Open mike 13/01/2013

80 comments on “Open mike 13/01/2013 ”

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1. mickysavage 1

   13 January 2013 at 7:08 am

   It appears that the White House is not planning on building the Death Star any time soon. Tea Party followers will be relieved …

   https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/isnt-petition-response-youre-looking
   • The Al1en 1.1

     13 January 2013 at 11:12 am

     http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20997144

     “in a playful response, a senior US government official said the Obama administration “does not support blowing up planets”.

     Let’s hope that now he’s won his re-election, he can go that bit further and have a go at trying to save one.
2. bad12 2

   13 January 2013 at 8:23 am

   We are the high and mighty Lords of Bizness, therefor if We do anything illegal it is obviously SOMEONE ELSES fault,

   The fishing company Sanfords has been fined by the US courts for dumping liquid waste in the sea off the coast of American Samoa,

   4 million bucks and a years ban from fishing in US waters seems like a fairly light punishment for dumping liquid waste,including what appears to have been some oil contaminate, and you would think that the fishing company involved would have simply paid the fine and hung it’s head in contrition,

   Not likely, on RadioNZ National News at 8.00 this morning there is a Rep from the fishing industry, i didn’t catch his name or whether or not He was attached to Sanfords, laying the blame for the waste dumping at the feet of Government inspectors,

   According to the Brainless Prick speaking for the fishing industry if those who inspect such ships on behalf of the Government had of picked up the fact that the waste piping had been altered in such a way as to allow the dumping they,( the inspectors), could have stopped the Sanford ship from leaving port here in New Zealand and the ship wouldn’t have been able to dump it’s s**t off of the coast of American Samoa,

   Anyone reading the Standard and not understanding the allusion often made in these pages to the Bizness sector being staffed at the management and board level by a bunch of psycho and sociopaths need only listen to that news item for some enlightening education…
   • Tiresias 2.1

     13 January 2013 at 9:39 am

     I heard the same piece while milking, which means I wasn’t giving it my full attention. However my impression was that the speaker as not trying in any way to excuse Sandford but was trying to draw attention to the fact that, yet again, Government regulators once again seem to have been captured by the Industy they are supposed to be regulating.

     Also I’m not sure it’s fair to see the whole incident as some devious and intricate conspiracy by Sandford management and board of directors to shave a few cents off its operating costs. The charges against the company were that it was ‘vicariously liable’ for the acts of the boat’s crew, and my money would be on this being yet another case of incompetence and carelessness at the top in leaving the detail to others further down the chain who cut corners or adopted a ‘she’ll be all right’ attitude. Certainly the damage to Sandford beside the fine far outweighs any profits this practice might have generated – Shares of Sanford fell 0.3 percent to $3.83 on the NZX and have dropped 6 percent this year. Believe me that plus the international damage to Sandford’s reputation will be of far more importance to the top brass at Sandfords than the details of the plumbing on one of its boats.

     So yes, management at Sandfords was slack and incompetent – which makes them pretty typical – as they failed to implement proceedures and appoint the right people to stop people down the chain cutting corners to save themselves a dirty chore. So everything they got they deserved. But if this wasn’t picked up, or worse still was picked up but not followed up, by regulators THAT is the real story.

     Why did the regulators let the ship sail if they had picked this up? Did they accept a back-hander from the captain to avoid a delay in sailing any repairs might have entailed? Did they turn a blind eye to it because they have become too pally with the crews they are supposed to check? Is there a revolving door between the industry and the regulators? Did the regulators receive instructions from on high not to look too closely or take too much notice of the minor stuff when compared with basic sea-worthiness, in order to ‘encourage’ the fishing industry to beef up its productivity?

     Those are the questions I’d like answers to, and at least someone has raised them on the radio.
     • Akldnut 2.1.1

       13 January 2013 at 10:53 am

       I disagree – the real story is firstly that Sanfords as a major fishing company is willing to pollute the very environment that we all (themselves included) rely on to survive and secondly that it incompetence at procedural and inspection levels need to be tightened up.
       • bad12 2.1.1.1

         13 January 2013 at 11:21 am

         If you or i saved up all our waste for a month including sewerage and then took it down to the harbour and publicly dumped it off of a wharf all hell would break loose and we would probably end up being thrown in a jail cell,

         That is the difference between us and in this instance the Board of Sanfords, everyone agrees that it is the Board which is ultimately responsible for the actions of the Company BUT the Boards of company’s found to be breaking the law are seldom, if ever, held personally responsible for the criminal actions of the company…
     • bad12 2.1.2

       13 January 2013 at 11:05 am

       Jesus, that’s a long winded advertisement on behalf of the Board of Sanford don’t you think, is it not the Board who is ultimately responsible for the actions of those who conduct the company’s business???,

       My opinion is that the Board of Sanford’s must take ultimate responsibility for the dumping of waste whether or not They knew of the practice or not, SO, they got what THEY as a company deserved including the drop in share price which effects the share-holders who in essence appoint the Board,

       Please provide ‘the evidence’ that those in Government employment tasked with inspecting the particular ship in question were in any way ‘bribed’ to ignore the particular ship’s ability to illegally dump waste into the sea,AND, ‘the evidence’ that these inspectors actually KNEW the dumping was taking place,

       Your denigration of these inspectors borders on the defamatory and is simply a reinforcement of the ‘Bizness model’ of blaming the inspectors for the criminal behaviour of Sanford’s….

       PS, the Management, including the Board of Sanford were guilty of criminal acts, nothing more, nothing less…
       • Fortran 2.1.2.1

         13 January 2013 at 12:42 pm

         Drop in share price makes them more buyable for a foreign company – Chinese or Korean.
         Lower the share price the cheaper to buy.
       • Tiresias 2.1.2.2

         13 January 2013 at 1:47 pm

         Yes, the Board and management at Sandford’s are ultimately responsible for their ships dumping waste at sea. No-one is disputing that, that I’m aware of.

         I’m suggesting they didn’t know it was going on. I’m even suggesting they shouldn’t be expected to know it was going on as this involves operational matters at a very low and specialist level. What they should have done and clearly failed to do was to set up the systems and employ the people who should have known and who should have stopped it. This I say is poor management and incompetence on their part which has now been rightly exposed. You seem to be suggesting that at the very highest levels of management, decisions were taken to save a few dollars in a multi-million dollar operation by tweaking some very obscure plumbing in one of their boats. I say that’s nonsense.

         You were the one saying that there are Government inspectors/regulators tasked with inspecting these boats to ensure they can’t/don’t pollute the oceans. IF that’s the case then, as the commentator on the radio pointed out, they clearly failed to do their job. This might have been because:
         a) they were incompetent,
         b) they were paid not to see it
         c) they saw it but didn’t want to ‘rock the boat’
         e) they think there’s a good chance they might be looking for work in the Industry as Marine Engineers or whatever sometime soon, or have just come from the Industry and don’t want to draw attention to things they did themselves
         f) they’ve been instructed by their own seniors not to worry about ‘minor’ or ‘technical’ breaches of the regulations as some-one above them doesn’t want the Fishing Industy hobbled with ‘trivia’.
         g) they were short-staffed and too busy to make a proper inspection.
         g) I can’t think of any others but feel free to add any other reasons the ship might have sailed in breach of the regs.

         To my mind it is important that we know why a(nother) Government agency failed to do its job properly but if you’re happy to blame all the world’s problems on evil, conniving capitalists I don’t give a damn.

         “PS, the Management, including the Board of Sanford were guilty of criminal acts, nothing more, nothing less…” Actually ‘the Company’ was found guilty vicariously for the acts of certain of its employees. Neither the ‘management’ nor ‘the Board’ were found guilty or any any way personally liable.
         • bad12 2.1.2.2.1

           13 January 2013 at 2:12 pm

           Ha….Ha…Ha…For a lesson in how the capitalists shift the blame that’s just perfect, I am not the one who suggested that there are Government inspectors tasked with doing any such thing,

           The dickhead on the news this morning representing the fishing industry is the one suggesting that and then like you attempts to blame those inspectors for the criminal actions of the company,

           The piping that allowed the emptying of the ships waste into the sea might for all i (or you) know be perfectly legal, it is the actions of dumping the waste illegally that are in question,

           The point you make that the Board did not hire management of sufficient intelligence to stop the dumping of the waste is still the responsibility of the Board, the fact that the Board had not issued specific directives about the dumping of waste simply makes them as culpable as those who thought it a good idea to ditch the waste at sea,

           But hell i tend to agree it was all my fault…
     • bad12 2.1.3

       13 January 2013 at 11:36 am

       I also belatedly notice that you have abhorently blamed the ‘workers’ aboard the Sanford ship for the waste dumping, claiming, again with the provision of not the slightest scrap of evidence, that it was the workers dumping the waste to avoid having to engage in a ‘dirty chore’ at some later point,

       The fact that you make these unfounded allegations simply proves the point that i make and illuminates you personally as a prize wanker…
       • Tiresias 2.1.3.1

         13 January 2013 at 1:59 pm

         Oh I agree I don’t know why the waste was dumped. However it seems to me reasonable to assume that separating waste oil for storage on board and then disposing of it ‘responsibly’ at a later stage is a dirty and onerous chore compared with just pumping it overboard.

         And I’m afraid I do blame the crew of the boat for dumping the waste, unless you are suggesting that the senior management and Board of Sanfords had themselves helicoptered out to the boat as it worked ‘off the coast of American Samoa” and did this nefarious deed themselves while the crew attended a prayer meeting or something below decks.

         As far as I can tell from the press reports none of the crew themselves have been charged with this ‘crime’ – responsibility has been quite rightly sheeted home to their employer for failing to take the proper steps to stop what should not have happened from happening.
         • bad12 2.1.3.1.1

           13 January 2013 at 3:27 pm

           The ‘crew’ on a ship such as what Sanford’s use as fishing trawlers DO NOT unilaterally DO ANYTHING that they have not been told to do by a senior officer,

           IE, the crew don’t even chip paint unless the order comes from on high, you are in fact saying 2 things at once here,(in other words being a wanker),the crew may have been involved in the physical actions of turning on the taps which dumped the waste,BUT, for this to happen orders must have been given,

           This simply begs the question of the ‘practice and why the ship wasn’t put into port when the waste tanks were full which in my mind if i were running such a ship would come down to a simple matter of (a), the cost,and (b), the risk of being caught dumping the waste at sea,

           These are NOT equations that are made by the crew, on a ship such as this one there is a large amount of doubt in my mind at least that even the Captain would be making such decisions, such decisions of whether or not the ship stayed at sea fishing would be made via radio communication with the company back in New Zealand and would be based upon the gross amount of catch in the hold,

           The company in New Zealand would have weighed up the cost/risk equation against a backdrop of what would be the cost of putting into American Samoa to empty the waste or dump some or all of it in the sea thus allowing the ship to continue fishing until the ships capacity to store fish had been reached,

           The alternative, if there were even the facilities in American Samoa, were to put into American Samoa or steam home to New Zealand to discharge the waste,

           It is obvious that the company in New Zealand has opted to have the ship stay at sea fishing believing it could ‘get away’ with dumping the waste…
           • McFlock 2.1.3.1.1.1

             13 January 2013 at 3:33 pm

             The ‘crew’ on a ship such as what Sanford’s use as fishing trawlers DO NOT unilaterally DO ANYTHING that they have not been told to do by a senior officer,

             While I have some sympathy for the crew, I can’t help but wonder where I might have heard that excuse before…
             • bad12 …

               13 January 2013 at 4:24 pm

               Yeah sure Mac,are you a secret anarchist??? we all follow orders Mac, if your in the employ of someone and you don’t follow orders,(requests to direct your labour),then you don’t stay in that employment for long,

               Even if we are not in employment we all follow the orders of society as expressed within the laws and statutes of the society we inhabit, other wise that society has places such as jails and phsychiatric facilities where you are removed to,

               I assume you mean the guards excuse for having helped operate the death camps, to have objected and refused would have simply resulted in the guards being subjected to much the same treatment as the detainees in the death camp,

               The crew of fishing boats aint Green-Peace activists, perhaps you think that en masse the crew should have refused to dump the waste and joined the unemployed in the ever elongating queue so as the rest of the country could look down upon and denigrate them…
               • McFlock …

                 13 January 2013 at 6:02 pm

                 Let’s see, the excuse list:

                 preserve one’s job
                 everyone does it
                 Nuremburg defense should have worked
                 Fishing crews aren’t environmentalists, so it’s not their job.

                 That’s a fairly morally bankrupt list.
                 Should the crews go to prison? Nope, probably not. But they are still responsible for their own actions, just as you or I am. We choose which orders we obey, and why.
                 • bad12 …

                   13 January 2013 at 6:48 pm

                   Yeah sure Mac, it’s easy for you to sit in judgement, let us all know wont you when you stand up for the ecology and lose your job as a consequence,

                   I wont hold my breath waiting for that to happen tho…
                   • McFlock …

                     13 January 2013 at 7:05 pm

                     Actually, I said I had some sympathy for the crew.

                     But they’re still responsible for their actions. As am I.
                 • Foreign Waka …

                   13 January 2013 at 9:43 pm

                   The bigger worry is: how much of the same is going on and the culprits are never caught? Dumping rubbish seem to be common practice – why else is it that the North Pacific and Atlantic have large “islands” of waste, mostly plastic floating just beneath the water surface? What does this do to the ecosystem in regards to weather, oxygen exchange, sea creatures and plankton etc. Seems that a lot of lip service is going on but not much else.
           • bad12 2.1.3.1.1.2

             13 January 2013 at 4:34 pm

             PS, of course my comment above is me being nice to the Sanfords, we might all learn some time in the future that the dumping of waste products by the company is ‘normal practice’ in New Zealand waters,

             If we do learn this at some future point in time i for one will not be surprised in the least…
             • Foreign Waka …

               14 January 2013 at 7:27 pm
   • David H 2.2

     13 January 2013 at 4:21 pm

     A link so that we can hear the offending track would be nice. Please.
3. Lou 3

   13 January 2013 at 10:05 am

   For those of you and to all the rest of the good people in Aotearoa who are concerned about the rise in cost of prescriptions, ask yourself or your doctor – “do I really need these pills?”. Check out this link http://myscienceacademy.org/2012/08/19/world-renown-heart-surgeon-speaks-out-on-what-really-causes-heart-disease/
   • AsleepWhileWalking 3.1

     13 January 2013 at 10:21 am

     Halides (what you find in our treated water) are scientifically shown to cause hardening of the arteries. We NEVER hear about this in the news.

     A conspiracy theorist might think that our water is treated so that older people die earlier from heart disease lessening the burdern of retirement on the state and killing off the worker drones once they come to the end of their working life.

     Moral of the story? Filter your water to remove added fluoride + chlorine as much as possible.
     • Lanthanide 3.1.1

       13 January 2013 at 11:26 am

       “A conspiracy theorist might think that our water is treated so that older people die earlier from heart disease lessening the burdern of retirement on the state and killing off the worker drones once they come to the end of their working life.”

       Which would be rather contra-indicated by the massive increase in life expectancy and improvement in quality of life for those over 70 that have come about in the last 20-30 years.
     • RedLogix 3.1.2

       13 January 2013 at 11:53 am

       Filter your water to remove added fluoride + chlorine as much as possible.

       Absolute Bullshit.

       The amount of chlorine added to water in this country is very minimal, typically at about 0.7 ppm at the treatment plant and usually less than 0.3 ppm by the time it gets to your tap. That’s almost nothing.

       This is quite different to the practise overseas (often the USA) where much higher levels ( 1.5 -2.5 ppm) are commonplace AND the levels of organics in the water are neither measured nor removed. This creates a problem where the chlorine and the organics can react to create trihalomethanes which are potentially carcinogenic. In this country the plant operators monitor and control for organics and chlorine dosing very tightly. The NZ Drinking Water Standard is very advanced when compared to much of the rest of the world.

       Fluoride is also added at very low levels, also 0.7 ppm. This is not actually all that higher than what is typically found in the natural sources:

       Fluoride is usually found naturally in low concentration in drinking water and foods. The concentration in seawater averages 1.3 parts per million (ppm). Fresh water supplies generally contain between 0.01–0.3 ppm, whereas the ocean contains between 1.2 and 1.5 ppm.

       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoride

       The treatment process actually reduces the amount of fluoride that was in the raw water to almost zero; the fluoride dosing after treatment merely returns what was taken out and then increases it to a standardised level somewhat above that. Again the level is pretty low and realistically does not represent a risk all that much higher than the natural background.

       You might also want to consider that there are water supplies in New Zealand that have been non-fluoridated for a very long time now and there has been zero evidence that this has made any difference whatsoever. People who have lived on tank water all their lives … still get heart-attacks.

       http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/chemicals/fluoride.pdf

       As for home filters. These have to be changed on a regular basis, otherwise they become a very real and definite health risk in themselves. If the municipal water treatment operators allowed their filter systems to operate for months or years without backwashing (the equivalent of changing your home filter) there would be a huge health risk, and prosecutions would result.

       But somehow when people at home do exactly the same thing with filters they leave in place unchanged for ages … blissfully delude themselves that they’re doing the ‘right thing’ for their health.
   • vivaciousviper 3.2

     13 January 2013 at 11:04 am

     Thank you for the great read Lou, having heart disease i was interested in what the
     article was about, very informative.cheers.
   • joe90 3.3

     13 January 2013 at 12:19 pm

     Oh look, Dr. Dwight Lundell has his own page.

     http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/lundell.html
     • vivaciousviper 3.3.1

       13 January 2013 at 12:46 pm

       @ Joe, Just goes to show you shouldn’t believe everything you read or hear (:
     • RedLogix 3.3.2

       13 January 2013 at 12:47 pm

       Oh I don’t know so much joe … Dwight Lundell may have been struck off for defying the conventional wisdom … but he’s far from being alone on this topic. One for instance:

       http://eatingacademy.com/category/cholesterol-2
       • Colonial Viper 3.3.2.1

         13 January 2013 at 1:09 pm

         Indeed. Attacking the messenger is a tactic we should be wary of.

         You can’t get much more mainstream than the US CDC and even they are looking into this. Here they discuss a theory of general inflammation caused by contemporary lifestyle factors (“metaflammation”), which might lead to the development of modern chronic diseases – like heart disease.

         http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2012/11_0301.htm
       • weka 3.3.2.2

         13 January 2013 at 9:00 pm

         Gary Taubes (award winning science journalist), and Effe Ravnskov (medical researcher) are also among the reputable people who challenge the fat hypothesis. Taube’s book Good Calories, Bad Calories has a fascinating few chapters on the history of medical research and why we ended up with the wrong public health advice about fat, cholesterol and heart disease.

         http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

         http://www.ravnskov.nu/uffe.htm
     • joe90 3.3.3

       13 January 2013 at 2:02 pm

       My own circumstance RL where weight was never a worry the stubbornly high cholesterol level which familial comparisons indicated was unlikely to be hereditary was a concern. The first remedy was a close watch on my diet, the second was a dairy/protein watch and the third was a carbohydrate watch and still the high levels persisted. So I tried a mostly vegetarian and then for 20 or so weeks a vegan diet and apart from being perpetually hungry and a return to the fighting weight of my youth nothing really changed.

       So I’m back to eating what gandma ate and statins it is.

       VV, ae. Recently through a Whāngai connection I’ve been involved with organising accommodation for some people who, while they’re hardly destitute, are struggling financially quite simply because of the lack of education and skills and paralleled with those factors is a deep seated suspicion of the establishment.

       But it’s not the distrust of the services, police etc, that’s the worry, fuck, in the most I agree with them, it’s the anti-fluoride, anti-vaccination attitudes with a couple of world government references thrown in that are. The where and who these attitudes came from concerns me greatly.
       • Lou 3.3.3.1

         13 January 2013 at 5:55 pm

         I think we might be one of two or three countries in the world where pharmaceutical companies are allowed to advertise in magazines and on tv.

         The bloke who set the theory on cholesterol that the heart foundations around the world have endorsed for too long now was a ‘marine biologist’. Ancel Keys was the same man that put cigarettes into the US Army’s “K-rations” (long time before anyone admitted that smoking was a causal effect of heart disease)

         Statin studies have been showing little effect except on men under 20 or some such age (i read these in “Sweet Poison” David Gillespie, 2010). A man (lawyer) motivated by the truth.

         Dwight Lundell may be a poor financial whizz and not a surgeon of a gold standard, but he is brave enough to go against the BIG pharmaceuticals and food manufacturers (this is dangerous or mutiny for many health workers) and point out that our bodies are treating our food like ‘foreign particles’ cos thats exactly what our ‘food’ is these days. This is besides ‘experts’ trying to sell books or trendy ideas.

         People who struggle financially are more likely to eat food that is cheaper and less likely to be real food and more likely to have added sugar to make it taste like food.
         • Colonial Viper 3.3.3.1.1

           13 January 2013 at 9:56 pm

           Yep. And the more one reads up about how the American “Food Pyramid” was actually constructed by industry interests, how their recommendations for sugar consumption were reached, etc. the more cynical one becomes.
     • vivaciousviper 3.3.4

       13 January 2013 at 4:19 pm

       @Joe, The drug cartels are making billions of dollars off heart medications.
       An american doctor i visited was astonished that nz’ers with heart problems were
       given asprin to thin the blood.
       Weight doesn’t go hand in hand with a high
       cholestarol either,my mother was a tiny lady
       and had high cholestarol.
       • Colonial Viper 3.3.4.1

         13 January 2013 at 9:59 pm

         A really good trick is to lower the guidelines for what counts as an “acceptable” cholesterol level bu just a smidgeon, and voila out of thin air, millions of new statin customers world wide are created, each one worth hundreds of dollars to the pharmaceutical companies.
   • Rogue Trooper 3.4

     13 January 2013 at 12:30 pm

     THATS MY GIRL! (I knew you had it in you, you procrastinator you’re not!)
     (up for a little “scrabble” later;mwaaahaahaa) 🙂
4. AsleepWhileWalking 4

   13 January 2013 at 10:14 am

   Worrying article in the Herald, “DESPERATE BORROWERS SIGN AWAY PRIVACY”

   http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10858785

   Quote: “Some loansharks even require clients to sign power of attorney, allowing lenders to make all kinds of financial decisions on a borrower’s behalf.”

   Pretty shocking for me to read that this is occuring. Something has to be done asap.

   Charles Chauvel bless him, had some legislation he was trying to get through regarding loan sharks – not sure if it has anything about this in it but I’m picking it won’t.
5. Tiresias 5

   13 January 2013 at 11:21 am

   FWIW:

   The Agent under a Power of Attorney is REQUIRED to act in the principal’s best interest. The agent MUST always follow the principal’s directions and holds a fiduciary duty which requires him to always act with the HIGHEST DEGREE OF GOOD FAITH in behalf of their principals.

   A Power of Attorney is revocable at any time and no reason is necessary. A simple written revocation suffices – no legalese is specified as long is intent (and capacity) are apparent.

   The Agent cannot profit by any transaction where he represents the principal’s interests,
   nor make a gift or otherwise transfer any of the principal’s money, personal property or real estate to himself unless the power of attorney explicitly states he can do so.

   A court will declare a power of attorney invalid if the court finds that the principal lacked mental competency when the power of attorney was executed, or that the principal was the victim of fraud or UNDUE INFLUENCE.

   Given the above I would have thought that a Power of Attorney would be of very little use to a loanshark, particularly as a court declaring a PoA invalid could make the agent personally liable to the principal for any sums improperly disbursed.

   Of course this depends upon the debtor having sufficient access legal help to undo the damage but that’s going to be the case whatever arm-twisting methods the loanshark employs and whatever remedies Parliament might in its glacial wisdom enact into New Zealand law.
   • bad12 5.1

     13 January 2013 at 11:45 am

     Really??? has the plum in your mouth migrated to your brain thus stifling your ability to think beyond the point of ‘self interest’,

     Yes, you are quite correct in the ‘facts’ of what you say about ‘powers of attorney’, BUT, you only have to think for 1 or 2 seconds about the decile of people that ‘use’ the services of such loan sharks,

     Many do not have English as a first language, have very limited knowledge of the law, and, are obviously fucking broke and desperate, the former indicating that they would have no ability to hire a lawyer to get such matter into a courtroom in the first place even if they had the understanding of the laws that we do…
     • bad12 5.1.1

       13 January 2013 at 12:39 pm

       PS, from anecdotal evidence the power of attorney gained by the loan-shark is used at the loan recipient’s bank to advance the automatic payment of the loan ahead of any other automatic payments that might be paid from that account…
     • Tiresias 5.1.2

       13 January 2013 at 2:04 pm

       Which is exctly why I said what I said in my final paragraph.
6. Jenny 6

   13 January 2013 at 11:38 am

   Time for for the Green Party to publicly promote anti-climate change legislation that will challenge Australians to demand the same?

   Or time for grubby public and backroom haggling over cabinet positions?

   As the Ausralian heatwave disaster continues to roll on.

   Blaming the citizenry for lack of action over climate change and ridiculous sanctimonious demands to use composting toilets and cycle to work won’t cut it. Central government regulatory initiative is urgently required. Instead of down playing climate change for electoral advantage, the Green Party should be actively calling for such action to be taken.

   Why won’t they do it?

   Are they corrupted?

   Are they cowards?

   Are they stupid?

   “Today’s report warns that heat waves will become hotter longer and more frequent.” ABC News.

   The climate commission was set up two years ago to inform Australians about climate change.

   Professor David Karoly is the author of that report and he joins me now from Melbourne….

   Louise Criely For ABC TV News

   Sitting here in New Zealand it may be hard to guage the psychological effect on those suffering through this heatwave, and now being informed by their climate scientists, that future heatwaves will be twice, too three times, more extreme. In my opinion Australians would be very interrested in any serious actions being promoted in New Zealand to halt climate change.

   Australia’s average temperature has increased by 0.9 of a degree since 1910, and the report says small changes in average temperature can have a significant impact on the frequency and nature of extreme weather events.

   Professor Karoly says, based on current projections of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, the long-term outlook is even more dire.

   “We are expecting in the next 50 years for two to three degrees more warming,” he said.

   “In other words two or three times the warming we’ve seen already leading to much greater increases in heatwaves and extreme fire danger days.

   Simon Lauder ABC Radio News

   http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-12/heat-waves-exacerbated-by-climate-change/4462014

   Watch the following interview, though the camera doesn’t spend much time on her, notice the body language of Louise Criely as she begins to look increasingly uncomfortable as the interview continues, struggling not to bite her lip and shifting in her chair.

   http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-12/climate-commission-predicts-more-heatwaves-bushfires/4461960

   Professor Karoly: What we have been trying to do is look at these longer term trends in the context of what we have seen in the last week or so….

   We have set a new record for;

   The hottest temperature,

   The hottest average temperature, over Australia.

   We have had more extensive heat over Australia.

   A dome of hot air has been located over Australia for the most of last week.

   We have had a longer lasting heatwave.

   We’ve six days where the average maximum temperature has been hotter than 39 degrees celcius. The previous record was only three days where the average maximum temperature was hotter than that.

   Louise Criely: So what’s your outlook now for Australian summers?

   Professor Karoly: Not every summer will be hotter than the one before. In fact this year is markedly hotter than the last couple of years when we had relatively milder and wetter conditions.

   But what we are going to find on average is more of the hot extremes and faster increases in the future, over the next 10 and 30 years, that we have seen over the last 30 years – more hot extremes, more heatwaves and more extreme fire conditions.

   Professor Karoly: Climate scientists have been talking about these increases for more than 20 years in Australia. We are now seeing exactly what was predicted more than 20 years ago

   Louise Criely: So what action should policy makers take from the report?

   Professor Karoly: We know that climate change is getting worse due to increasing green house gases in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.

   So if we want to slow down climate change we need to reduce the emissions of green house gases into the atmosphere. We can do that by changing our energy sources….
7. KhandallaViper 7

   13 January 2013 at 12:01 pm

   Cactus Kate has a strong take on Hpusing policies generally.
   A good read.
   http://asianinvasion2006.blogspot.co.nz/2013/01/labour-struggles-with-its-direction.html?m=1

   It actually is capitalist societies that promote buying over renting. It benefits the bankers, and those at the top of the housing ladder.

   Yes, have money in the bank and I can tell you this, banks all want to meet with you not to thank you for your money, but to get you in to debt with property so the bank actually can make money off you. Getting people into debt politically makes them slaves to voting for policies to keep interest rates lower and property valuations up. Then they pay the debt off when older and want the opposite. I do not agree with the incentives of encouraging people to get into debt who cannot afford or want it yet it is a vote winner. And in business, most entrepreneurs will tell you, never do with your own money what the bank or others will give to you and you can profit from.
   • Colonial Viper 7.1

     13 January 2013 at 12:37 pm

     Cactus also correctly asks when NZ is going to benefit once more from true political debate of issues. Debate from actually different points of view on the political continuum, instead of this perennial tepid crowding into the political economic “centre”.
   • Fortran 7.2

     13 January 2013 at 12:46 pm

     KV

     From time immemorial a banker’s job has always been to lend money.
     • Colonial Viper 7.2.1

       13 January 2013 at 12:53 pm

       From time immemorial a banker’s job has always been to lend money.

       often at no interest I might add, because many ancient societies rejected usury.
       • McFlock 7.2.1.1

         13 January 2013 at 1:51 pm

         lol
       • Populuxe1 7.2.1.2

         14 January 2013 at 12:09 am

         Except for the Romans, and the Jews were allowed to charge non-Jews interest (Deuteronomy 23:20 – “Unto a foreigner thou mayest lend upon interest; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon interest; that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou puttest thy hand unto, in the land whither thou goest in to possess it.”. And even Muslim banks have a form of interest that gets around their Koranic restrictions. While individuals may have preached against usury in various ancient culture, it has tended not to be observed in the breech.
     • AmaKiwi 7.2.2

       13 January 2013 at 3:28 pm

       A banker’s job has always been to MAKE money.
8. Rogue Trooper 8

   13 January 2013 at 12:48 pm

   well, I been through the desert on a horse with no name, it felt good to be out of the rain, In the desert, you can remember your name…la,la,la la la la…

   was walking down the street early this morning…And I swear I heard the voices singing to me…
   I was approached by a boy (16 years old ) and his younger friend to buy some “K2” for them from the Adult Shop (it was Closed) freakin Asparagrass.

   It’s a fine line between pleasure and pain, if you’ve done it once then you’ll do it again, it’s a fine fine line between pleasure and pain!

   As people shift from place to place, as they construct more pliable, less rooted patterns of life, what was once solid melts into air, to recall a comment of Marx.

   -Sister ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rxgGVIrDqY )

   (Blinded By The Light) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2-GqYkwjTM. M.A.N
9. Jenny 9

   13 January 2013 at 2:10 pm

   ‘

   Australian Government Official Climate Commission Report on the Heatwave:
   http://climatecommission.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/CC_Jan_2013_Heatwave4.pdf

   Home:
   http://climatecommission.gov.au/
10. Tony P 10

    13 January 2013 at 2:13 pm

    Anybody got any idea why for the last 2 days posts from The Standard are not showing up in Google Reader?
    • QoT 10.1

      13 January 2013 at 5:39 pm

      Huh. I only just noticed this because you pointed it out.
11. karol 11

    13 January 2013 at 5:23 pm

    Rod Oram’s article today on Stuff is well worth a read, and I’d be interested in comments on it from those more knowledgeable about economics than me. he begins:

    This will be the make or break year for the Key Government’s economic strategy. If it fails to deliver reasonable growth to businesses and consumers the Government will have to defend a poor economic record in next year’s election.

    He is pretty pessimistic:

    Our dollar will remain high and our exports lacklustre so our current account deficit will increase from 4.5 per cent of GDP in the March 2012 year to 6.5 per cent in 2017; and New Zealand’s net international investment position (ie, what we owe the rest of the world) worsens from 71.9 per cent of GDP to 83.6 per cent. We will remain one of the most indebted of developed countries….

    The real reason for our poor performance lies at home. The economy is stuck in its long-standing dependence on low value commodities. Worse, the volume of commodities grows only slowly because of constraints on land, labour, capital and science.

    Then does a run-down on significant areas of the economy: export markets (government has hopes for TPP, but resistance is rising internationally), skills and safe workplaces (mixed outlook based on this government’s past record), natural resources (government may do many dodgy things that’ll upset a lot of voters), infrastructure (more RONS, resistance to Auckland rail loop).

    Oram concludes:

    The Government has taken far too long to get even this far with them; it co-ordinates, sells and executes these policies badly; there are merits in many of the policies but they are not bold enough to shift the economy to a higher growth track; and public resistance to many of the policies is rising.
12. Rogue Trooper 12

    13 January 2013 at 6:16 pm

    not wanting to rain on the “optimists” parade, however, from that Guardian article the other day (muchas gracias);
    looming on the global Horizon,
    -systematic financial crisis
    -water supply challenges
    -fiscal imbalances (oh look, Above)
    -food shortages
    -WMD proliferation
    -information breakdown
    -chronic disease in developing countries (and some developed country not a million miles from Here)
    -asset price collapse
    -retrenchment from globalization
    -pandemics / anti-biotic resistance
    -and last, yet not least ( I “Like” this one) Digital / Social Media provocation of social breakdown ;(

    anyway, back to the Fundamentalists

    previously, the inhabiting of a dual tradition that included both an intellectual engagement with texts and practical tradition learnt by a process of mimesis, for example,
    http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo3760020.html
    http://www.lookstein.org/links/orthodoxy.htm

    However, large-scale migration and immersion in the societal melting-pot has disrupted the mimetic element.

    Alienation, and the turn to rigid forms of faith will be coloured by the particularities of religion and historical circumstances.

    In a “witty and profound” book, Lost in the Cosmos, Walker Perry describes how, as the scientific description of the universe dominates, and because it asserts to be “objective”, it distances people from engagement with the world around them, promoting further existential angst. Furthermore, modern media such as the internet (and tele-evangelism) can serve the Fundamentalist very well. The internet propagates words, and Fundamentalists tend to put great stock in the power of words. Little wonder that they have shown themselves to be early adopters and swift masters of communication online. In addition, there has been in recent decades an emergence of what may be referred to as a militant form of atheism, wherby individuals are as emotionally committed to to science as the sole form of truth as fundamentalists might be to the documents of their faith (Dawk ins) and it seems important to such atheists to dispatch any alternatives to their world-view.

    Julian Baggini (an atheist philosopher ) aspires to values of open-mindedness and in his discussion of militant atheists in Atheism: A Very Short Introduction, concludes “Hostile opposition to the beliefs of others combined with an inflexible conviction of the certainty of one’s own beliefs is antithetical to such values.

    All in All, religious fundamentalism and contemporary scientism are cultural cousins.:)
    • Colonial Viper 12.1

      13 January 2013 at 6:21 pm

      All in All, religious fundamentalism and contemporary scientism are cultural cousins.:)

      Indeed.
      • McFlock 12.1.1

        13 January 2013 at 6:28 pm

        except one generally relies on magic books, and the other insists on verifiable evidence.
        • Colonial Viper 12.1.1.1

          13 January 2013 at 6:53 pm

          magic books like peer reviewed journals. And of course you need the circles of old wisemen/old wisewomen who each have their own collections of scrolls, and who pass the final judgements on what is good magic and what is not.
          • McFlock 12.1.1.1.1

            13 January 2013 at 7:10 pm

            The authors of peer reviewed journals don’t normally claim to have written the infallible word of god.
            • Rogue Trooper 12.1.1.1.1.1

              13 January 2013 at 7:15 pm

              Hey Flockie, sure gettin’ interestin “down on the farm” (free thought good, two legs bad )
              • Populuxe1 …

                13 January 2013 at 7:58 pm

                Having an open mind is fine up until the point you brain falls out.
                • Rogue Trooper …

                  13 January 2013 at 8:02 pm

                  what are you implying Pop?
                  • Populuxe1 …

                    14 January 2013 at 12:15 am

                    Getting paranoid about peer reviewed journals is ridiculous as the findings are always presented in such a way as any scientist with the resources can recreate the experiment. Expressions like “scientism” is a poisonous bye-blow of trying to apply postmodern semiotics to the scientific method.
                    • Colonial Viper …

                      14 January 2013 at 12:30 am

                      any scientist with the resources can recreate the experiment.

                      Exactly.
                    • Populuxe1 …

                      14 January 2013 at 12:38 am

                      CV, how I have missed your paranoia. The system has worked well so far, and short of the need for a Large Hadron Collider or something equally hard to come by, there are very few experiments that can’t be independently verified, or at least immediately understood, by competing scientists, companies, or even rival nations. It is impossible to argue with the process of scientific method, nor is there any need to.
                    • Colonial Viper …

                      14 January 2013 at 12:47 am

                      there are very few experiments that can’t be independently verified, or at least immediately understood

                      Those are two completely different things and quite different from your original assertion

                      findings are always presented in such a way as any scientist with the resources can recreate the experiment.

                      which isn’t always true any way.
                    • Colonial Viper …

                      14 January 2013 at 12:51 am

                      It is impossible to argue with the process of scientific method, nor is there any need to.

                      This is a statement quite suitable for the protector of a religion, or exponent of dogma.
                    • Populuxe1 …

                      14 January 2013 at 12:52 am

                      I can’t be bothered arguing semantics with someone who apparently doesn’t know how to read a peer-reviewed paper.
                    • Colonial Viper …

                      14 January 2013 at 1:00 am

                      I can’t be bothered arguing semantics with someone who apparently doesn’t know how to read a peer-reviewed paper.

                      Only the priesthood appropriately trained in interpreting scripture may approach the temple.
                    • weka …

                      14 January 2013 at 4:55 am

                      “What is clear is that the forms of peer review are protean. Probably the systems of every journal and every grant giving body are different in at least some detail; and some systems are very different. There may even be some journals using the following classic system. The editor looks at the title of the paper and sends it to two friends whom the editor thinks know something about the subject. If both advise publication the editor sends it to the printers. If both advise against publication the editor rejects the paper. If the reviewers disagree the editor sends it to a third reviewer and does whatever he or she advises. This pastiche—which is not far from systems I have seen used—is little better than tossing a coin, because the level of agreement between reviewers on whether a paper should be published is little better than you’d expect by chance.

                      That is why Robbie Fox, the great 20th century editor of the Lancet, who was no admirer of peer review, wondered whether anybody would notice if he were to swap the piles marked `publish’ and `reject’. He also joked that the Lancet had a system of throwing a pile of papers down the stairs and publishing those that reached the bottom. When I was editor of the BMJ I was challenged by two of the cleverest researchers in Britain to publish an issue of the journal comprised only of papers that had failed peer review and see if anybody noticed. I wrote back `How do you know I haven’t already done it?'”

                      “CONCLUSION

                      So peer review is a flawed process, full of easily identified defects with little evidence that it works. Nevertheless, it is likely to remain central to science and journals because there is no obvious alternative, and scientists and editors have a continuing belief in peer review. How odd that science should be rooted in belief.”

                      http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/content/99/4/178.full

                      The whole thing is worth the read. CV is just pointing out the Emperor is nekkid.
                    • McFlock …

                      14 January 2013 at 1:30 pm

                      It’s a human system. But still light years ahead of religion or nutbars who think that surfing equally delusional and pseudo-scientific web pages deserves the term “autodidactic”.
13. Colonial Viper 13

    13 January 2013 at 6:52 pm

    Ellen MacArthur – Redesigning the whole system to create an inspirational Circular Economy
    • Bill 13.1

      13 January 2013 at 8:41 pm

      Interesting link CV. Cheers. Being a cynic, my first thought was “Well, the capitalists will love it because it preserves the idea of inbuilt obsolescence.” And my second thought was to do with ‘dis-assembly’. It’s one thing to (chemically?) deconstruct carpet square fibres and bases (melting), but a computer? How does that work without the immense amounts of toxic waste that process currently entails? I’m suspicious that there’s a silver lining being promoted here while a great big black cloud is being ignored. So, I’ll away and read up on it a bit further… no democracy I notice
14. Rogue Trooper 14

    13 January 2013 at 7:12 pm

    testing smiley 🙂
    • Te Reo Putake 14.1

      13 January 2013 at 7:39 pm

      I found smiley testing, too.
      • Rogue Trooper 14.1.1

        13 January 2013 at 7:58 pm

        🙁
15. joe90 15

    13 January 2013 at 7:54 pm

    A rather long read for those so inclined.

    http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/01/rough-transcript-stimulus-or-stymied-the-macroeconomics-of-recessions.html
16. Rogue Trooper 16

    13 January 2013 at 9:41 pm

    some words
    https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/407801_592499697442758_137233956_n.jpg

    some Swiss Cheese
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/switzerland/9797668/Swiss-move-towards-barring-Eurozone-refugees.html

    cannot see those bicycles above Beijing
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/science/earth/beijing-air-pollution-off-the-charts.html?_r=0

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