I am truly trying to understand left wing thinking when it comes to negative outcomes of left wing ideals.. I get the impression that many lefties don’t acknowledge any culpability from negative results of leftist policies.
I post my example from yesterday again to see if someone can explain why sugar production in Venezuela has fallen so dramatically after it was nationalised in the early 2000’s. This is not just a one off event that can be explained by the effect of drought. It was a sustained declined over a period of years. Why couldn’t Venezuela keep sugar production at the levels it was when it was largely controlled privately?
The only explanation I have been given so far is that it is related to the fall in the price in oil or sanctions imposed by the US. That doesn’t seem to make sense given that the sugar is for domestic consumption and therefore both those things would have made it more attractive to produce locally rather than import.
I’m struggling to understand the cognitive dissonance of the left wing mind set. I can quite easily accept the negative outcomes of right wing policies.
The elephant graph posted by Anthony Robins today is an example of that. Free trade has negative consequences for a sector of society and public policy needs to take account of that. However I have never seen any acknowledgment from left wingers that policies they support also have negative consequences.
The situation in Venezuela is entirely predictable in terms of outcomes economically. If you reduce private sector involvement and increase public sector participation in the provision of goods and services the right wing economic viewpoint is that you retard production. This us what has happened. However I suspect accepting this self evident truth is too much more many lefties (like Draco for example). They will attempt to deflect the cause to other areas. I find that fascinating.
You are fascinated by what you believe to be “left wing” thought and you struggle to understand it. As a consequence you demand that thinkers from that field explain themselves to you.
Truly. Fascinating.
I challenge left wingers to explain outcomes which can be attributed directly to the ideals they expouse (i.e greater involvement of State and workers in control of production). Are you stating thus is not a key ideal of the left?
I challenged you to demonstrate that any of that rote-learned lazy tripe you call an argument has a basis in reality. With references, to support your assertion of “attributed directly”, for example.
Otherwise, why should anyone answer your loaded questions, mendacity boy?
*yawn* after all this time pasting TS with Venezuela and not actually gaining any understanding of political thought on this site, there’s bugger all anyone can do to enlighten you now.
Anyways, you say Venezuela, I say Honduras. I doubt many want either extreme.
No he’s not, those don’t interrupt the global flow of goods, y’see, and of course they wouldn’t have had lives even that good under a non-capitalist regime.
There are examples in NZ of shortages caused by free market policies. Try housing.
See Gos the problem with the free market is that in it you only need a willing buyer and a willing seller for the free market to have the illusion of working.
Bob Jones buys a private jet. you have just shown the free market works. But you dont see the market adjusting so everyone can have a private jet do you.
Sure ridiculous example but it can be applied to any part and any level of society.
You can have a Kebab shop that has 1000 customers and as such the kebab shop can stay open and in business. Yet at the same time you could have 100000 people who cannot afford a kebab.
Shortage does not always need to relate to supply. it can relate to a persons ability to overcome the barrier of price in order to be able to obtain the desired product or service and for an individual or section of society who cant afford it there is a shortage and as such they may as well have been living in the soviet union just perior to its collapse because for them the outcome is the same.
A good system would enable every single person to meet their essential basic needs as a bare minimum. A shit system won’t even be able to do that. The free market doesnt do that. But you go on defending your shitty system if you can’t think any bigger or broader than it.
you suspect vs taking a look at examples of the principle I outlined in pretty much every single so called first world country.
You champion a system that is so poor it cannot provide essential basic needs for everyone.
Your in telligent In Vino I’ll give you that but your very entrenched in the current system.
Without being able to check the “replies” column is creating a few problems. Not complaining as such because lprent does a magnificent job but the sooner we get it back the better. 😕
Edit: I know we can access immediately after leaving a comment but that’s not always convenient. We all have other lives.
Which particular “left wing ideals” led to this particular outcome Gosman? I’m truly interested in your in-depth detailed analysis, with multiple references and an attempt to asses what bias if any they may contain, showing:
1. That you can accurately summarise left wing ideals and,
2. That your argument has any basis.
Please, I’m truly, sincerely interested in “your” “opinion”.
Do you disagree that the State in Venezuela has encourage greater worker control and State ownership of industry and that is (or at least used to be) a key element if left wing economic theory?
As I stated above, right wing economic thinking suggests the outcome from following such a path is usually reduced quality and/or quantity of goods and services. This is exactly what has occured in Venezuela (and lots of other countries).
I don’t know much if anything about Venezuela, and you tell too many lies for me to take your word for it, so that’s why I asked for multiple references.
Your dismissal of US interference, for example, indicates that you believe it had no effect on Venezuela’s economy. I don’t believe you, and you’re doing a very very shit job of persuading me or indeed, putting up any argument whatsoever.
I have provided numerous source on Venezuela even from a left wing perspective (Venezuelananaalysis). Are you disputing any if the facts that have been put forward such as the decline in domestic Sugar production? I would be quite willing to investigate US interference if you can explain how it is meant to impact production of goods and services within Venezuela in industries largely controlled by the State. Explain a mechanism that allows the US to influence that and I’ll look to see if that is the case.
Meanwhile, in New Zealand. the right makes unemployment and homelessness. No wonder you want to talk about sugar production in a falling global market.
I’m not reading your source until you meet the requirements I laid out in 1.2: write an in-depth detailed multi-referenced analysis that demonstrates why the assertions in your loaded questions are true.
You would certainly have to show how what happens in Venezuela relates to Green and Labour policies in New Zealand, for example.
Remind me what part of “Socialism” involves one person making all the decisions. It’s sad that you just blew over your own house of cards. I suppose I can always enjoy the schadenfreude 😈
Read your second sentence (The first should have been 2 sentences..)
It makes no sense at all. Try to explain it in real English, please. ‘Medium’ is singular, and how does control of ‘medium’ go to large business etc etc??
Who are the first ‘they’ in your third mangled sentence (oil prices?), and maybe you could confirm that the second ‘they’ refers to oil prices?
By the way, it was USA fracking that caused oil prices to fall. But you are one of those who denies any kind of US sabotage, aren’t you?
Hi Gos
Can you please explain what is happening in US politics right now when right wingers have voted in Trump to lead them and his party are trying their best to oust him? A lengthy analysis would be welcome. Cheers
Largely irrelevant in the context of domestic production for a domestic market. Why can’t Venezuelan producers of sugar do so cheaper than foreign producers?
Please post a link to a graph that compares Venezuelan domestic sugar prices with global prices over the period 1950 – 2016.
Then, provide an in-depth detailed multi-referenced analysis of sugar production, its history and methods, both globally and in Venezuela, so that I can put your assertions in context while I think about them.
He is challenging group think on this site The response to challenging sacred lefty dogma with empirical observation highlights the religious zealotry and hate held by many here to any challenge to such dogma The right in turn are a lot more comfortable to ideas been challenged without the tantrums
Why can’t Venezuelan producers of sugar do so cheaper than foreign producers?
Perhaps the owners of the Venezuelan sugar cooperatives have decided that while up to 69% of sugar cane workers in other producer nations are affected by Chronic Kidney Disease, it’s not for them.
I hear the Philippines is importing sugar this year too. I guess the Coca Cola factories in Venezuela (ironic that the symbol of American affluence is produced there) aren’t importing from there.
It may be due to a move from “sweated labour” to improved working conditions. Or fewer workers wanting to work in the sugar fields when better jobs were available elsewhere.
Yep, Sugar is so good for you Gosman. I too am deeply concerned, but more about what concerns the right wing mindset. Worrying about sugar exports and I believe our very own government is deeply worried about luggage at present….
When are you going to own up about the toilet paper Gosman?
Seriously every time you open your mouth about Venezuela I just think you are talking a load of rubbish.
You lied for weeks about the toilet paper issue, and when it was pointed out that the supermarkets artificially created a crisis around toilet paper, you said nothing?
So to answer you question – why do right wingers lie and cheat the system, then blame the left for it?
My God……I hear your frustration Adam but remember……it’s not your fault that Gosman’s a twisted lying zealot with not a care for the world……aside from the miniscule and putrid part of it he inhabits. I mean who the fuck would regularly get on a more or less left wing blog and spiel such cruelty as moral gospel ? That’s a head that needs seeing to in my book. Poor man. Pity the people he/she lives with……if any.
Maybe a shift to stevia production could be better long term move for Venezuela. Stevia is grown in Brazil and Paraguay so may do ok in Venezuela. Getting rid of Coke is probably a positive change for Venezuela and the health of its citizens.
You are aware that simply because they don’t produce the product locally doesn’t mean they aren’t buying it aren’t you? They are importing it from other countries instead. This is costing them precious foreign exchange which they lack.
Gosman you are a bore. If you can’t do your own delving into USA overt and covert interference in central and southern American economies then go back to burying your head in the sand .
No, I challenge you to explain how US interference could lead to a catastrophic drop in production of sugar (amongst other products).
Your argument would be like stating the reason the USSR failed was because of US interference. There is a element of truth that the US was undermining the Soviet Union but the system itself was at fault for its eventual collapse.
Well, it cracked under the pressure of an arms race imposed by a technologically superior USA. But the fairy tale is that Capitalism is just so much better. No mention of the inconvenient fact that all the rich countries have been capitalist, and that no heavily industrialised, rich country has tried anything else, unless you go downscale to include Scandinavian countries small enough and isolated enough not to face that ire of American Capitalism in the way that Cuba, Chile, and Venezuela have had to do, along with others…
I have just watched the most appalling ever attempt on Q&A to politically assassinate Labour’s leader, Andrew Little. So much so that someone, somewhere, needs to publicly condemn TV1 for what was clearly a premeditated and politically motivated attempt to discredit him.
The panel guests consisted of Bryce Edwards, Phil Quin and Heather Roy. The subject matter… Nick Leggett. There was no attempt to explain what happened or what Little said – or why. Instead the public was subjected to a long rant from Phil Quin (which was why he was invited in the first place) about a restaurant dinner in Auckland where he and Nick Leggott spoke to the people gathered. Yeah… he talked about American politics – nothing else – and we weren’t told what Leggett spoke about but we can guess. According to Quin it was all an imagined conspiracy on Little’s part, but no-one (other than beltway types) would have known what he was talking about except that… Andrew Little is a really bad guy and so is the Labour Party.
The most telling moment was when Bryce Edwards tried to add his contribution – which I suspect was going to bring some semblance of balance to the discussion – but he was cut off by the host (whose name escapes me) and on came some ads. But not before a surprised Edwards let out an “aaagh” of frustration. Deliberate? You bet!
You should do a Broadcastings Standards complaint Anne.
I didn’t see it but it is very clearly lacking in balance with a panel like that. Roy is from ACT, Quin has been criticising Labour for decades now, wanting a return to the Rogernomics era. In the 1990s he tried to organise a coup against Helen Clark and Bryce Edwards is, at best, centrist. There should have been someone who could argue Labour’s position to meet the requirements of the act.
Been down that road Karen. Took Q&A to the BSA over their handling of the Hobbit dispute – must have been around 2010/11. It was a total sham. They made it about Helen Kelly (who received a drubbing on the programme in question) and said she was… quite capable of looking after herself.
My complaint had nothing to do with Helen Kelly as a person and whether she could look after herself. As if I would presume to be an arbiter of someone like Helen Kelly’s personal character anyway. Yes, I took the stinging rebuke personally, and just hoped that Helen Kelly (who I don’t personally know) did not buy their nonsense.
I agree your complaint may not be upheld but it may make TVNZ be a bit more careful next time. They hate having to spend time justifying themselves to the BSA.
This is just the start. The whole MSM are at it.
But like they were always assuring us that no one outside the Wellington beltway cares about National’s dirty deeds like the Saudi sheep saga, the Panama Papers, homelessness, dodgy steel, etc etc etc – this time it may backfire, because nobody outside the Wellington beltway truly cares about the Nash/Leggett/Little conflict.
The funniest thing is that the panel reckoned Little should have been talking about “Nick Smith not Nick Leggat”, apparently he opened his stand up doing exactly that.
But this is very clearly a beltway issue, its a shame Q&A have picked it up because they’ve been doing some excellent shows lately, imho.
This now is starting to look like an orchestrated beat up. Who is behind it? It was gallery journalists who brought up the topic when questioning Little so someone has primed them Quin? Pagani? Leggett? My guess is Quin.
Shame that so many gallery journalists have swallowed this.
You know I’m going back donkeys’ years like 40 when a minor ‘journalist’ in Wellington said to me “Well how can Norman Kirk control a country when he can’t even control his own weight?” and then another household name journalist Spiro Zavos said to me when challeneged about the legalities of racist South African rugby tours……”I’ve done Legal System” (the Law 101 at Vic’ at the time).
I have to say this. Our ‘jonolists’ being intellectually and socially pretty much nothing, cannot be trusted other than to pos’ themselves so as to lick the arse of power. In the expectation of being rewarded for it. By the arses they lick. And then they get ‘oh so up their own arses’ when it seems to work. Trev’ of the Hearld for example, junketing with Key.
They are basically very poor examples of humanity. To a man and a woman not very bright. Otherwise they would have done ‘Law’. Not that the rote shit of ‘Law’ speaks of bright. We are so ill-served by the media.
They are such wannabees. And double-shotters. Saw Duncan Garner and his production man I guess, all skinny jeans and florid shirts and RM Williams boots disporting themselves in McDonalds in Wellsford 7.00 am one morning. Talking loud, musing loud, “look at me look at me” Fuck ! what cheapies. In Kaikohe they mighta’ got a well deserved hiding for being so up-themselves waha’.
Chuck, Jason Ede ran a Dirty Politics “black ops team alpha 2 bravo” from John Keys office, tax payer funded dirty tricks where he had access to secret SIS files (for PMs eyes only!) where he had a network of complacent journos & bloggers to smear the opposition & manipulate the last few elections. So there is form of state sponsored smearing & you seemingly support it?
Ann has just posted this below “I noted some comments from Quin the other day about some very, very nasty stuff doing the rounds about him after he left Labour. How did he know it came from L.P. members?”
My guess… all 3 of them – Quin, Pagani and Leggett. Josie loves hanging out with TV celebrities and Gallery types. They are happy to oblige her for tidbits from the enemy camp – Labour. Since I doubt she’s still a member (certainly not an active one) she doesn’t actually know anything of worth.
I noted some comments from Quin the other day about some very, very nasty stuff doing the rounds about him after he left Labour. How did he know it came from L.P. members? If there was anything it was confined to the Wellington beltway. Never heard a whisper in Auckland. Have my doubts it was as serious as he’s making out, but all good with which to bash Labour over the head.
This Gorman reminds me of ShonKey…… Ask him to put up some evidence , and he goes off on to some other blah mindless drivel….. Key does it to use up media airtime….. Sounds good and confident, but no substance….. And certainly no answer.
Sunday morning, I’ll take a look at The Standard for a while, to see what interesting topics are being discussed there…what’s this? Some person named “Gosman” is demanding we answer questions on his chosen topic! How quaint he is! How petulant and righteous he acts when people point to his churlish behaviour.
Other threads, thankfully, are not infested with his pabulum. I’m look to those.
I started a business 10 years ago this November. I started it because I wanted to generate passive income. I wanted enoughy passive income so that I could as much as possible live the life I want to live. It is my life afterall.
To make this happen there are others who work for me. For many years and still to this day they have been paid and I have not.
If I could I would generatew enough passive income and put in place enough automation so that those working for me no longer had to work unecessarily eaither and could then live the life that they each in turn would like to live.
The realisation I came to and the reason I am wqriting this is that in my view every single person should have passive income. Every person should be ( in a good system…. one designed to work for us ) able to live the life they want to live.
Each person should be able to meet their essential basic needs for themselves and their family. Our system doesnt enable this. People are run ragged and in talking to those in the community the one thing everyone lacks is time.
Time is the other thing that is required for me and you and everyone else to be able to live the life that we would like to live. Whatever that life may be and yours will differ from mine and thats ok.
Having passive income that is enough to live on gives you time also. Time so that you can live the life you want to live.
In living the lives we want to live we currently have to work to earn money in order to survive let alone be able to live the life we want to live. So before we can do that we have two barrieres we need to overcome under the current system. We need to make money for ourselves (enough to live the life we want to live) and before we can do that we need a job of some description.
A system that enables humans or in other words a good system does not put in place barriers. In facrt it seeks to remove them.
Having an entire system where everyone has passive income removes those barriers.
We then have a system that enables each and everyone of us and gives us the time to life the lives we each would like to live.
In our current system their are limited options to enable this to happen and each of them is a barrier to having a system of passive income so each of these should not be used but an entirely new and different way found to enable a better system.
The current options are
tax and redistribute wealth – somewhat illogical if you are changing the system to one that gives people money. Why would you take it from some in the first place besides this only gives those it is being taken from a reason to vote against it.
Increase debt to pay for it. We struggle to pay for essential services such as health and education as it is and we have the highest debt our nation has ever had. It is also counter intuitive to a system designed to give people money to enable them to live the life they want top live. Debt forces people rto work not because the work is rewquired and needs to be done for society, No it requires work top be done to earn money to pay back the debt. It is enslavement by debt so again not a good option.
Printing money well this simply in the current system devalues the currency and reduces purchasaing power so not necessarily a good option either at lewast not within the current currency markets.
Nobody said we had to have a debt based monetary system and if having one enslaves people at a time where there are going to be less jobs available therough technological automation then perhaps we should be looking at the same technological automation to replace thew debt based monetary system with one that generates passive income for everyone and enables us all to have time and to be able to live the life we eaxch woulsd like to live. Not only for us but for every single generation that comes after us.
Participation sounds egalitarian, but it leads to some interesting contradictions. The most elaborate camps and spectacles tend to be brought by the rich because they have the time, the money, or both, to do so. Wealthier attendees often pay laborers to build and plan their own massive (and often exclusive) camps. If you scan San Francisco’s Craigslist in the month of August, you’ll start to see ads for part-time service labor gigs to plump the metaphorical pillows of wealthy Burners.
The rich also hire sherpas to guide them around the festival and wait on them at the camp. Some burners derogatorily refer to these rich person camps as “turnkey camps.”
And yet the festival thrives despite these aberrations. The people who go truly come in all shapes, sizes and agendas. It’s inevitable there will be contradictions and tensions. With in excess of 60,000 people in one place, it’s far too big to experience the whole of it in the time you are there.
But the point is that for just one week, many people get to live an alternative way of experiencing the world … and that alone energises them.
how about a worker owned business, organised along burning man/permaculture principles, looking to transfer to a sharing economy?
less about $ (although they are handy), but stronger in building communities, bringing together the like minded and showing a powerful positive example of cooperation.
You gotta love Iceland. First they tell the global banking system to fuck off, then the world’s first lesbian PM … and now this:
One of Europe’s most radical political parties is expected to gain its first taste of power after Iceland’s ruling coalition and opposition agreed to hold early elections caused by the Panama Papers scandal in October.
The Pirate party, whose platform includes direct democracy, greater government transparency, a new national constitution and asylum for US whistleblower Edward Snowden, will field candidates in every constituency and has been at or near the top of every opinion poll for over a year.
As befits a movement dedicated to reinventing democracy through new technology, it also aims to boost the youth vote by persuading the company developing Pokémon Go in Iceland to turn polling stations into Pokéstops.
I can see another Turkey event here – with outside interests stoking unrest. Heaven forbid that a country would offer Edward Snowden asylum and direct democracy, that’s never going to happen – to close to the US and his sphere of interest. Fun times ahead for the plucky Iceland. Would that we could grow some cajones and do something similar..
The USA still has a base on the North East of Iceland I think. They will have an interest in politics!
Icelanders think that the name Iceland is a bit strange since Iceland is a very green country yet Greenland is almost totally covered in snow and therefore be better called Iceland.
And yes Iceland has people-power and holds their money players accountable. A model for us?
People may have heard of the “Alt-right”, championed by the likes of the racist troll Milo Yiannopoulos. It’s a mish-mash of reactionary conservatism (of the Gamergate variety), right-wing libertarianism, “meritocracy” and neoliberalism that inevitably metasizes into oligarchism and adulation of dictatorship.
It’s apparently rife among the tech industries and attracts many who at one stage might have described themselves as liberal. I’ve a few friends from Europe old enough to remember the first time around…
Hi Poisson, that link helps to explain how aspartame, phenolanylin(?) etc got into the food system.
‘Sabbaticals’ for executives between Monsanto and the fda.
I’ve just got into my Jim-Jams – the ones with the little WWI RAF and Fokker biplanes all over them – I’m now in the process of running upstairs to comb my hair and brush my teeth and then I’ll be tucked up in bed, with tears streaming down my cheeks.
Tomorrow, I might have a bit of a tantrum when I’m in the Supermarket, lying on my back, kicking my feet up in the air. Manager will no doubt come over and ask sympathetically: “Oh now, what’s upsetting ya, young fella, eh ???”. Between all the crying and sobbing, all I’ll be able to blurt out is “Colmar Brunton, No Colmar Brunton !!!”.
i’ve had half a day with a lap top refusing to pick up wifi i was bloody close to tantrum time my self , fortunately for me one of the many icons or buttons i pushed did the trick, buggered i know which one though.
An instant analysis from Climate Nexus refers to today’s Louisiana rainstorm as a “classic signal of climate change.” It’s right. The NWS maintains a statistical database used to calculate the “annual exceedance probability” of a given rainfall event — basically, the expected frequency this event would occur in any given year.
Today’s rainstorm in Louisiana is at least the eighth 500-year rainfall event across America in little more than a year, including similarly extreme downpours in Oklahoma last May, central Texas (twice: last May and last October), South Carolina last October, northern Louisiana this March, West Virginia in June, and Maryland last month.
“Remember when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to help “fix” Newark’s public schools? In 2010, Zuckerberg — perhaps hoping to improve his image after his callous depiction in biopic The Social Network — donated $100 million to Newark’s education system to overhaul Newark schools.
The money was directed as a part of then–Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s plan to remake the city into the “charter school capital of the nation,” bypassing public oversight through partnership with private philanthropists.
Traditionally, public education has been interwoven with the democratic process: in a given school district, the community elects the school board every few years. School boards then make public decisions and deliberations. Zuckerberg’s donation, and the project it was attached to, directly undermined this democratic process by promoting an agenda to privatize public schools, destroy local unions, disempower teachers, and put the reins of public education into the hands of technocrats and profiteers.”
Well, you have to have the right people running the shop.
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Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
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 ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
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. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
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. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
Hera Lindsay Bird reveals the best places in Ōtepoti to score more for your apocalypse-prep book hoard.Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve been killed in a car crash, and this second half of my life is just the brain unspooling itself, like one of those episodes of a hospital ...
ThreeNow’s new murder mystery series takes us on a dark, damp journey into the Australian wilderness.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. High Country is ThreeNow’s new Australian eight-part crime drama, set in a remote part of the Victorian highlands. It tells ...
Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend. After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekend. It is through the sheer power of technology ...
Tip one: let yourself be nurtured by this big old man. Tip two: don’t ask him to adopt you. So, you’ve arrived at your first session with a new therapist. He tells you to make yourself comfortable and you opt for the tweed armchair, hoping it makes you look like ...
I didn’t know books could open you back up; that there were books that stayed with you, where reading was like a chemical event. I knew nothing.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Not too long ago, I was listening to the American ...
Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
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I am truly trying to understand left wing thinking when it comes to negative outcomes of left wing ideals.. I get the impression that many lefties don’t acknowledge any culpability from negative results of leftist policies.
I post my example from yesterday again to see if someone can explain why sugar production in Venezuela has fallen so dramatically after it was nationalised in the early 2000’s. This is not just a one off event that can be explained by the effect of drought. It was a sustained declined over a period of years. Why couldn’t Venezuela keep sugar production at the levels it was when it was largely controlled privately?
The only explanation I have been given so far is that it is related to the fall in the price in oil or sanctions imposed by the US. That doesn’t seem to make sense given that the sugar is for domestic consumption and therefore both those things would have made it more attractive to produce locally rather than import.
http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-venezuela-imports-20160809-snap-story.html
Truly, I am. Truly.
I’m struggling to understand the cognitive dissonance of the left wing mind set. I can quite easily accept the negative outcomes of right wing policies.
The elephant graph posted by Anthony Robins today is an example of that. Free trade has negative consequences for a sector of society and public policy needs to take account of that. However I have never seen any acknowledgment from left wingers that policies they support also have negative consequences.
The situation in Venezuela is entirely predictable in terms of outcomes economically. If you reduce private sector involvement and increase public sector participation in the provision of goods and services the right wing economic viewpoint is that you retard production. This us what has happened. However I suspect accepting this self evident truth is too much more many lefties (like Draco for example). They will attempt to deflect the cause to other areas. I find that fascinating.
You are fascinated by what you believe to be “left wing” thought and you struggle to understand it. As a consequence you demand that thinkers from that field explain themselves to you.
Truly. Fascinating.
I challenge left wingers to explain outcomes which can be attributed directly to the ideals they expouse (i.e greater involvement of State and workers in control of production). Are you stating thus is not a key ideal of the left?
I challenged you to demonstrate that any of that rote-learned lazy tripe you call an argument has a basis in reality. With references, to support your assertion of “attributed directly”, for example.
Otherwise, why should anyone answer your loaded questions, mendacity boy?
*yawn* after all this time pasting TS with Venezuela and not actually gaining any understanding of political thought on this site, there’s bugger all anyone can do to enlighten you now.
Anyways, you say Venezuela, I say Honduras. I doubt many want either extreme.
Do you have evidence of serious shortages in Honduras caused by free market policies? If so I will have a look.
Getting specific aren’t you? Not at all interested in widespread poverty, societal breakdown and murders of environmentalists at all?
No he’s not, those don’t interrupt the global flow of goods, y’see, and of course they wouldn’t have had lives even that good under a non-capitalist regime.
Or so the right wing tell themselves.
+1
There are examples in NZ of shortages caused by free market policies. Try housing.
See Gos the problem with the free market is that in it you only need a willing buyer and a willing seller for the free market to have the illusion of working.
Bob Jones buys a private jet. you have just shown the free market works. But you dont see the market adjusting so everyone can have a private jet do you.
Sure ridiculous example but it can be applied to any part and any level of society.
You can have a Kebab shop that has 1000 customers and as such the kebab shop can stay open and in business. Yet at the same time you could have 100000 people who cannot afford a kebab.
Shortage does not always need to relate to supply. it can relate to a persons ability to overcome the barrier of price in order to be able to obtain the desired product or service and for an individual or section of society who cant afford it there is a shortage and as such they may as well have been living in the soviet union just perior to its collapse because for them the outcome is the same.
A good system would enable every single person to meet their essential basic needs as a bare minimum. A shit system won’t even be able to do that. The free market doesnt do that. But you go on defending your shitty system if you can’t think any bigger or broader than it.
I suspect there is a serious shortage of proper democratic lifestyle, but your blinkered market mentality won’t recognise such a thing, will it?
you suspect vs taking a look at examples of the principle I outlined in pretty much every single so called first world country.
You champion a system that is so poor it cannot provide essential basic needs for everyone.
Your in telligent In Vino I’ll give you that but your very entrenched in the current system.
Coffee, I was replying to Goosey Gosman. Your well-written comment sneaked in before mine. I have no argument with what you wrote.
Without being able to check the “replies” column is creating a few problems. Not complaining as such because lprent does a magnificent job but the sooner we get it back the better. 😕
Edit: I know we can access immediately after leaving a comment but that’s not always convenient. We all have other lives.
Which particular “left wing ideals” led to this particular outcome Gosman? I’m truly interested in your in-depth detailed analysis, with multiple references and an attempt to asses what bias if any they may contain, showing:
1. That you can accurately summarise left wing ideals and,
2. That your argument has any basis.
Please, I’m truly, sincerely interested in “your” “opinion”.
Do you disagree that the State in Venezuela has encourage greater worker control and State ownership of industry and that is (or at least used to be) a key element if left wing economic theory?
As I stated above, right wing economic thinking suggests the outcome from following such a path is usually reduced quality and/or quantity of goods and services. This is exactly what has occured in Venezuela (and lots of other countries).
Gosman you’ll get better engagement if you don’t put up straw man arguments.
What element is a strawman and why so I won’t attempt to bring it up again.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I don’t know much if anything about Venezuela, and you tell too many lies for me to take your word for it, so that’s why I asked for multiple references.
Your dismissal of US interference, for example, indicates that you believe it had no effect on Venezuela’s economy. I don’t believe you, and you’re doing a very very shit job of persuading me or indeed, putting up any argument whatsoever.
Apart from your habitual ad nauseam, that is.
I have provided numerous source on Venezuela even from a left wing perspective (Venezuelananaalysis). Are you disputing any if the facts that have been put forward such as the decline in domestic Sugar production? I would be quite willing to investigate US interference if you can explain how it is meant to impact production of goods and services within Venezuela in industries largely controlled by the State. Explain a mechanism that allows the US to influence that and I’ll look to see if that is the case.
You’ve provided no sources here.
Meanwhile, in New Zealand. the right makes unemployment and homelessness. No wonder you want to talk about sugar production in a falling global market.
I provided a link to the source. Are you disputing the source and if so why?
I’m not reading your source until you meet the requirements I laid out in 1.2: write an in-depth detailed multi-referenced analysis that demonstrates why the assertions in your loaded questions are true.
You would certainly have to show how what happens in Venezuela relates to Green and Labour policies in New Zealand, for example.
Or alternatively, you can fuck off.
Venezuela is a basket case I think you can agree with me on that OAB.
Hugo Chavez 2 decades of centralizing all decisions (into his hands) the state taking control of medium to large business etc etc has lead to this.
While oil prices were high they masked the issues at hand, however once they started to fall so did Venezuela.
Half of all oil exported today from Venezuela goes to paying back a $50 billion loan from China.
Remind me what part of “Socialism” involves one person making all the decisions. It’s sad that you just blew over your own house of cards. I suppose I can always enjoy the schadenfreude 😈
Read your second sentence (The first should have been 2 sentences..)
It makes no sense at all. Try to explain it in real English, please. ‘Medium’ is singular, and how does control of ‘medium’ go to large business etc etc??
Who are the first ‘they’ in your third mangled sentence (oil prices?), and maybe you could confirm that the second ‘they’ refers to oil prices?
By the way, it was USA fracking that caused oil prices to fall. But you are one of those who denies any kind of US sabotage, aren’t you?
Oops.
Do you honestly think the decision to “frack” for oil in the US was to screw with the Venezuelan economy?
For profit in general, and then the Russian economy, but Venezuela was no doubt a minor bonus, much to your joy.
“It makes no sense at all.”
Of course it does my friend…that is why you are reduced to playing the English teacher.
“By the way, it was USA fracking that caused oil prices to fall. But you are one of those who denies any kind of US sabotage, aren’t you?”
Venezuela was sabotaged by Socialism.
“This is exactly what has occured in Venezuela (and lots of other countries).”
Name em
To give you a start I will name one for you, Ukraine. Please carry on
Hi Gos
Can you please explain what is happening in US politics right now when right wingers have voted in Trump to lead them and his party are trying their best to oust him? A lengthy analysis would be welcome. Cheers
What happened to global sugar prices over the period in question?
Largely irrelevant in the context of domestic production for a domestic market. Why can’t Venezuelan producers of sugar do so cheaper than foreign producers?
Please post a link to a graph that compares Venezuelan domestic sugar prices with global prices over the period 1950 – 2016.
Then, provide an in-depth detailed multi-referenced analysis of sugar production, its history and methods, both globally and in Venezuela, so that I can put your assertions in context while I think about them.
Hahahahaha. LIAR. Like YOU would ever post that kind of detailed analysis if ever called to task.
Bwahahahahaha.
Gosman has a habit of setting homework for people. I doubt the real Nelson Muntz would need that explained.
What homework have I set before?
Thank you for making my point. You think I’m going to trawl through your troll effluent for examples. Get a clue.
Gosman, was that your first try at real wit??
I am not sure you showing off that you may have done a paper in post grad research techniques is really adding anything here OAB
I have not done a paper in post grad research techniques. Perhaps I should write one, since they seem so friggin’ obvious.
In your own words, explain the sum of Gosman’s contribution to this and/or any other debate on this forum.
Sum Contribution Gosman = Sum Contribution OAB = 0
He is challenging group think on this site The response to challenging sacred lefty dogma with empirical observation highlights the religious zealotry and hate held by many here to any challenge to such dogma The right in turn are a lot more comfortable to ideas been challenged without the tantrums
“He is challenging group think on this site ”
no – hes posing straw man time wasting goal post shifting arguments, just like he always does
Perhaps the owners of the Venezuelan sugar cooperatives have decided that while up to 69% of sugar cane workers in other producer nations are affected by Chronic Kidney Disease, it’s not for them.
http://sugarcane-solidaridad.org/combatting-epidemic-chronic-kidney-disease-amongst-canecutters
http://www.aaas.org/news/science-researchers-hunt-origin-enigmatic-kidney-disease
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_nephropathy
I hear the Philippines is importing sugar this year too. I guess the Coca Cola factories in Venezuela (ironic that the symbol of American affluence is produced there) aren’t importing from there.
It may be due to a move from “sweated labour” to improved working conditions. Or fewer workers wanting to work in the sugar fields when better jobs were available elsewhere.
Yep, Sugar is so good for you Gosman. I too am deeply concerned, but more about what concerns the right wing mindset. Worrying about sugar exports and I believe our very own government is deeply worried about luggage at present….
When are you going to own up about the toilet paper Gosman?
Seriously every time you open your mouth about Venezuela I just think you are talking a load of rubbish.
You lied for weeks about the toilet paper issue, and when it was pointed out that the supermarkets artificially created a crisis around toilet paper, you said nothing?
So to answer you question – why do right wingers lie and cheat the system, then blame the left for it?
My God……I hear your frustration Adam but remember……it’s not your fault that Gosman’s a twisted lying zealot with not a care for the world……aside from the miniscule and putrid part of it he inhabits. I mean who the fuck would regularly get on a more or less left wing blog and spiel such cruelty as moral gospel ? That’s a head that needs seeing to in my book. Poor man. Pity the people he/she lives with……if any.
From what I have read in the time I have been reading, I think you have sussed Gosman very well, North.
Maybe a shift to stevia production could be better long term move for Venezuela. Stevia is grown in Brazil and Paraguay so may do ok in Venezuela. Getting rid of Coke is probably a positive change for Venezuela and the health of its citizens.
You are aware that simply because they don’t produce the product locally doesn’t mean they aren’t buying it aren’t you? They are importing it from other countries instead. This is costing them precious foreign exchange which they lack.
Gosman you are a bore. If you can’t do your own delving into USA overt and covert interference in central and southern American economies then go back to burying your head in the sand .
No, I challenge you to explain how US interference could lead to a catastrophic drop in production of sugar (amongst other products).
Your argument would be like stating the reason the USSR failed was because of US interference. There is a element of truth that the US was undermining the Soviet Union but the system itself was at fault for its eventual collapse.
How could it not !
Well, it cracked under the pressure of an arms race imposed by a technologically superior USA. But the fairy tale is that Capitalism is just so much better. No mention of the inconvenient fact that all the rich countries have been capitalist, and that no heavily industrialised, rich country has tried anything else, unless you go downscale to include Scandinavian countries small enough and isolated enough not to face that ire of American Capitalism in the way that Cuba, Chile, and Venezuela have had to do, along with others…
I have just watched the most appalling ever attempt on Q&A to politically assassinate Labour’s leader, Andrew Little. So much so that someone, somewhere, needs to publicly condemn TV1 for what was clearly a premeditated and politically motivated attempt to discredit him.
The panel guests consisted of Bryce Edwards, Phil Quin and Heather Roy. The subject matter… Nick Leggett. There was no attempt to explain what happened or what Little said – or why. Instead the public was subjected to a long rant from Phil Quin (which was why he was invited in the first place) about a restaurant dinner in Auckland where he and Nick Leggott spoke to the people gathered. Yeah… he talked about American politics – nothing else – and we weren’t told what Leggett spoke about but we can guess. According to Quin it was all an imagined conspiracy on Little’s part, but no-one (other than beltway types) would have known what he was talking about except that… Andrew Little is a really bad guy and so is the Labour Party.
The most telling moment was when Bryce Edwards tried to add his contribution – which I suspect was going to bring some semblance of balance to the discussion – but he was cut off by the host (whose name escapes me) and on came some ads. But not before a surprised Edwards let out an “aaagh” of frustration. Deliberate? You bet!
You should do a Broadcastings Standards complaint Anne.
I didn’t see it but it is very clearly lacking in balance with a panel like that. Roy is from ACT, Quin has been criticising Labour for decades now, wanting a return to the Rogernomics era. In the 1990s he tried to organise a coup against Helen Clark and Bryce Edwards is, at best, centrist. There should have been someone who could argue Labour’s position to meet the requirements of the act.
Been down that road Karen. Took Q&A to the BSA over their handling of the Hobbit dispute – must have been around 2010/11. It was a total sham. They made it about Helen Kelly (who received a drubbing on the programme in question) and said she was… quite capable of looking after herself.
My complaint had nothing to do with Helen Kelly as a person and whether she could look after herself. As if I would presume to be an arbiter of someone like Helen Kelly’s personal character anyway. Yes, I took the stinging rebuke personally, and just hoped that Helen Kelly (who I don’t personally know) did not buy their nonsense.
Once bitten like that and twice shy.
I agree your complaint may not be upheld but it may make TVNZ be a bit more careful next time. They hate having to spend time justifying themselves to the BSA.
This is just the start. The whole MSM are at it.
But like they were always assuring us that no one outside the Wellington beltway cares about National’s dirty deeds like the Saudi sheep saga, the Panama Papers, homelessness, dodgy steel, etc etc etc – this time it may backfire, because nobody outside the Wellington beltway truly cares about the Nash/Leggett/Little conflict.
I think the explanation as to why our media have become such toadys to the national party is quite simple They all voted blue .
Oh diddums Anne, this happens to Key all the time !
“this happens to Key all the time !” Citation please, I have never seen Key beat up by the media, ever! Just 1 example will suffice.
National Party suck up Tracy Watkin’s piece on this issue…
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/83106498/Labours-tent-no-longer-big-enough-for-the-right-wingers?cid=app-iPhone
I suspect its the old story, Leggatt and Quin have contacts in the gallery who are happy to do some shit stirring.
The funniest thing is that the panel reckoned Little should have been talking about “Nick Smith not Nick Leggat”, apparently he opened his stand up doing exactly that.
But this is very clearly a beltway issue, its a shame Q&A have picked it up because they’ve been doing some excellent shows lately, imho.
And it seems Stacey Kirk has joined in the let’s do some Andrew Little bashing.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/83097599/stacey-kirk-opportunity-squandered-labour-flounders-without-focus
This now is starting to look like an orchestrated beat up. Who is behind it? It was gallery journalists who brought up the topic when questioning Little so someone has primed them Quin? Pagani? Leggett? My guess is Quin.
Shame that so many gallery journalists have swallowed this.
“This now is starting to look like an orchestrated beat up. Who is behind it?”
Most likely it was “black ops team alpha 2 bravo” 🙂
Come on really though…Andrew Little was a idiot and brought it on himself.
You know I’m going back donkeys’ years like 40 when a minor ‘journalist’ in Wellington said to me “Well how can Norman Kirk control a country when he can’t even control his own weight?” and then another household name journalist Spiro Zavos said to me when challeneged about the legalities of racist South African rugby tours……”I’ve done Legal System” (the Law 101 at Vic’ at the time).
I have to say this. Our ‘jonolists’ being intellectually and socially pretty much nothing, cannot be trusted other than to pos’ themselves so as to lick the arse of power. In the expectation of being rewarded for it. By the arses they lick. And then they get ‘oh so up their own arses’ when it seems to work. Trev’ of the Hearld for example, junketing with Key.
They are basically very poor examples of humanity. To a man and a woman not very bright. Otherwise they would have done ‘Law’. Not that the rote shit of ‘Law’ speaks of bright. We are so ill-served by the media.
They are such wannabees. And double-shotters. Saw Duncan Garner and his production man I guess, all skinny jeans and florid shirts and RM Williams boots disporting themselves in McDonalds in Wellsford 7.00 am one morning. Talking loud, musing loud, “look at me look at me” Fuck ! what cheapies. In Kaikohe they mighta’ got a well deserved hiding for being so up-themselves waha’.
Chuck, Jason Ede ran a Dirty Politics “black ops team alpha 2 bravo” from John Keys office, tax payer funded dirty tricks where he had access to secret SIS files (for PMs eyes only!) where he had a network of complacent journos & bloggers to smear the opposition & manipulate the last few elections. So there is form of state sponsored smearing & you seemingly support it?
Cry me a river…
So called Dirty Politics is played by all sides.
Ann has just posted this below “I noted some comments from Quin the other day about some very, very nasty stuff doing the rounds about him after he left Labour. How did he know it came from L.P. members?”
That’s a form of “dirty politics”…do I care? no.
Who is behind it?
My guess… all 3 of them – Quin, Pagani and Leggett. Josie loves hanging out with TV celebrities and Gallery types. They are happy to oblige her for tidbits from the enemy camp – Labour. Since I doubt she’s still a member (certainly not an active one) she doesn’t actually know anything of worth.
I noted some comments from Quin the other day about some very, very nasty stuff doing the rounds about him after he left Labour. How did he know it came from L.P. members? If there was anything it was confined to the Wellington beltway. Never heard a whisper in Auckland. Have my doubts it was as serious as he’s making out, but all good with which to bash Labour over the head.
This Gorman reminds me of ShonKey…… Ask him to put up some evidence , and he goes off on to some other blah mindless drivel….. Key does it to use up media airtime….. Sounds good and confident, but no substance….. And certainly no answer.
“No, I challenge you…”
Tan
Trum
Sunday morning, I’ll take a look at The Standard for a while, to see what interesting topics are being discussed there…what’s this? Some person named “Gosman” is demanding we answer questions on his chosen topic! How quaint he is! How petulant and righteous he acts when people point to his churlish behaviour.
Other threads, thankfully, are not infested with his pabulum. I’m look to those.
I started a business 10 years ago this November. I started it because I wanted to generate passive income. I wanted enoughy passive income so that I could as much as possible live the life I want to live. It is my life afterall.
To make this happen there are others who work for me. For many years and still to this day they have been paid and I have not.
If I could I would generatew enough passive income and put in place enough automation so that those working for me no longer had to work unecessarily eaither and could then live the life that they each in turn would like to live.
The realisation I came to and the reason I am wqriting this is that in my view every single person should have passive income. Every person should be ( in a good system…. one designed to work for us ) able to live the life they want to live.
Each person should be able to meet their essential basic needs for themselves and their family. Our system doesnt enable this. People are run ragged and in talking to those in the community the one thing everyone lacks is time.
Time is the other thing that is required for me and you and everyone else to be able to live the life that we would like to live. Whatever that life may be and yours will differ from mine and thats ok.
Having passive income that is enough to live on gives you time also. Time so that you can live the life you want to live.
In living the lives we want to live we currently have to work to earn money in order to survive let alone be able to live the life we want to live. So before we can do that we have two barrieres we need to overcome under the current system. We need to make money for ourselves (enough to live the life we want to live) and before we can do that we need a job of some description.
A system that enables humans or in other words a good system does not put in place barriers. In facrt it seeks to remove them.
Having an entire system where everyone has passive income removes those barriers.
We then have a system that enables each and everyone of us and gives us the time to life the lives we each would like to live.
In our current system their are limited options to enable this to happen and each of them is a barrier to having a system of passive income so each of these should not be used but an entirely new and different way found to enable a better system.
The current options are
tax and redistribute wealth – somewhat illogical if you are changing the system to one that gives people money. Why would you take it from some in the first place besides this only gives those it is being taken from a reason to vote against it.
Increase debt to pay for it. We struggle to pay for essential services such as health and education as it is and we have the highest debt our nation has ever had. It is also counter intuitive to a system designed to give people money to enable them to live the life they want top live. Debt forces people rto work not because the work is rewquired and needs to be done for society, No it requires work top be done to earn money to pay back the debt. It is enslavement by debt so again not a good option.
Printing money well this simply in the current system devalues the currency and reduces purchasaing power so not necessarily a good option either at lewast not within the current currency markets.
Nobody said we had to have a debt based monetary system and if having one enslaves people at a time where there are going to be less jobs available therough technological automation then perhaps we should be looking at the same technological automation to replace thew debt based monetary system with one that generates passive income for everyone and enables us all to have time and to be able to live the life we eaxch woulsd like to live. Not only for us but for every single generation that comes after us.
A thoughtful comment CC. Here is an alternative:
http://burningman.org/culture/philosophical-center/10-principles/
In the context of the festival it works. It changes lives, it opens up a whole sense of possibilities that are entirely shut down in ‘normal life’.
Scratch a hippy…….
Participation sounds egalitarian, but it leads to some interesting contradictions. The most elaborate camps and spectacles tend to be brought by the rich because they have the time, the money, or both, to do so. Wealthier attendees often pay laborers to build and plan their own massive (and often exclusive) camps. If you scan San Francisco’s Craigslist in the month of August, you’ll start to see ads for part-time service labor gigs to plump the metaphorical pillows of wealthy Burners.
The rich also hire sherpas to guide them around the festival and wait on them at the camp. Some burners derogatorily refer to these rich person camps as “turnkey camps.”
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/burning-man-one-percent-silicon-valley-tech/
And yet the festival thrives despite these aberrations. The people who go truly come in all shapes, sizes and agendas. It’s inevitable there will be contradictions and tensions. With in excess of 60,000 people in one place, it’s far too big to experience the whole of it in the time you are there.
But the point is that for just one week, many people get to live an alternative way of experiencing the world … and that alone energises them.
hi cc, thanx for the comment.
how about a worker owned business, organised along burning man/permaculture principles, looking to transfer to a sharing economy?
less about $ (although they are handy), but stronger in building communities, bringing together the like minded and showing a powerful positive example of cooperation.
You gotta love Iceland. First they tell the global banking system to fuck off, then the world’s first lesbian PM … and now this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/12/polls-suggests-icelands-pirate-party-form-next-government
I can see another Turkey event here – with outside interests stoking unrest. Heaven forbid that a country would offer Edward Snowden asylum and direct democracy, that’s never going to happen – to close to the US and his sphere of interest. Fun times ahead for the plucky Iceland. Would that we could grow some cajones and do something similar..
The USA still has a base on the North East of Iceland I think. They will have an interest in politics!
Icelanders think that the name Iceland is a bit strange since Iceland is a very green country yet Greenland is almost totally covered in snow and therefore be better called Iceland.
And yes Iceland has people-power and holds their money players accountable. A model for us?
How self-pity turns toxic, how demagogues use it, and where it leads:
http://thebaffler.com/salvos/pity-o-god-republican-faludi
People may have heard of the “Alt-right”, championed by the likes of the racist troll Milo Yiannopoulos. It’s a mish-mash of reactionary conservatism (of the Gamergate variety), right-wing libertarianism, “meritocracy” and neoliberalism that inevitably metasizes into oligarchism and adulation of dictatorship.
It’s apparently rife among the tech industries and attracts many who at one stage might have described themselves as liberal. I’ve a few friends from Europe old enough to remember the first time around…
http://thebaffler.com/blog/mouthbreathing-machiavellis
https://medium.com/welcome-to-the-scream-room/im-with-the-banned-8d1b6e0b2932#.mri33abl3
http://boingboing.net/2015/01/28/a-beginners-guide-to-the-red.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/05/meet-milo-yiannopoulos-the-appealing-young-face-of-the-racist-alt-right.html
Thought for the day,ethics of civil service
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CpvqwWMWEAAMfJ7.jpg:large
Hi Poisson, that link helps to explain how aspartame, phenolanylin(?) etc got into the food system.
‘Sabbaticals’ for executives between Monsanto and the fda.
Civil service indeed!
in the meantime over in the us another riot brewing after another ‘fleeing’ suspect was killed.
the worlds has become a fucked place
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ex414
this is actually chilling to watch and to listen to it.
as the guys on the life feed says, the Mainstream Media is not alive.
holy shite, this is the ‘how to create a riot’ by simply not doing anything when one still could.
Couldn’t get that to run on the link provided Sabine.
its a life feed and needs refreshing quite a bit. i
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ex414
follow the comments on the side of the screen .
fox6news here now.
http://fox6now.com/on-air/live-streaming/
seems to be cooling down. the commentary is just spectacular.
Wayyyy past time for another Colmar Brunton. Always release on a Sunday. There’ll be tears before bed-time if we don’t see one in about half an hour …
Perhaps such a poll has bad news for the Government so they have sent it back to be checked and “adjusted?”
I’ve just got into my Jim-Jams – the ones with the little WWI RAF and Fokker biplanes all over them – I’m now in the process of running upstairs to comb my hair and brush my teeth and then I’ll be tucked up in bed, with tears streaming down my cheeks.
Tomorrow, I might have a bit of a tantrum when I’m in the Supermarket, lying on my back, kicking my feet up in the air. Manager will no doubt come over and ask sympathetically: “Oh now, what’s upsetting ya, young fella, eh ???”. Between all the crying and sobbing, all I’ll be able to blurt out is “Colmar Brunton, No Colmar Brunton !!!”.
i’ve had half a day with a lap top refusing to pick up wifi i was bloody close to tantrum time my self , fortunately for me one of the many icons or buttons i pushed did the trick, buggered i know which one though.
Been there done that. On mine it turned out there is a little slide switch on the side that turned the wifi on and off.
Swordfish love the story of your jim-jams ! But no Swordfish, no tears please. His Effeteness is gone by 2017 if not before.
Oh dear, you’ve got it bad swordfish. But don’t worry. It probs. coming tomorrow night – the day after they did the Q&A hatchet job on Andrew Little.
Once in 500 year flood number eight.
An instant analysis from Climate Nexus refers to today’s Louisiana rainstorm as a “classic signal of climate change.” It’s right. The NWS maintains a statistical database used to calculate the “annual exceedance probability” of a given rainfall event — basically, the expected frequency this event would occur in any given year.
Today’s rainstorm in Louisiana is at least the eighth 500-year rainfall event across America in little more than a year, including similarly extreme downpours in Oklahoma last May, central Texas (twice: last May and last October), South Carolina last October, northern Louisiana this March, West Virginia in June, and Maryland last month.
https://psmag.com/americas-latest-500-year-rainstorm-is-underway-right-now-in-louisiana-98acbdf435d0#.c59wau8hn
More from Jeff Masters.
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/record-flooding-in-southeast-louisiana-may-get-worse
“Remember when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to help “fix” Newark’s public schools? In 2010, Zuckerberg — perhaps hoping to improve his image after his callous depiction in biopic The Social Network — donated $100 million to Newark’s education system to overhaul Newark schools.
The money was directed as a part of then–Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s plan to remake the city into the “charter school capital of the nation,” bypassing public oversight through partnership with private philanthropists.
Traditionally, public education has been interwoven with the democratic process: in a given school district, the community elects the school board every few years. School boards then make public decisions and deliberations. Zuckerberg’s donation, and the project it was attached to, directly undermined this democratic process by promoting an agenda to privatize public schools, destroy local unions, disempower teachers, and put the reins of public education into the hands of technocrats and profiteers.”
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/burning-man-one-percent-silicon-valley-tech/
Well, you have to have the right people running the shop.
/
Perhaps the one thing uniting all neoreactionaries is a critique of modernity that centers on opposition to democracy in all its forms. Many are former libertarians who decided that freedom and democracy were incompatible
https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement
Money rules whatever the provenance, even if it be seeming good guy ‘giving back’…….money rules. We know this.
Remember Peter Talley got knighted.
We honour the wrong people in this country.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/wanganui-chronicle/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503423&objectid=11693272
Bludgers.
Until Friday of last week, council CEO Kym Fell had been talking with Affco, the major trade-waste user, to find an alternative treatment solution that may have resulted in lower costs for the new plant. Affco, Open Country Dairy and Land Meats had indicated they wanted to build their own treatment plant but use the city pipes and consents to discharge into the ocean.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/wanganui-chronicle/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503426&objectid=11690404