There may be world wide woes in the Labour camp this week due to their Wide Open Web.
And the people will roll their eyes and turn off politicians even more at the propaganda, like Whaleoil response blatant dishonesty? – our entrenched political sickness needs a bloody big injection of something different.
You’d think they would have learnt from past outbreaks of exposure but no, the self interest of the parties is too deeply rooted. No matter who’s done the most wrong in this latest debacle they won’t change more than they have to, again. Unless we confront them and make them.
Why do you think that there is an adverse political consequence? The information may not have been secure but this does not authorize it being accessed. And it appears that someone in the National Party may have discovered the vulnerability and passed it onto Lapdog Slater.
They should check their legal position. This may boomerang on them.
I seem to recall another cocked up piece of political information theft…Watergate. Seemed trifling at teh time but it did lead to some very interesting outcomes.
19th Century land grab tactics in the 21st Century
A couple own some land take out a mortgage with a bank to buy a kitset home to be delivered to their section. The mortgage stipulates that the Kitset house company is only to be paid the full amount on the delivery and completion of the house.
1/ In breach of the mortgage agreement the bank pays out all the money to the kitset house company.
2/ The kitset house company does not deliver the house as arranged, instead declares bankruptcy taking all the money with them.
3/ The bank demands immediate full repayment of the total amount of the mortgage from the couple and threatens to take their land unless they receive it.
4/ The result: the couple lose their deposit, And lose their land.
If their is no intervention from an outraged public I imagine that this story will follow a time worn pattern as follows:
1/ Using the template perfected for over a hundred years in this country, the bank will call on the police to evict the couple from their land for non-payment of the mortgage for the house they never got.
2/ The police will use the necessary amount of force to uphold the law, arresting the couple. The courts will issue them with a trespass notice, and threaten them with fines if they return to their land without the new owners permission.
3/ The bank along with other lucky investors will build a holiday resort on the land.
5/ The resort will hire the couple and their children as cleaners and maids at slave wages and treat them like dirt, to wait on the rich bankers and bankrupt Palagi businessmen who come to enjoy the resort on their stolen land.
6/ Relaxing at the poolside of the resort, being waited on hand and foot by the former owners of all the land around them, some resort guests may ponder how did this amazing circumstance come about.
Maori up and down this land could relate this chain of events from their own experience.
I hope a good lawyer comes forward to help the complainants. NZ is not Florida, and banks here will not get away with perpetrating another Florida Foreclosure Fraud scandal.
In fact, this bank is up for a significant sum of civil damages, a couple of incompetent bank staffers are due to be fired, so let’s get on with it and see if this organisation deserves to be screwed to the wall.
‘
Maori will tell you that in similar circumstances, the cost of hiring lawyers to seek justice was so burdensome that they had to sell even more land to pay for them. Launching a downward spiral of land loss.
What is needed is immediate combined solidarity pickets by Maori and PI and concerned Palagi outside every branch of this bank all around the country.
I am sure that interrupting the flow of profits will have a far more electrifying effect and yield more immediate results than any long drawn out and expensive legal action.
(of course that could be done as well, after these banksters get a good public drubbing)
I’m very interested in their case. How much time do they still have before they are being evicted? I would like for you to get in contact with me via my blog. I’m not saying I can help but I do have a couple of tricks they might be able to use. Do they have the paper work stipulating the conditions for the payment of the kit set house on paper? I am very serious about this. So please get in touch.
‘
Hi Travelrev. I have no more knowledge of the facts of this story than what was reported from the sole TV1 news flash.
To go to the link to the TV1 news flash, click here.
If not for the power of the internet most people would have missed the above singular, lone, TV1 news flash – unfortunately for the bank, though no single other media outlet has run with this story, and TV1 has chosen not to repeat, or follow it up. Due to the power of the internet the facts are still retrievable (even by a technophobe like me).
Here they are:
The couple’s names are Nooroa Samuel and Tangi Samuel both resident of Raratonga.
The Bankrupt kitset home builder is Bettaway based in West Auckland.
The bank persecuting the couple is ANZ.
From the transcript of the TV1 newsflash:
The couple had ordered and paid for a kitset home from Bettaway Properties based in west Auckland.
Despite receiving their money, the company never sent any part of the kitset and several months later went into liquidation.
“I started ringing Bettaway and chasing after them, and all I get from the director of Bettaway is don’t contact me,” said Nooroa Samuel
…..the ANZ bank – which lent them $95,000 for their kitset home – handled their loan.
According to their letter of offer, the bank said the money would be paid to Bettaway progressively – as work was completed and the property inspected.
But all the money was directly paid to Bettaway despite the work never being completed.
The Samuels also said they only authorised the bank to make one initial payment.
“They make the policy but they break their own policy,” said Tangi Samuel
…… the bank is demanding the couple – who have been refusing to make loan repayments on the non-existent house – repay the full amount immediately with interest, adding to $180,000.
In this world you meet all kinds of men, some will rob you with a six gun, some with a fountain pen.
In this world no matter how far you roam, you will never see an outlaw who will drive a family from their home.
The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd the Outlaw.
Lyrics and music by Woody Guthrie
I am not suggesting we become vigilantes to overcome the banksters and financiers that are raping the planet.
But we could certainly do with a popular democratic movement, to take them down a peg or two. Along with all their well rewarded lickspittle politicians, bought off media hacks and their ‘learned’ apologists who claim to be “Economists” but are clueless.
‘
Why after the initial report on TV1 has there been a complete lockdown on this story in the Mainstream Media?
Despite searching multiple websites using variations of the words, “Samuels”, “ANZ”, “Bettaway”
Herald on line – no mention
Stuff – no mention
Scoop – no mention
TV3 – no mention
What if this story had been the other way around – The ANZ lost their own money on a business deal?
It would be front page news (despite the earthquake)
The government would be rushing to bail the ANZ’s losses to the tune of $ billions, if necessary. Even if the banks losses were caused by greedy and risky investment decisions.
An honest family doing the right thing are hounded like criminals by a bank. The ANZ are threatening to take their land to extort $180,000 plus interest from this couple for a service they didn’t deliver.
Are high powered ANZ lawyers behind this news whiteout?
Yes, I would not be surprised if the ANZ had its lawyers threaten the papers and media or if the media have been instructed to ignore those “sad” cases in which “irresponsible” lenders are being chastised over their “irresponsible” behaviour.
Well, if the agreement was that the bank only pay out small amounts as authorized and they paid out the whole lot then the bank is at fault and they should be writing the whole lot off. Any other outcome is legalized theft.
‘
Even if ANZ did write off “their” loss. I feel justice still wouldn’t be served in this case. as the couple have also had the loss of their deposit.
In my opinion the bank should cover this loss as well, because if they had kept to their side of the contract none of the money would have gone to Bettaway.
For hounding the couple and threatening to confiscate their land. ANZ should also pay substantial damages to the Samuels.
Will there be any just outcome for the Samuels’ from this affair?
The MSM have shown no interest in taking up this story and it looks like TV1 will not be doing any follow up of this story either, so we may never know the outcome.
Such is the shallowness of the Mainstream Media.
In my opinion if there is to be any justice for Nooroa and Tangi Samuel it will be up to the new Social Media to follow up and champion their case.
The anguished cry from one of the mothers says it all..
“Why does this keep happening to all our beautiful boys. I just cannot understand it. Something terrible is happening and it just can’t go on,” Donna Treffers said.
An inquiry into the school’s culture “was inevitable”.
“The problem at [King’s College] is the kids come from such privileged homes and have so much freedom and wealth they don’t know how to cope. The pressure on them is enormous.”
It would be interesting to hear from Ann Tolley on this. After all, this government has pumped another $30m into these bastions of privilege, at a time when ‘belt-tightening’ is called for from the masses.
And anyone who thinks so much of ‘top’ Christchurch schools should get along to the annual Christ’s College/Boys’ High rugby game, which these days requires police and security guards to keep order.
Reminds me very closely of this – skyrocketing youth deaths in Kawerau. Different town, different socioeconomic classes, different pressures, same tragic outcome. There is something wrong happening with NZ youth.
Well said CV. But I see from stuff in their latest update that we have the dynamic Paula Bennett on the case…..Minister of Youth Affairs…but seems action not imminent…
In our neck of the Christchurch woods it is known that the worst drug and alcohol abuse takes place at the private schools and the richer households.
But of course, like most parts of the western world, the attention is diverted away from such annoying troublesome facts, which may affect current and future business and dinner party invitations and positions of reputation and status (ha ha, yeah right), and towards those easier targets less able to defend themselves, the brown poor.
The reasons people avoid Aranui and Linwood and Shirley highs do not stack up, yet the avoidance still goes on. And dear me such prejudive is THICK on the ground in these here parts – so thick in fact that it is impenetrable. People have earplugs in and blinkers on. As evidence, witness the necessity for police to breath test every spectator at the annual Christs College vs Christchurch Boys rugby match. Don’t happen at other schools.
Avoiding Shirley Boys? Huh, when the hell did that start? Because when I left there in 2003 there were still tons of out-area applicants if memory serves me right and mentioning that I went there hasn’t had me snobbed at…
Though the attitude to Aranui is bloody stupid given the gains they’ve made and while Linwood’s had it’s problems, often those problems are present at other schools in Christchurch. Then again, I’ve joked that Christchurch is a “middle class hell”, given teh snobbery about the poorer areas that comes from people who should know better…
The mothers and fathers never understand how their children were left injured or dead. It’s always bad luck or an unexplainable mystery or a tragedy or ‘society’ at fault. Never heard is ‘I didn’t set good limits for my children. I should have been a better role model, been firm as well as fair, and done my parental job better.” Yet the anecdotes build up about parents and many of them wealthy, facilitating their children drinking.
Meanwhile the government is helpless to take definitive controlling action on behalf of the country though polls indicate there is a majority for what seems a sensible measure. Is the government senseless then? This alcohol-induced paralysis must result from corruption of government and should be considered when people are being queried by Transparency International.
Alcohol drug dealers have been sanitised and absorbed by society and now we seem unable to limit the excessive use of the alcohol drug which creates criminal offending, though we agonise and storm against other drugs which create criminals of a more serious type. So we add to criminality by encouraging excess alcohol intake and don’t seek effective ways to limit other drugs, and then complain that crime is rising. Our drug policies are totally illogical and destructive of society.
“The problem at [King’s College] is the kids come from such privileged homes and have so much freedom and wealth they don’t know how to cope. The pressure on them is enormous.”
Sounds like the debauchery that seems to appear in all aristocrats at the end of the civilisation of which they find themselves at the top of.
Bloody hell, I go away for the weekend and find all this when I get back.
The most interesting thing so far is the clear link between the National party and Whaleoil. To put it mildly, it is now quite clear that he is their poodle and barks to order.
He’s talking about exposing National, Greens and Maori Party rorting Parliamentary Services too – if he follows through with that he is hardly being a National poodle.
The National “did it/stole it/control it” campaign sounds like an attempt at trying to redirect the attention. It sounds like bleating in panic.
Sure, Labour need to take steps to try and protect private information, if Whale releases any of that he will shit in his own campaign.
Labour should be concentrating on assuring us that everything they do with Parliamentary Services is within the rules and a fair use of government (that means our) resources, rather than blowing smoke in an attempted screen.
He’s talking about exposing National, Greens and Maori Party rorting Parliamentary Services too
isn’t he just saying that he reckons they do it too, and if anyone hands him info proving it he will publish? That’s a pretty weak play, given the thin gruel he has so far published.
Labour should be concentrating on assuring us that everything they do with Parliamentary Services is within the rules and a fair use of government (that means our) resources, rather than blowing smoke in an attempted screen
Well sure, but so far WO has published a lot of smokey innuendo and not much to back it up…
The minutes also spoke of using parliamentary resources to secure “the best outcome for LP [the Labour Party]” but included a reminder that parliamentary resources could not be used for campaigning.
It looks like the same sort of thing as tax avoidence vs evasion. Maybe it’s in the same league as helicopter rides to V8 phot ops, but who knows?
While it does pay dividends to string a smear story out, WO hasn’t published anything that even looks a like a gun yet, leta alone a smoking one; and now he has moved on to talking about private citizens… donations.
And he is getting it in the neck because he is a Sickness Beneficiary as well, and not a squeak from pudding bennet on the whale puppy. But straight onto a boxer who wanted to hit her SBW, she’s as pathetic as the rest of them.
I like the piccy in Curioser and Curioser with Joky Hen holding a beer bottle in his hand. Does he get product endorsement fees? Just the thing to promote alcohol when there is another Kings College student death. Last year one student drank himself to death, this year a year 13 with brains addled, managed to kill himself (planking?), and a female student required treatment for serious alcohol intake.
I remember a boy from a beneficiary family lower South Island who was given a bottle of vodka by his mother, no doubt so he could keep up with his friends. She was villified and when his car, driven by somebody else crashed with deaths, the young fellow was charged and jailed for a time. He was very young but considered responsible for the crash because he owned the car and should have stopped the inebriated driver from taking the wheel. I think that we live in a two-faced society that is willing to dump on the lower-classes while the wealthy have slack standards themselves which they aren’t prepared to raise beyond the hedonistic or be judged on.
When the drinking age is discussed with a view to raising it, there is always some well-spoken young person who speaks against such a restriction. The idea given is that it is those ‘others’, the outliers, who cause alcohol-related trouble and civilised, mature, sophisticated young people shouldn’t have this imposition spoiling their social activities. (The idea of enjoying a party without alcohol is regarded as strange and austere.) Yet alcohol ruins so many lives as it wears through bank balances and brain synapses and apparently solid citizens deteriorate into hollow shells of themselves.
I like alcohol myself, but warily, alcoholism lurks in my family. Control should be kept to a reasonable level, not unreasonable as at present. Drinking at restaurants and bars with food beyond peanuts, yes. Late boozing hours listening to late night bands no. The bands might like to start earlier and get to bed earlier so they don’t need alcohol and/or stimulants to keep themselves firing late into the early morning.
The incidents at King’s college prove first and foremost that inability or unwillingness to handle alcohol sensibly has little to do with economic status. Thus the theory that upping excise tax to prohibitive levels will reduce harm (or the revese conclusion that if you have plenty of money you will act sensibly) is surely shown for the crock it is?
Searching the non-sensible contorted sentencing trust website for any mention of Rosemary Ives the victim of hunters. The issue of hunters whose hunting party would stand idle while one of their member shoots recklessly without consideration to the back lot behind the target, where there was a duty of care by others in a hunting party to members of the public. But found nothing. However there was mention of self-defense, that someone fearing for their life who kept a gun under the bed could not use it if an assailant gained unlawful entry to their home at night. Of course expecting the SS to be trustworthy that this is indeed the case, I could not help but think that the SS was biased toward the selection of its ranting tirades. Hunting out, but home invasion in. Maybe some victims of crime are more, well, victims than others if the criminals aren’t doing something wealthy people do.
Forewarned is forearmed.
Oh oops,
Three of Fukushima’s reactors have suffered a melt through. That is sort of when the entire fuel supply in the core is now lying on the floor of the reactor out in the open fissioning away at warp speed.
There is now speculation that the spike of 35% increase in child mortality at the US west coast which occurred after the earthquake in Japan may have something to do with the destroyed reactors.
No kidding!!!
Its sad but probably true. An apple grown in Japan is unlikely to be saleable in Toyko because of the radioactive background spike, yet those same apples may be saleable in the US, OZ preciously because background was not raised. Comes from a story I heard once that low level radiation could be spread on farmland. This is why its should be illegal to deny free treatment to anyone for anything, capitalism, industrialization, petrolunancy all have negative externalities, health consequences, poverty, crime, lunatics running the government.
Did you not see the Nation this weekend JN.? It was a National Party election advert. Its ba wonder Plunket did not get down and lick his boots. The whole episode was nauseating to say the least. I
Did you not see the Nation this weekend JN.? It was a National Party election advert. Its ba wonder Plunket did not get down and lick his boots. The whole episode was nauseating to say the least. I wanted to vomit.
It will be interesting to see whether Phill G
4.3 magnitude, 11km depth, 10km north of Darfield – this one reported on Geonet?
My Singapore-based feng shui friend says current PM is jinx, get rid of him, he not good growing people’s money (except if his own) and he bad for tourism.
No, not that one. It’ll be 5.5 or bigger, ~1:00pm.
It’s funny that you found that 4.3, because I was sitting eating my lunch feeling a bit ‘wobbly’ and wondered if that was a quake or not. So I consulted my earthquake detector (essentially some suspended bulldog clips) and sure enough they were shaking a bit.
Our wee sensitive house went bang and sideways about a foot a few times and rattled to billy-oh. Fucking nerves all shot again and looking nervously at them rocks on the hills and the sea out in the bay and the silt below our feet and on it goes.
Yeah, those in the east would have been much more rattled by this one.
The last 5.5 was out at Rolleston, and this one felt bigger. A bit difficult to compare though, since for the one on Monday I was at home, whereas this one being in the 2nd story of a 3-story building is a little different.
Each one of these makes it easy for those still deciding whether to pack bags or not. A few more will have just had that decision made for them. Bloody more shakes going on while I write. The city continues to empty…
I’m so sorry to hear this. I know there is nothing I can do to help but I wish I could. My sister in law lives in Christchurch and she’s still determined to keep on living there but I worry for her and her family.
Well, not “massive”, but big. Probably at least 5.5. Wouldn’t expect too many buildings down. This happened about 1:01pm – Lynn the time-stamping on this site seems quite a few minutes ahead of what my computer shows.
Seemed to come in a couple of pulses, initially everything started wobbling and I was considering whether to get under the desk. It eased off a little, and then got worse, so I got under. Went on for maybe 20-25 seconds total (length seems to be most correlated with size/strength). We evacuated the building, but are now back inside.
Motorway outside my window is flowing normally, maybe a little extra traffic.
I’ve been working on another website lately, which might interest you. I’m calling it Earth Monitor and it’s designed to collate lots of information on climate change, earthquakes, floods, radiation, food production, debt and recent articles concerning these things. It’s still under construction so I’ll be adding more helpful things over the next few weeks. Check it out…
Hmm Maybe there is something to the Mayan calenders ending in 2012. Radiation , Big Storms, Earth Quakes, Global Warming, Ice caps melting, National Party.
Thast was awful, there is liquidfaction all over the place, the shake itself was horrific, i really dont see how much more people in this city can take of this, its a nightmare.
Did you not see the Nation this week J.N. Plunket interviewing (?) Key.?
I was expecting Plunket to get down and kiss Key’s boots at any time.
It was nauseous I wanted go be sick . It was a National Party election advert. It will be interesting to see if Phil Goff has the same chance before long. I certainly hope that someone in the hierarchy of the Labour Party demands an equal chance for Goff,
Pink Postman – Did you realise that your same comment in embryo has cropped up here as at 3.40, 3.41, 3.48, 3.49 and emerged fully hatched at 4.06 pm, but I’m not sure as it ends with a comma,
More bene-bashing by basher bennet. Another release of random data without context.
My worst flat meltdown was in a 5 bedroom flat. In the space of six months 13 seperate people were on the lease at different times, and given that many of them weren’t rocket scientists they might have taken a while to tell work & income of their change of address (but I assure the tory astro-turfers, they were definitely unemployable).
Just for the record, we’re talking about 7-18 people still being on social warfare’s database as living at a single address, and a total of 24 housholds in this situation. Maximum of 421 people out of how many hundred thousand?
And yet the opening paragraph is about benefit fraud. Typical.
Agreed, Someone should make a complaint to the press council and the HRC, discrimination on the basis of receipt of a benefit, impugning the character of them and possible making getting a fair trial impossible when so many now think being on benefit means guilty until proven otherwise. If they exchanged the term Bbenefitaries for Gays, or Gypsies, they’d be had up for discrimination of a group.
Well with 11 adults and 3 kids at the same address getting about $4300 a week that is $300 dollars a week each. Hardly benefit fraud.
Obviously Bennet could not pass NACT standards.
NewstalkZB’s John Peachey slams colleague for murder of own child
Monday 13 June 2011
“Giving a teenager access to alcohol is tantamount to murder. This is a very sad tragedy. Somebody slipped up here, and slipped up badly. I don’t know the details but it’s CERTAIN that it was a FAILURE by the boy’s parents.”
At about 12.15 this morning, that foam-flecked assessment spat forth from the lips of NewstalkZB’s graveyard shift host JOHN PEACHEY. Since he did not know the details, and therefore had no idea who those parents were, Peachey obviously felt free to dish out the standard NewstalkZB treatment to them. This followed the tragic death of 17-year-old Auckland boy David Gaynor on Saturday night.
Clearly nobody on the NewstalkZB station management had bothered to give Peachey a key piece of information: one of the “failed parents” who had “murdered” his son was Brian Gaynor, a highly respected financial commentator, who regularly appears on NewstalkZB. He is, therefore, a colleague of Peachey.
NewstalkZB is part of The Radio Network (TRN). The hosts on TRN stations are instructed by management to give total support to any colleague in trouble, no matter how heinous the act that got him into that trouble in the first place. Thus, over the last few years, NewstalkZB staff have been required to publicly express support for curmudgeonly sports jock MURRAY DEAKER, following repeated public outrage over his crude, inflammatory and racist comments on air. They have on several occasions been forced to publicly support PAUL HOLMES, most notoriously following the obscenity-laced “cheeky darkie” rant in September 2003. They were even required to say how much they “respect” the much-reviled TONY VEITCH after it was revealed he had repeatedly assaulted his fiancée, with the assaults culminating in a frenzied kicking attack which paralyzed her.
So of course the TRN management would have expected all of its hosts to fall in line and express sympathy for the tragedy that befell one of their own colleagues. Instead, an unwitting John Peachey publicly condemned him for the “murder” of his own son.
That’s poor management. One wonders if such a lapse of discipline would have occurred under the reign of former CEO Bill Francis?
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TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent talking about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s release of its first Emissions Reduction Plan;University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor and special guest Dr Karin von ...
Open access notablesImproving global temperature datasets to better account for non-uniform warming, Calvert, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society:To better account for spatial non-uniform trends in warming, a new GITD [global instrumental temperature dataset] was created that used maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to combine the land surface ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
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There may be world wide woes in the Labour camp this week due to their Wide Open Web.
And the people will roll their eyes and turn off politicians even more at the propaganda, like Whaleoil response blatant dishonesty? – our entrenched political sickness needs a bloody big injection of something different.
You’d think they would have learnt from past outbreaks of exposure but no, the self interest of the parties is too deeply rooted. No matter who’s done the most wrong in this latest debacle they won’t change more than they have to, again. Unless we confront them and make them.
PeteG
Why do you think that there is an adverse political consequence? The information may not have been secure but this does not authorize it being accessed. And it appears that someone in the National Party may have discovered the vulnerability and passed it onto Lapdog Slater.
They should check their legal position. This may boomerang on them.
I seem to recall another cocked up piece of political information theft…Watergate. Seemed trifling at teh time but it did lead to some very interesting outcomes.
Sky City gets the nod to build an international scale convention centre in Auckland….but there is a catch….
So now the laws and regulations of New Zealand are up for sale?
Hmmmm I reckon the Warner Bros incident already proved that; now we have more of the same. A Government of sell outs creating a sold out country.
If our principles and morals are of any value, please don’t tell John Key or he will sell those too.
I wonder how many NAT MP’s trusts hold shares in Sky City?
Yippee, I hope my blind trust had bought some:
“Skycity shares gain on convention centre news”
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/skycity-shares-gain-convention-centre-news-ck-95211
Hooten said this morning that he thought that SkyCity shares would drop. Looks like their investors liked the deal however. Surprise surprise.
Was Hooton for real? Why would SkyCity shares drop with such news?
Why indeed with all those nice shiny noisy machines promising big bucks for the unwary. Not John Key promising 177000 jobs.
There ya go – John Key is ambitious for SkyCity investors:
“… you can’t expect [SkyCity’s] shareholders to invest for six years without certainty of their investment,” Mr Key said this morning.
Source: http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/key-defends-sky-city-deal-ck-95205
SkyCity shares drop, haha, was Hooton for real?
And yet all the capitalist apologists keep telling us it’s all about taking risks and that there’s no certainty that they will get a return…
This would be the government then picking winners by ensuring that those risk taking investors get a guaranteed return.
“Just another slice of paradise”
How Maori lost their land
TVNZ: Couple’s dream home hopes shattered
19th Century land grab tactics in the 21st Century
A couple own some land take out a mortgage with a bank to buy a kitset home to be delivered to their section. The mortgage stipulates that the Kitset house company is only to be paid the full amount on the delivery and completion of the house.
1/ In breach of the mortgage agreement the bank pays out all the money to the kitset house company.
2/ The kitset house company does not deliver the house as arranged, instead declares bankruptcy taking all the money with them.
3/ The bank demands immediate full repayment of the total amount of the mortgage from the couple and threatens to take their land unless they receive it.
4/ The result: the couple lose their deposit, And lose their land.
If their is no intervention from an outraged public I imagine that this story will follow a time worn pattern as follows:
1/ Using the template perfected for over a hundred years in this country, the bank will call on the police to evict the couple from their land for non-payment of the mortgage for the house they never got.
2/ The police will use the necessary amount of force to uphold the law, arresting the couple. The courts will issue them with a trespass notice, and threaten them with fines if they return to their land without the new owners permission.
3/ The bank along with other lucky investors will build a holiday resort on the land.
5/ The resort will hire the couple and their children as cleaners and maids at slave wages and treat them like dirt, to wait on the rich bankers and bankrupt Palagi businessmen who come to enjoy the resort on their stolen land.
6/ Relaxing at the poolside of the resort, being waited on hand and foot by the former owners of all the land around them, some resort guests may ponder how did this amazing circumstance come about.
Maori up and down this land could relate this chain of events from their own experience.
I hope a good lawyer comes forward to help the complainants. NZ is not Florida, and banks here will not get away with perpetrating another Florida Foreclosure Fraud scandal.
In fact, this bank is up for a significant sum of civil damages, a couple of incompetent bank staffers are due to be fired, so let’s get on with it and see if this organisation deserves to be screwed to the wall.
‘
Maori will tell you that in similar circumstances, the cost of hiring lawyers to seek justice was so burdensome that they had to sell even more land to pay for them. Launching a downward spiral of land loss.
What is needed is immediate combined solidarity pickets by Maori and PI and concerned Palagi outside every branch of this bank all around the country.
I am sure that interrupting the flow of profits will have a far more electrifying effect and yield more immediate results than any long drawn out and expensive legal action.
(of course that could be done as well, after these banksters get a good public drubbing)
Hi Jenny,
I’m very interested in their case. How much time do they still have before they are being evicted? I would like for you to get in contact with me via my blog. I’m not saying I can help but I do have a couple of tricks they might be able to use. Do they have the paper work stipulating the conditions for the payment of the kit set house on paper? I am very serious about this. So please get in touch.
Kind regards
Ev
‘
Hi Travelrev. I have no more knowledge of the facts of this story than what was reported from the sole TV1 news flash.
To go to the link to the TV1 news flash, click here.
If not for the power of the internet most people would have missed the above singular, lone, TV1 news flash – unfortunately for the bank, though no single other media outlet has run with this story, and TV1 has chosen not to repeat, or follow it up. Due to the power of the internet the facts are still retrievable (even by a technophobe like me).
Here they are:
The couple’s names are Nooroa Samuel and Tangi Samuel both resident of Raratonga.
The Bankrupt kitset home builder is Bettaway based in West Auckland.
The bank persecuting the couple is ANZ.
From the transcript of the TV1 newsflash:
Why was the money going direct from the ANZ to Bettaway? Is that normal? Shouldn’t it have gone through the couple or their lawyer?
‘
The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd the Outlaw.
Lyrics and music by Woody Guthrie
I am not suggesting we become vigilantes to overcome the banksters and financiers that are raping the planet.
But we could certainly do with a popular democratic movement, to take them down a peg or two. Along with all their well rewarded lickspittle politicians, bought off media hacks and their ‘learned’ apologists who claim to be “Economists” but are clueless.
‘
Why after the initial report on TV1 has there been a complete lockdown on this story in the Mainstream Media?
Despite searching multiple websites using variations of the words, “Samuels”, “ANZ”, “Bettaway”
Herald on line – no mention
Stuff – no mention
Scoop – no mention
TV3 – no mention
What if this story had been the other way around – The ANZ lost their own money on a business deal?
It would be front page news (despite the earthquake)
The government would be rushing to bail the ANZ’s losses to the tune of $ billions, if necessary. Even if the banks losses were caused by greedy and risky investment decisions.
An honest family doing the right thing are hounded like criminals by a bank. The ANZ are threatening to take their land to extort $180,000 plus interest from this couple for a service they didn’t deliver.
Are high powered ANZ lawyers behind this news whiteout?
Yes, I would not be surprised if the ANZ had its lawyers threaten the papers and media or if the media have been instructed to ignore those “sad” cases in which “irresponsible” lenders are being chastised over their “irresponsible” behaviour.
Well, if the agreement was that the bank only pay out small amounts as authorized and they paid out the whole lot then the bank is at fault and they should be writing the whole lot off. Any other outcome is legalized theft.
‘
Even if ANZ did write off “their” loss. I feel justice still wouldn’t be served in this case. as the couple have also had the loss of their deposit.
In my opinion the bank should cover this loss as well, because if they had kept to their side of the contract none of the money would have gone to Bettaway.
For hounding the couple and threatening to confiscate their land. ANZ should also pay substantial damages to the Samuels.
Will there be any just outcome for the Samuels’ from this affair?
The MSM have shown no interest in taking up this story and it looks like TV1 will not be doing any follow up of this story either, so we may never know the outcome.
Such is the shallowness of the Mainstream Media.
In my opinion if there is to be any justice for Nooroa and Tangi Samuel it will be up to the new Social Media to follow up and champion their case.
Surely, after 4 deaths in 17 months, the Kings College culture demands a full-scale enquiry.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/5134137/Concern-over-Kings-College-culture-after-death
The anguished cry from one of the mothers says it all..
“Why does this keep happening to all our beautiful boys. I just cannot understand it. Something terrible is happening and it just can’t go on,” Donna Treffers said.
An inquiry into the school’s culture “was inevitable”.
“The problem at [King’s College] is the kids come from such privileged homes and have so much freedom and wealth they don’t know how to cope. The pressure on them is enormous.”
It would be interesting to hear from Ann Tolley on this. After all, this government has pumped another $30m into these bastions of privilege, at a time when ‘belt-tightening’ is called for from the masses.
And anyone who thinks so much of ‘top’ Christchurch schools should get along to the annual Christ’s College/Boys’ High rugby game, which these days requires police and security guards to keep order.
Reminds me very closely of this – skyrocketing youth deaths in Kawerau. Different town, different socioeconomic classes, different pressures, same tragic outcome. There is something wrong happening with NZ youth.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10731766
Well said CV. But I see from stuff in their latest update that we have the dynamic Paula Bennett on the case…..Minister of Youth Affairs…but seems action not imminent…
In our neck of the Christchurch woods it is known that the worst drug and alcohol abuse takes place at the private schools and the richer households.
But of course, like most parts of the western world, the attention is diverted away from such annoying troublesome facts, which may affect current and future business and dinner party invitations and positions of reputation and status (ha ha, yeah right), and towards those easier targets less able to defend themselves, the brown poor.
The reasons people avoid Aranui and Linwood and Shirley highs do not stack up, yet the avoidance still goes on. And dear me such prejudive is THICK on the ground in these here parts – so thick in fact that it is impenetrable. People have earplugs in and blinkers on. As evidence, witness the necessity for police to breath test every spectator at the annual Christs College vs Christchurch Boys rugby match. Don’t happen at other schools.
Avoiding Shirley Boys? Huh, when the hell did that start? Because when I left there in 2003 there were still tons of out-area applicants if memory serves me right and mentioning that I went there hasn’t had me snobbed at…
Though the attitude to Aranui is bloody stupid given the gains they’ve made and while Linwood’s had it’s problems, often those problems are present at other schools in Christchurch. Then again, I’ve joked that Christchurch is a “middle class hell”, given teh snobbery about the poorer areas that comes from people who should know better…
The mothers and fathers never understand how their children were left injured or dead. It’s always bad luck or an unexplainable mystery or a tragedy or ‘society’ at fault. Never heard is ‘I didn’t set good limits for my children. I should have been a better role model, been firm as well as fair, and done my parental job better.” Yet the anecdotes build up about parents and many of them wealthy, facilitating their children drinking.
Meanwhile the government is helpless to take definitive controlling action on behalf of the country though polls indicate there is a majority for what seems a sensible measure. Is the government senseless then? This alcohol-induced paralysis must result from corruption of government and should be considered when people are being queried by Transparency International.
Alcohol drug dealers have been sanitised and absorbed by society and now we seem unable to limit the excessive use of the alcohol drug which creates criminal offending, though we agonise and storm against other drugs which create criminals of a more serious type. So we add to criminality by encouraging excess alcohol intake and don’t seek effective ways to limit other drugs, and then complain that crime is rising. Our drug policies are totally illogical and destructive of society.
Sounds like the debauchery that seems to appear in all aristocrats at the end of the civilisation of which they find themselves at the top of.
Bloody hell, I go away for the weekend and find all this when I get back.
The most interesting thing so far is the clear link between the National party and Whaleoil. To put it mildly, it is now quite clear that he is their poodle and barks to order.
Exactly, lp. He’s their bitch but acts like he’s some sort of freedom fighter. It really is quite pathetic.
He’s talking about exposing National, Greens and Maori Party rorting Parliamentary Services too – if he follows through with that he is hardly being a National poodle.
The National “did it/stole it/control it” campaign sounds like an attempt at trying to redirect the attention. It sounds like bleating in panic.
Sure, Labour need to take steps to try and protect private information, if Whale releases any of that he will shit in his own campaign.
Labour should be concentrating on assuring us that everything they do with Parliamentary Services is within the rules and a fair use of government (that means our) resources, rather than blowing smoke in an attempted screen.
He’s talking about exposing National, Greens and Maori Party rorting Parliamentary Services too
isn’t he just saying that he reckons they do it too, and if anyone hands him info proving it he will publish? That’s a pretty weak play, given the thin gruel he has so far published.
Labour should be concentrating on assuring us that everything they do with Parliamentary Services is within the rules and a fair use of government (that means our) resources, rather than blowing smoke in an attempted screen
Well sure, but so far WO has published a lot of smokey innuendo and not much to back it up…
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10731868
It looks like the same sort of thing as tax avoidence vs evasion. Maybe it’s in the same league as helicopter rides to V8 phot ops, but who knows?
While it does pay dividends to string a smear story out, WO hasn’t published anything that even looks a like a gun yet, leta alone a smoking one; and now he has moved on to talking about private citizens… donations.
And he is getting it in the neck because he is a Sickness Beneficiary as well, and not a squeak from pudding bennet on the whale puppy. But straight onto a boxer who wanted to hit her SBW, she’s as pathetic as the rest of them.
I like the piccy in Curioser and Curioser with Joky Hen holding a beer bottle in his hand. Does he get product endorsement fees? Just the thing to promote alcohol when there is another Kings College student death. Last year one student drank himself to death, this year a year 13 with brains addled, managed to kill himself (planking?), and a female student required treatment for serious alcohol intake.
I remember a boy from a beneficiary family lower South Island who was given a bottle of vodka by his mother, no doubt so he could keep up with his friends. She was villified and when his car, driven by somebody else crashed with deaths, the young fellow was charged and jailed for a time. He was very young but considered responsible for the crash because he owned the car and should have stopped the inebriated driver from taking the wheel. I think that we live in a two-faced society that is willing to dump on the lower-classes while the wealthy have slack standards themselves which they aren’t prepared to raise beyond the hedonistic or be judged on.
When the drinking age is discussed with a view to raising it, there is always some well-spoken young person who speaks against such a restriction. The idea given is that it is those ‘others’, the outliers, who cause alcohol-related trouble and civilised, mature, sophisticated young people shouldn’t have this imposition spoiling their social activities. (The idea of enjoying a party without alcohol is regarded as strange and austere.) Yet alcohol ruins so many lives as it wears through bank balances and brain synapses and apparently solid citizens deteriorate into hollow shells of themselves.
I like alcohol myself, but warily, alcoholism lurks in my family. Control should be kept to a reasonable level, not unreasonable as at present. Drinking at restaurants and bars with food beyond peanuts, yes. Late boozing hours listening to late night bands no. The bands might like to start earlier and get to bed earlier so they don’t need alcohol and/or stimulants to keep themselves firing late into the early morning.
The incidents at King’s college prove first and foremost that inability or unwillingness to handle alcohol sensibly has little to do with economic status. Thus the theory that upping excise tax to prohibitive levels will reduce harm (or the revese conclusion that if you have plenty of money you will act sensibly) is surely shown for the crock it is?
Hmmm Augustus, increasing the price of alcohol does reduce harm. People can’t afford to drink as much, so they drink less.
Obviously however price is less of a deterrent if you are in the top 5% of wealth.
Up to a point. Eventually by increasing the price of alcohol you encourage home brewing and distilling.
It also breeds yet more elitism, which we need like a hole in the head IMO.
Monitoring results of raising prices for alcohol and reducing outlets has shown that the two are very worthwhile.
Searching the non-sensible contorted sentencing trust website for any mention of Rosemary Ives the victim of hunters. The issue of hunters whose hunting party would stand idle while one of their member shoots recklessly without consideration to the back lot behind the target, where there was a duty of care by others in a hunting party to members of the public. But found nothing. However there was mention of self-defense, that someone fearing for their life who kept a gun under the bed could not use it if an assailant gained unlawful entry to their home at night. Of course expecting the SS to be trustworthy that this is indeed the case, I could not help but think that the SS was biased toward the selection of its ranting tirades. Hunting out, but home invasion in. Maybe some victims of crime are more, well, victims than others if the criminals aren’t doing something wealthy people do.
Forewarned is forearmed.
Oh oops,
Three of Fukushima’s reactors have suffered a melt through. That is sort of when the entire fuel supply in the core is now lying on the floor of the reactor out in the open fissioning away at warp speed.
There is now speculation that the spike of 35% increase in child mortality at the US west coast which occurred after the earthquake in Japan may have something to do with the destroyed reactors.
No kidding!!!
Its sad but probably true. An apple grown in Japan is unlikely to be saleable in Toyko because of the radioactive background spike, yet those same apples may be saleable in the US, OZ preciously because background was not raised. Comes from a story I heard once that low level radiation could be spread on farmland. This is why its should be illegal to deny free treatment to anyone for anything, capitalism, industrialization, petrolunancy all have negative externalities, health consequences, poverty, crime, lunatics running the government.
Gosh, it feels like such a long wait between John Key’s photo-op.
When is the next one coming and what might it be?
Can’t wait for the charmer to amuse us!
Did you not see the Nation tv3 this weekend J.N . I
Did you not see the Nation tv3 this weekend J.N . It was nothing more than a N
Did you not see the Nation this weekend JN.? It was a National Party election advert. Its ba wonder Plunket did not get down and lick his boots. The whole episode was nauseating to say the least. I
Did you not see the Nation this weekend JN.? It was a National Party election advert. Its ba wonder Plunket did not get down and lick his boots. The whole episode was nauseating to say the least. I wanted to vomit.
It will be interesting to see whether Phill G
We’ve had another massive quake again.
4.3 magnitude, 11km depth, 10km north of Darfield – this one reported on Geonet?
My Singapore-based feng shui friend says current PM is jinx, get rid of him, he not good growing people’s money (except if his own) and he bad for tourism.
No this one was bigger.
No, not that one. It’ll be 5.5 or bigger, ~1:00pm.
It’s funny that you found that 4.3, because I was sitting eating my lunch feeling a bit ‘wobbly’ and wondered if that was a quake or not. So I consulted my earthquake detector (essentially some suspended bulldog clips) and sure enough they were shaking a bit.
Geonet updates 5.5M, 10km east: http://geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/3528810g.html
Our wee sensitive house went bang and sideways about a foot a few times and rattled to billy-oh. Fucking nerves all shot again and looking nervously at them rocks on the hills and the sea out in the bay and the silt below our feet and on it goes.
Fuck this. fuck it fuck it fuck it.
Yeah, those in the east would have been much more rattled by this one.
The last 5.5 was out at Rolleston, and this one felt bigger. A bit difficult to compare though, since for the one on Monday I was at home, whereas this one being in the 2nd story of a 3-story building is a little different.
Each one of these makes it easy for those still deciding whether to pack bags or not. A few more will have just had that decision made for them. Bloody more shakes going on while I write. The city continues to empty…
Christchurch increasingly going hollow
more rocks down, another building down, more damage, kids running around like its business as usual. what a nutty place.
Yeah I wasn’t too far away from Rolleston when that 5,5 happened and that was way bad enough. Can’t imagine what the day has been like today. Regards.
I’m so sorry to hear this. I know there is nothing I can do to help but I wish I could. My sister in law lives in Christchurch and she’s still determined to keep on living there but I worry for her and her family.
Well, not “massive”, but big. Probably at least 5.5. Wouldn’t expect too many buildings down. This happened about 1:01pm – Lynn the time-stamping on this site seems quite a few minutes ahead of what my computer shows.
Seemed to come in a couple of pulses, initially everything started wobbling and I was considering whether to get under the desk. It eased off a little, and then got worse, so I got under. Went on for maybe 20-25 seconds total (length seems to be most correlated with size/strength). We evacuated the building, but are now back inside.
Motorway outside my window is flowing normally, maybe a little extra traffic.
That’s two 5.5’s in the space of a week. Ouch. Just when locals thought things were settling down nicely.
Well there is another full moon arising.
Ummm. New server. I can’t remember if I put the process on for updating the clocks. I’ll check later.
From geonet:
Reference Number: 3528810
NZST: Mon, Jun 13 2011 1:00 pm
Magnitude: 5.5
Depth: 11 km
Details: 10 km east of Christchurch
I’ve been working on another website lately, which might interest you. I’m calling it Earth Monitor and it’s designed to collate lots of information on climate change, earthquakes, floods, radiation, food production, debt and recent articles concerning these things. It’s still under construction so I’ll be adding more helpful things over the next few weeks. Check it out…
Hmm Maybe there is something to the Mayan calenders ending in 2012. Radiation , Big Storms, Earth Quakes, Global Warming, Ice caps melting, National Party.
Thast was awful, there is liquidfaction all over the place, the shake itself was horrific, i really dont see how much more people in this city can take of this, its a nightmare.
An hour ago Geonet just announced there was another 6.0 quake.
Did you not see the Nation this week J.N. Plunket interviewing (?) Key.?
I was expecting Plunket to get down and kiss Key’s boots at any time.
It was nauseous I wanted go be sick . It was a National Party election advert. It will be interesting to see if Phil Goff has the same chance before long. I certainly hope that someone in the hierarchy of the Labour Party demands an equal chance for Goff,
Pink Postman – Did you realise that your same comment in embryo has cropped up here as at 3.40, 3.41, 3.48, 3.49 and emerged fully hatched at 4.06 pm, but I’m not sure as it ends with a comma,
My apologies regarding the bloop above. Im not sure what has happened.
I think some Tory is spooking me .PP
More bene-bashing by basher bennet. Another release of random data without context.
My worst flat meltdown was in a 5 bedroom flat. In the space of six months 13 seperate people were on the lease at different times, and given that many of them weren’t rocket scientists they might have taken a while to tell work & income of their change of address (but I assure the tory astro-turfers, they were definitely unemployable).
Just for the record, we’re talking about 7-18 people still being on social warfare’s database as living at a single address, and a total of 24 housholds in this situation. Maximum of 421 people out of how many hundred thousand?
And yet the opening paragraph is about benefit fraud. Typical.
Agreed, Someone should make a complaint to the press council and the HRC, discrimination on the basis of receipt of a benefit, impugning the character of them and possible making getting a fair trial impossible when so many now think being on benefit means guilty until proven otherwise. If they exchanged the term Bbenefitaries for Gays, or Gypsies, they’d be had up for discrimination of a group.
Well with 11 adults and 3 kids at the same address getting about $4300 a week that is $300 dollars a week each. Hardly benefit fraud.
Obviously Bennet could not pass NACT standards.
It’s great when John Key loses it, need more of this please.
http://www.radiolive.co.nz/PM-John-Key-on-Sky-City-Fiji-and-youth-drinking/tabid/506/articleID/20983/Default.aspx
NewstalkZB’s John Peachey slams colleague for murder of own child
Monday 13 June 2011
“Giving a teenager access to alcohol is tantamount to murder. This is a very sad tragedy. Somebody slipped up here, and slipped up badly. I don’t know the details but it’s CERTAIN that it was a FAILURE by the boy’s parents.”
At about 12.15 this morning, that foam-flecked assessment spat forth from the lips of NewstalkZB’s graveyard shift host JOHN PEACHEY. Since he did not know the details, and therefore had no idea who those parents were, Peachey obviously felt free to dish out the standard NewstalkZB treatment to them. This followed the tragic death of 17-year-old Auckland boy David Gaynor on Saturday night.
Clearly nobody on the NewstalkZB station management had bothered to give Peachey a key piece of information: one of the “failed parents” who had “murdered” his son was Brian Gaynor, a highly respected financial commentator, who regularly appears on NewstalkZB. He is, therefore, a colleague of Peachey.
NewstalkZB is part of The Radio Network (TRN). The hosts on TRN stations are instructed by management to give total support to any colleague in trouble, no matter how heinous the act that got him into that trouble in the first place. Thus, over the last few years, NewstalkZB staff have been required to publicly express support for curmudgeonly sports jock MURRAY DEAKER, following repeated public outrage over his crude, inflammatory and racist comments on air. They have on several occasions been forced to publicly support PAUL HOLMES, most notoriously following the obscenity-laced “cheeky darkie” rant in September 2003. They were even required to say how much they “respect” the much-reviled TONY VEITCH after it was revealed he had repeatedly assaulted his fiancée, with the assaults culminating in a frenzied kicking attack which paralyzed her.
So of course the TRN management would have expected all of its hosts to fall in line and express sympathy for the tragedy that befell one of their own colleagues. Instead, an unwitting John Peachey publicly condemned him for the “murder” of his own son.
That’s poor management. One wonders if such a lapse of discipline would have occurred under the reign of former CEO Bill Francis?
Am I the only one that found this very funny?
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0CnivlXR0yU/TfWmkE2fNzI/AAAAAAAAH6k/C4p-SSEzsbY/s1600/HighRise%2Bcopy.jpg
(ex Tumeke)
My apologies to Chch folk.
What I will say is that the person who came up with that knows far too much.