Over the past 15 years, death rates among white women in the United States have mysteriously surged. New research pins blame on an insidious culprit: prescription painkillers.
Nice use of ‘the euphemism ‘painkillers’.
It’s not like (white women) haven’t been through this before. In the 50s it was mother’s little helper. The article is trying to discuss a lot of things but not very clearly. Class is obviously a factor, as are geographical prescribing patterns, and the much easier availability of drugs. Ethnicity is mentioned, but in an almost causal way (black women’s death rates are much higher than white women’s despite the former decreasing and the latter increasing).
Breast cancer rates were for a long time a lot lower in black and Hispanic women then whites. White women’s rate has fallen in the last 10 years and the incident rate is now almost the same. Hispanic women have a far lower incident rate – it is almost unchanged.
Black people have a first time stroke incidence twice as high as whites. They also have a higher incidence rate of high blood pressure.
This points to lifestyle choices, diet for the most part but could also involvelso genetics.
Cause of Death Age-Adjusted Death Rates*
White Black Hispanic Asian
All causes 450.4 690.9 432.8 264.6
Heart disease 121.9 183.3 84.2 67.4
Coronary heart disease 79.2 92.5 54.7 42.9
Stroke 23.3 41.4 19 22.7
Cancer 121 161.2 76.1 74.8
COPD 21.9 17.7 8.5 7.4
Pneumonia/influenza 12.7 17.4 9.8 10.3
Liver disease/cirrhosis 7.1 8 11.7 2.4
Diabetes mellitus 12 28.8 18.4 8.7
HIV infection 2.6 20.6 6.2 0.8
External causes 46.7 68.8 44.7 24.4
Infant Mortality per 1,000 6 13.6 5.8 5.5
Life expectancy (years from birth) 77.3 71.3 >80? >80?
‘Lifestyle choice’ is an unfortunate choice of words, giving you the benefit of the doubt there, but poverty undermines lifestyle choices most of the time.
Lifestyle choice – I would translate this into not moving much. Not much sport and lots of TV, games etc. This is then showing in the heart disease and diabetics stats. Mind you, whites are catching up fast.
” No wonder some are questioning their own use of conventional medical approaches.”
It has me questioning, in the context of the US health system, long-term relief through strong painkillers of conditions that patients can’t afford to see a specialist about.
In other words people are using strong painkillers, obtained through health practitioners too ready to write prescriptions for them, or obtained illegally, because they can’t even get to see someone about conventional medical approaches for their conditions.
i.e:
Curbing opioid-related deaths is more complicated than simply arresting people who illegally peddle or buy the drugs. Lawmakers should also address the social determinants of health, Astone said. Housing and access to medical care, for example, are high on the list.
The highest concentration of counties with rising female death rates clustered in historically impoverished regions of the Southwest, where doctors and clinics are known to write more opioid prescriptions.
Previous research shows a strong correlation between income and lifespan.
I’d guess that another significant part of the picture is painkillers being used by people self medicating other kinds of pain than physical injury/illness. That’s about poverty, self-determination, culture etc as much as access to medical care.
I agree – class, ethnicity, culture, geography. societal structures that impact on the use of available resources (time, money, social constraints etc) are all part of the context that affect access to health care (compared to commonly held views of access directly related to categories like transport, ethnicity, age, ‘attitudes’ & ‘behaviours’ and so forth).
“are all part of the context that affect access to health care”
Yes, but I’m saying in addition to that, poverty etc makes for a higher level of need to self medicate around existential pain, and people will use what they can get their hands on. That is essentially not a healthcare issue but one of poverty i.e. relieve poverty and many people won’t need to self-medicate. That’s a different thing than someone with back pain or on a long waiting list for hip replacement using opiates in the meantime because they’re not getting adequate medical treatment.
Yes, I see what you mean, however that is true of people in all sorts of situations – whether they’re poor or not. For example, commonly cited are links between addictions are surviving child sexual abuse and domestic violence.
I also wonder how much the medicalisation of unhappiness and anxiety affect people’s responses to these perfectly ok responses to some short-term, awful situations.
It’s the medicalisation of societal, economic and familial dysfunction to try and cope with far wider issues.
The highest concentration of counties with rising female death rates clustered in historically impoverished regions of the Southwest, where doctors and clinics are known to write more opioid prescriptions.
Previous research shows a strong correlation between income and lifespan.
People whose family income in 1980 was greater than $50,000, putting them in the top 5 percent of incomes, had a life expectancy at all ages that was about 25 percent longer than those in the bottom 5 percent
+1
That fits with what I know of both living with chronic pain and prescribing practice in Dixie. If you have a pain problem that could be fixed if surgery were available, what do you do? You treat the symptoms while the underlying problem gets worse. Eventually you die and the American medical establishment blames the painkillers. The problem is just as likely to be lack of access to hospital treatment.
I wonder if there is an equivalent rising death rate in countries that have an accessible health system?
“I wonder if there is an equivalent rising death rate in countries that have an accessible health system?”
A good research question there… hmm
re chronic pain – I’ve been having a bit of a conversation with a patient US group and although I was aware of access issues there, some of the stories stunned me – losing healthcare with loss of job, going bankrupt several time due to the cost of meds, managing life around access to serious painkillers because they can’t get the prescriptions required to manage their disease, and then they lose access to the painkillers…. when they finally get on clinical trials or pharma charity (for want of a better description) the illness has progressed to a level that causes permanent disability – the list goes on….
A workplace based scheme that nudges people towards greater personal responsibility with features like preferred providers, portability and non-exclusion – adopted in the KiwiSaver scheme – could play an important role in making the New Zealand health system more sustainable
I think the news/PR release when largely unnoticed here, but their lobbyists will certainly be heard loud and clear by the government, I expect.
That’s unhelpful stirring Contrarian. Let it go.
The topic was the increased death rate among white women and its link to a type of prescription drug.
CV has some insight into the intersection of social problems and over medicalisation, understanding of which is at a primitive stage in the mainstream.
What’s your view on that?
Deaths (most of which are unintentional) from strong opioids have been increasing in parallel with increasing opioid sales worldwide but particularly in the USA. The USA uses 55% of the global morphine and hydromorphone supply, >99% of hydrocodone supply and 83% of oxycodone supply. On the other hand, Canada has the highest per capita “dose”. Mortality rates in NZ from prescription medicines are not easily available. The use of strong opioids has increased exponentially since the late 80s and early 90s when doctors in the USA started using them for non-cancer pain, despite minimal evidence of their long-term effectiveness and safety. Strong patient and healthcare professional lobby groups (often backed by pharmaceutical companies) combined with aggressive marketing tactics led to a marked growth in the use of strong opioids for non-cancer pain. The drug company who make Oxycontin spent US$200M on marketing in 2001, including US$40M in drug rep bonuses. The drug company’s profits rose from US$48M in 1996 when it was launched to US$3B in 2010. There are many reasons for the increase in use (including abuse), and the consensus is that it is primarily due to the lower threshold to prescribing strong opioids (particularly in light of increasing concerns about the toxicity of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory painkillers). Lack of access to specialist care is unlikely to be a strong contributor, treating existential suffering (eloquently put) is a recognised problem (“chemical coping”). Another reason the use is increasing is the development of tolerance, whereby more drug is needed for the same effect (this is not addiction or dependence). For more information on NZ usage: http://www.bpac.org.nz/BPJ/2014/July/oxycodone.aspx, http://www.hqsc.govt.nz/assets/Health-Quality-Evaluation/Atlas/opioidsSF/atlas.html
Thanks Pauline, interesting. I was surprised to learn from the Bpac link the majority of oxycodone isn’t prescribed in general practice. It says GPs post hospital discharge can feel compelled to continue prescribing, which figures, but I would have thought the resulting primary care prescription numbers would then vastly outweigh hospital prescribing.
I wonder how much of the hospital prescribing is post-surgical, and how much is to patients waiting for surgery when they visit the hospital specialist or the hospital’s chronic pain clinic.
”Dispensing data shows that in New Zealand, the majority of prescriptions for oxycodone are not being written by General Practitioners.5 This suggests that a considerable proportion of oxycodone is being prescribed to patients on discharge from hospital, e.g. for post-surgical pain management”
The majority of hospital scripts for strong opioids are for patients being discharged after surgery, possibly also from ED. Specialists who see patients in outpatient clinics (including chronic pain team specialists) try to avoid writing scripts as they usually prefer the GP to retain primary management of the patient (plus it’s a hassle writing controlled drug scripts). The number of people taking strong opioids because they are waiting for surgery is likely to be minimal. Even so, these would only be hip and knee surgery and I can’t see orthopaedic surgeons writing controlled drug scripts. To give an example, in BoP in 2013 the prescription numbers for strong opioids were 4500; 2100 of these were for pts who had been in hospital in the past week, so 2400 were GP prescribed. Only about 600 of these were for >6 weeks. So the majority of the 4500 were for short-term use which is good.
+1 Thanks Pauline. Diseases with chronic pain is managed quite differently in NZ compared with the US, I think, where ‘most’ chronic noncancer pain is managed in primary care.
Sort of what I expected given access to free specialist care (albeit with sometimes long waiting times) in NZ.
Using rheumatoid arthritis as and example, many individuals with this disease are managed in primary care, where, as well as not being able to afford the cost of treatment, patients may be in the care of physicians who are uncomfortable with prescribing drugs that control the disease. This means patients are left with symptomatic relief i.e. painkillers. Similar concerns about treating in primary care in Canada exist. NZ GPs do tend follow recommended practice and refer people with RA to specialists.
Also interesting is GP concerns about the safety of non-steriodal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). There is possibly a link there to increased prescribing of opiates and the controversy surrounding cox-2 inhibitors (e.g. vioxx) in the early 2000s which eventually proved an increased risk of heart problems with the used of several NSAIDs.
I’m not sure about the subtleties of US primary care/specialist care but at in NZ pts can be treated by their GP along with input from a specialist (at no cost to the pt) if the pt’s condition is more complex or labile. The waiting lists are not as long as they used to be and are usually quite reasonable, depending on the severity of the problem. Specialists try not to “take over” the prescribing and management because the GP is the main healthcare provider. Having access to specialists in the public system also gives access to specialist meds including expensive biologicals like adalimumab for RA, whereas in the US I understand this is dictated by someone’s insurance coverage and many people have to pay extra as a copayment. BTW, opioids are not very effective in RA.
Yes, the increase in strong opioid prescribing may be related to the safety issues about NSAIDs including COX-2 inhibitors but there is some evidence that opioids have even more risks in older pts (Arch Intern Med. 2010;170(22):1979-1986).
It’s been awhile since I’ve used the NZ health system, but I’m pretty familiar with how it operates. Good to know waiting times are improving (I suspect, more targeted referrals rather than improvements in resourcing).
It’s also great when GPs and specialists can work together to manage chronic pain conditions. Although that would vary depending on the interests and confidence of the GP in managing a particular condition and the drug protocols, and for RA, whether the condition has stabilised, or not, as far as I recall. Although I understand that there is some collaboration between ‘expert’ GPs and consultants in this field to improve this situation.
Yes, I’ve also heard that access to some biologics is much better than a few years ago, although the range is still rather sparse. You’re right that insurance coverage and co-payment are a huge big problem for US patients (along with getting a specialist diagnosis in the first place), according to the people there that I’ve conversed with.
“opioids are not very effective in RA.”
… and yet … they’re still prescribed (referring to aforementioned US patients). Obviously the best pain relief is to control the disease – a whole other topic, given the recommended meds for that – except that plenty of people refuse these and rely on painkillers to get through. The John Hopkins Institute does suggest there may be a role for opiates in RA. Maybe that justifies, for some, the prescribing of these rather than NSAIDs or steroids, if they’re worried about side effects from those. I’m not sure of the consensus on that view.
Re opioids in the elderly: one of the reasons I used RA as an example is because onset frequently occurs in midlife, rather than later in life, which fit better with the original article of increased deaths in women due to overdoses up to age 54.
Thanks again for the discussion. It’s clearly a big and diverse topic.
Thanks for the link.
I agree with Chris Trotter: “His (Key’s) brilliance as a politician (if “brilliance” is the right word for so sinister a talent) lies in the way he has transformed the Truths and Untruths of the controversy into brutal binary equations of partisan allegiance.”
The Crosby Textors of the world have been doing this for over 50 years. Well before “either you are with us or you are against us.” Even before the days of McCarthy, where people labelled as communist sympathisers had their careers and lives destroyed.
Freud, Lippman and Bernays were spot on. And the intellectual left has struggled ever since in the belief that policies, facts and figures – “evidence” – was the way to persuade people one way or the other. Utterly hopeless.
tc @ 4.1I was expecting Paddy and the panel to spin, which they did. Paddy started right away with the angle that James would recognise the rights of a snail in the same way human rights (weirdo greens). Then Andrea Vance saying they should know the basic facts such as unemployment rate etc. FFS we are not at school anymore (and even school don’t do the rote learning of facts).
I watched because I wanted to see the Green candidates and hear them talk. They were good, very good and I am a Labour supporter. There was also a good report on obesity.
When you look at the electorate vote, Robertson’s has been increasing with each election and Shaw’s falling. Maybe you mean that Robertson has been prioritising his own place in parliament (EV) over the good of the party (PV)?
2008 17,046 GR 5,971 Kedgley
2011 18,836 GR 5,225 Shaw
2014 19,807 GR 5,077 Shaw
An important point I didn’t mention above was that the 2011 Wellington Central results represents a time when Kedgley was a Green MP. I am disinclined to ascribe Shaw; and his present electorate team, too much credit for the 7% rise in GP PV in that election.
Yep, Greens subjected directly to the same treatment Labour get EVERYTIME they dare to disclose any details. Strangely, Nats NEVER seem to be subjected to same, and get away with appalling whitewashes of any/all their policies.Amazing.
The series of statistical questions seem to have been suddenly unleashed on them with the sole aim of getting some ‘gotcha’ moments for discrediting them. Gower and the panel latched on to this as if those statistical numbers were the most important questions at hand, while ignoring the bulk of the interview based on their many other more important views including on environmental, political, social and leadership issues. They weren’t there to instantly recall and regurgitate the government’s various numbers. Would have been good if they knew, but that was NOT the most important matter for discussion TODAY or to be judged on.
John Key did not even remember whose side he himself was on during the Springbok rugby protest that divided the entire nation!
It began in Wellington and spread to every major city in months. The loss of life was immense. 200,000 New Zealanders were killed. Who would be next? What about the kids? In the end, the fighting came to your suburb. You knew you had to go. You packed up your life in the space of a few minutes and fled the house. You locked the front door and hoped to God everything would still be there in a couple of months’ time.
It would be all over by then, surely. It couldn’t drag on forever, could it?
That was four years ago. This is now your reality. This is what life looks like for your family.
You live in a refugee camp in the Auckland Domain. Your middle-class life is gone. You had a few thousand dollars that kept you going in the early years, but most of the money was tied up in the house.
There is nothing left. Your family relies on aid-agencies to sustain your miserable, impoverished lives.
There are no hospitals. No schools. The economy has collapsed. New Zealand is officially a failed state.
It has happened in other countries, like Syria – “The Herald and World Vision are running a major campaign to raise funds and help the millions of children left homeless by war in Syria.” Good work Herald and World Vision – no matter what percentage actually gets used for purpose that will be better than nothing.
Meanwhile – how would you cope if your world disintegrated.
Western power and western allies wanted Assad gone and this is the result. The result of supplying funds, arms and fighters to anti-Assad rebels in Syria.
As Madeline Albright famously said on American TV when asked about the half million Iraqi children killed by sanctions, they think that it is “worth it.”
NB ISIS continues to make gains against Assad in Syria despite US airstrikes. Its like the US doesn’t really want to be effective against ISIS.
Pretty sure the easily huntable food wouldn’t last that long. Here in the SI we’d do better, but the climate is colder too, which has a bit impact on food resources.
Just a side point about money being raised for charity and good causes. I thought I heard on Radionz that the actual charity only got 4% of the funds raised by one contracted fund-raiser! Did anyone else hear a report about fund raisers for charities on radio about a week ago?
Now when there are so many requests for money coming at you, and if what I’ve remembered is true, how much will that poor group in the Auckand Domain get from donations from kind people trying to help?
I hate relying on private charity, and I want my government to have principles that ensure adequate help is available from funds received from all NZs from progressive income tax and other taxes. Private charity can fill the extreme needs, the unusual.
Interesting article and thought experiment marty. I think GFC/PO is more likely in NZ than civil war, but it could be both of course.
I’m also not sure about comparing Syria with NZ, such different histories and geographies.
I don’t have to think too much about how I would survive because I’d be one of the first to die 😉 But in the event of a slower, less violent collapse I think about things like how there are plenty of houses in NZ, and a lot of fertile land (decreasing though), and still quite a few people who know how to grow food. More of an issue is what the police and army would do here in various scenarios. Would people really be living in tents when there are empty houses around? If enough of the police and army have family who are homeless are they really going to support a state that says you can’t live in a house unless you pay rent/mortgage?
I’m also not sure about comparing Syria with NZ, such different histories and geographies.
Another quite important difference between NZ and Syria is the fact that the United States, Britain, France, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have not been funding a bloody insurrection against our country for the last four years.
hi marty, two things spring immediately to mind.
the first is how does raising funds help?
you can not solve a problem with what got you into troubles in the first place.
lets face it these conflicts ultimately have money as their root cause and are a significant driving factor.
secondly i have been moving my life, to build resilience in the event of the scenario you described. learning about growing food energy, how to provide shelter (short and long term), strenthening the communities i am privileged to be involved with.
i have come to the conclusion that money is the main chain that binds us and the less reliant i/we are on money the better off we are.
i forget who said it but when the $*@#i goes down i would prefer to fall from the footpath to the gutter rather than from the penthouse.
Marty, do you think it might be a good idea for our government and its media mouthpieces to stop supporting the violent Al Qaeda/ISIS-led insurrection in Syria?
Only a year or so ago, the media were treating as heroes the fanatical louts who travelled to Syria to join the insurrection. If you read the endless torrent of anti-Syrian propaganda that the Herald has been running for the last four years—clearly you have not done so—then congratulating it would be the last thing you would do.
It was – but when I first saw the picture, for a minute I actually thought the woman was Hekia! She has an almost identical costume which she used to wear a lot!
Just my weird sense of humour, posted it for a laugh on a dull, grey Saturday.
Mmmmmm………don’t recall any exhortations from the Herald to discover some human empathy re 60 plus years of human tragedy wrought by Zionist Eceptionalism in Palestine…….nor re the carnage brought down by Zionist Sports Tours Inc’s biennial ‘shooting fish in a barrel’ exercises in Gaza.
I do recall TVOne/3 news anchors endlessly, sternly, reproachfully, reporting thus – “And today MILITANTS in Gaza……..”
Damn ! I think Rachel might’ve been one of them at some point. Might be wrong but I think so. Certainly there were heaps !
Cheers RL. Stiglitz is right. If I can hopefully simplify it down increased inequality reduces trust including trust in political institutions which unfortunately weakens them and reduces the ability for a political solution to be found. Feels a bit like a never ending cycle.
“ISDS (Investor Dispute Settlement) raises serious questions about democratic accountability, sovereignty, checks and balances and the separation of power” Sen Warren quoting the CATO Institute Trade Policy Programme ( yup, CATO said that )
“100+ law professors agree: A TPP trade deal that includes an Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision would undermine US sovereignty. ”
– Sen Warren (quote from her fb page)
If a US Senator declares openly that US sovereignty, its commercial freedoms and its legal system’s independence are put at risk by the TPPA, what chance does NZ have ?
(And if you pay attention you may notice that once again, when discussing countries involved in US led actions, New Zealand does not even rate a mention from our good friend the USA)
A man who refused to leave his car has died after being Tasered and pepper-sprayed by police, and having a dog set on him.
Tasered, pepper sprayed and had a dog set on him? I suspect that they never considered that they were going over board with the assaults until he died.
And, really, all they needed to do was block him in, put some clamps on a wheel or two and then leave two officers there to wait until he stepped out.
The comment doesn’t mention that the police also smashed his car windows.
That is very frightening. And if he is a mental case, he would be out of the norms anyway. The suggestion made above about blocking seems the best thing.
Perhaps all the police care about now is targets and money and that comes from the top. If any policeman involved in causing injury or death or being peripheral to it was docked pay according to how involved they were, that might have a limiting effect on violence used. Many of them seem to be brutalised, seem a bit distant from the ordinary citizen. Speak to them and they look at you assessingly “Is this a person causing a public nuisance” in their eyes.
I don’t like this type of police behaviour. They ramp themselves up it seems. Round here they regularly have sirens on and shoot down the road at 70-80 kmh. It can be dangerous being a policeman, but their aqctions can increase that. And all are not equally at risk. The rural officers have more to contend with and less back-up, support people on the ground.
They should be charged with manslaughter, at the very least. Until we see some serious charges laid and pursued through to sentencing, poaka will continue to kill us.
Conservatives report, but liberals display, greater happiness
Research suggesting that political conservatives are happier than political liberals has relied exclusively on self-report measures of subjective well-being. We show that this finding is fully mediated by conservatives’ self-enhancing style of self-report (study 1; N = 1433) and then describe three studies drawing from “big data” sources to assess liberal-conservative differences in happiness-related behavior (studies 2 to 4; N = 4936). Relative to conservatives, liberals more frequently used positive emotional language in their speech and smiled more intensely and genuinely in photographs. Our results were consistent across large samples of online survey takers, U.S. politicians, Twitter users, and LinkedIn users. Our findings illustrate the nuanced relationship between political ideology, self-enhancement, and happiness and illuminate the contradictory ways that happiness differences can manifest across behavior and self-reports.
A teenager from London, who was allegedly trying to join a Kurdish military women’s unit fighting Isis in Syria, has been charged with a terrorist offence.
Shilan Ozcelik, who is of Kurdish descent, was arrested earlier this year at Stansted airport. She is believed to be the first British citizen to be arrested for trying to join the campaign against the jihadis who control eastern Syria and western Iraq.
…
She was arrested by on 16 January at as she returned from Brussels. Neither the YPJ nor the YPG, the main men’s Kurdish peshmerga militia in northern Syria, are banned organisations in the UK.
The charges against Ozcelik are understood to relate to the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK), which is outlawed in Britain and has spent decades fighting the Turkish army in a separatist conflict
Don’t take my word for it. The Wall Street Journal, the leading financial information magazine in the world, has a blog dedicated to the life of expats and recently they featured a story ‘Who is an expat, anyway?’. Here are the main conclusions: “Some arrivals are described as expats; others as immigrants; and some simply as migrants. It depends on social class, country of origin and economic status. It’s strange to hear some people in Hong Kong described as expats, but not others. Anyone with roots in a western country is considered an expat … Filipino domestic helpers are just guests, even if they’ve been here for decades. Mandarin-speaking mainland Chinese are rarely regarded as expats … It’s a double standard woven into official policy.”
It’s actually quite amazing where racism and privilege shows itself.
With a bit of expat experience, my partner and I were discussing this and came to the conclusion that it’s not so much racism these days. However, there is a strong class/privilege issue. In a nutshell, expats work move to take up a designated job in expensive offices and earn loads of money ‘guest’ workers take up jobs in factories, restaurants and homes and don’t earn much at all.
The class/privilege bias means that Europeans hold a lot of the expat positions in some places but the situation is changing. That said, despite our belief that expat/guest definitions are about class, how the person on the street relates to all of these economic migrants can definitely racist, in my experience.
Excuse me if this has already been covered, but has anyone else noticed how the Roy Morgan website isn’t being updated with its latest poll since Jan 18th 2015, even though another poll has been released by them through the media since then?
I’m assuming they’re only releasing their polls now to paying organisations prior to media release. Is this the case?
A bit late to tell you but their February Poll was published on the day it was released. It is at http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/6078-roy-morgan-new-zealand-february-voting-intention-201502200720
They posted it on February 20, which is the date they referred to.
They haven’t changed anything except that at the moment they are only polling once a month in New Zealand.
If you want to you can register at the website and you will get an e-mail when they post polls you are interested in. I’m sure the method is there. I forget what I did.
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Open access notables Glacial isostatic adjustment reduces past and future Arctic subsea permafrost, Creel et al., Nature Communications:Sea-level rise submerges terrestrial permafrost in the Arctic, turning it into subsea permafrost. Subsea permafrost underlies ~ 1.8 million km2 of Arctic continental shelf, with thicknesses in places exceeding 700 m. Sea-level variations over glacial-interglacial cycles control ...
The operating system (OS) is the heart and soul of a computer, orchestrating every action and interaction between hardware and software. But have you ever wondered where on a computer is the operating system generally stored? The answer lies in the intricate dance between hardware and software components, particularly within ...
Laptops have become essential tools for work, entertainment, and communication, offering portability and functionality. However, with rising energy costs and growing environmental concerns, understanding a laptop’s power consumption is more important than ever. So, how many watts does a laptop use? The answer, unfortunately, isn’t straightforward. It depends on several ...
Screen recording has become an essential tool for various purposes, such as creating tutorials, capturing gameplay footage, recording online meetings, or sharing information with others. Fortunately, Dell laptops offer several built-in and external options for screen recording, catering to different needs and preferences. This guide will explore various methods on ...
A cracked or damaged laptop screen can be a frustrating experience, impacting productivity and enjoyment. Fortunately, laptop screen repair is a common service offered by various repair shops and technicians. However, the cost of fixing a laptop screen can vary significantly depending on several factors. This article delves into the ...
Gaming laptops represent a significant investment for passionate gamers, offering portability and powerful performance for immersive gaming experiences. However, a common concern among potential buyers is their lifespan. Unlike desktop PCs, which allow for easier component upgrades, gaming laptops have inherent limitations due to their compact and integrated design. This ...
The annual inventory report of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions has been released, showing that gross emissions have dropped for the third year in a row, to 78.4 million tons: All-told gross emissions have decreased by over 6 million tons since the Zero Carbon Act was passed in 2019. ...
Experiencing a locked computer can be frustrating, especially when you need access to your files and applications urgently. The methods to unlock your computer will vary depending on the specific situation and the type of lock you encounter. This guide will explore various scenarios and provide step-by-step instructions on how ...
While the world has largely transitioned to digital communication, faxing still holds relevance in certain industries and situations. Fortunately, gone are the days of bulky fax machines and dedicated phone lines. Today, you can easily send and receive faxes directly from your computer, offering a convenient and efficient way to ...
In our increasingly digital world, home computers have become essential tools for work, communication, entertainment, and more. However, this increased reliance on technology also exposes us to various cyber threats. Understanding these threats and taking proactive steps to protect your home computer is crucial for safeguarding your personal information, finances, ...
In the ever-evolving world of technology, server-based computing has emerged as a cornerstone of modern digital infrastructure. This article delves into the concept of server-based computing, exploring its various forms, benefits, challenges, and its impact on the way we work and interact with technology. Understanding Server-Based Computing: At its core, ...
The absolute brass neck of this guy.We want more medical doctors, not more spin doctors, Luxon was saying a couple of weeks ago, and now we’re told the guy has seven salaried adults on TikTok duty. Sorry, doing social media. The absolute brass neck of it. The irony that the ...
Buzz from the Beehive Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones relishes spatting and eagerly takes issue with environmentalists who criticise his enthusiasm for resource development. He relishes helping the fishing industry too. And so today, while the media are making much of the latest culling in the public service to ...
Having written, taught and worked for the US government on issues involving unconventional warfare and terrorism for 30-odd years, two things irritate me the most when the subject is discussed in public. The first is the Johnny-come-lately academics-turned-media commentators who … Continue reading → ...
Eric Crampton writes – Kainga Ora is the government’s house building agency. It’s been building a lot of social housing. Kainga Ora has its own (but independent) consenting authority, Consentium. It’s a neat idea. Rather than have to deal with building consents across each different territorial authority, Kainga Ora ...
Muriel Newman writes – The Coalition Government says it is moving with speed to deliver campaign promises and reverse the damage done by Labour. One of their key commitments is to “defend the principle that New Zealanders are equal before the law.” To achieve this, they have pledged they “will not advance ...
Chris Trotter writes – The absence of anything resembling a fightback from the public servants currently losing their jobs is interesting. State-sector workers’ collective fatalism in the face of Coalition cutbacks indicates a surprisingly broad acceptance of impermanence in the workplace. Fifty years ago, lay-offs in the thousands ...
Mariupol, on the Azov Sea coast, was one of the first cities to suffer almost complete destruction after the start of the Ukraine War started in late February 2022. We remember the scenes of absolute destruction of the houses and city structures. The deaths of innocent civilians – many of ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – Ten years ago, I wrote the following in a Listener column: Every year around one in five new-born babies will be reliant on their caregivers benefit by Christmas. This pattern has persisted from at least 1993. For Maori the number jumps to over one in three. ...
Climate change is expected to generate more and more extreme events, delivering a sort of structural shock to inflation that central banks will have to react to as if they were short-term cyclical issues. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s ...
It’s a simple deal. We pay taxes in order to finance the social services we want and need. The carnage now occurring across the public sector though, is breaking that contract. Over 3,000 jobs have been lost so far. Many are in crucial areas like Education where the impact of ...
Hi,A friend had their 40th over the weekend and decided to theme it after Curb Your Enthusiasm fashion icon Susie Greene. Captured in my tiny kitchen before I left the house, I ending up evoking a mix of old lesbian and Hillary Clinton — both unintentional.Me vs Hillary ClintonIf you’re ...
This is a re-post from Andrew Dessler at the Climate Brink blogIn 2023, the Earth reached temperature levels unprecedented in modern times. Given that, it’s reasonable to ask: What’s going on? There’s been lots of discussions by scientists about whether this is just the normal progression of global warming or if something ...
The schools are on holiday and the sun is shining in the seaside village and all day long I have been seeing bunches of bikes; Mums, Dads, teens and toddlers chattering, laughing, happy, having a bloody great time together. Cheers, AT, for the bits of lane you’ve added lately around the ...
Today in our National-led authoritarian nightmare: Shane Jones thinks Ministers should be above the law: New Zealand First MP Shane Jones is accusing the Waitangi Tribunal of over-stepping its mandate by subpoenaing a minister for its urgent hearing on the Oranga Tamariki claim. The tribunal is looking into the ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Politicians across the political spectrum are implicated in the New Zealand media’s failing health. Either through neglect or incompetent interventions, successive governments have failed to regulate, foster, and allow a healthy Fourth Estate that can adequately hold politicians and the powerful to account. ...
Citizen Science writes – Last week saw two significant developments in the debate over the treatment of trans-identifying children and young people – the release in Britain of the final report of Dr Hilary Cass’s review into gender healthcare, and here in New Zealand, the news that the ...
One night while sleeping in my bed I had a beautiful dreamThat all the people of the world got together on the same wavelengthAnd began helping one anotherNow in this dream, universal love was the theme of the dayPeace and understanding and it happened this wayAfter such an eventful day ...
This is a guest post by Oscar Simms who is a housing activist, volunteer for the Coalition for More Homes, and was the Labour Party candidate for Auckland Central at the last election. ...
Turning what Labour called the “holiday highway” into a four-lane expressway from Auckland to Whangarei could bring at least an economic benefit of nearly two billion a year for Northland each year. And it could help bring an end to poverty in one of New Zealand’s most deprived regions. The ...
Tonight’s six-stack includes: launching his substack with a bunch of his previous documentaries, including this 1992 interview with Dame Whina Cooper. and here crew give climate activists plenty to do, including this call to submit against the Fast Track Approvals bill. writes brilliantly here on his substack ...
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 ...
You're in the mall when you hear it: some kind of popping sound in the distance, kids with fireworks, maybe. But then a moment of eerie stillness is followed by more of the fireworks sound and there’s also screaming and shrieking and now here come people running for their lives.Does ...
Karl du Fresne writes – There’s a crisis in the news media and the media are blaming it on everyone except themselves. Culpability is being deflected elsewhere – mainly to the hapless Minister of Communications, Melissa Lee, and the big social media platforms that are accused of hoovering ...
I don’t normally send out two newsletters in a day but I figured I’d say something about… the news. If two newsletters is a bit much then maybe just skip one, I don’t want to overload people. Alternatively if you’d be interested in sometimes receiving multiple, smaller updates from me, ...
Buzz from the Beehive David Seymour and Winston Peters today signalled that at least two ministers of the Crown might be in Wellington today. Seymour (as Associate Minister of Education) announced the removal of more red tape, this time to make it easier for new early learning services to be ...
Politicians across the political spectrum are implicated in the New Zealand media’s failing health. Either through neglect or incompetent interventions, successive governments have failed to regulate, foster, and allow a healthy Fourth Estate that can adequately hold politicians and the powerful to account. Our political system is suffering from the ...
David Farrar writes – The Broadcasting Standards Authority ruled: Comments by radio host Kate Hawkesby suggesting Māori and Pacific patients were being prioritised for surgery due to their ethnicity were misleading and discriminatory, the Broadcasting Standards Authority has found. It is a fact such patients are prioritised. ...
PRC and its proxies in Solomons have been preparing for these elections for a long time.A lot of money, effort and intelligence have gone into ensuring an outcome that won’t compromise Beijing’s plans. Cleo Paskall writes – On April 17th the Solomon Islands, a country of ...
Is speeding up the trip to and from Wellington airport by 12 minutes worth spending up more than $10 billion? Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The six news items that stood out to me in the last day to 8:26 am today are:The Lead: Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced ...
You're a fraud, and you know itBut it's too good to throw it all awayAnyone would do the sameYou've got 'em goingAnd you're careful not to show itSometimes you even fool yourself a bitIt's like magicBut it's always been a smoke and mirrors gameAnyone would do the sameForty six billion ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections The June general election in Mexico could mark a turning point in ensuring that the country’s climate policies better reflect the desire of its citizens to address the climate crisis, with both leading presidential candidates expressing support for renewable energy. Mexico is the ...
2024, it feels, keeps presenting us with ever more challenges, ever more dismay.Do you give up yet? It seems to ask.No? How about this? Or this?How about this?When I say 2024 I really mean the state of humanity in 2024.Saturday night, we watched Civil War because that is one terrifying cliff we've ...
Buzz from the Beehive A pet project and governmental tunnel vision jump out from the latest batch of ministerial announcements. The government is keen to assure us of its concern for the wellbeing of our pets. It will be introducing pet bonds in a change to the Residential Tenancies Act ...
A recent report generated from a Growing Up in New Zealand (GUiNZ) survey of 1,224 rangatahi Māori aged 11-12 found: Cultural connectedness was associated with fewer depression symptoms, anxiety symptoms and better quality of life. That sounds cut and dry. But further into the report the following appears: Cultural connectedness is ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: From the gory details of job-cuts news, you’d think the public service was being eviscerated. While the media’s view of the cuts is incomplete, it’s also true that departments have been leaking the particulars faster than a Wellington ...
Remember the good old days, back when New Zealand had a PM who could think and speak calmly and intelligently in whole sentences without blustering? Even while Iran’s drones and missiles were still being launched, Helen Clark was live on TVNZ expertly summing up the latest crisis in the Middle ...
Costello did not pass on analysis of the benefits of the smokefree reforms to Cabinet, emphasising instead the extra tax revenues of repealing them. Photo: Hagen Hopkins, Getty Images TL;DR: The six news items that stood out to me at 7:26 am today are:The Lead: Casey Costello never passed on ...
True loveYou're the one I'm dreaming ofYour heart fits me like a gloveAnd I'm gonna be true blueBaby, I love youI’ve written about the job cuts in our news media last week. The impact on individuals, and the loss to Aotearoa of voices covering our news from different angles.That by ...
While commentators, including former Prime Minister Helen Clark, are noting a subtle shift in New Zealand’s foreign policy, which now places more emphasis on the United States, many have missed a key element of the shift. What National said before the election is not what the government is doing now. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 7, 2024 thru Sat, April 13, 2024. Story of the week Our story of the week is about adults in the room setting terms and conditions of ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
The Government’s newly announced review of methane emissions reduction targets hints at its desire to delay Aotearoa New Zealand’s urgent transition to a climate safe future, the Green Party said. ...
The Government must commit to the Maitai School building project for students with high and complex needs, to ensure disabled students from the top of the South Island have somewhere to learn. ...
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey and his Government colleagues have made a meal of their mental health commitments, showing how flimsy their efforts to champion the issue truly are, says Labour Mental Health spokesperson Ingrid Leary. ...
Māori are yet to see anything from this Government except cuts, reversals and taking our people backwards, Māori Development spokesperson Willie Jackson said. ...
The Coalition Government’s refusal to commit to ongoing funding for social housing is seeing the sector pull back on developments and families watch their dreams of securing a home fade away, says Labour Housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty. ...
Changes to minimum wage and benefit indexation means many New Zealanders will get less this year, as the Government gives a big tax break to landlords instead. ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
The Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...
Changes to the Resource Management Act will align consenting for coal mining to other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The inconsistent treatment of coal mining compared with other extractive activities is burdensome red tape that fails to acknowledge ...
Trade, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay has concluded productive discussions with ministerial counterparts in Beijing today, in support of the New Zealand-China trade and economic relationship. “My meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao reaffirmed the complementary nature of the bilateral trade relationship, with our Free Trade Agreement at its ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today paid tribute to Singapore’s outgoing Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Meeting in Singapore today immediately before Prime Minister Lee announced he was stepping down, Prime Minister Luxon warmly acknowledged his counterpart’s almost twenty years as leader, and the enduring legacy he has left for Singapore and South East ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. While in Singapore as part of his visit to South East Asia this week, Prime Minister Luxon also met with Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and will meet with Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has made further appointments to the Board of Antarctica New Zealand as part of a continued effort to ensure the Scott Base Redevelopment project is delivered in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The Minister has appointed Neville Harris as a new member of the Board. Mr ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis will travel to the United States on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the Five Finance Ministers group, with counterparts from Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. “I am looking forward to meeting with our Five Finance partners on how we can work ...
The coalition Government has today announced purrfect and pawsitive changes to the Residential Tenancies Act to give tenants with pets greater choice when looking for a rental property, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Pets are important members of many Kiwi families. It’s estimated that around 64 per cent of New ...
State Highway 1 (SH1) through Wellington City is heavily congested at peak times and while planning continues on the duplicate Mt Victoria Tunnel and Basin Reserve project, the Government has also asked NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) to consider and provide advice on a Long Tunnel option, Transport Minister Simeon Brown ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters have condemned Iran’s shocking and illegal strikes against Israel. “These attacks are a major challenge to peace and stability in a region already under enormous pressure," Mr Luxon says. "We are deeply concerned that miscalculation on any side could ...
Hundreds of people in little over a week have turned out in Northland to hear Regional Development Minister Shane Jones speak about plans for boosting the regional economy through infrastructure. About 200 people from the infrastructure and associated sectors attended an event headlined by Mr Jones in Whangarei today. Last ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti has today thanked outgoing Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora Chair Dame Karen Poutasi for her service on the Board. “Dame Karen tendered her resignation as Chair and as a member of the Board today,” says Dr Reti. “I have asked her to ...
The NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has signalled their proposed delivery approach for the Government’s 15 Roads of National Significance (RoNS), with the release of the State Highway Investment Proposal (SHIP) today, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Boosting economic growth and productivity is a key part of the Government’s plan to ...
New Zealand is renewing its connections with a world facing urgent challenges by pursuing an active, energetic foreign policy, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Our country faces the most unstable global environment in decades,” Mr Peters says at the conclusion of two weeks of engagements in Egypt, Europe and the United States. “We cannot afford to sit back in splendid ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has announced the Australian Governor-General, His Excellency General The Honourable David Hurley and his wife Her Excellency Mrs Linda Hurley, will make a State visit to New Zealand from Tuesday 16 April to Thursday 18 April. The visit reciprocates the State visit of former Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced that Medsafe has approved 11 cold and flu medicines containing pseudoephedrine. Pharmaceutical suppliers have indicated they may be able to supply the first products in June. “This is much earlier than the original expectation of medicines being available by 2025. The Government recognised ...
New Zealand and the United States have recommitted to their strategic partnership in Washington DC today, pledging to work ever more closely together in support of shared values and interests, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The strategic environment that New Zealand and the United States face is considerably more ...
April 11, 2024 Joint Declaration by United States Secretary of State the Honorable Antony J. Blinken and New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs the Right Honourable Winston Peters We met today in Washington, D.C. to recommit to the historic partnership between our two countries and the principles that underpin it—rule ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced further New Zealand cooperation with the United States in the Pacific Islands region through $16.4 million in funding for initiatives in digital connectivity and oceans and fisheries research. “New Zealand can achieve more in the Pacific if we work together more urgently and ...
With submissions closing today, Macassey-Pickard says groups around the country have been supporting a huge range of people to make their submissions. ...
Our response to the new legislation is informed by targeted conversations with practitioners working in the system and through an implementation lens. ...
The new ‘Fast-track Approvals Bill’ would give just three Ministers the power to approve or deny development projects. They would avoid the usual checks and balances that are in place to protect rivers, land, the ocean, and communities. ...
COMMENTARY:By Eugene Doyle Helen Clark, how I miss you. The former New Zealand Prime Minister — the safest pair of hands this country has had in living memory — gave a masterclass on the importance of maintaining an independent foreign policy when she spoke at an AUKUS symposium held ...
The government's released the list of organisations provided with information on how to apply - just hours before public submissions on the bill close. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milton Speer, Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney Before climate change really got going, eastern Australia’s flash floods tended to concentrate on our coastal regions, east of the Great Dividing Range. But that’s changing. Now ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Finkel, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University Sia Duff / South Australian Museum In February, the South Australian Museum “re-imagined” itself. In the face of rising costs and inadequate government funds, CEO David Gaimster, who took the reins last June, declared ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Pearce, Professor, School of Allied Heath, Human Services & Sport, La Trobe University, La Trobe University This week, Collingwood AFL player Nathan Murphy announced his retirement, brought on by his concussion history and ongoing issues. The 24-year-old’s seemingly sudden retirement, ...
The Mental Health Foundation provides support and resources for those facing the loss of their job, so it’s wrong in the very week the Government adds another 1000 jobs to its tally of cuts, that this is happening. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company Decay, terror, revulsion. These are three of the central themes of Thomas Bernhard’s rarely performed play The President. The Austrian is one of the greatest ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ye In (Jane) Hwang, Postdoctoral Research Associate at School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney Shutterstock You’d be hard pressed to find any aspect of daily life that doesn’t require some form of digital literacy. We need only to look back ten ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says threats by ministers Shane Jones and David Seymour to reform or close down the Waitangi Tribunal were “ill-considered”, as legal experts say the ministers may have breached Cabinet Manual conventions. “I think those comments are ill-considered and we expect all ministers to actually exercise good ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Newton, Professor of Exercise Medicine, Edith Cowan University Pexels/RDNE stock project You’re not in your 20s or 30s anymore and you know regular health checks are important. So you go to your GP. During the appointment they measure your waist. ...
A new poem by Evangeline Riddiford Graham. Mitochondrial Problem I. It was long drive to Kansas for the man and his dog but you have to understand he said She doesn’t fly. Which calls to mind not carsick shitting barking or whining but a dog who chooses not to as ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)Hot off the press, this debut ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Wajnryb McDonald, PhD candidate in Criminology, University of Sydney Less than 24 hours after Ashlee Good was murdered in Bondi Junction, her family released a statement requesting the media take down photographs they had reproduced of Ashlee and her family without ...
Chief executive Shaun Robinson said it has not had any government funding cut, but government-funded contracts have not kept pace with rising costs. ...
The Ministry of Health has delayed the release of its evidence brief on the safety, reversibility and mental health and wellbeing outcomes for puberty blockers. While we wait, Julia de Bres speaks to those with firsthand experience. Best practice gender-affirming healthcare is based on trans people’s self-determination and agency. The ...
Barcelona’s city streets have gone from traffic-clogged to pedestrian-friendly. How? Superblocks. Ellen Rykers explains. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week I read a great interview with renowned urbanist Janette Sadik-Khan by The Spinoff’s Wellington editor Joel MacManus: “You can reimagine streets, ...
Student groups ‘Climate Action VUW’, Schools Strike 4 Climate and VUWSA will be on the street in Wellington today, the last day for submissions on the Fast-track Approvals Bill, with a message that the fight against the Government’s ‘War on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sofia Ammassari, Research Fellow, Griffith University Since 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity has grown exponentially – and so has the formidable organisational machine of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). These two factors will be key to delivering the BJP a ...
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HOMEOPATHY!!!!!
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-14032015/#comment-985074
Prescription medications responsible for historic and rapidly increasing death rate amongst white US women
It adds up to millions of excess deaths. No wonder some are questioning their own use of conventional medical approaches.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/05/the-mysterious-force-behind-rising-death-rates-for-white-women/
Over the past 15 years, death rates among white women in the United States have mysteriously surged. New research pins blame on an insidious culprit: prescription painkillers.
Nice use of ‘the euphemism ‘painkillers’.
It’s not like (white women) haven’t been through this before. In the 50s it was mother’s little helper. The article is trying to discuss a lot of things but not very clearly. Class is obviously a factor, as are geographical prescribing patterns, and the much easier availability of drugs. Ethnicity is mentioned, but in an almost causal way (black women’s death rates are much higher than white women’s despite the former decreasing and the latter increasing).
Breast cancer rates were for a long time a lot lower in black and Hispanic women then whites. White women’s rate has fallen in the last 10 years and the incident rate is now almost the same. Hispanic women have a far lower incident rate – it is almost unchanged.
Black people have a first time stroke incidence twice as high as whites. They also have a higher incidence rate of high blood pressure.
This points to lifestyle choices, diet for the most part but could also involvelso genetics.
Cause of Death Age-Adjusted Death Rates*
White Black Hispanic Asian
All causes 450.4 690.9 432.8 264.6
Heart disease 121.9 183.3 84.2 67.4
Coronary heart disease 79.2 92.5 54.7 42.9
Stroke 23.3 41.4 19 22.7
Cancer 121 161.2 76.1 74.8
COPD 21.9 17.7 8.5 7.4
Pneumonia/influenza 12.7 17.4 9.8 10.3
Liver disease/cirrhosis 7.1 8 11.7 2.4
Diabetes mellitus 12 28.8 18.4 8.7
HIV infection 2.6 20.6 6.2 0.8
External causes 46.7 68.8 44.7 24.4
Infant Mortality per 1,000 6 13.6 5.8 5.5
Life expectancy (years from birth) 77.3 71.3 >80? >80?
‘Lifestyle choice’ is an unfortunate choice of words, giving you the benefit of the doubt there, but poverty undermines lifestyle choices most of the time.
Lifestyle choice – I would translate this into not moving much. Not much sport and lots of TV, games etc. This is then showing in the heart disease and diabetics stats. Mind you, whites are catching up fast.
” No wonder some are questioning their own use of conventional medical approaches.”
It has me questioning, in the context of the US health system, long-term relief through strong painkillers of conditions that patients can’t afford to see a specialist about.
In other words people are using strong painkillers, obtained through health practitioners too ready to write prescriptions for them, or obtained illegally, because they can’t even get to see someone about conventional medical approaches for their conditions.
i.e:
I’d guess that another significant part of the picture is painkillers being used by people self medicating other kinds of pain than physical injury/illness. That’s about poverty, self-determination, culture etc as much as access to medical care.
I agree – class, ethnicity, culture, geography. societal structures that impact on the use of available resources (time, money, social constraints etc) are all part of the context that affect access to health care (compared to commonly held views of access directly related to categories like transport, ethnicity, age, ‘attitudes’ & ‘behaviours’ and so forth).
Although the US stands out in the developed world for the cost being a massive barrier. Hopefully the affordable care act despite its flaws will continue to improve this situation.
“are all part of the context that affect access to health care”
Yes, but I’m saying in addition to that, poverty etc makes for a higher level of need to self medicate around existential pain, and people will use what they can get their hands on. That is essentially not a healthcare issue but one of poverty i.e. relieve poverty and many people won’t need to self-medicate. That’s a different thing than someone with back pain or on a long waiting list for hip replacement using opiates in the meantime because they’re not getting adequate medical treatment.
Yes, I see what you mean, however that is true of people in all sorts of situations – whether they’re poor or not. For example, commonly cited are links between addictions are surviving child sexual abuse and domestic violence.
I also wonder how much the medicalisation of unhappiness and anxiety affect people’s responses to these perfectly ok responses to some short-term, awful situations.
It’s the medicalisation of societal, economic and familial dysfunction to try and cope with far wider issues.
+1
That fits with what I know of both living with chronic pain and prescribing practice in Dixie. If you have a pain problem that could be fixed if surgery were available, what do you do? You treat the symptoms while the underlying problem gets worse. Eventually you die and the American medical establishment blames the painkillers. The problem is just as likely to be lack of access to hospital treatment.
I wonder if there is an equivalent rising death rate in countries that have an accessible health system?
“I wonder if there is an equivalent rising death rate in countries that have an accessible health system?”
A good research question there… hmm
re chronic pain – I’ve been having a bit of a conversation with a patient US group and although I was aware of access issues there, some of the stories stunned me – losing healthcare with loss of job, going bankrupt several time due to the cost of meds, managing life around access to serious painkillers because they can’t get the prescriptions required to manage their disease, and then they lose access to the painkillers…. when they finally get on clinical trials or pharma charity (for want of a better description) the illness has progressed to a level that causes permanent disability – the list goes on….
And that is the sort of health system NAct want for Aotearoa.
Yup. Just recently a Health Funds Association/NZIER report [.pdf] came out in favour of an workplace insurance scheme.
I think the news/PR release when largely unnoticed here, but their lobbyists will certainly be heard loud and clear by the government, I expect.
Magic memory water is the way to go
That’s unhelpful stirring Contrarian. Let it go.
The topic was the increased death rate among white women and its link to a type of prescription drug.
CV has some insight into the intersection of social problems and over medicalisation, understanding of which is at a primitive stage in the mainstream.
What’s your view on that?
no
Deaths (most of which are unintentional) from strong opioids have been increasing in parallel with increasing opioid sales worldwide but particularly in the USA. The USA uses 55% of the global morphine and hydromorphone supply, >99% of hydrocodone supply and 83% of oxycodone supply. On the other hand, Canada has the highest per capita “dose”. Mortality rates in NZ from prescription medicines are not easily available. The use of strong opioids has increased exponentially since the late 80s and early 90s when doctors in the USA started using them for non-cancer pain, despite minimal evidence of their long-term effectiveness and safety. Strong patient and healthcare professional lobby groups (often backed by pharmaceutical companies) combined with aggressive marketing tactics led to a marked growth in the use of strong opioids for non-cancer pain. The drug company who make Oxycontin spent US$200M on marketing in 2001, including US$40M in drug rep bonuses. The drug company’s profits rose from US$48M in 1996 when it was launched to US$3B in 2010. There are many reasons for the increase in use (including abuse), and the consensus is that it is primarily due to the lower threshold to prescribing strong opioids (particularly in light of increasing concerns about the toxicity of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory painkillers). Lack of access to specialist care is unlikely to be a strong contributor, treating existential suffering (eloquently put) is a recognised problem (“chemical coping”). Another reason the use is increasing is the development of tolerance, whereby more drug is needed for the same effect (this is not addiction or dependence). For more information on NZ usage: http://www.bpac.org.nz/BPJ/2014/July/oxycodone.aspx, http://www.hqsc.govt.nz/assets/Health-Quality-Evaluation/Atlas/opioidsSF/atlas.html
Thanks Pauline, interesting. I was surprised to learn from the Bpac link the majority of oxycodone isn’t prescribed in general practice. It says GPs post hospital discharge can feel compelled to continue prescribing, which figures, but I would have thought the resulting primary care prescription numbers would then vastly outweigh hospital prescribing.
I wonder how much of the hospital prescribing is post-surgical, and how much is to patients waiting for surgery when they visit the hospital specialist or the hospital’s chronic pain clinic.
”Dispensing data shows that in New Zealand, the majority of prescriptions for oxycodone are not being written by General Practitioners.5 This suggests that a considerable proportion of oxycodone is being prescribed to patients on discharge from hospital, e.g. for post-surgical pain management”
The majority of hospital scripts for strong opioids are for patients being discharged after surgery, possibly also from ED. Specialists who see patients in outpatient clinics (including chronic pain team specialists) try to avoid writing scripts as they usually prefer the GP to retain primary management of the patient (plus it’s a hassle writing controlled drug scripts). The number of people taking strong opioids because they are waiting for surgery is likely to be minimal. Even so, these would only be hip and knee surgery and I can’t see orthopaedic surgeons writing controlled drug scripts. To give an example, in BoP in 2013 the prescription numbers for strong opioids were 4500; 2100 of these were for pts who had been in hospital in the past week, so 2400 were GP prescribed. Only about 600 of these were for >6 weeks. So the majority of the 4500 were for short-term use which is good.
+1 Thanks Pauline. Diseases with chronic pain is managed quite differently in NZ compared with the US, I think, where ‘most’ chronic noncancer pain is managed in primary care.
Sort of what I expected given access to free specialist care (albeit with sometimes long waiting times) in NZ.
Using rheumatoid arthritis as and example, many individuals with this disease are managed in primary care, where, as well as not being able to afford the cost of treatment, patients may be in the care of physicians who are uncomfortable with prescribing drugs that control the disease. This means patients are left with symptomatic relief i.e. painkillers. Similar concerns about treating in primary care in Canada exist. NZ GPs do tend follow recommended practice and refer people with RA to specialists.
Also interesting is GP concerns about the safety of non-steriodal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). There is possibly a link there to increased prescribing of opiates and the controversy surrounding cox-2 inhibitors (e.g. vioxx) in the early 2000s which eventually proved an increased risk of heart problems with the used of several NSAIDs.
I’m not sure about the subtleties of US primary care/specialist care but at in NZ pts can be treated by their GP along with input from a specialist (at no cost to the pt) if the pt’s condition is more complex or labile. The waiting lists are not as long as they used to be and are usually quite reasonable, depending on the severity of the problem. Specialists try not to “take over” the prescribing and management because the GP is the main healthcare provider. Having access to specialists in the public system also gives access to specialist meds including expensive biologicals like adalimumab for RA, whereas in the US I understand this is dictated by someone’s insurance coverage and many people have to pay extra as a copayment. BTW, opioids are not very effective in RA.
Yes, the increase in strong opioid prescribing may be related to the safety issues about NSAIDs including COX-2 inhibitors but there is some evidence that opioids have even more risks in older pts (Arch Intern Med. 2010;170(22):1979-1986).
It’s been awhile since I’ve used the NZ health system, but I’m pretty familiar with how it operates. Good to know waiting times are improving (I suspect, more targeted referrals rather than improvements in resourcing).
It’s also great when GPs and specialists can work together to manage chronic pain conditions. Although that would vary depending on the interests and confidence of the GP in managing a particular condition and the drug protocols, and for RA, whether the condition has stabilised, or not, as far as I recall. Although I understand that there is some collaboration between ‘expert’ GPs and consultants in this field to improve this situation.
Yes, I’ve also heard that access to some biologics is much better than a few years ago, although the range is still rather sparse. You’re right that insurance coverage and co-payment are a huge big problem for US patients (along with getting a specialist diagnosis in the first place), according to the people there that I’ve conversed with.
“opioids are not very effective in RA.”
… and yet … they’re still prescribed (referring to aforementioned US patients). Obviously the best pain relief is to control the disease – a whole other topic, given the recommended meds for that – except that plenty of people refuse these and rely on painkillers to get through. The John Hopkins Institute does suggest there may be a role for opiates in RA. Maybe that justifies, for some, the prescribing of these rather than NSAIDs or steroids, if they’re worried about side effects from those. I’m not sure of the consensus on that view.
Re opioids in the elderly: one of the reasons I used RA as an example is because onset frequently occurs in midlife, rather than later in life, which fit better with the original article of increased deaths in women due to overdoses up to age 54.
Thanks again for the discussion. It’s clearly a big and diverse topic.
Great piece from Chris Trotter.
http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.co.nz/2015/03/not-understood.html
Thanks for the link.
I agree with Chris Trotter: “His (Key’s) brilliance as a politician (if “brilliance” is the right word for so sinister a talent) lies in the way he has transformed the Truths and Untruths of the controversy into brutal binary equations of partisan allegiance.”
Key is very skilled in this regard.
The Crosby Textors of the world have been doing this for over 50 years. Well before “either you are with us or you are against us.” Even before the days of McCarthy, where people labelled as communist sympathisers had their careers and lives destroyed.
+1
It’s actually been going on for centuries but the deception has become more refined over the last few decades.
it’s become a science, and unfortunately, there isn’t an equal and opposite force yet.
The film “Idiocracy” was as prophetic as George Orwell’s books.
Freud, Lippman and Bernays were spot on. And the intellectual left has struggled ever since in the belief that policies, facts and figures – “evidence” – was the way to persuade people one way or the other. Utterly hopeless.
A great article that every New Zealander should read.
At the end of that excellent article about Key’s lying,
a reader had the following comment and a link for signing a petition to John Key:
COMMENT:
Alma Rae from Christchurch:
If anyone’s getting sick of Key’s endless lies, there’s a petition addressed to him asking him to get treatment for pathological lying:
LINK:
https://www.change.org/p/the-right-honourable-john-key-prime-minister-of-new-zealand-get-treatment-for-compulsive-lying
Just watching the Nation, with the 4 Green Leadership contenders. All did well.
Then the panel! FFS.
dunno why you bother what were you expecting, intelligent independant commentary.
tc @ 4.1I was expecting Paddy and the panel to spin, which they did. Paddy started right away with the angle that James would recognise the rights of a snail in the same way human rights (weirdo greens). Then Andrea Vance saying they should know the basic facts such as unemployment rate etc. FFS we are not at school anymore (and even school don’t do the rote learning of facts).
I watched because I wanted to see the Green candidates and hear them talk. They were good, very good and I am a Labour supporter. There was also a good report on obesity.
It’s up online now:
http://www.3news.co.nz/tvshows/thenation/debate-who-wants-to-be-the-next-greens-co-leader-2015031409#axzz3UJAQCSK2
I missed the contenders and could only stand 5 minutes of the commentary on TV, so no opinion as to content as yet.
The debate was much better than the panel would have you believe. Though this from Shaw seems to be on the verge of deception”
15.8% 2005 Kedgley
20.6% 2008 Kedgley
27.6% 2011 Shaw
29.5% 2014 Shaw
The actual increase in GP PV in; “the last election”, was 1.9% rather than the 10% suggested.
I think those numbers are just as much about Grant Robertson as about the Green Party
CR
When you look at the electorate vote, Robertson’s has been increasing with each election and Shaw’s falling. Maybe you mean that Robertson has been prioritising his own place in parliament (EV) over the good of the party (PV)?
2008 17,046 GR 5,971 Kedgley
2011 18,836 GR 5,225 Shaw
2014 19,807 GR 5,077 Shaw
An important point I didn’t mention above was that the 2011 Wellington Central results represents a time when Kedgley was a Green MP. I am disinclined to ascribe Shaw; and his present electorate team, too much credit for the 7% rise in GP PV in that election.
Yep, Greens subjected directly to the same treatment Labour get EVERYTIME they dare to disclose any details. Strangely, Nats NEVER seem to be subjected to same, and get away with appalling whitewashes of any/all their policies.Amazing.
The series of statistical questions seem to have been suddenly unleashed on them with the sole aim of getting some ‘gotcha’ moments for discrediting them. Gower and the panel latched on to this as if those statistical numbers were the most important questions at hand, while ignoring the bulk of the interview based on their many other more important views including on environmental, political, social and leadership issues. They weren’t there to instantly recall and regurgitate the government’s various numbers. Would have been good if they knew, but that was NOT the most important matter for discussion TODAY or to be judged on.
John Key did not even remember whose side he himself was on during the Springbok rugby protest that divided the entire nation!
thought provoking
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11416992
It has happened in other countries, like Syria – “The Herald and World Vision are running a major campaign to raise funds and help the millions of children left homeless by war in Syria.” Good work Herald and World Vision – no matter what percentage actually gets used for purpose that will be better than nothing.
Meanwhile – how would you cope if your world disintegrated.
Western power and western allies wanted Assad gone and this is the result. The result of supplying funds, arms and fighters to anti-Assad rebels in Syria.
As Madeline Albright famously said on American TV when asked about the half million Iraqi children killed by sanctions, they think that it is “worth it.”
NB ISIS continues to make gains against Assad in Syria despite US airstrikes. Its like the US doesn’t really want to be effective against ISIS.
Could always go hunting for food. And retribution from the Politicians.
Pretty sure the easily huntable food wouldn’t last that long. Here in the SI we’d do better, but the climate is colder too, which has a bit impact on food resources.
Just a side point about money being raised for charity and good causes. I thought I heard on Radionz that the actual charity only got 4% of the funds raised by one contracted fund-raiser! Did anyone else hear a report about fund raisers for charities on radio about a week ago?
Now when there are so many requests for money coming at you, and if what I’ve remembered is true, how much will that poor group in the Auckand Domain get from donations from kind people trying to help?
I hate relying on private charity, and I want my government to have principles that ensure adequate help is available from funds received from all NZs from progressive income tax and other taxes. Private charity can fill the extreme needs, the unusual.
Interesting article and thought experiment marty. I think GFC/PO is more likely in NZ than civil war, but it could be both of course.
I’m also not sure about comparing Syria with NZ, such different histories and geographies.
I don’t have to think too much about how I would survive because I’d be one of the first to die 😉 But in the event of a slower, less violent collapse I think about things like how there are plenty of houses in NZ, and a lot of fertile land (decreasing though), and still quite a few people who know how to grow food. More of an issue is what the police and army would do here in various scenarios. Would people really be living in tents when there are empty houses around? If enough of the police and army have family who are homeless are they really going to support a state that says you can’t live in a house unless you pay rent/mortgage?
I’m also not sure about comparing Syria with NZ, such different histories and geographies.
Another quite important difference between NZ and Syria is the fact that the United States, Britain, France, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have not been funding a bloody insurrection against our country for the last four years.
True. It could also be argued that the U.S. doesn’t need to do that here when it has Key as PM ;-/
hi marty, two things spring immediately to mind.
the first is how does raising funds help?
you can not solve a problem with what got you into troubles in the first place.
lets face it these conflicts ultimately have money as their root cause and are a significant driving factor.
secondly i have been moving my life, to build resilience in the event of the scenario you described. learning about growing food energy, how to provide shelter (short and long term), strenthening the communities i am privileged to be involved with.
i have come to the conclusion that money is the main chain that binds us and the less reliant i/we are on money the better off we are.
i forget who said it but when the $*@#i goes down i would prefer to fall from the footpath to the gutter rather than from the penthouse.
Marty, do you think it might be a good idea for our government and its media mouthpieces to stop supporting the violent Al Qaeda/ISIS-led insurrection in Syria?
Only a year or so ago, the media were treating as heroes the fanatical louts who travelled to Syria to join the insurrection. If you read the endless torrent of anti-Syrian propaganda that the Herald has been running for the last four years—clearly you have not done so—then congratulating it would be the last thing you would do.
If the economy was an airplane…
BUT, but, but – what is Hekia Parata doing in this picture?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_4nv7-WQAAw6ku.jpg:large
For a minute I thought you were talking about the smiling lady to the right of Mr Rabbott…….”nah” I said……..”that’s Mrs Rabbott”.
Then I saw Hekia conked out on the table. Poor girl ! They do tell me increasing numbers of kids are coming to school pissed nowadays…….
Looks like she may actually be learning something. Abbot really is a clown.
Love the head-to-table position of the child right in front of Abbott.
I think that the head on table was the original point of the posted image.
It was – but when I first saw the picture, for a minute I actually thought the woman was Hekia! She has an almost identical costume which she used to wear a lot!
Just my weird sense of humour, posted it for a laugh on a dull, grey Saturday.
South Africa is now the most unequal society in the world, certainly more economically unequal than it was before the end of apartheid. Certainly, a cruel irony. But perhaps also the result of putting the politics of ‘race’ above those of class?
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/03/14/south-africa-and-the-consequences-of-race-over-class/
Phil
From Rachel Smalley in the Herald: Exhortation to New Zealanders to discover some human empathy. Good !
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11416992
Mmmmmm………don’t recall any exhortations from the Herald to discover some human empathy re 60 plus years of human tragedy wrought by Zionist Eceptionalism in Palestine…….nor re the carnage brought down by Zionist Sports Tours Inc’s biennial ‘shooting fish in a barrel’ exercises in Gaza.
I do recall TVOne/3 news anchors endlessly, sternly, reproachfully, reporting thus – “And today MILITANTS in Gaza……..”
Damn ! I think Rachel might’ve been one of them at some point. Might be wrong but I think so. Certainly there were heaps !
How the hell does the Granny call that News????
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/21/in-no-one-we-trust/?_r=0
Stiglitz getting to the most fundamental issue.
Cheers RL. Stiglitz is right. If I can hopefully simplify it down increased inequality reduces trust including trust in political institutions which unfortunately weakens them and reduces the ability for a political solution to be found. Feels a bit like a never ending cycle.
An excellent article and a must read.
Please listen to this speech by US Senator Elizabeth Warren on the TPPA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsFdO2DynsQ
“ISDS (Investor Dispute Settlement) raises serious questions about democratic accountability, sovereignty, checks and balances and the separation of power” Sen Warren quoting the CATO Institute Trade Policy Programme ( yup, CATO said that )
“100+ law professors agree: A TPP trade deal that includes an Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision would undermine US sovereignty. ”
– Sen Warren (quote from her fb page)
If a US Senator declares openly that US sovereignty, its commercial freedoms and its legal system’s independence are put at risk by the TPPA, what chance does NZ have ?
(And if you pay attention you may notice that once again, when discussing countries involved in US led actions, New Zealand does not even rate a mention from our good friend the USA)
Excellent clip, Warren is very good. Explains the corporates’ ISDS rort and its history well.
Man who died after being Tasered by police named
Tasered, pepper sprayed and had a dog set on him? I suspect that they never considered that they were going over board with the assaults until he died.
And, really, all they needed to do was block him in, put some clamps on a wheel or two and then leave two officers there to wait until he stepped out.
Exactly Draco. The man must have cooled down eventually.
The comment doesn’t mention that the police also smashed his car windows.
That is very frightening. And if he is a mental case, he would be out of the norms anyway. The suggestion made above about blocking seems the best thing.
Perhaps all the police care about now is targets and money and that comes from the top. If any policeman involved in causing injury or death or being peripheral to it was docked pay according to how involved they were, that might have a limiting effect on violence used. Many of them seem to be brutalised, seem a bit distant from the ordinary citizen. Speak to them and they look at you assessingly “Is this a person causing a public nuisance” in their eyes.
I don’t like this type of police behaviour. They ramp themselves up it seems. Round here they regularly have sirens on and shoot down the road at 70-80 kmh. It can be dangerous being a policeman, but their aqctions can increase that. And all are not equally at risk. The rural officers have more to contend with and less back-up, support people on the ground.
They should be charged with manslaughter, at the very least. Until we see some serious charges laid and pursued through to sentencing, poaka will continue to kill us.
tl;dr – they lie.
Conservatives report, but liberals display, greater happiness
Research suggesting that political conservatives are happier than political liberals has relied exclusively on self-report measures of subjective well-being. We show that this finding is fully mediated by conservatives’ self-enhancing style of self-report (study 1; N = 1433) and then describe three studies drawing from “big data” sources to assess liberal-conservative differences in happiness-related behavior (studies 2 to 4; N = 4936). Relative to conservatives, liberals more frequently used positive emotional language in their speech and smiled more intensely and genuinely in photographs. Our results were consistent across large samples of online survey takers, U.S. politicians, Twitter users, and LinkedIn users. Our findings illustrate the nuanced relationship between political ideology, self-enhancement, and happiness and illuminate the contradictory ways that happiness differences can manifest across behavior and self-reports.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6227/1243#aff-1
Another charity effort that the Herald has been supporting
“As ever, Britain will be sending millions of pounds to schools and hospitals abroad next year, in the form of Cruise missiles.”
—-Frankie Boyle
https://twitter.com/frankieboyle/status/576512653960572928
Double thread posting, but hey…
So, this is what happens when you try to support democracy….
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/13/british-teenage-girl-charged-kurdish-forces-fighting-isis
…
For your amusement: A wall of memes
Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants?
It’s actually quite amazing where racism and privilege shows itself.
With a bit of expat experience, my partner and I were discussing this and came to the conclusion that it’s not so much racism these days. However, there is a strong class/privilege issue. In a nutshell, expats work move to take up a designated job in expensive offices and earn loads of money ‘guest’ workers take up jobs in factories, restaurants and homes and don’t earn much at all.
The class/privilege bias means that Europeans hold a lot of the expat positions in some places but the situation is changing. That said, despite our belief that expat/guest definitions are about class, how the person on the street relates to all of these economic migrants can definitely racist, in my experience.
Excuse me if this has already been covered, but has anyone else noticed how the Roy Morgan website isn’t being updated with its latest poll since Jan 18th 2015, even though another poll has been released by them through the media since then?
I’m assuming they’re only releasing their polls now to paying organisations prior to media release. Is this the case?
A bit late to tell you but their February Poll was published on the day it was released. It is at
http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/6078-roy-morgan-new-zealand-february-voting-intention-201502200720
They posted it on February 20, which is the date they referred to.
They haven’t changed anything except that at the moment they are only polling once a month in New Zealand.
If you want to you can register at the website and you will get an e-mail when they post polls you are interested in. I’m sure the method is there. I forget what I did.
Thanks Alwyn.
Some sanity…
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/13/julian-assange-wikileaks-swedish-prosecutors-london-interview
If only.
Some sanity would be if the accused could be sure that his appearance in a Swedish court had no bearing on US ambitions.
A map of the presently known asteroids that could, potentially, wipe us out.
They should be thought of as ‘reset buttons’