. Scrutinizing Jane Clifton’s claims as an exemplar of the current Media Orthodoxy
In which i take serious issue with key claims made by Jane Clifton (Politics column in the latest edition of the Listener‘For Whom the Polls Tell’ December 15 2018) and, by extension, with an entirely fallacious Media consensus on National’s supposedly “remarkable” Poll ratings this year:
Me too thanks swordfish. Actually I think that your research is far more deserving of words like “amazing, phenomenal, herculean, …”
Specially note that the Right is National without other Right partners except Seymour.
[OK, Morrissey. Enough pointless and unwarranted attacks on women in the media. Take a week off and have a good think about how to critique media without resorting to misogyny. Back next Thursday. TRP]
It’s a hard row sometimes when trying to fight curmudgeonhood @ Morry eh?
In case you hadn’t noticed – it is a new era
And especially when confronted by complete fucking muppetry by those anxious to maintain their veneer and what they perceive is their social status , and more especially when they’re operating within a bubble (just as you are – and me for that matter).
Try and catch my idol (Kim) this Saturday coming, while you’re having a lay down – she might even read out some Moz feedback.
In the meantime, watch a fashion show like parliament (you’ll need to watch rather than just listen) and learn to laugh – there’s enough gNat/Act material in there for a comedy TV series if you could get NuZull on Ear funding
Yes, I agree. It is a tenant’s letting fee repayment plan with no end date.
Property Managers will retain the first week’s rent and after the add-on to the rent has covered the proxy letting fee the benefit will revert to the owner.
Property managers are going to have to present an accompanying benefit to owners when they advise them: “We’re keeping the first week’s rent.”
“Excessive rents” are merely a reflection of what a house is worth.
Just say I owned a house worth 600k, 500k of that was the mortgage.
I’d have to charge at least $480 dollars a week to just cover the interest payments on the mortgage
Add on to of that rates, insurance, maintenance, letting fees, a bit of profit etc and you can see why rent is so high.
For rents to come down the price of housing needs to fall, unfortunately, Kiwi Buy has stopped that, because Tywford is now underwriting property developers by buying their developments he’s created an artificial price point in the market.
That’s it, while Kiwi buy exists in its current form, this is as cheap as it gets
The solution is to lower the cost of land, the cost of materials, the cost of labour and the cost of compliance.
For Auckland and Queenstown those prices are cheap but as you point out if a new landlord is in property for profit it only makes sense if there is a decent capital gain existing landlords will be questioning the returns on capital especially if prices start falling. That’s why most landlords like National doing nothing or very little to solve housing shortage. It creates a speculative bubble.
It is a landlords choice Muttonbird to own a rental, and my guess is that less and less people will want to own one (in the 1990’s it was encouraged by government because they told everybody that NZ could not afford pensions in the future and so they should start saving now and that encouraged the drive of ‘mums and dads’ owning rentals and the surplus of them which led to a decent supply and lower rents).
Now the message from government is not to own a rental, and everyone should be an owner occupier, so a certain percentage of landlords will sell up and the government is not exactly adding shit loads of state houses or new rentals but going for the sales models…. this is because they believe in trickle down, aka if they increase supply then this will trickle down into lower rents… but again increasing supply is a waste of time if your demand is also increasing through immigration or gold bricks investors who don’t necessarily have to rent the property.
To stem the gold bricks they will have to bring in more laws about empty houses and then start to police the rentals if they are empty or not, so it’s getting more and more complicated for everyone, when government could do some quick easy fixes, see 2.2.2.2.1.2 at little cost which would do a lot more to help straight away as well as build houses just for state house renting while allowing the market to do the more middle class to luxury side which they are already preferring to do anyway.
I also thing that anybody owning over 5 houses/land or having shares in a company with houses/land over 5 titles should be taxed a bit more, aka 1/2 percent of their worth, etc. This will encourage people not to ‘hog’ houses and those that do are rightly identified as a land business and should pay a tax on it to stem housing shortages or land banking.
Likewise a stamp duty on houses, assets and land over 5 million dollars.
This is much fairer and more profitable than capital gains and will do the same thing but on steroids while not effecting the middle class at all. In fact will lower prices as people don’t hog assets.
Again if NZ and the world bought in laws to challenge the super rich and not the middle to upper class that people aspire to, then governments would be much more popular and inequality would diminish as the super rich were taxed more on land/asset banking assets.
@BM, If we look at what you want historically when have we ever had over decades the cost of land going down? (pretty much never unless something is wrong with it) the cost of materials going down (hardly ever and generally for the same reason aka some is wrong with it (asbestos) or it is advanced by something newer and better, the cost of labour traditionally also does not fall (although historically in line with expenses it has) and the cost of compliance, (judging by Auckland council increasing their consent costs and investing ratepayers money into America’s cup and stadiums etc, not likely to come down, new scam is to make the consumers pay for it over decades).
So my take home of that is, new tech might help[ make buildings cheaper, labour has already fallen in real terms but due to the amount of subcontractors we are actually paying a fortune over multiple companies for poor skills and the middle men are making a significant profit, so that needs to change back to the old model of one contractor one building, and until the councils are forced to go back to their knitting and spend the rates on running council services and not being amateur investors and charities for their pet projects, and also get much better skilled and highly trained building inspectors and planners, then compliance costs will not go down.
What they can change, is incomes going up. Which is why we have a huge problem at present aka the cost of living is out of kilter with many people’s incomes.
P>S> When the Natz forced through the zoning changes to allow much greater density, guess what, land prices went through the roof. So whatever great ideas these politicians are having. please take a seat and don’t fiddle.
The best thing for government to do, is to build shit loads of small but well built state houses themselves with no middlemen and then rent them out with reduced rents which over time will be cash positive. Leave the private sector alone. Any help has so far done the opposite of it’s supposed intentions.
They could over night solve a lot of the affordable housing crisis, by allowing people to convert existing multiple level houses into a flat by allowing a kitchen to make a granny flat. Then it only costs someone about $10k to create another unit, and they are then happy with a small rent of a few hundred dollars which is what many people can only afford these days and is now in Auckland the cost of a single room.
Newshub has obtained a letter from a rental agency urging landlords to raise rents by $10 a week to cover the cost
Did you that….Some rental agencies exploit both tenants and landlords.
Anyways I see that judith is coming out against this move by the government. So naturally you will be on her side no matter what. Your loyalty is endearing.
I find it weird that letting agencies have escaped with no regulation on them like every other body has in this country. Maybe part of our renting woes, also stems from the idea that any one seems to be able to set up shop as a letting agent, and when things go wrong the landlord is the one in the firing line who probably had no clue what was going on? Real Estate agents have a body you can complain to, whereas nothing for letting agents if they are in breach of their duty or acting illegally very hard to quickly hold them to account and they are in a position of power and holding keys to people’s houses…
Letting agents also have substantial amounts of money going through their books and often the landlords are quite elderly and have no clue what is going on. If there are discrepancies then it goes to highly expensive court proceedings… the meth tests are a case where hundreds of thousands of dollars were at the mercy of letting agents views on meth contamination or not and had the power to call in on any ‘private’ companies. But even day to day, the amount of rents going through their books is high and the agents are not exactly trained or vetted very well. All that money is a temptation.
These are a lot of frauds being prosecuted from real estate, so highly likely that similar fraud is going on for letting agents but they are just not being caught or it is too much money and effort to prosecute the letting fraudsters because there is not clear pathway to do it.
I can’t see that this will make a big difference. There will be no cost to recoup until a new tenant is needed but it is commonplace to review the rent anyway when re-renting a property, and most landlords will already set this at what they think the market can deliver.
Are you suggesting that property managers are currently failing to look after their clients’ interests by collaborating in setting rents at lower than what the market will bear?
It’s worth it for the opportunity to show up those that usually claim *the market sets the price* as just shilling for rich people when they claim landlords will put up rents because one of their costs has just gone up.
@ Andre, it is pretty much a given that certain unscrupulous agents were under renting properties to get the tenants in and get their letting fee, then increasing the rents within 6 months of the tenants paying the letting fees…
@ Andre, 2.4, Yes some agents defiantly are because say you have a $500 p/w house to rent. The rental agent only gets about 7% of that aka $35 p/w so the big money of $500 + GST is nice to get as an xtra bonus. Even better if there is a dispute at the tenancy tribunal then the landlord pays the letting agent to attend. A percentage is added to repairs also. So when places are relet or there are problems the letting agents get extra fees.
The fact is, James, letting fees were just too much of a burden for poor people to pay. Especially when it is the policy of WINZ not to pay letting fees.
Initially, yes but WINZ have advanced complete move-in monies including letting fees for some years. Average Joe tax payer getting it in the neck again. No assistance for his letting fee and his taxes pay the letting fees for those that qualify for Govt assistance.
Bond Grant
WINZ can make a non-recoverable (you don’t have to pay it back) contribution to your bond or rent in advance. They’ll look at how much your bond or rent in advance is and you’ll need to show you can afford the rent payments in the future. There are income or cash asset limits placed on who can qualify for bond grants.
Letting fees assistance
Sometimes rental agencies will charge a ‘letting fee’ for securing a place to live. If you are having trouble paying this letting fee you can apply to Work and Income for assistance. You don’t need to be receiving a benefit or pension to apply for financial assistance up to the cost of one week’s rent, plus GST. You can only use letting fees assistance once a year, but it doesn’t need to be paid back. There are income or cash asset limits on who can qualify for letting fees assistance.
Rent in Advance
Rent in Advance is a non-recoverable (you don’t have to pay it back) payment towards your rent if your needs qualify you. There are income or cash asset limits on who can qualify for Rent in Advance.
The article you link to has “could” in the title and it contains “maybe”‘s and “seemingly” etc . There is no proof that rents have gone up.
“Everyone” includes me. I didn’t say rents would go up.
Rents may go up for many reasons. They may come down! I bet you won’t give praise to Jacinda if that happens. You’ll say it was due to other factors. It will be hard to tell if this change gets passed on to renters or not. Letting hopefully doesn’t happen once a year as is implied by $10 per week suggested.
I’m guessing some regions rents won’t go up. So increases (if any happen) will be due to other factors…
There in the Jail House this morning is the Kiwi Murderer of a young Woman waiting for his breakfast – as if he deserved it. He will await for three comfortable meals each day.
While his snappy Lawyer will be wiggling and manipulating reasons and excuses to smother the crime, and explain the Dreadful Tragedy away. For the Lawyer and the Murderer will blame anything and anybody but themselves in the so called “fair trial”.
It is said that most women in NZ do not report the Grim Rape they suffer, because the lugubrious Barrister and his companions will destroy what is left of her self esteem. Rape is rampant here. Absolutely Rampant.
The Lawyer Brutes will pat themselves on the back for having persuaded Judge and Jury that the raped woman “had it coming to her”. There will be celebrations in Chambers later, over their legal brilliance – and discussions about how pretty the young woman was.
You don’t believe me ? Ask the women in Chambers – throughout New Zealand !. Sex is the PAVLOVA of NZ Lawyers. We do not realise that the real Whores are numerous predator kiwi men – in all sectors. We never face up to it.
We must not allow the snappy smart Lawyer to divert and tarnish the Course of Justice this time. They have done that far too often – over so many days and years and decades
Grace – in her lasting silence – will draw the true graphic of every cowardly evil kiwi male, for now and for decades, and centuries to come. She has done so much for Kiwi Women. So so much. Grace has displayed our Male Evil.
I am horrified and disgusted that Epilepsy New Zealand has asked Bill English (yes, that one) to become their patron, and that he accepted. Apparently they feel his “mana” will help in raising their profile.
Many people with epilepsy by necessity are on benefits. English’s views on this subject are a matter of record as are what the Nats did to us for 9 years, and the deliberate suffering his Government inflicted on people with disabilities, alongside the cuts to health services funding; this guy is directly complicit in doing a great deal of harm to disabled people in NZ. There is no reason to believe that, just because he is no longer an MP his ideology has changed one iota.
So the national organisation who as part of their brief are suppose to advocate for people with epilepsy approach an ex-PM with a track record of openly despising the disabled as non-productive economic units (aka lowest form of life and drain on the hard working tax payer) and offer him the patronage. Brilliant.
English makes caring noises. Like the bird call on Radionz. He also makes a big deal of how Catholic he is, and might be expected to have some moral concern for needy people. Epilepsy NZ are desperate for some action and gone to the heart of the National Party. I hope they have found one there that is not diseased beyond recovery.
@grey, I’m wondering if someone high up was star struck by the ‘Knight of the Realm’ bit? Or this being NZ, more than likely knows him personally hence the approach.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the roles of ex-MPs/PMs on boards etc. Boards are one thing- often the business/charity corresponds quite well with the idelogical leanings of the ex-politician. We’re not surprised seeing Key on the ANZ board, I’d have no problem with ex-Green MPs on conservation-related charity boards.
But in a situation like this political neutrality is called for, and necessary. And the Patron’s past actions have to be scrutinised for suitablity. A few years back the ENZ patron was the sitting Governor General, which was perfectly reasonable. Our version of Royal patronage, but whatever your views there, politically neutral.
@ Kay, the start to his Knighthood maybe, since I’m not sure he has ever done anything charitable before, maybe he needs to have something charitable on his CV to justify the “honour”?
English has appeared to be on the charitable line to RWs with his talk of social investment and a new way of doing welfare. He and his wife seem hard-line Catholic and I think against abortion which goes with that. It suits such people to be engaged with charities that are not connected with behaviour not validated by their value models, drugs, sex, weaknesses of the human condition as they see them. So epilepsy, the blind are likely outlets for any kind concerns they have.
“…an ex-PM with a track record of openly despising the disabled as non-productive economic units (aka lowest form of life and drain on the hard working tax payer) and offer him the patronage.”
“As examples he cites work being done at Housing New Zealand and specifically at the Ministry of Social Development by the welfare working advisory group looking at the big driver of future costs: long-term invalids and sickness beneficiaries, a group he describes as “this big hard lump of long-term waste of human potential”.
English says the MSD is not set up to deal with them.
Rather, it is set up to deal with “the easy stuff” – the unemployment and the domestic purposes benefits.
“How did the Nazis see disabled people?
The Nazis took Darwin’s ideas of natural selection, in particular the idea of survival of the fittest in the animal kingdom, and applied them to the human world and society (Darwin’s Origin of the Species had been published in 1859). It was argued that allowing disabled people to live and have children, led to the “unfit” reproducing more quickly than “the fit”. It was said that this weakened society’s ability to function efficiently, placing an unnecessary toll on non-disabled people.
The Nazis claimed that the social and economic problems that Germany experienced in the 1920s and early 1930s were due in part to the weakening of the population created by an unfair burden.”
I rest my case Rosemary.
I’m seriously considering taking this to the media to try and get this made more known (I don’t do social media). I have a reporter I’m thinking of as somewhere to start, if you have any suggestions please let me know?
I get totally why you have an issue with Bill ‘the lizard’ English being a Patron of a charity advocating for those with a health condition/disability. While he may not actually be in charge of the hen house , having him sitting atop the structure as some kind of figurehead is plain wrong. And it’s hard to put into words why.
Epilepsy New Zealand must think Bill as pulling power (oh what an image that conjures!) and have chosen him pragmatically…it gives them some credibility, authority?
In my mind there are a number of organisations and individuals who have been active in the health and disability ‘sector’ over the past 10-20 years (snouts firmly in the trough of neoliberal policy generated government funding) who should, were we actually committed to shucking off the nefarious policies and practices of the past 20 years, be consigned to the dustbin where all the enablers belong.
Happy they have been to take the government coin and pretend advocacy, while those in need of that advocacy drift further into the margins. These charities will claim that it is better to be sitting at the table with the policy makers…that compromise is required to facilitate change.
I cry bullshit to that. And you know all too well Kay that there has been no meaningful improvement for those with long term health and disability needs.
And we see no hope of any meaningful improvement in the near future as those enablers of the past decade or so still claim exclusive rights to the ears of the politicians and policy makers. (I am indulging in a little transference here as this is what seems to be happening right this minute with the review of the family care policy.)
There are some good journalists out there doing sterling work, and the likes of me who scour the net for such articles will read them. As for the wider ‘community’? I don’t know…I’m feeling a bit like a stranger in a strange land at the moment. https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/11/17/feeling-like-a-stranger-in-a-familiar-land/
“Remember when Jacinda said she was a pragmatic idealist? In Sam’s letter to Eugenie, he has an answer for that. He quotes, ‘when the law is subject to pragmatism then the firm foundations on which we set our society turn to sand’ and that ‘pragmatism and compromise are corrosive elements that most threaten the architecture of democracy’. Elsewhere online, pragmatism, it is said, ‘reflects with almost disarming candour, the spirit of the prevailing business culture’, (Max Horkheimer); ‘Pragmatism contains nothing but sophistry and illusion’, (David Hume); ‘It is the attitude of looking away from first things, principles, ‘categories’, supposed necessities, and of looking toward last things, fruits, consequences and facts’ (William James). Idealism and pragmatism are almost incompatible.”
Mind you Rosemary may have other views as she has had personal experience of Kirsty. Articles on Rosemary and Peter are amongst those in the above link.
Yes, Kirsty does good work and has been a constant friend on disability issues.
If I look like a reluctant participant in that piece it was because I was a reluctant participant. Not because of Kirsty, but because I felt it was more important for Peter to have his say and have centre stage, as often the voice of the person with the disability is lost. (I was also being peripherally distracted by a mate and her mate who were having problems, as homeless people, with the local council.)
It will be interesting to see if Kirsty does a follow up article if this government fails to honour its promise to repeal the Part 4 amendment to the Public Health and Disability Act and dispose of the iniquitous Funded Family Care.
Thanks for that Rosemary. And fully understand what you said re Peter needing to be centre stage. Wanted to defer to your personal experience, but I have considerable respect for Kirsty, despite her young age! (From an oldie, LOL)
Jess McAllen is also superb in the mental health area, particular for young people. But don’t think disability is her focus.
VV, thanks for the suggestion. I’ve always liked Kirsty’s work.
I haven’t been this furious about something for a very long time (which is saying a lot given how much there is to be angry about, I just don’t tend to have the energy anymore!) so am trying the outsourcing approach 🙂 Unfortunately for very good reasons I still can’t use my real name in connection to this topic publicly- active discrimination is alive and kicking in NZ and there would be serious consequences for me- so I can but try to get to get this information out by other means.
Rosemary
It sounds as if English would like to take the disabled people and churn them from one welfare management group to another so they can’t take the easy way out ‘playing the victim’. I would think that is at the base of his thinking though he would not explicitly say that. Though I think he has come close if he has actually been documented as saying things referred to in your comment.
It’s using capitalist, neo lib thinking, and the fact that he claims religion and Catholicism doesn’t make any difference because religions have been been friends with capitalism for ever. If Maori can hold on to their belief *’He Tangata, He Tangata, – the people are the core of everything – we may be able to save the nation’s soul. Otherwise it’s hard work making headway and its getting wrinkled like a raisin. But then even small and wrinkled raisins can be sweet, so we must just try and stop these moves to monetise everything. Nazis get mentioned because the Holocaust was so scary, now organ taking from unaethetised persons in China. It’s hard to cope. Hold onto that soul, it’s the meaning of life.
*This is an expression taken from a Maori proverb that ponders. He aha te mea nui o te ao, he tangata he tangata he tangata. The meaning roughly translates as What is the most important thing in the world, it is the people, the people, the people. https://ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/handle/10523/5200
Some of the more recent comments on TS refer to the Dunedin Longitudinal Study on domestic violence, which I have unsuccessfully been trying to access online.
I have looked to the search page on the Otago University website, and the closest I can come to what seems to be an indication of higher female violence is perhaps the 1998 study – “Physical assault in New Zealand: the experience of 21 year old men and women in a community sample”.
The other studies seem to indicate otherwise: “Physical assault among 21-year-olds by partners”
Do any of the commentators who reference that study, know the name and/or have a link to an accessible copy online?
Unfortunately, in our village, the guy who didn’t ‘tune up’ his wife was considered unusual. I was a big fan of Mrs K*****, her husband came home after drinking, tried to hit her, got a black eye and a night out cold on the porch for his trouble.
The ladies used to comment how distinguished and handsome Mr K***** was. But not after that night. He was a bitch slapped schmuck.
She was my secret hero.
Bit off topic. From where/when I grew up, the real figures for domestic abuse possibly > 90%. The official figures were probably much less. Everyone was scared, nobody talked about it. The men laughed at their antics over beer.
If you don’t mind, did that experience while you were young emerge at any time when you began to form relationships with partners? That is, did you have moments where you deliberately chose another way, or were you lucky enough to escape unscathed emotionally?
I’m interested in having a look at the study because it is referenced very often on discussions on gender in NZ. From the looks of it is relates to a group of 21 year olds in Dunedin all part of a longitudinal study, and would be unlikely to have a lot of the later pressures of supporting children, and accompanying money issues. Also, don’t know whether the demographic would reflect the NZ demographic in terms of income, education and ethnicity.
There have also been indications that the study referred to used the CTS (Conflict Tactics Scales). The Wikipedia page states that:
“CTS is one of the most widely criticized domestic violence measurement instruments due to its exclusion of context variables and motivational factors in understanding acts of violence. The National Institute of Justice cautions that the CTS may not be appropriate for IPV research “because it does not measure control, coercion, or the motives for conflict tactics.”
Use of CTS would count your Mrs K’s violence as equal to Mr K, without acknowledging that it was a response to previous and intended violence against her.
I would think that would be an important consideration to include when looking at patterns of violence in an effort to reduce it – valuable for both men and women looking to change societal behaviour.
I hit my first partner at age 16. I was horrified at myself. It has not repeated I sought help anger management and counsel around drinking too much. She threw the first punch, but no excuse. There is a woman down the road from me gives her man a hiding when they drink. He finally left after many years of it.
I resolved issues with men with fist fights. I learned black and white thinking so compromise was unheard of. That behavior stayed till almost my 30’s. University education was the biggest turnover in my life I reckon. It helped me to think critically, to listen, to be wrong… and the counselors there, taught me its ok to be wrong. I used to get 99% in school and get a hiding for not trying hard enough…
Very hard to talk of, it’s putting yourself up for more abuse by people who don’t understand what it’s like being trapped in a cycle of crazy. I’m aspergers, PTSD, a general clusterf*** of disastrous childhood happenings… But I pulled myself up (with help).
The victim shit stops here. I’m responsible today. I can snap at people online but that’s as violent as it gets.
My sisters all chose abusive partners. Then a string of them. We were all damaged, us, the strangers we met…
The fact women return many times to abusive partners shows just how psychologically damaging it is. To go back to that your self worth is just gone.
Terrible state of affairs deeply afflicting our nation.
It must be nigh on impossible for many men to do what I just did. Now let’s see how people react.
Any response seems inadequate to your comment, WeTheBleeple, but I do value your honesty in sharing, and think it is of immense value to have these discussions in the open. Thanks seem so trite in this case, but I’ll offer it in absence of anything better to mind, Thank you.
I have a very dear friend that was brought up in a chaotic household and community who found an alternative choice through dedicated nursing practice and service in the armed forces, but this came at a cost of relationship disconnect with family members and others in her community. Although her family members had chaotic lives and made destructive choices, they were still her family – and loved – and because of her choices she was effectively “out of the loop” and ridiculed. That is, until situations occurred that required self-sacrifice and sustained effort solutions – when she was hooked back into the fold to sort the problems out.
What I admired – and still admire – about her, was her ability to continue to love without judgement and take opportunities when offered to improve the lives of her family members. Such a deft and sincere human response, when dealing with other people.
“I used to get 99% in school and get a hiding for not trying hard enough…” The effect of this was probably amplified by the self-critical trait of those with ASD, who are often perfectionists. I’m on the spectrum myself, and healthy self-examination has been a big help. Not only to me, but those in my life.
Perhaps your contribution is important because it shows that both environmental and individual choices can be considered in regards to solutions, it is not an either/or scenario.
And it is important to have these conversations in context, and to discuss violence without seeking simple solutions – when perhaps complex ones are required and will be more effective.
Apart from the counselling and support services, did you find any particular studies at university level helped?
“Look what you made me do!
One of those phrases that I found myself saying in my early parenting years almost automatically. Thankfully managed to have some form of self-awareness there and stopped, now only have to work on the many other unworthy techniques – hopefully before they all move out.
I missed that last question: Apart from the counselling and support services, did you find any particular studies at university level helped?
Te Ao Maori was amazing. Gave me white guilt for a bit but it also gave me some history and understanding of NZ, and what I perceived as casual racism everywhere – it’s called institutionalized racism so I learned. I also immediately identified with Kaitiakitanga.
The Tertiary Foundations Certificate was quite brilliant. I’d dropped out by form 3 so needed catch-up. But it was the other adult students in that program gave me some peers to walk the journey with. Some of them had it pretty rough too. Having support is so important. Also, having someone to support. I guess I learned community.
We were there to give ourselves another chance. We lost a few on the way, one went back to stripping, another to the dole… but most of us graduated.
I wasn’t in engineering but biology, so my peers were for the most part non racist, non sexist, highly intelligent, and from all over the world. I was in heaven.
“Having support is so important. Also, having someone to support. I guess I learned community.”
I honestly believe that if a stated outcome and effective implentation of creating healthy communities was a priority with government, many solutions would be found for the problems we face on an individual, family, community and national level.
I am not sure Grace death is domestic (family) violence, because they had just met on a dating app, aka they only met each other a few hours before her death by the sounds of it? It is a separate crime to family violence.
Hi SaveNZ, I wasn’t referring to the Grace Millane case.
Just have had some discussions lately with people referring to this study, and wanted to find an online accessible one to see what the study actually was about.
@ Molly, sorry wasn’t sure, but the MSM are now full of family violence and anti shit men, due to the Grace case. While there is validity of being angry, blaming all men probably isn’t the right solution. They needed to clean up family violence decades ago, instead they just do little to nothing and I am not sure that keeping men in prison on remand or the new strangulation law is justice is the right place to start. Prevention is always the best way and NZ is catapulting into a very punitive and US style society rather than early prevention, aka the boys at school and teaching them better ways to think about women when they are forming their views on gender.
Also boys that grow up feeling disempowered deal with the in a variety of often very anti social ways.
Men top the suicide rates and many statistics. Men commit harm to themselves, men commit harm to others.
Either way, if there are ways to prevent it, and society should be concerned about it, and not just trying to profit from it, have talkfests about it, bury statistics or not take detailed ones from people who are experts in it, or react too late to tragedy.
Many feminists recognise the harm that society places on men.
But there have been many comments on TS lately, that seem to jump to great generalisations and have intimated that female perpetrated violence is ignored by all feminists, court decisions, and society. They often refer to the Dunedin study, which is why I wanted to have a look.
Your first response is a case in point. I have asked for a link and you have responded with two comments that are not in line with that request, the latter being a list of statements (that I do not disagree with) but with the focus only on the harm to men.
As someone who has always appreciated the value of male companionship in her life, who values the male partner in her life, and the mother of three sons, I am aware of the pressures on males in our society which are not conducive to healthy mental health, valuable and varied inter-relationship skills and a stable sense of self-worth. So I am always interested in hearing about solutions to these issues.
There seems to be a trigger reaction amongst more than few, that are trying to ensure that discussions on violence are always concerned with the harm done to men. When really it should be about the harm done to society – women and children included.
It’s hard for men to talk openly about this stuff. This is the age of outrage, of finger pointing and blame. I’m talking under an alias. Some here might know who I am. Nobody wants to own being human or having history in case they are crucified. Picture perfect, that’s what’s expected.
Me too was/is brilliant in bringing predatory behavior to light, but men are scared to be flawed at all in today’s environment. Take Louis CK. He immediately owned his behavior and went into soul searching mode not realising that, though he asked permission, his was a position of power. He’d done the same thing with Sarah Silverman when they were relative unknowns he’s a freak. Predator? He almost lost it all. Others deserve to lose it all e.g. Weinstein.
Now, the outrage over predatory men in general is absolutely vindicated. Many men will be soul searching but they don’t want to put their heads up.
Too scary.
This makes the conversations required very difficult to have.
Sexual violence is off topic of domestic violence, but part of the same as well.
There is a component of public shaming for past behaviours that seems to be automatic, and misses the opportunities many have taken to improve behaviour and have sincerely changed their views and actions.
From a personal point of view, I think of some of my past actions, and consider it a form of grace to my sanity that I don’t have the public persona that would preserve and record all meltdowns and mistakes, and would undergo such relentless scrutiny that others are exposed to.
It also doesn’t help when recognisably public relations statements are issued that ring with insincerity when past behaviour is called into question.
But if we are discussing solutions and improvements in violent behaviour, we do have to give space for people to change and encourage and celebrate genuine change when it does occur.
Yes savenz NZ is punitive about bad behaviour. WTF it’s too late then, and doesn’t stop it just imposes harsh circumstances on someone who has already gone troppo. It’s just military, get back into line, stand straight do the right thing.
But we are living life not army soldiers, and it’s the learning how to get started and getting the hang of it that needs attention, not punishing people for being such bad-arse proponents of life. The time when to do the good thing, is to care about the young. But this culture of neo lib actually doesn’t care about people from cradle to grave, we are just things to be manipulated.
We need to get rid of the shapeshifters, with new aliens popping out of their minds, and find enough like-minded real people to get back to a caring society that values people for themselves, and how they want to both give and receive, and not how much money they have, styley house, clothes, holidays…blah to that.
If they bothered to keep better statistics rather than going on some political gut feelings (aka the vulnerable). For example it has come out that the Grace alleged killer was from divorced parents… these days people meet one day, have kids the next, then divorce soon after or just live together and split up… it would be good to have NON political or identity politics input on this, but just gather the hard cold statistics. Makes sense to me, that kids from broken homes might suffer emotional trauma for example, and maybe we need to think about their rights more and from a prevention point of view, rather than being this tolerant liberal society to a certain set of whims and then the collateral damage is swept under the table. Suicide and depression also on the increase.
I don’t think we keep proper statistics on this type of thing and it’s manipulated completely the small amounts we do. Divorce is not an identity indicator, aka race, gender, sexuality, age etc
Divorce/relationship break up with children involved, is an event.
I’m trying to say, to get equality and or a better society we need to widen the factors to be studied about modern life, not just focus on factors like identity such as race, gender, sexuality, age or socio economic group and think that will solely make the change alone.
Aka the Natz thinking that targeting a few factors in kids would do anything. Life is complicated now, and maybe like areas like smoking, something which people thought was harmless a few decades later, might not be with further study. Same might help for how people live now, and common things that are occurring to kids throughout their lives.
Modern economics (aka neoliberalism) could be having negative effects on society that are not measured and I think that looking wider at modern life and the statistics of that and people who might be succeeding or not succeeding might help look at what might be causing things like high levels of violence, suicide, mental illness, depression etc and what factors might help a child/person have much better outcomes…
I agree on limiting perspectives, but I think with some issues – such as violence – there are many successful approaches that are specific to specific outcomes for identified demographics. Rather than eliminating success stories, we should be adding to them so that violent offending is reduced or eliminated, and all victims of violence are helped in the way that best suits them.
It seems you are asking for a one-stop shop in terms of framing the situation and providing solutions for it by requiring all relevant considerations to be stripped out. This will result in a flawed framework of discussion, and less than efficient outcomes.
I see value in specific programmes addressing both bullies and victims at different ages, and in different environments. There is also value in specialised support a child victim of violence receives, as well as specific approaches for both female and male victims.
Gender based solutions – when they provide best outcomes – are surely dependent on gathering that data and info during research.
There is a list put together for counselling, assessing trauma etc that prioritises life shocks that impact on peoples’ wellbeing.
Just moving house, school is one. Being divorced, with other shocks added to it may be a large trauma to a child. The trouble is that staying with a violent or erratic parent where the child cannot have a stable relationship may be worse than divorce.
Helping parents with their needs so they can manage their lives and cope, making the best they can with them would diminish trauma to manageable. But instead we have pious preachy punishing politicians and leaders who have their lives sorted out satisfactorily to them, probably sending their kids to boarding school, and they love to feel superior to others struggling to cope, automatically they feel they are inadequate and unintelligent.
It may not be as different as you think. There are men who seem to think they are undermined if, as a woman, you don’t do as you are told, and the response can be violent. It is almost irrelevant what the status of the relationship is.
Most of us harbour a fear of men, though many of us are so used to it that we hide it even from ourselves.
Molly, re your request for links etc to the “Dunedin Longitudinal Study”, I did a Google search for that exact phrase and came up with long list which seems to have links to the Study itself. I don’t have time right now to check them out, but hope this helps.
I have also wanted to see the actual study and results etc so have added this link to my Summer Recess Watch and Read list for checking out further.
I did scout around a bit before asking, but couldn’t find access to the whole paper, and though your search threw up a couple extra, am limited to the abstract or the intro of a book.
If you do find links to the studies, would appreciate if you could post here on TS, will watch out for your comments.
There were just a couple of commenters on TS that referred to the studies more than once, I was hoping one of them could provide a link 🙂
As I said I have put it on my list of Reads etc for the Summer break, so will see what I can find. Will also ask a couple of people I know who may be able to help. Will post here mentioning you to alert you if I get any closer to the elusive study. But as a Longitudinal Study I would expect that it is many reports rather than one single one ….
All good. Really would like those who refer to it often to provide the link, to show that they have put some effort into reading the source, rather than relying on third-party interpretations, and ensuring that the data supports what they are stating.
From reading the executive summary it seems that the sample size was considerable – 8,000 females and 8,000 males interviewed, and it appears that both male and female victims of harm were recorded.
Hi molly only just read your request. Here is a link, although I haven’t read this actual bit of the study. If you type into google google scholar , click the type in the Dunedin longitudinal study’ you will find a number of articles there
I’ve seen that link already, but it only shows a limited number of pages from the beginning of the book. I can come up with articles but not the study itself.
This article seems fairly comprehensive though. Thanks for suggesting Google Scholar, didn’t think to utilise that.
There are some issues I have with the article though –
1. The longitudinal study from Dunedin would be unlikely to have a demographic that matches New Zealand
2. The study – due to its nature – only interviewed 21 years olds, and described the interactions of that age cohort only – there will be different responses for others at different stages of their lives;
3. The use of the CTS tool for assessment of violence, there seems to be no reference to the degree of violence either from the aggressor or as experienced by the victim, (on page 3 of the report)
4. Although there is a reference to mutual violence, there is no information presented to whether violence occurred due to previous victimisation or violence received. I would consider this to be an important consideration when your count for violent acts includes:
“Given in to your partner but planned revenge,
Deliberately disposed of or hidden an important item of your partner’s,
Damaged a household item or some part of the home out of anger,
Made threats to leave,
Thrown, smashed, hit, or kicked something during a disagreement,
Ordered your partner around”
Although the article makes reference to the difference between male and female perpetrators of physical violence, despite having the information to hand they don’t appear to publish the different degrees of violence perpetrated. Instead they have lumped all incidents in as if they are of equal import.
I don’t think this particular study is as indicative of the pattern of violence in the wider New Zealand population as many who reference it seem to believe. There are limitations in the sample, both in size and demographics. Also, the use of CTS that doesn’t place any degree on harm on instances of violence so that an incident of “Given in to your partner but planned revenge” is given equal weight to “Used a knife or gun on your partner”.
There is also very little context given to violence perpetrated as a response to violence experienced: eg. Someone who locked a partner out of the house, is counted as equal to some one who has “Physically forced your partner to have sex”, because even if the locking occurred after the forced sex, it still counts as an act of violence.
The Dunedin Study is by it’s nature representative of Dunedin in 1972, but remarkably most of it’s findings have been confirmed by similar studies elsewhere in the world. It possibly turns out that when dealing with the sociological and psychological nature of children, families and how we navigate through life, “demographics” has less of an impact that we imagine.
The Dunedin Study is unique for both it’s reasonably large sample size (over a thousand), it’s longevity (now into it’s fifth decade) and outstanding retention rate (over 95%).
These make it unique and recognised the world over as a valuable resource; literally hundreds if not thousands of reviewed papers have been published using this Study as a primary source; many of them ground breaking and widely cited. There is a LOT more to this entire Study than one paper or book.
Abstract: The authors sought to answer the following question: Are more women than men physically assaulted by a partner? Do a disproportionate number of physical assaults against women involve a partner?Are women subjected to more physical assaults from partners than are men? Are physical assaults on women by partners more severe in terms of physical harm than physical assaults on men by partners? Using a semistructured face-to-face interview, information on assault was obtained from Study members when they turned 21 years of age. Our results showed that more women than men reported being assaulted by a partner, assaults by men represented a greater percentage of women�s assault experiences, the partner assault rate was higher for women, and the assaults against women tended to result in more serious injury.
When commenters here refer to the Dunedin study where women are shown to be violent more than men to their partner, I believe it needs to be taken in context if we are to successfully find effective solutions.
As I have not been able to access the study that is often referred to, I made a critique of an article about the study which – indeed – did seem to uphold that premise. However, the CTS tool is a wide-encompassing one – where “thinking about revenge” is counted as an act of violence. That is not necessarily a problem, if the difference in acts are identified in some way in the report. That doesn’t seem to be the case.
I can also only find the abstract to the above study, which specifically looks at physical violence – and in that context – would be more indicative of the physical harm that is inflicted as IPV.
On the psychological abuse scale both of these merit the same weighting: “Given in to your partner but planned revenge”
and “Threatened to hit or throw something at your partner in anger”
One is a thought process that doesn’t necessarily result in any further action, the second is a voiced threat that is used to manipulate another person to compliance.
Do you have any comments on the use of the CTS scale – and why you think it is appropriate?
Do you have any comments on the abstract shown that indicates that the presumption of women committing equal or more violence when put in context of physical abuse or harm is not upheld by the same group that was studied?
Do you think it would have been of greater use to indicate what level of abuse was perpetrated, and/or the degree of harm inflicted when reporting on IPV? (This may be available in the original paper but I haven’t yet found an accessible link)
Duplicating this study using the same CTS scale would in fact duplicate results.
I’d love to have the time and in-depth understanding to do this question justice. For the moment this is the best I can do:
Imagine I’m working on a ladder and I fall on top of you and break your arm. Painful, annoying and you might well be pissed at me for being so clumsy … but unlikely to be a traumatic episode.
Now imagine I pick up the same ladder and deliberately smashed your arm, inflicting the exactly same injury. Physically almost identical, except now my bad intentions and malice create an entirely different emotional response. Clearly I’ve set out to hurt you, clearly my bad intent matters quite a lot.
In general I’d argue that while the physical impact of violence is important, we really cannot discount the emotional aspect either. Intent matters. It can even be argued that repeated, sustained emotional attacks are more corrosive and damaging, especially on children, than physical ones.
Of course physical violence is relatively easy to observe and classify, while the scars left by bad intent are far less obvious and much harder to quantify. So much depends on context and personality as to how we respond to an emotional attack, and what long-term effects it has. Still any practicing clinical psychologist would tell us that their entire business model depends on to the extreme importance of the emotional response to violence in any form, rather than broken bones.
What’s more this is not the only study to show that both genders commit IPV at similar rates, although they don’t go about it in exactly the same way. A narrow definition focusing on physical violence will tilt the outcome towards highlighting male aggression, while a wider one that encompasses emotional aggression will tend to even out the result between the genders.
Therefore at first glance I generally support the idea of including emotional attacks into the category of ‘violence’ … but at the same time accept it’s a troublesome notion to get to grips with. I understand your reservations.
Thanks RedLogix. I appreciate you taking time to consider my points.
I also agree that psychological abuse needs to be assessed, but it seems such a flawed decision to not show distinctions in abuse when looking at how to assess the IPV issue, primarily because the tools for solutions will be better designed if they are specific. ie. The support required for psychological harm is appropriate for psychological abuse, but must also be joined with medical expertise and rehabilitation if dealing with severe physical harm.
It was also interesting that the second research paper on the 21 year olds regarding only physical IPV, had only 5 hits on Google Scholar. The other one, where I linked to the article – comes up with hundreds.
Part of this could be due to the surprising result of female violence being greater than mens in personal relationships. Click bait for the scientists and headline writers. But as I mentioned, I’m not sure if I am critiquing the paper correctly, but the use of CTS seems to redefine the term of violence into one that my children would be committing – especially the plotting revenge when they are coerced. This internal plotting is human nature, and would only not be present if a person is completely subdued.
RL at 7.36am The Dunedin Study is by it’s nature representative of Dunedin in 1972, but remarkably most of it’s findings have been confirmed by similar studies elsewhere in the world.
This sentence follows the format of many others i have read about sensitive social issues.
If it confirms similar studies elsewhere in the world. Maybe it is using the same methodology on the same cultural age group in other countries, so that would not be so remarkable, if they were from countries with similar cultures and language.
‘Elsewhere in the world’ is the sort of loose comment that we make in NZ which, to me, shows a cultural cringe. It could easily be narrowed down into ‘English speaking’ or expressed as ‘similar studies in the USA, UK and Scandinavia’. There is a laxity in identifying just where the source is by politicians and informed commenters. They might even be talking only about the USA and the ‘studies’ being from separate States there.
On Morning Report just now they said that Britain can just Cancel Brexit if the want to and that that would be legal. Not sure what would happen to May if that happened.
Y’know, every now and then I feel a bit sympathetic to May trying to do her best with Brexit when in fact she was a remain supporter before the referendum. Don’t worry, that moment doesn’t last long.
@ Andre, May is gone, either way. Not sure I agree that someone power hungry is a good thing when they are working against what they supposedly believed in to remain in power?
Everyone that is willing to do what it takes to win an elected position is power-hungry. Some are just better at hiding it than others. Sometimes we strongly disagree with what they want to do with that power, sometimes we even get lucky and elect someone that wants to use that power to achieve a few things we actually agree with.
In May’s case, power-hungry for sure, but also willing to take on a shit sandwich and try to make something vaguely palatable out of it. Surely that’s worth an occasional moment of grudging respect?
No Andre
No grudging respect for being such a dedicated patsy for her class and Party. If she is so desperate to get to the top and has the strength and will to carry through such bad policy because of a redundant desire for British greatness and hubris then she will be blamed, and deserve the obloquy that Margaret hatcher received.
(The mind is amazing – obloquy just popped up – didn’t know that I knew it.) If we keep on discussing important matters in a thoughtful way on TS we may be able to dredge up unimagined ideas for a better future – so let’s keep trying, and doing something as well as tapping and talking too.
Obloquy? Thatcher? Do keep in mind we live in a world where Thatcher is still the only Prime Minister in recent history to have an overall positive favourability rating.
@ ianmac, I think they should seriously consider cancelling Brexit. It is not an election, it is a decision and the people should have the right to vote whether as new information comes to light, they still want Brexit.
If you go into a business decision and then find out it is pretty unworkable, do you keep going with the ‘shit sandwich’ as Andre above describes it, like a fool, or do you bail out until you have something much better and reasonable and a risk adverse position to move to. They have nothing to move to that is reasonable therefore they should have another referendum and take stock on what the mood of the public is.
The AirNZ engineers threatened strike is apparently for three days – 21st 22nd 23rd
(three separate strike notices, one each day).
This will endear unions to the wide general public as it enhances Christmas festivities so much!!
This will enhance the Labour Party, long connected with workers and unions, and encourage the wide general public to think that Labour will deliver a better-run
society and is able to solve problems facing the country!!
This will impress people who regard the word ‘engineer’ with some wariness after the debacle over the presiding engineer and his offsider in designing the incredible collapsing CTV building!!
Et tu union organiser “We don’t take this position lightly…I appreciate this is hard for people….This is not holding people to ransom. We have drawn a line in the sand.”
Piffle. Liar. Self-justifying, it isn’t our fault, it was forced on us. This is the tone and is exactly the same as was taken by unions back in the 1980’s. I am not impressed. Deja vu all over again. Bastards.
NOTE; REGIONAL AIRLINES MAY NOT BE INVOLVED. LOOKING AT HINTS FROM THE SIDELINES, REDDIT ETC. BUT NOT SURE IF THIS HAS BEEN REVEALED OFFICIALLY. IF YOUR FLIGHT NO. HAS FOUR NUMBERS AND STARTS WITH 5 IT MAY BE OKAY.
Airlines only need a commercial team, flight operations, pilots and cabin crew (even they can be outsourced). All other functions can easily be outsourced.
The employers are holding their employees to ransom … and the country gets the benefit of that through lower airfares – although maybe not given the profit the company is making.
We are complicit with the company when we get a benefit when the company treats their workers shabbily. The obvious answer is to shop elsewhere for those of us who don’t like how the workers are treated.
If the company doesn’t use employees from NZ then why should we, as NZers, give it our loyalty? How can it be a NZ company when it outsources it’s work overseas?
“If the company doesn’t use employees from NZ then why should we, as NZers, give it our loyalty?”
Sure. On my future travels I’ll use an international airline that employs only NZ’ers, pays tax only in NZ, and is run and governed from NZ. Oh wait…
Perhaps it has to do with all those other aircraft coming in to land that need maintenance. Perhaps they realised that they’d lose more profit by cutting those services than they’d save.
You RWNJs really don’t know how to run a business.
The two unions representing engineering and logistics workers, AMEA and E tū, say two days of mediation have so far failed. Industrial action was initially estimated to affect nearly 42,000 people, but House of Travel commercial planning director Brent Thomas said three days of strike action would affect many more.
“If it proceeds, it will be a significant impact for a number of travellers – probably upwards of 100,000 potentially people who could be impacted by such a strike”, Mr Thomas said.
E tū union aviation organiser who goes by the name of Savage, said the members hadn’t taken their decision lightly.
“Air New Zealand is trying to portray this as a group of overpaid engineers when actually there are a lot of underpaid logistics and cleaning staff also included in the collective agreement,” he said.
“This is primarily about Air New Zealand making record profits and then attempting to cut the pay and conditions of their workers.”
Are we supposed to feel that Air NZ is making record profits and that going on strike over Christmas is justified to get them to pay more to cleaners, and give engineers more breaks? This is old-style chest-thumping worker versus rich greedy boss, and shoving union power in their face stuff. I thought we were more subtle than that now.
It appears that union leaders are always prepared to take us to the brink and push us over when they have had a dose too much of strengthening medicine, and are feeling all stroppy. Playing rugby involves tackling head on, but unions learn to play a smarter game. And Now! Just say that you don’t want to go to disappoint at Christmas. Please.
Grace Millane
Foreign visitors get more sympathy and attention when they are killed and injured than NZs do it seems. We don’t care about each other enough to deal with the awful conditions that so many have to put up with here, but when foreigners in their innocence come here believing our propaganda, we feel guilty.
And so we should. But more often, and as a whole country that cares, not just a few people who have to continually agitate in NZ to get any humanitarian reaction. Instead we tend to respond to instant emotionalism if there is enough hype, lighting candles and holding vigils for one person. It should be continual observance for those lost to our damaged society.
True savenz Let’s keep the emotion going and flowing now for the others to come, and a thought for the background of the shits that hurt them, because the background is what has produced the behaviour, which just tells the thinking person what a desert of anomy (anomie) the person was brought up in.
Let us in society and our government systems act with love to help the little person and their parents with their needs so as to grow, be strong in resolve and capable with good skills, and be integrated in a caring society that encourages personal responsibility but doesn’t ignore the requirement for a good society to nurture the young and be there for the parent/s.
Anomy | Define Anomy at Dictionary.com https://www.dictionary.com/browse/anomy
a state or condition of individuals or society characterized by a breakdown or absence of social norms and values, as in the case of uprooted people.
Your challenge is to sit behind a desk, look straight at an audience (must consist of at least three people) and read the following ten statements without snickering like Paul Henry, corpsing like Hilary Barry, raising an eyebrow like Peter Williams, pouting like Jack Tame, pausing meaningfully like Simon Dallow or in any other manner indicating dissent or disagreement with the words, however outrageous or offensive, that you are required to read out.
Okay, here we go….
1.) President Trump assured the crowd that he was not only a genius, but an especially “stable genius.”
2.) President Clinton admits that he did indeed smoke marijuana, however he was at pains to assure the American people that he “didn’t enjoy it” and he “didn’t inhale.”
4.) Repeatedly insisting that the victim had in fact chased himself down and then stabbed himself to death, the victim advocate Garth McVicar noted that the angry man wielding the knife had nothing to do with the killing.
5.) Judith Collins said she was most concerned about those close to Mr Ross. “I just feel SO SORRY for his wife and family. It’s so appalling.”
6.) “Israel is a law-abiding state,” said Mr Netanyahu.
7.) The blogger Cameron Slater issued the following statement: “I don’t break the law, and that’s the end of the story.”
8.) Assistant Commissioner Alan Boreham assured the media: “Look, integrity is absolutely critical to the New Zealand Police. It’s a core value.”
10.) President George W. Bush solemnly announced that the United States would “be standing with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq until their hopes for freedom and liberty are fulfilled.”
If you made it to the end of that with a straight face, congratulations. You are either braindead, or your name is Ingrid.
Former McGillicuddy Serious leader Graeme Cairns now divides his time between penny farthings, medical training and street theatre, and his latest endeavour “doing pennants” features a bicycle-powered sewing machine.
The McGillicuddy Serious Party was founded to contest the 1984 election with its campaign plank of the Great Leap Backwards.
It predicted upheaval, chaos and the breakdown of society as we know it and a plan to insulate New Zealand from the worst excesses of the future.
I knew a couple of those boys doing uni in Hamilton when I was a Hamiltonian. Loads of fun and very smart. Fridgehenge was my favorite. Lots of old fridges in a circle in a paddock, and lots of cider.
Auckland-based Catholic priest Fr Douglas Al-Bazi was tortured by terrorists in Iraq and sheltered thousands of people fleeing from Islamic State. He tells Alex Perrottet his harrowing story and says New Zealand should be taking more refugees suffering genocide in the Middle East
I haven’t listened to it yet but I guess I must. As I asked querously before ‘Do I have to worry about everything?’ and thought it seems that I do, I should put this on my list of important human things to be concerned about and act to assist.
They have a good case surely. Perhaps we should look each day, and refer and describe a group that should be in our minds for the fraction of time necessary to ensure they stay in society’s consciousness. So today Syria.
The monopoly of the press by National supporting billionaires erodes our democracy.
Breaking up that monopoly should be a priority of the coalition Government.
[lprent: Ed needs to get up later. This morning he gets the late morning award. ]
Power, building materials, fullers ferrys, supermarkets, fuel etc etc crikey don’t stop at the media as oligopoly/duopoly behaves as a combined monopoly.
Duh why should I do that. I have enough to worry about wondering if I should change my booking to get me and family to our Christmas family meeting.
Do i have to worry about everything in the world? Apparently I do.
Yes commenters need to understand the numbering system and how it works. I sometimes insert mine under someone’s who I concur with rather than trail under some who are WOS in my opinion.
And if not carefully placed, a reply gets so far away from the original
comment, it becomes irrelevant especially if there is no reference in it to hook it up by the number or name.
What happens when we get to 1017am in real time? Does Ed zoom out of his present spot and goes to the bottom, or do all those ahead of him disappear and he ends up back at the top again? 😛
Nothing happens to the comment or thread following. Ed just appears in the comments sidebar, making it briefly falsely appear like he’s going to participate in an actual discussion rather than doing his usual early morning spray and walk away.
Interesting and there was an entry in the sidebar at about 10.17am and his comment and the thread are now set at number 12 – and the next new ‘start’ comment at 10.40am came in under it at 13.
He’s boring greywarshark. It’s the same old same old day in day out. As someone tried to tell him recently… he’s preaching to the converted. We don’t need to be told a dozen times a day and then more…
I remember back in school the really bright, keen interested persons who were up with the lesson and always had their hand up with the answer for the teacher. Sometimes that was me. The other kids get p.o. It’s wise to let others go first Ed – I do notice that you tend to be up with the birds to get the first worms!
60% of sunscreens are misleading, not acceptable. What happens if they are misleading, surely they get a massive fine, not just a shrug or a slap on the hand? There seems to be a double standard when businesses rip people off and profit from it and when individuals rips people off and profit from it.
Consumer NZ report shows most sunscreens not living up to label claims
SPF50+ offers only marginally better protection from Ultra Violet (UV) radiation than SPF30+ filtering out 98% of UV radiation compared to 96.7% blocked by SPF30.
To cut themselves off from this is to be driven off the land. National, Fed Farmers are not your friends to this, are not on your side, are not on the same team. They butter you up with the high prices, the imported labour, you are better than your community & immune to the quietly rising bank rates and costs of living. But then the bubbles in your returns are removed more and more.
And the local market and culture is gone. Your biggest asset in stability. Your biggest card for brand identity and connection to external markets, where you don’t need the middle men of trade homogenization and are at the whims of fluctuating rates amidst all the other brands of X, Y & Z.
Because you have the advantage of your boutique local community chains and markets that no one else has.
Farmers stopped being the lifeblood of the community when they dropped below supporting 50% of the economy. IIRC, that was back in about 1920. Even if they still employ ~7% directly I would be surprised if the total employed due to farming gets above 10%.
Some more simple logic could be also that the ground floor stopped being important, when all the others were built on top of it; or the region’s resources lost their importance once the town grew up in the middle of it.
I didn’t say that they stopped being important. I said that the stopped being the lifeblood. The reason for that is because they no longer relate to everybody and the percentage is dropping.
If we got serious about climate change the number of farms and farmers would drop to ~1/3rd of what we have now.
It’s long gone that they did relate to everybody and it’s not coming back and they really should drop this leaning on past glories that they seem to think is still important and still valid.
I bet no one can guess what Battler Simon will ask in Q1 today at Question Time. You would think that by now he would know that he will make no headway against Jacinda.
Q1 Hon SIMON BRIDGES to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her Government’s statements and actions?
And he didn’t. Bridges is still on about any representations by Ministers etc on the Sroubek case but he isn’t and is unlikely to make any progress on that. He really is walking on shaky grounds on that one IMO but cannot say why. Bridges really is not very clever. Mitchell has gone very very quiet recently. LOL
Today’s Questions to Ministers
Hon SIMON BRIDGES to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her Government’s statements and actions?
KIRITAPU ALLAN to the Minister of Finance: What progress, if any, has been made on implementing the Government’s economic policies?
Hon AMY ADAMS to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all of his statements and actions?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: How many houses built, bought, or underwritten by the KiwiBuild programme are contracted and scheduled to be ready for owner occupation by 1 July 2019, and when will the first KiwiBuild houses in Te Kauwhata be completed?
MARK PATTERSON to the Minister of Conservation: What alternatives to 1080, if any, is the Department of Conservation involved in using or researching for pest control?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH to the Minister of Transport: Does he think that the purpose of transport policy is to make it easier for New Zealanders to get around quickly, efficiently, and safely?
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: How many workers have gone on strike so far in 2018, and does he believe it is reasonable for union workers at Air New Zealand to threaten strike action on the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd of December?
JAN TINETTI to the Minister of Education: What proposals has he seen on the future of schooling in New Zealand?
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE to the Minister of Immigration: Other than Karel Sroubek’s lawyer and family members, who made representations on his behalf in respect of the deportation liability that was the subject of the Minister’s decision on 19 September 2018?
Hon NIKKI KAYE to the Minister of Education: What advice, if any, has he received on the potential estimated cost of implementing recommendations in the report by the Tomorrow’s Schools Independent Taskforce?
TAMATI COFFEY to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: What recent announcements has he made to protect consumers and businesses from unfair commercial practices?
JO HAYES to the Minister for Whānau Ora: Does he agree with the Prime Minister’s statement on Whānau Ora incentive payments that “the Minister has said he is looking at the way that some of those arrangements work with Whānau Ora”?
————————–
Then the usual Wednesday, General Debate for an hour, followed by the last Members’ Day of the year. Regrettably the Members’ Bills to be considered are Nat ones, sponsored by Nick Smith and Jonathan Young in that order, ie:
The Tasman District Council (Waimea Water Augmentation Scheme) Bill – First Reading
The New Plymouth District Council (Waitara Lands) Bill – Second Reading
They may then move onto continuing the Committee stages of Simeon Brown’s Psychoactive Substances (Increasing Penalty for Supply and Distribution) Amendment Bill.
I loved the way he asked a supplementary question in such a way as to give the PM a free hit in reply, then repeated the question so she she could whomp him again. Simon’s a slow learner.
Years into the future I see Michael Woodhouse on his deathbed asking questions of the most significant event in the years of his time: “Who made representations about Karel Sroubek?”
Weird eh? Do they think that someone whose aunty is the second cousin of a Labour MP reckons that someone ought to speak up for Sroubek but in fact they thought they were backing a new brand of bacon. Sroubek Bacon.
Still you have to give Bridges and Woodhouse credit for the doggedness needed to uncover the said aunty’s name. And won’t the Opposition be thrilled with Aunty Jenny’s name. Wow!
Turns out that the name they have been desperately trying to be spoken in an answer is a one ‘Richie Hardcore’ seemingly a friend of Clarke Gayford and a kick boxing associate of Sroubeck . National desperate to make Jacinda look guilty by association . Question that should be asked of the opposition is how did they get a copy of the representations . Looks like National has left the Public Service stacked with informants . Interesting that the MSM didn’t cover this when the Penguin at Kiwiblog published this weeks ago and got no traction on it . In the end Woodlouse spat the name out himself . Shows the level of desperation in National to get a headline putting the PM in a bad light because her partner knows someone who knows someone .
And how many people is that? I’d like a dollar for every person who knows a person I know!
New Zealand is like that. One of the great things about meeting another Kiwi is the second question.
Q1. “So where are you from?
Q2. “Do you know so and so from there?”
I met a man in the street in Greece who had a Kiwi accent. He asked where are you from? I told him. “Oh,” he said. “I met a winemaker from your area in Gibraltar on a yacht. Can’t remember his name.”
I could, though.
So, if National is trying to link our PM into the Sroubek affair because someone she knows knows someone, then that is patently ludicrous.
It’s ‘guilt by association”, very tenuous and would be laughed out of court, and out of any reasonable debate. Pfffffft!
Yeh. Actually I know a chap who played chess with a woman who once took a selfie with John Key. Luckily the then Opposition didn’t find out about my association with Key or all Hell would break out. Phew!
Really taxicab? Do you mean to say that the Opposition wasted dozens of questions to get that??? What a strategy. No wonder the Opposition looks so flat.
Ah so. Richie Hardcore did know Jacinda.
“”The Prime Minister received a text message from Richie Hardcore following media coverage of the first decision about Karel Sroubek that acknowledged the decision. She did not respond to the text.”
But thats it??? All that for so little? https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12175727
Considering the dangers of beach-front houses – they were warned. As a child it may seem nice to have a house on the beach. An adult should know better.
Fantastic, I presume that as this government are going to compensate land owners for climate change impacts, that I should expect a subsidy should my farm suffer any loss of productivity or value from climate.
It’s hard to imagine the Captains of Insurance resigned to “Oh well, my bad luck, there goes 8 million” as their Takapuna boxes of architect spunk go under.
Hyper capitalist….sheesh. We’ve got it pretty sweet bro. 12 year old girl got her legs blown off in Homs today, what happened in your suburb?
You will die waiting for the revolution you dream of Draco. Waiting on a bus that is never coming is a crap way to rip up 70 years. Buy a Subway franchise man!
Trying to save the world from the greedy schmucks is worthwhile even if I don’t manage it. The people left over after the ecological collapse brought about by those same greedy schmucks will have something to work with.
I’m sorry Draco, you’re not a gluttonous pig. You’re passionate about your view of the world and a desire to share that view is mere testament to that passion. We need more people that care as much as you do.
How would you feel about being crowd funded into your own Subway franchise?
David Mac – don’t overrate yourself, and don’t judge others by your own miserably low standards. Greed is your own quality. Love it if you must, but don’t try to impose it on us all like a religion. Your hot air is unimpressive. Go somewhere else.
In Vino
I usually like your take on things. David Mac tends much to the RW
and the pragmatic.approach which ought to be considered when thinking about anything, but not automatically adopted.
Kia ora The Am Show
Japan best symbol of the year is correct disaster the world is heading towards a massive disaster .
Cohen 3 year’s jail does not look good for someone.
Yes people have to respect Tangaroa and its beautiful creatures if one does not it could end badly .
Its cool that Air NZ & there workers have come to a agreement to sort out there differences in a office and not striking .
Mark I seen that Dennis Conner is back to challenge for the Americas Cup .
Chris what happened to the hot dry year that was forecast just a few months ago what about climate change ??????????.
Genetic therapy engineering is not acceptable at all but selecting embryos is ok that is not quite trying to be god and when one try’s to do that it ends up being a big mess.
Kia ora to Andrew good skills to get in 2018 your sustainability qualification .
Ka kite ano P.S I like Noam Chomsky view on things
I say equality is needed to correct this big mess that men are making of Our world .
Susan Atkins: ‘We must take the threat to women in public life seriously’
Catherine Baksi
On the republication of 1984’s Woman and the Law, the co-author says the legal system remains ‘male-centric’
Susan Atkins is co-author of the pioneering book Women and the Law, which examines the way the law has treated women at work, in the family, in matters of sexuality, fertility and violence, and in public life. It is a study of the law’s attitude to women and how it reflects the influence of economic, social and political forces, revealing a deep-rooted, male-centric gender inequality. “Only when women are aware of the extent of the discrimination against them, of how it operates and of how to use the law and to influence law reform to their own ends will further progress be made,” it says.
The book was first published in 1984, when society and law were going through a period of transition. In 1973 married mothers gained a status equal to that of married fathers. Equal pay and sex discrimination legislation was changing the workplace. The Abortion Act 1967 expanded the grounds upon which abortion was legal in Britain. The introduction of the contraceptive pill in 1974 gave women greater control over their fertility, and the Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act 1976 strengthened the civil remedies available to victims of abuse.
We need to use laws to correct this in our society as some men will fight Equality with all the power they have and because of this it will take centuries to correct this imbalance of power that is leading us down the road of disaster . Ka kite ano links below
This is a scramble to keep burning carbon in Australia after there next election as it looks like the morrison moron COAL coalition government will be rolled trump will be lonely when the may government gets rolled out of government to then most will be flipping him the bird
The morrison government has sent a clear signal that it is prepared to provide taxpayer support for both new and existing coal plants, opening registrations of interest in its controversial new power generation underwriting program.
Labor and the Greens are opposed to any taxpayer support for coal projects, and will continue efforts once parliament resumes next year to try and frustrate the Coalition’s program, potentially by attempting to amend the government’s “big stick” divestiture bill, which stalled in the final sitting week, to include a prohibition on power companies receiving commonwealth support Ka kite ano
We did not see this story in OUR Worlds media Ka pai they have voted to pull the war machine out of Yemen I hope aid will be sent in to the poor children
The Senate is due to vote on Wednesday on whether to cut US military support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen, amid deepening scepticism over the Trump administration’s alliance with Riyadh.
The independent senator Bernie Sanders succeeded in forcing a vote on the resolution after a Republican revolt on 28 November – driven in part by outrage over the Saudi murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi – defeated the Trump administration’s efforts to stop it going to a vote.
‘Yemenis are left so poor they kill themselves before the hunger does’
Read more
Wednesday’s vote marks the first time a measure invoking the 1973 War Powers Resolution, asserting congressional supremacy in matters of war and peace, has progressed so far in the Senate. The vote comes across the backdrop of peace talks in Stockholm in a UN-brokered effort to halt a war that is thought to have already killed many tens of thousands of civilians, mostly from coalition bombing and starvation, largely as a results of the coalition’s strategy of economic strangulation.
Links below
Well I did find the story but not in the big web sights of Aotearoa
In a rare break with President Donald Trump, the US Senate has voted to move ahead with a resolution to end military support for the Saudi Arabian-led coalition in the war in Yemen and lawmakers vowed to push for sanctions against the kingdom in the new year Ka kite ano links below
Kia ora Scotty from Te karere
I did back vaping but only as a tool to give up smoking I now have some concerns about the oil as we don’t no what is in it but ka pai to the kuia for using it to give up smoking I am still using mine
Our maori Rugby players had a good season this year
Yes its better to treat the addiction than lock em up like some fools back Pee and dariydack are killing our tangata
Ka kite ano PS I started watching a bit late ka kite ano
Kia ora Newshub
Well that’s a logical move as there is a need to target the importers of hard drugs as these kill people weed well no reports of people dying from a over dose from consuming weed .
I did a post on how the world treats our Wahine the leaders of our country need to set a good example to our youth that Wahine are not just here for men’s use and need to be respected .
The way I see it Lloyd is they did not want a coo just before Christmas may and brexit
or boris in power.
Yes we have to plan for climate change to minimize loses of life and money thanks to shonky and bridges we have no real plan to mitigate the phenomenon bridges togs are getting messy .
What that tx tells me is that bridges is grabbing at straws and looks like a kid who is not happy .
Congratulations to Jemma and Richie on the new baby
Simon I see that Te papa displaying some of the great Chinese Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang that is awesome .
Alex hope we have some good weather but it does not look like it with that weather map
Ka kite ano P.S for got to edit last nite
Kia ora James & Mulls
The Allblacks awards Sam Brodies try was up there with was it Joes try the chicken.
You guys look so young in the back yard cricket last night
Ka pai to Honey Hireme and Jarred Waerea Hargreaves for there Rugby league awards
yes James one need’s boots to play league lol
That a good challenge from the Basket ball team the young fella did quite good
O so there was Steven Adams and Temura Morrison acting with Jason Momoa in Aquaman I will be going to see that movie. I have just watched Frontier another of Jasons movies . P.S the Pacific Stars are shining ka pai
Our wahine sports star are shining bright to
Ka kite ano
In 1987, as a British Labour MP, I was elected to the Shadow Cabinet by my colleagues and was asked by the party leader to direct Labour’s campaign in the general election of that year. The election was to take place at the height of Mrs Thatcher’s dominance and we ...
National MP Nicola WillisHousing, which I would argue is a fundamental human right, has long been a problem in New Zealand. Not only do we have some of the most overpriced houses in the entire world, much of the housing stock is substandard and therefore affects not just people’s health ...
If the government has not lined up behind a "Yes" vote in this year's cannabis referendum the way some reformers would have liked, one entirely laudable thing it did do was commission some science around the public's choice.That science landed today, in the form of the report from an expert ...
Associate Professor Sara WaltonAt the heart of the discussion on opening up our borders is the dichotomy of health and the economy – both of which are actually intertwined, like many things with our economy, as this epidemic has shown.If we think about our country as a system, ...
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Josh Gabbatiss This year will see the largest ever drop globally in both investment and consumer spending on energy as the coronavirus pandemic hits every major sector, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The crisis is accelerating the shutdown of older fossil-fuelled ...
A short opinion piece – Friday 26th June 2020 Whilst our Government has treated many financial victims of the current Covid-19 virus with appropriate generosity, the same cannot be said for those of the two earlier “epidemics” in NZ. The “Covid-84” virus (also called “Rogernomics”) spread systemic greed, with the ...
Everyone deserves a a decent life. We know this is possible with a fairer approach to income support and tax Read the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Poverty Action Plan here ...
After a long break, the government is back inserting secrecy clauses in legislation. This time its the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3), which in its clause allowing Ministers to exempt purchasers of farm land from the usual rules also allows them to exempt an exemption from the publication requirement: ...
Over the past two years the government has repeatedly delayed a scheme to put cameras on boats to monitor Mew Zealand's pervasively criminal fishing industry. But it turns out that the industry actually wants cameras: Three of the country's biggest seafood companies have broken ranks with the rest of the ...
Louise Delany (public health lawyer)Health and emergency laws have played a critical role in this country’s successful elimination of community transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic. This blog details key aspects of the legislation and comments on issues around testing, payments by incoming travellers for quarantine costs, and mask use. ...
I like Andrew Curry’s succinct and insightful futures blog The Next Wave. His most recent post is about social change. In particular, the decadal-long periods usually required for changes in values. He highlights a 2016 paper by Inglehart and Norris, who examined whether economic insecurity or a “cultural backlash” ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Stop making sense: why it's time to get emotional about climate changeThe science has been settled to the highest degree, so now ...
MONDAY JULY 6Washington (History, Sky 073, 7.30pm). The brilliant Doris Kearns Goodwin is the executive producer of this six-part series about America's first president. It combines interviews with live action and is narrated by Jeff Daniels. It's engaging, said Salon.TUESDAY JULY 7The ABC Murders (Prime, 8.30pm). Sarah Phelps has done incredible things with ...
I think we can all agree that the mainstream media in New Zealand has a very different set of rules for the right wing compared to the left. While Labour and Green Party politicians don’t seem to be able to fart without it becoming a sackable offence, National and Act ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, June 28 through Sat, July 4, 2020Editor's Choice'2040': A funny, entertaining, upbeat climate documentaryA timely Australian documentary takes a 'solutions' approach, with the filmmaker inspired by visions of ...
Racist National MP Hamish WalkerEven before Todd Muller's coup ousted Simon Bridges by a single vote, it was patently obvious that the National Party promotes and stands for white privilege. In fact they’ve always worked to ensure the discriminatory status quo in New Zealand doesn’t change.So it’s no surprise that ...
Dave HeatleyZero community transmission. Just a handful of active cases, all in quarantine. New Zealand is in an attractive situation, at least compared to much of the world. The situation could be robust and enduring – or it might be fragile, just one border incursion away from a “second ...
Is the consequence of the Simpson Report proposals for restructuring the health system poorer accountability to people? When in doubt, centralise‘ has been a persistent theme in New Zealand public policy throughout our history. The current government is no exception. Here are some examples. - The regional polytechs have been ...
I wrote earlier in the week about the Scientology front organisations Drug Free World and Drug Free Ambassadors and their quite prominent role in anti-cannabis reform "coalition" assembled by Family First and a newloca branch of the American prohibitionist organisation SAM.It turns out Family First aren't the only ones helping ...
Nik GreenMuch of the public debate about the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has focused on the extent to which government regulations have restricted personal and business activity.Oxford University Blavatnik School of Government Here in New Zealand, the question of when to change Alert Levels dominated the ...
Raising The Bar: Would that the Prime Minister and her colleagues would listen as intently to what the people – as opposed to the power elites – are saying as the Greens. Were they so disposed, the popular clamour for a transformational post-Covid reset would be loud in their ears. ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzDo you think the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown will slow or ...
A bit like a letter home. I have now been full-time at the University of Melbourne since 2019. Before that, I was 20 years at the University of Otago, Wellington. Indeed, I set up this very Public Health Expert Blog with Nick Wilson ten years ago. Now I am your ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections House Democrats have released a comprehensive report showing how – if they control the White House and both the Senate and the House of Representatives – they might move forward on climate change. Their “Climate Crisis Action Plan,” released June 30 by the ...
Not Ready: Todd Muller’s lack-lustre and self-contradictory performances offer conclusive proof that a political leader cannot be managed into competence. National’s new boss has Janet Wilson handling his media and Matthew Hooton writing his speeches. Both are highly professional political and public relations specialists, and Muller is lucky to have ...
Unfortunately, due to a medical emergency, I have landed in hospital so am not able to do a current update on the NZ blog statistics. Let’s hope I can get back to this in good time. ...
It started as a family story, about a step-father who went out one night to break into an embassy in Wadestown, Wellington. John Daniell wanted to understand what his family had been part of when his mother and then step-father work for New Zealand’s Security Intelligence. He wanted to know ...
The Greens have shaken up the election campaign with the announcement of their radical poverty and action plan to reform welfare provision and introduce a new wealth tax for millionaires. It’s a big-thinking, controversial policy and has generated a lot of disagreement over how radical it is, whether it could ...
My house is currently supplied electricity by Meridian. As soon as I can change I will because Meridian spilled water to hike electricity prices. They got consumers to spend an extra $80 million on power unnecessarily. Clever them. The Electricity Authority has called their behaviour an “undesirable trading situation”, or ...
When Jacinda Ardern unexpectedly became the Labour Party leader shortly before the 2017 general election, she promised to lead a government of transformation. After nearly three years occupying the Treasury benches, health professionals working in public hospitals have been keenly waiting for transformational progress, including in the capacity and quality ...
Last night, One News ran a follow-up story to its Colmar Brunton poll results on the cannabis referendum, headed here as Government accuses big American anti-cannabis group of interfering in NZ politics.In truth it wasn't just the government: Justice minister Andrew Little, National's Shane Reti and the Greens' Chloe Swarbrick ...
When the government refused to put cameras on fishing boats to ensure fishers obeyed the law, Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash claimed that coalition partner NZ First (which has received large donations from the fishing industry) was not responsible for the decision. He has repeated that claim repeatedly since then. But ...
Heroic Evasions: Labour needs to be unequivocal in its communications with the electorate. Either it has a plan to prevent their fellow New Zealanders from falling off the economic cliff, or it doesn’t. Either it has a fiscal policy equal to the task of funding that plan, or it hasn’t. ...
Prof John Potter*Elimination has been an effective strategy for New Zealand in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic virus (SARS-CoV-2). Most other countries have not pursued this goal and are ignoring the opportunity even now. SARS-CoV-2 is not manageable by the influenza playbook; its longer incubation period makes tracing ...
This is a re-post from Weather Underground by Bob HensonAbove: This rainbow appears unusually low in the sky because it has formed early in the afternoon, rather than toward sunset. For a rainbow to form, water droplets must be present in the air in front of an observer ...
On Monday, Todd Muller gave an important speech to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce, He spoke firmly about his belief in the need for foreign investment, for the public sector to partner with the private sector rather than boss it around and, crucially, demanded the government deliver a clear strategy ...
Todd Muller's first act on become party leader was to appoint an all-white front bench. This understandably raised eyebrows, so he is now apparently reconsidering caucus and list rankings. Which is obviously necessary, but there's still the underlying problem: National doesn't have a lot of Māori MP's. And the reason ...
Meridian energy has been caught manipulating the electricity market for fun and profit: Meridian Energy pushed up power prices by unnecessary spilling water from its south dams in December that could have been used for generation, the Electricity Authority has ruled in a preliminary decision. The authority said the ...
When the Christchurch murderer pleaded guilty to 51 counts of murder and a number of other violent assault charges a few months ago, he effectively closed the door on what the public will know about the lead up to and commission of the event. His plea means that no evidence ...
Daphna Whitmore The Philippines is enduring one of the longest lockdowns in the world. For President Duterte the lockdown provides an opportunity to garner more powers and to push through a brazen assault on human rights. A new law called the Anti-Terror Bill has been passed under urgency and it ...
Hearing the Prime Minister castigate the Warehouse for laying off 1,000 workers after receiving $52 million in wage subsidies reminds me of the fabled frog who agreed to carry a scorpion across a river. The scorpion stings the frog halfway across, dooming both to drown. The frog cries “Why on ...
Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Amanda Kvalsvig, Prof Michael BakerCompared with other OECD countries NZ is a stand-out success story by ending community transmission of COVID-19. While there have been some well-publicised recent deficiencies (eg, quarantine organisation), there has still been no evidence of community transmission for many weeks. Nevertheless, ...
It’s June 30th, marked as Asteroid Day by many people of an astronomical bent around the globe. On this date in 1908, early in the morning in a remote part of central Siberia, the sky fell in. Well, not literally. What happened is a substantially-sized lump of cosmic detritus ...
There really is not much about Paula Bennett concerning her career trajectory, the policies she promoted, and most importantly, the socio-economic effect this had upon New Zealand (and particularly the most vulnerable in this, our oft-cited “egalitarian” society of this country) that can be said now that hasn’t already been ...
Don Franks Poverty, inequality – really – aren’t politicians paid to sort that stuff ? Why can’t they just get it together and come up with something fair and sensible? A cold rainy 2020 morning, a headline showed promise. “Green Party’s $8b plan would guarantee an income of $325 a ...
A guest repost by Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) staff attorney Augusta Wilson. Fundraising is not the objective of this article but readers may wish to know that CSLDF is currently conducting a summer fundraiser to support defense of research scientists and research integrity from anti-science interference by politicians and industrial interests. The COVID-19 pandemic ...
Helloy… My name is Todd Muller and I am the leader of the National Party of New Zealand. Many people come up to me on the street and ask me who I am. I’m often walking through Tauranga, or in a mall in suburban Auckland, or maybe even a farmers’ ...
The US state of Mississippi has finally voted to remove the Confederate emblem from its state flag. Good. Its appalling that it was put there in the first place, but even more appalling that it took so long to remove it. Its basicly as if a German Länder still had ...
No one could have predicted when David Seymour’s End of Life Choice Bill was passed by Parliament last November that the referendum required to bring the legislation into force would be held against the backdrop of a deadly global pandemic. Since then, the mounting tally of casualties around the world ...
Paul GoldsmithYou can often tell just how effective a progressive policy proposal will be by how much the right wing criticise it. The more socially beneficial, the more vitriolic and unhinged they seem to become.That was the case when the Green Party announced their Poverty Action Plan yesterday. The response ...
Back at the beginning of April, when we had much else on our minds, I wrote this post urging some caution in interpreting the results of the latest Horizon poll, conducted in February, on voting intentions in this year's cannabis referendum, which was paid for by Helius Therapeutics.I wrote that ...
Over the weekend the Greens made their first election policy announcement, and promised transformational change: a more progressive tax system, with new rates applying to incomes of $100,000 and $150,000; a new wealth tax on net wealth over $1 million; and a guaranteed minimum income to eliminate poverty. Its bold, ...
Story of the Week... El Niño/La Niña Update... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Global Warming Is Melting Our Sense of Time Satellite image of smoke from active fires burning near the ...
. . Plague town? There are two things right now in Aotearoa New Zealand that are guaranteed to piss people off. Firstly, it’s National playing silly-bugger politics with the covid-19 pandemic. This cost Simon Bridges his job as National’s Leader. Lately, Michael Woodhouse has been playing fast and loose with ...
Tertiary fees in New Zealand versus Australia: Fees Are Important, but not as Important as Financing In Australia, the Education Minister Dan Tehan has proposed an overhaul of the existing higher education funding system to offer 39,000 additional study places by 2023 and 100,000 by 2030. The proposal has been ...
The latest opinion poll forecasts a landslide win by Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party, but when taken alongside other polling, it illustrates New Zealand politics remains volatile and the contest is still very open. According to the Colmar Brunton poll published by TVNZ last night, Labour would easily romp back ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, June 21 through Sat, June 27, 2020Editor's ChoiceFacebook creates fact-checking exemption for climate deniers Facebook is "aiding and abetting the spread of climate misinformation,” said Robert Brulle, an ...
The images and reports delivered to us by the world’s media leave us in no doubt that the rest of the world is still in the grip of a coronavirus pandemic that shows no signs of slackening, but is actually uncontrolled and picking up pace in many countries; and even ...
Minister of Health - David ClarkIf you follow politics at all in New Zealand, David Clark is likely a name you’re a bit familiar with. The current Minister of Health is perhaps the most disliked Member of Parliament at the moment, which amongst very stiff competition is really saying something. ...
SUNDAY JUNE 28Beat the Chasers (TVNZ 1, 8.30pm). Judging by the tweets, which is probably a bad idea, over lockdown, all of New Zealand found itself in front of The Chase every night at 5pm. It is a brilliant fomat: hardly anyone wins any money ...
SATURDAY JUNE 27Banksy and the Rise of Outlaw Art (Sky Arts, Sky 017, 8.00pm). There was graffiti before Banksy, but perhaps his pungent political messages hit home a bit harder. Anyways, a doco about his influence on street art featuring a bunch of cool people.SUNDAY JUNE 28Beat the Chasers (TVNZ 1, ...
We have been assailed by Fox News-style headlines, lurid stories of “a breach!”. An almost nuclear level disaster on the horizon scream, “Fiasco!” here, “Hero to Zero!” there… Oh quick, panic everyone!This has fueled an unbelievably stupid environment of panic among some, and spurred useless, counterproductive political ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters A massive dust storm formed over the Sahara Desert last week and invaded the Caribbean over the June 20-21 weekend, bringing dangerous levels of air pollution and low visibility to the islands. The dust is accompanied by a large amount ...
Will the Covid Crisis lead to a dramatic redirection for New Zealand and the World? A hinge in history occurs where the past and present are connected but they point in different directions. Big hinges are rare but crucial in the development of humankind. Not in Narrow Seas identifies six. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand First leader Winston Peters today scoffed at suggestions that a team of six political operatives have been dispatched to New Zealand to assist his campaign. ‘As President Ronald Reagan once said, ‘there they go again.’ ‘The clickbait journos can’t ...
New Zealand First is pleased to announce Jenny Marcroft as the party’s election 2020 candidate for the Auckland Central electorate. Jenny spent years working in Auckland Central, having spent a vast proportion of her broadcasting career there. She says she, "knows the place and knows the people." Ms Marcroft says ...
New Zealanders deserve healthy rivers and lakes that are safe to swim in - but they have been getting worse for decades. That's why, with our latest announcement, we're investing in projects that will help clean up our rivers and lakes and restore them to health, within a generation. ...
This week we moved into the second half of 2020 - and our Government delivered another week of big changes and major progress for New Zealanders. Read below for a wrap of the key things moments from the week - from extending paid parental leave, to making major investments in ...
The Green Party has opposed the COVID-19 Recovery Fast-track Consenting Bill which shortcuts normal consenting processes under the Resource Management Act (RMA), reduces public participation and narrows environmental considerations. ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister of Regional Economic Development A regional freight hub for the lower North Island will be built just northeast of Palmerston North, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. The Government is investing $40 million through the Provincial Growth Fund to designate and buy land and design ...
Green Party Co-leader Marama Davidson is calling for the introduction of a Guaranteed Minimum Income to lift hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty and prevent more families entering into further debt with the Ministry of Social Development. ...
There has been renewed focus on New Zealand First acting as a handbrake on the Government after our decision to not support Auckland light rail. We are a handbrake for bad ideas, that istrue, but our track record since 2017 has seen New Zealand First constructively also serve as an ...
Mark Patterson MP, New Zealand First List MP New Zealand First’s Fair Residency for Superannuation Bill passed its First Reading in Parliament today. The Bill makes a significant change to NZ Super by raising the minimum residency requirement from 10 to 20 years, after age 20. “Currently, a migrant of ...
Darroch Ball MP, Spokesperson for Law and Order A New Zealand First member’s bill in the name of Darroch Ball introducing a six-month minimum prison sentence for assaults on first responders has passed its second reading in Parliament. The new offence of "injuring a first responder or corrections officer with ...
Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Deputy Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand First welcomes the launch of the new Criminal Cases Review Commission, gifted with the name from Waikato-Tainui - Te Kāhui Tātari Ture, announced in Hamilton today by Justice Minister Andrew Little. “New Zealand First has long believed in and ...
The Green Party is celebrating over $800m in new funding for green projects, which will get people into jobs while solving New Zealand’s long-term challenges. ...
Mark Patterson MP, Spokesperson for Primary Industries New Zealand First is appalled that Meridian seems to have been unnecessarily spilling water from its dams to drive up its profits."While New Zealanders have been coming together in some of our darkest hours, we don’t expect power gentailers to waste water and ...
We wrapped up the first half of 2020 with a busy month, taking additional steps to support New Zealanders as we continue with our economic recovery. We rolled out targeted packages to support key industries like tourism and construction, helped create jobs in the environmental and agriculture sectors, and set ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Infrastructure Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones has welcomed the appointment of Maurice Davis and his deep infrastructure and construction experience to the board of the Infrastructure Commission. Mr Davis (Ngāti Maniapoto), is the seventh and final appointment to the board led by former Reserve Bank Governor ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand’s click bait journalism is taking a turn for the worse, with yet another example of sensationalist, wilful-misrepresentation of the facts. “New Zealand First has worked constructively with its Coalition partner on hundreds of pieces of legislation and policy, and ...
The Green Party is today unveiling its Poverty Action Plan, which includes a Guaranteed Minimum Income to ensure people have enough to live with dignity. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Rotorua Museum redevelopment and Whakarewarewa and Tokorangi Forest projects will be accelerated thanks to a $2.09 million Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) boost, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher ...
This week, we rolled out the next steps of our recovery plan, with new infrastructure investment, extra support for tourism operators, and a new programme to get Kiwis into agriculture careers. The global economic consequences of COVID-19 will continue to be a challenge, but we have a detailed plan to ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First welcomes the passage of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission Bill through its final reading in Parliament today fulfilling a coalition agreement commitment. “This is an important step in saving the lives of New Zealanders and delivers a key coalition commitment ...
Whakatāne has been given a $2.5 million boost to speed up previously funded projects and create more than 450 jobs in the next decade. Of those, the equivalent of 160 full-time jobs could be delivered in the next six weeks. Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters is in town to make ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is investing $2.5 million to accelerate three infrastructure projects in Whakatāne, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. “This package is about ...
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones is throwing his weight behind a bid by the Auckland Council to fast-track the more than doubling of the city's water allowance from the Waikato River. And he's coming out strongly against anyone who plans on getting in the way of this campaign. "It is my ...
The Green Party is thrilled to see changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that mean consents for large projects can be declined if they will have significant climate change implications that are inconsistent with the Zero Carbon Act and Aotearoa New Zealand’s Paris Agreement obligations. ...
Hon Ron Mark, Minister of Defence The Royal New Zealand Navy’s new ship, Aotearoa, set sail for New Zealand on 10 June from the Republic of Korea, and is due to arrive in Auckland tomorrow, announced Minister of Defence Ron Mark. “Aotearoa is the Royal New Zealand Navy’s new fleet ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Racing Racing Minister Winston Peters has today welcomed the Racing Industry Bill passing its third reading, creating the legislative framework for revitalising the racing industry while limiting the need for future government intervention. “For too long our domestic racing industry has ...
The Green Party has today put forward an amendment to the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill to ensure all people in prisons can vote in general elections. ...
The Green Party welcomes the decision to not proceed with Public Public Investment (PPI) delivery of Auckland’s light rail project and to instead run the process through the public service. ...
Hon Ron Mark, New Zealand First List MP based in the Wairarapa New Zealand First List MP Hon Ron Mark welcomes the announcement of Provincial Growth Funding investment of $1.4 million to help secure the Wairarapa’s water supply. The funding boost will allow the Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC), and ...
New Zealand First list MP Mark Patterson has been selected to represent the party in the newly formed Taieri electorate at the upcoming election. Mr Patterson, his wife Jude and two daughters farm sheep and beef at Lawrence and Waitahuna. He previously stood in the Clutha-Southland electorate however boundary changes ...
Hon Shane Jones, Associate Minister for State Owned Enterprises A new ‘super depot’ to be built for NZ Post in Wellington will create around 350 jobs during construction, Associate Minister for State Owned Enterprises Shane Jones says. Shane Jones today attended a ground-breaking and blessing ceremony for the parcel-processing depot ...
Our strong economic management prior to COVID-19 - with surpluses, low debt and near-record-low unemployment - put us in a good position to weather the impact of the virus and start to rebuild our economy much earlier than many other countries.Now we're putting our plan to recover and rebuild ...
Darroch Ball MP, New Zealand First Spokesperson for Law and Order Recently released Police fleeing driver statistics have shown yet another increase in incidents with another record-high in the latest quarter. “This new quarterly record-high is the latest in a string of record-high numbers since 2014. The data shows incidents ...
New Zealand First MP Fletcher Tabuteau is pleased to be confirmed today as the party’s candidate for the Rotorua electorate. Speaking at the Rotorua AGM for New Zealand First, Mr Tabuteau said this is an election that is incredibly important for the people of Rotorua. “The founding principles of New ...
The Human Rights Commission’s PRISM report on the issues impacting people based on their sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) provides an excellent programme of work for future governments to follow, say the Greens. ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said the trans-Tasman bubble had not been jeopardised after aborder botch-upresulted in New Zealand having two active cases of COVID-19. On Friday, Mr Peters told RNZ's Morning Report he had heard from Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison that borders for trans-Tasman travel would open by ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said today he was pleased the army was now running the quarantine and isolation process - up until now it has been the Ministry of Health. Peters told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking that the army knew how to introduce and follow protocols and instil discipline. ...
Hon Ron Mark, New Zealand First List MP based in the Wairarapa New Zealand First MP and Minister for Defence and Veteran’s Affairs Ron Mark has confirmed his bid for the Wairarapa seat.“The Coalition Government has done a lot of good work throughout the Wairarapa, but many constituents have told ...
The Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Poto Williams, is seeking feedback on a proposal to better enable the development and operation of commercial film and video facilities in Christchurch. The Proposal, developed by Regenerate Christchurch in response to a request from Christchurch City Council, asks that powers under section ...
The Government has launched a bold plan to boost primary sector export earnings by $44 billion over the next decade, while protecting the environment and growing jobs. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern today released Fit for a Better World – Accelerating our Economic Potential, a 10-year roadmap to unlock greater value ...
A new approach to prevent family harm that encourages greater collaboration across government and community groups is being celebrated at the opening of a new facility in Auckland. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern today opened the Multi-Disciplinary Family Harm Prevention Hub Te Taanga Manawa in Lambie Road in Manukau. The facility ...
The Government has released a major new report on the options for relocating the Port of Auckland’s freight operations while deferring any decision on the issue. “That decision needs to be informed by policy analysis that is still to be completed. As a result it will be up to a ...
The history of Rāpaki is being restored through the inclusion of te reo in thirteen official place names on Te Pātaka-o-Rākaihautū / Banks Peninsula and around Lyttelton Harbour/Whakaraupō, the Minister for Land Information, Eugenie Sage, announced today. “I am pleased to approve the proposals from Te Hapū o Ngāti ...
Bookings for seats on Air New Zealand flights into New Zealand will be managed in the short term to ensure the Government is able to safely place New Zealanders arriving home into a managed isolation or quarantine facility, says Housing Minister Megan Woods. “Last week Air Commodore Darryn Webb and I ...
Grant Robertson has today announced the first major release of funding from the $265 million Sport Recovery Package announced at Budget 2020. “Today we’re setting out how $80 million will be invested, with $54 million of that over the 2020/2021 financial year for organisations from community level through to elite ...
The Government is maintaining current levy rates for the next 2 years, as part of a set of changes to help ease the financial pressures of COVID-19 providing certainty for businesses and New Zealanders, ACC Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. “New Zealanders and businesses are facing unprecedented financial pressures as a ...
Small businesses are getting greater certainty about access to finance with an extension to the interest-free cashflow loan scheme to the end of the year. The Small Business Cashflow Loan Scheme has already been extended once, to 24 July. Revenue and Small Business Minister Stuart Nash says it will be ...
A package of 23 projects across the country will clean up waterways and deliver over 2000 jobs Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Environment Minister David Parker announced today. The $162 million dollar package will see 22 water clean-up projects put forward by local councils receiving $62 million and the Kaipara ...
Tena koutou katoa Nga tangata whenua o tenei rohe o Pōneke, tena koutou Nau mai, haere mai ki te hui a tau mo te roopu reipa Ko tatou! Ko to tatou mana! Ko to tatou kaupapa kei te kokiri whakamua Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena tatou katoa Welcome. I ...
The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is investing $1.5 million to ensure QE Health in Rotorua can proceed with its world class health service and save 75 existing jobs, Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development, Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. The PGF funding announced today is in addition to the $8 million ...
A new programme, which sets a firm course for the Building and Construction sector to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, has been announced by the Minister for Building and Construction Jenny Salesa. “A significant amount of New Zealand’s carbon emissions come from the building and construction sector. If we’re serious ...
The Provincial Growth Fund is investing more than $7.5 million in Northland ventures to combat the economic impact of the COVID-19 virus, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones have announced. The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) investment is going to the Northern Adventure Experience and ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Education Minister Chris Hipkins today announced significant funding for Auckland’s Northcote College as part of the first wave of a new nationwide school redevelopment programme to upgrade schools over the next 10 years. The $48.5 million project brings the total investment in Northcote College to ...
The Government has opened an urgent response fund to support schools and early learning services to get children and young people back on track after the Covid-19 lockdown. “While we are seeing improvements in attendance under Alert Level 1 Ministry of Education data shows that attendance rates in our schools ...
The law to boost the economic recovery from the impact of COVID-19 by speeding up resource consenting on selected projects has passed its second and third readings in the House today. “Accelerating nationwide projects and activities by government, iwi and the private sector will help deliver faster economic recovery and ...
Five port-related projects in Whanganui will receive a $26.75 million Provincial Growth Fund investment to support local economic recovery and create new opportunities for growth, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This is a significant investment that will support the redevelopment of the Whanganui Port, a project governed ...
Whanganui’s Sarjeant Gallery will receive an investment of up to $12 million administered by the Provincial Growth Fund to support its redevelopment, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. The project is included in a $3 billion infrastructure pipeline announced by Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Shane Jones yesterday. ...
The Provincial Growth Fund is investing nearly $2.5 million into three Te Ara Mahi programmes to support Manawatū-Whanganui jobseekers and employees to quickly train and upskill, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “Up to 154 local people will be supported into employment within the first year by these ...
This morning I have formally tendered my resignation as Minister of Health, which was accepted by the Prime Minister. Serving as Minister of Health has been an absolute privilege – particularly through these extraordinary last few months. It’s no secret that Health is a challenging portfolio. I have given ...
Scholarships for 57 early-career agricultural emissions scientists from 20 developing countries is another example of New Zealand’s international leadership in primary sector sustainability, says Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor. Mr O’Connor, announcing the scholarships today, says hundreds of applications were received for this fourth round of the CLIFF-GRADS programme (Climate, Food ...
A project to help rejuvenate the Horowhenua town of Foxton will receive a Provincial Growth Fund investment of $3.86 million, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This funding for the Foxton Regeneration project will be used to make the well-known holiday town even more attractive for visitors and ...
Moa bones and other sub-fossil remains of extinct species are set to have improved protection with proposals to prevent the trade in extinct species announced the Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage today. “We have lost too many of our native species, but these lost species, such as moa, remain an ...
The Government’s free and healthy school lunches programme moves south for the first time creating jobs for around 30 people in Otago and Southland. “Eighteen schools with 3000 students are joining the programme – 11 have already begun serving lunches, and seven are preparing to start during Term 3. This is ...
Thousands of Kiwi jobs and investment in New Zealand productions will be protected through a screen sector support package announced today by Associate Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage Carmel Sepuloni, Minister for Economic Development Phil Twyford and Minister for Broadcasting Kris Faafoi. The package also includes investment in broadcasting ...
The Government has established a new $10 million fund for the domestic events sector to help save jobs and protect incomes as it recovers from the impacts of COVID-19, Minister of Economic Development Phil Twyford announced today. This funding from Budget 2020 follows talks with the event sector designed to ...
The Government has taken another step in its commitment to making sure New Zealanders get a fairer deal at the petrol pump with the introduction of legislation to improve competition in the retail fuel market, says Energy and Resources Minister Megan Woods. “The fuel market study that this Government ordered ...
New Zealand has joined a global initiative that aims to enable all countries to access a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters announced today. The COVAX Facility was recently launched by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The Alliance includes the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank ...
From today new legislation takes effect to both restore the right to legal representation at the start of a Care of Children (CoCA) dispute in the Family Court, and allow parties to those proceedings to access legal aid where eligible. During a visit to the Family Court in Auckland today, ...
Home-based early childhood education (ECE) subsidised by the government will transition to a fully qualified workforce by 2025 to ensure better and more consistent quality, Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. “Quality early learning helps provide children with a strong foundation for their future,” Chris Hipkins said. From 1 January ...
The new Criminal Cases Review Commission | Te Kāhui Tātari Ture (CCRC) has started work and can now independently investigate claimed miscarriages of justice. “Even though we have appeal rights and safeguards against unsafe convictions, from time to time our justice system does get things wrong. The design of the ...
E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā karangatanga maha, tēnā koutou Ki a koutou Te Āti Awa, Taranaki Whānui, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, ngā mana whenua o te rohe nei, tēnā koutou Ko Te Whare Wānanga o Aotearoa ki ngā take o te Ao (NZIIA), Ko te Rōpū Tohu Tono ...
The Government’s increase to paid parental leave kicks in today with another 4 weeks taking New Zealand up to a full 6 months (26 weeks, up from 22 weeks) leave for new parents, and the maximum weekly payment will increase by $20pw, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. ...
A new package of infrastructure investments will help kick-start the post-COVID rebuild by creating more than 20,000 jobs and unlocking more than $5 billion of projects up and down New Zealand. Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones today outlined how the $3 billion infrastructure fund in the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today expressed the New Zealand Government’s deep disappointment at the passage by China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee of a national security law for Hong Kong. “New Zealand has consistently emphasised its serious concern about the imposition of this legislation on Hong Kong without inclusive ...
More jobs and more family time with newborns are the centrepiece of a suite of Government initiatives coming into effect today. July 1 is a milestone day for the Government as a host of key policies take effect, demonstrating the critical areas where progress has been made. “The Coalition Government ...
Environment Minister David Parker has today “called in” Auckland’s application to the Waikato Regional Council to take an extra 200 million litres of water a day from the lower reaches of the Waikato River for Auckland drinking water and other municipal uses. The call-in means the application has been referred ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker announced today that New Zealand’s hosting of APEC in 2021 will go ahead using virtual digital platforms. Mr Peters said the global disruption caused by COVID-19, including resultant border restrictions, had been the major factor in the ...
The start of construction on a new link road between Matakana Road and State Highway 1 will create jobs and support the significant population growth expected in the Warkworth area, Transport Minister Phil Twyford and Mayor Phil Goff announced today. Transport Minister Phil Twyford said construction of the Matakana Link ...
Air New Zealand are temporarily suspending new international bookings to New Zealand to ensure that all arrivals can be accommodated in a managed isolation or quarantine facility. But as more countries open their borders to foreigners, including Kiwis, ...
Greenpeace says the newly released Government plan for the Primary Sector is a missed opportunity to build back better. The plan Fit for a Better World - Accelerating our Economic Potential , was released by Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday. It aims to map ...
Organisations representing a cross section of New Zealand industries are alarmed that no decision has been made on the fate of thousands of temporary workers with visas about to expire. ...
After three decades in existence, Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust has launched its own gallery on Auckland’s Karangahape Road.The first thing that hits you entering Tautai Gallery’s inaugural exhibition, Moana Legacy, is the range of works on show. On one huge wall is a mural of black humanoid crocodiles on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sue McIntyre, Honorary Professor, Australian National University Last week we learned woody vegetation in New South Wales is being cleared at more than double the rate of the previous decade – and agriculture was responsible for more than half the destruction. Farming ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chongyi Feng, Associate Professor in China Studies, University of Technology Sydney Chinese law professor Xu Zhangrun, who completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne, has become the latest high-profile critic of President Xi Jinping to be silenced for his views. It’s ...
If you’ve ever wondered what influencers have to offer to the world, look no further than Simone Anderson’s new recipe book So Delish!, which will revolutionise the way you put things on plates and in freezers.You know what I’m tired of? Professional cooks publishing cookbooks. Boring. If I ever fancy ...
The Electoral Commission has confirmed that the 'Aroha' posters of Jacinda Ardern, promoted by artists Weston Frizzell and advertiser Phantom Billstickers, does indeed constitute a party advertisement for the Labour Party. This judgment comes after ...
The Primary Land Users Group (PLUG) representing a cross-section of forestry, dairy, horticulture and dry-stock land-users has called out the Green Party, asking how they can reconcile their desire for legal cannabis with the negative environmental ...
Latest from the Beehive Readers are increasingly being introduced to Te Reo by a government which eschews prosaic names that simply and functionally reflect an agency’ purpose – such as Ministry of Forestry. Consistent with the discarding of plain English, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has opened a Multi-Disciplinary Family Harm ...
Mau Whenua statement on Nicky Hager Investigative Report - The long, sorry saga of Shelly Bay – Published Saturday 4th of July 2020 Hirini Jenkins-Mepham Chair of the Mau Whenua group opposing Port Nicholson Block Trustees land sales said “Nicky ...
Forest & Bird welcomes a new sustainable vision for the primary sector, but says it needs to be backed up with strong rules, meaningful support, and a change of attitude from industry laggards. The Government has released a report outlining ...
Rather than MPs rushing to regulate vaping in the last few days of this Parliamentary term, the bill’s many complexities should be debated after the General Election, says Nancy Loucas, co-director of Aotearoa Vapers Community Advocacy (AVCA). Parliament ...
The Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand will share parts 1 and 2 of the submission we presented to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch Mosque Attacks. The aim is to ensure New Zealand is fully informed about the efforts IWCNZ took prior ...
Irrigation New Zealand is greatly encouraged by the fact that the Government has today recognised the “transformational opportunity” water storage provides for New Zealand as part of our post-Covid economic recovery. Water storage was acknowledged ...
The Taxpayers’ Union cannot believe that New Zealand First is importing foreign political consultants, presumably because no New Zealanders are suitable, or perhaps willing, for NZ First campaign roles. Union spokesperson Jordan Williams says: “Winston ...
Retailers upset by the Government’s blinkered restrictions on vaping products say they feel shut out and ignored given the outcome of the select committee process. New Zealand Association of Convenience Stores (NZACS) Executive Director, Dave Hooker, ...
The MakeItLegal campaign has today welcomed the website on cannabis legalisation from the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor. “It is essential that people have reliable and factual information to help them decide how to vote in the cannabis ...
Responding to National MP Nicola Willis’s statement that National was wrong to sell so much state housing, New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says: “What a weak capitulation to left-wing ideology.” “Selling a state house ...
The Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand are sharing parts 1 and 2 of the submission we presented to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch Mosque Attacks. The aim is to ensure New Zealand is fully informed about the efforts IWCNZ took prior ...
An interesting tale of international diplomacy has emerged over NZ’s decision to turn next year’s round of APEC meetings – including the leaders’ summit – into a virtual event. NZ had to fight off a determined bid by the 2020 host, Malaysia, which hoped it could have its hosting rights ...
Members of New Zealand’s Indian community rallied in Auckland on Sunday to raise awareness about threats to their homeland’s democracy from the rise of right-wing Hindu nationalism. As the world’s second-most populous nation grapples with a burgeoning pandemic and deepening political and social division, about 25 protesters gathered in Auckland’s Aotea ...
CEAC applauds professor Mike Joy as NZ’s leading environmental ecologists tireless efforts to enlighten ‘successive Governments’ over the pollution of our waterways and promoting best practice paths of cleaning up of our waterways over successive ...
Almost 170 years ago, Māori political processes were interrupted and displaced by a new, enforced electoral system. Researcher Jo Waitoa dispels the myth that voter turnout and political participation are the same thing. Read more of the The Spinoff’s Election 2020 coverage here.Māori political participation has a long and enduring tradition ...
After previously stonewalling inquiries on the matter, Leave.EU ‘bad boy’ Arron Banks has told a UK newspaper he is sending a team to New Zealand to work on Winston Peters’ NZ First campaign. Justin Giovannetti reports. New Zealand First has hired a crew of political operators from one of the most ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Campbell, Senior research fellow and ARC Future Fellow, Monash University Lithium is used in everything from medication to mobile phone batteries, but where does it come from? We know it is mined here on Earth, but where it is created in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janak Rogers, Associate Lecturer, Broadcast Journalism, RMIT University The case for a more diverse and representative media should be clear by now – it’s been made time and time again. But it’s instructive to take stock every now and then. Over the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Lee, Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne) and Director at 360Edge, Curtin University The “hard lockdown” of nine public housing towers in Melbourne has no doubt brought an array of challenges for the thousands of residents. For people who ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ryan R. Witt, Conjoint Lecturer | School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle This article is a preview from Flora, Fauna, Fire, a multimedia project launching on Monday July 13. The project tracks the recovery of Australia’s native plants and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Turney, Professor of Earth Science and Climate Change, Director of the Changing Earth Research Centre and the Chronos 14Carbon-Cycle Facility at UNSW, and Node Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, UNSW Evidence of minute amounts ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Isaac Gross, Lecturer in Economics, Monash University Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has spent billions trying to save us from recession. The winding down of JobKeeper scheduled for September means he’ll have to spend billions more. Many of the stimulus measures talked about are ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Hassan, Professor, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne Spoiler alert: this story details how The War of the Worlds ends. The latest screen adaption of H. G. Wells’ 1898 modern masterwork The War of the Worlds will hit our ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level one – read about what that means here. For official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is made possible thanks to donations from Spinoff Members. To support this ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Problems looming for temporary visa holders, state house waiting list balloons again, and US ban could hit NZ seafood exports.There are some real problems looming for temporary visa holders and their employers, with thousands set to expire all once, reports Nona ...
Publisher Stuff is turning its back on Facebook. Anna Rawhiti-Connell explains why, and how that might affect readers In a bold move, one of our biggest media companies announced on Monday it will cease all activity on Facebook and Instagram for an unspecified time. Stuff’s action follows in the wake ...
A call by Peter Gluckman, Helen Clark and Rob Fyfe for a 'conversation' on opening our border lacks serious economic analysis and ignores real risks to New Zealanders, writes Geoff Bertram From the start of the coronavirus pandemic there has been a steady drumbeat of demands from tourism and other ...
Cat MacLennan argues there's scanty evidence for a decision to rule footage of a sharemilker beating cows with a metal pole inadmissible on the grounds it would encourage more undercover filming The judge in the cow cruelty case of Ministry for Primary Industries v Luke ruled that hidden camera film footage ...
I’m one of many applauding the Government’s decision to prescribe the teaching of New Zealand history in our schools. But wait – prescription – isn’t that anathema to the Ministry of Education? We now have a localised curriculum, with the national document giving guidelines only. It’s up to schools to ...
An author finds historical parallels with the dog-whistling comments made by Clutha-Southland MP Hamish Walker. The recent race-based comments by the Clutha-Southland MP Hamish Walker have been described as “disgraceful, scaremongering and racist”. But I found them fascinatingly familiar. My wife Jenny and I, both Otago-born teachers, lived in Central ...
A new port report before Cabinet is a U-turn on the last one, which recommended Auckland's port be moved to Northland Moves to shift Auckland's port from the CBD to Northland have ground to a halt on the back of a new report before Cabinet that suggests Manukau Harbour is a better option. ...
Sarah Cowley Ross sits down with Mary Thompson, one of New Zealand's great sports volunteers, who's given much of her life to netball. Mary Thompson clearly remembers the conversation with Dame Lois Muir. It was during Thompson’s stint as president of Bay of Plenty Netball, and two candidates had applied to ...
Matt Bartlett explains why Facebook should come to see political advertising and its challenges in the same way as Twitter Even before Covid-19 prevented most of us from leaving our homes, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter had become society’s main public square. We gather online in Facebook and ...
In quitting the social media giant, Stuff has taken a risk. But the gamble is not as big as it may seem, writes Hal Crawford.Ceasing all activity on Facebook is a bold move for a news publisher, and I’m not surprised that it has come from the company now owned ...
Bullying behaviour is embedded in institutions across our country, and parliament is no exception. But it can be different, writes Jess Berentson-Shaw.Every now and then I find myself imagining what it would look like if our political system was built around the sorts of ideals most of us deeply aspire ...
Clare Curran’s interview has resurfaced concerns about the toxic nature of parliamentary politics. But while politics shouldn’t be toxic, or misogynistic, or cruel, for the system to be work, nor should it be nice, writes Danyl Mclauchlan.Two high-profile MPs are leaving parliament at the end of this term: National’s Paula ...
Our economy's taking a hit, our wallets are thinner - and this pandemic has also changed our direction of travel when it comes to spending. Covid-19 may have felt like a death sentence for some businesses but it hasn’t all been bad news. Today The Detail looks at how ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Scott Morrison has repeatedly and vociferously championed keeping state borders open. But on Monday, Morrison was forced to change course, agreeing, in a hook up with premiers Daniel Andrews and Gladys Berejiklian that the Victorian-NSW ...
Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk Papua New Guinea’s police and courts must work closely with media for transparency to inform the public on the daily investigation and court processes taken over the death of young mother Jenelyn Kennedy late last month, a men’s gender justice advocate says. Man Up group representative ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Esterman, Professor of Biostatistics, University of South Australia Victoria recorded its largest daily increase of 127 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, 16 more than the previous peak of 111 cases on March 28. As I recently wrote, there’s no formal definition ...
After months of delays, the man responsible for murdering 51 people in a Christchurch mosque will finally be sentenced next month. Law professor Kris Gledhill explains how the sentencing will likely unfold. On the very day New Zealand entered Covid-19 lockdown, the man arrested for the Christchurch mosque terror attacks admitted ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathan Kettlewell, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Economics Discipline Group, University of Technology Sydney We live in a culture that values “experiences”. These are often promoted in the media, and by those selling them, as vital to enhancing our well-being. We all know ...
Hidden camera footage showing cows being beaten with a steel pipe was deemed unlawful in court partially on the grounds it would encourage undercover filming in the future A Northland contract milker caught on hidden camera beating cows with a steel pipe has had five charges against him dropped after a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jon Iredell, Professor, Medicine and Microbiology (conjoint), University of Sydney The NSW-Victorian border will be closed as of midnight Tuesday this week, the NSW and Victorian premiers have announced, in an effort to limit the spread of COVID-19. The announcement comes amid ...
Keagan Carr Fransch reviews I May Destroy You, the acclaimed new show from British writer-director-actress Michaela Coel. The following includes discussion of rape, sexual assault, sexual violence, drug-facilitated sexual assault, and PTSD.Since the release of her comedy Chewing Gum in 2015, Michaela Coel has been a recurrent name on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Burridge, Lecturer in Human Geography, Macquarie University Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has announced the border between his state and NSW will close after 11:59pm on Tuesday to prevent the coronavirus outbreak in Melbourne from spreading further. It will be the first ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jim Salinger, Honorary Associate, Tasmanian Institute for Agriculture, University of Tasmania A major global update based on data from more than 36,000 weather stations around the world confirms that, as the planet continues to warm, extreme weather events such as heatwaves and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trevor Thornton, Lecturer, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University The federal government today announced A$190 million in funding for new recycling infrastructure, as it seeks to divert more than ten million tonnes of waste from landfill and create 10,000 jobs. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Graeme Dunk, PhD Candidate, Australian National University Amid fanfare last week at the start of the new financial year the government promised to invest A$270 billion over a decade to upgrade the defence force. It said a side benefit would be a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sonya Teich, Lecturer in Design, Visual Effects Projects, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington When Star Wars was awarded the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1978 it marked the first time the visual component of effects was differentiated ...
The Forest Owners Association says the MBIE announcement of ‘Building for Climate Change’ will mean more timber is used in New Zealand construction. FOA President Phil Taylor says he’s been waiting three years for the government to announce a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Kelly, Research Fellow, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University This week, the Victorian government unilaterally placed the residents of nine public housing towers in inner Melbourne under “hard lockdown” due to the “explosive potential” of increasing COVID-19 cases. The lockdown requires ...
Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk Thirty five years ago this week in another life Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie was an environmental journalist on board the original Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace flagship that was bombed by French secret agents on 10 July 1985. He was on board for almost ...
Head of the inquiry Michael Heron QC will have the power to require the production of documents, summon witnesses and question parties under oath if necessary. ...
State Services Commissioner Peter Hughes has today announced the details of an investigation into the breach of sensitive personal information last week. The Commissioner said the Minister of State Services, the Hon Chris Hipkins, had asked him to undertake ...
More than 3400 primary health care nurses and medical receptionists/administrators across more than 500 practices and accident and medical centres will stop work for two hours nationwide on Thursday 23 July after mediation to settle their multi-employer ...
Open Mike 12/12/2018 
In 1987, as a British Labour MP, I was elected to the Shadow Cabinet by my colleagues and was asked by the party leader to direct Labour’s campaign in the general election of that year. The election was to take place at the height of Mrs Thatcher’s dominance and we ...57 mins ago
1 hour ago
If the government has not lined up behind a "Yes" vote in this year's cannabis referendum the way some reformers would have liked, one entirely laudable thing it did do was commission some science around the public's choice.That science landed today, in the form of the report from an expert ...1 hour ago
Almost two years ago, the government announced that it might take a look at OIA reform. After an attempt to do it in secret, they finally asked for public submissions, then summarised them for the Minister, who... sat on them for nine months. But today, after an almost two year ...4 hours ago
Associate Professor Sara Walton At the heart of the discussion on opening up our borders is the dichotomy of health and the economy – both of which are actually intertwined, like many things with our economy, as this epidemic has shown. If we think about our country as a system, ...6 hours ago
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Josh Gabbatiss This year will see the largest ever drop globally in both investment and consumer spending on energy as the coronavirus pandemic hits every major sector, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The crisis is accelerating the shutdown of older fossil-fuelled ...14 hours ago
...18 hours ago
Today’s content Labour Party Thomas Manch (Stuff): It might be ‘team’ Labour, but there’s little doubt about who’s the skipper, and ‘saviour’ Audrey Young (Herald): No ordinary Labour speech by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (paywalled) Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): Ardern asks NZ to move her towards a second term Richard Harman (Politik): Labour’s red glow Justin ...1 day ago
Is the consequence of the Simpson Report proposals for restructuring the health system poorer accountability to people? When in doubt, centralise‘ has been a persistent theme in New Zealand public policy throughout our history. The current government is no exception. Here are some examples. - The regional polytechs have been ...4 days ago
4 days ago
Unfortunately, due to a medical emergency, I have landed in hospital so am not able to do a current update on the NZ blog statistics. Let’s hope I can get back to this in good time. ...5 days ago
When the Christchurch murderer pleaded guilty to 51 counts of murder and a number of other violent assault charges a few months ago, he effectively closed the door on what the public will know about the lead up to and commission of the event. His plea means that no evidence ...1 week ago
Daphna Whitmore The Philippines is enduring one of the longest lockdowns in the world. For President Duterte the lockdown provides an opportunity to garner more powers and to push through a brazen assault on human rights. A new law called the Anti-Terror Bill has been passed under urgency and it ...1 week ago
There really is not much about Paula Bennett concerning her career trajectory, the policies she promoted, and most importantly, the socio-economic effect this had upon New Zealand (and particularly the most vulnerable in this, our oft-cited “egalitarian” society of this country) that can be said now that hasn’t already been ...1 week ago
Helloy… My name is Todd Muller and I am the leader of the National Party of New Zealand. Many people come up to me on the street and ask me who I am. I’m often walking through Tauranga, or in a mall in suburban Auckland, or maybe even a farmers’ ...1 week ago
. . Plague town? There are two things right now in Aotearoa New Zealand that are guaranteed to piss people off. Firstly, it’s National playing silly-bugger politics with the covid-19 pandemic. This cost Simon Bridges his job as National’s Leader. Lately, Michael Woodhouse has been playing fast and loose with ...1 week ago
Tertiary fees in New Zealand versus Australia: Fees Are Important, but not as Important as Financing In Australia, the Education Minister Dan Tehan has proposed an overhaul of the existing higher education funding system to offer 39,000 additional study places by 2023 and 100,000 by 2030. The proposal has been ...1 week ago
We have been assailed by Fox News-style headlines, lurid stories of “a breach!”. An almost nuclear level disaster on the horizon scream, “Fiasco!” here, “Hero to Zero!” there… Oh quick, panic everyone! This has fueled an unbelievably stupid environment of panic among some, and spurred useless, counterproductive political ...2 weeks ago
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand First leader Winston Peters today scoffed at suggestions that a team of six political operatives have been dispatched to New Zealand to assist his campaign. ‘As President Ronald Reagan once said, ‘there they go again.’ ‘The clickbait journos can’t ...36 mins ago
New Zealanders deserve healthy rivers and lakes that are safe to swim in - but they have been getting worse for decades. That's why, with our latest announcement, we're investing in projects that will help clean up our rivers and lakes and restore them to health, within a generation. ...2 days ago
The Green Party has opposed the COVID-19 Recovery Fast-track Consenting Bill which shortcuts normal consenting processes under the Resource Management Act (RMA), reduces public participation and narrows environmental considerations. ...5 days ago
The Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Poto Williams, is seeking feedback on a proposal to better enable the development and operation of commercial film and video facilities in Christchurch. The Proposal, developed by Regenerate Christchurch in response to a request from Christchurch City Council, asks that powers under section ...2 hours ago
Far from becoming a more centrist, mainstream force, the Greens have instead come up with a "bonkers" tax policy, says Oliver Hartwich ...20 mins ago
Air New Zealand are temporarily suspending new international bookings to New Zealand to ensure that all arrivals can be accommodated in a managed isolation or quarantine facility. But as more countries open their borders to foreigners, including Kiwis, ...20 mins ago
The government is extending temporary work visas by six months, Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway has announced. ...33 mins ago
After three decades in existence, Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust has launched its own gallery on Auckland’s Karangahape Road.The first thing that hits you entering Tautai Gallery’s inaugural exhibition, Moana Legacy, is the range of works on show. On one huge wall is a mural of black humanoid crocodiles on ...60 mins ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sue McIntyre, Honorary Professor, Australian National University Last week we learned woody vegetation in New South Wales is being cleared at more than double the rate of the previous decade – and agriculture was responsible for more than half the destruction. Farming ...1 hour ago
Latest from the Beehive Readers are increasingly being introduced to Te Reo by a government which eschews prosaic names that simply and functionally reflect an agency’ purpose – such as Ministry of Forestry. Consistent with the discarding of plain English, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has opened a Multi-Disciplinary Family Harm ...2 hours ago
Metlifecare and Swedish private equity bidder return to negotiation table to consider lower bid, but chairman Kim Ellis still under pressure to go ...8 hours ago
Publisher Stuff is turning its back on Facebook. Anna Rawhiti-Connell explains why, and how that might affect readers In a bold move, one of our biggest media companies announced on Monday it will cease all activity on Facebook and Instagram for an unspecified time. Stuff’s action follows in the wake ...9 hours ago
Calls for a system overhaul grow, as ECE teachers reveal a system in crisis and a workforce at breaking point. ...10 hours ago
A call by Peter Gluckman, Helen Clark and Rob Fyfe for a 'conversation' on opening our border lacks serious economic analysis and ignores real risks to New Zealanders, writes Geoff Bertram From the start of the coronavirus pandemic there has been a steady drumbeat of demands from tourism and other ...10 hours ago
Cat MacLennan argues there's scanty evidence for a decision to rule footage of a sharemilker beating cows with a metal pole inadmissible on the grounds it would encourage more undercover filming The judge in the cow cruelty case of Ministry for Primary Industries v Luke ruled that hidden camera film footage ...10 hours ago
I’m one of many applauding the Government’s decision to prescribe the teaching of New Zealand history in our schools. But wait – prescription – isn’t that anathema to the Ministry of Education? We now have a localised curriculum, with the national document giving guidelines only. It’s up to schools to ...10 hours ago
An author finds historical parallels with the dog-whistling comments made by Clutha-Southland MP Hamish Walker. The recent race-based comments by the Clutha-Southland MP Hamish Walker have been described as “disgraceful, scaremongering and racist”. But I found them fascinatingly familiar. My wife Jenny and I, both Otago-born teachers, lived in Central ...10 hours ago
A new port report before Cabinet is a U-turn on the last one, which recommended Auckland's port be moved to Northland Moves to shift Auckland's port from the CBD to Northland have ground to a halt on the back of a new report before Cabinet that suggests Manukau Harbour is a better option. ...10 hours ago
Sarah Cowley Ross sits down with Mary Thompson, one of New Zealand's great sports volunteers, who's given much of her life to netball. Mary Thompson clearly remembers the conversation with Dame Lois Muir. It was during Thompson’s stint as president of Bay of Plenty Netball, and two candidates had applied to ...10 hours ago
Matt Bartlett explains why Facebook should come to see political advertising and its challenges in the same way as Twitter Even before Covid-19 prevented most of us from leaving our homes, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter had become society’s main public square. We gather online in Facebook and ...10 hours ago
Our economy's taking a hit, our wallets are thinner - and this pandemic has also changed our direction of travel when it comes to spending. Covid-19 may have felt like a death sentence for some businesses but it hasn’t all been bad news. Today The Detail looks at how ...11 hours ago
Hidden camera footage showing cows being beaten with a steel pipe was deemed unlawful in court partially on the grounds it would encourage undercover filming in the future A Northland contract milker caught on hidden camera beating cows with a steel pipe has had five charges against him dropped after a ...22 hours ago
.
Scrutinizing Jane Clifton’s claims as an exemplar of the current Media Orthodoxy
In which i take serious issue with key claims made by Jane Clifton (Politics column in the latest edition of the Listener ‘For Whom the Polls Tell’ December 15 2018) and, by extension, with an entirely fallacious Media consensus on National’s supposedly “remarkable” Poll ratings this year:
I do wish senior journalists would cease:
(a) mindlessly regurgitating young David Farrar
(b) cheerfully & unashamedly interviewing their own typewriters
I always enjoy your poll post swordfish.
Missed last nights one so thanks for the link.
+1 Thanks Swordfish you do incredible work re the polls and stat’s etc etc. Very much appreciated by many.
Me too thanks swordfish. Actually I think that your research is far more deserving of words like “amazing, phenomenal, herculean, …”
Specially note that the Right is National without other Right partners except Seymour.
Jane Clifton? Vacuousness personified.
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/01/there-isnt-much-profundity-coming-from.html
[OK, Morrissey. Enough pointless and unwarranted attacks on women in the media. Take a week off and have a good think about how to critique media without resorting to misogyny. Back next Thursday. TRP]
It’s a hard row sometimes when trying to fight curmudgeonhood @ Morry eh?
In case you hadn’t noticed – it is a new era
And especially when confronted by complete fucking muppetry by those anxious to maintain their veneer and what they perceive is their social status , and more especially when they’re operating within a bubble (just as you are – and me for that matter).
Try and catch my idol (Kim) this Saturday coming, while you’re having a lay down – she might even read out some Moz feedback.
In the meantime, watch a fashion show like parliament (you’ll need to watch rather than just listen) and learn to laugh – there’s enough gNat/Act material in there for a comedy TV series if you could get NuZull on Ear funding
Luv it.
I am the samish age as David Farrar and it’s nice to be thought of as young.
Farrar is just a child to me and still full of wilful childish habits. One day…
Everybody said this would happen. Yet Jacinda said she hoped it wouldn’t.
Seems everyone except Jacinda was right.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2018/12/exclusive-letting-fee-ban-could-make-renting-more-expensive.html
It was so bloody obvious.
Jacinda – making it harder and more expensive for renters.
At least renters don’t have to find a big lump sum up front .
So more expensive na it’s not.
It’s piss poor financial understanding like yours that people get into financial trouble with “no payment deals” and the like.
Let me try and help you,,,,
You don’t have to pay up front (you are right there).
But you pay it off over a year with higher rents.
But at the end of the year the rents don’t go down. So you keep paying more.
Stay 18 months and you have paid 50% extra.
Stay 2 years and you have paid double.
That’s not a good deal despite not paying up front.
It’s was obvious – but seems it fools some people
Yes, I agree. It is a tenant’s letting fee repayment plan with no end date.
Property Managers will retain the first week’s rent and after the add-on to the rent has covered the proxy letting fee the benefit will revert to the owner.
Property managers are going to have to present an accompanying benefit to owners when they advise them: “We’re keeping the first week’s rent.”
What’s your solution James to the excessive rents people are paying? Or do you think that is ok?
“Excessive rents” are merely a reflection of what a house is worth.
Just say I owned a house worth 600k, 500k of that was the mortgage.
I’d have to charge at least $480 dollars a week to just cover the interest payments on the mortgage
Add on to of that rates, insurance, maintenance, letting fees, a bit of profit etc and you can see why rent is so high.
For rents to come down the price of housing needs to fall, unfortunately, Kiwi Buy has stopped that, because Tywford is now underwriting property developers by buying their developments he’s created an artificial price point in the market.
That’s it, while Kiwi buy exists in its current form, this is as cheap as it gets
The solution is to lower the cost of land, the cost of materials, the cost of labour and the cost of compliance.
It’s your choice to own a rental with just 17% equity.
Ok, using the current LVR of 35% you’d still need of a 400k loan to buy a 600,000k home.
Still around $420 a week just for interest.
For Auckland and Queenstown those prices are cheap but as you point out if a new landlord is in property for profit it only makes sense if there is a decent capital gain existing landlords will be questioning the returns on capital especially if prices start falling. That’s why most landlords like National doing nothing or very little to solve housing shortage. It creates a speculative bubble.
It is a landlords choice Muttonbird to own a rental, and my guess is that less and less people will want to own one (in the 1990’s it was encouraged by government because they told everybody that NZ could not afford pensions in the future and so they should start saving now and that encouraged the drive of ‘mums and dads’ owning rentals and the surplus of them which led to a decent supply and lower rents).
Now the message from government is not to own a rental, and everyone should be an owner occupier, so a certain percentage of landlords will sell up and the government is not exactly adding shit loads of state houses or new rentals but going for the sales models…. this is because they believe in trickle down, aka if they increase supply then this will trickle down into lower rents… but again increasing supply is a waste of time if your demand is also increasing through immigration or gold bricks investors who don’t necessarily have to rent the property.
To stem the gold bricks they will have to bring in more laws about empty houses and then start to police the rentals if they are empty or not, so it’s getting more and more complicated for everyone, when government could do some quick easy fixes, see 2.2.2.2.1.2 at little cost which would do a lot more to help straight away as well as build houses just for state house renting while allowing the market to do the more middle class to luxury side which they are already preferring to do anyway.
I also thing that anybody owning over 5 houses/land or having shares in a company with houses/land over 5 titles should be taxed a bit more, aka 1/2 percent of their worth, etc. This will encourage people not to ‘hog’ houses and those that do are rightly identified as a land business and should pay a tax on it to stem housing shortages or land banking.
Likewise a stamp duty on houses, assets and land over 5 million dollars.
This is much fairer and more profitable than capital gains and will do the same thing but on steroids while not effecting the middle class at all. In fact will lower prices as people don’t hog assets.
Again if NZ and the world bought in laws to challenge the super rich and not the middle to upper class that people aspire to, then governments would be much more popular and inequality would diminish as the super rich were taxed more on land/asset banking assets.
@BM, If we look at what you want historically when have we ever had over decades the cost of land going down? (pretty much never unless something is wrong with it) the cost of materials going down (hardly ever and generally for the same reason aka some is wrong with it (asbestos) or it is advanced by something newer and better, the cost of labour traditionally also does not fall (although historically in line with expenses it has) and the cost of compliance, (judging by Auckland council increasing their consent costs and investing ratepayers money into America’s cup and stadiums etc, not likely to come down, new scam is to make the consumers pay for it over decades).
So my take home of that is, new tech might help[ make buildings cheaper, labour has already fallen in real terms but due to the amount of subcontractors we are actually paying a fortune over multiple companies for poor skills and the middle men are making a significant profit, so that needs to change back to the old model of one contractor one building, and until the councils are forced to go back to their knitting and spend the rates on running council services and not being amateur investors and charities for their pet projects, and also get much better skilled and highly trained building inspectors and planners, then compliance costs will not go down.
What they can change, is incomes going up. Which is why we have a huge problem at present aka the cost of living is out of kilter with many people’s incomes.
P>S> When the Natz forced through the zoning changes to allow much greater density, guess what, land prices went through the roof. So whatever great ideas these politicians are having. please take a seat and don’t fiddle.
The best thing for government to do, is to build shit loads of small but well built state houses themselves with no middlemen and then rent them out with reduced rents which over time will be cash positive. Leave the private sector alone. Any help has so far done the opposite of it’s supposed intentions.
They could over night solve a lot of the affordable housing crisis, by allowing people to convert existing multiple level houses into a flat by allowing a kitchen to make a granny flat. Then it only costs someone about $10k to create another unit, and they are then happy with a small rent of a few hundred dollars which is what many people can only afford these days and is now in Auckland the cost of a single room.
If more people were renting state houses, there are no letting fees.
James, one can’t solely blame the PM for the greed of some landlords and letting agencies.
We had an agency look after the property in Welly, that didn’t last long, they were USELESS especially considering what they charged us.
That was Quinovic, back in 2002.
Did you read the link ?
We can blame Jacinda for ignoring all the advise and common sense and progressing on “hope” despite everyone saying she was wrong.
And wouldn’t you know it – looks like she was wrong and renters are worse off for it.
Sure did read it.
Newshub has obtained a letter from a rental agency urging landlords to raise rents by $10 a week to cover the cost
Did you that….Some rental agencies exploit both tenants and landlords.
Anyways I see that judith is coming out against this move by the government. So naturally you will be on her side no matter what. Your loyalty is endearing.
It’s going to take many years to turn around the housing crisis that got sooo much worse under national who did nothing to try and address it
I find it weird that letting agencies have escaped with no regulation on them like every other body has in this country. Maybe part of our renting woes, also stems from the idea that any one seems to be able to set up shop as a letting agent, and when things go wrong the landlord is the one in the firing line who probably had no clue what was going on? Real Estate agents have a body you can complain to, whereas nothing for letting agents if they are in breach of their duty or acting illegally very hard to quickly hold them to account and they are in a position of power and holding keys to people’s houses…
Letting agents also have substantial amounts of money going through their books and often the landlords are quite elderly and have no clue what is going on. If there are discrepancies then it goes to highly expensive court proceedings… the meth tests are a case where hundreds of thousands of dollars were at the mercy of letting agents views on meth contamination or not and had the power to call in on any ‘private’ companies. But even day to day, the amount of rents going through their books is high and the agents are not exactly trained or vetted very well. All that money is a temptation.
These are a lot of frauds being prosecuted from real estate, so highly likely that similar fraud is going on for letting agents but they are just not being caught or it is too much money and effort to prosecute the letting fraudsters because there is not clear pathway to do it.
I can’t see that this will make a big difference. There will be no cost to recoup until a new tenant is needed but it is commonplace to review the rent anyway when re-renting a property, and most landlords will already set this at what they think the market can deliver.
Are you suggesting that property managers are currently failing to look after their clients’ interests by collaborating in setting rents at lower than what the market will bear?
Damn. That’s $80 earned by James from 8 replies.
It’s worth it for the opportunity to show up those that usually claim *the market sets the price* as just shilling for rich people when they claim landlords will put up rents because one of their costs has just gone up.
@ Andre, it is pretty much a given that certain unscrupulous agents were under renting properties to get the tenants in and get their letting fee, then increasing the rents within 6 months of the tenants paying the letting fees…
@ Andre, 2.4, Yes some agents defiantly are because say you have a $500 p/w house to rent. The rental agent only gets about 7% of that aka $35 p/w so the big money of $500 + GST is nice to get as an xtra bonus. Even better if there is a dispute at the tenancy tribunal then the landlord pays the letting agent to attend. A percentage is added to repairs also. So when places are relet or there are problems the letting agents get extra fees.
The fact is, James, letting fees were just too much of a burden for poor people to pay. Especially when it is the policy of WINZ not to pay letting fees.
Initially, yes but WINZ have advanced complete move-in monies including letting fees for some years. Average Joe tax payer getting it in the neck again. No assistance for his letting fee and his taxes pay the letting fees for those that qualify for Govt assistance.
I think you’ll find those advances have to be paid back, David. They are loans, not grants.
This from the Awhina site:
Bond Grant
WINZ can make a non-recoverable (you don’t have to pay it back) contribution to your bond or rent in advance. They’ll look at how much your bond or rent in advance is and you’ll need to show you can afford the rent payments in the future. There are income or cash asset limits placed on who can qualify for bond grants.
Letting fees assistance
Sometimes rental agencies will charge a ‘letting fee’ for securing a place to live. If you are having trouble paying this letting fee you can apply to Work and Income for assistance. You don’t need to be receiving a benefit or pension to apply for financial assistance up to the cost of one week’s rent, plus GST. You can only use letting fees assistance once a year, but it doesn’t need to be paid back. There are income or cash asset limits on who can qualify for letting fees assistance.
Rent in Advance
Rent in Advance is a non-recoverable (you don’t have to pay it back) payment towards your rent if your needs qualify you. There are income or cash asset limits on who can qualify for Rent in Advance.
http://www.awhina.net.nz/steps-to-housing/what-work-and-income-offer/
Bwahahaha
rental agency urges landlords to raise rents above market rates in order to keep income stream.
The landlords who do not follow this “urge” will find their places easier to rent.
I thought you liked market forces?
The article you link to has “could” in the title and it contains “maybe”‘s and “seemingly” etc . There is no proof that rents have gone up.
“Everyone” includes me. I didn’t say rents would go up.
Rents may go up for many reasons. They may come down! I bet you won’t give praise to Jacinda if that happens. You’ll say it was due to other factors. It will be hard to tell if this change gets passed on to renters or not. Letting hopefully doesn’t happen once a year as is implied by $10 per week suggested.
I’m guessing some regions rents won’t go up. So increases (if any happen) will be due to other factors…
It is so Gross – beyond Measure
There in the Jail House this morning is the Kiwi Murderer of a young Woman waiting for his breakfast – as if he deserved it. He will await for three comfortable meals each day.
While his snappy Lawyer will be wiggling and manipulating reasons and excuses to smother the crime, and explain the Dreadful Tragedy away. For the Lawyer and the Murderer will blame anything and anybody but themselves in the so called “fair trial”.
It is said that most women in NZ do not report the Grim Rape they suffer, because the lugubrious Barrister and his companions will destroy what is left of her self esteem. Rape is rampant here. Absolutely Rampant.
The Lawyer Brutes will pat themselves on the back for having persuaded Judge and Jury that the raped woman “had it coming to her”. There will be celebrations in Chambers later, over their legal brilliance – and discussions about how pretty the young woman was.
You don’t believe me ? Ask the women in Chambers – throughout New Zealand !. Sex is the PAVLOVA of NZ Lawyers. We do not realise that the real Whores are numerous predator kiwi men – in all sectors. We never face up to it.
We must not allow the snappy smart Lawyer to divert and tarnish the Course of Justice this time. They have done that far too often – over so many days and years and decades
Grace – in her lasting silence – will draw the true graphic of every cowardly evil kiwi male, for now and for decades, and centuries to come. She has done so much for Kiwi Women. So so much. Grace has displayed our Male Evil.
I am horrified and disgusted that Epilepsy New Zealand has asked Bill English (yes, that one) to become their patron, and that he accepted. Apparently they feel his “mana” will help in raising their profile.
Many people with epilepsy by necessity are on benefits. English’s views on this subject are a matter of record as are what the Nats did to us for 9 years, and the deliberate suffering his Government inflicted on people with disabilities, alongside the cuts to health services funding; this guy is directly complicit in doing a great deal of harm to disabled people in NZ. There is no reason to believe that, just because he is no longer an MP his ideology has changed one iota.
So the national organisation who as part of their brief are suppose to advocate for people with epilepsy approach an ex-PM with a track record of openly despising the disabled as non-productive economic units (aka lowest form of life and drain on the hard working tax payer) and offer him the patronage. Brilliant.
Don’t forget English’s hand in the slashing of reigonal health services in the 1990’s.
English makes caring noises. Like the bird call on Radionz. He also makes a big deal of how Catholic he is, and might be expected to have some moral concern for needy people. Epilepsy NZ are desperate for some action and gone to the heart of the National Party. I hope they have found one there that is not diseased beyond recovery.
@grey, I’m wondering if someone high up was star struck by the ‘Knight of the Realm’ bit? Or this being NZ, more than likely knows him personally hence the approach.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the roles of ex-MPs/PMs on boards etc. Boards are one thing- often the business/charity corresponds quite well with the idelogical leanings of the ex-politician. We’re not surprised seeing Key on the ANZ board, I’d have no problem with ex-Green MPs on conservation-related charity boards.
But in a situation like this political neutrality is called for, and necessary. And the Patron’s past actions have to be scrutinised for suitablity. A few years back the ENZ patron was the sitting Governor General, which was perfectly reasonable. Our version of Royal patronage, but whatever your views there, politically neutral.
@greywarshark, these days the Natz are more interested in receiving donations than making them so not sure Bill will generate much charity.
I suspect he’s a ‘the poor will always be with us’ catholic.
I’m sure that now he’s no longer relevant he will be tireless in improving the lives of people with disabilities and chronic conditions. 🙄
And marching in anti-abortion protests.
@ Kay, the start to his Knighthood maybe, since I’m not sure he has ever done anything charitable before, maybe he needs to have something charitable on his CV to justify the “honour”?
English has appeared to be on the charitable line to RWs with his talk of social investment and a new way of doing welfare. He and his wife seem hard-line Catholic and I think against abortion which goes with that. It suits such people to be engaged with charities that are not connected with behaviour not validated by their value models, drugs, sex, weaknesses of the human condition as they see them. So epilepsy, the blind are likely outlets for any kind concerns they have.
probably right, greywarshark, God made them an epileptic or blind so they are ok and not sinners like others needing charity. sarcasm.
“…an ex-PM with a track record of openly despising the disabled as non-productive economic units (aka lowest form of life and drain on the hard working tax payer) and offer him the patronage.”
“As examples he cites work being done at Housing New Zealand and specifically at the Ministry of Social Development by the welfare working advisory group looking at the big driver of future costs: long-term invalids and sickness beneficiaries, a group he describes as “this big hard lump of long-term waste of human potential”.
English says the MSD is not set up to deal with them.
Rather, it is set up to deal with “the easy stuff” – the unemployment and the domestic purposes benefits.
“They do the easy stuff and they do it very well, but they don’t worry about these guys. If they were ACC customers, we would be spending a lot of money on trying to move them. ”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10644993
ACC ‘moved’ hundreds, perhaps thousands of clients from its books and dumped them onto Social Development and Health.
And then what happens to those who can’t be ‘cured’, ‘fixed’, ‘rehabilitated’????
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/fact/the_holocaust_and_disabled_people_faq_frequently_asked_questions.shtml
“How did the Nazis see disabled people?
The Nazis took Darwin’s ideas of natural selection, in particular the idea of survival of the fittest in the animal kingdom, and applied them to the human world and society (Darwin’s Origin of the Species had been published in 1859). It was argued that allowing disabled people to live and have children, led to the “unfit” reproducing more quickly than “the fit”. It was said that this weakened society’s ability to function efficiently, placing an unnecessary toll on non-disabled people.
The Nazis claimed that the social and economic problems that Germany experienced in the 1920s and early 1930s were due in part to the weakening of the population created by an unfair burden.”
I rest my case Rosemary.
I’m seriously considering taking this to the media to try and get this made more known (I don’t do social media). I have a reporter I’m thinking of as somewhere to start, if you have any suggestions please let me know?
I get totally why you have an issue with Bill ‘the lizard’ English being a Patron of a charity advocating for those with a health condition/disability. While he may not actually be in charge of the hen house , having him sitting atop the structure as some kind of figurehead is plain wrong. And it’s hard to put into words why.
Epilepsy New Zealand must think Bill as pulling power (oh what an image that conjures!) and have chosen him pragmatically…it gives them some credibility, authority?
In my mind there are a number of organisations and individuals who have been active in the health and disability ‘sector’ over the past 10-20 years (snouts firmly in the trough of neoliberal policy generated government funding) who should, were we actually committed to shucking off the nefarious policies and practices of the past 20 years, be consigned to the dustbin where all the enablers belong.
Happy they have been to take the government coin and pretend advocacy, while those in need of that advocacy drift further into the margins. These charities will claim that it is better to be sitting at the table with the policy makers…that compromise is required to facilitate change.
I cry bullshit to that. And you know all too well Kay that there has been no meaningful improvement for those with long term health and disability needs.
And we see no hope of any meaningful improvement in the near future as those enablers of the past decade or so still claim exclusive rights to the ears of the politicians and policy makers. (I am indulging in a little transference here as this is what seems to be happening right this minute with the review of the family care policy.)
There are some good journalists out there doing sterling work, and the likes of me who scour the net for such articles will read them. As for the wider ‘community’? I don’t know…I’m feeling a bit like a stranger in a strange land at the moment. https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/11/17/feeling-like-a-stranger-in-a-familiar-land/
“Remember when Jacinda said she was a pragmatic idealist? In Sam’s letter to Eugenie, he has an answer for that. He quotes, ‘when the law is subject to pragmatism then the firm foundations on which we set our society turn to sand’ and that ‘pragmatism and compromise are corrosive elements that most threaten the architecture of democracy’. Elsewhere online, pragmatism, it is said, ‘reflects with almost disarming candour, the spirit of the prevailing business culture’, (Max Horkheimer); ‘Pragmatism contains nothing but sophistry and illusion’, (David Hume); ‘It is the attitude of looking away from first things, principles, ‘categories’, supposed necessities, and of looking toward last things, fruits, consequences and facts’ (William James). Idealism and pragmatism are almost incompatible.”
Kirsty Johnson NZ Herald
kirsty.johnston@nzherald.co.nz
@kirsty_johnston (Twitter account)
Impressive investigative work in a number of areas including health – eg Ashley Peacock.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/author/kirsty-johnston/
Mind you Rosemary may have other views as she has had personal experience of Kirsty. Articles on Rosemary and Peter are amongst those in the above link.
Yes, Kirsty does good work and has been a constant friend on disability issues.
If I look like a reluctant participant in that piece it was because I was a reluctant participant. Not because of Kirsty, but because I felt it was more important for Peter to have his say and have centre stage, as often the voice of the person with the disability is lost. (I was also being peripherally distracted by a mate and her mate who were having problems, as homeless people, with the local council.)
It will be interesting to see if Kirsty does a follow up article if this government fails to honour its promise to repeal the Part 4 amendment to the Public Health and Disability Act and dispose of the iniquitous Funded Family Care.
Thanks for that Rosemary. And fully understand what you said re Peter needing to be centre stage. Wanted to defer to your personal experience, but I have considerable respect for Kirsty, despite her young age! (From an oldie, LOL)
Jess McAllen is also superb in the mental health area, particular for young people. But don’t think disability is her focus.
VV, thanks for the suggestion. I’ve always liked Kirsty’s work.
I haven’t been this furious about something for a very long time (which is saying a lot given how much there is to be angry about, I just don’t tend to have the energy anymore!) so am trying the outsourcing approach 🙂 Unfortunately for very good reasons I still can’t use my real name in connection to this topic publicly- active discrimination is alive and kicking in NZ and there would be serious consequences for me- so I can but try to get to get this information out by other means.
Rosemary
It sounds as if English would like to take the disabled people and churn them from one welfare management group to another so they can’t take the easy way out ‘playing the victim’. I would think that is at the base of his thinking though he would not explicitly say that. Though I think he has come close if he has actually been documented as saying things referred to in your comment.
It’s using capitalist, neo lib thinking, and the fact that he claims religion and Catholicism doesn’t make any difference because religions have been been friends with capitalism for ever. If Maori can hold on to their belief *’He Tangata, He Tangata, – the people are the core of everything – we may be able to save the nation’s soul. Otherwise it’s hard work making headway and its getting wrinkled like a raisin. But then even small and wrinkled raisins can be sweet, so we must just try and stop these moves to monetise everything. Nazis get mentioned because the Holocaust was so scary, now organ taking from unaethetised persons in China. It’s hard to cope. Hold onto that soul, it’s the meaning of life.
*This is an expression taken from a Maori proverb that ponders. He aha te mea nui o te ao, he tangata he tangata he tangata. The meaning roughly translates as What is the most important thing in the world, it is the people, the people, the people.
https://ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/handle/10523/5200
Some of the more recent comments on TS refer to the Dunedin Longitudinal Study on domestic violence, which I have unsuccessfully been trying to access online.
I have looked to the search page on the Otago University website, and the closest I can come to what seems to be an indication of higher female violence is perhaps the 1998 study – “Physical assault in New Zealand: the experience of 21 year old men and women in a community sample”.
The other studies seem to indicate otherwise: “Physical assault among 21-year-olds by partners”
Do any of the commentators who reference that study, know the name and/or have a link to an accessible copy online?
Unfortunately, in our village, the guy who didn’t ‘tune up’ his wife was considered unusual. I was a big fan of Mrs K*****, her husband came home after drinking, tried to hit her, got a black eye and a night out cold on the porch for his trouble.
The ladies used to comment how distinguished and handsome Mr K***** was. But not after that night. He was a bitch slapped schmuck.
She was my secret hero.
Bit off topic. From where/when I grew up, the real figures for domestic abuse possibly > 90%. The official figures were probably much less. Everyone was scared, nobody talked about it. The men laughed at their antics over beer.
Thanks, WeTheBleeple.
If you don’t mind, did that experience while you were young emerge at any time when you began to form relationships with partners? That is, did you have moments where you deliberately chose another way, or were you lucky enough to escape unscathed emotionally?
I’m interested in having a look at the study because it is referenced very often on discussions on gender in NZ. From the looks of it is relates to a group of 21 year olds in Dunedin all part of a longitudinal study, and would be unlikely to have a lot of the later pressures of supporting children, and accompanying money issues. Also, don’t know whether the demographic would reflect the NZ demographic in terms of income, education and ethnicity.
There have also been indications that the study referred to used the CTS (Conflict Tactics Scales). The Wikipedia page states that:
Use of CTS would count your Mrs K’s violence as equal to Mr K, without acknowledging that it was a response to previous and intended violence against her.
I would think that would be an important consideration to include when looking at patterns of violence in an effort to reduce it – valuable for both men and women looking to change societal behaviour.
I hit my first partner at age 16. I was horrified at myself. It has not repeated I sought help anger management and counsel around drinking too much. She threw the first punch, but no excuse. There is a woman down the road from me gives her man a hiding when they drink. He finally left after many years of it.
I resolved issues with men with fist fights. I learned black and white thinking so compromise was unheard of. That behavior stayed till almost my 30’s. University education was the biggest turnover in my life I reckon. It helped me to think critically, to listen, to be wrong… and the counselors there, taught me its ok to be wrong. I used to get 99% in school and get a hiding for not trying hard enough…
Very hard to talk of, it’s putting yourself up for more abuse by people who don’t understand what it’s like being trapped in a cycle of crazy. I’m aspergers, PTSD, a general clusterf*** of disastrous childhood happenings… But I pulled myself up (with help).
The victim shit stops here. I’m responsible today. I can snap at people online but that’s as violent as it gets.
My sisters all chose abusive partners. Then a string of them. We were all damaged, us, the strangers we met…
The fact women return many times to abusive partners shows just how psychologically damaging it is. To go back to that your self worth is just gone.
Terrible state of affairs deeply afflicting our nation.
It must be nigh on impossible for many men to do what I just did. Now let’s see how people react.
Any response seems inadequate to your comment, WeTheBleeple, but I do value your honesty in sharing, and think it is of immense value to have these discussions in the open. Thanks seem so trite in this case, but I’ll offer it in absence of anything better to mind, Thank you.
I have a very dear friend that was brought up in a chaotic household and community who found an alternative choice through dedicated nursing practice and service in the armed forces, but this came at a cost of relationship disconnect with family members and others in her community. Although her family members had chaotic lives and made destructive choices, they were still her family – and loved – and because of her choices she was effectively “out of the loop” and ridiculed. That is, until situations occurred that required self-sacrifice and sustained effort solutions – when she was hooked back into the fold to sort the problems out.
What I admired – and still admire – about her, was her ability to continue to love without judgement and take opportunities when offered to improve the lives of her family members. Such a deft and sincere human response, when dealing with other people.
“I used to get 99% in school and get a hiding for not trying hard enough…” The effect of this was probably amplified by the self-critical trait of those with ASD, who are often perfectionists. I’m on the spectrum myself, and healthy self-examination has been a big help. Not only to me, but those in my life.
Perhaps your contribution is important because it shows that both environmental and individual choices can be considered in regards to solutions, it is not an either/or scenario.
And it is important to have these conversations in context, and to discuss violence without seeking simple solutions – when perhaps complex ones are required and will be more effective.
Apart from the counselling and support services, did you find any particular studies at university level helped?
Emotional illiteracy is part of the problem I’m sure. We express ourselves with fists unable to display passion in a more appropriate manner.
Check this comics opening minute. On point.
“Look what you made me do!
One of those phrases that I found myself saying in my early parenting years almost automatically. Thankfully managed to have some form of self-awareness there and stopped, now only have to work on the many other unworthy techniques – hopefully before they all move out.
WtB
That is an amazing performance. Haven’t finished watching it though. I have to go and look for my secret stash axshually.
Spot on.
Also:
” ..a night owl .. which, by the way, is just an owl..”
I missed that last question: Apart from the counselling and support services, did you find any particular studies at university level helped?
Te Ao Maori was amazing. Gave me white guilt for a bit but it also gave me some history and understanding of NZ, and what I perceived as casual racism everywhere – it’s called institutionalized racism so I learned. I also immediately identified with Kaitiakitanga.
The Tertiary Foundations Certificate was quite brilliant. I’d dropped out by form 3 so needed catch-up. But it was the other adult students in that program gave me some peers to walk the journey with. Some of them had it pretty rough too. Having support is so important. Also, having someone to support. I guess I learned community.
We were there to give ourselves another chance. We lost a few on the way, one went back to stripping, another to the dole… but most of us graduated.
I wasn’t in engineering but biology, so my peers were for the most part non racist, non sexist, highly intelligent, and from all over the world. I was in heaven.
Thanks, WTB.
“Having support is so important. Also, having someone to support. I guess I learned community.”
I honestly believe that if a stated outcome and effective implentation of creating healthy communities was a priority with government, many solutions would be found for the problems we face on an individual, family, community and national level.
I got nothing to add but I appreciate the honesty of what you’ve written
I am not sure Grace death is domestic (family) violence, because they had just met on a dating app, aka they only met each other a few hours before her death by the sounds of it? It is a separate crime to family violence.
Hi SaveNZ, I wasn’t referring to the Grace Millane case.
Just have had some discussions lately with people referring to this study, and wanted to find an online accessible one to see what the study actually was about.
@ Molly, sorry wasn’t sure, but the MSM are now full of family violence and anti shit men, due to the Grace case. While there is validity of being angry, blaming all men probably isn’t the right solution. They needed to clean up family violence decades ago, instead they just do little to nothing and I am not sure that keeping men in prison on remand or the new strangulation law is justice is the right place to start. Prevention is always the best way and NZ is catapulting into a very punitive and US style society rather than early prevention, aka the boys at school and teaching them better ways to think about women when they are forming their views on gender.
Also boys that grow up feeling disempowered deal with the in a variety of often very anti social ways.
Men top the suicide rates and many statistics. Men commit harm to themselves, men commit harm to others.
Either way, if there are ways to prevent it, and society should be concerned about it, and not just trying to profit from it, have talkfests about it, bury statistics or not take detailed ones from people who are experts in it, or react too late to tragedy.
Many feminists recognise the harm that society places on men.
But there have been many comments on TS lately, that seem to jump to great generalisations and have intimated that female perpetrated violence is ignored by all feminists, court decisions, and society. They often refer to the Dunedin study, which is why I wanted to have a look.
Your first response is a case in point. I have asked for a link and you have responded with two comments that are not in line with that request, the latter being a list of statements (that I do not disagree with) but with the focus only on the harm to men.
As someone who has always appreciated the value of male companionship in her life, who values the male partner in her life, and the mother of three sons, I am aware of the pressures on males in our society which are not conducive to healthy mental health, valuable and varied inter-relationship skills and a stable sense of self-worth. So I am always interested in hearing about solutions to these issues.
There seems to be a trigger reaction amongst more than few, that are trying to ensure that discussions on violence are always concerned with the harm done to men. When really it should be about the harm done to society – women and children included.
Links to Dunedin Study at 5.3. Cheers.
It’s hard for men to talk openly about this stuff. This is the age of outrage, of finger pointing and blame. I’m talking under an alias. Some here might know who I am. Nobody wants to own being human or having history in case they are crucified. Picture perfect, that’s what’s expected.
Me too was/is brilliant in bringing predatory behavior to light, but men are scared to be flawed at all in today’s environment. Take Louis CK. He immediately owned his behavior and went into soul searching mode not realising that, though he asked permission, his was a position of power. He’d done the same thing with Sarah Silverman when they were relative unknowns he’s a freak. Predator? He almost lost it all. Others deserve to lose it all e.g. Weinstein.
Now, the outrage over predatory men in general is absolutely vindicated. Many men will be soul searching but they don’t want to put their heads up.
Too scary.
This makes the conversations required very difficult to have.
Sexual violence is off topic of domestic violence, but part of the same as well.
There is a component of public shaming for past behaviours that seems to be automatic, and misses the opportunities many have taken to improve behaviour and have sincerely changed their views and actions.
From a personal point of view, I think of some of my past actions, and consider it a form of grace to my sanity that I don’t have the public persona that would preserve and record all meltdowns and mistakes, and would undergo such relentless scrutiny that others are exposed to.
It also doesn’t help when recognisably public relations statements are issued that ring with insincerity when past behaviour is called into question.
But if we are discussing solutions and improvements in violent behaviour, we do have to give space for people to change and encourage and celebrate genuine change when it does occur.
Yes savenz NZ is punitive about bad behaviour. WTF it’s too late then, and doesn’t stop it just imposes harsh circumstances on someone who has already gone troppo. It’s just military, get back into line, stand straight do the right thing.
But we are living life not army soldiers, and it’s the learning how to get started and getting the hang of it that needs attention, not punishing people for being such bad-arse proponents of life. The time when to do the good thing, is to care about the young. But this culture of neo lib actually doesn’t care about people from cradle to grave, we are just things to be manipulated.
We need to get rid of the shapeshifters, with new aliens popping out of their minds, and find enough like-minded real people to get back to a caring society that values people for themselves, and how they want to both give and receive, and not how much money they have, styley house, clothes, holidays…blah to that.
If they bothered to keep better statistics rather than going on some political gut feelings (aka the vulnerable). For example it has come out that the Grace alleged killer was from divorced parents… these days people meet one day, have kids the next, then divorce soon after or just live together and split up… it would be good to have NON political or identity politics input on this, but just gather the hard cold statistics. Makes sense to me, that kids from broken homes might suffer emotional trauma for example, and maybe we need to think about their rights more and from a prevention point of view, rather than being this tolerant liberal society to a certain set of whims and then the collateral damage is swept under the table. Suicide and depression also on the increase.
How is reporting Grace came from divorced parents “identity or political input”?
‘Divorced parents’ provides no conclusive or suggestive data – just information.
I don’t think we keep proper statistics on this type of thing and it’s manipulated completely the small amounts we do. Divorce is not an identity indicator, aka race, gender, sexuality, age etc
Divorce/relationship break up with children involved, is an event.
OK, I now see what you are getting at.
But I still don’t see how to relates to reporting of an individual instance, and why you are framing it as an identity issue.
I’m trying to say, to get equality and or a better society we need to widen the factors to be studied about modern life, not just focus on factors like identity such as race, gender, sexuality, age or socio economic group and think that will solely make the change alone.
Aka the Natz thinking that targeting a few factors in kids would do anything. Life is complicated now, and maybe like areas like smoking, something which people thought was harmless a few decades later, might not be with further study. Same might help for how people live now, and common things that are occurring to kids throughout their lives.
Modern economics (aka neoliberalism) could be having negative effects on society that are not measured and I think that looking wider at modern life and the statistics of that and people who might be succeeding or not succeeding might help look at what might be causing things like high levels of violence, suicide, mental illness, depression etc and what factors might help a child/person have much better outcomes…
I agree on limiting perspectives, but I think with some issues – such as violence – there are many successful approaches that are specific to specific outcomes for identified demographics. Rather than eliminating success stories, we should be adding to them so that violent offending is reduced or eliminated, and all victims of violence are helped in the way that best suits them.
It seems you are asking for a one-stop shop in terms of framing the situation and providing solutions for it by requiring all relevant considerations to be stripped out. This will result in a flawed framework of discussion, and less than efficient outcomes.
I see value in specific programmes addressing both bullies and victims at different ages, and in different environments. There is also value in specialised support a child victim of violence receives, as well as specific approaches for both female and male victims.
Gender based solutions – when they provide best outcomes – are surely dependent on gathering that data and info during research.
I think more correctly it is a ‘labelling’ issue, so that people are stigmatised and pigeonholed with extreme prejudice.
There is a list put together for counselling, assessing trauma etc that prioritises life shocks that impact on peoples’ wellbeing.
Just moving house, school is one. Being divorced, with other shocks added to it may be a large trauma to a child. The trouble is that staying with a violent or erratic parent where the child cannot have a stable relationship may be worse than divorce.
Helping parents with their needs so they can manage their lives and cope, making the best they can with them would diminish trauma to manageable. But instead we have pious preachy punishing politicians and leaders who have their lives sorted out satisfactorily to them, probably sending their kids to boarding school, and they love to feel superior to others struggling to cope, automatically they feel they are inadequate and unintelligent.
It may not be as different as you think. There are men who seem to think they are undermined if, as a woman, you don’t do as you are told, and the response can be violent. It is almost irrelevant what the status of the relationship is.
Most of us harbour a fear of men, though many of us are so used to it that we hide it even from ourselves.
Molly, re your request for links etc to the “Dunedin Longitudinal Study”, I did a Google search for that exact phrase and came up with long list which seems to have links to the Study itself. I don’t have time right now to check them out, but hope this helps.
I have also wanted to see the actual study and results etc so have added this link to my Summer Recess Watch and Read list for checking out further.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Dunedin+Longitudinal+Study&rlz=1C1LDJZ_enNZ499&oq=Dunedin+Longitudinal+Study&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Cheers.
I now see there is a Christchurch Longitudinal Study as well.
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1LDJZ_enNZ499&q=christchurch+longitudinal+study&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwib59zH45jfAhWLV30KHf7lDjYQ1QIoB3oECAwQCA
Thanks vv.
I did scout around a bit before asking, but couldn’t find access to the whole paper, and though your search threw up a couple extra, am limited to the abstract or the intro of a book.
If you do find links to the studies, would appreciate if you could post here on TS, will watch out for your comments.
There were just a couple of commenters on TS that referred to the studies more than once, I was hoping one of them could provide a link 🙂
As I said I have put it on my list of Reads etc for the Summer break, so will see what I can find. Will also ask a couple of people I know who may be able to help. Will post here mentioning you to alert you if I get any closer to the elusive study. But as a Longitudinal Study I would expect that it is many reports rather than one single one ….
All good. Really would like those who refer to it often to provide the link, to show that they have put some effort into reading the source, rather than relying on third-party interpretations, and ensuring that the data supports what they are stating.
While searching did find a link to an American research study:
Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women that despite the title, interviewed equal numbers of men and women for the report.
From reading the executive summary it seems that the sample size was considerable – 8,000 females and 8,000 males interviewed, and it appears that both male and female victims of harm were recorded.
Another one for the summer reading list?
https://books.google.com/books/about/Sex_Differences_in_Antisocial_Behaviour.html?id=kPdUHpwtCjYC
Hi molly only just read your request. Here is a link, although I haven’t read this actual bit of the study. If you type into google google scholar , click the type in the Dunedin longitudinal study’ you will find a number of articles there
Hi Ankerrawshark,
I’ve seen that link already, but it only shows a limited number of pages from the beginning of the book. I can come up with articles but not the study itself.
This article seems fairly comprehensive though. Thanks for suggesting Google Scholar, didn’t think to utilise that.
There are some issues I have with the article though –
1. The longitudinal study from Dunedin would be unlikely to have a demographic that matches New Zealand
2. The study – due to its nature – only interviewed 21 years olds, and described the interactions of that age cohort only – there will be different responses for others at different stages of their lives;
3. The use of the CTS tool for assessment of violence, there seems to be no reference to the degree of violence either from the aggressor or as experienced by the victim, (on page 3 of the report)
4. Although there is a reference to mutual violence, there is no information presented to whether violence occurred due to previous victimisation or violence received. I would consider this to be an important consideration when your count for violent acts includes:
Although the article makes reference to the difference between male and female perpetrators of physical violence, despite having the information to hand they don’t appear to publish the different degrees of violence perpetrated. Instead they have lumped all incidents in as if they are of equal import.
I don’t think this particular study is as indicative of the pattern of violence in the wider New Zealand population as many who reference it seem to believe. There are limitations in the sample, both in size and demographics. Also, the use of CTS that doesn’t place any degree on harm on instances of violence so that an incident of “Given in to your partner but planned revenge” is given equal weight to “Used a knife or gun on your partner”.
There is also very little context given to violence perpetrated as a response to violence experienced: eg. Someone who locked a partner out of the house, is counted as equal to some one who has “Physically forced your partner to have sex”, because even if the locking occurred after the forced sex, it still counts as an act of violence.
The Dunedin Study is by it’s nature representative of Dunedin in 1972, but remarkably most of it’s findings have been confirmed by similar studies elsewhere in the world. It possibly turns out that when dealing with the sociological and psychological nature of children, families and how we navigate through life, “demographics” has less of an impact that we imagine.
The Dunedin Study is unique for both it’s reasonably large sample size (over a thousand), it’s longevity (now into it’s fifth decade) and outstanding retention rate (over 95%).
These make it unique and recognised the world over as a valuable resource; literally hundreds if not thousands of reviewed papers have been published using this Study as a primary source; many of them ground breaking and widely cited. There is a LOT more to this entire Study than one paper or book.
This aligns with the idea I’ve been expressing elsewhere around violence: The Importance of Self Control.
I’m not disagreeing with your statements, but do you have any comments about the way that this particular study collated the data on violence?
Another research project on exactly the same sample group, specifically looked at “Physical assault by 21 year olds against partners”, and once again can only get the abstract which reads as follows:
When commenters here refer to the Dunedin study where women are shown to be violent more than men to their partner, I believe it needs to be taken in context if we are to successfully find effective solutions.
As I have not been able to access the study that is often referred to, I made a critique of an article about the study which – indeed – did seem to uphold that premise. However, the CTS tool is a wide-encompassing one – where “thinking about revenge” is counted as an act of violence. That is not necessarily a problem, if the difference in acts are identified in some way in the report. That doesn’t seem to be the case.
I can also only find the abstract to the above study, which specifically looks at physical violence – and in that context – would be more indicative of the physical harm that is inflicted as IPV.
On the psychological abuse scale both of these merit the same weighting:
“Given in to your partner but planned revenge”
and
“Threatened to hit or throw something at your partner in anger”
One is a thought process that doesn’t necessarily result in any further action, the second is a voiced threat that is used to manipulate another person to compliance.
Do you have any comments on the use of the CTS scale – and why you think it is appropriate?
Do you have any comments on the abstract shown that indicates that the presumption of women committing equal or more violence when put in context of physical abuse or harm is not upheld by the same group that was studied?
Do you think it would have been of greater use to indicate what level of abuse was perpetrated, and/or the degree of harm inflicted when reporting on IPV? (This may be available in the original paper but I haven’t yet found an accessible link)
Duplicating this study using the same CTS scale would in fact duplicate results.
I’d love to have the time and in-depth understanding to do this question justice. For the moment this is the best I can do:
Imagine I’m working on a ladder and I fall on top of you and break your arm. Painful, annoying and you might well be pissed at me for being so clumsy … but unlikely to be a traumatic episode.
Now imagine I pick up the same ladder and deliberately smashed your arm, inflicting the exactly same injury. Physically almost identical, except now my bad intentions and malice create an entirely different emotional response. Clearly I’ve set out to hurt you, clearly my bad intent matters quite a lot.
In general I’d argue that while the physical impact of violence is important, we really cannot discount the emotional aspect either. Intent matters. It can even be argued that repeated, sustained emotional attacks are more corrosive and damaging, especially on children, than physical ones.
Of course physical violence is relatively easy to observe and classify, while the scars left by bad intent are far less obvious and much harder to quantify. So much depends on context and personality as to how we respond to an emotional attack, and what long-term effects it has. Still any practicing clinical psychologist would tell us that their entire business model depends on to the extreme importance of the emotional response to violence in any form, rather than broken bones.
What’s more this is not the only study to show that both genders commit IPV at similar rates, although they don’t go about it in exactly the same way. A narrow definition focusing on physical violence will tilt the outcome towards highlighting male aggression, while a wider one that encompasses emotional aggression will tend to even out the result between the genders.
Therefore at first glance I generally support the idea of including emotional attacks into the category of ‘violence’ … but at the same time accept it’s a troublesome notion to get to grips with. I understand your reservations.
Thanks RedLogix. I appreciate you taking time to consider my points.
I also agree that psychological abuse needs to be assessed, but it seems such a flawed decision to not show distinctions in abuse when looking at how to assess the IPV issue, primarily because the tools for solutions will be better designed if they are specific. ie. The support required for psychological harm is appropriate for psychological abuse, but must also be joined with medical expertise and rehabilitation if dealing with severe physical harm.
It was also interesting that the second research paper on the 21 year olds regarding only physical IPV, had only 5 hits on Google Scholar. The other one, where I linked to the article – comes up with hundreds.
Part of this could be due to the surprising result of female violence being greater than mens in personal relationships. Click bait for the scientists and headline writers. But as I mentioned, I’m not sure if I am critiquing the paper correctly, but the use of CTS seems to redefine the term of violence into one that my children would be committing – especially the plotting revenge when they are coerced. This internal plotting is human nature, and would only not be present if a person is completely subdued.
RL at 7.36am
The Dunedin Study is by it’s nature representative of Dunedin in 1972, but remarkably most of it’s findings have been confirmed by similar studies elsewhere in the world.
This sentence follows the format of many others i have read about sensitive social issues.
If it confirms similar studies elsewhere in the world. Maybe it is using the same methodology on the same cultural age group in other countries, so that would not be so remarkable, if they were from countries with similar cultures and language.
‘Elsewhere in the world’ is the sort of loose comment that we make in NZ which, to me, shows a cultural cringe. It could easily be narrowed down into ‘English speaking’ or expressed as ‘similar studies in the USA, UK and Scandinavia’. There is a laxity in identifying just where the source is by politicians and informed commenters. They might even be talking only about the USA and the ‘studies’ being from separate States there.
On Morning Report just now they said that Britain can just Cancel Brexit if the want to and that that would be legal. Not sure what would happen to May if that happened.
Y’know, every now and then I feel a bit sympathetic to May trying to do her best with Brexit when in fact she was a remain supporter before the referendum. Don’t worry, that moment doesn’t last long.
“The European Court of Justice has ruled that Britain can cancel Brexit without the consent of the other EU member states.”
https://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018675224
@ Andre, May is gone, either way. Not sure I agree that someone power hungry is a good thing when they are working against what they supposedly believed in to remain in power?
Everyone that is willing to do what it takes to win an elected position is power-hungry. Some are just better at hiding it than others. Sometimes we strongly disagree with what they want to do with that power, sometimes we even get lucky and elect someone that wants to use that power to achieve a few things we actually agree with.
In May’s case, power-hungry for sure, but also willing to take on a shit sandwich and try to make something vaguely palatable out of it. Surely that’s worth an occasional moment of grudging respect?
@Andre, May might be willing to take on the shit sandwich, but is she able?
I hope Corbyn is up to the task – nothing like reality to dampen ideological fervour – hope he’s been watching yes minister repeatedly.
No Andre
No grudging respect for being such a dedicated patsy for her class and Party. If she is so desperate to get to the top and has the strength and will to carry through such bad policy because of a redundant desire for British greatness and hubris then she will be blamed, and deserve the obloquy that Margaret hatcher received.
(The mind is amazing – obloquy just popped up – didn’t know that I knew it.) If we keep on discussing important matters in a thoughtful way on TS we may be able to dredge up unimagined ideas for a better future – so let’s keep trying, and doing something as well as tapping and talking too.
Obloquy? Thatcher? Do keep in mind we live in a world where Thatcher is still the only Prime Minister in recent history to have an overall positive favourability rating.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2016/08/10/cameron-best-prime-minister-since-thatcher
And then I think, why, she did make love to this employment.
@ ianmac, I think they should seriously consider cancelling Brexit. It is not an election, it is a decision and the people should have the right to vote whether as new information comes to light, they still want Brexit.
The referendum was not binding so they could bail out.
If you go into a business decision and then find out it is pretty unworkable, do you keep going with the ‘shit sandwich’ as Andre above describes it, like a fool, or do you bail out until you have something much better and reasonable and a risk adverse position to move to. They have nothing to move to that is reasonable therefore they should have another referendum and take stock on what the mood of the public is.
Promotion to Saint May. It would be a miracle.
The AirNZ engineers threatened strike is apparently for three days – 21st 22nd 23rd
(three separate strike notices, one each day).
This will endear unions to the wide general public as it enhances Christmas festivities so much!!
This will enhance the Labour Party, long connected with workers and unions, and encourage the wide general public to think that Labour will deliver a better-run
society and is able to solve problems facing the country!!
This will impress people who regard the word ‘engineer’ with some wariness after the debacle over the presiding engineer and his offsider in designing the incredible collapsing CTV building!!
Et tu union organiser “We don’t take this position lightly…I appreciate this is hard for people….This is not holding people to ransom. We have drawn a line in the sand.”
Piffle. Liar. Self-justifying, it isn’t our fault, it was forced on us. This is the tone and is exactly the same as was taken by unions back in the 1980’s. I am not impressed. Deja vu all over again. Bastards.
NOTE; REGIONAL AIRLINES MAY NOT BE INVOLVED. LOOKING AT HINTS FROM THE SIDELINES, REDDIT ETC. BUT NOT SURE IF THIS HAS BEEN REVEALED OFFICIALLY. IF YOUR FLIGHT NO. HAS FOUR NUMBERS AND STARTS WITH 5 IT MAY BE OKAY.
If the Air NZ CEO has the same balls as the Qantas CEO, he’ll ground the fleet now before anymore damage is done.
Long-term what will happen is aircraft maintenance will be done offshore and these engineers will lose their jobs.
And the NZ public will cheer and say it serves you right.
Airlines only need a commercial team, flight operations, pilots and cabin crew (even they can be outsourced). All other functions can easily be outsourced.
Yeah, they’re really cutting their own throats.
You can’t have a group of employees hold a company and country to ransom.
Steps will have to be taken to remove this threat, outsourcing maintenance is the logical solution.
Cheaper is better afterall, but it’s not really is it?
Soooooo……
Air New Zealand’s plan was to demand cutbacks in conditions to deliberately trigger strike action to more easily export NZ jobs overseas.
Jeez that ponytailpuller really has both the cunning and morals of a shithouse rat.
The employers are holding their employees to ransom … and the country gets the benefit of that through lower airfares – although maybe not given the profit the company is making.
We are complicit with the company when we get a benefit when the company treats their workers shabbily. The obvious answer is to shop elsewhere for those of us who don’t like how the workers are treated.
If the company doesn’t use employees from NZ then why should we, as NZers, give it our loyalty? How can it be a NZ company when it outsources it’s work overseas?
“If the company doesn’t use employees from NZ then why should we, as NZers, give it our loyalty?”
Sure. On my future travels I’ll use an international airline that employs only NZ’ers, pays tax only in NZ, and is run and governed from NZ. Oh wait…
You do know that they’ve tried that before right?
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU0602/S00260.htm
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/9078930/Air-New-Zealand-to-axe-180-jobs
Doesn’t seem to be going too well for them.
Perhaps it has to do with all those other aircraft coming in to land that need maintenance. Perhaps they realised that they’d lose more profit by cutting those services than they’d save.
You RWNJs really don’t know how to run a business.
Air NZ disruption over Christmas – Union comment
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018675228/air-nz-engineers-strike-not-about-holding-people-to-ramsom-e-tu-union
Aviation unions revealed yesterday the strike notice they had issued last week was for three days – 21, 22 and 23 December.
Urgent talks between unions and the airline to try to avert industrial action over pay and conditions have entered their third day.
The two unions representing engineering and logistics workers, AMEA and E tū, say two days of mediation have so far failed. Industrial action was initially estimated to affect nearly 42,000 people, but House of Travel commercial planning director Brent Thomas said three days of strike action would affect many more.
“If it proceeds, it will be a significant impact for a number of travellers – probably upwards of 100,000 potentially people who could be impacted by such a strike”, Mr Thomas said.
E tū union aviation organiser who goes by the name of Savage, said the members hadn’t taken their decision lightly.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/377896/air-nz-unions-begin-urgent-talks-as-strike-looms
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/378077/air-nz-engineers-strike-could-affect-100-000-people-travel-agent
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/377958/air-nz-strike-would-be-almost-unprecedented-travel-agent
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/377776/air-nz-strike-could-affect-thousands
7 Dec
However, the unions involved are not liking Air New Zealand’s tone.
E Tū union’s head of aviation, Savage, said the airline was trying to mislead the public.
“Air New Zealand is trying to portray this as a group of overpaid engineers when actually there are a lot of underpaid logistics and cleaning staff also included in the collective agreement,” he said.
“This is primarily about Air New Zealand making record profits and then attempting to cut the pay and conditions of their workers.”
Are we supposed to feel that Air NZ is making record profits and that going on strike over Christmas is justified to get them to pay more to cleaners, and give engineers more breaks? This is old-style chest-thumping worker versus rich greedy boss, and shoving union power in their face stuff. I thought we were more subtle than that now.
It appears that union leaders are always prepared to take us to the brink and push us over when they have had a dose too much of strengthening medicine, and are feeling all stroppy. Playing rugby involves tackling head on, but unions learn to play a smarter game. And Now! Just say that you don’t want to go to disappoint at Christmas. Please.
It appears the company are quite happy to go to the brink as well.
If Air NZ, as a service industry, really care about servicing their customers they should have sorted it out well before this stage.
Their raison d’être is to provide a service – it seems they have forgotten that.
Grace Millane
Foreign visitors get more sympathy and attention when they are killed and injured than NZs do it seems. We don’t care about each other enough to deal with the awful conditions that so many have to put up with here, but when foreigners in their innocence come here believing our propaganda, we feel guilty.
And so we should. But more often, and as a whole country that cares, not just a few people who have to continually agitate in NZ to get any humanitarian reaction. Instead we tend to respond to instant emotionalism if there is enough hype, lighting candles and holding vigils for one person. It should be continual observance for those lost to our damaged society.
@greywarshark, I agree, Grace Millane has captured people’s hearts for the tragedy, but there are approx 50 murders in NZ per year.
Saying that, I think Grace is very special because she connected to a lot of people who never knew her in life, and now emotional about her death.
True savenz Let’s keep the emotion going and flowing now for the others to come, and a thought for the background of the shits that hurt them, because the background is what has produced the behaviour, which just tells the thinking person what a desert of anomy (anomie) the person was brought up in.
Let us in society and our government systems act with love to help the little person and their parents with their needs so as to grow, be strong in resolve and capable with good skills, and be integrated in a caring society that encourages personal responsibility but doesn’t ignore the requirement for a good society to nurture the young and be there for the parent/s.
Anomy | Define Anomy at Dictionary.com
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/anomy
a state or condition of individuals or society characterized by a breakdown or absence of social norms and values, as in the case of uprooted people.
“Abandon Empathy and Judgement All Ye Who Enter Here.”
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: You are a television news reader
“Hipkiss, when reading the news or introducing guests reads what other people write. Her job has no editorial component.”—-Sir Galahad Putake, 11 December 2018.
https://thestandard.org.nz/praying-for-grace/#comment-1561196
Your challenge is to sit behind a desk, look straight at an audience (must consist of at least three people) and read the following ten statements without snickering like Paul Henry, corpsing like Hilary Barry, raising an eyebrow like Peter Williams, pouting like Jack Tame, pausing meaningfully like Simon Dallow or in any other manner indicating dissent or disagreement with the words, however outrageous or offensive, that you are required to read out.
Okay, here we go….
If you made it to the end of that with a straight face, congratulations. You are either braindead, or your name is Ingrid.
My goodness, has somebody been caught not preaching from the Texts Approved By Mozzer? Shame on them, fie and fiddlesticks.
LOL – but he can’t reply for a week!
I think Ed’s on a ban at the moment, too. I’m running out of people to scroll past.
edit: apparently not. Oh well.
Nah, lprent didn’t ban him. Just bumped him down the page a bit, I guess so that the start of Open Mike today isn’t just a mirror of Ed’s news feed.
Only for a few days last week – was back on Saturday. But see 12 below. I could suggest some more scroll pasts for you but better not. LOL
Brilliantly, Morrisey
How to repeat a lie with a straight face. Thanks Morrissey.
We need pageantry and rituals and fun and laughter and light-hearted poking at serious topics, now and then. People like this are national treasures.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018674742/graeme-cairns-laird-of-hamilton
Former McGillicuddy Serious leader Graeme Cairns now divides his time between penny farthings, medical training and street theatre, and his latest endeavour “doing pennants” features a bicycle-powered sewing machine.
The McGillicuddy Serious Party was founded to contest the 1984 election with its campaign plank of the Great Leap Backwards.
It predicted upheaval, chaos and the breakdown of society as we know it and a plan to insulate New Zealand from the worst excesses of the future.
I knew a couple of those boys doing uni in Hamilton when I was a Hamiltonian. Loads of fun and very smart. Fridgehenge was my favorite. Lots of old fridges in a circle in a paddock, and lots of cider.
Fridgehenge! Please stick around WtB won’t you. You are a fount of creative thinking with laughs as well; great mix.
Cairns has no desire to revive his great political movement, despite McGillicuddy Serious once being the fifth-biggest party in the country.
Shame. I want to vote for them.
Iraq, it got hit badly. It gets pushed to the side by the latest outrage but here is a plea to think again of us.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018674479/iraqi-priest-in-nz-please-save-our-people
life and society refugees and migrants
6 Dec 2018
Iraqi priest in NZ: ‘Please save our people’
From Checkpoint, 6:13 pm on 6 December 2018
Listen duration 13′ :42″
Auckland-based Catholic priest Fr Douglas Al-Bazi was tortured by terrorists in Iraq and sheltered thousands of people fleeing from Islamic State. He tells Alex Perrottet his harrowing story and says New Zealand should be taking more refugees suffering genocide in the Middle East
I haven’t listened to it yet but I guess I must. As I asked querously before ‘Do I have to worry about everything?’ and thought it seems that I do, I should put this on my list of important human things to be concerned about and act to assist.
They have a good case surely. Perhaps we should look each day, and refer and describe a group that should be in our minds for the fraction of time necessary to ensure they stay in society’s consciousness. So today Syria.
The monopoly of the press by National supporting billionaires erodes our democracy.
Breaking up that monopoly should be a priority of the coalition Government.
[lprent: Ed needs to get up later. This morning he gets the late morning award. ]
Power, building materials, fullers ferrys, supermarkets, fuel etc etc crikey don’t stop at the media as oligopoly/duopoly behaves as a combined monopoly.
You’ll be pleased to know Mark Richardson came out in support of the air nz strikers this am then .
Do you know what a monopoly is?
What exactly are you trying to break up ?
How come on the 12 December I am looking at Ed’s comment at 8.42am while the comment’s time is 10.17 am. Is Ed in another country, are you in Oz Ed?
Have a think about who might have the ability to change the timestamp on a comment and why that choice might be made.
Duh why should I do that. I have enough to worry about wondering if I should change my booking to get me and family to our Christmas family meeting.
Do i have to worry about everything in the world? Apparently I do.
grey – lprent has left a comment on Ed’s that indicates he has changed Ed’s timestamp so that it will not be at the top of Open Mike.
That’s elegant, lprent.
I am assuming that lprent uses this same ability on an automatic basis to move another poster’s comments to the end of the previous day’s OM.
It is quite fascinating watching this whole thread move slowly down the numbering system as new comments appear here on OM.
Yes commenters need to understand the numbering system and how it works. I sometimes insert mine under someone’s who I concur with rather than trail under some who are WOS in my opinion.
And if not carefully placed, a reply gets so far away from the original
comment, it becomes irrelevant especially if there is no reference in it to hook it up by the number or name.
What happens when we get to 1017am in real time? Does Ed zoom out of his present spot and goes to the bottom, or do all those ahead of him disappear and he ends up back at the top again? 😛
Nothing happens to the comment or thread following. Ed just appears in the comments sidebar, making it briefly falsely appear like he’s going to participate in an actual discussion rather than doing his usual early morning spray and walk away.
Interesting and there was an entry in the sidebar at about 10.17am and his comment and the thread are now set at number 12 – and the next new ‘start’ comment at 10.40am came in under it at 13.
Clever!
I was being facetious as Ed’s expense. 😎
He does seem to care about issues, perhaps more than you Andre from whom I get a whiff of cynicism and possibly even sneering from time to time.
He’s boring greywarshark. It’s the same old same old day in day out. As someone tried to tell him recently… he’s preaching to the converted. We don’t need to be told a dozen times a day and then more…
Just his three issues. Otherwise quite heartless.
Well solkta that summary applies to quite a number here.
True, but you are not trying to polish them.
Thanks Molly.
I remember back in school the really bright, keen interested persons who were up with the lesson and always had their hand up with the answer for the teacher. Sometimes that was me. The other kids get p.o. It’s wise to let others go first Ed – I do notice that you tend to be up with the birds to get the first worms!
60% of sunscreens are misleading, not acceptable. What happens if they are misleading, surely they get a massive fine, not just a shrug or a slap on the hand? There seems to be a double standard when businesses rip people off and profit from it and when individuals rips people off and profit from it.
Consumer NZ report shows most sunscreens not living up to label claims
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12175415
SPF50+ offers only marginally better protection from Ultra Violet (UV) radiation than SPF30+ filtering out 98% of UV radiation compared to 96.7% blocked by SPF30.
https://www.cancerwa.asn.au/articles/news-2018/whats-the-difference-between-spf-30-and-spf-50/
Leakers again!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/109283154/budget-2019-priorities-leaked-to-national-include-focus-on-mental-wellbeing-and-call-to-find-lowest-1-of-spending
A.
Farmers,, to protect yourselves they need to be the liveblood of their communities and the local communities the identities of the farmers.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/109276319/fonterras-advance-payments-cuts-dampen-christmas-cheer
To cut themselves off from this is to be driven off the land. National, Fed Farmers are not your friends to this, are not on your side, are not on the same team. They butter you up with the high prices, the imported labour, you are better than your community & immune to the quietly rising bank rates and costs of living. But then the bubbles in your returns are removed more and more.
And the local market and culture is gone. Your biggest asset in stability. Your biggest card for brand identity and connection to external markets, where you don’t need the middle men of trade homogenization and are at the whims of fluctuating rates amidst all the other brands of X, Y & Z.
Because you have the advantage of your boutique local community chains and markets that no one else has.
NZ1st!
Farmers stopped being the lifeblood of the community when they dropped below supporting 50% of the economy. IIRC, that was back in about 1920. Even if they still employ ~7% directly I would be surprised if the total employed due to farming gets above 10%.
Simple maths really.
That is simple maths.
Some more simple logic could be also that the ground floor stopped being important, when all the others were built on top of it; or the region’s resources lost their importance once the town grew up in the middle of it.
I didn’t say that they stopped being important. I said that the stopped being the lifeblood. The reason for that is because they no longer relate to everybody and the percentage is dropping.
If we got serious about climate change the number of farms and farmers would drop to ~1/3rd of what we have now.
It’s long gone that they did relate to everybody and it’s not coming back and they really should drop this leaning on past glories that they seem to think is still important and still valid.
I bet no one can guess what Battler Simon will ask in Q1 today at Question Time. You would think that by now he would know that he will make no headway against Jacinda.
Q1 Hon SIMON BRIDGES to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her Government’s statements and actions?
And he didn’t. Bridges is still on about any representations by Ministers etc on the Sroubek case but he isn’t and is unlikely to make any progress on that. He really is walking on shaky grounds on that one IMO but cannot say why. Bridges really is not very clever. Mitchell has gone very very quiet recently. LOL
Today’s Questions to Ministers
Hon SIMON BRIDGES to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her Government’s statements and actions?
KIRITAPU ALLAN to the Minister of Finance: What progress, if any, has been made on implementing the Government’s economic policies?
Hon AMY ADAMS to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all of his statements and actions?
Hon JUDITH COLLINS to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: How many houses built, bought, or underwritten by the KiwiBuild programme are contracted and scheduled to be ready for owner occupation by 1 July 2019, and when will the first KiwiBuild houses in Te Kauwhata be completed?
MARK PATTERSON to the Minister of Conservation: What alternatives to 1080, if any, is the Department of Conservation involved in using or researching for pest control?
Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH to the Minister of Transport: Does he think that the purpose of transport policy is to make it easier for New Zealanders to get around quickly, efficiently, and safely?
Hon SCOTT SIMPSON to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: How many workers have gone on strike so far in 2018, and does he believe it is reasonable for union workers at Air New Zealand to threaten strike action on the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd of December?
JAN TINETTI to the Minister of Education: What proposals has he seen on the future of schooling in New Zealand?
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE to the Minister of Immigration: Other than Karel Sroubek’s lawyer and family members, who made representations on his behalf in respect of the deportation liability that was the subject of the Minister’s decision on 19 September 2018?
Hon NIKKI KAYE to the Minister of Education: What advice, if any, has he received on the potential estimated cost of implementing recommendations in the report by the Tomorrow’s Schools Independent Taskforce?
TAMATI COFFEY to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: What recent announcements has he made to protect consumers and businesses from unfair commercial practices?
JO HAYES to the Minister for Whānau Ora: Does he agree with the Prime Minister’s statement on Whānau Ora incentive payments that “the Minister has said he is looking at the way that some of those arrangements work with Whānau Ora”?
————————–
Then the usual Wednesday, General Debate for an hour, followed by the last Members’ Day of the year. Regrettably the Members’ Bills to be considered are Nat ones, sponsored by Nick Smith and Jonathan Young in that order, ie:
The Tasman District Council (Waimea Water Augmentation Scheme) Bill – First Reading
The New Plymouth District Council (Waitara Lands) Bill – Second Reading
They may then move onto continuing the Committee stages of Simeon Brown’s Psychoactive Substances (Increasing Penalty for Supply and Distribution) Amendment Bill.
I loved the way he asked a supplementary question in such a way as to give the PM a free hit in reply, then repeated the question so she she could whomp him again. Simon’s a slow learner.
Sign if you want to
Give the Māori seats the same level of protection as every other seat in Parliament.
https://our.actionstation.org.nz/petitions/secure-the-maori-seats?utm_source=actionstation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=blast2018-12-12
Years into the future I see Michael Woodhouse on his deathbed asking questions of the most significant event in the years of his time: “Who made representations about Karel Sroubek?”
Weird eh? Do they think that someone whose aunty is the second cousin of a Labour MP reckons that someone ought to speak up for Sroubek but in fact they thought they were backing a new brand of bacon. Sroubek Bacon.
Still you have to give Bridges and Woodhouse credit for the doggedness needed to uncover the said aunty’s name. And won’t the Opposition be thrilled with Aunty Jenny’s name. Wow!
Turns out that the name they have been desperately trying to be spoken in an answer is a one ‘Richie Hardcore’ seemingly a friend of Clarke Gayford and a kick boxing associate of Sroubeck . National desperate to make Jacinda look guilty by association . Question that should be asked of the opposition is how did they get a copy of the representations . Looks like National has left the Public Service stacked with informants . Interesting that the MSM didn’t cover this when the Penguin at Kiwiblog published this weeks ago and got no traction on it . In the end Woodlouse spat the name out himself . Shows the level of desperation in National to get a headline putting the PM in a bad light because her partner knows someone who knows someone .
And how many people is that? I’d like a dollar for every person who knows a person I know!
New Zealand is like that. One of the great things about meeting another Kiwi is the second question.
Q1. “So where are you from?
Q2. “Do you know so and so from there?”
I met a man in the street in Greece who had a Kiwi accent. He asked where are you from? I told him. “Oh,” he said. “I met a winemaker from your area in Gibraltar on a yacht. Can’t remember his name.”
I could, though.
So, if National is trying to link our PM into the Sroubek affair because someone she knows knows someone, then that is patently ludicrous.
It’s ‘guilt by association”, very tenuous and would be laughed out of court, and out of any reasonable debate. Pfffffft!
Yeh. Actually I know a chap who played chess with a woman who once took a selfie with John Key. Luckily the then Opposition didn’t find out about my association with Key or all Hell would break out. Phew!
Really taxicab? Do you mean to say that the Opposition wasted dozens of questions to get that??? What a strategy. No wonder the Opposition looks so flat.
Ah so. Richie Hardcore did know Jacinda.
“”The Prime Minister received a text message from Richie Hardcore following media coverage of the first decision about Karel Sroubek that acknowledged the decision. She did not respond to the text.”
But thats it??? All that for so little?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12175727
Followed up by an annoying prick who sometimes appears here .
https://yournz.org/2018/12/12/sroubek-hardcore-ardern-pressure-builds-for-full-disclosure/
You mean like this:
This is especially for lprent because I know how much it means to him. Its his kinda music.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/109295415/does-the-taxpayer-fund-climate-compensation-for-beachfront-homeowners
If you brought coastal property in the last 10 years tuff luck no compo you were warned about sea level rise.
Before that maybe there is a case.
But surely RICH people will be compensated?
Considering the dangers of beach-front houses – they were warned. As a child it may seem nice to have a house on the beach. An adult should know better.
Fantastic, I presume that as this government are going to compensate land owners for climate change impacts, that I should expect a subsidy should my farm suffer any loss of productivity or value from climate.
Has haa haven’t you noticed it’s all our fault apparently .
Well be the main payers
It’s hard to imagine the Captains of Insurance resigned to “Oh well, my bad luck, there goes 8 million” as their Takapuna boxes of architect spunk go under.
In this hyper-capitalist, individualistic society – its not our problem.
If they’re that concerned about it they should probably be contacting their insurance agents and making sure that they’re still insured.
Hyper capitalist….sheesh. We’ve got it pretty sweet bro. 12 year old girl got her legs blown off in Homs today, what happened in your suburb?
You will die waiting for the revolution you dream of Draco. Waiting on a bus that is never coming is a crap way to rip up 70 years. Buy a Subway franchise man!
Trying to save the world from the greedy schmucks is worthwhile even if I don’t manage it. The people left over after the ecological collapse brought about by those same greedy schmucks will have something to work with.
There’s a vein of envy that runs through your comments Draco.
We are all greedy. You are a ‘The Standard’ bandwidth gluttonous pig.
As sins go, we all fall victim to the temptation of greed.
Some people don’t know when to stop stacking money and others don’t know when to get out of the fridge.
I’m sorry Draco, you’re not a gluttonous pig. You’re passionate about your view of the world and a desire to share that view is mere testament to that passion. We need more people that care as much as you do.
How would you feel about being crowd funded into your own Subway franchise?
David Mac – don’t overrate yourself, and don’t judge others by your own miserably low standards. Greed is your own quality. Love it if you must, but don’t try to impose it on us all like a religion. Your hot air is unimpressive. Go somewhere else.
In Vino
I usually like your take on things. David Mac tends much to the RW
and the pragmatic.approach which ought to be considered when thinking about anything, but not automatically adopted.
Right-wing and pragmatic would be an oxymoron.
Such ideas should be considered and then, more often than not, thrown out as they’re simply not connected to reality in any way, shape or form.
Kia ora The Am Show
Japan best symbol of the year is correct disaster the world is heading towards a massive disaster .
Cohen 3 year’s jail does not look good for someone.
Yes people have to respect Tangaroa and its beautiful creatures if one does not it could end badly .
Its cool that Air NZ & there workers have come to a agreement to sort out there differences in a office and not striking .
Mark I seen that Dennis Conner is back to challenge for the Americas Cup .
Chris what happened to the hot dry year that was forecast just a few months ago what about climate change ??????????.
Genetic therapy engineering is not acceptable at all but selecting embryos is ok that is not quite trying to be god and when one try’s to do that it ends up being a big mess.
Kia ora to Andrew good skills to get in 2018 your sustainability qualification .
Ka kite ano P.S I like Noam Chomsky view on things
I say equality is needed to correct this big mess that men are making of Our world .
Susan Atkins: ‘We must take the threat to women in public life seriously’
Catherine Baksi
On the republication of 1984’s Woman and the Law, the co-author says the legal system remains ‘male-centric’
Susan Atkins is co-author of the pioneering book Women and the Law, which examines the way the law has treated women at work, in the family, in matters of sexuality, fertility and violence, and in public life. It is a study of the law’s attitude to women and how it reflects the influence of economic, social and political forces, revealing a deep-rooted, male-centric gender inequality. “Only when women are aware of the extent of the discrimination against them, of how it operates and of how to use the law and to influence law reform to their own ends will further progress be made,” it says.
The book was first published in 1984, when society and law were going through a period of transition. In 1973 married mothers gained a status equal to that of married fathers. Equal pay and sex discrimination legislation was changing the workplace. The Abortion Act 1967 expanded the grounds upon which abortion was legal in Britain. The introduction of the contraceptive pill in 1974 gave women greater control over their fertility, and the Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act 1976 strengthened the civil remedies available to victims of abuse.
We need to use laws to correct this in our society as some men will fight Equality with all the power they have and because of this it will take centuries to correct this imbalance of power that is leading us down the road of disaster . Ka kite ano links below
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2018/dec/12/susan-atkins-we-have-got-to-take-seriously-the-threat-to-women-in-public-life
This is a scramble to keep burning carbon in Australia after there next election as it looks like the morrison moron COAL coalition government will be rolled trump will be lonely when the may government gets rolled out of government to then most will be flipping him the bird
The morrison government has sent a clear signal that it is prepared to provide taxpayer support for both new and existing coal plants, opening registrations of interest in its controversial new power generation underwriting program.
Labor and the Greens are opposed to any taxpayer support for coal projects, and will continue efforts once parliament resumes next year to try and frustrate the Coalition’s program, potentially by attempting to amend the government’s “big stick” divestiture bill, which stalled in the final sitting week, to include a prohibition on power companies receiving commonwealth support Ka kite ano
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/13/coalition-signals-it-will-provide-taxpayer-support-for-new-and-existing-coal-plants
Eco Maori say bring back Bernie Sanders he will clean up trump and the mess he is making of OUR world ka kite ano P.S I seen the show with Michelle
We did not see this story in OUR Worlds media Ka pai they have voted to pull the war machine out of Yemen I hope aid will be sent in to the poor children
The Senate is due to vote on Wednesday on whether to cut US military support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen, amid deepening scepticism over the Trump administration’s alliance with Riyadh.
The independent senator Bernie Sanders succeeded in forcing a vote on the resolution after a Republican revolt on 28 November – driven in part by outrage over the Saudi murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi – defeated the Trump administration’s efforts to stop it going to a vote.
‘Yemenis are left so poor they kill themselves before the hunger does’
Read more
Wednesday’s vote marks the first time a measure invoking the 1973 War Powers Resolution, asserting congressional supremacy in matters of war and peace, has progressed so far in the Senate. The vote comes across the backdrop of peace talks in Stockholm in a UN-brokered effort to halt a war that is thought to have already killed many tens of thousands of civilians, mostly from coalition bombing and starvation, largely as a results of the coalition’s strategy of economic strangulation.
Links below
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/bernie-sanders
Fast facts on Bernie Sanders ka kite ano
https://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/27/us/bernie-sanders-fast-facts/index.html
Here my video on Bernie Sanders take 2 ka kite ano P.S someone is stuffing with my computer
Well I did find the story but not in the big web sights of Aotearoa
In a rare break with President Donald Trump, the US Senate has voted to move ahead with a resolution to end military support for the Saudi Arabian-led coalition in the war in Yemen and lawmakers vowed to push for sanctions against the kingdom in the new year Ka kite ano links below
.https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/378186/us-senate-defies-trump-votes-to-stop-support-for-yemen-war
Kia ora Scotty from Te karere
I did back vaping but only as a tool to give up smoking I now have some concerns about the oil as we don’t no what is in it but ka pai to the kuia for using it to give up smoking I am still using mine
Our maori Rugby players had a good season this year
Yes its better to treat the addiction than lock em up like some fools back Pee and dariydack are killing our tangata
Ka kite ano PS I started watching a bit late ka kite ano
Kia ora Newshub
Well that’s a logical move as there is a need to target the importers of hard drugs as these kill people weed well no reports of people dying from a over dose from consuming weed .
I did a post on how the world treats our Wahine the leaders of our country need to set a good example to our youth that Wahine are not just here for men’s use and need to be respected .
The way I see it Lloyd is they did not want a coo just before Christmas may and brexit
or boris in power.
Yes we have to plan for climate change to minimize loses of life and money thanks to shonky and bridges we have no real plan to mitigate the phenomenon bridges togs are getting messy .
What that tx tells me is that bridges is grabbing at straws and looks like a kid who is not happy .
Congratulations to Jemma and Richie on the new baby
Simon I see that Te papa displaying some of the great Chinese Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang that is awesome .
Alex hope we have some good weather but it does not look like it with that weather map
Ka kite ano P.S for got to edit last nite
Kia ora James & Mulls
The Allblacks awards Sam Brodies try was up there with was it Joes try the chicken.
You guys look so young in the back yard cricket last night
Ka pai to Honey Hireme and Jarred Waerea Hargreaves for there Rugby league awards
yes James one need’s boots to play league lol
That a good challenge from the Basket ball team the young fella did quite good
O so there was Steven Adams and Temura Morrison acting with Jason Momoa in Aquaman I will be going to see that movie. I have just watched Frontier another of Jasons movies . P.S the Pacific Stars are shining ka pai
Our wahine sports star are shining bright to
Ka kite ano
Jokes on Eco Maori Mulls I quite like humour but the jokes on you its on air that you stated that Ka kite ano P.S your m8 are abandoning ship lol
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute