Open mike 12/09/2010

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, September 12th, 2010 - 26 comments
Categories: open mike - Tags:

Open mike is your post.

It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

Comment on whatever takes your fancy.

The usual good behaviour rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner).

Step right up to the mike…

26 comments on “Open mike 12/09/2010 ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Kaplan 1
    12 September 2010 at 8:11 am

    Govt to push through emergency quake laws
    Anyone else have an uneasy feeling about what might get tagged on to/incorporated/hidden in this?

  2. just saying 2
    12 September 2010 at 8:26 am

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/4119579/Matt-McCarten-has-his-own-take-on-cancer

    The ‘Stuff’ header says: “The Union Hardman’s Cancer Battle”

    – So I was already bristling with the stereotypical union meme – straight out of the biased media depiction of union leaders I grew up with. At least in those days the unions actually were militant at times. And the reporter seems to have perservered with her unionist-thug angle right through the story.

    I suspect it’s an angle McCarten would have preferred to the saccharine sympathy and fawning that usually characterises this kind of story, but she’s painted him as a cartoon caricature of a ‘baddie’ unionist IMO.

    Anyway, it’s the reporter’s portrayal of the Alliance split that seriously pissed me off. – McCarten didn’t accept that Labour had returned to its labour roots – really? – can the anonymous ‘Anderton camp’ really say that with straight faces in 2010?

  3. joe90 3
    12 September 2010 at 10:37 am

    It seems there always was a mosque at ground zero, a Muslim prayer room on the 17th floor of the south tower.

    On any given day, Mr. Abdus-Salaam’s companions in the prayer room might include financial analysts, carpenters, receptionists, secretaries and ironworkers. There were American natives, immigrants who had earned citizenship, visitors conducting international business — the whole Muslim spectrum of nationality and race.

  5. The Chairman 5
    12 September 2010 at 11:03 am

    Council debt soars

    Some councils have increased their debt loads by more than 500%.
    http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/business/4093499/Manukau-City-offers-350m-bonds-issue-as-debt-soars

  7. Loota 7
    12 September 2010 at 12:09 pm

    Deborah Coddington says:

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10672703

    However, I do not believe Williamson is racist for telling unoriginal jokes at an awards ceremony shortly before he accused us all of being racist.

    But his statements are without merit. This country was built on foreign investment – South British Insurance, Commercial Bank of Australia – I never saw Kiwis run screaming in terror from these august institutions.

    And if you look at last year’s statistics, $4.9 foreign billions were invested in land, plus $219 billion in manufacturing, finance and insurance companies. So there’s still plenty of unopposed foreign investment pouring in.

    It seriously sucks that Coddington conflated foreign investment in manufacturing, finance and insurance into the same category. The first is a part of the real productive economy, the last two often the province of the international money go-round and financial speculators.

    And there is no way I can see her figures being correct.

    $219B of foreign investment in NZ manuf/finance/insurance??? I have a feeling that is more than the country’s GDP. Enough to rebuild Christchurch 75-100x over. Don’t know about you but I didn’t see anywhere near that magnitude of money go into building the country’s productive capacity last year.

    Where the heck does she get those figures.

    And if that level of capital is being funneled into the country – why do we still have families who can’t afford to buy meat and milk every day.

  8. prism 8
    12 September 2010 at 12:23 pm

    Heard a replay of comment by Peter Dunne, Revenue Minister criticising media coverage of Christchurch. What a senseless outburst, all in a deep, confident tone of a supposedly intelligent man. No doubt he was talking his brand of ‘commonsense’ which is really just shallow thinking.

    • nzfp 9.1
      12 September 2010 at 1:31 pm

      Here are a couple more about the Artic Ice:

      Physorg.com Sep 7, 2010 “Climate: New study slashes estimate of icecap loss”

      Estimates of the rate of ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica, one of the most worrying questions in the global warming debate, should be halved, according to Dutch and US scientists.

      BBC Hardtalk Aug 18, 2009 (youtube)“Greenpeace Leader Admits Arctic Ice Exaggeration”

      Gerd Leipold, the outgoing leader of Greenpeace, admitted that his organization’s recent claim that the Arctic Ice will disappear by 2030 was “a mistake.” Greenpeace said in a July 15 press release that there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming. BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on the “Hardtalk” program pressed Leipold until he admitted the claim was wrong.

      arcus.org Pan-Arctic Summary Sep 1, 2010 “September Sea Ice Outlook: August Report”

      The mean prediction for the September minimum, excluding the two contributions from the general public, is 4.9 +/- 0.51 million square kilometers. This is a slight increase from the July Outlook of 4.8 +/- 0.62 million square kilometers and reflects in part the slowdown of ice loss observed in July.

      IARC-JAXA Information System (IJIS) Sep 10, 2010 “Data of Sea Ice Extent (Graph)”

      # Data from June 2002 to the present are included.
      # The format is “month, day, year, extent (unit: square km)”.
      # Number “-9999” represents that we couldn’t conduct the observation during the period for the reason that the satellite went into constrained operation mode or stand-by mode to avoid harmful effects by meteor showers and solar flares.

      It’s amazing how the trends from 2002 to 2010 are soo uniform.

      Climate is most definitely changing – anyone who won’t admit that climate is changing must be living in a vacuum.

    • john 9.2
      13 September 2010 at 12:38 am

      http://www.postcarbon.org/video/136726-bill-mckibben-on-david-letterman/12877-climate

      Great interview with Bill McKibben on Letterman on climate change.

    • john 9.3
      13 September 2010 at 1:34 am

      http://www.billmckibben.com/index.html
      Refer link for brilliant explanation we now live on a different Earth to the one of 40 years ago Climate change is here. Bill Mckibben has written a book Eaarth with two a’s to illustrate this fact.

  10. BLiP 10
    12 September 2010 at 4:05 pm

    The irony . . . it burns.

    Odierno: Troops staying in Iraq to prevent foreign interference

  11. WHY? 11
    12 September 2010 at 4:16 pm

    Find it interesting that no one here seems to be mentioning the allegations of electoral irregularities up auckland way. Too close to home? So not going to mention it?

  12. Jilly Bee 12
    12 September 2010 at 5:19 pm

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10672889
    Oh dear, why does Auntie HoS have to remind their readers that Onslow Road, Mt Eden is connected with former PM Helen Clark – the reporter was positively salivating about it rather than the fact that some unfortunate guy had been murdered there. It rather seems that Helen Clark just may have had a point about the clientele who live at said property. At least the Sunday Star-Times simply reported the facts.

    • BLiP 12.1
      12 September 2010 at 6:58 pm

      Ten years ago Helen Clark joined forces with local residents to block construction of a 61-bedroom extension to the boarding house.

      Ten years ago . . . ten fucking years ago!!! In the interim, John Banks sold the council’s sheltered accommodation for psych patients who, poor souls, have had to cluster into these 19th century doss houses. Why didn’t the tabloids follow that up . . . seems far more pertinent to the issue than Helen signing a neighbourhood petition a decade ago. FFS!!

      • Lindsey 12.1.1
        12 September 2010 at 10:45 pm

        Also the submission process removed some of the worst features of the boarding house proposal, namely the bedrooms with windows so close to the neighbours they were proposed to have opaque glass, and the bedrooms opening straight off the living areas which were really noisy etc.
        It was, and still is, a grotty dump, stuck on the front of a lovely old villa and all about cramming as many poor people as possible into the space.

Links to post

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.