Me, offended? Not at all, and clearly not as peed off as you are by the millions of hard, working class folk. Ah Mc’Cain, you’ve done it again. lol
Just remember that slogan politics is the intellectual equivalent of paint by numbers.
And to read below, despite all your bellicose angst you’re not even voting to change the nat government, well, colour me proved correct, Mr Chips.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
[I don’t want to have to waste my time reading through this to moderate, so here’s a warning for both other you. 1. don’t do this personal shit on authored posts, if you really have to get into a beef, take it to Open Mike. 2. read the Policy about pointless personal attacks, tone, and flamewars, and pull your heads on. You both have the ability to make political arguments, so please head back that way weka]
That’s it, mate, steer the issue of you shouting the odds about the government even though you won’t be voting, and away from you insulting people by calling them middle class because they will vote for labour and/or the greens.
You’ve been outed as a blow hard, which is ironic, as lefties who won’t vote the nats out, despite whining on and on about the unfairness of it all, despite having the democratic option to do so, just totally suck. You blow and suck at the same time. lol.
Come back when you’ve stopped stomping your feet and holding your breath, and are ready to do your bit in real life to improve the lives and conditions of the poorest in our society and the hard out working classes.
Until then, wank on, web warrior.
“You lie so often Union city greens, ever thought of a job for national?
It would seem that what you are good at, lies, and assumptions.
What do you do to help? Do you do anything? Beyond the election, anything?”
I’m not even going to bother asking you to cite my lies, even though I know there are none, even though it could lead to you getting warned for it. All I will say is there are no lies coming from me.
Let me explain it clearly for you.
It was stated from another poster you don’t intend to vote. You didn’t deny it. True.
You not voting to change the government directly affects the lives of poorest amongst us in the most negative of ways. True.
You make insults by calling people middle class. True.
The middle class and top earners who will vote to change the government for the benefit of those less fortunate are doing more to improve the well being of children in poverty and the homeless by casting their votes for labour and/or the greens than you are. True.
You don’t have a leg to stand on. True.
As a hard working, poor, working class man, instead of castigating the people you are, like Lprent, who I (rightly or wrongly) perceive as being middle class, who in his early vote thread did his part for the left, I thank them for voting with their social conscience. True.
You’re all fur coat and no knickers. All mouth and no trousers. The worst kind of lefty. True.
If lefty is you mate, then I’m glad I’m no lefty like you.
As for your lies, well I pointed one out, here another.
“insulting people by calling them middle class because they will vote for labour and/or the greens.” that is a lie. I attacked the sanctimonious and condescension of a middle class labour party hack who lied again.
You took my comments personally, and for some reason keep adding the greens, which is quite frankly odd. No wait, add it to your lies.
I’m not your type of lefty, and thank God for that. I don’t think I could live with that much self denial and smug wankery.
You’re all over the place, except in the polling booth, voting out this national government… Where any lefty should be.
Angry Adam, for the working class, poor and vulnerable of NZ.
I can put up with you lying about me, but If you don’t vote labour and/or the greens, you’re an even bigger wanker than you appear.
It’s been over 36 hours since the TV3 poll, fronted by a 12 year old, with the ‘unbelievable’ results and I’ve run the gambit of emotions – from despair to anger and many stations in between.
First, as Martyn Bradbury says on TDB – if 47% of NZers think like National, what does that say of us as a nation?
Second, the left trend was positive for weeks, so how come such a dramatic reversal?
So . . . my conclusion – we’ve been conned – that poll was DIRTY POLITICS 2.0.
I don’t know how they did it, but I just ‘know’ they did! I can feel it in my bones!
And that makes me very angry – such a blatant, cynical and malicious manipulation of our political process!
I suspect its easier for Labour (given they’ve had 9 years in opposition) to come up with some ideas on taxes and be able to present those ideas then it is for Lotto to give out the winning numbers
Strange I remember National promising not to raise GST in 2008 and then running a tax working group that resulted in them raising GST.
You are trying to make something out of nothing. The media are more than happy to jump on the band wagon. Labour are going to get the help of experts to come up with a good plan. Holy shit what a radical idea. Next you will be moaning that they listen to engineers before they decide what Bridges they can and can’t build up north.
I admire your optimism.
The way the Labour Party are going I think picking the winning Lotto numbers is much more likely to happen than getting an agreed policy out of that rabble.
At least when National were defeated in 1999 they settled down and got organised by about Christmas, 2003. It took them about 4 years.
Labour has spent 9 years and are no better off than they were when everything collapsed for them in 2008.
It feels as the Labour Party are the cast of Groundhog Day.
And how is your optimism after the Colmar-Brunton poll on TV1 tonight, Alwyn ? No doubt you will find it less credible, but I suggest that the TV3 poll was indeed utter junk. It bucked the trend, which is now obvious.
Or maybe the honeymoon period is over and people would actually like to know what taxes are coming before they vote for a party
They didn’t in 2008 but they do now? Why would that be? Surely it can’t be because they’re being bullshitted by right-wing propagandists, because that would never happen, right?
> So . . . my conclusion – we’ve been conned – that poll was DIRTY POLITICS 2.0.
> I don’t know how they did it, but I just ‘know’ they did! I can feel it in my bones!
Not so very delusional at all. In fact, easily done:
A high ranking National minister with a fiscal hole rings the boss of the company he once owned, quietly suggesting the next poll should favour the ruling party. No trace or paper trail.
Te boss of the company once owned by the fiscal hole suggests some new methodology to the polling company – such as asking negative questions about Labour and the Greens, and only polling blue electorates. Again, no real evidence.
Get a 12 year old FW to breathlessly announce the findings – and it’s done!
Easy as!
Gullible people, seeing the Greens below 5%, switch their party votes to Labour – and the desired outcome is achieved.
I don’t think any individual polls are that useful (try reading the linked posts) and that we should be looking at trends and analysis of those by people who have some skills in that.
I also think it’s dangerous that we have a MSM intent on influencing voting, esp given advance voting. I’ve also said in the past that the value of individual polls is how they might help campaigning. So of course the left is going to down play bad ones and up play good ones, but it’s still bullshit. I’m all for changing that system, in the meantime we need good analysis of the whole situation.
This was a gigged poll, – it was done by Steven Joyce as he has immense control over all media as he is a share holder or board director of mediaworks. TV3 ilk.
So this was his deliberate retaliation to being ‘stomped all over with his $11 billion dollar hole allegation made against Labour that was his silly fuck up, and he needed to get that monkey off his back.
This was his way of diverting the glare off his fuck up.
Can he control the next two polls coming up? We shall see.
Yes I enjoyed that and i am so astonished most can’t see the forest for the trees!!
Hope all our efforts wake them up to vote the right way after nine yrs of slash and burn, our grand kids will have no future if we dont rid these carpertbaggers from our shores now.
“This was a gigged poll, – it was done by Steven Joyce as he has immense control over all media as he is a share holder or board director of mediaworks. TV3 ilk.”
I did suspect this, because the result of the TV Reid poll didn’t seems to be in sync with recent polling trends which glaringly stood out, but wasn’t quite sure if Joyce still had interests other than contacts in Mediaworks.
So the likelihood of Joyce using his powerful media business influence to manipulate the TV3 Reid poll, in a dirty attempt to maintain his rotten political empire, is a possibility? If this is the case, resorting to gutter tactics influencing a poll result favourable to one particular political party, goes right down to National’s dark, corrupt core! Just proves then that Joyce is indeed a master of the dark art of political manipulation and should be nowhere near government!
Have you ever considered writing a sequel to the Harry Potter books?
Your imagination would certainly be up to it, given what you manage to claim about Stephen Joyce.
He sold out completely and left the company Radioworks, which he had founded, when it was bought by Canwest in 2001. That is 16 years during which he has had nothing to do with the business. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Joyce
You really shouldn’t believe everything you read on the Standard you know.
The payment for broadcasting licences was changed so that the licence for the whole period, 21 years if I remember, had to be paid in one go, at the beginning, rather than on an annual basis.
Rather like if you rented a house for a 21 year term and had to pay the entire rental amount, for the whole time, before you could move in.
They were given the option of paying it in chunks, with a very high interest rate of over 10% being levied on the unpaid balance.
ALL licence holders could do this I don’t remember how many took it up.
It wasn’t anything like what various ignorant idiots may have told you and you shouldn’t really believe everything you are told.
ps I can’t guarantee the 21 years or the 10%. If you really feel you want to know the truth you can easily find it.
I’ll bet you don’t though.
The first thing I decline to believe on the Standard is trolling rubbish from Right Wingers like Alwyn. With the benefit of the hindsight Alwyn has probably gained if he watched TV1 News this evening, Alwyn may regret some of the bumph he has contributed today.
The connection between your comment and the one you are replying to is not apparent.
Do you reply to comments or does my name work on you like a red rag to a bull?
‘The Dairy propaganda adverts on TV are hilarious. So terrified are Fonterra that the rest of the country is getting sick to death of them stealing and polluting our water, they are desperately pumping these farcical adverts out to try and distract Kiwis from the wholesale abuse of their industry.
Richie McCaw wanders around a Farm in the early morning and marvels at the pristine goodness of these human beings as if Jesus himself had personally popped down to the milking shed to milk a herd before feeding 5000 with a block of cheese.
Indeed the most recent advert actually goes as incredibly far as suggesting milk is some kind of miracle drug that can help paralysed teenagers walk again.
‘So, what happens if you do question farmers on any environmental issue? Take water quality. Simple. It’s a rapid result – and a predictable one. You are labelled “anti-farming”. That’s it. Black and white. A slam dunk. End of discussion.
And that’s the point, of course. Nothing shuts down dialogue faster than a label. Except it doesn’t work on me – given my farming background, and it no longer really flies with your average non-farming New Zealander either.
For nine years we’ve all watched the waterways go rapidly downhill, and the rhetoric from industry push the proverbial uphill, and our patience has run out. The public have reached peak bulls*** detection and are well and truly over farmers’ “beyond criticism” status. Now, they’re also about to decide farmers’ future through this quaint mechanism called democracy.
That future looks like a bit of a correction. They will be forced, under a new government, to pay for a fraction of their pollution via a water royalty, and pay for a contribution to their massive carbon footprint via the Emissions Trading Scheme. Oh, lord. Give them strength.
Instead of hearing what the public wants – that is, clean water, fewer cows, no more dairy conversions, and an end to irrigation schemes – they choose to put their energy into flailing and fighting the inevitable. Stuffed full of false promises from their industry leaders, and their National buddies, they thrash about like dying fish at the bottom of a polluted, dried-out riverbed. It’s ugly to watch.
The interminable Fonterra adverts, DairyNZ taking Greenpeace to the Advertising Standards Authority (and losing) over their TV ad, cockies drinking from streams as if that proves anything other than low IQ, Federated Farmers blaming trout and Canada geese for water pollution. The list is long and has only served to harden the heart of even the kindest, most patient voter.
Watch closely for the next phase of the campaign. You will see National delivering a full-on offensive designed to fire up the farming base, and get the electorate to feel deep sympathy for the farmers’ plight……’
Yes time these historical rent seekers coughed up, scaled back and served NZ wider interests. Non dairy farmers aren’t that enamoured with them either.
Instead of their sacred dairy cow broken model which passed the point of diminishing returns decades ago at the expense of our environment.
Fonterra are the worst run organisation in NZ, there’s a better future for dairy farmers without this top heavy bloated crony empire, much better. Look at the returns better run aggregators generate like Tatua etc.
Well, I watched it. Not surprising that they’d tell this story – the contents of milk get used for all kinds of things other than filling milk bottles, which some people may not be aware of. Do you dispute the story in some way?
This Fonterra ad is just so wrong. The opposite is true, dairy consumption is actually a contributing factor to disabling diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinsons.
You seem to misunderstand the words “true” and “actually.” Lactose tolerance was one of the fastest-spreading adaptations known to those studying human evolution, exactly because of dairy food’s advantages.
There was an article a few weeks ago showing that milk intolerance may be greater than previously thought. It’s not just lactose intolerance either.
For the first time, scientists have shown that dairy intolerance is a physiological condition distinct from lactose intolerance, and not “all in people’s heads”.
“Lots of people suspect that they have some intolerance to dairy foods, but testing shows they aren’t lactose intolerant,” says Dr Amber Milan, a research fellow at the Liggins Institute, University of Auckland, New Zealand. “Before this study, there had not been any detailed analysis of dairy intolerance to see if something else could be causing it.
“Our findings show dairy intolerance is a ‘real thing’ with a particular symptom profile – not something that’s just in people’s heads. That means sufferers and doctors can better identify it. Now, we need to find out more about what’s going on and how to measure it better.”
Still need a citation on her accusations that milk causes disabling diseases though.
“Overshadowed by an American hurricane, the news of the South Asian flooding has emerged slowly. Even in Dhaka, the English-language newspapers carried events in Houston on their front pages. But these are the worst floods in a century.”
And on top of that Bangladesh is struggling to cope with an influx of some 370,000 Rohingya refugees from Burma.
Joyce knew what he was doing. It was cynical and targetted.
He knows many peoples no.1 concern is the economy .
He also knows tgat in 2014 and 2015 National while governing left exactly such a small amount of wiggle room and the sky didnt fall. But that bit is left out. Economy is all English has.
Further to the Dr. Yang saga – a close friend who is from China – but is not Chinese, told me it is very difficult, if not impossible for police officers and high ranking military to get passports and/or permission to leave the country.
Which begs the question – how did Dr. Yang get out? With official connivance?
A National MP who taught English to Chinese spies didn’t declare the names of the military institutions where that happened to New Zealand authorities.
Jian Yang told the Herald he didn’t name the Air Force Engineering University or Luoyang People’s Liberation Army University of Foreign Languages when making the applications that led to New Zealand citizenship, which he was granted in 2004.
He instead gave the names of two Chinese universities for civilians that had “partnership” status with the military institutions where he taught intelligence agency cadets as an English lecturer.
Asked if he made a false declaration on his citizenship application, Yang said giving the name of “partnership” universities instead of the institutes he actually worked and studied at was not a false declaration and was required if he was to leave China.
“It is not a false declaration. When I left China I was asked by the system to use my partnership universities. That is why I used those universities in applying for jobs, even [at] the University of Auckland.
But it’s not, you know, lying despite it not being true.
Tony Veitch (not etc) @ (6) … yes there needs to be some serious questioning re Jian Yang’s position, both in China and here.
An allegation of a possible foreign infiltration of our government, by a Chinese agent serving as a National MP and it seems this issue has all but disappeared altogether from msm! Almost shut down completely!
However should it have involved Labour or the Greens … media would have been all over this one like a pack of blood thirsty baying hounds! Look at what msm did to Metiria Turei in comparison!
I can see my children in the same role as I am now in 25 years being grandparents and when one becomes a grandparent that is a paradigm shift because you are wiser and more observant. You worry about there future and the world future and take more notice on what’s going on in our WORLD.
So in my view on reality we live for ever in our children I see parts of me in my grandchildren.
So we cannot keep shitting on there future we have to plan and mitigate for climate change so our grandchildren will have a future.
Not just live for the now one can not eat or drink money when a disaster strikes and again it’s is a when not a if .So I say let’s part with some money so our grandchildren can have a future so our WORLD can have a future.
I say that the Western WORLD have obligation to help our third world cousin mitigate against climate change.
Again spend now to save billions in the future billions of lives WE ARE ONE RACE THE HUMAN RACE AND WE CAN BE A BEAUTIFUL CAREING RACE we need to act now so our grandchildren have a future.
To MSM we are fighting the neo liberals not you people Kai pai
Hi, weka. Just spoke with Dave (long discussion, lots to talk about 🙂 and he says he’s more than happy for you to put his article up here. He also told me that the southern greens have an election night celebration planned at the craft brewery in Invercargill – looking forward to that! Metiria’s coming down soon, to speak at a “poverty” debate – it’ll be great to catch up with her.
I heard Paul Buchanan overnight talking about Jian Yang. He said things you’d expect.
You plant operatives who fit in. They get involved in life wherever and (my words), become part of the wallpaper.
What could be more part of the wallpaper than the life Dr Yang has? I’m not saying there is anything untoward about Dr Yang. I’ve heard him say there’s nothing untoward. He’s in a situation a bit like in the Monty Python movie, the , “I am not Jesus Christ” scene. What did we expect to hear from him?
That’s how the espionage world works. That’s how suspicion works. More furtive and sinister though, is that’s how politics and NZ elections work. And you can bet a $100,000 bottle of wine from an Asian gentleman on that.
It’s focused on the way the Chinese government operates in contrast to “the best” of liberal democracies. But, of course, 5 Eyes ain’t all that transparent and innocent. The article begins with:
Openness, diversity and tolerance are the greatest strengths of the world’s liberal democracies. But to autocratic regimes like China, these same attributes are vulnerabilities ripe for exploitation.
And ends with:
But liberal open democracies are more fragile than most people believe, and without the courage to face up to the potential threat posed by illiberal countries and their subversion efforts, we are all contributing to the erosion of what makes these systems so great.
The plot thickens, I see in the Herald that Todd Barclay is leaving for work in England. So look at things like this, Dr Yang trains toddy up in the Dipton office in the art of spying. Todd spies and is caught out by office girl, Bill jacks him up a job in London–MI5 or similar, and tells office girl todd is going to England.–via text. The deep south hides its sins, have we a contact among correspondents keeping an eagle eye open, up dates welcome.
isn’t Barclay still being investigated by the police? how is it that he’s being allowed to skip the country, seems to me that either the fix is already in, or he’s leaving one step ahead of the law
i despise the highly paid members of the media like Guyon Espiner who make it their job to pimp for the Tories and turn a democratic election into a Showground attraction.
Words fail me.
We need a better and more democratic media.
I have again switched RNZ off.
100% Ed Guyon Espiner apears to be a national party plant now as Suzie Ferguson is and Kath Ryan all inside RNZ!! RNZ now is controlled by Steven Joyce as his propaganda spin machine.
This is corruption using our public funded RNZ now.
Hate to say it, but we actually have no fuckn idea which side of the political spectrum Guyon and Suzie lay/lie. You could actually be very! surprised.
The most you can accuse them of is being in a comfy little bubble with the ability to sympathise, but not empathise with those beneath.
But then again …. I just heard a RNZ sports reporter use the word “learnings”
+100 Ben….the Herald rolls out the ex-ACT leader neo-liberal dinosaur to slag Labour off and this is news?
Meanwhile Guyon Espiner just destroyed Winston on Morning Report. Why anybody would vote NZF after that I don’t know.
It has been noticeable recently that Winston has lost some of his sharpness; he tried to cover this by telling Espiner continuously that he didn’t know what he was doing as an interviewer.
Party Vote Green. Hayley was good on Backbenches last night. Willie Jackson was good too and will be an asset to parliament-we need characters with humour that have their hearts in the right place.
BG. I thought Guyon was a prat this morning with Winston. He let that “gotcha” stupidity override everything and wouldn’t let Winston even take a breath without interrupting. His behaviour is what is wrong and that is not good enough for RNZ.
Party vote Green.
We laid a complaint over Espiner’s lack of fairness and balance in his ‘presentation’ it was the worst I have even seen of him. he is a disgrace to us all.
When National’s leader Engish is interveiwed Guyon will be as nice as pie, believe me.
He wont ask any hard questions of that leader you can bet like wat have you signed us up to in any free trade can you release this to us all now?
Another question Guyon should have asked english was ‘are you going to sell off ant other public assets or turn them into PPP’s?.
he will not be alolowed to ask them as he is cached by Joyce what to ask.
here is my complaint to RNZ today.
Subject: complaint to RNZ morning report leaders debate 14/9/17 INTERVIWS WITH GUYON ESPINER. 14/9/17. unfair unbalanced interview compared to other leaders interviews
Importance: High
Listening to RNZ this morning Morning report 14/9/17 with Guyon Espiner & Suzie Ferguson was such a totally botched sad show of a very low quality coverage of interviewing Winston Peters as the NZ First leader.
As Espiner did not give a similar space and time for Winston to talk and explain his policies before Espiner chipped in completely destroying the flow of detailed information we as listeners needed to hear.
We should not be subjected to Guyon’s own views or Suzie’s dismissive responses but we do not have a ‘fair & balanced’ media any more within our flagship public radio platform.
I hope when Labour/NZ First begin the new media platform we will see an end of these low quality radio presenters and produce informative quality presenters with core values of presenting fair & balanced media presentations.
Shameful show from Espiner & Ferguson I would remove them both if I could.
Bearded Git @ (11.1) … Although I’m not a NZF voter, in some respects I feel sorry for Winston, because it seems now his age is beginning to show. He definitely doesn’t seem to be as sharp as he once was, which incidentally wasn’t that long ago. He’s coming across at this election as a fading light.
I’m of the same generation as Winston and sometimes it takes a little bit of effort to get the old grey matter into gear and responses are not as quick as they used to be, with some of us, because we are beginning to “wear out.” This could be the case with Winston.
With Winston when he’s finding interviews not going his way and he realises he is not quite on top of his game when faced with a challenging interviewer, to make up for this, in typical Muldoon style, Winston lashes out at the interviewers, which doesn’t do him any favours at all. In fact it makes him look foolish. Besides that, it isn’t a good look for NZF either.
To be honest, I’m finding his utterances and secrets are becoming tiresome and annoying, because they more often than not amount to nothing.
In my honest opinion, I think Winston should have bowed out at this election with some dignity and handed the reins over to someone younger in NZF, who is able to keep up with the play, appeal to the younger generation and rejuvenate the party. Or to quote the wonderful Fred Dagg “… kick her (NZF) in the guts Trev.” Because at present, NZF’s image is that of an old person’s political party, which it doesn’t have to be!
Agreed mary-a. I am 71 yrs old, I well remember Muldoon’s decline. This is similar. Not Winston’s fault – I always saw him as Muldoon’s heir, the only one with a similar gift. (Not that I liked either of them.) But now he is fading.
It happens to all of us – I ought to know….
Yes that stinks, no way is that “news” no way should it be headlined , and where is the promoters statement, they really abuseing their “news” outlet status there
11 Ben, this is the next attack mode. To belittle her. To frame her as a backstabber
Jacinda is being shown as stressed and not coping with pressure through slanted reporting,
Stuff has an article in which they mention a confrontation from a grey power audience heckler regarding the TPPA.
They failed to mention the sustained standing ovation she received on entering the hall. The love and warmth shown by Jacinda and others during and after the meeting.
This is deliberate.
A wounded National is a dangerous beast.
Kia kaha. Stay strong, vote Red/Green or Green/Red.
There is a Nelson Mail report of the Grey Power meeting.
“An estimated 450 people turned out to hear Jacinda Ardern deliver a speech to Grey Power Nelson on Wednesday as part of the Labour leader’s whistlestop tour of the city.
Extra seats had to be brought in for the meeting at Annesbrook Church in Stoke, with the crowd by far the biggest of a series of Grey Power meetings with political leaders on the campaign trail in Nelson.
Last month 260 people turned out for the Prime Minister, National leader Bill English, and 220 for NZ First leader Winston Peters.
Loud cheers and whooping greeted Ardern as she entered the church.
Unlike the previous two events, the crowd was not all grey heads.”
In Blenheim, in 1999, Helen Clark had a similar turnout- a packed church, standing room only, and school boys attending. I don’t recall whoops, though.
It was Grahame O’Brien and he was all over the show yesterday, relentless, police kept an eye on him, he was the one who posted the pro nat poem on all the cars, police were informed it was him.
It was a real wtf moment, him of all people being anti left, I was like dang, what are you doing dude?
Steven Joyce has now got his mates in the Landlords Assn to spread more fear about a Labour Government causing rents to rise by taking away their ability for negative gearing. How long before he resurrects the dancing Cossacks?
Nationals whole campaign is dancing cossacks….they have abandoned any pretence of honesty and are shamelessly appealing directly to fear and greed….it’ll only work if turnout is low.
It’s very defensive, and defending a long way back in National’s own territory. And some of National’s supporters have a lot to defend, a change of government could put some of them in rather reduced circumstances.
That change of government could also put a lot more people in much better circumstances. I think tonight’s CB poll bears this out.
As for dancing cossacks, I’m waiting for dancing pandas, little blue ones, to make an appearance…..
And the smugness with which some of their supporters embrace this behaviour makes me worry for NZ. What kind of kids are we all raising when this behaviour is revered and rewarded… except when poor brown people behave this way… then there is outrage
True Janice….and Susie Ferguson was completely useless as usual on Morning Report, failing to ask WHY rental prices will go up. She simply accepted the statement.
The question should have been “but Labour is promising to build 100,000 state houses on top of those being built by private enterprise; won’t this cause rents to come down?”
Propagandist Steven Joyce would never allow Kim Hill back until after the election as he has shut down any critics or free speech as he will not allow it while in his attack mode, he must be banished he is a powerful dictator now.
Is not the $2.3Billion accomodation supplement not enough corporate welfare?
IMO should a landlord be a net recipient of this, then their property should comply to certain govt standards, and dept of social welfare should have a list of properties that comply and over time move remnants not into these properties. I know easier said than done
Prebble’s “Jacinda tidal wave has gone out” is an appallingly selected metaphor.
A tidal wave (tsunami) that has gone out draws back from the shore so far that where there was water before nothing remains. 37.8 % is hardly nothing, nor is running neck and neck with the PM “nothing”.
These emotive ‘good sounding’ headlines epitomize the endless layers of calculated spin we are prey to.
lol…what happens when a tidal wave approaches the shore?….the water level drops as the approaching wave draws it to itself just before it inundates the shore in a massive wall of water…..watch out National, you’re busy inspecting the exposed foreshore and are about to be swamped .
It baffles me how Bill English can call himself ‘Christian’ when he lives his life as anything but in my opinion. His lies over Todd Barclay and support of Steven Joyce’s venomous behaviour are appalling. Dirty politics and National are one and the same.
As for Prebble slithering out of the slime – I just hope there are enough people who can see him for what he is. How does the Herald get away with this? Likewise Vernon Small in the Dominion Post has an anti Labour article today. Fair enough if there was also an examination of National as well.
Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
Very few self claimed Christians actually model their lives on the teachings of JC, right wing Christians being prime examples.
“RNZ has heard a secret recording Danny made of a conversation with his former employer where they talk about the scam.
His lawyer said they went to Immigration New Zealand (INZ) to lay a complaint and offered the recording as evidence of Danny’s exploitation, but authorities wouldn’t investigate and told them complainants should come forward at the first instance of exploitation.
The lawyer argued that if that was the case, there would almost never be a case taken. “And another thing I think they said is whether or not he has clean hands. Again, if you have been part of or party to a migrant exploitation situation it’s highly unlikely that one would ever have clean hands.”
In a statement, Immigration New Zealand said the initial complaint did not meet the threshold for investigation, but it did refer it to the Labour Inspectorate. It said the fact that Danny “admitted being complicit in the original arrangements was relevant to INZ’s initial assessment”.
I’m pretty sure that the person admitting being complicit in the scam brings it up to a threshold where an investigation is warranted and the police involved. It doesn’t stop it meeting that threshold.
So under the bellicose banner of “Landlords First !” a gang of anti-social greedies threaten havoc. Well bring it on. ‘Master of the Universe’ terrorists puffingly expressing the mantra “Democracy is Mine !” are beneath contempt. When bottom-line fixation comes down to waging class warfare things get very ‘personal’. Expect very ‘personal’ accountability. He Tangata He Tangata He Tangata !
I frequently spend weekend time in South Auckland. The sight of rentiers and their proxies scuttling around the area in their aspirational decade-old BMWs, Merc’s and Audis, aluminium ladders atop, DIY toolkits in the boot…….they absolutely turn my guts. Their obvious fish-out-of-water discomfort, their incapacity to meet eyes, evidences their feasting on the lives of others’ grandchildren as they scheme the enhancement of the lives of their own. As sick making as the Herald with its routine celebration of this “righteous entrepreneurialism” in its Monday morning headlines. Parading yesterday man Mad Dog Prebble is a new low.
Yep the prebbs trained and unleashed by labour and then turning on his master and biting the shit out of them since then. Where is the spca and why haven’t they done something about this dangerous animal.
An article usefully clarifying the term ‘Identity Politics’, reminding us of the original meaning, and why it should be reclaimed as a radical critique, not the straw man for used by white male paleoleftists such as Trotter to suppress the struggles of people who aren’t straight white men with moustaches.
Lilla’s spin on this statement would make identity politics sound like a selfish political theory. But his bad interpretation is not the same as a bad theory. When the collective writes that the “most radical politics come directly out of our own identity,” Lilla reads this as applying to each individual group’s identity when the Combahee River Collective meant “our own” to apply specifically to black women. It is a result of their belief, as they write later in the statement, that, “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.” The original intent of identity politics was articulating black women’s struggle at the nexus of race, gender, sexual, and class oppressions, and then forming strategies for dismantling each of these, both in black feminist spaces and in coalition with other groups.
Ask everyone what rights they think they should have. Questions such as:
1. Should you have the right to marry? Y/N
2. Should you have the right to do as you wish? Y/N
3. Should you have the right not to be affected by other peoples actions? Y/N
etcetera.
Get the questions right and we’ll end up with a very good BORA – and ACT would be out of options as ‘property rights’ wouldn’t survive.
So many abstract nouns. So very very many. Trotsker’s a man of words. Big round comfortable words. Then there’s that crap about paleoleftists whatever the fuck they are.
Paleoleftist – someone for whom it is always 1916, still in the Industrial revolution, on the eve of the revolution. Someone who likes big round comfortable words because they’re big, round and comfortable. A white male heterosexual assimilationist who assumes that his own type is the norm and all radical or revolutionary endeavours must support his own needs and all struggles must be subsumed into his own because he cannot comprehend another person’s experience and will not listen. In other words, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
With confessions mentioned earlier in the post, 3/4s of what you have listed resonates.
Apart from comfortable, and I am not a hundy on what assimilationist is.
Upon rereading, I reckon I am a good listener with plenty of empathy.
The TRUTH about the Tamaki ‘Regeneration’ – GENTRIFICATION $CAM!
“Penny Bright has been shining a light into the murky recesses of public/private partnerships in the Tamaki Regeneration scheme and revealed some disturbing details…”
Authorised by Penny Bright
2017 Independent candidate for Tamaki, 86A School Rd, Kingsland, Auckland 1021.
He expected about 100 young farmers to benefit from the programme. Not all of Landcorp’s 140 farms will be sold, he said.
“Many are subject to Treaty claims and others have a right-of-first-refusal for iwi. Some of Landcorp’s larger farms will be divided into smaller units.”
National said it expected it to take more than a decade to complete the sale and settlement process for the farms. Any revenue generated will be reinvested in public services.
Jericho Station, Landcorp farm near Te Anau, is to be sold to a Chinese buyer who lives “elsewhere”. An essentially equivalent bid for Jericho Station from a New Zealand buyer was declined.
So let me get this right, intensive dairying is ruining our environment and running down our number one export (tourism), yet national want more farms? WTF
Yep. They are doubling down on the lack of vision. Selling publicly owned land to private individuals while encouraging dairy expansion on unsuitable land thereby exacerbating damage to waterways and the tourism industry.
so currently many farmers pay less tax than the average working person, and they are using tax payer owned land to make their profits from.
They’ve had subsidies for mass irrigation, which is only needed due to the changing climate, environment as well as the greed of intensive dairy farming.
And now they are being offered the land which is currently owned by the people of NZ to buy (probably dirt cheap) to continue this practise. Rather than be given the skills/training to diversify and change, after being aware of (due to technology) just how damaging and destructive intensive dairying is to the planet we live on.
Far out, it’s just unreal. But climate change is real. One would think that having a business that relies on the climate/environment in order to profit, that one would be bending over backwards to protect the environment from which the profit depends.
How about a bit of free tertiary education for the farmers on the changing environment and diversification.
My Grandpop was a farmer, he loved animals so much, loved the land and the river from which their water came. Seems like SOME farmers today love the money/profit above everything else. Yup I’m more than a little bit fucked off about the news today.
Can Robertson please tell Joyce that the PM ran two zero budgets which is what Joyces accusation boils down too. Another thing Mr Joyce doesnt understand about economics and the economy
Should be a goodie, and would be good if Grant pointed out just why Joyce doesnt understand economics… ie Joyces unfinished/failed economics papers when he went to uni.
Haven’t seen a link yet Trace for the debate will post as soon as I do 😀
Australia blocks access to TAB betting accounts
From Morning Report, 8:40 am today
Listen duration 4′ :43″
The TAB’s been caught on the back foot by a surprise Australian law change that means no one in Australia can place bets in New Zealand. John Allen is the chief executive of the Racing Board, which runs the TAB.
Somehow reminds me of the song ‘Everything’s Up to date in Kansas City – They’ve gone about as far as they can go.’ (We are Kansas City, had our brief moment in time as a first world, brave little country footing it in the machine age out of the agricultural field, now back again, and Oz recognises that they can take potshots at us, no missiles needed.)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T0G2UNv0fM
This claim from National that farmers could face a $50,000 cost increase from Labour’s water tax sounds a bit sus to me. On the face of it, it sounds like an awfully big and scary number (it’s purpose), but at a cost @2-3 cents/cubic metre the farmer would have to be drawing off around 3 million cubic metres of water each year to receive a $50,000 water-use charge.
That’s a massive amount. But in reality, what is the size of an operation like that? What would its turnover be? I’m guessing into the millions. Because $50,000 as a line item to a multi-million dollar business isn’t that much when worked out as a percentage. But I would go further and say that if you’re having to draw off that much water and you really can’t afford to pay for it, you’re operating unsustainably and probably shouldn’t be in business anyway.
Finally got it together to do an early vote. Took my easyvote card and my 2.5 year old down. Oh no, our early voting starts NEXT week. Wtf – yes lots of people have complained. You could drive 50ks to Motueka to vote if you wanted. TDC – not our fault. Electoral commission oh that seems funny. Marty – you have impinged on my democratic right to vote early and I consider this dirty politics to try and keep the dirty gnats in power. Electoral commission – I’ll certainly note your comments.
Janice @ (27.1.1) … an election card isn’t necessary to vote. We still haven’t received our cards yet, but we voted on Tuesday at a place we didn’t know had an election booth available, because it wasn’t advertised as having one!
Seems to be a lot of inconsistencies related to early voting at this election.
Over 250,000 hectares of land have been bought by foreigners without required approval from the Overseas Investment Office since 2011, and the response was a slap with a wet bus ticket by National, says Leader of the Opposition Andrew Little.
“Our land is being sold into foreign ownership illegally on a massive scale, and National is doing nothing about it.
“The OIO had to validate the purchases retrospectively. It imposed fines in 31 cases of land being sold without approval, totalling 257,000 hectares valued at over half a billion dollars. The average fine was $8,500, or less than $1 a hectare. In other cases, no fine was imposed or the buyers were allowed to make a donation to charity to settle the issue.share on twitter
Can’t think of a better use for the Proceeds of Crime Act. Take the land back into state hands and take the money from those who sold it illegally.
Barclay doing a runner, I thought the police investigation had not yet wound up.
And the questions remain, why was Todd taping Glenis, did he ask her to lie for him and the identity of the female cabinet member (at the time) who was also involved. JS
Barclay doing a runner, I thought the police investigation had not yet wound up.
You’d think that with an ongoing police investigation he wouldn’t be able to. You will get stopped if you have any unpaid court fines and this is bad enough that it should stop him leaving.
It’s probably a loophole that allows him to leave before he gets convicted but if he stays he will be convicted. So he’s leaving to pre-empt the conviction.
Probably got a nice little cushy number courtesy of john key as long as he keeps his mouth shut. Lots going on there that all New Zealanders want to know about. Probably. Imo.
Jimmy Carter is roughly 100 feet (30 m) longer than the other two ships of her class, USS Seawolf (SSN-21) and USS Connecticut (SSN-22). This is due to the insertion of a plug (additional section) known as the Multi-Mission Platform (MMP), which allows launch and recovery of ROVs and Navy SEAL forces. The plug features a fairing over a wasp-waist shaped passageway allowing crew to pass between the fore and aft sections of the hull while providing a space to store ROVs and special equipment that may need to launch and recover from the submarine
Hi Robert G
Problems because of rain with hortis losing a lot of their crop, Kumaras going off in shop soon after arrival instead of keeping for ages.
What can be done about coping with rainy seasons in your opinion? Furrows as they used to use in West Coast? Lifting the beds higher and allowing for streams alongside?
Warm enough where you are, grey, for rice? 🙂
Watercress, raupo, willow-strawberries? (no such thing as “willow-strawberries” though they’d do well in the wet, I imagine. I grow Himalayan tree-strawberries, but they don’t like wet feet). Increasingly rainy conditions are going to be very challenging in some regions as the climate slips and slides about the place. I guess we have to look to monsoon areas and see how they do it. Biodynamics does have one answer: preparation 501, a silica application that strengthens the plants and helps them resist rot. It works well, but you have to subscribe to the Steiner thinking before you’d start applying that.
Pete @ (33) … At present I’m in Frau Paula’s constituency (temporarily thank goodness) and come to think of it, I haven’t seen hair nor hide of her, not anywhere. However, I do have a pitchfork on hand, should she or her minions come door knocking at the last minute, closer to the election!
Robert Guyton:
Most New Zealander’s are sane and considerate people.
Most would rather slit their throats than vote for the Greens.
Fact’s are fact’s.
Please climb down from your tree.
[that’s not a fact, it’s a belief. Stop trolling and have a think about how to be here without being an arse – weka]
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
billmurray – what contradictory, lunatic nonsense you write!
Let me explain where you’ve fallen into your own heap of thought-dung:
You write,
“Most New Zealander’s are sane and considerate people.”
Then, perversely, your contradict your claim,
“Most would rather slit their throats…”
Have you flipped out, Billmurray?
You claim is ridiculous in the extreme.
Did you expect to be taken seriously, flailing about with idiocy like that?
Bill! Don’t be a dill!
Apart from the obvious bovine humour of the fool from the Infrastructure NZ suggesting that because the project will do nothing obvious for Auckland traffic congestion by 2046, that it is too small and should be made bigger and even more expensive. FFS It is already going to be the most expensive road in NZ and vies on a kilometre basis with the most expensive roads ever built..
There is also the question about why in the hell are they building this damn thing when it obviously has NO apparent utility?
Apparently designating it as a road of significance to National mean that the Board of Inquiry disassociated their mind from looking if it is a useful project.
A proposed Auckland motorway could rival the most expensive roading project in the world, Infrastructure New Zealand says.
The group, which represents infrastructure companies such as Kiwirail and Transpower, has calculated Auckland’s proposed 5.5km East-West Link (EWL) would cost an estimated $327 million per-kilometre, equalling the 40km Sochi to Krasnaya Polyana road in Russia.
Constructed for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi the US$9.4b (NZ$13b) Sochi to Krasnaya Polyana motorway and railway project connected the coastal Winter Games site to alpine sporting venues and was touted as the most expensive road infrastructure project in history.
So, it’s going to cost lots and lots but the big part is right down the bottom:
In a June board of enquiry hearing, NZTA economist John Williamson said no cost-benefit analysis was to be conducted by the agency on the EWL.
“I do not consider that it would be practical, and may not even be possible, to undertake such a task nor do I think it is helpful,” Williamson said.
Yeah, doing a cost-benefit analysis is not considered to be helpful. Probably because it would show that it’s completely bloody worthless.
Robert Guyton:
Most New Zealander’s are sound and sensible people.
Most would rather slit their own throats than vote for the Greens.
Scramble down from your tree habitat, move around, get a view of the real world.
I and many other’s wish that the Green’s disappear at the election.
They are a blight on our Country.
Hope you take my advice, best wishes for a awful election.
[2 week ban for trolling. See also other moderation in Open Mike. Up your game or expect a longer ban time. – weka]
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
I would guess that New Zealand share market investors have decided that the Green Party aren’t going to make it back into Parliament.
The Air New Zealand share price has dropped by about 7% in the last week.
Without their (very) frequent flier Gareth Hughes the companies’ profitability will plummet. How can a list MP based in Wellington possibly spend so much on flying?
No more taxpayer paid flights for the little bearded one.
That drop has probably got something to do with the fact they have gone ex-dividend. Stocks invariably fall by the amount of the dividend when they go ex, because the dividend is transferred from the company (the company is now worth less) to the shareholder.
That is quite true of course, although the drop has been about twice the dividend.
However I find my interpretation much more fun. Yours is so much more sensible but doesn’t have the stardust to it. Mind you I don’t actually invest on that basis.
You really can’t read can you?
You did see that my original comment was at 3.12pm
The second was at 5.41pm
Now please tell me. When did you discover the Colmar-Brunton results?
You really are dumb aren’t you?
Why I’ll bet you are a Green supporter.
No, I am pointing out that you are burbling over-confidence because of TV3’s poll. But you are forming the basis of an irony. That comes with the TV1 News. You dug your pit – lie in it.
I see the New Zealand Herald election forecast model says “Predicted candidate vote for Ilam
Predictions for candidate vote by electorate take into account the trends in previous elections and polling data. These are hardest to predict because of tactical voting.”
The graph shows Brownlee at about 60%, Rimell at 30% and Lee at 7%. (Each + or -)
The fact that city councillor Raf Manji isn’t even on there gives context to the guesswork. In spite of that will the information be held up as a source of information? Let alone a ‘reliable’ source?
“When instead they’re good for the country, and the sky doesn’t fall on your head, have the grace to acknowledge it.”
If you were so inclined – (and i’m pretty sure we both are not), you could go back thru my post and see that I have done this on several occasions when wrong.
I don’t have to go back through your comments because I can remember you doing so. However, where National supporters are concerned, I’m very much in favour of the “that’s for nothing, now do something” approach 😈
NEO LIBERALISM at its best the Fury camp no that Hughie will lose in a fair fight so they stack the deck in there favor.
Well Joseph as soon as you see your opening Knock That fucker out that is what you have to do to win this fight.
Have you seen the Alaskan King crab fishing Its one of my favorite programs .
I think that scampi fishing was similar to that the place wear we were fishing had a all you can catch quota in 5 days so we worked 4 1/2 days straight no sleep we stop to eat we had to make boxes to pack the scampi wash grade and pack scampi load and unload the blast freezer head and gut fish box it. I lost 8 Kgs in 7 days it was a lot of work.
The skippers are the same some are screamers ect they have your life in there hands
so you have to trust them.
Maf found the scampi fisheries no one new it existed .
Well one of the MAF Officers went and seen his mate that had a fish shop and they got a boat and sent it out scampi fishing they got a skipper from the Australian prawn fisheries well they ended up cornering the scampi fisheries and owning close to half of the quota worth $100 MIL. I think that stinks a state employee should not be able to gain from the state .
This the reason why I say we have to be really care full with the policy because water is a valuable resource and some sneaky bastard mite exploit our water at our loss.
So it is our duty to keep a sharp eye on the process on our water policy and if we see bullshit happening we will let everyone no so it will be stopped .
We got the Michail fay, scampi fisheries, there will be others .
I meet a skipper down there we got along awesome I thought I could trust him and work with him.
but while we were steaming to Bluff we got a call that he got caught in his gear and was gone .
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
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 arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
Open access notablesIce acceleration and rotation in the Greenland Ice Sheet interior in recent decades, Løkkegaard et al., Communications Earth & Environment:In the past two decades, mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated, partly due to the speedup of glaciers. However, uncertainty in speed derived from satellite products ...
Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Government’s official website – arrived in Point of Order’s email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
It's hard times try to make a livingYou wake up every morning in the unforgivingOut there somewhere in the cityThere's people living lives without mercy or pityI feel good, yeah I'm feeling fineI feel better then I have for the longest timeI think these pills have been good for meI ...
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
Every day now just seems to bring in more fresh meat for the grinder.In their relentlessly ideological drive to cut back on the “excessive bloat” (as they see it) of the previous Labour-led government, on the mountains of evidence accumulated in such a short period of time do not ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Megan Valére SosouMarket gardening site of the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè (Image credit: Megan Valère Sossou) For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough ...
Buzz from the Beehive Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ...
Morning in London Mother hugs beloved daughter outside the converted shoe factory in which she is living.Afternoon in London Travelling writer takes himself and his wrist down to A&E, just to be sure. Read more ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – The recent announcement of the University Advisory Group, chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, makes very clear where the Government’s focus and priorities lie. The remit of the Advisory Group is that Group members will consider challenges and opportunities for improvement in the university sector including: ...
Eric Crampton writes – The Reserve Bank of New Zealand desperately wants to find reasons to have workstreams in climate change. It makes little sense. They’ve run another stress test on the banks looking to see if they could find a prudential regulation case. They couldn’t. They ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Pundits from the left and the right are arguing that National’s Fast Track Bill that is designed to speed up infrastructure decisions could end up becoming mired in a cesspool of corruption. Political commentator ...
Looking at the headlines this morning it’s hard to feel anything other than pessimistic about the future of humanity.Note that I’m not speaking about the future of mankind, but the survival of our humanity. The values that we believe in seem to be ebbing away, by the day.Perhaps every generation ...
Swabbing mixed breed baby chicks to test for avian influenzaUh oh. Bird flu – often deadly to humans – is not only being transmitted from infected birds to dairy cows, but is now travelling between dairy cows. As of last Friday, Bloomberg News reports, there were 32 American dairy herds ...
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 ...
What is it with the mining industry? Its not enough for them to pillage the earth - they apparently can't even be bothered getting resource consent to do so: The proponent behind a major mine near the Clutha River had already been undertaking activity in the area without a ...
Photo # 1 I am a huge fan of Singapore’s approach to housing, as described here two years ago by copying and pasting from The ConversationWhat Singapore has that Australia does not is a public housing developer, the Housing Development Board, which puts new dwellings on public and reclaimed land, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Reactions to news of the government’s readiness to make urgent changes to “the resource management system” through a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) suggest a balanced approach is being taken. The Taxpayers’ Union says the proposed changes don’t go far enough. Greenpeace says ...
I’m starting to wonder if Anna Burns-Francis might be the best political interviewer we’ve got. That might sound unlikely to you, it came as a bit of a surprise to me.Jack Tame can be excellent, but has some pretty average days. I like Rebecca Wright on Newshub, she asks good ...
Chris Trotter writes – Willie Jackson is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also ...
Graeme Edgeler writes – This morning [April 21], the Wellington High Court is hearing a judicial review brought by Hon. Karen Chhour, the Minister for Children, against a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal. This is unusual, judicial reviews are much more likely to brought against ministers, rather than ...
Both of Parliament’s watchdogs have now ripped into the Government’s Fast-track Approvals Bill. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s political economy and beyond on the morning of Tuesday, April 23 are:The Lead: The Auditor General,John Ryan, has joined the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah SpengemanPeople wait to board an electric bus in Pune, India. (Image credit: courtesy of ITDP) Public transportation riders in Pune, India, love the city’s new electric buses so much they will actually skip an older diesel bus that ...
The infrastructure industry yesterday issued a “hurry up” message to the Government, telling it to get cracking on developing a pipeline of infrastructure projects.The hiatus around the change of Government has seen some major projects cancelled and others delayed, and there is uncertainty about what will happen with the new ...
Hi,Over the weekend I revisited a podcast I really adore, Dead Eyes. It’s about a guy who got fired from Band of Brothers over two decades ago because Tom Hanks said he had “dead eyes”.If you don’t recall — 2001’s Band of Brothers was part of the emerging trend of ...
Buzz from the Beehive The 180 or so recipients of letters from the Government telling them how to submit infrastructure projects for “fast track” consideration includes some whose project applications previously have been rejected by the courts. News media were quick to feature these in their reports after RMA Reform Minister Chris ...
It would not be a desirable way to start your holiday by breaking your back, your head, or your wrist, but on our first hour in Singapore I gave it a try.We were chatting, last week, before we started a meeting of Hazel’s Enviro Trust, about the things that can ...
Calling all journalists, academics, planners, lawyers, political activists, environmentalists, and other members of the public who believe that the relationships between vested interests and politicians need to be scrutinised. We need to work together to make sure that the new Fast-Track Approvals Bill – currently being pushed through by the ...
Feel worried. Shane Jones and a couple of his Cabinet colleagues are about to be granted the power to override any and all objections to projects like dams, mines, roads etc even if: said projects will harm biodiversity, increase global warming and cause other environmental harms, and even if ...
Bryce Edwards writes- The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. ...
Michael Bassett writes – If you think there is a move afoot by the radical Maori fringe of New Zealand society to create a parallel system of government to the one that we elect at our triennial elections, you aren’t wrong. Over the last few days we have ...
Without a corresponding drop in interest rates, it’s doubtful any changes to the CCCFA will unleash a massive rush of home buyers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Monday, April 22 included:The Government making a ...
Sunday was a lazy day. I started watching Jack Tame on Q&A, the interviews are usually good for something to write about. Saying the things that the politicians won’t, but are quite possibly thinking. Things that are true and need to be extracted from between the lines.As you might know ...
In our Weekly Roundup last week we covered news from Auckland Transport that the WX1 Western Express is going to get an upgrade next year with double decker electric buses. As part of the announcement, AT also said “Since we introduced the WX1 Western Express last November we have seen ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 29 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Stats NZ releases its statutory report on Census 2023 tomorrow.Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers a pre-Budget speech at ...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 14, 2024 thru Sat, April 20, 2024. Story of the week Our story of the week hinges on these words from the abstract of a fresh academic ...
The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. The Government says this will ...
This is a column to say thank you. So many of have been in touch since Mum died to say so many kind and thoughtful things. You’re wonderful, all of you. You’ve asked how we’re doing, how Dad’s doing. A little more realisation each day, of the irretrievable finality of ...
Identifying the engine type in your car is crucial for various reasons, including maintenance, repairs, and performance upgrades. Knowing the specific engine model allows you to access detailed technical information, locate compatible parts, and make informed decisions about modifications. This comprehensive guide will provide you with a step-by-step approach to ...
Introduction: The allure of racing is undeniable. The thrill of speed, the roar of engines, and the exhilaration of competition all contribute to the allure of this adrenaline-driven sport. For those who yearn to experience the pinnacle of racing, becoming a race car driver is the ultimate dream. However, the ...
Introduction Automobiles have become ubiquitous in modern society, serving as a primary mode of transportation and a symbol of economic growth and personal mobility. With countless vehicles traversing roads and highways worldwide, it begs the question: how many cars are there in the world? Determining the precise number is a ...
Maintaining a safe and reliable vehicle requires regular inspections. Whether it’s a routine maintenance checkup or a safety inspection, knowing how long the process will take can help you plan your day accordingly. This article delves into the factors that influence the duration of a car inspection and provides an ...
Mazda Motor Corporation, commonly known as Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Fuchu, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. The company was founded in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd., and began producing vehicles in 1931. Mazda is primarily known for its production of passenger cars, but ...
Your car battery is an essential component that provides power to start your engine, operate your electrical systems, and store energy. Over time, batteries can weaken and lose their ability to hold a charge, which can lead to starting problems, power failures, and other issues. Replacing your battery before it ...
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. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
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 ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Asia Pacific Report A score of Palestine solidarity protesters draped themselves in white shrouds with mock blood in a sombre “die-in” demonstration at Te Komitanga Square — the heart of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city — today as speakers urged people to take a stronger boycott against Israeli products. The ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Tackling violence against women will be the sole agenda item for a national cabinet meeting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has convened for Wednesday. The meeting, held remotely, follows thousands of Australians attending rallies across ...
The protest outside the White House correspondents’ dinner hotel. Image: Anatolu video screenshot APR More than two dozen Palestinian journalists had called for a boycott of the dinner, writing an open letter urging their American colleagues not to attend. “You have a unique responsibility to speak truth to power and ...
“Our exporters should, therefore, be deeply concerned that the Fast-track Approvals Bill was not assessed for consistency with any of our free trade commitments prior to being introduced to the House,” says Gary Taylor, Chief Executive of the Environmental ...
NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff is calling on all political parties to support the new Member’s Bill from Labour’s workplace relations and safety spokesperson Camilla Belich MP that would ensure negligent companies are held accountable when their employees ...
A historian with an uncanny track record of predicting US election winners tells RNZ's Sunday Morning that President Biden looks to be on track for another term, but things could still go very wrong for him. ...
A historian with a track record of predicting US election winners tells RNZ's Sunday Morning that President Biden looks to be on track for another term, but things could still go wrong for him. ...
Ngaio Marsh House is one of Christchurch’s best kept secrets – and contains more than a few mysteries of its own.Trust Ngaio Marsh to leave more than a few mysteries scattered through her house long after her departure. For a start, there’s the curious concrete portal in the garden, ...
Appointment viewing has been lost to the mists of time, but memories of Montana Sunday Theatre can still be conjured by hitting play on a particular piece of classical music. “You’re not going to be able to sell it.” Over 30 years on, Karen Bieleski still recalls how the task ...
Performance Review King Luxon sat behind His massive polished oak desk. It is Performance Review time. There is a knock on the door. “Enter!” says the King. In steps Minister of Disabilities and Carer Pedicures, Penny Simmonds. “I can explain everything …” she begins. “Fine,” says King Luxon, pressing the ...
The pair opened their first fully collaborative exhibition, Nina for Flowers, last Saturday. Gabi Lardies visited their studio to find out who Nina is and what working together was like.‘It didn’t start out like, ‘This is a show about Nina,’” says Josephine Jelicich, gripping a thermos of peppermint tea. ...
Thank you, Dr Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner, for your brilliant invention. I’m another mid-20s Kiwi who had an OE last year. I hopped on my bicycle where France meets the Atlantic and cycled east. I pedalled through the Loire Valley, down rivers lined with willows and ancient wisteria-draped chateaus. I relished ...
Asia Pacific Report From France to Australia, university pro-Palestine protests in the United States have now spread to several countries with students pitching on-campus camps. And students at Columbia and other US universities remain defiant as campuses have witnessed the biggest protests since the anti-Vietnam war and anti-apartheid eras in ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)New Zealand Government’s Fast Track legislation. 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 ...
Tara Ward talks to presenter Naomi Toilalo about the new TV show that turns food waste into a three course feast. Naomi Toilalo is standing in the warehouse at Good Neighbour Tauranga, helping unpack the two-and-a-half tonnes of rejected food that will arrive at the community support hub that day. ...
Scout is our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Scout’s human, Avril, for her support. Dog name: Scout (named after the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird – she inherited the independent spirit ...
Megan Alatini takes us through her life in TV, including ‘terrible’ daytime TV, the class of Carol Hirschfeld and her most embarrassing TrueBliss moment. When she responded to a vague newspaper ad asking “do you have what it takes to be a popstar?” 25 years ago, Megan Alatini never guessed ...
A new exhibition in Wellington showcases the faces behind your local goods and services. Back in 1977, when I was a fine arts student at the University of Canterbury, I took a series of photographs of Christchurch shopkeepers. The photos were for a calendar – a project for my end ...
Toomaj and his resistance to tyranny through his songs have become an icon for the youth of Iran, so his sentence has hit the nation hard. Toomaj Salehi is not the first artist to pay the price for standing with the people. ...
My cousin Dylan and I spotted these big eels under the bridge that summer. We watched them lounging under the dark weed, facing into the flow of water, their mouths frozen open. Dylan and I couldn’t stop thinking about those eels. The night we went down to the creek, we ...
Newsroom, home of satire. My long-running weekly satirical series The Secret Diary has moved to Newsroom and will appear every Saturday, with Victor Billot’s wildly popular satirical Odes continuing to appear every Sunday. Diaries, Odes – while serious political columnists toil at meaningful opinions and stroke their chins to an ...
Tara Ward unravels the many nuanced layers of a cartoon about talking dogs.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. It’s not often an episode of a children’s cartoon has adults sobbing into their sleeves, but that’s exactly what happened this week when ...
Working as a doctor in developing countries to help communities achieve better health outcomes is nothing short of a life goal for Jessica Tater. The University of Otago medical student has her sights firmly set on joining the international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) when she qualifies ...
There’s an island in the far reaches of Auckland’s territory, sitting off the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula, 30 minutes by air from the city or four hours on the slow boat. Aotea Great Barrier is off-grid, it has a population of fewer than a thousand people … and most ...
Asia Pacific Report An Australian author and advocate, Jim Aubrey, today led a national symbolic one minute’s silence to mark the “blood debt” owed to Papuan allies during the Second World War indigenous resistance against the invading Japanese forces. “A promise to most people is a promise,” Aubrey said in ...
Asia Pacific Report The Freedom Flotilla is ready to sail to Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. All the required paperwork has been submitted to the port authority, and the cargo has been loaded and prepared for the humanitarian trip to the besieged enclave. However, organisers received word of an “administrative ...
Pacific Media Watch Palestine solidarity protesters today demonstrated at the Auckland headquarters of Television New Zealand, accusing the country’s major TV network of broadcasting “propaganda” backing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. About 50 protesters targeted the main entrance to the TVNZ building near Sky Tower and also picketed a side ...
Opinion by Lynley Hood. Forty years on from my 1985 Fulbright Grant, my disquiet over the war in Gaza evoked some troubling questions. The answer to my first question – What is the primary purpose of the Fulbright Programme? – was on the Fulbright NZ website. It says: US Senator, ...
The ministers responsible for green-lighting major projects need to be open about potential conflicts of interest, says Transparency International. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University It has been a particularly distressing start to the year. There is little that can ease the current grief of individuals, families and communities who have needlessly lost a loved one to men’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Lichen, the first described example of symbiosis.AdeJ Artventure/Shutterstock Once known only to those studying biology, the word symbiosis is now widely used. Symbiosis is the intimate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Hemsley, Head, Childhood Dementia Research Group, Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University Olena Ivanova/Shutterstock “Childhood” and “dementia” are two words we wish we didn’t have to use together. But sadly, around 1,400 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University The government’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has just published its second report. It was set up by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth in 2022 to provide: ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne The Queensland state election will be held in October. A YouGov poll for The Courier Mail, conducted April 9–17 from a sample ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Naeni, PhD candidate at Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University There’s been much talk in recent months about what a possible second Donald Trump presidency in the United States could mean for Europe, Russia’s war in Ukraine, the ...
A brief round-up of submissions on the controversial proposed law. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week, submissions on the controversial Fast-track Approvals Bill closed just hours after the government released a list of stakeholder organisations who were sent letters advising how they could ...
A poem from Robin Peace’s new collection Detritus of Empire: feather / grass / rock. Cereal giving I see a woman’s hands, see her curious hands break a stalk as she walks through the tall prairie, the savannah, the steppe, wherever it was. See her idly bite the grass that ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)A handsomely produced (debossed cover, lovely ...
The Commissioner's decision validates the longstanding efforts of the local community and ensures that Awataha Marae will be managed to serve the needs of the local community, particularly for hosting tangihanga. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Salles, Associate professor, University of Sydney Examples of Australian landscapes.Unsplash Seventy thousand years ago, the sea level was much lower than today. Australia, along with New Guinea and Tasmania, formed a connected landmass known as Sahul. Around this time – ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Castagna, Lecturer, Creative Writing, Western Sydney University Day Day Market, ParramattaPhoto: Garry Trinh I live on the edge of Parramatta, Australia’s fastest-growing city, on the kind of old-fashioned suburban street that has 1950s fibros constructed in the post-war housing boom, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Ryan, Teaching Fellow in Economics, University of Waikato GettyImagesfatido/Getty Images There is an ongoing global debate over whether the high inflation seen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic can be lowered without a recession. New Zealand is not ...
The ‘Wicked Game’ heartthrob is in his late 60s now. That didn’t stop him putting on a lively, goofy and very sparkly show. Apart from ‘Wicked Game’, which graces a sultry playlist of mine simply called 💋, my last sustained Chris Isaak listening session took place when I was about ...
Analysis - Two ministers were stripped of portfolios in a warning to Cabinet, drama broke out at the Waitangi Tribunal, and the gang patch ban bill ran into opposition. ...
Tara Ward makes an impassioned plea for some vital pop culture merch. In April 1999, I became obsessed with a new reality television show called Popstars. Every Tuesday night, five strangers transformed into music royalty before my very eyes as Joe, Keri, Carly, Erika and Megan were chosen to form ...
PNG Post-Courier In the early hours of ANZAC Day, aerial photographs captured an impressive gathering of Australians and Papua New Guineans at Isurava in the Northern (Oro) Province. The solemn dawn service yesterday was held at a site steeped in history, where some of the fiercest battles of World War ...
The PSA is shocked that Oranga Tamariki has used the cost cutting drive to downgrade its commitment to Te Ao Māori and remove many specialist Māori roles. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland There can be no more powerful symbol of the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea than the prime ministers of these neighbouring countries walking together on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharon Robinson, Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director of ARC Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong Andrew Netherwood Over the last 25 years, the ozone hole which forming over Antarctica each spring has started to shrink. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Viktoria Kahui, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Economics, University of Otago Getty Images/Amy Toensing Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing. One emerging concept focuses on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Colin Bednall, Associate Professor in Management, Swinburne University of Technology marvent/Shutterstock Finding the best person to fill a position can be tough, from drafting a job ad to producing a shortlist of top interview candidates. Employers typically consider information from ...
Wondering where to host your next BYO? Whether its a small gathering or a massive party, we’ve got some recommendations. I was first introduced to the concept of BYOs at Dunedin’s India Gardens, a legendary but sadly defunct establishment, which purveyed enormous quantities of mango chicken to Aotearoa’s drunkest future ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julien Cooper, Honorary Lecturer, Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University Julien Cooper The hyper-arid desert of Eastern Sudan, the Atbai Desert, seems like an unlikely place to find evidence of ancient cattle herders. But in this dry environment, my new ...
The sector says it’s hopeful her replacement Paul Goldsmith will be able to throw it a lifeline, after six months with a minister deemed missing in action, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign ...
The government can't just rely on axing public sector jobs and has to do more to cut spending, says the chief economist at a free market think tank. ...
Me, offended? Not at all, and clearly not as peed off as you are by the millions of hard, working class folk. Ah Mc’Cain, you’ve done it again. lol
Just remember that slogan politics is the intellectual equivalent of paint by numbers.
And to read below, despite all your bellicose angst you’re not even voting to change the nat government, well, colour me proved correct, Mr Chips.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
[I don’t want to have to waste my time reading through this to moderate, so here’s a warning for both other you. 1. don’t do this personal shit on authored posts, if you really have to get into a beef, take it to Open Mike. 2. read the Policy about pointless personal attacks, tone, and flamewars, and pull your heads on. You both have the ability to make political arguments, so please head back that way weka]
“Not at all, and clearly not as peed off as you are by the millions of hard, working class folk.”
Liar
Blowhard.
So no retraction for your lies, but a double-down.
Classy
That’s it, mate, steer the issue of you shouting the odds about the government even though you won’t be voting, and away from you insulting people by calling them middle class because they will vote for labour and/or the greens.
You’ve been outed as a blow hard, which is ironic, as lefties who won’t vote the nats out, despite whining on and on about the unfairness of it all, despite having the democratic option to do so, just totally suck. You blow and suck at the same time. lol.
Come back when you’ve stopped stomping your feet and holding your breath, and are ready to do your bit in real life to improve the lives and conditions of the poorest in our society and the hard out working classes.
Until then, wank on, web warrior.
You lie so often Union city greens, ever thought of a job for national?
It would seem that what you are good at, lies, and assumptions.
What do you do to help? Do you do anything? Beyond the election, anything?
“You lie so often Union city greens, ever thought of a job for national?
It would seem that what you are good at, lies, and assumptions.
What do you do to help? Do you do anything? Beyond the election, anything?”
I’m not even going to bother asking you to cite my lies, even though I know there are none, even though it could lead to you getting warned for it. All I will say is there are no lies coming from me.
Let me explain it clearly for you.
It was stated from another poster you don’t intend to vote. You didn’t deny it. True.
You not voting to change the government directly affects the lives of poorest amongst us in the most negative of ways. True.
You make insults by calling people middle class. True.
The middle class and top earners who will vote to change the government for the benefit of those less fortunate are doing more to improve the well being of children in poverty and the homeless by casting their votes for labour and/or the greens than you are. True.
You don’t have a leg to stand on. True.
As a hard working, poor, working class man, instead of castigating the people you are, like Lprent, who I (rightly or wrongly) perceive as being middle class, who in his early vote thread did his part for the left, I thank them for voting with their social conscience. True.
You’re all fur coat and no knickers. All mouth and no trousers. The worst kind of lefty. True.
If lefty is you mate, then I’m glad I’m no lefty like you.
As for your lies, well I pointed one out, here another.
“insulting people by calling them middle class because they will vote for labour and/or the greens.” that is a lie. I attacked the sanctimonious and condescension of a middle class labour party hack who lied again.
You took my comments personally, and for some reason keep adding the greens, which is quite frankly odd. No wait, add it to your lies.
I’m not your type of lefty, and thank God for that. I don’t think I could live with that much self denial and smug wankery.
You’re all over the place, except in the polling booth, voting out this national government… Where any lefty should be.
Angry Adam, for the working class, poor and vulnerable of NZ.
I can put up with you lying about me, but If you don’t vote labour and/or the greens, you’re an even bigger wanker than you appear.
Let’s do this, Chips.
please read moderator note above and acknowledge.
Seen it.
Is it comforting being such a libtard?
I see why/how the right came up with the term after talking with you.
please read moderator note above and acknowledge.
Indeed, stopped now.
thanks adam.
It’s been over 36 hours since the TV3 poll, fronted by a 12 year old, with the ‘unbelievable’ results and I’ve run the gambit of emotions – from despair to anger and many stations in between.
First, as Martyn Bradbury says on TDB – if 47% of NZers think like National, what does that say of us as a nation?
Second, the left trend was positive for weeks, so how come such a dramatic reversal?
So . . . my conclusion – we’ve been conned – that poll was DIRTY POLITICS 2.0.
I don’t know how they did it, but I just ‘know’ they did! I can feel it in my bones!
And that makes me very angry – such a blatant, cynical and malicious manipulation of our political process!
Electorate vote Labour, party vote Greens!
Yes, the owners of this country don’t want the status quo changed.
George Carlin nails it.
Or maybe the honeymoon period is over and people would actually like to know what taxes are coming before they vote for a party
Some people would actually like to know next week’s Lotto numbers too.
I suspect its easier for Labour (given they’ve had 9 years in opposition) to come up with some ideas on taxes and be able to present those ideas then it is for Lotto to give out the winning numbers
Strange I remember National promising not to raise GST in 2008 and then running a tax working group that resulted in them raising GST.
You are trying to make something out of nothing. The media are more than happy to jump on the band wagon. Labour are going to get the help of experts to come up with a good plan. Holy shit what a radical idea. Next you will be moaning that they listen to engineers before they decide what Bridges they can and can’t build up north.
I admire your optimism.
The way the Labour Party are going I think picking the winning Lotto numbers is much more likely to happen than getting an agreed policy out of that rabble.
At least when National were defeated in 1999 they settled down and got organised by about Christmas, 2003. It took them about 4 years.
Labour has spent 9 years and are no better off than they were when everything collapsed for them in 2008.
It feels as the Labour Party are the cast of Groundhog Day.
And how is your optimism after the Colmar-Brunton poll on TV1 tonight, Alwyn ? No doubt you will find it less credible, but I suggest that the TV3 poll was indeed utter junk. It bucked the trend, which is now obvious.
Please stop following me around.
My wife is getting very suspicious.
So she should. Your faculty for accurate judgement appears to be suffering from shaky unreliability.
Are you advocating taxation by lottery?
Or maybe attaching significance to individual polls is stupid and useless.
What about what services National are going to cut?
Or what they are going to privatise or contract out? Bill English is on record is being anti public ownership.
Will council be forced to privatise water reticulation?
What is going to happen to the country’s state housing stock?
Or maybe the honeymoon period is over and people would actually like to know what taxes are coming before they vote for a party
They didn’t in 2008 but they do now? Why would that be? Surely it can’t be because they’re being bullshitted by right-wing propagandists, because that would never happen, right?
> So . . . my conclusion – we’ve been conned – that poll was DIRTY POLITICS 2.0.
> I don’t know how they did it, but I just ‘know’ they did! I can feel it in my bones!
Have to say dude, you sound a bit delusional
> Electorate vote Labour, party vote Greens!
OK
A.
Not so very delusional at all. In fact, easily done:
A high ranking National minister with a fiscal hole rings the boss of the company he once owned, quietly suggesting the next poll should favour the ruling party. No trace or paper trail.
Te boss of the company once owned by the fiscal hole suggests some new methodology to the polling company – such as asking negative questions about Labour and the Greens, and only polling blue electorates. Again, no real evidence.
Get a 12 year old FW to breathlessly announce the findings – and it’s done!
Easy as!
Gullible people, seeing the Greens below 5%, switch their party votes to Labour – and the desired outcome is achieved.
The poll is unlikely to be accurate. We had a couple of posts about it,
https://thestandard.org.nz/kia-kaha-lefties-its-one-poll/
https://thestandard.org.nz/the-bullshit/
Will be interesting to see the results of the one news poll this evening.
It will be interesting if also indicates National up / Labour down result.
Would that make this poll potentially accurate then?
I don’t think any individual polls are that useful (try reading the linked posts) and that we should be looking at trends and analysis of those by people who have some skills in that.
I also think it’s dangerous that we have a MSM intent on influencing voting, esp given advance voting. I’ve also said in the past that the value of individual polls is how they might help campaigning. So of course the left is going to down play bad ones and up play good ones, but it’s still bullshit. I’m all for changing that system, in the meantime we need good analysis of the whole situation.
Well, James?
Bit of a bugger, really, I suppose, for you. And yours.
dont like the result – must be rigged.
Thats a sound, well reasoned argument you have there Tony. Dosnt sound crazy at all.
Tony Veitch,
This was a gigged poll, – it was done by Steven Joyce as he has immense control over all media as he is a share holder or board director of mediaworks. TV3 ilk.
So this was his deliberate retaliation to being ‘stomped all over with his $11 billion dollar hole allegation made against Labour that was his silly fuck up, and he needed to get that monkey off his back.
This was his way of diverting the glare off his fuck up.
Can he control the next two polls coming up? We shall see.
cleangreen – agree – see post above.
Tony Veitch (not etc)
Yes I enjoyed that and i am so astonished most can’t see the forest for the trees!!
Hope all our efforts wake them up to vote the right way after nine yrs of slash and burn, our grand kids will have no future if we dont rid these carpertbaggers from our shores now.
Hi cleangreen @ (1.6) you state …
“This was a gigged poll, – it was done by Steven Joyce as he has immense control over all media as he is a share holder or board director of mediaworks. TV3 ilk.”
I did suspect this, because the result of the TV Reid poll didn’t seems to be in sync with recent polling trends which glaringly stood out, but wasn’t quite sure if Joyce still had interests other than contacts in Mediaworks.
So the likelihood of Joyce using his powerful media business influence to manipulate the TV3 Reid poll, in a dirty attempt to maintain his rotten political empire, is a possibility? If this is the case, resorting to gutter tactics influencing a poll result favourable to one particular political party, goes right down to National’s dark, corrupt core! Just proves then that Joyce is indeed a master of the dark art of political manipulation and should be nowhere near government!
Have you ever considered writing a sequel to the Harry Potter books?
Your imagination would certainly be up to it, given what you manage to claim about Stephen Joyce.
He sold out completely and left the company Radioworks, which he had founded, when it was bought by Canwest in 2001. That is 16 years during which he has had nothing to do with the business.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Joyce
Are you saying he had nothing to do with the ‘loan’ made to the company, by the state, to pay for their license fees?
You really shouldn’t believe everything you read on the Standard you know.
The payment for broadcasting licences was changed so that the licence for the whole period, 21 years if I remember, had to be paid in one go, at the beginning, rather than on an annual basis.
Rather like if you rented a house for a 21 year term and had to pay the entire rental amount, for the whole time, before you could move in.
They were given the option of paying it in chunks, with a very high interest rate of over 10% being levied on the unpaid balance.
ALL licence holders could do this I don’t remember how many took it up.
It wasn’t anything like what various ignorant idiots may have told you and you shouldn’t really believe everything you are told.
ps I can’t guarantee the 21 years or the 10%. If you really feel you want to know the truth you can easily find it.
I’ll bet you don’t though.
The first thing I decline to believe on the Standard is trolling rubbish from Right Wingers like Alwyn. With the benefit of the hindsight Alwyn has probably gained if he watched TV1 News this evening, Alwyn may regret some of the bumph he has contributed today.
The connection between your comment and the one you are replying to is not apparent.
Do you reply to comments or does my name work on you like a red rag to a bull?
Your focus is too narrow.
In Vino deals with the vexatious nonsense of Alwyn who is getting just a bit too excited.
Yep,… your a legend alwyn,!! (in your own field note book)
We will correct all our comments to YOU!, as you state … your name inspired us to do so…
I suppose you think there is some meaning to this statement.
It certainly isn’t apparent to those of us who have sound minds.
You are right alwyn, about not believing everything on TS.
Your daily propaganda from Fonterra….
As Martyn Bradbury Stewart says
‘The Dairy propaganda adverts on TV are hilarious. So terrified are Fonterra that the rest of the country is getting sick to death of them stealing and polluting our water, they are desperately pumping these farcical adverts out to try and distract Kiwis from the wholesale abuse of their industry.
Richie McCaw wanders around a Farm in the early morning and marvels at the pristine goodness of these human beings as if Jesus himself had personally popped down to the milking shed to milk a herd before feeding 5000 with a block of cheese.
Indeed the most recent advert actually goes as incredibly far as suggesting milk is some kind of miracle drug that can help paralysed teenagers walk again.
You have to see it to believe it…’
As Rachel Stewart writes.
‘So, what happens if you do question farmers on any environmental issue? Take water quality. Simple. It’s a rapid result – and a predictable one. You are labelled “anti-farming”. That’s it. Black and white. A slam dunk. End of discussion.
And that’s the point, of course. Nothing shuts down dialogue faster than a label. Except it doesn’t work on me – given my farming background, and it no longer really flies with your average non-farming New Zealander either.
For nine years we’ve all watched the waterways go rapidly downhill, and the rhetoric from industry push the proverbial uphill, and our patience has run out. The public have reached peak bulls*** detection and are well and truly over farmers’ “beyond criticism” status. Now, they’re also about to decide farmers’ future through this quaint mechanism called democracy.
That future looks like a bit of a correction. They will be forced, under a new government, to pay for a fraction of their pollution via a water royalty, and pay for a contribution to their massive carbon footprint via the Emissions Trading Scheme. Oh, lord. Give them strength.
Instead of hearing what the public wants – that is, clean water, fewer cows, no more dairy conversions, and an end to irrigation schemes – they choose to put their energy into flailing and fighting the inevitable. Stuffed full of false promises from their industry leaders, and their National buddies, they thrash about like dying fish at the bottom of a polluted, dried-out riverbed. It’s ugly to watch.
The interminable Fonterra adverts, DairyNZ taking Greenpeace to the Advertising Standards Authority (and losing) over their TV ad, cockies drinking from streams as if that proves anything other than low IQ, Federated Farmers blaming trout and Canada geese for water pollution. The list is long and has only served to harden the heart of even the kindest, most patient voter.
Watch closely for the next phase of the campaign. You will see National delivering a full-on offensive designed to fire up the farming base, and get the electorate to feel deep sympathy for the farmers’ plight……’
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=11921404&ref=twitter
Yes time these historical rent seekers coughed up, scaled back and served NZ wider interests. Non dairy farmers aren’t that enamoured with them either.
Instead of their sacred dairy cow broken model which passed the point of diminishing returns decades ago at the expense of our environment.
Fonterra are the worst run organisation in NZ, there’s a better future for dairy farmers without this top heavy bloated crony empire, much better. Look at the returns better run aggregators generate like Tatua etc.
Well, I watched it. Not surprising that they’d tell this story – the contents of milk get used for all kinds of things other than filling milk bottles, which some people may not be aware of. Do you dispute the story in some way?
True but do the benefits outweigh the destruction caused?
The benefits don’t outweigh the destruction caused by over-intensification, but that’s a separate issue. Ed’s issue is with dairy per se.
This Fonterra ad is just so wrong. The opposite is true, dairy consumption is actually a contributing factor to disabling diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinsons.
[citation needed]
You seem to misunderstand the words “true” and “actually.” Lactose tolerance was one of the fastest-spreading adaptations known to those studying human evolution, exactly because of dairy food’s advantages.
There was an article a few weeks ago showing that milk intolerance may be greater than previously thought. It’s not just lactose intolerance either.
Still need a citation on her accusations that milk causes disabling diseases though.
RNZ seems to be devoting all its post Irma disaster focus on Florida.
Hasn’t it heard of the Caribbean?
Cuba
http://ottawacitizen.com/g00/news/local-news/cuba-devastated-by-hurricane-irma-care-canada-rep-says?i10c.referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co.nz%2F
Antigua and Barbuda
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-41182991
Haiti
http://reliefweb.int/report/haiti/more-24-million-children-need-humanitarian-assistance-after-irmas-devastating-passage
Dominican Republic
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/07/549136781/devastation-of-epic-proportions-in-caribbean-wake-of-hurricane-irma
There are many more examples.
Yes such a dulled down insular organisation under nationals thumb….imagine Kim hill interviewing Joyce/Blinglish/Bennett because you’ll never see it.
Imagine National being grilled about their woeful management of the economy.
Imagine a grassroots media where the airwaves ( the commons) are not owned by big corporations.
Used to be what Freeview had….till shonkys mob got in, remember triangle and CTV imagine if it’d been fostered not killed off.
Turdbulls trying to repeat it in OZ except it’s alot more mature wider supported community model over there.
Yep… then there is the flooding in India and Bangladesh… 41 million people across region affected.
https://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2017/sep/12/bangladesh-severe-disaster-flooding
“Overshadowed by an American hurricane, the news of the South Asian flooding has emerged slowly. Even in Dhaka, the English-language newspapers carried events in Houston on their front pages. But these are the worst floods in a century.”
And on top of that Bangladesh is struggling to cope with an influx of some 370,000 Rohingya refugees from Burma.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/12/bangladesh-sheikh-hasina-calls-on-myanmar-to-take-back-rohingya-refugees.
Better than the Herald, I guess, which leads with the All Blacks selection.
Joyce knew what he was doing. It was cynical and targetted.
He knows many peoples no.1 concern is the economy .
He also knows tgat in 2014 and 2015 National while governing left exactly such a small amount of wiggle room and the sky didnt fall. But that bit is left out. Economy is all English has.
Further to the Dr. Yang saga – a close friend who is from China – but is not Chinese, told me it is very difficult, if not impossible for police officers and high ranking military to get passports and/or permission to leave the country.
Which begs the question – how did Dr. Yang get out? With official connivance?
Money – how do you think!
Looks that way. They specifically told him not to list the military places he taught at but to use ‘partnership universities’ instead:
But it’s not, you know, lying despite it not being true.
Spy or not a spy, he lied on his declaration
Exactly which should have his NZ citizenship immediately revoked.
I’m getting irritated with this shit not being appropriately dealt with and, in fact, excused by those in power.
I’m struggling with an English language teacher getting a decent pol sci dept position. Must have other strings to his bow.
Tony Veitch (not etc) @ (6) … yes there needs to be some serious questioning re Jian Yang’s position, both in China and here.
An allegation of a possible foreign infiltration of our government, by a Chinese agent serving as a National MP and it seems this issue has all but disappeared altogether from msm! Almost shut down completely!
However should it have involved Labour or the Greens … media would have been all over this one like a pack of blood thirsty baying hounds! Look at what msm did to Metiria Turei in comparison!
I can see my children in the same role as I am now in 25 years being grandparents and when one becomes a grandparent that is a paradigm shift because you are wiser and more observant. You worry about there future and the world future and take more notice on what’s going on in our WORLD.
So in my view on reality we live for ever in our children I see parts of me in my grandchildren.
So we cannot keep shitting on there future we have to plan and mitigate for climate change so our grandchildren will have a future.
Not just live for the now one can not eat or drink money when a disaster strikes and again it’s is a when not a if .So I say let’s part with some money so our grandchildren can have a future so our WORLD can have a future.
I say that the Western WORLD have obligation to help our third world cousin mitigate against climate change.
Again spend now to save billions in the future billions of lives WE ARE ONE RACE THE HUMAN RACE AND WE CAN BE A BEAUTIFUL CAREING RACE we need to act now so our grandchildren have a future.
To MSM we are fighting the neo liberals not you people Kai pai
Dave Kennedy’s written a very good piece on “who to vote for and why” – it’d make a fine post here on TS 🙂
http://localbodies-bsprout.blogspot.co.nz/2017/09/what-vote-will-deliver-change-we-need.html
If you can get permission from Dave to cross post it here, I will put it up 🙂
Hi, weka. Just spoke with Dave (long discussion, lots to talk about 🙂 and he says he’s more than happy for you to put his article up here. He also told me that the southern greens have an election night celebration planned at the craft brewery in Invercargill – looking forward to that! Metiria’s coming down soon, to speak at a “poverty” debate – it’ll be great to catch up with her.
thanks!
Wish I could be at that debate!
I heard Paul Buchanan overnight talking about Jian Yang. He said things you’d expect.
You plant operatives who fit in. They get involved in life wherever and (my words), become part of the wallpaper.
What could be more part of the wallpaper than the life Dr Yang has? I’m not saying there is anything untoward about Dr Yang. I’ve heard him say there’s nothing untoward. He’s in a situation a bit like in the Monty Python movie, the , “I am not Jesus Christ” scene. What did we expect to hear from him?
That’s how the espionage world works. That’s how suspicion works. More furtive and sinister though, is that’s how politics and NZ elections work. And you can bet a $100,000 bottle of wine from an Asian gentleman on that.
Yes, impossible to know exactly what to make of this situation.
This article in the financial Times provides some more circumstantial evidence.
It’s focused on the way the Chinese government operates in contrast to “the best” of liberal democracies. But, of course, 5 Eyes ain’t all that transparent and innocent. The article begins with:
And ends with:
Thats why several of our trading artners including China, and Autralia have rules on who is allowed to sit in Government.
The plot thickens, I see in the Herald that Todd Barclay is leaving for work in England. So look at things like this, Dr Yang trains toddy up in the Dipton office in the art of spying. Todd spies and is caught out by office girl, Bill jacks him up a job in London–MI5 or similar, and tells office girl todd is going to England.–via text. The deep south hides its sins, have we a contact among correspondents keeping an eagle eye open, up dates welcome.
isn’t Barclay still being investigated by the police? how is it that he’s being allowed to skip the country, seems to me that either the fix is already in, or he’s leaving one step ahead of the law
Todd could be 0.007
More Naked Gun, I think, than 007.
Having read the article that won’t be his bank balance. Is that his IQ ?
Nactional = coruption.
Bill said he would work right up to the election. Oops not true. Do we like liars this week or not?
i despise the highly paid members of the media like Guyon Espiner who make it their job to pimp for the Tories and turn a democratic election into a Showground attraction.
Words fail me.
We need a better and more democratic media.
I have again switched RNZ off.
100% Ed Guyon Espiner apears to be a national party plant now as Suzie Ferguson is and Kath Ryan all inside RNZ!! RNZ now is controlled by Steven Joyce as his propaganda spin machine.
This is corruption using our public funded RNZ now.
Vote them out now.
Hate to say it, but we actually have no fuckn idea which side of the political spectrum Guyon and Suzie lay/lie. You could actually be very! surprised.
The most you can accuse them of is being in a comfy little bubble with the ability to sympathise, but not empathise with those beneath.
But then again …. I just heard a RNZ sports reporter use the word “learnings”
yes Tim,
They all are regularly ‘briefed’ as I saw working for a large Corporation, (Bell) as they called it ‘indoctrination’ over Canada way then.
So the word ‘learnings’ is a similar term I guess.
I would call it ‘Joyce’s brainwashing’ he controls it all from his propaganda nerve centre ‘bunker’ – MBIE.
Breaking News on The Herald, replete with flashing red banner :
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11921804
How can a politically charged opinion piece be breaking news?
+100 Ben….the Herald rolls out the ex-ACT leader neo-liberal dinosaur to slag Labour off and this is news?
Meanwhile Guyon Espiner just destroyed Winston on Morning Report. Why anybody would vote NZF after that I don’t know.
It has been noticeable recently that Winston has lost some of his sharpness; he tried to cover this by telling Espiner continuously that he didn’t know what he was doing as an interviewer.
Party Vote Green. Hayley was good on Backbenches last night. Willie Jackson was good too and will be an asset to parliament-we need characters with humour that have their hearts in the right place.
BG. I thought Guyon was a prat this morning with Winston. He let that “gotcha” stupidity override everything and wouldn’t let Winston even take a breath without interrupting. His behaviour is what is wrong and that is not good enough for RNZ.
Party vote Green.
Yes garibaldi,
I saw it this way to.
We laid a complaint over Espiner’s lack of fairness and balance in his ‘presentation’ it was the worst I have even seen of him. he is a disgrace to us all.
When National’s leader Engish is interveiwed Guyon will be as nice as pie, believe me.
He wont ask any hard questions of that leader you can bet like wat have you signed us up to in any free trade can you release this to us all now?
Another question Guyon should have asked english was ‘are you going to sell off ant other public assets or turn them into PPP’s?.
he will not be alolowed to ask them as he is cached by Joyce what to ask.
here is my complaint to RNZ today.
Subject: complaint to RNZ morning report leaders debate 14/9/17 INTERVIWS WITH GUYON ESPINER. 14/9/17. unfair unbalanced interview compared to other leaders interviews
Importance: High
Listening to RNZ this morning Morning report 14/9/17 with Guyon Espiner & Suzie Ferguson was such a totally botched sad show of a very low quality coverage of interviewing Winston Peters as the NZ First leader.
As Espiner did not give a similar space and time for Winston to talk and explain his policies before Espiner chipped in completely destroying the flow of detailed information we as listeners needed to hear.
We should not be subjected to Guyon’s own views or Suzie’s dismissive responses but we do not have a ‘fair & balanced’ media any more within our flagship public radio platform.
I hope when Labour/NZ First begin the new media platform we will see an end of these low quality radio presenters and produce informative quality presenters with core values of presenting fair & balanced media presentations.
Shameful show from Espiner & Ferguson I would remove them both if I could.
Bearded Git @ (11.1) … Although I’m not a NZF voter, in some respects I feel sorry for Winston, because it seems now his age is beginning to show. He definitely doesn’t seem to be as sharp as he once was, which incidentally wasn’t that long ago. He’s coming across at this election as a fading light.
I’m of the same generation as Winston and sometimes it takes a little bit of effort to get the old grey matter into gear and responses are not as quick as they used to be, with some of us, because we are beginning to “wear out.” This could be the case with Winston.
With Winston when he’s finding interviews not going his way and he realises he is not quite on top of his game when faced with a challenging interviewer, to make up for this, in typical Muldoon style, Winston lashes out at the interviewers, which doesn’t do him any favours at all. In fact it makes him look foolish. Besides that, it isn’t a good look for NZF either.
To be honest, I’m finding his utterances and secrets are becoming tiresome and annoying, because they more often than not amount to nothing.
In my honest opinion, I think Winston should have bowed out at this election with some dignity and handed the reins over to someone younger in NZF, who is able to keep up with the play, appeal to the younger generation and rejuvenate the party. Or to quote the wonderful Fred Dagg “… kick her (NZF) in the guts Trev.” Because at present, NZF’s image is that of an old person’s political party, which it doesn’t have to be!
Agreed mary-a. I am 71 yrs old, I well remember Muldoon’s decline. This is similar. Not Winston’s fault – I always saw him as Muldoon’s heir, the only one with a similar gift. (Not that I liked either of them.) But now he is fading.
It happens to all of us – I ought to know….
Muldoon when he played Narrator in The Rocky Horror Show. Poor bastard.
Yes that stinks, no way is that “news” no way should it be headlined , and where is the promoters statement, they really abuseing their “news” outlet status there
And they headlined it over their own prediction of a very tight election day outcome
11 Ben, this is the next attack mode. To belittle her. To frame her as a backstabber
Jacinda is being shown as stressed and not coping with pressure through slanted reporting,
Stuff has an article in which they mention a confrontation from a grey power audience heckler regarding the TPPA.
They failed to mention the sustained standing ovation she received on entering the hall. The love and warmth shown by Jacinda and others during and after the meeting.
This is deliberate.
A wounded National is a dangerous beast.
Kia kaha. Stay strong, vote Red/Green or Green/Red.
There is a Nelson Mail report of the Grey Power meeting.
“An estimated 450 people turned out to hear Jacinda Ardern deliver a speech to Grey Power Nelson on Wednesday as part of the Labour leader’s whistlestop tour of the city.
Extra seats had to be brought in for the meeting at Annesbrook Church in Stoke, with the crowd by far the biggest of a series of Grey Power meetings with political leaders on the campaign trail in Nelson.
Last month 260 people turned out for the Prime Minister, National leader Bill English, and 220 for NZ First leader Winston Peters.
Loud cheers and whooping greeted Ardern as she entered the church.
Unlike the previous two events, the crowd was not all grey heads.”
In Blenheim, in 1999, Helen Clark had a similar turnout- a packed church, standing room only, and school boys attending. I don’t recall whoops, though.
It was Grahame O’Brien and he was all over the show yesterday, relentless, police kept an eye on him, he was the one who posted the pro nat poem on all the cars, police were informed it was him.
It was a real wtf moment, him of all people being anti left, I was like dang, what are you doing dude?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/81533359/community-activist-graeme-obrien-enters-nelson-mayoral-race
Ben @ (12) … Natz in desperate times roll out any decrepit old right wing has been. This time it’s Prebble again. Ho hum … so obvious.
Steven Joyce has now got his mates in the Landlords Assn to spread more fear about a Labour Government causing rents to rise by taking away their ability for negative gearing. How long before he resurrects the dancing Cossacks?
Nationals whole campaign is dancing cossacks….they have abandoned any pretence of honesty and are shamelessly appealing directly to fear and greed….it’ll only work if turnout is low.
Pat,
Perfectly said – I coulnt have said it better.
Spot on. It confirms and accentuates all their negative traits. A desperate and high risk strategy.
In fairness Ad (Advantage) who supports Labour has similar views, if it gets you power it is ok.
It’s very defensive, and defending a long way back in National’s own territory. And some of National’s supporters have a lot to defend, a change of government could put some of them in rather reduced circumstances.
That change of government could also put a lot more people in much better circumstances. I think tonight’s CB poll bears this out.
As for dancing cossacks, I’m waiting for dancing pandas, little blue ones, to make an appearance…..
And the smugness with which some of their supporters embrace this behaviour makes me worry for NZ. What kind of kids are we all raising when this behaviour is revered and rewarded… except when poor brown people behave this way… then there is outrage
And probably jail time.
True Janice….and Susie Ferguson was completely useless as usual on Morning Report, failing to ask WHY rental prices will go up. She simply accepted the statement.
The question should have been “but Labour is promising to build 100,000 state houses on top of those being built by private enterprise; won’t this cause rents to come down?”
Bring back Kim Hill.
BG
Propagandist Steven Joyce would never allow Kim Hill back until after the election as he has shut down any critics or free speech as he will not allow it while in his attack mode, he must be banished he is a powerful dictator now.
She did ask fairly pointed questions about the nateure of the ‘survey’, let him foam for a bit, then basically went ‘sure, fine, whatever.’
Is not the $2.3Billion accomodation supplement not enough corporate welfare?
IMO should a landlord be a net recipient of this, then their property should comply to certain govt standards, and dept of social welfare should have a list of properties that comply and over time move remnants not into these properties. I know easier said than done
Prebble’s “Jacinda tidal wave has gone out” is an appallingly selected metaphor.
A tidal wave (tsunami) that has gone out draws back from the shore so far that where there was water before nothing remains. 37.8 % is hardly nothing, nor is running neck and neck with the PM “nothing”.
These emotive ‘good sounding’ headlines epitomize the endless layers of calculated spin we are prey to.
lol…what happens when a tidal wave approaches the shore?….the water level drops as the approaching wave draws it to itself just before it inundates the shore in a massive wall of water…..watch out National, you’re busy inspecting the exposed foreshore and are about to be swamped .
+ 1 good one even though the metaphor is a bit you know.
After the ‘$11 billion dollar hole’ now there’s ‘Joyce’s Storm surge.’
And his article headlines ahead of Heralds prediction of neck and neck.
Remember Prebble doesnt understand the difference between weather and climate. He thinks if it snows unseasonably there cannot be global warming
Tracey, Prebble is an idiot remember two years ago he was calling for government to save rail?
Then National continued flogging off more Kiwirail land and assets till the electric trains are now sold!!!
So where was prebble then??
No Prebble is just another tory hollow man.
It baffles me how Bill English can call himself ‘Christian’ when he lives his life as anything but in my opinion. His lies over Todd Barclay and support of Steven Joyce’s venomous behaviour are appalling. Dirty politics and National are one and the same.
As for Prebble slithering out of the slime – I just hope there are enough people who can see him for what he is. How does the Herald get away with this? Likewise Vernon Small in the Dominion Post has an anti Labour article today. Fair enough if there was also an examination of National as well.
He confesses his sins every Sunday and is good to go again on monday
Yep… that’s how it works. In my view, Confession is THE greatest invention of the Catholic Church, period.
Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
Very few self claimed Christians actually model their lives on the teachings of JC, right wing Christians being prime examples.
+1
Yes as a non church attending christian I am appalled at Bill English acting as bad as our last PM athiest was, as a taker and not a giver.
The day of reckoning will come to visit these morons.
It appears to be camouflage to try and hide his sociopathy. After all, many people still apply the false logic of ‘Christian = Good’.
Merkel on track for fourth term on September 24th with another grand coalition.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/german-election-polls-odds-tracker-merkel-seeks-fourth-term1/
Merkie’s like herpes. Just when you think it’s gone..
“RNZ has heard a secret recording Danny made of a conversation with his former employer where they talk about the scam.
His lawyer said they went to Immigration New Zealand (INZ) to lay a complaint and offered the recording as evidence of Danny’s exploitation, but authorities wouldn’t investigate and told them complainants should come forward at the first instance of exploitation.
The lawyer argued that if that was the case, there would almost never be a case taken. “And another thing I think they said is whether or not he has clean hands. Again, if you have been part of or party to a migrant exploitation situation it’s highly unlikely that one would ever have clean hands.”
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/339373/migrant-worker-describes-modern-day-slavery-scam
Nationals corruption has obviously infected our public service….time to clean house before its too late.
yes our whole Public service is now compromised and corrupted.
I’m pretty sure that the person admitting being complicit in the scam brings it up to a threshold where an investigation is warranted and the police involved. It doesn’t stop it meeting that threshold.
one wouldn’t think so….unless of course the direction from above is that it does
Unfortunately, it is the norm. It’s also getting worse not better.
Wow
So under the bellicose banner of “Landlords First !” a gang of anti-social greedies threaten havoc. Well bring it on. ‘Master of the Universe’ terrorists puffingly expressing the mantra “Democracy is Mine !” are beneath contempt. When bottom-line fixation comes down to waging class warfare things get very ‘personal’. Expect very ‘personal’ accountability. He Tangata He Tangata He Tangata !
Fuck yeah!!!
I frequently spend weekend time in South Auckland. The sight of rentiers and their proxies scuttling around the area in their aspirational decade-old BMWs, Merc’s and Audis, aluminium ladders atop, DIY toolkits in the boot…….they absolutely turn my guts. Their obvious fish-out-of-water discomfort, their incapacity to meet eyes, evidences their feasting on the lives of others’ grandchildren as they scheme the enhancement of the lives of their own. As sick making as the Herald with its routine celebration of this “righteous entrepreneurialism” in its Monday morning headlines. Parading yesterday man Mad Dog Prebble is a new low.
Yep the prebbs trained and unleashed by labour and then turning on his master and biting the shit out of them since then. Where is the spca and why haven’t they done something about this dangerous animal.
An article usefully clarifying the term ‘Identity Politics’, reminding us of the original meaning, and why it should be reclaimed as a radical critique, not the straw man for used by white male paleoleftists such as Trotter to suppress the struggles of people who aren’t straight white men with moustaches.
https://newrepublic.com/article/144739/liberals-get-wrong-identity-politics
Lilla’s spin on this statement would make identity politics sound like a selfish political theory. But his bad interpretation is not the same as a bad theory. When the collective writes that the “most radical politics come directly out of our own identity,” Lilla reads this as applying to each individual group’s identity when the Combahee River Collective meant “our own” to apply specifically to black women. It is a result of their belief, as they write later in the statement, that, “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.” The original intent of identity politics was articulating black women’s struggle at the nexus of race, gender, sexual, and class oppressions, and then forming strategies for dismantling each of these, both in black feminist spaces and in coalition with other groups.
How do you insure universal rights?
Ask everyone what rights they think they should have. Questions such as:
1. Should you have the right to marry? Y/N
2. Should you have the right to do as you wish? Y/N
3. Should you have the right not to be affected by other peoples actions? Y/N
etcetera.
Get the questions right and we’ll end up with a very good BORA – and ACT would be out of options as ‘property rights’ wouldn’t survive.
So many abstract nouns. So very very many. Trotsker’s a man of words. Big round comfortable words. Then there’s that crap about paleoleftists whatever the fuck they are.
Didnt Trotter bemoan the demise of Labour only a few short weeks ago
Paleoleftist – someone for whom it is always 1916, still in the Industrial revolution, on the eve of the revolution. Someone who likes big round comfortable words because they’re big, round and comfortable. A white male heterosexual assimilationist who assumes that his own type is the norm and all radical or revolutionary endeavours must support his own needs and all struggles must be subsumed into his own because he cannot comprehend another person’s experience and will not listen. In other words, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
With confessions mentioned earlier in the post, 3/4s of what you have listed resonates.
Apart from comfortable, and I am not a hundy on what assimilationist is.
Upon rereading, I reckon I am a good listener with plenty of empathy.
Thanks for posting this.
NZ WHISTLE-BLOWER ALERT!
The TRUTH about the Tamaki ‘Regeneration’ – GENTRIFICATION $CAM!
“Penny Bright has been shining a light into the murky recesses of public/private partnerships in the Tamaki Regeneration scheme and revealed some disturbing details…”
Authorised by Penny Bright
2017 Independent candidate for Tamaki, 86A School Rd, Kingsland, Auckland 1021.
https://www.facebook.com/penny.bright.104/posts/1796625243683493
WTF happened to the treaty?
National will help young farmers buy State Owned farms.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11922193
He expected about 100 young farmers to benefit from the programme. Not all of Landcorp’s 140 farms will be sold, he said.
“Many are subject to Treaty claims and others have a right-of-first-refusal for iwi. Some of Landcorp’s larger farms will be divided into smaller units.”
National said it expected it to take more than a decade to complete the sale and settlement process for the farms. Any revenue generated will be reinvested in public services.
Jericho Station, Landcorp farm near Te Anau, is to be sold to a Chinese buyer who lives “elsewhere”. An essentially equivalent bid for Jericho Station from a New Zealand buyer was declined.
I guess the spy was able to vouch for him.
Lie on lie on lie – where are the detailed costings, projections and so on? Up the office where he pulled his lies from.
This ^^^^^^
Yep the gnats will throw everyone under the bus to get in and they start with the most vulnerable.
Didn’t they promise no more state asset sales?
DRACO;
National = dont tell truth.
My dearest says;
National = ‘make’s it up as they go’
More asset sales. Run down and strangle Landcorp then sell it to your voting base 9 days out from an election.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/96824794/live-on-the-campaign-trail
So let me get this right, intensive dairying is ruining our environment and running down our number one export (tourism), yet national want more farms? WTF
Yep. They are doubling down on the lack of vision. Selling publicly owned land to private individuals while encouraging dairy expansion on unsuitable land thereby exacerbating damage to waterways and the tourism industry.
so currently many farmers pay less tax than the average working person, and they are using tax payer owned land to make their profits from.
They’ve had subsidies for mass irrigation, which is only needed due to the changing climate, environment as well as the greed of intensive dairy farming.
And now they are being offered the land which is currently owned by the people of NZ to buy (probably dirt cheap) to continue this practise. Rather than be given the skills/training to diversify and change, after being aware of (due to technology) just how damaging and destructive intensive dairying is to the planet we live on.
Far out, it’s just unreal. But climate change is real. One would think that having a business that relies on the climate/environment in order to profit, that one would be bending over backwards to protect the environment from which the profit depends.
How about a bit of free tertiary education for the farmers on the changing environment and diversification.
My Grandpop was a farmer, he loved animals so much, loved the land and the river from which their water came. Seems like SOME farmers today love the money/profit above everything else. Yup I’m more than a little bit fucked off about the news today.
Did you have any problems with all keys u turns. He turned so fast he left skid marks.
Bill English has many sons. Maybe they want to till the soil.
Debate tonight that will be well worth watching/listening to
Tonight from 7pm Stuff is hosting a debate between Stephen Joyce and Grant Robertson, the two blokes who want to look after the nation’s bank account.
Can Robertson please tell Joyce that the PM ran two zero budgets which is what Joyces accusation boils down too. Another thing Mr Joyce doesnt understand about economics and the economy
Should be a goodie, and would be good if Grant pointed out just why Joyce doesnt understand economics… ie Joyces unfinished/failed economics papers when he went to uni.
Haven’t seen a link yet Trace for the debate will post as soon as I do 😀
Yeah – cannot wait to hear Grant talk about the total u-turn they have had to make so close to the election. So much for the captians call
Australia watch. What next? They have won us by conquest, any advantages in agreement has been from our wheedling. Time to tighten the screws.
RadioNZ
8:40 am today
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201858456/australia-blocks-access-to-tab-betting-accounts
Australia blocks access to TAB betting accounts
From Morning Report, 8:40 am today
Listen duration 4′ :43″
The TAB’s been caught on the back foot by a surprise Australian law change that means no one in Australia can place bets in New Zealand. John Allen is the chief executive of the Racing Board, which runs the TAB.
Somehow reminds me of the song ‘Everything’s Up to date in Kansas City – They’ve gone about as far as they can go.’ (We are Kansas City, had our brief moment in time as a first world, brave little country footing it in the machine age out of the agricultural field, now back again, and Oz recognises that they can take potshots at us, no missiles needed.)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T0G2UNv0fM
This claim from National that farmers could face a $50,000 cost increase from Labour’s water tax sounds a bit sus to me. On the face of it, it sounds like an awfully big and scary number (it’s purpose), but at a cost @2-3 cents/cubic metre the farmer would have to be drawing off around 3 million cubic metres of water each year to receive a $50,000 water-use charge.
That’s a massive amount. But in reality, what is the size of an operation like that? What would its turnover be? I’m guessing into the millions. Because $50,000 as a line item to a multi-million dollar business isn’t that much when worked out as a percentage. But I would go further and say that if you’re having to draw off that much water and you really can’t afford to pay for it, you’re operating unsustainably and probably shouldn’t be in business anyway.
It is made up. No one is asking Bill to provide an independent report verifying the claim
Finally got it together to do an early vote. Took my easyvote card and my 2.5 year old down. Oh no, our early voting starts NEXT week. Wtf – yes lots of people have complained. You could drive 50ks to Motueka to vote if you wanted. TDC – not our fault. Electoral commission oh that seems funny. Marty – you have impinged on my democratic right to vote early and I consider this dirty politics to try and keep the dirty gnats in power. Electoral commission – I’ll certainly note your comments.
ffs not happy
WTF
Our early voting in Hunua doesn’t start until tomorrow. Only got my card yesterday, what is going on?
Janice @ (27.1.1) … an election card isn’t necessary to vote. We still haven’t received our cards yet, but we voted on Tuesday at a place we didn’t know had an election booth available, because it wasn’t advertised as having one!
Seems to be a lot of inconsistencies related to early voting at this election.
Quarter of a million hectares sold into overseas ownership illegally
Can’t think of a better use for the Proceeds of Crime Act. Take the land back into state hands and take the money from those who sold it illegally.
And Barclay has skipped out on his well paying job:
Despite, you know, still being paid.
Pretty sure that constitutes theft as a servant.
Barclay doing a runner, I thought the police investigation had not yet wound up.
And the questions remain, why was Todd taping Glenis, did he ask her to lie for him and the identity of the female cabinet member (at the time) who was also involved. JS
You’d think that with an ongoing police investigation he wouldn’t be able to. You will get stopped if you have any unpaid court fines and this is bad enough that it should stop him leaving.
It’s probably a loophole that allows him to leave before he gets convicted but if he stays he will be convicted. So he’s leaving to pre-empt the conviction.
Paula Bennett
Amy Adams
Anne Tolley
Nikki Kaye
Judith Collins
Maggie Barry
Louise Upston
C’mon, Cinny! Gizus a clue (tick one) 🙂
Well at least he’s leaving!
I’d rather he went to jail on his way out.
Deport to Mannus. I reckon.
He is from Double Dipton after all.
Despite Bill saying he would work til election day
Probably got a nice little cushy number courtesy of john key as long as he keeps his mouth shut. Lots going on there that all New Zealanders want to know about. Probably. Imo.
I’m sure we’ll find that he’s got a nice cushy job with Lord so&so that visited with Key back when he was PM. National do look after their own.
us nuke sub returns to base flying jolly roger.
https://twitter.com/IanJKeddie
The Jimmy Carter is a Seawolf-class submarine specially modified for spying and covert operations. Interesting…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter
Jimmy Carter is roughly 100 feet (30 m) longer than the other two ships of her class, USS Seawolf (SSN-21) and USS Connecticut (SSN-22). This is due to the insertion of a plug (additional section) known as the Multi-Mission Platform (MMP), which allows launch and recovery of ROVs and Navy SEAL forces. The plug features a fairing over a wasp-waist shaped passageway allowing crew to pass between the fore and aft sections of the hull while providing a space to store ROVs and special equipment that may need to launch and recover from the submarine
Hi Robert G
Problems because of rain with hortis losing a lot of their crop, Kumaras going off in shop soon after arrival instead of keeping for ages.
What can be done about coping with rainy seasons in your opinion? Furrows as they used to use in West Coast? Lifting the beds higher and allowing for streams alongside?
Warm enough where you are, grey, for rice? 🙂
Watercress, raupo, willow-strawberries? (no such thing as “willow-strawberries” though they’d do well in the wet, I imagine. I grow Himalayan tree-strawberries, but they don’t like wet feet). Increasingly rainy conditions are going to be very challenging in some regions as the climate slips and slides about the place. I guess we have to look to monsoon areas and see how they do it. Biodynamics does have one answer: preparation 501, a silica application that strengthens the plants and helps them resist rot. It works well, but you have to subscribe to the Steiner thinking before you’d start applying that.
At Wanaka library.
Voting is very busy.
Hope Labour’s tax u-turn isn’t too late.
Im sure the voting public will be smart enough to see it for what it was.
Anything on Paula today/
think she’s still locked in the cupboard
Pat,
Ha ha ha – Lock the bloody cupboard.
Deputy PM has gone very quiet and the media arent seeking her out for policy/promises comments
A heavy mantle of guilt?
Pete @ (33) … At present I’m in Frau Paula’s constituency (temporarily thank goodness) and come to think of it, I haven’t seen hair nor hide of her, not anywhere. However, I do have a pitchfork on hand, should she or her minions come door knocking at the last minute, closer to the election!
Robert Guyton:
Most New Zealander’s are sane and considerate people.
Most would rather slit their throats than vote for the Greens.
Fact’s are fact’s.
Please climb down from your tree.
[that’s not a fact, it’s a belief. Stop trolling and have a think about how to be here without being an arse – weka]
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
billmurray – what contradictory, lunatic nonsense you write!
Let me explain where you’ve fallen into your own heap of thought-dung:
You write,
“Most New Zealander’s are sane and considerate people.”
Then, perversely, your contradict your claim,
“Most would rather slit their throats…”
Have you flipped out, Billmurray?
You claim is ridiculous in the extreme.
Did you expect to be taken seriously, flailing about with idiocy like that?
Bill! Don’t be a dill!
And, Bill Murray, please stop abusing the apostrophe. It is “facts”, not “fact’s” you bloody goof.
🙂
My god, has anyone else read the post at Greater Auckland on the massively expensive East-West highway?
http://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2017/09/14/surprising-ally-fight-east-west-link/
Apart from the obvious bovine humour of the fool from the Infrastructure NZ suggesting that because the project will do nothing obvious for Auckland traffic congestion by 2046, that it is too small and should be made bigger and even more expensive. FFS It is already going to be the most expensive road in NZ and vies on a kilometre basis with the most expensive roads ever built..
There is also the question about why in the hell are they building this damn thing when it obviously has NO apparent utility?
Apparently designating it as a road of significance to National mean that the Board of Inquiry disassociated their mind from looking if it is a useful project.
Another BS policy of the Nats going unscrutinised
That is damn hilarious.
Top work again from Matt Lowry.
East-West Link to cost an estimated $327 million per-kilometre, Infrastructure New Zealand says
So, it’s going to cost lots and lots but the big part is right down the bottom:
Yeah, doing a cost-benefit analysis is not considered to be helpful. Probably because it would show that it’s completely bloody worthless.
There must be money in it for the National Party or otherwise it makes no sense at all.
I would be great if this story got some cut through in the MSM because it really highlights the lie that their funding decisions are evidence based.
Hopefully Stephen Joyce will also be asked if this is true.
http://www.labour.org.nz/is_national_planning_a_secret_fuel_tax
“Hopefully Stephen Joyce will also be asked if this is true.
http://www.labour.org.nz/is_national_planning_a_secret_fuel_tax”
Or which magic money tree he’s going to get the necessary from?
Or if he is going to fund them from existing funding sources, what is he going to cut to pay for the boondoggles.
Robert Guyton:
Most New Zealander’s are sound and sensible people.
Most would rather slit their own throats than vote for the Greens.
Scramble down from your tree habitat, move around, get a view of the real world.
I and many other’s wish that the Green’s disappear at the election.
They are a blight on our Country.
Hope you take my advice, best wishes for a awful election.
[2 week ban for trolling. See also other moderation in Open Mike. Up your game or expect a longer ban time. – weka]
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
I would guess that New Zealand share market investors have decided that the Green Party aren’t going to make it back into Parliament.
The Air New Zealand share price has dropped by about 7% in the last week.
Without their (very) frequent flier Gareth Hughes the companies’ profitability will plummet. How can a list MP based in Wellington possibly spend so much on flying?
No more taxpayer paid flights for the little bearded one.
That drop has probably got something to do with the fact they have gone ex-dividend. Stocks invariably fall by the amount of the dividend when they go ex, because the dividend is transferred from the company (the company is now worth less) to the shareholder.
That is quite true of course, although the drop has been about twice the dividend.
However I find my interpretation much more fun. Yours is so much more sensible but doesn’t have the stardust to it. Mind you I don’t actually invest on that basis.
Once again, Alwyn still has to learn about the Colmar-Brunton poll on TV1 tonight. Silly boy
You really can’t read can you?
You did see that my original comment was at 3.12pm
The second was at 5.41pm
Now please tell me. When did you discover the Colmar-Brunton results?
You really are dumb aren’t you?
Why I’ll bet you are a Green supporter.
No, I am pointing out that you are burbling over-confidence because of TV3’s poll. But you are forming the basis of an irony. That comes with the TV1 News. You dug your pit – lie in it.
I see the New Zealand Herald election forecast model says “Predicted candidate vote for Ilam
Predictions for candidate vote by electorate take into account the trends in previous elections and polling data. These are hardest to predict because of tactical voting.”
The graph shows Brownlee at about 60%, Rimell at 30% and Lee at 7%. (Each + or -)
The fact that city councillor Raf Manji isn’t even on there gives context to the guesswork. In spite of that will the information be held up as a source of information? Let alone a ‘reliable’ source?
So – who thinks that tonights CB poll will show labour in the lead still ?
anyone?
Is there as much chance of that as there is of Bill English turning into a teller of the truth?
Looks like they are ….
James.
James.
James.
Goose.
Labour / greens could govern alone on these numbers (my worse nightmare … agghhh).
Should be happier reading for a lot on here.
James, you honey, you. Thanks for the good news and the supportive comments.
respect for fronting up.
my worse nightmare
I expect that’s founded on a belief that they’d be bad for the country.
When instead they’re good for the country, and the sky doesn’t fall on your head, have the grace to acknowledge it.
Or are you more of a “what’s in it for me?” voter (Newsflash, they’ll be good for you too).
“When instead they’re good for the country, and the sky doesn’t fall on your head, have the grace to acknowledge it.”
If you were so inclined – (and i’m pretty sure we both are not), you could go back thru my post and see that I have done this on several occasions when wrong.
More than I can say for a lot of people on here.
I don’t have to go back through your comments because I can remember you doing so. However, where National supporters are concerned, I’m very much in favour of the “that’s for nothing, now do something” approach 😈
NEO LIBERALISM at its best the Fury camp no that Hughie will lose in a fair fight so they stack the deck in there favor.
Well Joseph as soon as you see your opening Knock That fucker out that is what you have to do to win this fight.
Have you seen the Alaskan King crab fishing Its one of my favorite programs .
I think that scampi fishing was similar to that the place wear we were fishing had a all you can catch quota in 5 days so we worked 4 1/2 days straight no sleep we stop to eat we had to make boxes to pack the scampi wash grade and pack scampi load and unload the blast freezer head and gut fish box it. I lost 8 Kgs in 7 days it was a lot of work.
The skippers are the same some are screamers ect they have your life in there hands
so you have to trust them.
Maf found the scampi fisheries no one new it existed .
Well one of the MAF Officers went and seen his mate that had a fish shop and they got a boat and sent it out scampi fishing they got a skipper from the Australian prawn fisheries well they ended up cornering the scampi fisheries and owning close to half of the quota worth $100 MIL. I think that stinks a state employee should not be able to gain from the state .
This the reason why I say we have to be really care full with the policy because water is a valuable resource and some sneaky bastard mite exploit our water at our loss.
So it is our duty to keep a sharp eye on the process on our water policy and if we see bullshit happening we will let everyone no so it will be stopped .
We got the Michail fay, scampi fisheries, there will be others .
I meet a skipper down there we got along awesome I thought I could trust him and work with him.
but while we were steaming to Bluff we got a call that he got caught in his gear and was gone .