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
…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…
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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Right-clicking is a common and essential computer operation that allows users to access additional options and settings. While most desktop computers have dedicated right-click buttons on their mice, laptops often do not have these buttons due to space limitations. This article will provide a comprehensive guide on how to right-click ...
Powering up and shutting down your ASUS laptop is an essential task for any laptop user. Locating the power button can sometimes be a hassle, especially if you’re new to ASUS laptops. This article will provide a comprehensive guide on where to find the power button on different ASUS laptop ...
Dell laptops are renowned for their reliability, performance, and versatility. Whether you’re a student, a professional, or just someone who needs a reliable computing device, a Dell laptop can meet your needs. However, if you’re new to Dell laptops, you may be wondering how to get started. In this comprehensive ...
Two-thirds of the country think that “New Zealand’s economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful”. They also believe that “New Zealand needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful”. These are just two of a handful of stunning new survey results released ...
In today’s digital world, screenshots have become an indispensable tool for communication and documentation. Whether you need to capture an important email, preserve a website page, or share an error message, screenshots allow you to quickly and easily preserve digital information. If you’re an Asus laptop user, there are several ...
A factory reset restores your Gateway laptop to its original factory settings, erasing all data, apps, and personalizations. This can be necessary to resolve software issues, remove viruses, or prepare your laptop for sale or transfer. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to factory reset your Gateway laptop: Method 1: ...
“You talking about me?”The neoliberal denigration of the past was nowhere more unrelenting than in its depiction of the public service. The Post Office and the Railways were held up as being both irremediably inefficient and scandalously over-manned. Playwright Roger Hall’s “Glide Time” caricatures were presented as accurate depictions of ...
Roger Partridge writes – When the Coalition Government took office last October, it inherited a country on a precipice. With persistent inflation, decades of insipid productivity growth and crises in healthcare, education, housing and law and order, it is no exaggeration to suggest New Zealand’s first-world status was ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – In 2022, the Curriculum Centre at the Ministry of Education employed 308 staff, according to an Official Information Request. Earlier this week it was announced 202 of those staff were being cut. When you look up “The New Zealand Curriculum” on the Ministry of ...
Chris Bishop’s bill has stirred up a hornets nest of opposition. Photo: Lynn Grieveson for The KākāTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate from the last day included:A crescendo of opposition to the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill is ...
Monday left me brokenTuesday, I was through with hopingWednesday, my empty arms were openThursday, waiting for love, waiting for loveThe end of another week that left many of us asking WTF? What on earth has NZ gotten itself into and how on earth could people have voluntarily signed up for ...
Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past week’s editions.State of humanity, 20242024, it feels, keeps presenting us with ever more challenges, ever more dismay.Do you give up yet? It seems to ask.No? How about this? Or this?How about this?Full story Share ...
Determining the hardest sport in the world is a subjective matter, as the difficulty level can vary depending on individual abilities, physical attributes, and experience. However, based on various factors including physical demands, technical skills, mental fortitude, and overall accomplishment, here is an exploration of some of the most challenging ...
The allure of sport transcends age, culture, and geographical boundaries. It captivates hearts, ignites passions, and provides unparalleled entertainment. Behind the spectacle, however, lies a fascinating world of financial investment and expenditure. Among the vast array of competitive pursuits, one question looms large: which sport carries the hefty title of ...
Introduction Pickleball, a rapidly growing paddle sport, has captured the hearts and imaginations of millions around the world. Its blend of tennis, badminton, and table tennis elements has made it a favorite among players of all ages and skill levels. As the sport’s popularity continues to surge, the question on ...
Abstract: Soccer, the global phenomenon captivating millions worldwide, has a rich history that spans centuries. Its origins trace back to ancient civilizations, but the modern version we know and love emerged through a complex interplay of cultural influences and innovations. This article delves into the fascinating journey of soccer’s evolution, ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
The Government’s newly announced review of methane emissions reduction targets hints at its desire to delay Aotearoa New Zealand’s urgent transition to a climate safe future, the Green Party said. ...
The Government must commit to the Maitai School building project for students with high and complex needs, to ensure disabled students from the top of the South Island have somewhere to learn. ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
The Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...
Changes to the Resource Management Act will align consenting for coal mining to other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The inconsistent treatment of coal mining compared with other extractive activities is burdensome red tape that fails to acknowledge ...
Trade, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay has concluded productive discussions with ministerial counterparts in Beijing today, in support of the New Zealand-China trade and economic relationship. “My meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao reaffirmed the complementary nature of the bilateral trade relationship, with our Free Trade Agreement at its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Magdalena M.E. Bunbury, Postdoctoral Researcher, James Cook University Burial with a horse at the Rákóczifalva site, Hungary (8th century AD).Sándor Hegedűs, Hungarian National Museum, CC BY How do we understand past societies? For centuries, our main sources of information have been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathryn Willis, Postdoctoral Researcher, CSIRO Xavier Boulenger/Shutterstock In the two decades to 2019, global plastic production doubled. By 2040, plastic manufacturing and processing could consume as much as 20% of global oil production and use up 15% of the annual carbon ...
With our collective remembrance, and steadfast belief in our common humanity, we strengthen our hope and resolve to do what we can to foster dialogue and understanding, and to heal divisions in our pursuit of peace. ...
Principal reasons for the opposition is the loss of the public’s democratic right to have “a fair say” and the vital need for a government free from corruption, said Casey Cravens of Dunedin, president of the New Zealand Federation of Freshwater ...
Never mind the scoreboard – in the 2000 Bledisloe Cup decider, the real trans-Tasman battle was won before kickoff.First published in 2016. The dawn of the new millennium was a dark time for the All Blacks. Their final game pre-Y2K was a 22-18 loss to South Africa in the ...
I’m on the wrong side of 40, I never pursued creative work and now my job is killing my soul. Help! Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,May I start with the least original conversation opener you’re likely to hear around the motu at the moment, particularly in Wellington: ...
“Never again - No AUKUS” was the message of the wreath laid at this morning’s national ANZAC Day commemorative service at Pukeahu National War Memorial Park this morning by the Stop AUKUS group. ...
Until this month, Auckland swimmer Hazel Ouwehand had never met a qualifying time in an Olympic event for a New Zealand team, even as a junior. Now she’s very likely off to the Paris Olympics after swimming well under the qualifying standard in the 100m butterfly twice – both in ...
While Anzac Day has experienced a resurgence in recent years, our other day of remembrance has slowly faded from view.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand. Original illustrations by Hope McConnell.First published in 2022.The high school’s head girl and ...
Australian and New Zealand volunteers fought together in the Waikato War, yet still its place in the Anzac tradition is unacknowledged by our defence forces or Returned Services Association.First published in 2018.When I was a boy cub I attended Anzac Day services in the South Auckland suburb of ...
A poem by Wellington writer Tayi Tibble.Hoki Mai She kisses him goodbye with her eyes still wet and alight from their last swim in the Awatere river. At the train station celebration, she leads the Kapa Haka but her voice keeps breaking under and over itself like waves. ...
A poem from Bill Manhire’s 2017 book of verse Some Things to Place in a Coffin.My World War I Poem Inside each trench, the sound of prayer. Inside each prayer, the sound of digging. Image courtesy of Auckland War Memorial Museum. ...
There are three books I have wolfed down in one sitting over the last two years. Colleen Maria Lenihan’s gorgeous and sad debut Kōhine, Noelle McCarthy’s memoir Grand about becoming her mother and then unbecoming her, and now Hine Toa, a staunch yet gentle self-portrait by living legend Ngāhuia te ...
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Asia Pacific Report Students and activist staff at Australia’s University of Sydney (USyd) have set up a Gaza solidarity encampment in support of Palestinians and similar student-led protests in the United States. The camp was pitched as mass graves, crippled hospitals, thousands of civilian deaths and the near-total destruction of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James B. Dorey, Lecturer in Biological Sciences, University of Wollongong Australian teddy bear bees are cute and fluffy, but get a look at that massive (unbarbed) stinger! James Dorey Photography Most of us have been stung by a bee and we ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jen Roberts, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong Aussie~mobs/FlickrVictor Farr, a private in the 1st Infantry Battalion, was among the first to land at Anzac Cove just before dawn on April 25 1915. Victor Farr ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Gregory Moore I had the good fortune to care for the sugar gum at The University of Melbourne’s Burnley Gardens in Victoria where I worked for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra BagzhanSadvakassov/Upsplash, CC BY-SA Australia’s inflation rate has fallen for the fifth successive quarter, and it’s now less than half of what it was back in late 2022. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Ong ViforJ, ARC Future Fellow & Professor of Economics, Curtin University Just when we think the price of rentals could not get any worse, this week’s Rental Affordability Snapshot by Anglicare has revealed low-income Australians are facing a housing crisis like ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meighen McCrae, Associate Professor of Strategic & Defence Studies, Australian National University American and Australian stretcher bearers working together near the front line during the Battle of Hamel in 1918.Australian War Memorial While the AUKUS alliance is new, the Australian-American partnership ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tracey Holmes, Professorial Fellow in Sport, University of Canberra When the news broke last weekend that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive to a banned drug in early 2021 and were allowed to compete at the Tokyo Olympic Games six months later ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cally Jetta, Senior Lecturer and Academic Lead; College for First Nations, University of Southern Queensland Australian War MemorialAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people, as well as sensitive historical information ...
RNZ News Melissa Lee has been ousted from New Zealand’s coalition cabinet and stripped of the Media portfolio, and Penny Simmonds has lost the Disability Issues portfolio in a reshuffle. Climate Change and Revenue Minister Simon Watts will take Lee’s spot in cabinet. Simmonds was a minister outside of cabinet. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Lindenmayer, Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University laurello/Shutterstock Some reports and popular books, such as Bill Gammage’s Biggest Estate on Earth, have argued that extensive areas of Australia’s forests were kept open through frequent burning by ...
Analysis - Christopher Luxon framing the demotion of two ministers as the portfolios getting "too complex" is a charitable way of saying they weren't up to the job. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra With Jim Chalmers’s third budget on May 14, Australians will be looking for some more cost-of-living relief – beyond the tax cuts – although they have been warned extra measures will be modest. As ...
Analysis: Melissa Lee has lost the media portfolio and her spot in Cabinet after multiple failed attempts to find solutions for a media industry in crisis. On Wednesday, the Prime Minister announced Lee would be losing her spot in Cabinet along with her media and communications ministerial portfolio. The job ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Wilmot, Senior Lecturer, Film, Deakin University Among the many Australian who served during the second world war, there is a small group of people whose stories remain largely untold. These are the Muslim men and women who, while small in number, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly Saunders, PhD Candidate, University of Canberra There has been much analysis and praise of Justice Michael Lee’s recent judgement in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case against Channel Ten. Many people were openly relieved to read Lee’s “forensic” and “nuanced” application of law ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathy Gibbs, Program Director for the Bachelor of Education, Griffith University zEdward_Indy/Shutterstock Around one in 20 people has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It’s one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders in childhood and often continues into adulthood. ADHD is diagnosed ...
The Fairer Future coalition of anti-poverty groups say Whaikaha must be properly funded going forward, and that to argue that poor financial management of the new Ministry is a red herring by the Prime Minister. ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is today congratulating Hon. Paul Goldsmith on his appointment as Minister for Media and Communications and urges him to rule out state intervention in the private media sector. ...
Asia Pacific Report The West Papuan resistance OPM leader has condemned Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Joe Biden, accusing their countries of “six decades of treachery” over Papuan independence. The open letter was released today by OPM chairman Jeffrey P Bomanak on the eve of ANZAC Day ...
Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits and quirks of New Zealanders at large. This week: writer and one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2024, Lauren Groff.The book I wish I’d writtenIf I wish I’d written a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Fechner, Research Fellow, Social Marketing, Griffith University mavo/Shutterstock Imagine having dinner at a restaurant. The menu offers plant-based meat alternatives made mostly from vegetables, mushrooms, legumes and wheat that mimic meat in taste, texture and smell. Despite being given that ...
“Three Strikes is a dead-end policy proposed by a dead-end government. The Three Strikes law ignores the causes of crime, instead just brutalising people already crushed by the cost of living.” ...
By Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist An Australian-born judge in Kiribati could well face deportation later this week after a tribunal ruling that he should be removed from his post. The tribunal’s report has just been tabled in the Kiribati Parliament and is due to be debated by MPs ...
With its clear mandate for police use, political nuances, and nuanced public trust, Denmark's insights provide valuable considerations for Australia and New Zealand. ...
Books editor Claire Mabey reviews poet Louise Wallace’s debut novel. A famous poet once said to me that he’s always suspicious when a poet publishes a novel. I never really understood why but maybe it’s something to do with cheating on your first form. Louise Wallace is a poet. She’s ...
For a few months at the turn of the millennium, TrueBliss burned bright as the biggest pop stars in the country. Alex Casey chats to two superfans who still hold the flame. During a humble backyard wedding in Nelson, 1999, one of the cordially invited guests had to excuse themselves ...
How will the recent wave of job cuts impact ethnic diversity in the media? In November last year, I was working a very busy day in the newsroom of a large online news site, interviewing whānau about their concerns over the imminent closure of one of the few puna reo ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ruth Knight, Researcher, Queensland University of Technology Have you ever felt sick at work? Perhaps you had food poisoning or the flu. Your belly hurt, or you felt tired, making it hard to concentrate and be productive. How likely would you be ...
Despite heavy criticism and an ongoing select committee process, the Police Minister says the Government will forge ahead with a ban on gang patches. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Whiting, Lecturer – Creative Industries, University of South Australia Shutterstock Everyone has a favourite band, or a favourite composer, or a favourite song. There is some music which speaks to you, deeply; and other music which might be the current ...
A new survey says ‘outlook not great’ for those charged with building infrastructure, while RMA changes delight farmers and depress environmentalists, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. First RMA changes announced ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olli Hellmann, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Waikato Getty Images When New Zealanders commemorate Anzac Day on April 25, it’s not only to honour the soldiers who lost their lives in World War I and subsequent conflicts, but also ...
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A look at the state of the previous government’s affordable housing scheme, and what could come next.Remind me: What’s KiwiBuild again?First announced in 2012, KiwiBuild was a flagship policy of the Labour Party heading into both its 2014 and 2017 election campaigns. With Jacinda Ardern as prime minister, ...
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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.
https://www.facebook.com/AUSAStudents/posts/we-are-stoked-to-have-chloe-swarbrick-on-board-for-our-campaign-against-the-libr/1848243215194337/
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3BL2SaCAx4
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.
https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1072444378231255040
edit:
https://screenshotscdn.firefoxusercontent.com/images/1b838bec-2c7f-4371-82a9-69dc79eb5b43.png
https://twitter.com/_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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMRuCS7MCG8
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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk6dPSiIG54
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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKopy74weus
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT_nvWreIhg
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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LanCLS_hIo4
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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3UJ6yMaM4A
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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Cve4bLDrlM
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34Na4j8AVgA
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWoDSGfSu6o
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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktvTqknDobU
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR0fQ6wJb6A