But the National Party is outraged that someone in business might have tried (and failed) to leverage their relationship with politicians for pecuniary interest. Would never happen under their watch eh? They are definitely scavenging around for the opportunity to mount a 2008-style ‘corruption’ attack on NZF.
IMHO, what we are seeing here is institutional racism in action. NZ is a small society which makes it hard for elites to avoid stories like this if the MSM decide to go after you. When you are dealing with the Maori business elite, which is a small part of a minority in an already small population it become almost impossible to do anything and avoid an establishment white media hatchet job around your connections.
The proof of the pudding is whether or not there is any evidence of impropriety – and the behaviour of the minister seems to have been perfectly in order.
Espiner seems to be happy to be a tool of the business/right wing elites these days, as long as he gets any sort of "serious" content for the pearl clutching class. His Pharmac panic mongering seemed to parrot the propaganda put out by PR agencies that push the agenda of big drug companies. Now it seems he is muck raking on behalf of that section of our society that is outraged Shane Jones has a billion dollars to spend and so far he isn't giving the usual suspects their cut.
This arvo I am headed your way for the cider festival. Looking forward to catching up with Alex Peckham. He guided a swag (I need a collective noun for cider enthusiasts) of us through a selection of Peckhams cider.
He generously sent a 20 litre ladder of Black Chisel(?) Apple juice to the Manawatu for me to ferment into cider.
I have had The Free House recommended to me.
If any Standardistas are going, I am the big gallah in the watermelon bucket hat.
This is my problem with the reaction and reporting of climate change or global warming. Everything that happens in the world is leveraged in the context of climate change.
Before a single gallon of oil was taken from the ground my great grandparents were terrified of bushfire in rural Victoria. Drought and bushfires have been a part of Australia for so long that gum trees have had millions of years to adapt to and even require fire to stay healthy as it kills the parasites in the bark.
Whats the problem now? Fucking idiot people ! A large number of these fires have been deliberatly lit by humans, others by discarded bottles and careless smokers, people really are stupid.
These fires used to rage without damage generally to lives and infrastructure because there were none, but if you want to stick a house in what is essentially a forest of petroleum producing trees there is a very good chance that you will lose it one day, a bit the same as building here in the Shakey Isles.
Maybe not as clear as I imagined….the events are greater and more frequent and compounding….there is less and less time/capacity to recover and resources (physical and human) are overwhelmed…this is not as before and it will increase
But Pat, how much of that is due to an expanding population that are increasingly living in vulnerable areas? How much of that is merely your perception due to a far greater reporting of bush fires and such like?
I am not disagreeing regarding climate change, and it seems an inescapable conclusion that much of that is human generated, but really, these doomsday scenarios that link every naturally occurring event to 'climate change' when patently it is not just gives fuel to those who deny human generated climate change.
The doomsday hypocrit Al Gore and his ilk have done immense damage to climate change acceptance.
Yes population larger and more living amongst bush etc but that does not change the cascading effects, it simply means more people impacted and more resources at risk than were in the past…the undelying point is the increased incidence and diminishing ability to cope and that is solely down to CC and with the lag involved in that impact it will increase in effect even if we stopped adding to it at this instant
Pat, I just love this video showing population growth . Near exponential over last two centuries after little more than flat lining for the millennia before.
And some people still say humans are not driving much of the climate change! Hope you enjoy.
ask yourself whether this planet would or could support 8 billion without the emissions of its primary energy source…the answer is quite simply, no it could (and will) not….if we (the human race) are lucky we will adapt and settle into an equilibrium…and it wont be supporting 8 billion
"These fires used to rage without damage generally to lives and infrastructure because there were none, but if you want to stick a house in what is essentially a forest of petroleum producing trees there is a very good chance that you will lose it one day, a bit the same as building here in the Shakey Isles."
Yes, and no. Climate change impacts intersect with other things humans are doing. It might have been reasonable to build houses in fire-prone forests 50 years ago, because the risk was lowish. Climate change is making that risk much much higher. So we have the confluence of three things: building in a fire area; a bigger population in a fire area; many more fires than normal (and of unusual intensity).
There are other factors there, like drought making forest management harder (there is less opportunity to controlled burns at other time).
In all that climate change has to be centred, because the potential for global catastrophe is serious, and because locally, in terms of adaptation, the impacts of AGW matter (drought, frequency, changes to vegetation and ecologies).
Two areas where this happens in NZ. One is we are building in some pretty stupid places (eg among kānuka/mānuka or pine or gums), and planting flammable trees in stupid places too. Still haven't caught up our thinking, and we'd be much better off if CC was centred in all those decisions.
The other is the tenure review process changing land use, so that many of our dry areas now have a lot of flammable vegetation (sans sheep grazing and farmer burnoffs). Farmers are talking about this, but I'm not seeing conservationists having this conversation yet.
I suspect in increasing areas adaptation will be abandoned as an option as there will simply be no capacity (or will) to continue to expend resources needed elsewhere….you can hear the phrasing now
probably. NZ's impending but largely unacknowledged* crisis is around big slips covering roads. Neither our engineering nor economics is designed around the frequency we will experience going forward.
*weird given we should be planning around this for quakes anyway.
"2) Capitalism has reached a dead end. We are entering a period of social revolution because capitalism is exhausted as a social relation: it generates more and more superfluous humanity, it expels living labor from social production, and it consumes energy and raw materials with increasing voracity to try to address with more commodities what it loses by expelling human labor. Its crises are and will be more and more catastrophic."
One of the major problems I have interacting with this style (I'm going to call it vaguely marxist) of writing is interpreting the writers meaning of capitalism. As far as i understand the term capitalism refers to how economic relations are defined by society. But the problem is if thats the case then in a democracy these arrangements are at all times up for change by legitimate democratic process. So there is a continuous 'revolution' going on but the authors picture of where this leads is obscured. Its also unclear which bits of the economic arrangements would be disposed of by a non capitalist alternative.
Revolts caused by weakness in democratic responsiveness included:
– Every single election since 2016 across Europe including Brexit (despite multiple elections in the last 5 year term)
– Every new political party formed in Europe since 2011
– The election of Donald Trump
– The election of the new Brazilian president
– The ejection of the President of Bolivia a few weeks' ago
– The Hong Kong riots this year
– The Indian election this year
It would be just so lovely if class analysis worked at all these days. It very rarely does.
But the revolutions have come from the right, rising to defend the nation-state better than the left have done for 90 years, won repeatedly and for years, and they continue to win.
In a case of egregiously bad timing, the Venice City Council was flooded with the largest flood in 50 years on the same night that the Coucnil voted to reject climate change measures.
"Ironically, the chamber was flooded two minutes after the majority League, Brothers of Italy, and Forza Italia parties rejected our amendments to tackle climate change," Zanoni, who is deputy chairman of the environment committee, said in the post, which also has photographs of the room under water.
Among the rejected amendments were measures to fund renewable sources, to replace diesel buses with "more efficient and less polluting ones," to scrap polluting stoves and reduce the impact of plastics, he said.
Zanoni went on to accuse Veneto regional president Luca Zaia, who is a member of Matteo Salvini's far-right League Party, of presenting a budget "with no concrete actions to combat climate change."
The flooding is not linked to climate change. Venice has been sinking into the mud slowly for centuries, and this was recognised as a major threat as far back as the 18th century.
It's not that sort of question. Every storm is, and every storm isn't. You get a 1 in 50-year event, that's probably just bad luck even though it is part of "climate". You get ten of them in five years, we'd know most of them will be directly attributable to climate change, but we'd never know exactly which one.
But Venice is built on crap ground and has been slowly sinking for centuries, and they keep building up and reclaiming. Fascinating history.
I think given the shit we are in it's reasonable to assume that climate change is affecting everything. It's a bit abstract to think that one storm is caused by CC and another isn't.
Also, the intersection of human activity with CC. Building in South Dunedin seemed reasonable in the 1800s, not so much now, but has our thinking caught up yet? Does it matter what is caused by CC? We can focus on the pumps if we want, but ultimately seeing all the causative factors in the bigger picture will help us more.
Yeah I was only joking ha ha – the response will be funny.
In a telephone interview with the Guardian, in response to a question about whether he was nervous that Trump might “throw him under a bus” in the impeachment crisis, Giuliani said, with a slight laugh: “I’m not, but I do have very, very good insurance, so if he does, all my hospital bills will be paid.”
Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, who was also on the call, then interjected: “He’s joking.”
No matter what pharmac's budget is, there will always be someone who wants more money spent on a medication that might or might not have any effect. Last time it was herceptin.
We have yet to see whether this latest funding decision reversal is the result of the substitution being a genuine error with clinical consequnces, or another case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease.
Medsafe's advice to Pharmac against making the change makes for deeply uncomfortable reading. Not because of the potential for increased deaths, which Medsafe didn't mention and it has yet to be demonstrated that there actually are increased deaths due to the change, but because of the likelihood of extreme adverse quality of life effects for those do suffer adverse effects from the change.
Yeah – the bit about rejecting studies funded by pharmacorps when they disagree with pharmac's decision even though pharmac as a policy accepts such studies is a suggestion that the move was a done deal before consultation.
There seems to be a theme…patient seizure free for many years, is dispensed generic by pharmacy with sticker reassuring patient that it is the same drug just a different colour. Patient has sudden seizure and dies.
Thing is McFlock…as far as I know one is allowed to criticize a decision made by one of our State's agencies
This is not treason.
Pharmac may be the hard arsed deal-makers needed to drive the bargaining for affordable drugs for all…but when another State agency strongly advises caution against a particular cost saving measure because of, well, lives….
Pharmac forgot the Rule..
First do no harm.
Hope y'all listened to Espiner's interviewing Herr Doktor this evening.
What a warm man. Overflowing with the milk of human kindness. How well we are served. Sarc.
The incidence of SUDEP in New Zealand is not known but using this figure it is estimated that approximately 40 people with epilepsy in New Zealand die from SUDEP every year.
terrible for all users of those drugs and especially for the victims and their families – appears a change happening
In a statement, Pharmac's medical director Dr Ken Clark said "we understand the news of the three deaths of patients taking Lamotrigine will concern people. We don't know if this is linked to the brand change – and we don't want people to stop taking their medication out of fear so we're making it easier for people to stay on their current brand if their doctor believes it is the right thing for them."
Professor Andrew Geddis, an expert on constitutional and electoral law at Otago University, believes the New Zealand First Foundation did not provide the level of transparency the public needed, especially from a party with ministers in government."
It's an odd beast because it's not clear why it exists," he said of the foundation.
He said one possible explanation was the foundation was used "to allow money to be given for the benefit of the New Zealand First party without going through the usual disclosure requirements".
Many authors here over the last 12 years has said that non-transparent funding of political parties is an rort (or words to that effect) at one point or another. If you go back 11-12 years you’ll find that we tried to get this crap closed down over and over again.
Just for instance consider r0b with /what-can-you-buy-with-5×10000/ which looks like exactly the same kind of thing with a slightly different mechanism.
The Electoral Finance Act 2008 tightened the rules for anonymous donations. But they are still in my opinion far too lax, inherently undemocratic, and too susceptible to abuse. The voters should know who is funding political parties.
The only real solution for donations are that all donations above a minimal value need to have a single person responsible for and required by law to fully account for the sources of funding – however small. That includes such things as the organisers of raffles and trusts.
Or political parties can only get funded by the state.
I prefer the latter. I’m willing to accept the former.
In the meantime could you suggest a alternate mechanism that would prevent such rorts happening – because when I look at the kinds of corruption that comes with practices like this one /ross-resigns-to-lay-corrupt-practices-complain-against-bridges-with-police/ with its allegation of a $100k donation to National being broken down into non-declarable $15k packets – I can’t see one.
All of those were apparently legal at the time (except maybe the last – can’t remember seeing the police response to that). Each change to tighten up has had fatal flaws and more rorts. It seems to be in the nature of politicians that they simply cannot be trusted to write the legislation required to control their own carnal behavior.
But I suspect that you’re going to simply be your dimwitted critical self. Once more tirelessly and fruitlessly simpering on the sidelines criticising those who actually try to do something about such practices. Basically I can’t see you doing anything except for presenting yourself as being hypocritical jerk – as usual.
I'm with you on this one lprent. State funding seems the most logical.
Moreover, campaigns should be simplified. Give all parties some airtime on TV to put forward their policies and allow them all to have a mass debate thereafter. And that's it. No more billboards, ads, etc.
I haven’t since 2012 because the advertising just wastes my time and disrupts the few bits of time that I have to watch TV – I haven’t seen anything on it worth watching in a decade. It isn’t exactly a mass media any more – it only caters to the elderly, the technophobic conservatives, and the idiotic. At least that seems to be who they are catering for – from the ‘news’ to the local content.
Perhaps you should (re-)read my last post on the subject.
I’m not exactly a minority in this, especially with the 40 and under age groups
I’d personally prefer to pour state money down a sewer rather than spend any more on television, it’d have a better chance of remaining productive and clean (think of MAFS for instance).
As it is I both spend my own money to get something I can be bothered watching, and I pay wasted taxes on the drivel that is free-to-air TV. The RNZ National programme I like, the concert programme is worth supporting, but television as it currently stands isn’t worth wasting money on.
Nationwide, the weekly cumulative audience for RNZ National is 599,800 New Zealanders of the 10 plus population.
Among all radio stations in New Zealand, RNZ National’s station share of 11.1%.
The weekly cumulative audience for RNZ Concert is 165,600 or 3.8% of the 10+ population.
The weekly cumulative audience for RNZ (National and Concert combined) is 669,600 people aged 10+ years or 15.4% of the NZ population. Many Concert listeners also listen to National.
However the usual screw up that I have come to expect from all of the media websites.
The ubuntu system is on the correct timezone, running chrome, and this system is almost direct out to the net. It sits behind a bog standard ethernet router hooked on to a fibre connection. There is a pinhole firewall in there. In other words the default setup for most desktop systems (apart from linux).
I even trapped the transmitted data and the location looked ok in there as well. Just a bug in the TVNZ streaming provider.
Oh well, I’ll have a look around to see if there are other legit sources that are competently run. It may work on android… But basically this is too much trouble already. I was going to look at it on my 4k monitor.
Otherwise there are providers who are actually competent and fast – unlike TVNZ on-demand.
Here's (link below) a bit of background on it. But you may want to read it after you have viewed it. That's, of course, if you can locate a legal site screening it.
I'm guessing the other group that watches free to air is poor people. I don't know what's happening with broadband prices these days, but the whole computer/streaming thing is not cheap if you have no money. One (partial) solution there would be for WINZ to consider internet access as a basic need.
The other problem at the moment is the weird way that the networks manage their streaming and on demand access. I can't figure out how to watch The Nation other than having to turn up right at 9.30am on a Saturday morning (streaming). Which never happens, so I'm out of the #nzpol twitter convos immediately. If you go to their webpage the on demand videos for The Nation are random, the first one I just clicked on is from August.
This may be TV3 cutting costs pre-sale, but I remember it being like that at other times too and I just gave up.
I find the sign-in for general on demand for either network a big cumbersome, which I can resolve if it bothers me. I often it takes time to find what I want to watch, I think because of how the networks are trying to corral viewers (you're supposed to become a loyal viewer I guess then they push stuff at you). Quite often I just give up. I've been thinking I should just get a TV for the 2020 election.
I think there is a case for not putting political content behind a tracking wall though. Mentioning this because the TVNZ/RNZ merger proposal includes paywalls and ads.
Also, rural internet speeds still often suck.
All of that is resolvable, and streaming and broadcast seem the way to go, but I'm not particularly confident that we would get it right.
This popped up in my twitter feed this morning. Free, high speed internet for all Brits via a publicly owned company (tied in with job creation, economy, working from home)
But, in 1990, then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, decided that BT's rapid and extensive rollout of fibre optic broadband was anti-competitive and held a monopoly on a technology and service that no other telecom company could do.
"Unfortunately, the Thatcher government decided that it wanted the American cable companies providing the same service to increase competition. So the decision was made to close down the local loop roll out and in 1991 that roll out was stopped.
I can't figure out how to watch The Nation other than having to turn up right at 9.30am on a Saturday morning (streaming)
It is very easy. Go to: https://www.threenow.co.nz/ Scroll down to: NEWS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS and select it. 41 episodes available there if you feel like a binge.
edit
the first one there is last weeks for me using chrome. sorry should have read that last sentence properly.
yeah, but if I miss the stream (or broadcast) at 9.30am I can't watch it in time to take part in #nzpol convos because they don't put the on demand up until some random time later. It's current affairs, people are talking about it on the day, it's bizarre they're not making that available. I don't know if that's a technical issue, but I had assumed it was how they wanted to do it in terms of controlling how people view their content.
Even more bizarrely, I followed your instructions and there is no sign of the live stream, which should be happening right now. FFS.
I don't know if that's a technical issue, but I had assumed it was how they wanted to do it in terms of controlling how people view their content.
More basic than that: their systems still require humans to make the clips available to view – so it's about paying them on a weekend vs the return on that. Other tasks are more profitable. Civic conversations do not factor into commercial broadcasting.
By comparison, RNZ has a fully-automated post-broadcast publishing pipeline because they had a very smart tech boss years ago when it was created (who also made their site a model of universal accessibility just because it was the right thing to do). I guess you could call that a technical issue.
thanks, re technical, I wasn't sure how easy it was to automate or to enable livestreaming where you can start watching the start half way through the stream (this is possible, just not sure how easy).
And yep, the driving force of profit doesn't serve us.
I find the sign-in for general on demand for either network a big cumbersome
I don't. I create a login with whatever name comes to mind and leave it logged in. I never remember the passwords. TVNZ has logged me out a couple of times over several years but i just create a new login.
edit
I use Chrome for TV and radio and Firefox for internet with Chrome set up so two windows for each TV site and windows for George FM and Ngati Hine FM open automatically.
I don't log out and then both networks log me out at some point (also not a fan of staying logged in because I assume it enhances tracking). I need to write down the login details and make them easily accessible on my desktop. Which I will no doubt do next year for the election to make my life easier, but I think there is a case for actual free to stream for politics during an election year.
Most browsers will offer to store login details for websites on the first sign in, and apart from internet banking, which I decline, there’s no need to write the details down. I always log out after visiting a site I've logged in to and I've never had an issue, and I clear the cache and internet files multiple times a day.
The problem with that approach is that it sort of works when you jump across multiple machines with chrome and firefox – but not quite.
I routinely use at least 5-10 computers during a day. Between work laptops, mobiles and tablets, base systems, and TVs it gets to be a mess trying to have remembered login names and passwords – all of which need to be updated.
But the real issue is that the TV sites want you to jump through their promo pages and ads. So they don’t have good persistent links. I usually can’t have a link direct to what I want to watch. There is always a new hoop to jump through with media sites. I prefer to use the attention time for login hoops like that for things that I work with – like email, messaging, slack, stackoverflow, man pages, language reference sites etc – so I seldom bother.
I’m certainly not going to waste that valuable attention to detail on sites that are basically trying to sell me stuff.
Good point about multiple devices. I only us a desktop for interwebs. TV as a cascaded second screen.
Agree the Three site is a dog with intrusive ads but i find the TVNZ site easy to use with minimal ads and no hoops. I have Crome set to open two windows of the ondemad page on startup. The first two rows with no ads are favourites and new.
I was meaning on the page itself. No ads at all on the ondemand page, not even self-promoting. One small commercial ad on the homepage, and some for shows but you would expect that. The videos themselves have about a third of the ad time of the live stream.
I’m guessing the other group that watches free to air is poor people.
Oh I agree. To a large extent they are catering to that market. It shows in content of the adverts in particular.
It is just that I have zero interest in anything where I can figure out the inevitable ‘story’ pattern within 10 minutes of the first episode. Or in the case of something like MAFS, without even seeing more than a few paragraphs of promotional stories in the NZ Herald. Similarly I don’t find much to be interested in with the slow unrolling of news or current affairs punctuated by inane ads for something that I already read online days or even weeks earlier.
The problem is that there are viable alternatives these days without ads and on-demand. So what is happening is that free-to-air is becoming a broadcast media desolation that is losing the more affluent and time constrained of their audience to anything else. That means that the support for a free-to-air network model is being continuously eroded.
As the number of audience who have the income to be really interesting to advertisers stop watching, the number of and length of ad breaks increases to drop costs – driving more of their audience with choices away. Ads targeting those groups get increasingly concentrated around the things that draw them back – like political debates or current affairs or the news or local content or satire. Driving them away from that as well.
But there is a need as a society to maintain public broadcasting systems for a whole host of reasons that I won’t describe right now. The problem is that when the system is orientated around advertising or even competitive advertorials (advertising upcoming shows etc) when there are viable alternatives without those factors, the public support for maintaining a free-to-air system diminishes as well.
I find the sign-in for general on demand for either network a big cumbersome, which I can resolve if it bothers me. I often it takes time to find what I want to watch,
That is how I find it as well. Apart from anything else they seem to delight in not having persistent links to content. You have to jump through pages and hoops to the point where it is easier to just dig a snippet off youtube (permanent links and no sign ins) to see if it looks interesting – and if it isn’t on one of the existing subscriptions to fire up a torrent. After all I’ll lose interest in most things half way through the first episode if the storyline has been cribbed from shakespeare et al yet again. Or we have ‘celebrity’ fools like Hosking (who I have never seen) posturing that they can moderate political debate.
I think there is a case for not putting political content behind a tracking wall though. Mentioning this because the TVNZ/RNZ merger proposal includes paywalls and ads.
Yeah. You either have public money funding open political debate or you don’t. None of the political content in NZ runs without large support from state funding. It shouldn’t have either paywalls or adverts. It should just be available online.
Also, rural internet speeds still often suck.
I know. Otherwise I’d have been living in Glenorchy 2 decades ago.
Mostly that is currently an issue of maintaining above ground copper networks. While cell-systems are a viable way to put in network infrastructure, their bandwidth is a direct function of distance and weather (ie it is an issue of attenuation). Thee more bandwidth, the closer the tower have to be together – which is why there will be a lot of infill for 5G in urban areas.
Besides they require a higher speed network to get to cell towers anyway. Basically fibre has few limitations over time and is the approach that needs to be taken (unless quantum entangling becomes more than curiosity).
They have pretty well wired up the urban areas with fiber-optic now – ie max people at least cable length. We need to start biting the bullet and look at a decades long project to persistently (ie underground) keep getting fibre into smaller communities. There really isn’t a good technical way to fibre out to the farms. The lengths are long and the maintenance costs mount up over longer lengths – even underground.
Nancy has quite a lot of mahi on Maori made films she will be missed.
I remember when the reserve in Te Tairawhiti had Kai moana in it before the same as it has now with the reservation. Its great to see Te Kai Moana return to the reservation in great numbers we need reservations like that all around Aotearoa.
Awsome that Ngāti Oneone are planting native trees on their Moanga.
Coal is old dirty technology that needs to be banished to our history books.
Two of America’s biggest coal plants closed this month
First the dirtiest ones began shutting down. Then it was the old ones. Now it’s some of the biggest. America’s coal plants are turning off the boilers, facing brutal economics and customers fleeing for natural gas and renewable energy.
This week, Arizona’s 2.25-GW Navajo Generating Station burned its last load of coal after no buyers turned up during a two-year search
This week, Arizona’s 2.25-GW Navajo Generating Station burned its last load of coal after no buyers turned up during a two-year search. Trade publication Utility Dive reports that the fate of the financially ailing plant was sealed after a bid to force an Arizona water agency to buy its electricity failed. The Navajo station emitted about 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, equivalent to 3.3 million cars. It’s one of the biggest retirements in a year of massive shutdowns.
The second is Pennsylvania’s 2.7-GW Bruce Mansfield unit. The plant’s bankrupt owner began shutdown on Nov. 7, almost two years ahead of schedule. It was the state’s largest coal-fired plant, operating for 40 years.
Together, the two retirements equal all the emission reductions from coal plant shut-downs in 2015, a record year when 15 GW of mostly smaller and older units were shuttered, reports Scientific American. Last year, 14 GW were mothballed. In 2020, more are on the way, including Kentucky’s Paradise plant.
Thanks to The European Investment Bank for their move to protect our mokopuna future from a carbon polluted environment.
The European Investment Bank has agreed to phase out its multibillion-euro financing for fossil fuels within the next two years to become the world’s first ‘“climate bank”.
The bank will end its financing of oil, gas, and coal projects after 2021, a policy that will make the EU’s lending arm the first multilateral lender to rule out financing for projects that contribute to the climate crisis.
The decision to stem the flow of capital into fossil fuel projects has been welcomed by green groups as an important step towards the EU’s aim to be carbon-neutral by 2050.
The EIB, the world’s largest multilateral financial institution, described its decision as a “quantum leap” in ambition. “Climate is the top issue on the political agenda of our time,” said the bank’s president, Werner Hoyer. “We will stop financing fossil fuels and launch the most ambitious climate investment strategy of any public financial institution anywhere.”
The bank’s vice-president, Andrew McDowell, said the move was “an important first step – not the last step, but probably one of the most difficult.”
Under its new policy, the bank will end all lending to fossil fuels within two years and align all funding decisions with the Paris climate accord. Energy projects applying for EIB funding will have to show they can produce one kilowatt hour of energy while emitting less than 250 grammes of carbon dioxide.
Less than two months after China told the WHO there was a problem, a lot has happened. Sadly, deaths, confirmed cases and countries affected are increasing every day. However, on a scientific and medical level, what is going on to contain, cure and prevent this new disease is truly inspirational. ...
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I must say that it’s at loggerheads with the inclusive and free society we want to create in New Zealand that one of our largest media outlets, MediaWorks, would allow Hannah Tamaki to perform on their show, Dancing With The Stars.Hannah Tamaki and her husband Brian are after all well-known ...
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The Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change book is now available! The book uses cartoons, humor, and critical thinking to expose how and why some people reject climate science. It's now available for sale on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other book outlets. If you're near the DC area, you're very welcome to ...
by the Council of Disobedient Women When Moana Maniapoto recently lamented that Rachel Stewart was no longer writing for the Herald, political commentator Morgan Godfery was quick to brag on Twitter, like a schoolyard bully, how proud he was of “driving Rachel Stewart from the Herald”. What a contrast Morgan ...
You’re probably aware that the Achievement Standards used to assess senior school students’ learning are being reviewed. Science is one of the ‘pilot’ subjects in this process, where a ‘Subject Expert Group’ has developed 4 draft Science standards¹ (a significant step away from the current 30+, and a response to ...
John MacCormickTo succeed in an unpredictable and changing world, adaptability is the key. Let’s be chameleons. Technology continues to change people’s jobs and work environments. But change so far is not as fast and extensive as some pundits claim. Nor is it as fast and extensive as it needs ...
It seems we can’t even get through a week these days without the National Party's leader, Simon Bridges, making some sort of silly announcement about a policy that doesn’t actually exist.Usually concerning Bridges’ gut instinct and the undoing of whatever the Government has recently announced, National’s reactionary opinions and uncosted ...
Oh look! NZ First's secret slush fund was laundering donations from Talley's:One of the country's biggest fishing companies, Talley's, and its managing director donated nearly $27,000 to the New Zealand First Foundation, which has been bankrolling the New Zealand First Party. The foundation received $26,950 from seafood giant Talley's and ...
Janet Hoek, Richard Edwards, Andrew Waa, Nick Wilson, George ThomsonMinister Jenny Salesa announced the Government’s long-awaited Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Vaping) Amendment Bill on Sunday 23 February. The Bill contains some important provisions as it works to strike a balance between ensuring regulated products are available to ...
Surprisingly enough, one could argue (as I often do) that the day inserted into a leap year is not that we label 29th February, but actually the 24th of February. Here I explain why, briefly. Almost everyone assumes that the day added into February in a leap year is the ...
If you haven’t watched Newsroom’s video showing Oranga Tamariki staff attempting to uplift a newborn baby yet you should do so. Although it's not the worst case as far as interventions go, it’s certainly not a good look for the Government. Because of this controversy there’s been a plethora of ...
Genesis Energy is planning to build the country's biggest PV solar farm:Power generator and retailer Genesis Energy says it is in advanced discussions to build New Zealand's biggest solar farm in northern Waikato. The company, which earlier reported a 15 per cent decline in operating earnings to $167.2 million, said ...
Transport is our second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Any credible effort to reduce emissions to net-zero has to target it. So what is the government doing? Subsidising some of the dirtiest, most inefficient vehicles on the roads:New Zealand's favourite cars - double cab utes - are largely exempt ...
You’ve really got to wonder what the NZ First Party was thinking and drinking last Friday? Not only did they hamstring the Greens by halting one of their main environmental policies, the electric vehicle fee-bate scheme, a policy that the public was led to believe was a done deal…but they ...
High Risk Call: Insensitive though it may seem to even pose the question: how will the electorate respond to what the Prime Minister’s opponents will undoubtedly characterise as an attack on New Zealanders’ freedom of speech? At more than twelve month’s remove from the terrible events of 15 March 2019, ...
Story of the Week... Opinion of the Week... El Niño/La Niña Update... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... Climate change leads to more violence against women, girlsRape, domestic violence, forced marriages: A new ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Feb 16, 2020 through Sat, Feb 22, 2020 Editor's Pick JP Morgan economists warn climate crisis is threat to human raceLeaked report for world’s major fossil fuel financier says ...
Last week the Wall Street Journal published an article ‘The Dangerous Denial of Sex by two scientists Colin Wright and Emma Hilton. Write is an evolutionary biologist at Penn State and Hilton is a developmental biologist at the University of Manchester. It is well worth reading the article in full. Here ...
I am about to mail my overseas ballot to Florida so that it can be counted in the Democratic primary on March 17. In Florida you have closed as opposed to open primaries, which means that one must declare a party preference in order to vote in a party primary. ...
Winston Peters - Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the NZ First PartyWe all know that politics can be pretty messy at times. Just look at the Dirty Politics saga in New Zealand, the misgovernment of the Australian bushfires or the recent Trump impeachment debacle in the US. In a ...
Last Monday SpaceX launched another clutch of Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit, bringing up to 300 the number of these units intended to bring 5G internet to the whole globe. In this post I present a movie showing how all 300 such satellites will be zipping around our planet over ...
The recent floods in Southland have highlighted the issue of Rio Tinto's illegal toxic waste dump in Mataura. But according to Newsroom, there's an even worse mess in Ruakaka near Whangarei:A Northland property stockpiled one million litres of flammable and toxic chemicals. Almost two years since the situation came to ...
It’s amazing just how many attack ads $100,000 buys you these days. The National Party has really been going to town lately, with their latest Twitter campaign making a number of questionable and blatantly false assertions, one being that poverty has worsened under the Labour led Government.The National Party's claim ...
OMV's exploratory drilling in the Great South Basin has failed to find oil. Good. Firstly, because we can't afford to burn the oil and gas we've already found, so there's just no point looking for more. And secondly, because offshore, deep-water drilling poses a risk of an environmental catastrophe, which ...
The government has announced it will strengthen whistleblower protections. The major change is "allowing people to report serious wrongdoing direct to an external authority if they wish", which fixes one of the big flaws in the Act. At present, whistleblowers must generally make their disclosure direct to the body they ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bruce Lieberman CARLSBAD, CA. – When it comes to paying the electric bill, most people don’t give it a second thought – it’s something that in effect is “baked in.” But across California and several other states, local governments increasingly are ...
Excerpts from Being and Being Bought, by Kajsa Ekis Ekman, Spinifex Press, 2013. Part 4 Ekman, a Swedish journalist and critic, brings together a Marxist and feminist analysis of prostitution and surrogacy in this groundbreaking book. This is the fourth part of a synopsis and brief commentary of the book by Daphna ...
The Democracy Virus: China’s authoritarian political system enables a level of social surveillance and control that liberal democratic societies cannot match. The Chinese Government makes full use of the latest digital technology to both punish – and reward – its citizens. The plans it formulates cannot be challenged, or hindered. Where ...
Another day, another IPCA report on criminal conduct by policy. This time they kicked a child in the head when he was handcuffed:Police chased him and yelled out for him to stop. When he turned to face the police, he threatened them with a hammer. That's when the officers tasered ...
The investigation of two of the five parties in Parliament for fraud around their election donations has pushed the issue of party funding back into the spotlight. And while there are obvious things we can do to tighten up the donations regime - a much lower declaration threshold, realtime disclosure ...
While the south of New Zealand has been struggling with too much rain in recent days, here in the north we are so very short of it (though Saturday’s forecast looks promising). Basically, we have had almost none since Christmas.As someone who relies on rain to wash the car, ...
Former National Party MP Jami-Lee RossIt comes as no surprise that Jami-Lee Ross has been named as one of the defendants in the X2 $100,000 National Party donations case currently before the courts. Click bait journalists who were chaffing at the bit to discredit the former senior whip had already ...
Stand Clear! Winston Peters is encouraging voters to think of RNZ as belonging to “The Media Party”. He wants them to see it as a politically partisan institution with its own, vicious attack-dogs in the electoral fight. If he succeeds, it will be, and probably should be, the end of ...
"You're going to need a longer runway" Gratton et al explore the ongoing effects of upward-creeping temperatures on aviation in Greece in the period since 1955 at a range of airports in that country. For longer runways impacts are measurable but with little impact on operations. For airports with shorter runways, ...
In mid-December the Israeli secret police, the Shin Beit, revealed it had arrested dozens of Palestinian left-wing activists, including members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), in the previous few months. Among those arrested was one of the central leaders of the PFLP, Khalida Jarrar. As ...
Former National Party chief whip Jami-Lee Ross is one of the four people charged over National's multiple fraudulent donations. How unsurprising. Meanwhile, just days ago National leader Simon Bridges was trying to pretend the charges were nothing to do with his party. Yeah, right. When your chief whip effectively publicly ...
If you've been watching FYI for a while, you'll have noticed that the police have a bad habit of demanding ID from requesters. They have apparently been repeatedly told to stop doing this by the Ombudsman, but we all know what law enforcement thinks of the law, so thye keep ...
Collateral Damage: For the Green Phoenix to be reborn, the funeral pyre so patiently assembled by its identity politicians over the course of many fractious years – but with growing intensity over the past three – first has to be ignited. The terrible probability, of course, is that, in setting ...
If you follow politics in New Zealand you've likely noticed that the right wing have been going on and on about the Coalition Government failing to reduce poverty. In fact they’ve been incessantly claiming, in the absence of any conclusive data, that poverty has been getting worse.Yesterday, NewstalkZB reported:Mike Hosking: ...
The Herald reported over the weekend that an Auckland business owner is being targeted with asset forfeiture laws over a workplace death:A workplace fatality has seen police use a law usually associated with drugs and organised crime to seize millions of dollars in assets from a business owner because of ...
Just days after talking about how people feel "squeezed" and promising tax and service cuts as a "solution", National is talking about cancelling a rise in the minimum wage if elected: National is considering scrapping the Government's planned minimum wage increase if it wins this year's election, the party's finance ...
Nobody thinks about the next century anymore. That at least is Sci-Fi writer William Gibson’s observation (in this BBC 4 short interview, starting at 1:43:50 ). He calls it “Futures Fatigue”, but isn’t judgemental about it. Gibson notes that in the 20th century speculation about the 21st (and beyond) was common. Now ...
A Labour government desperate for the numbers crawls into bed with Winston Peters. Winston ignores the law and secretly takes money under the table from someone. When it is exposed just months out from an election, he is investigated by the Serious Fraud Office. That's what happened back in 2008. ...
So the Serious Fraud Office has another secret $100,050 National Party donation before the Courts in a major scandal that looks set to quash any chances Simon Bridges had of winning the 2020 election.Yesterday, Newsroom reported:The Serious Fraud Office prosecution of four people over donations to the National Party involves ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Iceberg twice the size of Washington, D.C., breaks off Pine Island glacier in Antarctica Story Highlights: The Pine Island ...
Prof Philippa Howden-ChapmanHousing policy is building up to be the key election issue again. In this blog I reflect on the importance of the role of the New Zealand Government in improving access to affordable housing. I look at what the Government has been doing to increase quality public housing ...
Writing on The Spinoff, Danyl Mclauchlan argues that we have a vacuum in our political system, in that there is no longer an anti-establishment party anymore:I think there’s a vacuum in our political system. There are obvious problems with the status quo but no real critics offering reform. It’s a ...
Stuff today has a piece about the government discovering it has been oversubsidising polluters for a decade under the Emissions Trading scheme:The Government is pledging to urgently fix an issue within the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), after it emerged some polluters are likely being over-compensated with taxpayer-funded carbon credits. [...] ...
The Marlborough District Council, tired of public scrutiny, wants to increase the amount it charges for LGOIMA requests:The cost of requesting official information from Marlborough's government agency could almost double after a jump in "fishing expeditions". Charges could be raised from $60 to $100 an hour for information supplied by ...
When Winston Peters was caught money laundering donations and stalking journalists, the Greens were conspicuous by their silence. It was another example of how getting along with their government partners was eroding their values and their own reputation. It was obviously unsustainable, and so now James Shaw has finally spoken ...
I am among the most pro-free speech people I know. I don’t doubt there are others more strident than me, but I’m certainly up there. And my support for freedom of expression isn’t limited to opposition to government-imposed restrictions. It extends to a belief that employers should have limited powers ...
With over 69,000 confirmed cases and 1,600 deaths, here’s your round-up of the latest coronavirus news. New disease and virus have now officially been named On the 11th February, the WHO Director General announced a new name for the disease: COVID-19 which is short for coronavirus disease 2019. The naming ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Feb 9, 2020 through Sat, Feb 15, 2020 Editor's Pick ANALYSIS-Climate change opens up 'frontier' farmland, but at what cost to the planet?Climate change could expand farmland globally by ...
After cross-examination Jones knew he would lose the defamation case he took against film maker Renae Maihi. That’s why he threw in the towel. The weight of evidence was clearly against the old tycoon with the defense presenting fifty articles to confirm Jones’ racist views.Being unable to harass somebody into ...
Sprung! Former NZ First president, Lester Gray, chats with RNZ's Guyon Espiner in the carpark of a Tauranga shopping centre.(Photo supplied anonymously to NZ First and The BFD.)IT’S CLEAR THAT an important aspect of Jacinda Ardern’s political success is her willingness to seek – and take – advice. This ...
Ruth Cunningham, Charlotte Paul, Andrew MoorePublic health responses to infectious diseases such as COVID-19 require us to draw on our common humanity and be explicit about our values. Recognising this will help us make good decisions in difficult situations so that, for example, the need to impose restrictive measures ...
The Helen Clark Foundation has released its report on the housing crisis, and found that house-hoarders are to blame for it:Property investors are to blame for New Zealand's high house prices, a new research paper published by the Helen Clark Foundation says. [...] McArthur said previous attempts to address housing ...
The Abortion Legislation Committee has reported back on the Abortion Legislation Bill and recommended that it be passed with some amendments. Unfortunately, the latter include even more hoops to jump through for those seeking abortions after 20 weeks, including a time-wasting requirement to consult a second doctor. No-one casually seeks ...
Brexit is likely to be a disaster for the UK (how sad, never mind). But now that they're out of the EU, the latter has finaly taken the opportunity to blacklist one of their key tax havens:The Cayman Islands, a British overseas territory, is to be put on an EU ...
I’m not quite sure of what to make of the new figures for COVID-19 (as we must now call the novel coronavirus – though I’m not sure the capitalisation is correct) from Hubei province:Image from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51495484The spike yesterday is a consequence of a using a different way of ...
Bob Jones has dropped his defamation case against Renae Maihi. Good. But at the same time, it perfectly exposes what the case was all about: not protecting Jones' reputation, but punishing someone who had dared to criticise him, and deterring others from doing the same. This rich pompous asshat dragged ...
As I've done for the past few years, I'm curating and presenting The Listening Lounge, the talk programme at Splore. On the morning of Saturday the 22nd at the Living Lounge stage, the korero goes like this.Yes, we're talking about drugs again, not just because I'm professionally interested in drug ...
What Were They Thinking? RNZ's CEO Paul Thompson (left) and Jim Mather, Chairman of the RNZ Board of Governors, attempt to justify the debacle arising out of their attempt to downgrade RNZ Concert to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Select Committee at Parliament on Thursday, 13 February 2020.WHAT IS ...
Dame Tariana Turia with former PM John KeyWhat is it about Tariana Turia’s grudge against the Labour Party? Not content with attacking the Government over Whānau Ora funding, which was increased by $80 million in 2019, she has now made it personal by saying that Jacinda Ardern is out of her ...
Back in 2017, right after being elected, Jacinda Ardern promised that there would be no new mines on conservation land. Since then, her government has done nothing to make that happen, and now the policy has been officially "parked" for the election:West Coast-Tasman MP Damien O'Connor says the "no new ...
One of our most immediate priorities upon forming Government was to get people out of sleeping in cars, garages, or on the street and into safe and warm housing. Since then, we've made major progress towards breaking the cycle of homelessness, including expanding Housing First, building more state houses, and ...
Kids learn better with a full stomach. That's why we launched our Lunches in Schools programme, which is already providing free and healthy school lunches to thousands of children so they can focus on what's important - learning. ...
Mark Patterson MP, New Zealand First List MP based in Clutha-Southland This afternoon to a crowd of over 100 people in Mataura -- Mark Patterson, New Zealand First List MP based in Clutha-Southland launched a parliamentary petition regarding the aluminium dross issue in Mataura, Southland. The petition asks that the ...
Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development New Zealand First Deputy Leader and Spokesperson for Finance, Fletcher Tabuteau has welcomed Statistics New Zealand’s latest report as a timely reminder of the value that this Coalition Government brings to every day New Zealanders: “This Coalition Government has meant a ...
Today New Zealand First made a pledge to campaign at the election to fund St John Ambulance the 90 per cent it has asked for. Government funding would allow St. John’s to achieve fully funded status. Leader of New Zealand First, Rt Hon Winston Peters publicly declared his determination to deliver ...
Darroch Ball MP, Spokesperson for Law and Order Newly released Police data shows once again the number of fleeing drivers have continued to skyrocket with a record 512 incidents occurring in December – almost tripling the number of incidents occurring just ten years ago, says New Zealand First Law and ...
While the Provincial Growth Fund has provided $2 million to set up temporary water supplies in Kaikohe and Kaitaia, Regional Economic Minister Shane Jones said he is greatly concerned that there are “issues” in implementing the projects. The Minister said the immediate solution was to pipe water from a bore ...
Mark Patterson MP, New Zealand First List MP for Clutha-Southland NZ First is calling on Rio Tinto to accept its responsibilities to the Southland community and enable the immediate removal of the toxic Aluminium Dross from the Mataura Paper Mill site. New Zealand First List MP for Clutha-Southland, Mark Patterson ...
The Coalition Government has announced that a further $500,000 will be given to help residents in Southland and Otago to speed up recovery efforts from the floods. It follows prior government assistance of $200,000 earlier this month where the Southland Mayoral Relief Fund received $100,000 to support communities impacted by ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones was on RNZ’s Morning Report talking about the recent droughts in the Northland region and what the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is doing to alleviate its impact. The PGF recently announced a funding of $2 million for temporary water supplies to Kaikohe and Kaitaia, ...
Speaking to The Country’s Jamie Mackay, New Zealand First MP and Cabinet Minister Shane Jones talks water storage, plant-based meat imitation, and superstar Hollywood director James Cameron. While water storage may have its critics, Minister Jones defended the scheme by saying: “unless we invest and continue to invest” in this ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones is accusing northern iwi leaders of selling out Māori by voting for ideologically-driven court cases rather than practical steps to increase water supply. “I just think that iwi leaders who think that water issues are going to be solved by perpetually fighting in the ...
A dairy owner in St Kilda, Dunedin was delighted to hear that an attempted robbery of his establishment was foiled by a government-funded security system. Sean Lee was delighted at how well the anti-theft smoke system worked. When a knife-wielding man entered the store, the shop assistant immediately pressed a ...
Customs says it stopped more than three tonnes of illegal drugs coming into New Zealand last year. This includes 1,180kg of methamphetamine, 329kg of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine precursors, which could have been converted into 246kg of methamphetamine, 739kg and 6469 pills of MDMA or Ecstasy and 60kg of cocaine. Offshore, ...
Hon. Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development Up to $2 million will be allocated from the Provincial Growth Fund to set up temporary water supplies in Kaikohe and Kaitaia where drought is biting hard, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. Drought conditions in Northland have led to ...
Darroch Ball, Spokesperson for Law and Order New Zealand First welcomes the deployment of an Eagle Police helicopter in Christchurch in what is a step towards fulfilling its long-standing goal to increase the use of police helicopters for the front line, particularly in addressing the scourge of fleeing drivers. Christchurch leads ...
It may have been the first sitting week of 2020, but our Government is already in full-swing - managing a strong economy, investing in infrastructure, and working to break the cycle of homelessness. Read below for all that, and more... ...
In a heated debate in Parliament, National's Deputy Leader Paula Bennett claimed that “nearly 1600 patched gang members have been added” since the Coalition Government took power. To illustrate her point, she altered a chart used by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to show her government’s progress in housing to instead ...
Speech by the Rt Hon Winston Peters at Parliament’s Opening 2020 "We all need insurance" This year New Zealanders are going to have a clear choice to make That choice is between: Optimism versus pessimism; More progress versus back to the future; Investment versus divestment; Unity versus division. New Zealand ...
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones has slammed the Board of Auckland Airport following the airport's runway closing twice within two weeks due to maintenance. Around 2,000 passengers were affected by last week’s runway closures, according to 1NEWS. Another maintenance closure on January 24 saw two international flights and three domestic flights ...
Jenny Marcroft, Spokesperson for Broadcasting New Zealand First supports the commissioning of a business case to assess the viability of a new public media entity. “A strong media environment is critical for a healthy democracy. New Zealand First is a strong supporter of a diverse, independent media,” New Zealand First broadcasting spokesperson ...
Pounamou and technology industries in the West Coast region are set to receive more than $2 million in Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) funding. This was announced by the Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau during Waitangi Day commemorations in Hokitika. He said $800,000 would be given to Development West ...
Hon. Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic DevelopmentTe Tii, the lower marae at Waitangi, is among more than 70 marae now connected to broadband internet thanks to the Provincial Growth Fund’s marae connectivity scheme, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones said today.In February 2019, the Provincial Growth Fund ...
Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The West Coast has had a funding injection of over $1.2 million from the Provincial Growth Fund, Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced at Waitangi Day commemorations in Hokitika today. The PGF projects announced are: $800,000 to Development ...
Speech to the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA) Delhi, India Wednesday 26 February 2020 [CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY] The Indo-Pacific: from principles to partnerships Distinguished guests, good afternoon and thank you for your invitation. It is good to be here at a time where New Zealand needs less of an introduction than ...
Tihei mauri ora Te Whare e tu nei Te Papa e takoto Tēnā korua No reira tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa Ni sa bula Vinaka It is a real pleasure to be here today, and to have the honour of addressing you all. If you’ll indulge me I’m ...
Improved air quality to support better health and environmental wellbeing is the focus of proposed amendments to air quality regulations, says the Associate Minister for the Environment, Hon Nanaia Mahuta. “Although our air quality is good in most places, during winter certain places have spikes in air pollution, mainly from ...
The remote eastern Bay of Plenty community of Raukokere will receive a Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) investment of $10.6 million for a water storage facility, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones says. “This is great news for the rural community. The landowner, Te Whānau a Maruhaeremuri Hapū Trust, will use ...
New legislation is being proposed which aims to reduce the stress and financial hardship caused by late payments to small businesses. The Minister for Small Business Stuart Nash is considering stricter rules around payment practices between businesses. “Late payments from large organisations to smaller suppliers can be crippling for these ...
A new partnership programme between the New Zealand Police and Fiji Police will focus on combatting transnational organised crime and enhancing investigative skills, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on the first day of her visit to Fiji. The programme will see: · New Zealand Institute of Environmental Science and Research ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Prime Minister Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama met today in Suva, and renewed their commitment to continue to strengthen Fiji-New Zealand relations on a foundation of shared values and equal partnership. The Prime Ministers acknowledged the kinship between Fijians and New Zealanders, one that has endured over ...
A $19.9 million investment from the Provincial Growth Fund will help develop essential infrastructure for an industrial hub in the Bay of Plenty town of Kawerau, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones says. “The funding will go to three projects to further develop the Putauaki Trust Industrial Hub, an industrial ...
The Provincial Growth Fund is investing $8.3 million on a roading package for Mahia that will lead to greater and wider economic benefits for the region and beyond, Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced at an event in Mahia today. The $8.3 million announced consists of: $7 ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has welcomed new reporting showing the Coalition Government is on track to meet its child poverty targets, with 18,400 children lifted out of poverty as a result of the Families Package. Stats NZ has released the first set of comprehensive child poverty statistics since the Government ...
Associate Minister of Transport Julie Anne Genter today announced that Bikes in Schools facilities have been rolled out to 20,000 more kiwi kids under this Government. She made the announcement at the opening of a new bike track at Henderson North School in Auckland. “Bikes in Schools facilities give kids ...
Benefit settings rise in line with wages as of 1 April Main benefits will increase by over 3 percent, instead of 1.66 percent, on 1 April with the Government’s decision to annually adjust benefit rates to increases in the average wage. The Minister for Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni, said ...
Strengthening New Zealand’s political and business ties with India will be the focus of Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters’ and Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker’s visit to India this week. The Ministers are co-leading a high level business delegation to India to support increased people and economic engagement ...
The Minister for Pacific Peoples, Aupito William Sio continues to champion for greater Pacific participation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers with the announcement of the Toloa Awards, with 8 recipients of the Toloa Community Fund and 13 Toloa Tertiary Scholarships. “The Toloa Programme encourages more Pacific peoples ...
Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage has extended the date for people to have their say on proposed changes to improve management of whitebait across New Zealand. Submissions were due to close on 2 March 2020 but will now remain open until 9am on Monday 16 March 2020. “I have ...
The endangered toroa/Antipodean albatross has new international protection for its 100,000km annual migration, thanks to collaborative efforts led by New Zealand, Australia and Chile. Today, 130 countries agreed to strictly protect Antipodean albatross at the Conference of Parties on the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild ...
No sales to under-18-year-olds No advertising and sponsorship of vaping products and e-cigarettes No vaping or smokeless tobacco in smokefree areas Regulates vaping product safety comprehensively, - including devices, flavours and ingredients Ensure vaping products are available for those who want to quit smoking Vaping regulation that balances ...
Justice Minister Andrew Little will travel to Berlin tomorrow to represent New Zealand at a high-level summit on nuclear disarmament. This year, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) celebrates 50 years since it entered into force. “New Zealand’s proud record and leadership on nuclear disarmament is unwavering, so it’s important we are present ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will visit two of New Zealand’s most important Pacific partners, Fiji and Australia, next week. The visit to Fiji will be the first by a New Zealand Prime Minister in four years and comes during the 50th anniversary of Fijian independence and diplomatic relations between our ...
Justice Minister Andrew Little and New Zealand First MP Darroch Ball, have today announced the appointment of the Chief Commissioner of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), the location, and the membership of the Establishment Advisory Group. Colin Carruthers QC has been appointed Chief Commissioner of the CCRC for an ...
Māori Development Minister Hon Nanaia Mahuta and Agriculture Minister Hon Damien O’Connor co-announced the first horticultural finalists for the Ahuwhenua Trophy celebrating excellence in the Māori agricultural sector. The three finalists are Ngai Tukairangi Trust from Mt Maunganui, Otama Marere Trust from Tauranga, and Hineora Orchard Te Kaha 15B Ahuwhenua ...
A new kete of resources to strengthen support for students with dyslexia will provide extra tools for the new Learning Support Coordinators (LSCs) as they start in schools, Associate Education Minister Tracey Martin announced today. The Minister launched the kete in Wellington this morning, at the first of three induction ...
The Government continues to make progress on a fairer and more secure rental market for renters and landlords with the First Reading of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill and its referral to the Social Services and Community Select Committee. “Now is the opportunity for landlords, tenants and others who want ...
Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister Hon James Marape will visit New Zealand from 21-25 February, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today. “New Zealand and Papua New Guinea have a warm and friendly relationship. I look forward to welcoming Prime Minister Marape here and strengthening the relationship between our two countries,” ...
Thousands of children have begun receiving a free lunch on every day of the school week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. The Government’s free and healthy school lunch programme is under way for 7,000 students at 31 schools in Hawke’s Bay / Tairāwhiti and Bay of Plenty / Waiariki, extending ...
The Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni today announced a new approach that continues to broaden the Government’s social sector focus from a narrow, investment approach to one centred on people and wellbeing. Minister Sepuloni said redefining the previous approach to social investment by combining science, data and lived experience ...
The Government is strengthening the Protected Disclosures Act to provide better protection for whistle blowers, Minister of State Services Chris Hipkins said today. “The Protected Disclosures Act is meant to encourage people to speak up about serious wrongdoing in the workplace and protect them from losing their jobs or being ...
Nǐn hǎo (Hello in Mandarin). Xīn Nián Kuài Lè (Happy New Year in Mandarin) Néi Hóu (Hello in Cantonese). Sun Nin Fai Lok (Happy New Year in Cantonese) Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. Thank you for your invitation to attend this celebration today. I would like to acknowledge ...
Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa. Nau mai haere mai ki te Whare Pāremata. E ngā mana whenua ki tēnei rohe Taranaki Whānui, Te Upoko o Te Ika, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Ngāti Raukawa – kei te mihi, kei te mihi, kei te mihi. E ngā mana, e ...
Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa. Nau mai haere mai ki te Whare Pāremata. E ngā mana whenua ki tēnei rohe Taranaki Whānui, Te Upoko o Te Ika, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Ngāti Raukawa – kei te mihi, kei te mihi, kei te mihi. E ngā mana, e ngā ...
Tougher penalties for gun crime are a step closer with the passage of firearms reform legislation through another stage in Parliament. The Arms Legislation Bill has tonight passed its Second Reading. “The changes have one objective - to prevent firearms falling into the wrong hands,” said Police Minister Stuart Nash. ...
Introduction Mr Speaker We all know why we are here today. It has been a long journey. The journey did not actually begin on 15 March 2019. It began on 30 June 1997. Almost 23 years ago, Justice Sir Thomas Thorp told us what was wrong with our firearms legislation. ...
The Government’s work to put trades and vocational education back on the agenda took another major step forward today with the passing of the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment Bill, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said. “This is a watershed day for trades and vocational education. These law changes formalise ...
Speeding up the return of Christchurch regeneration activities to local leadership is behind the Greater Christchurch Regeneration Amendment Bill introduced to Parliament today by Minister Megan Woods. “As we approach nine years since the February 2011 earthquake in Canterbury, and with the transition to local leadership well underway, the time ...
Hundreds of New Zealanders and international visitors will be able to get back out into nature with the Milford Track partially reopening next week, after extensive assessments and repairs, the Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage announced today. The popular Great Walk has been closed since 3 February after an extreme ...
Up to 110 new EV chargers nationwide in cities and regions 50 electric vehicles for ride-sharing The Government is helping deliver more infrastructure and options for low emissions transport through new projects, Energy and Resources Minister Dr Megan Woods says. Tauranga, Nelson, Levin, New Plymouth and Oamaru are just some ...
New Zealanders are increasingly better off under this Government as wages rise and families have more disposable income, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. Stats NZ reported today that average household disposable incomes after housing costs rose 4.9% in 2019. This was the highest rise in four years and came as ...
All New Zealanders need to have their voices heard at work to ensure we have an inclusive and productive economy. Today we introduce a Bill to do this for workers in the New Zealand screen industry, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. “The Screen Industry Workers Bill will ...
The Government has announced further help for the Southland and Otago regions to speed up recovery efforts from the floods. “I’ve approved Enhanced Taskforce Green (ETFG), making $500,000 available to help with the clean-up in Fiordland, Southland, and the Clutha district in Otago,” Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni said. ...
Following the announcement that more than 340 schools will be funded to run events promoting vocational education, the Government has announced it will fund a further 257 events to be run by employers and industry. “These industry-run events will allow more than 30,000 students to connect with more than 2,000 ...
ReadingRoom has devoted all week to the biggest-selling book in New Zealand right now, In The Clearing, a brilliant thriller by Ngāpuhi author JP Pomare, based on creepy Australian cult The Family. We conclude the series with a review by Bill Ralston.JP Pomare's second novel In ...
Up-and-coming teenage freeskiier Ruby Andrews has shown she has the boldness and the bravery to become one of the world's top women in not one, but three, different events. There’s no questioning Ruby Andrews’ grit and determination. While most 15-year-olds are spending this summer hanging with friends on the beach, Andrews ...
An anonymous international student at the University of Auckland grapples with when and how she might return to NZ amid the coronavirus outbreak, and what challenges she will face if she makes it back. I am a Chinese international student at the University of Auckland. Having completed my language course and ...
When will there be a vaccine? What can we do and how do we stay up to date? Helen Petousis-Harris gives an update on the COVID-19 global health emergency Less than two months after China told the World Health Organisation there was a problem, a lot has happened. Sadly, deaths, confirmed ...
From February 28, Kiwibank will be cheque-free. Mark Jennings looks at how it has been preparing its customers for the big change. It’s raining heavily in Nelson, something it hasn’t done for a while. Local MP and former cabinet minister Nick Smith hurriedly climbs into an old bus parked outside the city’s library. ...
Experts in far-right extremism see a number of similarities between the Christchurch terror attack and last week's mass shooting in Hanau, Germany. Marc Daalder reports. On the evening of February 19, a man shot up two shisha bars frequented by Muslims in Hanau, Germany. It later emerged that he had released ...
New Zealand’s travel ban on China has been extended another week. The president of the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations argues for a student exemption.The loss of lives and poor health caused by coronavirus is devastating. We must acknowledge the families, across the globe, who have lost loved ones ...
The first issue of the Otago student magazine for 2020 had barely hit campus before it was making headlines in the wider media. The cover was censored by Facebook, and a furious editorial denounced party politics, promising to give them a miss. Josie Adams speaks to editor Sinead Gill about ...
The global health emergency that is the Coronavirus - or Covid-19 - has become a game-changer for scientists around the world in terms of the speed of the response. But at the same time it's been termed a 'misinfodemic' Covid-19 – or coronavirus – is a game changer for scientists around the ...
President Rodrigo Duterte administers the oath of office to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) officials in a ceremony at the Rizal Hall in Malacañang Palace on February 26, 2020. Video: RapplerBy Felipe F. Salvosa II in Manila Reporters have finally got the chance to ...
Andy Ayamiseba died a few days ago. While the West Papuan was loved, admired and supported in Vanuatu, he fought tirelessly to win a home he could return to. He died before the dream was achieved.Originally published by the Pacific Institute of Public Policy (PIPP), this 2013 profile ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Merryn McKinnon, Senior lecturer, Australian National University Public representation of science in the media still struggles to reflect the true diversity of those who work in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM). According to the Women in Leadership Australia’s 2019 Women for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Mathews, Professor of Strategic Management, Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University Australia is the world’s third largest fossil fuels exporter – a fact that generates intense debate as climate change intensifies. While the economy is heavily reliant on coal and ...
The Otago Regional Council (ORC) voted today to request that Minister for the Environment Hon. David Parker exercise his authority to ‘call in’ upcoming proposed plan changes to the Regional Plan for Otago: Water and Regional Plan for Otago: Waste ...
This week’s plummeting international stock markets are a sign the ‘best case scenario’ economic outcomes of the coronavirus are increasingly unlikely. And that’s a worry for NZ’s manufacturers. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Mark Butler, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy, is optimistic that Labor is better placed to prosecute its climate policy at the next election, compared to the last. “I think we are better positioned ...
The huge majority of New Zealanders think fishing industry donations to Members of Parliament at the last election have the potential to “strongly influence” decisions the MPs make, according to a poll conducted by Horizon Research. The poll, ...
Wellington councillors have voted to expand the mayor's proposed taskforce on the city's water problems, to include business and community members and water experts. The council has today voted to establish the taskforce proposed by mayor Andy Foster. The group he envisaged comprised only councillors, officials and iwi representatives. However, ...
“Let me be clear, Maori have a guardianship, ownership and protection role when it comes to the nations freshwater ways and let me be even clearer – if what has been happening to our freshwater eco-systems and ecology over the last hundred years ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yvonne Zurynski, Associate Professor of Health System Sustainability, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University If you have a rare disease, you may be the only person in Australia with that condition. You may not know, however, that being diagnosed with a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Akshaya Kamalnath, Lecturer (Corporate law), Auckland University of Technology Global investment company Goldman Sachs recently announced it would only take startups public if they had at least one diverse board member. In New Zealand, a new KiwiSaver fund, CareSaver, announced it would ...
BusinessNZ Energy Council (BEC) Executive Director Tina Schirr welcomes the release of the World Energy Council’s Issues Monitor for 2020. The Issues Monitor provides a snapshot of what keeps energy policymakers, CEOs and leading experts in 104 countries ...
Investors in the failed Ross Asset Management (RAM) company will be seeking $80 million from ANZ Bank when they start a legal claim next week. The group of more than 550 investors has claimed the bank either knew or should have known that Wellington financial adviser David Ross was operating ...
Apple exporter Scales Corporation has posted a higher full year profit of $121.6 million, boosted by $78m in asset sales and improvement in its food ingredients division. Revenue was up 20 percent to $484.6m, which included the first full year's trading of the petfood company, Shelby Foods, which Scales acquired ...
PGG Wrightson has reported a lift in earnings on improved sales for its livestock and horticultural businesses. The rural services company's net profit for the half year ended December was $12.8 million, compared with $0.3m the year before, which reflected the sale of its seeds business and accounting changes. Chief ...
The retirement village operator and takeover target Metlifecare has posted a larger half year profit, on the back of valuation gains, encouraging it to progress its development timeline. Its net profit rose 28 percent to $24.6 million in the six months ended December, as it built more retirement homes. The ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Barton, Chair in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University Words matter. Especially when you are the director-general of security and head of ASIO. Barely three months into the post, and delivering his first ASIO Annual ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Terry, Vice-Chancellor, Curtin University This is an edited extract of a speech to the National Press Club given by Chair of Universities Australia, Professor Deborah Terry AONew modelling for Universities Australia prepared by Ernst and Young finds close to 17,000 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Maguire, Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, James Cook University In today’s terms, June Dally-Watkins was Australia’s OG (original gangster) #girlboss. The illegitimate child of a single mother, Dally-Watkins came from humble rural beginnings and found fame as a young model ...
A new index ranking ‘soft power’ praises ‘a shining example of how to build a tolerant and inclusive society in the face of adversity’ – and offers a rejoinder to sneers at the prime minister’s appearances in international media, writes Toby Manhire.At the end of last week of Jacinda Ardern ...
Six60 are on pace to overtake Pink Floyd for one of the most formidable records in NZ chart history. Duncan Greive breaks down their dominance.Over the weekend, Six60 played Western Springs to around 50,000 people for the second straight year, a feat which seemed utterly unfathomable 18 months ago, but ...
The New Zealand College of Midwives (the College) has congratulated Ontario midwives following a landmark legal decision from the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. The Tribunal has ordered the Canadian Government to take concrete actions to end the ...
NZME, New Zealand’s largest media company, released its 2019 financial report yesterday. Michael Andrew checks in on the health of huge brands like the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB.It was apparently a good year for NZME, which yesterday reported a strong financial performance with $19.7m operating profit and the growth ...
Welcome to the Bulletin World Weekly, an email exclusively for The Spinoff Members. As a one-off, we’ve put today’s edition up for everyone to read. If you want to get this every week, sign up to The Spinoff Members here.In the last week, outbreaks of the Covid-19 coronavirus have shaken ...
Sam Brooks watches I Am Not Okay With This, the new show that feels like a calculated mash-up of a bunch of other Netflix shows you really liked.“Oh, it’s like Sex Education meets Stranger Things.”It’s not a new thing to describe a television show in this X-meets-Y fashion. It’s convenient ...
By Nicola Igusa The value of different perspectives in film making is valued now more than ever, says Auckland University of Technology screen production Associate Professor Arezou Zalipour. “We’ve just seen the historic win of Parasite at the 2020s Oscars – the first non-English language production to win Best ...
The New Zealand College of Midwives (the College) has congratulated Ontario midwives following a landmark legal decision from the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. The Tribunal has ordered the Canadian Government to take concrete actions to end the ...
Cross-examination strategies in rape trials remain resistant to reforms, which continues to negatively impact on complainants despite initiatives to improve the legal process, a University of Canterbury (UC) expert says. Professor Elisabeth McDonald specialises ...
Early model electric vehicles are already running low on juice, with some batteries down to around half their original capacity. With the international auto industry slow to find solutions, one New Zealand company is using Kiwi ingenuity to repurpose old batteries and keep the cars – and their owners – ...
The Government's looking at law changes to ensure small businesses are paid on time. Small Business Minister Stuart Nash said he is willing to legislate, if necessary, to ensure payments within 20 days, with interest imposed for late payments. He said prompt payment and cash flow are vital to small ...
Meridian Energy has made a record first half profit with improved revenue. The South Island generator's net profit for the six months ended December rose 26 percent to $191 million. Revenue was up 5 percent to $1.78bn on record hydro generation from the South Island lakes. It had significant customer ...
Economists are predicting a flat - or slightly down - March quarter, as the effects of the Covid-19 coronavirus and the drought come to a head. The Institute of Economic Research's (NZIER) latest Quarterly Economic Predictions picks the virus impact will be short and sharp, with the economy gradually recovering ...
New Zealanders throw away 295 million single-use cups per year. Alice Neville ponders our obsession with takeaway culture, and looks at what’s needed for consumers to change their behaviour. How many commuters did you see clutching single-use takeaway coffee cups on your way to work this morning? Or how many empty ...
New Conservative is extremely concerned over what is tantamount to the confiscation by government of private land, without compensation. Taranaki farmers and landowners have had portions of their properties classed as “Significant Natural Areas” ...
Half of New Zealanders are more likely to vote for a political party in this year’s general election that promises to ‘significantly and urgently’ improve the unhealthy state of homes in Aotearoa. The Consumerlink survey, carried out for the Green Building ...
Mike, a 30-something professional, cares enough about better cannabis policy that he and other local supporters will be at the Riccarton Sunday Market, March 1st from 9am-2pm. “I don't want my kids to grow up in a country that criminalises them for ...
The Salvation Army is strongly opposed to the Government’s new Racing Bill. Today, Salvation Army staff will make our oral submission to the Bill. “Harm from gambling is already at unacceptable levels in this country and increasing availability and ...
One of the men charged over donations to the National Party was at one stage to have gone to the party's candidate college, which identifies and train potential members of Parliament. ...
Child poverty figures released today by Statistics New Zealand show further urgent Government action is needed to lift more children and whānau out of poverty, says The Salvation Army, which is calling for a change in core welfare benefits to be ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s contentChild poverty, welfare Max Rashbrooke (RNZ): Child poverty stats promising, but more is needed Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): Child poverty ...
Data released under the Official Information Act today reveals almost 12,000 more children are dependent on welfare benefits since December 2017. "At 31 December 2019 there were 206,395 children aged 0-18 reliant on caregiver on a main benefit ...
The Government would consider direct assistance to tourism industry players if the fallout from coronavirus lasts well beyond the first half of the year. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute Opposition leader Anthony Albanese sought to claim the climate policy high ground last week with his commitment to a net-zero emissions target by 2050. But figures on Australia’s emissions from the Department of the Environment ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Marston, Head of School, School of Social Science, The University of Queensland The Australian government touts compulsory income management as a way to stop welfare payments being spent on alcohol, drugs or gambling. The Howard government introduced the BasicsCard more than ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Clarkson, Professor in Archaeology, The University of Queensland About 74,000 years ago a volcanic eruption at what is now Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia, created one of the most dramatic natural disasters of the past 2 million years. The plume of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Omer Yezdani, Director, Office of Planning and Strategic Management, Australian Catholic University Philanthropy is a growing source of revenue for Australian universities. It’s essential to advancing quality research, equity and learning. On average, Australia’s top five fundraising universities receive nearly 20 times ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Dawson, Honorary Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne The assumption that retired people have minimal housing costs underpins the settings of our retirement incomes system. But the real state of housing for older Australians today makes it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Keating, Visiting Fellow, College of Business & Economics, Australian National University We are continually being told that more of us are employed than ever before. Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe points out (correctly) that a higher proportion of us are in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, University of Adelaide Berlin. February 26 1920. A new silent film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, is released to unsuspecting German audiences and quickly becomes a worldwide sensation. “When will I die?” asks one character ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: New child poverty statistics show little change yet, Greenpeace call for fishing policy review over donations, and a focus on Covid-19 effects on forestry.New figures were released yesterday on one of the most important issues facing the country – how many ...
Former regional parks chair Sandra Coney says a purchase of the disputed land at Ihumātao by Auckland Council would be entirely in keeping with historical precedent and the actions of local government in preserving open spaces for future generations. With various claims being made about the Government stepping in to ...
Open mike 15/11/2019 
Fans are outraged at the prospect of Destiny Church pastor Hannah Tamaki joining the Black Caps ...13 hours ago
Less than two months after China told the WHO there was a problem, a lot has happened. Sadly, deaths, confirmed cases and countries affected are increasing every day. However, on a scientific and medical level, what is going on to contain, cure and prevent this new disease is truly inspirational. ...13 hours ago
This morning the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) pointed people at an article on "Playing Hide and Speak: Analyzing the Protected Disclosures Framework of the New Zealand Intelligence Community" by Caitlin Macdonald, Rhys Ball & William James Hoverd. The authors were trying to look at how the whistleblowing framework ...16 hours ago
I must say that it’s at loggerheads with the inclusive and free society we want to create in New Zealand that one of our largest media outlets, MediaWorks, would allow Hannah Tamaki to perform on their show, Dancing With The Stars.Hannah Tamaki and her husband Brian are after all well-known ...17 hours ago
The Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change book is now available! The book uses cartoons, humor, and critical thinking to expose how and why some people reject climate science. It's now available for sale on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other book outlets. If you're near the DC area, you're very welcome to ...1 day ago
by the Council of Disobedient Women When Moana Maniapoto recently lamented that Rachel Stewart was no longer writing for the Herald, political commentator Morgan Godfery was quick to brag on Twitter, like a schoolyard bully, how proud he was of “driving Rachel Stewart from the Herald”. What a contrast Morgan ...1 day ago
High Risk Call: Insensitive though it may seem to even pose the question: how will the electorate respond to what the Prime Minister’s opponents will undoubtedly characterise as an attack on New Zealanders’ freedom of speech? At more than twelve month’s remove from the terrible events of 15 March 2019, ...3 days ago
I am about to mail my overseas ballot to Florida so that it can be counted in the Democratic primary on March 17. In Florida you have closed as opposed to open primaries, which means that one must declare a party preference in order to vote in a party primary. ...5 days ago
In mid-December the Israeli secret police, the Shin Beit, revealed it had arrested dozens of Palestinian left-wing activists, including members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), in the previous few months. Among those arrested was one of the central leaders of the PFLP, Khalida Jarrar. As ...1 week ago
I am among the most pro-free speech people I know. I don’t doubt there are others more strident than me, but I’m certainly up there. And my support for freedom of expression isn’t limited to opposition to government-imposed restrictions. It extends to a belief that employers should have limited powers ...1 week ago
One of our most immediate priorities upon forming Government was to get people out of sleeping in cars, garages, or on the street and into safe and warm housing. Since then, we've made major progress towards breaking the cycle of homelessness, including expanding Housing First, building more state houses, and ...21 hours ago
Mark Patterson MP, New Zealand First List MP based in Clutha-Southland This afternoon to a crowd of over 100 people in Mataura -- Mark Patterson, New Zealand First List MP based in Clutha-Southland launched a parliamentary petition regarding the aluminium dross issue in Mataura, Southland. The petition asks that the ...2 days ago
Speech to the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA) Delhi, India Wednesday 26 February 2020 [CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY] The Indo-Pacific: from principles to partnerships Distinguished guests, good afternoon and thank you for your invitation. It is good to be here at a time where New Zealand needs less of an introduction than ...4 hours ago
ReadingRoom has devoted all week to the biggest-selling book in New Zealand right now, In The Clearing, a brilliant thriller by Ngāpuhi author JP Pomare, based on creepy Australian cult The Family. We conclude the series with a review by Bill Ralston. JP Pomare's second novel In ...9 mins ago
Up-and-coming teenage freeskiier Ruby Andrews has shown she has the boldness and the bravery to become one of the world's top women in not one, but three, different events. There’s no questioning Ruby Andrews’ grit and determination. While most 15-year-olds are spending this summer hanging with friends on the beach, Andrews ...9 mins ago
An anonymous international student at the University of Auckland grapples with when and how she might return to NZ amid the coronavirus outbreak, and what challenges she will face if she makes it back. I am a Chinese international student at the University of Auckland. Having completed my language course and ...9 mins ago
When will there be a vaccine? What can we do and how do we stay up to date? Helen Petousis-Harris gives an update on the COVID-19 global health emergency Less than two months after China told the World Health Organisation there was a problem, a lot has happened. Sadly, deaths, confirmed ...9 mins ago
From February 28, Kiwibank will be cheque-free. Mark Jennings looks at how it has been preparing its customers for the big change. It’s raining heavily in Nelson, something it hasn’t done for a while. Local MP and former cabinet minister Nick Smith hurriedly climbs into an old bus parked outside the city’s library. ...9 mins ago
Experts in far-right extremism see a number of similarities between the Christchurch terror attack and last week's mass shooting in Hanau, Germany. Marc Daalder reports. On the evening of February 19, a man shot up two shisha bars frequented by Muslims in Hanau, Germany. It later emerged that he had released ...9 mins ago
New Zealand’s travel ban on China has been extended another week. The president of the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations argues for a student exemption.The loss of lives and poor health caused by coronavirus is devastating. We must acknowledge the families, across the globe, who have lost loved ones ...28 mins ago
The global health emergency that is the Coronavirus - or Covid-19 - has become a game-changer for scientists around the world in terms of the speed of the response. But at the same time it's been termed a 'misinfodemic' Covid-19 – or coronavirus – is a game changer for scientists around the ...39 mins ago
President Rodrigo Duterte administers the oath of office to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) officials in a ceremony at the Rizal Hall in Malacañang Palace on February 26, 2020. Video: Rappler By Felipe F. Salvosa II in Manila Reporters have finally got the chance to ...2 hours ago
Global health officials have declared the world is not ready for coronavirus - but can we be ready for future outbreaks? ...10 hours ago
The response aims to avoid a 'one-size-fits-all' solution to homelessness. ...11 hours ago
The Otago Regional Council (ORC) voted today to request that Minister for the Environment Hon. David Parker exercise his authority to ‘call in’ upcoming proposed plan changes to the Regional Plan for Otago: Water and Regional Plan for Otago: Waste ...12 hours ago
This week’s plummeting international stock markets are a sign the ‘best case scenario’ economic outcomes of the coronavirus are increasingly unlikely. And that’s a worry for NZ’s manufacturers. ...13 hours ago
Wellington councillors have voted to expand the mayor's proposed taskforce on the city's water problems, to include business and community members and water experts. The council has today voted to establish the taskforce proposed by mayor Andy Foster. The group he envisaged comprised only councillors, officials and iwi representatives. However, ...13 hours ago
Investors in the failed Ross Asset Management (RAM) company will be seeking $80 million from ANZ Bank when they start a legal claim next week. The group of more than 550 investors has claimed the bank either knew or should have known that Wellington financial adviser David Ross was operating ...13 hours ago
Apple exporter Scales Corporation has posted a higher full year profit of $121.6 million, boosted by $78m in asset sales and improvement in its food ingredients division. Revenue was up 20 percent to $484.6m, which included the first full year's trading of the petfood company, Shelby Foods, which Scales acquired ...14 hours ago
PGG Wrightson has reported a lift in earnings on improved sales for its livestock and horticultural businesses. The rural services company's net profit for the half year ended December was $12.8 million, compared with $0.3m the year before, which reflected the sale of its seeds business and accounting changes. Chief ...14 hours ago
The retirement village operator and takeover target Metlifecare has posted a larger half year profit, on the back of valuation gains, encouraging it to progress its development timeline. Its net profit rose 28 percent to $24.6 million in the six months ended December, as it built more retirement homes. The ...14 hours ago
Meridian Energy chief executive Neal Barclay says Rio Tinto's repeated threats to close down its aluminium smelter are getting old. ...14 hours ago
As we acknowledged yesterday, Point of Order must declare a pecuniary interest in the boost to benefits announced by Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni. Some of the team are among the 800,000 people receiving New Zealand Superannuation and Veteran’s Pension who will enjoy a rate increase by just over 3 ...15 hours ago
Government announces it won't raise residency requirements, it will simply stop looking at new applications for a while. ...16 hours ago
The Government is planning for a serious hit to the New Zealand economy following the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak. ...17 hours ago
Simon Bridges would have a testing time putting together a Cabinet that balanced talent with experience and not too many sore egos ...19 hours ago
The Government's looking at law changes to ensure small businesses are paid on time. Small Business Minister Stuart Nash said he is willing to legislate, if necessary, to ensure payments within 20 days, with interest imposed for late payments. He said prompt payment and cash flow are vital to small ...20 hours ago
Meridian Energy has made a record first half profit with improved revenue. The South Island generator's net profit for the six months ended December rose 26 percent to $191 million. Revenue was up 5 percent to $1.78bn on record hydro generation from the South Island lakes. It had significant customer ...20 hours ago
Economists are predicting a flat - or slightly down - March quarter, as the effects of the Covid-19 coronavirus and the drought come to a head. The Institute of Economic Research's (NZIER) latest Quarterly Economic Predictions picks the virus impact will be short and sharp, with the economy gradually recovering ...20 hours ago
The Government's looking at law changes to ensure small businesses are paid on time. ...21 hours ago
The Government would consider direct assistance to tourism industry players if the fallout from coronavirus lasts well beyond the first half of the year. ...21 hours ago
OneCoin cryptocurrency scheme not direct focus of probe, Govt says; and NZME encouraged by talks with Government over plan to buy Stuff. ...21 hours ago
Former regional parks chair Sandra Coney says a purchase of the disputed land at Ihumātao by Auckland Council would be entirely in keeping with historical precedent and the actions of local government in preserving open spaces for future generations. With various claims being made about the Government stepping in to ...1 day ago
Guyon Espiner has a huge scoop of a minister behaving correctly with a potential conflict of interest.
I guess with all the $$$ spent on work done for a nothing outcome he has to yell fire at any sign of smoke, but honestly.
But the National Party is outraged that someone in business might have tried (and failed) to leverage their relationship with politicians for pecuniary interest. Would never happen under their watch eh? They are definitely scavenging around for the opportunity to mount a 2008-style ‘corruption’ attack on NZF.
IMHO, what we are seeing here is institutional racism in action. NZ is a small society which makes it hard for elites to avoid stories like this if the MSM decide to go after you. When you are dealing with the Maori business elite, which is a small part of a minority in an already small population it become almost impossible to do anything and avoid an establishment white media hatchet job around your connections.
The proof of the pudding is whether or not there is any evidence of impropriety – and the behaviour of the minister seems to have been perfectly in order.
Espiner seems to be happy to be a tool of the business/right wing elites these days, as long as he gets any sort of "serious" content for the pearl clutching class. His Pharmac panic mongering seemed to parrot the propaganda put out by PR agencies that push the agenda of big drug companies. Now it seems he is muck raking on behalf of that section of our society that is outraged Shane Jones has a billion dollars to spend and so far he isn't giving the usual suspects their cut.
Yes very good point – a 'corruption' narrative amplified by an underlying racist sentiment that “Maoris can't be trusted with public money”.
Didn't Bill English brother get a special job in Canterbury?
Didn't the Speaker back then get irrigation benefit for his Hurinui farm while ECan was stripped of its democratic power??
I also had a funny feeling reading the RNZ report that this is a lead in to something else. The return serve could be interesting
On a lighter note: Take Cover Nelson!
This arvo I am headed your way for the cider festival. Looking forward to catching up with Alex Peckham. He guided a swag (I need a collective noun for cider enthusiasts) of us through a selection of Peckhams cider.
He generously sent a 20 litre ladder of Black Chisel(?) Apple juice to the Manawatu for me to ferment into cider.
I have had The Free House recommended to me.
If any Standardistas are going, I am the big gallah in the watermelon bucket hat.
Heh shame I am not in Nelson this weekend!
Sounds wonderful gsays!
How much clearer can anyone be?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018722343/australia-enters-era-of-disaster-bushfires-and-drought
This is my problem with the reaction and reporting of climate change or global warming. Everything that happens in the world is leveraged in the context of climate change.
Before a single gallon of oil was taken from the ground my great grandparents were terrified of bushfire in rural Victoria. Drought and bushfires have been a part of Australia for so long that gum trees have had millions of years to adapt to and even require fire to stay healthy as it kills the parasites in the bark.
Whats the problem now? Fucking idiot people ! A large number of these fires have been deliberatly lit by humans, others by discarded bottles and careless smokers, people really are stupid.
These fires used to rage without damage generally to lives and infrastructure because there were none, but if you want to stick a house in what is essentially a forest of petroleum producing trees there is a very good chance that you will lose it one day, a bit the same as building here in the Shakey Isles.
Maybe not as clear as I imagined….the events are greater and more frequent and compounding….there is less and less time/capacity to recover and resources (physical and human) are overwhelmed…this is not as before and it will increase
But Pat, how much of that is due to an expanding population that are increasingly living in vulnerable areas? How much of that is merely your perception due to a far greater reporting of bush fires and such like?
I am not disagreeing regarding climate change, and it seems an inescapable conclusion that much of that is human generated, but really, these doomsday scenarios that link every naturally occurring event to 'climate change' when patently it is not just gives fuel to those who deny human generated climate change.
The doomsday hypocrit Al Gore and his ilk have done immense damage to climate change acceptance.
Yes population larger and more living amongst bush etc but that does not change the cascading effects, it simply means more people impacted and more resources at risk than were in the past…the undelying point is the increased incidence and diminishing ability to cope and that is solely down to CC and with the lag involved in that impact it will increase in effect even if we stopped adding to it at this instant
Pat, I just love this video showing population growth . Near exponential over last two centuries after little more than flat lining for the millennia before.
And some people still say humans are not driving much of the climate change! Hope you enjoy.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DPUwmA3Q0_OE&ved=2ahUKEwj01b2w8OrlAhWWfisKHfsNBZ4Qo7QBMAB6BAgAEAI&usg=AOvVaw14_amXHFfgrw33Iog0P1YK
meanwhile, data, not perception, suggests otherwise.
he is however correct in the link between population growth and climate change.
Population growth causes many ills, but if we'd stuck with a billion people and kept the fossil fuel use, climate change would still be a major issue.
Losing fossil fuel use but still going to 7B people, I suspect climate change would be much less significant.
ask yourself whether this planet would or could support 8 billion without the emissions of its primary energy source…the answer is quite simply, no it could (and will) not….if we (the human race) are lucky we will adapt and settle into an equilibrium…and it wont be supporting 8 billion
No argument there.
Just saying population isn't as much of a problem relating to climate change as the fuel source that sustains us.
unfortunately we have developed said population on that unsustainable fuel source and have created something of a conundrum
If only it were so unsustainable that it had run out around 1960 lol.
yep…that might have been a lifesaver
"These fires used to rage without damage generally to lives and infrastructure because there were none, but if you want to stick a house in what is essentially a forest of petroleum producing trees there is a very good chance that you will lose it one day, a bit the same as building here in the Shakey Isles."
Yes, and no. Climate change impacts intersect with other things humans are doing. It might have been reasonable to build houses in fire-prone forests 50 years ago, because the risk was lowish. Climate change is making that risk much much higher. So we have the confluence of three things: building in a fire area; a bigger population in a fire area; many more fires than normal (and of unusual intensity).
There are other factors there, like drought making forest management harder (there is less opportunity to controlled burns at other time).
In all that climate change has to be centred, because the potential for global catastrophe is serious, and because locally, in terms of adaptation, the impacts of AGW matter (drought, frequency, changes to vegetation and ecologies).
Two areas where this happens in NZ. One is we are building in some pretty stupid places (eg among kānuka/mānuka or pine or gums), and planting flammable trees in stupid places too. Still haven't caught up our thinking, and we'd be much better off if CC was centred in all those decisions.
The other is the tenure review process changing land use, so that many of our dry areas now have a lot of flammable vegetation (sans sheep grazing and farmer burnoffs). Farmers are talking about this, but I'm not seeing conservationists having this conversation yet.
I suspect in increasing areas adaptation will be abandoned as an option as there will simply be no capacity (or will) to continue to expend resources needed elsewhere….you can hear the phrasing now
probably. NZ's impending but largely unacknowledged* crisis is around big slips covering roads. Neither our engineering nor economics is designed around the frequency we will experience going forward.
*weird given we should be planning around this for quakes anyway.
The year in revolt, in review. Well worth the read if your not a beige lefty.
https://libcom.org/news/balance-sheet-perspective-current-proletarian-struggles-all-over-world-14112019
From the article:
"2) Capitalism has reached a dead end. We are entering a period of social revolution because capitalism is exhausted as a social relation: it generates more and more superfluous humanity, it expels living labor from social production, and it consumes energy and raw materials with increasing voracity to try to address with more commodities what it loses by expelling human labor. Its crises are and will be more and more catastrophic."
Capitalism is doing very well.
Democracy is the one retreating fast.
One of the major problems I have interacting with this style (I'm going to call it vaguely marxist) of writing is interpreting the writers meaning of capitalism. As far as i understand the term capitalism refers to how economic relations are defined by society. But the problem is if thats the case then in a democracy these arrangements are at all times up for change by legitimate democratic process. So there is a continuous 'revolution' going on but the authors picture of where this leads is obscured. Its also unclear which bits of the economic arrangements would be disposed of by a non capitalist alternative.
"All right chaps, look this democracy thing is not doing to well – let's revolt"
YEAH RIGHT
OK let me see.
Revolts caused by weakness in democratic responsiveness included:
– Every single election since 2016 across Europe including Brexit (despite multiple elections in the last 5 year term)
– Every new political party formed in Europe since 2011
– The election of Donald Trump
– The election of the new Brazilian president
– The ejection of the President of Bolivia a few weeks' ago
– The Hong Kong riots this year
– The Indian election this year
It would be just so lovely if class analysis worked at all these days. It very rarely does.
But the revolutions have come from the right, rising to defend the nation-state better than the left have done for 90 years, won repeatedly and for years, and they continue to win.
You don't think Bolivia should maybe be called a military coup?
I think you are conflating "caused" with "enabled".
In a case of egregiously bad timing, the Venice City Council was flooded with the largest flood in 50 years on the same night that the Coucnil voted to reject climate change measures.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/14/europe/veneto-council-climate-change-floods-trnd-intl-scli/index.html
"Ironically, the chamber was flooded two minutes after the majority League, Brothers of Italy, and Forza Italia parties rejected our amendments to tackle climate change," Zanoni, who is deputy chairman of the environment committee, said in the post, which also has photographs of the room under water.
Among the rejected amendments were measures to fund renewable sources, to replace diesel buses with "more efficient and less polluting ones," to scrap polluting stoves and reduce the impact of plastics, he said.
Zanoni went on to accuse Veneto regional president Luca Zaia, who is a member of Matteo Salvini's far-right League Party, of presenting a budget "with no concrete actions to combat climate change."
The flooding is not linked to climate change. Venice has been sinking into the mud slowly for centuries, and this was recognised as a major threat as far back as the 18th century.
"is not linked" is a stronger claim than "is much less of a factor than Venice sinking".
Either way, it's still pretty funny.
Yep, McFlock. Poor choice of wording on my part and true, is very funny.
how would we know if such a situation was linked to CC or not?
It's not that sort of question. Every storm is, and every storm isn't. You get a 1 in 50-year event, that's probably just bad luck even though it is part of "climate". You get ten of them in five years, we'd know most of them will be directly attributable to climate change, but we'd never know exactly which one.
But Venice is built on crap ground and has been slowly sinking for centuries, and they keep building up and reclaiming. Fascinating history.
I think given the shit we are in it's reasonable to assume that climate change is affecting everything. It's a bit abstract to think that one storm is caused by CC and another isn't.
Also, the intersection of human activity with CC. Building in South Dunedin seemed reasonable in the 1800s, not so much now, but has our thinking caught up yet? Does it matter what is caused by CC? We can focus on the pumps if we want, but ultimately seeing all the causative factors in the bigger picture will help us more.
The fantasy of everything being fine if only we had perfectly regulated markets – Elizabeth Warren sounding surprisingly silly for a very smart person.
The American connection in Bolivia's right wing coup.
https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2019/11/14/the-clear-us-role-in-bolivias-tragic-hard-right-coup/
The level playing field of the U.K media campaign.
https://www.thecanary.co/opinion/2019/11/13/we-need-to-have-a-serious-conversation-about-bbc-bias-because-this-really-isnt-on/
Yeah I was only joking ha ha – the response will be funny.
Lol. Nervous.
So. Pharmac. Didn't they do well?
Four deaths now, possibly due to patients having to accept generic epilepsy medication.
Pharmac kind of relaxing its 'exceptional circumstances ' provision but it's too late for the victims.
Ho hum. Those here steadfastly defending Pharmac's determined stance on this despite Medsafe advising caution….how do you feel now?
If it was 400 deaths, it would clearly be a scandal.
4… is the rate any higher than one would expect without med change?
Fairly brutal observation McFlock.
400 is your indication of a scandal. I would suggest that if 4 have died because 'balance sheet' then someone should be facing gaol time.
I suppose with all the euthanasia talk around, life is cheap.
I was pulling a number that would be a demonstrable change in mortality rate.
Life isn't cheap. It can be very expensive. Pharmac's job is to save as many lives as possible for the given $$$.
"..the given $$$."
That's the crux of it there I reckon. Many say Pharmac's budget needs to increase.
In the context of euthanasia, I would speculate that the lack of $ will contribute to some folk being euthanized inappropriately.
Euthanasia is a whole other discussion.
No matter what pharmac's budget is, there will always be someone who wants more money spent on a medication that might or might not have any effect. Last time it was herceptin.
We have yet to see whether this latest funding decision reversal is the result of the substitution being a genuine error with clinical consequnces, or another case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease.
Medsafe's advice to Pharmac against making the change makes for deeply uncomfortable reading. Not because of the potential for increased deaths, which Medsafe didn't mention and it has yet to be demonstrated that there actually are increased deaths due to the change, but because of the likelihood of extreme adverse quality of life effects for those do suffer adverse effects from the change.
Yeah – the bit about rejecting studies funded by pharmacorps when they disagree with pharmac's decision even though pharmac as a policy accepts such studies is a suggestion that the move was a done deal before consultation.
There seems to be a theme…patient seizure free for many years, is dispensed generic by pharmacy with sticker reassuring patient that it is the same drug just a different colour. Patient has sudden seizure and dies.
Thing is McFlock…as far as I know one is allowed to criticize a decision made by one of our State's agencies
This is not treason.
Pharmac may be the hard arsed deal-makers needed to drive the bargaining for affordable drugs for all…but when another State agency strongly advises caution against a particular cost saving measure because of, well, lives….
Pharmac forgot the Rule..
First do no harm.
Hope y'all listened to Espiner's interviewing Herr Doktor this evening.
What a warm man. Overflowing with the milk of human kindness. How well we are served. Sarc.
To argue "first do no harm" when harm has not been established might not be treason, but it is unreasonable.
The theme you outline happens regularly in NZ, with and without medication changes.
Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP)
If a person with epilepsy dies and no other cause of death can be found, this is called SUDEP (sudden unexpected death in epilepsy).
How common is SUDEP?
SUDEP is less common in children than in adults.
Who is at risk of SUDEP?
The cause of SUDEP is unknown but there are some things that can increase the risk of SUDEP:
https://www.healthnavigator.org.nz/health-a-z/e/epilepsy/
http://epilepsy.org.nz/viewobj/abn_poster_sudep1_pb_003_.pdf?objID=363
terrible for all users of those drugs and especially for the victims and their families – appears a change happening
Welcome change. We all make errors of judgement. What matters is what we do about it.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/403141/mysterious-foundation-loaning-new-zealand-first-money
It may be legal, but it shouldn't be.
I'll give you a good deal on your furniture and drive you to the airport as soon as tomorrow. Why on earth do you continue to tolerate this shit-hole?
OK, that's not going to work. You need only respond "None of the people I love will leave the shit-hole with me, they like frolicking in feces."
Many authors here over the last 12 years has said that non-transparent funding of political parties is an rort (or words to that effect) at one point or another. If you go back 11-12 years you’ll find that we tried to get this crap closed down over and over again.
Just for instance consider r0b with /what-can-you-buy-with-5×10000/ which looks like exactly the same kind of thing with a slightly different mechanism.
Or Steve P with /open-up-the-trusts/
Or me with /political-funding-have-your-say/ where i said
The only real solution for donations are that all donations above a minimal value need to have a single person responsible for and required by law to fully account for the sources of funding – however small. That includes such things as the organisers of raffles and trusts.
Or political parties can only get funded by the state.
I prefer the latter. I’m willing to accept the former.
In the meantime could you suggest a alternate mechanism that would prevent such rorts happening – because when I look at the kinds of corruption that comes with practices like this one /ross-resigns-to-lay-corrupt-practices-complain-against-bridges-with-police/ with its allegation of a $100k donation to National being broken down into non-declarable $15k packets – I can’t see one.
All of those were apparently legal at the time (except maybe the last – can’t remember seeing the police response to that). Each change to tighten up has had fatal flaws and more rorts. It seems to be in the nature of politicians that they simply cannot be trusted to write the legislation required to control their own carnal behavior.
But I suspect that you’re going to simply be your dimwitted critical self. Once more tirelessly and fruitlessly simpering on the sidelines criticising those who actually try to do something about such practices. Basically I can’t see you doing anything except for presenting yourself as being hypocritical jerk – as usual.
I'm with you on this one lprent. State funding seems the most logical.
Moreover, campaigns should be simplified. Give all parties some airtime on TV to put forward their policies and allow them all to have a mass debate thereafter. And that's it. No more billboards, ads, etc.
Who watches ‘free-to-air’ TV any more?
I haven’t since 2012 because the advertising just wastes my time and disrupts the few bits of time that I have to watch TV – I haven’t seen anything on it worth watching in a decade. It isn’t exactly a mass media any more – it only caters to the elderly, the technophobic conservatives, and the idiotic. At least that seems to be who they are catering for – from the ‘news’ to the local content.
Perhaps you should (re-)read my last post on the subject.
I’m not exactly a minority in this, especially with the 40 and under age groups
I’d personally prefer to pour state money down a sewer rather than spend any more on television, it’d have a better chance of remaining productive and clean (think of MAFS for instance).
As it is I both spend my own money to get something I can be bothered watching, and I pay wasted taxes on the drivel that is free-to-air TV. The RNZ National programme I like, the concert programme is worth supporting, but television as it currently stands isn’t worth wasting money on.
Perhaps the RNZ non-commercial model should just take over TVNZ? After all it appears to be climbing in audience and not contracting. https://www.rnz.co.nz/about/audience-research
They could also stream it live and have it on demand to better fit in with peoples schedules.
But I hear what you are saying about declining viewership, therefore have no problem with a RNZ non-commercial model take over.
Not to sure about your viewing taste but I found this show (links below) of late to be rather good.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/the-capture/episodes/s1-e1
Went and checked it out. Looks interesting.
However the usual screw up that I have come to expect from all of the media websites.
The ubuntu system is on the correct timezone, running chrome, and this system is almost direct out to the net. It sits behind a bog standard ethernet router hooked on to a fibre connection. There is a pinhole firewall in there. In other words the default setup for most desktop systems (apart from linux).
I even trapped the transmitted data and the location looked ok in there as well. Just a bug in the TVNZ streaming provider.
Oh well, I’ll have a look around to see if there are other legit sources that are competently run. It may work on android… But basically this is too much trouble already. I was going to look at it on my 4k monitor.
Otherwise there are providers who are actually competent and fast – unlike TVNZ on-demand.
Bugger! That's a shame.
It was all the talk in the UK.
Here's (link below) a bit of background on it. But you may want to read it after you have viewed it. That's, of course, if you can locate a legal site screening it.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/aug/31/bbc-the-capture-thriller-fake-news
I'm guessing the other group that watches free to air is poor people. I don't know what's happening with broadband prices these days, but the whole computer/streaming thing is not cheap if you have no money. One (partial) solution there would be for WINZ to consider internet access as a basic need.
The other problem at the moment is the weird way that the networks manage their streaming and on demand access. I can't figure out how to watch The Nation other than having to turn up right at 9.30am on a Saturday morning (streaming). Which never happens, so I'm out of the #nzpol twitter convos immediately. If you go to their webpage the on demand videos for The Nation are random, the first one I just clicked on is from August.
This may be TV3 cutting costs pre-sale, but I remember it being like that at other times too and I just gave up.
I find the sign-in for general on demand for either network a big cumbersome, which I can resolve if it bothers me. I often it takes time to find what I want to watch, I think because of how the networks are trying to corral viewers (you're supposed to become a loyal viewer I guess then they push stuff at you). Quite often I just give up. I've been thinking I should just get a TV for the 2020 election.
I think there is a case for not putting political content behind a tracking wall though. Mentioning this because the TVNZ/RNZ merger proposal includes paywalls and ads.
Also, rural internet speeds still often suck.
All of that is resolvable, and streaming and broadcast seem the way to go, but I'm not particularly confident that we would get it right.
This popped up in my twitter feed this morning. Free, high speed internet for all Brits via a publicly owned company (tied in with job creation, economy, working from home)
The UK is starting a long way behind, thanks to slavish neoliberalism: https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784
I can't figure out how to watch The Nation other than having to turn up right at 9.30am on a Saturday morning (streaming)
It is very easy. Go to: https://www.threenow.co.nz/ Scroll down to: NEWS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS and select it. 41 episodes available there if you feel like a binge.
edit
the first one there is last weeks for me using chrome. sorry should have read that last sentence properly.
edit edit
same with firefox
yeah, but if I miss the stream (or broadcast) at 9.30am I can't watch it in time to take part in #nzpol convos because they don't put the on demand up until some random time later. It's current affairs, people are talking about it on the day, it's bizarre they're not making that available. I don't know if that's a technical issue, but I had assumed it was how they wanted to do it in terms of controlling how people view their content.
Even more bizarrely, I followed your instructions and there is no sign of the live stream, which should be happening right now. FFS.
It shouldn't be this hard.
To get the live stream you need to go via "Live TV and Guide". Watching now. TERF stuff.
Yes it is annoying that stuff comes ondemand at random times after the live stream.
"To get the live stream you need to go via "Live TV and Guide"
Right. It's not like they're going to make it easy, you have to know your way around the website and how they organise content. It's daft.
Imagine you can't remember the name of the show, they don't even have a live stream link on TV3's front page ffs. Compare to RNZ's front page,
https://www.rnz.co.nz/
The thing that annoys me most about the three site is that you need to click into the live stream of each sub-channel just to see the guide.
More basic than that: their systems still require humans to make the clips available to view – so it's about paying them on a weekend vs the return on that. Other tasks are more profitable. Civic conversations do not factor into commercial broadcasting.
By comparison, RNZ has a fully-automated post-broadcast publishing pipeline because they had a very smart tech boss years ago when it was created (who also made their site a model of universal accessibility just because it was the right thing to do). I guess you could call that a technical issue.
thanks, re technical, I wasn't sure how easy it was to automate or to enable livestreaming where you can start watching the start half way through the stream (this is possible, just not sure how easy).
And yep, the driving force of profit doesn't serve us.
I find the sign-in for general on demand for either network a big cumbersome
I don't. I create a login with whatever name comes to mind and leave it logged in. I never remember the passwords. TVNZ has logged me out a couple of times over several years but i just create a new login.
edit
I use Chrome for TV and radio and Firefox for internet with Chrome set up so two windows for each TV site and windows for George FM and Ngati Hine FM open automatically.
I don't log out and then both networks log me out at some point (also not a fan of staying logged in because I assume it enhances tracking). I need to write down the login details and make them easily accessible on my desktop. Which I will no doubt do next year for the election to make my life easier, but I think there is a case for actual free to stream for politics during an election year.
Most browsers will offer to store login details for websites on the first sign in, and apart from internet banking, which I decline, there’s no need to write the details down. I always log out after visiting a site I've logged in to and I've never had an issue, and I clear the cache and internet files multiple times a day.
What browser are you using?
Opera at the moment, but it works in Firefox and Chrome
Firefox
Chrome
The problem with that approach is that it sort of works when you jump across multiple machines with chrome and firefox – but not quite.
I routinely use at least 5-10 computers during a day. Between work laptops, mobiles and tablets, base systems, and TVs it gets to be a mess trying to have remembered login names and passwords – all of which need to be updated.
But the real issue is that the TV sites want you to jump through their promo pages and ads. So they don’t have good persistent links. I usually can’t have a link direct to what I want to watch. There is always a new hoop to jump through with media sites. I prefer to use the attention time for login hoops like that for things that I work with – like email, messaging, slack, stackoverflow, man pages, language reference sites etc – so I seldom bother.
I’m certainly not going to waste that valuable attention to detail on sites that are basically trying to sell me stuff.
Good point about multiple devices. I only us a desktop for interwebs. TV as a cascaded second screen.
Agree the Three site is a dog with intrusive ads but i find the TVNZ site easy to use with minimal ads and no hoops. I have Crome set to open two windows of the ondemad page on startup. The first two rows with no ads are favourites and new.
do you mean they don't play ads on those videos?
I was meaning on the page itself. No ads at all on the ondemand page, not even self-promoting. One small commercial ad on the homepage, and some for shows but you would expect that. The videos themselves have about a third of the ad time of the live stream.
Oh I agree. To a large extent they are catering to that market. It shows in content of the adverts in particular.
It is just that I have zero interest in anything where I can figure out the inevitable ‘story’ pattern within 10 minutes of the first episode. Or in the case of something like MAFS, without even seeing more than a few paragraphs of promotional stories in the NZ Herald. Similarly I don’t find much to be interested in with the slow unrolling of news or current affairs punctuated by inane ads for something that I already read online days or even weeks earlier.
The problem is that there are viable alternatives these days without ads and on-demand. So what is happening is that free-to-air is becoming a broadcast media desolation that is losing the more affluent and time constrained of their audience to anything else. That means that the support for a free-to-air network model is being continuously eroded.
As the number of audience who have the income to be really interesting to advertisers stop watching, the number of and length of ad breaks increases to drop costs – driving more of their audience with choices away. Ads targeting those groups get increasingly concentrated around the things that draw them back – like political debates or current affairs or the news or local content or satire. Driving them away from that as well.
But there is a need as a society to maintain public broadcasting systems for a whole host of reasons that I won’t describe right now. The problem is that when the system is orientated around advertising or even competitive advertorials (advertising upcoming shows etc) when there are viable alternatives without those factors, the public support for maintaining a free-to-air system diminishes as well.
That is how I find it as well. Apart from anything else they seem to delight in not having persistent links to content. You have to jump through pages and hoops to the point where it is easier to just dig a snippet off youtube (permanent links and no sign ins) to see if it looks interesting – and if it isn’t on one of the existing subscriptions to fire up a torrent. After all I’ll lose interest in most things half way through the first episode if the storyline has been cribbed from shakespeare et al yet again. Or we have ‘celebrity’ fools like Hosking (who I have never seen) posturing that they can moderate political debate.
Yeah. You either have public money funding open political debate or you don’t. None of the political content in NZ runs without large support from state funding. It shouldn’t have either paywalls or adverts. It should just be available online.
I know. Otherwise I’d have been living in Glenorchy 2 decades ago.
Mostly that is currently an issue of maintaining above ground copper networks. While cell-systems are a viable way to put in network infrastructure, their bandwidth is a direct function of distance and weather (ie it is an issue of attenuation). Thee more bandwidth, the closer the tower have to be together – which is why there will be a lot of infill for 5G in urban areas.
Besides they require a higher speed network to get to cell towers anyway. Basically fibre has few limitations over time and is the approach that needs to be taken (unless quantum entangling becomes more than curiosity).
They have pretty well wired up the urban areas with fiber-optic now – ie max people at least cable length. We need to start biting the bullet and look at a decades long project to persistently (ie underground) keep getting fibre into smaller communities. There really isn’t a good technical way to fibre out to the farms. The lengths are long and the maintenance costs mount up over longer lengths – even underground.
Kia Ora 1 News.
Condolences to Nancy Brunning Whanau.
The Auckland City rail link will save Aotearoa burning a lot of carbon.
All the best on your new journey Gareth.
I think that DIY cervical smears will improve the diagnosis of Wahine cervical cancer.
That's awesome Paris highlighting our Ocean problems with their Christmas parades.
Ka kite Ano
Kia Ora Te Ao Maori News.
Nancy has quite a lot of mahi on Maori made films she will be missed.
I remember when the reserve in Te Tairawhiti had Kai moana in it before the same as it has now with the reservation. Its great to see Te Kai Moana return to the reservation in great numbers we need reservations like that all around Aotearoa.
Awsome that Ngāti Oneone are planting native trees on their Moanga.
Ka kite Ano
Kia Ora 1 News.
Ka pai to the Champion Chest playing tamariki.
Ka kite Ano
Coal is old dirty technology that needs to be banished to our history books.
Two of America’s biggest coal plants closed this month
First the dirtiest ones began shutting down. Then it was the old ones. Now it’s some of the biggest. America’s coal plants are turning off the boilers, facing brutal economics and customers fleeing for natural gas and renewable energy.
This week, Arizona’s 2.25-GW Navajo Generating Station burned its last load of coal after no buyers turned up during a two-year search
This week, Arizona’s 2.25-GW Navajo Generating Station burned its last load of coal after no buyers turned up during a two-year search. Trade publication Utility Dive reports that the fate of the financially ailing plant was sealed after a bid to force an Arizona water agency to buy its electricity failed. The Navajo station emitted about 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, equivalent to 3.3 million cars. It’s one of the biggest retirements in a year of massive shutdowns.
The second is Pennsylvania’s 2.7-GW Bruce Mansfield unit. The plant’s bankrupt owner began shutdown on Nov. 7, almost two years ahead of schedule. It was the state’s largest coal-fired plant, operating for 40 years.
Together, the two retirements equal all the emission reductions from coal plant shut-downs in 2015, a record year when 15 GW of mostly smaller and older units were shuttered, reports Scientific American. Last year, 14 GW were mothballed. In 2020, more are on the way, including Kentucky’s Paradise plant.
Ka kite Ano link below.
https://qz.com/1749023/two-of-americas-biggest-coal-plants-closed-this-month/amp/
Thanks to The European Investment Bank for their move to protect our mokopuna future from a carbon polluted environment.
The European Investment Bank has agreed to phase out its multibillion-euro financing for fossil fuels within the next two years to become the world’s first ‘“climate bank”.
The bank will end its financing of oil, gas, and coal projects after 2021, a policy that will make the EU’s lending arm the first multilateral lender to rule out financing for projects that contribute to the climate crisis.
The decision to stem the flow of capital into fossil fuel projects has been welcomed by green groups as an important step towards the EU’s aim to be carbon-neutral by 2050.
The EIB, the world’s largest multilateral financial institution, described its decision as a “quantum leap” in ambition. “Climate is the top issue on the political agenda of our time,” said the bank’s president, Werner Hoyer. “We will stop financing fossil fuels and launch the most ambitious climate investment strategy of any public financial institution anywhere.”
The bank’s vice-president, Andrew McDowell, said the move was “an important first step – not the last step, but probably one of the most difficult.”
Under its new policy, the bank will end all lending to fossil fuels within two years and align all funding decisions with the Paris climate accord. Energy projects applying for EIB funding will have to show they can produce one kilowatt hour of energy while emitting less than 250 grammes of carbon dioxide.
Ka kite Ano link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/15/european-investment-bank-to-phase-out-fossil-fuels-financing