Tuppence, why in your comment did you refer to the “kiwis who can enjoy Christmas” as being ‘honest, hard working”?
Are you insinuating that the engineers who work for Air New Zealand are not? It seems that you are using a meme often used by National now in constant referral to ‘hard-working kiwis’ which is actually a way of saying that our side are the good guys and those who disagree with us are lazy and corrupt.
The old reference used to be “decent law-abiding citizens” and before that ‘God-fearing people”.
It’s all smear tactics, Tuppence, and it’s dirty politics.
So you are saying that 41000 kiwis who had travel booked next friday shouldn’t be thought of as hard working? and that my mentioning of it is some kind of conspiracy?
are the 41000 people, who would have paid above a normal rate to travel next friday, somehow to blame for their travel getting in the way of a strike and the demands of 1000 top 10 percent salary earners”
Yes, I’m saying that. You used National party rhetoric, clichéd and false.
If you had meant that the ordinary public would have been inconvenienced, which is true, then you should have said that. Why typify these travellers as ‘hard-working and honest’? Conspiracy is not the same as insinuation, btw.
Their honesty and work ethic is not germane to the issue unless you were smearing the engineers.
And FFS how can you construe from my comments that I am blaming these travellers? That in itself points to your illogicality and your falseness in accusations, adding to the falseness of the implied accusation that the proposed strikers (remember they aren’t strikers until they have actually struck) are lazy and corrupt.
So Kiwi’s who have been working all year and are looking forward to a well earned break at christmas time aren’t germane to the conversation about striking engineers?
Why did the engineers choose the busiest time of year to strike then?
Tuppence, most travellers have been working all year. You haven’t answered why you chose that descriptor, along with ‘honest’, to describe them. Tuppence, why did you use the word honest?
Your second paragraph is an attempted distraction from your discredited smearing and illogicality.
And you still haven’t justified your language………..
Your debating behaviour is a bit like that worm on the hook that Paula Bennett is going fishing with in the Sroubek case- wriggle, wiggle, twist and turn.
“There has to be a connection” says Paula. I am trying to get you to admit that there is a connection between your thinking and the language that you use.
Let’s fact it, Tuppence, you regard workers who contemplate strike action in defence of their wages and conditions, and perhaps even their very jobs, as being the opposite to hard-working and honest.
This strike was dishonest. Ruining innocent travellers holiday plans so that the engineers could have more annual leave shows a callous disregard for the truth when e tu and yourself try to make this about fairness.
So you seem to know what dishonest means, Tuppence.
Now, why use honest to describe travellers? (And I’m not talking Irish gypsies here). As Anne points out, the word honest is not applicable to all travellers, nor I say to all kiwis.
Nor does hard-working.
But we know they are dog-whistle terms to denigrate and elicit support from fellow (heh!) travellers.
So, you’re claiming all travellers are hard working and honest. What a load of codswallop. Some are, some aren’t. Some earned their money honestly some didn’t. Some are decent people, some are ratbags. In other words travellers represent a cross section of people who can be good, bad and indifferent.
I notice how what should have been a discussion about the union and airnz has been derailed by a bloody RW lightweight. We would get further if we treated them all the time as just trolls who would rather argue with a leftie than stop them falling under a bus. DFTT they are enemies, not merely ignorant of facts and realities – and if they are ignorant it is the wilful kind, and NOTHING will ever improve with that mindset, concrete-set.
So back to Patricia at 1.
I guess the union were counting on Air NZ getting bowled over by the ramifications. And AirNZ have been low shits for sure. The engineers have to work long hours, keep themselves to high standards of work, and we all love them for the safety of travel that results. Then to try and save money on those extra-long hours by reducing the overtime rates, when they are making large profits is just unconscionable. That sort of thing is why unions are so important. Unions are to help safeguard employees against the machinations of Big Business and also the sneaky, nasty types of Small Business that do exist.
But unions need people to see them as good jokers, not self-centred people who will adopt business tactics and walk all over the people further down the ladder, the customers of their employers. Going on strike in January, that would have caused disruption, but Christmas is family time and we need to have lives and families to make life worth living.
Was there some reason that the two unions ( E tū and the Aviation and Marine Engineers Association – AMEA) could not have waited till January to make their protest? It would still have brought leverage on our national airline. And AirNZ don’t think of going overseas for all your engineering checks, we want quality NZ workers, to be treated fairly, and in turn, for them and their unions to treat us fairly and thoughtfully.
Probably due to substantial rebuilding of their facilities around that time at a cost of in excess of $100 million. The capital expenditure then feeds into the annual capital charge (about 7% of the capital), which is part of fixed overhead.
Thanks Wayne. Archives have built a new Christchurch repository at Wigram.
But I still find it hard to understand how the new capital charge deriving from this initiative could almost quadruple the agency’s total overhead in 5 years.
As far as I know, DIA/Archives still has some fairly substantial project(s) underway – even though they may be over-burdened with countless meetings and bean counting
I have not actually checked the annual accounts on the increase in capital charge. But I do know National Library and Archives had some big capital projects, mostly approved in 2009 and actually started in 2010. At that stage well over $100 million initially on the National Library with Archives to follow. I would imagine a lot more than $100 million by now.
As an aside one of the ways NZDF buys new assets is to use the depreciation allowance. With all the stuff bought over the last decade (helicopters, upgrades to aircraft, upgrades to ships, new buildings, new Army weapons and vehicles) there is at least $200 million annual depreciation. This is used to buy new stuff, so a fair chunk of the $2.3 billion on the new maritime surveillance aircraft comes from accumulated depreciation.
I don’t know about other libraries around the country, but our local libraries in Napier and Hastings, (both of which were very good provincial libraries) have been absolutely destroyed and gutted over the past 2-3 years, huge book sales, including many very rare local history books, the shelves are now only half full, and a majority of the few replacement books are lackluster coffee table books rather than serious reference books,
I hardly go to either library now, I find them too depressing witnessing in real time the dumbing down of out communities, as if there wasn’t enough dumbing down going on everywhere else anyway.
Totally whacked out on the meme that digital is everything and books and paper and passe’.Digital as ephemeral as the brains that only briefly touch on an understanding of knowledge and how it is used to achieve wisdom. I am reading Penguins printed shortly after i was born. They are available, accessible, and don’t require a machine.
It’s also a weird inverted privilege issue. With a Kindle I can carry an entire library of books with me wherever I go. To have paper versions of the ebooks I have in my backpack 24/7 I would need to buy a big house with entire rooms devoted to book storage. Who can afford that these days?
Visited Ōtara library in Auckland recently after several months, the library has been deliberately gutted by Auckland Council to make room for “community space”.
This was achieved by initially putting out a survey in Ōtara asking the public if they wanted more community space. When the results were collated, Auckland Council then used those results to remove about 80% of the books from the library, which now has plenty of open space and beanbags.
The really vindictive nature of this move is that the library is part of the shopping and parking complex near to Manukau Technical Institute. Auckland Council owns and manages the large Ōtara Community Centre, the Ōtara Music Centre, and the aquatic complex within the same area. These community spaces, particularly the Community Centre, are available for public use if required, but the use of fees prohibits use.
This is in indication of the stealth with which Auckland Council will go to remove one of the best accesses a community and individual, regardless of age or ability, can have to a free education.
Down here in Hastings, I had a member of the local ‘Friends of the Library’ inform me with great pride that they used the money from the endless all encompassing book sales to buy a new couch for the Flaxmere Library.
yipee.
4 years latter the couch is looking suitably sad…and the libraries are even emptier.
What especially irritates me is the claim that books being sold are either unborrowed titles, or books that are about to be superceded. Yet I have seen recent books on, NZ Tapa; NZ Tussock Moths and NZ State Houses, all in pristine condition, on the sales table. They are not redundant titles.
I presume that the term ‘friends of the Library’ is purely ironic.
meantime…
“,i>There are 178 New Zealand schools that don’t have a dedicated library, while 330 schools have less library space than they’re entitled to.”
I spoke to one of the librarians at the time, and asked what had happened.
He seemed fairly accepting of the process. I said that I considered libraries to be the one public place that is accessible to all; regardless of age, income, physical impairment and education. That physical browsing can expose you to ideas and interests that are not likely in internet browsing, and the editing and publishing process ensures a degree of quality that is not necessarily true of online sources. I honestly believe that access to well-resourced libraries is access to education, and the value of libraries is social.
If local authorities want to get more financial value of of library investment, use financial tools such as SROI (social return on investment) to see what they provide. Include in libraries – social enterprise cafes that train people to employment while providing a gathering place for users. Add programmes that genuinely bring together community.
The dependence on the current financial methods of cost/benefit produce four-year old saggy sofas. The value of libraries is more than that.
We didn’t have a library at school till I was eight. When we got a prefab library I nearly read the whole lot. I’d already read everything my parents owned. Then it was off to Hamilton. Bored, I’d skip school and go to the public library and study plants, insects and fungi…
Both those libraries, when I first walked into them and saw the books: at school the smell of new carpet and print, with more books than I’d ever seen before; and then Hamilton, this massive building with mezzanine floor holding row after row of shelves that stretched beyond the walking bridges criss-crossed overhead… it was like finding hallowed ground. All the worlds were in those rooms.
Libraries should be hallowed ground.
Officials in charge of libraries should be total geeks who’d live onsite if allowed. They are the gatekeepers of knowledge. I know people who’ve worked very hard just to be librarians, they love books like crazy. Why aren’t they in charge?
Business heads qualified to be managerial material’. Meddling in education and the arts. No f’n idea. If we have x books and y book lenders…
Just re-read Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ (1932)
‘There isn’t any need for civilised man to bear anything that’s seriously unpleasant. And as for doing things, Ford forbid that he should get the idea into his head. It would upset the whole social order if men started doing things on their own.
What about self-denial, then? If you had a God, you’d have a reason for self denial.
But industrial civilisation is only possible when there is no self denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygeine and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning.’
WTB
Libraries, banks of thought and imagination and facts. Stacked up on shelves, each book long in the making, the planning, the choice of words for meaning and impact. Jewels of the brain’s electricity crystallised into physical form.
Go into a bank which represents fantastical power. Where is the money, the documents, the trapped electrical impulses that carry this weight of value. The product isn’t to be seen. If it is physical, it must be stowed away safely. If it is driven by impulses, it must be protected, even though it is merely based on imagination, feeling, marks on a screen that can change, double or vanish as one watches.
But a book is an artifact, it has been made from different components, and each aspect is the result of skilled tradespeople working together, consulting and then going forward with their portion of the whole. And these magic objects can be touched and handled, and will last for many lifetimes with care, and an understanding of the marks on the page.
The book is human communication reaching out to others of like mind, and those who want to explore that line of thinking. It is a little piece of society, wrapped up in a sort of ravioli case, ready for the mind’s delectation. It talks to us and may give us strength and comradeship as in the last verse of 1 September 1939, W.H.Auden.
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
+1 millsy, sad, it’s not just the local history, but not having to rely on an internet connection which as we all know in NZ, is hardly reliable or even fast. Not sure how many low income families are also allowing their kids internet access when they can’t even keep the power or phone on.
Adrian Thornton,
In 1989, I began saving books that I thought were important, because I could see what was going to happen when greed and asset sales and betraying New Zealanders’ rights and histories began to swirl under extreme right philosophies that are incapable of appreciating the beauty of books AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, the need for all New Zealanders to access them. I now have my own library. Perhaps you can start your own. Good luck.
+1 Me, but it is not just the right who seem to now hate books, the third way Rogernomic lefties seem to hate books too. And the Auckland university specialist libraries were closed with a Labour government in, with Chloe from the Greens who I think did art history there, did not seem to be making any protest about the libraries demise and the jobs lost, while the university were also paying the Chancellor over $700k, the third highest public servant apparently.
I think the idea is that Kiwis don’t read because then they can be better low paid workers, have less critical thinking and be blind donors to political parties to get things done.
I hear there is a very good secondhand bookshop in Hastings called “The Little Red Bookshop” …. LOL
“Their huge collection of affordable books is a local treasure. As their website puts it, they are “proprietors of the best little second hand bookshop in Hastings, New Zealand. We may, on occasion, seem a touch irreverent, but hopefully in the nicest possible way”.
…
Behind the book shop and chocolate shop is a warren of fascinating rooms. It’s like something out of Being John Malkovich. There are rooms filled to brimming with books and puzzles, a music studio (home of the seven-ten piece Revolutionary Arts Ensemble, …), and a large collection of classic racing bicycles and memorabilia. This collection is a penchant of (name removed), to which he welcomes like minds by appointment.”
Really? I am not in the Bay, but will check it out sometime. Hope I did not overstep in my comment above! Did not put link …… but AT and partner and their wonderful shop are well known outside the Bay as well.
I’m sure it’ll be fine with Adrian, any publicity is good publicity, as the marketers say.
Bay FM can be found on Simple radio and via their website. The first time I heard the station I was driving into Hastings and resetting the radio. I couldn’t believe it when I heard Lou Reed’s Coney Island Baby. They followed that up with a Joy Division track and that was me hooked!
But never forget, the mandarin manutang’s opponent won almost 3 million more votes than he did. It was just an anachronistic quirk of the electoral system that delivered the presidency to Dementia Don. Coupled with the way the Electoral College failed to fulfill one of the duties it was expected to do when it was set up: it was intended that the Electors would assess the fitness for office of the candidates and if somehow someone totally unsuitable conned the general public, the Electors would exercise their better judgement and choose a candidate that actually was fit. Check out the Federalist Papers 68. In this case, the Electors overrode the good sense of the popular vote and installed the Tangerine Tantrum.
Not really an anachronistic quirk. It is built in to the constitution ensure that each state has their say in the final result. So that huge majorities in say New York or California don’t drown out narrow victories in smaller states.
We tend to forget in New Zealand that the United States has a federal constitution, designed to give a substantial say to each of the 50 states.
Not much likelihood of changing the constitution on this point. What the next democratic candidate has to do is win states like Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Been done plenty of times in the past.
At the time it was set up, communication across the country was extremely slow and unreliable. Times have moved on.
At the time it was set up, how to account for the proportion of a state’s population that were slaves was an issue. Women and non-landowning males couldn’t vote either. Times and human rights views have moved on.
Should the decisions around setting up the Electoral College be redone today, I’d be astonished if choosing the presidency would be anything other than one person, one equal vote. The composition of the Senate with 2 senators from each state would then be the sufficient safeguard of the smaller states’ interests.
But yeah, changing the Constitution ain’t gonna happen. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact sidestepping the Electoral College is only a tiny bit more likely to happen.
Anachronistic is correct. There was a link on here detailing how the system, set up to achieve what you say, now actively prevents it. It needs to be changed but the chances of that happening are between slim and none. The US constitution is preventing that necessary change because of the requirements needed to change the constitution.
Wayne what you say is true to some extent but there are tremendous inequalities built into the current system of Government in the States where, for example, the value of a vote in California is only a fraction of the vote in Wyoming. This was exemplified in the recent appointment of Judge Kavenaugh where the number of votes behind the senators who voted for him was around 11million less than the votes represented by those who voted against.
I’m sure you would find this opinion piece by John Dingell the longest serving, and recently retired Senator, (he represented Michigan for 59 years) highly interesting.
Informative input you make Andre. I can recall reading somewhere years ago something suggesting that it is lawful for an official (?) to throw a state’s electoral college vote tally in favour of a presidential candidate who did not receive a majority of the votes in that state. Thinking about that now it seems unlikely, even as a legal possibility. Do you know anything of that Andre ?
Going from memory, there’s nothing in the US constitution that says an Elector is in any way constrained in who they vote for. Almost every presidential election there are a few faithless electors that vote for someone other than who they were “supposed to” vote for. But so far, the only election where faithless electors have changed the outcome was 1796.
States set their own laws about how to apportion their electors and penalties for faithless electors. 48 states have winner-take-all for all of their electors. Maine and Nebraska have winner-take-all for two of their electors (corresponding to the 2 senators) and then the electors corresponding to the House seats are pledged to the popular vote winner of that district.
I reckon May will step down in June. There will be an open contest so that will take a couple of months. I reckon Dominic Raab or Sajid Javid will be the finalists. Something flawed about Boris.
As for a snap election. Won’t happen. The only way it can occur is if the DUP switch sides, and they won’t.
i suppose the new PM could call a new election, but given what happened to May, that won’t be very appealing.
Looks like May has won the no confidence vote. Helps that she has decided to stand down before the next election so took the wind out of her opponents sails
I missed this article by Rachel Stewart yesterday.
Absolutely superb. Read it and share it with all your friends.
I see she is also talking to Derrick Jensen on Christmas Day.
That will be well worth a listen.
Rachel isn’t scared to tel us the truth.
A rare commodity today.
An excerpt of her wisdom.
“As this is my last column for 2018, I thought it timely to review the big news stories that point to an even better 2019.
Except, there are none.
So, instead, here’s a selection of this year’s news stories that sent a shiver down
my spine. I write it for those of us who aren’t stupid enough to believe that the planet is doing anything other than hurtling to its doom.
First cab off the rank must be climate change. You know, the biggest threat to the continuation of our species since Donald Trump was inaugurated. Not only is the news all bad, there’s no sign of any global consensus on the way forward. The chances of reversing the situation in any meaningful way are about as high as my dog reversing my Jeep into a spare parallel park on Queen St during Christmas week.
Too many people living on an overheating capitalist planet means that our oceans are awash with plastic, our rivers – the ones that still flow – are awash with nitrates, our soils are awash with chemicals, and our media is awash with greenwash. Whatever pays the bills, right?
Only when our biodiversity is gone, and we reach the point of biological breakdown, will we realise what we’ve done. Even then, someone will find a way to spin a buck out of it. Profit is everything, and the earth will provide. Until it won’t.”
Since July the government’s family package has been giving low-income families an extra $75 a week. Yet, the Auckland City Mission has had an unprecedented increase in demand for food parcels and will double its Christmas efforts as a result.
City missioner Chris Farrelly said “we’ve identified very clearly that we have got a growth in food insecurity and food poverty in New Zealand.
The prime minister plans to visit the Auckland City Mission before Christmas to “drill into” why an increasing number of families are struggling to make ends meet.
She is hoping the rise in demand is a case of more people in need feeling they can ask for help. However, even if it is a case of more people in need feeling they can ask for help, clearly the government’s family package isn’t doing enough to help them.
Could it merely be a case of more people in need feeling they can ask for help or is the growth in demand (as City missioner Chris Farrelly pointed out above) more likely a case of the government’s family package not going far enough?
The benefit of the government’s family package would have been largely offset by the new charges/taxes the government has also introduced since in power.
How long will it take for the government to establish what is driving the increase in demand and more importantly, when are they going to act to correct it? One would like to think people going hungry is a priority for this government. So again, when are they going to correct it?
When you have huge increase in low paid workers and and fake students with fake financials, you get a spike in poorer people into NZ, which then can make the exisiting poor even poorer as they are all competing for the same resources.
A spike in people with money also drives up the prices of luxury housing, while spikes of poorer people drives up the affordable housing prices. Not rocket science!
Before the government capitulated to business interests and ran their lazy immigration scams to the maximum, they might have worked out how much it was going to cost to upgrade all the housing, infrastructure, hospitals, schools, roads and how they were going to pay for the top up of so many low paid wages, WFF or asset rich, cash poor satellite families based in NZ.
When they decided to do it through further taxation like petrol taxes, rates and user pays charges what effects that might have on poorer folks based here that don’t have family to fed X over tens of thousands of family money for the increased cost of living.
The thirty year NZ experiment, first Rogernomics then immigration led neoliberalism has made NZ a worse place to live for many people and reduced the opportunities for our youth born here, made productivity static, lowered wages in real terms, driven up the prices of set costs of living and create a bigger inequality divide.
Do you think Labour will do enough over the coming year to make a significant difference in turning around the large number queuing at the City Mission next Christmas?
@The Chairman, nope. It is not so much Labour’s fault as the legacy of National party policy on immigration and welfare but Labour don’t seem to be keeping their election promises of reducing immigration to 15000, which judging by the amount of new housing they are whooping about for Kiwibuild does not even cover it. aka 100,000 over 10 years is approx 10,000 houses per year.
The types of migrants coming are of a lower skill level than 5 years ago. Hard to see where the tax money will come from for the future when our big plan for immigration is more nickel and dime store owners with 100% profits on liquor, bad restaurant food and plastic goods stores and how to be a third party rip off merchant on labour and more nurses and doctors and teachers to pay for the population growth on the back of it and people’s 11 day relationships when they get lonely or jailed criminals coming here on ‘compassionate’ grounds .
Landlords who want more money, and who can ask for more money, ask for more money, driving up costs for many. And considering that we still have a rental shortage, and that people don’t really like living in ditches, Landlord can virtually ask for what ever they like and still rent out their investments.
Rents have always gone up since… forever havn’t they? Or are right wingers suddenly wanting rent controls? I do, I actually bought my first home a couple years ago, way cheaper than renting ironically, though I was very lucky with a Super scheme through my (heavily unionised) job.
Apparently the people who are the largest group in poverty is Pakeha parents with a mortgage. Aka not renters. I think you can look back and realise that certain things like housing don’t seem to go down over time but increase, and I very much doubt the government can do much to stem that. What is not rising enough is people’s incomes.
It is the role of the Reserve Bank and the Government to ensure price stability in the housing market. But it’s not just the price of houses that has been excessively exceeding, putting more into hardship.
Generally, landlords want more money due to their costs rising – i.e. rates, insurance, etc. And Labour policy (like the recent change in letting fees) is driving up their costs.
Part of the problem is a build up of poverty and debt during the last 9/10 years.
The payments made helped many, but others have reached the end of their resilience, and debts are growing. Repaying MSD, student debt, rental debts. etc.
To imply that Jacinda Ardern and her Government have caused this is such deliberate misdirection that I despair of your “concern”
When the previous Government was in power, I did not read anything from you telling that government to alleviate hunger.
Further, when some ideas were put forward there was a huge out cry about choices self help and I did not see any effort by any politician to find out what was happening.
The PM says she will visit to discover where the problems lie. Because she cares.
I wasn’t implying Jacinda Ardern and her Government have caused this, Patricia. But it is evident that she and her coalition Government aren’t doing enough to turn the numbers around.
Thanks Maui.
I listen to his show every week.
It’s the University of the airwaves, as GG puts it.
8 a.m Saturday NZ time.
Three hours of brilliant radio.
I’m no lawyer but Marie Dryberg’s stance seems a sensible one to me:
“Sharing the name is a publication,” defence lawyer Marie Dyhrberg QC said.
“I don’t think anyone rowed out of New Zealand waters and called a newsroom and then rowed back.”
….. and that said, wouldn’t it have been an opportunity to put that before the judiciary, get some sort of precedent set, so that we can see if and what sort of changes need to be made?
If the guy is guilty, it’d be a shame if the case failed on some technicality
Thoughts???
I reckon Marie Dyhrberg is wrong and Chris Finlayson is right on how the appeal should be dealt with. There should be no automatic 20 days for an appeal. In a case like this, it should be accelerated through the High Court, say by end of business/court year.
The District Court Judge could see no grounds at all for name suppression, but of course the right to an appeal is automatic, whether to not the appeal has any merit. I am not suggesting any change to the right of appeal since that right is fundamental. But I do think that an appeal like this should be expedited, and not automatically stall everything for 20 days.
There is almost nil circumstance where the naming of the accused in the UK press will have any effect in the accused going through a full trial. Little was at best exaggerating that it would.
By the way Wayne, I have a different perspective, and that is that is actually none of my bloody business, or the public’s who the defendant is UNTIL a verdict has been given.
The only people who need know are the Police, Judiciary, Jurors, the family and various Counsel.
Justice being seen to be done does not have to be immediate just to serve whatever voyeuristic tendencies I might have. I could either attend Court, or perhaps look at a recording of proceedings AFTER a verdict has been delivered.
It seems to me that one of the reasons faith is being lost in judicial processes (and the Police sometimes) is that all the hype and sensationalism that goes on just serves to make people lose faith in the system (especially when you get Lackwit Larry’s, and Hoskings, and Leighton’s rarking it all up)
I saw a photo and heard the name discussed as I negotiated my way through a group of butch, fluro-vested blokes blocking the footpath just near Courtenay Place when they were on their tablet.
The look on their face was almost like one of disappointment when the image popped up (presumably because, AND judging by the discussion – the defendant was neither brown, nor apparently gang-related).
I’m of course making assumptions there, but even then, as I managed to get past I could hear the “fucking scumbag” , and “I’d ……..” and “If someone did that to my missus”…… etc.
Whoar! they were tuff!
Out of curiosity to see just how simple it was to find out, I did a Google search and blimey up came the UK Telegraph with name and photo. I quickly got out of it. I suppose I’m now one of the thousands who did just that. “The look on their face was almost like one of disappointment when the image popped up (presumably because, AND judging by the discussion – the defendant was neither brown, nor apparently gang-related).” My reaction was relief actually.
Can’t possibly agree. The idea that every trial of every defendant would not have the name of the defendant disclosed seems to be a gross breach of the concept of open and public justice.
In any event it is not going to happen. No conceivable parliament would vote for it.
If I may say so, that’s fairly lame (even coming from you. And I mean that because you are really quite a fuddy duddy – sorry I couldn’t find a better way of saying it).
You’ll have to agree that there are often suppression orders and for good reason. After a verdict is reached, the details are usually public, “Open and Public” justice is still done and seen to have been done. The only difference is immediacy, which in the new era, is proving to be a problem – as in Millane case and with the likes of Google. We’ll likely see more of this kind of stuff
Sorry @ Wayne….. at the time I posted, it had been a long day, and the word I was looking for was ‘traditionalist’ – despite all that spin you’ve learned about not being ‘change averse’. (We’ll fight them in the trenches till the bitter end! For our agenda and vision is sacrosanct and righteous – and of course we do know better. ‘We’ were BORN to rule and preserve decency and we’ll fight to the death)
So, tell me, should all the investigations that the police engage in also be on public display during the investigation so as to prevent a gross breach of open and public justice?
IMO, the court is the end part of that investigation and it is only afterwards that the public should see it.
Edmonton also saw a large protest, with hundreds marching from the Legislature to Churchill Square, carrying signs, some reading “No Global Climate Pact. Suicide.”
Multiple posts on Canada’s yellow jackets Facebook page called for more drastic action.
“Look at France today. After four weeks of burning the cities, the French government cut the carbon tax. So what do we want? 90 years or four weeks until something changes?” wrote Robb Kerr on the group’s page. “If you want to crush a government, you have to play their game … You want to see them jump? Then burn down City Hall.”
The protests were jointly against the provincial and federal carbon taxes, and Canada’s plan to endorse the United Nations’ migration pact, which outlines objectives for treating global migrants humanely and efficiently.
Jenny Shipley – China Bank director? Joind at the hip?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/68435306/null
Richard Meadows 11 May 2015 – (good stuff Richard.) The first disclosure statement for China Construction Bank (CCB) NZ, of which Shipley is chairman, reveals she was paid $50,769 between June and December last year, which works out to about $90,000 on a yearly basis.
In an interview with Stuff.co.nz last week, Shipley declined to reveal her director’s fees, though hinted that she had taken a substantial pay-cut.
Even so, Shipley’s earnings dwarf that of her fellow former politician, with Brash earning just $65,000 as chairman of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC)’s local arm.
The Bank of China, which is the third banking behemoth to enter New Zealand in the last two years, has yet to disclose its financial records.
That means the salaries of its directors Ruth Richardson and Chris Tremain, also both former National MPs, are as yet unknown.
Shipley
Brash
Richardson
Tremain
Being a NZ government minister is a good CV point.
I think we should bring the salaries down for MPs as they apparently regard it as apprenticeship training, or an alternative to a politics university degree which others have to pay to get.
+1 (especially the bit about apprenticeship training)
I’m wondering where Nafe might end up. Most of the rest of them could get a pozzy at Harcourts Real Estate – without even having to change their uniforms – exceptions being Gerry the big boy, and Finlayson of course, and there are others looking for a pozzy in a High Commission somewhere.
Paula’s going to be a problem. She does have impeccable credentials as an actress or maybe a mime artist though.
Paula has presumably had advice on changing her image, and has succeeded. She looks quite tasty – an actress would be good, Maori presenter as she would be a good role model for the star-struck teenager. Has she ever been on Shortland Street? They could find a spot for her I should think. She follows along similar lines to Donna Awatere Huata who has found her feet in management.
Finlayson slagging off Maori because they persist in wanting their own way, but Ngapuhi can’t work out how many ways there are! He needs to get into something where they call a spade a spade and no mucking about.
Yes yes. As Maggie might say – Paula has come a long way but she still has a wee way to go to shake off some of that rabble around her. She has scrubbed up well and its hard not having gone to a finishing school. She’ll have to learn not to use those ‘P’- like eyes when she gets angry and when cameras are present.
It’s all about perceptions and ‘the look’ darling, which I’m becoming increasingly concerned about poor old Chris.
I am of course of the same vintage and I’m not sure whether his bro feels the same, but he is starting to look more like a dried up old prune and could end up like our friend Moz. Or things could go the other way and he’ll land on his feet at Palmer and Chen maybe
I love how quietly this immense slapdown is delivered to @ABridgen and what a supremely important point it is. “You can’t have what you want” is the one concept Brexiters cannot seems to grasp. Give that woman a big hug @joannaccherry. pic.twitter.com/peOD3uwmaZ— Alex Andreou (@sturdyAlex) December 11, 2018
I love how quietly this immense slapdown is delivered to @ABridgen and what a supremely important point it is. “You can’t have what you want” is the one concept Brexiters cannot seems to grasp. Give that woman a big hug @joannaccherry. pic.twitter.com/peOD3uwmaZ
…in fact it would be very un-New Zealand of us, if we didn’t try to rort the system, especially when the policies are designed/loaded with unintended circumstances.
At the very least they could have given it to third year students or grad students or something, of course they shouldn’t have done it in the first place
There is always a percentage of first year students that withdraw, don’t engage or fail in the first year of tertiary study. The article would be more informative if it compared last year’s rate to the usual, but as far as I can see – it did not. In any real way, this withdrawal rate should have been anticipated by the government.
As for the rest, I think tertiary education should be free, but if this is the best that can be done. I agree with PR below. There would have been a greater benefit to graduate students, and the attrition rate would have been much lower.
It’s better because it does get people educated. Yes, even people who fail a course have better education and by failing they will probably understand how to succeed next time. In fact, calling it ‘failing’ is a misnomer. They didn’t learn what the course taught but they learned so much else. Here’s a few links on the subject:
Admittedly, our thoughts on falling forward or failing forward get a little cynical here, but then we sat down with Gregg Fairbrothers – a Dartmouth College grad, founder of the Dartmouth Entrepreneur Network, and serial entrepreneur – who brought some reasonable perspective. A pretty savvy guy involved in at least a half dozen successful startups, Fairbrothers argues, ‘When you succeed you often don’t know why. Often it is pure luck.’ He points out what do you learn from that except it’s good to be lucky? Whereas he believes ‘mistakes are a terrific teacher.’ Looking at the collective experience of many founders, it’s hard to disagree with the luck factor. Sure, you can have a competent founder who makes all the right decisions but they also get lucky – maybe it’s lucky timing like good market trends. On the flipside, lucky timing can also cover up mistakes, gives you wiggle room, so what are you really learning?
There’s nothing wrong with the spend on helping people be better. They tried. Now we need to support them into picking themselves up and trying again.
It’s only idiots that expect everything to go perfectly every time. They seem to all vote National.
Where’s the rort?
~12% fail usually.
We have another ~6% who withdrew.
The students don’t get any money if they withdraw. They don’t have a motive to rort the system for the institutions. And most courses would do a refund if you withdraw, depending on how much of the course you were there for.
If there was a spike in people enrolling then withdrawing, that just means that the policy has at least identified the need for education to be more accessible. In that case we need to know what other barriers exist for those 2600 people.
If we’re not failing we’re not trying hard enough.
The path way to equality needs to be paved with opportunity. Providing opportunities for people to try university study that are otherwise unable to do so is exactly the right thing to be doing. Some establish it’s not for them, fabulous, reset their compasses. Others flourish, equally fine.
Lasting equality will not come about by slopping grants around. It will come through the creation of opportunities. Opportunities for Mothers to receive a tertiary education, opportunities for poor kids to learn to sail. A vast and enticing tsunami of opportunity available to all.
After leaving school at 15 and having 3 kids at 21, I would never have my tertiary education with out the opportunity to try and not manage, then try again and achieve.
Obviously that was before the last NAct government.
I still reckon it is a good thing that I stopped coding an hour earlier and then biked there.
Better than today. I didn’t have whatever biological bug which my body is fighting off today. I really hate being sick. Makes it hard to concentrate on the site theme upgrade.
Open your Christmas whisky early! Hope you recover soon – don’t be sick with bugs at Christmas, keep it for hangovers if you get those. Perhaps your trouble is the sudden change to fresh air from being in a coding-coop. You need to get off your perch more often. Anyway Merry Christmas when it comes and regards to Lyn.
Picked up 3×1 litre bottles of Tullamore Dew duty free when I came back from Singapore a few weeks ago. I was working long hours outside for 7 weeks there because when you play with radio frequencies you need to suffer the weather. Fresh air I can live without hummph! Give me air-conditioning any day.
But I may have to drag myself out to find some food before self-medicating as the cupboard is a bit bare. After a few days of diminished appetite has left me a bit hungry.
And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven….
Asked whether it’d been an adjustment to his lifestyle, the legendary guitarist quipped: “You can call it that, yeah”
The Rolling Stones‘ Keith Richards has revealed that he has cut back drastically on his drinking, admitting in a new interview that “it was time to quit”.
What’s the joke? After an atomic apocalypse all that will be left alive are the cock roaches … and Keith Richards. I’m glad he’s cut down, he’s a great guitarist and a very funny guy.
Probably for the same reason that RW trolls still can come here and be objectionable, and never change despite protests. Once a thought settles into the brain of someone who thinks they are entitled, everything else gets rationalised away – they are teflon-coated.
The Catholic church does so much good, but it’s the old saying which applies to all:
‘Power tends to corrupt; and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely’.
Yep court orders obtained in Aussie can apply here if they are asked to be observed by the courts there and yes, I’d be the person in the gun.
Besides I agree with the underlying precepts of court orders – which is why I don’t break them or allow them to be broken on my server. I’ll let published information and information that doesn’t appear to break the published detail of a court order through (obviously I’m not in court to get the detailed orders) including speculation through. Anything else gets warnings and if required some painful moderation.
Any time that I need to understand exactly why, I only have to look at the travesty of the open court American lynch system, the conviction rates of high media cases, and their incredibly high ratio of overturned criminal convictions when and only when someone actually funds the collection and presentation of basic evidence presented to judge only appeals. Basically if you are black or hispanic and not wealthy, having a highly public trial appear to ensure convictions.
To be fair it isn’t your arse that such dimwits legally risk, it is mine. I’m not put at risk if it isn’t on my server. And I’m perfectly happy making an example of any arsehole who deliberately puts my server at risk. In fact I’d be prepared to add an exception to our privacy rules and lay a complaint and give assistance to the police against any arsehole that violates the court orders on this site.
I’ve already spend almost 40k because the legally ignorant criminal blogger Dermot Nottingham falsely accused me of breaking name suppression orders on his case where he was charged and eventually convicted of deliberately breaking name suppression and harassment on his blog. He brought a private prosecution against me.
He failed to even prove after 15 months that I was associated with The Standard or that APN were associated with the Herald – which really demonstrates his level of legal stupidity. Since he seems to have spent a lot of time assisting Cameron Slater, I guess it is pretty obvious why Cameron is in so much legal shit. Dermot is now wearing a bracelet and home detention, and as he lost futile appeals I assisted him into bankruptcy along others who’d been dragged through his insane legal vendettas.
Besides, it wouldn’t surprise me if the courts ask the courts and the police in the UK to find out what local scumbag journalist leaked the information from court documents here to the yellow rags in the UK.
I hope when they find out who it is that they use the full-force of the sentences and toss the scumsucker into jail as a lesson in journalistic ethics.
“Russian media say a contraption presented by Russian state television as a high- tech robot was in fact a man in a commercially available robot costume.”
NZ media say a man presented by the gnashional party as its leader Simon bridges is in fact a robotic contraption in a commercially available man costume.
Meanwhile ,… while we are all fighting among ourselves , having wars, getting drunk and celebrating Christmas… somewhere out there ( perhaps ) is something truly creepy… or maybe they think we are creepy…
Is Bigfoot a Neanderthal? (ThinkerThunker) – YouTube
He should ask his friends….oh, that’s right, he stiffed them on the bail money.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appears via video at a Quito court hearing as he appeals against new protocols – Ecuador will no longer pay for his food and medical care, etc. – governing his stay at the Embassy in London pic.twitter.com/UbIw5qxTiF— AFP news agency (@AFP) December 13, 2018
Turkey will launch a military operation against U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in northern Syria “within a matter of days,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday, prompting warnings from the Pentagon and State Department.
Washington backs the Kurds with thousands of service members, special forces and contractors who maintain a presence east of the Euphrates River, while Turkey and its coalition of Syrian rebels have mainly stayed to the west.
Turkey will target the east to “save the area from the separatist terrorist movement,” Erdogan said, using his routine term for Kurdish militias.
Kia ora The Am Show
Kendra deserved to win NZ Rugby Player of the year prize she had a good season
ka pai.
That what a wahine would say Ingrid funny my partner would have said the same on the Rugby.
The thing about the sandflys discretion on who they bust for drugs and billy said they did so last year when he was in the lead is they let Europeans off and lock up the brown people I hope that has changed I have warned the Tangata of that reality .So in reality there has been little changes on that front.
Grant I see the Maori Party and Tops party are going to cooperate a .
Eco Maori for Tangata Whenua of the year.
MPI are full of your m8 duncan I served the official information act on them and the statements they sent me were mostly false.
Fontera did not deliver they lost billions in China and just added 50% more admin cost.
Aretha Franklin death was a sad loss to she fought for equal rights to .
The theft of the Mangere Bridge kindy play ground is stupid why don’t you start a give alittle page then the mokopunas will get brand new jungle jim and slides .
judy your neo libreal capitalist m8 around Papatuanuku are crashing out they are all greedy climate change deniers who can not think about there childrens FUTURE .
King Home Boy giving his prize to charity ka pai
I do support looking after the well being of our new foreign workers paying and treating them fairly mai chen ?????? & her m8 shrilly from 7 blunt tried to underarm bowl me out but they just gave me more mana.
I tau toko the #METO movement Ka kite ano P.S what happened to the poll??????????
To the Am Show team have a good holiday have not been able to afford one of those in ten years with that monkey on Eco Maori’s back playing with my fortunes
Ka kite ano
The cafe I could support Credit Simple I just need to get my communication encrypt I have seen the Eco Maori effect in action but I will only use it to benefit all Te tangata positively ka kite ano
Many thank’s to the American Senators that voted to curb support to the Saudi war machine and for putting the children’s lives first ka pai
US Senate approves resolutions to curb Saudi support and condemn Khashoggi murder – liveSenate votes 56-41 to pass the War Powers Resolution that would halt US military assistance to Saudis in Yemen Ka kite ano links below.
I can see that this will become a reality very soon the world’s financial crash and in trumps own word’s he did not care because it would happen when he has retired .
Global investors managing $32tn issued a stark warning to governments at the UN climate summit on Monday, demanding urgent cuts in carbon emissions and the phasing out of all coal burning. Without these, the world faces a financial crash several times worse than the 2008 crisis, they said.
The investors include some of the world’s biggest pension funds, insurers and asset managers and marks the largest such intervention to date. They say fossil fuel subsidies must end and substantial taxes on carbon be introduced.
Eco Maori is proactive for a positive future for all the humans on Mother Earth .
Ka kite ano. links below. P.S Just 3 % of the worlds GDP is need to combat climate change shear with thy neighbors
Eco Maori agrees strongly with John Kerry’s words
John Kerry: Forget Trump. We All Must Act on Climate Change.
If we fail, it won’t be just the president’s fault.
This week is the third anniversary of the Paris climate agreement. The Trump administration marked it by working with Russia and Gulf oil nations to sideline science and undermine the accord at climate talks underway in Katowice, Poland.
While I was in New Delhi this week, where I met with solar energy advocates, a comment made thousands of miles away by the journalist Bob Woodward almost jumped off my iPad: The president, he said, “makes decisions often without a factual basis.” This isn’t a mere personality quirk of the leader of the free world. It is profoundly dangerous for the entire planet.
Scientists tell us we must act now to avoid the ravages of climate change. The collision of facts and alternative facts has hurt America’s efforts to confront this existential crisis. Ever since Mr. Trump announced that he would pull America out of the Paris accord, those of us in the fight have worked to demonstrate that the American people are still in. Links Below
You know I remember when I was a young fella my Mama /Greatgrandmother told me be loyal to those that help you and don’t bite the hand that feed’s you.
There have been some that Eco MaoriTau toko’s and next minute these people are biting me WTF.
You know that the sandflys are breaking mine and my immediate whano’s human right’s every day 24/7 I know every move they make against me but I get pissed when they target my whano. The justice system does stuff all for the poor but try to stuff us up .But there are consequences to biting Eco Maori Ka kite ano
Kia ora Piripi from Tekaea yes tangata whenua have the highest rate of heart attacks and lowest survival rates te tangata need to go to the doctors more and look after Our health to look after the Mokopunas
Carmen I say the culture is much better now than it was last time I was in Winz the wait was short and there were not a lot of people in the office and they were not stressed .
Maori interactive video games ki ora that is awesome maori can generate a lot of jobs and money from video game’s .The industry is way bigger than Hollywood.
Eco Maori tau toko’s the Maori Santa some people cannot put there prejudices
Ka pai to the maori modular whare with the money saved with time
That was cool Jason Momoa doing the Haka and his movie Aquaman will be one I am going to watch at the Cinema.
Ka kite ano
Kia ora Newshub
Steve Hansen is retiring he does not mince word’s all the best on your new journey Coach. I have my pick for your replacement but I will keep that to myself .
That hurricane hitting Australia looks like it will cause problems I hope no one gets hurt.
People searching on Google for good thing’s is cool some in the media need to do they same .
It show how deprived some people are in America if they will risk there lives going to get copper wire in a mine to survive.
Virgin Galactic is getting close to there goals of passenger space flights I wish Richard all the best .
Sawn the Sun bear dying is sad
There you go Russia has taken a leaf out of someone else old book with the man posing as a robot lol . Ka kite ano
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A new digital platform aims to make it easier for small businesses to access services from multiple government agencies, leaving them more time to focus on their own priorities. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister for Small Business Stuart Nash ...
Million-dollar start to gun collection eventsPolice Minister Stuart Nash says a solid start has been made to the gun buyback and amnesty after the first weekend of community collection events. “Gun owners will walk away with more than ...
Police Minister Stuart Nash has praised Police and gun owners after the first firearms collection event saw a busy turnout at Riccarton Racecourse in Christchurch. “Police officers and staff have put a tremendous effort into planning and logistics for the ...
Seventy-eight new Police constables are heading out to the regions following today’s graduation of a new recruit wing from the Royal New Zealand Police College. Police Minister Stuart Nash says the record high number of new Police officers being recruited, ...
Fonterra’s use of coal has been the target of numerous grassroots campaigns in recent years. Last year 350 Aotearoa affiliated groups, Fossil Free Aoraki and 350 Nelson launched a petition dismissing the dairy giant’s initial target of no new ...
Information sessions on proposals for The Medicinal Cannabis Scheme take place in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch over the next fortnight. The sessions are open to anyone with an interest in learning more about the proposed scheme. ...
“Our children are our most vulnerable, most innocent victims and we do not want to see any more children harmed by these ‘known sex offenders’. The safety of our community must be the paramount consideration.” ...
“The announcement that Fonterra will immediately stop installing any new coal boilers or increasing capacity to burn coal is the signal that the biomass fuel supply industry welcomes” said Brian Cox, Executive Officer of the Bioenergy Association. ...
18 July 2019-- Coal Action Network Aotearoa (CANA) today welcomed Fonterra’s commitment to build no new coal plants, a “no brainer” for the climate crisis the world faces. The group has been urging this transition for six years now and ...
The increase in demand for cage-free eggs is set to continue according to animal rights organisation SAFE, who says the egg industry should expect this and prepare. ...
Wellington, New Zealand – 350 Pacific made a formal submission to the New Zealand Government’s Environment Parliamentary Select Committee on the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill, led by the Pacific Climate Warriors (PCWs) based in ...
There used to be a school of thought on the centre right side of politics that the best way to neuter the Greens as a political force would be to let them have a spell in government. Then, according to ...
Today (18 July) is Nelson Mandela International Day when the United Nations highlights the importance of humane conditions of imprisonment. In New Zealand our prisons are overcrowded and understaffed. At 214 prisoners per 100,000 people, we have the fifth ...
NZEI Te Riu Roa will take legal action over the lengthy delay in implementing pay increases for teachers. Novopay announced yesterday that teachers would have to wait until 11 September to see pay increases that they won when they settled ...
EDS has filed its submission on the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill. The Bill sets targets for greenhouse gas reductions, provides for the government to set a series of carbon budgets, and sets up a new, independent, Climate ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union has identified an absurd case of mission creep at Wellington City Council: the decision to spend $21,750 on two Consumer NZ investigations into different brands of bike lights. ...
The Motor Trade Association is welcoming the release of the Government’s new draft road safety strategy. MTA Chief Executive Craig Pomare says the association is pleased to see vehicle safety has been made a priority in the Road to Zero ...
The Department of Conservation continue to repeat the same old story about attacks on staff and how it is affecting their role in protecting our precious wildlife. NZ herald https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12249704 ...
The government's silence on the fact that the country's second-largest milk processor is on the brink of becoming 25% Chinese Government owned has been deafening. ...
School Strike 4 Climate NZ welcomes the coalition Government’s endeavour to take action on reducing agricultural emissions but is disappointed at the weak stance that the Government has taken on the issue. ...
The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) has issued a formal warning under the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 (AML/CFT Act) to seven reporting entities within the Regus Management Limited (RNZML) designated business ...
The Northland Regional Council (NRC) has voted to exclude all GM/GE precautionary provisions in its regional plan, despite years of community engagement showing support for such protection. There is a sense of betrayal following the way the NRC Chairman ...
New Zealand’s ‘mission-driven’ charities working in international aid are showing early signs of changing the way they work, in particular prioritising building the capacity and resilience of local communities to do their own development. ...
Teachers will have to wait until 11 September for pay increases won as part of their collective agreement negotiations settled in June, according to an update sent to schools today from Novopay. ...
July 16 (BusinessDesk) - Energy Minister Megan Woods says the government “won’t die in a ditch” if its goal of 100 percent renewable electricity generation isn't reached by 2035. ...
The Electricity Networks Association (ENA) is welcoming the Government’s response to the Interim Climate Change Committee (ICCC) Report released today. Graeme Peters, chief executive of the ENA, said one of the key recommendations, endorsed by the ...
An article* published this month in the Journal of Health Organization and Management raises questions over the way health board members are elected and whether the boards are even needed. ...
NZEI Te Riu Roa's kindergarten teacher members will vote on a proposed settlement to their collective agreement after four days of negotiations with the Ministry of Education and kindergarten employers. ...
Vector has today welcomed the ICCC’s report on Accelerated Electrification . Vector agrees that accelerating the electrification of transport and process heat will play a major role in reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Initiatives to ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is calling on the Porirua City Council to cancel its underwriting of a proposed Canadian-led privately owned adventure park slated for public land after a similar project created a huge liability for Christchurch ...
Youth climate change campaigners Generation Zero welcome the Interim Climate Change Committee’s (ICCC’s) reports: Accelerated Electrification and Action on agricultural emissions ; which were finally released by the Government today, almost three months ...
Fish & Game New Zealand notes the announcement today that the Government and the intensive agriculture leadership have reached a ‘historic consensus’ and are exploring using a formal sector-government agreement instead of bringing agriculture ...
The independent Interim Climate Change Committee’s report on Accelerated Electrification was released today by the Minister for Energy and Resources, Hon Dr Megan Woods. ...
The independent Interim Climate Change Committee’s report Action on agricultural emissions was released today by the Minister for Climate Change, Hon James Shaw and the Minister of Agriculture, Hon Damien O’Connor. ...
Please find attached embargoed copies of two media statements from the Interim Climate Change Committee http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/1907/Embargoed_Interim_Climate_Change_Committee_Accelerated_electrification_MEDIA_STATEMENT.pdf ...
Greenpeace Executive Director, Dr Russel Norman, has reacted with disbelief that the Government’s latest climate proposal includes an option for dairy to voluntarily deal with their emissions over the next six years. ...
This week’s “Youth Parliament” is an expensive waste of time that promotes taxpayer-funded junketeering, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union . “We shouldn’t be training kids on the joys of the trough,” says Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson ...
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones admitted on Q+A tonight that the state of New Zealand’s infrastructure planning is “dismal” and the government needs to get on with building “rather than writing more reports about it.” ...
DairyNZ has released its submission on the Zero Carbon Bill and is calling on the Government to revise the methane target in the Bill to one that does not put at risk New Zealand’s world-leading dairy sector. Farm profit could ...
July 15 (BusinessDesk) - Foreign Minister Winston Peters will have bi-lateral meetings with two of US president Donald Trump's most hawkish defence and security advisers in a five day trip to Washington D.C. ...
Youth climate change campaigners Generation Zero are calling for Members of Parliament to show political courage as the Zero Carbon Bill goes through the crucial Select Committee process. ...
Annual net migration was provisionally estimated at 50,200 (± 800) in the year ended December 2018 compared with 52,600 in the previous year, Stats NZ said today. ...
New Zealanders have the opportunity to contribute to the government’s Review of Retirement Income Policies, including questions around Superannuation and KiwiSaver. Submissions are now open for the Review, being run by the Commission for Financial ...
Yesterday at Mataatua Marae the Tamaki Makaurau Electorate of the Māori party congratulated Rangi Mclean who was appointed to the Vice president Tāne role of the party nation-wide executive. ...
The funding crisis facing the disability sector has become more urgent following the disturbing news that the Ministry of Health will not increase contract prices for providers this year, the New Zealand Disability Support Network said today. ...
The growing number of working poor is an alarming indicator that the regulatory Minimum Wage does not cut it said Closing the Gap spokesperson Peter Malcolm. ...
Historic hui gives overwhelming agreement for a Māori Inquiry The inquiry into state run Oranga Tamariki will be led by whanau, kaimahi and Māori leaders. ...
Drug infiltration into our maximum security prisons is putting prisoners and staff at unnecessary risk, and one tool that would be of huge benefit is a full body scanner. ...
A children’s television presenter, New Zealand’s first supermodel, and bloody Cocksy! Jordan Hamel pays tribute to the Kiwi icons that helped get him through his life.Adolescence was not a great time for me. Depression, anxiety, sexuality, awkward social interactions, emotional ...
The House - The Youth Parliament has beat the real thing to the punch by declaring a climate change emergency this week. Youth Press Gallery member Sophie Dixon reports. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rona Macniven, Research Fellow, University of Sydney Indigenous Australians have a long and proud heritage in both traditional sports and games, and in modern sport through the achievements of people like Johnathan ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alice Gorman, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders University It’s 50 years since the two Apollo 11 astronauts – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin – spent 22 hours collecting samples, ...
The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in reality television and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s.It’s a wacky, wacky week on The Real Pod this week. But is it wackier than the fact that Gilda Kirkpatrick saw a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neal Hughes, Senior Economist, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) Water prices in the southern Murray-Darling Basin have reached their highest levels since the worst of the Millennium ...
It seems inevitable that New Zealand will soon officially be in a state of emergency over climate change, with a declaration likely to be passed in Parliament. Is this a good thing? The debate over moving into official emergency status ...
The newsreader turned talkback host Peter Williams (not Peter Williams) is furious about the mainstream refusal to acknowledge the cheesiness of the moon.I’m sorry but my head still hurts.Yesterday I blew to smithereens the so-called “consensus” on the “science” around ...
Every fish on the iconic New Zealand Commercial Fish Species poster, ranked. There are a few staples of the quintessential fish and chip shop: sticky plastic curtains, soggy paper tickets with a little red number, tin pottles of Wattie’s tomato sauce, ...
Eligible home owners will be able to claim grants for energy-efficient heaters this winter as part of the government's Warmer Kiwi Homes programme. ...
MediaRoom this week: the Media Council backs reporters asking questions, urges caution linking a group to the Christchurch attacks, muses on news vs advertising and wants corrections published faster. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Even though we can see the Moon shining brightly in the night sky – and sometimes in daylight – it’s hard to put into ...
By Pacific Media Centre NewsdeskIndonesian President Joko Widodo’s threat to pursue anyone who impedes investment is worrying environmental activists who claim that such actions could criminalise those fighting for the environment, reports CNN Indonesia.Jokowi made the threat ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Monica Barratt, Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University A NSW Coronial Inquest investigating a series of drug-related deaths at Australian music festivals has heard evidence of ...
The Netball World Cup grand final is tie-proof and won't end in any kind of super over. RNZ's netball reporter Ravinder Hunia who's in Liverpool explains why. ...
Party Line is a new audio work by Evangeline Riddiford Graham that reinvestigates the Cartwright Inquiry, medical mispractice and misogyny through the lens of the #metoo era. In a red room six handsets dangle from the ceiling on their spiral cords. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neil R Jordan, Lecturer, UNSW Humans and dogs go way back. From wolf totems to the big bad wolf of fact and fairy tale, through sheepdogs, lap dogs, and labradoodles, our relationships ...
For Auckland is a new Spinoff podcast of civic conversations with people working to create and sustain a better Auckland for all. In episode three, host Timothy Giles speaks to Grace Stratton about accessibility, in fashion and in Auckland.She’s launched ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s contentForeign affairs and trade Peter Dunne (Newsroom): Beware, nice ...
Human rights activists and refugees are calling on the PM to use her international profile to speak out against China’s persecution of religious groups. ...
Instead of buying a cuppa in exchange for a place to work, Coffee Supreme is flipping the script.For the last 25 years, Coffee Supreme has stuck to what it does best, which is sourcing, roasting, brewing and selling some seriously ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Blaskovich, Senior Research Officer, The University of Queensland Artistic depictions of several chemical elements feature in a new exhibition from today as part of Australia’s celebrations for the International Year of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Hopkins, Senior Lecturer, Australian National University In 2017, a small group of male prisoners participated in an eight-week yoga program at the Alexander Maconochie Centre(AMC), which houses all adult prisoners in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ramon Zenel Shaban, Clinical Chair and Professor of Infection Prevention and Disease Control at the University of Sydney, University of Sydney “Travel safe, travel far, travel wide, and travel often,” saysNomadic ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Bone, Lecturer, Massey University A majority of academic staff at some of Australia’s top universities work in casual or fixed-term positions. This reflects a trend towards casualisation in academia, and other ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Smith, Professor of Archaeology, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape in south-west Victoria is the first Indigenous Australian landscape to be gazetted on ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will touch down in Melbourne this afternoon, four months after her planned visit to the city was called off due to the Christchurch terror attack. ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Union to take legal action against Novopay, building site sediment damaging waterways, and the govt’s road safety strategy explained.Teachers are taking legal action against Novopay, amidst the news their payrise ...
The lawyer representing bankrupt blogger Cameron Slater in a defamation case has been trying since February to withdraw from the case, but a judge keeps declining. Tim Murphy reports. ...
Net migration, skills shortage, and the challenge for employers to hire the people they need are frequent themes in our media, but there is a talent pool trained right here many are overlooking. ...
The young Kiwi sprinters who won relay bronze at the World University Games - setting a new NZ record - can still go much faster on the world stage. ...
A recent issue of Air Force News revealed that a senior NZDF officer served a six-month posting at the Qatar base, placing New Zealanders at the heart of the main targeting and bombing centre in that region, writes Darius ShahtahmasebiLast ...
Figure 10: A Kanak voter wearing a ‘Kanaky New Caledonia’ flag tee shirt at the Loyalty Islands special polling booth in Vallee du Tir, Noumea. Image: David Robie David Robie Wednesday, July 17, 2019 Abstract The French-ruled ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darren Paul Fisher, Head of Directing, Department of Film, Screen and Creative Media, Bond University Something incredible might be happening to James Bond: a separation, a personal Brexit of sorts. According to ...
Depending on which coalition party you ask, the Government is either introducing a new way to fund community wellbeing or using the same funds to tackle organised crime. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Hepburn, Director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Law, Deakin Law School, Deakin University A freedom of information request has revealed Adani sought the names of CSIRO and Geoscience ...
For generations, women have done the heavy lifting in the fight for social change. What will it take to get more men to give a fuck about their children’s future?At every question and answer session I attend, I get a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Kang, Associate professor, University of Technology Sydney I Need to Know is an ongoing series for teens in search of reliable, confidential advice about life’s tricky questions. If you’re a teen, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katarina Miljkovic, ARC DECRA fellow, Curtin University Look up on a clear night and you can see some circular formations on the face of our lunar neighbour. These are impact craters, circular ...
Open Mike 13/12/2018 
I have been reading and listening to the aftermath of Trump’s comments about the four female first term Democratic representatives, all of whom are “people of color.” I found the US coverage interesting both as evidence of partisanship and the ...2 hours ago
The Herald reports that the housing shortage / bubble has hit a new level:New Zealand is short of 130,000 homes, the tally having risen lately by 30,000, two economists say. Jarrod Kerr and Jeremy Couchman, Kiwibank economists said: "This time ...2 hours ago
The proposed Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill treats biogenic methane emissions differently from all other carbon emissions. The latter are to be measured net so that emissions from fossil fuels can be offset by carbon stored in trees. ...18 hours ago
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh This article aims to answer a simple question, whether the conflict is only a rural one or whether it is also urban. The verb ‘to be’ is conjugated in the present tense as ,despite what some ...1 day ago
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On Sunday July 7, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter announced their intention to review the Ministry of Health’s Funded Family Care policy and repeal Part 4Aof the 2000 NZ Public Health and Disability Act. These are festering injustices ...2 days ago
Belle is a lovely fifteen year-old border collie who belongs to our friends and neighbours at Bryan’s Beach, Michael and Judy Corboy. Belle, in her old age, can hardly see or hear, but – as a constant participant at social ...2 days ago
A Woman’s Place is on the Podium was a public meeting in London on 10 July to discuss women’s sports and the impact of transwomen competing against women. The venue was sold out with a packed hall of 750 people. ...4 days ago
An occasional series where I will ponder allegations of anti-Semitism directed at the British Labour Party and its members.In this case, we are thinking about an allegedly anti-Semitic image shared by a Labour Party member. Its origins appear to be ...1 week ago
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Welcome to another heaping helping of research publications related to climate change drivers and mechanisms, the effects of climate change and how we might yet grope our way into systems approaches to dealing with the mess we're making, despite ourselves. ...2 weeks ago
The People's "Friend": In this masterpiece of revolutionary propaganda, the homicidal political psychopath, Jean-Paul Marat, has been transformed by Jacques-Louis David, the French Revolution's most accomplished artist, into a martyred hero of the ordinary people of Paris. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, ...2 weeks ago
The principle of one person, one vote doesn’t apply for local elections. In fact, you don’t even need to be a person to have voting rights. Welcome to the ratepayer roll. While the ratepayer roll accounts for less than 1% ...2 weeks ago
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When people slate the current Government for taking too long on certain issues, or not getting everything right, just check the outrage and quit helping National manufacture consent for their decade of Disaster Economics and much more. Bill couldn’t ...3 weeks ago
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More people have died in the shower this year than will die in a KiwiBuild home. KiwiBuild home owners are experiencing a surprise windfall this month, as the price of their houses have begun to rise dramatically, due to growing ...3 weeks ago
A new digital platform aims to make it easier for small businesses to access services from multiple government agencies, leaving them more time to focus on their own priorities. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister for Small Business Stuart Nash ...2 days ago
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The House - The Youth Parliament has beat the real thing to the punch by declaring a climate change emergency this week. Youth Press Gallery member Sophie Dixon reports. ...57 mins ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rona Macniven, Research Fellow, University of Sydney Indigenous Australians have a long and proud heritage in both traditional sports and games, and in modern sport through the achievements of people like Johnathan ...59 mins ago
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Instagram will test the removal of 'likes' from New Zealand-based users' content from today. ...3 hours ago
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Every fish on the iconic New Zealand Commercial Fish Species poster, ranked. There are a few staples of the quintessential fish and chip shop: sticky plastic curtains, soggy paper tickets with a little red number, tin pottles of Wattie’s tomato sauce, ...3 hours ago
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Net migration, skills shortage, and the challenge for employers to hire the people they need are frequent themes in our media, but there is a talent pool trained right here many are overlooking. ...12 hours ago
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A successful outcome for the Union negotiators.
Air NZ spotting backlash in opinions and insurance problems.
Where’s the statement of what the union has achieved from e tu?
Unions blinked, realised the masses hold more power than the few, and now honest hard working kiwis can enjoy Christmas
Tuppence, why in your comment did you refer to the “kiwis who can enjoy Christmas” as being ‘honest, hard working”?
Are you insinuating that the engineers who work for Air New Zealand are not? It seems that you are using a meme often used by National now in constant referral to ‘hard-working kiwis’ which is actually a way of saying that our side are the good guys and those who disagree with us are lazy and corrupt.
The old reference used to be “decent law-abiding citizens” and before that ‘God-fearing people”.
It’s all smear tactics, Tuppence, and it’s dirty politics.
So you are saying that 41000 kiwis who had travel booked next friday shouldn’t be thought of as hard working? and that my mentioning of it is some kind of conspiracy?
are the 41000 people, who would have paid above a normal rate to travel next friday, somehow to blame for their travel getting in the way of a strike and the demands of 1000 top 10 percent salary earners”
Yes, I’m saying that. You used National party rhetoric, clichéd and false.
If you had meant that the ordinary public would have been inconvenienced, which is true, then you should have said that. Why typify these travellers as ‘hard-working and honest’? Conspiracy is not the same as insinuation, btw.
Their honesty and work ethic is not germane to the issue unless you were smearing the engineers.
And FFS how can you construe from my comments that I am blaming these travellers? That in itself points to your illogicality and your falseness in accusations, adding to the falseness of the implied accusation that the proposed strikers (remember they aren’t strikers until they have actually struck) are lazy and corrupt.
So Kiwi’s who have been working all year and are looking forward to a well earned break at christmas time aren’t germane to the conversation about striking engineers?
Why did the engineers choose the busiest time of year to strike then?
Tuppence, most travellers have been working all year. You haven’t answered why you chose that descriptor, along with ‘honest’, to describe them. Tuppence, why did you use the word honest?
Your second paragraph is an attempted distraction from your discredited smearing and illogicality.
Thanks for agreeing with me. it was hard to see how you could try impugn that travellers aren’t hard working.
as they go about in an honest attempt to enjoy christmas with their families on their limited holiday with minimal disruption
And you still haven’t justified your language………..
Your debating behaviour is a bit like that worm on the hook that Paula Bennett is going fishing with in the Sroubek case- wriggle, wiggle, twist and turn.
“There has to be a connection” says Paula. I am trying to get you to admit that there is a connection between your thinking and the language that you use.
Let’s fact it, Tuppence, you regard workers who contemplate strike action in defence of their wages and conditions, and perhaps even their very jobs, as being the opposite to hard-working and honest.
Which is why you used the language that you used.
This strike was dishonest. Ruining innocent travellers holiday plans so that the engineers could have more annual leave shows a callous disregard for the truth when e tu and yourself try to make this about fairness.
So you seem to know what dishonest means, Tuppence.
Now, why use honest to describe travellers? (And I’m not talking Irish gypsies here). As Anne points out, the word honest is not applicable to all travellers, nor I say to all kiwis.
Nor does hard-working.
But we know they are dog-whistle terms to denigrate and elicit support from fellow (heh!) travellers.
So, you’re claiming all travellers are hard working and honest. What a load of codswallop. Some are, some aren’t. Some earned their money honestly some didn’t. Some are decent people, some are ratbags. In other words travellers represent a cross section of people who can be good, bad and indifferent.
Hi Tuppence
You wanted the people who keep the Aircraft maintained to have their pay and conditions cut.
You are one nice fellow Miss Tuppence.
I think Tuppence deserves a long flight on an aeroplane that hasn’t been well-maintained by the honest, hard-working aviation engineers at Air NZ.
You are such a shill Tuppence and couldn’t make a straight truthful statement about anything – it all gets skewed as it runs past your crooked mind.
Our Tuppence shilling? We don’t get our full bobs-worth………
Sparking well mac1
You get what you pay for ..
And I’d put money on his pushing on all the holes in the biscuits when he doesn’t get his way, then putting them back at the packet
I notice how what should have been a discussion about the union and airnz has been derailed by a bloody RW lightweight. We would get further if we treated them all the time as just trolls who would rather argue with a leftie than stop them falling under a bus. DFTT they are enemies, not merely ignorant of facts and realities – and if they are ignorant it is the wilful kind, and NOTHING will ever improve with that mindset, concrete-set.
So back to Patricia at 1.
I guess the union were counting on Air NZ getting bowled over by the ramifications. And AirNZ have been low shits for sure. The engineers have to work long hours, keep themselves to high standards of work, and we all love them for the safety of travel that results. Then to try and save money on those extra-long hours by reducing the overtime rates, when they are making large profits is just unconscionable. That sort of thing is why unions are so important. Unions are to help safeguard employees against the machinations of Big Business and also the sneaky, nasty types of Small Business that do exist.
But unions need people to see them as good jokers, not self-centred people who will adopt business tactics and walk all over the people further down the ladder, the customers of their employers. Going on strike in January, that would have caused disruption, but Christmas is family time and we need to have lives and families to make life worth living.
Was there some reason that the two unions ( E tū and the Aviation and Marine Engineers Association – AMEA) could not have waited till January to make their protest? It would still have brought leverage on our national airline. And AirNZ don’t think of going overseas for all your engineering checks, we want quality NZ workers, to be treated fairly, and in turn, for them and their unions to treat us fairly and thoughtfully.
Note: Employers and Manufacturers Association heads-up on new workplace access bill.
https://www.ema.co.nz/newsandmedia/news/Pages/Workplace-Bill-proposes-changes-to-union-access.aspx
II agree tuppy, Sirponyboy was always going to enjoy xmas. Private jet dewnchinew.
including the honest hard working engineers, baggage loaders and other support crew who have had an offer from their employer to vote on
An update on how DIA appears to have been stripping out the budgets of the National Library and Archives NZ:
https://turnbullfriends.org.nz/numbers-tell-the-story/
Quite curious how Archive NZ’s overheads somehow increased 279% between 2013 and 2018.
Probably due to substantial rebuilding of their facilities around that time at a cost of in excess of $100 million. The capital expenditure then feeds into the annual capital charge (about 7% of the capital), which is part of fixed overhead.
Thanks Wayne. Archives have built a new Christchurch repository at Wigram.
But I still find it hard to understand how the new capital charge deriving from this initiative could almost quadruple the agency’s total overhead in 5 years.
How would that work?
As far as I know, DIA/Archives still has some fairly substantial project(s) underway – even though they may be over-burdened with countless meetings and bean counting
Increase in value of asset a brand new asset is worth more than a rundown asset.
I have not actually checked the annual accounts on the increase in capital charge. But I do know National Library and Archives had some big capital projects, mostly approved in 2009 and actually started in 2010. At that stage well over $100 million initially on the National Library with Archives to follow. I would imagine a lot more than $100 million by now.
As an aside one of the ways NZDF buys new assets is to use the depreciation allowance. With all the stuff bought over the last decade (helicopters, upgrades to aircraft, upgrades to ships, new buildings, new Army weapons and vehicles) there is at least $200 million annual depreciation. This is used to buy new stuff, so a fair chunk of the $2.3 billion on the new maritime surveillance aircraft comes from accumulated depreciation.
I don’t know about other libraries around the country, but our local libraries in Napier and Hastings, (both of which were very good provincial libraries) have been absolutely destroyed and gutted over the past 2-3 years, huge book sales, including many very rare local history books, the shelves are now only half full, and a majority of the few replacement books are lackluster coffee table books rather than serious reference books,
I hardly go to either library now, I find them too depressing witnessing in real time the dumbing down of out communities, as if there wasn’t enough dumbing down going on everywhere else anyway.
@Adrian, Sad. Our poorly stocked libraries and sales of out of print books, a national shame.
Totally whacked out on the meme that digital is everything and books and paper and passe’.Digital as ephemeral as the brains that only briefly touch on an understanding of knowledge and how it is used to achieve wisdom. I am reading Penguins printed shortly after i was born. They are available, accessible, and don’t require a machine.
It’s also a weird inverted privilege issue. With a Kindle I can carry an entire library of books with me wherever I go. To have paper versions of the ebooks I have in my backpack 24/7 I would need to buy a big house with entire rooms devoted to book storage. Who can afford that these days?
Visited Ōtara library in Auckland recently after several months, the library has been deliberately gutted by Auckland Council to make room for “community space”.
This was achieved by initially putting out a survey in Ōtara asking the public if they wanted more community space. When the results were collated, Auckland Council then used those results to remove about 80% of the books from the library, which now has plenty of open space and beanbags.
The really vindictive nature of this move is that the library is part of the shopping and parking complex near to Manukau Technical Institute. Auckland Council owns and manages the large Ōtara Community Centre, the Ōtara Music Centre, and the aquatic complex within the same area. These community spaces, particularly the Community Centre, are available for public use if required, but the use of fees prohibits use.
This is in indication of the stealth with which Auckland Council will go to remove one of the best accesses a community and individual, regardless of age or ability, can have to a free education.
+1 Molly
Down here in Hastings, I had a member of the local ‘Friends of the Library’ inform me with great pride that they used the money from the endless all encompassing book sales to buy a new couch for the Flaxmere Library.
yipee.
4 years latter the couch is looking suitably sad…and the libraries are even emptier.
What especially irritates me is the claim that books being sold are either unborrowed titles, or books that are about to be superceded. Yet I have seen recent books on, NZ Tapa; NZ Tussock Moths and NZ State Houses, all in pristine condition, on the sales table. They are not redundant titles.
I presume that the term ‘friends of the Library’ is purely ironic.
meantime…
“,i>There are 178 New Zealand schools that don’t have a dedicated library, while 330 schools have less library space than they’re entitled to.”
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/overcrowding-forces-178-nz-schools-go-without-library?utm_variant=taboola_visible_1
I spoke to one of the librarians at the time, and asked what had happened.
He seemed fairly accepting of the process. I said that I considered libraries to be the one public place that is accessible to all; regardless of age, income, physical impairment and education. That physical browsing can expose you to ideas and interests that are not likely in internet browsing, and the editing and publishing process ensures a degree of quality that is not necessarily true of online sources. I honestly believe that access to well-resourced libraries is access to education, and the value of libraries is social.
If local authorities want to get more financial value of of library investment, use financial tools such as SROI (social return on investment) to see what they provide. Include in libraries – social enterprise cafes that train people to employment while providing a gathering place for users. Add programmes that genuinely bring together community.
The dependence on the current financial methods of cost/benefit produce four-year old saggy sofas. The value of libraries is more than that.
We didn’t have a library at school till I was eight. When we got a prefab library I nearly read the whole lot. I’d already read everything my parents owned. Then it was off to Hamilton. Bored, I’d skip school and go to the public library and study plants, insects and fungi…
Both those libraries, when I first walked into them and saw the books: at school the smell of new carpet and print, with more books than I’d ever seen before; and then Hamilton, this massive building with mezzanine floor holding row after row of shelves that stretched beyond the walking bridges criss-crossed overhead… it was like finding hallowed ground. All the worlds were in those rooms.
Libraries should be hallowed ground.
Officials in charge of libraries should be total geeks who’d live onsite if allowed. They are the gatekeepers of knowledge. I know people who’ve worked very hard just to be librarians, they love books like crazy. Why aren’t they in charge?
Business heads qualified to be managerial material’. Meddling in education and the arts. No f’n idea. If we have x books and y book lenders…
Just re-read Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ (1932)
‘There isn’t any need for civilised man to bear anything that’s seriously unpleasant. And as for doing things, Ford forbid that he should get the idea into his head. It would upset the whole social order if men started doing things on their own.
What about self-denial, then? If you had a God, you’d have a reason for self denial.
But industrial civilisation is only possible when there is no self denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygeine and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning.’
WTB
Libraries, banks of thought and imagination and facts. Stacked up on shelves, each book long in the making, the planning, the choice of words for meaning and impact. Jewels of the brain’s electricity crystallised into physical form.
Go into a bank which represents fantastical power. Where is the money, the documents, the trapped electrical impulses that carry this weight of value. The product isn’t to be seen. If it is physical, it must be stowed away safely. If it is driven by impulses, it must be protected, even though it is merely based on imagination, feeling, marks on a screen that can change, double or vanish as one watches.
But a book is an artifact, it has been made from different components, and each aspect is the result of skilled tradespeople working together, consulting and then going forward with their portion of the whole. And these magic objects can be touched and handled, and will last for many lifetimes with care, and an understanding of the marks on the page.
The book is human communication reaching out to others of like mind, and those who want to explore that line of thinking. It is a little piece of society, wrapped up in a sort of ravioli case, ready for the mind’s delectation. It talks to us and may give us strength and comradeship as in the last verse of 1 September 1939, W.H.Auden.
Same thing is happening in New Plymouth here. People need to realise you cannot Google a lot of stuff that relates to local history.
+1 millsy, sad, it’s not just the local history, but not having to rely on an internet connection which as we all know in NZ, is hardly reliable or even fast. Not sure how many low income families are also allowing their kids internet access when they can’t even keep the power or phone on.
Are they removing local history materials?
Adrian Thornton,
In 1989, I began saving books that I thought were important, because I could see what was going to happen when greed and asset sales and betraying New Zealanders’ rights and histories began to swirl under extreme right philosophies that are incapable of appreciating the beauty of books AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, the need for all New Zealanders to access them. I now have my own library. Perhaps you can start your own. Good luck.
+1 Me, but it is not just the right who seem to now hate books, the third way Rogernomic lefties seem to hate books too. And the Auckland university specialist libraries were closed with a Labour government in, with Chloe from the Greens who I think did art history there, did not seem to be making any protest about the libraries demise and the jobs lost, while the university were also paying the Chancellor over $700k, the third highest public servant apparently.
I think the idea is that Kiwis don’t read because then they can be better low paid workers, have less critical thinking and be blind donors to political parties to get things done.
I hear there is a very good secondhand bookshop in Hastings called “The Little Red Bookshop” …. LOL
“Their huge collection of affordable books is a local treasure. As their website puts it, they are “proprietors of the best little second hand bookshop in Hastings, New Zealand. We may, on occasion, seem a touch irreverent, but hopefully in the nicest possible way”.
…
Behind the book shop and chocolate shop is a warren of fascinating rooms. It’s like something out of Being John Malkovich. There are rooms filled to brimming with books and puzzles, a music studio (home of the seven-ten piece Revolutionary Arts Ensemble, …), and a large collection of classic racing bicycles and memorabilia. This collection is a penchant of (name removed), to which he welcomes like minds by appointment.”
Shout out to Bay FM, NZ’s best indy station!
Really? I am not in the Bay, but will check it out sometime. Hope I did not overstep in my comment above! Did not put link …… but AT and partner and their wonderful shop are well known outside the Bay as well.
I’m sure it’ll be fine with Adrian, any publicity is good publicity, as the marketers say.
Bay FM can be found on Simple radio and via their website. The first time I heard the station I was driving into Hastings and resetting the radio. I couldn’t believe it when I heard Lou Reed’s Coney Island Baby. They followed that up with a Joy Division track and that was me hooked!
You need Brian in your life.
http://brianfm.com/
Ah, yes, Springvale’s finest. I regularly pick Brian FM up in the strangest places as I travel around. Great wee network.
PEEOTUS isn’t denying campaign contacts with Russia anymore, now he’s calling them “peanut stuff”.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/12/politics/donald-trump-russia-contacts-peanut-stuff/index.html
Geeez, Cohen just got three years jail for lying to congress over it, peanuts huh?
Oh well USA voted for their peanut president.
Lotsa peanuts. Lotsa monkeys. Bananas galore.
But never forget, the mandarin manutang’s opponent won almost 3 million more votes than he did. It was just an anachronistic quirk of the electoral system that delivered the presidency to Dementia Don. Coupled with the way the Electoral College failed to fulfill one of the duties it was expected to do when it was set up: it was intended that the Electors would assess the fitness for office of the candidates and if somehow someone totally unsuitable conned the general public, the Electors would exercise their better judgement and choose a candidate that actually was fit. Check out the Federalist Papers 68. In this case, the Electors overrode the good sense of the popular vote and installed the Tangerine Tantrum.
Not really an anachronistic quirk. It is built in to the constitution ensure that each state has their say in the final result. So that huge majorities in say New York or California don’t drown out narrow victories in smaller states.
We tend to forget in New Zealand that the United States has a federal constitution, designed to give a substantial say to each of the 50 states.
Not much likelihood of changing the constitution on this point. What the next democratic candidate has to do is win states like Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Been done plenty of times in the past.
I’ll stick with anachronistic.
At the time it was set up, communication across the country was extremely slow and unreliable. Times have moved on.
At the time it was set up, how to account for the proportion of a state’s population that were slaves was an issue. Women and non-landowning males couldn’t vote either. Times and human rights views have moved on.
Should the decisions around setting up the Electoral College be redone today, I’d be astonished if choosing the presidency would be anything other than one person, one equal vote. The composition of the Senate with 2 senators from each state would then be the sufficient safeguard of the smaller states’ interests.
But yeah, changing the Constitution ain’t gonna happen. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact sidestepping the Electoral College is only a tiny bit more likely to happen.
Anachronistic is correct. There was a link on here detailing how the system, set up to achieve what you say, now actively prevents it. It needs to be changed but the chances of that happening are between slim and none. The US constitution is preventing that necessary change because of the requirements needed to change the constitution.
Wayne what you say is true to some extent but there are tremendous inequalities built into the current system of Government in the States where, for example, the value of a vote in California is only a fraction of the vote in Wyoming. This was exemplified in the recent appointment of Judge Kavenaugh where the number of votes behind the senators who voted for him was around 11million less than the votes represented by those who voted against.
I’m sure you would find this opinion piece by John Dingell the longest serving, and recently retired Senator, (he represented Michigan for 59 years) highly interesting.
Andre, you’ve made me laugh so much, thanks for the giggles this morning…. the mandarin manutang, dementia don, peeotus, tangerine tantrum. Lmao
Just a reminder, he never actually got around to proving that … errrm … he doesn’t have a genetic heritage unusually rich in species diversity.
https://www.reuters.com/article/entertainment-us-usa-trump-lawsuit/trump-withdraws-orangutan-lawsuit-against-comic-bill-maher-idUSBRE9310PL20130402
Informative input you make Andre. I can recall reading somewhere years ago something suggesting that it is lawful for an official (?) to throw a state’s electoral college vote tally in favour of a presidential candidate who did not receive a majority of the votes in that state. Thinking about that now it seems unlikely, even as a legal possibility. Do you know anything of that Andre ?
Going from memory, there’s nothing in the US constitution that says an Elector is in any way constrained in who they vote for. Almost every presidential election there are a few faithless electors that vote for someone other than who they were “supposed to” vote for. But so far, the only election where faithless electors have changed the outcome was 1796.
States set their own laws about how to apportion their electors and penalties for faithless electors. 48 states have winner-take-all for all of their electors. Maine and Nebraska have winner-take-all for two of their electors (corresponding to the 2 senators) and then the electors corresponding to the House seats are pledged to the popular vote winner of that district.
There were between 7 and 10 faithless electors in the last election. Some swapping one way, others the other.
https://dqydj.com/how-many-faithless-electors-2016/
Who will take over from May? Snap election in the UK? Or will she win her party over?
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-46535739
I reckon May will step down in June. There will be an open contest so that will take a couple of months. I reckon Dominic Raab or Sajid Javid will be the finalists. Something flawed about Boris.
As for a snap election. Won’t happen. The only way it can occur is if the DUP switch sides, and they won’t.
i suppose the new PM could call a new election, but given what happened to May, that won’t be very appealing.
There are times when politics should be put to one side, so this is a genuine question for you Wayne.
Have you had a look at what Graeme Edgeler has proposed on name suppression here on Public Address?
And what are your views on what he is suggesting in his draft bill?
https://publicaddress.net/legalbeagle/name-suppression-appeals/
I agree entirely with him. I noted this point in a comment earlier in another post on The Standard.
Looks like May has won the no confidence vote. Helps that she has decided to stand down before the next election so took the wind out of her opponents sails
I missed this article by Rachel Stewart yesterday.
Absolutely superb. Read it and share it with all your friends.
I see she is also talking to Derrick Jensen on Christmas Day.
That will be well worth a listen.
Rachel isn’t scared to tel us the truth.
A rare commodity today.
An excerpt of her wisdom.
“As this is my last column for 2018, I thought it timely to review the big news stories that point to an even better 2019.
Except, there are none.
So, instead, here’s a selection of this year’s news stories that sent a shiver down
my spine. I write it for those of us who aren’t stupid enough to believe that the planet is doing anything other than hurtling to its doom.
First cab off the rank must be climate change. You know, the biggest threat to the continuation of our species since Donald Trump was inaugurated. Not only is the news all bad, there’s no sign of any global consensus on the way forward. The chances of reversing the situation in any meaningful way are about as high as my dog reversing my Jeep into a spare parallel park on Queen St during Christmas week.
Too many people living on an overheating capitalist planet means that our oceans are awash with plastic, our rivers – the ones that still flow – are awash with nitrates, our soils are awash with chemicals, and our media is awash with greenwash. Whatever pays the bills, right?
Only when our biodiversity is gone, and we reach the point of biological breakdown, will we realise what we’ve done. Even then, someone will find a way to spin a buck out of it. Profit is everything, and the earth will provide. Until it won’t.”
https://t.co/LhbjvYLhqQ?amp=1
As always Ed, thank you. Both you and Rachael are gems.
Derrick Jensen is sure to rock a few yachts.
I enjoyed his Endgame books.
Has influenced my thinking.
Sustainability defined as leaving the soil in better condition than last season.
Haven’t gotten round to blowing up any dams yet though.
Love his books and Philosophy.
Since July the government’s family package has been giving low-income families an extra $75 a week. Yet, the Auckland City Mission has had an unprecedented increase in demand for food parcels and will double its Christmas efforts as a result.
City missioner Chris Farrelly said “we’ve identified very clearly that we have got a growth in food insecurity and food poverty in New Zealand.
The prime minister plans to visit the Auckland City Mission before Christmas to “drill into” why an increasing number of families are struggling to make ends meet.
She is hoping the rise in demand is a case of more people in need feeling they can ask for help. However, even if it is a case of more people in need feeling they can ask for help, clearly the government’s family package isn’t doing enough to help them.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/377945/city-mission-to-double-efforts-for-christmas-due-to-unprecedented-demand
Could it merely be a case of more people in need feeling they can ask for help or is the growth in demand (as City missioner Chris Farrelly pointed out above) more likely a case of the government’s family package not going far enough?
The benefit of the government’s family package would have been largely offset by the new charges/taxes the government has also introduced since in power.
How long will it take for the government to establish what is driving the increase in demand and more importantly, when are they going to act to correct it? One would like to think people going hungry is a priority for this government. So again, when are they going to correct it?
When you have huge increase in low paid workers and and fake students with fake financials, you get a spike in poorer people into NZ, which then can make the exisiting poor even poorer as they are all competing for the same resources.
A spike in people with money also drives up the prices of luxury housing, while spikes of poorer people drives up the affordable housing prices. Not rocket science!
Before the government capitulated to business interests and ran their lazy immigration scams to the maximum, they might have worked out how much it was going to cost to upgrade all the housing, infrastructure, hospitals, schools, roads and how they were going to pay for the top up of so many low paid wages, WFF or asset rich, cash poor satellite families based in NZ.
When they decided to do it through further taxation like petrol taxes, rates and user pays charges what effects that might have on poorer folks based here that don’t have family to fed X over tens of thousands of family money for the increased cost of living.
The thirty year NZ experiment, first Rogernomics then immigration led neoliberalism has made NZ a worse place to live for many people and reduced the opportunities for our youth born here, made productivity static, lowered wages in real terms, driven up the prices of set costs of living and create a bigger inequality divide.
Do you think Labour will do enough over the coming year to make a significant difference in turning around the large number queuing at the City Mission next Christmas?
@The Chairman, nope. It is not so much Labour’s fault as the legacy of National party policy on immigration and welfare but Labour don’t seem to be keeping their election promises of reducing immigration to 15000, which judging by the amount of new housing they are whooping about for Kiwibuild does not even cover it. aka 100,000 over 10 years is approx 10,000 houses per year.
The types of migrants coming are of a lower skill level than 5 years ago. Hard to see where the tax money will come from for the future when our big plan for immigration is more nickel and dime store owners with 100% profits on liquor, bad restaurant food and plastic goods stores and how to be a third party rip off merchant on labour and more nurses and doctors and teachers to pay for the population growth on the back of it and people’s 11 day relationships when they get lonely or jailed criminals coming here on ‘compassionate’ grounds .
Landlords upping rents again.
Rents are another area where Labour policy is driving up costs.
In my humble opinion
Get housing right and most other issues in directly would be resolved.
The rise of those in need form my observation has mirrored the increasing level of affordability of housing and then the flow on with rental prices, which leaves a reduced disposable income after housing costs are deducted
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11894842
https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/research-and-publications/speeches/2013/speech2013-10-15
No, Labour are not driving up costs,
Landlords who want more money, and who can ask for more money, ask for more money, driving up costs for many. And considering that we still have a rental shortage, and that people don’t really like living in ditches, Landlord can virtually ask for what ever they like and still rent out their investments.
Good grief, can’t you do better?
Rents have always gone up since… forever havn’t they? Or are right wingers suddenly wanting rent controls? I do, I actually bought my first home a couple years ago, way cheaper than renting ironically, though I was very lucky with a Super scheme through my (heavily unionised) job.
Apparently the people who are the largest group in poverty is Pakeha parents with a mortgage. Aka not renters. I think you can look back and realise that certain things like housing don’t seem to go down over time but increase, and I very much doubt the government can do much to stem that. What is not rising enough is people’s incomes.
It is the role of the Reserve Bank and the Government to ensure price stability in the housing market. But it’s not just the price of houses that has been excessively exceeding, putting more into hardship.
@Sabine
Generally, landlords want more money due to their costs rising – i.e. rates, insurance, etc. And Labour policy (like the recent change in letting fees) is driving up their costs.
You started off right:
Generally, landlords want more money
Part of the problem is a build up of poverty and debt during the last 9/10 years.
The payments made helped many, but others have reached the end of their resilience, and debts are growing. Repaying MSD, student debt, rental debts. etc.
To imply that Jacinda Ardern and her Government have caused this is such deliberate misdirection that I despair of your “concern”
When the previous Government was in power, I did not read anything from you telling that government to alleviate hunger.
Further, when some ideas were put forward there was a huge out cry about choices self help and I did not see any effort by any politician to find out what was happening.
The PM says she will visit to discover where the problems lie. Because she cares.
I wasn’t implying Jacinda Ardern and her Government have caused this, Patricia. But it is evident that she and her coalition Government aren’t doing enough to turn the numbers around.
As for you despairing my concern, Patricia, I despair more on the left aren’t making noise about this.
We on the left should be calling out in numbers for the Government to do more.
The glorious George Galloway on the “Gilet Jaune” demonstrators in France and of course May.
I prefer his cat videos
Half man, half cat. It was a stunning impression. Thank you George.
Thanks Maui.
I listen to his show every week.
It’s the University of the airwaves, as GG puts it.
8 a.m Saturday NZ time.
Three hours of brilliant radio.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/109294166/grace-millane-case-accuseds-name-searched-more-than-100000-times-on-google-despite-it-being-suppressed
I’m no lawyer but Marie Dryberg’s stance seems a sensible one to me:
“Sharing the name is a publication,” defence lawyer Marie Dyhrberg QC said.
“I don’t think anyone rowed out of New Zealand waters and called a newsroom and then rowed back.”
….. and that said, wouldn’t it have been an opportunity to put that before the judiciary, get some sort of precedent set, so that we can see if and what sort of changes need to be made?
If the guy is guilty, it’d be a shame if the case failed on some technicality
Thoughts???
I reckon Marie Dyhrberg is wrong and Chris Finlayson is right on how the appeal should be dealt with. There should be no automatic 20 days for an appeal. In a case like this, it should be accelerated through the High Court, say by end of business/court year.
The District Court Judge could see no grounds at all for name suppression, but of course the right to an appeal is automatic, whether to not the appeal has any merit. I am not suggesting any change to the right of appeal since that right is fundamental. But I do think that an appeal like this should be expedited, and not automatically stall everything for 20 days.
There is almost nil circumstance where the naming of the accused in the UK press will have any effect in the accused going through a full trial. Little was at best exaggerating that it would.
Well we’ve yet to see what sort of a defence will be put up, so going through a full trial is one thing, going through a fair trial might be another.
But….. in any event, THEN there is this:
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/13-12-2018/google-emailed-out-the-name-of-the-man-accused-of-killing-grace-millane-and-they-dont-even-care/
The name probably would not even have got to Google had members of the Brit Media not been on the ground (sharing/publishing it).
By the way Wayne, I have a different perspective, and that is that is actually none of my bloody business, or the public’s who the defendant is UNTIL a verdict has been given.
The only people who need know are the Police, Judiciary, Jurors, the family and various Counsel.
Justice being seen to be done does not have to be immediate just to serve whatever voyeuristic tendencies I might have. I could either attend Court, or perhaps look at a recording of proceedings AFTER a verdict has been delivered.
It seems to me that one of the reasons faith is being lost in judicial processes (and the Police sometimes) is that all the hype and sensationalism that goes on just serves to make people lose faith in the system (especially when you get Lackwit Larry’s, and Hoskings, and Leighton’s rarking it all up)
I could not agree more
I saw a photo and heard the name discussed as I negotiated my way through a group of butch, fluro-vested blokes blocking the footpath just near Courtenay Place when they were on their tablet.
The look on their face was almost like one of disappointment when the image popped up (presumably because, AND judging by the discussion – the defendant was neither brown, nor apparently gang-related).
I’m of course making assumptions there, but even then, as I managed to get past I could hear the “fucking scumbag” , and “I’d ……..” and “If someone did that to my missus”…… etc.
Whoar! they were tuff!
Out of curiosity to see just how simple it was to find out, I did a Google search and blimey up came the UK Telegraph with name and photo. I quickly got out of it. I suppose I’m now one of the thousands who did just that. “The look on their face was almost like one of disappointment when the image popped up (presumably because, AND judging by the discussion – the defendant was neither brown, nor apparently gang-related).” My reaction was relief actually.
/agreed
Agree. Even if I knew the name what difference would it make? I also am presuming he’s innocent til judge decides otherwise.
Can’t possibly agree. The idea that every trial of every defendant would not have the name of the defendant disclosed seems to be a gross breach of the concept of open and public justice.
In any event it is not going to happen. No conceivable parliament would vote for it.
If I may say so, that’s fairly lame (even coming from you. And I mean that because you are really quite a fuddy duddy – sorry I couldn’t find a better way of saying it).
You’ll have to agree that there are often suppression orders and for good reason. After a verdict is reached, the details are usually public, “Open and Public” justice is still done and seen to have been done. The only difference is immediacy, which in the new era, is proving to be a problem – as in Millane case and with the likes of Google. We’ll likely see more of this kind of stuff
Sorry @ Wayne….. at the time I posted, it had been a long day, and the word I was looking for was ‘traditionalist’ – despite all that spin you’ve learned about not being ‘change averse’. (We’ll fight them in the trenches till the bitter end! For our agenda and vision is sacrosanct and righteous – and of course we do know better. ‘We’ were BORN to rule and preserve decency and we’ll fight to the death)
Justice is blind.
So, tell me, should all the investigations that the police engage in also be on public display during the investigation so as to prevent a gross breach of open and public justice?
IMO, the court is the end part of that investigation and it is only afterwards that the public should see it.
Yay, yellow vests for carbon.
/
Edmonton also saw a large protest, with hundreds marching from the Legislature to Churchill Square, carrying signs, some reading “No Global Climate Pact. Suicide.”
Multiple posts on Canada’s yellow jackets Facebook page called for more drastic action.
“Look at France today. After four weeks of burning the cities, the French government cut the carbon tax. So what do we want? 90 years or four weeks until something changes?” wrote Robb Kerr on the group’s page. “If you want to crush a government, you have to play their game … You want to see them jump? Then burn down City Hall.”
The protests were jointly against the provincial and federal carbon taxes, and Canada’s plan to endorse the United Nations’ migration pact, which outlines objectives for treating global migrants humanely and efficiently.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-yellow-vest-protests-1.4938333
A tale of two steels: Auckland’s Seascape vs Wellington’s Dixon St project
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/378085/a-tale-of-two-steels-auckland-s-seascape-vs-wellington-s-dixon-st-project
P>S> Doesn’t Jenny Shipley have a place on the board of China Construction company? That alone after Mainzeal is a huge worry.
Jenny Shipley – China Bank director? Joind at the hip?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/68435306/null
Richard Meadows 11 May 2015 – (good stuff Richard.)
The first disclosure statement for China Construction Bank (CCB) NZ, of which Shipley is chairman, reveals she was paid $50,769 between June and December last year, which works out to about $90,000 on a yearly basis.
In an interview with Stuff.co.nz last week, Shipley declined to reveal her director’s fees, though hinted that she had taken a substantial pay-cut.
Even so, Shipley’s earnings dwarf that of her fellow former politician, with Brash earning just $65,000 as chairman of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC)’s local arm.
The Bank of China, which is the third banking behemoth to enter New Zealand in the last two years, has yet to disclose its financial records.
That means the salaries of its directors Ruth Richardson and Chris Tremain, also both former National MPs, are as yet unknown.
Shipley
Brash
Richardson
Tremain
Being a NZ government minister is a good CV point.
I think we should bring the salaries down for MPs as they apparently regard it as apprenticeship training, or an alternative to a politics university degree which others have to pay to get.
+1 (especially the bit about apprenticeship training)
I’m wondering where Nafe might end up. Most of the rest of them could get a pozzy at Harcourts Real Estate – without even having to change their uniforms – exceptions being Gerry the big boy, and Finlayson of course, and there are others looking for a pozzy in a High Commission somewhere.
Paula’s going to be a problem. She does have impeccable credentials as an actress or maybe a mime artist though.
Paula has presumably had advice on changing her image, and has succeeded. She looks quite tasty – an actress would be good, Maori presenter as she would be a good role model for the star-struck teenager. Has she ever been on Shortland Street? They could find a spot for her I should think. She follows along similar lines to Donna Awatere Huata who has found her feet in management.
Finlayson slagging off Maori because they persist in wanting their own way, but Ngapuhi can’t work out how many ways there are! He needs to get into something where they call a spade a spade and no mucking about.
Yes yes. As Maggie might say – Paula has come a long way but she still has a wee way to go to shake off some of that rabble around her. She has scrubbed up well and its hard not having gone to a finishing school. She’ll have to learn not to use those ‘P’- like eyes when she gets angry and when cameras are present.
It’s all about perceptions and ‘the look’ darling, which I’m becoming increasingly concerned about poor old Chris.
I am of course of the same vintage and I’m not sure whether his bro feels the same, but he is starting to look more like a dried up old prune and could end up like our friend Moz. Or things could go the other way and he’ll land on his feet at Palmer and Chen maybe
A hug and a chocolate fish.
edit:
https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/1b838bec-2c7f-4371-82a9-69dc79eb5b43.png
Tweets by _abbylouisee_
The Milky Bars are on us!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=12175719
…in fact it would be very un-New Zealand of us, if we didn’t try to rort the system, especially when the policies are designed/loaded with unintended circumstances.
At the very least they could have given it to third year students or grad students or something, of course they shouldn’t have done it in the first place
One more sleep?
Que?
Resolved as per our other conversation. 14 Jan not 14 Dec.
There is always a percentage of first year students that withdraw, don’t engage or fail in the first year of tertiary study. The article would be more informative if it compared last year’s rate to the usual, but as far as I can see – it did not. In any real way, this withdrawal rate should have been anticipated by the government.
As for the rest, I think tertiary education should be free, but if this is the best that can be done. I agree with PR below. There would have been a greater benefit to graduate students, and the attrition rate would have been much lower.
It’s still a better spend than $26m on a flag.
It’s better because it does get people educated. Yes, even people who fail a course have better education and by failing they will probably understand how to succeed next time. In fact, calling it ‘failing’ is a misnomer. They didn’t learn what the course taught but they learned so much else. Here’s a few links on the subject:
https://www.elitedaily.com/life/failure-more-beneficial-than-success/1824857
https://blog.bufferapp.com/why-highly-successful-people-crave-failure-and-mistakes
I especially liked this one:
There’s nothing wrong with the spend on helping people be better. They tried. Now we need to support them into picking themselves up and trying again.
It’s only idiots that expect everything to go perfectly every time. They seem to all vote National.
Where’s the rort?
~12% fail usually.
We have another ~6% who withdrew.
The students don’t get any money if they withdraw. They don’t have a motive to rort the system for the institutions. And most courses would do a refund if you withdraw, depending on how much of the course you were there for.
If there was a spike in people enrolling then withdrawing, that just means that the policy has at least identified the need for education to be more accessible. In that case we need to know what other barriers exist for those 2600 people.
If we’re not failing we’re not trying hard enough.
The path way to equality needs to be paved with opportunity. Providing opportunities for people to try university study that are otherwise unable to do so is exactly the right thing to be doing. Some establish it’s not for them, fabulous, reset their compasses. Others flourish, equally fine.
Lasting equality will not come about by slopping grants around. It will come through the creation of opportunities. Opportunities for Mothers to receive a tertiary education, opportunities for poor kids to learn to sail. A vast and enticing tsunami of opportunity available to all.
Thanks for that comment David Mac.
After leaving school at 15 and having 3 kids at 21, I would never have my tertiary education with out the opportunity to try and not manage, then try again and achieve.
Obviously that was before the last NAct government.
I did one of my very rare media appearances last week with Greg Presland on Planet FM
https://www.planetaudio.org.nz/listen/red-alert-radio/political-current-affairs/455254
Always an issue talking after I’ve been programming. But I wasn’t too inarticulate.
Sounded good. It was interesting hearing the brief resume’ of the history.
Only half an hour and voice is a slow medium.
I still reckon it is a good thing that I stopped coding an hour earlier and then biked there.
Better than today. I didn’t have whatever biological bug which my body is fighting off today. I really hate being sick. Makes it hard to concentrate on the site theme upgrade.
Open your Christmas whisky early! Hope you recover soon – don’t be sick with bugs at Christmas, keep it for hangovers if you get those. Perhaps your trouble is the sudden change to fresh air from being in a coding-coop. You need to get off your perch more often. Anyway Merry Christmas when it comes and regards to Lyn.
Picked up 3×1 litre bottles of Tullamore Dew duty free when I came back from Singapore a few weeks ago. I was working long hours outside for 7 weeks there because when you play with radio frequencies you need to suffer the weather. Fresh air I can live without hummph! Give me air-conditioning any day.
But I may have to drag myself out to find some food before self-medicating as the cupboard is a bit bare. After a few days of diminished appetite has left me a bit hungry.
“site theme upgrade”
applause!
I have a few weeks off over xmas. WordPress has had some significiant changes and it has been more than 8 years since the last major update.
Yes, I also need to get up to speed with Gutenberg over the break.
And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven….
https://www.nme.com/news/music/keith-richards-cut-back-on-drinking-rolling-stones-interview-2419801
What’s the joke? After an atomic apocalypse all that will be left alive are the cock roaches … and Keith Richards. I’m glad he’s cut down, he’s a great guitarist and a very funny guy.
[lprent: deleted. Still subject to a court orders in Australia. I’d suggest not doing that again. ]
The Catholic Church is a centuries-old child-rape cult. Why it is allowed to continue to exist is beyond me.
Probably for the same reason that RW trolls still can come here and be objectionable, and never change despite protests. Once a thought settles into the brain of someone who thinks they are entitled, everything else gets rationalised away – they are teflon-coated.
The Catholic church does so much good, but it’s the old saying which applies to all:
‘Power tends to corrupt; and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely’.
And that is truly one of the absolutes in life.
So much good? I’ll let Hitch handle this one.
Orders issued in Australia apply here?.
Because it’s Lynn who gets the legal in the neck not you.
Yep court orders obtained in Aussie can apply here if they are asked to be observed by the courts there and yes, I’d be the person in the gun.
Besides I agree with the underlying precepts of court orders – which is why I don’t break them or allow them to be broken on my server. I’ll let published information and information that doesn’t appear to break the published detail of a court order through (obviously I’m not in court to get the detailed orders) including speculation through. Anything else gets warnings and if required some painful moderation.
Any time that I need to understand exactly why, I only have to look at the travesty of the open court American lynch system, the conviction rates of high media cases, and their incredibly high ratio of overturned criminal convictions when and only when someone actually funds the collection and presentation of basic evidence presented to judge only appeals. Basically if you are black or hispanic and not wealthy, having a highly public trial appear to ensure convictions.
And tbf it is a bit pointless with the risk putting his name here as everyone knows who he is any way.
Bit of similar situation to that other scumbag who killed the UK girl
To be fair it isn’t your arse that such dimwits legally risk, it is mine. I’m not put at risk if it isn’t on my server. And I’m perfectly happy making an example of any arsehole who deliberately puts my server at risk. In fact I’d be prepared to add an exception to our privacy rules and lay a complaint and give assistance to the police against any arsehole that violates the court orders on this site.
I’ve already spend almost 40k because the legally ignorant criminal blogger Dermot Nottingham falsely accused me of breaking name suppression orders on his case where he was charged and eventually convicted of deliberately breaking name suppression and harassment on his blog. He brought a private prosecution against me.
He failed to even prove after 15 months that I was associated with The Standard or that APN were associated with the Herald – which really demonstrates his level of legal stupidity. Since he seems to have spent a lot of time assisting Cameron Slater, I guess it is pretty obvious why Cameron is in so much legal shit. Dermot is now wearing a bracelet and home detention, and as he lost futile appeals I assisted him into bankruptcy along others who’d been dragged through his insane legal vendettas.
Besides, it wouldn’t surprise me if the courts ask the courts and the police in the UK to find out what local scumbag journalist leaked the information from court documents here to the yellow rags in the UK.
I hope when they find out who it is that they use the full-force of the sentences and toss the scumsucker into jail as a lesson in journalistic ethics.
I know that I would.
Don’t know how true it is, but I have heard Google just didn’t bother removing it in one of their latest global news alerts to the world’s media.
Which is probably what Little was meeting them about today
ReNews
“Russian media say a contraption presented by Russian state television as a high- tech robot was in fact a man in a commercially available robot costume.”
NZ media say a man presented by the gnashional party as its leader Simon bridges is in fact a robotic contraption in a commercially available man costume.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/109324993/robot-shown-on-russian-tv-turns-out-to-be-man-in-suit
Great to see [deleted] reported as convicted for historic sex crimes against minors:
[deleted]
[lprent: Still under court orders ]
Good! No wonder we haven’t heard of it here because of name suppression in Australia. Sentencing next year.
Meanwhile ,… while we are all fighting among ourselves , having wars, getting drunk and celebrating Christmas… somewhere out there ( perhaps ) is something truly creepy… or maybe they think we are creepy…
Is Bigfoot a Neanderthal? (ThinkerThunker) – YouTube
He should ask his friends….oh, that’s right, he stiffed them on the bail money.
Donald Trump huh.
On sorry, “Crooked” Donald
What was that saying? Something like, um…
…”lock him up! lock him up! lock him up”
Erdogan’s dead set on remaking the empire.
Turkey will launch a military operation against U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in northern Syria “within a matter of days,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday, prompting warnings from the Pentagon and State Department.
Washington backs the Kurds with thousands of service members, special forces and contractors who maintain a presence east of the Euphrates River, while Turkey and its coalition of Syrian rebels have mainly stayed to the west.
Turkey will target the east to “save the area from the separatist terrorist movement,” Erdogan said, using his routine term for Kurdish militias.
https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-turkey-operation-20181212-story.html
Kia ora The Am Show
Kendra deserved to win NZ Rugby Player of the year prize she had a good season
ka pai.
That what a wahine would say Ingrid funny my partner would have said the same on the Rugby.
The thing about the sandflys discretion on who they bust for drugs and billy said they did so last year when he was in the lead is they let Europeans off and lock up the brown people I hope that has changed I have warned the Tangata of that reality .So in reality there has been little changes on that front.
Grant I see the Maori Party and Tops party are going to cooperate a .
Eco Maori for Tangata Whenua of the year.
MPI are full of your m8 duncan I served the official information act on them and the statements they sent me were mostly false.
Fontera did not deliver they lost billions in China and just added 50% more admin cost.
Aretha Franklin death was a sad loss to she fought for equal rights to .
The theft of the Mangere Bridge kindy play ground is stupid why don’t you start a give alittle page then the mokopunas will get brand new jungle jim and slides .
judy your neo libreal capitalist m8 around Papatuanuku are crashing out they are all greedy climate change deniers who can not think about there childrens FUTURE .
King Home Boy giving his prize to charity ka pai
I do support looking after the well being of our new foreign workers paying and treating them fairly mai chen ?????? & her m8 shrilly from 7 blunt tried to underarm bowl me out but they just gave me more mana.
I tau toko the #METO movement Ka kite ano P.S what happened to the poll??????????
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute
To the Am Show team have a good holiday have not been able to afford one of those in ten years with that monkey on Eco Maori’s back playing with my fortunes
Ka kite ano
The cafe I could support Credit Simple I just need to get my communication encrypt I have seen the Eco Maori effect in action but I will only use it to benefit all Te tangata positively ka kite ano
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
Many thank’s to the American Senators that voted to curb support to the Saudi war machine and for putting the children’s lives first ka pai
US Senate approves resolutions to curb Saudi support and condemn Khashoggi murder – liveSenate votes 56-41 to pass the War Powers Resolution that would halt US military assistance to Saudis in Yemen Ka kite ano links below.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2018/dec/13/trump-michael-cohen-mueller-investigation-pelosi-latest-live-updates
I can see that this will become a reality very soon the world’s financial crash and in trumps own word’s he did not care because it would happen when he has retired .
Global investors managing $32tn issued a stark warning to governments at the UN climate summit on Monday, demanding urgent cuts in carbon emissions and the phasing out of all coal burning. Without these, the world faces a financial crash several times worse than the 2008 crisis, they said.
The investors include some of the world’s biggest pension funds, insurers and asset managers and marks the largest such intervention to date. They say fossil fuel subsidies must end and substantial taxes on carbon be introduced.
Eco Maori is proactive for a positive future for all the humans on Mother Earth .
Ka kite ano. links below. P.S Just 3 % of the worlds GDP is need to combat climate change shear with thy neighbors
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/10/tackle-climate-or-face-financial-crash-say-worlds-biggest-investors
Eco Maori agrees strongly with John Kerry’s words
John Kerry: Forget Trump. We All Must Act on Climate Change.
If we fail, it won’t be just the president’s fault.
This week is the third anniversary of the Paris climate agreement. The Trump administration marked it by working with Russia and Gulf oil nations to sideline science and undermine the accord at climate talks underway in Katowice, Poland.
While I was in New Delhi this week, where I met with solar energy advocates, a comment made thousands of miles away by the journalist Bob Woodward almost jumped off my iPad: The president, he said, “makes decisions often without a factual basis.” This isn’t a mere personality quirk of the leader of the free world. It is profoundly dangerous for the entire planet.
Scientists tell us we must act now to avoid the ravages of climate change. The collision of facts and alternative facts has hurt America’s efforts to confront this existential crisis. Ever since Mr. Trump announced that he would pull America out of the Paris accord, those of us in the fight have worked to demonstrate that the American people are still in. Links Below
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/opinion/kerry-climate-change-trump.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute
You know I remember when I was a young fella my Mama /Greatgrandmother told me be loyal to those that help you and don’t bite the hand that feed’s you.
There have been some that Eco MaoriTau toko’s and next minute these people are biting me WTF.
You know that the sandflys are breaking mine and my immediate whano’s human right’s every day 24/7 I know every move they make against me but I get pissed when they target my whano. The justice system does stuff all for the poor but try to stuff us up .But there are consequences to biting Eco Maori Ka kite ano
Kia ora Piripi from Tekaea yes tangata whenua have the highest rate of heart attacks and lowest survival rates te tangata need to go to the doctors more and look after Our health to look after the Mokopunas
Carmen I say the culture is much better now than it was last time I was in Winz the wait was short and there were not a lot of people in the office and they were not stressed .
Maori interactive video games ki ora that is awesome maori can generate a lot of jobs and money from video game’s .The industry is way bigger than Hollywood.
Eco Maori tau toko’s the Maori Santa some people cannot put there prejudices
Ka pai to the maori modular whare with the money saved with time
That was cool Jason Momoa doing the Haka and his movie Aquaman will be one I am going to watch at the Cinema.
Ka kite ano
Kia ora Newshub
Steve Hansen is retiring he does not mince word’s all the best on your new journey Coach. I have my pick for your replacement but I will keep that to myself .
That hurricane hitting Australia looks like it will cause problems I hope no one gets hurt.
People searching on Google for good thing’s is cool some in the media need to do they same .
It show how deprived some people are in America if they will risk there lives going to get copper wire in a mine to survive.
Virgin Galactic is getting close to there goals of passenger space flights I wish Richard all the best .
Sawn the Sun bear dying is sad
There you go Russia has taken a leaf out of someone else old book with the man posing as a robot lol . Ka kite ano
Some Eco Maori music for the minute.