“Tony Blair’s presence in front of the Cenotaph is grotesque. It’s like having an arsonist attending the funeral of the victims of his fire starting. One million Iraqis dead, ME plunged into the abyss, Blair is a war criminal. ”
George Galloway.
“There is no Poppy large enough, no overcoat thick enough to hide the black evil hearts of the War Criminals amongst whom Corbyn was forced to linger in London this morning.”
“’ll use Twitter sparingly from now on, and only for either my latest column or when I’ve something I really want to say. Real life awaits. Given the planetary state of things, we’d all likely do better by spending more time with family, friends, animals & nature. Peace out.”
Some could infer that the govt has now moved regarding the teachers, to engaging in the PR war with the voter, placing a wedge between the teachers and the public. The phrasing of the $9,500 is of interest as it grosses 3 annual rises of 3% into 1, and has been used to destroy favourable public opinion towards teachers. That is something you could think another govt would use, the tactic shouldn’t employed by Labour 🤔
Hipkins said the proposed pay rise exceeded that of many other professions.
“I think that a $9500 pay rise is a pay rise that many other New Zealanders would certainly appreciate.” https://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=12158332
Of course Hipkins is Labour Ed. Labour is a neoliberal party which seems to hope people will eventually forget that they unleashed neoliberalism in NZ and have never said sorry.
Didn’t you see the part where most new Teachers leave in the first few years, due to crippling workloads, unrealistic expectations from their employers, micro-management and the stultifying effect of Nationals dumbing down of education.
Before you even get into pay, about half of the earnings of a tradesman, or other equivalently educated, skilled trade. I.E. Lawyers, dentists and real estate agents.
The right wing say we should pay millions to managers and directors to ensure competence. Teachers are supposed to do it for love.
I know. I was one of them. I didn’t expect to earn the same as my real job, but I expected to earn enough to live on reasonably, and to go to the scale they told me I would be on, before I retrained for Teaching.
Not sure how big an issue it is, but I have heard in interviews and the mighty talk back radio, that one of the issues new teachers have is their obvious lack of experience.
Some schools being hesitant to hire too many newbies.
As I say, not sure how prevalent it is, as a lot of it seemed to be anecdotal
That’s across a lot of hiring practices – demanding two years experience. It makes things very hard for people who qualify in NZ because the job market is neither large nor extensive. Getting a job near one’s family and friends or your partner’s workplace is hard enough without such nonsense. Teachers used to have some protection in the first two years though – not sure if it’s still there.
A major problem is the requirement for continued training for the first two years. The Beginning Teacher had to be under a suitable Senior Teacher for two years as part of certification. That senior person was meant to broaden the junior teacher’s curriculum and classroom management strategies.
Many schools were caused headaches by Boards of Trustees failing to keep a balance of staff, through choosing younger staff… (close to their own age often).
Older Teachers were seen as costly, harder to manage and not progressive enough. That started a chain of failures and stressed teachers and boards.
Yeah, friend of mine did a midlife swap to teaching – gave notice in year one due to stress and was essentially saved by a good mentor teacher & principal. Now much in demand at a highend private school – one of the few who knows the NCEA stuff well enough to coach the younger & foreign imports – on top of her actual job.
But the systemic prejudice against kiwis is frankly huge, and not confined to teaching. The worthless English buffoons who’ve run the MSA for the last few decades pretty much killed the training path for kiwis – took me till I was thirty to get my coastal masters, not because I failed anything but because the useless deleted expletives wouldn’t recognize my seatime. Teaching in China, one of the blokes who owned the company I worked for had got his master foreign going by the time he was 19. He was from Hong Kong – which had the same UK descended qualification framework but without the obstructive culture that was allowed to ruin NZ’s system. And still does.
In the MSA’s case, now Maritime New Zealand, it was organizational incompetence, which seems to be intergenerational. Governments putting taxi drivers or real Estate agents in charge, and employing ex cops, doesn’t help. There are some good people in MNZ, but they tell me you have to keep your heads well down, if you have any real knowledge.
Having experience in New Zealand shipping, is a definite barrier to employment with MNZ.
The current international requirement for only one years sea time for a second mates certificate, and the like, is even more pandering to cost cutting shipowners.
Useless Management in NZ is systemic throughout the Public Service & Private Companies “the harder you suck the higher you get & it depends on who you know not what you know ?”.
Most Public Companies here in NZ have either been bankrupted through management incompetence or sold to offshore investors.
Government Departments and SOE’s run as little fiefdoms ?
“I can’t see how there can be a teacher shortage” – are you saying there isn’t one?
If so, where is your analysis to back that up?
If you don’t have that analysis – and I’m sure you don’t – or you are not saying there isn’t a shortage, then stop introducing distractions like this to every single discussion.
My dentist has just awarded himself a pay rise, of double that.
Average pay rises for top managers over 17%.
Civil service managers are now on hundreds of thousands.
Teachers used to be on the same as a backbencher.
I think they are being rather restrained, myself. Especially when you consider the rises are nowhere near that for all Teachers, and they are over several years.
Lastly. If you want to attract competent people from other jobs, you need to, at least, pay them enough to live in Auckland.
The time of expecting women with well paid husbands, to do the job for love and peanuts, is over.
Teachers are used as scapegoats, regularly chastised, blamed, painted as unsatisfactory servants just carrying on at a higher level from pre-school education. Their achievements and workload aren’t respected, and for decades also teach mentally unabled childre, those who are disturbed and mind-stressed from unhappy homes and from watching mind-warping television and videos, as well as those who are to be prepared for a regular working life if they can find that.
Just as government and leaders play games with them, expecting more but also increasing their difficulties, they do the same to the adults who have finished school, and they have difficulties finding that regular working life. All are easured all the time with forms to fill out. This is a society that is built around the idea that people are not good enough to be treated as satisfactory; niggling and fault-finding by those who have managed to climb the ladder is constant but those at the upper level somehow avoid much of it themselves.
“A University of Otago study shows CEO pay is increasing at almost five times the rate of the average worker.
Otago University Business School Accountancy and Finance researcher Dr Helen Roberts’ longitudinal study study, which adjusted for inflation, showed the proportion of CEOs paid over $500,000 per year had also increased approximately five-fold across three different compensation measures.
It showed chief executives were now paid 30 to 50 times more than the average wage of $60,000.”
“Chief executive pay packes often do not seem to relate to performance. Fonterra and Fletcher Building are good examples. Or CBL. The troubled insurer’s boss was paid $2.6 million in 2016 and the company was placed in voluntary administration in early 2018.
For context, the chief executive pay in the top 50 companies in New Zealand averaged average under NZ$2 million. That’s around 35 times the average worker pay.”
And that same CEO will have large investments in the stock market that has tripled in value in the last 9 years and he/she will own multiple houses that, as everybody knows, have gone up massively in value in the last 20 years.
The combination of massive salary increases and massive capital gains represents a huge shift in wealth to the top 5-10%.
at least you did not say capital gains where the ‘family home’ is tax free ha ha.
Problem with asset tax is, if you are not a CEO how the hell do you pay it on NZ wages? Can you imagine a teacher adding that tax on to their mortgage, rates and other expenses to pay?
Obviously fine if you work or have income from overseas and therefore can earn money in relation to cost of living. In NZ there is a disparity of wages including those middle class wages i.e. teachers and police which is why there is an issue with ‘asset’ taxes on NZ wages.
I’d prefer more targeted taxes aka stamp duty on assets over 5 million for example – business/farm/house. Even if it was the ‘family home’ you would still have to pay.
Also more investigation into ‘minimum’ turnover taxes aka comanies like Google that pay little taxes here have to pay a minimum of tax on turnovers over 10 million for example even if they make a ‘loss’.
And a financial transaction tax on banks and money coming into and out of NZ to get all those ‘profits’.
Some of the people inconvenienced by the teachers this week will be paid even less than teachers and work just as hard.
I have doubts about how far the model of individual unions seeking improvements for their members alone can be pushed. I would prefer to see increases in the ‘social wage’ that benefit all low and moderate income earners.
The rich and the powerful are pointing out the minor problems caused by people demanding to be paid enough while distracting from the major problems that they themselves cause such as under paying people.
Worse DTB, the rich demand private schools and suitable packages to attract the best teaching staff for their children. Further they take the funds from the General Education Budget, thus lowering the money for the rest.
Exactly. But the media now portray reasonable catch-up as beyond reasonable.. (Thanks, ERA..)
I have lived many years (I started in 1970) wishing that NZEI and my PPTA could actually work together. It appears that from the start of next year this may actually happen. The foolish promoters of the economy need to be taught that there are many things more important than what they think is good for the economy. Society matters far more than the economy, … the economy has to be a servant, not a master.
Worse DTB, the rich demand private schools and suitable packages to attract the best teaching staff for their children.
Oh yes, the rich believe in performance-based pay and meritocracy; the best get paid better, the better-paid are the best. They would say that, wouldn’t they?
This feeds into the urban myth that teachers in low-decile schools are generally inferior to teachers in high-decile ones with only the best carefully handpicked for private schools (the elite schools). Consequently, the low-decile schools are inferior too, which is obvious when you look at academic success of the students, now and in future.
This BS keeps self-perpetuating and even some of the poor are buying into it.
Don’t!
One’s pay (or wealth) is not a marker of one’s competence as a teacher.
But AB teachers aren’t unskilled and semi-skilled workers, and they are extensions of the socialising and informing role that parents do (if all is going well). Teachers are trained to carry out their role, unlike parents who struggle to get along with or without teachers strikes. Teachers are trying to maintain their numbers with training to expected levels of expertise in these difficult times. While we have teachers who care and try to help children through their school years to a level that enables them to manage in the world, we have some hope that they will be able to negotiate social wages for themselves as adults, if their parents have not learned enough to achieve that themselves.
‘Teach your children well, their parents hell will surely go by’.
Grey – I find comparisons between who is ‘skilled’ and ‘unskilled’ a bit odious. And I don’t really like the idea of people’s economic wellbeing coming down to how well they can make the case that they are more skilled than someone else, who therefore deserves less than they do.
I would like to see a sort of cross-occupational solidarity that assumes the baseline of a decent economic life for everyone, then places some relatively modest skill differentials (insofar as these can be determined) on top of that. If people are in occupational silos trying to do the best for themselves alone, that plays into the individualistic habits of mind that are part of our current predicament.
We aren’t and can’t all be the same AB. Chance to realise the fullness of oneself through work and opportunities and decent conditions in one’s community and the world would be a fine thing. But life and self management has to be learned, just scrambling along, dragging oneself up with no wise and caring help rarely results in a well-balanced and wise person. Teachers are worthy, should be nurtured and respected and have reasonable expectations placed on them in return.
They, and informed and thinking people, know too well today that they are the first rather than the second stage of support and introduction to life skills for many children in our society. That is why these skilled people need to get more attention than the unskilled, who in turn should get better conditions offered for their living and advancement. I don’t agree with the theory of communism, and everyone getting the same if that is what is behind your thinking.
Certainly would not get many to do my present job, without a skills and responsibility premium. We offered to train some staff. The response was, “you couldn’t pay me enough to take the responsibility”.
The lifestyle which made it an adventure for young people in the past, are long gone.
However there is no justification for jobs that I regard as semi-skilled, such as management in large companies, getting 35 times the average wage.
How much did teachers pay rise under the Natz and how much now under Labour would be a good comparison.
My gut feeling is that maybe the Natz did not give the teachers enough pay rises, and now labour are being blamed for it.
Plus the neoliberal immigration policies of the last 12 years in particular mean that it sounds like teachers would not have enough pay for even Kiwibuild ‘affordable’ houses up to $180k dual income.
In addition the glut of spec houses being built in Auckland were based around a Ponzi scheme and Kiwis can’t afford or not interested in 1 million+ dollar McMansions and want/need that 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom house with double garage and tiny section or 2 bedroom apartment with $13,000 a year body corporates and chance of leaks?
The ‘market driven’ developers have failed to build for the market of NZ and the high paid jobs were never created to keep the migrants or Kiwis in NZ with enough wages to live here without an overseas job to fund it? Aka once people get residency here, they leave their $20p/h insecure NZ job… NZ back where it started the ponzi but with much more liabilities and satellite families earning nothing but kids to teach, kids to give health care to, kids to commute to schools, WFF and tops ups to pay…
It would have to be a pretty flash apartment to have $13,000 body corporate fees. I have been looking at apartments around the $700,000 mark for a relative. Body corporate plus rates are around $5,000 to $6,000.
You have got to be joking Wayne! Just the insurance component on many apartments in Wellington exceeds $5000 to $6000. Now add $3000 p.a. for rates and varying amounts for future maintenance charges in the range of $1000 to five times that. One can be sure that $13,000 is not exceptional, particularly for older repurposed buildings. Also, you must realise that there are a number of apartments around that are at give-away prices as owners cannot afford the repair bills for earthquake and structural problems.
There are pockets of excellence in NZ in-between vast deserts of doubt and apathy. Many good ideas get buried by bureaucracy and/or suffocated by mediocre managers. Access to funding is like a 3,000-mile pilgrimage carrying a heavy load and with self-flagellation at each and every step, bare feet, I should add. It’s dire.
There are pockets of excellence in NZ in-between vast deserts of doubt and apathy.
Dear God is that such a true statement.
I’m sorry to say this; but it’s the one thing that becomes vividly apparent the moment you get on a plane and leave. If only NZ would learn to believe in itself the way our best rugby players and our world class sailors do … the country would be unstoppable.
Elite NZ athletes ‘learn to believe in themselves’ through expensive ongoing coaching and psychological support. Let’s invest in the equivalent for everyone else and reap the benefits.
Perhaps we could make lemonade out of something sour? The long spiritual walk of Spain the Carmino de Santiago is a selling point to meditative visitors and bucket-list tourists;, a spiritual and physical task that attracts thousands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_de_Santiago
Our pain and spiritual exercise of effort obtaining resources to try and save what is good in NZ from destruction and to nurture, build and develop better things in NZ, could be sold as a journey that attracts sympathetic tourists. Sell ourselves as a small green jewel in the world being threatened by the twin hazards of neoliberal freemarketing and runaway climate change. ‘Join us in our fevered attempts to rise above this tide’; better than an epic blockbuster.
/sarc or is it a step outside the square that could be the floating something that we grasp to save ourselves from drowning? I’ll leave you to conjecture what the something would be!
In 2010, Rocket Lab worked on a project for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, a US Department of Defense agency. The result of this work was passed on to the US military in 2012.
In 2013, Rocket Lab received funding from Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. Around this time Rocket Lab moved its company registration to the US and opened a corporate office in Los Angeles. In a recent TV interview, Peter Beck stated that he now spends his time betwwen LA and NZ.
In 2014, the US military and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin invested an undisclosed amount in Rocket Lab. Lockheed Martin is one of the US largest defence contractors, $35.2 billion in US military contracts last year. Rocket lab have refused to discuss the amount of funding they recieve from Lockheed Martin.
Is naive little NZ developing military and surveillance technology for the US?
I don’t think cube satellites are of much interest to the military. Way too small for serious comms and data use, and way too small for aerial surveillance. The camera lens needs to at least 30 cm is diameter to be of any serious military use. Way too big for a cube sat.
LM will just want Rocket Lab to be in its overall portfolio. After all LM won’t want to be completely reliant on military contracts. For instance the F35 project (largest single military contract in the world) will be complete in 10 years, and that probably accounts for 30% of current LM revenue.
Fireblade that is what concerns me. One thing to notice is that every new finding and invention gets looked at by ‘defence’ to see if they can use it to advantage. And they very likely be funding the tech.
And the othr thing that anything is moral if it makes a profit to these things parading themselves as people. So what if we are dependent for jobs on making butterfly bombs, rocket parts with impregnated mine material into every sq cm. etc?
How come the Opposition is doing all this quizzing of every meeting of some Ministers? It is as if they have taken over the snooping job of those detectives Thomson and Clark? What is the task they should be doing in their role?
3000 questions they asked of just Shane Jones, let alone anyone else, and that was a ploy they signalled early in the term of the new government. I would like to know exactly what the questions were? Clearly by dint of the number of questions there would be “gaps”. Likewise when you see the range of people he spoke to that seemed entirely normal, I doubt the same can be said of opposition “meetings” both during this term and prior.
The more people in NZ meet and talk with genuine intention the better off the country will be in the longterm.
One thing that has been absent other that weasel worded, relentless and empty badgering from the entire opposition party is what they would do to improve NZ and the lives of NZers, prior, within this term by positive example and if they ever, god forbid, got themselves back on the government side of the house without a major shift in dedication and intentions for NZ.
Goldsmith is obsessed with trying to hang something on Shane Jones, it appears to be an obsessive delusional trait with the National Party at present, maybe they have private investigators following all the Government MP’s, National have plenty in their coffers from their Asian Backers ?
Goldsmith appears to be working from the John Key & Crosby Textor Dirty Tricks Handbook ?
I was scratching my head as to what a good/easy issue to practice bipartisanship.
Treaty of Waitangi settlements.
Ongoing, big budget (not one term fiscal responsibility) fairly apolitical.
Who knows what could come of it?
Every human is better when we cooperate.
Jacinda Ardern told NZ this would be the most open transparent government ever, a none too subtle dig at National, so when the present government is less than transparent you think National shouldn’t remind voters of what Jacinda Ardern said
PR We had to learn of some meetings by National with their funders and masters through a fallout between friends.
Don’t come to this forum spouting the current Government is not transparent.
The last National Government was totally hiding meetings and schemes.
That is now being reflected in their shrinking support.
They are trying to build an impression of holding the government to account – severely handicapped by their own cavalier behavior in office. They may fool some of their base by it, but not much more.
Goldsmith is obsessed with trying to hang something on Shane Jones, it appears to be an obsessive delusional trait with the National Party at present, maybe they have private investigators following all the Government MP’s, National have plenty in their coffers from their Asian Backers ?
Goldsmith appears to be working from the John Key & Crosby Textor Dirty Tricks Handbook ?
Clare Curran was an incompetent Minister whose downfall in part brought about by questioning about her ‘meetings’. It might be unpleasant, but it is a legitimate part of opposition.
Am I the only that is slightly cynical and amused that the teachers strikes “just happen” to give both Auckland and Wellington teachers a long weekend?
“The whole weekend was supposed to be a show of western solidarity, and ended up proving its absence. Trump showed himself ill at ease with most of his European counterparts and the fleeting encounter with Putin was a reminder of his much greater affinity for autocrats.
He has claimed warm, even affectionate, relations with Putin, Kim Jong-un, Xi Jinping, Mohammed bin Salman, Rodrigo Duterte and now Brazil’s president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro.
Trump may have cut a lonely figure in Paris, but on the world stage, he is less and less isolated.”
Yes. This has been apparent from the outset and is alarming. The man is a god-awful lout and his election symptomatic of a deeply divided and troubled society.
Having said that, there may well be another side to this. In a world now increasingly dominated by dangerously authoritarian figures in places like Russia, China, Saudi, Brazil and so on … the liberal instincts of the west have proven an inadequate response.
It’s possibly worth remembering that just prior to WW2 Churchill was widely regarded with similar disdain by almost the entire educated, leadership class in Britain. They saw him too as an erratic, uncouth man with a patchy record. (The ‘appeasers’ were by no means confined to Chamberlain; if events had transpired just a little differently there is no doubt that Rudolf Hess’s attempt at a peace treaty might well have succeeded.)
Events play strange tricks with us, the leaders we need in peacetime are not necessarily the ones we need in times of trouble. I’m not trying to compare Trump with Churchill directly; but there are some parallels between the two men and their place in history that are worth thinking about.
I do think trump is a manifestation of his society, a consequence and predictable. To me he is dangerous, not just because of his ideas and beliefs but more because of the company he enjoys. He is like them and them ain’t good.
Churchill was the man of the times as was Hitler as is t.rump. The hardest thing for me in some ways is knowing that he is just the beginning and he will be far from the worst as the Empire crumbles little bit by little bit. T.rump is funny in some ways, amongst the carnage – other ones coming won’t be funny.
Yes. If I’m reading you correctly then I agree wholeheartedly. The potential for utter catastrophe is chilling and stalking us daily.
My optimism pivots on this one thing; that for fear of the consequences these leaders of the world will soon agree to set aside some portion of their unconstrained national sovereignty in favour of a wider common good. Events in Paris more than hint at this possibility:
Dozens of leaders, except Mr Trump, gathered in Paris later in the day for a peace forum.
Opening the event, Mrs Merkel said: “Most of the challenges today cannot be solved by one nation alone, but together. That’s why we need a common approach.
“If isolation wasn’t the solution 100 years ago, how can it be today in such an interconnected world?”
With US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin sitting in the nearby audience, Macron said that “old demons are reawakening” and warned against ignoring the past as a lesson to the danger of nationalist sentiments.
Yes there does appear to be attempts to bring people together as per macrons speech. T.rump is diametrically opposed to that and him and his supporters are proud of that. This is their agenda. Thus the delusions perpetuate.
There is a coalescing occurring around very fundamentally different ways of looking at things.
Thanks for posting that marty-superb article. What a nasty prat Trump is.
I think the mid-term results have been poorly reported. The democrats now look like taking 35-36 seats in the House where early results showed more like 25. This is close to the “blue-wave” 40-seat gain they were after. The Democrats won 7 important Governor races.
In Florida the Senate race is now within 0.14 percent where the Republican spent $60 million (NZ$90m) of his own fortune on trying to get elected. The recount will be interesting.
Meanwhile there was a massive increase in young voters. Bodes well for 2020.
“The purpose of my work was never to destroy but always to create, to construct bridges, because we must live in the hope that humankind will draw together and that the better we understand each other the easier this will become.”
Alphonse Mucha
As he was inaugurated for a second term this evening, President Michael D Higgins said “ideas matter” and “history tells us that anti-intellectualism” is the “the weapon of authoritarian and anti-democratic forces in so many parts of our shared, vulnerable planet” .
“Our choice must be to actively extend and deepen democracy, to express it in wider forms and in new ways,” he said.
Not alone was “the very existence of our planet in its bio-diversity threatened but we have not yet slowed the pace of that destruction. We live with ongoing violence against women which must be ended.
“We must confront and challenge any excuses offered for the denial of the irreducible rights, of women who make up, let us not forget, a majority of humanity on this planet. It is important that we recognize the rights and culture of indigenous peoples. It is also important that each person is free to express their sexuality, gender or relationship,” he said.
There should be a set curriculum at all schools in NZ with schools able to add to these, but not to forego important factual stuff we should all know and understand.
And religion should not be taught, it should be part of a philosophy based curricu,um teaching about culture and how values are established.
However, University of Canterbury School of Teacher Education senior lecturer Dr Richard Manning …
Difficulties arose because of “perceived white backlash”. He had encountered history teachers who pushed back on teaching Māori history saying it was “all political correctness”.
> There should be a set curriculum at all schools in NZ with schools able to add to these, but not to forego important factual stuff we should all know and understand.
Sorry dude, schools have taught very little ‘factual stuff’ of any sort for some time.
You have to teach your own kids facts, or hope they pick it up in books.
Well, I don’t think kids learn a lot of facts at primary school, even compared to in my day (the 80s).
This is based on a sample size of 1 (my kid) plus what I hear from others and read in the media.
If you have information to the contrary I would be pleased to hear it.
> Most of the kids these days seem pretty onto it.
I never said they weren’t ‘onto it’! I said they don’t learn a lot of facts at school! It doesn’t actually seem that controversial of a statement. I do not think many modern educators would seriously contend that they try to stuff kids’ heads with facts nowadays.
>Maybe the poor influence on your kids isn’t at school?
You seem like a decent bloke overall, I don’t know why you act like an asshole towards me. Should I just stop trying to engage you in conversation?
To sum up, I think Cleangreen thinks that the Ministry of Education in Wellington sets a list of information (not skills, not competencies, but facts) that kids must learn. I respond that if this was ever the case, it has not been so for decades.
“Onto it” as in knowing stuff. Facts. Their math seems pretty good. Same with basic NZ history and plants and stuff. Most of the sprogs I know love to interrupt discussions with vaguely-relevant crap they picked up somewhere.
Sure, there’s not so much rote learning, but this isn’t a bad thing. And in my day they just hit us if we didn’t remember whatever shit was being taught at the time.
I had a chat to a modern teacher in regards to rote learning vs enquiry learning (not sure what correct terminology is).
This was after watching my son get to a level at maths ok then largely struggle. From about year 8.
I came through with the times table, rote learnt in the 70s.
With that foundation, I found it easy to hold 2or 3 parts of the solution in mind before getting answer.
I don’t think the answer is one or the other but a combo, but we have a habit of throwing out all of the old when we have a new.
One interesting element is the ‘Key Competencies.’ Calls for teacher performance pay usually mention testing kids for how much the kids ‘know’ in subjects and paying teachers accordingly not on how essential competencies have been achieved and to what level.
In front of the world, America has shown everyone what a piss weak president they have. He would not walk a step to honour the American soldiers WWI. Because of rain drops.
In front of the great State of California the same piss weak president has poured out his piss weak insults on the devastated, the dead and dying in the fierce hell fires – fiddling like a mad man with his insipid tweets.
America is at its Weakest. Surely they can rid themselves of the current Whitehouse Fool.
Kia ora The Am Show It is alarming that the Pola Ice Cap’s could be melting faster than previously thought that will raze sea levels by mtr and not just cm there will be stronger storm and Hurricanes smashing the coastal community’s.
.Christina its cool that we are talking about Human Caused Climate Change its about time I have worked out what has happened a BLUE Tsunami thank’s for your word’s Christina.
Kiwi are kind when the telephon 24 hour TV fun razing money for to aid 3 world country’s was running Kiwi donated million’s we were one of the highest for donation’s per capital time’s were much easier in those day’s we had spear money.
That the internet correcting thing’s again the fuel community price app is a cool Idea that will keep the gas company’s honestest may be you could have other consumer good’s and services listed to your app will pump.
With our teachers strike they mone about there work load .
I will give a example of the kicks and work smarter theory its fact actually.
I was part of a organization that milked 5000.00 cow’s twice a day through one 80 bale shed the neighbour and the newbees could not milk 3500 2 80 bale sheds it was a finely run farming group .
Point the teacher have heap’s of tool at there disposal to teach tamariki with the internet at there disposal they just have to look outside of the square to come up with smart efficient teaching solution’s.
Also these strikes will hit the common poor tamariki the most if the parents have to take time off work to care for there tamariki the wealthy will just hire a carer
There is a glut of oil on the market and we have hundred’s of thousands of electric vehicles coming on stream and millions of solar panels wind turbines displacing oil Thanks to China’s manufacturing muscle and people like Mus .
Its good that the Anglican Church is backing the public inquiry into child abuse of
state care tamariki and the Religious groups that cared for tamariki . Ka kite ano P.S no flash video links I need some DIMP for my computer the sandflys keep attacking it
Here is the reason our fuel prices have dropped trump’s tricks have been countered
the world woke up to his moves to inflate oil prices his oil baron supporters net worth went up by billions
Also, the weekly estimates are not as accurate as the monthly figures, which are published on a roughly 2-month lag. As such, they should be taken with a grain of salt. However, the massive increase comes just days after the EIA reported a huge increase in production in the monthly data – at 11.346 mb/d in August, the U.S. oil industry has clearly been producing a lot more than previously thought. That lends some weight to the weekly figures.
Another previously-bullish factor was Iran. With Iran’s oil exports spiraling downwards at the end of the summer and into September, the oil market grew very concerned about adequate global supply and the rapidly dwindling volume of spare capacity. U.S. waivers on countries importing Iranian oil removed that threat. Washington still wants to tighten the screws – and in fact, the sudden bearishness in the market gives the Trump administration more leeway to do just that – but in the near-term, Iran will continue to export.
A third factor is OPEC+ production. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, Russia and Libya have all increased production in recent months, offsetting the losses from Iran. Now, the group has a different problem on its hands. A technical committee to the OPEC+ coalition is set to meet this weekend where it will take stock of the oil market. They will also consider options going forward for managing the market, including the potential for a production cut in 2019 to avoid another market downturn. The 180-degree turn – from adding supply just a few months ago to now considering a cut – is a remarkable indicator that demonstrates how quickly the sentiment has turned.
Ka kite ano
Plunging Battery Costs To Trigger Energy Storage Boom YEA YES KA PAI
Bloomberg New Energy Finance has forecast a veritable boom in energy storage installations in the coming years with investments hitting US$1.2 trillion by 2040. Falling battery costs will be the driver behind this boom, with BNEF projecting a 52 percent drop in utility-scale lithium-ion systems by 2030. .
It is a fact that the cost of producing batteries for energy storage is falling. Cost reduction, after all, is a top priority for everyone from EV makers to utilities betting on energy storage as a future source of revenues
But what about energy storage installations’ effect on the grid? That should be all-round positive, except for utilities that generate power from non-renewable sources. They better start preparing because BNEF’s analysts projected energy storage may rise to 7 percent of the world’s total installed power generation capacity by 2040.
In more good news for renewables, while until about 2030 most energy storage installations will be utility-scale from about 2035 behind-the-meter facilities will begin to take over, which means they will probably be affordable by then, and Elon Musk’s concept of a household featuring a solar roof, a household battery pack, and an EV could become a reality not just for billionai Ka kite ano link below . P.S I could build a offgrid solar power system for a small family for $4000 all up .
I decided to wait and see what happened when I first seen reports on China lifting Ban on trade in endangered animal parts
The Chinese government announced on Monday that it would postpone a plan to lift the 25-year ban on the endangered animals, following a storm of international protest.
It’s important to send the strongest message that the value of wild populations of tigers and rhinos and their ecosystems is much greater than the value of their bones and horns. Ka pai China they get the big picture its te tangata its te tangata and we need Papatuanuku and all her creatures to be respected to have a prosperous future for all.
Link below ka kite ano
We need to protect OUR worlds forest and start planting billions of trees for our future
decedents to have a good life .There are many cases in OUR History that show’s a complete collapse of the environment and the society all because we did not respect mother nature .
The UK, France and Germany have called on the European commission to launch tough new action to halt deforestation by the end of the year.
A long-delayed EU action plan should be brought forward “as soon as possible”, says a letter to the commission sent by the Amsterdam Declaration group of countries, which also includes Italy, the Netherlands and Norway.
To help meet a UN goal of halting deforestation by 2020, the EU should show “a leadership role, mobilising its political and market leverage, and promoting broader international dialogue and cooperation”, the letter says.
Link below ka kite ano
Its people like Stan Lee who have provided us with fantastic comic books he has ignited
the imagination of billions of people and a lot have gone on to become the worlds greatest inventors condolences to his whano/family he will be missed he is in a higher place now
Stan Lee: Spider-Man, X-Men and Avengers creator dies aged 95
Born Stanley Martin Lieber on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in 1922, Lee’s childhood was marked by the Great Depression. In his 2002 autobiography Excelsior!, Lee described how his father’s struggle to find a steady job had forever affected him: “It’s a feeling that the most important thing for a man to do is to have work to do, to be busy, to be needed,” he wrote.
At 17, Lee landed a job at a publishing company owned by his relative Martin Goodman, and began writing scripts for superhero and mystery comics. When Goodman fell out with his editor in 1941, Lee found himself editor-in-chief at just 19.
Link below ka kite ano. P.S my eldest grandson has a flash suit
Our Pacific cousins have a positive influence on Aotearoa society culturally and financially
“The [NZ Pacific Economy] report reveals Pacific peoples are contributing significantly to the economy despite some of the poor health, housing, education and employment outcomes experienced by many in their communities,” Robertson said.
Pasifika families and businesses are big contributors to NZ economy: Finance Minister Assets from about 1500 Pacific business employers and almost 500 not-for-profit organisations totalled up to $8.3b and, from those assets, the total value added was thought to be $3.1b annually. Ka kite ano link below.
ASB has joined the fray in the latest round of mortgage rate wars – dropping its one year fixed rate to match the record low 3.95 per cent offered by ANZ.
Its good to see ANZ bank start to the one year fixed interest rate drop that’s cool.
But I will still be after one of there board members /shonky but if you can save money go for it put all the saving on the mortgage .The low rate specials offered by ANZ, BNZ and Westpac are only available to home owners with a deposit or 20 per cent equity stake in their homes.
Its a buyers market now and about time thanks to the moves of our new Coalition Government. ka kite ano P.S we have other’s banks competing for your custom and the interest rate battle begins link below.
Kia ora Te Kaea I have to use my phone to get the post out the sandflys are attaking my other computer.
It will be a good trip for our Prime minister meeting all the heads of states talking about the Pacific relations and Climate change impacts on the Pacific and Aotearoa.
It been good seeing Te IWIs helping there tangata into housing that’s the best way to escape the poverty trap a lot of our tangata fall into.
Son of Zion are a cool banned music is good for te Wairua.
It would be nice if our government did advocate for Indigenous people consern.s at the gathering of our world leaders.
Ka kite ano P.S I will get some dimp tomorrow
Kia ora Newshub Paddy Andrew is letting the people go into the Pike River mine that will be of great relief for Berne and the family of all the people who have lost love ones in the mine.
Kate I have a post early on for the Great Comic writing legend Stan Lee.
Those fires in Northern Calafornia is a great desaster condolences to the people who have lost.
I say that the Shane Jones NZFirst billion tree program has had a minor hick up its what could happened to anyone when you have Papatuanukue and Tawhirirmate one can not pradict the weather.
It looks like they had a good day at the Addington race way in Christchurch Ra is shining to.
That’s what I wanted Sukieanne get her houners taken away for the atrocities that her government is doing to those poor people in Mayna.
We get half our meat from my sons they buy a beef so I dive into their freezers.
I do like my veggies to but I have to have some meat unprocessed we don’t eat as much meat as we used to.
That must have been a shock to SUE she is doing a fine job the new Auckland Prison told her that she needs to have a photo ID and finger print to she helps people who are having proroale problems we have seen a lot of people can’t get prole no fix abode if they can’t read a write
. Plastic water bottles leaching toxins well. I say know one has tested them for the effects on the fetus and the long term effects on anmials humans one to.
Ka kite ano P.S mind the spelling sandflys muppets
Some people try and play ECO MAORI they get the benefit of doubt they believe the lies the sandflys are spinning about ECO MAORI to them they get one chance.
I should listen to my instinct it’s always correct Ana to kai
The Crowd goes Wild Mulls and James.
Manu and Butterbean fight will be interesting. Monty ECO a South paw.
Mulls you lost weight can you still shuffle my moko is good at the shuffle they get their groove from the Wife my children give me shit when I have enough cups of tea to start to fluffel LOL.
The Addington races NZ trotting Cup was Winston there.
Butterbean has to get the message out drop the sugar us Pacific Islanders body’s are to effect at storing fat and sugar stuff up our health.
Ka kite ano P.S that’s the way guys support the Bowls teams and Showing heaps of Wahine Sports Stars on The Crowd goes Wild
Good morning The AM Show Azzes is having fun at the AMP Show.
There you go Winston Peters and Andrew Little The Coalition Government has helped the Pike River family to find the truth about the explosion.
This all happened because shonky made a unwise bet on COAL/Carbon. I have story that links shonky to Aotearoa losing 1 billion dollars of assets will tell when the time is right.
The road accidents =not enough investment in roads and a xtra 1 million people and cars = more accidents.
Lloyd the britexit I say it’s a can of worms they wish they never opened.
Robots are the future and AI Is a big threat to human kind and the World take it seriously one just. To see how the sandflys are behaveing with the technology tools help you to understand part of my concern of Artifical Intelligents every single thing we do will have computers integrated into it and if one App has that power we’ll people who make movies about this subject are warming US.
IF a person like trump gets the power of total control that AI can have we are in the SHIT.
It will be cool if Israel gets a title fight at the UFC.
There you go Berne Monk you want justice and accountability shonky was covering up the big mistake they made with the health and safety prosses at Pike River mine. Because the familys of the people who died are common people it’s worth the massive effort yous have put into getting justice a big WIN for the common tangata.
Ka kite ano
Kia ora The AM Show. The Pike River scandle is just one issue from shonky
The Britexit don’t count your chickens May I have read that Nigal Farr has been linked to the Muler Russian investorgation I smelt that far right money all over his actions.
I East Asia summit Tova I bet Mike Pence wanted to talk about more issues that the dumb trade tariff.??????????
It has been the reward of a lot of people’s hard work that has paid off with the Mountain Grilla coming of the most endangered list.
The Black Ferns are getting heaps of game time and coverage on TV
Ka kite ano. P.S flip flop
I am not a criminologist or organisational sociologist, so I cannot offer a data-driven opinion on the effectiveness of military-syle so-called ‘boot camps” when it comes to rehabilitating juvenile delinquents and youth offenders. They are popular in the US and … Continue reading → ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 27 were:1. The Minister for Ford Rangers strikes againTransport Minister Simeon Brown was again the busiest of the Cabinet ministers this week, announcing an ...
You got a fast carAnd I want a ticket to anywhereMaybe we make a dealMaybe together we can get somewhereAny place is betterYesterday’s newsletter, Trust In Me, on the report of abuse in state care, and by religious organisations, between 1950 and 2019, coupled with the hypocrisy of Christopher Luxon ...
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
Te Rangi e tu nei (The sky above us) Te Papa e takoto nei (The land beneath us) Tatou katoa te hunga ora (To us all the living) Tena koutou katoa (Greetings) ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Austin, Lecturer in Theatre, The University of Melbourne There has never been an opening ceremony quite like it. For the first time in Olympic Games history, the ceremony took place outside a stadium arena. Despite a rainy and miserable Paris ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Åkerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Mike Lewinski/Flickr, CC BY On any clear night, if you gaze skywards long enough, chances are you’ll see a meteor streaking through the sky. Some nights, however, are better than others. At ...
Despite having no bars or other designated spaces for lesbians, Auckland boasts a small but mighty lesbian museum. So how did it get here? The past 18 months has brought increasing hostility towards the queer community across Aotearoa. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s anti-trans rally in Tamaki Makaurau last March led to a ...
Poneke Antifascist Coalition has invited Wellingtonians to stand in solidarity with the Kanak people at 12pm today outside the French Embassy in Wellington. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Strategic Studies, Griffith University Drones are the signature technology of the Ukraine war. A few miniature aircraft designs were used in the war’s early days, but an incredible array of drones have now evolved. There are different types, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Slee, Associate Professor, Clinical Academic Neurologist, Flinders University Francisco Gonzelez/Unsplash Migraine is many things, but one thing it’s not is “just a headache”. “Migraine” comes from the Greek word “hemicrania”, referring to the common experience of migraine being predominantly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee White, Senior Lecturer and Horizon Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Australia was slow to introduce minimum building standards for energy efficiency. The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) only came into force in 2003. Older homes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Sherwood, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney The past century of human-induced warming has increased rainfall variability over 75% of the Earth’s land area – particularly over Australia, Europe and eastern North America, new research shows. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Heynen, Program Coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland A temporary stadium in the Champ-de-Mars, ParisEkaterina Pokrovsky/Shutterstock As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the sustainability of the event is coming under scrutiny. The organisers have promoted ...
A night of karaoke and community in a pub that feels like a memory. You’d barely even notice it, unless you knew to look. Tucked away behind a liquor store on busy Constable Street is the capital’s last great pub. Newtown Sports Bar is an emblem of the pub culture ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Wright, Professor in Marine Geology, University of Canterbury Louise Corcoran/Getty Images The decline in the number of doctoral candidates at New Zealand universities is a worrying sign for the country’s effort to build a knowledge-based economy. Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurie Berg, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney defotoberg/Shutterstock Migrant worker exploitation is entrenched in workplaces across Australia. Tragically, a deep fear of immigration consequences means most unlawful employer conduct goes unreported. On Wednesday, however, the government officially launched a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Tasmania Paris is about to host its third summer Olympics. While we don’t yet know what the legacy of this year’s games will be, let’s take the opportunity to reflect on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University In the wake of the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, there were calls from bothsides of US politics, as well as internationally, to reduce the brutal, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Rathbone, Senior Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University Two high-profile assaults on Australians in Paris have raised concerns about security ahead of the Olympic Games. On Saturday evening, a young woman was allegedly sexually assaulted by a ...
Dying is inevitable and, so it seems, is it costing a lot, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.The cost of dying ...
The government took Joyce Harris's first baby and sent her off to a girls' home. Half a century on - and out of oceans of hurt - it asked her to be a mother figure. ...
John Wight
“Tony Blair’s presence in front of the Cenotaph is grotesque. It’s like having an arsonist attending the funeral of the victims of his fire starting. One million Iraqis dead, ME plunged into the abyss, Blair is a war criminal. ”
George Galloway.
“There is no Poppy large enough, no overcoat thick enough to hide the black evil hearts of the War Criminals amongst whom Corbyn was forced to linger in London this morning.”
Rachel Stewart
“’ll use Twitter sparingly from now on, and only for either my latest column or when I’ve something I really want to say. Real life awaits. Given the planetary state of things, we’d all likely do better by spending more time with family, friends, animals & nature. Peace out.”
Some could infer that the govt has now moved regarding the teachers, to engaging in the PR war with the voter, placing a wedge between the teachers and the public. The phrasing of the $9,500 is of interest as it grosses 3 annual rises of 3% into 1, and has been used to destroy favourable public opinion towards teachers. That is something you could think another govt would use, the tactic shouldn’t employed by Labour 🤔
Hipkins said the proposed pay rise exceeded that of many other professions.
“I think that a $9500 pay rise is a pay rise that many other New Zealanders would certainly appreciate.”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=12158332
Hopkins is just another neoliberal politician.
He is no socialist.
He does not represent the working class.
He is not Labour.
Who is Hopkins?
Hipkins!
A member of the elite.
Of course Hipkins is Labour Ed. Labour is a neoliberal party which seems to hope people will eventually forget that they unleashed neoliberalism in NZ and have never said sorry.
Hipkins is right at home.
So that will solve the shortage!!!!
Yea Right
I can’t see how there can be a teacher shortage, we train thousands of new teachers every year.
Where do they all go? do they all have teaching jobs?
Didn’t you see the part where most new Teachers leave in the first few years, due to crippling workloads, unrealistic expectations from their employers, micro-management and the stultifying effect of Nationals dumbing down of education.
Before you even get into pay, about half of the earnings of a tradesman, or other equivalently educated, skilled trade. I.E. Lawyers, dentists and real estate agents.
The right wing say we should pay millions to managers and directors to ensure competence. Teachers are supposed to do it for love.
I know. I was one of them. I didn’t expect to earn the same as my real job, but I expected to earn enough to live on reasonably, and to go to the scale they told me I would be on, before I retrained for Teaching.
But hasn’t that all been changed under this Government ? There should be a massive increase in people wanting to train as teachers now.
Nope. Labour are still holding on to the delusional tradition that a new government doesn’t change the policies set by the previous government.
And the reality is that it’s going to take time to recognise the damage that the right-wing policies are doing and then fix them.
Not sure how big an issue it is, but I have heard in interviews and the mighty talk back radio, that one of the issues new teachers have is their obvious lack of experience.
Some schools being hesitant to hire too many newbies.
As I say, not sure how prevalent it is, as a lot of it seemed to be anecdotal
That’s across a lot of hiring practices – demanding two years experience. It makes things very hard for people who qualify in NZ because the job market is neither large nor extensive. Getting a job near one’s family and friends or your partner’s workplace is hard enough without such nonsense. Teachers used to have some protection in the first two years though – not sure if it’s still there.
A major problem is the requirement for continued training for the first two years. The Beginning Teacher had to be under a suitable Senior Teacher for two years as part of certification. That senior person was meant to broaden the junior teacher’s curriculum and classroom management strategies.
Many schools were caused headaches by Boards of Trustees failing to keep a balance of staff, through choosing younger staff… (close to their own age often).
Older Teachers were seen as costly, harder to manage and not progressive enough. That started a chain of failures and stressed teachers and boards.
Yeah, friend of mine did a midlife swap to teaching – gave notice in year one due to stress and was essentially saved by a good mentor teacher & principal. Now much in demand at a highend private school – one of the few who knows the NCEA stuff well enough to coach the younger & foreign imports – on top of her actual job.
But the systemic prejudice against kiwis is frankly huge, and not confined to teaching. The worthless English buffoons who’ve run the MSA for the last few decades pretty much killed the training path for kiwis – took me till I was thirty to get my coastal masters, not because I failed anything but because the useless deleted expletives wouldn’t recognize my seatime. Teaching in China, one of the blokes who owned the company I worked for had got his master foreign going by the time he was 19. He was from Hong Kong – which had the same UK descended qualification framework but without the obstructive culture that was allowed to ruin NZ’s system. And still does.
> the obstructive culture that was allowed to ruin NZ’s system
Do you think this is largely grounded in protectionism – those that are already ‘in’ pulling up the ladder after them?
A.
In the case of the MSA, yes.
Most cultures do this in their own country in fact – it’s a colonial legacy that this strange version of it remains so prevalent in NZ.
In the MSA’s case, now Maritime New Zealand, it was organizational incompetence, which seems to be intergenerational. Governments putting taxi drivers or real Estate agents in charge, and employing ex cops, doesn’t help. There are some good people in MNZ, but they tell me you have to keep your heads well down, if you have any real knowledge.
Having experience in New Zealand shipping, is a definite barrier to employment with MNZ.
The current international requirement for only one years sea time for a second mates certificate, and the like, is even more pandering to cost cutting shipowners.
All NZ companies, hate paying for training.
Experience, short term contracts and long trial periods.
Don’t forget, young. Skilled older tradespeople, who are often better with the stroppy kids, not wanted.
Only seems to apply to New Zealand trained Teachers?
Useless Management in NZ is systemic throughout the Public Service & Private Companies “the harder you suck the higher you get & it depends on who you know not what you know ?”.
Most Public Companies here in NZ have either been bankrupted through management incompetence or sold to offshore investors.
Government Departments and SOE’s run as little fiefdoms ?
In one word Management in NZ is “Useless” IMHO.
“I can’t see how there can be a teacher shortage” – are you saying there isn’t one?
If so, where is your analysis to back that up?
If you don’t have that analysis – and I’m sure you don’t – or you are not saying there isn’t a shortage, then stop introducing distractions like this to every single discussion.
A couple from my kids school shot the gap to Dubai as soon as there 1 1/2 ? Probation was up .
My dentist has just awarded himself a pay rise, of double that.
Average pay rises for top managers over 17%.
Civil service managers are now on hundreds of thousands.
Teachers used to be on the same as a backbencher.
I think they are being rather restrained, myself. Especially when you consider the rises are nowhere near that for all Teachers, and they are over several years.
Lastly. If you want to attract competent people from other jobs, you need to, at least, pay them enough to live in Auckland.
The time of expecting women with well paid husbands, to do the job for love and peanuts, is over.
Teachers are used as scapegoats, regularly chastised, blamed, painted as unsatisfactory servants just carrying on at a higher level from pre-school education. Their achievements and workload aren’t respected, and for decades also teach mentally unabled childre, those who are disturbed and mind-stressed from unhappy homes and from watching mind-warping television and videos, as well as those who are to be prepared for a regular working life if they can find that.
Just as government and leaders play games with them, expecting more but also increasing their difficulties, they do the same to the adults who have finished school, and they have difficulties finding that regular working life. All are easured all the time with forms to fill out. This is a society that is built around the idea that people are not good enough to be treated as satisfactory; niggling and fault-finding by those who have managed to climb the ladder is constant but those at the upper level somehow avoid much of it themselves.
“A University of Otago study shows CEO pay is increasing at almost five times the rate of the average worker.
Otago University Business School Accountancy and Finance researcher Dr Helen Roberts’ longitudinal study study, which adjusted for inflation, showed the proportion of CEOs paid over $500,000 per year had also increased approximately five-fold across three different compensation measures.
It showed chief executives were now paid 30 to 50 times more than the average wage of $60,000.”
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/ceo-pay-increases-five-times-average-rate
“Chief executive pay packes often do not seem to relate to performance. Fonterra and Fletcher Building are good examples. Or CBL. The troubled insurer’s boss was paid $2.6 million in 2016 and the company was placed in voluntary administration in early 2018.
For context, the chief executive pay in the top 50 companies in New Zealand averaged average under NZ$2 million. That’s around 35 times the average worker pay.”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/106499178/what-to-do-about-the-everincreasing-rate-of-ceo-pay
And that same CEO will have large investments in the stock market that has tripled in value in the last 9 years and he/she will own multiple houses that, as everybody knows, have gone up massively in value in the last 20 years.
The combination of massive salary increases and massive capital gains represents a huge shift in wealth to the top 5-10%.
We need an asset tax and a land tax.
at least you did not say capital gains where the ‘family home’ is tax free ha ha.
Problem with asset tax is, if you are not a CEO how the hell do you pay it on NZ wages? Can you imagine a teacher adding that tax on to their mortgage, rates and other expenses to pay?
Obviously fine if you work or have income from overseas and therefore can earn money in relation to cost of living. In NZ there is a disparity of wages including those middle class wages i.e. teachers and police which is why there is an issue with ‘asset’ taxes on NZ wages.
I’d prefer more targeted taxes aka stamp duty on assets over 5 million for example – business/farm/house. Even if it was the ‘family home’ you would still have to pay.
Also more investigation into ‘minimum’ turnover taxes aka comanies like Google that pay little taxes here have to pay a minimum of tax on turnovers over 10 million for example even if they make a ‘loss’.
And a financial transaction tax on banks and money coming into and out of NZ to get all those ‘profits’.
yep agree….like the turnover tax but not set at a pathetically low token level like in the UK
Some of the people inconvenienced by the teachers this week will be paid even less than teachers and work just as hard.
I have doubts about how far the model of individual unions seeking improvements for their members alone can be pushed. I would prefer to see increases in the ‘social wage’ that benefit all low and moderate income earners.
That is how we got descent wages and welfare in the first place. Bit by bit. Mostly by striking. The horror.
Nationwide strikes in support are illegal. Otherwise you may find that many of the people you are so concerned about, support Teachers.
Increases in the social wage, means Government share of the economy must increase. Taxes on the rich may have to go up! Horrors.
Quality Teaching and education, is part of the “social wage”, by the way.
+111
Exactly.
The rich and the powerful are pointing out the minor problems caused by people demanding to be paid enough while distracting from the major problems that they themselves cause such as under paying people.
Worse DTB, the rich demand private schools and suitable packages to attract the best teaching staff for their children. Further they take the funds from the General Education Budget, thus lowering the money for the rest.
Exactly. But the media now portray reasonable catch-up as beyond reasonable.. (Thanks, ERA..)
I have lived many years (I started in 1970) wishing that NZEI and my PPTA could actually work together. It appears that from the start of next year this may actually happen. The foolish promoters of the economy need to be taught that there are many things more important than what they think is good for the economy. Society matters far more than the economy, … the economy has to be a servant, not a master.
NZEI have always been too terrified of upsetting parents and far too into self-sacrifice.
Oh yes, the rich believe in performance-based pay and meritocracy; the best get paid better, the better-paid are the best. They would say that, wouldn’t they?
This feeds into the urban myth that teachers in low-decile schools are generally inferior to teachers in high-decile ones with only the best carefully handpicked for private schools (the elite schools). Consequently, the low-decile schools are inferior too, which is obvious when you look at academic success of the students, now and in future.
This BS keeps self-perpetuating and even some of the poor are buying into it.
Don’t!
One’s pay (or wealth) is not a marker of one’s competence as a teacher.
But AB teachers aren’t unskilled and semi-skilled workers, and they are extensions of the socialising and informing role that parents do (if all is going well). Teachers are trained to carry out their role, unlike parents who struggle to get along with or without teachers strikes. Teachers are trying to maintain their numbers with training to expected levels of expertise in these difficult times. While we have teachers who care and try to help children through their school years to a level that enables them to manage in the world, we have some hope that they will be able to negotiate social wages for themselves as adults, if their parents have not learned enough to achieve that themselves.
‘Teach your children well, their parents hell will surely go by’.
Grey – I find comparisons between who is ‘skilled’ and ‘unskilled’ a bit odious. And I don’t really like the idea of people’s economic wellbeing coming down to how well they can make the case that they are more skilled than someone else, who therefore deserves less than they do.
I would like to see a sort of cross-occupational solidarity that assumes the baseline of a decent economic life for everyone, then places some relatively modest skill differentials (insofar as these can be determined) on top of that. If people are in occupational silos trying to do the best for themselves alone, that plays into the individualistic habits of mind that are part of our current predicament.
We aren’t and can’t all be the same AB. Chance to realise the fullness of oneself through work and opportunities and decent conditions in one’s community and the world would be a fine thing. But life and self management has to be learned, just scrambling along, dragging oneself up with no wise and caring help rarely results in a well-balanced and wise person. Teachers are worthy, should be nurtured and respected and have reasonable expectations placed on them in return.
They, and informed and thinking people, know too well today that they are the first rather than the second stage of support and introduction to life skills for many children in our society. That is why these skilled people need to get more attention than the unskilled, who in turn should get better conditions offered for their living and advancement. I don’t agree with the theory of communism, and everyone getting the same if that is what is behind your thinking.
Certainly would not get many to do my present job, without a skills and responsibility premium. We offered to train some staff. The response was, “you couldn’t pay me enough to take the responsibility”.
The lifestyle which made it an adventure for young people in the past, are long gone.
However there is no justification for jobs that I regard as semi-skilled, such as management in large companies, getting 35 times the average wage.
How much did teachers pay rise under the Natz and how much now under Labour would be a good comparison.
My gut feeling is that maybe the Natz did not give the teachers enough pay rises, and now labour are being blamed for it.
Plus the neoliberal immigration policies of the last 12 years in particular mean that it sounds like teachers would not have enough pay for even Kiwibuild ‘affordable’ houses up to $180k dual income.
In addition the glut of spec houses being built in Auckland were based around a Ponzi scheme and Kiwis can’t afford or not interested in 1 million+ dollar McMansions and want/need that 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom house with double garage and tiny section or 2 bedroom apartment with $13,000 a year body corporates and chance of leaks?
The ‘market driven’ developers have failed to build for the market of NZ and the high paid jobs were never created to keep the migrants or Kiwis in NZ with enough wages to live here without an overseas job to fund it? Aka once people get residency here, they leave their $20p/h insecure NZ job… NZ back where it started the ponzi but with much more liabilities and satellite families earning nothing but kids to teach, kids to give health care to, kids to commute to schools, WFF and tops ups to pay…
It would have to be a pretty flash apartment to have $13,000 body corporate fees. I have been looking at apartments around the $700,000 mark for a relative. Body corporate plus rates are around $5,000 to $6,000.
You have got to be joking Wayne! Just the insurance component on many apartments in Wellington exceeds $5000 to $6000. Now add $3000 p.a. for rates and varying amounts for future maintenance charges in the range of $1000 to five times that. One can be sure that $13,000 is not exceptional, particularly for older repurposed buildings. Also, you must realise that there are a number of apartments around that are at give-away prices as owners cannot afford the repair bills for earthquake and structural problems.
Hipkins use of that is bullshit and propaganda, an easily used line to be picked up by people like Michael Barnett.
Last week Hipkins had it at $10,000 so it’s already dropped!
Congratulations to Rocketlab on their successful launch of their rocket last night.
In New Zealand; who’da thought?
There are pockets of excellence in NZ in-between vast deserts of doubt and apathy. Many good ideas get buried by bureaucracy and/or suffocated by mediocre managers. Access to funding is like a 3,000-mile pilgrimage carrying a heavy load and with self-flagellation at each and every step, bare feet, I should add. It’s dire.
There are pockets of excellence in NZ in-between vast deserts of doubt and apathy.
Dear God is that such a true statement.
I’m sorry to say this; but it’s the one thing that becomes vividly apparent the moment you get on a plane and leave. If only NZ would learn to believe in itself the way our best rugby players and our world class sailors do … the country would be unstoppable.
And yes big congrats to RocketLab !!
Elite NZ athletes ‘learn to believe in themselves’ through expensive ongoing coaching and psychological support. Let’s invest in the equivalent for everyone else and reap the benefits.
Perhaps we could make lemonade out of something sour? The long spiritual walk of Spain the Carmino de Santiago is a selling point to meditative visitors and bucket-list tourists;, a spiritual and physical task that attracts thousands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_de_Santiago
Our pain and spiritual exercise of effort obtaining resources to try and save what is good in NZ from destruction and to nurture, build and develop better things in NZ, could be sold as a journey that attracts sympathetic tourists. Sell ourselves as a small green jewel in the world being threatened by the twin hazards of neoliberal freemarketing and runaway climate change. ‘Join us in our fevered attempts to rise above this tide’; better than an epic blockbuster.
/sarc or is it a step outside the square that could be the floating something that we grasp to save ourselves from drowning? I’ll leave you to conjecture what the something would be!
The Rocket Lab launch is interesting.
In 2010, Rocket Lab worked on a project for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, a US Department of Defense agency. The result of this work was passed on to the US military in 2012.
In 2013, Rocket Lab received funding from Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. Around this time Rocket Lab moved its company registration to the US and opened a corporate office in Los Angeles. In a recent TV interview, Peter Beck stated that he now spends his time betwwen LA and NZ.
In 2014, the US military and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin invested an undisclosed amount in Rocket Lab. Lockheed Martin is one of the US largest defence contractors, $35.2 billion in US military contracts last year. Rocket lab have refused to discuss the amount of funding they recieve from Lockheed Martin.
Is naive little NZ developing military and surveillance technology for the US?
I don’t think cube satellites are of much interest to the military. Way too small for serious comms and data use, and way too small for aerial surveillance. The camera lens needs to at least 30 cm is diameter to be of any serious military use. Way too big for a cube sat.
LM will just want Rocket Lab to be in its overall portfolio. After all LM won’t want to be completely reliant on military contracts. For instance the F35 project (largest single military contract in the world) will be complete in 10 years, and that probably accounts for 30% of current LM revenue.
Fireblade that is what concerns me. One thing to notice is that every new finding and invention gets looked at by ‘defence’ to see if they can use it to advantage. And they very likely be funding the tech.
And the othr thing that anything is moral if it makes a profit to these things parading themselves as people. So what if we are dependent for jobs on making butterfly bombs, rocket parts with impregnated mine material into every sq cm. etc?
More information about the Rocket Lab, US and Lockheed Martin connections.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12159204
How come the Opposition is doing all this quizzing of every meeting of some Ministers? It is as if they have taken over the snooping job of those detectives Thomson and Clark? What is the task they should be doing in their role?
Deflecting away from their 3 terms of damage and the car crash that is bridges and Bennett’s handling of bagman JLR.
A full time job.
3000 questions they asked of just Shane Jones, let alone anyone else, and that was a ploy they signalled early in the term of the new government. I would like to know exactly what the questions were? Clearly by dint of the number of questions there would be “gaps”. Likewise when you see the range of people he spoke to that seemed entirely normal, I doubt the same can be said of opposition “meetings” both during this term and prior.
The more people in NZ meet and talk with genuine intention the better off the country will be in the longterm.
One thing that has been absent other that weasel worded, relentless and empty badgering from the entire opposition party is what they would do to improve NZ and the lives of NZers, prior, within this term by positive example and if they ever, god forbid, got themselves back on the government side of the house without a major shift in dedication and intentions for NZ.
Goldsmith is obsessed with trying to hang something on Shane Jones, it appears to be an obsessive delusional trait with the National Party at present, maybe they have private investigators following all the Government MP’s, National have plenty in their coffers from their Asian Backers ?
Goldsmith appears to be working from the John Key & Crosby Textor Dirty Tricks Handbook ?
Goldie will only ever get pompous crap out of that flatulating blowhard.
I was scratching my head as to what a good/easy issue to practice bipartisanship.
Treaty of Waitangi settlements.
Ongoing, big budget (not one term fiscal responsibility) fairly apolitical.
Who knows what could come of it?
Every human is better when we cooperate.
Well when you proclaim to wanting the most open and transparent government ever then you have to expect the opposition will hold you to that
What? The patently ridiculous and time wasting crap from National, has nothing to do with “holding the Government to account”.
It is just designed to prevent this Government achieving anything.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/watch-jacinda-ardern-admits-government-not-most-open-transparent-after-questioning-simon-bridges-in-parliament
Jacinda Ardern told NZ this would be the most open transparent government ever, a none too subtle dig at National, so when the present government is less than transparent you think National shouldn’t remind voters of what Jacinda Ardern said
PR We had to learn of some meetings by National with their funders and masters through a fallout between friends.
Don’t come to this forum spouting the current Government is not transparent.
The last National Government was totally hiding meetings and schemes.
That is now being reflected in their shrinking support.
Bbbut they had hats. The meetings were in other hats. It was all ok.
Wally Haumaha clean as a whistle according to the latest QC Report another Natzi beat up by the little worm Christopher Bishop down the shitter ?
I think ‘clean as a whistle’ is a bit of a stretch.
You mean the integrity of the process has been maintained.
They are trying to build an impression of holding the government to account – severely handicapped by their own cavalier behavior in office. They may fool some of their base by it, but not much more.
Goldsmith is obsessed with trying to hang something on Shane Jones, it appears to be an obsessive delusional trait with the National Party at present, maybe they have private investigators following all the Government MP’s, National have plenty in their coffers from their Asian Backers ?
Goldsmith appears to be working from the John Key & Crosby Textor Dirty Tricks Handbook ?
Clare Curran was an incompetent Minister whose downfall in part brought about by questioning about her ‘meetings’. It might be unpleasant, but it is a legitimate part of opposition.
National think that being in opposition involves getting back power at all costs..
Their MP’s are tasked as being snipers, taking endless shots at the coalition, in the hope of winging as many as possible.
Representing New Zealanders in Parliament is obviously not part of their job description.
Am I the only that is slightly cynical and amused that the teachers strikes “just happen” to give both Auckland and Wellington teachers a long weekend?
Yes
Yes except for the opposition party, that will be way up there to the level of any one of their 3000 questions, you’d fit right in there.
Go away christy
Also less disruptive for parents and children..
Parents tend to whinge that the least those stroppy commie teachers could do is strike on the edge of the weekend christy.
Good article on the t.rump debacle.
“The whole weekend was supposed to be a show of western solidarity, and ended up proving its absence. Trump showed himself ill at ease with most of his European counterparts and the fleeting encounter with Putin was a reminder of his much greater affinity for autocrats.
He has claimed warm, even affectionate, relations with Putin, Kim Jong-un, Xi Jinping, Mohammed bin Salman, Rodrigo Duterte and now Brazil’s president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro.
Trump may have cut a lonely figure in Paris, but on the world stage, he is less and less isolated.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/11/thumbs-up-from-putin-as-trump-rains-on-armistice-parade
Yes. This has been apparent from the outset and is alarming. The man is a god-awful lout and his election symptomatic of a deeply divided and troubled society.
Having said that, there may well be another side to this. In a world now increasingly dominated by dangerously authoritarian figures in places like Russia, China, Saudi, Brazil and so on … the liberal instincts of the west have proven an inadequate response.
It’s possibly worth remembering that just prior to WW2 Churchill was widely regarded with similar disdain by almost the entire educated, leadership class in Britain. They saw him too as an erratic, uncouth man with a patchy record. (The ‘appeasers’ were by no means confined to Chamberlain; if events had transpired just a little differently there is no doubt that Rudolf Hess’s attempt at a peace treaty might well have succeeded.)
Events play strange tricks with us, the leaders we need in peacetime are not necessarily the ones we need in times of trouble. I’m not trying to compare Trump with Churchill directly; but there are some parallels between the two men and their place in history that are worth thinking about.
I do think trump is a manifestation of his society, a consequence and predictable. To me he is dangerous, not just because of his ideas and beliefs but more because of the company he enjoys. He is like them and them ain’t good.
Churchill was the man of the times as was Hitler as is t.rump. The hardest thing for me in some ways is knowing that he is just the beginning and he will be far from the worst as the Empire crumbles little bit by little bit. T.rump is funny in some ways, amongst the carnage – other ones coming won’t be funny.
Yes. If I’m reading you correctly then I agree wholeheartedly. The potential for utter catastrophe is chilling and stalking us daily.
My optimism pivots on this one thing; that for fear of the consequences these leaders of the world will soon agree to set aside some portion of their unconstrained national sovereignty in favour of a wider common good. Events in Paris more than hint at this possibility:
https://news.sky.com/story/armistice-day-in-europe-macron-warns-against-nationalism-as-wwi-remembered-11551693
Another link:
https://www.businessinsider.com/r-with-trump-sitting-nearby-macron-calls-nationalism-a-betrayal-2018-11/?r=AU&IR=T
Yes there does appear to be attempts to bring people together as per macrons speech. T.rump is diametrically opposed to that and him and his supporters are proud of that. This is their agenda. Thus the delusions perpetuate.
There is a coalescing occurring around very fundamentally different ways of looking at things.
Thanks for posting that marty-superb article. What a nasty prat Trump is.
I think the mid-term results have been poorly reported. The democrats now look like taking 35-36 seats in the House where early results showed more like 25. This is close to the “blue-wave” 40-seat gain they were after. The Democrats won 7 important Governor races.
In Florida the Senate race is now within 0.14 percent where the Republican spent $60 million (NZ$90m) of his own fortune on trying to get elected. The recount will be interesting.
Meanwhile there was a massive increase in young voters. Bodes well for 2020.
Sanders for president? (Corbyn for PM?).
A good thought from Alphonse Mucha 1860-1939
Ideas matter.
As he was inaugurated for a second term this evening, President Michael D Higgins said “ideas matter” and “history tells us that anti-intellectualism” is the “the weapon of authoritarian and anti-democratic forces in so many parts of our shared, vulnerable planet” .
“Our choice must be to actively extend and deepen democracy, to express it in wider forms and in new ways,” he said.
Not alone was “the very existence of our planet in its bio-diversity threatened but we have not yet slowed the pace of that destruction. We live with ongoing violence against women which must be ended.
“We must confront and challenge any excuses offered for the denial of the irreducible rights, of women who make up, let us not forget, a majority of humanity on this planet. It is important that we recognize the rights and culture of indigenous peoples. It is also important that each person is free to express their sexuality, gender or relationship,” he said.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/president-michael-d-higgins-says-ideas-matter-as-he-is-inaugurated-for-second-term-1.3694089
When is New Zealand going to have its own President. ?
There should be a set curriculum at all schools in NZ with schools able to add to these, but not to forego important factual stuff we should all know and understand.
And religion should not be taught, it should be part of a philosophy based curricu,um teaching about culture and how values are established.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/107206925/new-zealands-schooltaught-colonial-history-is-racist-and-needs-changing–say-teachers
However, University of Canterbury School of Teacher Education senior lecturer Dr Richard Manning …
Difficulties arose because of “perceived white backlash”. He had encountered history teachers who pushed back on teaching Māori history saying it was “all political correctness”.
> There should be a set curriculum at all schools in NZ with schools able to add to these, but not to forego important factual stuff we should all know and understand.
Sorry dude, schools have taught very little ‘factual stuff’ of any sort for some time.
You have to teach your own kids facts, or hope they pick it up in books.
A.
Maybe they just don’t teach “alternative facts”?
Have you got school age kids??
A.
I do, a 10 year old, she gets taught facts, thanks for your concern though.
Wasn’t talking to you,
Besides, I also have a primary school age kid and not a lot of facts going on. More emphasis on doing their own research…
A.
lol
Because possession grants more expertise than merely knowing a few through friends, maybe?
Most of the kids these days seem pretty onto it. Maybe the poor influence on your kids isn’t at school?
Well, I don’t think kids learn a lot of facts at primary school, even compared to in my day (the 80s).
This is based on a sample size of 1 (my kid) plus what I hear from others and read in the media.
If you have information to the contrary I would be pleased to hear it.
> Most of the kids these days seem pretty onto it.
I never said they weren’t ‘onto it’! I said they don’t learn a lot of facts at school! It doesn’t actually seem that controversial of a statement. I do not think many modern educators would seriously contend that they try to stuff kids’ heads with facts nowadays.
>Maybe the poor influence on your kids isn’t at school?
You seem like a decent bloke overall, I don’t know why you act like an asshole towards me. Should I just stop trying to engage you in conversation?
To sum up, I think Cleangreen thinks that the Ministry of Education in Wellington sets a list of information (not skills, not competencies, but facts) that kids must learn. I respond that if this was ever the case, it has not been so for decades.
A.
“Onto it” as in knowing stuff. Facts. Their math seems pretty good. Same with basic NZ history and plants and stuff. Most of the sprogs I know love to interrupt discussions with vaguely-relevant crap they picked up somewhere.
Sure, there’s not so much rote learning, but this isn’t a bad thing. And in my day they just hit us if we didn’t remember whatever shit was being taught at the time.
Heel yes I wish I was taught the new way . ..
Imagine being taught to think rather than remember .
> Most of the sprogs I know love to interrupt discussions with vaguely-relevant crap they picked up somewhere.
Bet it wasn’t at school
A.
Unless it’s about dinosaurs or superheroes, you’d probably lose that bet.
I had a chat to a modern teacher in regards to rote learning vs enquiry learning (not sure what correct terminology is).
This was after watching my son get to a level at maths ok then largely struggle. From about year 8.
I came through with the times table, rote learnt in the 70s.
With that foundation, I found it easy to hold 2or 3 parts of the solution in mind before getting answer.
I don’t think the answer is one or the other but a combo, but we have a habit of throwing out all of the old when we have a new.
Yep. We have gone away from simply regurgitating long lists of facts, without understanding!
Rote recitation only works for times tables and the alphabet.
> Rote recitation only works for times tables and the alphabet.
That is just not so.
A.
Worked for me.
No, I mean you can learn other things through rote recitation, I have done it.
e.g. conjugation of verbs in a foreign language.
A.
The NZ curriculum for those who haven’t looked at it.
http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum/English/Learning-areas
http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum#collapsible7
One interesting element is the ‘Key Competencies.’ Calls for teacher performance pay usually mention testing kids for how much the kids ‘know’ in subjects and paying teachers accordingly not on how essential competencies have been achieved and to what level.
These California wildfires are getting apocalyptic:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/officials-order-evacuations-camp-fire-threatens-8000-acres/story?id=59065896
And the lout in charge makes outrageous claims as usual:
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/11/politics/california-wildfires-trump-tweets/index.html
they did not vote for him. So there.
Here’s a needle in a haystack, but it’s a start. Headline acknowledging climate change:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/11/la-fire-chief-climate-change-california-wildfires
Skyrocket consciousness. When your ass is on fire, you’ll move.
It’s A Pity
In front of the world, America has shown everyone what a piss weak president they have. He would not walk a step to honour the American soldiers WWI. Because of rain drops.
In front of the great State of California the same piss weak president has poured out his piss weak insults on the devastated, the dead and dying in the fierce hell fires – fiddling like a mad man with his insipid tweets.
America is at its Weakest. Surely they can rid themselves of the current Whitehouse Fool.
Kia ora The Am Show It is alarming that the Pola Ice Cap’s could be melting faster than previously thought that will raze sea levels by mtr and not just cm there will be stronger storm and Hurricanes smashing the coastal community’s.
.Christina its cool that we are talking about Human Caused Climate Change its about time I have worked out what has happened a BLUE Tsunami thank’s for your word’s Christina.
Kiwi are kind when the telephon 24 hour TV fun razing money for to aid 3 world country’s was running Kiwi donated million’s we were one of the highest for donation’s per capital time’s were much easier in those day’s we had spear money.
That the internet correcting thing’s again the fuel community price app is a cool Idea that will keep the gas company’s honestest may be you could have other consumer good’s and services listed to your app will pump.
With our teachers strike they mone about there work load .
I will give a example of the kicks and work smarter theory its fact actually.
I was part of a organization that milked 5000.00 cow’s twice a day through one 80 bale shed the neighbour and the newbees could not milk 3500 2 80 bale sheds it was a finely run farming group .
Point the teacher have heap’s of tool at there disposal to teach tamariki with the internet at there disposal they just have to look outside of the square to come up with smart efficient teaching solution’s.
Also these strikes will hit the common poor tamariki the most if the parents have to take time off work to care for there tamariki the wealthy will just hire a carer
There is a glut of oil on the market and we have hundred’s of thousands of electric vehicles coming on stream and millions of solar panels wind turbines displacing oil Thanks to China’s manufacturing muscle and people like Mus .
Its good that the Anglican Church is backing the public inquiry into child abuse of
state care tamariki and the Religious groups that cared for tamariki . Ka kite ano P.S no flash video links I need some DIMP for my computer the sandflys keep attacking it
Here is the reason our fuel prices have dropped trump’s tricks have been countered
the world woke up to his moves to inflate oil prices his oil baron supporters net worth went up by billions
Also, the weekly estimates are not as accurate as the monthly figures, which are published on a roughly 2-month lag. As such, they should be taken with a grain of salt. However, the massive increase comes just days after the EIA reported a huge increase in production in the monthly data – at 11.346 mb/d in August, the U.S. oil industry has clearly been producing a lot more than previously thought. That lends some weight to the weekly figures.
Another previously-bullish factor was Iran. With Iran’s oil exports spiraling downwards at the end of the summer and into September, the oil market grew very concerned about adequate global supply and the rapidly dwindling volume of spare capacity. U.S. waivers on countries importing Iranian oil removed that threat. Washington still wants to tighten the screws – and in fact, the sudden bearishness in the market gives the Trump administration more leeway to do just that – but in the near-term, Iran will continue to export.
A third factor is OPEC+ production. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, Russia and Libya have all increased production in recent months, offsetting the losses from Iran. Now, the group has a different problem on its hands. A technical committee to the OPEC+ coalition is set to meet this weekend where it will take stock of the oil market. They will also consider options going forward for managing the market, including the potential for a production cut in 2019 to avoid another market downturn. The 180-degree turn – from adding supply just a few months ago to now considering a cut – is a remarkable indicator that demonstrates how quickly the sentiment has turned.
Ka kite ano
Plunging Battery Costs To Trigger Energy Storage Boom YEA YES KA PAI
Bloomberg New Energy Finance has forecast a veritable boom in energy storage installations in the coming years with investments hitting US$1.2 trillion by 2040. Falling battery costs will be the driver behind this boom, with BNEF projecting a 52 percent drop in utility-scale lithium-ion systems by 2030. .
It is a fact that the cost of producing batteries for energy storage is falling. Cost reduction, after all, is a top priority for everyone from EV makers to utilities betting on energy storage as a future source of revenues
But what about energy storage installations’ effect on the grid? That should be all-round positive, except for utilities that generate power from non-renewable sources. They better start preparing because BNEF’s analysts projected energy storage may rise to 7 percent of the world’s total installed power generation capacity by 2040.
In more good news for renewables, while until about 2030 most energy storage installations will be utility-scale from about 2035 behind-the-meter facilities will begin to take over, which means they will probably be affordable by then, and Elon Musk’s concept of a household featuring a solar roof, a household battery pack, and an EV could become a reality not just for billionai Ka kite ano link below . P.S I could build a offgrid solar power system for a small family for $4000 all up .
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/Plunging-Battery-Costs-To-Trigger-Energy-Storage-Boom.html
I decided to wait and see what happened when I first seen reports on China lifting Ban on trade in endangered animal parts
The Chinese government announced on Monday that it would postpone a plan to lift the 25-year ban on the endangered animals, following a storm of international protest.
It’s important to send the strongest message that the value of wild populations of tigers and rhinos and their ecosystems is much greater than the value of their bones and horns. Ka pai China they get the big picture its te tangata its te tangata and we need Papatuanuku and all her creatures to be respected to have a prosperous future for all.
Link below ka kite ano
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/12/campaigners-welcome-china-u-turn-over-rhino-and-tiger-products
We need to protect OUR worlds forest and start planting billions of trees for our future
decedents to have a good life .There are many cases in OUR History that show’s a complete collapse of the environment and the society all because we did not respect mother nature .
The UK, France and Germany have called on the European commission to launch tough new action to halt deforestation by the end of the year.
A long-delayed EU action plan should be brought forward “as soon as possible”, says a letter to the commission sent by the Amsterdam Declaration group of countries, which also includes Italy, the Netherlands and Norway.
To help meet a UN goal of halting deforestation by 2020, the EU should show “a leadership role, mobilising its political and market leverage, and promoting broader international dialogue and cooperation”, the letter says.
Link below ka kite ano
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/12/eu-states-call-for-tough-action-on-deforestation-to-meet-2020-un-goal-amsterdam-declaration
Its people like Stan Lee who have provided us with fantastic comic books he has ignited
the imagination of billions of people and a lot have gone on to become the worlds greatest inventors condolences to his whano/family he will be missed he is in a higher place now
Stan Lee: Spider-Man, X-Men and Avengers creator dies aged 95
Born Stanley Martin Lieber on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in 1922, Lee’s childhood was marked by the Great Depression. In his 2002 autobiography Excelsior!, Lee described how his father’s struggle to find a steady job had forever affected him: “It’s a feeling that the most important thing for a man to do is to have work to do, to be busy, to be needed,” he wrote.
At 17, Lee landed a job at a publishing company owned by his relative Martin Goodman, and began writing scripts for superhero and mystery comics. When Goodman fell out with his editor in 1941, Lee found himself editor-in-chief at just 19.
Link below ka kite ano. P.S my eldest grandson has a flash suit
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/12/stan-lee-spider-man-x-men-avengers-marvel-universe-dies
Our Pacific cousins have a positive influence on Aotearoa society culturally and financially
“The [NZ Pacific Economy] report reveals Pacific peoples are contributing significantly to the economy despite some of the poor health, housing, education and employment outcomes experienced by many in their communities,” Robertson said.
Pasifika families and businesses are big contributors to NZ economy: Finance Minister Assets from about 1500 Pacific business employers and almost 500 not-for-profit organisations totalled up to $8.3b and, from those assets, the total value added was thought to be $3.1b annually. Ka kite ano link below.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12159122
ASB has joined the fray in the latest round of mortgage rate wars – dropping its one year fixed rate to match the record low 3.95 per cent offered by ANZ.
Its good to see ANZ bank start to the one year fixed interest rate drop that’s cool.
But I will still be after one of there board members /shonky but if you can save money go for it put all the saving on the mortgage .The low rate specials offered by ANZ, BNZ and Westpac are only available to home owners with a deposit or 20 per cent equity stake in their homes.
Its a buyers market now and about time thanks to the moves of our new Coalition Government. ka kite ano P.S we have other’s banks competing for your custom and the interest rate battle begins link below.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12159386
Kia ora Te Kaea I have to use my phone to get the post out the sandflys are attaking my other computer.
It will be a good trip for our Prime minister meeting all the heads of states talking about the Pacific relations and Climate change impacts on the Pacific and Aotearoa.
It been good seeing Te IWIs helping there tangata into housing that’s the best way to escape the poverty trap a lot of our tangata fall into.
Son of Zion are a cool banned music is good for te Wairua.
It would be nice if our government did advocate for Indigenous people consern.s at the gathering of our world leaders.
Ka kite ano P.S I will get some dimp tomorrow
Kia ora Newshub Paddy Andrew is letting the people go into the Pike River mine that will be of great relief for Berne and the family of all the people who have lost love ones in the mine.
Kate I have a post early on for the Great Comic writing legend Stan Lee.
Those fires in Northern Calafornia is a great desaster condolences to the people who have lost.
I say that the Shane Jones NZFirst billion tree program has had a minor hick up its what could happened to anyone when you have Papatuanukue and Tawhirirmate one can not pradict the weather.
It looks like they had a good day at the Addington race way in Christchurch Ra is shining to.
That’s what I wanted Sukieanne get her houners taken away for the atrocities that her government is doing to those poor people in Mayna.
We get half our meat from my sons they buy a beef so I dive into their freezers.
I do like my veggies to but I have to have some meat unprocessed we don’t eat as much meat as we used to.
That must have been a shock to SUE she is doing a fine job the new Auckland Prison told her that she needs to have a photo ID and finger print to she helps people who are having proroale problems we have seen a lot of people can’t get prole no fix abode if they can’t read a write
. Plastic water bottles leaching toxins well. I say know one has tested them for the effects on the fetus and the long term effects on anmials humans one to.
Ka kite ano P.S mind the spelling sandflys muppets
Some people try and play ECO MAORI they get the benefit of doubt they believe the lies the sandflys are spinning about ECO MAORI to them they get one chance.
I should listen to my instinct it’s always correct Ana to kai
The Crowd goes Wild Mulls and James.
Manu and Butterbean fight will be interesting. Monty ECO a South paw.
Mulls you lost weight can you still shuffle my moko is good at the shuffle they get their groove from the Wife my children give me shit when I have enough cups of tea to start to fluffel LOL.
The Addington races NZ trotting Cup was Winston there.
Butterbean has to get the message out drop the sugar us Pacific Islanders body’s are to effect at storing fat and sugar stuff up our health.
Ka kite ano P.S that’s the way guys support the Bowls teams and Showing heaps of Wahine Sports Stars on The Crowd goes Wild
Good morning The AM Show Azzes is having fun at the AMP Show.
There you go Winston Peters and Andrew Little The Coalition Government has helped the Pike River family to find the truth about the explosion.
This all happened because shonky made a unwise bet on COAL/Carbon. I have story that links shonky to Aotearoa losing 1 billion dollars of assets will tell when the time is right.
The road accidents =not enough investment in roads and a xtra 1 million people and cars = more accidents.
Lloyd the britexit I say it’s a can of worms they wish they never opened.
Robots are the future and AI Is a big threat to human kind and the World take it seriously one just. To see how the sandflys are behaveing with the technology tools help you to understand part of my concern of Artifical Intelligents every single thing we do will have computers integrated into it and if one App has that power we’ll people who make movies about this subject are warming US.
IF a person like trump gets the power of total control that AI can have we are in the SHIT.
It will be cool if Israel gets a title fight at the UFC.
There you go Berne Monk you want justice and accountability shonky was covering up the big mistake they made with the health and safety prosses at Pike River mine. Because the familys of the people who died are common people it’s worth the massive effort yous have put into getting justice a big WIN for the common tangata.
Ka kite ano
Kia ora The AM Show. The Pike River scandle is just one issue from shonky
The Britexit don’t count your chickens May I have read that Nigal Farr has been linked to the Muler Russian investorgation I smelt that far right money all over his actions.
I East Asia summit Tova I bet Mike Pence wanted to talk about more issues that the dumb trade tariff.??????????
It has been the reward of a lot of people’s hard work that has paid off with the Mountain Grilla coming of the most endangered list.
The Black Ferns are getting heaps of game time and coverage on TV
Ka kite ano. P.S flip flop
You can talk muppet puppet