Gender critical feminists are generally socially conservitive and reactionary. Quite frankly, there are views that need to be silenced, if we are to have some form of social progress.
The overturning of Roe v Wade is one of the end points of allowing free speech.
[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.]
Gender critical feminists are generally socially conservitive and reactionary. Quite frankly, there are views that need to be silenced, if we are to have some form of social progress.
The overturning of Roe v Wade is one of the end points of allowing free speech.
This is complete nonsense. You are mistaking GCFs for gender critical conservatives. GCFs are left wing/centre left/progressive feminists, often with very long histories of work on women’s rights including on abortion rights. It’s that work (theory, analysis, academic, grassroots) that informs gender critical feminist positions. GCFs often critique conservative gender politics.
The reason we have a reactionary, conservative backlash against trans people is because the liberal left got sucked into No Debate by Stonewall UK and other progressional lobby groups. Had GCFs and women generally been allowed to speak freely, we would have solid left wing positions on women’s sex based rights to push back on the conservative positions. Instead, trans allies appear to have decided to shut all women up because anything is better than questioning gender identity ideology. Can’t really complain afterwards about the debate then being dominated by people like Kellie Jay Keen or Matt Walsh.
If people want o understand what gender critical feminism is, read Jane Clare Jones, Kathleen Stock, Julie Bindel, Jo Phoenix, Brighton Sisters, Women’s Place UK, FiLiA
Here’s the Standard’s category for gender critical feminism posts
No, Gender critical feminists have always been right wing. I have spent hours combing through the twitter feeds of various CG feminists, such as Maya Forstater, Helen Joyce, and the Landy sisters (to name a few), and there is a lot of stuff there that the likes of Pat Roberston, Jerry Falwell and the likes would agree with.
If there was any justice in this world, Matt Walsh would be in a prison cell for holding his posionious views.
[Please provide some evidence for your claims. You know how this works: your own explanation, supporting quotes and links from sources that are evidence based. Don’t use Pink News.
The claims are:
Gender critical feminists have always been right wing
that the women you name are GCF
the stuff specifically that each or any of them say that Robertson or Falwell would agree with
That’s a mod request. Please do this before you comment again elsewhere on TS. – weka]
The Landy’s aren’t GCF, they’re reactionary gender critical activists.
Neither is Forstater a GCF. I would guess her politics are centrist, and she is a feminist in the contemporary centrist understanding of the term. eg
… she describes herself as being “a mother and a feminist” who thinks “that sexist stereotypes about women and girls, and about men and boys, are damaging for children and adults”
I don’t consider Joyce to be GCF either, she is a socially liberal centrist conservative. I do think of her as feminist, but again in the centrist contemporary understanding.
Weka – please – why does Millsy have to provide all that supportive material for his expressed view, while on this thread, Anker can write,
"UNiversitites (sic) here and overseas have been captured by the ideologically driven left ie critical race theory and gender ideology. They have had a very significant influence on our institutions for example the public service" without having to provide links, quotes etc?
As I see it, Weka is trying to bring rigour to the left. Millsy often makes wild claims that do a disservice to the left. While I don't agree with everything Anker says, I've never seen her behave like Millsy. And Anker is quite right about our universities. I should know – I work at one. In 2022 our boss encouraged us to enroll in a Critical Theory course – not compulsory at this stage, but we were told it would be "good for your careers".
the short answer is that millsy is telling lies about gender critical feminism.
It's akin to a right winger saying on TS that feminists hate men and always have. Or that Māori radicals want to kill white people. You can get away with that opinion in limited circumstances but once it becomes a pattern, expressed as fact in different ways over time, it's tedious as fuck because it's basically propaganda designed to mislead political debate. As such it has no place on TS. Millsy has form for this on multiple topics and has been moderated for it by more than just me.
I know millsy is wrong on GCF because I am very well informed on the topic. Re anker's comment. Anyone is free to ask her for evidence if they think she is wrong. I don't think she is wrong (again, I am well informed so I know what she is talking about). I probably disagree with her framing and the extent to which it is happening, and her view could do with some teasing out so that other people know what she is talking about, but that's a different matter from what millsy is doing.
It's not akin to saying that feminists hate men and always have. Or that Māori radicals want to kill white people.
Akin to would be saying feminists are too political, and that Māori radicals all vote Labour. That's akin, and debatable.
By describing millsy's comment as similar to feminists hate men and always have and Māori radicals want to kill white people is the definition of a straw man argument.
That means projecting and attributing a false, exaggerated argument onto your opponent, then attacking that falsehood.
GCF is an actual thing. Millsy was telling lies about what GCF is. I agree that my comparisons were poor, I will try and think of better ones. But the point I was making is that someone could come onto TS and tell lies about specific politics and that would cause a problem. For obvious reasons.
If people want to make an argument against gender critical feminist politics, then make the argument. But millsy wasn't doing that. They were misleading what GCF is, and they weren't making any argument apart from throwing out slurs about GCF being the same as rw fundamentalist christian positions.
The problem here is that No Debate means people criticising GCF haven't actually had to formulate an argument. They just repeat talking points and thought terminating cliches.
Using Pink News as a main reference point rots people's brains.
[that’s not good enough. It took time for me to research and then moderate. Why should any of the mods have to keep doing this when we have explained repeatedly over the past few years? 2 month ban.
When you come back you will be in premod again, and you will have to provide evidence for every claim you make at the time you make it.
If you don’t you will get a longer ban and eventually a permanent one.
I strongly encourage you to review the moderations on this, because we have explained what the problem is a number of times. I will post links to them below – weka]
I started compiling this list below and I cannot understand why you should be given 15th chance. Ban upgraded to your second 12 month ban, simply to preserve moderator sanity.
the moderations from the past, in reverse chronological order, I gave up half way through 2022.
All the Gender Critical Feminists I know are pretty much like me. Older – with a history of working for progressive and women's movements and causes for most (if not all) of our working lives. Many are lesbians, and none of them ever vote for any kind of Tory.
We are GC because we worked for the stuff that the Trans Activists are busy stripping from us. We are not going to hand our rights over easily, and for those of us who are lesbian, we don't care if you call it a "Ladydick", or a "Girldick" or a "Shenis" – we are not interested it in and anything it hangs off.
Am with Visubversa on this. Politicised lesbian women are the staunchest most trustworthy allies to have in progressive struggles has been my experience for many years.
The new women with cocks and balls–trans women–are unlikely ultimately, to get away with denigrating lesbians. Trans women like any other group are entitled to have lives free of harassment but that does not entitle them to hound other traditionally oppressed people.
There can be some horrific othering and demonising of marginalised people on this forum sometimes. Punching down rather than up. It's not progressive and it's really depressing.
What, no link? I provided a link to support my claim, but you did not :/
Graham Lineman sets up fake accounts in order to troll, harass, and doxx people online. That's a big no, no pretty much everywhere in decent society.
Visibersa and Tiger's comments on any other group of people (particularly marginalised people) I suspect would attract significant moderator attention…
…like I said it’s pretty depressing that sort of stuff is said here.
People can just go read and see for themselves, right?
Visibersa and Tiger’s comments on any other group of people (particularly marginalised people) I suspect would attract significant moderator attention.
So make an actual argument, that way you will get respect. But that sentence is just another meaningless slur.
In my long experience, and the experience of many gender critical women and men, what you are doing here is very familiar. Point the finger, accuse someone of being transphobic, but almost never explain what that means, nor engage with critical debate about your position.
How about you just lay out what your specific concerns are about visubversa and Tiger’s comments and then we can look at them and see if they are justified or have meaning. That’s what we do here, it’s robust debate.
My concerns about visubversa and Tiger's comments are that they trivialise and delegitimise all transgender people by mocking them as nothing more than sexual fetishists and imposters with cocks and balls.
This is a from of prejudice akin to racism which we don't stand for I think. Tiger asked that transgender people should be able to lives free of harassment conditional on none falling foul of the law. What, the, fuck.
Your claim below that my defense of transgender people living lives free of prejudice means I'm also defending prison rape is another straw man argument. That whole comment is akin to describing all Maori men as violent in the home because there have been some cases of that.
My concerns about visubversa and Tiger’s comments are that they trivialise and delegitimise all transgender people by mocking them as nothing more than sexual fetishists and imposters with cocks and balls.
I agree TM’s comment is close to the line, if not over it, in terms of talking about TW generally.
But visubversa named two groups: Trans Rights Activists (not all trans people), and the trans women and their allies who insist that lesbians should accept trans identified males into their sex lives. Lebsians have every right to be be both extremely fucked off about that as well as politically resistant.
This is a from of prejudice akin to racism which we don’t stand for I think. Tiger asked that transgender people should be able to lives free of harassment conditional on none falling foul of the law. What, the, fuck.
I don’t think that is what they meant at all. This is what they said,
Trans women like any other group are entitled to have lives free of harassment but that does not entitle them to hound other traditionally oppressed people.
How that reads to me is general support for the human rights of TW, and those rights don’t extend to telling lesbians they should like girldick.
That’s not a form of of prejudice like racism, it’s a political analysis of gender identity ideology. If you want to argue that lesbians should like girldick, please do so. If not, then my question for you is why you can’t see what is happening to lesbians. Or why you don’t think it’s important?
Your claim below that my defense of transgender people living lives free of prejudice means I'm also defending prison rape is another straw man argument. That whole comment is akin to describing all Maori men as violent in the home because there have been some cases of that.
If your position is that you believe trans people should be allowed/enabled to live lives free of prejudice, then that’s great. I agree.
I don’t believe all trans people are rapists, and you appear to have missed my point. GCFs, GC women, and people in general have been blocked from talking about serious issues around gender identity ideology.
Note I am not talking about trans people, or trans women, I am talking about the ideology and the politics that flow from it.
That ideology says trans women are literally women and society should enact legislation that allows any man to self identify as a woman at any time and then he must be treated as if he were a woman. That is why we have rapists self-identifying as women, and it’s why it took gender critical feminists and other GC people to force liberals and society to put some blocks on that. Although afaik there are still places in the world where men can self ID into women’s prisons.
I’ve seen it argued on TS that this is right, men should be allowed to do this, and women apparently should suck this up. So if you want to put say TM’s comments in the broader TS context, you have to understand that there have been left wing, pro-feminist men on TS who have argued that it’s ok for women to be rape collateral damage in order to support gender identity ideology.
What could have been fought for instead was safe prisons for gender non conforming males. But no, that won’t work because there is a subset of trans women for whom affirmation of their self ID has to be enshrined across all society. No matter who it hurts.
wealthy white cis men who are AGP are not more oppressed than lesbians in the (neo)liberal hierarchy of oppression. Critiquing gender identity ideology is not punching down.
If you wanted more support for TQ+ you probably should have stepped in quite some years ago when women were being subjected to heinous, often sexualised, online violence from the men you are defending here.
Women sorted that out themselves, and chose their own wellbeing and politics. Funny how many left wing men are now against them. Who is punching down exactly?
And before you say oh that's just a few rare examples, I could go on all day. As could anyone whose been paying attention and listening to women for the last 6 years.
That man at half time who did the slow strip in the white ensemble sure could move his legs though….. I do wonder how an American journalist would write up a T20 game in India or a Saudi Arabian view of the World Darts Final. I prefer to watch Parliament- lots of circus, not much bread and far less fattening.
Looks like the fiasco of Auckland's transport is about to be inflicted on the Cook Strait ferry service. National ideology is to do nothing, gut the state and create an opaque provider/funder split. Listening to Willis on RNZ just now the obvious plan for Cook Strait is to use Bluebridge and offload/on load rail containers in an inefficient manner. There will be a nightmare where Kiwirail own the rail, a private monopoly carry the freight at crippling costs, and the government spends nothing on infrastructure. Tax cuts now, and to hell with the infrastructure deficit.
But that's ok- those refunds mean the landlords won't have to raise their rents, so the workers and beneficiaries who are taking the massive income hit to pay for it, don't need to worry about being priced out of a roof over their heads. So everyone wins, right? /s
The landlord tax given away by the government would have funded the new ferries and new port facilities with state of art rail freight facilities for generations to come
I too heard Willis on RNZ this morning ..doesn't give a toss.
This government is simply crap….but Luxon will be ok with his 7 houses.
The fact that we will have useless ferries in three years time should be an election issue.
This country is going to be in an absolute state of destruction in 3 years time after this pack of vandals have had their go. Let's hope that the general public will learn their lesson and never again give this C of C the keys to the purse again.
Gobsmacked by huge 200k upward revision of long-term sickness numbers by @ONS. Overall picture is emphatic. Britain is too sick to work productively. The economic hit will be HARD. @hmtreasury will be gutted. Mandarins! We need to address our underlying health! Urgently!
New Study Sheds Light on COVID-19 and Dementia Risk in Older Adults
A groundbreaking study in preprint at Lancet has revealed a significant link between COVID-19 infection and the increased risk of new-onset dementia (NOD) in older adults (60+ years).
Here’s what you need to know…
What Did Researchers Do? – Reviewed 11 studies involving nearly 940,000 people who had COVID-19 and over 6.7 million controls (without COVID-19). – Compared the risk of developing dementia post-COVID across various time frames up to 24 months after infection.
Key Findings: – COVID-19 survivors are at a higher risk of developing dementia, with a risk ratio (RR) of 1.58, meaning they’re 58% more likely to develop dementia than those without the virus. – This risk spikes to 84% higher than non-COVID individuals at 12 months post-infection. – Women and patients with severe COVID-19 showed significantly higher risks of developing dementia.
Could have been a direct quote from Kiwiblog anytime during the previous Government's time. I wonder if that reveals the failings of the whole oppositional, binary system we operate in? They're right, then we're right; they're wrong then we are wrong.
What irks me most is the language these Government MPs are using; trash-talking the previous Government and its specific ministers seems churlish, mean-spirited, and a word beloved by Kiwibloggers, nasty 🙂
completely agree. The left wing anger is palpable and justified. But we're no longer in a world where that oppositional binary system works (before it worked albeit dysfunctionally). We're still using that system, but the game has completely changed and we haven't caught up yet.
How to change that? Or how to adapt to the new dynamics so that we have agency towards all of life?
(and this is where we're going to sorely miss the likes of James Shaw).
this is another serious problem with our oppositional binary system, how to Tory proof legislation and policy. But it works the other way too, if we tory-proof from our side, they can socialist-proof from theirs.
Shaw walked a different path from that. The value is threefold (at least).
he demonstrated a different way of doing things
he passed legislation that had support from across the house
as a Minister he was able to change culture within government departments to be conscious of the importance of climate/eco crisis.
To step out of the oppositional binary for a moment, how about we list Shaw's achievements that will survive this government, wholly or in part?
One less obvious one is that all the people in government departments who are on board with climate and transition thanks to having had two terms of a Green Climate Minister, they're not going to suddenly disappear.
He was also constantly frustrated by the lack of depth and speed of progress and I have no doubt he's appalled by the tweaks from this Government; clean car discount etc.
All progressive actions are vulnerable to regressive governance.
I still believe strongly that providing narratives of how things can work out is imperative.
Macro implied above that we need to replace the government in 3 years time. What are the things that we can do between now and then that increase the chances of a change of govt in 2026? At the moment we are understandably focused on anger and calling out NACTF. This is important too (micky's posts and many of the comments on TS are great at this).
In addition, we need to be talking about how to win next time. That gives us 2024 and 2025 to organise. Then 2026 being the election campaign itself (I bet you have some thoughts on political campaigning!)
That's a short term, working with the system we've got option. I might see if I can do a post on that but have been wanting TS lefties to get the initial anger out of their system a bit.
Alongside and overlapping that is what Swarbrick is talking about, movement building at the community level. The left have been banging on about that for a long time, so I'm curious to see what CS comes up with.
I said yesterday that the details on that are probably going to be available to members as the Greens work on that over the next year. So anyone who hasn't and is inclined, might want to join the party now and get involved at the local level.
That is both short, medium and long term mahi. Getting our heads around the generational nature of change is probably a fairly big challenge.
Back to the how things work out. What would a new government in 2026 look like? Where will be at with climate/ecology? Can we develop a two pathways approach (parliament and community/movement)? What would that look like when we win in 2026?
I feel we could co-create a wonderful system, for sure.
But if the "others" stick to their game plan, they'll smash everything again. Community /movements would have to be free from the need for Government assistance, and also wary that the threat they will represent, will be met by unkind Government actions.
I agree that government funding is problematic. In the age of the internet, networking, and crowd funding, this is less of a problem now than it used to be.
In CS' electorate campaign, the workers were free from government crackdown, and I assume used a mix of fundraising and GP monies (some of which come from the government??).
I assume this is true for the three other electorates the Greens did well in.
Great questions Weka and ones I've been waiting for more people to ask. We can all see the horror show unfolding in front us but what do we do about it? I hear your point about letting the anger disappate a bit but I feel it's going to continue as the wreckers continue their work.
Perhaps one answer is to harness it. I'm on the verge of re-joining the Greens
While joining The Greens is a positive step, any meaningful solution is to be found at grass/flax roots level.
No party can implement the changes needed and get voted in.
To move to a less carbon dense lifestyle is the answer to almost all serious issues we face- climate, economic, social, inequality, ecosystem collapse/extinctions.
Transition Towns offer a great model, tweaked to your own circumstance/location.
Sharing will be at the heart of our future.
When we move, the pollies have no option but to follow.
Sigh. I wish we could find a way to "Tory proof" the WCC. Can we please have our infrastructure fixed rather then provide huge subsidies to US theatre owners?
If a transaction is between private individuals or organisations I see no reason for them not to be confidential.
When, on the other hand, one side of the transaction is a Governmental organisation, such as the central Government or a local body which is financed by the taxpayer or the ratepayer I don't see that there is any transaction that should be hidden.
I believe that the Governmental group should always offer the same deal to anyone. The only way to ensure that that happens is to make them known. I certainly don't want the Wellington Council giving special rates to their mates at my, the ratepayer's, expense.
If you, as a private individual chose to charge one of your friends less for work you do for them, and it is you own money that is providing the discount, why should it be anything to do with me?
the commercially sensitive transaction in this case was the WCC buying a piece of land. Where it being public might increase the amount the WCC had to pay.
I certainly don't want the Wellington Council giving special rates to their mates at my, the ratepayer's, expense.
I was thinking about contract bidding being done privately. Aren't there rules in place for that kind of thing to prevent mates rates?
The people who owned the cinemas were the ones who owned the land they were sitting on. They were selling it to the Council but were going to keep on running the cinemas.
As the sellers they obviously knew how much they were going to be paid.
I can see no way that the Council could have to pay more money if the public knew how much the price was going to be.
Tory-proofing is difficult when they operate in bad faith and rely on disinformation campaigns against progressive reforms.
Jacinda's frustrating incrementalism and consensus-building was an attempt to embed legislation for the long term. The miniscule carbon prices attached to farming were hammered out over years of negotiations in good faith. But Groundswell threw that away and decided to drive tractors up and down the country at the horror of having to pay for a tiny bit of their emissions.
Co-governance was a principle established by the previous National government and should be uncontroversial by now, but the munters and shit-stirrers found it a useful wedge for their racist conspiracy theories.
I still have a bit of faith that most Kiwis don't particularly like National or Luxon, but the resentment and anger at Jacinda and lockdowns is still palpable out there. She was wise to fall on her sword, but the hostile sentiment still remains. Hopefully people will wake up soon when they see the Nats trying to sell off half the country again. Before it's too late.
"Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says farmers have been treated ‘’like villains’’ for the last six years, and his Government was working hard to remove red tape and regulations that were slowing down the economy."
He hasn't got a clue or is the worst served PM by advisors in history. He turned up at a well known Marlborough wine company in the campaign sprouting the same target of doubling production only to be rebuked by the owner who pointed out that that was impossible because most of the suitable land was already in grapes and the industry's goal was quality not quantity. He has no idea that doubling production is almost impossible in most areas of primary production, certainly in sheep, probably also in beef and almost all other sectors as the constraints are not only local but mostly external with protected markets and over supply. The man is a muppet who has spent most of his working life in the US and is seriously ill-informed personally and professionly.
Can only assume he means further dairy intensification (double the intensification by definition) with all the destructiveness that brings upon the environment.
Trading off the New Zealand brand while simultaneously destroying that brand. Vulture capitalist, anyone?
They seem to be blithely unaware (or just callous) that climate catastrophies will totally fuck up the supply chain that underpins global free markets, and environmental collapse will put a stop to our food producing capacities
We need to become self sufficient in all things as soon as possible, which means subsidies for farmers to produce for the domestic market, (as well as encouraging those who can to have home gardens).And regenerative agriculture! Something Damien O'Connor was pushing for in our area.
We produce milk powder that ends up as a filler in all manner of unhealthy foodstuffs, nothing to be proud of, while ruining one of the most essential elements to life…our water.
Puppet rather than muppet as this is just another role where he works to direction, has the rhetoric provided and gets rewarded based on his ability to get the 'job' done.
That 'job' as we're starting to see is an ideologically driven destruction. Haters and wreckers.
No one from Fonterra would be interviewed about Mr Spierings' payout, but a Fonterra statement said he was given the $4.6m when he left the co-op last August.
It said the payment covered the final part of a deferred bonus dating back to 2017 and Mr Spierings' final remuneration for this year including his base salary, superannuation, and holiday pay.
Mr Spierings' annual annual salary was $2.5m a year but he earned over $8m for each of the last two years with bonuses.
Did Luxon and Stuff mean 'villeins' and not 'villains'? Defined as "(in medieval England) villeins were feudal tenants entirely subject to a lord or manor to whom they paid dues and services in return for land."
Bowls of decidedly pink-tinged rice are about to feature on sustainable food menus, according to researchers who created rice grains with beef and cow fat cells grown inside them.
Scientists made the experimental food by covering traditional rice grains in fish gelatin and seeding them with skeletal muscle and fat stem cells which were then grown in the laboratory.
After culturing the muscle, fat and gelatin-smothered rice for nine to 11 days, the grains contained meat and fat throughout, resulting in an end product the researchers believe could become a nutritious and flavourful food.
Prof Jinkee Hong, who led the work at Yonsei University in South Korea, cooked and tasted the beef-cultured rice, which he hopes will be a more affordable source of protein than traditional beef, with a much smaller carbon footprint.
So the prediction that this lot would wreak the economy for us all by Feb is coming true, every day these muppets are doing more bat shit ideological shitfuckary with economy than ann randy on steroids.
In fact it's a bloody roid rage event. How much of a fetishist wet dream can this lot run with? We can only guess that purity is the only thing holden them together.
How many times have we got to have this shitfucker bugger with people lives till they work out ideological free markets and business does it best – is a sick bloody joke?
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 27 were:1. The Minister for Ford Rangers strikes againTransport Minister Simeon Brown was again the busiest of the Cabinet ministers this week, announcing an ...
You got a fast carAnd I want a ticket to anywhereMaybe we make a dealMaybe together we can get somewhereAny place is betterYesterday’s newsletter, Trust In Me, on the report of abuse in state care, and by religious organisations, between 1950 and 2019, coupled with the hypocrisy of Christopher Luxon ...
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
Te Rangi e tu nei (The sky above us) Te Papa e takoto nei (The land beneath us) Tatou katoa te hunga ora (To us all the living) Tena koutou katoa (Greetings) ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
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Gender critical feminists are generally socially conservitive and reactionary. Quite frankly, there are views that need to be silenced, if we are to have some form of social progress.
The overturning of Roe v Wade is one of the end points of allowing free speech.
[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.]
[moved from here https://thestandard.org.nz/a-sad-lament-from-the-serial-left/#comment-1989347%5D
This is complete nonsense. You are mistaking GCFs for gender critical conservatives. GCFs are left wing/centre left/progressive feminists, often with very long histories of work on women’s rights including on abortion rights. It’s that work (theory, analysis, academic, grassroots) that informs gender critical feminist positions. GCFs often critique conservative gender politics.
The reason we have a reactionary, conservative backlash against trans people is because the liberal left got sucked into No Debate by Stonewall UK and other progressional lobby groups. Had GCFs and women generally been allowed to speak freely, we would have solid left wing positions on women’s sex based rights to push back on the conservative positions. Instead, trans allies appear to have decided to shut all women up because anything is better than questioning gender identity ideology. Can’t really complain afterwards about the debate then being dominated by people like Kellie Jay Keen or Matt Walsh.
If people want o understand what gender critical feminism is, read Jane Clare Jones, Kathleen Stock, Julie Bindel, Jo Phoenix, Brighton Sisters, Women’s Place UK, FiLiA
Here’s the Standard’s category for gender critical feminism posts
https://thestandard.org.nz/category/government-and-politics/gender-critical-feminism/
No, Gender critical feminists have always been right wing. I have spent hours combing through the twitter feeds of various CG feminists, such as Maya Forstater, Helen Joyce, and the Landy sisters (to name a few), and there is a lot of stuff there that the likes of Pat Roberston, Jerry Falwell and the likes would agree with.
If there was any justice in this world, Matt Walsh would be in a prison cell for holding his posionious views.
[Please provide some evidence for your claims. You know how this works: your own explanation, supporting quotes and links from sources that are evidence based. Don’t use Pink News.
The claims are:
That’s a mod request. Please do this before you comment again elsewhere on TS. – weka]
The Landy’s aren’t GCF, they’re reactionary gender critical activists.
Neither is Forstater a GCF. I would guess her politics are centrist, and she is a feminist in the contemporary centrist understanding of the term. eg
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/maya-forstater-transgender-twitter-jk-rowling-b1838151.html
I don’t consider Joyce to be GCF either, she is a socially liberal centrist conservative. I do think of her as feminist, but again in the centrist contemporary understanding.
Weka – please – why does Millsy have to provide all that supportive material for his expressed view, while on this thread, Anker can write,
"UNiversitites (sic) here and overseas have been captured by the ideologically driven left ie critical race theory and gender ideology. They have had a very significant influence on our institutions for example the public service" without having to provide links, quotes etc?
I don't get it.
As I see it, Weka is trying to bring rigour to the left. Millsy often makes wild claims that do a disservice to the left. While I don't agree with everything Anker says, I've never seen her behave like Millsy. And Anker is quite right about our universities. I should know – I work at one. In 2022 our boss encouraged us to enroll in a Critical Theory course – not compulsory at this stage, but we were told it would be "good for your careers".
the short answer is that millsy is telling lies about gender critical feminism.
It's akin to a right winger saying on TS that feminists hate men and always have. Or that Māori radicals want to kill white people. You can get away with that opinion in limited circumstances but once it becomes a pattern, expressed as fact in different ways over time, it's tedious as fuck because it's basically propaganda designed to mislead political debate. As such it has no place on TS. Millsy has form for this on multiple topics and has been moderated for it by more than just me.
I know millsy is wrong on GCF because I am very well informed on the topic. Re anker's comment. Anyone is free to ask her for evidence if they think she is wrong. I don't think she is wrong (again, I am well informed so I know what she is talking about). I probably disagree with her framing and the extent to which it is happening, and her view could do with some teasing out so that other people know what she is talking about, but that's a different matter from what millsy is doing.
It's not akin to saying that feminists hate men and always have. Or that Māori radicals want to kill white people.
Akin to would be saying feminists are too political, and that Māori radicals all vote Labour. That's akin, and debatable.
By describing millsy's comment as similar to feminists hate men and always have and Māori radicals want to kill white people is the definition of a straw man argument.
That means projecting and attributing a false, exaggerated argument onto your opponent, then attacking that falsehood.
GCF is an actual thing. Millsy was telling lies about what GCF is. I agree that my comparisons were poor, I will try and think of better ones. But the point I was making is that someone could come onto TS and tell lies about specific politics and that would cause a problem. For obvious reasons.
If people want to make an argument against gender critical feminist politics, then make the argument. But millsy wasn't doing that. They were misleading what GCF is, and they weren't making any argument apart from throwing out slurs about GCF being the same as rw fundamentalist christian positions.
The problem here is that No Debate means people criticising GCF haven't actually had to formulate an argument. They just repeat talking points and thought terminating cliches.
Using Pink News as a main reference point rots people's brains.
Probably because Millsy appears to be quite happy to imprision people for what he beleives is 'wrong think'
mod note.
I will also remind you of this, where you agreed to post evidence at the time of making claims,
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-09-01-2024/#comment-1983905
in response to this mod note about making unsubstantiated claims,
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-09-01-2024/#comment-1983853
Please reread that.
Never mind. I withdraw the allegations.
[that’s not good enough. It took time for me to research and then moderate. Why should any of the mods have to keep doing this when we have explained repeatedly over the past few years? 2 month ban.
When you come back you will be in premod again, and you will have to provide evidence for every claim you make at the time you make it.
If you don’t you will get a longer ban and eventually a permanent one.
I strongly encourage you to review the moderations on this, because we have explained what the problem is a number of times. I will post links to them below – weka]
mod note.
I started compiling this list below and I cannot understand why you should be given 15th chance. Ban upgraded to your second 12 month ban, simply to preserve moderator sanity.
the moderations from the past, in reverse chronological order, I gave up half way through 2022.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-10-02-2024/#comment-1989245
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-11-01-2024/#comment-1984201
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-11-01-2024/#comment-1984202
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-09-01-2024/#comment-1983853
https://thestandard.org.nz/atlas-smirked/#comment-1983696
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-07-01-2023/#comment-1929460
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-29-12-2022/#comment-1928564
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-11-11-2022/#comment-1920633
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-11-11-2022/#comment-1920681
"Gender critical feminists have always been right wing.."?
I don't think many here would agree with you.
All the Gender Critical Feminists I know are pretty much like me. Older – with a history of working for progressive and women's movements and causes for most (if not all) of our working lives. Many are lesbians, and none of them ever vote for any kind of Tory.
We are GC because we worked for the stuff that the Trans Activists are busy stripping from us. We are not going to hand our rights over easily, and for those of us who are lesbian, we don't care if you call it a "Ladydick", or a "Girldick" or a "Shenis" – we are not interested it in and anything it hangs off.
Am with Visubversa on this. Politicised lesbian women are the staunchest most trustworthy allies to have in progressive struggles has been my experience for many years.
The new women with cocks and balls–trans women–are unlikely ultimately, to get away with denigrating lesbians. Trans women like any other group are entitled to have lives free of harassment but that does not entitle them to hound other traditionally oppressed people.
There can be some horrific othering and demonising of marginalised people on this forum sometimes. Punching down rather than up. It's not progressive and it's really depressing.
You mean baseless smears against Graham Linehan that you like to throw round and don't back up?
Hypocrite much.
Graham Linehan is a white cis male. Hardly marginalised.
He's also a hateful transphobe.
Sounds yucky.
Who would support him?
The Sovereign crowd, I suppose.
And you're a hateful misogynist.
What, no link? I provided a link to support my claim, but you did not :/
Graham Lineman sets up fake accounts in order to troll, harass, and doxx people online. That's a big no, no pretty much everywhere in decent society.
Visibersa and Tiger's comments on any other group of people (particularly marginalised people) I suspect would attract significant moderator attention…
…like I said it’s pretty depressing that sort of stuff is said here.
I’ve explained this to you before. If you are going to throw out lazy slurs, I will throw out one about you.
As for your link, that’s about as useful as me giving this one,
https://thestandard.org.nz/search/muttonbird+trans/?search_comments=true&search_posts=true&search_sortby=date
People can just go read and see for themselves, right?
So make an actual argument, that way you will get respect. But that sentence is just another meaningless slur.
In my long experience, and the experience of many gender critical women and men, what you are doing here is very familiar. Point the finger, accuse someone of being transphobic, but almost never explain what that means, nor engage with critical debate about your position.
How about you just lay out what your specific concerns are about visubversa and Tiger’s comments and then we can look at them and see if they are justified or have meaning. That’s what we do here, it’s robust debate.
My concerns about visubversa and Tiger's comments are that they trivialise and delegitimise all transgender people by mocking them as nothing more than sexual fetishists and imposters with cocks and balls.
This is a from of prejudice akin to racism which we don't stand for I think. Tiger asked that transgender people should be able to lives free of harassment conditional on none falling foul of the law. What, the, fuck.
Your claim below that my defense of transgender people living lives free of prejudice means I'm also defending prison rape is another straw man argument. That whole comment is akin to describing all Maori men as violent in the home because there have been some cases of that.
thanks for clarifying MB, I think that’s useful.
I agree TM’s comment is close to the line, if not over it, in terms of talking about TW generally.
But visubversa named two groups: Trans Rights Activists (not all trans people), and the trans women and their allies who insist that lesbians should accept trans identified males into their sex lives. Lebsians have every right to be be both extremely fucked off about that as well as politically resistant.
I don’t think that is what they meant at all. This is what they said,
How that reads to me is general support for the human rights of TW, and those rights don’t extend to telling lesbians they should like girldick.
That’s not a form of of prejudice like racism, it’s a political analysis of gender identity ideology. If you want to argue that lesbians should like girldick, please do so. If not, then my question for you is why you can’t see what is happening to lesbians. Or why you don’t think it’s important?
If your position is that you believe trans people should be allowed/enabled to live lives free of prejudice, then that’s great. I agree.
I don’t believe all trans people are rapists, and you appear to have missed my point. GCFs, GC women, and people in general have been blocked from talking about serious issues around gender identity ideology.
Note I am not talking about trans people, or trans women, I am talking about the ideology and the politics that flow from it.
That ideology says trans women are literally women and society should enact legislation that allows any man to self identify as a woman at any time and then he must be treated as if he were a woman. That is why we have rapists self-identifying as women, and it’s why it took gender critical feminists and other GC people to force liberals and society to put some blocks on that. Although afaik there are still places in the world where men can self ID into women’s prisons.
I’ve seen it argued on TS that this is right, men should be allowed to do this, and women apparently should suck this up. So if you want to put say TM’s comments in the broader TS context, you have to understand that there have been left wing, pro-feminist men on TS who have argued that it’s ok for women to be rape collateral damage in order to support gender identity ideology.
What could have been fought for instead was safe prisons for gender non conforming males. But no, that won’t work because there is a subset of trans women for whom affirmation of their self ID has to be enshrined across all society. No matter who it hurts.
wealthy white cis men who are AGP are not more oppressed than lesbians in the (neo)liberal hierarchy of oppression. Critiquing gender identity ideology is not punching down.
If you wanted more support for TQ+ you probably should have stepped in quite some years ago when women were being subjected to heinous, often sexualised, online violence from the men you are defending here.
https://terfisaslur.com/
Women sorted that out themselves, and chose their own wellbeing and politics. Funny how many left wing men are now against them. Who is punching down exactly?
Sorry, who am I defending here apart from transgender people?
These trans identified males:
https://terfisaslur.com
And the ones here protesting a feminist conference with signs saying things like "suck my dick you transphobic cunts"
https://thestandard.org.nz/new-misogyny-same-as-the-old-misogyny/
Or this rapist who self-ID into a women's prison,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isla_Bryson_case
Or this trans woman who told a crowd to punch feminists
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-66676737
Or this bloke who did punch a GC woman,
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/26/woman-punched-in-brawl-between-transgender-activists-and-radical-feminists
And this one, a young man who punched an elderly woman because of her GC politics,
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/crime/posie-parker-protest-activist-pleads-guilty-to-punching-elderly-woman-at-heated-auckland-trans-rights-protest/A5RG2HY2TJFLFKAP4OT7JLGIGU/
And before you say oh that's just a few rare examples, I could go on all day. As could anyone whose been paying attention and listening to women for the last 6 years.
Excellent review of the Superbowl. Bread and Circuses.
Super Bowl LVIII Review: An American Orgy of Late Stage Capitalism | The Daily Blog
That man at half time who did the slow strip in the white ensemble sure could move his legs though….. I do wonder how an American journalist would write up a T20 game in India or a Saudi Arabian view of the World Darts Final. I prefer to watch Parliament- lots of circus, not much bread and far less fattening.
But wait there's more. In a poetic script of our times, written in pure American tradition:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/350180345/shots-fired-kansas-city-chiefs-super-bowl-celebration
Looks like the fiasco of Auckland's transport is about to be inflicted on the Cook Strait ferry service. National ideology is to do nothing, gut the state and create an opaque provider/funder split. Listening to Willis on RNZ just now the obvious plan for Cook Strait is to use Bluebridge and offload/on load rail containers in an inefficient manner. There will be a nightmare where Kiwirail own the rail, a private monopoly carry the freight at crippling costs, and the government spends nothing on infrastructure. Tax cuts now, and to hell with the infrastructure deficit.
As the sun sets on New Zealand, here are those new ferries sailing off into the pockets of amateur landlords:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/governments-3-billion-landlord-tax-cut-would-be-retrospective-and-trigger-some-refunds-ird/FR2BQCUMDBEDHGZETZZEYJARZI/
But that's ok- those refunds mean the landlords won't have to raise their rents, so the workers and beneficiaries who are taking the massive income hit to pay for it, don't need to worry about being priced out of a roof over their heads. So everyone wins, right? /s
Who has shares in Bluebridge? Willis? Luxon?
+100
Well now, why aren't they for the high jump? Seems like a conflict of interest.![surprise surprise](https://cdn2.thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/plugins/ark-wysiwyg-comment-editor/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/omg_smile.png?x42494)
The landlord tax given away by the government would have funded the new ferries and new port facilities with state of art rail freight facilities for generations to come
I too heard Willis on RNZ this morning ..doesn't give a toss.
This government is simply crap….but Luxon will be ok with his 7 houses.
The fact that we will have useless ferries in three years time should be an election issue.
Like blip's list of Key's lies, this needs to go on the "National are good economic managers" legacy of disappointment.
Sir Dove Meyer Robinson would be spinning in his grave.
This country is going to be in an absolute state of destruction in 3 years time after this pack of vandals have had their go. Let's hope that the general public will learn their lesson and never again give this C of C the keys to the purse again.
We're heading for disaster in several ways.
A new pandemic wave is about to break.
Water infrastructure isn't getting fixed.
Cheaping out on Cook Strait ferries is forgetting the Wahine disaster (and disrespecting the power of Tangaroa)
BuckleMask up.Lord Bethell
@JimBethell
Gobsmacked by huge 200k upward revision of long-term sickness numbers by @ONS. Overall picture is emphatic. Britain is too sick to work productively. The economic hit will be HARD. @hmtreasury will be gutted. Mandarins! We need to address our underlying health! Urgently!
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https://obr.uk/frs/fiscal-risks-and-sustainability-july-2023/#chapter-2
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https://twitter.com/JimBethell/status/1754518991941579038
( https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1754518991941579038.html)
@drseanmullen
New Study Sheds Light on COVID-19 and Dementia Risk in Older Adults
A groundbreaking study in preprint at Lancet has revealed a significant link between COVID-19 infection and the increased risk of new-onset dementia (NOD) in older adults (60+ years).
Here’s what you need to know…
What Did Researchers Do? – Reviewed 11 studies involving nearly 940,000 people who had COVID-19 and over 6.7 million controls (without COVID-19). – Compared the risk of developing dementia post-COVID across various time frames up to 24 months after infection.
Key Findings: – COVID-19 survivors are at a higher risk of developing dementia, with a risk ratio (RR) of 1.58, meaning they’re 58% more likely to develop dementia than those without the virus. – This risk spikes to 84% higher than non-COVID individuals at 12 months post-infection. – Women and patients with severe COVID-19 showed significantly higher risks of developing dementia.
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https://twitter.com/drseanmullen/status/1757429814376398963
( https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1757429814376398963.html )
Could have been a direct quote from Kiwiblog anytime during the previous Government's time. I wonder if that reveals the failings of the whole oppositional, binary system we operate in? They're right, then we're right; they're wrong then we are wrong.
What irks me most is the language these Government MPs are using; trash-talking the previous Government and its specific ministers seems churlish, mean-spirited, and a word beloved by Kiwibloggers, nasty 🙂
completely agree. The left wing anger is palpable and justified. But we're no longer in a world where that oppositional binary system works (before it worked albeit dysfunctionally). We're still using that system, but the game has completely changed and we haven't caught up yet.
How to change that? Or how to adapt to the new dynamics so that we have agency towards all of life?
(and this is where we're going to sorely miss the likes of James Shaw).
But James' success was short-lived; largely trashed by the incoming orcs?
Sorry, "arsonists"
https://norightturn.blogspot.com/2024/02/climate-change-arsonists.html
this is another serious problem with our oppositional binary system, how to Tory proof legislation and policy. But it works the other way too, if we tory-proof from our side, they can socialist-proof from theirs.
Shaw walked a different path from that. The value is threefold (at least).
To step out of the oppositional binary for a moment, how about we list Shaw's achievements that will survive this government, wholly or in part?
One less obvious one is that all the people in government departments who are on board with climate and transition thanks to having had two terms of a Green Climate Minister, they're not going to suddenly disappear.
Afaik the the zero carbon act will survive.
some more here
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/133356580/the-unexpected-climate-plans-of-the-new-government
He was also constantly frustrated by the lack of depth and speed of progress and I have no doubt he's appalled by the tweaks from this Government; clean car discount etc.
All progressive actions are vulnerable to regressive governance.
What's the solution to that?
that's the million trees question.
A few starting thoughts.
I still believe strongly that providing narratives of how things can work out is imperative.
Macro implied above that we need to replace the government in 3 years time. What are the things that we can do between now and then that increase the chances of a change of govt in 2026? At the moment we are understandably focused on anger and calling out NACTF. This is important too (micky's posts and many of the comments on TS are great at this).
In addition, we need to be talking about how to win next time. That gives us 2024 and 2025 to organise. Then 2026 being the election campaign itself (I bet you have some thoughts on political campaigning!)
That's a short term, working with the system we've got option. I might see if I can do a post on that but have been wanting TS lefties to get the initial anger out of their system a bit.
Alongside and overlapping that is what Swarbrick is talking about, movement building at the community level. The left have been banging on about that for a long time, so I'm curious to see what CS comes up with.
I said yesterday that the details on that are probably going to be available to members as the Greens work on that over the next year. So anyone who hasn't and is inclined, might want to join the party now and get involved at the local level.
That is both short, medium and long term mahi. Getting our heads around the generational nature of change is probably a fairly big challenge.
Back to the how things work out. What would a new government in 2026 look like? Where will be at with climate/ecology? Can we develop a two pathways approach (parliament and community/movement)? What would that look like when we win in 2026?
I feel we could co-create a wonderful system, for sure.
But if the "others" stick to their game plan, they'll smash everything again. Community /movements would have to be free from the need for Government assistance, and also wary that the threat they will represent, will be met by unkind Government actions.
Let's start with the low hanging fruit then.
I agree that government funding is problematic. In the age of the internet, networking, and crowd funding, this is less of a problem now than it used to be.
In CS' electorate campaign, the workers were free from government crackdown, and I assume used a mix of fundraising and GP monies (some of which come from the government??).
I assume this is true for the three other electorates the Greens did well in.
We can help build on that by getting involved.
Great questions Weka and ones I've been waiting for more people to ask. We can all see the horror show unfolding in front us but what do we do about it? I hear your point about letting the anger disappate a bit but I feel it's going to continue as the wreckers continue their work.
Perhaps one answer is to harness it. I'm on the verge of re-joining the Greens
nice one. It does seem such a simple act to join the Greens, or Te Pati Māori, whichever is the best fit.
Agree about the anger. I'm a fan of using anger to act. Is that a skill that can be learned?
While joining The Greens is a positive step, any meaningful solution is to be found at grass/flax roots level.
No party can implement the changes needed and get voted in.
To move to a less carbon dense lifestyle is the answer to almost all serious issues we face- climate, economic, social, inequality, ecosystem collapse/extinctions.
Transition Towns offer a great model, tweaked to your own circumstance/location.
Sharing will be at the heart of our future.
When we move, the pollies have no option but to follow.
They'll smash the grass-roots, just as they smashed forests.
that’s dark.
Who's "they”?
"how to Tory proof legislation and policy"
Sigh. I wish we could find a way to "Tory proof" the WCC. Can we please have our infrastructure fixed rather then provide huge subsidies to US theatre owners?
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/350085030/council-planning-buy-reading-cinema-land-offset-earthquake-strengthening-cost
When this deal became public knowledge the Mayor, Tory by name, then started a witch hunt against the Councillors who opposed the scheme.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/local-government/133216223/accused-wellington-councillors-brand-leak-review-political-and-biased-attack
are you in favour of all commercially sensitive transactions being done publicly?
In general my opinion is this.
If a transaction is between private individuals or organisations I see no reason for them not to be confidential.
When, on the other hand, one side of the transaction is a Governmental organisation, such as the central Government or a local body which is financed by the taxpayer or the ratepayer I don't see that there is any transaction that should be hidden.
I believe that the Governmental group should always offer the same deal to anyone. The only way to ensure that that happens is to make them known. I certainly don't want the Wellington Council giving special rates to their mates at my, the ratepayer's, expense.
If you, as a private individual chose to charge one of your friends less for work you do for them, and it is you own money that is providing the discount, why should it be anything to do with me?
the commercially sensitive transaction in this case was the WCC buying a piece of land. Where it being public might increase the amount the WCC had to pay.
I was thinking about contract bidding being done privately. Aren't there rules in place for that kind of thing to prevent mates rates?
The people who owned the cinemas were the ones who owned the land they were sitting on. They were selling it to the Council but were going to keep on running the cinemas.
As the sellers they obviously knew how much they were going to be paid.
I can see no way that the Council could have to pay more money if the public knew how much the price was going to be.
Just curious and I can't let it go, where do you sit in regards to Speaker Brownlee's secrecy in relation to the identity of the 4 swipe card holders?
It would be safe to assume there is a commercial imperative tied up in it all.
I have no idea what this is about and I therefore have no way of making a reasoned comment.
Gosh, I'm surprised it passed under yr radar.
https://thestandard.org.nz/who-are-the-four-lobbyists-with-parliamentary-swipe-cards/
Don't have to know details to have an opinion as to its appropriateness.
If Winston had any gumption he would vote against the ferry policy. I don't think it is popular with the NZ people.
That is how MMP is supposed to work.
'how to Tory proof legislation and policy.'
Tory-proofing is difficult when they operate in bad faith and rely on disinformation campaigns against progressive reforms.
Jacinda's frustrating incrementalism and consensus-building was an attempt to embed legislation for the long term. The miniscule carbon prices attached to farming were hammered out over years of negotiations in good faith. But Groundswell threw that away and decided to drive tractors up and down the country at the horror of having to pay for a tiny bit of their emissions.
Co-governance was a principle established by the previous National government and should be uncontroversial by now, but the munters and shit-stirrers found it a useful wedge for their racist conspiracy theories.
I still have a bit of faith that most Kiwis don't particularly like National or Luxon, but the resentment and anger at Jacinda and lockdowns is still palpable out there. She was wise to fall on her sword, but the hostile sentiment still remains. Hopefully people will wake up soon when they see the Nats trying to sell off half the country again. Before it's too late.
The general public never learn. They make the same mistakes time and again. Everywhere.
"Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says farmers have been treated ‘’like villains’’ for the last six years, and his Government was working hard to remove red tape and regulations that were slowing down the economy."
Groundswell has the Government's ear.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350174744/luxon-farmers-have-been-treated-villains
He hasn't got a clue or is the worst served PM by advisors in history. He turned up at a well known Marlborough wine company in the campaign sprouting the same target of doubling production only to be rebuked by the owner who pointed out that that was impossible because most of the suitable land was already in grapes and the industry's goal was quality not quantity. He has no idea that doubling production is almost impossible in most areas of primary production, certainly in sheep, probably also in beef and almost all other sectors as the constraints are not only local but mostly external with protected markets and over supply. The man is a muppet who has spent most of his working life in the US and is seriously ill-informed personally and professionly.
Can only assume he means further dairy intensification (double the intensification by definition) with all the destructiveness that brings upon the environment.
Trading off the New Zealand brand while simultaneously destroying that brand. Vulture capitalist, anyone?
They seem to be blithely unaware (or just callous) that climate catastrophies will totally fuck up the supply chain that underpins global free markets, and environmental collapse will put a stop to our food producing capacities
We need to become self sufficient in all things as soon as possible, which means subsidies for farmers to produce for the domestic market, (as well as encouraging those who can to have home gardens).And regenerative agriculture! Something Damien O'Connor was pushing for in our area.
We produce milk powder that ends up as a filler in all manner of unhealthy foodstuffs, nothing to be proud of, while ruining one of the most essential elements to life…our water.
And that leaked Cabinet paper!
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2024/02/leaked-cabinet-paper-reveals-government-considering-allowing-potential-influx-of-overseas-landlords.html
More leaks please
I wonder how many are now privately experiencing voter remorse?
But the Groundswellers cheered themselves silly!
Puppet rather than muppet as this is just another role where he works to direction, has the rhetoric provided and gets rewarded based on his ability to get the 'job' done.
That 'job' as we're starting to see is an ideologically driven destruction. Haters and wreckers.
"Puppet rather than muppet "
Agreed.
I thought that too, about his Waitangi Day speech.
Luxon may have no idea, but does he care? Spierings brought Fonterra to its knees.
Did Luxon and Stuff mean 'villeins' and not 'villains'? Defined as "(in medieval England) villeins were feudal tenants entirely subject to a lord or manor to whom they paid dues and services in return for land."
The previous head of Federated Farmers is now a Minister.
The previous GM Corporate Relations for Fonterra is now our Minister of Finance.
There's more of course if people just want to go through the CV's.
Big tRumpy vibe….
Luxon got out of the tractor cab sporting a wide smile.
“That was great fun — the highlight of my day,” Luxon said.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/southern-field-days-christopher-luxon-attends-first-day-as-farmers-flock-to-event/E45YGGU5WJCDLFRD6FV7V62C2Q/
Soylent pink. Its here…
Bowls of decidedly pink-tinged rice are about to feature on sustainable food menus, according to researchers who created rice grains with beef and cow fat cells grown inside them.
Scientists made the experimental food by covering traditional rice grains in fish gelatin and seeding them with skeletal muscle and fat stem cells which were then grown in the laboratory.
After culturing the muscle, fat and gelatin-smothered rice for nine to 11 days, the grains contained meat and fat throughout, resulting in an end product the researchers believe could become a nutritious and flavourful food.
Prof Jinkee Hong, who led the work at Yonsei University in South Korea, cooked and tasted the beef-cultured rice, which he hopes will be a more affordable source of protein than traditional beef, with a much smaller carbon footprint.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/14/lab-grown-beef-rice-could-offer-more-sustainable-protein-source-say-creators
'believe could' is doing some heavy lifting there.
BUT PINK RICE IS PEOPLE!
This should help Biden out.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2024/02/christopher-luxon-joins-anthony-albanese-justin-trudeau-in-major-statement-on-israel-gaza.html
So these three have "grave concern about "indications that Israel is planning a ground offensive" into the southern Gazan city of Rafah.""
Well whoop de doo. No call for a ceasefire. Just continuing to enable genocide.
Luxon just wanting to look prime ministerial while the human toll mounts.
Despicable.
So the prediction that this lot would wreak the economy for us all by Feb is coming true, every day these muppets are doing more bat shit ideological shitfuckary with economy than ann randy on steroids.
In fact it's a bloody roid rage event. How much of a fetishist wet dream can this lot run with? We can only guess that purity is the only thing holden them together.
My favourite today –
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/509263/auckland-train-cancellations-kiwirail-says-foundations-on-some-tracks-not-strong-enough
How many times have we got to have this shitfucker bugger with people lives till they work out ideological free markets and business does it best – is a sick bloody joke?