The New Zealand Herald recently published a column which criticises its own record on race. Teuila Fuatai explains why she felt she had to call out the paper that commissioned her. In the column, freelance journalist Teuila Fuatai detailed her concerns about the Herald’s record on race and her efforts to ...
Dunedin writer Victor Billot farewells retiring National MP Paula Bennett.Working Class Hero I came up the hard way in Taupo, you see, surviving off Weetbix (just occasionally.) I waited tables then knocked off a degree, perhaps with the help of a state subsidy. Then a man with a ...
Three of the country's biggest seafood companies have broken ranks with the rest of the sector and declared their support for cameras on fishing boats. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne This article was updated July 5. With 77% of enrolled voters counted at Saturday’s Eden-Monaro byelection, Labor’s Kristy McBain currently leads the Liberals’ Fiona Kotvojs by a 50.8-49.2 projected ...
The family of pioneering New Zealand suffragist Kate Sheppard kept an important secret – one that possibly explains a lot about her life, her beliefs and her motivation.Kate Sheppard’s secret involved her father, Andrew Wilson Malcolm, and what happened to him after she was born. An extensive and painstaking quest ...
Covid-19 or not, renewable energy is the future. That’s why one grassroots business is taking a leap of faith and trusting that the current downturn will eventually yield to an ecotourism boom.To launch an ecotourism business in rural Otago right now, you’d need to be either a visionary or just ...
Sam Brooks reviews Auckland writer Lil O’Brien’s memoir Not That I’d Kiss A Girl, and finds it a valuable yet unclear story of the author’s struggle with her own acceptance.As queer people, we can be unnecessarily harsh on media that is about us, and by us. I think of the ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level one – read about what that means here. For official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is made possible thanks to donations from Spinoff Members. To support this ...
In the wake of lockdown, Volunteering New Zealand is calling on people to reshape the way they think about volunteering. To unite with whānau, friends and workmates to make a group commitment to a community or cause that matters to them. Covid-19 ...
Mahesh Bindra has been a loyal member of NZ First for almost 15 years. But as an Indian-New Zealander, what does he make of members of his party attacking his community? Multicultural Times editor Gaurav Sharma reports.Winston Peters, deputy prime minister and leader of New Zealand First, likes to say ...
As Auckland suffers its worst drought in 27 years, many of the city’s self-service car washes are doing a roaring trade. Michael Andrew finds out how these businesses are getting around the strict water restrictions.Car washing may seem like a wasteful luxury in the middle of a drought, but take ...
Call it last, call it the foundation: Georgie Dansey is 84th on the Labour Party list for the 2020 election. Here she explains how she got there.What does it take to come last on the Labour list? It’s a bit of a story, so if you’re feeling tl;dr then just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne At Saturday’s Eden-Monaro byelection, Labor’s Kristy McBain currently leads the Liberals’ Fiona Kotvojs by a 50.7-49.3 projected margin in The Poll Bludger’s Eden-Monaro election page. This page has all the ...
The controversial MP says his former party put a target on the minister’s back, but Melissa Lee insists there was no concerted campaign.The MP who exited the National Party in a tailspin attack on former leader Simon Bridges has publicly apologised to Clare Curran for his role in the treatment ...
By Jane Patterson, political editor of RNZ News The State Services Minister says the government will do everything it can to track down who is responsible for a massive privacy breach relating to New Zealand’s active covid cases, and is not ruling out pursuing criminal charges. An investigation has been ...
The National editorial Hundreds walked the Sir John Guise drive on Thursday calling for justice for the brutal death of 19-year-old mother-of-two – Jenelyn Kennedy last week. Jenelyn’s battered lifeless body was taken into the Port Moresby General Hospital last Tuesday by four men (one believed to be the father ...
*Watch the full video in the player below*In the first 48 hours of life, blood from newborn New Zealand babies is taken and tested. Most parents will never hear back. For others, it’s life-changing, and life-saving. Frank Film investigates. Performed 48 hours after birth, it’s a medical procedure ...
Latest from the Beehive Shane Jones, the Minister of Munificence, in a joint statement with fellow Northlander and Deputy PM Winston Peters, wrapped up a week of handout investment announcements with news of more millions for the people of his patch in the Far North. This time it was a ...
By Rebecca Kuku in Port Moresby A passionate plea by men, women and children has echoed around the Papua New Guinean capital of Port Moresby – that it is time to turn the corner on addressing gender-based violence in the country. Gatherings, a peaceful march and a vigil were staged ...
Former Race Relations Commissioner Gregory Fortuin has called out National MP Hamish Walker for his racist comments towards people of colour. This follows Walker's press release objecting to people from Pakistan, India and Korea potentially being quarantined ...
Khruangbin have established their live reputation with spacious instrumentals, but the band’s third album, Mordechai, features prominent vocals and disco-funk jams. Andrew Drever interviews the Texas-based trio upon its release.While the Covid-19 pandemic continues to rage in the US, the situation has actually been a blessing in disguise for Khruangbin ...
The State Services Minister says the government will do everything it can to track down who is responsible for a massive privacy breach relating to New Zealand's active Covid cases, and is not ruling out pursuing criminal charges. ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level one – read about what that means here. For official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is made possible thanks to donations from Spinoff Members. To support this ...
With the collapse of Bauer NZ resulting in Australian magazines flooding our shelves, Wendyl Nissen looks back at her battle to get homegrown content given the star billing it deserved.Thanks to some hard-fought battles 30 years ago, New Zealand women have been enjoying their own version of Woman’s Day and ...
Extending the franchise to prisoners is the latest in a series of contentious electoral reforms enacted by this government, but history suggests the ‘convention’ for consensual election reform is more imagined than real.The Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Act, passed last week and corrected this week, extends the franchise ...
Since publication of Newsroom’s extensive investigation into serious issues at Oranga Tamariki, our inbox has been flooded with stories from more current and former employees. In less than 48 hours after Newsroom’s in-depth inquiry into the children's ministry was published we received a high volume of correspondence from current and former ...
“She’d come into town on the bus. The photographer, so her mother had told her, was famous”: a short story by Wellington writer Elspeth Sandys. It was to be a present for her father who was dying. A photograph of her in her first ball gown. When she reached for ...
Controversy over Wellington's Shelly Bay has ensnared iwi, the council and politicians for years. Investigative journalist Nicky Hager uses official documents to lay out the roles of money, power and wheels-within-wheels on this most contentious of developments. Any time I am asked whether we have corruption in New Zealand, I ...
Those who can’t afford to travel will “attend” the terror sentencing via video link, the Immigration Minister says. David Williams reports The Immigration Minister is demanding officials give urgent help to overseas victims of the Christchurch terror attack and their families. Yesterday, High Court Justice Cameron Mander announced the terrorist, ...
Is the answer to saving New Zealand's professional sports teams creating super-franchises? The Extra Time podcast asks sports leaders. Professional sport is slowly emerging from the grip of the pandemic but its financial future is far from certain. Covid-19 highlighted a weakness in the structure of professional sport in New ...
Before Covid-19, it’d take a long flight and half a grand to see Hamilton in the flesh. Now, the biggest musical of the past two decades is available to watch on Disney+. Sam Brooks takes stock of this extraordinary move. Right now, Broadway is a sleeping dragon. New York theatres ...
Sacked cabinet minister Clare Curran speaks for the first time about the brutal end to her political career – and what she calls the toxicity and bullying that marked her years in parliament. By Donna Chisholm.Of all the humiliations – often self-inflicted – that Clare Curran endured during her 12-year ...
On 03 July Children’s Commissioner was given additional responsibility by the Minister of Justice which extended its role as the independent monitor of the conditions and treatment of children and young people in secure detention centres. The Children’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, ARC Future Fellow, UNSW The term “heatwave” is no stranger to Australians. Defined as when conditions are excessively hot for at least three days in a row, these extreme temperature events have always punctuated our climate. With many of us ...
Pacific Media Watch A senior Indonesian government official and a New Zealand journalism professor have clashed over differing perspectives on access for journalists and media to the West Papua region. Speaking on a webinar organised by the Jubi newspaper in Jayapura, Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ director of the European affairs ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Barbara Mintzes, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sydney To beat the coronavirus pandemic, countries need to collaborate. We need the best possible science to develop vaccines and drugs, and to test, track and contain the virus. If we’ve learned anything ...
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His numbers are not accurate but the gist and ultimate question remain to be confronted…
"The one thing they will not do, however, is confront the brutal, but inescapable, truth that there is only one way this planet will be saved from the effects of the 9 billion human-beings living upon its surface; and that is for more than 8 billion of them to disappear. How that might be achieved, and who should take responsibility for achieving it, are questions which, to date, only novelists and science fiction writers have attempted to answer."
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/101146/chris-trotter-deconstructs-arguments-used-eco-warriors-and-questions-how-much-they
Inspired by weka's "Totally Shit Farming" post, here's a quick look at the status of non-cow dairy efforts.
tl;dr, one company has made and sold batches of icecream made from lab-grown whey and casein, and there's others not too far behind. To be sure, the tiny quantities involved make it a publicity stunt rather than a real product. But it's still a big milestone on the way to a real alternative to a cow.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/16/perfect-day-foods-made-ice-cream-from-real-dairy-grown-in-lab.html
https://www.thestar.com.my/business/smebiz/2019/07/22/forget-synthetic-meat-lab-grown-dairy-is-here
That gives the farming lobby a reason to keep on with practices that can not be supported and avoid improving their approach. I like the idea of having milk from happy cows, given proper conditions and feed, it is a natural way of getting good food. But the ability to force-feed the animals, and manipulate them to the nth degree, take their colostrum, take the calves away from the mothers at an early age etc etc has warped the dairy system.
Having dairy replaced by tech is another step away from the needs of the populace; there is money to be made by making business from spoiling the planet and our traditional systems. It is happening with meat, milk, and further, our money exchange being replaced by electrified cards, and on.
i find lab 'grown' as gross as the practices of industrial dairy farming.
i really would like to go to ethical organic farming.
this to me is just simply the other extreme of the same scale.
Sure you've got a preference. And you've probably got a price differential point at which you're willing to pay extra to indulge that preference. But the vast majority of consumers? Not so much.
When lab-grown synthesised milk becomes an actual thing, something that's going to get a lot more publicity is how engineered the milk we buy already is. Between the cow and bottle, it's cooked, separated into its constituents, then reformulated back to just barely meet the minimum requirements of whatever category it's sold as. Lab-grown constituents will be just a minor change in that context.
https://milk.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000658
http://www.nutritionaustralia.org/national/resource/permeate-%E2%80%93-everything-you-need-know-about-milk-standardisation
Cooking and pasteurisation aren't quite the same thing, but either can be done in a home kitchen. Full fat milk doesn't get much else done to it afaik, but do share because it's this kind of conflation that leads to people not trusting science.
and once we get over the idiocy of avoid animal fats, more people will want full fat milk again.
Full fat milk gets the same separation then add back in treatment reduced fat and skim milk get.
Homogenisation and Standardisation.. 'town supply' has had it for decades
how does that differ from historical separation of cream from milk?
(leave homogenisation out for now, because it's weird, just shake the bottle)
The point is the milk we buy in the supermarket is a manipulated engineered product. It's had a shit load more done to it than just squirted out of a cow, made safe, and put in a bottle.
Forty-odd years ago as a kid doing a milk run I got a tour through the Palmy milk treatment plant. Part of that was tasting a small sample at each step along the way. And every step made a big difference. I'd imagine what was happening then is primitive compared to how it's manipulated now.
pasteurisation and separating cream from milk can be done at home. Homogenisation is a more industrial process but even that I think is a long step from lab dairy.
It's like people who think that splicing genes is the same as selective breeding. If it doesn't matter to you, that's great, you can eat lab dairy. But it will matter to many, and pretending those are all the same kind of tech will create confusion, division and resentment.
Looking back,it seems complex diets from simpler foods,greater (longer work) days, seem to have been a recipe for good health for the working class.
Mid-Victorian working class men and women consumed between 50% and 100% more calories than we do, but because they were so much more physically active than we are today, overweight and obesity hardly existed at the working class level. The working class diet was rich in seasonal vegetables and fruits; with consumption of fruits and vegetables amounting to eight to 10 portions per day. This far exceeds the current national average of around three portions, and the government-recommended five-a-day. The mid-Victorian diet also contained significantly more nuts, legumes, whole grains and omega three fatty acids than the modern diet. Much meat consumed was offal, which has a higher micronutrient density than the skeletal muscle we largely eat today [59]. Prior to the introduction of margarine in the late Victorian period, dietary intakes of trans fats were very low. There were very few processed foods and therefore little hidden salt, other than in bread (Recipes suggest that significantly less salt was then added to meals. At table, salt was not usually sprinkled on a serving but piled at the side of the plate, allowing consumers to regulate consumption in a more controlled way.). The mid-Victorian diet had a lower calorific density and a higher nutrient density than ours. It had a higher content of fibre (including fermentable fibre), and a lower sodium/potassium ratio. In short, the mid-Victorians ate a diet that was not only considerably better than our own, but also far in advance of current government recommendations. It more closely resembles the Mediterranean diet, proven in many studies to promote health and longevity; or even the ‘Paleolithic diet’ recommended by some nutritionists [60].
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/
that was interesting!
My uncle (born around WW1 I think) used to do that with his salt, got a lot of ribbing about it that he ignored. I have a context to put his habit in now.
I'll be reading the article. The nutrient density doesn't surprise me, the low levels of animal fat does.
Victorian margarine though, what?
Sure. I'd imagine in a possible future, those who find the distinction important will still be able to buy the boutique product from a cow at enormous price with emission fees, pollution fees, animal welfare fees and so on.
And those that don't care at all, or only care about nutritional value and taste, or can't afford the boutique stuff out of a cow, will end up eating cheese and yoghurt and maybe even directly drinking the stuff that comes from industrial vats.
What I'd like to see is more honesty about lab dairy. That it needs to be presented as being the same as cow's milk suggests there isn't as much acceptance of it as you believe.
Do you mean ethical organic farming of animals?
yes.
Humans are omnivores, we can luckily survive by eating clay.
To me lab grown is the other extreme to industrial farming. As far removed from nature and natural occurance as can be giving a false sense of food security while the planet still is being treated as a rubbish bin.
so yes, ethical farming, less eating, paying the full price of food, paying even the full price of gasoline, and such. Cause us here in the spoiled western world we have not paid the full price on anything in a long time. We like the stuff that we eat, that we wrap our selfs in, that we use to enterain us, that houses us all to be cheap.
Just because humans can eat animal flesh doesn't mean they should.
I am genuinely interested in the ethics of killing an animal to eat it (or paying someone else indirectly to do it), which I'm sure the animal doesn't want, and which is unnecessary given humans can exist perfectly well on a plant-based diet.
Besides the blatant anthropomorphising, that's a pretty loose use of "perfectly well".
Both of which I stand behind.
The documentary evidence I've seen of animals going to slaughter kind of shows me they are not choosing to have their throats cut. They are sentient beings who feel terror just like we do.
And a balanced plant-based diet is healthy, nutricious and good for the planet. What's not to like about that?
Taste and texture.
As for the "documentary evidence", yeah nah. Persistent abstract memory, self awareness, reasoned anticipation of future events, and the ability to communicate abstract ideas are all part of a fundamentally different consciousness than biological impulse.
We shouldn't be cruel, but to equate a cow with a human is a moral equivalence that lacks any reasonable foundation.
Totally disagree so let's leave it there.
fair call.
Humans and all other living things must 'consume' nutrients to live. Some humans have an (over-)abundance of dietary choices, and so we have omnivores, vegetarians, vegans et al.
The known risks associated with 'veganism by choice' are easily mitigated, hence the paucity of reports of human health being compromised by veganism in the OECD.
If human civilisation reverts to a pre-industrial state, then veganism may be a less heathly ‘option’, but at the moment it seems a pretty good OECD option for the health of humans and the planet.
Not a choice I could make (yet), because I enjoy eating bacon, chicken, cheese et al. [dribble drool, slaver slobber] It's a delicious habit that is (on balance) bad for my health, and for the planet, but 'from my cold, dead mouth' and all that, although I’m eating less meat than I used to.
Jaeeezusss! 106.7 kilos a year? 2 kilos a week? Maybe Psycho Milt is chowing down that roughly 1 1/2 kilos a week I'm not eating.
I seem to be getting through half a kilo a week just in bacon for breakfast, so yeah, probably eating a few people's shares…
…which I'm sure the animal doesn't want…
Plants don't want to be eaten either, Grey Area. Many go to considerable evolutionary efforts to make it harder to eat them, up to and including making themselves toxic to animals. If you want to live without killing things, you'd better learn how to photosynthesise.
A broccopalypse or maybe a caulicaust lol
It's funny how the idea of differentiating what one consumes is extrapolated into living without killing things – what's with that?
for some reason it brings to mind this lyric and song for me
We walked out – tentacle in hand
You could sense that the earthlings would not understand
They'd go.. nudge nudge …when we got off the bus
Saying it's extra-terrestial – not like us
And it's bad enough with another race
But fuck me… a monster …from outer space
I spose I see us all as earthlings
is the issue what one consumes or what dies so that one might live?
I believe that the ecological cost of mass producing meat is OTT. I think that our western diets are unsustainable. People make their choices to do what they want and they accept their choices – personally I no longer care what anyone else eats – we all make choices. It is a fairness of argument for me re my comment.
As a global trade, and the gearing required to bring it together, you're probably correct – Way too high an environmental cost.
For a local market only, surely consumption can continue with a much better carbon footprint and improved standards.
Re ethics of argument, Grey Area's argument was that killing animals to eat them is wrong as animals don't want to be killed, so people should eat plants. My counter-argument was that plants also don't want to be killed and it's impossible for humans to live without killing things. In what sense do you consider that counter-argument unfair?
Far more than our western diets is unsustainable….the problem is in providing a viable alternative and the transition…and equitably
@ Al1en – needs verses wants I suppose
@ PM I think when you said, "If you want to live without killing things, you'd better learn how to photosynthesise." was my tipping point. Extrapolating for effect just a little too far for me. So that's why I responded.
@ Pat – yeah – I believe the inevitability of the changes will make choice moot down the track – still we can future proof by diversifying while we can and moving to as sustainable as we can be. The dietary lifestyle we enjoy now is pretty decadent and the cost so high imo.
I'm similar marty. It's fairness for humans globally, but also fairness for other life forms.
The more people eat local the more this will become apparent. So many people don't understand what it takes to grow good food and do that fairly.
Sadly eating locally dosnt solve it…there are too many locations that require imported food and therein lies one of the problems
where are you thinking needs imported food?
the uk for one…but if you like we could research the number of locations that are net food importers
P.S.
quick search reveals
https://www.indexmundi.com/blog/index.php/2013/02/19/food-exports-and-imports-worldwide/
and none of this accounts for CC…or failed states
@ PM I think when you said, "If you want to live without killing things, you'd better learn how to photosynthesise." was my tipping point.
I think it's a reasonable response. Even if you reject the idea that plants object to being killed, is it wrong to kill a chicken so you can eat it but OK to kill a shitload of mice when you turn your combine harvesters loose on the wheat crop? It isn't currently possible for humans to live without killing things.
that countries import food doesn't mean they have to or that they can't produce food locally. Local food production is largely a function of the relationship between population, geography and climate. Capitalism doesn't care about that because it has fossil fuels and can import and export food at will.
Pat that link appears to be measuring $ not things like calories or nutrients.
@ Psycho Milt
Do you also think that natures predators are also undesirable?…we are nothing more than mammals and we are omnivores, are we to be condemned any more than sharks or lions?…or any other species that ends the existence of another life form
we are nothing more than mammals and we are omnivores, are we to be condemned any more than sharks or lions?
I wouldn't say "nothing more than," but we for sure are omnivorous primates and that means we have a taste for eating other critters, much like sharks or lions.
It's worth keeping in mind that plants are also in evolutionary competition with each other and doing their best to ensure their own survival at the expense of other plant species, same as animals. It just all happens a hell of a lot slower and without all the clawing, biting, bludgeoning etc.
@Weka.lol…didnt you know everything is measured in dollars?….but we can can still infer …and as said that dosnt account for CC nor failed states…which are only going to increase.
@ PM….thats all very well but dosnt address my point.
Sorry, in that case I haven't understood what you were saying. Could you dumb it down for me?
The question was are we to be condemned?….your answer didnt address that….so I shall offer one on your behalf…yes we are, as a result of our success we are destined to out compete everything including our environment.
Pat, lol, yes dollars rule. I wondered if one is measuring commodity dollars how useful that is because it will include things like chocolate, coffee and wine.
That CC and war are going to force big changes in food production is an argument for shifting to local food production sooner rather than later.
7.8 billion and growing…it aint doable.
We are witnessing how humans cope with a resource constrained world….we dont.
All of our petty disputes about how we farm etc are symptomatic of a problem that we cannot solve.
Long before rising sea levels or non habitable heat undoes us we will will destroy each other
Why is it not doable? We know that the end of fossil fuels will make transporting food harder. We know that we need more resilient systems. Both those things are within our reach irrespective of how bad CC gets.
Addressing industrial dairying isn't a petty dispute, it's literally about whether humans get to survive in the future, possibly even you and I. Those big, industrial, nature ignoring, FF burning systems are going to crash. How is relocalising food production not a good response to that?
The question was are we to be condemned?
…
… yes we are, as a result of our success we are destined to out compete everything including our environment.
It does sure look like having self-awareness and the ability to think in abstracts doesn't outweigh being just an upmarket bunch of omnivore primates when it comes down to it. I'll hold off the condemnations until it's clear whether or not we've played ourselves, though.
Its petty because we are creating unnecessary divisions in a society that has little chance of achieving a positive outcome…and it certainly wont if its divided.
The problem is so complicated that the only possible way to address it requires widespread buy in…that is not achieved by attack and demonisation.
Societies are too easily fragmented and as said in other posts long before we are seriously challenged by the physical impacts of CC we will have to avoid the societal conflicts (if we can)
Animals are sentient beings and while plants are alive they are not sentient.
Are you suggesting that boiling a live chicken and a head of broccoli are the same thing?
How do we know this is true? Science is demonstrating that plants in forests communicate with each other, including by using other species. They tend and protect via this communication as well as repel. Maybe that's not sentience as we understand it, or maybe we're locked into particular ideas about sentience that stop us seeing other kinds.
It really is an amazing rabbit hole to dive into for a while. It starts to screw with our concepts of "communication" and even what constitutes an "organism" or a "mind", our role in the world and even whether there is a being of "humanity" that is made up of all the interactions of us people. At the root of it all is the conundrum of the observer who sits behind our eyes and other sensory organs.
John Varley's "The Ophiuchi Hotline" has a plotline in which aliens discover the Earth and identify Homo Sapiens not as a fellow sentient species but as a cancerous growth and eradicate it, leaving the occupants of a base on the moon as the last humans. In the novel, the aliens consider whales and dolphins to be Earth's sentient life forms (perhaps reflecting the fact it was written in the 1970s), but it would be equally plausible that they'd consider plants the sentient life forms, given that aliens could be evolved from any kind of life.
Or even the earth itself as a life form, and our destruction of biodiversity (and ther biological interactions therein) as a literal brain cancer.
McFLock at 8.18pm.
I know. I love it. It really stretches my mind. I find myself going 'that can't be right', then going 'well yeah, it could be'. In the end my position is that there are plenty of good reasons to err on the side of caution and not be cruel to anything unnecessarily. We don't have to know for sure if forests are sentient to decide that cutting one down is something serious.
I feel sorry for humans sometimes with our big brains trying to figure out how to be with our particular capacity for perception.
I'm suggesting that living things don't want to be killed, but we don't have much choice about killing them if we want to remain alive ourselves and that applies to eating plants as much as it does to eating animals. If you personally want to designate "has a central nervous system" as a threshold beyond which you won't kill to eat, by all means act on it and eat accordingly. But that designation is as arbitrary as anyone else's.
No-one answered my question. You reacted but you didn't respond. Bit like plants actually.
And in reply to Pyscho Milt upstream (as I don't see a reply button) aboiut mice being killed by a combine harvester Earthling Ed would ask: "Morally, is there a difference between accidentally hitting a dog with your car and purposefully hitting a dog with your car?”. If you say yes, "then by that logic is there morally a difference between an animal accidentally being killed in crop production and an animal purposefully being killed in a slaughterhouse?”.
If it were impossible to drive your car without accidentally hitting a bunch of dogs on your way to your destination, I expect many of us would be put off driving. People give less of a shit about mice and other field critters, on the out-of-sight-out-of-mind principle.
I didn't answer your question, no. The question was essentially a reframing of McFlock's comment further up:
We shouldn't be cruel, but to equate a cow with a human is a moral equivalence that lacks any reasonable foundation.
You've swapped out "cow/human" with "broccoli/chicken" but are making essentially the same argument. I notice that your response to that argument from McFlock was "Totally disagree but let's leave it there." Given that response, why do you assume we'd answer your question?
I wasn't assuming anything. I was busy at work and didn't have the time to challenge the statement that I don't accept. I happened to see some activity around the issue and decided to re-enter the fray.
And anyway that was in response to him this afternoon not you this evening.
Seeing as you have a bit more time, then. My shorthand on the issue for a while now has been "could [animal X] write an essay entitled what I did on my holidays?"
Some mammals and cephalopodes probably could, given the right communication interface. Not all of them, though.
Cows and sheep, I doubt it. And if they can't, even if there's a type of impulse-driven or momentary sentience, it wouldn't exist without farming. If we can give them a reasonably happy life and end it without their anticipation or pain, by several methods of moral accounting (utilitarianism or whatever) I'm not seeing a net negative.
Contrast with slavery, or cannibalism of captive humans. Lots of negatives and suffering for a simple meal or delaying mechanisation.
I mean, theoretically the math might add up, but Kevin would have to make a lots-better-than-Michelin dinner for that to happen. 🙂
My shorthand position is that killing other sentient beings to use them as a food source is immoral, cruel and for those of us in the "West" unnecessary.
I see cows, pigs, sheep, etc as someone, not something. Especially not something for us to use.
They are creatures often with personalities and intelligence and with a capacity to feel emotions like we do.
Humans seem to have such huge capacity to f*ck things up. We use and abuse everything around us and the climate crisis we are in the middle of is mostly the result of that.
So taking off my vegan hat and putting on my climate change one, animal agriculture is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and if we are to have any chance of at least slowing climate collapse animal agriculture needs to be hugely reduced and better still eliminated.
We can't afford it anymore.
And if I shared that perspective, I'd probably agree. Or eat people. But I've been around livestock of various types, and didn't see the same spark of humanity that you did.
As for climate change, the main event will always be fossil fuels. Substitutiopn is necessary, and if it's not sufficient then global vegetarianism probably won't be, either.
So limit meat intake in the same way we stop using plastic straws – it might encourage people more powerful than us to address the elephant.
yes the line is arbitrary – because you can live within the choices – so the question is then, what are the factors driving the choices – that is where the morals get really interesting
what are your drivers?
the footprint of the choice is important
buying local is important
fairness is another driver – I'm anti capitalism and exploitation
truth also is when I became a vegetarian 39 years ago it was because I couldn't handle the suffering inflicted on the animals – I suppose my species boundary and what falls out of that, is different to science and normal western thought.
I don't think it's all that different. Vegetarianism is hardly rare in the West, or amongst scientists.
It's a line that is philosophical, spiritual, logical, emotional, practical… everyone draws it in their own place. I'm not sure anyone is in a place to judge anyone else's placement of that line – just whether they're being dicks about it 🙂
Yep I spose the reals dicks will be the meat eaters who chose to not reduce their meat especially when reports like the one below come out. The vegans are the good guys although shrill and annoying.
That's quite nice framing by Hans-Otto Pörtner I think
meh
Thinking more of the monomaniacs, but each to their own
"the footprint of the choice is important
buying local is important
fairness is another driver – I'm anti capitalism and exploitation"
Pretty much mine too. Interesting we come to different conclusions about what that means.
"truth also is when I became a vegetarian 39 years ago it was because I couldn't handle the suffering inflicted on the animals – I suppose my species boundary and what falls out of that, is different to science and normal western thought."
I was vegetarian around the same time. I don't think being vegetarian is at odds with western thought especially in a country like NZ where lots of people care about animals. I do think we are behind in the science though and that care for the wellbeing of ecosystems as a right (rather than just how they serve humans) is going to become more mainstream off the back of the leading edge science.
i find lab 'grown' as gross as the practices of industrial dairy farming.
One of the TV news's had an item last night on an Aus company that's just grown kangaroo meat in a lab – story here.
It was pitched as being a way for billions of humans to have a meat diet without affecting the environment (bullshit detector going off big-time at that point). The process takes stem cells from kangaroo meat, puts them in a "nutrient-rich solution" and waits for the stem cells to make kangaroo meat out of the solution.
So, if billions of people are going to eat this stuff, that's shit-tonnes of "nutrient-rich solution" that has to turn up from somewhere – industrial farming, I hear you say? Surely not…
My wife's only comment: "Wouldn't you cut out the middle-man and just eat the "nutrient-rich solution?”
Hmmm. Matrix comes to mind, where steak was an example of why cypher(?) wanted to live in the machine rather than eat the protein gruel in the "real world".
I guess they won't have kangaroo stem cells in the future…
Mixed with alcohol that would make a great breakfast for those who want to forget, even before the day has produced the unforgettables.
Would also see off all those boring "Make sure you eat food when you're drinking, never drink alcohol on an empty stomach, etc" messages. Two birds with one stone…
Yeah it'll take a lot of nutrient-rich solution. But most of that nutrient goes into growing the flesh cells we end up eating, rather than most of it going into just keeping a hulking great host alive and walking around and only a tiny bit goes into muscle growth in a live animal. So growing the nutrient feedstock should require a lot less space and inputs than growing all the vegetable matter a live animal needs to produce the same amount of edible "flesh".
Then there's the matter of eliminating the methane emissions from live ruminants. Although roos aren’t ruminants and are pretty low emission critters.
Personally I'll probably be quite happy with just a moderately realistic facsimile of mince for burgers, sausages, salami, spag bol etc. But bacon is going to have to be fkn convincing before the pigs are out of trouble.
Yes, it would certainly make way more sense than growing crops to feed to livestock – but that has to be the stupidest form of agriculture ever invented.
I guess it just irks me that people talk about replacing meat with plant-based alternatives (which is presumably where this nutrient solution comes from – I sure as shit hope they're not getting it by grinding up sea critters) as though creating industrial-scale crop monocultures were some kind of improvement on grazing livestock. If it is an improvement, the improvement's marginal at best.
To a large extent, the potential for improvement comes from eliminating the methane emissions and effluent problems of live animals.
But cows and sheep are also incredible inefficient at turning the calories and protein they're fed into calories and protein available to humans eating them. Around 1% conversion efficiency for calories and maybe 4% for protein. Pork and poultry do a lot better, around 10% for calories and 15 to 20% for protein (as well as emitting a lot less methane).
If vats didn't do a whole lot better, say at least 30% conversion efficiency, then yeah you'd question the point. But since cells in a vat only have to grow, and not sustain a whole bunch of other metabolic processes, the potential has to be there.
As for where the feed comes from, yeah, ground sea critters would be disastrous. But seaweed could be interesting.
Then there's the whole question around the merits of grazing animals in hilly ground not suitable for cropping. Dunno, maybe if the cell vats become a reality, hill country will be where the boutique "real meat" gets produced.
It's fkn hard finding hard info that isn't obviously pushing some sort of barrow. But the numbers presented in these two pieces are about what seems to be the consensus of stuff I've seen elsewhere.
https://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/a-meat-eaters-guide-to-climate-change-health-what-you-eat-matters/climate-and-environmental-impacts/
https://www.wri.org/blog/2016/04/sustainable-diets-what-you-need-know-12-charts
Fonterra posts another massive loss at $-675 million
And more to come next year.
Do we have anyone in this government who can forcefully represent the whole interests of New Zealand to Fonterra?
This is not a business we can let die.
If the vat-grown whey and casein efforts linked above actually come to fruition, what's going to happen to Fonterra?
I'm guessing the commodity milk-powder business – gone. Commodity cheese for pizzas and burgers – gone. What will be left? Boutique products where the customers will really want to believe they come from happy cows lovingly tended to in green grassy pastures. And that business is extremely vulnerable to the kind of shit highlighted today by weka and lprent.
Commodity milk powder exists because milk cant be stored in its natural form and milk powder can. Cows are milked everyday and the fresh milk has to be processed the following day
The commodity milk powder provides the dairy products for 30 mill people outside NZ for all sorts of reasons.
Just a note about Fonterras loss , they are just book keeping writedowns of assets.
Its not a cash loss as they are awash in it , like the paddocks the cows are stuck in over winter
Perhaps you are demonstrating to us that we are alike the cows in that we are awash with money in this country but stuck up to our knees in debt incurred as we just try to get regular food and find a place to lie down.
If my life was wrapped up in Fonterra I think the aspect worthy of attention in the info is the amount of the write down that relates to market share erosion. Start-ups doing it better than NZ's biggest company.
The rise of domestic competition and abroad.
We don't hold many picture cards. That's one of them, we should be leading the world in the milk fields. If Fonterra were the All Blacks, they couldn't beat Mount Albert Grammar.
Great big Brontosaurus that can barely get out of it's own way. So many desks and so few udders. Subsidiaries struggling in prospering centres around the globe.
We should be brilliant at this. We're not even average.
I paid a premium for cheese in Sweden, about 50% more than here. I visited a Swedish dairy farm. For half the year each cow is hand fed in it's own stall in a heated barn. They had their names on their stall doors.
We don't know how lucky we are. We should be creaming it.
The Swedes are cunning socialists. I think it's because they spend 4 months of the year sitting around fires in the freezing dark slamming shots of rocket fuel, sharing their hearts, dreams and Spring plans.
Dairy farmers felt the winter pinch. Many crop farmers face 5 months of a permafrozen farm. They found a solution that works for everybody. It's easy to push a log around on ice, farmers drop trees, trim them, spray their code on the end and leave them beside the road. The co-op truck with a Hiab grapple stopped at the end of the drive, loaded the logs up and took them to the co-op owned processing plant.
Crop farmers on Graso were as concerned about growing Pines as they were corn.
Ad,,
we are worried about this as it seems that the Chinese are unndermining Fonterra so the share price fall will give them the soluution to buy Fonterra as a luididated bussiness asset.
China are playing us to take over our entire farming industry.
Write down in investments in Australia, Venezuela and Brazil as well as the sell off of Tip Top in NZ . So not just China.
Fonterra is a strange mix of being a Coop and a shareholding company – almost entirely in shares only dairy farmers can own.
The Coop side doesnt make a profit and returns all its earnings to farmers through the milk price.
Normally the payments to farmers each would be 90% or more milk price and the rest 'share dividend'
Maybe someone can look at the accounts in detail and see what share of revenue is Fonterra Coop and how much is Fonterra Ltd
How much of the write down of investments have resulted from the illegal US sanctions that have been inflicted on Venezuela?
The economic collapse ..? Almost all I would think.
Its weird but the US gets all worked up when Russia even thinks of wielding its massive gas exports as an economic weapon.
In fact they want Europe to buy US CNG at higher prices.
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/11/16/why-america-struggles-to-sell-lng-in-europe
That's the kind of joint venture they can get behind, where they take over the joint.
Well Fonterra should learn the lesson=$8,000,000 p.annum is NOT the going rate for TALENT!
Earthquakes – just looking. One felt locally, a little jolt.
https://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/statistics
Three weeks ago – more than 24 weak or light
Two weeks ago – 19 w or l.
Today – 5.2 at Mot is regarded as a light earthquake.
6 in last 24 hours.
I noticed south of Snares Island, south of NZ mentioned; I hadn't noticed before.
4th and 5th August 5.6 and 6.3 south of Snares
29 July 4.6 south of Snares
27 July 4.5 "
18 July 5.1 "
18 July 4.6 "
17 July 4.7 "
I noticed that Seddon was continuing in the listings.
Napier had some recently ?
have you just moved there as they are very regular events, like all the other towns along the east coast.
maybe you should have moved to Northland where they are infrequent compared to Napier
Nah Dukeofurl.
I am mostly in the hills above Gisbrone near BOP border, and was born in Auckland in 1944 and raised in Napier 1951 to 1964, didn't you read my posts on the Fox river debarkle?
All us 'Napierites' have very keen knowledge of when the usual swarms of earthquakes do occur with annual frequencies.
This time last week when we were there, it was very odd when the earthquake hit us.
It was at a time when we don't usually expeirience 'swams' of quakes' so that is our concern.
Thanks for your concern.
Shit if I wanted to move from earthquakes I would;
go back to Canada
or my last home Florida
as they don’t have earthquakes,
But Canada's weather is shit
Florida has hurricanes.
So I am good at present above the pollution, noise, and truck gridlock, here in the hinterland of rural NZ hill country.
Bloody new lambs wake me up though now.
The Motueka eq was within the forecast parameters ie a 99% probability of a m5-m5.9.within 12 months of the forecast.
https://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/forecast/
Well we won't be putting the forecasters in prison like the Italians did then?
Should've locked up the politicians etc behind that decision.
Ignorant #$%^&*! with no understanding of science & its uncertainties seeking to deflect from there own failings…
Poission;
That reminds me of the promises made when big tobacco excecs were all linned up in front of a congressonal inquiry promising that smokng was safe???
According to the National Research Council, no toxicity data are available for over 39,000 commercially available used chemicals.
And this also;
Approximately 80 million people or three out of every 10, in the United States can expect to contract some form of cancer in their lifetime. The National Cancer Institute has estimated in at least one communique’ that at least 98% of all cancers may be linked to chemical exposures,
According to Lynn Montandon, founder of the Response team for the chemically injured.
Until recently, the Federal Government has concentrated most of its resources on researching cancer and the effects of acute chemical exposures, paying very little attention to the effects of long term low level chemical exposures, or to the neurological, reproductive, developmental, or immunological effects that chemicals may cause. The government is just beginning to look into these non-cancer health risks and the existing research into these other health matters is, on the whole, inadequate and non-existent.
I understand that deep earthquakes in the subducting Pacific Plate such as this one are outside the forecast area which applies only to the (relatively) near surface – approximately to top 20 to 30 km.
The Snares earthquakes are associated with the Puysegur Trench subduction zone where the Australian Plate is descending below the Pacific Plate.
Seddon earhtquakes are likely continuing aftershocks of the 2013 Grassmere quake and/or 2016 Kaikoura quake (several faults in the Cape Campbell area ruptured at the surface in the Kaikoura quake).
Given there are ~20,000 record quakes per year in NZ, its not unusual to have several in a week that are felt to some degree.
If you're interested in where the known acitve faults (on land) are, check out GNS's active faults map: http://data.gns.cri.nz/af
Capitalism finally weaponizes ignorance, and being ignorance, shoots itself. Media moguls setting up fast tracking promedia nra, cc, and now the trifecta, tv personality president, have they no sense. Why are Act members always turning up on tv? first they attacked Greens for not getting into bed with big polluters, now Greens are power starved like 6% down from 10% was a means to demand more. Now I get that we do need balance in tv but just right-wing talking heads, and disgruntaled former Greens, really, is that all they dan find. Seems to me when the ecology, climate, resource limits are hit, or whatever, the media will be the culprits.
The SFO clears Thompson and Clark.
Somehow i knew they would.
Now up next the SFO and the investigation into the National parties donation scandal.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/08/12/surprise-surprise-the-sfo-clears-thompson-clark-spying-heres-the-real-reason-why/
Sounds like a good mystery tv series – what was the one with Gillian Anderson in it? Like that. We can put everything on tv like a real Reality Show. Sit and watch things like on The Truman Show. Tonight we are going to have a prison break – who will get away and who will be shot?
The SFO can be dressed like Sherlock Holmes with really giant magnifying glasses and computer nerds tracing people on grids all round town with Tumpson and Clerk giving directions. The miscreants would have the choice of being in the show, or going to Court and paying their own legal fees whether they are found guilty or not.
Lol. Steven Molyneuax equates lipstick to an erection and channels his compatriot and stablemate Jordan Petersen's virulent hatred of women.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=12257679
Women had fun in the Twitter comments!
I can't wait for his next post, probably wanting to ban women licking icecream in the workplace.
And if, in some insane universe that he inhabits, he is actually right, what does that tell us about women wearing black or purple lipstick? I shudder at his possible explanation!
[Different e-mail address?]
UK 'Conservative Home' newslinks for 11th August 2019
https://www.conservativehome.com/frontpage/2019/08/145979.html
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/boris-johnson-pledges-2-5bn-for-10-000-new-prison-beds-8d7nh0gmf
Interesting ..
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/10/dominic-cummings-owns-farm-got-eu-subsidy
"In the government’s first major piece of legislation mapping out post-EU policy, Environment and Food Secretary Michael Gove is set to present sweeping changes Wednesday to the agriculture sector. Gove's plan will phase out the EU’s sacrosanct direct payment scheme under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which props up farmers' wages based on the amount of land they own, and instead link farmers' payments to environmental standards.
Isnt that a good thing ?
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-presents-post-brexit-plans-for-agriculture/
Its a common fallacy that most of the things the EU does are somehow fine and dandy
Theres opportunity under a new Fisheries policy after Brexit to make well overdue changes as well
Hey, the screaming skull is smashing the system from inside! Fight the paua!
Important in so many ways
https://www.waitangitribunal.govt.nz/news/tribunal-releases-report-on-maori-prisoners-voting-rights/
With Diana and Unity, too.
Margaret Thatcher liked Pinochet I think!
Australian snow event has local bouncing for joy.
Giving the prisoners the vote eh?
Well if the criminals’ and con-artists that run Corporations are found guilty and not jailed for ’embezlement, cheating, extortion and other offences under (the list below; – some exeptions as it is a US list); then are still allowed to vote, why should we ban any prisoners from voting?
https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/view-all-criminal-charges.html
[Deleted long list that was straight from the link provided. Remember that some people read TS on their phone and have to scroll through – Incognito]
Will light rail be the new Passchendaele for public transport passengers.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-12/pedestrian-hit-by-canberra-light-rail/11404506
Trains vs brains in NZ.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ll4icg2x3ftq6sx/Near%20miss%20media%20reel.mp4?dl=0
Wage theft and the hospitality industry. I think it goes much deeper than that and is across many industries, especially those employing low skilled labour and migrant labour.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/114853237/wage-theft-has-become-a-business-model-in-the-hospitality-industry
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/396504/metropolitan-based-power-culture-targeting-fishing-industry-jones
The Minister for Regional Economic Development has launched a stinging attack on urban liberals, accusing them of trying to take the fishing industry down….
He said the attacks came from people who did not always understand what was at stake, and the industry had to fight back to protect itself.
Mr Jones said it was not just the fishing industry that was threatened, Māori who had invested much of their economic heritage in the business were threatened too.
"Those of us such as me as a Māori, who have our legacy interests via the treaty in the fishing industry, need to gird our loins and protect ourselves," Mr Jones said.
"Rest assured, there is a largely metropolitan-based power culture, which seeks to do damage to our industry."
Mr Jones said this was a very serious problem to people who had stored their full and final wealth from Treaty settlements in this industry.
Can Shane Jones walk and chew calamari at the same time?
Thats Jones being the glove puppet Sooty. With all those big donors expecting fighting talk…and they got it.
That'd be the same Jones who took Sealord from being NZ's biggest seafood company to no. three or four? Not an expert on fishing by any stretch of the imagination – just a parachutist.
had to larf at Neal Jones dealing to the nationals party squealer Mathew Hooton on 9-noon this morning.
Jones had Hooton on the back foot right from the start and the more he got backed into a corner the more hooton squealed as all his right wing memes and tropes came flying out of his gob unbidden to show the real hooton. not nice.
Indonesia has interesting history.https://asiapacificreport.nz/2019/08/09/the-bloody-1965-66-slaughter-behind-indonesias-mass-killings-secrecy/
A report from link picked up from TDB about Indonesia with help from USA JK and Australia (NZ?) and the killing of up to million people, and imprisonment of about million, of 9 August 2019,
https://asiapacificreport.nz/2019/08/09/the-bloody-1965-66-slaughter-behind-indonesias-mass-killings-secrecy/
Can someone please explain why I see a Reply button on most but not all posts? I've tried three different browsers and get the same result. On my Android mobile I seem to see reply on every post.
@Lprent may know.
Kia Ora The Am Show.
Tamki Makaru had a couple of tawhirimate nights
Its great to see more attention for OUR Mokopuna future environment but to have a clean environment one needs to clean up poverty aswell no use having a clean environment in one hand and thousands living under the bridge. national made a big mess of our environment and caused a housing short in Aotearoa in 9 years I have see miles of forest turned into Dairy Farm in the central North Island that is not good for the environment. All prosecution for effluent entering our waterways stop .To many things national did negatively to our environment to itemize
. Its great to see alot of Tangata Whenua challenging local council elections post in Hawksbay kia kaha times are changing it happening all around the Motu.
That was a huge beautiful crocodile on the roof of a house during the India monsoon floods great picture.
That is a great phenomenon getting thousands more to give blood awesome Sir Henry
Great To see a shopping mall Goldsmith in America doing things to save our mokopuna future environment.
Nothing wrong with being nice some people think Im weak because I nice .?????.
Great to see the Eco Maori affect is still getting reka .
Ka kite ano
Ka pai to the Wahine who wrote this story and Kia kaha to the Students Strikes to champion a clean environment for their mokopuna grandchildren .
We will be striking again for climate change
OPINION: Students are taking to the streets, beaches and parks on 27 September, and we're inviting everyone to join us. That's right, this is an intergenerational issue, and you're all invited to put pressure on politicians worldwide to pass bills which will take action to reduce the impacts of climate change.
I know, you're probably thinking "again, really?" and so are we. You'd think millions of people marching, rallying, lobbying, protesting and even a couple climbing buildings would be enough to get governments worldwide to actually treat this issue as a crisis, but apparently it's not. So we're going again
We want our government and governments worldwide to do everything in their power to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by ending the use of fossil fuels and investing in a regenerative and renewable economy. Additionally, we are asking the government to acknowledge the severity of climate change and declare a climate emergency.
On 24 May, we walked out of school alongside hundreds of thousands of students around the globe. We won't sit and watch our futures disintegrate, and we invite you to join us to strengthen our movement. That's you, reading this column; that's the next person you talk to; that's the waiter who gives you your coffee and the woman sitting in front of you in the car/bus/train, it really is everyone
Climate change isn't just a youth problem, even though it'll hit us the hardest. It's everyone's problem. Everyone has a responsibility to act, in both practical ways and through joining the strike movement on 27 September.
If you have a child, niece, nephew or young person you care about, it's your problem. Do you think they look into their future and imagine travelling to various islands and cities, bays and beaches? Or do they wonder if the sea will have swallowed them by the time they're your age ka kite ano link below.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/114926802/we-will-be-striking-again-for-climate-change
Some Eco Maori music for the minute.
Some Eco Maori music for the minute.
Kia Ora Newshub.
A avalanche at Mount Cook lets hope that the 5 people caught in the avalanche are all good.
A tornado hit the water front in Tamaki Makau flipping 30 ton yachts tawhirimate is a powerful entity.
Mike the Pigeon Valley fire was huge you say it started by a farmer plowing his paddock with heavy disks which created sparks.
The People of Papatuanuku need to combat climate change to help our Pacific Island cousins it is their biggest threat to a happy healthy future.
The New Zealand Airforce needs to have the equipment to patrol the Pacific Ocean we have a huge Tangata area to patrol the new Aircraft being delivered in 2023 is needed to protect our fisheries and tangata who end up in strife in Tangaroa.
Ka kite ano
Kia Ora Te Ao Maori News.
I do think that the commercial mussels spat catches need to respect the environment that they catch their spat from they should have vehicles that have tyers that spread their load to save our tuatua . This is how the neanderthal capitalist work they thrash a resource till it collapses this happened to tuatua wet fish fisheries I also have great concern about the Manuka honey industry on the East Coast there are hives everywhere on the coast they wonder why they have had 2 to 3 bad seasons it because they are over exploiting the resource.
Awesome that the Coalition Government is investing to fixing Rotoruas museum there would be some great taonga in their care to display to the public.
In Porirua the state housing they pull down functional whare to cramm flash new housing any intelligent person will know that the rents will go up too cover the cost of the building of the whare capitalism ways are most salespeople tell you what you want to here .
Lyndon PEE is a powerful poison that takes control of the user who can be manipulated to do just about anything we need more advertising to educate te tangata about the crap it great that this program is happening in Te Taiwhiti the crap is making a big mess up there.
A lot of people don't understand that A warm whare is a healthy whare Eco Maori say a education program needs to be run about the effects of a cold damp whare has on te tamariki respiratory system it's not good Eco Maori always has a warm WHARE.
Ka kite Ano.
[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.]
Great tune… loved this performance of Dylan's "Hard Rain"… seems to fit with the weather and the topic
That was choice thanks roblogic
speaking of great covers..this one still stands..
Well, all kudos to those in South Auckland… they've done their people proud,… pacifist, benevolent and upholding their culture.
They've conducted themselves well. Faultless.
There's hope yet.
[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.]
Kia Ora The Am Show.
The statistic mess is from simons time in Parliament along with many others kia ora.
The Australian idiot who stabbed people they are being empowered by people who use hate to gain power.
People who go to WAR often suffer mental trauma .The Pilots whos autobiography book that the Wahine was describing him being cold in nature no hugging ect.
I see all the moves that you try to manipulate me just wasting your time and money.
You would think that a organization like Cambridge Analytical would use the data they harvest off the internet would be used for good purposes like governments planning for the future .
You know its ridiculous that humanity has not learnt by its mistakes we discovered a resource and exploit it till it collapses or nearly collapses thrown our arms in the AIR and make all the excuses in the Papatuanuku to push the blame to others as to WHY the resources collapse. I have seen it with fishing farming Honey many other valuable species and resources are over exploiting by humanity. What should happen is when a resource is discovered the planing should be put in place to harvest it sustainably from the START not the AMBULANCES at the bottom of the hill that we have going down at the MINUTE. You see we might be still catching fishes but the amount of diesel burned to catch te ika will have gone up 50 % from 30 years ago the fishermen wanted to have horses power limits to control the fisherys instead of the quota system that would have limited the catch effort on the fishery you see it is basically horse power that catches fish .The fishermen would be able to buy and sell the right to the use of horses power to catch fish that system would have limited the pressure on our fisheries to what it was 30 years ago.
But the corrupted money men got their way and a dump ass Quoter system was implemented that can be exploited very easily by the crooked MAN big fail Aotearoa Quoter management system .
Ka kite ano
You're dead right about the QMS – the tide has gone out on that nonsense bigtime.
The bureaucrats, for whose convenience it was introduced, will stick to it come hell or highwater of course, but it seems that both are coming fairly soon now.
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
Kia Ora Newshub.
I say a national statement to protect our precious whenua that produces our food from housing development good on you David Te Atua is not making anymore.
That is the way people with power have to be held accountable for their abuse of power and abuseing people The opera singer Placido Domingo.
That shows that Aotearoa was a land of the giants with another discovery of a giant penguin in Aotearoa .
A nuclear accident in Russia we should not be wasting precious resources on weapons of mass destruction but I get it yin yan it's about the balance of power.
Ka kite ano
Kia Ora Te Ao Maori News.
Good Idea having a online petition to get Jacinda to visit Ihumatao I think it's about time Tangata Whenua O Aotearoa got a win
I don't think that there should be a problem in The Tauranga whenua Waitangi treaty settlement's Its a fact that Tangata Whenua O Aotearoa lost millions of hectares of whenua.
I am sure that the mussel spat harvester are just chasing the $$$$$$$ without considering the effects that there actions have on the environment I know someone who is in that industry.
I think it's good that our Armed personnel the Army and Navy are covered by Accident Compensation Corporation who paid for their accidents before the Army and Navy that is stupid they are KIWIs that is the reason why we have some ex personnel not getting the correct help they needed.
Kia Ora to the Tangata Whenua O Aotearoa living in Australia awesome that you are keeping our culture going strong in Australia Te manawa ora teaching te raku ka pai I know those whanau names We need to keep our cultural pumping and pass it on to our mokopuna in a stronger state that is one of my main goals .ka pai to Jess in Uawa winning the Great Ideas for life Awesome Ideas Mana Wahine
Ka kite ano
Kia Ora The Am Show.
Lets hope that they come up with smart simple solutions in the Pacific Island form Government meeting in Tuvalu to help them survive prosperously on their own whenua that means coming up with solutions for them to create their own wealth to teach a person to ika is better than giving the person a ika
Its called showing respect for our biggest tradeing partner that is what Jacinda is doing she not stupid. But Eca Maori wants Australia to be committed to slow down and stop their use of COAL.
The tide has changed on Global warming sea level rising human caused climate change. Russell the Bird shoe man gave a excellent opinion. Once Business Figure Out that the Green Industry is the next big Gold rush The changes we need to make as a society will speed up real fast thats part of capitalism The tipping point is just around the corner but WHANAU don’t let up keep championing for a Clean Green Environment for Our Mokopuna. Yes Australia needs to do more once they figure out that a bet on Carbon is a losing bet. The Green Energy Revolution has Started they will be rushing to catch up to Aotearoa we need to embrace 5 G technology to help generate a Clean Green society.
Pukana man is doing great in Cricket its was great that Aotearoa Cricket and Pukana man managed to sort out their differences and keep him playing for us Mark.
I think it's stupid that the prison system is giving that Idiot more publicity trying to get a new law that will take rights away from all the other prisoners when they have laws to control the Christchurch idiots communications this stuff up is just giving him more publicity.
If you want to be treated respectfully one must do the same it's not rocket science Newshub.
Herbs Song For Freedom movie gets Nation Wide Release Today I will go and watch the movie. Music is great for the Wairua I have to set me up a 12 volt radio system. Those dawn raids of the past in Papatuanuku was a politican trying to use HATE to gain votes he didn't care about the lives he ruined Ilolahia ka pai great name Herbs original manager.
Ka kite ano
Kia kaha Greta we all know whom is a puppet in Reality keep up your great mahi championing a clean healthy environment for our next generation
Greta Thunberg sets sail for New York on zero-carbon yacht
Climate activist begins voyage from Plymouth to Trump’s US with father and two-man crew
On white-crested swells under leaden skies, the teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has set sail from Plymouth on arguably her most daunting challenge yet.
A two-week crossing of the Atlantic during hurricane season in a solar-powered yacht is the first obstacle, but it is unlikely to be the toughest in an odyssey through the Americas over many months
This will be both the ultimate gap year and a journey into the heart of climate darkness: first to the United States of president Donald Trump, who has promised to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, and then down to South America, possibly including Brazil where president Jair Bolsonaro is overseeing a surge of Amazon deforestation.
In between, the 16-year-old Swede will add her increasingly influential voice to appeals for deeper emissions cuts at two crucial global gatherings: the Climate Action Summit in New York on 23 September and the the UN climate conference in Santiago in early December.
The reception awaiting her on the other side is likely to be mixed, with the climate issue a polarising point in US politics
In a taste of the hostility that is likely to come from supporters of the fossil fuel industry, Steve Milloy, a Fox News contributor and former member of the Trump transition team, described Thunberg on Twitter earlier this week as “the ignorant teenage climate puppet
Ka kite ano link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/14/greta-thunberg-sets-sail-plymouth-climate-us-trump
oops – old OM
Kia Ora Newshub.
The Minister has apologized to the Papatuanuku because some of the prison staff drop the ball and let this idiot post inappropriate letters. The Prison Director should resign anyone with a brain will know that any letters that he writes and gets to post could gain publicity I agree prison guards are corrupt.
trump playing the bully with the might of the USA behind him is a cause for concern the stock market dropping.
Its great that our government has stepped in to clean up another national mess The Christchurch earthquake shambles repairs giving the people money to fix the shoddy repairs made when national was in government so there whare can pass a inspection to get insurance.
Allan Jones is just a neanderthal he is trying to boost his ratings making statements like that he should retired and let someone from the next generation have his mic ma te wa he probably has a lump of coal under his bed.
Ka kite ano.
Kia Ora Te Ao Maori News.
Ka pai to the Pee that was seized in Vags
The Casson Whanau its hard to figure out and find people who you can trust there are people who are just hustlers and don't care about the damage they do to others whanau.
That's wise The Provenance Growth Fund investing in giving tangata whenua Technology skills that is the low carbon industry that could quite easily beat the dairy industry in export income.
Its cool to see the hearing impaired getting taught tangata whenua O Aotearoa te reo and cultural awesome.
Ka kite ano my device cursor starts jumping all over the place when I write too Te Ao Maori News the sandflys are trying to stop me posting to Maori TV