Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Step right up to the mike…
The second sentence means I don’t need to read any further, I know what’s coming. Actually because it’s Damien Grant I know reading any further is a waste of time (unless he’s had an epiphany – 2nd sentence show’s that’s unlikely).
So to save others time, 2nd sentence …
First, if someone wants to sell you their labour for $14 an hour and you choose to pay them more, the difference is charity.
Then blah, blah, blah…. it’s unfair that people should be paid a living wage from our rates [the end].
Did I just hear Fran O’Sullivan say John Key should go? Did she say he was being selfish? Did she talk about Gerry Brownlee’s puffed up ego? What’s happening? Has she been walking down the road to Damascus or has she been sitting under a Bo tree? Go the new Fran.
Yea I wondered that too! I think they call it ‘positioning’. Wanting to retain some sort of credibility amongst their elitist peers when the tide changes and they find themselves on the wrong side of history.
Yes I see your point David H but the tide IS turning, for now in spite of the efforts of the vainglorious yuppies of the MSM. Those whose subliminal self promoting reflex to laud their perceived top-dog constrains them to remain callow, artless, sucky, and lazy frankly.
Wait until even they can’t deny the smell and the colour of a traitorous, classist government’s dying blood. Watch them change. For most not the reflex itself. Just the beneficiary.
And should their corporate masters and a suddenly un-chummy ShonKey Python become menacing – “You better watch yourself ……” in effect – let’s hope we see an arseblower turn whistleblower.
According to this article best we not look at abortion law lest we get something even worse! – Really?? How about we challenge for a better law anyway?
ETA: Oh, and fuck Dame Linda Holloway and her “from a prochoice position it doesn’t matter”. Pregnant people have to jump through hoops, travel long distances and wait longer than necessary to have a very safe medical procedure? What could be wrong with THAT?
QoT, haven’t seen anything any thing written about the pro-life TV ads I’ve been seeing on TV2 over the past week; wondering if you’ve seen them? I caught one last Monday night sometime between 11.00pm and midnight. Young woman (actor? dunno) talking about becoming infertile after an abortion. Another one Thursday night, same timeframe, young woman saying not having an abortion stopped her from self-harming (cutting).
I’ve been trying to find out via the pro-life websites who’s behind them, but not having much luck.
Very soon, every American will be required to register their biological property
(that’s you and your children) in a national system designed to keep track of the people and that will operate
under the ancient system of pledging. By such methodology, we can compel people to submit to our agenda,
which will affect our security as a charge back for our fiat paper currency.
Every American will be forced to register or suffer not being able to work and earn a living. They will be
our chattels (property) and we will hold the security interest over them forever, by operation of the law
merchant under the scheme of secured transactions. Americans, by unknowingly or unwittingly delivering
the bills of lading (Birth Certificate) to us will be rendered bankrupt and insolvent, secured by their pledges.
They will be stripped of their rights and given a commercial value designed to make us a profit and
they will be none the wiser, for not one man in a million could ever figure our plans and, if by accident one
or two should figure it out, we have in our arsenal plausible deniability. After all, this is the only logical way
to fund government, by floating liens and debts to the registrants in the form of benefits and privileges.
This will inevitably reap us huge profits beyond our wildest expectations and leave every American a
contributor to this fraud, which we will call âSocial Insurance.â Without realizing it, every American will
unknowingly be our servant, however begrudgingly. The people will become helpless and without any hope
for their redemption and we will employ the high office (presidency) of our dummy corporation (USA) to
foment this plot against America. â Colonel Edward Mandell House
The above statement was made to Woodrow Wilson, approximately 100 years ago!
If you’re talking about the way vast swaths of the worlds peoples are living, like an open air prison, then you would be in the right direction. Is that what you meant?
Perhaps your could present a case against the text, hows about you give that crack!
Locus, if the best you have to offer is to concur with whatever J90 was on about, you need to try harder.
Perhaps offer forward some thoughts comments, a rebuttle even.
Sure. There are questions that need to be answered though.
1) Where’d the text come from? Not just where did you found it, but how do we know it is legit. when did it first surface, and where, is it verified as being what it claims to be. There are plenty of texts lying about the place claiming to be significant, but with no provenance, ie, they just surface in odd places in ways that make it impossible to tell if they are real, or fabrications.
2) What happened next? For the text to be significant, even if we believe it be legitimate, we need to know what influence it had. That influence has to be shown in law. Birth certificates are legal things, with their purpose written into law. This text makes claims about what they do, but those claims will only be real if they are reflected in the laws about birth certificates.
Those are the obvious questions that need to be answered first up.
Have at it.
For “1” I’d like to see the document referenced as to where and when it was supposedly written, and how it surfaced.
For “2” we need to see that context of the document, what effect did it have. Did Wilson reply for example, where there others involved in the debate? And we need to see what is written in the law to text if the claims made about birth certificates reflect what actually happened.
Given the context of Wilson’s presidency, it appears to be a rant against the Federal Reserve that morphs into equating social welfare with fraud and possibly slavery. As found on nutbar conspiracy sites, according to google.
I first came across this stuff in discussions about the 90’s militia movement. Ruby ridge, waco and all that jazz. “Sovereign citizens” and the like. Post-McVeigh they all got the scares and folded up their tents to an extent, I guess when someone started things off they decided that, well, someone else should carry on but they were all too busy sitting on their hands and saying it was just a hobby, and a theory, and never you mind.
The process of redemption involves a change of legal status from a human being to a man or woman. Human beings are always persons and have lower status than men or women. Humans suffer from universalism, which implies that they think that everyone is like them. For them equality under the state is the highest virtue.
The relationship between the state and humans is much like the relationship between deity and people. The state protects humans from harm and they petition the state when they think that their needs are not being met.
The realm of the state and the realm of deity are disparate. While the state may pay lip service to deity, it is fundamentally secular. The diffrerence between law and rules is that law is ordained (or consistent with what is ordained) while rules are purely secular constructs. Since the state has removed the connection to deity, the rules of the state do not constitute law. The state assumes the role of deity when it gives its legislation the name of law.
The diffrerence between law and rules is that law is ordained (or consistent with what is ordained) while rules are purely secular constructs. Since the state has removed the connection to deity, the rules of the state do not constitute law.
I was obviously asking about these ‘ordained’ laws. How do we know which are laws that are ordained, and which are rules made by the state?
The problem is that UT has a habit of ranting on what is complete bollocks – usually about the law and how it was 500 years ago and why it shouldn’t have changed despite the fact that people have been having problems with the law going back thousands of years (Debt: The first 5000 years, David Graeber).
Is that the same Graeber who was involved with occupy?
And yes, you can see that the agenda was put into action many thousands of years ago, and is entirely responsible for the current state of the world we live in!
Just because you can’t wrap your head around it Draco, does not make it bollocks!
The point is, the controllers are getting away with their plans somehow, and what are the key mechanisms which enable the agenda
1: Controling, writing and enforcing, so called law.
2: Inventing, owning and controlling, so called money/currency.
I’m quite aware of what’s happening and how our idea of ownership is at the heart of the problem. Thing is, UT usually says that we need to go back to the way things were around 500 years when things were actually worse. We have, over time, corrected some of the worse aspects but we still need to look to the problem of ownership itself.
Len Brown is good for Auckland. He was the first mayor of a united Auckland and has been re-elected with hardly a ripple of dissent or opposition….
…
We need a new box to tick on the ballot. One that says “none of the above”. That would enable voters to say, we don’t care, we just want the elected government of the day to appoint the best people to run our city and region.
Len wouldn’t even have been elected as mayor for you to opine on whether he’s good for the place, or not, Rodney, if you had your way.
To add further insult to citizens who elect people like Len, Rodney moves on to Canterbury in a ridiculous attempt to underline a point he failed to make in the first place.
That’s what’s happened with the regional council in Canterbury. It has a top civil servant, a former top judge, an ex-minister, and business people – a qualified and professional leadership team who can get on with the job.
It’s a far better team than one would ever get standing for election. It would seem to me that we should have that option in the rest of the country.
Sorry Cantabrians, you’re useless unless Rodders belatedly agrees with a choice he thinks you are better off for not having. Does he not realise that he just endorsed the mayor people voted for in Auckland in his pronouncement that mayors should be appointed by Rodders mates because the electors pick useless people!
I’m seriously struggling to refrain from shouting.
agreed Paul, but i got tempted, and though it make me choke to say it… the MSM – and their corporate shills – still influence public opinion
but just in case anyone else is tempted here’s the two-faced anti-democratic self-serving crap from Hide in the Herald:
“I would vote if I could tick a box that allowed the government of the day to appoint the best people to run the council. It would save a lot of fluffing around”
I truly hope the ABCer’s see what a ridiculous cock-up they made of putting up Shearer ahead of Cunliffe back in 2011. Still think Cunliffe shouldn’t have tried to do that double-ticket with Nanaia and that it played a big part of his loss, though.
Cunliffe looks like Lange did in 1983-4: like the prime minister-in-waiting. The National Party knows that too, hence their hysterical, doomed attempts to portray him as “extreme left”.
Concur. I listened to a speech he did during the leadership stoush with another tab open in front so I wasn’t distracted by the images, and his cadences reminded me very much of Lange.
…They will be going for him in whatever way they can to undermine him….The main thing is that he isn’t diverted or panicked by them ( like Helen Clark was by Brash’s speech)…but keeps a steady course to a great victory!!!
QOT,re: Fluoride, anti science, that’s a matter of opinion, you mean anti-statistical production from those who have a vested interest,
Christchurch which has never used fluoride in it’s water supply has remarkably ‘average teeth’ when compared with the rest of New Zealand, at times having a lower rate of caries than the average and at times having a slightly higher rate, according to ‘science’ that cannot be true,but it is,
Looking country on country Iceland with the same number of caries per head of population as New Zealand has never used fluoride in it’s water supply, according to ‘science’ Ice land should have a far higher rate of caries than New Zealand, but they don’t…
Sure, if you choose to simply say “no fluoride in this water, therefore we expect differences in dental problems which we aren’t seeing”.
However fluoride being in just the local drinking water is not the sole factor. For example products that substantially contain water (beverages) that are produced in an area that has fluoride in the water and shipped to areas that don’t, will provide a ‘halo’ effect on those areas.
Now, looking at the most basic, obvious correlation and then saying “science” this and “science” that, using quotes as if science is somehow at fault, just makes *you* look stupid.
The truth of the matter is that science, when it comes to studies of human health, is very complex and complicated, which is why we leave it to the professionals, called scientists, and not the average joe on the street.
Lolz, ‘the halo effect’ now that’s definitely scientific right, tell me what exactly is stupid about (a) comparing the second biggest city in New Zealand which does not dump fluoride in it’s water supply with other cities that do,
Oh except LOLZ for your halo effect, when did you make up that little gem, just now perhaps,
So a place like Iceland which has remarkably the same number of caries as the New Zealand average is protected by your ‘halo effect’ is it, LOLZ can you link me to the study that says this,or did you as usual pull the ‘halo’ outta ya anus…
So you suggest that Iceland imports one hell of a lot of liquids that they drink, all with fluoride that has been untainted by any effect of whatever it is that the end user drink turns out to be and any manufacturing process that was undergone to reach that end use product,
Christchurch kids all drink the same amount of what, coke perhaps, as each other, and enough imported liquids to equal the intake of fluoridated water that kids in other places using fluoride in the water do???
That’s a stretch even of my imagination, i am more inclined to believe that as far as fluoride goes Christchurch kids brush their teeth as much as any other kids anywhere else in New Zealand from whence, if fluoride is of any benefit, they get more than enough to keep their teeth on a par with the rest of the kids in New Zealand,
Which just brings me to where the biggest problem would be vis a vis tooth decay, South Auckland fluoridated, Porirua fluoridated, the missing link wouldn’t be tooth paste would it…
“So you suggest that Iceland imports one hell of a lot of liquids that they drink, all with fluoride that has been untainted by any effect of whatever it is that the end user drink turns out to be and any manufacturing process that was undergone to reach that end use product,”
Actually, I’m suggesting that the halo effect is something that is beyond the obvious “the water supply of this town has no fluoride in it and yet the dental evidence is the same”.
I’m not suggesting that the halo effect is necessarily in effect in Iceland. Merely that there are many many many compounding factors involved in a complex system like this, and your a priori “argument” isn’t worth bumpkiss.
And yes, it’s reasonable that a city that doesn’t fluoridate its water inside a country that does could still have average teeth when there are other factors involved, including fluoride content of products produced in other cities. Christchurch could, for all we know, have the best teeth in the country if it DID fluoridate it’s water. Science is not about making simplistic assumptions, it’s far more about painstaking accuracy and research, and thus, as Lanthanide points out, is best left to professionals and the really talented amateurs.
@ Lanthanide….except some scientists are bought off, or their studies are flawed and require more evidence….eg ‘science’ and scientists who supported the cigarette industry…..So it always pays to form your own opinion on things, based on the evidence as far as possible…and not just take the “experts” as Gospel…In fact it pays not to take the Gospel as gospel ( eg Inquisition ….as the pagans, heretics and witches on the ducking stools and in the bonfires found out).
PFFT, try an answer in understandable English wont you, when statistics tell you something other than what you postulate regress into ‘other factors’ that’s laughable,
What you actually allude to is that other factors in the diet have a far greater bearing on the number of caries than does Fluoride, which in reality when we compare the two countries has FA to do with the number of caries…
I’m pretty sure my comment was in very understandable English.
The fact is there are many, many things which are different between Iceland and New Zealand. Climate. Economy. Diet. Ethnic and age differences. Probably very different attitudes towards health and lifestyle factors.
The “laughable” thing is pretending that we can form any conclusion on fluoride based solely on rates of caries in two very different populations.
And please don’t try to explain “what I’m alluding to”. Because you couldn’t be more incorrect.
LOLZ, thats making me snigger, but fluroide so you say is the magic ingredient, you can hide behind such an argument here in New Zealand as well, but as far as the magic ingreedient goes its all simply wallpaper over the holes in your argument,
The fact is, the claim is, that Fluoride in the water has a marked difference in tooth decay, Iceland and Christchurch say that isnt true,
You then claim a ‘halo effect’ from imported liquids along with enthnic,age,diet,climate blah blah blah differences as if the American halo effect is not also filled with the same differences,
Face it, IF fluoride has an effect then brushing your teeth with toothpaste and not rinsing it off would be the efficacious means of delivering such fluoride, the worst teeth in New Zealand are the result of fluoride in the water…
I’ve never said “fluoride is the magic ingredient”. I also didn’t bring up the halo effect – Lanthanide did.
It’s cute how you keep arguing against things no one is saying and then making wild statements with nothing to back them up … and then think this is going to make me revisit my opinion of anti-fluoride folk.
You may want to consider that in the city of Wellington the old borough of Petone has never been fluoridated while the rest of the city is. Otherwise they get the exact same water from the exact same source as the rest of Lower Hutt. I know this for an absolute fact. (I used to write the software that controlled it all.)
This has been a long running and ‘as good as you are going to get’ controlled experiment and I’m not aware of any good data telling us that the dental health, or otherwise, of people who have lived in Petone all their lives is any different to the rest of the city. (If anyone knows otherwise I’d be most interested.)
Whatever is going on I don’t think dosing the public water supply is the dominant factor anymore. Tooth decay is all about sugar and carbohydrates … not what’s in the water.
Um … you may want to consider that there isn’t a wall built around Petone which isolates its residents from the rest of Wellington. I don’t know what kind of “controlled experiments” you run where there’s actually no serious separation of the test and control groups, but they don’t sound like any kind of controlled experiment I’d put a lot of faith into.
Exactly my thoughts, QoT. I think realistically you could only hope to go with entire regions that don’t fluoridate water, but even that is doubtful if the halo effect comes into play.
“Um ⊠you may want to consider that there isnât a wall built around Petone which isolates its residents from the rest of Wellington. I donât know what kind of âcontrolled experimentsâ you run where thereâs actually no serious separation of the test and control groups, but they donât sound like any kind of controlled experiment Iâd put a lot of faith into.”
There are lots of different ways of generating knowledge, even within science. In this case, you could look at the health dental outcomes of a certain subset of people that lived in the area ie the people that were drinking non-treated water. You compare them to the outcomes of the people who were drinking treated water.
Of course you could. But that’s not what RedLogix has asserted. “Drinks only untreated water and only products made with untreated water vs treated” is very different from “Petone vs rest of Wellington”.
No one’s said that anywhere, CV. We’ve just said that it’s difficult to draw a clear line around populations completely divorced from treated water, so it’s difficult to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of fluoridation.
But please, continue today’s trend of reading what you want to instead of what people are actually saying.
@ CV: As I replied to you in the other thread, I have *not* posited that CHCH is benefiting from the halo effect. I simply suggested it as a possible reason, to illustrate how flimsy bad12’s strawman was.
Also QoT linked to a paper from 1994 that discusses the halo effect of fluoridation. I’m sure there will be more recent studies that have more information, too.
@felix: That was certainly how I read RL’s comment:
You may want to consider that in the city of Wellington the old borough of Petone has never been fluoridated while the rest of the city is.
…
This has been a long running and âas good as you are going to getâ controlled experiment and Iâm not aware of any good data telling us that the dental health, or otherwise, of people who have lived in Petone all their lives is any different to the rest of the city.
I dunno, as leftie middle-class person I’m willing to take one for the team and buy one of those new-fandangled water purifier thingies until I know that all poor kids go to homes with usable toothbrushes and toothpaste, parents who have the time and energy to make sure these are used, and when milk is cheaper than coke.
Even then the assumption is still a complete isolation of everyone in Petone from everywhere else in wellington, on a long term basis, in order to guarantee any experimental validity.
I thought the assumption was that the people in Petone would be exposed to broadly the same environmental and dietary conditions as the rest of Wellington.
Perhaps I’ve misunderstood the purpose of the experiment.
If someone who sleeps in a house in petone spends most of their awake time in wellington or vice versa, that kind of screws the experiment. And it also ignores that there can be massive socioeconomic (and therefore dietary and even environmental differences) differences between suburbs in a city – to put it more bluntly, is petone on the “right side of the tracks”?
So one factor serves to muddy the water by bringing the populations closer together, and the other factor might move them apart in a manner independent of water fluoridation.
So who knows where the balance would lie. Doable, but increases the cost of the study by an order of magnitude.
It’s reasonable to assume that most children who drink tap water are going to get most of it from their home or their school.
No?
Again, maybe I’ve misunderstood the purpose of the experiment.
(ps the question of which “side of the tracks” is irrelevant unless only one “side of the tracks” is flouridated. I don’t think anyone has suggested that.)
I have no idea what proportion of metropolitan kids go to school in the same mains water area as their home.
Nor, more importantly, do I have any idea whether kids who live in petone but go to school in a fluoridated area are systematically different in family income, dental care, or dietary practise.
Addressing those questions is why the cost of the study would be an order of magnitude higher than just comparing school dmftt rates.
“I have no idea what proportion of metropolitan kids go to school in the same mains water area as their home.”
Does that matter? I’m assuming the long term dental records are tied to the schools.
The crucial point though is that the comparison between the two groups doesn’t rely on isolation for validity. It’s not important that some children in Petone are drinking some amount of flouridated water unless you’re analysing individual cases.
But like I said, I may have misunderstood the purpose of the experiment.
Of course it matters if you don’t know how much overlap there is between your case and control groups. It stuffs your entire experiment.
How many kids going to schools in petone drink lots of water at their homes in kilbirnie? Or vice versa? You could make the same-catchment assumption in rural schools, but metro areas linked by a decent public transport system? The moh dmftt checks are based on school checks, but the public data is grouped by dhb.
I don’t see how that “stuffs your entire experiment” at all.
Children who live in a flouridated area and go to school in a non-flouridated area (or vise-versa) will on average be getting less flouridated tap water than children who live and go to school in a flouridated area.
But of course I may have misunderstood the purpose of the experiment.
However you slice it, one group can be assumed to be consuming more flouridated tap water than the other.
Well, when one is looking at the effect of a variable that differs between two equivalent groups, it pays to actually know that the variable does in fact differ between groups that are in fact equivalent, rather than just assuming it.
edit: oh, there was an edit:
Children who live in a flouridated area and go to school in a non-flouridated area (or vise-versa) will on average be getting less flouridated tap water than children who live and go to school in a flouridated area.
Yes I edited to make it clear exactly what I’m assuming.
Hardly a controversial assumption, is it?
I mean I suppose it’s possible that the average child in a non flouridated area drinks just as much flouridated tap water as the average child in a flouridated area, but frankly that’s a bit far fetched to convince me to turn my back on the bleeding obvious.
But then I don’t have a barrow to push so I have the luxury of applying common sense.
I mean I suppose itâs possible that the average child in a non flouridated area drinks just as much flouridated tap water as the average child in a flouridated area, but frankly thatâs a bit far fetched to convince me to turn my back on the bleeding obvious.
But that’s not the problem with your assumption. The assumption you are making is that there is no cross-contamination between the groups, or at least not enough to make the results undetectable (there are secondary assumptions that the two populations are equivalent in all factors that affect dental health, but the main problem is the cross-contamination).
Where do kids drink most of their water, at school or at home? If they drink most of their water at home, then kids who live outside petone but go to school in petone will reduce any detectable difference. If they get most of their water at school, the reverse is true. If it’s 50:50, then that just means that all kids who live in a different group to where they go to school muddy the waters – the ones in petone schools raise petone caries free %, the ones in wgtn schools lower wgtn caries-free%. You need to be able to estimate the effect of any cross-contamination.
This is basic shit, one of the first questions a reviewer or conference attendee would ask. You can’t just assume that your case and control groups don’t have cross-contamination – especially when a bunch of them share the same or adjacent school districts.
Don’t see why you can’t just classify different sets of kids when the interviews get done. Kids who live and go to school in an area with untreated water, kids who live and go to school in an area with treated water, kids who who live in an untreated area but go to school in a treated area, etc. You can even just exclude the kids in the last group if it’s a problem.
Weka, yes, that’s why it’s not a case of just comparing stats as felix wants. A few hundred dollars and spare time becomes interviews and life histories and ethics approval across two school districts, just to see if two schools have a rate that’s different from the district norm.
Of course it comes down to cases – every filling is in a single child. But even from a population perspective, you’re talking about a case:control study. And even from a population perspective, you still need to demonstrate that you really have separated two populations, rather than just assuming it.
For example, how many intermediate or secondary schools are there in Petone, to get the year8 count? Do they serve more or fewer students than the two primary schools I’ve found? If fewer, do the rich ones with better teeth go to school outside of petone more often than poorer kids, or is it the other way around?
Option A: buy a spreadsheet with the data and “assume” that there is no difference, and whack out a quick article in your spare time. Cheap, but utter bullshit.
Option B: get ethical approval and parental and school consent to pay multiple research assistants to interview thousands of kids, cross reference them with dental checks, buy a suite of computers and a few analysts to crunch the data, rent office space to put them in, and hire a manager to sort out all the HR stuff. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, but a solid article at the end of it.
Option C: anywhere on the front where cost is reduced at the expense of validity.
Option D: piggy back on an already running longitudinal stud, if one’s running across wellington..
I guess you either missed the part where I said “assume”, or you agree that the two groups can easily be compared if my assumptions turn out to be accurate.
you agree that the two groups can easily be compared if my assumptions turn out to be accurate.
Of course.
But without testing those assumptions, the study rests entirely on something that might be utter crap. And if we do test those assumptions, then we are no longer assuming. We have demonstrated it.
So we can assume all you want, but with a population that small failure to test that assumption is akin to just throwing the entire study in the bin.
Lanth, that’s simply not true. There is always a degree of uncertainty in real-world testing. That’s why it’s done on as large a scale as possible rather than comparing the life histories of individual households.
McFlock I think by year 8 the children of Petone are all bussed off to Strawman Intermediate. It’s down at at the end of Red Herring Drive.
Not at all. The 5yo check might have nothing to do with the school, especially if the parents commute and put the kids into daycare near their fluoridated workplace. And if the vast majority then go to school in the Hutt, then basically your confidence interval would be a mile wide because of the small numbers.
So for one age you have no idea which population is truly which, and for the other age group you’re not even sure that there’s a test population to count. And you still want to assume that any numbers you can drag out signify anything.
You want the largest scale possible? Compare national “fluoridated vs nonfluoridated” data. A couple of thousand kids (if that) in petone will not give you the accuracy you need, and will probably include major socioeconomic differences. Which you’d need to control for, which you can only do if you know what they are, which you can often get by… interviewing households, amongst other methods.
Yes, because dep10 accounts for every possible socioeconomic difference between school kids. đ
Fuck it. School dental checks:
Hutt 5yolds: total 1420, non-fluoridated 72
Capcoast 5yo: tot2649 NF 16
Hutt yr8: tot 1538 NF: 50
capcoast: tot:2563 NF 51
Even if all the NF were petone, and 3/4 comparisons show the caries free % much higher in fluoridated areas than non-fluoridated, the numbers are so small a 0.8 rate ratio has a 95% interval from 0.63-1.01, and a 0.85 ratio goes from 0.67-1.09.
By comparison, the same crunch with the total NZ data yr8 (44k kids) gives a RR of 0.94 with a 95% spread of 0.92-0.96.
That’s the impulse, but the numbers are just too small. I mean, it might improve by changing the CI methodology, but it’s beginning to over-play the data.
Basically, that’s where the pophealth crowd steps back and the qual and cohort folk walk in, and they’re the ones who isolate specific confounding variables and really get in-depth with lifestyles and other interventions.
Use the search function for this site, I dumped a hell of a lot of science on fluoridation earlier this year, mainly on risk factors. Short version – the concentrations used in water treatment are perfectly safe, it’s only once you hit 0.5ppm that small negative effects are detected.
Search terms: “flouridation NickS”
Also – fluoridation effects are lessened when poverty is low and people have high levels of education about dental hygiene and easy access to fluoridated toothpaste. Like say Iceland.
Bulls**t, you are the one who implied that Icelandic children have better levels of education about dental hygiene and better access to fluoridated toothpaste than New Zealand kids,
Even if such were the case it proves nothing about fluoride in the water, except to say that it’s pretty much useless seeing as they don’t put the stuff in their water, then again Icelandic kids may live in the ‘halo world’ where they drink only imported liquids that have been made with the addition of fluoridated water…
Your argument supports the use of toothpaste but is in effect saying that fluoride in drinking water has no effectâŠ
Until you can actually work out why the above is wrong, I wont be bothering with you.
And it’s _very_ obvious. So obvious even I could grasp it on no sleep and no caffeine :3
Yet you’ve gone off on a tangent on Iceland, a tangent that Lanth, QoT and McFlock hath already dealt with. It would be infuriating, if I hadn’t seen a thousands times before with creationists, climate change denialists etc. Now? It’s just amusing.
That’s frigging gut bustingly funny, the fact that Iceland which has never fluoridated its water is dealt with by those you name by claiming without a shred of evidence differences in diet blah blah blah,
Or even funnier ‘the halo effect’ where supposedly Iceland must import and feed it’s kids one hell of a load of coke or something,
The simple fact that you and others claim that Iceland with the exact same %of caries as this country achieves that not by water fluoridation but by some other magical means including diet blah blah blah is an admission on all your parts that fluoridation has sweet FA to do with dental outcomes…
bad12, you’re clearly not engaging with what people are actually saying. Which is disappointing.
There comes a time when everyone should admit that there are other people that know more about a particular topic than themselves. Which is what you should be doing now.
It’s also obvious he hasn’t bothered digging up the stuff I suggested, despite the fact I’d linked to a variety of papers not locked behind paywalls, as otherwise he’d have found the review article on fluoridation efficacy and be using it đ
Lolz, funnier still, if all sorts of other factors except fluoridation in the drinking water lead Icelandic children to have teeth just as good or bad as New Zealand kids have with fluoride in the drinking water, then it’s obvious to most except you of course, that ‘the all sorts of other factors’ must be more important to the outcome than fluoride is,
Lolz, i just luuuurve the reeking of ego that your little statement imparts, your we know more than you so shut up is an excellent tool of debate used by Nazi’s everywhere,
i have cited but two places, Iceland and Christchurch, Red Logix cites another, there are of course a zillion other’s even befor i link you to science which debunks any that you or other’s have offered up in support of fluoride,
The worst kids teeth in New Zealand???Porirua and South Auckland, both have fluoride in the water, if ‘other’ factors are at work there then that simply tells us how ineffective fluoride is in the drinking water,
Kids in Christchurch, just as good teeth as the rest of the country, No fluoride in the drinking water, you lot say Christchurch kids must drink lots of ‘imported water’ from other places with fluoride in the water,
Yeah right, what is it they are importing and drinking which has lots of fluoridated water in the mix, coca cola???vodka???…
Lolz, yes honestly the sense of loss is palpable, oh by the way kids in Christchurch with better teeth than those in Porirua and South Auckland, no fluoride for the former but in the water for the latter,
Hence having fluoride in the drinking water doesn’t produce better results for kids teeth, carry on with dispensing the man’s propaganda for them tho wont you…
[facepalm]
ever consider that Porirua kids teeth might be even worse without fluoridation, b12?
Dental health might have a pretty strong relationship with income, for example.
Nick I tried to explain it to someone this way recently – water is fluoridated at .7mg/litre while LD50 of fluoride is 32-64mg/kg of body weight (let’s be conservative and say 32) -so to get a dose that high you’d have to drink 45 litres of fluoridated town water for every kg of your body weight
Water is considered one of the least toxic of chemicals, it has a :LD50 of 90g/kg of body – you are going to die of water poisoning long long before you die from drinking fluoridated tap water
You may be well meaning, but using an LD50 is mad and irrelevant.
water is fluoridated at .7mg/litre while LD50 of fluoride is 32-64mg/kg of body weight (letâs be conservative and say 32)
Fluoride is clearly and measurably neurotoxic at 1/10 or 1/20 or less of this level, and in human children is associated with significant neurodevelopmental delays and reduced intelligence.
It’s also a scientific fact that people drown in water and it’s piped into people’s homes.
Really CV, I thought you were better than this.
Next you’re going to be saying “Barrack Hussein Obama” like Morrissey did that one time and then defend it by saying you’re “just using his full name”.
Next youâre going to be saying âBarrack Hussein Obamaâ like Morrissey did that one time and then defend it by saying youâre âjust using his full nameâ.
Indeed I did, and that is exactly the case. Using the full name of that war criminal, serial liar and appallingly bad actor has no more significance than saying “Richard Milhous Nixon” or “Franklin Delano Roosevelt”.
If you want to go on another quixotic adventure and show I was pursuing some racist agenda, then go right ahead. I have neither written nor implied anything even remotely racist on this or any other forum.
Funny Morrissey, because you already had Obama in your little list and didn’t have his middle name for those entries, or anyone else already on the list. Subsequently when that item was archived to the list, you removed his middle name. All other new entrants on the list have not had their middle name.
So either it was a purely “innocent” brainfart on your part to put his middle name in, which you’ve never done before or since for anyone else, or you did it deliberately for some purpose.
I’m not implying you were doing it on a racist agenda, just that the evidence suggests you did it for some reason.
“Air is dangerously thin at 3 to 6 times the height of mt cook (scientific fact). You might decide it’s not relevant to this meeting of Mountain Safety NZ, but the fact still stands…”
Still waiting for any evidence of harm to nz kids.
Iâm not implying you were doing it on a racist agenda, just that the evidence suggests you did it for some reason.
I think you’ve read much too much into it, my friend. My mentioning of Obama’s middle name sprang from no agenda, as far as I am aware, but feel free to continue psychoanalyzing me. Although I am sure you have noticed that Obama shares many of Saddam Hussein’s less savoury traits.
Re: LD50 – well you have to choose something, I chose the same measure for the two things – even if it’s 1/20th the value you still need to drink more than twice your body weight in water – balloon up to 3 times your size – to get a dose that will harm you, and that’s going to be more than 20 times the LD50 for plain water itself (which is ~1/10 of your body mass)
And Churchill lived to a ripe old age despite heavy smoking, heavy drinking, and obesity.
But that doesn’t mean those habits would make you live longer.
As for Iceland:
What’re the background fluoride levels in the water supply?
What’s their child & adult provision of dental care like?
what’s their per capita consumption of high fructose corn syrup?
Do they supplement anything else with fluoride, such as salt or flour, or are there higher levels elsewhere?
Whats the difference between Porirua kids and South Auckland kids when compared to the rest of fluoridated New Zealand kids, seeing as those two areas have the worst caries rates,
Can’t be the fluoride either way can it as they all get it in the water…
In Scandanavia they use Xylitol quite a lot …it is a natural sugar substitute and supposed to remineralise teeth and get rid of bad bacteria causing teeth decay decay and other infections eg ear
“Looking country on country Iceland with the same number of caries per head of population as New Zealand has never used fluoride in itâs water supply”
Yes but because of it’s volcanic history there is a vast natural occurrence of fluoride already present in the ground water so you aren’t comparing like with like.
A nice Sunday doco: The four horsemen. The economic collapse of the US empire and hence the entire Anglo Saxon five-eye system Jon Key is traveling around the world to help keep together for his bankster puppet masters made simple so that even the average Kiwi can understand it so share with your colleagues and family.
Yes its been quite the global(ist) tour for little johnny lately!
Meeting with one of the heads of the cartel, staying on-site and so forth – If I remember rightly it was NZ who took the lead role in the so called, laws of succession changes, surprise surprise!
Speaking at the UN, selected to speak out against the security council veto and how they have failed the people of Syria!
Then we get little johnny stepping in for barry, and carrying the responsibility of the latest round of secret negotiations , not the first time he has been front and center to spin the TPP fraud.
Just what is little johnny being set up for, I think we can clearly see what his duties are here in NZ, but on the international stage, what’s going on…
Most likely it is tied to the fraud being carried out in the name of the , “realm”
He is that nice “colonial clot” selling the TPP and bullying the 54 states of the common wealth into accepting the queen and her offspring to become their heads of state forever. The smiling Assassin’s MO from when he was a banker. He will be rewarded handsomely! A knighthood, a couple of seriously lucrative seats on some Financial Military Industrial complex boards raking it in!
Wow. How to lose comrades and alienate friends. Nice going Martyn, really getting everyone on side there with hostility and something verging on pathological hate.
Although the correct order should have been “how to lose friends and alienate comrades”.
It’s a bit of shame he’s got such a bee in his bonnet because the work of the TDB has been otherwise good, with knowledgeable authors and live streaming of public meetings. Unfortunately he’s not helping himself and furthering the stereotype of the “Aucklander living in a bubble” (I did meet these types in my years of living in Akld, I believe they do exist, as well as the cool people) by today only publishing articles on the local body elections from an Auckland centric view, no word on the other regions, not even Liane Dalziel winning CHCH. Compare that with the the nationwide comment on TS on the subject, including Karols article on the Green Sweep.
Oh well, it’s his blog and he can write what he likes. I just wonder if on top of his misdirected anger about Wellington he’s really sour about the fact that there was such a poor turnout at the Wellington TICS Bill meeting TDB hosted alongside the anti GCSB coalition.. TDB is possibly a bit out of pocket due to the cost of the venue and maybe the cost wasn’t met due to the lack of attendee’s when they had the whip round afterwards.He’d be right to be disappointed with the turnout though, I was surprised.
“Oh well, itâs his blog and he can write what he likes”
But I thought it was opened to unite the best of the ‘left’ leaning authors, against the ‘right’ Blogs. Not to be Martyns personal soapbox.
Launched on Friday 1 March, 2013, the âTheDailyBlog.co.nzâ unites over 42 of the countryâs leading left-wing commentators and progressive opinion shapers to provide the other side of the story on todayâs news, media and political agendas.
Yes, Rose, extremely disappointing in the current climate to see the Left leap into unprovoked infighting. Will we never learn? And right on cue, Bruiser Borrows leads with another prepared Benny-bash Right hook…..funny, innit, how the answer to billions in tax fraud is a tax cut and even the odd knighthood, but fail once to donate the odd lawnmowing cash to Key and you’re marked for life….. sickening. Focus that nausea, brothers and sisters, where it belongs.
My comments do not seem to have appeared on that post. Basically, under a different pseudonym, I suggested Bomber learn that class does still have a place in politics. So far he’s managed to include birth dates and addresses, which covers A and B. Time for C. I also suggested he is so good at own goals that he should get himself selected for the Socceroos and give the All Whites a chance. I am really beginning to wonder if he is any more than an event manager.
“My comments do not seem to have appeared on that post”.
Could be some of that ol’ fashioned TDB moderating going on……….Although, mine got through within 30 mins this time. I was pleasantly surprised. Own goals? Indeed.
Roguey and ak: acknowledged (especially the bit about tax fraud)
What I never mentioned to Martyn was that I have a duck named Jaffa. She is named for her colourings which resemble the well known lollie, rather than the unkind term for an Aucklander. It’s not a term I’d use for my friends and family I left behind in that city. Shame he can’t see that his perception is somewhat unjustified, somewhat paranoid, and that his view doesn’t exactly cement solidarity.
Quite – it is also interesting to note, from my own personal experience, that many of my Wellingtonian friends move (or want to move) to Auckland. I myself am considering such a move. The Wellington economy is tanking and Auckland never looked so bright and promising to us in the capital.
Very rarely will critical comments be allowed through – particularly from those Bombers has already identified as his ‘enemies’ (and I am not just talking about myself – I know several others who get caught up in his..intriguing moderation policy. People further to left than me).
I know, I know, it is technically his blog – his rules however The Standard, as much as I malign some of it’s editors, writers and positions, has a very adult approach to moderation in most cases. Bomber does the left a disservice by being so stridently uncompromising and rude to anyone who might question his POV.
I learnt the hard way by questioning the view that political polls conducted via land lines are biased in that they inadvertently target wealthier households. Prior to that, I thought it would have been clear that I am “on the same side” but really, what does that mean anyway. Observation, not question mark.
If you do fly the coup to Akld TC, pack plenty of cash for accommodation, whether it be for rental or purchase. Apart from that, there is alot of interest to be found in Akld. Good luck with your decisions.
Ugly Truth Science has been the nemisis of fundamentalist reilion for at least 1 000 years the more people that get a half decent education the less they believe in religion.
You are the christian equivalent of the Taliban .
Insecure people like yourself need to push regessive ideas onto others to justify your outdated naive guilt trip.
That’s your ugly truth for you.
Aree you an exclusive bretheren .
I thought of getting some information about election in Taranaki. I looked at one info site and found 1 woman in 15 ranked councillors. Looked to see her photo but none supplied.
Looked up Andrew Judd and it certainly pays to sort NZ pages. There are a number of Andrew Judds around the English speaking world. Found that he is an optician. Against questions placed at the site like what about library policy etc. his answer was look at other candidate answers.
So the person looking on line can’t bring together informative material easily to so as to build an idea of his character. Perhaps you have to have to go and visit his offices and look into his eyes while he is looking at yours? He got 10,000 approx more votes than Duynhoven so they must know something about him in Naki. He has been on other councils.
Thanks joe 90 – noticed this bit about Naki and Oz farms.
An interesting point about Taranaki and investments for the Council that return it about $20m in returns from about $200m+ invested. These include $152m in Tasmanian dairy farms.
The squabble comes one day after a report that Chinese investors were looking at buying into the Van Diemen’s Land Company farms and possibly taking them off the council’s hands. In the Taranaki Daily News yesterday, finance journalist Tim Hunter also questioned the wisdom of the council investment.
The farms and stock have a book value of $152m and controversially make up a majority of the council’s perpetual investment fund which is run by the independent Taranaki Investment Management Ltd, TIML.
It is interesting when anybody has any money, they immediately think of investing it outside NZ. !Generalisation! But hey we haven’t got any money in NZ for investment is the pop song that plays on rotation.
Nice Move. “You’ll find a God in every cloister…not much between despair and ecstatsy. All Change! don’t you know that when you Play at this level there’s no ordinary venue. It’s Iceland, or the Phillipines, or…
I had to watch it twice but I’m pretty sure that, in response to the discussion around superannuation on Q&A today Fran O’Sullivan said that John Key ‘should go’. Basically she made the point that a government’s superannuation policy should amount to more that just the PM’s pride and vanity (pretty galling I know to those of us here at The Standard who’ve been saying exactly that for ages). Call me an optimist but is there a sense that those in the so-called ‘business/economy lobby’ can see a change in the wind and are starting to gravitate towards the Cunliffe/Parker team?
Collins was pretty terrible on Q&A today (even Fran said she failed to make her case). She only looked remotely credible because Corin Dann is a fucking hopeless interviewer.
Nope. Scott’s correct. At about 1min 56secs, FO’S says “He [Key] should go.” Interesting discussion. I tend to agree more with Annette Sykes though, rather than raising the retirement age beven further beyond when most Maori die.
Agreed t=with the later point in the discussion about bringing parties back into local politics so people have an idea of what candidates stand for.
And…. seriously! Susan Wood, political journalist, fucked up filling out her vote for the health board – I do agree the muddled mix of voting styles will confuse many, but surely not someone who is meant to be right up to date on political processes?
I was impressed with Annette Sykes today with one caveat. I think that while she made excellent points about maori life expectancy with regard to the pension, she lost an opportunity to link super with the living wage by pointing out how impossible it is for young NZers (maori, pacifica mostly but everybody really) on minimum wage (or lower in the case of the youth wage) to set aside any money for their retirement.
If they are gravitating to Labour because they think Cunliffe and Parker are willing to raise the super age (while National is not), then I’m not sure that “optimism” is the right word.
When the European Commission asked Britain for proof that sly continentals were sneaking into our hospital beds, Whitehall replied that its demand for hard facts was an affront. “We consider that these questions place too much emphasis on quantitative evidence,” it huffed.
Proof, if you still needed it, that conservatives ignore facts at will.
I am not making this up.First few lines of the Dail Mail write up:Boris Johnson's exasperated media minder swore on live TV today as the PM refused to speak to Good Morning Britain before trotting into a fridge as he started an early milkround in Yorkshire. Piers Morgan was visibly ...
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We are very pleased to publish this submission is from Lucinda Stoan. She is a social justice activist, mother, and educator, based in Washington State in the US. This detailed and comprehensive source-linked overview of trans issues and what is at stake will be useful for many people, especially in ...
New Zealand's Underarm Banker: It bears recalling that the “independence” of the Reserve Bank Governor was for decades held up by neoliberal capitalists as the most compelling justification for passing the Reserve Bank Act. Interesting, is it not, how the ruling class’s support for the Bank’s independence lasted no longer than ...
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Some people seem to want to close down any critical discussion of the current research into the relationship between water fluoride and child IQ. They appear to argue that claims made by researchers should not be open to critical review and that the claims be accepted without proper consideration ...
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Image credit:The beginner’s guide to blogging I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is ...
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Within quick succession, Countdown maths wizard and twitterer Rachel Riley, alleged comedian David Baddiel and prominent lawyer Andrew Julius have all expressed very similar opinions / ideas:
These #3billboards are going round London today, organised by ex-Labour people, horrified by what their party has become. Their principles haven’t changed, they’re ...
So, there have been a bunch of bad polls out for Labour, and even the Leftie's friend, Survation, have recently given the Conservatives a rip-snorting 11% lead. You Gov's much vaunted MRP poll - which pretty much nailed the result in 2015 - is currently predicting a comfortable majority for ...
The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to declare a climate emergency:The European parliament has declared a global “climate and environmental emergency” as it urged all EU countries to commit to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The vote came as scientists warned that the world may have already crossed ...
Pure Fear: Worse than Heroin, this drug’s addictive power was terrifying. People under its influence didn’t drift off to Elysium. Nor did it persuade inadequate individuals that they could conquer the world. No, this drug – pure crystal methamphetamine, “P” for short – unlocked the gates of Hell itself. It ...
As the rate of measles infection, and of deaths, continues to climb in Samoa, antivaccination activists infectious disease proponents seem intent on doubling down on their claims about vaccination. (Check pretty much any news-media FB post about measles & you’ll see exactly what I mean.) Unfortunately, some of them have ...
Samoa are experiencing a devastating measles epidemic. It is possible that 2-3% of the population will ultimately be infected by the time it is over. Hopefully the mass immunisation campaign currently under way can mitigate some of this, for many it is too late. The first question many people ask ...
Meghan Murphy is a Canadian writer and journalist She runs the Feminist Current website which she founded in 2012. She was a keynote speaker for the Feminism2020 conference in Wellington this month. When Massey University cancelled the original venue booking Feminism2020 was hosted in Parliament by MP David Seymour. Meghan ...
Text and photos by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh Colombia has lived through one week of protests against the economic measures taken by president Duque. What looked like a protest that would fizzle out after its first day on November 21st is still going strong. Part of the reason for the continuance ...
Around a million billion pass through you each second, almost all originating from our sun, but few of them are likely to interact with you enroute. I was reading in a physics magazine earlier in the week about the nature of neutrinos. These are extremely numerous elementary particles, but only ...
By Pallab GhoshThere’s value in covering new research advances, even when the underlying science is unsettled. But there are also risks.The recent announcement that scientists discovered water on the planet K2-18b, 110 light years away, prompted a media swoon. News stories, including a piece written by me, billed ...
I wrote this review a couple of years ago when I was still in the process of getting my head around the politics of transgenderism, and specifically the claim that intersex conditions lend support to the notion that sex is ‘socially constructed’. Since writing this review I have come across ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzHow much does our use of air travel contribute to the ...
Minor planet/asteroid (2309) Mr. Spock is named not for the character in Star Trek, but for a cat that was itself imperturbable, logical, intelligent and had pointed ears. In a preceding blog post I introduced one of my favourite asteroids, (2472) Bradman, and also mentioned (6581) Sobers amongst a few ...
Today the death toll from measles in Samoa rose to 32. All but four of the dead were less than 5 years old. Absolutely terrible, heartbreaking, news. That statistic alone should be enough to give the lie to the common claim by antivaccination activists plague enthusiasts that “measles is a ...
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh It is late here in Bogotá, almost 11.30pm on Monday the 25th of November as I write this. The day began full of hope with yet more massive marches throughout the country, a mix of the International Day of Non-Violence Against Women and the National Strike. ...
New Zealand First MP Darroch Ball’s bill introducing a six-month minimum sentence for assaults on first responders has passed its first reading in Parliament. Mr Ball said the new offence of "injuring a first responder or prison officer with intent" would target people who attacked paramedics, police, firefighters, and corrections ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters gave his final interview for 2019 on The Country to tell farmers they have never had it better under the current coalition Government. “Here you've got these record returns [for farmers]. These returns would be nothing like a record if the currency under the ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters said that New Zealand's Cook Islands High Commissioner, Tessa Temata, has died over the weekend. Ms Temata, 52, died in Palmerston North and had returned to New Zealand for medical treatment. She was the first New Zealand High Commissioner to the Cook Islands of Cook Island ...
A new defence report has mapped out how New Zealand's soldiers will navigate rising seas, and a year after the Defence Force announced its need to prepare for climate change. In the “Responding to the Climate Crisis” report, the Force restates its operational plan and sets goals to tackle climate ...
Mark Patterson, Spokesperson for Primary Industries New Zealand First spokesperson for Primary Industries, Mark Patterson, has called for awareness to be raised and more stringent biosecurity checks to be put in place for African Swine Fever (ASF), a widespread virus that is uncontrolled in most of Asia and a serious ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Human Rights A critical step has been taken to end gender based violence against women and girls in Parliament this evening. New Zealand First Spokesperson for Human Rights Jenny Marcroft MP has welcomed the passing of the first reading of the Crimes (Definition of Female ...
New Zealand First MP Shane Jones says it's time to recognise market forces haven't led to the expected reduction in Māori smoking rates and try a new approach. The Party had recently invoked the agree to disagree clause in their Coalition Agreement with the Labour Party, and will not support ...
Live from the Whanganui Opera House, on the final day of the 2019 Labour Party Conference, Jacinda Ardern announced the largest investment in school property in 25 years. ...
The Coalition Government will be banning foreign donations to political parties and candidates, ahead of next year’s general elections. Legislation will be introduced to Parliament and passed under urgency – emphasising the need for such restrictions to safeguard our democracy. The bill introduces a new requirement that party secretaries and ...
Associate Transport Minister Shane Jones opened Taipā's $19 million bridge recently, improving transport infrastructure in the Northland region. The two-lane bridge is 107m long with a 2.5m-wide shared walking and cycling path, and will reduce the congestion that the old one-lane bridge was notorious for. The project had also included ...
The Overseas Investment Office have rejected the application of Mercury Agriculture LP, which is 92 per cent controlled by Canadian interests, to purchase more than 2000 hectares of South Canterbury and Otago land. Mercury wanted to buy 2000ha at Rangitata, 1494ha near Ashburton, 816ha near Cromwell and 212ha near Temuka. ...
This weekend was Labour's 103rd Party Conference! We welcomed over 500 of our Labour whānau in red to Whanganui, where we reflected on the last two years in Government, and looked ahead to 2020 and beyond. We know the long-term challenges facing New Zealand won't be tackled overnight, but we're making ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced that the Provincial Growth Fund will invest $9.6 million to seal the final unsealed section of State Highway 43 from Stratford to Taumarunui. The Minister said sealing the 12-kilometre gravel section of the highway – also called the “Forgotten World Highway” - through ...
Former Finance Minister and former chair of the Tax Working Group, Sir Michael Cullen, has voiced his support for New Zealand First’s decision to oppose the planned increase in tobacco excise tax. In an interview with The Weekend Collective, he said that increasing the price was no longer effective in ...
Māori are natural storytellers. On the marae we use stories to tell our history, to teach the next generation life lessons and to let people know, in our most creative of ways, who we are and where we have come from. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First has invoked the ‘Agree to Disagree’ provisions of the Coalition Agreement because it cannot support the announced 11.46 percent increase in the tobacco excise from 1 January 2020. “Studies show that the automatic tobacco excise increases are having less effect ...
Taupō-based company Geo40 has made a breakthrough in extracting near battery-grade lithium from geothermal fluid which its says could be a gamechanger. Its chief executive John Worth said the earth mineral was highly prized, with battery-grade lithium selling for US$10,000 (NZ$15,600) a tonne. Geo40 was founded in 2010 to find ...
Crown research institute AgResearch Ltd, as part of its Future Footprint plan, had intended to relocate top scientists and support staff — particularly those focused on sheep genetics and genomics — from Invermay to Lincoln. However, those plans seem to have been shelved at the request of the Coalition Government. ...
Ten engineering firms in Southland are receiving a total of $2.13 million in Provincial Growth Fund funding to lift productivity and create new jobs. Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced in Invercargill that the 10 engineering and manufacturing firms would receive funding to assist them with buying equipment that ...
The number of new residents to New Zealand is the lowest it has been in nearly two decades and it has earned the ire of the immigration industry. The industry alleges that 'Trump-style extreme vetting' is being put in place aimed at keeping a lid on immigration numbers. June Ranson, ...
The Royal New Zealand Air Force is one step closer to modernising its fleet after the United States State Department recently approved the sale of five new C-130J Hercules aircraft to New Zealand. Arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin, in Fort Worth, Texas, will provide the aircraft, but as a "foreign military ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones wants to create a log barging facility at Hicks Bay and turn the area into a Special Economic Zone. The move would be part of protecting New Zealand's forests from being depleted by India and China, he said. It follows his announcement last week to strengthen ...
New Zealand First supports the changes recommended by the Winter Grazing Taskforce to improve animal welfare outcomes through the winter months, and the establishment of a pan-sector action group to implement them. New Zealand First Primary Industries Spokesperson Mark Patterson says the report highlights areas of concern about the animal ...
Former prime ministers Helen Clark and Sir John Key, formerly from the Labour and National parties respectively, have joined forces in support of New Zealand First’s plan to relocate Auckland's port to Whangārei. While Ms Clark and Sir John spent their political careers on opposite sides of the political divide, ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is in Japan for the Foreign Ministers' meeting of the G20 grouping of countries as one of nine "invited" countries. He has used the opportunity to cast a spotlight on the plight of Pacific countries, calling out countries which still offered subsidies or Government assistance to ...
It's been a great week of progress: we've celebrated Children's Day, we've made communities safer with 1800 new police, and we've seen almost 90% of eligible schools take up Government funding to scrap school donations - taking pressure off the families of more than 416,000 students. ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister of Forestry The Government will further strengthen New Zealand’s wood processing sector as part of our focus on ‘value over volume’ in our forestry industry, Forestry Minister Shane Jones says. Minister Jones will today meet with forestry representatives in Northland to signal new measures to help the ...
New Zealand firms expanding beyond the start-up phase are set for more support after today’s passage of the Venture Capital Fund Bill, Associate Finance Minister David Parker said. The Bill, which establishes a $300 million Venture Capital Fund, puts in place a key initiative of the Wellbeing Budget’s economic package. ...
E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā iwi, e ngā rau rangatira mā. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. Señora Presidenta, Excellencies, Delegates. International action A common thread that runs through the Paris Agreement is the commitment we have made to each other to do what we can to ...
Budget 2020 will continue the Coalition Government’s focus on tackling the long-term challenges facing New Zealand while also investing to future-proof the economy. When the Government took office in 2017 it was left with crumbling infrastructure, severe underinvestment in public services, degraded rivers and lakes, a housing crisis and rising ...
The Government is lifting capital investment to the highest level in more than 20 years as it takes the next step to future-proof New Zealand. Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced $12 billion of new investment, with $8 billion for specific capital projects and $4 billion to be added to ...
The Government is forecast to run $12 billion worth of surpluses across the four years to 2023/24 as the economy continues to grow. The surpluses will help fund day-to-day capital requirements each year. These include fixing leaky hospitals, building new classrooms to cover population growth and take pressure off class ...
The Minister responsible for the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011 (te Takutai Moana Act 2011), Andrew Little has welcomed the launch of an online geospatial tool that provides data-rich, dynamic coastline maps that will significantly boost research and evidence-gathering under the Act. Te Kete Kōrero a Te ...
The Chief Victims Advisor to Government Dr Kim McGregor, QSO, has been reappointed in her role for a further two years. Dr McGregor has held the role since it was established in November 2015. She provides independent advice to government on how to improve the criminal justice system for victims. ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Civil Defence Minister Peeni Henare have today announced the deployment of a network of DART (Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami) buoys. “New Zealand and the Pacific region are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters. It is vital we have adequate warning systems in place,” ...
DART Buoys Announcement Aotea Wharf, 9.30am 11 December 2019 Acknowledgements Acknowledgements to Minister for Civil Defence Hon Peeni Henare also here today. White Island It is with regret that this event shadows the tragic natural disaster two days ago. The volcanic eruptions on White Island have claimed 5 lives, ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has welcomed the first reading of the Racing Industry Bill in parliament today. This is the second of two Bills that have been introduced this year to revitalise New Zealand’s racing industry. “Our domestic racing industry has been in serious decline. The Government is committed to ...
Minister for Disability Issues, Carmel Sepuloni, is pleased to announce that $291,321 is to be awarded to national and local community initiatives to maintain and promote the use of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). “New Zealand is one of the few countries in the world where Sign Language is an ...
Minister for Veterans Ron Mark has announced today the Coalition Government’s initial response to work completed by the independent statutory body, the Veterans’ Advisory Board. “When Professor Ron Paterson completed his review of the Veterans’ Support Act in 2018, he made a number of recommendations, including one which I referred ...
The Government will fund the bulk of the cost of a rural water supply for the Ohakea community affected by PFAS contamination, Environment Minister David Parker announced today at a meeting of local residents. This new water scheme will provide a reliable and clean source of drinking water to the ...
I have had the opportunity to be briefed on the details of the volcanic eruption of Whakaari/White Island, off the coast of Whakatane in the Bay of Plenty. The eruption happened at 2.11pm today. It continues to be an evolving situation. We know that there were a number of tourists ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister of Civil Defence Peeni Henare have today confirmed initial Government support of $100,000 for communities affected by the severe weather that swept across the South Island and lower North Island over the weekend. The contribution will be made to Mayoral relief funds across the ...
New Zealand's High Commissioner to the Cook Islands, Tessa Temata, died in Palmerston North over the weekend, Foreign Minister Winston Peters said today. Ms Temata, 52, had recently returned to New Zealand for medical treatment. "On behalf of the Government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, we extend ...
Transport Minister Phil Twyford today announced construction is underway on Wellington commuter rail upgrades which will mean more frequent services and fewer breakdowns. The upgrades include converting the Trentham to Upper Hutt single track section to a double track, with a new signalling system, upgraded stations and level crossings, and ...
Minister of Defence Ron Mark and Minister for Climate Change James Shaw have announced the release of a Defence Climate Change Implementation Work Plan, titled Responding to the Climate Crisis: An Implementation Plan. The plan sets out a series of recommendations based on the 2018 New Zealand Defence Assessment, The ...
A medium-scale adverse event has been declared for the South Canterbury district, which will see up to $50,000 in funding made available to support farming communities which have been significantly affected by recent heavy rain and flooding in the area, says Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor. “Two weeks of solid rain ...
Thank you Professor Juliet Gerrard and your team for the comprehensive and extremely helpful report and recommendations. Thank you too to all the stakeholders and interested parties who have contributed ideas and thinking to it. “Making best practice, standard practice” is a great framework for change and the action plan ...
The Government will phase out more single-use plastics following the success of its single-use plastic bag ban earlier this year and the release today of a pivotal report for dealing with waste. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has welcomed the Rethinking Plastics in Aotearoa New Zealandreport, released by her Chief Science Advisor ...
International education continues to thrive as the Government focuses on quality over quantity, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said. The tuition revenue from international education increased to $1.16 billion last year with the average tuition fee per student increasing by $960. The total number of international students enrolled in New Zealand ...
I want to talk about one of the most pressing issues in our national life: the housing crisis and the poor performance of our cities. The argument I want to make to you is that generations of urban land use policy have lacked a decent grounding in economics. The consequences ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says new appointments to DHBs represent a significant changing of the guard, with 13 new chairs including four Māori chairs. Today 76 appointments have been announced to complement elected board members, as well as eight elected members appointed as either chair or deputy chair. Four ...
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Fletcher Tabuteau, is travelling to Germany, Poland, Austria, and Spain next week to bolster New Zealand’s political and trade relationships in Europe. While in Spain, Mr Tabuteau will represent New Zealand at the 14th Asia-Europe (ASEM) Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Madrid. “New Zealand strongly supports ...
“I’ve spoken to Minister Faafoi, who has apologised for his poor handling of this issue,” Jacinda Ardern said. “I have confidence in Kris as a hardworking and effective Minister, but this should have been dealt with in a much clearer manner, and I’ve made my views on that very clear ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters met with Tongan Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pohiva Tu'i'onetoa in Wellington today. The pair signed a Statement of Partnership setting out joint priorities for cooperation out to 2023. “We welcomed Prime Minister Tu'i'onetoa on his first visit to New Zealand as Prime Minister. Tonga ...
The Minister of Police Stuart Nash says his sympathies are with the family of a man who died after being shot by Police in Kurow. “Initial reports are that Police were called by a family member to help the man who was threatening to harm himself,” Mr Nash says. “However ...
Ethnic communities will be able to plan and deliver more community initiatives thanks to an increase in Government funding, Minister for Ethnic Communities Hon Jenny Salesa said today. “Ensuring Aotearoa New Zealand is a place we can all be proud to call home has been a key priority of our ...
Healthier waterways, better productivity and farmer wellbeing are front and centre in a new project involving more than 1000 Southland farmers and growers. Minister of Agriculture Damien O’Connor today announced that the Thriving Southland Change and Innovation Project is the first region-wide extension programme supported by the $229 million Sustainable ...
Work to look after nature and restore freshwater quality in Te Hoiere/Pelorus River catchment is getting a significant boost, thanks to new Government funding support Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage announced in Canvastown today. “Every New Zealander should be able to swim in their local river without getting sick, and ...
Eight Queen’s Counsel have been appointed under a process that includes the new criterion of a commitment to improving access to justice, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. “The new criterion was included this year. It emphasises that excellence and leadership in the profession can be seen through a wider, community ...
Onslow College in Wellington will get 20 new classrooms for more than 400 students, Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. The much-needed investment will relieve growth pressure the school has been experiencing for some time. Seven existing classrooms which have deteriorated over time will also be replaced, bringing the total ...
More than 250 young New Zealanders will add international experience to their education, thanks to the latest Prime Minister’s Scholarships for Asia (PMSA) and Latin America (PMSLA), Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. This round of scholarships supports 252 recent graduates or current students to undertake study, research or internships ...
Consumers will benefit from a more competitive, transparent retail fuel market as a result of changes the Government will be making in response to the findings of the Commerce Commission’s study of the fuel sector. “We accept the Commission’s findings and, as the Prime Minister has said, we’re ready to ...
Five new cancer medicines have now been funded this year, meaning thousands of people have more treatment options PHARMAC has today announced that it has approved two new medicines for funding – fulvestrant for breast cancer and olaparib for ovarian cancer. This follows earlier decisions on advanced lung cancer treatment alectinib, ...
The Minister of Local Government, Hon Nanaia Mahuta says the Government will consider making changes to local electoral legislation before the 2022 elections to fix the problems that have arisen where elections are settled by a coin toss. The Minister says the recount process in the Murupara- Galatea ward at ...
New Zealand will sign up to new international maritime regulations to reduce ship emissions and lift air quality around ports and harbours, Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter announced today. Subject to completion of the Parliamentary treaty examination process, New Zealand will sign up to Annex VI of MARPOL, an ...
New legislation to transform our urban areas and create sustainable, inclusive and thriving communities will tomorrow be introduced to Parliament, Urban Development Minister Phil Twyford said. “The Urban Development Bill gives Kāinga Ora-Homes and Communities the tools it needs to partner with councils, communities, mana whenua and private developers to ...
Today’s launch of He taonga te Tamaiti: Every child a taonga: The Early Learning Action Plan 2019-2029 provides the foundation for long-lasting changes to early learning, Education Minister Chris Hipkins says. “Early learning will be one of the Government’s top education priorities going into 2020,” Chris Hipkins said. ...
Those reflecting on the aftermath of the White Island eruption might take a little time to study this article in Discover Magazine by Erik Klemetti.Published in August 2012, he asked the question “How Dangerous is Visiting New Zealand’s White Island?” and offered some sober opinions.On the inherent risk ...
The Chief Ombudsman is launching a follow up investigation to see whether government agencies have improved their Official Information Act compliance. ...
How to watch the Rugby World Cup? How to make spaghetti bolognese? Who is James Charles? Google just released what New Zealanders looked for the most in 2019, and it says a lot about us.Another year on the internet, another year of Google searches you hope nobody excavates. Until now!Our Google ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Burgin, Research associate, Monash University The NSW Law Reform Commission will hand down its final recommendations for a reformed definition of sexual consent in the new year, following draft proposals in October. The commission’s inquiry is largely the result of the ...
Auckland Mayor Phil Goff says he welcomes the government’s announcement of $12 billion in extra infrastructure investment, including $6.8 billion for new transport projects, and looks forward to working with the government to ensure that a fair ...
“We’re delighted with today’s announcement of $12 billion in new capital investment by the Government,” says Infrastructure New Zealand CEO Paul Blair. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eric Brymer, Reader, Psychology with Outdoor and Adventure studies, Leeds Beckett University Review: Finke: There & Back, directed by Dylan River The Finke Desert Race takes place in the harsh desert environment near Alice Springs. Scores of motorbikes and cars are raced ...
Climate action organisations 350 Aotearoa and Coal Action Network Aotearoa commend New Zealand’s Crown Research Institutes’ phase-out of coal burning in their operations, with the final two users, Plant and Food Research and Landcare Research decommissioning ...
The government’s books are now expected to go into the red this financial year with a forecast deficit of $900 million, down from a budget forecast surplus of $1.3 billion.The government will borrow $12 billion to spend on transport, schools, hospitals and investment in the regions over the next five ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Blanche Verlie, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of Sydney I moved to Sydney less than five weeks ago and the city has been shrouded in smoke haze on and off since then. I joke this is my “Sydney hazing” but it’s only now ...
Curator and art writer Justin Paton on the process of writing McCahon Country, homesickness, and uncontemporary art. Plus his top tips for art writers. Justin Paton is theauthor of the award-winning How to Look at a Painting. A book so popular it inspired aTV series of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacob Blokland, Palaeontology PhD Candidate and Casual Academic, Flinders University A new species of extinct penguin has been discovered. It’s helping us bridge the gap between modern penguins and their counterparts from the Paleocene epoch – the 10-million-year period following dinosaur extinction. ...
The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) is placing greater controls on the use of the herbicide paraquat. Paraquat is the first active ingredient on our priority chemicals list, announced in October 2018, to be reassessed. ...
Today the Government revealed its plan to spend an extra $12bn on infrastructure projects following public pressure for them to do more. Irrigation New Zealand supports government investment to ensure New Zealand is future-ready however, the organisation ...
The grim statistics set out in the Child Poverty Monitor report issued this week underscore yet again the need for bolder action to reduce entrenched inequality, Peter Malcolm, spokesperson for the income equality project Closing the Gap, said ...
The Public Service Association strongly supports Labour MP Ginny Andersen’s bill to give three days paid leave to parents who experience a miscarriage or stillbirth. ...
From Waipukurau to Waipawa, Hastings to Havelock North, how did a humble crumbed meatball reach cult status? Fiona Fraser investigates the origins of this east coast delicacy.I was halfway out the door of a client’s premises when he bellowed “Have you had lunch? I’m just nipping out to get some ...
Back in September, when the NZ Herald issued its supplement “Mood of the Boardroom”, Commerce Minister Kris Faafoi featured as the politician who most impressed top chief executives on ministerial performance. The newspaper reported it was the first time in the history of the Mood of the Boardroom survey that ...
"The Government’s announcement that an additional $12 billion capital will be available to address backlogs in our deteriorating schools, hospitals and rail infrastructure and for regional development is welcome news and sensible policy", ...
Whether tourists should have been allowed to visit Whakaari-White Island in the past and whether tourists should be allowed to visit in future are among the questions inevitably raised in the aftermath of the tragic volcanic eruption this week. Concerns have extended beyond the operations of White Island Tours, which ...
Government books are now expected to go into the red this financial year with a forecast deficit of $900 million, down from a Budget forecast surplus of $1.3 billion. ...
Responding to the Minister of Finance’s Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update , which includes a $900 million deficit for the next financial year, New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says: “At at time of high commodity ...
The Maniapoto Māori Trust Board (MMTB) is pleased the Waitangi Tribunal’s report has agreed that the Crown was correct to recognise it as the appropriate body to hold the settlement mandate for Maniapoto. ...
Government books are now expected to go into the red this financial year with a forecast deficit of $900 million, down from a Budget forecast surplus of $1.3 billion. ...
Government books are now expected to go into the red this financial year with a forecast deficit of $900 million, down from a Budget forecast surplus of $1.3 billion. ...
In this hard-hitting episode of current affairs show OTR 24/7, lady journalist Leonie Hayden comes face to face with one of society’s most elusive figures.“Hey baby, show us ya [insert weird word for body part here]!”To many women and non-binary folks this is a common greeting, usually delivered with great ...
Start learning te reo Māori anywhere in Aotearoa with this list of introductory, part-time classes.‘Learn te reo Māori’ is at the top of a lot of people’s New Year’s resolutions. The problem is, it can be hard to enrol after the new year, which is typically when resolutions are meant ...
Last year, we published the anonymous account of a Koru Club member who was denied their mandated birthright entry into the Koru Club. This Koru Club member returns to give us their harrowing, haunting account of the day the Koru Lounge went dry.“Bye, bye miss American Pie. Drove the Chevy ...
A Labour MP’s private members bill which allowed for bereavement leave for a miscarriage has been withdrawn and resubmitted , in seemingly a deliberate attempt to exclude post-abortive women who may also be suffering grief and loss. It will receive its ...
The police are not ruling out starting the recovery operation today for eight people missing after the Whakaari / White Island eruption but say safety comes first ...
Power Play - The latest report on moving the bulk of Auckland's port operations to Northport will be released tomorrow, but Jane Patterson asks whether it will be possible for Cabinet to press ahead prior to next year's election. ...
Toby Manhire gazes back at the last almost-10 years in New Zealand politics, leadership and tragedy.When I returned to New Zealand after 11 years away in 2010, John Key had been prime minister for a couple of years and it felt like he’d been prime minister forever. He was a ...
The Chief Ombudsman is launching a new inquiry into whether central government agencies have addressed any weaknesses identified in a landmark investigation five years ago. ...
Op-Ed by Kaveh Zahedi and Van NguyenKaveh Zahedi, Deputy Executive Secretary for Sustainable Development, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).“The 2030 Agenda is coming to life”, declared the Secretary General at the opening of the first SDG Summit, a quadrennial event for ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Whakaari/White Island eruption Gordon Campbell: On the Whakaari/White Island eruption MIchael Lueck (Stuff): Should NZ look again at risky adventure tourism? Brook ...
The senior doctors’ union, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, is welcoming a report from the Medical Protection Society which provides further evidence of doctor burnout and high workload pressures. ...
Responding to reports of New Plymouth District Council’s $1.6 million rates surplus, New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says: “A rates surplus means the Council has taken more from the people of New Plymouth than it needs. It ...
The fatal eruption on Whakaari on Monday may force the tourism industry to review its current rules, writes tourism professor Michael Lueck.The official death toll is six and eight people are still missing, presumed to have died, in Monday’s volcanic eruption at Whakaari/White Island. The people on the island were ...
The Council of Licenced Firearms Owners (COLFO) is calling out Police for stepping up their intimidation campaign of licenced firearms owners as the deadline for firearms compensation draws near. ...
Belong Aotearoa alongside leading organisations working in the resettlement (refugee background) sector is calling on the New Zealand Government to play a greater role in responding to the international refugee crisis, ahead of the Global Refugee Forum ...
Protest groups and human rights supporters are preparing to “unwelcome” bulk carrying cargo ship ‘Federal Crimson’ as it arrives in Dunedin on Wednesday. The ship has carried over 50,000 tonnes of ‘conflict phosphate’ from the non-self ...
Tower boss quits after turning around $6.3m loss with risk-based insurance pricing strategy; and Prime Minister meets with rescuers of Whakaari / White Island survivors. ...
Should we modify the process of government formation to ensure no future incoming PM has the authority and mana of their office compromised from the outset? ...
A petition to Government that would see e-scooters and other personal transport devices banned from New Zealand footpaths is to be presented to the Honorable Tracey Martin, Minister for Children and Seniors on Thursday, 12th December, at 1.00 pm on the steps ...
All eyes today will be on Treasury and Finance Minister Grant Robertson when he releases his "significant infrastructure spending package" at 1pm today. ...
The Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Group Incorporated (ARFGI) is marking today’s International Human Rights Day to draw attention to the NZ Government’s discriminatory policy of only supporting selective Pacific Island languages. ...
Western Australia’s move to legalise voluntary assisted dying continues a worldwide trend supported by a clear majority of New Zealanders, the End-of-Life Choice Society’s President, Dr Mary Panko, said on Wednesday. ...
School support staff have voted to accept collective agreement offers from the Ministry of Education, with the Living Wage of $21.15 as the new minimum pay rate. ...
Our pop culture superfans at The Real Pod look back at the local celebrities who defined the last decade in Aotearoa.If there’s any group of people we can turn to in these uncertain times, it’s celebrities. And lucky for us, New Zealand suddenly seems to have heaps of them. The ...
Wellington’s newest local body political party, the Wellington Party , welcomes the news that if returned to Government, the National Party will accelerate the construction work on the proposed duplicate Mt Victoria tunnel. Party President, David Lloyd, ...
Sweeping law changes proposed by an official inquiry into last year's election and foreign interference have taken too long to be of use for next year's election. ...
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Big call in the current environment.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11139280
The second sentence means I don’t need to read any further, I know what’s coming. Actually because it’s Damien Grant I know reading any further is a waste of time (unless he’s had an epiphany – 2nd sentence show’s that’s unlikely).
So to save others time, 2nd sentence …
Then blah, blah, blah…. it’s unfair that people should be paid a living wage from our rates [the end].
Paid to pen ultra right propaganda, Damien Grant is an arsehole.
The end.
Our good friend The Jackal provides the best summing up of Damien Grant….
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GsTNP7TuiX8/URg0v6XZ2CI/AAAAAAAAH7I/8TTWillZTD8/s1600/Damien+Grant+idiot.jpg
Perfect!
rubber stamped.
Yes he has written some other revolting pieces.
The Herald is a corporate rag used as a platform for the 1%.
First topic: quite simply Damien Grant is a nutter.
Nutter Damien Grant talking “morality” ?
What ??????
Second topic: Judge Judy on Q+A demeanour strangely “nice”.
My she sports a big one. Much bigger than Shonkey Python’s. The silver fern on the lapel I mean. What’s the kind lady up to ?
Third topic: Fran The Old Boardroom Trout on Q+A putting the knife into Judge Judy.
Does FTOBT already know what JJ’s up to ?
Grant’s writings? -Just another example of the ‘Dunning Kruger effect…’
But then you see such rabid Righties like Armstrong writing stuff like this.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/john-armstrong-on-politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=1502865&objectid=11138933
And Clare Trevett writes nice things too.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/best-of-political-analysis/news/article.cfm?c_id=1502734&objectid=11137660
Now for the trifecta does Fran be nice.
She must be too busy on Q+A
Did I just hear Fran O’Sullivan say John Key should go? Did she say he was being selfish? Did she talk about Gerry Brownlee’s puffed up ego? What’s happening? Has she been walking down the road to Damascus or has she been sitting under a Bo tree? Go the new Fran.
Yea I wondered that too! I think they call it ‘positioning’. Wanting to retain some sort of credibility amongst their elitist peers when the tide changes and they find themselves on the wrong side of history.
Yes I see your point David H but the tide IS turning, for now in spite of the efforts of the vainglorious yuppies of the MSM. Those whose subliminal self promoting reflex to laud their perceived top-dog constrains them to remain callow, artless, sucky, and lazy frankly.
Wait until even they can’t deny the smell and the colour of a traitorous, classist government’s dying blood. Watch them change. For most not the reflex itself. Just the beneficiary.
And should their corporate masters and a suddenly un-chummy ShonKey Python become menacing – “You better watch yourself ……” in effect – let’s hope we see an arseblower turn whistleblower.
“truth is the sort of error without which a definite type of living entity could not live”.- Nietzsche
(double 7’s if anybody is card counting).
According to this article best we not look at abortion law lest we get something even worse! – Really?? How about we challenge for a better law anyway?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/9277101/Abortions-lead-to-mental-health-issues
Fergusson’s study is old news and also incredibly unconvincing – I blogged about it back in May:
http://ideologicallyimpure.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/abortion-and-mental-health-research-not-as-clear-cut-as-reported-no-surprises-there/
ETA: Oh, and fuck Dame Linda Holloway and her “from a prochoice position it doesn’t matter”. Pregnant people have to jump through hoops, travel long distances and wait longer than necessary to have a very safe medical procedure? What could be wrong with THAT?
QoT, haven’t seen anything any thing written about the pro-life TV ads I’ve been seeing on TV2 over the past week; wondering if you’ve seen them? I caught one last Monday night sometime between 11.00pm and midnight. Young woman (actor? dunno) talking about becoming infertile after an abortion. Another one Thursday night, same timeframe, young woman saying not having an abortion stopped her from self-harming (cutting).
I’ve been trying to find out via the pro-life websites who’s behind them, but not having much luck.
I’ve seen some Facebook discussion of them but so far I’ve not caught them on TV myself. But I do have a prochoice post coming up this week!
The ads appear to be from Voice for Life, formerly SPUC, which was heavily financed by the Catholic Church back in the 70s.
Interesting things they keep off the News
No. 1: Guantanamo Bay captives
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/oct/11/guantanamo-bay-hunger-strikes-video-animation
I think I’m going to find this series of yours enlightening.
Thank you
Indeed. Well spotted, Moz.
peace in our Times
Well, my good friend Morrissey was very gracious in his retraction, so I choose to move on in the same spirit.
And, of course, this:
somebody has to draw the short straw; just ask Lhaws. đ
Chilling!
The above statement was made to Woodrow Wilson, approximately 100 years ago!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson
Ugly Truth, who posts occasionally, attempts to inform on how the fraud is achieved, and routinely gets blown off.
Those who blow off the posts, need to start to read up, quickly!
âȘ ..prison planet ⊠â«
succinct and right on target as usual joe90
What’s Prison Planet Joe?
If you’re talking about the way vast swaths of the worlds peoples are living, like an open air prison, then you would be in the right direction. Is that what you meant?
Perhaps your could present a case against the text, hows about you give that crack!
Locus, if the best you have to offer is to concur with whatever J90 was on about, you need to try harder.
Perhaps offer forward some thoughts comments, a rebuttle even.
Sure. There are questions that need to be answered though.
1) Where’d the text come from? Not just where did you found it, but how do we know it is legit. when did it first surface, and where, is it verified as being what it claims to be. There are plenty of texts lying about the place claiming to be significant, but with no provenance, ie, they just surface in odd places in ways that make it impossible to tell if they are real, or fabrications.
2) What happened next? For the text to be significant, even if we believe it be legitimate, we need to know what influence it had. That influence has to be shown in law. Birth certificates are legal things, with their purpose written into law. This text makes claims about what they do, but those claims will only be real if they are reflected in the laws about birth certificates.
Those are the obvious questions that need to be answered first up.
Have at it.
For “1” I’d like to see the document referenced as to where and when it was supposedly written, and how it surfaced.
For “2” we need to see that context of the document, what effect did it have. Did Wilson reply for example, where there others involved in the debate? And we need to see what is written in the law to text if the claims made about birth certificates reflect what actually happened.
Given the context of Wilson’s presidency, it appears to be a rant against the Federal Reserve that morphs into equating social welfare with fraud and possibly slavery. As found on nutbar conspiracy sites, according to google.
Yeah, there’s horde of them.
I first came across this stuff in discussions about the 90’s militia movement. Ruby ridge, waco and all that jazz. “Sovereign citizens” and the like. Post-McVeigh they all got the scares and folded up their tents to an extent, I guess when someone started things off they decided that, well, someone else should carry on but they were all too busy sitting on their hands and saying it was just a hobby, and a theory, and never you mind.
Exactly, but I try not to feed them.
“Massa, the sugar cane is cut” – said to George Washington by the overseer on his Manassass sugar plantation.
any last requests? đ
Hi Muzza
The process of redemption involves a change of legal status from a human being to a man or woman. Human beings are always persons and have lower status than men or women. Humans suffer from universalism, which implies that they think that everyone is like them. For them equality under the state is the highest virtue.
The relationship between the state and humans is much like the relationship between deity and people. The state protects humans from harm and they petition the state when they think that their needs are not being met.
The realm of the state and the realm of deity are disparate. While the state may pay lip service to deity, it is fundamentally secular. The diffrerence between law and rules is that law is ordained (or consistent with what is ordained) while rules are purely secular constructs. Since the state has removed the connection to deity, the rules of the state do not constitute law. The state assumes the role of deity when it gives its legislation the name of law.
http://www.actsinjunction.info/nwo.html
UT, are laws revealed, or discovered by way of observation?
PB, natural laws (eg the physical laws) are discovered by observation.
The diffrerence between law and rules is that law is ordained (or consistent with what is ordained) while rules are purely secular constructs. Since the state has removed the connection to deity, the rules of the state do not constitute law.
I was obviously asking about these ‘ordained’ laws. How do we know which are laws that are ordained, and which are rules made by the state?
The problem is that UT has a habit of ranting on what is complete bollocks – usually about the law and how it was 500 years ago and why it shouldn’t have changed despite the fact that people have been having problems with the law going back thousands of years (Debt: The first 5000 years, David Graeber).
Is that the same Graeber who was involved with occupy?
And yes, you can see that the agenda was put into action many thousands of years ago, and is entirely responsible for the current state of the world we live in!
Just because you can’t wrap your head around it Draco, does not make it bollocks!
The point is, the controllers are getting away with their plans somehow, and what are the key mechanisms which enable the agenda
1: Controling, writing and enforcing, so called law.
2: Inventing, owning and controlling, so called money/currency.
I’m quite aware of what’s happening and how our idea of ownership is at the heart of the problem. Thing is, UT usually says that we need to go back to the way things were around 500 years when things were actually worse. We have, over time, corrected some of the worse aspects but we still need to look to the problem of ownership itself.
“UT usually says that we need to go back to the way things were around 500 years when things were actually worse”
I’ve never said that, fool.
“fool” is a fairly generic term
Yeah, actually, you have. Don’t believe me, just go read your comments. And more.
You’re as delusional as a libertarian.
Time on your hands then (not the devil’s plaything).
-comment #101.
Project much, Draco?
Talking about common law is not the same as saying that “we need to go back to the way things were around 500 years”
personally, i have found your voice interesting…
So you wouldn’t have said that an easy way to return to democracy would be a tax embargo and common law courts?
A deluded Draco debates a delusional Ugly Truth.
However, after Ugly’s “Aliens controls teh gummints!” rant at Kiwiblog I’d throw my lot in with Draco.
better the devil you’ve known
Nope.
The way you talk about it it is.
500 years ago …middle of the Inquisition
lolz
Rodney Hide has cheek!
Len wouldn’t even have been elected as mayor for you to opine on whether he’s good for the place, or not, Rodney, if you had your way.
To add further insult to citizens who elect people like Len, Rodney moves on to Canterbury in a ridiculous attempt to underline a point he failed to make in the first place.
Sorry Cantabrians, you’re useless unless Rodders belatedly agrees with a choice he thinks you are better off for not having. Does he not realise that he just endorsed the mayor people voted for in Auckland in his pronouncement that mayors should be appointed by Rodders mates because the electors pick useless people!
I’m seriously struggling to refrain from shouting.
The Herald uses corporate shills to sell the narrative of the 1%.
Don’t bother reading it.
agreed Paul, but i got tempted, and though it make me choke to say it… the MSM – and their corporate shills – still influence public opinion
but just in case anyone else is tempted here’s the two-faced anti-democratic self-serving crap from Hide in the Herald:
“I would vote if I could tick a box that allowed the government of the day to appoint the best people to run the council. It would save a lot of fluffing around”
The sooner we buy out of their agenda the better.
The internet provides us with an alternative.
Then I suggest you stop using their language.
The sooner we drop their agenda and implement ours the better.
Good point
It’s insidious, isn’t it?
Yes, it is.
+1 Miravox
Rodney Hide actually has two cheeks inside his scull where a brain should be.
“………….we just want the elected government of the day to appoint the best people to run our city and region.”
What utter crap, makes me want to shout too.
Cunliffe excellent on the Nation just now. Rachel Smalley desperately tried to nail him but was left floundering. Cunliffe measured and confident.
I truly hope the ABCer’s see what a ridiculous cock-up they made of putting up Shearer ahead of Cunliffe back in 2011. Still think Cunliffe shouldn’t have tried to do that double-ticket with Nanaia and that it played a big part of his loss, though.
Cunliffe looks like Lange did in 1983-4: like the prime minister-in-waiting. The National Party knows that too, hence their hysterical, doomed attempts to portray him as “extreme left”.
Concur. I listened to a speech he did during the leadership stoush with another tab open in front so I wasn’t distracted by the images, and his cadences reminded me very much of Lange.
just Imagine ; that’s where books come in helpful. đ
…They will be going for him in whatever way they can to undermine him….The main thing is that he isn’t diverted or panicked by them ( like Helen Clark was by Brash’s speech)…but keeps a steady course to a great victory!!!
cos
Joker’s Wilde
QOT,re: Fluoride, anti science, that’s a matter of opinion, you mean anti-statistical production from those who have a vested interest,
Christchurch which has never used fluoride in it’s water supply has remarkably ‘average teeth’ when compared with the rest of New Zealand, at times having a lower rate of caries than the average and at times having a slightly higher rate, according to ‘science’ that cannot be true,but it is,
Looking country on country Iceland with the same number of caries per head of population as New Zealand has never used fluoride in it’s water supply, according to ‘science’ Ice land should have a far higher rate of caries than New Zealand, but they don’t…
Sure, if you choose to simply say “no fluoride in this water, therefore we expect differences in dental problems which we aren’t seeing”.
However fluoride being in just the local drinking water is not the sole factor. For example products that substantially contain water (beverages) that are produced in an area that has fluoride in the water and shipped to areas that don’t, will provide a ‘halo’ effect on those areas.
Now, looking at the most basic, obvious correlation and then saying “science” this and “science” that, using quotes as if science is somehow at fault, just makes *you* look stupid.
The truth of the matter is that science, when it comes to studies of human health, is very complex and complicated, which is why we leave it to the professionals, called scientists, and not the average joe on the street.
Lolz, ‘the halo effect’ now that’s definitely scientific right, tell me what exactly is stupid about (a) comparing the second biggest city in New Zealand which does not dump fluoride in it’s water supply with other cities that do,
Oh except LOLZ for your halo effect, when did you make up that little gem, just now perhaps,
So a place like Iceland which has remarkably the same number of caries as the New Zealand average is protected by your ‘halo effect’ is it, LOLZ can you link me to the study that says this,or did you as usual pull the ‘halo’ outta ya anus…
Yes. And then Lanth travelled through time to 1994 to publish a paper on it.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8070242
So you suggest that Iceland imports one hell of a lot of liquids that they drink, all with fluoride that has been untainted by any effect of whatever it is that the end user drink turns out to be and any manufacturing process that was undergone to reach that end use product,
Christchurch kids all drink the same amount of what, coke perhaps, as each other, and enough imported liquids to equal the intake of fluoridated water that kids in other places using fluoride in the water do???
That’s a stretch even of my imagination, i am more inclined to believe that as far as fluoride goes Christchurch kids brush their teeth as much as any other kids anywhere else in New Zealand from whence, if fluoride is of any benefit, they get more than enough to keep their teeth on a par with the rest of the kids in New Zealand,
Which just brings me to where the biggest problem would be vis a vis tooth decay, South Auckland fluoridated, Porirua fluoridated, the missing link wouldn’t be tooth paste would it…
“So you suggest that Iceland imports one hell of a lot of liquids that they drink, all with fluoride that has been untainted by any effect of whatever it is that the end user drink turns out to be and any manufacturing process that was undergone to reach that end use product,”
Actually, I’m suggesting that the halo effect is something that is beyond the obvious “the water supply of this town has no fluoride in it and yet the dental evidence is the same”.
I’m not suggesting that the halo effect is necessarily in effect in Iceland. Merely that there are many many many compounding factors involved in a complex system like this, and your a priori “argument” isn’t worth bumpkiss.
Lath appears to be adapting the term which is directly searchable on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
And yes, it’s reasonable that a city that doesn’t fluoridate its water inside a country that does could still have average teeth when there are other factors involved, including fluoride content of products produced in other cities. Christchurch could, for all we know, have the best teeth in the country if it DID fluoridate it’s water. Science is not about making simplistic assumptions, it’s far more about painstaking accuracy and research, and thus, as Lanthanide points out, is best left to professionals and the really talented amateurs.
@ Lanthanide….except some scientists are bought off, or their studies are flawed and require more evidence….eg ‘science’ and scientists who supported the cigarette industry…..So it always pays to form your own opinion on things, based on the evidence as far as possible…and not just take the “experts” as Gospel…In fact it pays not to take the Gospel as gospel ( eg Inquisition ….as the pagans, heretics and witches on the ducking stools and in the bonfires found out).
hence hermeneutics
I was reading about Herr Schleiermacher and his circle (or do I prefer spiral?) just yesterday. Will be making use of his work today.
“every extension of consciousness being higher life”
Yes, very valid point, Chooky.
However bad12 did not imply any of those things in his post at all, he just seem up a flimsy strawman.
Because New Zealand and Iceland, barring fluoridated water, are completely identical in every way.
… and that’s why I say “anti-science”. I should probably just say “anti-logic”.
PFFT, try an answer in understandable English wont you, when statistics tell you something other than what you postulate regress into ‘other factors’ that’s laughable,
What you actually allude to is that other factors in the diet have a far greater bearing on the number of caries than does Fluoride, which in reality when we compare the two countries has FA to do with the number of caries…
I’m pretty sure my comment was in very understandable English.
The fact is there are many, many things which are different between Iceland and New Zealand. Climate. Economy. Diet. Ethnic and age differences. Probably very different attitudes towards health and lifestyle factors.
The “laughable” thing is pretending that we can form any conclusion on fluoride based solely on rates of caries in two very different populations.
And please don’t try to explain “what I’m alluding to”. Because you couldn’t be more incorrect.
LOLZ, thats making me snigger, but fluroide so you say is the magic ingredient, you can hide behind such an argument here in New Zealand as well, but as far as the magic ingreedient goes its all simply wallpaper over the holes in your argument,
The fact is, the claim is, that Fluoride in the water has a marked difference in tooth decay, Iceland and Christchurch say that isnt true,
You then claim a ‘halo effect’ from imported liquids along with enthnic,age,diet,climate blah blah blah differences as if the American halo effect is not also filled with the same differences,
Face it, IF fluoride has an effect then brushing your teeth with toothpaste and not rinsing it off would be the efficacious means of delivering such fluoride, the worst teeth in New Zealand are the result of fluoride in the water…
I’ve never said “fluoride is the magic ingredient”. I also didn’t bring up the halo effect – Lanthanide did.
It’s cute how you keep arguing against things no one is saying and then making wild statements with nothing to back them up … and then think this is going to make me revisit my opinion of anti-fluoride folk.
You may want to consider that in the city of Wellington the old borough of Petone has never been fluoridated while the rest of the city is. Otherwise they get the exact same water from the exact same source as the rest of Lower Hutt. I know this for an absolute fact. (I used to write the software that controlled it all.)
This has been a long running and ‘as good as you are going to get’ controlled experiment and I’m not aware of any good data telling us that the dental health, or otherwise, of people who have lived in Petone all their lives is any different to the rest of the city. (If anyone knows otherwise I’d be most interested.)
Whatever is going on I don’t think dosing the public water supply is the dominant factor anymore. Tooth decay is all about sugar and carbohydrates … not what’s in the water.
and then, there is the Public Health perspective
See that sounds pretty reasonable. Do Petone and the rest of Lower Hutt have roughly similar statistics then? Good to know. đ
Um … you may want to consider that there isn’t a wall built around Petone which isolates its residents from the rest of Wellington. I don’t know what kind of “controlled experiments” you run where there’s actually no serious separation of the test and control groups, but they don’t sound like any kind of controlled experiment I’d put a lot of faith into.
Exactly my thoughts, QoT. I think realistically you could only hope to go with entire regions that don’t fluoridate water, but even that is doubtful if the halo effect comes into play.
“Um ⊠you may want to consider that there isnât a wall built around Petone which isolates its residents from the rest of Wellington. I donât know what kind of âcontrolled experimentsâ you run where thereâs actually no serious separation of the test and control groups, but they donât sound like any kind of controlled experiment Iâd put a lot of faith into.”
There are lots of different ways of generating knowledge, even within science. In this case, you could look at the health dental outcomes of a certain subset of people that lived in the area ie the people that were drinking non-treated water. You compare them to the outcomes of the people who were drinking treated water.
Of course you could. But that’s not what RedLogix has asserted. “Drinks only untreated water and only products made with untreated water vs treated” is very different from “Petone vs rest of Wellington”.
So what the pro-fluoridation lobby are saying now:
Improved child dental health in fluoridation areas is due to fluoridation
Improved child dental health in non-fluoridation areas is due to fluoridation
It’s assanine, the totally unscientific theory of “second hand fluoridation”.
No one’s said that anywhere, CV. We’ve just said that it’s difficult to draw a clear line around populations completely divorced from treated water, so it’s difficult to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of fluoridation.
But please, continue today’s trend of reading what you want to instead of what people are actually saying.
A kid in Christchurch gets dental protection from Coke bottled in Auckland using Auckland water?
Not only does it sound ridiculous, second hand fluoridation has no evidence in science.
@ CV: As I replied to you in the other thread, I have *not* posited that CHCH is benefiting from the halo effect. I simply suggested it as a possible reason, to illustrate how flimsy bad12’s strawman was.
Also QoT linked to a paper from 1994 that discusses the halo effect of fluoridation. I’m sure there will be more recent studies that have more information, too.
CV: Is the coke made using fluoridated water? It the kid drinking coke zero?
Besides, the chrischurch thing was already done in June. You’re just reinventing the bullshit wheel.
âDrinks only untreated water and only products made with untreated water vs treatedâ is very different from âPetone vs rest of Wellingtonâ.
Good thing no-one suggested that then.
@felix: That was certainly how I read RL’s comment:
You may want to consider that in the city of Wellington the old borough of Petone has never been fluoridated while the rest of the city is.
…
This has been a long running and âas good as you are going to getâ controlled experiment and Iâm not aware of any good data telling us that the dental health, or otherwise, of people who have lived in Petone all their lives is any different to the rest of the city.
I dunno, as leftie middle-class person I’m willing to take one for the team and buy one of those new-fandangled water purifier thingies until I know that all poor kids go to homes with usable toothbrushes and toothpaste, parents who have the time and energy to make sure these are used, and when milk is cheaper than coke.
@QoT
I may have misread it, but it looks to me like “and only products made with untreated water” is your own addition.
Even then the assumption is still a complete isolation of everyone in Petone from everywhere else in wellington, on a long term basis, in order to guarantee any experimental validity.
How so?
I thought the assumption was that the people in Petone would be exposed to broadly the same environmental and dietary conditions as the rest of Wellington.
Perhaps I’ve misunderstood the purpose of the experiment.
If someone who sleeps in a house in petone spends most of their awake time in wellington or vice versa, that kind of screws the experiment. And it also ignores that there can be massive socioeconomic (and therefore dietary and even environmental differences) differences between suburbs in a city – to put it more bluntly, is petone on the “right side of the tracks”?
So one factor serves to muddy the water by bringing the populations closer together, and the other factor might move them apart in a manner independent of water fluoridation.
So who knows where the balance would lie. Doable, but increases the cost of the study by an order of magnitude.
It’s reasonable to assume that most children who drink tap water are going to get most of it from their home or their school.
No?
Again, maybe I’ve misunderstood the purpose of the experiment.
(ps the question of which “side of the tracks” is irrelevant unless only one “side of the tracks” is flouridated. I don’t think anyone has suggested that.)
I have no idea what proportion of metropolitan kids go to school in the same mains water area as their home.
Nor, more importantly, do I have any idea whether kids who live in petone but go to school in a fluoridated area are systematically different in family income, dental care, or dietary practise.
Addressing those questions is why the cost of the study would be an order of magnitude higher than just comparing school dmftt rates.
“I have no idea what proportion of metropolitan kids go to school in the same mains water area as their home.”
Does that matter? I’m assuming the long term dental records are tied to the schools.
The crucial point though is that the comparison between the two groups doesn’t rely on isolation for validity. It’s not important that some children in Petone are drinking some amount of flouridated water unless you’re analysing individual cases.
But like I said, I may have misunderstood the purpose of the experiment.
Of course it matters if you don’t know how much overlap there is between your case and control groups. It stuffs your entire experiment.
How many kids going to schools in petone drink lots of water at their homes in kilbirnie? Or vice versa? You could make the same-catchment assumption in rural schools, but metro areas linked by a decent public transport system? The moh dmftt checks are based on school checks, but the public data is grouped by dhb.
I don’t see how that “stuffs your entire experiment” at all.
Children who live in a flouridated area and go to school in a non-flouridated area (or vise-versa) will on average be getting less flouridated tap water than children who live and go to school in a flouridated area.
But of course I may have misunderstood the purpose of the experiment.
Well, when one is looking at the effect of a variable that differs between two equivalent groups, it pays to actually know that the variable does in fact differ between groups that are in fact equivalent, rather than just assuming it.
edit: oh, there was an edit:
[citation needed]
Yes I edited to make it clear exactly what I’m assuming.
Hardly a controversial assumption, is it?
I mean I suppose it’s possible that the average child in a non flouridated area drinks just as much flouridated tap water as the average child in a flouridated area, but frankly that’s a bit far fetched to convince me to turn my back on the bleeding obvious.
But then I don’t have a barrow to push so I have the luxury of applying common sense.
But that’s not the problem with your assumption. The assumption you are making is that there is no cross-contamination between the groups, or at least not enough to make the results undetectable (there are secondary assumptions that the two populations are equivalent in all factors that affect dental health, but the main problem is the cross-contamination).
Where do kids drink most of their water, at school or at home? If they drink most of their water at home, then kids who live outside petone but go to school in petone will reduce any detectable difference. If they get most of their water at school, the reverse is true. If it’s 50:50, then that just means that all kids who live in a different group to where they go to school muddy the waters – the ones in petone schools raise petone caries free %, the ones in wgtn schools lower wgtn caries-free%. You need to be able to estimate the effect of any cross-contamination.
This is basic shit, one of the first questions a reviewer or conference attendee would ask. You can’t just assume that your case and control groups don’t have cross-contamination – especially when a bunch of them share the same or adjacent school districts.
lolz, I suppose it’s also possible that there are no children who go to school where they live too.
I’m going to carrie on assuming that’s not the case though if it’s ok with you.
“You canât just assume that your case and control groups donât have cross-contamination”
Pretty sure I assumed they did. But then I may have misunderstood the purpose of the experiment.
Don’t see why you can’t just classify different sets of kids when the interviews get done. Kids who live and go to school in an area with untreated water, kids who live and go to school in an area with treated water, kids who who live in an untreated area but go to school in a treated area, etc. You can even just exclude the kids in the last group if it’s a problem.
Weka, yes, that’s why it’s not a case of just comparing stats as felix wants. A few hundred dollars and spare time becomes interviews and life histories and ethics approval across two school districts, just to see if two schools have a rate that’s different from the district norm.
Goodness, that does sound complicated. I guess we’ll never know then.
Unless of course we stop pretending that this is about comparing individual cases. But then I may have misunderstood the purpose of the experiment.
Of course it comes down to cases – every filling is in a single child. But even from a population perspective, you’re talking about a case:control study. And even from a population perspective, you still need to demonstrate that you really have separated two populations, rather than just assuming it.
For example, how many intermediate or secondary schools are there in Petone, to get the year8 count? Do they serve more or fewer students than the two primary schools I’ve found? If fewer, do the rich ones with better teeth go to school outside of petone more often than poorer kids, or is it the other way around?
Option A: buy a spreadsheet with the data and “assume” that there is no difference, and whack out a quick article in your spare time. Cheap, but utter bullshit.
Option B: get ethical approval and parental and school consent to pay multiple research assistants to interview thousands of kids, cross reference them with dental checks, buy a suite of computers and a few analysts to crunch the data, rent office space to put them in, and hire a manager to sort out all the HR stuff. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, but a solid article at the end of it.
Option C: anywhere on the front where cost is reduced at the expense of validity.
Option D: piggy back on an already running longitudinal stud, if one’s running across wellington..
Yeah.
I guess you either missed the part where I said “assume”, or you agree that the two groups can easily be compared if my assumptions turn out to be accurate.
Of course.
But without testing those assumptions, the study rests entirely on something that might be utter crap. And if we do test those assumptions, then we are no longer assuming. We have demonstrated it.
So we can assume all you want, but with a population that small failure to test that assumption is akin to just throwing the entire study in the bin.
My assumptions are as follows:
1. Children in Petone do not consume significantly more or less tap water than children anywhere else.
2. Children in Petone mostly go to school in Petone.
And with those two hugely controversial assumptions noted, I hereby throw the whole study in the bin.
@ felix: science isn’t about controversy, it’s about certainty. That’s why it’s science and not “making shit up”.
Are there even any year8 schools in petone?
I can’t seem to find any online. Maybe they all go to the Hutt?
Lanth, that’s simply not true. There is always a degree of uncertainty in real-world testing. That’s why it’s done on as large a scale as possible rather than comparing the life histories of individual households.
McFlock I think by year 8 the children of Petone are all bussed off to Strawman Intermediate. It’s down at at the end of Red Herring Drive.
Not at all. The 5yo check might have nothing to do with the school, especially if the parents commute and put the kids into daycare near their fluoridated workplace. And if the vast majority then go to school in the Hutt, then basically your confidence interval would be a mile wide because of the small numbers.
So for one age you have no idea which population is truly which, and for the other age group you’re not even sure that there’s a test population to count. And you still want to assume that any numbers you can drag out signify anything.
You want the largest scale possible? Compare national “fluoridated vs nonfluoridated” data. A couple of thousand kids (if that) in petone will not give you the accuracy you need, and will probably include major socioeconomic differences. Which you’d need to control for, which you can only do if you know what they are, which you can often get by… interviewing households, amongst other methods.
If only there were some way of ranking the socio-economic levels of schools against one another…
Yes, because dep10 accounts for every possible socioeconomic difference between school kids. đ
Fuck it. School dental checks:
Hutt 5yolds: total 1420, non-fluoridated 72
Capcoast 5yo: tot2649 NF 16
Hutt yr8: tot 1538 NF: 50
capcoast: tot:2563 NF 51
Even if all the NF were petone, and 3/4 comparisons show the caries free % much higher in fluoridated areas than non-fluoridated, the numbers are so small a 0.8 rate ratio has a 95% interval from 0.63-1.01, and a 0.85 ratio goes from 0.67-1.09.
By comparison, the same crunch with the total NZ data yr8 (44k kids) gives a RR of 0.94 with a 95% spread of 0.92-0.96.
On the face of it that would seem to contradict what RL posted.
That’s the impulse, but the numbers are just too small. I mean, it might improve by changing the CI methodology, but it’s beginning to over-play the data.
Basically, that’s where the pophealth crowd steps back and the qual and cohort folk walk in, and they’re the ones who isolate specific confounding variables and really get in-depth with lifestyles and other interventions.
In a word or two – volcanic gases.
đ
Use the search function for this site, I dumped a hell of a lot of science on fluoridation earlier this year, mainly on risk factors. Short version – the concentrations used in water treatment are perfectly safe, it’s only once you hit 0.5ppm that small negative effects are detected.
Search terms: “flouridation NickS”
Also – fluoridation effects are lessened when poverty is low and people have high levels of education about dental hygiene and easy access to fluoridated toothpaste. Like say Iceland.
Do you ‘know’ that Icelandic children have better access to and use more or as much toothpaste as New Zealand kids do,
Your argument supports the use of toothpaste but is in effect saying that fluoride in drinking water has no effect…
đ
Warning – significant logic flaws detected in bad12’s post. Recommend rebooting user and exposing to list of formal/informal fallacies.
Bulls**t, you are the one who implied that Icelandic children have better levels of education about dental hygiene and better access to fluoridated toothpaste than New Zealand kids,
Even if such were the case it proves nothing about fluoride in the water, except to say that it’s pretty much useless seeing as they don’t put the stuff in their water, then again Icelandic kids may live in the ‘halo world’ where they drink only imported liquids that have been made with the addition of fluoridated water…
lulz.
Teh stupid, how it burns:
Until you can actually work out why the above is wrong, I wont be bothering with you.
And it’s _very_ obvious. So obvious even I could grasp it on no sleep and no caffeine :3
Yet you’ve gone off on a tangent on Iceland, a tangent that Lanth, QoT and McFlock hath already dealt with. It would be infuriating, if I hadn’t seen a thousands times before with creationists, climate change denialists etc. Now? It’s just amusing.
ahhh, caffeine, was proposed a while back for admission to the DSM…Axis 1 đ (Team Jesus).
That’s frigging gut bustingly funny, the fact that Iceland which has never fluoridated its water is dealt with by those you name by claiming without a shred of evidence differences in diet blah blah blah,
Or even funnier ‘the halo effect’ where supposedly Iceland must import and feed it’s kids one hell of a load of coke or something,
The simple fact that you and others claim that Iceland with the exact same %of caries as this country achieves that not by water fluoridation but by some other magical means including diet blah blah blah is an admission on all your parts that fluoridation has sweet FA to do with dental outcomes…
bad12, you’re clearly not engaging with what people are actually saying. Which is disappointing.
There comes a time when everyone should admit that there are other people that know more about a particular topic than themselves. Which is what you should be doing now.
+1
It’s also obvious he hasn’t bothered digging up the stuff I suggested, despite the fact I’d linked to a variety of papers not locked behind paywalls, as otherwise he’d have found the review article on fluoridation efficacy and be using it đ
Lolz, funnier still, if all sorts of other factors except fluoridation in the drinking water lead Icelandic children to have teeth just as good or bad as New Zealand kids have with fluoride in the drinking water, then it’s obvious to most except you of course, that ‘the all sorts of other factors’ must be more important to the outcome than fluoride is,
Lolz, i just luuuurve the reeking of ego that your little statement imparts, your we know more than you so shut up is an excellent tool of debate used by Nazi’s everywhere,
i have cited but two places, Iceland and Christchurch, Red Logix cites another, there are of course a zillion other’s even befor i link you to science which debunks any that you or other’s have offered up in support of fluoride,
The worst kids teeth in New Zealand???Porirua and South Auckland, both have fluoride in the water, if ‘other’ factors are at work there then that simply tells us how ineffective fluoride is in the drinking water,
Kids in Christchurch, just as good teeth as the rest of the country, No fluoride in the drinking water, you lot say Christchurch kids must drink lots of ‘imported water’ from other places with fluoride in the water,
Yeah right, what is it they are importing and drinking which has lots of fluoridated water in the mix, coca cola???vodka???…
Iceland has a higher natural concentration of fluoride than NZ.
There are so many fallacies in this reply alone that it’s not worth my time bothering to reply to them because I know you won’t engage.
Your loss, not mine.
Lolz, yes honestly the sense of loss is palpable, oh by the way kids in Christchurch with better teeth than those in Porirua and South Auckland, no fluoride for the former but in the water for the latter,
Hence having fluoride in the drinking water doesn’t produce better results for kids teeth, carry on with dispensing the man’s propaganda for them tho wont you…
[facepalm]
ever consider that Porirua kids teeth might be even worse without fluoridation, b12?
Dental health might have a pretty strong relationship with income, for example.
(remember 1 liter of water weighs 1kg)
Nick I tried to explain it to someone this way recently – water is fluoridated at .7mg/litre while LD50 of fluoride is 32-64mg/kg of body weight (let’s be conservative and say 32) -so to get a dose that high you’d have to drink 45 litres of fluoridated town water for every kg of your body weight
Water is considered one of the least toxic of chemicals, it has a :LD50 of 90g/kg of body – you are going to die of water poisoning long long before you die from drinking fluoridated tap water
You may be well meaning, but using an LD50 is mad and irrelevant.
Fluoride is clearly and measurably neurotoxic at 1/10 or 1/20 or less of this level, and in human children is associated with significant neurodevelopmental delays and reduced intelligence.
but not at anywhere near NZ levels
Agreed.
Fluoride in water is a clearly demonstrated developmental neurotoxin, but only at concentrations 3x to 6x higher than that commonly added to NZ water.
So it’s completely irrelevant to the debate in NZ then.
If we’re scaremongering with irrelevancies, don’t we lose dozens of kids a year to drowning? And yet councils pipe this poison into people’s homes…
[edit: night night. Back tomorrow]
I’m simply stating a scientific fact. You may decide it’s not relevant to this discussion, but the fact still stands.
Fluoride is a scientifically demonstrated developmental neurotoxin at concentration levels 3x to 6x that added to NZ water supplies.
It’s also a scientific fact that people drown in water and it’s piped into people’s homes.
Really CV, I thought you were better than this.
Next you’re going to be saying “Barrack Hussein Obama” like Morrissey did that one time and then defend it by saying you’re “just using his full name”.
Next youâre going to be saying âBarrack Hussein Obamaâ like Morrissey did that one time and then defend it by saying youâre âjust using his full nameâ.
Indeed I did, and that is exactly the case. Using the full name of that war criminal, serial liar and appallingly bad actor has no more significance than saying “Richard Milhous Nixon” or “Franklin Delano Roosevelt”.
If you want to go on another quixotic adventure and show I was pursuing some racist agenda, then go right ahead. I have neither written nor implied anything even remotely racist on this or any other forum.
Funny Morrissey, because you already had Obama in your little list and didn’t have his middle name for those entries, or anyone else already on the list. Subsequently when that item was archived to the list, you removed his middle name. All other new entrants on the list have not had their middle name.
So either it was a purely “innocent” brainfart on your part to put his middle name in, which you’ve never done before or since for anyone else, or you did it deliberately for some purpose.
I’m not implying you were doing it on a racist agenda, just that the evidence suggests you did it for some reason.
“that one time in band camp”.
“Air is dangerously thin at 3 to 6 times the height of mt cook (scientific fact). You might decide it’s not relevant to this meeting of Mountain Safety NZ, but the fact still stands…”
Still waiting for any evidence of harm to nz kids.
Iâm not implying you were doing it on a racist agenda, just that the evidence suggests you did it for some reason.
I think you’ve read much too much into it, my friend. My mentioning of Obama’s middle name sprang from no agenda, as far as I am aware, but feel free to continue psychoanalyzing me. Although I am sure you have noticed that Obama shares many of Saddam Hussein’s less savoury traits.
Re: LD50 – well you have to choose something, I chose the same measure for the two things – even if it’s 1/20th the value you still need to drink more than twice your body weight in water – balloon up to 3 times your size – to get a dose that will harm you, and that’s going to be more than 20 times the LD50 for plain water itself (which is ~1/10 of your body mass)
And Churchill lived to a ripe old age despite heavy smoking, heavy drinking, and obesity.
But that doesn’t mean those habits would make you live longer.
As for Iceland:
What’re the background fluoride levels in the water supply?
What’s their child & adult provision of dental care like?
what’s their per capita consumption of high fructose corn syrup?
Do they supplement anything else with fluoride, such as salt or flour, or are there higher levels elsewhere?
Whats the difference between Porirua kids and South Auckland kids when compared to the rest of fluoridated New Zealand kids, seeing as those two areas have the worst caries rates,
Can’t be the fluoride either way can it as they all get it in the water…
Nobody, anywhere, ever has said fluoride is a magic bullet that gets rid of all caries, regardless of diet and dental care.
But we do know that caries are high in kids without fluoridation.
Funnily enough, so is fluorosis.
Iceland has a lot of fluoride naturally occurring in the ground water so can’t be compared with NZ.
So much so it can be harmful after periods of intense volcanic eruptions
http://www.academia.edu/1360978/Fluoride_in_Groundwater_Causes_Implications_and_Mitigation_Measures
Leading horses TC…
…but, but, that clear, natural stuff is poisonous.
Pure dihydrogen monoxide has indeed claimed many lives comrade.
In Scandanavia they use Xylitol quite a lot …it is a natural sugar substitute and supposed to remineralise teeth and get rid of bad bacteria causing teeth decay decay and other infections eg ear
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylitol
much respect for Lanth. (and Queen) established over, coming up, two years (at a stretch). now, gotta go an’ spray some weeds.
“Looking country on country Iceland with the same number of caries per head of population as New Zealand has never used fluoride in itâs water supply”
Yes but because of it’s volcanic history there is a vast natural occurrence of fluoride already present in the ground water so you aren’t comparing like with like.
A nice Sunday doco: The four horsemen. The economic collapse of the US empire and hence the entire Anglo Saxon five-eye system Jon Key is traveling around the world to help keep together for his bankster puppet masters made simple so that even the average Kiwi can understand it so share with your colleagues and family.
Yes its been quite the global(ist) tour for little johnny lately!
Meeting with one of the heads of the cartel, staying on-site and so forth – If I remember rightly it was NZ who took the lead role in the so called, laws of succession changes, surprise surprise!
Speaking at the UN, selected to speak out against the security council veto and how they have failed the people of Syria!
Then we get little johnny stepping in for barry, and carrying the responsibility of the latest round of secret negotiations , not the first time he has been front and center to spin the TPP fraud.
Just what is little johnny being set up for, I think we can clearly see what his duties are here in NZ, but on the international stage, what’s going on…
Most likely it is tied to the fraud being carried out in the name of the , “realm”
He is that nice “colonial clot” selling the TPP and bullying the 54 states of the common wealth into accepting the queen and her offspring to become their heads of state forever. The smiling Assassin’s MO from when he was a banker. He will be rewarded handsomely! A knighthood, a couple of seriously lucrative seats on some Financial Military Industrial complex boards raking it in!
Wow. How to lose comrades and alienate friends. Nice going Martyn, really getting everyone on side there with hostility and something verging on pathological hate.
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/10/12/what-every-aucklander-knew-the-wellington-syndrome/
Just when I thought it was safe to go back too………….
yes, skipped over that article in te newsfeed. (check requests Murray Olsen).
??? Which requests? What have I missed?
“Wow. How to lose comrades and alienate friends…………”
+1 Rosie
Many thumbs down there for Martyn to think about.
Although the correct order should have been “how to lose friends and alienate comrades”.
It’s a bit of shame he’s got such a bee in his bonnet because the work of the TDB has been otherwise good, with knowledgeable authors and live streaming of public meetings. Unfortunately he’s not helping himself and furthering the stereotype of the “Aucklander living in a bubble” (I did meet these types in my years of living in Akld, I believe they do exist, as well as the cool people) by today only publishing articles on the local body elections from an Auckland centric view, no word on the other regions, not even Liane Dalziel winning CHCH. Compare that with the the nationwide comment on TS on the subject, including Karols article on the Green Sweep.
Oh well, it’s his blog and he can write what he likes. I just wonder if on top of his misdirected anger about Wellington he’s really sour about the fact that there was such a poor turnout at the Wellington TICS Bill meeting TDB hosted alongside the anti GCSB coalition.. TDB is possibly a bit out of pocket due to the cost of the venue and maybe the cost wasn’t met due to the lack of attendee’s when they had the whip round afterwards.He’d be right to be disappointed with the turnout though, I was surprised.
wise words Rosie
“Oh well, itâs his blog and he can write what he likes”
But I thought it was opened to unite the best of the ‘left’ leaning authors, against the ‘right’ Blogs. Not to be Martyns personal soapbox.
Launched on Friday 1 March, 2013, the âTheDailyBlog.co.nzâ unites over 42 of the countryâs leading left-wing commentators and progressive opinion shapers to provide the other side of the story on todayâs news, media and political agendas.
Hmm well, with respect the many good authors on TDB, its the soapbox aspect that has been turning me off. Yesterday’s post really topped it.
Yes, Rose, extremely disappointing in the current climate to see the Left leap into unprovoked infighting. Will we never learn? And right on cue, Bruiser Borrows leads with another prepared Benny-bash Right hook…..funny, innit, how the answer to billions in tax fraud is a tax cut and even the odd knighthood, but fail once to donate the odd lawnmowing cash to Key and you’re marked for life….. sickening. Focus that nausea, brothers and sisters, where it belongs.
My comments do not seem to have appeared on that post. Basically, under a different pseudonym, I suggested Bomber learn that class does still have a place in politics. So far he’s managed to include birth dates and addresses, which covers A and B. Time for C. I also suggested he is so good at own goals that he should get himself selected for the Socceroos and give the All Whites a chance. I am really beginning to wonder if he is any more than an event manager.
“My comments do not seem to have appeared on that post”.
Could be some of that ol’ fashioned TDB moderating going on……….Although, mine got through within 30 mins this time. I was pleasantly surprised. Own goals? Indeed.
Roguey and ak: acknowledged (especially the bit about tax fraud)
What I never mentioned to Martyn was that I have a duck named Jaffa. She is named for her colourings which resemble the well known lollie, rather than the unkind term for an Aucklander. It’s not a term I’d use for my friends and family I left behind in that city. Shame he can’t see that his perception is somewhat unjustified, somewhat paranoid, and that his view doesn’t exactly cement solidarity.
Quite – it is also interesting to note, from my own personal experience, that many of my Wellingtonian friends move (or want to move) to Auckland. I myself am considering such a move. The Wellington economy is tanking and Auckland never looked so bright and promising to us in the capital.
Really? you’ve got a job in Wgtn, your kids go to school there and you want to sell your house in the Wgtn market and buy one in the Akl market.
I think bright and promising would turn to a daily dreary commute from Sth Akl very fast.
Probably better off moving to Aus.
Yeah it was an awful article. He’s a blowhard of the largest order.
Gotta hand it to you TC, you did try to warn us. You were right about the moderation policy too….
I’ll just pop in here.(thanks for the telephone box Rosie). now…back to the movie.
Hope you’re not on the shoe phone in there Roguey………….
Everything is Illuminated đ : Enjoy.
(99RedBallooons)
Nena, just 4 U, complete with thumb slap bass and synth
Thoroughly enjoyed: Great Hit.
Nachtvorstellung
x.
Very rarely will critical comments be allowed through – particularly from those Bombers has already identified as his ‘enemies’ (and I am not just talking about myself – I know several others who get caught up in his..intriguing moderation policy. People further to left than me).
I know, I know, it is technically his blog – his rules however The Standard, as much as I malign some of it’s editors, writers and positions, has a very adult approach to moderation in most cases. Bomber does the left a disservice by being so stridently uncompromising and rude to anyone who might question his POV.
it all becomes clear
I learnt the hard way by questioning the view that political polls conducted via land lines are biased in that they inadvertently target wealthier households. Prior to that, I thought it would have been clear that I am “on the same side” but really, what does that mean anyway. Observation, not question mark.
If you do fly the coup to Akld TC, pack plenty of cash for accommodation, whether it be for rental or purchase. Apart from that, there is alot of interest to be found in Akld. Good luck with your decisions.
Ugly Truth Science has been the nemisis of fundamentalist reilion for at least 1 000 years the more people that get a half decent education the less they believe in religion.
You are the christian equivalent of the Taliban .
Insecure people like yourself need to push regessive ideas onto others to justify your outdated naive guilt trip.
That’s your ugly truth for you.
Aree you an exclusive bretheren .
I thought of getting some information about election in Taranaki. I looked at one info site and found 1 woman in 15 ranked councillors. Looked to see her photo but none supplied.
Looked up Andrew Judd and it certainly pays to sort NZ pages. There are a number of Andrew Judds around the English speaking world. Found that he is an optician. Against questions placed at the site like what about library policy etc. his answer was look at other candidate answers.
So the person looking on line can’t bring together informative material easily to so as to build an idea of his character. Perhaps you have to have to go and visit his offices and look into his eyes while he is looking at yours? He got 10,000 approx more votes than Duynhoven so they must know something about him in Naki. He has been on other councils.
Andrew Judd – hothead and as with most hot heads he’s got a reputation as a bully.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/6039048/Judd-sent-from-fiery-cricket-debate
http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/8106884/No-charges-after-clampers-claims
http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/9127292/Mayor-rival-clash-on-fund
Thanks joe 90 – noticed this bit about Naki and Oz farms.
An interesting point about Taranaki and investments for the Council that return it about $20m in returns from about $200m+ invested. These include $152m in Tasmanian dairy farms.
The squabble comes one day after a report that Chinese investors were looking at buying into the Van Diemen’s Land Company farms and possibly taking them off the council’s hands. In the Taranaki Daily News yesterday, finance journalist Tim Hunter also questioned the wisdom of the council investment.
The farms and stock have a book value of $152m and controversially make up a majority of the council’s perpetual investment fund which is run by the independent Taranaki Investment Management Ltd, TIML.
It is interesting when anybody has any money, they immediately think of investing it outside NZ. !Generalisation! But hey we haven’t got any money in NZ for investment is the pop song that plays on rotation.
that’s Pop Music!
Nice Move. “You’ll find a God in every cloister…not much between despair and ecstatsy. All Change! don’t you know that when you Play at this level there’s no ordinary venue. It’s Iceland, or the Phillipines, or…
Superb
Rogue Trooper
You triggered my pavlovian response to ‘Pop Music’
and thanks DTB
that Chess piece is superb.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/10/why-microsoft-word-must-die.html
THIS.
/agreed
ancient history. I write free-hand, with the assistance of those red underlines (which I check, to differentiate) and the little, wee edit box. đ
I had to watch it twice but I’m pretty sure that, in response to the discussion around superannuation on Q&A today Fran O’Sullivan said that John Key ‘should go’. Basically she made the point that a government’s superannuation policy should amount to more that just the PM’s pride and vanity (pretty galling I know to those of us here at The Standard who’ve been saying exactly that for ages). Call me an optimist but is there a sense that those in the so-called ‘business/economy lobby’ can see a change in the wind and are starting to gravitate towards the Cunliffe/Parker team?
god no, they’d never go that far.
But PM Collins, maybe…
Collins was pretty terrible on Q&A today (even Fran said she failed to make her case). She only looked remotely credible because Corin Dann is a fucking hopeless interviewer.
Nope. Scott’s correct. At about 1min 56secs, FO’S says “He [Key] should go.” Interesting discussion. I tend to agree more with Annette Sykes though, rather than raising the retirement age beven further beyond when most Maori die.
Agreed t=with the later point in the discussion about bringing parties back into local politics so people have an idea of what candidates stand for.
And…. seriously! Susan Wood, political journalist, fucked up filling out her vote for the health board – I do agree the muddled mix of voting styles will confuse many, but surely not someone who is meant to be right up to date on political processes?
I was impressed with Annette Sykes today with one caveat. I think that while she made excellent points about maori life expectancy with regard to the pension, she lost an opportunity to link super with the living wage by pointing out how impossible it is for young NZers (maori, pacifica mostly but everybody really) on minimum wage (or lower in the case of the youth wage) to set aside any money for their retirement.
gr8t point ScottGN
karol
Susan Wood up to date – that gal needs raisin!
If they are gravitating to Labour because they think Cunliffe and Parker are willing to raise the super age (while National is not), then I’m not sure that “optimism” is the right word.
you lot have prolly already seen and discussed this, but i only saw it yesterday in a link in QoT post
“Tax the hell out of religious organisations.
According to the governmentâs charities website, religious groups are:
Making about $1.5 billion dollars per year.
The second largest collection of charity groups after research & education.
The top 2 of the top 10 charities by assets and income combined.
7 out of the 10 largest charities in the country.”
does tithing attract a rebate?
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/05/21/tax-the-hell-out-of-religion/
sigh
Facepalm
Proof, if you still needed it, that conservatives ignore facts at will.
Will today’s Open Mike be up?
I would like to point out a link on The Guardian.