Bullies everywhere when challenged say “I was only joking”, or “can’t you take a joke?” and now from NZ National we have “it was just the vernacular”.
Shane Reti has backed up his leader’s nasty comment to Siouxsie Wiles “big fat hypocrite”, saying Ms Wiles has to answer and that the comment was just kiwi vernacular rather than personal targeting.
It is so often women that take a hit from tory bullies, as writer Eleanor Catton discovered when then PM John Key waded into her for daring to critique the NZ neo liberal state.
This is what the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary says:
Definition of big fat
used for emphasis
So the words "big fat" are used for emphasis. A big fat lie is a whopper of a lie. A big fat liar/hypocrite is someone who tells whoppers or is as hypocritical as they come.
Let’s cut to the chase – Dr Wiles has said that if we leave the house in level 2, we should wear a mask. She left her house in level 4 (4 is stricter than 2) but didn’t wear a mask. People will make of that what they will.
[Show us the evidence that “She [Dr Wiles] left her house in level 4 (4 is stricter than 2) but didn’t wear a mask”. If you made it up, withdraw, correct and apologise for spreading DP-like misinformation.
Secondly, since you like Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary so much why don’t you look up the meaning of “dog-whistle” and let us know? – Incognito]
This is what the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary says:
The word you’ve entered isn’t in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search bar above.
The one sound provocative, while the other sounds petulant and childish.
I've read both – the latter tries, and fails IMO, to use that same argument: '"big, fat is commonly used and understood etc etc etc'; being a typical example of explaining is losing.
Judith should accuse someone else of being a big fat hypocrite as an example James Shaw for travelling to Scotland. Would everyone on here then be losing their rag over the wording if she said the same thing about Shaw?
Wait for Collins to start coming out calling everyone 'big fat' this, 'big fat' that, a bullshit attempt to make people think there was nothing sinister in what she said about Wiles. Anyway, her ridiculous outburst backfired spectacularly because Wiles is so beautiful in every way.
Juduth Collins has a liking for trying to pass uncouth comments as "vernacular"
"he need's to meet his maker"
"people would like to bottle her"
"stab from the front"
And they're just the ones she's willing to make in public – god only knows what else she says – I think her colleagues are now painfully aware of her reckless tongue
Crushed and Oblivious to blow back.Collins throwing bullying shit all over the place despetately flailling around ends up covered in the muck she throws.
I'm quite far from a National supporter, but I have never seen Collins get away with any kind of coloquialism. They are always immediately taken in the worst light possible by govt supporters.
“never seen Collins get away with any kind of coloquialism. They are always immediately taken in the worst light possible by govt supporters.”
… … …
Well, to be fair, they likely always will be by any supporters of any government, won’t they? 🤔
I seem to remember Andrew Little getting constantly roasted over some pretty petty stuff, & Ardern’s strongly Wycaddo-accented pronunciation still attracts regular criticism (as does Bridges’ nasally whine) from supporters of other parties.
Out of interest, what are any more examples you can recall of Collins getting slammed for using colloquialisms?
Still, it’s another example of a likely language useage cock up by Collins that anybody else would have seen comong & stopped themselves saying.
“Bottling” someone is a common useage (& practice), meaning assaulting or attacking someone with a broken bottle.
Back my childhood days I DO recall a phrase being used by my parents that went something like “that’s so good/clever/funny/whatever you should bottle it & sell it”.
But Collins didn’t say that. She went with the short version. The one with the double (including nasty) meaning.
I think she’s a comms freaking disaster for the Nats, hoping to attract & find new voters.
Yes. Which is why you have think very carefully, politics, in about what you ate going to say in reply to reporters. Collins’ tendency is make some instant remark that she thinks is witty, when it is just as likely to be half-witty.
Compare her to Ardern, when she is asked difficult or potential-disaster questions – whether people should have sex in hospitals, for example. Ardern thought carefully about it & gave a very neutrally-worded response. But her genuinely-humoured p, perfectly natural reaction to being asked the question was a winner!
You mean sort of like Ardern getting away with anything? She could make an announcement about NZ researchers coming up with a cure for cancer and for the National/Act supporters it would be about the terrible clothing she was wearing, the fact that her hands moved while she spoke and the terribleness of her being excited.
Sure, there are plenty of partisans on both sides. But in most debate contexts its considered correct to take the best reading of the counter position. Social Media and Twitter not withstanding.
She wouldn’t be trying to sow discontent, would she? Ironic words coming from the Leader of the Nats who’s telling her caucus what and what not to do to keep the appearance of unity and common agendas [plural].
"They are always immediately taken in the worst light possible by govt supporters."
That's because almost everything she says is calculated, and comes from her core being which is fundamentally damaged by her suffering from some kind of personality disorder, whatever the precise diagnosis might be. So in the rare instance that might involve her honest use of a coloquial term, then it's understandable people will assume the worst. At very best it's a matter of boy who cried wolf.
A good example is Chris Hipkins' slip up the other day during the live Covid update. If Hipkins had a reputation as being someone who deliberately used innuendo whenever he opened his mouth then we'd be right to think what happened during the Covid update was just another sleazy remark from a grubby character. And although I personally think it was a bad move putting that coffee cup on public display, we didn't think that of Hipkins because he doesn't have that reputation (or not that I know of). Apply the same logic to Collins and it's a different story, regardless of what her intentions were.
Indeed they are. And they are fun to use – what about "big fat rationalisation" ?
Unfortunately your rationalisation doesn't really let Judith off the hook. She knows perfectly well that "big fat" is used for emphasis – but also knows that the charming Dr Wiles is not a sylph-like figure. So Collins gets to smirkingly point at the latter fact, while maintaining the built-in defence of vernacular usage. So in addition to the standard charge that Judith is vulgar and dishonest, we can now also add the charge of deliberate cynicism.
So in addition to the standard charge that Judith is vulgar and dishonest, we can now also add the charge of deliberate cynicism.
I would've thought that there are plenty of things Judith can be criticised for without needing to manufacture outrage. And even a stopped clock is right twice a day. 🙂
If you don’t like the Merriam-Webster dictionary, you are welcome to inform its editors. I'm not in the habit of shooting the messenger.
On 7 September 2021, Dr Wiles told NZers on RNZ:
"At level 2, if a case gets out and into the community, there's a chance for massive spread with Delta. .. For the good of everybody, wearing a mask when you're out of your home is a good idea."
That raises the question of why it would be a good idea to wear a mask at level 2 but not at level 4. (The good doctor has admitted going to the beach sans mask. That of course raises the question of whether that was a good idea. What if she had been hit by a car while biking…presumably emergency services would’ve been needed which would have exposed them and her to possible infection.)
I trusted that you wouldn’t read that Dr Wiles admitted to not wearing a mask in level 4, based on your form. LOL
Feel free to shoot the messenger. Again.
[Bye, Ross, take two weeks off for spreading a lie, again. Dr Wiles has tweeted that she did not leave her house without wearing a mask, as you wrongfully asserted, but that she did take off her mask at the beach when it was safe and allowed to do so in her bubble – Incognito]
Your second link contradicts your assertion: “Let’s cut to the chase – Dr Wiles has said that if we leave the house in level 2, we should wear a mask. She left her house in level 4 (4 is stricter than 2) but didn’t wear a mask”.
"Wiles said that on the day the video was filmed, she and her friend had cycled to Judges Bay, about 5km from her house, and taken off their masks to talk as the beach was “near-deserted”.
Let’s cut to the chase – Dr Wiles has said that if we leave the house in level 2, we should wear a mask. She left her house in level 4 (4 is stricter than 2) but didn’t wear a mask. People will make of that what they will.
What Wiles actually said,
If I'm out for a walk and there's a group of people passing by should I put my mask on?
"It depends on where the wind is blowing you could have a gust of wind that if someone infected blows it to you or if you were infected blows it to someone else… For the good of everybody, wearing a mask when you're out of your home is a good idea."
She didn't say that everyone, everywhere, should wear a mask at Level 2.
Misquoting out of context to mislead is a bannable offence. That's in addition to the lie about Wiles not wearing a mask when she left home.
Incog has given you a 2 week ban. I think you got off lightly.
Hang on I’ll have a listen. He’s onto a losing argument claiming that “big fat liar” is the just the Kiwi vernacular. It’s a common (very) young child’s retort.
If he’s admitting Collins was being childish that’s a different story.
Oops: Correction. It’s big “fat hypocrite” she called her, isn’t it.
Still very childish language usage tho. I suppose I can just add incredible immaturity to Collins’ suite of talents.
I just did a google search on nz sites for "big fat hypocrite" and I get two pages with 95% of the results being within the last 4 days. If it's vernacular then it's not very widely used.
It’s just a throwaway question, right at the very end.
Shane laughs it off by comparing it to a word BHAG (big hairy audacious goal) hec says was all the rage in corporate organisational circles a few years back. Epic fail, I’m afraid, Shane. Nothing like the same thing.
(Didn’t know he’s a “Mormon boy”.) I’m sure “Dr Shane Reti” (as Collins seems to persistently call him in interviews) is embarrassed as hell at this latest sow’s ear Collins has for made herself out of what she thought was a silk purse.
I’ve opined here a few times in recent days that National has got no one else to replace Collins if she tanks the polls again.
Janet Wilson, in Stuff a couple of days back, sees it differently:
… … …
“The National Party caucus is not short of talent. While Collins was hurling poison across the benches on the day the house resumed last week, Chris Bishop (recently demoted by Collins) opened his speech by celebrating the increased rates of vaccination and praising essential workers. Dr Shane Reti has been a conscience and critic on issues including the failure to fully include GPs in the Covid response. Erica Stanford has led the charge on the important, unsexy work of families split apart by the Covid immigration rules.
…
Simon Bridges was judged to have cocked up the National response in the first outbreak, but watch his performance on the epidemic response committee in 2020: there was a leader.
Louise Upston has been asking timely and important questions about the wage subsidy. Matt Doocey has done a heap of mahi on mental health, and is asking hard, important questions on a sector where the government, in my view, has let us down really badly.
Gerry Brownlee started a podcast, and it’s pretty good!
Maybe Collins’ is the hardest job in politics, and maybe that’s because we find out who you are.
Janet Wilson, an experienced, smart and measured former journalist and communications expert, worked loyally and stoically alongside Collins through the agony of the last election campaign. So appalled has she been by the National leader’s performance she recently described her as “Muldoonist”, as paranoid, leading a party “floundering, saddled with endless entitleditis” and on a path to “irrelevance”.
…
Senior members of John Key’s slick ninth floor team talk privately, but with striking candour, and more than a little despair, about the state of the leadership today. And who can blame them? Key and Bill English and others must weep at the sight of a years-long project to cement National as the sensible voice of a modern middle New Zealand collapsing a little further with each spring-loaded outburst from Collins.”
Dr Reti has actually been quite reasonable on the Govt. COVID strategy the last several weeks, but make no mistake he is a provincial tory through and through.
He is the classic Māori that barely recognises he is one–a 37 dwelling state house build is underway in Whangārei’s middle class Maunu suburb. The development was strongly opposed by pākehā property owners but an Independent Commissioner Okayed Kāinga Ora to proceed.
Shane Reti, spring loaded, immediately took the property owners side rather than advocating for Whangārei’s working class and homeless in urgent need of housing.
There are plenty of women who can attest to that. Its ingrained in the right-wing mindset that women are easy targets. So many of us have had multiple experiences of it. Ever since RD Muldoon, National Party cowards have indulged in bullying behavior towards well known women particularly if they think they represent a threat to them.
Pick a person like Siouxsie Wiles, undermine her and drag her name through the mud.
Yes, politicians use of “fat” is interesting dialectics–would Collins have used it on a slimmer woman than Ms Wiles? Trump and Collins might qualify for the epithet themselves, but some curious separation of the personal and political seems to apply in their cases.
This extra week (at least) of level 4 sux weeks-unwashed balls. I'm an introvert, I actually enjoy lots of alone time, and it still grates. I really feel for the extroverts right now.
It really is time to start differentiating on the basis of vaccination status. Two weeks ago, New Zealand passed the 50% mark for first jabs. We're now just short of 60%, and it's looking like the rate of first jabs is starting to fall off.
Most of my workplace is fully vaccinated, having got their second jabs two weeks or more ago. Of the people I work with closely, I'm the laggard having got my first a week ago. My workplace could safely go back to work right now with negligible risk of spreading covid, just by making me wait another week before allowing me back on site.
I've been strongly supportive of the strategy the government has used, and I agree extending the level 4 is the right thing to do (barely) for now. But the vaccination campaign has reached the stage where the game has now changed, and it's time for responses to change. And the better responses will now consider individual vaccination status.
Andre if we don't beat this outbreak in these lower socioeconomic suburbs this week then we will go down the gurgler just like NSW. So suck it up and try to have some empathy for the living conditions of the poorly treated poor. It looks to me that we are probably about to reap what we have sown with neoliberalism.
Fact: the young immigrants that are most of the people I work with are fully vaccinated now because they went as walk-ins to vaccination clinics in lower socioeconomic suburbs that had lots of resource thrown at them that wasn't being accepted by the residents of those suburbs.
Fact: vaccination take-up now is a lot lower than it was a couple of weeks ago.
Fact: if you wanted to get vaccinated today, there's hundreds of available slots all over Auckland. Let alone places that accept walk or drive-ins. Same tomorrow, or any day after that. Lack of availability is no excuse to not be jabbed. For those that first booked weeks ago and couldn't get a booking before later this month or October because supply was constrained, rebook it now. You can get it today if you genuinely want it.
It really looks like we're pretty much at the tail-end of the actual vaccine enthusiasts, and it's time to start showing the carrots and the sticks. I don't much care whether anyone views "get a jab, get back to earning" as a carrot, or "no jab, no job" as a stick.
The National party is green lighting your application to head the vacine marketing campaign. Whats the slogan to be? May I suggest, we have counted to 50 so here comes the virus, ready or not.
Seymour's already ahead of that game and running with it.
It really is an issue that could flip people's minds and votes if people start to feel their actual rights are being unreasonably restricted because Labour are pandering to idiots that have swallowed vaccine misinformation and disinformation.
National and ACT may be fkn useless and even outright bonkers on many issues, but they're at least vaccine-sensible. So it's not like the US where the RepubliQooks have painted themselves into bizarre rabid anti-vax and other kinds of nuttery on all issues.
Your first sentence Andre…" the young immigrants that are most of the people I work with". Therein lies our self induced problem. Our economic policies in the last thirty years have led to this situation. Need I say more?
Most of my workplace is fully vaccinated, having got their second jabs two weeks or more ago…..
My workplace could safely go back to work right now with negligible risk of spreading covid,…. Andre
Just having some people vaccinated, is not how vaccination works. It’s a numbers thing. The more people who get vaccinated the more effective vaccination is.
For measles we know that number is 95%.
The percentage figure for Covid-19 is unknown. But Singhapore and Israel indicate that it has to be higher than 80% coverage.
Most fully vaccinated people who get Covid delta infections are asymptomatic, WHO says
Rich Mendez – CNBC, July 12, 2021
“There are reports coming in that vaccinated populations have cases of infection, particularly with the delta variant,”
“The majority of these are mild or asymptomatic infections.”
Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, World Health Organization’s chief scientist
Most of your workmates could be fully vaccinated and still catch Covid-19. possibly not even knowing they have it.
I am sure you can appreciate, Andre, the implications, of having vaccinated, asymptomatic persons, mixing in a partially vaccinated population.
All the more reason for those currently unvaccinated to rattle their dags and get jabbed. So when they get it, their infection is much more likely to be mild or asymptomatic.
By the numbers, we have about 360,000 people that have booked for their first jab and haven't got it yet. At rates of over 50,000 first jabs per day that were achieved a couple weeks ago, those 360,000 could be done in a week.
There's another million-ish of hesitants that are eligible that haven't yet booked. 20 days worth of jabs. Time for them to get shown the carrots and sticks.
Here's a thought. For the self-entitled Jaffas who flew to their Wanaka "holiday home", let's put them in quarantine before they're allowed back into Auckland – somewhere like a Mt Eden prison cell should be good. Then let's hope it can cost them a fortune in legal fees to get out of it and to stop their names being published. Oh, and get Slater to do some covert filming so we can see who they are. Name and shame.
[there is now a court order for name suppression in place. This means it is illegal to name the couple. It’s also against the TS rules to breach suppression orders, not least because it puts the site’s owners at legal risk. Please don’t encourage name and shaming while the name suppression is in place. Anyone naming the couple on TS can expect a substantial or permanent ban – weka]
Sorry but Mayor Boult has now made it clear that while he loves rich people and will bend over backwards to accommodate them, he doesn't want no stinky Aucklanders messing up the place at this time.
Look, I have suits that need drycleaning, properties that need annual tax-rebated inspections by flying there, the wine cellar is desperately low, the skis are barely used, the cleaners haven't been able to come around, the nails aren't done, the holiday home needs its cushions re-fluffed, I'm bored, everything in the house looks boring, there's spring Wisteria to trim back, the Airpoints are running low, and that mountain bike seriously needs its wheels rotated or there'll be hell to pay. Things are just getting desperate. Can't we just get a break here?
If they were smart and not as self-entitled as they seem to be , they would admit and take the punishment -which I hope is many years of community service, not a fine – and retreat back into a more considerate life. To me the name suppression thing suggests that rather than protecting, it is implicating the parents.
First they'll see what the privileged-person's penitential-triple can get them: a spontaneous donation to charity, a carefully drafted "heartfelt" apology (I wrote it myself with a pen, and they are my words because my lawyer paid the PR wonk to script them for me), and then a submission to the judge along the lines of "ohmagerd, if I get a conviction I might not get to travel overseas like I frequently do, and it might harm my career prospects". With an optional extra of "my good standing in the community should count in my favour".
The shit I saw some daddy's little girls and boys get away with at uni… not so much by the uni itself, but getting diversion multiple times because they were "promising young men" so the effort to prosecute would be futile. Yer honour, the dude was a smarmy little shit who would break random windows and fences for fun every saturday night. Spank him, or someone else eventually will – with a fist.
In what way should they be treated similarly? The two women ignored a police checkpoint, kept driving at dangerously high speeds, were eventually stopped by road spikes, nearly caused an accident with traffic coming the other way, and then resisted arrest.
The Auckland/Wanaka couple should be treated according to their own transgressions, which are serious enough but don't include the additional issues of resisting police directives. Pretty sure it will be clear in law what they have breached and what sentencing can go with that.
I was referring to that both consciously made efforts to break out of the boarder acting against the rules that many of us are following. And should luck have failed us and carried the covid to other areas what then of the consequences to the country and our strategy ? How so few can now, thru selfish reasoning cripple the country. That was what I was meaning by grouping these 2 incidents together. If there is no to minimal consequence how then do you signal the importance of following the directive ?
Then the 2 woman have two separate charges to be addressed quite separately.
I don,t like fines unless they are proportional to income and I think goal helps nothing. I do think a long term community service sentence might mean some thing constructive comes out of it all !
Janet I was thinking of the 2 options available that Weka quoted, and I feel with the limited info that I agree a fine would be nothing to these 2. It will be interesting to see what if any consequences there are. And I would believe that I am not alone within Auckland after 5+ weeks of lockdown and to see some flagrant totally selfish actions has brought out some of this frustration within me out 😤
Hopefully its lifted quickly, names are all over social media and sadly a woman with the same name as one of the parties is coping some pretty fucking horrible abuse.
I really hope that gets taken into account in the name supression arguements entitled prick needs to own his shit not hide behind mummy.
I do find it strange that he was given name suppresion because of his father. The man is 34 – surely at 34 his father is no longer answerable for his son's actions and noone could think it.
Fair call, death threats are too much and should be investigated. But stuff up? Mistake? Piss off. It's not like they popped out for some essential work and then "what the hell, how did we end up flying to queenstown and renting a car to Wanaka? That's an oopsie".
STFU. And save the "some of the stuff they have done in the community over the years" bullshit for the judge.
I think most of us have probably lost hope & interest & moved on already so I might knock off posting about Afghanistan, but I especially liked the author’s opening line for this NYT OP.
WAR ON TERROR CORRUPT FROM THE START
“The war in Afghanistan wasn’t a failure. It was a massive success — for those who made a fortune off it.
Consider the case of Hikmatullah Shadman, who was just a teenager when American Special Forces rolled into Kandahar on the heels of Sept. 11. They hired him as an interpreter, paying him up to $1,500 a month — 20 times the salary of a local police officer…. By his late 20s, he owned a trucking company that supplied U.S. military bases, earning him more than $160 million.
If a small fry like Shadman could get so rich off the war on terror, imagine how much Gul Agha Sherzai, a big-time warlord-turned-governor, has raked in since he helped the C.I.A. run the Taliban out of town. His large extended family supplied everything from gravel to furniture to the military base in Kandahar. His brother controlled the airport. Nobody knows how much he is worth, but it is clearly hundreds of millions….
Look under the hood of the “good war,” and this is what you see. Afghanistan was supposed to be an honorable war to neutralize terrorists and rescue girls from the Taliban. It was supposed to be a war that we woulda coulda shoulda won, had it not been for the distraction of Iraq, and the hopeless corruption of the Afghan government. But let’s get real. Corruption wasn’t a design flaw in the war. It was a design feature. We didn’t topple the Taliban. We paid warlords bags of cash to do it.
The White House & Senate may well soon end up under Republican control again, but I doubt it’ll be because of Afghanistan. There was never going to be a tidy way for the US (& the sucked-in NATO countries) to extricate themselves from that ill-thought-out invasion.
Biden’s said as much, publicly, twice & he’s betting that the hypocrtical criticism & fuss about abandoning the place in such shambolic way to the unstoppable Taliban is going to fade away. Pulling out & ending the “forever war” was what the great majority of US voters wanted.
“How 9/11 Turned America Into a Half-Crazed, Fading Power
…
“The painful condition of neither peace nor victory, against an enemy seen as practically subhuman, itself required vengeance,” Ackerman wrote. “Trump offered himself as its instrument. Declaring his presidential candidacy in his golden tower, he asked, ‘When was the last time the U.S. won at anything?’”
Now, as the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11 arrives with the Taliban back in power in Afghanistan, America is face to face with its defeat. In truth, the immediate collapse of the American-supported government probably saved many Afghan lives. If a Taliban victory was all but inevitable, as intelligence analysts apparently assumed, it’s probably better that it happened without a long siege of Kabul.
But the lack of a decent interval between America’s withdrawal and a Taliban takeover, besides being a tragedy for Afghans allied with us, revealed America’s longest war as worse than futile. We didn’t just lose to the Taliban. We left them stronger than we found them.
The sheer waste of it all is staggering. Twenty years ago, American politicians and intellectuals, traumatized by an unprecedented act of mass murder and not-so-secretly eager to see history revved up again, misunderstood what 9/11 represented. We inflated the stature of our enemies to match our need for retribution. We launched hubristic wars to remake the world and let ourselves be remade instead, spending an estimated $8 trillion in the process. We midwifed worse terrorists than those we set out to fight.
We thought we knew what had been lost on Sept. 11. We had no idea.”
Theatres of influence aren't static. They are also real, and active. Fine to keep underlining where the United States is withdrawing from. But as we've seen withdrawing itself is damaging.
It is very, very unlikely that President Biden is going to turn into the next Charles Lindberg. US global influence is going to stay huge.
The key question is whether Biden can make a better job of engaging with the Pacific and China more specifically than his predecessors Trump and Obama. He has a reasonable amount on at the moment.
Good points. I don’t personally think the US is fading as a superpower. More a case of China catching up to THEM.
Biden may irritate me if he paints himself as the “leader of the free world” as some of his predecessors have done, but he shows every sign of wanting the US to return to being the primary strategic guarantor of Western liberal democracies’ security.
As we mostly are not in any position to assume realistically that we can all defend ourselves from a sufficiently large, militarily-aggressive foe – should it ever come to that – it’s nice for us to be able to collectively assume that they probably have our backs.
Although I think he actually had a point about bludging NATO countries into stumping up their full agreed contributions to the cost of their own defence, Trump might well just abandon any traditional military alliance on a whim, should China or Russia ever setiously threaten another democratic country. And via a tweet.
Almost all of these pundits have a lot of fun poking at the US establishment as the big slow and easy target – but show the same ignorance around the role of the Afghans themselves in this disaster.
Most critically almost everyone has neglected the sad brutal truth that there is no Afghanistani nation – it never existed and isn't likely to anytime soon. It is instead a tribal society riven by ethnic divisions. The Taliban are the dominant Pashtun and the people that the Americans stupidly tried to put in power to unify the nation were largely Tajik or Uzbek with no regard to the local dynamics.
The reason why the Taliban took the country over is that they projected power in the interests of the majority of the people living in that country. When the Americans (and the Russians before them) left – the dominant ethnic group simply took over. The people it's now executing are of course mostly non-Pashtun. Good old fashioned medieval tribalism at work.
The American argument – for all of it's stupendous naivety – was that if they could remake authoritarian regimes like Germany and Japan into peaceful and democratic nations, why not Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan? The answer is pretty damned obvious in hindsight – that the former were ethnically homogenous while the latter were not. The Vietnamese were never going to tolerate the US handing over power to a corrupt Chinese elite, the Iraqi divisions between Sunni and Shiites has roots going back to the deathbed of the Prophet, and Afghanistan has 43 different ethnic groups who can barely tolerate the sight of each other.
That the Afghani locals were prepared to exploit American ignorance for their own purposes is not terribly surprising. That the Saudi Wahhibists were also prepared to build fundamentalist schools among the displaced Pashtun in Northern Pakistan, that the Pakistani authorities had their own games to play (very many Pashtun live in northern Pakistan) and that the CCP seem to have been playing their own hand – all gets conveniently airbrushed out of the analysis when it comes time to have another go at the perfidious Yanks.
A good read there. Last week at some point I found a “history of Afghanistan” youtube video about an hour long that started out as far back as 55O BCE. I had time to kill, I just let it play & listened to it while lying on the couch. The place actually has a very long history of parts or all of it being unified in one form or other & thus included in various different regional states or empires I’ve never heard of.
Several long before Islam arrived & eventually came to be the dominant religion.
Your comment makes me wonder why the US cops so muck flak from its critics, like me. The Russians’ behaviour in Afghanistan was pretty shit & their activities in Ukraine & particularly Syria has seen them either involved in their own, or supporting Assad’s, appalling atrocities.
The CCP have been guilty of various slaughters & terrible repressions in their own country & Tibet, too.
Some NATO European countries’ behaviour in their former colonies (that they finally departed from not all that long ago, historically speaking, and often left in the hands of equally appalling tribally-dominated regimes) was equally universally atrocious.
I think the US cops it so much because the Russians & Chinese simply don’t talk about what they’re up to where they’re misbehaving, while the US constantly talks about all the good that it’s doing or done for the countries they’ve invaded or interfered with.
It’s for their utter hypocrisy & their seemin national blindness to the reality of the misery & thousand of deaths & destruction they cause. It’s the rank double standards they demonstrate for their own people and those of the other countries they attack.
So you simply accept a wikipedia entry as the full and honest truth? I'm disappointed.
Do some investigating on the principal contributors to this article. e.g.Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Syrian Network for Human Rights.
Who are they? Where are they based? Have any reported from Syria? Who are their sources? Who funds them?
Read the Amnesty 'report' on so called Syrian Government atrocities and see if you can find a shred of evidence of their claims.
There was no Syrian Civil war. It was/is a proxy war against the Syrian people by mercenaries paid for by the US, UK, NATO, Saudi and Qatar. US still has troops in Syria.
You've a lot to catch up, you could start with Timber Sycamore.
Watch this: "Roland Dumas: The British prepared for war in Syria 2 years before the eruption of the crisis in 2011"
Find out what Gen. Wesley Clark has said on the destruction of the Middle East. That prior to the Afghan war there were plans to bring the Middle East to it's knees.
If you want to know what the about the inception of the war, do a youtube search on 'Talk With American-Syrians in Latakia'
Ask yourself why Syrians have been returning in their droves now that the country is safer? Why do you suppose Assad won the 2021 election with a vote of over 90%?
And before you listen to any claim that Syrian elections aren't fair and free this Observers Report to UN might be worth watching.
Perhaps wikipedia isn't always the most reliable source. In this case I'd have to say, and as any Syrian living in Syria will tell you, the article is simply fallacious.
“So you simply accept a wikipedia entry as the full and honest truth? I’m disappointed”
So am I, now you’ve complained about it. I’m aware the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is apparently just a one man operation based in London & that his reports have been challenged.
I don’t usually use Wikipedia as an only source for issues like this – I did a quick scan down the list of references before posting the link, & there seemed to be only one or two from the SOHR.
Not surprised at all to hear US & Western powers had long had plans to destabilise the ME.
My view on Assad’s & Russian forces has been partly formed by AlJazeera tv reporting, over the years that I’ve been watching tha channel on Freeview. Seeing the vid clips of barrel bombs being dropped by Assad’s choppers into cities, & e.g. the clips of White Helmets digging thru rubble pulling out survivors & bodies.
I watch Aljaz tv in the knowledge that some of their reporting is factual & neutral, but that they DO often have notable biases. Their reporting is invariably anti-Assad. They don’t report that the opposition now largely confined to the North I think includes some very nasty Islamist groups.
I’m not surprised that most of the Syrian population still there prefer living under the Assad regime to the rule of fundamentalist radicals.
I don’t know what to make of that video of those few Western election observers with the Syrian UN Ambassador,
“you want to know what the about the inception of the war, do a youtube search on ‘Talk With American-Syrians in Latakia'”- Will do.
…
“Ask yourself why Syrians have been returning in their droves now that the country is safer?” – Are they? This is news to me.
…
“Why do you suppose Assad won the 2021 election with a vote of over 90%?”
I plan to. The problem with the Middle East generally is that all sides involved in conflicts there are usually propagandising to the max. Sometimes a mixture of facts & deliberate omissions. ("The OTHER SIDE ARE VICIOUS ANIMALS: WE DON'T DO THAT.")
Getting to "the truth" often ends up amounting to choosing which side, or whose version – in complex situations with misbehaviours on both sides – you most prefer.
That UN link says Syria is still unsafe to return to. Gonna see if I can find any reliable evidence thousands of Syrian refugees are now returning to areas under Assad's forces' control as suggested by Brigid.
And yes, the vaccine doesn't 'beat' anything; it just flattens the curve, allowing the health system to cope. We're going to need more measures for sure.
Here's an interesting one (I'd never heard of the Stringency Index!):
The COVID-19 Stringency Index created by Our World in Data is a composite measure of the strictness of the COVID-19 containment policies in each country around the world. As of August 28 2021, Israel’s restrictions score was 45.4, far less strict than New Zealand, where outbreaks continue to be limited in scope (96.3), but comparable with the UK (44.0), which is reporting around 30,000 new cases per day.
Hopefully they are increasing the number of ICU beds etc. if they have modelled that they believe we will need them once everyone has had a chance to be vaccinated, and we have moved down to level 1 (or even level zero if it exists anymore?)
Correct, vaccines alone won't beat this. But Israel isn't the argument to show that. Israel isn't actually highly vaccinated. Lots of places have much higher vaccination rates than Israel.
The simple fact is real-world vaccine effectiveness is low enough and transmissibility is high enough that even a 100% vaccinated population will still have covid circulating in the population, in the absence of non-vaccine disease controls such as masks and restricting potential superspreading events.
The simple fact is also that permanent level 4 or level 3 lockdowns to maintain elimination aren't acceptable.
So our future lies somewhere in accepting that vaccines will reduce covid to a disease burden kinda like flu (in those that get vaccinated), and that masking in public places is good thing (as has been routine in a lot of Asian cities for a long time) and maybe places like pubs and nightclubs and sports stadiums and concerts etc need to change how they operate.
"Around 11% of COVID-19 cases were in Arab cities and towns last week, even though they constitute over 20% of the population. As of Sunday, some 26 cities were designated high-infection “red” areas; just one of them was an Arab locality."
So their infection rate is actually disproportionately low.
The data I referred to is for Israeli citizens. In East Jerusalem, Palestinains are being vaccinated by Israel. (Palestinians in East Jerusalem have Israeli residency status – so those living there pay Israeli taxes and have access to Israeli health insurance). From March, Israel began vaccinating all Palestinians who come to work in Israel or in Israeli settlements in the West Bank (Same source). Gaza is self governing – by Hamas. The West bank is seperated by regions under the control of Fatah and Israel. Various countries have donated vaccine to the palestinian territories, including Russia, UAE and Israel.
I don’t think I’d be prepared to sign this, though I’d like to see exactly what the petition says. I’m personally happy with using Māori names for some places that are still roughly the same place & even size of any original Maori-named rohe, region or settlement.
But some of these places are named after famous ancestors & so are some English language place names, so there’s an argument I agree with that such Rnglish place names have their own cultural validitt.
Case in point, my own city of Wellington. The city proper has for over achundred years well exceeded the size of any permanent or temporary Maori settlement (s suburbs still have their original Māori names (eg Hataitai, Petone).
Originally Port Nicholson (from where the area known as Poneke has probably come) the city was re-named Wellington by its Pākehā settlers & I’m very happy for it to continue to be called that.
On the other hand the HARBOUR was already long ago visited & reported on by a Māori rangatira sailor & thus the name Te Whanganui-a-Tara (the great harbour of Tara) works ok for me. So too does “Wellington harbour” – we Pākehā have a long tradition of naming ports & harbours after the city they service.
I think Rawiri over-eggs the “culturally insulted” side of things sometimes. You attract more bees with honey than vinegar.
(Te Pāti Māori has a really slick-looking website. )
Te Pāti Māori are calling for the House of Representatives to;
Change the country’s official name to Aotearoa and
Officially restore the Te Reo Māori names for all towns, cities and place names.
It’s well past time that Te Reo Māori was restored to its rightful place as the first and official language of this country. We are a Polynesian country – we are Aotearoa.
Name changes over our whenua and the imposition of a colonial agenda in the education system in the early 1900s meant that Te Reo Māori fluency among our tupuna went from 90% in 1910 to 26% in 1950. In only 40 years, the Crown managed to successfully strip us of our language and we are still feeling the impacts of this today. It’s totally unacceptable that 20% of the Māori population and 3% of people living in Aotearoa can speak te reo Māori.
Article 3 of Te Tiriti o Waitangi promises tangata whenua the same rights as British citizens, that Te Reo Māori me ōna tikanga katoa be treated and valued exactly the same as the English language.
This petition calls on Parliament to change New Zealand to Aotearoa and begin a process, alongside whānau, hapū and iwi, local government and the New Zealand Geographic Board to identify and officially restore the original Te Reo Māori names for all towns, cities and places right across the country by 2026.
Tangata whenua are sick to death of our ancestral names being mangled, bastardised, and ignored. It’s the 21st Century, this must change.
It is the duty of the Crown to do all that it can to restore the status of our language. That means it needs to be accessible in the most obvious of places; on our televisions, on our radio stations, on road signs, maps and official advertising, and in our education system."
“Apple has released an emergency software patch to fix a security vulnerability that researchers said could allow hackers to directly infect iPhones and other Apple devices without any user action.
The researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab said the flaw allowed spyware from the world’s most infamous hacker-for-hire firm, NSO Group, to directly infect the iPhone of a Saudi activist. The flaw affected all Apple’s operating systems, the researchers said.
It was the first time a so-called “zero-click” exploit had been caught and analysed, said the researchers, who found the malicious code on September 7 and immediately alerted Apple. They said they had high confidence the Israeli company NSO Group was behind the attack, adding that the targeted activist asked to remain anonymous”.
“We’re not necessarily attributing this attack to the Saudi government,” said researcher Bill Marczak.bAlthough Citizen Lab previously found evidence of zero-click exploits being used to hack into the phones of al-Jazeera journalists and other targets, “this is the first one where the exploit has been captured so we can find out how it works,” said Marczak.
Although security experts say that AVERAGE iPhone, iPad and Mac USERS generally NEED NOT WORRY – such attacks tend to be highly targeted – the discovery still alarmed security professionals.”
New Zealand’s cybersecurity agency CERT NZ has recommended Apple users update their software “as soon as possible” after a cyber surveillance company based in Israel developed a tool to break into iPhones.
This aggressive attack-Pākehā-oriented political style seems to be a deliberate strategy being quite frequently employed by Waititi & Ngarewa-Packer.
Not sure exactly what they aim to get from it but they’re neither of them fools. I’m presuming there’s a carefully-thought out, particular reason they are pushing the hostile “racist” envelope in this way.
Maybe it’s to make cultural connections with the haka? Try and sell themselves as more authentically Maori than Labour?
… in fact Winston’s probably doing exactly what they wanted someone like him to do. Get them more attention.
Let’s see how many other’s fall for it.
Ardern got asked what she thought about it at her Covid press standup today. She said no government plans to do what Rawiri wants; people are happy to use dual names, or their preferred on, from her observation.
And why did the Crown not challenge the Tribunal’s jurisdiction? Gary Judd writes – Retired District Court Judge, David Harvey, has posted on his A Halflings View Substack an excellent summary of Justice Isacs’ judgment declining to uphold the witness summons issued by the Waitangi Tribunal ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Do you believe New Zealand runs its general elections fairly and competently? As a voter, can you be confident that the votes on your ballot will be counted towards the final result?As a political scientist, I’ve been asked these questions many times and ...
Macklemore isn’t someone I’d usually think about. Sure I liked his big hit from a few years back, everybody did it was catchy and cool with some memorable lines. But if I was going to think of artists who might speak out on political matters or world events, he wouldn’t ...
Another week goes by in the Luxon government’s efforts to roll back the past 70 years of social progress. The school lunches programme is to be downgraded by $107 million, and women need bother their heads no longer about pay equity, let alone expect ACC to provide adequate sexual violence ...
Brrr, the first cold snap of the year. Hope you’re rugged up nice and warm. Here are some stories that caught our eye this week… This Week on Greater Auckland On Monday, we had a post from a new contributor, Connor Sharp, who dug into the public feedback ...
Almost all of the Wellington City Council’s recommended zoning changes to allow many more apartments and townhouses in its inner-suburbs have been approved.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guest on geopolitics, ...
Open access notablesA Global Increase in Nearshore Tropical Cyclone Intensification, Balaguru et al., Earth's Future:Tropical Cyclones (TCs) inflict substantial coastal damages, making it pertinent to understand changing storm characteristics in the important nearshore region. Past work examined several aspects of TCs relevant for impacts in coastal regions. However, ...
Do you believe New Zealand runs its general elections fairly and competently? As a voter, can you be confident that the votes on your ballot will be counted towards the final result? As a political scientist, I’ve been asked these questions many times and always answered “yes”, with very few ...
Thus far May has followed on from a quiet April in the blogging department, but in fairness, it has been another case of doing what I am supposed to be doing, namely writing original fiction. Plus reading. So don’t worry – I have been productive. But in order to reassure ...
Buzz from the Beehive A new government agency will open for business on July 1 – the Social Investment Agency. As a new standalone central agency effective from 1 July, it will lead the development of social investment across Government, helping ministers understand who they need to invest in, what ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to look at who is funding them. The ...
Alwyn Poole writes – After being elected to Parliament in 2008 the maiden speech of Hipkins was substantially around education policy. He was Labour’s spokesperson for education 2011 – 2017. He was Minister for Education from 2017 until February 2023. This is approximately 88% of the time Labour ...
Eric Crampton writes – A fashion industry group is lobbying for protections. They make the usual arguments and a newer one. None of it makes sense. An industry group says it pumped $7.8 billion into the economy last year – that’s 1.9 percent of New Zealand’s GDP. ...
In December 2006, Fiji's military leader Voreqe Bainimarama overthrew the elected government in a coup. He ruled Fiji for the next 16 years, first as dictator, then as "elected" Prime Minister. But now, he's finally been sent to jail where he belongs. Sadly, this isn't for his real crime of ...
Don't like National's corrupt Muldoonist "fast-track" law? Aotearoa's environmental NGO's - Greenpeace, Forest & Bird, WWF, Coromandel Watchdog, Coal Action Network Aotearoa, Kiwis Against Seabed Mining, and others - have announced a joint march against it in Auckland in June: When: 13:00, 8 June, 2024 Where: Aotea Square, Auckland You ...
Seymour describes sushi as too woke for school meals. There are no fish sushi meals recommended by the School Lunches programme. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: The Government will swap out hot meals for packaged sandwiches to save $107 million on school lunches for poor kids. MSD has pulled ...
I don't mind stealin' bread from the mouths of decadenceBut I can't feed on the powerless when my cup's already overfilled, yeahBut it's on the table, the fire's cookin'And they're farmin' babies, while slaves are workin'The blood is on the table and the mouths are chokin'But I'm goin' hungry, yeahSome ...
The Ardern Government’s chickens came home to roost yesterday with the news that the country is short of natural gas. In 2018, Labour banned offshore petroleum exploration, and industry executives say that the attendant loss of confidence by the industry impacted overall investment in onshore gas fields. Energy Resources Minister ...
Hi,If you’ve been digging through the newly launched Webworm store (orders are being dispatched worldwide as I type!) you’ll have noticed the best model we had was Calvin.This is Calvin.Calvin.Calvin is 7, and is the son of my producer over on Flightless Bird, Rob — aka “Wobby Wob”. Rob also ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Climate change is everywhere. And when something's everywhere it can feel like it's nowhere. So how do we get our heads ...
Its a law like gravity: whenever a right-wing government is elected, they start attacking democracy. And now, after talking to their Republican and Tory and Fidesz chums at the International Democracy Union forum in Wellington, National is doing it here, announcing plans to remove election-day enrolment. Or, to put it ...
Yesterday Winston Peters focussed his attention on the important matter at hand. Tweeting. Like the former, and quite possibly next, orange POTUS, from whom he takes much of his political strategy, Winston is an avid X’er.His message didn’t resemble an historic address this time. In fact it was more reminiscent ...
Buzz from the Beehive A significant decline in natural gas production has given Resources Minister Shane Jones an opportunity to reiterate his enthusiasm for the mining and burning of coal. For good measure, he has praised an announcement from Genesis Energy that it will resume importing coal. He and Energy ...
“Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to look at who is funding them. The political parties are legally obliged to make ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Here is my subjective ranking on a “most-left” to “most-right” scale of most of our major NZ Universities, with some anecdotal (and at times amusing) evidence to back up the claim.Extreme Left Auckland University of TechnologyEvidenceThe ...
Eric Crampton writes – I hadn’t thought about this one until a helpful email showed up in my inbox.It’s pretty obvious that income tax thresholds should automatically index with inflation – whether to anchor the thresholds in percentiles of the income distribution, or to anchor against a real ...
Jacqui Van Der Kaay writes – Parliament’s speaker had no option but to refer Green MP Julie Anne Genter to the Privileges Committee for her behaviour in the House last Wednesday evening. The incident, in which she crossed the floor to wave a book and yell at National ...
Gary Judd writes – The Dean of the law school at the Auckland University of Technology is someone called Khylee Quince. I have been sent her social media posting in which she has, over the LawNews headline “Senior King’s Counsel files complaint about compulsory tikanga Maori studies for ...
Cleo Paskal writes – WASHINGTON, D.C.: ‘Many of us have received phone calls from [the opposing camp] telling them if they join the camp they will be given projects for their wards and $300,000 [around US$35,000] each’, says former Malaita Premier Daniel Suidani. The elections in Solomon Islands aren’t ...
With hindsight, it was inevitable that (a) Hamas would agree to the ceasefire deal brokered by Egypt and Qatar and that ( b) Israel would then immediately launch attacks on Rafah, regardless. We might have hoped the concessions made by Hamas would cause Israel to desist from slaughtering thousands more ...
Placards and mourners outside the Kilbirnie Mosque following the Christchurch terror attack: MSD has terminated the Kaiwhakaoranga service, which has been used by 415 families since the attacks. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The Government’s pledge to only cut ‘back office’ staff rather than ‘frontline’ services is on increasingly shaky ground, with ...
There’s been a few smaller public transport announcements over the last week or so that I thought I’d cover in a single post. Fareshare I’ve long called for Auckland Transport to offer a way to enable employer-subsidised public transport options. The need for this took on even more importance ...
Parliament’s speaker had no option but to refer Green MP Julie Anne Genter to the Privileges Committee for her behaviour in the House last Wednesday evening. The incident, in which she crossed the floor to wave a book and yell at National Minister Matt Doocey, reflects poorly on Genter and ...
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 ...
Who likes being sneered at? Nobody. Worse yet, when the sneerer has their facts all wrong, and might well be an idiot.The sneer in question is The adults are in charge now, and it is a sneer offered in retort to criticism of this new Government, no matter how well ...
When in government, Labour pushed to extend the Parliamentary term to four years, to reduce accountability and our ability to vote out a bad government. And now, they're trying to do it through the member's ballot, with a Four-Year Parliamentary Term Legislation Bill. The bill at least requires a referendum ...
A ballot for a single Member's Bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn: Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill (Hūhana Lyndon) The bill would prevent the government from stealing Māori land in breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It ...
Simeon Brown, alongside Wayne Brown, is favouring a political figleaf now in exchange for loading up tens of millions in extra interest costs on Auckland ratepayers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s is pushing back hard at suggestions from Local Government Minister Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown ...
Buzz from the Beehive One headline-grabber from the Beehive yesterday was the OECD’s advice that the government must bring the Budget deficit under control or face higher interest rates. Another was the announcement of a $1.9 billion “investment” in Corrections over the next four years. In the best interests of ...
Chris Trotter writes – Had Zheng He’s fleet sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks of the Ming Dynasty, among the largest and most sophisticated sailing vessels ever constructed, would have failed ...
David Farrar writes – Two articles give a useful contrast in balance. Both seek to be neutral explainer articles. This one in the Herald on Social Investment covers the pros and cons nicely. It links to critical pieces and talks about aspects that failed and aspects that are more ...
The tikanga regulations will compel law students to be taught that a system which does not conform with the rule of law is nevertheless law which should be observed and applied…Gary Judd KC writes – I have made a complaint to Parliament’s Regulation ...
The future of Te Huia, the train between Hamilton and Auckland, has been getting a lot of attention recently as current funding for it is only in place till the end of June. The government initially agreed to a five year trial, through to April 2026, but that was subject ...
TL;DR: Hamas has just agreed to Israel’s ceasefire plan. Nelson hospital’s rebuild has been cut back to save money. The OECD suggests New Zealand break up network monopolies, including in electricity. PM Christopher Luxon’s news conference on a prison expansion announcement last night was his messiest yet.Here’s my top six ...
A homicide in Ponsonby, a manhunt with a killer on the run. The nation’s leader stands before a press conference reassuring a frightened nation that he’ll sort it out, he’ll keep them safe, he’ll build some new prison spaces.Sorry what? There’s a scary dude on the run with a gun ...
Hi,I know it’s been awhile since there’s been any Webworm merch — and today that all changes!Over the last four months, I’ve been working with New Zealand artist Jess Johnson to create a series of t-shirts, caps and stickers that are infused with Webworm DNA — and as of right ...
The OECD’s chief economist yesterday laid it on the line for the new Government: bring the deficit under control or face higher Reserve Bank interest rates for longer. And to bring the deficit under control, she meant not borrowing for tax cuts. But there was more. Without policy changes—introducing a ...
After a hiatus of over four months Selwyn Manning and I finally got it together to re-start the “A View from Afar” podcast series. We shall see how we go but aim to do 2 episodes per month if possible. … Continue reading → ...
In 2008, the UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act 2008. The law established a system of targets, budgets, and plans, with inbuilt accountability mechanisms; the aim was to break the cycle of empty promises and replace it with actual progress towards emissions reduction. The law was passed with near-universal ...
Buzz from the Beehive Local Water Done Well – let’s be blunt – is a silly name, but the first big initiative to put it into practice has gone done well. This success is reflected in the headline on an RNZ report:District mayors welcome Auckland’s new water deal with ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate ConnectionsA farmworker cleans the solar panels of a solar water pump in the village of Jagadhri, Haryana Country, India. (Photo credit: Prashanth Vishwanathan/ IWMI) Decisions made in India over the next few years will play a key role in global ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – The Children’s Minister, Karen Chhour, intends to repeal Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 because it creates conflict between claimed Crown Treaty obligations and the child’s best interests. In her words, “Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its act should be colour ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. ...
Brian Easton writes – This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be (I will report on them ...
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The Green Party is welcoming Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ continuation of Hon. James Shaw’s cross-party work on climate adaptation, now in the form of a Finance and Expenditure Committee Inquiry. ...
The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
The Government has been caught in opposition to evidence once again as it looks to usher in tried, tested and failed work seminar obligations for job-seeking beneficiaries. ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced the upcoming Budget will include new funding of $571 million for Defence Force pay and projects. “Our servicemen and women do New Zealand proud throughout the world and this funding will help ensure we retain their services and expertise as we navigate an increasingly ...
New Zealand’s ability to cope with climate change will be strengthened as part of the Government’s focus to build resilience as we rebuild the economy, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “An enduring and long-term approach is needed to provide New Zealanders and the economy with certainty as the climate ...
Jobseeker beneficiaries who have work obligations must now meet with MSD within two weeks of their benefit starting to determine their next step towards finding a job, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “A key part of the coalition Government’s plan to have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker ...
A new standalone Social Investment Agency will power-up the social investment approach, driving positive change for our most vulnerable New Zealanders, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis says. “Despite the Government currently investing more than $70 billion every year into social services, we are not seeing the outcomes we want for ...
Check against delivery Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you to outline the Coalition Government’s approach to our first Budget. Thank you Mark Skelly, President of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce, together with your Board and team, for hosting me. I’d like to acknowledge His Worship ...
Your Excellency Ambassador Meredith, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Ambassadors from European Union Member States, Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and other distinguished guests, Thank you everyone for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen - In diplomacy, we often speak of ‘close’ and ‘long-standing’ relations. ...
The Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will be repealed this year so that a better regime can be put in place to provide New Zealanders safe and timely access to medicines, medical devices and health products, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello announced today. “The medicines and products we are talking about ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop, today released his decision on twenty recommendations referred to him by the Wellington City Council relating to its Intensification Planning Instrument, after the Council rejected those recommendations of the Independent Hearings Panel and made alternative recommendations. “Wellington notified its District Plan on ...
Rape Awareness Week (6-10 May) is an important opportunity to acknowledge the continued effort required by government and communities to ensure that all New Zealanders can live free from violence, say Ministers Karen Chhour and Louise Upston. “With 1 in 3 women and 1 in 8 men experiencing sexual violence ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government will be delivering a more efficient Healthy School Lunches Programme, saving taxpayers approximately $107 million a year compared to how Labour funded it, by embracing innovation and commercial expertise. “We are delivering on our commitment to treat taxpayers’ money ...
New research on the impacts of extreme weather on coastal marine habitats in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay will help fishery managers plan for and respond to any future events, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. A report released today on research by Niwa on behalf of Fisheries New Zealand ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters will lead a broad political delegation on a five-stop Pacific tour next week to strengthen New Zealand’s engagement with the region. The delegation will visit Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Tuvalu. “New Zealand has deep and ...
There has been a material decline in gas production according to figures released today by the Gas Industry Co. Figures released by the Gas Industry Company show that there was a 12.5 per cent reduction in gas production during 2023, and a 27.8 per cent reduction in gas production in the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins tonight announced the recipients of the Minister of Defence Awards of Excellence for Industry, saying they all contribute to New Zealanders’ security and wellbeing. “Congratulations to this year’s recipients, whose innovative products and services play a critical role in the delivery of New Zealand’s defence capabilities, ...
Welcome to you all - it is a pleasure to be here this evening.I would like to start by thanking Greg Lowe, Chair of the New Zealand Defence Industry Advisory Council, for co-hosting this reception with me. This evening is about recognising businesses from across New Zealand and overseas who in ...
It is a pleasure to be speaking to you as the Minister for Digitising Government. I would like to thank Akolade for the invitation to address this Summit, and to acknowledge the great effort you are making to grow New Zealand’s digital future. Today, we stand at the cusp of ...
New Zealand is urging both Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid the further humanitarian catastrophe that military action in Rafah would unleash, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The immense suffering in Gaza cannot be allowed to worsen further. Both sides have a responsibility to ...
A new online data dashboard released today as part of the Government’s school attendance action plan makes more timely daily attendance data available to the public and parents, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average of how ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced Rosemary Banks will be New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the United States of America. “Our relationship with the United States is crucial for New Zealand in strategic, security and economic terms,” Mr Peters says. “New Zealand and the United States have a ...
The Government is considering creating a new tier of minerals permitting that will make it easier for hobby miners to prospect for gold. “New Zealand was built on gold, it’s in our DNA. Our gold deposits, particularly in regions such as Otago and the West Coast have always attracted fortune-hunters. ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) is supportive of the cross-party approach to climate adaptation announced by the Minister of Climate Change today. ...
The Sustainable Business Council (SBC) and Climate Leaders Coalition (CLC) welcome today’s announcement from Government around a bipartisan inquiry into an enduring climate adaptation framework for New Zealand. ...
The Free Speech Union welcomes the decision by the Department of Internal Affairs, and Minister Brooke Van Velden, to abandon proposals to further regulate online speech. ...
BusinessNZ is congratulating the Minister of Climate Change for his work in achieving cross-party consensus for a way forward on climate adaptation. ...
Recent research reveals the repeal of smokefree measures is not only bad for our health, but also the economy. The Government has repealed various smokefree measures to ensure it keeps collecting $1.2 billion a year in tobacco taxes, in order to pay for tax cuts already being delivered to ...
The club’s surprisingly good season is built on the desire to prove a random A-League YouTuber wrong… and a few other factors.“There’s no way that Wellington Phoenix play finals this year. I can’t see it happening at all.” Those are the words of Lachlan Raeside, an Australian football content ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By César Albarrán-Torres, Senior Lecturer, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology Apple TV+ As one of billions of bilingual individuals in the world, it disappoints me when a film or TV show with characters of a non-English-speaking background is ...
The under-utilised course is a waste of space, and with a little political will, it could be turned into something better. For the duration of her stay in Wellington, my long-suffering cousin listened to me rant about golf courses. They’re bad for the environment: water intensive and pesticide heavy. They ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Ruppanner, Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of The Future of Work Lab, Podcast at MissPerceived, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock A recent report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows US fertility rates dropped 2% in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Corderoy, Medical doctor and PhD candidate studying involuntary psychiatric treatment, School of Psychiatry, UNSW Sydney shop_py/Shutterstock Picture two people, both suffering from a serious mental illness requiring hospital admission. One was born in Australia, the other in Asia. Hopefully, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Treby, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, RMIT University P.j.Hickox, Shutterstock Peatlands store more carbon per square metre than any other ecosystem on Earth. These waterlogged, mossy bogs beat even dense rainforests for their ability to act as carbon reservoirs. Under the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Goss, Adjunct Associate Professor, Health Research Institute, University of Canberra Government spending on health has been growing so rapidly that a decade ago the then health minister Peter Dutton called it “unmanageable” and “unsustainable”. Health spending grew in real terms by ...
New Zealand's largest electricity distributor is warning the country to hurry up with controls around charging electric vehicles or face unnecessary bills running into the billions. ...
New Zealanders have been asked to conserve energy this morning to combat a possible electricity shortfall, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. A call to conserve power New Zealand is facing a possible electricity shortfall, with people up ...
Writer Rebecca K Reilly breaks down the national book awards. What are the Ockhams?The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are our annual national awards for books published for adults, and have existed in this form since 2016. There are four categories: Fiction, Poetry, General Non-fiction and Illustrated Non-fiction. There ...
Wellington City Council should keep its 34% ownership share in Wellington International Airport, argue Unions Wellington spokespeople Finn Cordwell and Ashok Jacob. Insanity, as the saying goes, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Wellington City Council (WCC) is yet again proposing to dispose ...
New Zealand’s largest book publisher has undergone drastic changes this week, leaving its future role in local publishing uncertain. Two of the most recognisable local publishers in New Zealand are among those restructured out of Penguin Random House, it was announced this week. Head of publishing Claire Murdoch will leave ...
Successive governments have tried, and failed, to count Māori. But with the return of social investment, it’s more important than ever to get good data. The post Government looks for a better way to count Māori appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Experts in financing social investment initiatives say New Zealand is in a prime position to tackle social issues via a social investment approach The post What will Willis’ social investment fund look like? appeared first on Newsroom. ...
In 2021 the Public Interest Journalism Fund launched the Te Rito Journalism project, a $2.4 million initiative to boost diversity in New Zealand’s newsrooms. The initiative was in response to the decades-long shortage of Māori and Pacific journalists in the media industry. It was billed as New Zealand’s ...
The Black Ferns Sevens appeared to be a mile behind Australia at the halfway point of the 2023-24 SVNS international circuit. Winless in three tournaments, a cup quarter-final exit in Perth was one of their worst results. To add insult to injury, talismanic skipper Sarah Hirini had been ruled out ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Friday 10 May appeared first on Newsroom. ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist A former Tuvalu prime minister says while the New Zealand government’s oil and gas plans show it is concerned about its economy, he is more concerned about the livelihoods and survival of the Tuvalu people. Enele Sopoaga — who still serves as an MP ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Many people who follow federal budgets know about the magnificent “budget tree” in a parliamentary courtyard, which turns a glorious red in time for the May event. This week Treasurer Jim Chalmers posed by ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Bennett, Professor of Music, Australian National University Richard P J Lambert/flickr, CC BY The future belongs to the analogue loyalists. Fuck digital. As a tsunami of CDs, DAT tapes and samplers swept the recording industry in the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Strong, Associate professor, Music Industry, RMIT University This week American rapper Macklemore released a new track, Hind’s Hall, which has gained a lot of attention because of its explicitly political nature. The track is unapologetically pro-Palestine. It declares the artist’s ...
Explainer - The government from 2025 is mandating how state schools teach children to read. But what is structured literacy and how does it compare to other teaching methods? ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danica Jenkins, Lecturer in European Studies, University of Sydney On a freezing spring night in March, Georgia’s national soccer team beat Greece in a nail-biter penalty shootout to qualify for the Euro 2024 championships. The atmosphere on the streets of the capital ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam G. Arian, Lecturer (Accounting & Finance), Australian Catholic University Loic Manegarium/Pexels Imagine every ton of carbon dioxide a company emits is slowly inflating its costs — not just in terms of potential fines or fees but in the capital it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Somwrita Sarkar, Senior Lecturer in Design and Computation, University of Sydney The “latte line” is the infamous, invisible boundary that divides Sydney between the more affluent north-east and the south-west. Historically, people north of the line enjoy better access to jobs and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dowdy, Principal Research Scientist in Extreme Weather, The University of Melbourne Nomad_Soul/Shutterstock In media articles about unprecedented flooding, you’ll often come across the statement that for every 1°C of warming, the atmosphere can hold about 7% more moisture. This ...
RNZ Pacific Former Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has been sentenced to one year in prison, Fiji media are reporting. Bainimarama, alongside suspended Fiji Police Commissioner Sitiveni Qiliho appeared in the High Court in Suva today for their sentencing hearing for a case involving their roles in blocking a police ...
Acting Chief Human Rights Commissioner Saunoamaali’i Dr Karanina Sumeo says, “Addressing violence and abuse remains New Zealand’s most significant human rights issue affecting women. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Symons, Macquarie School of Social Sciences, Macquarie University Michael Schiffer / Unsplash Life has transformed our world over billions of years, turning a dead rock into the lush, fertile planet we know today. But human activity is currently transforming Earth ...
One woman’s quest to watch Challengers without ruining her body clock. Every Saturday morning, I wake up with a screaming demon inside my head urging me to “Do. Something. This. Weekend.” I run through the possibilities in my head in a defensive mental crouch, reminiscent of that one time I ...
The PSA is alarmed that ACC is proposing to shed 309 jobs including 29 dedicated injury prevention jobs at a time when the number and cost of injuries is rising. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Baker, Associate Professor in Human Geography, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Getty Images As local and regional councils struggle with inadequate infrastructure and unsustainable costs, New Zealand will be hearing a lot more about the potential solution offered by ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gary Sacks, Professor of Public Health Policy, Deakin University Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock In recent years, there’s been increasinghype about the potential health risks associated with so-called “ultra-processed” foods. But new evidence published this week found not all “ultra-processed” foods are linked ...
Fears that New Zealand is relying too heavily on low-cost forests to absorb its carbon dioxide emissions have been reignited by a report from the OECD. ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed the total dollar savings target from public sector cuts has been met, but the reductions have not been felt evenly across public agencies. Government departments were told to make savings set at 6.5 percent or 7.5 percent where headcount had grown by more than ...
She doesn’t have a single kind word for me and it’s getting under my skin.Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,I have two amazing friends that I absolutely adore. Grace (all names have been changed) and I lived together across 2023 and Olivia moved in with us this ...
Can Western science and Māori science work together to support our well-being? The Te Ohu Mō Papatūānuku (TOMP) Trials Project was a landmark case for healing the land and people with the guidance of Māori science and leadership. This is what happened when Papatūānuku (Earth) was contaminated by toxic discharge, ...
The District Plan is a blueprint for a bigger, better Wellington, through tens of thousands of new apartments and townhouses and a new approach to urban growth. Joel MacManus lays out the vision. The process of putting together Wellington’s new District Plan has been long and excruciating. As a city, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Williams Veazey, ARC DECRA Research Fellow, University of Sydney DavideAngelini/Shutterstock In the 2007 film The Bucket List Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play two main characters who respond to their terminal cancer diagnoses by rejecting experimental treatment. Instead, they go ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mohan Singh, Professor of Agri-Food Biotechnology, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences at the University of Melbourne., The University of Melbourne Tanja Esser/Shutterstock Australia’s vital agriculture sector will be hit hard by steadily rising global temperatures. Our climate is already ...
The Acumen Edelman Trust barometer reported that New Zealand’s political trust score now sits below the global average, a topic explored in a recent discussion paper by Maxim Institute. ...
Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman says, "The Fast-Track Bill is the most damaging piece of environmental legislation any Government has introduced in living memory. People are angry, and it’s time to march." ...
The school lunches programme has been retained – and will be extended to some preschoolers. So how is it going to cost $107 million less? To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. The minister with many hats David Seymour wears a number of hats, but this week ...
Bullies everywhere when challenged say “I was only joking”, or “can’t you take a joke?” and now from NZ National we have “it was just the vernacular”.
Shane Reti has backed up his leader’s nasty comment to Siouxsie Wiles “big fat hypocrite”, saying Ms Wiles has to answer and that the comment was just kiwi vernacular rather than personal targeting.
Dr Reti’s comment at 6:49 of the interview…
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/first-up/audio/2018812219/reti-border-community-response-vaccination-rates-for-covid
It is so often women that take a hit from tory bullies, as writer Eleanor Catton discovered when then PM John Key waded into her for daring to critique the NZ neo liberal state.
Never heard that "BFH" before in Kiwi.
I think what he means its Collins vernacular
dv
You've never heard of big fat lie?
This is what the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary says:
Definition of big fat
So the words "big fat" are used for emphasis. A big fat lie is a whopper of a lie. A big fat liar/hypocrite is someone who tells whoppers or is as hypocritical as they come.
Let’s cut to the chase – Dr Wiles has said that if we leave the house in level 2, we should wear a mask. She left her house in level 4 (4 is stricter than 2) but didn’t wear a mask. People will make of that what they will.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/big%20fat
[Show us the evidence that “She [Dr Wiles] left her house in level 4 (4 is stricter than 2) but didn’t wear a mask”. If you made it up, withdraw, correct and apologise for spreading DP-like misinformation.
Secondly, since you like Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary so much why don’t you look up the meaning of “dog-whistle” and let us know? – Incognito]
"BFH"
NEVER HEARD BIG FAT HIPOCRITE.
This is what the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary says:
The word you’ve entered isn’t in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search bar above.
dv
"Big fat" is a figure of speech and is used for emphasis.
He opened his big fat mouth. You've not heard someone say that? The speaker doesn't have a fat mouth LOL
https://www.yourdictionary.com/big-fat
Here's an comparison: Michael Moore's book titled Stupid White Men compared to this one: Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man.
The one sound provocative, while the other sounds petulant and childish.
I've read both – the latter tries, and fails IMO, to use that same argument: '"big, fat is commonly used and understood etc etc etc'; being a typical example of explaining is losing.
Oh thank you for explaining that with references.
Now what does a BIG FAT PEDANT mean?
Judith should accuse someone else of being a big fat hypocrite as an example James Shaw for travelling to Scotland. Would everyone on here then be losing their rag over the wording if she said the same thing about Shaw?
Wait for Collins to start coming out calling everyone 'big fat' this, 'big fat' that, a bullshit attempt to make people think there was nothing sinister in what she said about Wiles. Anyway, her ridiculous outburst backfired spectacularly because Wiles is so beautiful in every way.
'Wiles is so beautiful in every way'
Yes beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say.
Some people may think Judith is so beautiful in every way!!!!!
Pukish does but his thinking is questionable at the best of times.
Giving everyone a big fat Talofa.
Sure, but meaning is in the context, not the words. What's the context here? Clue: Judith Collins.
Juduth Collins has a liking for trying to pass uncouth comments as "vernacular"
"he need's to meet his maker"
"people would like to bottle her"
"stab from the front"
And they're just the ones she's willing to make in public – god only knows what else she says – I think her colleagues are now painfully aware of her reckless tongue
Crushed and Oblivious to blow back.Collins throwing bullying shit all over the place despetately flailling around ends up covered in the muck she throws.
Keep it up paunch and Judy.
It's not reckless, it's designed to get a giggle out of the angry simply minds that think shes the bees knees. Yes they do exist.
You’re right Ross & I’ve been pointing out this language usage nearly always implies THE LIE is huge. Telling whoppers.
If Collins had had the presence of mind to say in her opinion Wiles is telling whoppers, she might have got away with it.
But instead, she’s gone off half-cocked with a kid’s language useage that was BOUND to attract immediate criticism for fat shaming.
Collins’ way of thinking is highly suspect. No way I’d ever want her in the PM’s job.
I'm quite far from a National supporter, but I have never seen Collins get away with any kind of coloquialism. They are always immediately taken in the worst light possible by govt supporters.
“never seen Collins get away with any kind of coloquialism. They are always immediately taken in the worst light possible by govt supporters.”
… … …
Well, to be fair, they likely always will be by any supporters of any government, won’t they? 🤔
I seem to remember Andrew Little getting constantly roasted over some pretty petty stuff, & Ardern’s strongly Wycaddo-accented pronunciation still attracts regular criticism (as does Bridges’ nasally whine) from supporters of other parties.
Out of interest, what are any more examples you can recall of Collins getting slammed for using colloquialisms?
For example, when she said she wanted to bottle Poto Williams.
Which resulted in this, even by mickey.
https://thestandard.org.nz/judiths-last-stand/
Oh Gawd, yes – how could I have forgotten that??
Still, it’s another example of a likely language useage cock up by Collins that anybody else would have seen comong & stopped themselves saying.
“Bottling” someone is a common useage (& practice), meaning assaulting or attacking someone with a broken bottle.
Back my childhood days I DO recall a phrase being used by my parents that went something like “that’s so good/clever/funny/whatever you should bottle it & sell it”.
But Collins didn’t say that. She went with the short version. The one with the double (including nasty) meaning.
I think she’s a comms freaking disaster for the Nats, hoping to attract & find new voters.
Or as Mickey suggested, if (as a politician) you acidentally use clumsy language in ways which can be miss construed as threatening, it will be.
Yes. Which is why you have think very carefully, politics, in about what you ate going to say in reply to reporters. Collins’ tendency is make some instant remark that she thinks is witty, when it is just as likely to be half-witty.
Compare her to Ardern, when she is asked difficult or potential-disaster questions – whether people should have sex in hospitals, for example. Ardern thought carefully about it & gave a very neutrally-worded response. But her genuinely-humoured p, perfectly natural reaction to being asked the question was a winner!
Collins just can’t pull this sort of thing off.
You mean sort of like Ardern getting away with anything? She could make an announcement about NZ researchers coming up with a cure for cancer and for the National/Act supporters it would be about the terrible clothing she was wearing, the fact that her hands moved while she spoke and the terribleness of her being excited.
Sure, there are plenty of partisans on both sides. But in most debate contexts its considered correct to take the best reading of the counter position. Social Media and Twitter not withstanding.
I thought; "I’m sick and tired of listening to her telling everyone else what to do" was Collins' most revealing phrase.
She wouldn’t be trying to sow discontent, would she? Ironic words coming from the Leader of the Nats who’s telling her caucus what and what not to do to keep the appearance of unity and common agendas [plural].
Spot on Robert .
"They are always immediately taken in the worst light possible by govt supporters."
That's because almost everything she says is calculated, and comes from her core being which is fundamentally damaged by her suffering from some kind of personality disorder, whatever the precise diagnosis might be. So in the rare instance that might involve her honest use of a coloquial term, then it's understandable people will assume the worst. At very best it's a matter of boy who cried wolf.
A good example is Chris Hipkins' slip up the other day during the live Covid update. If Hipkins had a reputation as being someone who deliberately used innuendo whenever he opened his mouth then we'd be right to think what happened during the Covid update was just another sleazy remark from a grubby character. And although I personally think it was a bad move putting that coffee cup on public display, we didn't think that of Hipkins because he doesn't have that reputation (or not that I know of). Apply the same logic to Collins and it's a different story, regardless of what her intentions were.
Clearly I don't rate Collins abilities as much as you.
ffs
It's an image she's cultivated over many years.
See my Moderation note @ 8:01 am.
That Judee's a sly one alright isn't she Ross. Woulda got away with it if it weren't for those darn woke kids.
"So the words "big fat" are used for emphasis…"
Indeed they are. And they are fun to use – what about "big fat rationalisation" ?
Unfortunately your rationalisation doesn't really let Judith off the hook. She knows perfectly well that "big fat" is used for emphasis – but also knows that the charming Dr Wiles is not a sylph-like figure. So Collins gets to smirkingly point at the latter fact, while maintaining the built-in defence of vernacular usage. So in addition to the standard charge that Judith is vulgar and dishonest, we can now also add the charge of deliberate cynicism.
So in addition to the standard charge that Judith is vulgar and dishonest, we can now also add the charge of deliberate cynicism.
I would've thought that there are plenty of things Judith can be criticised for without needing to manufacture outrage. And even a stopped clock is right twice a day. 🙂
Yep – but I'm not really outraged at all. For me the whole silly business is just another small bit of incremental evidence of what she's like.
… given Collins own rather generously-proportioned physique, with a huge dollop of pot calling the kettle black.
Incognito,
If you don’t like the Merriam-Webster dictionary, you are welcome to inform its editors. I'm not in the habit of shooting the messenger.
On 7 September 2021, Dr Wiles told NZers on RNZ:
"At level 2, if a case gets out and into the community, there's a chance for massive spread with Delta. .. For the good of everybody, wearing a mask when you're out of your home is a good idea."
That raises the question of why it would be a good idea to wear a mask at level 2 but not at level 4. (The good doctor has admitted going to the beach sans mask. That of course raises the question of whether that was a good idea. What if she had been hit by a car while biking…presumably emergency services would’ve been needed which would have exposed them and her to possible infection.)
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/450925/covid-19-dr-siouxsie-wiles-on-mask-wearing-in-alert-level-2
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/126351648/covid19-dr-siouxsie-wiles-warns-of-disinformation-after-claims-she-was-caught-breaking-lockdown-rules
[I trust that you’d choose to misinterpret my Moderation note, based on your form on this site.
Here’s your last opportunity.
You said that Dr Wiles left her home without wearing a mask.
Provide evidence for that, or correct/withdraw and apologise – Incognito]
See my Moderation note @ 10:53 am.
I trusted that you wouldn’t read that Dr Wiles admitted to not wearing a mask in level 4, based on your form. LOL
Feel free to shoot the messenger. Again.
[Bye, Ross, take two weeks off for spreading a lie, again. Dr Wiles has tweeted that she did not leave her house without wearing a mask, as you wrongfully asserted, but that she did take off her mask at the beach when it was safe and allowed to do so in her bubble – Incognito]
See my Moderation note @ 1:20 pm.
Your second link contradicts your assertion: “Let’s cut to the chase – Dr Wiles has said that if we leave the house in level 2, we should wear a mask. She left her house in level 4 (4 is stricter than 2) but didn’t wear a mask”.
"Wiles said that on the day the video was filmed, she and her friend had cycled to Judges Bay, about 5km from her house, and taken off their masks to talk as the beach was “near-deserted”.
We need better wingnuts.
What you claimed Wiles said,
What Wiles actually said,
She didn't say that everyone, everywhere, should wear a mask at Level 2.
Misquoting out of context to mislead is a bannable offence. That's in addition to the lie about Wiles not wearing a mask when she left home.
Incog has given you a 2 week ban. I think you got off lightly.
Hang on I’ll have a listen. He’s onto a losing argument claiming that “big fat liar” is the just the Kiwi vernacular. It’s a common (very) young child’s retort.
If he’s admitting Collins was being childish that’s a different story.
Oops: Correction. It’s big “fat hypocrite” she called her, isn’t it.
Still very childish language usage tho. I suppose I can just add incredible immaturity to Collins’ suite of talents.
I just did a google search on nz sites for "big fat hypocrite" and I get two pages with 95% of the results being within the last 4 days. If it's vernacular then it's not very widely used.
I think it is archaic now, but it did exist. My dear old mother had a retort for what she did not believe: "Oh, so's your fat aunt!"
Glorious retort, whether you had a fat aunt or not.
Such is language, but I would not trust Judith not to consciously use it with bad intent…
It’s just a throwaway question, right at the very end.
Shane laughs it off by comparing it to a word BHAG (big hairy audacious goal) hec says was all the rage in corporate organisational circles a few years back. Epic fail, I’m afraid, Shane. Nothing like the same thing.
(Didn’t know he’s a “Mormon boy”.) I’m sure “Dr Shane Reti” (as Collins seems to persistently call him in interviews) is embarrassed as hell at this latest sow’s ear Collins has for made herself out of what she thought was a silk purse.
I’ve opined here a few times in recent days that National has got no one else to replace Collins if she tanks the polls again.
Janet Wilson, in Stuff a couple of days back, sees it differently:
… … …
“The National Party caucus is not short of talent. While Collins was hurling poison across the benches on the day the house resumed last week, Chris Bishop (recently demoted by Collins) opened his speech by celebrating the increased rates of vaccination and praising essential workers. Dr Shane Reti has been a conscience and critic on issues including the failure to fully include GPs in the Covid response. Erica Stanford has led the charge on the important, unsexy work of families split apart by the Covid immigration rules.
…
Simon Bridges was judged to have cocked up the National response in the first outbreak, but watch his performance on the epidemic response committee in 2020: there was a leader.
Louise Upston has been asking timely and important questions about the wage subsidy. Matt Doocey has done a heap of mahi on mental health, and is asking hard, important questions on a sector where the government, in my view, has let us down really badly.
Gerry Brownlee started a podcast, and it’s pretty good!
Maybe Collins’ is the hardest job in politics, and maybe that’s because we find out who you are.
Janet Wilson, an experienced, smart and measured former journalist and communications expert, worked loyally and stoically alongside Collins through the agony of the last election campaign. So appalled has she been by the National leader’s performance she recently described her as “Muldoonist”, as paranoid, leading a party “floundering, saddled with endless entitleditis” and on a path to “irrelevance”.
…
Senior members of John Key’s slick ninth floor team talk privately, but with striking candour, and more than a little despair, about the state of the leadership today. And who can blame them? Key and Bill English and others must weep at the sight of a years-long project to cement National as the sensible voice of a modern middle New Zealand collapsing a little further with each spring-loaded outburst from Collins.”
🙄 Beg pardon. The author of those lines I quote above is Toby Mahire, writing in the Spinoff, carried by The Herald.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/the-spinoff-new-zealand-urgently-needs-a-serious-opposition-leader/VSJXHUHRKWZAHNDED7D6QD4A2I/
Arrgh! 😠
MaNhire. Damn this turning off javascript & losing the edit function !
Dr Reti has actually been quite reasonable on the Govt. COVID strategy the last several weeks, but make no mistake he is a provincial tory through and through.
He is the classic Māori that barely recognises he is one–a 37 dwelling state house build is underway in Whangārei’s middle class Maunu suburb. The development was strongly opposed by pākehā property owners but an Independent Commissioner Okayed Kāinga Ora to proceed.
Shane Reti, spring loaded, immediately took the property owners side rather than advocating for Whangārei’s working class and homeless in urgent need of housing.
There are plenty of women who can attest to that. Its ingrained in the right-wing mindset that women are easy targets. So many of us have had multiple experiences of it. Ever since RD Muldoon, National Party cowards have indulged in bullying behavior towards well known women particularly if they think they represent a threat to them.
Pick a person like Siouxsie Wiles, undermine her and drag her name through the mud.
Shame on Dr Shane Reti. He really needs to leave the Nasty Party.
The scurrilous Ms Collins is not the only politician to employ the word "fat" inappropriately…
http://news.ku.edu/2021/01/06/trumps-fixation-fat-exposes-cultural-and-political-divisions
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/16/politics/donald-trump-fat-new-hampshire-rally/index.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/joe-biden-look-fat-iq-angry-fight-video-iowa-campaign-a9235936.html
Yes, politicians use of “fat” is interesting dialectics–would Collins have used it on a slimmer woman than Ms Wiles? Trump and Collins might qualify for the epithet themselves, but some curious separation of the personal and political seems to apply in their cases.
This extra week (at least) of level 4 sux weeks-unwashed balls. I'm an introvert, I actually enjoy lots of alone time, and it still grates. I really feel for the extroverts right now.
It really is time to start differentiating on the basis of vaccination status. Two weeks ago, New Zealand passed the 50% mark for first jabs. We're now just short of 60%, and it's looking like the rate of first jabs is starting to fall off.
Most of my workplace is fully vaccinated, having got their second jabs two weeks or more ago. Of the people I work with closely, I'm the laggard having got my first a week ago. My workplace could safely go back to work right now with negligible risk of spreading covid, just by making me wait another week before allowing me back on site.
I've been strongly supportive of the strategy the government has used, and I agree extending the level 4 is the right thing to do (barely) for now. But the vaccination campaign has reached the stage where the game has now changed, and it's time for responses to change. And the better responses will now consider individual vaccination status.
Andre if we don't beat this outbreak in these lower socioeconomic suburbs this week then we will go down the gurgler just like NSW. So suck it up and try to have some empathy for the living conditions of the poorly treated poor. It looks to me that we are probably about to reap what we have sown with neoliberalism.
Fact: the young immigrants that are most of the people I work with are fully vaccinated now because they went as walk-ins to vaccination clinics in lower socioeconomic suburbs that had lots of resource thrown at them that wasn't being accepted by the residents of those suburbs.
Fact: vaccination take-up now is a lot lower than it was a couple of weeks ago.
Fact: if you wanted to get vaccinated today, there's hundreds of available slots all over Auckland. Let alone places that accept walk or drive-ins. Same tomorrow, or any day after that. Lack of availability is no excuse to not be jabbed. For those that first booked weeks ago and couldn't get a booking before later this month or October because supply was constrained, rebook it now. You can get it today if you genuinely want it.
It really looks like we're pretty much at the tail-end of the actual vaccine enthusiasts, and it's time to start showing the carrots and the sticks. I don't much care whether anyone views "get a jab, get back to earning" as a carrot, or "no jab, no job" as a stick.
The National party is green lighting your application to head the vacine marketing campaign. Whats the slogan to be? May I suggest, we have counted to 50 so here comes the virus, ready or not.
Seymour's already ahead of that game and running with it.
It really is an issue that could flip people's minds and votes if people start to feel their actual rights are being unreasonably restricted because Labour are pandering to idiots that have swallowed vaccine misinformation and disinformation.
National and ACT may be fkn useless and even outright bonkers on many issues, but they're at least vaccine-sensible. So it's not like the US where the RepubliQooks have painted themselves into bizarre rabid anti-vax and other kinds of nuttery on all issues.
Your first sentence Andre…" the young immigrants that are most of the people I work with". Therein lies our self induced problem. Our economic policies in the last thirty years have led to this situation. Need I say more?
Yes, you do need to say more
punching down on the most vulnerable in society who are doing the most societally responsible thing possible right now does need an explanation.
Fucking twit
Most of my workplace is fully vaccinated, having got their second jabs two weeks or more ago…..
My workplace could safely go back to work right now with negligible risk of spreading covid,….
Andre
Just having some people vaccinated, is not how vaccination works. It’s a numbers thing. The more people who get vaccinated the more effective vaccination is.
For measles we know that number is 95%.
The percentage figure for Covid-19 is unknown. But Singhapore and Israel indicate that it has to be higher than 80% coverage.
Most of your workmates could be fully vaccinated and still catch Covid-19. possibly not even knowing they have it.
I am sure you can appreciate, Andre, the implications, of having vaccinated, asymptomatic persons, mixing in a partially vaccinated population.
All the more reason for those currently unvaccinated to rattle their dags and get jabbed. So when they get it, their infection is much more likely to be mild or asymptomatic.
By the numbers, we have about 360,000 people that have booked for their first jab and haven't got it yet. At rates of over 50,000 first jabs per day that were achieved a couple weeks ago, those 360,000 could be done in a week.
There's another million-ish of hesitants that are eligible that haven't yet booked. 20 days worth of jabs. Time for them to get shown the carrots and sticks.
Bear Down for Midterms!
salty…
You know it, brutha.
Here's a thought. For the self-entitled Jaffas who flew to their Wanaka "holiday home", let's put them in quarantine before they're allowed back into Auckland – somewhere like a Mt Eden prison cell should be good. Then let's hope it can cost them a fortune in legal fees to get out of it and to stop their names being published. Oh, and get Slater to do some covert filming so we can see who they are. Name and shame.
[there is now a court order for name suppression in place. This means it is illegal to name the couple. It’s also against the TS rules to breach suppression orders, not least because it puts the site’s owners at legal risk. Please don’t encourage name and shaming while the name suppression is in place. Anyone naming the couple on TS can expect a substantial or permanent ban – weka]
mod note for you RosieLee, please acknowledge.
Understood.
I believe name suppression is allowed far to often in NZ for numerous crimes. You would think it should only be used in rare cases.
It's interim name suppression (24 hours from last night until another hearing can be had today).
Quite right there – but the Standard isn't the vehicle for outing them at present.
In order to get to Wanaka I nominate my two weeks in Blanket Bay Lodge first.
https://blanketbay.com/
Sorry but Mayor Boult has now made it clear that while he loves rich people and will bend over backwards to accommodate them, he doesn't want no stinky Aucklanders messing up the place at this time.
Look, I have suits that need drycleaning, properties that need annual tax-rebated inspections by flying there, the wine cellar is desperately low, the skis are barely used, the cleaners haven't been able to come around, the nails aren't done, the holiday home needs its cushions re-fluffed, I'm bored, everything in the house looks boring, there's spring Wisteria to trim back, the Airpoints are running low, and that mountain bike seriously needs its wheels rotated or there'll be hell to pay. Things are just getting desperate. Can't we just get a break here?
I can only imagine how much of a stress not being able to do tax-rebated inspections would be on top of everything else.
If they were smart and not as self-entitled as they seem to be , they would admit and take the punishment -which I hope is many years of community service, not a fine – and retreat back into a more considerate life. To me the name suppression thing suggests that rather than protecting, it is implicating the parents.
What are they, poor?
First they'll see what the privileged-person's penitential-triple can get them: a spontaneous donation to charity, a carefully drafted "heartfelt" apology (I wrote it myself with a pen, and they are my words because my lawyer paid the PR wonk to script them for me), and then a submission to the judge along the lines of "ohmagerd, if I get a conviction I might not get to travel overseas like I frequently do, and it might harm my career prospects". With an optional extra of "my good standing in the community should count in my favour".
The shit I saw some daddy's little girls and boys get away with at uni… not so much by the uni itself, but getting diversion multiple times because they were "promising young men" so the effort to prosecute would be futile. Yer honour, the dude was a smarmy little shit who would break random windows and fences for fun every saturday night. Spank him, or someone else eventually will – with a fist.
should be interesting in watching the 2 cases unfold to see if they are treated in a similar way. Both have flouted the rules in a very open manner. For my bit give them all 2 weeks in prison, and do not consider a financial penalty, as for some a financial penalty is no penalty.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/covid-19-coronavirus-delta-outbreak-two-sisters-remanded-in-custody-for-allegedly-driving-through-northlandauckland-border/BWISA5HEV44D6MUVJWXXMIP6H4/
In what way should they be treated similarly? The two women ignored a police checkpoint, kept driving at dangerously high speeds, were eventually stopped by road spikes, nearly caused an accident with traffic coming the other way, and then resisted arrest.
The Auckland/Wanaka couple should be treated according to their own transgressions, which are serious enough but don't include the additional issues of resisting police directives. Pretty sure it will be clear in law what they have breached and what sentencing can go with that.
I was referring to that both consciously made efforts to break out of the boarder acting against the rules that many of us are following. And should luck have failed us and carried the covid to other areas what then of the consequences to the country and our strategy ? How so few can now, thru selfish reasoning cripple the country. That was what I was meaning by grouping these 2 incidents together. If there is no to minimal consequence how then do you signal the importance of following the directive ?
$4,000 fine or 6 months in prison is what I've seen as the potential sentence for the couple.
I don't see how the additional offending from the two women can be separated out from the covid breaches.
Then the 2 woman have two separate charges to be addressed quite separately.
I don,t like fines unless they are proportional to income and I think goal helps nothing. I do think a long term community service sentence might mean some thing constructive comes out of it all !
Weka- fair enough
Janet I was thinking of the 2 options available that Weka quoted, and I feel with the limited info that I agree a fine would be nothing to these 2. It will be interesting to see what if any consequences there are. And I would believe that I am not alone within Auckland after 5+ weeks of lockdown and to see some flagrant totally selfish actions has brought out some of this frustration within me out 😤
Well, we've yet to hear their ethnicity, or for a spokesperson from that ethnicity to apologise to the rest of NZ, etc.
It is a laugh out loud irony, the horsey folks reason for name suppression is a lack of trust in strangers.
You can't make this sort of stuff up.
Hopefully its lifted quickly, names are all over social media and sadly a woman with the same name as one of the parties is coping some pretty fucking horrible abuse.
I really hope that gets taken into account in the name supression arguements entitled prick needs to own his shit not hide behind mummy.
I do find it strange that he was given name suppresion because of his father. The man is 34 – surely at 34 his father is no longer answerable for his son's actions and noone could think it.
Mother?
lol so their mate is in the ODT saying how sad it is for them after a "stuff up".
Fair call, death threats are too much and should be investigated. But stuff up? Mistake? Piss off. It's not like they popped out for some essential work and then "what the hell, how did we end up flying to queenstown and renting a car to Wanaka? That's an oopsie".
STFU. And save the "some of the stuff they have done in the community over the years" bullshit for the judge.
I think most of us have probably lost hope & interest & moved on already so I might knock off posting about Afghanistan, but I especially liked the author’s opening line for this NYT OP.
WAR ON TERROR CORRUPT FROM THE START
“The war in Afghanistan wasn’t a failure. It was a massive success — for those who made a fortune off it.
Consider the case of Hikmatullah Shadman, who was just a teenager when American Special Forces rolled into Kandahar on the heels of Sept. 11. They hired him as an interpreter, paying him up to $1,500 a month — 20 times the salary of a local police officer…. By his late 20s, he owned a trucking company that supplied U.S. military bases, earning him more than $160 million.
If a small fry like Shadman could get so rich off the war on terror, imagine how much Gul Agha Sherzai, a big-time warlord-turned-governor, has raked in since he helped the C.I.A. run the Taliban out of town. His large extended family supplied everything from gravel to furniture to the military base in Kandahar. His brother controlled the airport. Nobody knows how much he is worth, but it is clearly hundreds of millions….
Look under the hood of the “good war,” and this is what you see. Afghanistan was supposed to be an honorable war to neutralize terrorists and rescue girls from the Taliban. It was supposed to be a war that we woulda coulda shoulda won, had it not been for the distraction of Iraq, and the hopeless corruption of the Afghan government. But let’s get real. Corruption wasn’t a design flaw in the war. It was a design feature. We didn’t topple the Taliban. We paid warlords bags of cash to do it.
As the nation-building project got underway, those same warlords were transformed into governors, generals and members of Parliament, and the cash payments kept flowing.”
…
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/13/opinion/afghanistan-war-economy.html
It's interesting that these views are now part of mainstream thinking about Afghanistan ,and published in the "respectable" news media
People like John Pilger have been writing about the Afghanistan scam for decades, and not been amplified in the same news media.
Nor is he credited now
US withdrawal from Afghanistan gives a very good chance that both the White House and the Senate will return to Republican control.
US foreign policy over 20 years has fundamentally altered domestic politics; even worse and deeper than LBJ's exit.
The White House & Senate may well soon end up under Republican control again, but I doubt it’ll be because of Afghanistan. There was never going to be a tidy way for the US (& the sucked-in NATO countries) to extricate themselves from that ill-thought-out invasion.
Biden’s said as much, publicly, twice & he’s betting that the hypocrtical criticism & fuss about abandoning the place in such shambolic way to the unstoppable Taliban is going to fade away. Pulling out & ending the “forever war” was what the great majority of US voters wanted.
You're so optimistic!
Here’s another NYT OP from a pessimist:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/opinion/how-9-11-turned-america-into-a-half-crazed-fading-power.html
“How 9/11 Turned America Into a Half-Crazed, Fading Power
…
“The painful condition of neither peace nor victory, against an enemy seen as practically subhuman, itself required vengeance,” Ackerman wrote. “Trump offered himself as its instrument. Declaring his presidential candidacy in his golden tower, he asked, ‘When was the last time the U.S. won at anything?’”
Now, as the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11 arrives with the Taliban back in power in Afghanistan, America is face to face with its defeat. In truth, the immediate collapse of the American-supported government probably saved many Afghan lives. If a Taliban victory was all but inevitable, as intelligence analysts apparently assumed, it’s probably better that it happened without a long siege of Kabul.
But the lack of a decent interval between America’s withdrawal and a Taliban takeover, besides being a tragedy for Afghans allied with us, revealed America’s longest war as worse than futile. We didn’t just lose to the Taliban. We left them stronger than we found them.
The sheer waste of it all is staggering. Twenty years ago, American politicians and intellectuals, traumatized by an unprecedented act of mass murder and not-so-secretly eager to see history revved up again, misunderstood what 9/11 represented. We inflated the stature of our enemies to match our need for retribution. We launched hubristic wars to remake the world and let ourselves be remade instead, spending an estimated $8 trillion in the process. We midwifed worse terrorists than those we set out to fight.
We thought we knew what had been lost on Sept. 11. We had no idea.”
Theatres of influence aren't static. They are also real, and active. Fine to keep underlining where the United States is withdrawing from. But as we've seen withdrawing itself is damaging.
It is very, very unlikely that President Biden is going to turn into the next Charles Lindberg. US global influence is going to stay huge.
The key question is whether Biden can make a better job of engaging with the Pacific and China more specifically than his predecessors Trump and Obama. He has a reasonable amount on at the moment.
Good points. I don’t personally think the US is fading as a superpower. More a case of China catching up to THEM.
Biden may irritate me if he paints himself as the “leader of the free world” as some of his predecessors have done, but he shows every sign of wanting the US to return to being the primary strategic guarantor of Western liberal democracies’ security.
As we mostly are not in any position to assume realistically that we can all defend ourselves from a sufficiently large, militarily-aggressive foe – should it ever come to that – it’s nice for us to be able to collectively assume that they probably have our backs.
Although I think he actually had a point about bludging NATO countries into stumping up their full agreed contributions to the cost of their own defence, Trump might well just abandon any traditional military alliance on a whim, should China or Russia ever setiously threaten another democratic country. And via a tweet.
Almost all of these pundits have a lot of fun poking at the US establishment as the big slow and easy target – but show the same ignorance around the role of the Afghans themselves in this disaster.
Most critically almost everyone has neglected the sad brutal truth that there is no Afghanistani nation – it never existed and isn't likely to anytime soon. It is instead a tribal society riven by ethnic divisions. The Taliban are the dominant Pashtun and the people that the Americans stupidly tried to put in power to unify the nation were largely Tajik or Uzbek with no regard to the local dynamics.
The reason why the Taliban took the country over is that they projected power in the interests of the majority of the people living in that country. When the Americans (and the Russians before them) left – the dominant ethnic group simply took over. The people it's now executing are of course mostly non-Pashtun. Good old fashioned medieval tribalism at work.
The American argument – for all of it's stupendous naivety – was that if they could remake authoritarian regimes like Germany and Japan into peaceful and democratic nations, why not Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan? The answer is pretty damned obvious in hindsight – that the former were ethnically homogenous while the latter were not. The Vietnamese were never going to tolerate the US handing over power to a corrupt Chinese elite, the Iraqi divisions between Sunni and Shiites has roots going back to the deathbed of the Prophet, and Afghanistan has 43 different ethnic groups who can barely tolerate the sight of each other.
That the Afghani locals were prepared to exploit American ignorance for their own purposes is not terribly surprising. That the Saudi Wahhibists were also prepared to build fundamentalist schools among the displaced Pashtun in Northern Pakistan, that the Pakistani authorities had their own games to play (very many Pashtun live in northern Pakistan) and that the CCP seem to have been playing their own hand – all gets conveniently airbrushed out of the analysis when it comes time to have another go at the perfidious Yanks.
Weirdly similar to the breakup of Yugoslavia.
A good read there. Last week at some point I found a “history of Afghanistan” youtube video about an hour long that started out as far back as 55O BCE. I had time to kill, I just let it play & listened to it while lying on the couch. The place actually has a very long history of parts or all of it being unified in one form or other & thus included in various different regional states or empires I’ve never heard of.
Several long before Islam arrived & eventually came to be the dominant religion.
Your comment makes me wonder why the US cops so muck flak from its critics, like me. The Russians’ behaviour in Afghanistan was pretty shit & their activities in Ukraine & particularly Syria has seen them either involved in their own, or supporting Assad’s, appalling atrocities.
The CCP have been guilty of various slaughters & terrible repressions in their own country & Tibet, too.
Some NATO European countries’ behaviour in their former colonies (that they finally departed from not all that long ago, historically speaking, and often left in the hands of equally appalling tribally-dominated regimes) was equally universally atrocious.
I think the US cops it so much because the Russians & Chinese simply don’t talk about what they’re up to where they’re misbehaving, while the US constantly talks about all the good that it’s doing or done for the countries they’ve invaded or interfered with.
It’s for their utter hypocrisy & their seemin national blindness to the reality of the misery & thousand of deaths & destruction they cause. It’s the rank double standards they demonstrate for their own people and those of the other countries they attack.
" supporting Assad’s, appalling atrocities."
Such as?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violations_during_the_Syrian_civil_war
So you simply accept a wikipedia entry as the full and honest truth? I'm disappointed.
Do some investigating on the principal contributors to this article. e.g.Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Syrian Network for Human Rights.
Who are they? Where are they based? Have any reported from Syria? Who are their sources? Who funds them?
Read the Amnesty 'report' on so called Syrian Government atrocities and see if you can find a shred of evidence of their claims.
There was no Syrian Civil war. It was/is a proxy war against the Syrian people by mercenaries paid for by the US, UK, NATO, Saudi and Qatar. US still has troops in Syria.
You've a lot to catch up, you could start with Timber Sycamore.
Watch this: "Roland Dumas: The British prepared for war in Syria 2 years before the eruption of the crisis in 2011"
Find out what Gen. Wesley Clark has said on the destruction of the Middle East. That prior to the Afghan war there were plans to bring the Middle East to it's knees.
If you want to know what the about the inception of the war, do a youtube search on 'Talk With American-Syrians in Latakia'
Ask yourself why Syrians have been returning in their droves now that the country is safer? Why do you suppose Assad won the 2021 election with a vote of over 90%?
And before you listen to any claim that Syrian elections aren't fair and free this Observers Report to UN might be worth watching.
Perhaps wikipedia isn't always the most reliable source. In this case I'd have to say, and as any Syrian living in Syria will tell you, the article is simply fallacious.
“So you simply accept a wikipedia entry as the full and honest truth? I’m disappointed”
So am I, now you’ve complained about it. I’m aware the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is apparently just a one man operation based in London & that his reports have been challenged.
I don’t usually use Wikipedia as an only source for issues like this – I did a quick scan down the list of references before posting the link, & there seemed to be only one or two from the SOHR.
Not surprised at all to hear US & Western powers had long had plans to destabilise the ME.
My view on Assad’s & Russian forces has been partly formed by AlJazeera tv reporting, over the years that I’ve been watching tha channel on Freeview. Seeing the vid clips of barrel bombs being dropped by Assad’s choppers into cities, & e.g. the clips of White Helmets digging thru rubble pulling out survivors & bodies.
I watch Aljaz tv in the knowledge that some of their reporting is factual & neutral, but that they DO often have notable biases. Their reporting is invariably anti-Assad. They don’t report that the opposition now largely confined to the North I think includes some very nasty Islamist groups.
I’m not surprised that most of the Syrian population still there prefer living under the Assad regime to the rule of fundamentalist radicals.
I don’t know what to make of that video of those few Western election observers with the Syrian UN Ambassador,
“you want to know what the about the inception of the war, do a youtube search on ‘Talk With American-Syrians in Latakia'”- Will do.
…
“Ask yourself why Syrians have been returning in their droves now that the country is safer?” – Are they? This is news to me.
…
“Why do you suppose Assad won the 2021 election with a vote of over 90%?”
I suggest doing some research on what that "western observers with the Syrian UN ambassador" thing really was.
Propagandists are very skilled at creating facades and illusions of false legitimacy.
I plan to. The problem with the Middle East generally is that all sides involved in conflicts there are usually propagandising to the max. Sometimes a mixture of facts & deliberate omissions. ("The OTHER SIDE ARE VICIOUS ANIMALS: WE DON'T DO THAT.")
Getting to "the truth" often ends up amounting to choosing which side, or whose version – in complex situations with misbehaviours on both sides – you most prefer.
Still seems to be a "shithole country", with all sides in the conflct behaving badly at times:
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=27456&LangID=E
That UN link says Syria is still unsafe to return to. Gonna see if I can find any reliable evidence thousands of Syrian refugees are now returning to areas under Assad's forces' control as suggested by Brigid.
Anyone thinking that vaccines alone can beat this thing need only look at Israel.
Can you link to the latest?
And yes, the vaccine doesn't 'beat' anything; it just flattens the curve, allowing the health system to cope. We're going to need more measures for sure.
Here's an interesting one (I'd never heard of the Stringency Index!):
Hopefully they are increasing the number of ICU beds etc. if they have modelled that they believe we will need them once everyone has had a chance to be vaccinated, and we have moved down to level 1 (or even level zero if it exists anymore?)
I doubt it… they rushed builders in under level 4 to create more negative pressue rooms…
The numbers dying goes down exponentially from high rates of vaccination
Correct, vaccines alone won't beat this. But Israel isn't the argument to show that. Israel isn't actually highly vaccinated. Lots of places have much higher vaccination rates than Israel.
The simple fact is real-world vaccine effectiveness is low enough and transmissibility is high enough that even a 100% vaccinated population will still have covid circulating in the population, in the absence of non-vaccine disease controls such as masks and restricting potential superspreading events.
The simple fact is also that permanent level 4 or level 3 lockdowns to maintain elimination aren't acceptable.
So our future lies somewhere in accepting that vaccines will reduce covid to a disease burden kinda like flu (in those that get vaccinated), and that masking in public places is good thing (as has been routine in a lot of Asian cities for a long time) and maybe places like pubs and nightclubs and sports stadiums and concerts etc need to change how they operate.
Israel isn't actually highly vaccinated.
What's the vaccination rate for the "Israeli Arabs", i.e. the local Palestinians in the state of Israel?
Gee, mozzie, that might indeed be an interesting little morsel of information.
Howzabout you go look for it and let us know what you find?
Go on, the exercise of finding actual facts will be good for you.
Google is your friend.
As of 9th August, 51% of the Arab population were vaccinated, compared with 66% across the whole population.
The Israeli PM is actively encouraging Arab citizens to get vaccinated.
And:
"Around 11% of COVID-19 cases were in Arab cities and towns last week, even though they constitute over 20% of the population. As of Sunday, some 26 cities were designated high-infection “red” areas; just one of them was an Arab locality."
So their infection rate is actually disproportionately low.
Does that include the West Bank and the Gaza strip .what about the Arab populations age cohorts
The data I referred to is for Israeli citizens. In East Jerusalem, Palestinains are being vaccinated by Israel. (Palestinians in East Jerusalem have Israeli residency status – so those living there pay Israeli taxes and have access to Israeli health insurance). From March, Israel began vaccinating all Palestinians who come to work in Israel or in Israeli settlements in the West Bank (Same source). Gaza is self governing – by Hamas. The West bank is seperated by regions under the control of Fatah and Israel. Various countries have donated vaccine to the palestinian territories, including Russia, UAE and Israel.
Interestingly, there is reportedly significant vaccine reluctance in Gaza, which is holding back the vaccination program.
I feel for them all.
"what about the Arab populations age cohorts"
The Arab population of Israel is significantly younger than it's Jewish counterpart. The median age of the Jewish population is 32, the Arab median age is 21.
That could be one reason for the lower vaccination rate.
I can’t see a link to their actual petitition, either in here or on Te Pāti Māori website (unless it’s just because I’ve got javascript turned off):
https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/te-reo-maori/126369919/petition-to-rename-new-zealand-as-aotearoa-launched
I don’t think I’d be prepared to sign this, though I’d like to see exactly what the petition says. I’m personally happy with using Māori names for some places that are still roughly the same place & even size of any original Maori-named rohe, region or settlement.
But some of these places are named after famous ancestors & so are some English language place names, so there’s an argument I agree with that such Rnglish place names have their own cultural validitt.
Case in point, my own city of Wellington. The city proper has for over achundred years well exceeded the size of any permanent or temporary Maori settlement (s suburbs still have their original Māori names (eg Hataitai, Petone).
Originally Port Nicholson (from where the area known as Poneke has probably come) the city was re-named Wellington by its Pākehā settlers & I’m very happy for it to continue to be called that.
On the other hand the HARBOUR was already long ago visited & reported on by a Māori rangatira sailor & thus the name Te Whanganui-a-Tara (the great harbour of Tara) works ok for me. So too does “Wellington harbour” – we Pākehā have a long tradition of naming ports & harbours after the city they service.
I think Rawiri over-eggs the “culturally insulted” side of things sometimes. You attract more bees with honey than vinegar.
(Te Pāti Māori has a really slick-looking website. )
"Change our official name to Aotearoa
Tōku reo, tōku ohooho. Tōku reo, tōku māpihi maurea. Tōku reo, tōku whakakai marihi.
Te Pāti Māori are calling for the House of Representatives to;
Change the country’s official name to Aotearoa and
Officially restore the Te Reo Māori names for all towns, cities and place names.
It’s well past time that Te Reo Māori was restored to its rightful place as the first and official language of this country. We are a Polynesian country – we are Aotearoa.
Name changes over our whenua and the imposition of a colonial agenda in the education system in the early 1900s meant that Te Reo Māori fluency among our tupuna went from 90% in 1910 to 26% in 1950. In only 40 years, the Crown managed to successfully strip us of our language and we are still feeling the impacts of this today. It’s totally unacceptable that 20% of the Māori population and 3% of people living in Aotearoa can speak te reo Māori.
Article 3 of Te Tiriti o Waitangi promises tangata whenua the same rights as British citizens, that Te Reo Māori me ōna tikanga katoa be treated and valued exactly the same as the English language.
This petition calls on Parliament to change New Zealand to Aotearoa and begin a process, alongside whānau, hapū and iwi, local government and the New Zealand Geographic Board to identify and officially restore the original Te Reo Māori names for all towns, cities and places right across the country by 2026.
Tangata whenua are sick to death of our ancestral names being mangled, bastardised, and ignored. It’s the 21st Century, this must change.
It is the duty of the Crown to do all that it can to restore the status of our language. That means it needs to be accessible in the most obvious of places; on our televisions, on our radio stations, on road signs, maps and official advertising, and in our education system."
http://www.maoriparty.org.nz/nz_to_aotearoa?recruiter_id=62238
Thank you. 👍🏼
I’m sure I looked at that website page section as soon as I saw the Stuff article. Maybe it’s been loaded since.
The MIQ absconder's mum potted and then apologised for her son's behaviour.
Odds of Bonnie and Clydes’ parents doing the same?
Potted= plotted?
And it seems to me they need to be named and shamed. That is more than a fine.
I'm sure Bonnie and Clyde's daddy will throw cash and influence around till this all goes away.
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/put+someone%27s+pot+on
OK
I’m aving a bad day with idioms.
Lesson in aussie culture and values:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/international/300406242/hes-an-australian-hero-quade-cooper-set-to-be-awarded-citizenship-after-long-battle
On that subject, a lovely exchange between a heavy weight boxer and rugby league legend and a rugby boof head
Both declaring their love for each other without embarrassment or shame.
Welcome to the 21st century.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hEeW7a7C-XM
Fantastic. Would be great if there were more of that.
With the left installed in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, the Labor Party win yesterday in Norway completes the left revival for Scandinavia.
https://www.politico.eu/article/norways-labor-party-on-course-for-election-win/
Hopefully we get to see this in Germany as well in the next week.
“Apple has released an emergency software patch to fix a security vulnerability that researchers said could allow hackers to directly infect iPhones and other Apple devices without any user action.
The researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab said the flaw allowed spyware from the world’s most infamous hacker-for-hire firm, NSO Group, to directly infect the iPhone of a Saudi activist. The flaw affected all Apple’s operating systems, the researchers said.
It was the first time a so-called “zero-click” exploit had been caught and analysed, said the researchers, who found the malicious code on September 7 and immediately alerted Apple. They said they had high confidence the Israeli company NSO Group was behind the attack, adding that the targeted activist asked to remain anonymous”.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/300406391/apple-releases-emergency-software-patch-to-fix-vulnerability-to-zero-click-spyware
“We’re not necessarily attributing this attack to the Saudi government,” said researcher Bill Marczak.bAlthough Citizen Lab previously found evidence of zero-click exploits being used to hack into the phones of al-Jazeera journalists and other targets, “this is the first one where the exploit has been captured so we can find out how it works,” said Marczak.
Although security experts say that AVERAGE iPhone, iPad and Mac USERS generally NEED NOT WORRY – such attacks tend to be highly targeted – the discovery still alarmed security professionals.”
Newshub website reports:
New Zealand’s cybersecurity agency CERT NZ has recommended Apple users update their software “as soon as possible” after a cyber surveillance company based in Israel developed a tool to break into iPhones.
Winston making a come back?
'Left-wing radical bull dust': Peters blasts Māori Party petition to change country's name to Aotearoa (msn.com)
Ever the chancer, is 🗣 Winston.
Wonder how many would fall for it again, & vote NZF next election?
Very few, if any, I imagine.
Prity divisive approach by te Maori party imho.
Surely daul naming should suffice, but hell you dont get headlines by being sensible and inclusive.
This aggressive attack-Pākehā-oriented political style seems to be a deliberate strategy being quite frequently employed by Waititi & Ngarewa-Packer.
Not sure exactly what they aim to get from it but they’re neither of them fools. I’m presuming there’s a carefully-thought out, particular reason they are pushing the hostile “racist” envelope in this way.
Maybe it’s to make cultural connections with the haka? Try and sell themselves as more authentically Maori than Labour?
Winston certainly knows how to get headlines!
So do Rawiri & Debbie.
They’re the new kids on the block.
Winston’s just blowing his usual bubbles.
… in fact Winston’s probably doing exactly what they wanted someone like him to do. Get them more attention.
Let’s see how many other’s fall for it.
Ardern got asked what she thought about it at her Covid press standup today. She said no government plans to do what Rawiri wants; people are happy to use dual names, or their preferred on, from her observation.
🙄 other’s = others
on = one
[typo in e-mail address fixed]
Yup, there is one place worse than 'Murica in vaccine refusal and skepticism. They're No2 behind Russia.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/09/06/america-has-remained-unusually-vaccine-sceptical?
WTF did they think the reaction would be.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/alleged-wanaka-covid-19-breachers-remorseful-about-bad-decision-says-friend/ZSCJA2G2GAVVHDJE5VW4SGXUP4/
Community service as cleaners in Middlemores ED, and a hefty fine.