You strike me as a person who looks life’s challenges straight in the eye & lives life to the best & fullest extent possible.
80 years is a significant milestone for anyone & you thoroughly deserve to have got there. May you have many more birthdays & adventures to come.
You’ll no doubt be the star at your party & nosh up today. Wish I could be there to celebrate it with you.
If you post today what time lunch with all the trimmings is expected to be served up, I’ll raise a glass of kahlua & milk & drink a toast to your good health at Gezza’s Bird Café here at Pookden Manor.
Bless, The whole thing kicks off at lunch time. About 12.30. We always begin with a glass raised to absent family and friends, then it is food and music and drinks. We don't dance anymore but we used to do that as well . A good auld c'eilidh. Cheers Gezza You added to my day.
the difference between those two vaccines – the Pfizer vaccine will recode your DNA and turn you into a child-trafficking zombie controlled by Bill Gates whereas the AstraZeneca vaccine will also recode your DNA and turn you into a child-trafficking zombie, but you’ll be controlled by Jeff Bezos.
lol. At some point NZ will have to decide what to do with the people it is currently ridiculing. We might get lucky and they merge back into society. Or we might find they're a monster class by the time of the next election.
Remember when Hungary was censured for building fences to keep migrants and refugees out ?(to my mind they're all refugees, from climate crisis and war)
Now Uk soldiers are being sent to Poland's border .Not to help with processing asylum requests, or provide humanitarian help, but to help"strengthen the border" aka reinforcing fences
It is by no means the first time Putin's Russia has deployed migrants to destabilize peaceable European neighbours – though Boris's motives may well be as self-serving as a desperate shortage of truck drivers.
37 year old niece, who wouldn't get the vaccine because she didn't know what was in it. Diagnosed with covid, and isolating at home had to go into North Shore Hospital after developing breathing problems.
The good news; feels much better after being put on a drip.
No one who needs an IV, ever refuses it because they don't know what is in it.
I got put on one recently, after 6 failed attempts by nurses to get a working cannula into a vein, before a young surgeon finally succeeded & they could pump in the opioid I needed for excruciating abdominal pain. They sent me down to radiology forcan abdominal X-ray & put me on Nil By Mouth until the docs had seen the radiologist’s report.
I needed IV fluids for 12 hours. I didn’t ask what was in it.
A woman walks up to an elevator door, there's a man inside wearing a suit and looking normal. Her intuition says don't get in the elevator, her rational mind says it's the middle of the day, in a busy building, he looks fine, nothing is going to happen. What should she do?
👍🏼
I think that’s the right answer. There’s sometimes a debate about whether women are more intuitive than man. I think they are, when it comes to reading people or situations – for that very reason. They need to protect themselves from physically stronger, predatory men, & so many have highly developed instincts to that end.
On average women are more physically vulnerable than men in any number of ways. But this doesn't necessarily make them victims.
The other side of this equation is that men do most of the protecting and sacrificing for the women. This was a lot more obvious in the pre-industrial world because life then was so much more dangerous.
Looked at this way men evolved via sexual selection to be the somewhat more dangerous sex in order to be useful to women. There is however an inherent risk in having potentially hazardous things lying about the house 🙂
Last line – that’s about how my Friday caregiver described the fathers of her two adult children, except she used the term lazy bastards who saw me coming & noticed I had DOORMAT written all over me. She was a real character. Much prefers looking after herself & living without a man. She was visiting Israel in 1973 when the Arabs attacked.
Because some men are dangerous sexual predators. The thing is you can’t always tell who these bastards are, & and unfortunately neither can those of us men who love & honour women as God’s greatest ever invention, & would would happily castrate these animals if we could.
Because men in suits generally don't use the stairs, even if they can find them
Ha! Agree with the 'generally', but my partner does use the stairs – that's because he's a fitness freak – however, because he runs them noisily, in his suit, it's pretty clear he's no threat to anyone. He'd be appalled if he thought he was, and change his behaviour.
But you touch on a point about intuition. My thoughts are that intuition is not something outside of rationality. It's a sum of things you've learned through experience and stories and the weight you put on the contradictions in the things you've learned.
The difference with rationality is that its generally thought of as a weighing up of the odds in any given situation and choosing to do the action that is most likely to be safe (take the stairs – 99.99% of the time you're safe). Intuition (i.e. the weighing up of experience and stories) may lead to the opposite decision (avoid the stairs). Intuition in these cases is also self-reinforcing (you stayed safe by avoiding the man, therefore it was the right thing to do).
many different answers for many different reasons. (1) it is lunchtime ,so she should take the time and exercise by walking up the stairs. (2) who wants to share a small enclosed space with a normal suit wearer?so, she should let the elevator go, and wait for some interesting company.(3) its her ex-husband, and her intuition is that he;s going to try and borrow money. etc etc
Throughout COP 26, Resilience Frontiers has been challenging participants’ mindsets , aiming to promote a global paradigm shift towards resilience through eight novel pathways.
On Thursday, 11 November, participants considered the final pathway, which focused on developing transformative financial instruments.
Its goal was rethinking prosperity, growth, and value, and nurturing human wellbeing and the environment, while harnessing emerging technologies to transform financial networks and instruments.
The next session was chaired by Robert Filipp, Founder and President of Innovative Finance Foundation, with a panel featuring: Kim Stanley Robinson, Science Fiction Author; Elena Lopez-Gunn, Director of ICATALIST; Alex Gordon-Brander, CEO of Teratree; and Adam Rockefeller-Growald, Co-Founder of Teratree.
Although a cynic would dismiss this as mere leftist consciousness-raising, I get the sense that it does at least launch a geopolitical work in progress:
The final pathway sparked a dialogue on equity, collaboration, and how we value nature. Through group discussions, reflection exercises, and expert panel conversations, the Lab explored thoughts around a subconscious desire to co-exist with the biosphere in a respectful, regenerative, and resilient way.
At a reception celebrating the discussions held at the Lab at COP 26, Youssef Nassef, Founder of Resilience Frontiers, and Director of the Adaptation Division, UNFCCC Secretariat, thanked all participants who had engaged with the themes during the two weeks, welcoming them to the growing Resilience Frontiers community.
Admitted to the bar in 1990, Grey recently fought a losing battle with the High Court on behalf of four aviation security workers who refused to get vaccinated, despite a Government mandate. Her practising certificate was last renewed in July.
She frequently shares misinformation on her social media pages about COVID-19 and the Pfizer vaccine, such as falsely inflating the number of deaths linked to the vaccine, and calling the recent rollout of the vaccine to teenagers "Government-mandated genocide".
I suspect the relevant framing is creative interpretation. That's extremely traditional, of course! Hard-wired as part of the privilege system. The basic idea has always been that justice arrives as an incidental product of the competitive storytelling.
There is an artifice around the notion of fact, and precedence tends to be given to authoritative sources such as scientists & media (I'm not kidding) to establish fact.
I am guessing then, that the Law Society's deliberations may come down to a matter of integrity.
If it can be shown that she guarded her words in court knowing that they could be shown to be proven falsehoods by authoritative sources such as scientists & media. But then spread these falsehoods in public statements outside of court.
It could be evidence of a certain mens rea.
In her defence Sue Grey says that she was speaking as a politician not a lawyer.
Newshub has contacted Grey for a response. In a letter to the Law Society in her own defence, Stuff reports she made the ‘genocide’ comment “in my personal capacity as a political leader”, not a lawyer.
More arcane priesthood than cabal. Extremely important to protect the common interests of members (the principle of territoriality being the antique basis of that). Therefore rulings are normally protectionist.
So it will depend whether they see her as a wolf in sheep's clothing or not. Fear derives from audacious setting of precedents: such adventurism will be sure to come back and bite them in the future. Rationalists will adopt the stance ‘hey, she's one of us, the political clothing is irrelevant'. Protectionists will adopt the stance ‘yeah but the cowboy thing is a bad look, we must always wear suits, sorry – I meant cowgirl'.
Then there’s her `chinese walls in the mind’ rationale to consider. Dunno if there’s legal precedent around that.
she isn't a politician as far as I know. I wanna be but failed politician yes. Unless she is on a local body somewhere and then I guess a local body politician yes.
I do think that Sue Grey is a lawyer and person of high integrity and maybe we are lucky to have some one like her willing take on the contentious – especially the opposite views to that the government departments want to promulgate.
I have no doubt that there will be those out there wanting to cut her down at any opportunity because of her past achievements.
As with anyone who attempts to expose judicial corruption, furtive attempts by the judiciary have been made to discredit her. These have been only minimally effective due to her exemplary legal background, as well as her political savvy in keeping the focus on the negative commercial and economic effect such judicial corruption is having on her major wool producing client.
Dr David Collins QC (Solicitor General)
When allegations of Wilson J’s misconduct originally surfaced, Collins endeared himself to the judiciary by moving quickly to quash it. He orchestrated the firing of whistle-blower Sue Grey from her job at Department of Conservation, filed extensive legal submissions in support of Judge Wilson’s conduct and personally appeared in Court to show his support for Wilson in what was a civil case between two private parties.
My own granddaughter does not want to proceed on with her second vaccination because of what is online about young people and myocarditis in this links such as this.
does she just peddle misinformation on her Facebook and other platforms Janet?
If the story reported about her speculating a death from the pfizer vaccine before the person was vaccinated is correct. must be a pretty strong vaccine to do that.
On Jan. 6, violent insurrectionists erected a gallows, stormed the U.S. Capitol, and chanted “hang Mike Pence!” as they searched for him. Pence’s boss, former President Donald Trump, was totally fine with it.
That’s the revelation from an interview between ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl and Trump, in which the former president defended the people who threatened the life of his vice president. A clip of the interview was released on Friday in advance of the publication of Karl’s book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” which comes out next week.
Typical leftist fake news. Trump didn't say anything to indicate he agreed that Pence ought to be hung. The biased reporter uses the `sin by omission' theory to frame Trump as supporting the rabble's call. Trump was clearly supporting the rabble, and just as clearly refraining from comment. Bullshit from Huffpost dude.
Wasn’t just the Trumpanzees pushing those sorts of “alternative facts”. The liberals / Dems were into it just as badly – twisting & bending events & statements to back up prejudices & false assertions.
Maybe you've been following the ignominious unravelling of the so-called "Steele Dossier". Four years of US liberal media calling Trump out as a Russian asset – based on complete bullshit.
It's reasons like this that if another election were held tomorrow, Trump would stand a decent shot at winning. That's pretty damned depressing really.
I consider that whole saga as finalising the decline of journalism, and the public trust in journalism to an unprecedented degree, even including the Iraq war lead up.
Trump winning the election prompted such outrage than any hack could utter any unverifiable crap as gospel , and as long as it was anti Trump it was endorsed and cheered and could build a career
It would go a long way if some media figures had the guts to say – "I was wrong – we fucked that up and we have to do some work to earn back your trust".
“Maybe you’ve been following the ignominious unravelling of the so-called “Steele Dossier”. Four years of US liberal media calling Trump out as a Russian asset – based on complete bullshit.”
……………………….
Yep. I loathe Trump – despicable, narcissistic, bullying lying individual in my eyes – so I didn’t want to know initially, but as it unravelled it was obvious it was both a completely fallacious AND an utterly farcical allegation.
“It’s reasons like this that if another election were held tomorrow, Trump would stand a decent shot at winning. That’s pretty damned depressing really.”
………………………….
The Dems have the same problem with Joe Biden as they did with Hillary Clinton. Both of them compromised candidates. Joe’s obviously well past his prime – when his prime was pretty patchy, to say the least.
Hard to see how Biden’s ongoing muddlesome gaffes & obvious frailty will stand up to a full-on Trump challenge. Harris, an unknown quantity. Cos Joe may be past his best, such as it ever was, but he’s a grumpy old stickler for getting top billing & doing all the (heavily scripted) talking.
The liberal media are likely going to have their work cut out for them trying present Joe as on top of things when he blunders.
Trump’s just as bad for blithering nonsense word salads, as well as spouting out dog whistling rhetoric, but audiences lap that up & don’t expect anything else from that charlatan.
It's a pathetic descent into echo-chamber Tribalism … the Clintonistas as bad as (and far more dominant within the US Establishment than) the Trumpards. Each side deploying their own crude conspiracy theories.
You bet! Trump would have exhibited sanctimony! "Unfortunately my folks got carried away by their enthusiasm. It was god's will that Pence became a martyr for the cause. His heart was in the right place even if his head wasn't."
Pence isn't a strong contender for the nomination next time but it's in Trump's interest to minimise any competitor. He's sending a carefully-nuanced signal to the right: disloyalty to the chief will be punished one way or another…
Technical point to you on that. Trump is forever doing a reframe of the narrative. Rabble chanting is so totally irrelevant to him that the interviewers point gets over-ridden and ignored automatically. He's always telling someone what to think! His irritation that the interviewer is waving a red herring at him gets displaced by the essentiality of having to impose his narrative.
He genuinely doesn't get the concern the interviewer is trying to project. Who cares what the rabble chant? Not him! His gobbledygook trying to explain common sense results from his internal imperative. Narcissism compels that.
Trump didn't condemn the crowd, he didn't back Pence. It's all about Trump really, the mob was doing what Trump wanted, Pence declined to do what Trump wanted. Pretty clear from Trump that it is all about himself, and his delusions and his blow arse self aggrandisement. A 'wasn't very much' wannabe who cannot accept reality of "trump, you're fired".
Actually no. I've worked with about a dozen in both Canada and Latin America. They were generally easy to get to know and good people to work with.
When the topic drifted onto politics – they'd usually concede or openly state that Trump was a flawed, troublesome personality. Or as one guy put it sorrowfully, "how the fuck did the US come down to a choice between these two shitheads?"
We've been over this political ground many times, but for me it comes down to a question of just how accountable are we going to be? Because if the left cannot manage an utter landslide win over someone so blatantly unsuitable as Trump – then exactly what claim to political competence do we have?
Voters need to understand the fundamental differences between liberalism and leftism. It’s the difference between a candidate who believes capitalism, with just a little refereeing, will eventually provide what working people need, versus a candidate who believes serious intervention in the capitalist economy is necessary.
He didn't have to run for the Democrats nomination under any rule. He could have done what Ross Perot did in 1992 and run for a third party. The problem he would have had was two-fold. He didn't have any source of a great deal of money and he didn't have an organisation to carry out the basic tasks like getting on the ballot in all the States. They are all different and the rules are really all there to make it nearly impossible for a third party to get started. For example, when Perot ran –
"In New York, ballot access appeared to be the most difficult to attain. In a five-week summer period, the campaign would be required to compile 20,000 signatures from non-primary voters, including 100 from each of half of the state's Congressional districts"
Perot managed it but it helped that he was a billionaire and was willing to spend enormous amounts of his own money on the campaign. That was when a billion dollars was worth something.
Sanders on the other hand simply didn't have any money or organisation to do such a thing. That meant he became a Democrat as long as he was in the campaign, simply because they had an organisation to do the donkey work, before going back to being an Independent when he dropped out of the campaign which is what he remains, as far as I know.
Sociologist Stephanie Mudge explored the terrain three years ago.
In Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism, Mudge looks at left parties in advanced capitalist countries over the last century and shows how the experts aligned with those parties pushed them in the direction of spin doctors and markets. In the process, left parties’ ability to represent the interests of their own working-class constituencies was eroded — and ordinary people were shut out of the halls of power.
Political organizer and socialist activist Chase Burghgrave recently spoke with Mudge about her new book, the role of experts in democratic societies, and whether a more vibrant, egalitarian politics is possible.
The Democratic Party is trickier, because of its very different history. It has always been a mass party in a certain sense, but not a socialist or ideological one. I include it because, when the leading liberal or New Deal faction of the Democratic Party embraced Keynesianism around the time of the 1937 recession, it became somewhat comparable to social-democratic and labor parties. And, last but not least, in the 1990s the Democratic Party was a major exporter of “third way” politics to Europe and elsewhere. So that is why it needed to be part of the story.
She goes into why the left defaults to experts, then the future…
The short answer is that left politics needs experts who make spin unnecessary. Left politics should have intuitive appeal because it speaks to people’s real needs and concerns.
That said, I don’t think new experts will magically cure the ills of left politics. Nor is it my place to say who the next left party experts should be. I think that party experts can be anyone — and maybe, in the current moment, left parties should be dedicating their resources to playing the long game by radically broadening the profiles of the people we consider “experts.”
But I will say this: it is absolutely essential that left parties cultivate people’s ability to understand, and critically engage with, the structure and logic of contemporary financial capitalism. I think Alexis de Tocqueville once said that you have to “educate democracy.” I would give this a Marxian twist: you have to educate capitalist democracy. There can be no left politics without a shared understanding of today’s specific economic circumstances
Instead of the bipolar left-right model that's served as the default model for two hundred years, I'm suggesting it's more interesting to use three poles – conservative, liberal and socialist. Like all social models it's not meant to be perfect but I'm using it more and more these days.
I'd have a few quibbles with the details. Haidt is worth reading but that moral framework never struck me as compelling. Metaphysics always strikes me as a surer basis (principles, archetypes, models, assumptions & hypotheses). Although your scheme seems similar to the third way, it would be interesting to know if you see it as different, and how.
I mean, from a metaphysical perspective, triangulation is the common basis. So both have the merit of transcending the binary. I always saw the third way as fake – liberal capitalism and conservative capitalism are the same system. Blair's framing (from Giddens wasn't it?) was basically a pr sham to unhook Labour from socialism.
“The rise of “culture wars” has been incredibly important for the political atmosphere that we are now in. Quite simply it doesn’t lend itself to debate and discussion, or finding middle ground. Instead, it’s more polarising – it lends itself to the labelling of opponents as racists, sexists, or in the case of Hilary Clinton, talking about the masses as “deplorables”. So, there’s a strong strain of sneering from many on the left – especially against those that are seen as socially backward. The old slogan of: “The personal is political” now underpins the focus on how to fix the problems of the world.
good quote. I've been thinking lately that some of the language used to talk about the freedom protestors reminds me of Clinton's use of deplorables. Like we didn't learn anything from the time of Trump. Blows my mind.
i find this funny and interesting at the same time.
Largely it’s an elite top-down model of politics, reflective of the left being made up of the highly-educated stratum of society. They confidently believe that they know best.
later
And this is why it’s somewhat surprising that increasingly the left want either the state or society to put limits on political debate and expression.
lol, it must be hard to understand how someone who fought for the working class – proletariat and precariat' is now demanding no debate on issues that affect predominantly the proletariat and the precariat.
The turning point for me was Jonathan Haidt's ideas on Moral Foundations theory. All humans share a common suite of core moral drivers, but we place different weights on them. And this does seem to be closely linked to innate personality differences:
Researchers have found that people's sensitivities to the five/six moral foundations correlate with their political ideologies. Using the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, Haidt and Graham found that libertarians are most sensitive to the proposed Liberty foundation, liberals are most sensitive to the Care and Fairness foundations, while conservatives are equally sensitive to all five/six foundations.
According to Haidt, the differences have significant implications for political discourse and relations. Because members of two political camps are to a degree blind to one or more of the moral foundations of the others, they may perceive morally driven words or behavior as having another basis – at best self-interested, at worst evil, and thus demonize one another.
Haidt and Graham suggest a compromise can be found to allow liberals and conservatives to see eye-to-eye. They suggest that the five foundations can be used as "doorway" to allow liberals to step to the conservative side of the "wall" put up between these two political affiliations on major political issues (i.e. legalizing gay marriage). If liberals try to consider the latter three foundations in addition to the former two (therefore adopting all five foundations like conservatives for a brief amount of time) they could understand where the conservatives' viewpoints stem from and long-lasting political issues could finally be settled.
All too often we make the debate all about these moral weightings – which are fundamentally unresolvable at that level. If instead we accept that the people we perceive as our opponents are simply coming at an issue with a different set of priorities and interests – we're more likely to engage in a constructive negotiation.
And that's how all the great politicians got the results they’re remembered for, they understood their opponents and could make deals with them.
“All too often we make the debate all about these moral weightings – which are fundamentally unresolvable at that level. If instead we accept that the people we perceive as our opponents are simply coming at an issue with a different set of priorities and interests – we’re more likely to engage in a constructive negotiation.”
…………………………
That tends to be how I’ve always looked at issues. At various times in my life it’s seemed like a character flaw, because others with stronger egos & opinions made judgements & decisions (often, needed decisions) faster & with more conviction & certainty than I was comfortable with.
Then I began to notice how many of those decisions subsequently (sometimes a year or two later) turned to be bad ones, with negative blowback effects, from things that were bothering me as risks at the time I felt like a slow-minded fool for wanting more information or discussion.
I like people. I appear to be highly empathetic, at least at times. I seem to have the happy knack of easily getting people to talk to me and explain their viewpoint. Thereafter I find I can sometimes see the issue thru their eyes, from their perspective, as well as my own. I decided in the end that this isn’t a flaw, it’s an inbuilt talent, & I now employ it usefully whenever I can.
I can across this regarding people holding opposing political view but treated each other with respect (that IMO all are due) John Wayne and Mark Rydell.
"“He really wanted to do The Cowboys,” Rydell said. “He treated me with the most respect. I was like this (cringing) waiting for him to say something anti semitic or anti-Indian or anti-anything. I was ready to jump. But he taught me a lesson.
“I know a lot of people with whom I agree politically and otherwise who are jerks,” Rydell said. “And then you take someone like him who I disagreed with in almost every area, except art. And he was a terrific person. The first guy on the set, the last person to leave. The picture was full of kids. They climbed up on him like the monkey bars on a playground. He was available to everybody. We went out to dinner he would sign autographs for everybody. He never was unfair or unpleasant. It was a big lesson to me not to pre-judge.”
youtube 4:15 Mark Rydell director of The Cowboys,The Rose, On Golden Pond etc.
From a social science perspective, the question is if the theory can be validated via research. First, the stats basis would have to be robust in his home nation, then it would have to be replicated in the other western countries.
Since Liberalism morphed historically into separate beasts in the various countries that it invaded (as a meme) from Britain, I would expect the stats to render his thesis context-dependent only. Here, for example, liberalism has manifested only as a strand within the Alliance in the '90s plus economic ideology shared by Nat/Lab since the '80s, since our original Liberal Party died a century ago.
Just realised that there is something good about wearing a mask. Tromp around the supermarket, leave to go to the bike stand and then off with the mask. "Wow!." that first breath of fresh air is so great.
I am amazed by how good people are actually to be honest. I have a strikt no one enters the premise policy, plague door is mounted and all interaction is customer on one side and me on the other and everyone is very very understanding.
It allows me to trade without having to police people on vaccination status or mask wearing. And People are wearing their masks at about 95% rate. And if someone comes without one, i have spares to hand out and they are generally well accepted.
there are more of us doing the right things than not. That is always something we should keep in mind.
I agree, from what I have seen, with mask wearing. But jeez, wearing them indoors all day, thank you (I work on my own out doors mostly, so can slip it on & off).
i have been told by someone whom i trust on these issues tht mask wearing considerably reduces the risk of transmitting covid, as we keep our droplets to our self. And thus i am a great promoter of masks. Specifically indoors. I do tend to have one with me when out and about and will wear it when people are around. I feel naked now without one. Humans get used to this stuff fairly quickly i reckon.
Some useful information about another vaccine, Pandemrix. The following is from Peter Doshi, the associate editor of the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal):
In October 2009, the US National Institutes of Health infectious diseases chief, Anthony Fauci, appeared on YouTube to reassure Americans about the safety of the “swine flu” vaccine. “The track record for serious adverse events is very good. It’s very, very, very rare that you ever see anything that’s associated with the vaccine that’s a serious event,” he said.
Four months earlier, the World Health Organization had declared H1N1 influenza a pandemic, and by October 2009 the new vaccines were being rolled out across the world. A similar story was playing out in the UK, with prominent organisations, including the Department of Health, British Medical Association, and Royal Colleges of General Practitioners, working hard to convince a reluctant NHS workforce to get vaccinated. “We fully support the swine flu vaccination programme … The vaccine has been thoroughly tested,” they declared in a joint statement.
Except, it hadn’t.
…
The BMJ conducted its own analysis of the adverse events, most of which seem to have been reported spontaneously to GSK. For a range of concerning adverse events, reports were coming in for Pandemrix at a consistently higher rate than for the other two GSK pandemic vaccines–four times the rate of facial palsy, eight times the rate of serious adverse events, nine times the rate of convulsions. Overall, Pandemrix had, proportionally, five times more adverse events reported than Arepanrix and the unadjuvanted vaccine.
But those being vaccinated against swine flu were seemingly unaware of these side-effects, including narcolepsy. The vaccine manufacturer was aware of this side-effect but failed to inform health consumers. One can imagine why they might have been reluctant to provide such information.
Ian Mac, feel for the Covid nurses and doctors, my wife found while training and wearing N95 masks, they are brilliant at protection but it doesn’t take long before one is just recycling ones own CO2 even if it just a little bit every breath, a hard job made harder.
I have three cotton masks. They have an under cotton lining, open at both ends, so that the wearer can insert an extra layer for better protection. I haven't felt the need so far, but with rapidly rising cases I am wondering if it would be a good idea.
Can you recommend something I could slide in between the outer mask and the lining? It would have to be something a bit stiffer then normal.
I’m pretty sceptical of most reports of vaccine reactions, a 30 year old working with me after having her vaccination had just about every reaction you could think of from sunburn, “ Ohh that’s worse than I’ve had before” to tripping on something. “ I don’t usually do that “ ad infinitum …. turns out her mother had been diagnosed with hypochondria, and that’s the thing about hypochondriacs .. you can’t tell them they are sick because that’s exactly what they want to hear.
It's interesting to observe people getting upset about Covid spreading and their attitude towards those who are determined to not follow strictures or suggestions designed to protect.
Then saying that all border controls should go. And people should be trusted because they'll make the right decisions.
A person needs to think for their self and guide those dependent on them when it comes to their health.
There are going to be less health services available for those who already rely on the health system and who will need to enter it. This means longer waiting times and people becoming sicker.
Flag-waving images of protester really disturb me. I've been thinking that the meanings of those flags (United Tribes and Tino Rangatiratanga)
If, as a Pākehā, what is the first thing that would come to mind if I changed my cover photo on Facebook or Twitter to the Tino Rangatiratanga flag?
I support Māori aspirations for their people
I’m a pro-gun rights, anti-1080 anti-vaxxer with possible white supremacist tendencies who thinks the PM should be hung and scientists & health officials should face a Nuremburg trial over covid?
If 2., how do we remind people of the meaning of this symbol of Māori aspiration? How do we remove the re-purposing of the flag as a symbol of disinformation and violence?
“2., how do we remind people of the meaning of this symbol of Māori aspiration? How do we remove the re-purposing of the flag as a symbol of disinformation and violence?”
………………………….
The Tino Rangatiratanga flag turns up at all sorts of rallies and protests against the gummint, councils, private contractors, or Pākehā. It never gets a long term asociation with those because the fact that some Māori people purloin the flag & wave it around at demos as a means of personally expressing just their Māoriness is understood by most people, imo.
It won’t suffer a change of symbolism as result of being raised during the awfully muddled vaccination protests, imo.
It’s a shame this flag is forever associated with a coterie of perennial Pākehā-bashing Māori separatists. It’s iconic – the coolest design. If had a more inclusive cause & meaning I’d vote for it in a heartbeat to be Kiwiland’s new national flag.
Looks like today’s protesters achieve something Wellington Council and Wellington Police failed* to do for decades… the majority of cars driving within the speed limit.
If you want that history raw rather than re-cooked, just go to the Waitangi Tribunal hearing publications on the Ngati Paoa, Ngati Whaua Orakei, Te Kawerau a Maki, and Manukau Tainui. Not a barrel o' laffs necessarily but rich and detailed.
Also the one on the Musket Wars which is just utu manifold.
Also Belich's early Auckland accounts from Marsden etc up the Tamaki River in Making Peoples Vol 1. That spans the worlds old and new.
It's interesting. Typing away online, there's a separation when discussing irritating things. not perfect, but significant.
But talking to someone last night, the topic of covid came up, and I actually surprised myself with how just plain angry I got thinking about how constant white-anting defeatism from the very beginning has put us where we are now.
People are dying now because when people weren't dying, capitalists and the alliance of nutters demanded bubbles and relaxed restrictions and overseas holidays etc etc etc. Fuck 'em all. They managed to trip us up on the final lap.
So now the government is fighting a holding action against progressive expansion of covid in the hope the health system doesn't get overwhelmed. It's just such a pointless waste. We fucking had this thing. Another few months would have drastically changed the game, and much fewer people wouldn't be wondering whether they should go to the hospital because they were coughing up blood.
Same. I have to step away from thinking about it a lot.
Are you think the break was with the border control and delta getting in? Or when Labour gave up on elimination?
how constant white-anting defeatism from the very beginning has put us where we are now.
it still blows my mind. I can generally understand most political positions even the ones I outright hate. But this one I really don't get, that we should just have let a whole lot of people die. Do they not realise it might be them or their loved ones?
Death by a thousand nags, rather than any specific point.
Got lucky a couple of times, lucked out once or twice. But the constant rust eroding every single effort… just corrosive. Even if the govt had stood firm, enforcement would have had to get more drastic and still be less successful.
I think the ones who should know better, but were consultants for an international airport or wanted their nightclubs open 24/7 (or whatever) generally felt they could minimise their personal exposure. Who cares if your bar staff get it, you're isolating on a lifestyle block and working remotely. Isolation from society helps the tamakis. The rest? Just sad.
Seems obvious that Delta got spread by those who crossed borders. Rule-breakers got helped by bureaucrats using privacy law to prevent the public punishing them. Haven't seen much evidence of the system punishing them either, so I got the impression nobody was serious about the rules.
How many other folk got the same impression? If you enforce rules, people take them more seriously. Instead, we got an official sham. Understandably, Labour's poll rating dropped significantly compared to last year's effort.
Delta is endemic globally. Unless you were going to absolutely isolate NZ – and I mean no-one ever entered the border indefinitely into the future – then it was always going to arrive. It was just a matter of time.
There were only ever two justifications for lockdowns and isolation. Initially we needed to apply the precautionary principle in the face of a novel and unknown virus. The second was to buy time in order to prepare as best we could for COVID's inevitable arrival.
As far as the first precautionary principle is concerned that has pretty much expired. (And we might note the irony of the 'vax or die' crowd de-humanising those who would apply the same principle when faced with a novel vaccine with unknowable long term safety.)
As for preparing for the inevitable arrival of Delta, it seems to me that if public health really had been our top priority there was quite a deal more than could have been done.
Any strategy that relied on 90% or more of people complying with it, especially when it came to a novel vaccine technology, was always going to be high stakes politically.
True – but it's come at a cost. The anti-protests in NSW and VIC have been both a lot more politically intense and damaging than anything NZ has experienced.
Last I looked Melbourne was closing in on 280 days of lockdown in the past 12 months – one of the highest in the world.
Would people have taken the rules more seriously without a year of defeatists?
Recognising inevitability is one thing, embracing it is another. Half a dozen people (give or take) are dead because we couldn't hold it together. And that number's only going to increase.
seems like someone within National is cranking up the ABC (anyone but collins) campaign again, stories in the NZHerald about planning a coup. A few % points increase and the Govt having a roughish time with some covid stuff and soneone within National starts sharpening the knife
Yeah I saw that way back then after I read the book by Michael Lewis. He's brilliant every time! Starting with Liar's Poker late '80s. I own around 8/9 books analysing the gfc & have read 3/4 more & it's remarkable how they all reveal new angles.
Although Paulson (a different one than the Paulson in Bush Jr's cabinet who had to mastermind the rescue of the system & his book is also essential) is the main focus, the book includes cameos of several other guys who bet against both the establishment & the market herd & won hugely.
Thanks guy will watch that tomorrow, Just finishing tonight the last from series 3 of Fauda tonight. I know that series and movies have their framing – But taken back by the subject matter, and it has expanded for me the area and issues. I would say in lockdown you get to watch some gems that otherwise you wouldn't watch. I see Margin Call is on youtube.
Just finishing Alexandria by Edmond Richardson – So Dennis will be looking for something different to read so will follow your recommendation.
Cheers, RL, just watched it for the first time this morning on your recommendation … I see one critic called it"easily the best Wall Street movie ever made" & I can see why … hard to believe it's Chandor’s debut as a director.
I think I must have watched it four or five times now. Apart from some of the standout scenes with Jeremy Irons – that boardroom meeting is a masterpiece of scripting, direction and acting – what deeply appeals to me is that it opens up the world of big finance, lays bare it's ugliness and the very human costs -without ever once veering into preachiness or smugness.
The dying dog that bookends the movie is of course a brilliant metaphor.
If anybody is still under the illusion that the guy who harangued the PM in Northland was a "journalist" and she was "avoiding the media", this is from the backgrounder in today's herald:
For a journalist Shane Chafin has interesting ways of dealing with other journalists.
From David Fisher in interviewing Chafin:
"Do you also know I have had Muslim friends for 20 years? And they are willing to go on record." Chafin would not connect the Herald with anyone. "I'm a reporter. I can go on my channel and talk about that content any time I want to." Chafin said he had been a reporter for two months and "I'm the one making news around the world". "I made viral news around the world. When's the last time you did that?”
Chafin floated various claims about Covid-19, which – when challenged – led to him asking: "Are you f***ing stupid? Are you mentally ill? Maybe your meds aren't right. I'm a professional – maybe I could help your psychiatrist.”
The man who wraps his phone and computer in tin foil and puts them in a freezer asks someone else if they are mentally ill? And suggests that they have a psychiatrist?
He came from America because he didn't like the way things were going there. (Under Obama.) I can see he doesn't like the way things are going here. We certainly don't need him here and Northland with its low vaccination rates sure doesn't need him. He should bugger off.
It is claimed that the present ‘shockingly low’ conviction rate [in sexual cases] makes this bill necessary, but what is the evidence for this? The 2019 Justice Ministry ‘Attrition and Progression Report’ appears to be a main source.
This report says that only 11% of “perpetrators” who are reported to the Police by “victims” are convicted, but is based on the erroneous assumption that all allegations are valid. Figures for these “victimisations” include all cases in which the police were unable to act (for example no perpetrator was identified or insufficient evidence to prosecute), but absurdly also those which the police deemed actually “not to be a crime” and those where the accuser recanted. Even verdicts of not guilty are included, where juries had actually found police allegations to be unsubstantiated. The report therefore flies in the face of the presumption of innocence (a basic tenet of justice), not to mention good science.
Another incongruity is the purportedly ‘low’ conviction rate for cases that do make it to court. However, 2020 conviction rates of 39% for sexual violation and 50% for attempted sexual violation are not meagre when viewed against rates for some other violent crimes such as abductions and kidnapping (35%), aggravated robbery (41%), attempted murder (29%) and at the top, murder (56%). In no other crime is undermining defendants’ trial rights proposed to increase conviction rates.
I have insufficient expertise to support the legislation the Professor opposes. Nor am I doing so above.
But when she compares sex crime conviction failure to be comparable to a more general crime conviction failure, and then extrapolates that as a reason to not, essentially, worry, well ….. then I worry.
It's not PC I'm sure, but Police bring people to a court before a judge because they've done the crime.
Twenty or so years ago we had a tv show made here featuring spin doctors. Seemed quite good at the time. Public relations is the old label. Now we have the American beltway thing happening so we're getting a focus on lobbyists:
Good to see Labour & the Greens getting hip to the scene (just kidding) & the revolving door thing revving up. Soon it'll be just like the USA with the same folk switching jobs between industry & regulator constantly.
Stalin is the best model: leading revolutionary & state secret service agent simultaneously. In the middle, you get to play both sides against each other. Shapeshifter technique.
It has been made with the Ardern version for a little while as I have seen it used by RW people. They think it is so smart but I just think that they lack discernment – most of those NZers looking at the hat and logo think of Trump.
The NZ ones may be out of touch and think little of aligning themselves with Trump who many NZers think is a moron. They clearly have forgotten the pounding that Todd Muller got when his Maga hat was on display. He had to say that he collected this kind of memorabilia to get any kind of sympathy for him about having a Maga hat. It just shows how out of touch this rag tag mob was/is. Then the Trump flags ………, the upside down United Tribes flag etc etc.
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Peter Dunne writes – I am always wary when I hear that the Controller and Auditor-General has commented on or made recommendations to the government about an issue of public policy that does not relate strictly to public expenditure. According to the legislation, the role of the Controller ...
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Do you believe New Zealand runs its general elections fairly and competently? As a voter, can you be confident that the votes on your ballot will be counted towards the final result? As a political scientist, I’ve been asked these questions many times and always answered “yes”, with very few ...
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Hi,If you’ve been digging through the newly launched Webworm store (orders are being dispatched worldwide as I type!) you’ll have noticed the best model we had was Calvin.This is Calvin.Calvin.Calvin is 7, and is the son of my producer over on Flightless Bird, Rob — aka “Wobby Wob”. Rob also ...
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Its a law like gravity: whenever a right-wing government is elected, they start attacking democracy. And now, after talking to their Republican and Tory and Fidesz chums at the International Democracy Union forum in Wellington, National is doing it here, announcing plans to remove election-day enrolment. Or, to put it ...
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The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
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It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
Introduction Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here at the 2024 Infrastructure Symposium. I was extremely happy when the Prime Minister asked me to be his Minister for Infrastructure. It is one of the great barriers holding the New Zealand economy back from achieving its potential. Building high ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced the upcoming Budget will include new funding of $571 million for Defence Force pay and projects. “Our servicemen and women do New Zealand proud throughout the world and this funding will help ensure we retain their services and expertise as we navigate an increasingly ...
New Zealand’s ability to cope with climate change will be strengthened as part of the Government’s focus to build resilience as we rebuild the economy, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “An enduring and long-term approach is needed to provide New Zealanders and the economy with certainty as the climate ...
Jobseeker beneficiaries who have work obligations must now meet with MSD within two weeks of their benefit starting to determine their next step towards finding a job, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “A key part of the coalition Government’s plan to have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker ...
A new standalone Social Investment Agency will power-up the social investment approach, driving positive change for our most vulnerable New Zealanders, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis says. “Despite the Government currently investing more than $70 billion every year into social services, we are not seeing the outcomes we want for ...
Check against delivery Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you to outline the Coalition Government’s approach to our first Budget. Thank you Mark Skelly, President of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce, together with your Board and team, for hosting me. I’d like to acknowledge His Worship ...
Your Excellency Ambassador Meredith, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Ambassadors from European Union Member States, Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and other distinguished guests, Thank you everyone for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen - In diplomacy, we often speak of ‘close’ and ‘long-standing’ relations. ...
The Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will be repealed this year so that a better regime can be put in place to provide New Zealanders safe and timely access to medicines, medical devices and health products, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello announced today. “The medicines and products we are talking about ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop, today released his decision on twenty recommendations referred to him by the Wellington City Council relating to its Intensification Planning Instrument, after the Council rejected those recommendations of the Independent Hearings Panel and made alternative recommendations. “Wellington notified its District Plan on ...
Rape Awareness Week (6-10 May) is an important opportunity to acknowledge the continued effort required by government and communities to ensure that all New Zealanders can live free from violence, say Ministers Karen Chhour and Louise Upston. “With 1 in 3 women and 1 in 8 men experiencing sexual violence ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government will be delivering a more efficient Healthy School Lunches Programme, saving taxpayers approximately $107 million a year compared to how Labour funded it, by embracing innovation and commercial expertise. “We are delivering on our commitment to treat taxpayers’ money ...
New research on the impacts of extreme weather on coastal marine habitats in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay will help fishery managers plan for and respond to any future events, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. A report released today on research by Niwa on behalf of Fisheries New Zealand ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters will lead a broad political delegation on a five-stop Pacific tour next week to strengthen New Zealand’s engagement with the region. The delegation will visit Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Tuvalu. “New Zealand has deep and ...
There has been a material decline in gas production according to figures released today by the Gas Industry Co. Figures released by the Gas Industry Company show that there was a 12.5 per cent reduction in gas production during 2023, and a 27.8 per cent reduction in gas production in the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins tonight announced the recipients of the Minister of Defence Awards of Excellence for Industry, saying they all contribute to New Zealanders’ security and wellbeing. “Congratulations to this year’s recipients, whose innovative products and services play a critical role in the delivery of New Zealand’s defence capabilities, ...
Welcome to you all - it is a pleasure to be here this evening.I would like to start by thanking Greg Lowe, Chair of the New Zealand Defence Industry Advisory Council, for co-hosting this reception with me. This evening is about recognising businesses from across New Zealand and overseas who in ...
It is a pleasure to be speaking to you as the Minister for Digitising Government. I would like to thank Akolade for the invitation to address this Summit, and to acknowledge the great effort you are making to grow New Zealand’s digital future. Today, we stand at the cusp of ...
New Zealand is urging both Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid the further humanitarian catastrophe that military action in Rafah would unleash, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The immense suffering in Gaza cannot be allowed to worsen further. Both sides have a responsibility to ...
A new online data dashboard released today as part of the Government’s school attendance action plan makes more timely daily attendance data available to the public and parents, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average of how ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced Rosemary Banks will be New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the United States of America. “Our relationship with the United States is crucial for New Zealand in strategic, security and economic terms,” Mr Peters says. “New Zealand and the United States have a ...
The Government is considering creating a new tier of minerals permitting that will make it easier for hobby miners to prospect for gold. “New Zealand was built on gold, it’s in our DNA. Our gold deposits, particularly in regions such as Otago and the West Coast have always attracted fortune-hunters. ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
By Kaneta Naimatu in Suva Journalists in the Pacific region play an important role as the “eyes and ears on the ground” when it comes to reporting the climate crisis, says the European Union’s Pacific Ambassador Barbara Plinkert. Speaking at The University of the South Pacific (USP) on World Press ...
Aldora Itunu is back in the Black Ferns squad after a three-year absence. The last of her 24 internationals was an underwhelming loss to France (7-29) in Castres to conclude the disastrous 2021 Northern Tour. The powerhouse prop won a Rugby World Cup in 2017 and thought she was done. ...
The fight to control major transport policy and projects in Auckland has burst into the open again, with councillors rejecting Mayor Wayne Brown’s latest attempt to steer things more under his influence. Councillors from the left and right broke ranks on the mayor’s bid to control Auckland Transport more directly ...
Exhausted by the general election campaign, horrified by the twilight zone of coalition negotiations, distracted by the silly season and waiting for the honeymoon to begin, Raw Politics has been in hibernation since October. From today, we’re back. Our weekly political video show and podcast returns for ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk Authorities in the small town of Boulouparis have commemorated Armistice Day on May 8 with a new memorial honouring New Zealand soldiers who were stationed in New Caledonia during World War II. The ceremony took place in the township on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Dehm, Senior lecturer, international migration and refugee law, University of Technology Sydney The High Court unanimously ruled today that the Australian government can keep asylum seekers in immigration detention indefinitely in cases where they do not “voluntarily” cooperate with their own ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Munro, Lecturer, Creative Industries and Digital Media, University of South Australia Twenty-four hours after the release of Macklemore’s pro-Palestine protest song Hind’s Hall on social media on May 7, the video had already notched up over 24 million views. In ...
Failing to anticipate the complexity of the consenting system is being cited as the the current builder's shortcomings, an Infrastructure Commission review says. ...
350 Aotearoa is calling the Environment Select Committee’s decision to allow oral submissions from just 40% of individual, unique submitters who asked to speak to the committee ‘a disgraceful blight to democracy’. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Helal, Assistant Dean (Sustainability), The University of Melbourne Dubai skylineAleksandarPasaric/Pexels Since ancient times, people have built structures that reach for the skies – from the steep spires of medieval towers to the grand domes of ancient cathedrals and mosques. Today ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edward Musole, PhD Law Student, University of New England Girts Ragelis/ShutterstockRecent trends show Australians are increasingly buying wearables such as smartwatches and fitness trackers. These electronics track our body movements or vital signs to provide data throughout the day, with ...
Papua New Guinea experienced a significant earthquake on 24 March in East Sepik and there has also been recent flooding there and in surrounding provinces. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yousuf Mohammed, Dermatology researcher, The University of Queensland Maridav/Shutterstock You wake up, stagger to the bathroom and gaze into the mirror. No, you’re not imagining it. You’ve developed face wrinkles overnight. They’re sleep wrinkles. Sleep wrinkles are temporary. But as your ...
The Environment Select Committee has just announced that 60 percent of individuals who asked to speak at the hearings will not be heard. This equates to almost 700 people who made individual submissions and more than 1000 more who made a form submission. ...
The Royal New Zealand Ballet is performing Swan Lake around the country. What kind of dream does the ballet sell?Before going to see the Royal New Zealand Ballet perform Swan Lake, I had about as much familiarity with the plot of this ballet as could be expected from having ...
A new poem by Auckland poet Eamonn Tee. High Tide at Local Maxima It is only going to get worse. The streams will be narrow and fickle. The week will bend and buckle like a pot-bellied waist. You will make it to the weekend with one ...
The New Zealand entrepreneur behind beauty business Ethique is gearing up to launch a new eco-venture. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Our thirst for a tasty bevvy is insatiable, but it comes with a hefty plastic price for the planet: 580 billion ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 James by Percival Everett (Mantle, $38) A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from ...
By Kamna Kumar in Suva Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna stressed the importance of media freedom and its link to the climate and environmental crisis at the 2024 World Press Freedom Day event organised by the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme. Under the theme “A Planet for ...
Tara Ward previews a new local TV series offering alternative visions of motherhood. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. A woman is clambering up the side of her two-story house, clinging desperately to a drainpipe. Nearby, her child is perched on the ...
Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) is supportive of the cross-party approach to climate adaptation announced by the Minister of Climate Change today. ...
The Sustainable Business Council (SBC) and Climate Leaders Coalition (CLC) welcome today’s announcement from Government around a bipartisan inquiry into an enduring climate adaptation framework for New Zealand. ...
The Free Speech Union welcomes the decision by the Department of Internal Affairs, and Minister Brooke Van Velden, to abandon proposals to further regulate online speech. ...
Its new building in Wellington will not be nearly big enough for all its records, and it has also run out of money to build its new storage facility in Levin. ...
BusinessNZ is congratulating the Minister of Climate Change for his work in achieving cross-party consensus for a way forward on climate adaptation. ...
Recent research reveals the repeal of smokefree measures is not only bad for our health, but also the economy. The Government has repealed various smokefree measures to ensure it keeps collecting $1.2 billion a year in tobacco taxes, in order to pay for tax cuts already being delivered to ...
The club’s surprisingly good season is built on the desire to prove a random A-League YouTuber wrong… and a few other factors.“There’s no way that Wellington Phoenix play finals this year. I can’t see it happening at all.” Those are the words of Lachlan Raeside, an Australian football content ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By César Albarrán-Torres, Senior Lecturer, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology Apple TV+ As one of billions of bilingual individuals in the world, it disappoints me when a film or TV show with characters of a non-English-speaking background is ...
The under-utilised course is a waste of space, and with a little political will, it could be turned into something better. For the duration of her stay in Wellington, my long-suffering cousin listened to me rant about golf courses. They’re bad for the environment: water intensive and pesticide heavy. They ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Ruppanner, Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of The Future of Work Lab, Podcast at MissPerceived, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock A recent report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows US fertility rates dropped 2% in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Corderoy, Medical doctor and PhD candidate studying involuntary psychiatric treatment, School of Psychiatry, UNSW Sydney shop_py/Shutterstock Picture two people, both suffering from a serious mental illness requiring hospital admission. One was born in Australia, the other in Asia. Hopefully, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Treby, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, RMIT University P.j.Hickox, Shutterstock Peatlands store more carbon per square metre than any other ecosystem on Earth. These waterlogged, mossy bogs beat even dense rainforests for their ability to act as carbon reservoirs. Under the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Goss, Adjunct Associate Professor, Health Research Institute, University of Canberra Government spending on health has been growing so rapidly that a decade ago the then health minister Peter Dutton called it “unmanageable” and “unsustainable”. Health spending grew in real terms by ...
New Zealand's largest electricity distributor is warning the country to hurry up with controls around charging electric vehicles or face unnecessary bills running into the billions. ...
New Zealanders have been asked to conserve energy this morning to combat a possible electricity shortfall, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. A call to conserve power New Zealand is facing a possible electricity shortfall, with people up ...
Writer Rebecca K Reilly breaks down the national book awards. What are the Ockhams?The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are our annual national awards for books published for adults, and have existed in this form since 2016. There are four categories: Fiction, Poetry, General Non-fiction and Illustrated Non-fiction. There ...
Wellington City Council should keep its 34% ownership share in Wellington International Airport, argue Unions Wellington spokespeople Finn Cordwell and Ashok Jacob. Insanity, as the saying goes, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Wellington City Council (WCC) is yet again proposing to dispose ...
New Zealand’s largest book publisher has undergone drastic changes this week, leaving its future role in local publishing uncertain. Two of the most recognisable local publishers in New Zealand are among those restructured out of Penguin Random House, it was announced this week. Head of publishing Claire Murdoch will leave ...
Successive governments have tried, and failed, to count Māori. But with the return of social investment, it’s more important than ever to get good data. The post Government looks for a better way to count Māori appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Experts in financing social investment initiatives say New Zealand is in a prime position to tackle social issues via a social investment approach The post What will Willis’ social investment fund look like? appeared first on Newsroom. ...
In 2021 the Public Interest Journalism Fund launched the Te Rito Journalism project, a $2.4 million initiative to boost diversity in New Zealand’s newsrooms. The initiative was in response to the decades-long shortage of Māori and Pacific journalists in the media industry. It was billed as New Zealand’s ...
The Black Ferns Sevens appeared to be a mile behind Australia at the halfway point of the 2023-24 SVNS international circuit. Winless in three tournaments, a cup quarter-final exit in Perth was one of their worst results. To add insult to injury, talismanic skipper Sarah Hirini had been ruled out ...
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By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist A former Tuvalu prime minister says while the New Zealand government’s oil and gas plans show it is concerned about its economy, he is more concerned about the livelihoods and survival of the Tuvalu people. Enele Sopoaga — who still serves as an MP ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Many people who follow federal budgets know about the magnificent “budget tree” in a parliamentary courtyard, which turns a glorious red in time for the May event. This week Treasurer Jim Chalmers posed by ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Bennett, Professor of Music, Australian National University Richard P J Lambert/flickr, CC BY The future belongs to the analogue loyalists. Fuck digital. As a tsunami of CDs, DAT tapes and samplers swept the recording industry in the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Strong, Associate professor, Music Industry, RMIT University This week American rapper Macklemore released a new track, Hind’s Hall, which has gained a lot of attention because of its explicitly political nature. The track is unapologetically pro-Palestine. It declares the artist’s ...
Explainer - The government from 2025 is mandating how state schools teach children to read. But what is structured literacy and how does it compare to other teaching methods? ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danica Jenkins, Lecturer in European Studies, University of Sydney On a freezing spring night in March, Georgia’s national soccer team beat Greece in a nail-biter penalty shootout to qualify for the Euro 2024 championships. The atmosphere on the streets of the capital ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam G. Arian, Lecturer (Accounting & Finance), Australian Catholic University Loic Manegarium/Pexels Imagine every ton of carbon dioxide a company emits is slowly inflating its costs — not just in terms of potential fines or fees but in the capital it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Somwrita Sarkar, Senior Lecturer in Design and Computation, University of Sydney The “latte line” is the infamous, invisible boundary that divides Sydney between the more affluent north-east and the south-west. Historically, people north of the line enjoy better access to jobs and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dowdy, Principal Research Scientist in Extreme Weather, The University of Melbourne Nomad_Soul/Shutterstock In media articles about unprecedented flooding, you’ll often come across the statement that for every 1°C of warming, the atmosphere can hold about 7% more moisture. This ...
RNZ Pacific Former Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has been sentenced to one year in prison, Fiji media are reporting. Bainimarama, alongside suspended Fiji Police Commissioner Sitiveni Qiliho appeared in the High Court in Suva today for their sentencing hearing for a case involving their roles in blocking a police ...
🍾 Happy Birthday, Patricia 🎂
You strike me as a person who looks life’s challenges straight in the eye & lives life to the best & fullest extent possible.
80 years is a significant milestone for anyone & you thoroughly deserve to have got there. May you have many more birthdays & adventures to come.
You’ll no doubt be the star at your party & nosh up today. Wish I could be there to celebrate it with you.
If you post today what time lunch with all the trimmings is expected to be served up, I’ll raise a glass of kahlua & milk & drink a toast to your good health at Gezza’s Bird Café here at Pookden Manor.
Hope you enjoy the gif I chose for your birthday.
https://imgur.com/01MdCKf.gif
All the best
🐧 Sir Gerald Ormsby Battersea Bradders, RSVP, PC 🐧
North Wellington Avian Aviation Authority
Gosh, Labour sure does know how to party! Who knew? If all their conferences were that good recruiting would be a breeze, eh?
might recruit Gezza
Bless, The whole thing kicks off at lunch time. About 12.30. We always begin with a glass raised to absent family and friends, then it is food and music and drinks. We don't dance anymore but we used to do that as well . A good auld c'eilidh. Cheers Gezza You added to my day.
Hey Patricia, congratulations and best wishes. Have a wonderful 80th year.
Patricia,your a good sole and for many more.
Thank you very much.
Thank you I have had a great day, but a bit tired lol
Love the video Gezza and your kind birthday greetings to Patricia. The vid should be used by Labour to kick off its 2023 election campaign … hee hee
Newsroom writer explains
.
😮 😂
At least with Bezos, if they have any promotions, some of us might end up with a cool brief trip into space ….
lol. At some point NZ will have to decide what to do with the people it is currently ridiculing. We might get lucky and they merge back into society. Or we might find they're a monster class by the time of the next election.
Anyone wanting a fuller picture of what's happening on the Belarus /Poland border would do well to read this article.
https://nims360.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-interpreter-belarus-border-crisis.html
Remember when Hungary was censured for building fences to keep migrants and refugees out ?(to my mind they're all refugees, from climate crisis and war)
Now Uk soldiers are being sent to Poland's border .Not to help with processing asylum requests, or provide humanitarian help, but to help"strengthen the border" aka reinforcing fences
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/12/british-troops-sent-to-poland-to-assist-with-belarus-border-situation
Europe pulling the ladder up.
Ironic isn't it
It is by no means the first time Putin's Russia has deployed migrants to destabilize peaceable European neighbours – though Boris's motives may well be as self-serving as a desperate shortage of truck drivers.
Even France, by no means the US's best buddy at present, finds the cynicism of Russia intrigue deplorable.
37 year old niece, who wouldn't get the vaccine because she didn't know what was in it. Diagnosed with covid, and isolating at home had to go into North Shore Hospital after developing breathing problems.
The good news; feels much better after being put on a drip.
No one who needs an IV, ever refuses it because they don't know what is in it.
True.
I got put on one recently, after 6 failed attempts by nurses to get a working cannula into a vein, before a young surgeon finally succeeded & they could pump in the opioid I needed for excruciating abdominal pain. They sent me down to radiology forcan abdominal X-ray & put me on Nil By Mouth until the docs had seen the radiologist’s report.
I needed IV fluids for 12 hours. I didn’t ask what was in it.
Jenny, it is a hard way to learn. Hope she fully recovers.
Thank you Patricia.
She is feeling much better. You have to give it to our health workers, they really are angels.
people are intuitive and emotional as well as rational beings.
👍🏼
More or less, most of us.
Aye – but are also usually self-aware enough to know which is which, and not let them intrude into each others' spaces.
A woman walks up to an elevator door, there's a man inside wearing a suit and looking normal. Her intuition says don't get in the elevator, her rational mind says it's the middle of the day, in a busy building, he looks fine, nothing is going to happen. What should she do?
If there had been a huge background check onto him and highly trusted experts said he was all good , she should ride the elevator.
what if it's that he has covid?
Oooos have misunderstood your comment. Thought you were using an analogy to explain her intuition.
Its a bugger having a weird brain
I was trying to point out that sometimes intuition is the best source of data and out ranks rationality.
Intuition won't tell you rationally why not to get into the elevator. So background checks on the dude are beside the point.
Follow her instinct,I think that's your point
We've learnt self preservation that way
👍🏼
I think that’s the right answer. There’s sometimes a debate about whether women are more intuitive than man. I think they are, when it comes to reading people or situations – for that very reason. They need to protect themselves from physically stronger, predatory men, & so many have highly developed instincts to that end.
On average women are more physically vulnerable than men in any number of ways. But this doesn't necessarily make them victims.
The other side of this equation is that men do most of the protecting and sacrificing for the women. This was a lot more obvious in the pre-industrial world because life then was so much more dangerous.
Looked at this way men evolved via sexual selection to be the somewhat more dangerous sex in order to be useful to women. There is however an inherent risk in having potentially hazardous things lying about the house 🙂
Last line – that’s about how my Friday caregiver described the fathers of her two adult children, except she used the term lazy bastards who saw me coming & noticed I had DOORMAT written all over me. She was a real character. Much prefers looking after herself & living without a man. She was visiting Israel in 1973 when the Arabs attacked.
yes, and that sometimes intuition is more useful than rationality.
I think the question should be:
"Why do women find themselves in this situation"
See my reply above.
Because some men are dangerous sexual predators. The thing is you can’t always tell who these bastards are, & and unfortunately neither can those of us men who love & honour women as God’s greatest ever invention, & would would happily castrate these animals if we could.
I have a male friend who on a lonely dark street ,will cross the road rather than alarm a woman coming towards him , to signal he has no ill intent.
That’s a good idea. Sounds like a really nice guy.
Because men in suits generally don't use the stairs, even if they can find them.
Ha! Agree with the 'generally', but my partner does use the stairs – that's because he's a fitness freak – however, because he runs them noisily, in his suit, it's pretty clear he's no threat to anyone. He'd be appalled if he thought he was, and change his behaviour.
But you touch on a point about intuition. My thoughts are that intuition is not something outside of rationality. It's a sum of things you've learned through experience and stories and the weight you put on the contradictions in the things you've learned.
The difference with rationality is that its generally thought of as a weighing up of the odds in any given situation and choosing to do the action that is most likely to be safe (take the stairs – 99.99% of the time you're safe). Intuition (i.e. the weighing up of experience and stories) may lead to the opposite decision (avoid the stairs). Intuition in these cases is also self-reinforcing (you stayed safe by avoiding the man, therefore it was the right thing to do).
many different answers for many different reasons. (1) it is lunchtime ,so she should take the time and exercise by walking up the stairs. (2) who wants to share a small enclosed space with a normal suit wearer?so, she should let the elevator go, and wait for some interesting company.(3) its her ex-husband, and her intuition is that he;s going to try and borrow money. etc etc
Will she get vaccinated now?
Although a cynic would dismiss this as mere leftist consciousness-raising, I get the sense that it does at least launch a geopolitical work in progress:
Are lawyers allowed to lie in court?
This case may come down to whether or not this conspiracy theorist lawyer used misinformation and proven lies in the courtroom.
Are lawyers allowed to lie in court?
I suspect the relevant framing is creative interpretation. That's extremely traditional, of course! Hard-wired as part of the privilege system. The basic idea has always been that justice arrives as an incidental product of the competitive storytelling.
There is an artifice around the notion of fact, and precedence tends to be given to authoritative sources such as scientists & media (I'm not kidding) to establish fact.
I am guessing then, that the Law Society's deliberations may come down to a matter of integrity.
If it can be shown that she guarded her words in court knowing that they could be shown to be proven falsehoods by authoritative sources such as scientists & media. But then spread these falsehoods in public statements outside of court.
It could be evidence of a certain mens rea.
In her defence Sue Grey says that she was speaking as a politician not a lawyer.
Newshub has contacted Grey for a response. In a letter to the Law Society in her own defence, Stuff reports she made the ‘genocide’ comment “in my personal capacity as a political leader”, not a lawyer.
Are politicians allowed to lie.
Assuredly.
This must rank as one of the greatest defence arguments put up by a lawyer-cum-politician, ever.
‘I am a politician I am allowed to lie’.
Whether this defence will wash with the Law Society might be another matter.
I suspect it will, just from the sheer gall of it.
the Law Society
More arcane priesthood than cabal. Extremely important to protect the common interests of members (the principle of territoriality being the antique basis of that). Therefore rulings are normally protectionist.
So it will depend whether they see her as a wolf in sheep's clothing or not. Fear derives from audacious setting of precedents: such adventurism will be sure to come back and bite them in the future. Rationalists will adopt the stance ‘hey, she's one of us, the political clothing is irrelevant'. Protectionists will adopt the stance ‘yeah but the cowboy thing is a bad look, we must always wear suits, sorry – I meant cowgirl'.
Then there’s her `chinese walls in the mind’ rationale to consider. Dunno if there’s legal precedent around that.
she isn't a politician as far as I know. I wanna be but failed politician yes. Unless she is on a local body somewhere and then I guess a local body politician yes.
It coming to a matter of integrity might take things to a realm outside Sue Grey.
I mean my reading in the news today suggests she doesn't have any.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/126822668/by-positioning-herself-as-a-truth-seeker-lawyer-sue-grey-is-fuelling-covid19-disinformation
I do think that Sue Grey is a lawyer and person of high integrity and maybe we are lucky to have some one like her willing take on the contentious – especially the opposite views to that the government departments want to promulgate.
I have no doubt that there will be those out there wanting to cut her down at any opportunity because of her past achievements.
https://www.kiwisfirst.com/players-woolgate-supreme-court-scandal/
Sue Grey (Saxmere’s counsel
As with anyone who attempts to expose judicial corruption, furtive attempts by the judiciary have been made to discredit her. These have been only minimally effective due to her exemplary legal background, as well as her political savvy in keeping the focus on the negative commercial and economic effect such judicial corruption is having on her major wool producing client.
Dr David Collins QC (Solicitor General)
When allegations of Wilson J’s misconduct originally surfaced, Collins endeared himself to the judiciary by moving quickly to quash it. He orchestrated the firing of whistle-blower Sue Grey from her job at Department of Conservation, filed extensive legal submissions in support of Judge Wilson’s conduct and personally appeared in Court to show his support for Wilson in what was a civil case between two private parties.
My own granddaughter does not want to proceed on with her second vaccination because of what is online about young people and myocarditis in this links such as this.
https://www.myocarditisfoundation.org/myocarditis-and-pericarditis-following-mrna-covid-19-vaccination/?gclid=-qTfuE0nsRjf73XF_weLfLFb_ZOJtRnzJymn7BrqlajeGrYRoCeIcQAvD_BwE
does she just peddle misinformation on her Facebook and other platforms Janet?
If the story reported about her speculating a death from the pfizer vaccine before the person was vaccinated is correct. must be a pretty strong vaccine to do that.
Trump suggested Pence could be well hung?
Typical leftist fake news. Trump didn't say anything to indicate he agreed that Pence ought to be hung. The biased reporter uses the `sin by omission' theory to frame Trump as supporting the rabble's call. Trump was clearly supporting the rabble, and just as clearly refraining from comment. Bullshit from Huffpost dude.
Good on you for calling out fake news & BS.
Wasn’t just the Trumpanzees pushing those sorts of “alternative facts”. The liberals / Dems were into it just as badly – twisting & bending events & statements to back up prejudices & false assertions.
Maybe you've been following the ignominious unravelling of the so-called "Steele Dossier". Four years of US liberal media calling Trump out as a Russian asset – based on complete bullshit.
It's reasons like this that if another election were held tomorrow, Trump would stand a decent shot at winning. That's pretty damned depressing really.
I consider that whole saga as finalising the decline of journalism, and the public trust in journalism to an unprecedented degree, even including the Iraq war lead up.
Trump winning the election prompted such outrage than any hack could utter any unverifiable crap as gospel , and as long as it was anti Trump it was endorsed and cheered and could build a career
The media wasn’t attacked, it was an inside job
It would go a long way if some media figures had the guts to say – "I was wrong – we fucked that up and we have to do some work to earn back your trust".
You’re absolutely right, Red.
“Maybe you’ve been following the ignominious unravelling of the so-called “Steele Dossier”. Four years of US liberal media calling Trump out as a Russian asset – based on complete bullshit.”
……………………….
Yep. I loathe Trump – despicable, narcissistic, bullying lying individual in my eyes – so I didn’t want to know initially, but as it unravelled it was obvious it was both a completely fallacious AND an utterly farcical allegation.
“It’s reasons like this that if another election were held tomorrow, Trump would stand a decent shot at winning. That’s pretty damned depressing really.”
………………………….
The Dems have the same problem with Joe Biden as they did with Hillary Clinton. Both of them compromised candidates. Joe’s obviously well past his prime – when his prime was pretty patchy, to say the least.
Hard to see how Biden’s ongoing muddlesome gaffes & obvious frailty will stand up to a full-on Trump challenge. Harris, an unknown quantity. Cos Joe may be past his best, such as it ever was, but he’s a grumpy old stickler for getting top billing & doing all the (heavily scripted) talking.
The liberal media are likely going to have their work cut out for them trying present Joe as on top of things when he blunders.
Trump’s just as bad for blithering nonsense word salads, as well as spouting out dog whistling rhetoric, but audiences lap that up & don’t expect anything else from that charlatan.
.
It's a pathetic descent into echo-chamber Tribalism … the Clintonistas as bad as (and far more dominant within the US Establishment than) the Trumpards. Each side deploying their own crude conspiracy theories.
I wonder if we don't have an opportunity here at TS to set our own direction against this trend.
Not easy – but it would be the direction to go in I think.
Of course Trump didn't say he agreed that Pence ought to be hung.
Do you reckon Trump hoped that Pence would be hung or something otherwise dire happen to him?
You bet! Trump would have exhibited sanctimony! "Unfortunately my folks got carried away by their enthusiasm. It was god's will that Pence became a martyr for the cause. His heart was in the right place even if his head wasn't."
Pence isn't a strong contender for the nomination next time but it's in Trump's interest to minimise any competitor. He's sending a carefully-nuanced signal to the right: disloyalty to the chief will be punished one way or another…
For those who have not followed this here is a snippet of the interview:
Trump doesn't exactly condemn the insurrectionists does he. In fact he says to hang Pence is common sense!
Technical point to you on that. Trump is forever doing a reframe of the narrative. Rabble chanting is so totally irrelevant to him that the interviewers point gets over-ridden and ignored automatically. He's always telling someone what to think! His irritation that the interviewer is waving a red herring at him gets displaced by the essentiality of having to impose his narrative.
He genuinely doesn't get the concern the interviewer is trying to project. Who cares what the rabble chant? Not him! His gobbledygook trying to explain common sense results from his internal imperative. Narcissism compels that.
Trump didn't condemn the crowd, he didn't back Pence. It's all about Trump really, the mob was doing what Trump wanted, Pence declined to do what Trump wanted. Pretty clear from Trump that it is all about himself, and his delusions and his blow arse self aggrandisement. A 'wasn't very much' wannabe who cannot accept reality of "trump, you're fired".
trump supporters are like anti-vaxxers…
dont have time for either…
both types are the most dangerous people on the planet atm imo
Actually no. I've worked with about a dozen in both Canada and Latin America. They were generally easy to get to know and good people to work with.
When the topic drifted onto politics – they'd usually concede or openly state that Trump was a flawed, troublesome personality. Or as one guy put it sorrowfully, "how the fuck did the US come down to a choice between these two shitheads?"
We've been over this political ground many times, but for me it comes down to a question of just how accountable are we going to be? Because if the left cannot manage an utter landslide win over someone so blatantly unsuitable as Trump – then exactly what claim to political competence do we have?
tbf, the US doesn't really have a political left.
Worth reading for the historical back-story too! Notice that the author definition sorts out pseudo-leftists in Aotearoa rather effectively as well.
Good article. Very clear.
Bernie Sanders? Most seem to consider him poltically left?
He still had to run for the Dems though, who aren't left.
He didn't have to run for the Democrats nomination under any rule. He could have done what Ross Perot did in 1992 and run for a third party. The problem he would have had was two-fold. He didn't have any source of a great deal of money and he didn't have an organisation to carry out the basic tasks like getting on the ballot in all the States. They are all different and the rules are really all there to make it nearly impossible for a third party to get started. For example, when Perot ran –
"In New York, ballot access appeared to be the most difficult to attain. In a five-week summer period, the campaign would be required to compile 20,000 signatures from non-primary voters, including 100 from each of half of the state's Congressional districts"
Perot managed it but it helped that he was a billionaire and was willing to spend enormous amounts of his own money on the campaign. That was when a billion dollars was worth something.
Sanders on the other hand simply didn't have any money or organisation to do such a thing. That meant he became a Democrat as long as he was in the campaign, simply because they had an organisation to do the donkey work, before going back to being an Independent when he dropped out of the campaign which is what he remains, as far as I know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot_1992_presidential_campaign
Sociologist Stephanie Mudge explored the terrain three years ago.
She gets your point…
She goes into why the left defaults to experts, then the future…
I've found it helpful to move toward a tri-polar political model.
Instead of the bipolar left-right model that's served as the default model for two hundred years, I'm suggesting it's more interesting to use three poles – conservative, liberal and socialist. Like all social models it's not meant to be perfect but I'm using it more and more these days.
I'd have a few quibbles with the details. Haidt is worth reading but that moral framework never struck me as compelling. Metaphysics always strikes me as a surer basis (principles, archetypes, models, assumptions & hypotheses). Although your scheme seems similar to the third way, it would be interesting to know if you see it as different, and how.
I mean, from a metaphysical perspective, triangulation is the common basis. So both have the merit of transcending the binary. I always saw the third way as fake – liberal capitalism and conservative capitalism are the same system. Blair's framing (from Giddens wasn't it?) was basically a pr sham to unhook Labour from socialism.
I think this piece by Bryce Edwards is surprisingly good, and has some relevance to the toxic muddles we get into here on TS
https://democracyproject.nz/2021/05/23/bryce-edwards-the-state-of-the-political-left-in-the-age-of-outrage/
an excerpt
“The rise of “culture wars” has been incredibly important for the political atmosphere that we are now in. Quite simply it doesn’t lend itself to debate and discussion, or finding middle ground. Instead, it’s more polarising – it lends itself to the labelling of opponents as racists, sexists, or in the case of Hilary Clinton, talking about the masses as “deplorables”. So, there’s a strong strain of sneering from many on the left – especially against those that are seen as socially backward. The old slogan of: “The personal is political” now underpins the focus on how to fix the problems of the world.
good quote. I've been thinking lately that some of the language used to talk about the freedom protestors reminds me of Clinton's use of deplorables. Like we didn't learn anything from the time of Trump. Blows my mind.
i find this funny and interesting at the same time.
later
lol, it must be hard to understand how someone who fought for the working class – proletariat and precariat' is now demanding no debate on issues that affect predominantly the proletariat and the precariat.
The turning point for me was Jonathan Haidt's ideas on Moral Foundations theory. All humans share a common suite of core moral drivers, but we place different weights on them. And this does seem to be closely linked to innate personality differences:
All too often we make the debate all about these moral weightings – which are fundamentally unresolvable at that level. If instead we accept that the people we perceive as our opponents are simply coming at an issue with a different set of priorities and interests – we're more likely to engage in a constructive negotiation.
And that's how all the great politicians got the results they’re remembered for, they understood their opponents and could make deals with them.
“All too often we make the debate all about these moral weightings – which are fundamentally unresolvable at that level. If instead we accept that the people we perceive as our opponents are simply coming at an issue with a different set of priorities and interests – we’re more likely to engage in a constructive negotiation.”
…………………………
That tends to be how I’ve always looked at issues. At various times in my life it’s seemed like a character flaw, because others with stronger egos & opinions made judgements & decisions (often, needed decisions) faster & with more conviction & certainty than I was comfortable with.
Then I began to notice how many of those decisions subsequently (sometimes a year or two later) turned to be bad ones, with negative blowback effects, from things that were bothering me as risks at the time I felt like a slow-minded fool for wanting more information or discussion.
I like people. I appear to be highly empathetic, at least at times. I seem to have the happy knack of easily getting people to talk to me and explain their viewpoint. Thereafter I find I can sometimes see the issue thru their eyes, from their perspective, as well as my own. I decided in the end that this isn’t a flaw, it’s an inbuilt talent, & I now employ it usefully whenever I can.
I can across this regarding people holding opposing political view but treated each other with respect (that IMO all are due) John Wayne and Mark Rydell.
"“He really wanted to do The Cowboys,” Rydell said. “He treated me with the most respect. I was like this (cringing) waiting for him to say something anti semitic or anti-Indian or anti-anything. I was ready to jump. But he taught me a lesson.
“I know a lot of people with whom I agree politically and otherwise who are jerks,” Rydell said. “And then you take someone like him who I disagreed with in almost every area, except art. And he was a terrific person. The first guy on the set, the last person to leave. The picture was full of kids. They climbed up on him like the monkey bars on a playground. He was available to everybody. We went out to dinner he would sign autographs for everybody. He never was unfair or unpleasant. It was a big lesson to me not to pre-judge.”
youtube 4:15 Mark Rydell director of The Cowboys,The Rose, On Golden Pond etc.
https://outsider.com/news/entertainment/john-wayne-wasnt-the-cowboys-directors-first-choice-star-classic/
From a social science perspective, the question is if the theory can be validated via research. First, the stats basis would have to be robust in his home nation, then it would have to be replicated in the other western countries.
Since Liberalism morphed historically into separate beasts in the various countries that it invaded (as a meme) from Britain, I would expect the stats to render his thesis context-dependent only. Here, for example, liberalism has manifested only as a strand within the Alliance in the '90s plus economic ideology shared by Nat/Lab since the '80s, since our original Liberal Party died a century ago.
I was Given his "The Righteous Mind"
I wish I had been given Cliffs notes along with it.It was complex stuff and requires full commitment.I'll have another go at it
@ Red….Have a read of Michael Tomasky (Left for Dead) it's twenty odd years on but I think a quick read.
Hilary Clinton has been demonstrably accurate for the United States.
Edwards' piece doesn't reflect anything about politics to me.
Just realised that there is something good about wearing a mask. Tromp around the supermarket, leave to go to the bike stand and then off with the mask. "Wow!." that first breath of fresh air is so great.
Exactly ianmac, and the opportunity to put your glasses back on!
You have no idea how lovely that bit of fresh air is once you take the mask of after several hours of wearing them at work.
Appreciate yours & other retailers efforts Sabine, thank you.
I am amazed by how good people are actually to be honest. I have a strikt no one enters the premise policy, plague door is mounted and all interaction is customer on one side and me on the other and everyone is very very understanding.
It allows me to trade without having to police people on vaccination status or mask wearing. And People are wearing their masks at about 95% rate. And if someone comes without one, i have spares to hand out and they are generally well accepted.
there are more of us doing the right things than not. That is always something we should keep in mind.
I agree, from what I have seen, with mask wearing. But jeez, wearing them indoors all day, thank you (I work on my own out doors mostly, so can slip it on & off).
i have been told by someone whom i trust on these issues tht mask wearing considerably reduces the risk of transmitting covid, as we keep our droplets to our self. And thus i am a great promoter of masks. Specifically indoors. I do tend to have one with me when out and about and will wear it when people are around. I feel naked now without one. Humans get used to this stuff fairly quickly i reckon.
Some useful information about another vaccine, Pandemrix. The following is from Peter Doshi, the associate editor of the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal):
In October 2009, the US National Institutes of Health infectious diseases chief, Anthony Fauci, appeared on YouTube to reassure Americans about the safety of the “swine flu” vaccine. “The track record for serious adverse events is very good. It’s very, very, very rare that you ever see anything that’s associated with the vaccine that’s a serious event,” he said.
Four months earlier, the World Health Organization had declared H1N1 influenza a pandemic, and by October 2009 the new vaccines were being rolled out across the world. A similar story was playing out in the UK, with prominent organisations, including the Department of Health, British Medical Association, and Royal Colleges of General Practitioners, working hard to convince a reluctant NHS workforce to get vaccinated. “We fully support the swine flu vaccination programme … The vaccine has been thoroughly tested,” they declared in a joint statement.
Except, it hadn’t.
…
The BMJ conducted its own analysis of the adverse events, most of which seem to have been reported spontaneously to GSK. For a range of concerning adverse events, reports were coming in for Pandemrix at a consistently higher rate than for the other two GSK pandemic vaccines–four times the rate of facial palsy, eight times the rate of serious adverse events, nine times the rate of convulsions. Overall, Pandemrix had, proportionally, five times more adverse events reported than Arepanrix and the unadjuvanted vaccine.
But those being vaccinated against swine flu were seemingly unaware of these side-effects, including narcolepsy. The vaccine manufacturer was aware of this side-effect but failed to inform health consumers. One can imagine why they might have been reluctant to provide such information.
https://archive.hshsl.umaryland.edu/bitstream/handle/10713/8270/Doshi_Pandermrix2018.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/narcolepsy-case-raises-important-questions-about-vaccine-approval-1.4088792
https://www.mcgarrsolicitors.ie/2012/06/05/pandemrix/
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/high-court/swine-flu-cases-settlements-totalling-over-4-5m-approved-by-high-court-1.4634179
Ian Mac, feel for the Covid nurses and doctors, my wife found while training and wearing N95 masks, they are brilliant at protection but it doesn’t take long before one is just recycling ones own CO2 even if it just a little bit every breath, a hard job made harder.
Mask use for year 4 up next week in schools at level 3 step 2 lockdown I have been giving this some thought.
I can manage a mask better when seated than when walking.
I am sewing material masks again today for family, 100% cotton needs to be used.
@ Treetop.
I have three cotton masks. They have an under cotton lining, open at both ends, so that the wearer can insert an extra layer for better protection. I haven't felt the need so far, but with rapidly rising cases I am wondering if it would be a good idea.
Can you recommend something I could slide in between the outer mask and the lining? It would have to be something a bit stiffer then normal.
Coffee and tea filters are used as inserts for masks. They can be organic and made of cotton. Probably non reusable as they collect moisture.
Paper towels can be used as well.
There is a lot online.
I’m pretty sceptical of most reports of vaccine reactions, a 30 year old working with me after having her vaccination had just about every reaction you could think of from sunburn, “ Ohh that’s worse than I’ve had before” to tripping on something. “ I don’t usually do that “ ad infinitum …. turns out her mother had been diagnosed with hypochondria, and that’s the thing about hypochondriacs .. you can’t tell them they are sick because that’s exactly what they want to hear.
New Covid case in Taupo.
Was to be expected as they found hte samples in the waste water.
mask, physical distance, sanitze, jab and hopefully it works.
Wairarapa is my pick for the next region.
See super spreader events on again
It's interesting to observe people getting upset about Covid spreading and their attitude towards those who are determined to not follow strictures or suggestions designed to protect.
Then saying that all border controls should go. And people should be trusted because they'll make the right decisions.
Interesting huh!! Deranged more like it!!
A person needs to think for their self and guide those dependent on them when it comes to their health.
There are going to be less health services available for those who already rely on the health system and who will need to enter it. This means longer waiting times and people becoming sicker.
But my Freedoms!
Thankfully people still have the freedom to think for their self.
450 wide?
couldn't edit for some reason as there was no edit button. Had to leave it.
Flag-waving images of protester really disturb me. I've been thinking that the meanings of those flags (United Tribes and Tino Rangatiratanga)
If, as a Pākehā, what is the first thing that would come to mind if I changed my cover photo on Facebook or Twitter to the Tino Rangatiratanga flag?
If 2., how do we remind people of the meaning of this symbol of Māori aspiration? How do we remove the re-purposing of the flag as a symbol of disinformation and violence?
“2., how do we remind people of the meaning of this symbol of Māori aspiration? How do we remove the re-purposing of the flag as a symbol of disinformation and violence?”
………………………….
The Tino Rangatiratanga flag turns up at all sorts of rallies and protests against the gummint, councils, private contractors, or Pākehā. It never gets a long term asociation with those because the fact that some Māori people purloin the flag & wave it around at demos as a means of personally expressing just their Māoriness is understood by most people, imo.
It won’t suffer a change of symbolism as result of being raised during the awfully muddled vaccination protests, imo.
It’s a shame this flag is forever associated with a coterie of perennial Pākehā-bashing Māori separatists. It’s iconic – the coolest design. If had a more inclusive cause & meaning I’d vote for it in a heartbeat to be Kiwiland’s new national flag.
I hope you're right about the lack of association with this set of protests. I live in hope.
I wouldn't comment on how Maori use their flag, I'm only commenting on the misappropriation by Pakeha in this set of protests.
Looks like today’s protesters achieve something Wellington Council and Wellington Police failed* to do for decades… the majority of cars driving within the speed limit.
___
* Although you can only fail if you try.
This looks interesting, despite Auckland being a foreign land to me.
https://twitter.com/BWB_NZ/status/1458996728422563848
If you want that history raw rather than re-cooked, just go to the Waitangi Tribunal hearing publications on the Ngati Paoa, Ngati Whaua Orakei, Te Kawerau a Maki, and Manukau Tainui. Not a barrel o' laffs necessarily but rich and detailed.
Also the one on the Musket Wars which is just utu manifold.
Also Belich's early Auckland accounts from Marsden etc up the Tamaki River in Making Peoples Vol 1. That spans the worlds old and new.
I need the story telling. Raw history is just too hard at this point.
That does sound interesting
Then again it might be just too damned depressing
I'm hoping that the way she connects land and people will lift it. But yeah, we'll see.
Gridlock protest held up an ambulance. Scum.
https://mobile.twitter.com/drivethrupod/status/1459319708784623616
User name
Sorry. It seems to be an auto-fill problem on another device that I keep forgetting about..
yeah, seems to affect quite a few people.
Unsurprising. He does it every day on his podcast.
https://www.sportbible.com/australia/mma-joe-rogan-reveals-he-can-perform-auto-fellatio-20211112
It's interesting. Typing away online, there's a separation when discussing irritating things. not perfect, but significant.
But talking to someone last night, the topic of covid came up, and I actually surprised myself with how just plain angry I got thinking about how constant white-anting defeatism from the very beginning has put us where we are now.
People are dying now because when people weren't dying, capitalists and the alliance of nutters demanded bubbles and relaxed restrictions and overseas holidays etc etc etc. Fuck 'em all. They managed to trip us up on the final lap.
So now the government is fighting a holding action against progressive expansion of covid in the hope the health system doesn't get overwhelmed. It's just such a pointless waste. We fucking had this thing. Another few months would have drastically changed the game, and much fewer people wouldn't be wondering whether they should go to the hospital because they were coughing up blood.
Gah. Fuck everything.
Same. I have to step away from thinking about it a lot.
Are you think the break was with the border control and delta getting in? Or when Labour gave up on elimination?
it still blows my mind. I can generally understand most political positions even the ones I outright hate. But this one I really don't get, that we should just have let a whole lot of people die. Do they not realise it might be them or their loved ones?
Death by a thousand nags, rather than any specific point.
Got lucky a couple of times, lucked out once or twice. But the constant rust eroding every single effort… just corrosive. Even if the govt had stood firm, enforcement would have had to get more drastic and still be less successful.
I think the ones who should know better, but were consultants for an international airport or wanted their nightclubs open 24/7 (or whatever) generally felt they could minimise their personal exposure. Who cares if your bar staff get it, you're isolating on a lifestyle block and working remotely. Isolation from society helps the tamakis. The rest? Just sad.
Seems obvious that Delta got spread by those who crossed borders. Rule-breakers got helped by bureaucrats using privacy law to prevent the public punishing them. Haven't seen much evidence of the system punishing them either, so I got the impression nobody was serious about the rules.
How many other folk got the same impression? If you enforce rules, people take them more seriously. Instead, we got an official sham. Understandably, Labour's poll rating dropped significantly compared to last year's effort.
Delta is endemic globally. Unless you were going to absolutely isolate NZ – and I mean no-one ever entered the border indefinitely into the future – then it was always going to arrive. It was just a matter of time.
There were only ever two justifications for lockdowns and isolation. Initially we needed to apply the precautionary principle in the face of a novel and unknown virus. The second was to buy time in order to prepare as best we could for COVID's inevitable arrival.
As far as the first precautionary principle is concerned that has pretty much expired. (And we might note the irony of the 'vax or die' crowd de-humanising those who would apply the same principle when faced with a novel vaccine with unknowable long term safety.)
As for preparing for the inevitable arrival of Delta, it seems to me that if public health really had been our top priority there was quite a deal more than could have been done.
This is not encouraging.
https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1459245078543802376
Not it isn't. That last sentence nails it for me.
Any strategy that relied on 90% or more of people complying with it, especially when it came to a novel vaccine technology, was always going to be high stakes politically.
But that isn't what either New Zealand or Australia have done.
True – but it's come at a cost. The anti-protests in NSW and VIC have been both a lot more politically intense and damaging than anything NZ has experienced.
Last I looked Melbourne was closing in on 280 days of lockdown in the past 12 months – one of the highest in the world.
Would people have taken the rules more seriously without a year of defeatists?
Recognising inevitability is one thing, embracing it is another. Half a dozen people (give or take) are dead because we couldn't hold it together. And that number's only going to increase.
But some people wanted xmas holidays, boo hoo.
and they will get them again this year.
The best and smartest thing anyone can do is staying at home for the holidays.
but not holding my breath.
seems like someone within National is cranking up the ABC (anyone but collins) campaign again, stories in the NZHerald about planning a coup. A few % points increase and the Govt having a roughish time with some covid stuff and soneone within National starts sharpening the knife
Lock down in Auckland for 12 weeks-and its raining !!
If you have a spare 2 hours I recommend The Big Short. Great to view what was happening 2007-8 and a great cast, with a movie that makes you think.
Yeah I saw that way back then after I read the book by Michael Lewis. He's brilliant every time! Starting with Liar's Poker late '80s. I own around 8/9 books analysing the gfc & have read 3/4 more & it's remarkable how they all reveal new angles.
The best is this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest_Trade_Ever
Although Paulson (a different one than the Paulson in Bush Jr's cabinet who had to mastermind the rescue of the system & his book is also essential) is the main focus, the book includes cameos of several other guys who bet against both the establishment & the market herd & won hugely.
Another fabulous movie on the same theme is Margin Call.
Tight direction, strong cast, great story-telling and in the end very moving. One of my all-time favourites.
Thanks guy will watch that tomorrow, Just finishing tonight the last from series 3 of Fauda tonight. I know that series and movies have their framing – But taken back by the subject matter, and it has expanded for me the area and issues. I would say in lockdown you get to watch some gems that otherwise you wouldn't watch. I see Margin Call is on youtube.
Just finishing Alexandria by Edmond Richardson – So Dennis will be looking for something different to read so will follow your recommendation.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018801419/edmund-richardson-finding-the-lost-city-of-alexandria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fauda
.
Cheers, RL, just watched it for the first time this morning on your recommendation … I see one critic called it "easily the best Wall Street movie ever made" & I can see why … hard to believe it's Chandor’s debut as a director.
I think I must have watched it four or five times now. Apart from some of the standout scenes with Jeremy Irons – that boardroom meeting is a masterpiece of scripting, direction and acting – what deeply appeals to me is that it opens up the world of big finance, lays bare it's ugliness and the very human costs -without ever once veering into preachiness or smugness.
The dying dog that bookends the movie is of course a brilliant metaphor.
If anybody is still under the illusion that the guy who harangued the PM in Northland was a "journalist" and she was "avoiding the media", this is from the backgrounder in today's herald:
https://twitter.com/MattNippert/status/1459271101947826178
For a journalist Shane Chafin has interesting ways of dealing with other journalists.
From David Fisher in interviewing Chafin:
"Do you also know I have had Muslim friends for 20 years? And they are willing to go on record." Chafin would not connect the Herald with anyone. "I'm a reporter. I can go on my channel and talk about that content any time I want to." Chafin said he had been a reporter for two months and "I'm the one making news around the world". "I made viral news around the world. When's the last time you did that?”
Chafin floated various claims about Covid-19, which – when challenged – led to him asking: "Are you f***ing stupid? Are you mentally ill? Maybe your meds aren't right. I'm a professional – maybe I could help your psychiatrist.”
The man who wraps his phone and computer in tin foil and puts them in a freezer asks someone else if they are mentally ill? And suggests that they have a psychiatrist?
He came from America because he didn't like the way things were going there. (Under Obama.) I can see he doesn't like the way things are going here. We certainly don't need him here and Northland with its low vaccination rates sure doesn't need him. He should bugger off.
Piece of structural sadness for the day:
Of 100 adult sexual victimisations,
Less than 10 of those are reported to the Police.
Of that less-than-ten number, 31% get to Court,
and of that 31% of the less-than-ten who get the perp into Court,
"11 per cent resulted in a conviction and
6 per cent had a prison sentence imposed."
(according to the 2014 New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey).
Survivor of child sexual abuse finally gets justice by secretly recording abuser's confession – NZ Herald
The other side of the same coin:
It is claimed that the present ‘shockingly low’ conviction rate [in sexual cases] makes this bill necessary, but what is the evidence for this? The 2019 Justice Ministry ‘Attrition and Progression Report’ appears to be a main source.
This report says that only 11% of “perpetrators” who are reported to the Police by “victims” are convicted, but is based on the erroneous assumption that all allegations are valid. Figures for these “victimisations” include all cases in which the police were unable to act (for example no perpetrator was identified or insufficient evidence to prosecute), but absurdly also those which the police deemed actually “not to be a crime” and those where the accuser recanted. Even verdicts of not guilty are included, where juries had actually found police allegations to be unsubstantiated. The report therefore flies in the face of the presumption of innocence (a basic tenet of justice), not to mention good science.
Another incongruity is the purportedly ‘low’ conviction rate for cases that do make it to court. However, 2020 conviction rates of 39% for sexual violation and 50% for attempted sexual violation are not meagre when viewed against rates for some other violent crimes such as abductions and kidnapping (35%), aggravated robbery (41%), attempted murder (29%) and at the top, murder (56%). In no other crime is undermining defendants’ trial rights proposed to increase conviction rates.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2021/06/21/guest-blog-professor-felicity-goodyear-smith-faulty-assumptions-underpin-sexual-violence-bill/
I have insufficient expertise to support the legislation the Professor opposes. Nor am I doing so above.
But when she compares sex crime conviction failure to be comparable to a more general crime conviction failure, and then extrapolates that as a reason to not, essentially, worry, well ….. then I worry.
It's not PC I'm sure, but Police bring people to a court before a judge because they've done the crime.
NZLS | Conviction, sentencing and imprisonment of adults in 2019 (lawsociety.org.nz)
Twenty or so years ago we had a tv show made here featuring spin doctors. Seemed quite good at the time. Public relations is the old label. Now we have the American beltway thing happening so we're getting a focus on lobbyists:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/bryce-edwards-the-government-lobbying-revolving-door-just-keeps-on-turning/OK2TRISU6A2LAURUIC2KQKXX2Q/
Good to see Labour & the Greens getting hip to the scene (just kidding) & the revolving door thing revving up. Soon it'll be just like the USA with the same folk switching jobs between industry & regulator constantly.
Stalin is the best model: leading revolutionary & state secret service agent simultaneously. In the middle, you get to play both sides against each other. Shapeshifter technique.
Oh I get it – not the Trump meme, it's morphed into homegrown:
It has been made with the Ardern version for a little while as I have seen it used by RW people. They think it is so smart but I just think that they lack discernment – most of those NZers looking at the hat and logo think of Trump.
The NZ ones may be out of touch and think little of aligning themselves with Trump who many NZers think is a moron. They clearly have forgotten the pounding that Todd Muller got when his Maga hat was on display. He had to say that he collected this kind of memorabilia to get any kind of sympathy for him about having a Maga hat. It just shows how out of touch this rag tag mob was/is. Then the Trump flags ………, the upside down United Tribes flag etc etc.