A new media platform is being constructed, but no timeline & I wonder if the performers that will emerge on it have been pre-selected.
This year will see the birth of an entirely new outlet, The Platform, being put together by former Magic Radio/RNZ/and TV3 broadcaster Sean Plunket. If you run out of platforms, the only option is to build your own. The radio station and website will offer an anti-cancel culture format.
You can buy a t-shirt which leaves no doubt on political positioning. Its logo is “Join the Resistance”. Plunket says the mission of The Platform is to “beat the hatred fuelled by taxpayer-funded media and cultural commissars who use your tax dollar to stifle public debate”.
Studios are being built (including one in Queenstown) and staff hired for the new platform, which has funding from an unnamed private backer.
I like the robust intention to defend freedom of speech but any such good intentions will be self-defeated if all we get is a bunch of right wing zombies like Fox News.
The tax-payer funded media "stifling public debate" in our region is the local democracy reporter.
Because there is someone doing that job we get to find out stuff we likely would not know and have better understanding of things going on in the community.
The rabid approach of Plunket is to attract a rabid audience which can accuse everyone and everything else of being rabid.
He refuses to confirm it – citing client confidentially – but Plunket also had a role in the revival of Te Paati Māori in last year’s election, media training candidate Rawiri Waititi, now an MP and co-leader.
Fascinating. But explains why Waititi is so very good at “shock jock politics” stunts & statements that always seem to me to be deliberately provocative & aimed at generating immediate media interest & widespread free publicity.
I’d add that that article by Andrea Vance is a good piece of journalism. Gives a comprehensive look at Plunkett, his background, & his quite varied career.
Who knew that Sean Plunket was once a staunch advocate for more Te Reo Māori to be used on air than just “Kia ora” during Maori language week when he was broadcasting with RNZ years ago? I sure didn’t.
My sarcasm detector went off immediately. Plunkett’s style seems to be to criticise everything. Once he criticised RNZ for not using enuf Māori language. Now he’s moved on to criticising political correctness, wokism, & probably whatever the gummint’s doing.
There DOES need to be more open public discussion & debate on Treaty-related issues, imo. It’s only through such open & honest dialogue &debate that Māori & Pākehā can reach common understandings of each others’ positions & compromise or at least accord more respect to their sometimes differing viewpoints.
Stifling that debate could leads to more people becoming more enticed by, or entrenched in, hostile “anti-them” positions & suspicions about “what they’re really up to” that we really don’t need.
Plunkett’s most likely going to attract a lot of anti-Māori Pākehā whiners, but it will be interesting to see if any Māori are interested in ringing up & debating him or his callers on these kinds of issues. That’s really what we need to hear.
Because there are quite legitimate points to be made for against various issues & matters of interest to Kiwilanders by commentators & proponents who don’t get much of an airing on mainstream tv or on radio.
Martyn Bradbury on Waatea sometimes does this sort of thing well, holding discussions on topical issues with guests with opposing viewpoints. Curiously, his guests always seem to behave very well towards each other, usually with a lot of good humour. I’d like to see & hear a lot more of this kind of thing than the lukewarm efforts of Newhub Nation & Q+A, & RNZ doesn’t do talkback or current affairs debates/discussions.
Whether Plunkett’s new platform would be used in this way remains to be seen. If it’s just a right wing complainers’ echo chamber, it’ll just be competing for the same audience as Newstalk ZB.
Shouldn’t be a problem for you then, Robert. You can just ignore him as the local equivalent of Radio Fox News. Probably so can I. But I don’t mind waiting & then seeing what the show’s actually like.
Better imo to have a media outlet like this where people can air their grievances openly than to suppress all dissenting views from the current political, scientific, cultural or historical orthodoxy being unquestioningly promoted by governments or various politically or culturally biased arbitrators like the RRC, BSA, & Waitangi Tribunal from being heard.
The reaction to the Listener 7 academics criticising the teaching of mātauranga Māori as part of the classical sciences curriculum (as opposed to teaching it under other subjects) & the organising of a petition to attack them was deplorable, in my opinion.
They had a perfectly legitimate viewpoint to express which should have been widely debated. In the process people would have got a better understanding of both pure science & māturanga Māori. There’s a place for both to be studied & to be seen as equally valuable in their own space & context.
''Better imo to have a media outlet like this where people can air their grievances openly than to suppress all dissenting views from the current political, scientific, cultural or historical orthodoxy.''
And there you have it. One way to stop conspiracy theorists ( and me on occasions) major gripe about never being heard. Being able to express an opinion is a great release valve for many that may just save lives down the line.
I must say as this pandemic carriers on I am starting to side more and more with some conspiracy theories. It's not that I believe there is a one world government, or the Masons have signed a pact with the Greys…or that Robert is a cryptid. But it seems to me vested interest groups and governments are using Covid to get the global population under more control by limiting choice and travel, and having the global populations relying more on official organisations and controls while limiting free expression.
Do you remember why Peter Williams PROBABLY lost his job at Magic Radio?
What about poor Bansksie? He forgot the woke powers that be don't have a sense of humour.
If Plunket gets this show up and running I will guarantee it'll have a major following. ZB and Magic…or whatever it's now called, will lose many listeners.
I just wished I was a millionaire. I would bank roll Plunket for any court proceedings that are bound to follow his talkback shows.
Don't worry, Robert. We won't give a hoot about what you and your ilk think. You have National Socialist Radio. We will have Plunket. But I bet many Lefties will be listening on the sly, mainly for two reasons – the excitement and to be offended. Lefties love self flagellation. And unlike NSR…we will have the small mercy of not hearing bird calls or token Maori phrases every few seconds.
Laws, when he's not talking about sex, has some really good ideas. He had one idea that would have in my opinion solved many of societies ills.
I’ll probably have a brief listen. Right wing radio’s a lot more entertaining than pretty boring middle-of-the-road left wing RNZ. But I wouldn’t want to have it on all day. One gets pretty bored after listening to a constant stream of talk back complainers, many of whom clearly aren’t the brightest bulbs in the box, though they obviously think they’ve got great insight other Kiwis lack.
Its all about the topic and host for me. If it's a good topic and the host knows how to rark a caller up, I will listen. I only have a couple of small windows each day to indulge.
So, let me get this right. Here in Aotearoa we have one mildly liberal radio station that never rocks the boat aka RNZ.
We also have a rabid right wing newspaper and their vocal outlet, the Herald and ZB. Both of which have wide circulation and currency.
Yet the righties amongst us are so terrified of RNZ and the apparent thought control it has over the voting nation they're desperate for another rabid right radio station.
I thought Michael Laws idea to heavily subsidise bariatric surgery was a good idea as it would save lives, save money down the track and vastly improve the quality of life for quite a few people
His other great idea was voluntary sterilisation. That would have an immediate and long term positive affect on society.
First, it would be a great screening tool for rooting out potential feral parents. Any person willing to sell their reproductive rights to the state obviously holds parenthood in contempt.
The P epidemic would also allow drug uses to be sterilised. The line at clinics would be long with druggies that are cold turkey needing fast cash. Drug addled parents are the last thing a baby needs
Laws suggested $10.000 dollars for each sterilisation be paid to the recipient.
I would pay the recipient $1000 cash for instant gratification. And the rest into their bank account.
People who get their lives together, could at at later date, attempt to have the procedure reversed in order to have children. Again, that would be another great screening tool especially as the state wouldn't be paying for the reversal.
The Problems:
1- Women. Babies are cash in the bank. Plus all the subsidised benefits from car tune-ups to school uniforms women on benefits receive. A woman wouldn't need to be too bright to work out the money see receives for childcare right up to the child's teenage years would be way more than $10,000. The solution – women pocket $25.000 for the snip.
2- The odium from Liberals, Maori and the media. Many of these folk would rather live with a increasing welfare state, dead neglected babies and overwhelmed social services, not to mention crime. Unfortunately many have jobs thanks to the status quo.
Another great idea that will never see the light of day
Unfortunately many have jobs thanks to the status quo.
I can follow your argument above for those who are unemployed on multi-generational welfare, but I don’t quite get that bit. How is some of these folk having jobs a problem?
Sorry, I will clarify. Many objectors to such a scheme would rely on our broken society ( in my opinion) for their jobs. Eg social workers need broken people to help. Maori organisations collectively rake in billions to help wayward Maori. Hospitality and alcohol retail receive a huge injection of money each week from this demographic. Such a scheme would eventually impact on their employment by producing less clients and patrons.
Don't lose it, Robert. I find it alarming someone with contrary opinions to mainstream thought, who expresses those views in a comparatively small sector of the media still manages to generate such invective as you express.
Maybe its not only supposed dumb, red neck, right leaning listeners that we should be worried about?
"I find it alarming someone with contrary opinions to mainstream thought, who expresses those views in a comparatively small sector of the media still manages to generate such invective as you express."
Like some of those fruit-loop American politicians who find a Platform on Fox?
Undoubtedly they lost their jobs because of 'the market.'
The media company running the radio station relies on advertising. Advertisers would not want to be associated with views seen to be obnoxious, nasty, distasteful, objectionable or whatever negative by a large number of the public. It would affect their 'brand.'
It's not to say that offence could be taken all the time but the risk that it would be there sometimes, (or was there) would be a risk not worth taking.
If we had a much larger population there'd be a sizeable enough market for 'anything goes' radio. Like in the US.
That would be good, eh? Would signal to everyone that it was using a bipartisan basis. Would be likely to produce an ethos of diversity rather than monoculture.
I would pair Trotter and Hooton. That would be exquisite political commentary. A few years back I believe the Sunday Star Times ran them together leading up to an election.
I like the robust intention to defend freedom of speech but any such good intentions will be self-defeated if all we get is a bunch of right wing zombies like Fox News.
But, but, but…they'd be our right wing zombies! Home grown and probably related to my cousins next door neighbour's step-aunts mother's great uncle.
I used-to. In order to learn how the jocks do it (shape opinion and warp/disparage dissenting views) but it was frustrating enough to greet news of their expulsion with cheers 🙂
Probably closer than six degrees of freedom. Kiwiblog is too braindead, the BFT even worse, so all I'm looking for is an option that does better than both.
From a design perspective, if they go for the middle ground instead of preaching to the converted, they will almost certainly succeed…
Buckingham Palace said in a statement: "With the Queen's approval and agreement, the Duke of York's military affiliations and Royal patronages have been returned to the Queen. The Duke of York will continue not to undertake any public duties and is defending this case as a private citizen.
All Prince Andrew's roles have been returned to the Queen with immediate effect, and will be redistributed to other members of the Royal Family, a Royal Source said. He will stop using the title 'His Royal Highness' in any official capacity, they added.
Would have been better for her to switch him to His Royal Lowness! That would have created a certain je ne sais quoi in the public mind…
It was doing that quite often that caused the inbreeding that produced the royal families. Which is why the royals of Britain/Germany/Russia were cousins during WW1 and caused the war to be often referred to as a family spat. The Kaiser visited Queen Victoria during family get-togethers before he became macho.
As a minor side issue you may find interesting, Dennis (not meant to deflect from the main topic of what an embarrassment & rotter Prince Andrew seems to be), I only recently learned while listening to a history of the Tsars that, altho it predominantly affects males, Queen Victoria carried the haemophilia gene that afflicts the intermarried European royal families:
“Haemophilia figured prominently in the history of European royalty in the 19th and 20th centuries. Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, through two of her five daughters – Princess Alice and Princess Beatrice – passed the mutation to various royal houses across the continent, including the royal families of Spain, Germany, and Russia.
Victoria’s youngest son, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, also suffered from the disease, though none of her three elder sons did. Tests on the remains of the Romanov imperial family show that the specific form of haemophilia passed down by Queen Victoria was probably the relatively rare haemophilia B. The presence of haemophilia B within the European royal families was well-known, with the condition once popularly known as “the royal disease”.”
And on that basis, if you use memetic theory as originated by Dawkins, mental belief patterns are just as likely to be disseminated through a family as are the biological links. I'm not a good example (being non-conformist) but I often notice how various attitudes & stances on topics link me to my parents.
Just an interesting thing to reflect on eh? So with the royals, you get the operative born to rule shared entitlement tacit assumption.
That features historically with dramatic continuity. To verify this, one need only research the word lord. A meme conferring hegemony for millennia!
I think it’s cool someone has invented menetic theory that can be used to also encompass what we all know happens in hereditary monarchies. They believe they are special because they are from centuries back literally born to rule. Whether as the monarch or as the hereditary owners of estates & titles. And they simply grow up learning that at their parents’ knees & from how flunkeys treat them with deference.
Similar senses of entitlement to be treated as a cut above the hoi polloi are often demonstrated by the offspring, partners or spouses of those who are filthy rich (whether nouveau riche or old money), celebrities, or politically powerful (or any combination of those).
Cool photo! I was admiring the finery until I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be unimpressed by bling.
But yes, a strong resemblance indeed. Interesting that the one on the right has that glassy-eyed look that one often sees in 19th century & early 20th century photos, whereas the one on the left seems grounded, with total focus.
Going to take a guess here who's who … Tsar Nicholas on the left, George V (Queen Elizabeth II's grandfather) on the right? For first cousins, the resemblance is remarkable!
I think you're right. From an image search for Tsar Nicholas II & George V, Nicholas has the slightly more receded hairline. Difficult to tell them apart in many images.
In their finery, Tsar Nicholas has the more bling. Must have been rather time-consuming getting dressed up in all that regalia, even with the assistance of a manservant.
Yes – the picture was taken during the wedding of the Kaiser’s daughter Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia. The wedding, an extravagant affair, took place on 24 May 1913 in Berlin.
The wedding became the largest gathering of reigning monarchs in Germany since German unification in 1871, and one of the last great social events of European royalty before World War I.
Tsar Nicholas II is in the uniform of the Westphalian Hussars and King George V in the uniform of the Rhenish Cuirassiers (German Cuirassiers wore white) – their respective German regiments.
Inequality is traditional, which is probably why it persists despite years of people (including myself) complaining about it. Once I took the radical approach of proposing a simple solution to the Greens who were promptly baffled into a consensus that they couldn't possibly support any attempt to overthrow the status quo.
Anyway, property rights derive from English common law, in which the commons was enclosed by individual land users, bit by bit, until none was left and private property reigned supreme. Natives got restless. Pushback by indigenous folk citing tribal rights to common land produced this:
I am a Georgist, and according to the Georgist worldview, Native Americans have no special claim to any land, just like the rest of us. But since few are familiar with that economic ideology, I leaned instead on a principle described in John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, now known as the labor theory of property or the “homestead principle.”
To the Georgist idea that land is owned in common by all living people, Locke added that by mixing one’s labor with the land, one encloses it from the shared property because people own the products of their labor. If, for example, you make the effort to grow corn on an acre of land, you come to own that acre of land, so long as there is still plenty of land left for others to use.
Stuart Reges is a Teaching Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington where he teaches introductory programming classes. He took a principled stand, and the leftist honchos in the university hierarchy censored him.
I contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and on January 11th, they sent a letter to the university protesting its response. As a state school, FIRE pointed out, the University of Washington is bound by the First Amendment, which means that any limits on speech must be content neutral:
First, the Allen School’s requirement that faculty must use the university’s chosen land acknowledgment statement or refrain from speaking on this topic in their syllabi is an impermissible viewpoint-based regulation, violating the First Amendment rights of all faculty.
Second, UW’s censorship of Reges’s syllabus and creation of an alternative course section are retaliatory actions taken against Reges due to his views, violating his First Amendment rights.
The thing could go all the way to the Supreme Court – if it does, expect the conservative majority to side with Reges & slap down the leftists. I haven't quoted all the interesting parts of the report so recommend reading it instead. Thoughtful stuff.
Where does this fit into common law ? A publicly owned [75% Ch Ch Council 25% Govt] private company makes a hostile takeover bid for a rural town [Taras] to build an environmentally defunct airport [seemingly financed by the taxpayers]. I stretch things a bit but you get my point ?
From a Green perspective, the problem with common law is that it arose from feudalism. The lord was generally considered paramount by virtue of conquest, hegemony, whatever, but the commons was a notion deriving from common usage within that conceptual terrain of the patriarchy.
So the Green ethos features equity as a principled basis for common ownership instead. Needless to say, leftists have struggled to grasp this radical notion during the half century since it became intuitively obvious to me – which is why it still fails to feature in the leftist political party advocacy. Despite the obvious leverage it would give the left due to common ground with indigenous peoples!
I'm not aware of the Chch public/private scheme you refer to but it looks like the traditional hybrid used originally by royalty (royal charters for the first corporations). So it is a tool of the residual patriarchy. Unprincipled.
Sorry! I should have been clearer. I,m talking about the Christchurch International Airport Company,s attempt to build another international airport in Central Otago. I see the historical link to royal charters
I get the picture. Now if they allocated shares to all stakeholders the region would be empowered by equity. Instead, they are likely to default to the shareholder model, in which capitalists invest to control the money flow.
A Syrian colonel has been sentenced to life inprisonment by a German court for committing crimes against humanity.
There can be little doubt that as time goes by, there will be many more of such convictions for those identified as taking part, in what is arguably the first genocide of the 21st Century.
Syrian ex-colonel gets life sentence in German 'crimes against humanity' trial
…..The German court sentenced the former Syrian colonel to life in jail.
Anwar Raslan, aged 58, was found guilty of overseeing the murder of 27 people at the Al-Khatib detention centre in Damascus, also known as “Branch 251″, in 2011 and 2012.
He sought refuge in Germany after deserting the Syrian regime in 2012.
Prosecutors had accused him of overseeing the murder of 58 people and the torture of 4,000 others at the detention centre, but not all of the deaths could be proven.
The defendant, wearing a green winter jacket and listening to the verdict through headphones, remained emotionless as his sentence was read out in court.
More than 80 witnesses, including 12 regime deserters and many Syrian men and women now living across Europe, took the stand to testify during the trial, with around a dozen also attending the verdict.
"If everyone is guilty of something, is no one guilty of anything?"
….Tu quoque is considered to be a logical fallacy, because whether or not the original accuser is likewise guilty of an offense has no bearing on the truth value of the original accusation.
Prince Andrew, now just Andrew Windsor, is heading for the pedophilia register.
The British monarchy is a linchpin of global patriarchy and it just got one founding pillar pulled out.
She needs to stay in her Undead form a few more years so we can savour the green fumes of British royalty's rotting live corpse. It's a good reminder to rid ourselves of them.
Looking forward to the women's magazines spinning this one.
Prince Andrew, now just Andrew Windsor, is heading for the pedophilia register.
I don’t think so. He hasn’t been charged with a crime. But the civil claim, which may or may not be meritorious, will undoubtedly see his wallet lighter.
The Queen has stripped him of roles and rank and titles? The old British tabloids would've somehow turned that into something like, "Queen in stripping row."
That right?? An investigative journalist ought to look into that. If true, did the Queen allow him that one title to remain, perhaps conditionally? Or is it one that she cannot remove? I'd bet on the former option.
The demand by Rachael Maskell, the MP for York Central, echoed sentiments expressed by a senior councillor, Darryl Smalley, who said the association was tarnishing the city’s reputation.
Maskell said: “It’s untenable for the Duke of York to cling on to his title another day longer; this association with York must end. …”
I think you might find Ad that the age of consent is 16 in the UK so not much chance of a pedo conviction there, and as they say a picture is worth a thousand words, the photo of Windsor and Giuffe, 17, at the reported time and place does not appear to show someone being held against their will and not delighted to be in the company of royalty. It will be an interesting case even though I think Epstein is a deviant arsehole, association with arseholes only appears to be a hanging offence if you happen to be a brown NZer in Australia.
I wonder if a place can be found for Mr Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in one of London's homeless shelters? I don't think his mother will be housing him anymore.
Adrian (6) … I think it depends where the alleged sexual assaults took place. In NY, the age in which Ms Roberts Guiffre is claiming she was assaulted in that US state, comes under statuary rape. However I stand to be corrected on that point.
Regardless of age, if any sexual assault against the will of the claimant was forced upon her by a defendant, then isn't that classified as rape?
I went to post a reply to someone yesterday regarding climate change. The main part of that reply would have centred around a long list of eminent scientists who reject present CC theories being touted by consensus opinion – both public and scientific. My argument would then have hived out by showing where their main points of contention were.
I had many links from previous research, but was shocked to find many of those links don't exist anymore. Then I found this… it offers an explanation. Mainstream internet( oxymoron??) seems to be cleaning house of us supposed climate change deniers.
The list may exist elsewhere. But I have no desire to look.
So Labour have legislated to let private banks have free reign over determining who is worthy of a mortgage. Thanks to a change to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, banks have to crack down on applicants' spending before they can approve loans. This has had some outrageous outcomes:
The couple had a $63,000 mortgage and many years of work ahead of them. They wanted to increase their mortgage by $80,000 to get the repairs done.
Anderson-Robb applied to her bank, which she has been with for nearly 20 years, but was declined the loan because of a trip to Kmart in Invercargill, a $100 spend at the Warehouse, and a credit card she had not used in over a year, she said.
Bank staff also queried her husband's daily trip to the dairy to buy a drink for when he was at work.
First time buyers and low income people are being hardest hit by this, intended to crackdown on loan shark type lending:
Changes to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act at the start of December were intended to protect vulnerable borrowers from loan shark lenders.
Banks are now requiring detailed breakdowns of applicants' spending habits before approving mortgages.
Dunedin's MoaMoney Mortgage and Investment director Asher Ingram described the new rules as a "forensic analysis" of an applicant's bank accounts.
"Every single thing is under the spotlight now and it is having a really negative impact," Ingram said.
The law change was intended to deal with loan shark type lending, but it was hitting first home buyers the hardest.
Labour continues to tinker at the corners, making life harder for those not already on the property ladder, but at least they can say, not us, it's the banks!
But these rules will benefit with anyone who has cash assets and fixed assets, just as last years super low rates benefitted those that had cash assets and fixed assets. Also what housing crisis, after all most of our homeless are warehoused and stacked like cordwood in motels, and that is housing right?
Quelle surprise! Who would've thought relying on commercial banks results in lending decisions being made along commercial lines? So much for an alternative to neo-liberalism; outsource it all to the PMC, everything will be commodified so the purity of the market can cleanse it all!
Labour are evidently happy just to manage the decline.
It is the addiction to 'market principles' that has held Labour back. For example Kiwibank was an excellent opportunity to reshape the lending market. It could have been sufficiently funded to take on the Governments operating accounts, it could have offered higher interest rates on savings and lower lending interest rates, used these to outcompete the international banks. But adherence to ideology of 'business knows best' lead to it's underfunding and consequent lack of competitiveness.
Labour pays for your first home mortgages through state and employer contributions to Kiwisaver. Which remains the best and fastest way to get your deposit, outside of Bank of Mum and Dad.
When housing is commodified, a mortgage is necessary to purchase a place to live. Surely people have a right to be housed, ergo, in a 'housing market' the state should be on the people side, not the markets.
All government is for social welfare, otherwise you aren't governing for the people, you're just working to maintain the status quo.
The Government has an obligation to eliminate the requirement of inheritance or generational wealth to accessing home ownership. You know, equality of opportunity and all that. otherwise you're just managing the exacerbation of existing strata.
You should have a human right to shelter/home however.
When the Govt provides a subsidy of over 2billion to private landlords,and houses ' 23,000 in motels you would hope their would be a fairer more efficient use of capital.
The average stiff spends more on rent than they would on mortgage repayments.
Labour pays for your first home mortgages through state and employer contributions to Kiwisaver.
Labour pays no such things. The employers contribution to Kiwisaver are paid for by the Employer.
So if anything, one could argue that the Employer helps people get money into the Kiwi saver. I would also like to point out that you can only access so much of that fund for a mortgage, and also only under certain circumstances. Never mind the fact that the Kiwi Saver is also paid for by the Employee.
So again, Labour pays nothing to no one.
Any benefits on the Kiwisafer that comes via the Government comes via the government – be that Labour, National, Act (quite possible in the future) and the Government is funded by the tax payer who are also the ones that can’t afford houses in many cases in our fair land.
Again, Labour – the Party and its assembly of beige suits – pays nothing to no one in the Kiwi Saver.
Ideally we would have a Party in Government who campaigned on an end to neo-liberalism, with a long and storied history of world-leading social welfare and innovative egalitarianism.
Any day now they will fix that. Any day now. And they will bring dignity back to Winz, and kindness, and instill a deep seated desire in the Winz Drones to actually help the people in need rather.
Well well…..things are getting so bad thought horizons are expanding.
"Only the Māori can speak authoritatively about the sort of economy and society produced by living self-sufficiently in Aotearoa. From the beginning of the fourteenth century, until the late-eighteenth century, the inhabitants of these islands lived entirely without outside contact or assistance. All production of food, tools and medicines was internal, as was the trading of goods and services. For roughly five hundred years, in a multitude of small communities, Māori lived entirely alone in these islands at the bottom of the world. At any given moment between 1300CE and 1800CE, however, it is generally agreed that the combined population of these isolated human settlements never exceeded 150,000 individuals."
After reading the article the troops to Cuba & Venezuela threat sounds like something of a throwaway remark that is solely intended to illustrate how Russia feels about Ukraine possibly joining NATO and thus having their opposition/enemy right next door on their border, and is pretty unlikely to actually be in the serious planning stages by Russia.
Russia has mobilised 100,000 troops and placed military hardware along its border with Ukraine, while issuing a series of security demands that Nato has said are impossible to meet, such as removing troops from eastern members of the alliance and a block on any membership application from Kyiv.
It’s hard to say where things will go from here but I’d bet provocations will go on, but the stalemate will continue because neither side wants to push their luck too far and start something they can’t predict the end of.
It is geo political gamesmanship but I believe their resolve is serious.
Re Ukraine, I think you are right about that. Moving that number of troops and that amount of equipment to the border will be an expensive operation. Russia's not flush with cash. They wouldn't have done that were they not serious in their resolve to get some kind of backdown from Kyiv.
Whether they'll go any further and actually mount a serious offensive attack, I still doubt, B. I could be wrong – but were they to do so it could spin horribly out of control. I know Putin's often happy to push the envelope but how much risk he'll take here is hard to calculate. He's certainly not a fool or a straight out gambler.
Ukrainian troops probably will. Beyond that it’s difficult to tell what the various calculations are.
The Ukrainians have been taking part in regular regional military training exercises with NATO troops for years & have recently been undergoing a programme of changing their equipment to conform NATO standards.
But Ukraine’s latest request for admittance to NATO was apparently rebuffed.
Putin’s stated red line has been there can be no NATO missiles capable of striking Russian cities stationed in Ukraine.
The US and NATO allies have said they are open to discussing restrictions on each side’s military exercises and missile deployments in the region to cool the temperature.
Do Russian troops want to die for Ukraine? If Putin calculates wrongly & all or some NATO countries including the US support Ukraine militarily should it come to a Russian invasion?
Putin’s not rash enuf in my view to bet on a win for Russia as a certain outcome. This is Putin’s Cuban Missile Crisis equivalent. I’m pretty sure there’ll be a diplomatic solution – if necessary worked out on the quiet (like there was with that crisis) while they are bombastically facing each other off in public.
Given that NATO’s rebuffed the latest request for immediate NATO membership by Ukraine, Putin’s probably already won this round.
After doing a bit more reading, it seems that the current US planning envisages the strongest ever economic sanctions against Russia if it invades Uraine, with military planning underway on how they might support a post-invasion insurgency/guerilla war by Ukrainian irregulars.
They’ve analysed the Obama administration’s response to the invasion of Crimea & noted that it was so piss-weak it had no effect at all deterring Putin.
The ruling today by the US Supreme Court against Biden's employer vaccine mandates is a seriously massive win for the anti-vaccine movement and for libertarians globally.
This is now a massive and live global legal argument.
David Seymour, Hipango, Billy TK Junior, Bishop Tamaki and Bill in particular will take comfort in its reasoning.
Hard to understate the surge this gives the movement.
“If I had a dollar for every lockdown politician who decided to escape to Florida over the last two years, I’d be a pretty dog-gone wealthy man, let me tell ya,” DeSantis said at a press conference.
“I mean, Congress people, mayors, governors, I mean, you name it. It’s interesting though, the reception that some of these folks will get in Florida,” he continued. “Because I think a lot of Floridians will say ‘Wait a minute, you’re bashing us because we’re not doing your draconian policies, and yet we’re the first place you want to flee to to basically to be able to enjoy life. And so I’m not surprised to see that continue to happen.”
Oh yeah some interesting stats here, compare New York to Florida and remember Florida has a higher percentage of elderly:
In breaking news, the US Supreme Court has struck down the massively wide vaccine mandate on businesses over 100 employees but narrowly upheld healthcare worker mandate.
The law is, of course, different here in NZ and such a decision is not greatly legally relevant. However, it is instructive and positive signalling for those of us who still believe in democracy and human rights, and are wary of massive corporate and Government power.
In particular, the Supreme Court said:
"Although COVID-19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most….COVID–19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather. That kind of universal risk is no different from the day-to-day dangers that all face from crime, air pollution, or any number of communicable diseases."
As has been clear from the start, the start vaccine mandates and passports in NZ and abroad are hideous, overreach, segregationist, ineffective, and divisive. They are the antithesis of NZ society.
I would love to hear the scrapings of Authoritarian-apologists on this site, how, particularly now with double vaccination so ineffective on transmission and protection against (a far less serious) Omicron, and the utter patheticness and unrealism of booster shots every few months, our continued vaccine mandate and passports, extending forevermore, is even remotely justified in a free and democratic society.
It was one of the worst exercises of state power and coercion in our dark history, and now is beyond a joke. Every month the vaccines effectiveness seems to be less and less than told yet we continue to throw hard fought principles and rights continually out the window.
Is anyone willing to put reason, democracy, and proportionality before their ideological partisanship and fear to admit such mandates and passports was, and is, so wrong?
(And before you go crazy accusing me of all kinds of anti-vax witchery, I got double vaxxed and are not opposed to a targeted, limited healthcare worker mandate, given exposure to higher risk).
“Two-hundred twenty thousand Americans dead,” Biden began. “If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this: Anyone who is responsible, for not taking control — in fact, saying I take no responsibility initially — anyone that is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.”
Statists exist on the left & right even if mostly on the left. The basic notion is the matrix – a web of ties that bind individuals into society. Why Thatcher denied society's existence, right? As futile as Canute commanding the tide not to come in.
Since the state is sovereign, it rules over citizens. Supreme Courts are only relevant inasmuch as cases can be brought against the state, and they may determine that the state has over-reached, and find it in breach of the constitution. That may be the basis of the news you have reported. The state then has the option of creating a fix to the problem via new legislation…
I would love to hear all that crap come from someone that doesn't finish their rant with "I got double vaxxed". Put your health where you mouth is and spare us your hypocrisy.
It shows that you don't believe your own bullshit.
Also I believe the so called fear is mostly from a few retards about "how dangerous the vaccine is", not the health professionals/state about the real risk from the damn virus.
Actually, I agree – good point and I'm being hypocritical. I greatly dislike prefacing or ending with "I got double vaxxed" because vaccination status has no bearing on the quality of arguments or the morality or legality of a Government or society action.
However, we live in a country where anything remotely questioning of vaccines and now, vaccine mandates and passports, is generally automatically deemed 'anti-vax' misinformation.
You'll notice I talked exclusively about vaccine mandates and passports, not vaccination as an individual choice – which I'm for. Nuance, again, is lost in a society who cannot reason and relies on demonisation and fear.
We are all hypocrites: I know Big Oil has lied about climate change, yet I buy their product. Anti-vaxxers say Pfizer is corrupt, don't use their product, but some (you?) still do.
It's not possible to live in society without being a hypocrite :-
I guess its a matter of reducing your hypocrisy as low as you can get it.
"The law is, of course, different here in NZ and such a decision is not greatly legally relevant."
then continues:
" … vaccine mandates and passports in NZ and abroad are hideous, overreach, segregationist, ineffective, and divisive. They are the antithesis of NZ society."
I'm not going to repeat everything I've responded to Robert Guyton's comment below, but this argument is beyond weak.
– There's no human right for a non-citizen to enter another country; it's a jealously guarded perogative of the other state;
– Getting a passport doesn't require you taking a medical procedure that involves internal treatment of a recent vaccine;
– Not having a passport simply means you can't travel to another country; it doesn't mean you lose your job, can't get a coffee, can't go across the ferry, are excluded from your tennis club, or are demonised in your society.
Passports are a pretty proportionate, reasonable, and ordinary response to the need to organise international travel, protect state borders, and enforce fairly ordinary laws.
Frankly people like you scare me stiff; you seem almost eager to live in a socio-technological controlled society where your every interaction is based on state assessment of your citizenship grading. More passports, more! More control, more!
"Passports are a pretty proportionate, reasonable, and ordinary response to the need to organise international travel, protect state borders, and enforce fairly ordinary laws."
Where to begin.
Pretty proportionate (you'll need multiple injections – multiple!!!
Reasonable – only because you accept them – I personally, do not and won't travel accordingly.
"Ordinary" response? – you mean, been around for a while and few complain?
crossing Cook or Foveaux straight by ferry rather than airplane
attending one's tennis club
In the same way we don't have a human right to travel at will, we don't have a human right to do a lot of things. Some of us are afforded the privilege of those things, some more than others.
I think there are issues around using information tech by government. Lots of them.
But they existed long before the pandemic, which makes me wonder if the people protesting a lot now are more concerned with conceptual liberty. Why the passion about vax passes and not say police in NZ trialing face reconition software? Or the government's long standing policy of restricting the movements of beneficiaries? Or how our medical information is now being stored and accessed?
PuckishRogue – I think we have different reasoning but a similar conclusion on the US system.
But I was referring more specifically also to NZ's divisive Government vaccine mandate and passport system, particularly in an era of Omicron, as well as the utter rubbish and excessive corporate power exercised by NZ companies and Govt agencies wrapping up mass vaccine mandates as 'workplace health and safety' crap to avoid taking responsibility for what is a massive political choice and power.
I've read the infamous 'mass formation psychosis' theory and I'm pretty sceptical of its scientific basis, but there is definitely something gone absolutely wobbly in our society on Covid. The more lockdowns, vaccines, mandates, masks, etc have beenshown to be ineffective (Netherlands is simply the most recent example of this), massively costly, divisive, and immoral the more people seem to defend coercion and control.
They're like Trump supporters biting harder on election conspiracy the more the Courts rejected claims.
it is the theory recently espoused by Robert Malone, MD, regarding public health behavior. Malone posits that promoting messages encouraging people to get vaccinated against COVID-19, among other scientifically validated pandemic communications, is an attempt to hypnotize groups of people to follow these messages against their will.
Against their will?? 🙄 I disagree with this theory due to noticing long ago that the sheeple are dead keen to be hypnotised by pretty much anything the wind blows in.
Are we really still on equating vaccine passports and mandates with a driver's license and stop signs? Really, I was hoping for a bit more. But for about the billionth time let's put that rubbish in the bin, where it belongs.
– A driver's license or seat belt is not an injection or medical procedure literally inserted internally and that continues for months. I don't know about you but a seat belt I can simply take off, or a driver's licence I can simply give back, and that is ridiculously different to a medical treatment for a very recent (and sharply declining efficacy) vaccine.
– Not having a driver's license will, for the far majority of jobs, not get fired/refused to be hired nor demonised and your professional career lost. At most, you'll get a fine from a police officer. Nor will it ever stop you from exercising human rights such as free movement in NZ or every day human activities.
– There is no actual human right to drive – it's a privilege. There is a human right to refuse medical treatment reflected in the BoRA, multiple treaties, human dignity, and was borne from hideous forced medical treatment during WW2. To compare the two is the equivalent of an anti-vaxxer saying they are being treated like Jews.
Some say tyranny is the enforced absence of nuance, which you seem to be the expert on. Your childlike level of argument is that either you have to accept all and any Government control, or none. Does anyone actual live in that cuckoo world? I give your answer an F.
Yes, we are "equating vaccine passports and mandates with a driver's license and stop signs?" and that's because no one has yet addressed the issue fully; do you feel that you are only partly constrained from driving through a stop sign, because it's merely a law, and not a human right to do so?
Pffffffffft!
Do you feel your "right" to travel freely about the planet is constrained by the oppressive demands to be vaccinated against diseases found outside of the country?
Yes, I do feel constrained if I must a accept an internal injection and medical treatment to have my job, grab a coffee, see my brother.
Especially when I thought I had a human right to choose my own medical treatment, partly thanks to the endless suffering of thousands of Jews and other "undesirables" deemed by the Nazi state to have no personal autonomy. (And, thanks to poor intellectually disabled people who had forced sterilisation deemed necessary by medical "experts" at the time. Medical experts have a very patched history).
Of course state power and discrimination can be justified. As we'd both agree for a driver's license, for example.
But nobody has made anything coming close to such a justification. Especially for a vaccine that already had limited impact on transmission and efficiacy strongly declined after a few months – even before Omicron almost completely evades it.
Your argument is we do X, so we can do [wildly different] Y. OK, we cull diseased livestock, so we can cull diseased humans. A difference you say? Human have a right to life you say? Gosh.
Would you be ok with taking a medication you were opposed to if the government mandated that you had to take it in order to take part in civil life in NZ?
It's about bodily autonomy. I think the mandates are exceptional not routine like a drivers licence or cycle helmet. They push the edge of our human right to not be coerced into medical treatment.
What are the perimeters of "civil life in NZ", weka?
Are non-vaxxed people excluded to any significant extent from "civil life in NZ"? Or are they subject to some inconsequential restrictions; inconsequential, in light of the potential harm of the effects of a pandemic sweeping through NZ?
What are the perimeters of "civil life in NZ", weka?
This is indeed the question that we are all being asked now.
I'm vaccinated but don't have a vax pass (yet, will probably get one). It hasn't really affected me much, it's been relatively easy to work around.
For other people it will be a bigger deal. I'm guessing some parents will struggle esp with young kids. People who live already marginalised, low income lives being excluded from the few places they feel safe/welcome/comfortable is actually a big deal.
I'm not saying don't mandate (I consider them a necessary evil). I'm saying don't minimalise the impacts or the politics. It's not the same as requiring a driver's licence or bike helmet. The only way that argument works is if one believes that vaccines are Good and Safe and that people who don't want them are just wrong headed.
I've not argued that they are the same. They are though, analogous; there's something to be learned by considering them in tandem.
As to minimalising the impacts – well, I haven't heard much at all of the negative impacts – just some inconveniences for some – it seems to me that the wilfully-unvaxxed have found work-arounds, much of that building their tribe and enjoyable tribal activities – I don't see this as a bad thing. Has there been great harm and serious set-back for non-passport holders? I've not heard or seen much about that.
I also see that tribe stuff as a positive, and am looking forward to seeing what creative initiatives come out of that. But the people I know doing that are well resourced in one way or another and are used to being the counter culture.
I think there are non-vaxed people making a bit deal about the passes who are probably actually ok beyond the personal affront they feel. But as I said, I have some concerns about already marginal people being further marginalised, and the ostracisation vibe on top of that is probably going to cause problems.
So there is no difference between a Cop – a government employee, trained to aks "Papiere Bitte" or 'driver lisence', and the shop girl that is to ask anyone if they have a vaccine pass. No difference at all, right Robert, its like apples and oranges they are all fruit, unless they identify as vegetables. Right?
Dude the one is a legality that is enforced by Police, people trained and paid to put up with the shit, and the other is something that is supposedly to be enforced by the public.
Now if the government wants to have these passports/lisences then the government needs to put up and employ some more coppers to assure compliance. I nor you have any legal rights to ask anyone for their lisence even if we assume them to be driving drunk. The best we can do is call the coppers.
But i guess, the government don't want to be seen as draconian or even totalitarian with cops standing at the entrance of a mall 'Papiere bitte'. Why one might end up thinking this government is down right ugly.
It is awkward, Sabine, that's for sure and requires patience from all.
A shop-owner or someone employed by them may have "no right" to demand to see proof of this or that, but they are able to require certain things of their customers – after all, it's their "space" customers are entering. If a shop-owner deems someone to be undesirable, they are within their rights to refuse to serve them – this can be tested in the courts if need be, and if they want their customers to wear masks, they can state that, and they'll be supported by law, I believe. That a "mere slip of an employee" asks this of a customer, is of no consequence – irritating to some, but not a valid complaint.
This lisence bullshit is not worth the paper its printed on if the Government is not able for reasons of funds, or plain cowardice to put more cops on the street to enforce their laws. And putting cops on the street to enforce vaccine passport usage is not going down well in the country were there currently are actually not enough cops to keep up with crime, murder, and illegal driving. Never mind the really bad look of Joe and Jane Cop having to ask people 'Papiere bitte'.
Any person who is hurt by some irate customer after being asked for a vaccine passport is hurt on account of a lazy government that wants laws enforced, but don't want to put paid and trained enforcers on the street.
Maybe you could volunteer to be such an enforcer, you seem suited to the task. You are already making all sorts of excuses why it should be citizens to play coppers without pay, training and fancy hat.
The government wants this lisence, then the government carries the duty to enforce the use of this lisence.
No on in this country other then the polititians that cook that shit piss poor lazy lawmaking up should have to put up wit that shit, no sandwich maker or shop keeper is paid enough to be the brown shirt of the government, just because the government is too shit scared of hte optics for either hiring and paying brown shirts or asking for volunteers from the public to enforce its piss poor badly written laws.
The government wants mandates, the government can then organize to have these mandates enforced, be that with volunteers, police or the army.
What the government can not do is push that role over to people who are not trained, nor paid by the government to enforce compliance for the governments rules – that is what we have and pay a police force for. .
And now I leave to continue to play dumb old person with a beard, as sad as that is.
So, reading the link you provided 🙂 I see an anti-vaxxer berated staff – are you blaming the Government for his behaviour?
Those sorts of situations will arise/have arisen (in our own shop, more than once) but I've never blamed the Government, just viewed it as a "hot-point" that gives everyone an opportunity to sharpen their point of view.
Did you expect that the pandemic would be managed without ruffles?
It’s not impoliteness in a pandemic if they’re breaking the law and making transmission of a contagious illness more likely. That’s the whole point of the mandates. The protestor needs to be removed as soon as possible and in a way that doesn’t put staff and customers at risk.
He wasn't assaulted, Mitre10 staff were within their legal right to remove him from the premises.
Imagine that situation where we have an omicron outbreak and the stakes are even higher.
I don't think it's the job of the police, I think large stores like Mitre10 and subway should be hiring security staff. I don't know what smaller businesses should be doing. I think this is probably Sabine's point, that there is additional tension and conflict now over what we had before and it's being left to businesses to sort it out.
There's something here about about what people are going to do when other people are being arseholes in a pandemic. In this sense I'd prefer the government not to have been so casually authoritarian about the whole two NZs thing, but it works the other way too. If you're going to be that antisocial, you can probably expect someone to give you a slap at some point.
(It would have been better if the Mitre 10 dude refusing him entry and "personhandling" ( ) him out the door had a mask which fitted properly and wasn’t continually slipping down past his nose and mouth as he talked.)
But good on the Mitre 10 staff for how they handled that.
The Government is us. We voted them in with a majority in MMP. The Government does not gain anything except the ability to warn us if we have crossed paths with someone infectious. All the rest is in twisted minds. Fortunately most citizens are sensible and practising kindness.
Seeds of discord need watering with suggestions… some here do that at every opportunity.
I think the police are the only ones that can enforce the health orders.
And some people have mask exemptions.
Security guards can escort someone of the premises who has been tresspassed though. Even staff can do that (see the mitre10 video). Some retailers aren't going to do that for a number of reasons. I'd be more concerned if the two people were being dicks about it eg insisting on standing close to people.
People used to be free to drive. Then in 1925 the Government of the day ruined everything by bringing in drivers licenses and we have gone downhill ever since.
Actually I don't think my father ever had to have a driving test. He started driving in about 1919 which was long before there were any tests in New Zealand. When they introduced the licenses I think they went to then drivers without any test. I wouldn't put money on that being true of course. I'm not like Clarke who knows the details of all the regulations that affect his mates.
My father in law was probably worse. He was somehow given a license that allowed him to drive every single category of vehicle and they kept renewing it like that for about 20 years. It took that long before someone asked him whether he was really qualified to drive the lot. He answered honestly and thereafter he had the very limited license all the rest of us have.
Really? No I certainly did not. My children, and grandchildren for that matter, are all criminals then. When very young they all seemed to have a fascination with the idea, if they were held close enough to reach.
On the other hand I don't think people under a year old can be held criminally responsible.
So I can rest easy knowing that while the blacksmith is shoeing my horse, if she/he feels inclined to put their fingers in my mouth (for what ever reason), I can advise them that such a practise is not legal.
We are not yet in an 'era of Omicron'. Omicron is at our borders not yet in our communities. So we have reports that Omicron may be 'milder' but more transmissible. The current strain out in out communities is Delta and this is definitely not milder.
I wonder what the reaction would be if the coming variant was found to be more severe than Delta. I am picking that there would be plaudits all round for the far-sighted measures to get on top of the spread of such a severe disease.
We are living at the time when hindsight, which is always 20:20 is with us as we speak or do now.
We have spoken about this so-called fear thing that some posters are trying to foist upon us…..we are all supposed to be running around with our hair on fire about Omicron. I sense that there is a calmness about the populace as they go about NZ. They are being careful, doing the masking, scanning, physical distancing and listening to what is happening, being advised and will get ready to spring into action once called. Our vax rates are getting up and up and with the coming action to vaccinate children we hopefully will be well prepared.
The fact that the coming variant may be milder has, Green Bus says, allowed the anti vaccination 'experts' free rein, again.
We could have been facing a long term with Delta as it spread through the country, as it is now.
"The fact that the coming variant may be milder has, Green Bus says, allowed the anti vaccination 'experts' free rein, again."
I presume then you would prefer Omicron to be less mild and harsher than Delta? That would presumably then allow us to mask up even more, get back into lockdowns, and clamp down on those 'anti-vaccination experts' and remove their free rein to show how wrong and stupid they are?
I thought Covid was the actual enemy here and we would welcome a weaker strain. Seems I'm wrong all along. But thanks for clarifying this is not about Covid but rather silencing people with a set of beliefs, or human rights, we don't really like or agree with. Cheers.
GreenBus does not say any of that. Your the 3rd commenter to say that?
I want Omicron to be milder and in fact I want the whole kaboodle to just go away.
No more Virus, mandates lifted, masks off, concerts all go.
Actually, wearing a mask and showing a passport doesn't worry me at all. It is such a trivial thing to worry about, there are bigger fish to fry!
If mandates are not lifted at the end of this, THEN I will be concerned, but I have full confidence they will be and will not engage in fear mongering that one.
You prefer to just engage in two years of rabid fear mongering and dislocation of society for a disease that, even at its worst, killed less than 0.5%?
This why I gave up on this website – not because everyone won't agree with me (I enjoy a spirited debate) but there is so much emotional, blind, and inconsistent reasoning.
Covid is not making us wear masks, mandates, and the rest of the extreme measures. That is the Government and bureaucracy solely in charge of that. Of course if we remove it all, there may be a cost – there is also a huge cost with having it. The level of intellectual dishonesty to pretend our response is normal, proportionate, inevitable, or even vaguely democratic is astounding.
The idea that someone's rights, whole sectors of society, are just demonised and excluded from jobs, families, society, for some 'indefinite emergency' (that's an oxymoron beloved by authoritarians) is fine or that it is is 'trivial' shows how much we no longer think or act like a democracy. You have bitten so deep on a narrative that rights are now privileges and democracy is dangerous, the wormhole won't go any deeper. There is no reasoning with such ingrained unthinking, such blind compulsion to one fear beyond anything.
Go to Australia mate, they agree with you. We voted in support of protection from covid. You are conflating that with voting against freedom.
92000 cases in NSW and very little in the way of medical help or food in the shops. Others are dying because the systems are in disarray, with most in denial like you.
They are holding sports and other things with no mention of covid.
29 died last night. Too bad, collateral damage. Drive on by. Scomo will send them thoughts and prayers.
This hyperbole about "Freedoms". You are in Bill's square.
I thought Covid was the actual enemy here and we would welcome a weaker strain. Seems I'm wrong all along.
Almost certainly you are, because milder =/= mild. There's been a lot written about omicron along the lines of these two things:
it's too early to know how omicron will play out
current research shows considerable problems being caused by omicron
We may get lucky and omicron or another variant turns out to be mild. We're not there yet. In NZ, the pro-omicron position is basically saying let's shift from very low infection/death/disability rates to higher rates so that we can get back to normal. But we wouldn't be going back to normal, we'd be transitioning into a different pandemic state where more people were dying, workplaces were disrupted, and more people were getting hospitalised or long covid.
Weka's strategy is to come in late, say little, and pretend his short assertions are the final word in their self-endowed authority.
It's not. The position is to accept and respond to this as a endemic, like other risks we face – not some leftover elimination strategy of authoritarians.
If very low infection/death rates are our reality now then any change can only be upwards. If any change upwards is a price too much then our covid puritanism and extreme caution will never end. We are the son kept inside until the world is free from violence a and hate, only to live forever coseted and closed as utopia never arrives. Weka will retreat into a kind of obscure public health agnosticism because nothing can be certain. Democracy and our lives forever kept waiting on the phone line for a call never answered.
Fine, do that – but keep my country out of your hellish mindscape.
Weka's strategy is to come in late, say little, and pretend his short assertions are the final word in their self-endowed authority.
It's not. The position is to accept and respond to this as a endemic, like other risks we face – not some leftover elimination strategy of authoritarians.
I love it when people can't argue the political points and when they then resort to ad homs they project like mad. Whose really asserting their self-endowed authority here?
If very low infection/death rates are our reality now then any change can only be upwards. If any change upwards is a price too much then our covid puritanism and extreme caution will never end. We are the son kept inside until the world is free from violence a and hate, only to live forever coseted and closed as utopia never arrives. Weka will retreat into a kind of obscure public health agnosticism because nothing can be certain. Democracy and our lives forever kept waiting on the phone line for a call never answered.
It's not that any change upwards is a price too much, it's that we don't have the information yet on which to make a decision. In another couple of weeks we will probably have better data on omicron. Right now we have inklings and supposition.
As for your personal feelings of being locked away, I suggest following #NZHellHole on twitter.
If you want to argue for opening up then do that but just be honest about the price other people, not you, will pay. All the rhetoric above looks like bluster to hide the fact that you want something and you just won't say plainly what it is.
Keeping new COVID-19 variants out of our communities for longer, limiting the freedom of the virus to spread (28 community cases yesterday, and 17 new community cases today, cf. ~150,000 new cases in Australia yesterday) and kill, and aiming for high vaccination rates, are all strategies that have paid off handsomely in terms of COVID health outcomes, and 'bought' Team Kiwi valuable time – a 'commodity' in short supply during pandemics.
Omicron will get through NZ's excellent MIQ system soon enough – no need to be a faster follower of Australia's COVID case trend, imho.
The incoming variant could have been harsher or weaker. Govt/public health professionals have to scan ahead, walking a tight rope where they cannot see the far end or have any confidence that the rope is actually tied to anything at the far end. To now say, 'oh we don't need this' or that 'or may not need this or that' is basing the question on what we know now. The name for this process is 20:20 hindsight.
I have no problems with scanning, masking, physical distancing, people using their vax passports and people not. I have no problems with the traffic light system or using science, public health or constitutional based approaches.
I believe that those who have made the decision not to vaccinate will have made this with all the facts at their disposal. They are their own persons and can weigh up points for or against just as well as I can.
If their decisions put restrictions on them that we as other individuals may not tolerate then so be it. Of course I feel that some will have made the decision without the best info or in a spirt of 'cutting one's nose off to spite one's face' (because their employer wanted this for the safety of their business) etc , but that is not my concern. If they want to do this then they should be/will be comfortable with the consequences.
I do not say I prefer anything. I am saying Govts work with the info they had/have the at time……so Covid Alpha and Delta. I have tried to tease out if your concern would be the same had the incoming virus been a harsher version.
I've had the best part of a year combatting 'odd' views around vaccinations, social contract, rights, passports vaccine and otherwise……we now have fear (ie we are all supposed to be fearful didn't you know?), over the top 'think of the children' debates……
I really despair, the whack a mole crowd have strange arguments popping up all over the place…
I want people to be prepared. Our vax rates for adults are creeping up and hopefully we will get a good turnout with our younger citizens who have a right not to be sick, not to grapple with the consequences of Long Covid.
It goes without saying that if I could get hold of that Chinese bat I would kill on the spot but Covid is here now.
We all have to do our best as individuals and as part of the country/community of NZ to combat it. Our govt has chosen to follow a path of preserving life and minimising the untoward effects on the health system. I am happy with that. I have confidence that as the pandemic eases then so will some of the measures.
Though some are good to keep in my view…..handwashing, being careful in crowded environments etc.
I presume then you would prefer Omicron to be less mild and harsher than Delta? That would presumably then allow us to mask up even more, get back into lockdowns, and clamp down on those 'anti-vaccination experts' and remove their free rein to show how wrong and stupid they are?
Stop being a dick. You're not really here enough for me to bother with moderation yet, but this kind of argument is, in my moderator opinion, trolling. We all get it, you hate the pandemic response and you have a low opinion of people who support it. But you don't get to put bullshit arguments in other people's mouths, at least not here.
What the fck is going on that a simple google search for Mass Formation – the theory of a Belgian Psychologist, not Robert Malone, throws up pages of fact check nonsense?
Anyway. I can't readily see the Belgian Psychologists name, though I'm sure the same search a week ago would have brought him and his theory up on the first page of results. The theory has solid enough grounding. Mattias Desmet is the psychologist.
Anyone else tickled by the irony of such a hysterical reaction from 'fact checker' orgs on the question of mass psychosis/formation? Pure dead fucking mental, I tells ye 🙂
The government books have to be managed through the raising of revenue, and spending. COVID and investing to grow the economy are major expenditures. One way to raise revenue is to raise taxes.
Given there will be no Capital Gains Tax, what is the best and fairest way to raise taxes. Inheritance Tax, Land Tax.
Taxes are best for disincentivising particular economic activity and controlling inflation, the government would be wise to pursue a MMT style approach to its revenue.
The purpose of the proposed CGT was mostly to disincentivise property speculation, the additional revenue would have been a bonus. It also was to have a carve out for owner-occupied property sales, so any tax that functions like that, that makes hoarding houses less lucrative, would be appreciated.
Transaction tax has been suggested as being a very efficient strategy.
It is strongly opposed by the sectors that make a number of transactions.
The larger the transactions the more to pay.
If introduced it could mean a number of other taxes could be deleted.
'A financial transactionstax is a tax levied on those buying or selling securities — stocks, bonds, derivatives and other financial products. It is a favorite idea of progressives to raise money for social programs while essentially only hitting the very rich and those who make their money moving money around rather than laboring'
Check out the fine print though. Finagling is rife. The proposal as we understood it 30 years ago was to apply to all financial transactions, at a sufficient level to operate as a tax on capital flows. These countries are all faking it.
United States – (Financial Transaction Tax) A tax levied on security futures transactions will remain unchanged at $0.0042 for each round turn transaction (United States Securities And Exchange Commission 2020).
Tookiepuggles… loaded all his earthly possessions in a moving van headed for Texas. "That's why we must retreat to greener pastures where we will be safe…"
Tookiepuggles?? And greener pastures in Texas? Sounds like the old grass is greener on the far side of the hill syndrome. Hope arid desert doesn't traumatise him.
And anyway, he who fights & runs away lives to fight another day doesn't seem to apply here. He didn't go in with guns blazing & take out as many leftists as poss before he took off.
I bet he was born Greg Brown or something & changed it by deed poll to the wackiest thing he could think of.
Re:Covid: Some of us want the Booster but can’t get it because of the callous, pig-headed bureaucracy surrounding the 4 month rule.
First New Zealand’s initial 2-jab vaccination programme was woefully behind the rest of the World, particularly if you made the gauche mistake of not being born Maori. So most of us – including the highly vulnerable elderly with comorbidities – were forced to have our 2 jabs much later than we wanted. And now the 4 month rule is forcing us to wait longer for our Booster, despite the danger of Delta slowly beginning to circulate … and Omicron on the horizon.
In my case, I’m on chemo and therefore immunocompromised but can’t get a booster until my 4 months are up. Tried to get it yesterday but politely refused (with a good deal of sympathy expressed, I have to say)… but against the rules, so Nyet.
Just have to hope that when I head into Wellington Hospital for my Chemo infusion next week that Delta isn’t circulating in the hospital (more than possible given nearby businesses like Newtown Countdown were Places of Interest a week or so back).
If I do pick it up there … I’ll be:
(1) friggin annoyed
& quite possibly not long after
(2) friggin dead.
A little leeway for the immunocompromised & others vulnerable to Covid hospitalisation wouldn't go amiss. I mean, Throw us a Freakin Bone for chrissakes as I think Austin Powers’ Dr Evil once more or less said.
Have you had your 3rd primary dose? Different from the booster and can be given at least 8 weeks after your second dose. My partner had his 3rd primary dose a few weeks ago as he is immunocompromised like you, will have the booster when advised by his specialist.
Unfortunately not eligible for what they're calling the third dose (precisely the same as a booster as far as I can see … just another Pfizer shot) … restricted to those who had their 2 jabs during chemotherapy … I had my 2nd jab a couple of weeks before commencing chemo, so doesn't apply to me.
My immuno compromised friend has also had three primary doses. She and her Dr had some sort of an arrangement well before boosters were 'the thing'. From memory she had her third one in about October.
You trust the professionals to give you what they think you need for your condition, and when, according to their knowledge.
The protocol for the Covid jab was not to have the first one, followed by the 2nd one the next day, followed by a booster a week later. The timings are for reasons.
I too am immunocompromised and am following the schedule, not demanding that it be changed on my whim or fear. I've trusted the professionals with all the other stuff I'm involved in. I reckon they've invested a lot in me and trust their advice about the booster will be about protecting not just me but their significant investment.
The only feedback I've had from the Oncologists on the Booster is that I'm unfortunately not eligible for the so-called third dose [for the reason mentioned in my reply to Matiri above].
What I’ve gathered from various British specialists (articles / youtube) is that those on chemo should have their booster (1) as far away from infusion day as possible & (2) preferably when they’re having a break from chemo.
Which is why yesterday would’ve been the optimum … the first day of my week off … 7 days for it to have some sort of effect isn’t ideal … optimum is 2 weeks … but the best I could’ve hoped for. Will now have to wait a few weeks.
An invasive and predatory ladybird has firmly established itself in the Marlborough region after being blown across Cook Strait during Cyclone Gita, says a leading bio-protection expert.
The Harlequin ladybird was first discovered in New Zealand in 2016, in Auckland, and has been working its way south, through the country’s wine regions, since.
The ladybirds, originally for Asia, were known to aggregate, or cluster, on grapevines and had the potential to contaminate wine production as they released toxic and unpleasant odours when threatened or crushed. The Harlequin name came from the mask-like markings on their face.
Bellamy said the ladybirds appeared to congregate in vineyards around harvest time as they sought sweet fruits and to prey on honeydew producing insects. “When they are present in vineyards during harvest, they risk being processed along with the grapes and if this happens, then they [producers] will have to get rid of all the wine.”
In the United States and Canada, the Harlequin ladybird has caused millions of dollars of losses in the wine industry over the past decade.
So a year and a week after the capitol insurrection, a wee threshold has apparently been crossed: the first charges for actual sedition laid, rather than just property crimes, obstructing law enforcement, and all the relative minnow stuff.
Great time to find out that accused seditionist Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers and former firearms instructor, lost his eye after shooting himself in the face.
Looking back at the Capitol riot, Tasha Adams ponders her time as an Oath Keeper’s wife and asks: “What if I had not supported him?”
“Him” is her estranged husband, Stewart Rhodes, founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government group whose members stand accused by federal authorities of having played a crucial role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. During nearly 23 years of marriage, Adams says she devoted herself to Rhodes’ aspirations. She worked as an exotic dancer to help put him through college, assisted in writing his papers and encouraged him to successfully apply to Yale Law School. When he was looking for direction in life — a cause — Adams helped him start the Oath Keepers.
So the US still brings charges for that hoary old offence of sedition. I would have thought it would have been scrapped donkey's years ago.
I believe the last time anyone was charged with it in New Zealand was in 2006. I wonder what happened to that person. The definition of the crime seems so loose I find it almost impossible to see how you could defend yourself. At that time one clause was –
"To excite such hostility or ill will between different classes of persons as may endanger the public safety.".
Another was
"To bring into hatred or contempt, or to excite disaffection, against Her Majesty, or the Government of New Zealand or the administration of justice."
Who thinks they could avoid being found guilty of one of those offenses?
The Law Commission called for the law to be scrapped. I seemed to go from the Crimes Act 1961 in 2008 but did it turn up in some other Act instead. It looks such a lovely lot of offences for the Crown to accuse people of.
If you'd bothered to click a link, you'd have discovered that the US law is much more precise than the one NZ ditched:
If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
I know. I did look at what it said. I still think it a rather antiquated law. However I very clearly pointing out that I was, from that point on, quoting and commenting on, what the New Zealand law had been.
Yes, you were adttempting to belittle the charges and minimise the alleged offences. The former NZ law on sedition is largely irrelevant to the US law, despite having the same word.
The US law has things more in common with the NZ law of treason, e.g. the provisions of levying war against or attempting to overthrow the government.
Legislation against being overthrown by deranged mobs is something all governments should have, but hopefully hardly ever have to use.
Open access notables A survey of interventions to actively conserve the frozen North, van Wijngaarden et al., Climatic Change:The frozen elements of the high North are thawing as the region warms much faster than the global mean. The dangers of sea level rise due to melting glacier ice, increased ...
Bryce Edwards writes – New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure. The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On ...
In 2015, then-Prime Minister John Key announced plans for a huge ocean sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands, banning fishing and mining from 15% of Aotearoa's EEZ. It was bold, it was ambitious, and it suggested that National might actually care about the environment. Except they fucked it up: Key failed ...
1. Who has just been given the accolade New Zealander of the Year?a. The Kokakob. The Cook Strait Ferryc. Fair God. Dr Jim Salinger 2. Which of these is an affront to decent society?a. Dame Edna Everageb. Mrs Doubtfire c. Dr. Frank-N-Furterd. Brian 3. Who is Penny Simmonds?a. The aspiring actress in Big ...
New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure.The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On the face of it, the court found ...
Buzz from the Beehive Waves of rain are set to lash much of the North Island during Easter Weekend as a low-pressure system forms east of New Zealand, according to a weather forecast published in the past day or so. Niwa was warning of a “moisture-laden” long weekend, with rain expected ...
Look around us…Nicola Willis’ promises of balancing the books, of cutting spending without reducing services, and of delivering game changing tax cuts are disappearing before her eyes.Everyday we see stories of violent crime ending in horrific injuries, or worse. The cost of living worsens, whereas the PM claimed renters would ...
TL;DR: My top six news of note on the morning of Thursday, March 28 include:The Government will have to borrow between $10 billion to $15 billion more than previously expected in order to make up for a slowing economy and to pay for $14.9 billion of tax cuts, according to ...
This story by Naveena Sadasivam and Kate Yoder was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. The long-awaited jobs board for the American Climate Corps, promised early in the Biden administration, will open next month, according to details shared exclusively ...
Should landlords be able to deduct the interest on the loans they take out to bankroll their property speculation? The US Senate Budget Committee and Bloomberg News don’t think this is a good idea, for reasons set out below. Regardless, our coalition government has been burning through a ton of ...
Treasury’s first report on the economy since the change of government presents a damning indictment of Labour’s economic management. The problem for National is that it is so damning that logically, coupled with a rapidly slowing economy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis should respond to it by postponing or even cancelling ...
Budget tensions are becoming evident within the Coalition Government. Winston Peters made numerous political points in his speech to the NZF annual conference. But the attack on his own government’s fiscal policies raised issues of substance. ‘Today in the Sunday Star Times, journalist and former advisor to the Labour ...
Buzz from the Beehive The media – sure enough – have been binging on Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ release of the Budget Policy Statement and a statement headed Government announces Budget priorities This assures us – or rather, this parrots the Luxon team mantra – that the Budget “will deliver ...
The Ides of March brought me COVID followed by a bereavement. No wonder they tell you to be careful of them.I’m home now and have resumed the interrupted recuperation. Very much looking forward to getting back to regular things. Meanwhile, some thoughts…OneThis new Prime Minister guy just keeps getting more dire. ...
News that the Chinese ATP 40 cyber-hacking unit penetrated parliamentary internet networks in 2021 has renewed concerns about the PRC’s malign intentions in Aotearoa. But is the hack that significant given the length of time that has passed since its … Continue reading → ...
When Parliament passed the Intelligence and security Act in 2017, they assured us all that it was full of safeguards. Any intrusive surveillance of New Zealanders would be subject to a "triple lock", requiring the approval of the Minister and (supposedly independent) Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, as well as post-facto ...
Eric Crampton writes – Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter provides a bit of the context that ought to have been showing up in other media reports on potential reductions in public service staffing. Media has been reporting on staffing cuts on the order of about 7%. Is that ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many perceive free speech to have become the preserve of the politically right wing, the religiously conservative, the libertarian fringe, the anti-trans, the anti-Māori and…. well, just fill in with whatever groups or individuals you don’t like and don’t ...
Don Brash writes – As everybody who is not blind and deaf is aware, there is a huge political preoccupation with climate change at the moment, a widespread (though by no means unanimous) belief that global temperatures are rising mainly as a result of the greenhouse gases created ...
TL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, March 27 include:Chris Bishop laid out his vision for filling Aotearoa-NZ’s $100 billion infrastructure deficit in a speech yesterday, emphasising user pays and private funding, but failed to say how to achieve bipartisanship on population, public borrowing and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins have been conveying how unhappy they are with the tax system. Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax. And this week Hipkins ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Buzz from the Beehive China has loomed large in Beehive considerations over the past 24 hours, largely because of that country’s mischief-making in the cyber espionage department. Two media statements emerged on that subject hard on the heels of the PM baulking at questions put to him on RNZ’s Morning ...
Chris Trotter writes – WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s ...
Bryce Edwards writes – When she was campaigning to be Minister of Finance last year, Nicola Willis pledged that she would resign from the job if she failed to deliver tax cuts in her first Budget. Now, it’s that pledge, along with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s ...
Robert MacCulloch writes – The Reserve Bank has doubled staff numbers in five years to 510, with personnel costs rising to $80 million in 2023 from $32 million in 2018 – up by a whopping 150%. I guess when you print $50 billion and flood markets with liquidity, ...
The furore. In case you didn’t notice there was a controversy in the weekend involving dolphins in a little town off the South Island. Don’t panic, they haven’t declared independence and resumed whaling, this was simply a sailing event.The problem began when racing was cancelled on the opening day of ...
For 20 years or more, the case for a meaningful capital tax gains has been mulled over and analysed to death, including by the tax working group chaired by Sir Michael Cullen. More than once, the International Monetary Fund has said a CGT would be a good idea for New ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: The Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) call for urgent preventive action and a risk assessment survey of long covid in this briefing noteLocal scoop: NZ road deaths surpass OECD rates, so why is the govt reversing safety plans? ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising ...
This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The cruelty of short-term memory loss is that each time you ask where she is, you get the fresh shock and grief of the news. That was Dad's day yesterday.Comfortingly, it seems to be less so today. Last night he looked crumpled, today he seems more settled. There's a card ...
Photo by Alvan Nee on UnsplashIt’s that new day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm. Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat about the week’s news ...
Buzz from the Beehive One minister is talking tough while a colleague – whose ministry had acted tough and drawn a barrage of flak – has shown an official softening. Some ministers are doing what Labour was good at, which is distributing public funds to causes regarded as worthy or ...
A ballot for 4 Member's Bills was held today, and the following bills were drawn: Insurance Contracts Bill (Duncan Webb) Income Tax (Clean Transport FBT Exclusion) Amendment Bill (Julie Anne Genter) Crimes (Increased Penalties for Slavery Offences) Amendment Bill (Greg Fleming) Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) ...
One of the strongest narratives about "our" spy agencies is that they are basically institutional traitors, working for foreign powers (or just themselves), without any control or oversight by the elected government. And today, we have yet another report from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security which explicitly confirms this. ...
“It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April to meet the Prime Minister’s ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
EDITORIAL:The Jakarta Post It happens again and again; indigenous Papuans fall victim to Indonesian soldiers. This time, we have photographic evidence for the brutality, with videos on social media showing a Papuan man being tortured by a group of plainclothes men alleged to be the Indonesian Military (TNI) members. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity A strange and eclectic range of activities takes place across these few weeks of the year. Some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University It’s Easter weekend, which means many of us will be kicking back with the greatest hits on repeat. But whether you’re a boomer, or an ‘80s or ’90s kid, you might be ...
RNZ Pacific Fiji’s Acting Public Prosecutor has filed an appeal against the sentences of former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended police chief Sitiveni Qiliho in their corruption case. Bainimarama was granted an absolute discharge for attempting to pervert the course of justice while Qiliho received a conditional discharge with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arosha Weerakoon, Senior Lecturer and General Dentist, School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland Casezy idea/Shutterstock How does toothpaste work? What did people use before toothpaste was invented? – Amelia, age 7, Meanjin (Brisbane) Thanks for your ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Hallam, Associate professor, UNSW Sydney IM Imagery/Shutterstock Solar SunShot is well named. The Australian government announced today it would plough A$1 billion into bringing back solar manufacturing to Australia, boosting energy security, swapping coal and gas jobs for those ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Dix, Research Fellow in Nutrition & Dietetics, The University of Queensland Easter is the time for chocolate. The shops are full of fantastically packaged and shiny chocolates in all shapes and sizes, making trips to the supermarket with children more challenging ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Felton, Adjunct Senior Researcher, University of South Australia Even in a stubborn cost-of-living crisis, it seems there’s one luxury most Australians won’t sacrifice – their daily cup of coffee. Coffee sales have largely remained stable, even as financial pressures have ...
Mining company Trans-Tasman Resources has unexpectedly withdrawn its application for a consent to suck the valuable metals vanadium and titanium from the Taranaki seafloor, as it apparently wagers on the Government’s new fast-track process. It had spent two-and-a-half days putting its case to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision-making committee, at ...
Contrary to the Associate Minister of Education’s claims, analysis of Healthy School Lunches Programme - Ka Ora, Ka Ako assessments has revealed it provides excellent value for the taxpayer dollar, as a groundswell of public opposition to Government ...
Greenpeace says wannabe Taranaki seabed miner Trans-Tasman Resources is likely banking on Christopher Luxon’s fast-track process to side-step proper scrutiny of its Taranaki seabed mining proposal by bailing out of the Environmental Protection Agency hearing ...
Kiwis Against Seabed mining today slammed Australian owned would-be seabed miner Trans Tasman Resources (TTR) for abandoning its application to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to mine the seabed of the South Taranaki Bight. The company ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Attwell, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Months after COVID vaccines were introduced in 2021, governments and private organisations mandated them for various groups. Health and aged care workers were among the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dzurak, Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak, CEO and Founder of Diraq, UNSW Sydney Diraq For decades, the pursuit of quantum computing has struggled with the need for extremely low temperatures, mere fractions of a degree above absolute zero (0 Kelvin or ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne A national Essential poll, conducted March 20–24 from a sample of 1,150, gave the Coalition a 50–44 lead including undecided, a reversal ...
The Taxpayers’ Union has today made a formal request under the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information () for information held about how New Zealand Members of Parliament are spending taxpayer ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Nelson, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne A Byzantine depiction of the Eucharist in Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv.Jacek555/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA A nasty quarrel arose in the 11th century over what kind of bread should be used in holy ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Hesp, Professor, Flinders University Patrick Hesp In some parts of Australia, coastal dunes are retreating from the ocean at an alarming rate, as waves carve up the beach and wind blows the sand inland. But coastal communities are largely ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Heemsbergen, Senior Lecturer, Digital, Political, Media, Deakin University With an impressive 60% of the US smartphone market, Apple is undeniably big, but not a clear monopoly. Yet, years of innovation by Apple have effectively given the company its own exclusive ...
Whether you’re facing layoffs or are just an emotional junior staffer, it’s always a good idea to scout out a good crying place before you need it. It’s an incredibly hard time for Wellington. Across the city, thousands of public servants are hearing tough news about redundancies and layoffs. Government ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Miller-Jones, Professor, Curtin University Nuclear explosions on a neutron star feed its jets. Danielle Futselaar and Nathalie Degenaar, Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam, CC BY-SA How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology Sydney Earlier this week, independent MP Andrew Wilkie accused the AFL of conducting “off the books” illicit drug testing to identify players using substances of abuse, then inappropriately withdrawing them from matches ...
The Government’s announcement that it will scrap plans for a vast marine sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands is ‘shameful’ and will make it impossible for Aotearoa New Zealand to meet its international commitments, says the World Wide Fund for Nature ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland Shutterstock The federal government has bowed to pressure from the car industry, announcing it will relax proposed emissions rules for utes and vans and delay enforcement of the new standards ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suzanne Rutland, Professor Emerita, University of Sydney In his latest book, Jewish Life in Medieval Spain, Jonathan Ray focuses on the tumult of the 14th century in Spain – a time of the plague, civil strife and war between the two largest ...
While creating a slate of world-class shows, Whakaata Māori also developed a generation of world-class creatives. Television is an odd word. It mixes the Ancient Greek and Latin languages, and its most literal meaning is “far-off sight”. In the contemporary and living language of te reo Māori, “whakaata” as a ...
Yesterday the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. This significant step and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza prompted an urgent debate in the New Zealand Parliament. Leader ...
The Government’s decision to reduce access to continuous glucose monitors (CGM) not only threatens the lives of children with type 1 diabetes and increases the potential for ‘Dead in Bed’ syndrome, but also threatens the health of their parents an ...
Apples are available year-round, but the wide variety on offer involves intensive scientific research – and large-scale commercialisation. What’s beautiful, red, sweet and crunchy? Tony Martin’s favourite kind of apple: Sassy. The CEO of apple and pear breeding organisation Prevar, Martin’s fondness for Sassy represents professional success as well as ...
Family violence specialist service Shine is calling on employers to stop asking for proof of domestic violence in order for employees to access domestic violence leave. The call comes five years after the introduction of the Domestic Violence ...
The Deputy Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee is calling for public submissions on the Budget Policy Statement 2024. The Budget Policy Statement 2024 (BPS) sets out the Government's priorities for the 2024 Budget. It explains the approach ...
Brutal government spending cuts that will see the size of the Ministry for Pacific Peoples slashed by 40% will hit Pasifika communities hard, the PSA says. The Ministry has told staff that it is seeking voluntary redundancies, and to redeploy and reassign ...
I live with five people I mostly love, but our different ideas about generosity are starting to really irk me.Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,This is a bit of a random one but here goes. I’m 22 and work an OK job (OK meaning I get paid ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Nicholas, Senior Lecturer in Language and Literacy Education, Deakin University Earlier this month, the New South Wales government announced it would roll out programs for gifted students in every public school in the state. This comes amid concerns gifted school ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Rudge, Law lecturer, University of Sydney Massachusetts General Hospital In a world first, we heard last week that US surgeons had transplanted a kidney from a gene-edited pig into a living human. News reports said the procedure was a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tombs, Howard Paterson Chair of Theology and Public Issues, University of Otago The 5th-century Maskell panel showing Jesus in a loincloth.British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA When Jesus is shown on the cross, he is almost always depicted wearing a loincloth around ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University Shutterstock When you think about a red object, you might picture a red carpet, or the massive ruby in the Queen’s crown. Indeed, Western monarchies and marketing from brands such ...
COMMENTARY:Jewish Voice for Peace The UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza on Monday — and for the first time since the beginning of the Israeli military’s genocide of Palestinians, the United States abstained rather than vetoing it. Security Council resolutions are legally binding, ...
Asia Pacific Report A New Zealand investigative journalist and author says the US spy system hosted by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) appears to be a controversial intelligence system used in global capture-kill operations. Writing a commentary for RNZ News today, Nicky Hager, author of Secret Power, a 1996 ...
While Nicola Willis wouldn’t give any details on its size, she said a package of tax cuts is definitely still coming in this year’s budget, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming the investigation into the Department of Internal Affairs after it was revealed that the Department’s Chief Executive personally reached out to expedite a DJs passport application. Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns ...
Finance minister Nicola Willis delivers her first budget statement, and unwittingly helps Joel MacManus save his relationship. Nicola Willis strode into the Beehive Theatrette. Around me, on the green foldout seats, were the country’s top business and political journalists. They were all here to see her announce the Budget Policy ...
Twenty years ago today, Māori Television launched after much controversy. Jamie Tahana looks back on its survival and impact across two decades. Chad Chambers stepped onto the stage, the brim of his cap casting a shadow across his face. His smile beamed as bright as his white freezing works gumboots, ...
Tauranga, Rotorua, Wellsford, Onehunga, Westhaven marina – Gavin Strawhan walks the meanish streets of New Zealand in his entertaining debut novel The Call, almost sure to roar into the number 1 position on the Nielsen bestseller chart, its front cover bearing a rave from somebody: “A really good and genuinely ...
On a Thursday in February, at Wellington’s Conservation House, the Conservation Authority, a statutory body advising the eponymous department and minister, Tama Potaka, opened its 195th meeting. Under consideration that afternoon was an agenda item written by Tim Bamford, chief advisor in the Department of Conservation’s biodiversity, heritage and visitors ...
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A lengthy response to the recently released draft Government policy statement on transport will soon be delivered from Auckland Council to Minister of Transport Simeon Brown. A submission raising concerns about funding distribution and the plan’s treatment of Auckland passed through the council’s transport committee on Wednesday, despite some councillors ...
The unidentified foreign intelligence operation discussed in a scathing report by New Zealand’s Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) last week appears to be a controversial United States intelligence system. The IGIS report said the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) decision to host a foreign system from 2012-2020 was “improper” ...
As a young gymnast, Aimee Didierjean was always conscious of making sure her underwear wasn’t showing on the competition floor. A peek of a bra strap, or briefs if a leotard rode up, would cost a gymnast points in her routines. “When I was growing and going through puberty, it ...
Jubi/West Papua Daily Repeated cases of Indonesian military (TNI) soldiers torturing civilians in Papua have been evident, as seen in the viral video depicting the torture of civilians in the Puncak Regency allegedly done by soldiers of Raider 300/Brajawijaya Infantry Battalion. There is a pressing need for stringent law enforcement ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra In 2023, Anthony Albanese was shooting for the moon, his eyes on the Voice referendum. On one view, he looked like the idealist reflecting his left-wing roots. In 2024, we’re seeing a pragmatic, determined, ...
The House - The principle that all MPs are honourable and that they should be taken at their word has been tested multiple times this week in Parliament. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Dickinson, Professor, Public Service Research, UNSW Sydney Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock Since the review of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) released its recommendations in December, there has been a series of Town Hall events to discuss them around the country ...
Asia Pacific Report Two of the global Freedom Flotilla ships are being prepared in Turkey and almost ready for the upcoming humanitarian mission to Gaza. It is expected that the flotilla will include a New Zealand medical team. Kia Ora Gaza is a member of the international Freedom Flotilla Coalition ...
A new media platform is being constructed, but no timeline & I wonder if the performers that will emerge on it have been pre-selected.
I like the robust intention to defend freedom of speech but any such good intentions will be self-defeated if all we get is a bunch of right wing zombies like Fox News.
The tax-payer funded media "stifling public debate" in our region is the local democracy reporter.
Because there is someone doing that job we get to find out stuff we likely would not know and have better understanding of things going on in the community.
The rabid approach of Plunket is to attract a rabid audience which can accuse everyone and everything else of being rabid.
A long article about Plunket and his new venture was published last year.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/126414149/sean-plunket-putting-the-unfashionable-back-on-air
From the article:
He refuses to confirm it – citing client confidentially – but Plunket also had a role in the revival of Te Paati Māori in last year’s election, media training candidate Rawiri Waititi, now an MP and co-leader.
Fascinating. But explains why Waititi is so very good at “shock jock politics” stunts & statements that always seem to me to be deliberately provocative & aimed at generating immediate media interest & widespread free publicity.
I’d add that that article by Andrea Vance is a good piece of journalism. Gives a comprehensive look at Plunkett, his background, & his quite varied career.
Who knew that Sean Plunket was once a staunch advocate for more Te Reo Māori to be used on air than just “Kia ora” during Maori language week when he was broadcasting with RNZ years ago? I sure didn’t.
Sean's woke-as.
My sarcasm detector went off immediately. Plunkett’s style seems to be to criticise everything. Once he criticised RNZ for not using enuf Māori language. Now he’s moved on to criticising political correctness, wokism, & probably whatever the gummint’s doing.
There DOES need to be more open public discussion & debate on Treaty-related issues, imo. It’s only through such open & honest dialogue &debate that Māori & Pākehā can reach common understandings of each others’ positions & compromise or at least accord more respect to their sometimes differing viewpoints.
Stifling that debate could leads to more people becoming more enticed by, or entrenched in, hostile “anti-them” positions & suspicions about “what they’re really up to” that we really don’t need.
Plunkett’s most likely going to attract a lot of anti-Māori Pākehā whiners, but it will be interesting to see if any Māori are interested in ringing up & debating him or his callers on these kinds of issues. That’s really what we need to hear.
Why would anyone with a brain, bother?
Because there are quite legitimate points to be made for against various issues & matters of interest to Kiwilanders by commentators & proponents who don’t get much of an airing on mainstream tv or on radio.
Martyn Bradbury on Waatea sometimes does this sort of thing well, holding discussions on topical issues with guests with opposing viewpoints. Curiously, his guests always seem to behave very well towards each other, usually with a lot of good humour. I’d like to see & hear a lot more of this kind of thing than the lukewarm efforts of Newhub Nation & Q+A, & RNZ doesn’t do talkback or current affairs debates/discussions.
Whether Plunkett’s new platform would be used in this way remains to be seen. If it’s just a right wing complainers’ echo chamber, it’ll just be competing for the same audience as Newstalk ZB.
Legitimate points made on Plunket's show don't "get an airing" they get dismissed, smeared, besmirched, lampooned, poo-pooed etc.
Plunket has the pretence of "balance" about him, but his base political bias always dominated the show.
Good riddance.
Shouldn’t be a problem for you then, Robert. You can just ignore him as the local equivalent of Radio Fox News. Probably so can I. But I don’t mind waiting & then seeing what the show’s actually like.
Better imo to have a media outlet like this where people can air their grievances openly than to suppress all dissenting views from the current political, scientific, cultural or historical orthodoxy being unquestioningly promoted by governments or various politically or culturally biased arbitrators like the RRC, BSA, & Waitangi Tribunal from being heard.
The reaction to the Listener 7 academics criticising the teaching of mātauranga Māori as part of the classical sciences curriculum (as opposed to teaching it under other subjects) & the organising of a petition to attack them was deplorable, in my opinion.
They had a perfectly legitimate viewpoint to express which should have been widely debated. In the process people would have got a better understanding of both pure science & māturanga Māori. There’s a place for both to be studied & to be seen as equally valuable in their own space & context.
''Better imo to have a media outlet like this where people can air their grievances openly than to suppress all dissenting views from the current political, scientific, cultural or historical orthodoxy.''
And there you have it. One way to stop conspiracy theorists ( and me on occasions) major gripe about never being heard. Being able to express an opinion is a great release valve for many that may just save lives down the line.
I must say as this pandemic carriers on I am starting to side more and more with some conspiracy theories. It's not that I believe there is a one world government, or the Masons have signed a pact with the Greys…or that Robert is a cryptid. But it seems to me vested interest groups and governments are using Covid to get the global population under more control by limiting choice and travel, and having the global populations relying more on official organisations and controls while limiting free expression.
But Robert, isn't the narrative meant to be Plunket is full of anti Maori cant.
Not anti-Maori, anti-privilege (read, anti-Maori).
''The rabid approach of Plunket is to attract a rabid audience which can accuse everyone and everything else of being rabid.''
Do you remember why Plunket lost his job at Magic Radio. Peter?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/300225662/sean-plunket-offair-after-reports-he-was-asked-to-leave-the-station
Do you remember why Peter Williams PROBABLY lost his job at Magic Radio?
What about poor Bansksie? He forgot the woke powers that be don't have a sense of humour.
If Plunket gets this show up and running I will guarantee it'll have a major following. ZB and Magic…or whatever it's now called, will lose many listeners.
I just wished I was a millionaire. I would bank roll Plunket for any court proceedings that are bound to follow his talkback shows.
Time for utu. It's been a long time coming.
Plunket's a plonker. Williams was worse. Laws is a lout.
Platform?
Pratfall.
Don't worry, Robert. We won't give a hoot about what you and your ilk think. You have National Socialist Radio. We will have Plunket. But I bet many Lefties will be listening on the sly, mainly for two reasons – the excitement and to be offended. Lefties love self flagellation. And unlike NSR…we will have the small mercy of not hearing bird calls or token Maori phrases every few seconds.
Laws, when he's not talking about sex, has some really good ideas. He had one idea that would have in my opinion solved many of societies ills.
It's been over 50 years since I outgrew Plunket.
And what idea was that?
As for self flagellation….it begs the question.
I’ll probably have a brief listen. Right wing radio’s a lot more entertaining than pretty boring middle-of-the-road left wing RNZ. But I wouldn’t want to have it on all day. One gets pretty bored after listening to a constant stream of talk back complainers, many of whom clearly aren’t the brightest bulbs in the box, though they obviously think they’ve got great insight other Kiwis lack.
Its all about the topic and host for me. If it's a good topic and the host knows how to rark a caller up, I will listen. I only have a couple of small windows each day to indulge.
So, let me get this right. Here in Aotearoa we have one mildly liberal radio station that never rocks the boat aka RNZ.
We also have a rabid right wing newspaper and their vocal outlet, the Herald and ZB. Both of which have wide circulation and currency.
Yet the righties amongst us are so terrified of RNZ and the apparent thought control it has over the voting nation they're desperate for another rabid right radio station.
Sheesh!
I thought Michael Laws idea to heavily subsidise bariatric surgery was a good idea as it would save lives, save money down the track and vastly improve the quality of life for quite a few people
His other great idea was voluntary sterilisation. That would have an immediate and long term positive affect on society.
First, it would be a great screening tool for rooting out potential feral parents. Any person willing to sell their reproductive rights to the state obviously holds parenthood in contempt.
The P epidemic would also allow drug uses to be sterilised. The line at clinics would be long with druggies that are cold turkey needing fast cash. Drug addled parents are the last thing a baby needs
Laws suggested $10.000 dollars for each sterilisation be paid to the recipient.
I would pay the recipient $1000 cash for instant gratification. And the rest into their bank account.
People who get their lives together, could at at later date, attempt to have the procedure reversed in order to have children. Again, that would be another great screening tool especially as the state wouldn't be paying for the reversal.
The Problems:
1- Women. Babies are cash in the bank. Plus all the subsidised benefits from car tune-ups to school uniforms women on benefits receive. A woman wouldn't need to be too bright to work out the money see receives for childcare right up to the child's teenage years would be way more than $10,000. The solution – women pocket $25.000 for the snip.
2- The odium from Liberals, Maori and the media. Many of these folk would rather live with a increasing welfare state, dead neglected babies and overwhelmed social services, not to mention crime. Unfortunately many have jobs thanks to the status quo.
Another great idea that will never see the light of day
I'm not against it, I think its a good idea.
But only if they're allowed to store sperm and eggs, that way they can still arrange to have kids but will certainly cut down on unplanned births.
Unfortunately many have jobs thanks to the status quo.
I can follow your argument above for those who are unemployed on multi-generational welfare, but I don’t quite get that bit. How is some of these folk having jobs a problem?
Sorry, I will clarify. Many objectors to such a scheme would rely on our broken society ( in my opinion) for their jobs. Eg social workers need broken people to help. Maori organisations collectively rake in billions to help wayward Maori. Hospitality and alcohol retail receive a huge injection of money each week from this demographic. Such a scheme would eventually impact on their employment by producing less clients and patrons.
Ah. Thanks for the clarification.
There were no comments following that article. "Nuff said.
I indeed know why he (and they) lost their jobs.
Something to do with "If you want to throw shit around, do it in your own house."
He has and no doubt will. A perfect example of the 'free market' I suppose.
''I indeed know why he (and they) lost their jobs.
Something to do with "If you want to throw shit around, do it in your own house."
That was enlightening, Peter. And why did they lose their jobs?
Pandemic and Climate denial.
For starters.
Good riddance.
Don't lose it, Robert. I find it alarming someone with contrary opinions to mainstream thought, who expresses those views in a comparatively small sector of the media still manages to generate such invective as you express.
Maybe its not only supposed dumb, red neck, right leaning listeners that we should be worried about?
"I find it alarming someone with contrary opinions to mainstream thought, who expresses those views in a comparatively small sector of the media still manages to generate such invective as you express."
Like some of those fruit-loop American politicians who find a Platform on Fox?
Well, yes, invective earned, I reckon.
Undoubtedly they lost their jobs because of 'the market.'
The media company running the radio station relies on advertising. Advertisers would not want to be associated with views seen to be obnoxious, nasty, distasteful, objectionable or whatever negative by a large number of the public. It would affect their 'brand.'
It's not to say that offence could be taken all the time but the risk that it would be there sometimes, (or was there) would be a risk not worth taking.
If we had a much larger population there'd be a sizeable enough market for 'anything goes' radio. Like in the US.
Also, we know who is funding your local democracy reporter, and where editorial control lies.
Sean Plunket's 'open forum' doesn't extend to discussion about who his backing his new venture, and how much say that backer will have.
A convention of cacophonous buffoons with an audience to match.
Meets the nasal whine of liberals complaining to the BSA and Race Relations Commissioner because they are offended…once again!
It will probably have Trotter and Bradbury on board as the token lefties.
Jealous they didn't give you a call?
Bradbury would fit.
Green-bashing's de rigour on the Pete, Sean & Michael Show.
de rigueur
That would be good, eh? Would signal to everyone that it was using a bipartisan basis. Would be likely to produce an ethos of diversity rather than monoculture.
I would pair Trotter and Hooton. That would be exquisite political commentary. A few years back I believe the Sunday Star Times ran them together leading up to an election.
But, but, but…they'd be our right wing zombies! Home grown and probably related to my cousins next door neighbour's step-aunts mother's great uncle.
Many of whom will be listening-in.
I used-to. In order to learn how the jocks do it (shape opinion and warp/disparage dissenting views) but it was frustrating enough to greet news of their expulsion with cheers 🙂
Probably closer than six degrees of freedom. Kiwiblog is too braindead, the BFT even worse, so all I'm looking for is an option that does better than both.
From a design perspective, if they go for the middle ground instead of preaching to the converted, they will almost certainly succeed…
small places and the ties that bind.
Prince Andrew has been stripped of his titles & ranks by the Queen: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59987935
Would have been better for her to switch him to His Royal Lowness! That would have created a certain je ne sais quoi in the public mind…
The Queen is also the Head of the CE.
Having a scandal like this is almost as bad as marrying your cousin.
marrying your cousin
It was doing that quite often that caused the inbreeding that produced the royal families. Which is why the royals of Britain/Germany/Russia were cousins during WW1 and caused the war to be often referred to as a family spat. The Kaiser visited Queen Victoria during family get-togethers before he became macho.
As a minor side issue you may find interesting, Dennis (not meant to deflect from the main topic of what an embarrassment & rotter Prince Andrew seems to be), I only recently learned while listening to a history of the Tsars that, altho it predominantly affects males, Queen Victoria carried the haemophilia gene that afflicts the intermarried European royal families:
“Haemophilia figured prominently in the history of European royalty in the 19th and 20th centuries. Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, through two of her five daughters – Princess Alice and Princess Beatrice – passed the mutation to various royal houses across the continent, including the royal families of Spain, Germany, and Russia.
Victoria’s youngest son, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, also suffered from the disease, though none of her three elder sons did. Tests on the remains of the Romanov imperial family show that the specific form of haemophilia passed down by Queen Victoria was probably the relatively rare haemophilia B. The presence of haemophilia B within the European royal families was well-known, with the condition once popularly known as “the royal disease”.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haemophilia_in_European_royalty
And on that basis, if you use memetic theory as originated by Dawkins, mental belief patterns are just as likely to be disseminated through a family as are the biological links. I'm not a good example (being non-conformist) but I often notice how various attitudes & stances on topics link me to my parents.
Just an interesting thing to reflect on eh? So with the royals, you get the operative born to rule shared entitlement tacit assumption.
That features historically with dramatic continuity. To verify this, one need only research the word lord. A meme conferring hegemony for millennia!
I think it’s cool someone has invented menetic theory that can be used to also encompass what we all know happens in hereditary monarchies. They believe they are special because they are from centuries back literally born to rule. Whether as the monarch or as the hereditary owners of estates & titles. And they simply grow up learning that at their parents’ knees & from how flunkeys treat them with deference.
Similar senses of entitlement to be treated as a cut above the hoi polloi are often demonstrated by the offspring, partners or spouses of those who are filthy rich (whether nouveau riche or old money), celebrities, or politically powerful (or any combination of those).
🙄 *memetic
Andrew is an "embarrassment & rotter"?
Sounds awfully top-hole!
George V and Tsar Nicholas were basically twins, which caused a lot of contemporary as well as recent scurrilous speculation….
Cool photo! I was admiring the finery until I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be unimpressed by bling.
But yes, a strong resemblance indeed. Interesting that the one on the right has that glassy-eyed look that one often sees in 19th century & early 20th century photos, whereas the one on the left seems grounded, with total focus.
Cheers Sanctuary (2.1.1.2) for the neat pic.
Going to take a guess here who's who … Tsar Nicholas on the left, George V (Queen Elizabeth II's grandfather) on the right? For first cousins, the resemblance is remarkable!
I think you're right. From an image search for Tsar Nicholas II & George V, Nicholas has the slightly more receded hairline. Difficult to tell them apart in many images.
In their finery, Tsar Nicholas has the more bling. Must have been rather time-consuming getting dressed up in all that regalia, even with the assistance of a manservant.
Yes – the picture was taken during the wedding of the Kaiser’s daughter Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia. The wedding, an extravagant affair, took place on 24 May 1913 in Berlin.
The wedding became the largest gathering of reigning monarchs in Germany since German unification in 1871, and one of the last great social events of European royalty before World War I.
Tsar Nicholas II is in the uniform of the Westphalian Hussars and King George V in the uniform of the Rhenish Cuirassiers (German Cuirassiers wore white) – their respective German regiments.
Gezza (2.1.1.2.2.1) … Wouldn't want to be running late.Or imagine needing to use the bathroom!
Inequality is traditional, which is probably why it persists despite years of people (including myself) complaining about it. Once I took the radical approach of proposing a simple solution to the Greens who were promptly baffled into a consensus that they couldn't possibly support any attempt to overthrow the status quo.
Anyway, property rights derive from English common law, in which the commons was enclosed by individual land users, bit by bit, until none was left and private property reigned supreme. Natives got restless. Pushback by indigenous folk citing tribal rights to common land produced this:
Stuart Reges is a Teaching Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington where he teaches introductory programming classes. He took a principled stand, and the leftist honchos in the university hierarchy censored him.
The thing could go all the way to the Supreme Court – if it does, expect the conservative majority to side with Reges & slap down the leftists. I haven't quoted all the interesting parts of the report so recommend reading it instead. Thoughtful stuff.
Where does this fit into common law ? A publicly owned [75% Ch Ch Council 25% Govt] private company makes a hostile takeover bid for a rural town [Taras] to build an environmentally defunct airport [seemingly financed by the taxpayers]. I stretch things a bit but you get my point ?
From a Green perspective, the problem with common law is that it arose from feudalism. The lord was generally considered paramount by virtue of conquest, hegemony, whatever, but the commons was a notion deriving from common usage within that conceptual terrain of the patriarchy.
So the Green ethos features equity as a principled basis for common ownership instead. Needless to say, leftists have struggled to grasp this radical notion during the half century since it became intuitively obvious to me – which is why it still fails to feature in the leftist political party advocacy. Despite the obvious leverage it would give the left due to common ground with indigenous peoples!
I'm not aware of the Chch public/private scheme you refer to but it looks like the traditional hybrid used originally by royalty (royal charters for the first corporations). So it is a tool of the residual patriarchy. Unprincipled.
Sorry! I should have been clearer. I,m talking about the Christchurch International Airport Company,s attempt to build another international airport in Central Otago. I see the historical link to royal charters
I get the picture. Now if they allocated shares to all stakeholders the region would be empowered by equity. Instead, they are likely to default to the shareholder model, in which capitalists invest to control the money flow.
Stuart Regis should just stake out 5×5 metres on his Uni faculty lawn, grow corn, claim his title, and see what happens.
8 hours ago
A Syrian colonel has been sentenced to life inprisonment by a German court for committing crimes against humanity.
There can be little doubt that as time goes by, there will be many more of such convictions for those identified as taking part, in what is arguably the first genocide of the 21st Century.
There wouldn't be enough jail cells globally, to contain the number of candidates guilty of crimes against ….humanity.
Every American president would be a shoe in.
'Whataboutism'
Here's a question for you Blazer;
If you think the Assad regime and its henchmen are not guilty of crimes against humanity, because every other leader and regime are just as guilty.
In your opinion Blazer, are there no lines that can be crossed because others are doing or have done the same things?
Would you for example, be prepared to come to the defence of Adolf Hitler with the same argument?
The point is consistency.
At one time Assad was welcomed to stay and did at Buckingham Palace.
He's not welcome now.
Crimes against humanity is a very broad charge .
The facts are that hypocrisy exists and often its conveniently over looked.
'Whataboutism' is fairly recent label ,which I'm not really convinced cancels out a rather vintage one='pot calling the kettle…black'.
My statement stands ,your interpretation of it is…flawed.
Prince Andrew, now just Andrew Windsor, is heading for the pedophilia register.
The British monarchy is a linchpin of global patriarchy and it just got one founding pillar pulled out.
She needs to stay in her Undead form a few more years so we can savour the green fumes of British royalty's rotting live corpse. It's a good reminder to rid ourselves of them.
Looking forward to the women's magazines spinning this one.
Prince Andrew, now just Andrew Windsor, is heading for the pedophilia register.
I don’t think so. He hasn’t been charged with a crime. But the civil claim, which may or may not be meritorious, will undoubtedly see his wallet lighter.
Doesn't need to be proven: he's on the Undead list already.
The shunning will be more excruciating that anything out of The Crucible.
No child or grandchild contact, no income, no career, there won't be so much as a cave that will house him.
The Queen has stripped him of roles and rank and titles? The old British tabloids would've somehow turned that into something like, "Queen in stripping row."
"And we will never be royal…"
(thank goodness).
My hope is that this becomes the anthem played on high rotation at the next attempted royal tour of NZ.
The nobility of the commons as captured by Lorde;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlcIKh6sBtc&feature=emb_logo
He's still titled a duke, unfortunately, and has his estate. They protect even the worst of themselves (except if those who want out).
That right?? An investigative journalist ought to look into that. If true, did the Queen allow him that one title to remain, perhaps conditionally? Or is it one that she cannot remove? I'd bet on the former option.
I think you might find Ad that the age of consent is 16 in the UK so not much chance of a pedo conviction there, and as they say a picture is worth a thousand words, the photo of Windsor and Giuffe, 17, at the reported time and place does not appear to show someone being held against their will and not delighted to be in the company of royalty. It will be an interesting case even though I think Epstein is a deviant arsehole, association with arseholes only appears to be a hanging offence if you happen to be a brown NZer in Australia.
Not quite sure you get what the Queen has done here.
Stripped of all titles and patronage, he's socially radioactive.
His own mother just disowned him as indefensible.
No media will touch him, no income, no family contact, he has just been erased from every network of his existence.
And the media are just getting started.
He might need to go on the pension and find a council flat if he is lucky enough.
I wonder if a place can be found for Mr Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in one of London's homeless shelters? I don't think his mother will be housing him anymore.
Adrian (6) … I think it depends where the alleged sexual assaults took place. In NY, the age in which Ms Roberts Guiffre is claiming she was assaulted in that US state, comes under statuary rape. However I stand to be corrected on that point.
Regardless of age, if any sexual assault against the will of the claimant was forced upon her by a defendant, then isn't that classified as rape?
I went to post a reply to someone yesterday regarding climate change. The main part of that reply would have centred around a long list of eminent scientists who reject present CC theories being touted by consensus opinion – both public and scientific. My argument would then have hived out by showing where their main points of contention were.
I had many links from previous research, but was shocked to find many of those links don't exist anymore. Then I found this… it offers an explanation. Mainstream internet( oxymoron??) seems to be cleaning house of us supposed climate change deniers.
The list may exist elsewhere. But I have no desire to look.
https://electroverse.net/wikipedia-deletes/
Use these, there's usually a copy around somewhere.
https://archive.org/
https://archive.is/
Cool.
So Labour have legislated to let private banks have free reign over determining who is worthy of a mortgage. Thanks to a change to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, banks have to crack down on applicants' spending before they can approve loans. This has had some outrageous outcomes:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/459529/christmas-shopping-and-daily-drink-from-dairy-stops-dunedin-woman-from-getting-mortgage
First time buyers and low income people are being hardest hit by this, intended to crackdown on loan shark type lending:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/459484/banks-undertaking-forensic-analysis-of-home-loan-applicant-s-spending-habits
Labour continues to tinker at the corners, making life harder for those not already on the property ladder, but at least they can say, not us, it's the banks!
But these rules will benefit with anyone who has cash assets and fixed assets, just as last years super low rates benefitted those that had cash assets and fixed assets. Also what housing crisis, after all most of our homeless are warehoused and stacked like cordwood in motels, and that is housing right?
Quelle surprise! Who would've thought relying on commercial banks results in lending decisions being made along commercial lines? So much for an alternative to neo-liberalism; outsource it all to the PMC, everything will be commodified so the purity of the market can cleanse it all!
Labour are evidently happy just to manage the decline.
Banks own our national moral direction already. They addict us to excessive consumer and asset debt spending.
I sure hope Robertson is dusting off the regulatory impact statement for an amendment.
to achieve what?
Amendment.
Pretty common for such unintended consequences.
So they made a lazy bad law and now are trying to fix that lazy bad law?
It is the addiction to 'market principles' that has held Labour back. For example Kiwibank was an excellent opportunity to reshape the lending market. It could have been sufficiently funded to take on the Governments operating accounts, it could have offered higher interest rates on savings and lower lending interest rates, used these to outcompete the international banks. But adherence to ideology of 'business knows best' lead to it's underfunding and consequent lack of competitiveness.
You don't have a right to a mortgage.
Kiwibank are not social welfare.
Labour pays for your first home mortgages through state and employer contributions to Kiwisaver. Which remains the best and fastest way to get your deposit, outside of Bank of Mum and Dad.
When housing is commodified, a mortgage is necessary to purchase a place to live. Surely people have a right to be housed, ergo, in a 'housing market' the state should be on the people side, not the markets.
All government is for social welfare, otherwise you aren't governing for the people, you're just working to maintain the status quo.
The Government has an obligation to eliminate the requirement of inheritance or generational wealth to accessing home ownership. You know, equality of opportunity and all that. otherwise you're just managing the exacerbation of existing strata.
You should have a human right to shelter/home however.
When the Govt provides a subsidy of over 2billion to private landlords,and houses ' 23,000 in motels you would hope their would be a fairer more efficient use of capital.
The average stiff spends more on rent than they would on mortgage repayments.
Labour pays no such things. The employers contribution to Kiwisaver are paid for by the Employer.
So if anything, one could argue that the Employer helps people get money into the Kiwi saver. I would also like to point out that you can only access so much of that fund for a mortgage, and also only under certain circumstances. Never mind the fact that the Kiwi Saver is also paid for by the Employee.
So again, Labour pays nothing to no one.
Any benefits on the Kiwisafer that comes via the Government comes via the government – be that Labour, National, Act (quite possible in the future) and the Government is funded by the tax payer who are also the ones that can’t afford houses in many cases in our fair land.
Again, Labour – the Party and its assembly of beige suits – pays nothing to no one in the Kiwi Saver.
It would only have taken you 30 seconds on Sorted.org to deliver you from your usual woeful ignorance.
Government structured Kiwisaver to ensure it can be used as deposit for a first home.
Government isn't the main direct contribution but does provide up to $500 per year.
It binds business and employee to save. There are different rates of saving. And different kinds of Kiwisaver fund, to acceleraye the way you want.
Not everyone will afford a first mortgage even with this government-structured assistance. But more have.
Kiwisaver is a motivational structure to save that didn't exist before, and over
3 million New Zealanders are on it.
I find it very hard to believe that the banks will suddenly strictly adhere to any CCA guidelines.
Their exposed form suggests they will not forego profits and this 'forensic' requirement is a red herring.
We know how prudent their lending is already, with robust stress testing!
Indeed…and the 'rules' were implemented after the fact in any case.
WINZ clients have had to put up with this shit for the past 30-odd years. Now it's the turn of the middle class mortgage belt.
Ideally we would have a Party in Government who campaigned on an end to neo-liberalism, with a long and storied history of world-leading social welfare and innovative egalitarianism.
Alas, we have the NZ Labour party.
Any day now they will fix that. Any day now. And they will bring dignity back to Winz, and kindness, and instill a deep seated desire in the Winz Drones to actually help the people in need rather.
Well well…..things are getting so bad thought horizons are expanding.
"Only the Māori can speak authoritatively about the sort of economy and society produced by living self-sufficiently in Aotearoa. From the beginning of the fourteenth century, until the late-eighteenth century, the inhabitants of these islands lived entirely without outside contact or assistance. All production of food, tools and medicines was internal, as was the trading of goods and services. For roughly five hundred years, in a multitude of small communities, Māori lived entirely alone in these islands at the bottom of the world. At any given moment between 1300CE and 1800CE, however, it is generally agreed that the combined population of these isolated human settlements never exceeded 150,000 individuals."
http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-ships-from-north-why-autarky-cannot.html
I wonder what event/thought made CT write this piece?……theres plenty of candidates.
Ukraine tensions-Russia ups the ante…
Russia threatens military deployment to Cuba and Venezuela as Nato talks falter | Ukraine | The Guardian
After reading the article the troops to Cuba & Venezuela threat sounds like something of a throwaway remark that is solely intended to illustrate how Russia feels about Ukraine possibly joining NATO and thus having their opposition/enemy right next door on their border, and is pretty unlikely to actually be in the serious planning stages by Russia.
Russia has mobilised 100,000 troops and placed military hardware along its border with Ukraine, while issuing a series of security demands that Nato has said are impossible to meet, such as removing troops from eastern members of the alliance and a block on any membership application from Kyiv.
It’s hard to say where things will go from here but I’d bet provocations will go on, but the stalemate will continue because neither side wants to push their luck too far and start something they can’t predict the end of.
I understand they have sent elite troops to protect Maduro in Venezuela .
It is geo political gamesmanship but I believe their resolve is serious.
They do have some troops and advisers in Venezuela:
https://www.vox.com/2019/3/27/18283807/venezuela-russia-troops-trump-maduro-guaido
As regards elite troops, possibly you are thinking of this? (I wasn't previously aware of this event.)
https://www.voanews.com/a/americas_report-russian-troops-help-venezuela-search-members-failed-incursion/6189009.html
It is geo political gamesmanship but I believe their resolve is serious.
Re Ukraine, I think you are right about that. Moving that number of troops and that amount of equipment to the border will be an expensive operation. Russia's not flush with cash. They wouldn't have done that were they not serious in their resolve to get some kind of backdown from Kyiv.
Whether they'll go any further and actually mount a serious offensive attack, I still doubt, B. I could be wrong – but were they to do so it could spin horribly out of control. I know Putin's often happy to push the envelope but how much risk he'll take here is hard to calculate. He's certainly not a fool or a straight out gambler.
Who wants to die for Ukraine,French,U.S Nato troops?
Ukrainian troops probably will. Beyond that it’s difficult to tell what the various calculations are.
The Ukrainians have been taking part in regular regional military training exercises with NATO troops for years & have recently been undergoing a programme of changing their equipment to conform NATO standards.
But Ukraine’s latest request for admittance to NATO was apparently rebuffed.
Putin’s stated red line has been there can be no NATO missiles capable of striking Russian cities stationed in Ukraine.
The US and NATO allies have said they are open to discussing restrictions on each side’s military exercises and missile deployments in the region to cool the temperature.
Do Russian troops want to die for Ukraine? If Putin calculates wrongly & all or some NATO countries including the US support Ukraine militarily should it come to a Russian invasion?
Putin’s not rash enuf in my view to bet on a win for Russia as a certain outcome. This is Putin’s Cuban Missile Crisis equivalent. I’m pretty sure there’ll be a diplomatic solution – if necessary worked out on the quiet (like there was with that crisis) while they are bombastically facing each other off in public.
My bet is Putin will win this showdown.
Ukraine knows they need real commitment from NATO…they will fold imo.
Russias military arsenal is ..impressive.
The U.S have no appetite for engagement,Germany want no part,and the french are bluffing.
Given that NATO’s rebuffed the latest request for immediate NATO membership by Ukraine, Putin’s probably already won this round.
After doing a bit more reading, it seems that the current US planning envisages the strongest ever economic sanctions against Russia if it invades Uraine, with military planning underway on how they might support a post-invasion insurgency/guerilla war by Ukrainian irregulars.
They’ve analysed the Obama administration’s response to the invasion of Crimea & noted that it was so piss-weak it had no effect at all deterring Putin.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/08/us/politics/us-sanctions-russia-ukraine.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/16/world/europe/ukraine-nato-russia.html
The only way to find out how this situation is gonna go is to wait & see.
The ruling today by the US Supreme Court against Biden's employer vaccine mandates is a seriously massive win for the anti-vaccine movement and for libertarians globally.
This is now a massive and live global legal argument.
David Seymour, Hipango, Billy TK Junior, Bishop Tamaki and Bill in particular will take comfort in its reasoning.
Hard to understate the surge this gives the movement.
The US will suffer especially Republican states.
Hopefully it backfires on the GOP.
The toll on people and the economy will show other countries how stupid the let it rip mentality is.
Other countries will be motivated to do the right thing and not follow the GOP.
Yeah I know.
Who in their right mind would go to a state that doesn't mandate masks, what kind of idiot would do that:
https://theparadise.ng/after-aoc-caught-kissing-strangers-at-drag-queen-party-ron-desantis-has-the-perfect-response/
“If I had a dollar for every lockdown politician who decided to escape to Florida over the last two years, I’d be a pretty dog-gone wealthy man, let me tell ya,” DeSantis said at a press conference.
“I mean, Congress people, mayors, governors, I mean, you name it. It’s interesting though, the reception that some of these folks will get in Florida,” he continued. “Because I think a lot of Floridians will say ‘Wait a minute, you’re bashing us because we’re not doing your draconian policies, and yet we’re the first place you want to flee to to basically to be able to enjoy life. And so I’m not surprised to see that continue to happen.”
Oh yeah some interesting stats here, compare New York to Florida and remember Florida has a higher percentage of elderly:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
In breaking news, the US Supreme Court has struck down the massively wide vaccine mandate on businesses over 100 employees but narrowly upheld healthcare worker mandate.
The law is, of course, different here in NZ and such a decision is not greatly legally relevant. However, it is instructive and positive signalling for those of us who still believe in democracy and human rights, and are wary of massive corporate and Government power.
In particular, the Supreme Court said:
"Although COVID-19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most….COVID–19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather. That kind of universal risk is no different from the day-to-day dangers that all face from crime, air pollution, or any number of communicable diseases."
As has been clear from the start, the start vaccine mandates and passports in NZ and abroad are hideous, overreach, segregationist, ineffective, and divisive. They are the antithesis of NZ society.
I would love to hear the scrapings of Authoritarian-apologists on this site, how, particularly now with double vaccination so ineffective on transmission and protection against (a far less serious) Omicron, and the utter patheticness and unrealism of booster shots every few months, our continued vaccine mandate and passports, extending forevermore, is even remotely justified in a free and democratic society.
It was one of the worst exercises of state power and coercion in our dark history, and now is beyond a joke. Every month the vaccines effectiveness seems to be less and less than told yet we continue to throw hard fought principles and rights continually out the window.
Is anyone willing to put reason, democracy, and proportionality before their ideological partisanship and fear to admit such mandates and passports was, and is, so wrong?
(And before you go crazy accusing me of all kinds of anti-vax witchery, I got double vaxxed and are not opposed to a targeted, limited healthcare worker mandate, given exposure to higher risk).
It was a stupid law. Certainly all government workers were not being forced to vaccinate and why only over a 100, who not under a 100.
https://twitter.com/joebiden/status/1295759864648609795?lang=en
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/22/takeaways-final-presidential-debate/
“Two-hundred twenty thousand Americans dead,” Biden began. “If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this: Anyone who is responsible, for not taking control — in fact, saying I take no responsibility initially — anyone that is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/with-800000-americans-dead-of-covid-19-coronavirus-deaths-under-biden-now-equal-those-under-trump
So lets pass the buck:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/27/biden-says-covid-surge-needs-to-be-solved-at-state-level-vows-full-federal-support.html
Statists exist on the left & right even if mostly on the left. The basic notion is the matrix – a web of ties that bind individuals into society. Why Thatcher denied society's existence, right? As futile as Canute commanding the tide not to come in.
Since the state is sovereign, it rules over citizens. Supreme Courts are only relevant inasmuch as cases can be brought against the state, and they may determine that the state has over-reached, and find it in breach of the constitution. That may be the basis of the news you have reported. The state then has the option of creating a fix to the problem via new legislation…
James 2.
I would love to hear all that crap come from someone that doesn't finish their rant with "I got double vaxxed". Put your health where you mouth is and spare us your hypocrisy.
It shows that you don't believe your own bullshit.
Also I believe the so called fear is mostly from a few retards about "how dangerous the vaccine is", not the health professionals/state about the real risk from the damn virus.
Actually, I agree – good point and I'm being hypocritical. I greatly dislike prefacing or ending with "I got double vaxxed" because vaccination status has no bearing on the quality of arguments or the morality or legality of a Government or society action.
However, we live in a country where anything remotely questioning of vaccines and now, vaccine mandates and passports, is generally automatically deemed 'anti-vax' misinformation.
You'll notice I talked exclusively about vaccine mandates and passports, not vaccination as an individual choice – which I'm for. Nuance, again, is lost in a society who cannot reason and relies on demonisation and fear.
Don't worry, I'm a hypocrite as well. I'm anti mandate yet got vaxxed to keep my job.
We are all hypocrites: I know Big Oil has lied about climate change, yet I buy their product. Anti-vaxxers say Pfizer is corrupt, don't use their product, but some (you?) still do.
It's not possible to live in society without being a hypocrite :-
I guess its a matter of reducing your hypocrisy as low as you can get it.
James 2 writes:
"The law is, of course, different here in NZ and such a decision is not greatly legally relevant."
then continues:
" … vaccine mandates and passports in NZ and abroad are hideous, overreach, segregationist, ineffective, and divisive. They are the antithesis of NZ society."
So, as you were then, I suppose.
Try travelling overseas without a passport, which contains one hell of a lot more information on it than the vaccination passport.
There's a lot of hysterical crap talked about the vax passport.
I'm not going to repeat everything I've responded to Robert Guyton's comment below, but this argument is beyond weak.
– There's no human right for a non-citizen to enter another country; it's a jealously guarded perogative of the other state;
– Getting a passport doesn't require you taking a medical procedure that involves internal treatment of a recent vaccine;
– Not having a passport simply means you can't travel to another country; it doesn't mean you lose your job, can't get a coffee, can't go across the ferry, are excluded from your tennis club, or are demonised in your society.
Passports are a pretty proportionate, reasonable, and ordinary response to the need to organise international travel, protect state borders, and enforce fairly ordinary laws.
Frankly people like you scare me stiff; you seem almost eager to live in a socio-technological controlled society where your every interaction is based on state assessment of your citizenship grading. More passports, more! More control, more!
"Passports are a pretty proportionate, reasonable, and ordinary response to the need to organise international travel, protect state borders, and enforce fairly ordinary laws."
Where to begin.
Pretty proportionate (you'll need multiple injections – multiple!!!
Reasonable – only because you accept them – I personally, do not and won't travel accordingly.
"Ordinary" response? – you mean, been around for a while and few complain?
Pretty ordinary bar to set there, James 2.
Slavers used the same argument as you.
sorry, what? Arguing that passports for international travel are proportionate is akin to the arguments used by slavers?
Slavers argued "But everyone's doing it"?
That is: our behaviour is ordinary.
I'm still not getting it. Are you saying we should do away with passports for international travel?
Is there a human right to do these things?
In the same way we don't have a human right to travel at will, we don't have a human right to do a lot of things. Some of us are afforded the privilege of those things, some more than others.
I think there are issues around using information tech by government. Lots of them.
But they existed long before the pandemic, which makes me wonder if the people protesting a lot now are more concerned with conceptual liberty. Why the passion about vax passes and not say police in NZ trialing face reconition software? Or the government's long standing policy of restricting the movements of beneficiaries? Or how our medical information is now being stored and accessed?
PuckishRogue – I think we have different reasoning but a similar conclusion on the US system.
But I was referring more specifically also to NZ's divisive Government vaccine mandate and passport system, particularly in an era of Omicron, as well as the utter rubbish and excessive corporate power exercised by NZ companies and Govt agencies wrapping up mass vaccine mandates as 'workplace health and safety' crap to avoid taking responsibility for what is a massive political choice and power.
I've read the infamous 'mass formation psychosis' theory and I'm pretty sceptical of its scientific basis, but there is definitely something gone absolutely wobbly in our society on Covid. The more lockdowns, vaccines, mandates, masks, etc have beenshown to be ineffective (Netherlands is simply the most recent example of this), massively costly, divisive, and immoral the more people seem to defend coercion and control.
They're like Trump supporters biting harder on election conspiracy the more the Courts rejected claims.
Against their will?? 🙄 I disagree with this theory due to noticing long ago that the sheeple are dead keen to be hypnotised by pretty much anything the wind blows in.
Hmmmm Robert Malone, that paragon of sanity and calmness about Covid, vaccinations etc. What a pity he has gone so off the rails.
Joe Rogan anyone?
or any of the words put out by those highlighted in David Farrier's Loopy article
https://www.webworm.co/p/loopy
A Government that divides?
Appalling!
Everyone and anyone should be able to get into a car and drive whenever they wish!
This totalitarian Government requires, nay demands licenses! That's a document, right there! Call it a "driving passport" if you will!
Break out the placards! March on Parliament!
Are we really still on equating vaccine passports and mandates with a driver's license and stop signs? Really, I was hoping for a bit more. But for about the billionth time let's put that rubbish in the bin, where it belongs.
– A driver's license or seat belt is not an injection or medical procedure literally inserted internally and that continues for months. I don't know about you but a seat belt I can simply take off, or a driver's licence I can simply give back, and that is ridiculously different to a medical treatment for a very recent (and sharply declining efficacy) vaccine.
– Not having a driver's license will, for the far majority of jobs, not get fired/refused to be hired nor demonised and your professional career lost. At most, you'll get a fine from a police officer. Nor will it ever stop you from exercising human rights such as free movement in NZ or every day human activities.
– There is no actual human right to drive – it's a privilege. There is a human right to refuse medical treatment reflected in the BoRA, multiple treaties, human dignity, and was borne from hideous forced medical treatment during WW2. To compare the two is the equivalent of an anti-vaxxer saying they are being treated like Jews.
Some say tyranny is the enforced absence of nuance, which you seem to be the expert on. Your childlike level of argument is that either you have to accept all and any Government control, or none. Does anyone actual live in that cuckoo world? I give your answer an F.
Yes, we are "equating vaccine passports and mandates with a driver's license and stop signs?" and that's because no one has yet addressed the issue fully; do you feel that you are only partly constrained from driving through a stop sign, because it's merely a law, and not a human right to do so?
Pffffffffft!
Do you feel your "right" to travel freely about the planet is constrained by the oppressive demands to be vaccinated against diseases found outside of the country?
Pffftttt!
Yes, I do feel constrained if I must a accept an internal injection and medical treatment to have my job, grab a coffee, see my brother.
Especially when I thought I had a human right to choose my own medical treatment, partly thanks to the endless suffering of thousands of Jews and other "undesirables" deemed by the Nazi state to have no personal autonomy. (And, thanks to poor intellectually disabled people who had forced sterilisation deemed necessary by medical "experts" at the time. Medical experts have a very patched history).
Of course state power and discrimination can be justified. As we'd both agree for a driver's license, for example.
But nobody has made anything coming close to such a justification. Especially for a vaccine that already had limited impact on transmission and efficiacy strongly declined after a few months – even before Omicron almost completely evades it.
Your argument is we do X, so we can do [wildly different] Y. OK, we cull diseased livestock, so we can cull diseased humans. A difference you say? Human have a right to life you say? Gosh.
The social contract isn't free.
Pay up.
"But nobody has made anything coming close to such a justification."
The Government has. As they did for car licenses. And helmets for motorcyclists. And bicyclists.
This is not new.
This is just the latest outcry from the disaffected.
There were similar outcries when car licenses were proposed. And when helmet-wearing for motorcyclists was proposed. And cycle helmets.
similar but different.
Would you be ok with taking a medication you were opposed to if the government mandated that you had to take it in order to take part in civil life in NZ?
It's about bodily autonomy. I think the mandates are exceptional not routine like a drivers licence or cycle helmet. They push the edge of our human right to not be coerced into medical treatment.
What are the perimeters of "civil life in NZ", weka?
Are non-vaxxed people excluded to any significant extent from "civil life in NZ"? Or are they subject to some inconsequential restrictions; inconsequential, in light of the potential harm of the effects of a pandemic sweeping through NZ?
This is indeed the question that we are all being asked now.
I'm vaccinated but don't have a vax pass (yet, will probably get one). It hasn't really affected me much, it's been relatively easy to work around.
For other people it will be a bigger deal. I'm guessing some parents will struggle esp with young kids. People who live already marginalised, low income lives being excluded from the few places they feel safe/welcome/comfortable is actually a big deal.
I'm not saying don't mandate (I consider them a necessary evil). I'm saying don't minimalise the impacts or the politics. It's not the same as requiring a driver's licence or bike helmet. The only way that argument works is if one believes that vaccines are Good and Safe and that people who don't want them are just wrong headed.
I've not argued that they are the same. They are though, analogous; there's something to be learned by considering them in tandem.
As to minimalising the impacts – well, I haven't heard much at all of the negative impacts – just some inconveniences for some – it seems to me that the wilfully-unvaxxed have found work-arounds, much of that building their tribe and enjoyable tribal activities – I don't see this as a bad thing. Has there been great harm and serious set-back for non-passport holders? I've not heard or seen much about that.
I also see that tribe stuff as a positive, and am looking forward to seeing what creative initiatives come out of that. But the people I know doing that are well resourced in one way or another and are used to being the counter culture.
I think there are non-vaxed people making a bit deal about the passes who are probably actually ok beyond the personal affront they feel. But as I said, I have some concerns about already marginal people being further marginalised, and the ostracisation vibe on top of that is probably going to cause problems.
So there is no difference between a Cop – a government employee, trained to aks "Papiere Bitte" or 'driver lisence', and the shop girl that is to ask anyone if they have a vaccine pass. No difference at all, right Robert, its like apples and oranges they are all fruit, unless they identify as vegetables. Right?
There are differences, yes, Sabine but also striking similarities. Ignoring those is an easy way out for the anti-passporters.
Dude the one is a legality that is enforced by Police, people trained and paid to put up with the shit, and the other is something that is supposedly to be enforced by the public.
Now if the government wants to have these passports/lisences then the government needs to put up and employ some more coppers to assure compliance. I nor you have any legal rights to ask anyone for their lisence even if we assume them to be driving drunk. The best we can do is call the coppers.
But i guess, the government don't want to be seen as draconian or even totalitarian with cops standing at the entrance of a mall 'Papiere bitte'. Why one might end up thinking this government is down right ugly.
It is awkward, Sabine, that's for sure and requires patience from all.
A shop-owner or someone employed by them may have "no right" to demand to see proof of this or that, but they are able to require certain things of their customers – after all, it's their "space" customers are entering. If a shop-owner deems someone to be undesirable, they are within their rights to refuse to serve them – this can be tested in the courts if need be, and if they want their customers to wear masks, they can state that, and they'll be supported by law, I believe. That a "mere slip of an employee" asks this of a customer, is of no consequence – irritating to some, but not a valid complaint.
This lisence bullshit is not worth the paper its printed on if the Government is not able for reasons of funds, or plain cowardice to put more cops on the street to enforce their laws. And putting cops on the street to enforce vaccine passport usage is not going down well in the country were there currently are actually not enough cops to keep up with crime, murder, and illegal driving. Never mind the really bad look of Joe and Jane Cop having to ask people 'Papiere bitte'.
Any person who is hurt by some irate customer after being asked for a vaccine passport is hurt on account of a lazy government that wants laws enforced, but don't want to put paid and trained enforcers on the street.
Maybe you could volunteer to be such an enforcer, you seem suited to the task. You are already making all sorts of excuses why it should be citizens to play coppers without pay, training and fancy hat.
The government wants this lisence, then the government carries the duty to enforce the use of this lisence.
Why would someone be hurt in response to a request to see a passport?
Lowly shop-assistants ask for money from customers all the time.
Are they being assaulted for that?
You are playing dumb, and that is sad.
like this https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/12/conspiracy-theorist-films-himself-calling-subway-staff-nazis-for-asking-for-vaccine-pass.html
oh but then we can call the police right?
No on in this country other then the polititians that cook that shit piss poor lazy lawmaking up should have to put up wit that shit, no sandwich maker or shop keeper is paid enough to be the brown shirt of the government, just because the government is too shit scared of hte optics for either hiring and paying brown shirts or asking for volunteers from the public to enforce its piss poor badly written laws.
The government wants mandates, the government can then organize to have these mandates enforced, be that with volunteers, police or the army.
What the government can not do is push that role over to people who are not trained, nor paid by the government to enforce compliance for the governments rules – that is what we have and pay a police force for. .
And now I leave to continue to play dumb old person with a beard, as sad as that is.
Reconsidered.
So, reading the link you provided 🙂 I see an anti-vaxxer berated staff – are you blaming the Government for his behaviour?
Those sorts of situations will arise/have arisen (in our own shop, more than once) but I've never blamed the Government, just viewed it as a "hot-point" that gives everyone an opportunity to sharpen their point of view.
Did you expect that the pandemic would be managed without ruffles?
Pretty sure she is blaming the government for the staff being the ones to have to deal with it.
In that case, subway just need to employ some security staff.
Should impoliteness toward staff be dealt with by police?
Seems an awful lot of extra work for the People in Blue to do 🙂
It’s not impoliteness in a pandemic if they’re breaking the law and making transmission of a contagious illness more likely. That’s the whole point of the mandates. The protestor needs to be removed as soon as possible and in a way that doesn’t put staff and customers at risk.
Have you seen this?
https://twitter.com/eyepatchjack/status/1474228546772279296
He wasn't assaulted, Mitre10 staff were within their legal right to remove him from the premises.
Imagine that situation where we have an omicron outbreak and the stakes are even higher.
I don't think it's the job of the police, I think large stores like Mitre10 and subway should be hiring security staff. I don't know what smaller businesses should be doing. I think this is probably Sabine's point, that there is additional tension and conflict now over what we had before and it's being left to businesses to sort it out.
"It's my human right, not to wear a mask"
Idiot.
Nice reply,
“You don’t have to come in here, mate!”
I’m with the staff.
Does Mitre10 stock black spray-paint?
A puff of that on the lens of his phone and he'd head home, frustrated.
You gotta think these things through.
🙂
I was cheering on the staff.
There's something here about about what people are going to do when other people are being arseholes in a pandemic. In this sense I'd prefer the government not to have been so casually authoritarian about the whole two NZs thing, but it works the other way too. If you're going to be that antisocial, you can probably expect someone to give you a slap at some point.
God, what a moronic chump that anti-masker was.
(It would have been better if the Mitre 10 dude refusing him entry and "personhandling" ( ) him out the door had a mask which fitted properly and wasn’t continually slipping down past his nose and mouth as he talked.)
But good on the Mitre 10 staff for how they handled that.
The Government is us. We voted them in with a majority in MMP. The Government does not gain anything except the ability to warn us if we have crossed paths with someone infectious. All the rest is in twisted minds. Fortunately most citizens are sensible and practising kindness.
Seeds of discord need watering with suggestions… some here do that at every opportunity.
I was in a mall in Auckland this arvo .
Me and most others were wearing masks.
I saw 2 people coming up the escalator not wearing them.
I asked a security guard nearby what the protocol was….he said we can not enforce people wearing a mask in the mall.
Are masks mandatory in open malls?
I think the police are the only ones that can enforce the health orders.
And some people have mask exemptions.
Security guards can escort someone of the premises who has been tresspassed though. Even staff can do that (see the mitre10 video). Some retailers aren't going to do that for a number of reasons. I'd be more concerned if the two people were being dicks about it eg insisting on standing close to people.
No.I observed them going into a gym in the mall…where you do not have to wear masks.
People used to be free to drive. Then in 1925 the Government of the day ruined everything by bringing in drivers licenses and we have gone downhill ever since.
Actually I don't think my father ever had to have a driving test. He started driving in about 1919 which was long before there were any tests in New Zealand. When they introduced the licenses I think they went to then drivers without any test. I wouldn't put money on that being true of course. I'm not like Clarke who knows the details of all the regulations that affect his mates.
My father in law was probably worse. He was somehow given a license that allowed him to drive every single category of vehicle and they kept renewing it like that for about 20 years. It took that long before someone asked him whether he was really qualified to drive the lot. He answered honestly and thereafter he had the very limited license all the rest of us have.
"People used to be free to drive"
Yep. And blacksmiths set up as dentists.
Did you know that it's against the law to put your fingers in someone else mouth?
🙂
"it's against the law".
Really? No I certainly did not. My children, and grandchildren for that matter, are all criminals then. When very young they all seemed to have a fascination with the idea, if they were held close enough to reach.
On the other hand I don't think people under a year old can be held criminally responsible.
That's right. Professionally, I mean.
No blacksmith can legally put his or her or their fingers in your mouth (for the sake of extraction, for example).
At least, this is what I've heard.
So I can rest easy knowing that while the blacksmith is shoeing my horse, if she/he feels inclined to put their fingers in my mouth (for what ever reason), I can advise them that such a practise is not legal.
That's got to something to be pleased about.
Don't look a gift-horse…
We are not yet in an 'era of Omicron'. Omicron is at our borders not yet in our communities. So we have reports that Omicron may be 'milder' but more transmissible. The current strain out in out communities is Delta and this is definitely not milder.
I wonder what the reaction would be if the coming variant was found to be more severe than Delta. I am picking that there would be plaudits all round for the far-sighted measures to get on top of the spread of such a severe disease.
We are living at the time when hindsight, which is always 20:20 is with us as we speak or do now.
We have spoken about this so-called fear thing that some posters are trying to foist upon us…..we are all supposed to be running around with our hair on fire about Omicron. I sense that there is a calmness about the populace as they go about NZ. They are being careful, doing the masking, scanning, physical distancing and listening to what is happening, being advised and will get ready to spring into action once called. Our vax rates are getting up and up and with the coming action to vaccinate children we hopefully will be well prepared.
The fact that the coming variant may be milder has, Green Bus says, allowed the anti vaccination 'experts' free rein, again.
We could have been facing a long term with Delta as it spread through the country, as it is now.
We are totally in the Era of Covid, be that Alpha, Delta, Omicron of what ever next is coming.
We have been in this Era since we went into lockdonw end of March 2020.
Omicron is here in NZ, in our MIQ facilities and with Delta is only one person away from a full fledged outbreak.
As far as Delta is concerned, it is still spreading.
No Sabine the R factor is now less than 1. So it is declining.
"The fact that the coming variant may be milder has, Green Bus says, allowed the anti vaccination 'experts' free rein, again."
I presume then you would prefer Omicron to be less mild and harsher than Delta? That would presumably then allow us to mask up even more, get back into lockdowns, and clamp down on those 'anti-vaccination experts' and remove their free rein to show how wrong and stupid they are?
I thought Covid was the actual enemy here and we would welcome a weaker strain. Seems I'm wrong all along. But thanks for clarifying this is not about Covid but rather silencing people with a set of beliefs, or human rights, we don't really like or agree with. Cheers.
James 2
GreenBus does not say any of that. Your the 3rd commenter to say that?
I want Omicron to be milder and in fact I want the whole kaboodle to just go away.
No more Virus, mandates lifted, masks off, concerts all go.
Actually, wearing a mask and showing a passport doesn't worry me at all. It is such a trivial thing to worry about, there are bigger fish to fry!
If mandates are not lifted at the end of this, THEN I will be concerned, but I have full confidence they will be and will not engage in fear mongering that one.
You prefer to just engage in two years of rabid fear mongering and dislocation of society for a disease that, even at its worst, killed less than 0.5%?
This why I gave up on this website – not because everyone won't agree with me (I enjoy a spirited debate) but there is so much emotional, blind, and inconsistent reasoning.
Covid is not making us wear masks, mandates, and the rest of the extreme measures. That is the Government and bureaucracy solely in charge of that. Of course if we remove it all, there may be a cost – there is also a huge cost with having it. The level of intellectual dishonesty to pretend our response is normal, proportionate, inevitable, or even vaguely democratic is astounding.
The idea that someone's rights, whole sectors of society, are just demonised and excluded from jobs, families, society, for some 'indefinite emergency' (that's an oxymoron beloved by authoritarians) is fine or that it is is 'trivial' shows how much we no longer think or act like a democracy. You have bitten so deep on a narrative that rights are now privileges and democracy is dangerous, the wormhole won't go any deeper. There is no reasoning with such ingrained unthinking, such blind compulsion to one fear beyond anything.
" two years of rabid fear mongering and dislocation of society"
Bullsh*t.
Go to Australia mate, they agree with you. We voted in support of protection from covid. You are conflating that with voting against freedom.
92000 cases in NSW and very little in the way of medical help or food in the shops. Others are dying because the systems are in disarray, with most in denial like you.
They are holding sports and other things with no mention of covid.
29 died last night. Too bad, collateral damage. Drive on by. Scomo will send them thoughts and prayers.
This hyperbole about "Freedoms". You are in Bill's square.
Almost certainly you are, because milder =/= mild. There's been a lot written about omicron along the lines of these two things:
We may get lucky and omicron or another variant turns out to be mild. We're not there yet. In NZ, the pro-omicron position is basically saying let's shift from very low infection/death/disability rates to higher rates so that we can get back to normal. But we wouldn't be going back to normal, we'd be transitioning into a different pandemic state where more people were dying, workplaces were disrupted, and more people were getting hospitalised or long covid.
Good points Weka.
Weka's strategy is to come in late, say little, and pretend his short assertions are the final word in their self-endowed authority.
It's not. The position is to accept and respond to this as a endemic, like other risks we face – not some leftover elimination strategy of authoritarians.
If very low infection/death rates are our reality now then any change can only be upwards. If any change upwards is a price too much then our covid puritanism and extreme caution will never end. We are the son kept inside until the world is free from violence a and hate, only to live forever coseted and closed as utopia never arrives. Weka will retreat into a kind of obscure public health agnosticism because nothing can be certain. Democracy and our lives forever kept waiting on the phone line for a call never answered.
Fine, do that – but keep my country out of your hellish mindscape.
Pssst. Step back from the keyboard and go outside please. This is getting a little over wrought.
It is too soon to treat Covid as endemic.
I love it when people can't argue the political points and when they then resort to ad homs they project like mad. Whose really asserting their self-endowed authority here?
It's not that any change upwards is a price too much, it's that we don't have the information yet on which to make a decision. In another couple of weeks we will probably have better data on omicron. Right now we have inklings and supposition.
As for your personal feelings of being locked away, I suggest following #NZHellHole on twitter.
If you want to argue for opening up then do that but just be honest about the price other people, not you, will pay. All the rhetoric above looks like bluster to hide the fact that you want something and you just won't say plainly what it is.
This is maybe the biggest crack in the Covid narrative within mainstream press I've seen up til now James.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9bfLXBuRP8
This is endemic when we can't defeat or diminish the effects of it it in our country.
'Welcome' yes, just not to the extent of ushering it in, à la rabbit calicivirus.
Keeping new COVID-19 variants out of our communities for longer, limiting the freedom of the virus to spread (28 community cases yesterday, and 17 new community cases today, cf. ~150,000 new cases in Australia yesterday) and kill, and aiming for high vaccination rates, are all strategies that have paid off handsomely in terms of COVID health outcomes, and 'bought' Team Kiwi valuable time – a 'commodity' in short supply during pandemics.
Omicron will get through NZ's excellent MIQ system soon enough – no need to be a faster follower of Australia's COVID case trend, imho.
Good points also Drowsy
You have misread/misunderstood what I was saying.
The incoming variant could have been harsher or weaker. Govt/public health professionals have to scan ahead, walking a tight rope where they cannot see the far end or have any confidence that the rope is actually tied to anything at the far end. To now say, 'oh we don't need this' or that 'or may not need this or that' is basing the question on what we know now. The name for this process is 20:20 hindsight.
I have no problems with scanning, masking, physical distancing, people using their vax passports and people not. I have no problems with the traffic light system or using science, public health or constitutional based approaches.
I believe that those who have made the decision not to vaccinate will have made this with all the facts at their disposal. They are their own persons and can weigh up points for or against just as well as I can.
If their decisions put restrictions on them that we as other individuals may not tolerate then so be it. Of course I feel that some will have made the decision without the best info or in a spirt of 'cutting one's nose off to spite one's face' (because their employer wanted this for the safety of their business) etc , but that is not my concern. If they want to do this then they should be/will be comfortable with the consequences.
I do not say I prefer anything. I am saying Govts work with the info they had/have the at time……so Covid Alpha and Delta. I have tried to tease out if your concern would be the same had the incoming virus been a harsher version.
I've had the best part of a year combatting 'odd' views around vaccinations, social contract, rights, passports vaccine and otherwise……we now have fear (ie we are all supposed to be fearful didn't you know?), over the top 'think of the children' debates……
I really despair, the whack a mole crowd have strange arguments popping up all over the place…
I want people to be prepared. Our vax rates for adults are creeping up and hopefully we will get a good turnout with our younger citizens who have a right not to be sick, not to grapple with the consequences of Long Covid.
It goes without saying that if I could get hold of that Chinese bat I would kill on the spot but Covid is here now.
We all have to do our best as individuals and as part of the country/community of NZ to combat it. Our govt has chosen to follow a path of preserving life and minimising the untoward effects on the health system. I am happy with that. I have confidence that as the pandemic eases then so will some of the measures.
Though some are good to keep in my view…..handwashing, being careful in crowded environments etc.
Agreed.
Stop being a dick. You're not really here enough for me to bother with moderation yet, but this kind of argument is, in my moderator opinion, trolling. We all get it, you hate the pandemic response and you have a low opinion of people who support it. But you don't get to put bullshit arguments in other people's mouths, at least not here.
Jist …wow.
What the fck is going on that a simple google search for Mass Formation – the theory of a Belgian Psychologist, not Robert Malone, throws up pages of fact check nonsense?
Anyway. I can't readily see the Belgian Psychologists name, though I'm sure the same search a week ago would have brought him and his theory up on the first page of results. The theory has solid enough grounding. Mattias Desmet is the psychologist.
Anyone else tickled by the irony of such a hysterical reaction from 'fact checker' orgs on the question of mass psychosis/formation? Pure dead fucking mental, I tells ye 🙂
The government books have to be managed through the raising of revenue, and spending. COVID and investing to grow the economy are major expenditures. One way to raise revenue is to raise taxes.
Given there will be no Capital Gains Tax, what is the best and fairest way to raise taxes. Inheritance Tax, Land Tax.
Any economists out there any ideas?
Taxes are best for disincentivising particular economic activity and controlling inflation, the government would be wise to pursue a MMT style approach to its revenue.
The purpose of the proposed CGT was mostly to disincentivise property speculation, the additional revenue would have been a bonus. It also was to have a carve out for owner-occupied property sales, so any tax that functions like that, that makes hoarding houses less lucrative, would be appreciated.
Transaction tax has been suggested as being a very efficient strategy.
It is strongly opposed by the sectors that make a number of transactions.
The larger the transactions the more to pay.
If introduced it could mean a number of other taxes could be deleted.
'A financial transactions tax is a tax levied on those buying or selling securities — stocks, bonds, derivatives and other financial products. It is a favorite idea of progressives to raise money for social programs while essentially only hitting the very rich and those who make their money moving money around rather than laboring'
Any jurisdiction implemented a transaction tax?
Did the Google thing. 40 countries use it.
Check out the fine print though. Finagling is rife. The proposal as we understood it 30 years ago was to apply to all financial transactions, at a sufficient level to operate as a tax on capital flows. These countries are all faking it.
https://cepr.net/report/financial-transactions-taxes-around-the-world/
Love the token U.S one…
United States – (Financial Transaction Tax) A tax levied on security futures transactions will remain unchanged at $0.0042 for each round turn transaction (United States Securities And Exchange Commission 2020).
The Babylon Bee do it again:
https://babylonbee.com/news/conservatives-boldly-fight-liberal-takeover-of-their-states-by-running-away-to-other-states
Tookiepuggles?? And greener pastures in Texas? Sounds like the old grass is greener on the far side of the hill syndrome. Hope arid desert doesn't traumatise him.
And anyway, he who fights & runs away lives to fight another day doesn't seem to apply here. He didn't go in with guns blazing & take out as many leftists as poss before he took off.
I bet he was born Greg Brown or something & changed it by deed poll to the wackiest thing he could think of.
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Re:Covid: Some of us want the Booster but can’t get it because of the callous, pig-headed bureaucracy surrounding the 4 month rule.
First New Zealand’s initial 2-jab vaccination programme was woefully behind the rest of the World, particularly if you made the gauche mistake of not being born Maori. So most of us – including the highly vulnerable elderly with comorbidities – were forced to have our 2 jabs much later than we wanted. And now the 4 month rule is forcing us to wait longer for our Booster, despite the danger of Delta slowly beginning to circulate … and Omicron on the horizon.
In my case, I’m on chemo and therefore immunocompromised but can’t get a booster until my 4 months are up. Tried to get it yesterday but politely refused (with a good deal of sympathy expressed, I have to say)… but against the rules, so Nyet.
Just have to hope that when I head into Wellington Hospital for my Chemo infusion next week that Delta isn’t circulating in the hospital (more than possible given nearby businesses like Newtown Countdown were Places of Interest a week or so back).
If I do pick it up there … I’ll be:
(1) friggin annoyed
& quite possibly not long after
(2) friggin dead.
A little leeway for the immunocompromised & others vulnerable to Covid hospitalisation wouldn't go amiss. I mean, Throw us a Freakin Bone for chrissakes as I think Austin Powers’ Dr Evil once more or less said.
Swordfish, hope your chemo is going OK.
Have you had your 3rd primary dose? Different from the booster and can be given at least 8 weeks after your second dose. My partner had his 3rd primary dose a few weeks ago as he is immunocompromised like you, will have the booster when advised by his specialist.
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-vaccines/covid-19-vaccine-health-advice/covid-19-vaccine-severely-immunocompromised-people
Thanks for your best wishes, Matiri.
Unfortunately not eligible for what they're calling the third dose (precisely the same as a booster as far as I can see … just another Pfizer shot) … restricted to those who had their 2 jabs during chemotherapy … I had my 2nd jab a couple of weeks before commencing chemo, so doesn't apply to me.
My immuno compromised friend has also had three primary doses. She and her Dr had some sort of an arrangement well before boosters were 'the thing'. From memory she had her third one in about October.
Good luck with your treatment.
You trust the professionals to give you what they think you need for your condition, and when, according to their knowledge.
The protocol for the Covid jab was not to have the first one, followed by the 2nd one the next day, followed by a booster a week later. The timings are for reasons.
I too am immunocompromised and am following the schedule, not demanding that it be changed on my whim or fear. I've trusted the professionals with all the other stuff I'm involved in. I reckon they've invested a lot in me and trust their advice about the booster will be about protecting not just me but their significant investment.
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Thanks for your expressions of sympathy, Pete.
Have never heard of the protocol you mention.
The only feedback I've had from the Oncologists on the Booster is that I'm unfortunately not eligible for the so-called third dose [for the reason mentioned in my reply to Matiri above].
What I’ve gathered from various British specialists (articles / youtube) is that those on chemo should have their booster (1) as far away from infusion day as possible & (2) preferably when they’re having a break from chemo.
Which is why yesterday would’ve been the optimum … the first day of my week off … 7 days for it to have some sort of effect isn’t ideal … optimum is 2 weeks … but the best I could’ve hoped for. Will now have to wait a few weeks.
I hope everything turns out ok for you. Good luck.
Cheers, McFlock.
Swordfish I too hope that your treatment is going well. Like you I was concerend that a person with Covid had been into a local supermarket.
The protocol around the spacings of the injections was to give maximum effectiveness.
https://www.health.govt.nz/news-media/media-releases/time-between-doses-covid-19-vaccine-extended
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/126148780/covid19-switch-to-sixweek-gap-between-vaccine-doses-says-expert
Thanks, Shanreagh.
Foreign invader alert: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/300494594/harlequin-ladybird-wellestablished-in-marlborough-thanks-to-cyclone-gita
So a year and a week after the capitol insurrection, a wee threshold has apparently been crossed: the first charges for actual sedition laid, rather than just property crimes, obstructing law enforcement, and all the relative minnow stuff.
Seditious conspiracy is 20 year max, insurrection merely gets you ten years max.
They're slowly working their way up. Dunno if it will get to the orange one, but the marching got a little louder.
Funny how these Oath Keeper knobs dreamed up a conspiracy all on their own.
https://twitter.com/The315Cat/status/1481726487577440262
edit: success rate ain’t great
https://twitter.com/kathleen_belew/status/1481698843188244488
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1481698843188244488.html
Great time to find out that accused seditionist Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers and former firearms instructor, lost his eye after shooting himself in the face.
https://archive.li/ALjSK
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/right-wing-militias-civil-war/616473/
thanks joe90, a well-written story of the making of a domestic terrorist
absolutely wonderful…and quite a remove from the usual…shooting yourself in the…foot!
Quite the prick. He worked for Ron Paul, too.
Looking back at the Capitol riot, Tasha Adams ponders her time as an Oath Keeper’s wife and asks: “What if I had not supported him?”
“Him” is her estranged husband, Stewart Rhodes, founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government group whose members stand accused by federal authorities of having played a crucial role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. During nearly 23 years of marriage, Adams says she devoted herself to Rhodes’ aspirations. She worked as an exotic dancer to help put him through college, assisted in writing his papers and encouraged him to successfully apply to Yale Law School. When he was looking for direction in life — a cause — Adams helped him start the Oath Keepers.
https://archive.li/Uexg7
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-11-12/oath-keepers-wife-january-6th-stewart-rhodes-tasha-adams
Wonder if the QOP forgery scheme will get the attention it deserves.
https://twitter.com/brahmresnik/status/1481425178395430912
https://twitter.com/sandibachom/status/1481138341001183235
So the US still brings charges for that hoary old offence of sedition. I would have thought it would have been scrapped donkey's years ago.
I believe the last time anyone was charged with it in New Zealand was in 2006. I wonder what happened to that person. The definition of the crime seems so loose I find it almost impossible to see how you could defend yourself. At that time one clause was –
"To excite such hostility or ill will between different classes of persons as may endanger the public safety.".
Another was
"To bring into hatred or contempt, or to excite disaffection, against Her Majesty, or the Government of New Zealand or the administration of justice."
Who thinks they could avoid being found guilty of one of those offenses?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/law-advice-body-wants-to-scrap-crime-of-sedition/KD5MK7HHUTQIVI63URQ6V56VU4/
The Law Commission called for the law to be scrapped. I seemed to go from the Crimes Act 1961 in 2008 but did it turn up in some other Act instead. It looks such a lovely lot of offences for the Crown to accuse people of.
If you'd bothered to click a link, you'd have discovered that the US law is much more precise than the one NZ ditched:
I know. I did look at what it said. I still think it a rather antiquated law. However I very clearly pointing out that I was, from that point on, quoting and commenting on, what the New Zealand law had been.
Yes, you were adttempting to belittle the charges and minimise the alleged offences. The former NZ law on sedition is largely irrelevant to the US law, despite having the same word.
The US law has things more in common with the NZ law of treason, e.g. the provisions of levying war against or attempting to overthrow the government.
Legislation against being overthrown by deranged mobs is something all governments should have, but hopefully hardly ever have to use.