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.
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National Party leader - Judith CollinsElections often bring out the best and worst in politicians. Some rise to the occasion and provide us with a clear vision for the future. While others wallow in resentment and controversy, over-relying on attack politics to try to attain the interest of voters.That’s been ...
The attempts to sabotage Corbyn's leadership seems likely to do more damage than Corbyn supposedly ever could have done, even if all the stories about him were true:I was reluctant to say anything but this is too important, the full story needs to be told.Don’t let anyone ever tell ...
Good day to everyone. I’ve been asked by Mr Thinks to come here and talk to you all about my concerns regarding the government response to Covid-19. We’ve been living through this pandemic for, what seems like, years. Years and years and years. Why else would the National Party have ...
‘Good Economics for Hard Times’ should be on your reading list. New Zealand does not have a Minister of Labour. It has Ministers of Immigration and Workplace Relations and Safety but there is no minister with responsibility for the labour market. That responsibility was abolished in 2012 when ...
Back in the Kyoto era, the international climate change regime included a Clean Development Mechanism to fund emissions reduction projects in developing nations. Essentially someone would certify that a project - e.g. building a windfarm, or installing energy-efficient lightbulbs - would reduce emissions over and above "business-as-usual". The project would ...
Claire Breen, University of WaikatoWith COVID-19 vaccine developers reporting promising results, it is probable we will one day face a major public health question: can the government compel New Zealanders to be vaccinated? Just as inevitably, some people will refuse a vaccine. As we have seen overseas with debates ...
As the classic MMP cartoon goes, just look at who is against it. Yesterday, the Hamilton City Council voted to use STV for its next two local body elections. The move was initially opposed by deputy mayor Geoff Taylor. The reason? Because a voting system which provided accurate representation and ...
On Wednesday evening (which in Parliament’s weird world technically was still Tuesday because urgency had been taken and so time stood still), MPs united to remove a pretty terrible piece of law from our statute books. No real fanfare or fireworks accompanied this action. Indeed, I didn’t even know about it ...
By Geoffrey Miller Prominent refugee advocate Murdoch Stephens says he is disappointed by Judith Collins’ reaction to Immigration New Zealand’s decision to grant refugee status to Kurdish-Iranian writer Behrouz Boochani. Judith Collins told media last month that “there’s a lot of concern in New Zealand about what they see as ...
Hello all. Judith here to talk about how National are going to take the election in September. The National Party prides itself its unity and cohesion. We are working together to deliver for New Zealanders. First of all, ee are a strong team. We are a very strong team. Our ...
Parliament has just begun the adjournment debate, signalling the effective end of this Parliament. So it seems like an appropriate time to assess Labour's term in office. Unfortunately, its a pretty dismal assessment. Labour campaigned on one thing: change. Not just a change in who got the top jobs and ...
Our climate change policies are insufficient to achieve our goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, according to independent assessor Climate Action Tracker: New Zealand won’t be carbon neutral by 2050 without much stronger policies, says an independent analysis by Climate Action Tracker. The non-profit highlighted a lack of active ...
That was clearly a huge explosion. Just after the explosion, we see a cloud of ‘fog’ moving outwards at high speed. This is a shockwave, rather similar to that which causes a sonic boom. The ‘fog’ is caused by water condensing from the atmosphere in areas of intense low pressure ...
Government has decided in-principle to extend the wage subsidy scheme. We have also agreed in-principle to extend the mortgage deferral scheme, and to modify the COVID-19 Sick Leave Scheme to make it more accessible. Details will be finalised over the weekend and announced on Monday. ...
The Auckland region will remain at Alert Level 3, and the rest of New Zealand will remain at Alert Level 2, until 11.59pm Wednesday 26 August.Cabinet will meet again on the 21st of August to reassess these alert levels. ...
Green Party Co-leader James Shaw is awaiting the result of a precautionary COVID-19 test after travelling to the South Auckland area over the weekend. ...
The Auckland region moved to Alert Level 3 on 12 noon on Wednesday 12 August. The rest of New Zealand moved to Alert Level 2. Visit covid19.govt.nz for the latest information on alert levels, including an overview of restrictions in your area. ...
It's campaign time! The official countdown to Election Day is underway, with Labour supporters crowding into Auckland's Town Hall for our 2020 Campaign Launch. We recap some of the highlights below ...
It's campaign time! The official countdown to Election Day is underway, with Labour supporters crowding into Auckland's Town Hall for our 2020 Campaign Launch. We recap some of the highlights below ...
We've announced that we will expand the Flexi-wage programme to support up to 40,000 more people into work, or to help them start their own business. It's yet another way we're helping keep our economy moving by getting people into work and training. Read on to find out more ...
Business subsidy of on average $7500, and up to $22,000, to hire unemployed New ZealandersUp to 40,000 jobs to be supported by $311 million investment in keeping New Zealanders off the unemployment benefitRing-fenced fund to help unemployed start their own business ...
This week was the last of the 52nd Parliament: a major milestone for our Government and a great opportunity to look back at all the progress we've made for New Zealanders. This week, we increased support for businesses to take on apprentices, improved access to hospital care in Northland, and ...
Kia orana and kia ora koutou katoa. It is a privilege to be able to speak in this adjournment debate and to mark and acknowledge the fact that we are now two years and 10 months into the conclusion of a parliamentary term that has been extraordinary in so many ...
On 1 August, we marked the anniversary of Jacinda Ardern becoming the Leader of the Labour Party. On that day in 2017, Leader Andrew Little nominated Jacinda Ardern to succeed him and lead the party to victory.Now, three years on, we look back at some of the key moments ...
With the June 2020 quarter showing underemployment increasing, the Green Party is calling for a Guaranteed Minimum Income and an increase to the abatement threshold to ensure everyone has a dignified income. ...
We went hard and we went early in our health response to COVID-19, and we did everything we could to cushion the economic impact too. In fact, we can fill every letter of the alphabet with the steps we took to fight COVID-19 and ensure we were in a position ...
Investing in our people, backing businesses, and upgrading infrastructure and housing throughout the country - it's been another week of progress for New Zealanders as we deliver our plan to recover and rebuild. ...
July was another busy month, packed with key investments aimed at progressing our economic recovery as we rebuild New Zealand. We extended support for businesses, helped create jobs through local infrastructure projects, and kept working to clean up our waterways so Kiwis can access safe clean water. Check out the ...
The Green Party is calling for the Defence Force Chiefs in place between 2010-2017 to front up and explain how dishonesty, process and policy failures within the Defence Force led to ‘a series of incorrect statements in briefings to ministers and public releases’ regarding alleged breaches of international torture prevention ...
Thanks to our strong health response, New Zealand’s economy is more open than many other countries. But as COVID continues to surge around the world, the economic consequences of the virus will continue to be a challenge, which is why we have a detailed plan to help New Zealand bounce ...
Thanks to our strong health response, New Zealand’s economy is more open than many other countries. But as COVID continues to surge around the world, the economic consequences of the virus will continue to be a challenge, which is why we have a detailed plan to help New Zealand bounce ...
The Government is stepping up action to deal with environmentally harmful products – including plastic packaging, tyres and e-waste – before they become waste. ...
The Green Party are ensuring that New Zealanders who were overseas when COVID-19 hit will not be charged for the cost of isolation or quarantine if they return home to live. ...
In-principle decision to extend wage subsidy to support businesses and protect jobs Support will be nationwide in recognition of Auckland’s position in NZ economy and the impact of Level 2 Mortgage deferral scheme to be extended to support households The Government is taking action to support businesses and protect jobs ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters today called for National Party and Opposition leader Judith Collins to stop undermining democracy. “New Zealanders are sadly being fed a steady stream of misinformation about the pre-election period from the National Party,” said Mr Peters. “Its effect is to sow doubt about the legitimacy ...
Graduation of Wing 340 2pm, 13 August 2020, The Royal New Zealand Police College [CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY] Introduction Ladies and gentlemen, it is a privilege to be here today to celebrate the graduation of Wing 340. Let us begin by acknowledging the presence of Coalition Government colleague, Police Minister the ...
More Police are being deployed to the frontline to help manage the COVID response, after the graduation today of 56 new officers. “The ceremonies for the graduation of Wing 340 at the Royal New Zealand Police College were trimmed to take account of new Alert Level 2 restrictions in Wellington,” ...
Transitional housing provides much needed support for Taumarunui whānau New emergency and transitional homes will help ease a housing shortage in Taumarunui and provide whānau with much needed support, say Māori Development Minister, Nanaia Mahuta and Whānau Ora Minister, Peeni Henare. The Ministers officially opened five two-bedroom units ...
Following the success of the phase out of single-use plastic shopping bags, the Government now has plans to phase out more single-use and problem plastics to reduce waste and protect the environment announced Associate Minister for the Environment Eugenie Sage. The proposals are to phase-out: some hard-to-recycle PVC and polystyrene ...
A commercial and industrial site in Thames-Coromandel will receive $8.2 million to revamp its marine-servicing infrastructure and create new economic development opportunities, Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones has announced. This project is being supported from the $3 billion ‘shovel ready’ fund set aside in Budget 2020 to kick-start the post COVID-19 ...
After 102 days we have our first cases of Covid-19 outside of a Managed Isolation or Quarantine facility in New Zealand. Shortly I will ask Dr Bloomfield to set out the details of the case. While we have all worked incredibly hard to prevent this scenario, we have also planned ...
An iwi-Crown approach programme to restore the Raukūmara forest on the East Coast of the North Island and boost employment opportunities for whānau, particularly rangatahi/young people, will receive $34 million funding, Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage has announced. “Raukūmara Pae Maunga is a partnership with Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Ngāti Porou, and ...
Government agencies and partners are working closer together to provide more Māori Housing through the Te MAIHI o te Whare Māori – the Māori and Iwi Housing Innovation Framework for Action (MAIHI). MAIHI is a kaupapa Māori approach that drives a system change to give effect and impact on Māori ...
Site work is soon to begin on Te Ahu a Turanga: Manawatū Tararua Highway, the project to replace the former SH3 route through the Manawatū Gorge, Transport Minister Phil Twyford said today. Phil Twyford was today in Woodville at the signing of a formal agreement by members of the Alliance ...
The Pacific Islands Forum Economic Ministers Meeting (FEMM) begins today and will focus on the major economic and social impacts of COVID-19 on the Pacific. FEMM is an important congregation of Economic Ministers and senior officials from around the region, and for the first time, the annual meeting will be ...
Cabinet has approved a formal apology and ex gratia payment to former soldier George Nepata, announced Defence Minister Ron Mark. This payment is to recognise the New Zealand Defence Force’s failure to provide Mr Nepata with a safe system of work in April 1989 when, as a result of an ...
A report undertaken by Ministerial Services into Iain Lees-Galloway’s ministerial expenditure has found no evidence of any inappropriate transactions or spending. Ministerial Services undertook a line by line review of all his expenditure, including staff and spouse expenses for the period 1 January 2019 to 30 June 2020. “I commissioned ...
Managed isolation charges for returnees will come into force from 12.01am Tuesday 11th August, after they passed their last cabinet milestone today, Housing Minister Megan Woods said. “The new charging system balances the rights of New Zealanders to return home and helps reduce pressure on the managed isolation and quarantine ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Henry Puna have welcomed the completion of phase one in the establishment of a travel bubble between New Zealand and the Cook Island. Negotiations on the text of an ‘Arrangement to Facilitate Quarantine-Free Travel ...
The Government has launched a new online, phone and onsite service to help New Zealanders connect to a range of employment support and products for workers and businesses affected by COVID-19, announced Minister of Education Chris Hipkins and Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni. Connected.govt.nz is a one-stop-shop for jobseekers, ...
Security guards contracted to the Ministry of Social Development will be paid at least the Living Wage from next month supporting the Government’s commitment towards fair pay and employment conditions, announced Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni. “MSD was among the first government agencies to pay its employees the living ...
The Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage today launched Te Mana o te Taiao, the Aotearoa New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy - a way forward that envisions Aotearoa New Zealand as a place where ecosystems are healthy and resilient, and people embrace the natural world. “Many of New Zealand’s plants and wildlife species ...
“Pacific languages, cultures and identity are essential to the health, wellbeing and lifetime success of our Pacific peoples and their communities in Aotearoa. The strength and resilience of Pacific Aotearoa is not only vital to their own prosperity but integral to the prosperity of all New Zealanders, and is particularly ...
· $38 million to help schools cover unexpected costs related to COVID-19 · $69 million upgrade for online learning · $107 million contingency funding to support school construction suppliers facing additional costs due to the lockdown. The Government is releasing $214 million from the COVID-19 response and recovery fund to ...
Despite the Government installing safety upgrades around the country, people should still take care around rail crossings, said Transport Minister Phil Twyford launching Rail Safety Week. Phil Twyford said installing safety infrastructure is crucial, but we are encouraging people to be more careful around trains too. “We’re making good progress ...
The Government is providing a cash injection to help Palmerston North City Council complete a programme to provide 78 social housing units for vulnerable tenants. The $4.7 million to build 28 units in the Papaioea Place redevelopment comes from the $3 billion set aside for infrastructure in the Government’s COVID-19 ...
A pest free Banks Peninsula/Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū is one step closer with a $5.11 million boost to accelerate this project and create jobs, announced Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage in Canterbury today. “This is a game changer for this ambitious project to restore the native wildlife and plants on Ōtautahi/Christchurch’s doorstep ...
A Government grant of $6.4 million will expand the Pettigrew Arena in Taradale with new indoor courts of national standard. “The project is likely to take 18 months with approximately 300 people employed through the process,” Grant Robertson said. “The expansion will increase the indoor court space up to 11 ...
The Far North tourist destination of Mangonui is to receive Government funding to improve waterfront infrastructure, open up access to the harbour and improve water quality, Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones has announced. A total of $6.5 million from the $3 billion set aside in the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund ...
The Government has re-affirmed its commitment to supporting the hosting of the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup, which the ICC has delayed from 2021 to 2022. “This is obviously a disappointing decision for cricket players and fans around the world and for the White Ferns and their supporters here at ...
Cyclists and walkers will now have a safer way to get around Taupō, Tūrangi, and between Hamilton and Cambridge, with funding for shared paths and Te Awa River Ride, Associate Minister of Transport Julie Anne Genter announced today. “The Te Awa River Ride is the latest part of massive growth ...
Six major cycle routes will be completed in Christchurch thanks to funding from the Government’s investment in shovel-ready infrastructure as part of the COVID-19 recovery Associate Minister of Transport Julie Anne Genter announced today. $125 million will be invested to kick-start construction and fund the completion of the following cycleway ...
Plans are underway for a brand new state-of-the-art hub for Whanganui’s justice and social agencies, following confirmation the ageing Whanganui Central Police Station is to be replaced. Police Minister Stuart Nash has announced $25 million in new infrastructure spending to improve facilities for the wider community, and for staff who ...
An adjustment payment has been made to Waikato-Tainui and Ngāi Tahu under the relativity mechanisms in their 1995 and 1997 Treaty of Waitangi settlements, Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Andrew Little announced today. The latest payments to Waikato-Tainui and Ngāi Tahu are $2,700,000 and $2,600,000 respectively to ensure the ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Transport Minister Phil Twyford today kicked off the start of the Auckland NZ Upgrade Programme rail projects which will support over 400 jobs and help unlock our biggest city. Both ministers marked the start of enabling works on the third main rail line project ...
The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) investment of $3.78 million in Wairoa will create much needed economic stimulus and jobs, Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. PGF projects announced today include: $200,000 loan to Nuhaka Kiwifruit Holdings Ltd (operated by Pine Valley Orchard Ltd) to increase the productivity ...
Tenants in public and Māori housing may be benefiting from their own affordable renewable energy in future – a fund to trial renewable energy technology for public and Māori housing has today been announced by Energy and Resources Minister Megan Woods and Associate Minister for Housing (Māori Housing) Nanaia Mahuta. ...
Hokianga will receive $2.7 million to redevelop four of its wharves and upgrade its water supply, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. Far North District Council will receive $1.8 million from the Provincial Growth Fund for the work on the wharves. “The work will include the construction of ...
A $350 million Residential Development Response Fund is being established to support the residential construction sector and to minimise the economic impact from COVID-19, the Housing Minister Dr Megan Woods has announced. “The Residential Development Response Fund will help to progress stalled or at-risk developments that support our broader housing ...
As part of a broader plan to divert waste from landfill, the Government today announced $10.67 million for new infrastructure as part of the Resource Recovery Network across the Auckland region. “This key investment in Auckland’s community recycling network is part of the Government’s Infrastructure Reference Group ‘shovel ready’ projects ...
The Government is investing $45 million in the first stage of an ambitious urban development project for Tauranga that will employ up to 250 people and help the region grow, Urban Development Minister Phil Twyford announced today. Phil Twyford says the funding has been allocated out of the $3 billion ...
The Government is investing more than $1.6 million from the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) for a wide range of community and environmental projects in Hawke’s Bay, Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. These announcements today are part of the Government’s commitment to supporting regional economies in the ...
Getting low-emission trucks on the road is a step closer with investment in infrastructure to support hydrogen vehicles, the Energy and Resources Minister Megan Woods has announced. The Infrastructure Reference Group has provisionally approved $20 million for New Plymouth company Hiringa Energy to establish a nationwide network of hydrogen-fuelling stations. ...
With the extension of alert level three set to stretch many South Auckland families even further, Justin Latif reports on how organisations are preparing to help feed those most in need.Food banks across South Auckland are scrambling to get themselves ready for an expected surge in demand, following Friday’s announcement ...
By Sri Krishnamurthi, reporting for the Pacific Media Centre“Climate change may be slower but its momentum is enormous.” – Stuart Chape, Acting Director-General, South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP). Does anyone remember Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish environmentalist who caused a worldwide climate change stir – particularly among ...
An adventure story that splits the difference between action-packed intrigue and touching melancholy, Sam Brooks reviews Lizard’s Tale, which has just won the Wright Family Foundation Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction. When you think of settings for a children’s novel, the dawn before the dusk of the Second World War ...
New Zealand reports seven new positive cases of Covid-19 but all are likely to be linked to an existing cluster, giving officials confidence of containment. Health Minister Chris Hipkins says the 37 current Covid-19 cases represent just 0.07 percent of people tested, and point towards this being a 'contained outbreak'. Today's seven ...
Latest from the Beehive Yes, we all now know Auckland must spend another fortnight at level 3 lockdown while the rest of New Zealand continues under level-2 restrictions. Until 11:59pm on August 26 Aucklanders are expected to stay home in a bid to stamp out what has been identified as ...
The current pandemic will be a brand new experience for most, but others have been here before. Kevin Hague explains what we can learn from the LGBTQ+ community’s experience of the HIV/AIDS outbreak from decades past.If there’s one group in our country who really knows about beating pandemics, it’s surely ...
By RNZ News A person who arrived in Japan from New Zealand with covid-19 visited Wairakei Terraces and Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland in Rotorua and Taupō shortly before their departure, health authorities have revealed. As a precaution, Toi Te Ora Public Health have alerted the public there was a “small possibility” ...
“Over 17,000 Kiwis signed a Parliamentary petition on vaping, which was then completely ignored until five days after the vaping bill was passed. It’s so disappointing and shows what a sham the whole process has been from beginning to end,” says Nancy ...
Some of the best shows on Neon will take between a day and weeks to get through. Here’s a guide to the classics you’ve been holding off on, how long they take to watch, and why you should watch them.It’s a scientific fact that there’s too much TV and nobody ...
In the first of a weekly election diary, Labour MP Deborah Russell explains how you campaign when the campaign is on hold. Tomorrow is National's Chris Bishop. This is now a campaign diary of not campaigning. Parliament finished up on Thursday last week, and in the way that Covid-time goes, that ...
From the trusty old blue disposable medical face mask to a bandana made out of a pair of gruts, New Zealand’s TV news and current affairs shows have been a veritable parade of PPE this week. José Barbosa has compiled all the best examples here:The news that Auckland was moving ...
It’s Amazon Prime Video’s new show about the most extreme adventure race in the world, and host Bear Grylls wants us to enjoy it from the comfort of our couch. I tried to kill Bear Grylls in You Vs Wild, really I did. I made him swim with crocodiles, I ...
By Cook Islands News Former Cook Islands prime minister Dr Joe Williams, 82, a distinguished medical practitioner in Auckland, has been admitted to hospital with covid-19. His medical practice was near the Americold cold store at the centre of the new community-transmission virus cluster in New Zealand. The practice is ...
She’s engaged, so why is the prime minister regularly appearing on a dating app? Zara Beauchamp investigates the strange case of Jacinda Ardern’s cameos on Tinder.I have recently gone back on dating apps. Since I was last in this murky, selfie-filled world of flirtation and despair, several things have changed ...
Source: Council on Hemispheric Affairs – Analysis-Reportage By Arturo López-LevyFrom Oakland, California Throughout the Democratic Party primary for the 2020 elections, for the first time all the candidates proposed a policy towards Cuba in line with the course of dialogue and exchange led by President Barack Obama in his ...
After 102 days without community transmission, New Zealand is once again grappling with increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases. The return to level 3 lockdown for Auckland is estimated to cost the city $150 million dollars. But what price are New Zealanders ...
Newshub’s bombshell story about a Newstalk ZB caller named Merv rocked New Zealand’s political landscape. Roger Bridge, who stands accused of also being Merv, yesterday resigned from the National Party board. But he is far from the first political figure to don a fake name and ring a talkback station. ...
Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for August 15, bringing you the latest on New Zealand news and Covid-19 as it returns to the community. Auckland is now in alert level three and the rest of NZ level two. More details here. Official information here. Contact us at info@thespinoff.co.nz.7.45am: Cook Islands ...
"One day, shifting him between grazing paddocks, they had to take the pony along the State Highway": a short story by Auckland writer Isabel Haarhaus. Melissa and her mother had moved into a garage. It was under the house of a friend of Tash’s. There they made a makeshift ...
Broadcaster Ryan Bridge will write a weekly column for Newsroom during the election campaign. Today, is the Prime Minister's lockdown strategy worth the price? The team of five million is splintering and there are early signs Jacinda Ardern’s campaign that wasn’t a campaign for re-election is wobbling. It’s becoming abundantly clear the Prime ...
The simple rules for wearing face masks during levels two and three – and how they can effectively limit the spread of Covid-19Lots of people might be wondering why we’re now being asked to wear face masks when we didn’t use them the first time we were stamping out Covid-19 ...
In this week's Extra Time, Barry Guy speaks to New Zealand canoe sprinter Alice Hoskin on the heart problem that threatened her career, and her life. Gisborne paddler Alicia Hoskin would have expected to have competed in her first-ever Olympics by now, but she isn't too concerned. She doesn't get upset ...
In Christchurch there’s a tiny shop with a big mantra - buy New Zealand made. Frank Film meets the passionate retailer and the clever Kiwis she’s helping. In Tessa Peach’s tightly crammed shop, you’ll find everything from drill bits and garden spades, to preserved fruits, frying pans, shoes and shoe ...
For now, New Zealand seems to have dodged a Covid-shaped bullet - but there are plenty of hard questions to be asked in the coming weeks, Sam Sachdeva writes You could almost hear five million sets of lungs exhaling in unison. A week ago, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s announcement that Auckland ...
Tasked with scrutinising the agencies of state, Peter Boshier says being chief ombudsman is all about fairness and empathy. Michelle Langstone finds outf how life has prepared him for the role.Portraits by Edith Amituanai.Peter Boshier was robbed at knifepoint in a home invasion in Suva in 2002, had his eye ...
Jacinda Ardern and her cabinet yesterday chose the middle and least bad option. The next week will be critical in assessing whether the right choice was made, writes Justin Giovannetti from parliament.The sense of relief in the basement of the Beehive was unspoken but plain yesterday as Jacinda Ardern and ...
By RNZ News Auckland will remain in alert level three for a full two weeks, with the New Zealand government announcing that the country will remain at current covid-19 alert levels for 12 more days. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield have announced the decision ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The inquiry commissioned by the Berejiklian government into the Ruby Princess COVID-19 disaster has laid blame on NSW health officials, who made “inexcusable” and “inexplicable” mistakes. It also exonerated the Australian Border Force. In the ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson says he's looking at every support scheme on the Government's books to help cushion the blow of extended Level 3 restrictions in Auckland Wage subsidies will be extended nationwide as the effects of Auckland's Level 3 restrictions ripple across the country. However, questions are being asked ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Today’s chart compares this week’s Covid-19 outbreak in New Zealand with the latest case-data from other comparable countries. Note that the data plots new daily cases, smoothed using seven-day averages. However, the ‘black square’ represents New Zealand’s most recent daily total of new cases, at 260 ...
Safer Future trustees, from left, Richard Martin, Henoch Kloosterboer and Gael Goulter The Covid-19 extended restrictions will limit public discussion and education about the important issues involved in the End of Life Choice Act referendum. For that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janak Rogers, Associate Lecturer, Broadcast Journalism, RMIT University A Johannes Leak cartoon published in The Australian today, in which US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is depicted calling his vice-presidential running mate Kamala Harris a “little brown girl”, has drawn widespread condemnation. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Esterman, Professor of Biostatistics, University of South Australia Security guards at Melbourne’s quarantine hotels have been widely blamed for Victoria’s current outbreak of COVID-19. Reports have suggested they mixed inappropriately with people under quarantine, and did not properly follow instructions around ...
This Sunday on Q+A with Jack Tame Can New Zealand beat COVID-19 again? On Sunday, Jack interviews Health Minister Chris Hipkins and National leader Judith Collins. The Australian state of Victoria has been battling its own second wave. Melbourne ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe University The normalisation of diplomatic ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates has variously been described as a “breakthrough” and an important staging moment towards a comprehensive Middle East peace. These conclusions ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced Auckland will remain at Level 3 and the rest of New Zealand at Level 2 for 12 days Auckland's lockdown will continue until 11.59pm on Wednesday August 26. Cabinet has come to a decision on the next steps for managing a cluster of community ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Hooker, Senior Lecturer and Coordinator, Health and Medical Humanities, University of Sydney It could be a brother or sister. It could be a neighbour. It could be a person you work with. We probably all know someone who doesn’t wear a ...
The Save the Maitai campaigners have postponed their address to the Nelson City Council this week due to Covid 19 restrictions. About 100 people were to attend Council’s Thursday meeting to support their representatives due to advise the Council that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Graham, Senior Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology At midday on August 12 2020, the hashtag #DanLiedPeopleDied started trending on Twitter. By evening it had attracted over 10,000 tweets. The hashtag appeared to reflect widespread public distrust in Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Doctor of Botany, University of Melbourne With massive fronds creating a luxuriously green canopy in the understory of Australian forests, tree ferns are a familiar sight on many long drives or bushwalks. But how much do you really know about ...
Government minister James Shaw is in the clear after being tested for coronavirus as a precaution Green Party co-leader James Shaw has tested negative for Covid-19 after undergoing a precautionary test following a campaign trip to South Auckland last weekend. Shaw announced on Thursday he was self-isolating at home and awaiting ...
The Government is scrambling to ramp up the testing of border workers and the Health Minister has conceded he would have liked to have seen more of it earlier Health Minister Chris Hipkins is about to sign an order making it compulsory to test staff working at the border and in managed ...
The Public Service Association is strongly in favour of border control, managed isolation and quarantine workers getting a Covid-19 test as soon as possible, and supports the tests being mandatory and regular. PSA members from multiple government ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Paddy Nixon discuss the week in politics. This week Michelle and Paddy discuss the week of hearings before the Royal ...
A senior National party figure accused of attempting to derail a candidate for the Auckland Central seat with a late-night call to talkback radio has stood down. ...
We waste $1.6b in food in NZ every year. With more people struggling to put food on the table thanks to Covid-19, Two Cents' Worth looks at what we can do to change our habits. ...
Theatre owners are up in arms that potential blockbuster Mulan – filmed in New Zealand and directed by hometown hero Niki Caro – is to be premiered not in cinemas, but on Disney’s streaming platform, Disney+.On an office wall somewhere hangs a picture of Disney CEO Bob Chapek – target ...
A Wellington restaurateur was told by health officials that one of his venues had been visited by a Covid-positive person. So why did the health minister and director general of health not know anything? Stewart Sowman-Lund reports.You’d think the possibility that Covid-19 was in capital would be big news. Big ...
Whatever new arrangements may be put in place in response to Covid 19 for the General Election 2020, the Electoral Commission have been questioned as to what changes they have made to ensure the multiple problems experienced by Māori voters in the last ...
The Covid resurgence cluster is now at 29 confirmed cases, with one further unlinked case. Chris McDowall presents the latest information in visual form.With thanks to the Science Media Centre.Information about the resurgence of confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand is changing rapidly. These posts collate the ...
Analysis - Judith Collins pushes for the election to be delayed due to the Covid-19 outbreak and Gerry Brownlee is accused of undermining efforts to control the virus. ...
Senior doctors at the Canterbury DHB are calling on the Board to front up to staff and to the people of Canterbury. More than 100 members of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists and the Canterbury Hospitals’ Medical Staff Association met ...
By RNZ News New Zealand has announced there are 12 new cases and one probable case of covid-19 in Auckland and Waikato today. Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield revealed at today’s daily briefing there were now a total of 48 active cases, with 30 linked to the community outbreak. ...
Some Cook Islanders are expressing anger at the failure to implement stronger border control public health measures in response to 17 new community-transmitted covid-19 cases in New Zealand – and a further 13 today. Social media is abuzz with comments from some concerned locals. The island’s 10 volunteer puna cannot ...
New Zealanders are being encouraged to look at nature through new eyes during Conservation Week 2020, which this year is from 15 to 23 August. Conservation Week is an annual event led by the Department of Conservation (DOC), and this year’s focus is on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adele Marum, PhD Candidate in English, University of Melbourne Review: Little Birds, Sky Atlantic, released on Stan August 5 2020Little Birds adapts a 1979 collection of French-born diarist Anaïs Nin’s unsettling erotic short stories published two years after her death. Nin ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lorraine Finlay, Lecturer in Law, Murdoch University The events of the past few days in Western Australia have been extraordinary as the protracted conflict between the government and mining billionaire Clive Palmer reached a fever pitch. Premier Mark McGowan declared the state ...
How is New Zealand faring during the Covid-19 pandemic? Newsroom is taking a weekly look at the latest numbers related to the virus and the impact on the economy.Excess deaths Overseas the death toll in some countries has risen sharply, with ...
Responding to National Party Leader Judith Collins's comments this morning , the New Zealand Taxpayers' Union is criticising the National Party for softening its stance on reducing debt. Spokesperson Islay Aitchison says, "Reducing public ...
New Zealand's first cluster of community cases of Covid-19 in months has now spread to the Waikato, Marc Daalder reports Two new cases of Covid-19 associated with the community transmission cases identified on Tuesday have been found in the Waikato, Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said on Friday. Previously, all active ...
'Go hard, go early' has undoubtedly been a successful medical strategy. However, unpredictable, on-again off-again stringent lockdowns may produce so much uncertainty that other outcomes start to deteriorate, writes Robert MacCulloch. New Zealand's approach to keeping Coronavirus away from our shores, or at least stuck in our quarantine facilities, has been ...
Before we get to the top 10s, a note from the good folk at Unity Auckland: Wednesday, first thing, we found people knocking on the shop door before we had a chance to flick the lights on. This time around folk were not going to be without their reading materials. There ...
By Barbara Dreaver, 1 NEWS Pacific correspondent Pasifika family or just an Auckland family? There has been much debate over whether it was wrong to identify the family at the centre of New Zealand’s covid-cluster as a “Pasifika family”. As Pacific correspondent let me make this clear – it would ...
A new poem from Christchurch poet and environmental activist E Wen Wong.passport to the seasonsleaves f a l l crisp like coconut husks, fraying threads of winter’s snow. the hairs of the pōhutukawa stand on their necks doused in a chilli seeds they hang ...
Māori must move to Level 4 Lockdown and the borders must be closed for the next 14 days - even to overseas whānau wanting to return home – to ensure proper border control. That’s the call from the Māori Party who are calling on Māori to unite ...
Opinion: Why is JK Rowling so mad about periods, and why are so many people mad at JK Rowling? Alice Snedden waded into the volatile waters of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism for the latest episode of Bad News.After the horrible year we’ve had, the last thing anybody needed was for ...
By RNZ News The lack of testing of staff at New Zealand’s border is extraordinary, a prominent epidemiologist says. Health officials are frantically trying to trace the origin of the covid-19 cluster in Auckland, which could have come from the border. Otago University professor Sir David Skegg told RNZ Morning ...
Federated Farmers says the government needs to reconsider and let small business fresh food sellers stay open under level 3 and, if necessary, at level 4. "Let the little guys stay open, and sell fresh food, because it’s safer, fairer and ...
Latest from the Beehive Cabinet’s preoccupation with the re-emergence of Covid-19 in the community – we suppose – explains why there has been a lack of pronouncements from the Beehive over the past day or two. We found only three new posts on the Beehive website since we last reported. ...
Open mike 13/10/2013 
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…
Below is the list of gender-critical material which appeared on Redline from November 1, 2019 to December 31, 2019. Submission for rationality and science against the assaults of pre-modernism and post-modernism The left and violent misogyny Marvelly shows us how to be a feminist without feminism Georgina Beyer: We need ...15 hours ago
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The old ways of thinking about the macroeconomy have been found wanting, but the alternative is not clear. Macroeconomics – understanding how the economy as a whole works – appears to be going through a time of exceptionally great turbulence. There is always a robust debate, but today ...1 day ago
by Daphna Whitmore The outbreak of Covid-19 in the community is getting people to starting to thinking about the elimination strategy. Initially the government said ‘flatten the curve’ in order to avoid hospitals being overloaded with a sudden influx of Covid-19 cases. This made sense, but there were some experts, most ...2 days ago
How corrupt is Queensland? Yesterday they actually tried to ban journalists from exposing political corruption during election campaigns. Fortunately, today they changed their minds: A day after introducing laws that would ban journalists from reporting corruption allegations during elections, the State Government has withdrawn the proposal in a spectacular ...2 days ago
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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.