Well said, – maybe you will also be interested in also learning this other selloff now of public assets happening in another region of Hawkes Bay which is not in time with Labour’s new “wellbeing budget’ policies is it because this selling of our public assets is not sustainable for us to save our own incomes from our assets because they are shrinking as we speak?
Now today 15th December 2018 the HB Regional Council have made the same stupid proposal of sale of their Napier Port, and others have submitted against the sale of their own public owned Port.
The burning Question is; what is the new Labour lead Government doing to stop this rash of new right wing National party efforts to steal more assets from the public while under the Labour lead Government?????
So the questions now is;
“Why are Labour/NZ First coalition seeming to be comfortable under their watch over NZ politics,still allowing more robbing of NZ taxpayers assets by right wing overseas financial interests assets of public assets to be sold under their watch”?????
John Key’s ‘NZ Inc” rorting manipulation is obviously still very alive under a labour lead Government it seems,
Is there no end to stealing of our remaining assets?
“Yet, while the rich are getting richer, those in the bottom 40 percent have not seen an increase in net worth in three years, from June 2015 to June 2018.”
If the Napier port doesn’t go to a referendum, or an LTP process, or both, then it will culminate in the local government elections next year. All to play for if your local activists want to have a crack CG.
HBRC did not cover themselves in glory over the Ruitaniwha dam, and they have also failed to form a clear business plan for the Napier port which has well over capacity. If they had one they would not be in this undercapitalized dilemma.
If I were Rick Barker I would be calling Shane Jones for some money before Shane Jones comes down and ritually humiliates them first.
Hell if a tiny little poverty-stricken outfit like Ohope can come up with a plan and a funding application and get government to listen with tens of millions, why can’t Napier?
@Cleangreen, the government needs to reverse the profit/investment side of councils and public bodies and keep them focused on their main functions which have been lost and minimised.
We would have less leaky building and better water quality and public transport and public services if councils were not always focused on personal building projects aka stadiums, Westfield malls and marina’s.
Get rid of the COO’s and all that overhead and make the council asset COO’s work together not against each other like they used too.
Remove the ‘shareholder profits’ being the most important from the COO’s and have them all under the council again. It is more important that all COO’s work together to make a better city and environment, not just short term profit. Long term stability should be equally important.
Reform the salaries so that the executives get the same as the councillors and no more.
Try and pay fair salaries for people who are very good at their job rather than have a lot of people who don’t know what they are doing or are bullies in a political fiefdom covering their asses all the time.
Remove the bloodsucking private lawyers from the councils and get the council to employ a few top lawyers on salary whose job it is to actually make a fair city and increase social aims, not to bill as many private billing hours as possible and drag out litigation to make more profit, for bad outcomes. (Council had their own unitary plan removed because it was considered non compliant, they can’t even understand their own planning rules, nobody happy with leaky building outcomes).
So let me float a boat out for you on a couple of ideas.
I agree there’s too many entities. But.
There’s an accountability v expertise balance to be had somewhere.
You’re proposing something akin to one big single government department run by Cabinet, rather than Ministries with Ministers.
That might be fine for a while, until you try and hold people accountable for something. Stuff always goes wrong, and you need to roast, wrinse, and repeat.
On long term stability, I would argue that something like Christchurch Holdings or Dunedin City Holdings allows for more stability in the sustained dividends each year for Council policies and programmes than one agglomerated entity with multiple departments. Bureaucrats get to fudge the books more easily when they are covered from democratic scrutiny.
Agree with your point about supporting in-house lawyers.
@ Ad that’s exactly what is happening at present, aka council and their COO are NOT accountable, stuff always going wrong and it’s not getting any better under the current system.
The council has to much bloat mostly because they have expanded well outside their capabilities aka private building, Westfield malls, cruise ships… They need to reign it all back to essential core services, have different departments, (on salaries like the Mayor and councillors not fat cats) like ports, transport or what have you but under the council umbrella and under democratic control.
Personally think the Ports of Auckland needs to move out of central Auckland anyway, too much congestion and bottle neck to have it there with the prime land.
What do you define as “essential core services” for any Council?
Everyone has a different list.
To me, both local and central government need to be able to take more risks, not less, because the public need is so great.
Typical examples: Invercargill, Dunedin, and Christchurch Councils are all busily owning and rebuilding their town centres – as only the public sector can do. That means taking on a lot of property market risk.
There was a time when councils took on so much risk in real estate that they were able to manage much of the rental housing market including rental price – because they built and owned so many Council flats and houses.
There’s always limits to intervention – but this is the era to rebuild them not lessen them.
the government needs to reverse the profit/investment side of councils and public bodies and keep them focused on their main functions which have been lost and minimised.
You’re channelling ACT there which means the result will be worse than you expect but exactly what ACT wants – the continued selling of state assets.
The ports need to be pulled into central government ownership and then run as a government service/department so as to get the best efficiency going. Having them competing with each other actually prevents efficiency as it encourages landing goods at the cheapest place rather than at the best place.
I doubt that more well off households have had much increase in the three years of June 2015 to June 2018. Virtually all the big increases in property values (the main store of value in NZ) had occurred by mid 2015. There has been no increases in Auckland since 2016, in fact probably some softening.
So I imagine that pretty much everyones wealth has been pretty static in the last three years.
“Appalling news from the UK today, with a report from the TUC showing that the average worker is earning a third less in real terms than they did in 2008:”
When you have a big influx of workers, labour rates fall.
NZ is facing increasing poverty because like the UK our government has welcomed in as many new workers as possible which benefited some people at the expense and long term stability of social and financial cohesion here and created a fragile economy that increasingly relies on Ponzi’s to function while at the same time rocketing up the cost of living from housing, transport, food, power, fuel, insurance, water, rates, services… Also hiding the figures by for example calling someone working 1 hour a week, ’employed’.
Thanks savenz for that info. I thought that UK couldn’t do anything about influx of immigrants. Has Key been talking about his success in NZ in forcing down ages with substitute workers?
And a great interchange with Ad and you discussing. Should be put up on a post of its own, hopefully? All of 1 and perhaps have the cheeky heading of Economics for Dummies etc. Everyone would read it then, to prove to themselves that they weren’t actually dummies. Hah.
We can’t even grow food without polluting the place, and now we’re going to prove our incompetence by using robots to carry on with our shitty systems.
Soon the robots will be growing peas. After around a dozen sprays of pesticide, fungicide and herbicide, the peas will be converted to stringy protein, then, magic – the peas are meat.
It wont be country of origin you’ll need on the label, it will be organism of origin.
Now eat your meat.
“We are already industry leaders but my mandate is clear. It’s not about maintaining our position, it’s about defining and ensuring it in the future”
The writing is on the wall that we require sustainable solutions and a return to biodiversity. AsureQuality has no intention of aligning with the needs of the planet or society. They’re living in lalaland. Robots to grow the food, people to…. fuck right off, actually, workers are so demanding.
When we do have all these robots doing cafes, restaurants, horticulture, farming, service work, wonder how we will afford all the unemployed people and retraining of people (if even possible) who have been bought into NZ and given permanent residency on the basis of low level skills that are about to be made redundant?
There’ll be an easy fix via robots for unwanted population. This is the age of post-Holocaust, and we as a broad culture still have not learned from that trauma to our concept of ourselves. The concept of euthanasia by personal choice can’t be countenanced because that is people thinking and acting for their own and society’s benefit., and recalls the Holocaust. But the drive behind the Holocaust continues just in different ways. Killing people in wars, in skirmishes, by cunning devices – bombs, grenades, manufactured in their millions; if people are in the way of the small group who respond or initiate the vast powers’ requirements, that killing continues unabated by pleas, the UN, or simple respect for others’ lives, souls and rights.
In the interim, neo lib has flowed into the cracks of our bewilderment with its cunning concepts of humans as simple push-button pigeons whose emotions override any semblance of rationality we delve for. We do everything for profit they say, either physical or to our mental state, our concepts of wellbeing, and are never really altruistic, we get a mental feelgood, a payoff.
Under this concept we have no souls, so suggest everyone who wants a better future for people clutch their souls and keep ithem shiny and good, because the neolib-economic human robots versed in the black arts will try and steal them. And the way to keep our souls is to care and sacrifice something of ourselves for the sake of other people’s wellbeing and also that of animals lives and welfare, people and animals first, and in parallel with environmental nurture.
There will always be workers, there will always be fewer and fewer low paid and shit jobs. Robotics is just the same as mechanization, which has been with us for a wee while and the sky has not fallen in.
Headline unemployment at 3.6% and falling is going to force more investment in agricultural robotics. Great to see productivity being forced through labour shortages.
Actually, it’s how fewer people can control more land requiring fewer people. In this manner pesky health regulations regarding workers and cide applications can just be shelved, and spray operators can go away too. No witnesses, no lawsuits. No workers, more profit.
It’s a brave new world in which robots roam a poisoned landscape. Some zap weeds with poison, others kill the bugs…
People are moved into smart boxes in cities. They are completely dependent on everything being plugged in. They order the smart food on smart devices which gets delivered smartly by other smart devices. The media says they caught a criminal gang pinching water. The robots got them though.
And now, sports.
Unemployment should be higher. Start with social media influencers, advertising executives, electronic billboard manufacturers, portfolio advisers, corporate science mouthpieces, everything that is Hosking, industrial agriculture, the oil industry, and the Producer of City of 100 Lovers.
WTB
You are so sharp, don’t cut yourself though, we need every drop of energy you have to keep churning out your vision of reality to mix with ours.
And for others who want to arrive at their visions from outside the blog try reading John Wyndham and his stories that think about how people will cope and act in different situations rather than the more traditional War of the Worlds SF. John called his stuff ‘logical fantasy’ and had a few reject slips before his publishers decided to give his approach some page room.
The Day of the Triffids is a good start. Read the book and let your mind create the scene, not just watch someone else’s version.
At present on Trademe there is a good selection for $7 each plus post, a short story The Eternal Eve about being probably the last fertile woman in the human race and how an independent woman reacts to that – that’s in an anthology Time Untamed, good reading all of them $3, Pick 4 SF for $12 and three are John Wyndham’s. And that’s just from the used group, lots of new issues. Give yourself some reading, either new or a reprise, for Christmas. Now that’s an idea.
Another idea – in Hastings? Hang out at :: The Little Red Bookshop -.
Their huge collection of affordable books is a local treasure. As their website puts it, they are “proprietors of the best little second hand bookshop in Hastings, New Zealand. We may, on occasion, seem a touch irreverent, but hopefully in the nicest possible way”.
Superbugs resistant to antibiotics may be present in pork imported from Spain and Australia. However, because New Zealand does not test any products, no-one knows.
To date, MPI had not tested imported products for antimicrobial resistance.
MPI would not ban the import of the products because it was confident in New Zealand’s food safety systems. Note, a food safety system that doesn’t test for antimicrobial resistance.
Additionally, no figures exist for how many New Zealanders die from superbugs.
AS YOU WATCH THIS👇🏽video of a Border Patrol agent pouring out water that was left for migrants, know that the body of a 7 year-old girl is lying on a table right now. SHE NEEDED WHAT HE POURED OUT. Her death is a direct result of the hateful policies of Donald Trump & the @GOP. pic.twitter.com/IJ5LC0MJAO— Chet Powell (@ChetPowell) December 14, 2018
A 7-year-old Guatemalan girl died last week while in Border Patrol’s (CBP) custody. But a statement the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) released Thursday night about her death raises more questions than it answers.
The Washington Post reported that CBP told them the girl “died of dehydration and shock after she was taken into Border Patrol custody last week for crossing from Mexico into the United States illegally with her father and a large group of migrants along a remote span of New Mexico desert.”
According to CBP, the girl was traveling with a group of 163 migrants and was in CBP custody for more than eight hours before she started having seizures. She was transported to a hospital in El Paso, where she died. CBP says she “reportedly had not eaten or consumed water for several days.”
The timeline raises questions about whether CBP provided the girl, identified by the Guatemalan foreign ministry as Jackeline Caal, with food or water during the hours she was in their custody. But instead of addressing that concern, DHS, which oversees CBP, initially released a statement about Caal’s death that appears to try to shift blame onto her and her father for making the trek to the US in the first place.
Gee The Standard; – thanks to all the supporters here for us to keep public ownership of our Napier Port , as we do not want it privatised as we need the HBRC to “protect our residential and wider environment from harm that privateers would do by using the port as a dirty industrial activity as seen in other places around the globe.
we were given a tour of the tauranga Port and were impressed at the operations there as they are using far more rail freight whereas Napier needs to get Government support funding to restore the Rail services to Napier Port to encourage more rail freight again as should have happened years ago after the failed tragic sale of our public rail to privateers in 1993.
Ad we are scheduled to meet the HBRC CEO James Palmer 25th January and will raise that issue thanks very much for that. – Appreciated.
Too many of Labour’s front bench are yet to shine and they are leaning heavily on Ardern, Peters and Robertson. National’s front bench, in contrast, has been a machine, picking up in Opposition where they left off in government. They have consistently scored hits against the Government, have run hard on issues and scandals, and have made question time a ‘must watch’ again after years of irrelevance.
In short, National is fielding the best Opposition front bench we have seen in years and if it wasn’t for the Jami-Lee Ross train wreck, would get a near perfect score. But it’s hard to look past the fact that Ross was a key member of the front bench. The only reason National hasn’t been docked more points is because of the speed with which the caucus has recovered and moved on.
National 7.5/10. Labour 6/10
Housing spokeswoman Judith Collins: The joke goes that Collins could count on one finger the number of votes for her in the last leadership contest. Twelve months on, she is seen as the most likely successor to Bridges if his leadership fails. That’s an extraordinary turnaround for the woman who has had more political revivals than Lazarus. Love her or hate her, people know who she is.
The most reliably robotic part of National is stabbing each other in the back, punching holes in their own waterline, and stammering in front of the camera.
The National Party seems to attract and recruit persons of low IQ. Paula Bennett and Simon Bridges are but two who just don’t seem to cope with ordinary demands of everyday life. Let alone politics.
So they rely on contrived fiction, and childlike cunning – constantly spewing a cloud of unknowing.
There is not a single person in the National Caucus who has standing.
On the recent Final Reading of the Bill to Decriminalise Medicinal Marijuana, not one National speaker mentioned the suffering and Pain of seriously ill persons.
I can only put the callous behaviour of National as a Cluster of Low Intelligence. They have been incompetent for over a decade now.
Their denial of housing crisis; their slovenly care of miners and loggers; their sales of Assets; their outrageous costs of Heating; their sickening slobering over wealthy friends – while hundreds of thousands live in Poverty …their cavalier approach to everything. Sir John Key has sold and is selling; everything that the people of New Zealand own.
Sir John Key is for people destruction unlimited.
That strange Judith Collins who somehow got a job as Minister of Police, and immediately forbade them to attend to home Burglary! For Petes Sake. She is the weird epitome of National.
James, Speaking of intellect – when I posted recently that CanTeen, the AYA cancer service, was about to axe most of their staff and close their regional offices, you accused me of “bullshit and spin”.
Subsequent media coverage has shown my comment was 100% accurate.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, James. On this forum you constantly exhibit a paucity of intellectual capacity. Could I suggest that, in future, you refrain from comment on subjects you are ignorant about?
And, yes, I realise that will render you mute.
Audrey Young will have to have stern words with Tracey. By her assessment Jacinda is not doing very well and:
“Jacinda Ardern was forced to abandon her prime ministerial distance from the case of imprisoned Czech drug-smuggler Karel Sroubek.
She admitted she had received a text from a mutual acquaintance of hers and Sroubek’s commending her on the decision to let him stay in New Zealand (since reversed).
It confirmed a connection between her and the case, albeit a tenuous one, that National had clearly had a whiff of some weeks ago.”
There you go. Naughty Jacinda’s phone received a text. Damned.
“Simon Bridges trucked on in customary fashion, receiving no recognition for doing a reasonable job as Leader of the Opposition.” Good on yer Simon.
“”It was the news that Education Minister Chris Hipkins had agreed to support a member’s bill by former Education Minister Nikki Kaye to advance second language teaching in primary schools…….
….But an Opposition MP winning the support of Labour for a bill with such momentous and positive outcomes….
For that reason, Nikki Kaye is my Backbencher of the Year (runner-up is Maureen Pugh for her meteoric rise from obscurity).” (Not that any credit due the Government of course.
Rubbish from Audrey. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=12177022
Audrey is blinded by bitter rage and a loss of status.
Her blue dye has entered her eyes and brain to such a degree it is impossible to be reasonable let alone kind.
She bats for the National Cricket Club. (Thanks Mac1)
Watkins is simply being a realist.
She works for Fairfax, and all their newspapers are going down the gurgler. Tracey, and probably all their “journalists”, will be out of a job by the end of 2019.
There are, on the other hand a lot of current vacancies for press secretaries in ministerial offices at the moment. What better way to get on the approved list of appointees than sucking up to the boss of the area?
Of course she is going to say nice things about the current lot of incompetents.
I mean to say. Twyford, the walking disaster zone, gets 6.5?
Today, the biomass of humans (≈0.06 Gt C; SI Appendix, Table S9) and the biomass of livestock (≈0.1 Gt C, dominated by cattle and pigs; SI Appendix, Table S10) far surpass that of wild mammals, which has a mass of ≈0.007 Gt C (SI Appendix, Table S11).
Reporting in from Cyclone Owen; it’s passed inland to the south of us but we surely had a wet, stormy night. Lots of lightening and rain, plenty of wind but not damaging.
It’s dropped the temperature a into the mid-20’s so it’s not like working as a sauna attendant as it was last week.
The interesting observation; cyclones have been relatively rare in the Gulf of Carpentaria
Another cool cyclone story; about two months ago I was in Panama when Hurricane Michael hit Florida. That storm was so huge that it literally sucked all the rain out of the entire Caribbean afterwards. Where we were it was the middle of the wet season when it normally pisses down every day; but after Michael we had two whole weeks of dry weather.
What is there about you that attracts these storms?
Two of them when you were in the Gulf of Carpentaria and one when you were in the Caribbean, all within the last couple of years seems a bit more than a coincidence.
I had heard about Typhoid Mary, who caused a number of outbreaks of the disease as she moved around the New York area about a hundred years ago but you are surely the first person who appears to cause cyclones.
“Mary immigrated to the United States in 1883 and subsequently made her living as a domestic servant, most often as a cook. It is not clear when she became a carrier of the typhoid bacterium (Salmonella typhi). However, from 1900 to 1907 nearly two dozen people fell ill with typhoid fever in households in New York City and Long Island where Mary worked. The illnesses often occurred shortly after Mary began working in each household, but, by the time the disease was traced to its source in a household where she had recently been employed, Mary had disappeared.”
Can you control your powers? It would surely be incredibly useful if you could cause the rain without the wind. The farmers in the Murray/Darling area would pay you a fortune to break the drought there.
Mate I played rugby as a teen with a guy who is near the top in tauranga
Was a nice guy good parents no reason to be a drug dealer going round with a bunch young thugs for his shadows . But he does
There not lost boys they are people who have chosen the life they live .
They are very different from your kid from a poor house looking to belong .
BREAKING: Pres. Trump has named Mick Mulvaney to be acting White House chief of staff upon John Kelly's departure. Sen. Elizabeth Warren tells you what you need to know about him in this video: pic.twitter.com/Bkvvv3W3UE— NowThis (@nowthisnews) December 14, 2018
Her native american background, saying her parents had to elope because of being native american and she also benefited by Harvard hiring her and being Harvards first women of colour
When it turns out that she might be 1/64th and 1/1,024th, from 6 to 10 generations ago, and that that ancestry is actually Mexican, Peruvian, and Colombian
You or I might have more native ancestry than she does
The Boston Globe debunked the lie that Warren was appointed on the back of her claimed heritage.
The Globe closely reviewed the records, verified them where possible, and conducted more than 100 interviews with her colleagues and every person who had a role in hiring decisions about Warren who could be reached. In sum, it is clear that Warren was viewed as a white woman by the hiring committees at every institution that employed her.
Warren’s political enemies have long pushed a narrative that her unsubstantiated claims of Native American heritage turbocharged her legal career. But it is clear that Warren was viewed as a white woman by the hiring committees at every institution that employed her.
.
Among the records were some never examined before by a newspaper, including one key form that a University of Pennsylvania professor kept tucked away for three decades.
That previously undisclosed report reveals that the hiring committee at Penn, where Warren worked from 1987 to 1995, viewed her as a white female applicant. Moreover, the committee went to some pains to explain on this form why she was selected over several minorities to fill a faculty position.
Not until she had been teaching at Penn for two years did she authorize the university to change her personnel designation from white to Native American, the records show.
How dare they treat her as a white person when she self-identifies as a native American.
No wonder they hid that form away. They would all have been fired if that information had become known that they had treated her as being white!.
On the other hand I can see why she would change her designation to the false one of being native-American at about the same time as she switched from registering as a Republican to being a Democrat. Both sorts of people are fantasists and derangement on her part was clearly setting in.
Those figures are nonsense. Forcing organic systems to be grown like conventional fields and then saying see! – buy our fertiliser.
Never mind the loss of soil structure and subsequent hardpan, erosion and flooding, never mind the loss of insects, fungi and other soil microbiota, never mind the loss of soil organic matter and carbon. Never mind the rivers, the dead patches in the oceans. Never mind the pollinators, the predators, the birds that eat them. Never mind the water cleansing, or the pathogen and toxin reducing activities of the soil. Never mind the ever increasing lawsuits. Never mind the ever increasing deserts.
Pucky’s link and his reasons for posting it leave me a little saddened. In some ways, he seems a thoughtful guy, in others, plain daft. WTB’s response is nuanced, well reasoned and accurately applied, but Pucky, through his non-response, will collect a dullard or two for his cause. So it goes, but we don”t have to admire such duplicity, such ingenuousness. Food for thought, Pucky?
Nah.
Just dum sh*t.
‘K?
Seems Mick Mulvaney‘s been appointed acting Chief of Staff.
Bugger. I’m gutted Chris Christie apparently turned it down. Never mind, maybe he’ll have a change of heart when they have to go through the process again in a few Scaramuccis.
Looks like a smockscreen to covfefe that nobody wants the job.
WH clarifies Mulvaney and OMB. @PressSec says Mulvaney "will not resign" from OMB, "but will spend all of his time devoted to his role" as Acting WH Chief of Staff. She says OMB Deputy Dir Russ Vought will handle day to day operations and run OMB.— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) December 15, 2018
We all pay into this Aotearoa health insurance company shonky and joice turned it into a stock market trading toy for his rich m8 on the stock market to suck cash out of Kiwis in return for stuffed up service no service so his m8 had more money to trade.
Here is how a neo capitalist runs OUR Accident Compensation Corporation shonky flips the actual function of services provided by ACC and makes the staff compete to keep people in poverty and hard ship all the fools backing national will feel the sharp end of the captilist stick if they get a long term INJURY. I see the CEO of the Rotorua hospital has resigned my 10 year old grand daughter is still in pain thanks to the sandflys &——-
The $8m doctor: ACC pays for ‘wholly speculative diagnosis that does not accord with the clinical facts’, judge says The agency regularly calls in Christchurch’s Dr Bill Turner to reassess patients who have been granted ACC entitlements for chronic pain; court judgments show ACC consistently uses Turner’s opinions to cancel entitlements or cover.
In some cases, Turner considers the pain is in the sufferer’s head. In most cases, there is no question the patients are in severe pain: the only question is whether the pain is caused by injury – or is a vague “syndrome” as Turner sometimes argues. On numerous occasions he has assessed the pain as a syndrome, and nothing to do with the pig hunting accidents, car crashes and other injuries the claimants suffered. A former ACC employee told Stuff that ACC branches across the country compete to “exit” clients off their books before they reach 70, 180 or 365 days of cover. A weekly “traffic light” report indicates how the branch is performing and managers encourage case managers to look for people to get off their books.
“I’m one of the lucky ones,” Gordon said. “Although I’ve got this constant chronic pain to deal with, I can still do my job, and can avoid taking too many drugs. But some people would lose a life line with decisions like this and get totally crushed.”
LIFE SENTENCE WITHOUT REVIEW
Review decisions are final, often life-changing for the claimant and worth thousands of dollars in compensation and treatment. Ka kite ano link below
Kia ora from R&R Sugar is a man made substance in its natrual form its ok but the way it refined and bleached it’s not good. drop sugar out of your diet when is the government going to do the logical and sceneable thing and tax sugar out off reach of our mokopuna . The main goal in a good diet is unprocessed food as in prosessing food they put poison it the food to colour it and to stop bacteria growing in the food hence the poison stops food spoiling that’s a fact. Te Hakari was a really important phenomenon for the maori of old we made sure we put the best kai in the whenua in a hakari for the guest this was a thing of pride hence no whenua no good hakari no mana. The one food I have not seen since I was nine was steamed corn bread in tinfoil
that was the best kai Eco Maori liked .
Kina Paua Ika tuna koura. I agree that unless the doctor has stated you need a diet thats when you go on one the rest in the media are just fads to make some one money. Just eat less fatty foods IE cut the fat off and feed it to the pets no sugar grow your own organic vegetables as it the traces of chemicals in our food’s that slowly kill us causing cancer hence the cancer rate is rising fast in our Papatuanuku I love a good hangi the Papatuanuku waste 1 3rd of the food prouduced the logical and cheaps way to feed the Papatuanuku is to solve the waste problem not try and do gods work and grow synthetic meat that could have who nose what in it and big companys have shown they can not be trusted to do the good things
Ka kite ano Happy new year to the R&R Team.
I disagree re fats but mostly love your post. the fats is a whole other argument, but basically, the natural ones got a bad rap so industry could sell you lots of cheap nasty vegetable based ‘healthy’ alternatives.
I am now growing sugar cane in Auckland and so others might do the same. It needs full northern aspect, shelter, and plenty of water and compost. There are many types of crushers online I actually go to a restaurant he crushes it and keeps half. But crushers are available, or you can just make a traditional one out of bamboo – youtube is your friend. The sap can be rendered down to jaggery, or with fruit to make preserves, or just drunk. It’s great with vodka and a twist of lemon!
Prepare and plant a patch in Autumn by laying sections of cane in a trench and burying. youtube it. It’ll pop in spring.
Alternative sweeteners you can ‘grow’ are stevia, and honey. Stevia is a herb used in many drinks etc but has thousands of years of traditional use. It is not everyone’s cup of tea. I like using it in some things e.g. fruit, and not others e.g. hot drinks.
Honey… If you have a section surrounded by plant life… Beekeepers may put a hive on your property and tend it and you get some of the honey. Sweet deal.
Gardens. Because exercise, health, diet, sun, community, medicine, life.
Lets get this straight the #METO movement is not anti Men Its all about treating wahine with the respect they deserve the neo’s of the world are scared about losing contro and power hence they are trying to BRAND the #METO movement as anti Men
There’s nothing like a daughter to make Dad see the world differently
Barbara Ellen
While many men miraculously manage not to be chauvinists all by themselves, for others a daughter could prove a wake-up call that is stronger, more visceral than any number of #MeToo campaigns. At which point, big and small inequalities that may have passed almost unnoticed regarding women they’ve known and even loved (mothers, sisters, friends) are thrown into unprecedented sharp focus. As I say, an education – that “man’s world” could start looking very different when a father’s “mighty girl” has to navigate it.
My eldest child is a wahine my eldset mokopuna is a wahine 70 % of my whano are wahine what really convinced me to back the #METO movement was Eco Maori’s challenges our male dominant society has thrown at me and the BIG MESS this male dominated society is making of OUR World at the minute hence I figured out that man has been deliberately suppressing mana wahine for thousands of years as some new that Wahine would kick there asses in the board room into doing the humane thing and put people’s welbeing before there profit. Ka kite ano links below.
P.S having beautiful daughters and granddaughters did open my EYE’s to one never stops learning .
All our Coral Reef’s around the world are dying because off climate change and 30% of Australia Great Barrier Reef dyed of in a heat wave in 2016 and thats a crying shame . The Reef of the world are the nursery of the Oceans no reef no fish no fish masse human starvation we have to forget about politicians and make changes to our life styles to save our grandchildren future ourselves My carbon foot print has dropped a lot in the last six months .
Dr Pillans hoped despite the gloom and doom about the reef’s future, her story would give children hope that they could do something to help.
Her key message was greenhouse gas emissions had to be cut now.
“I don’t think it’s too late, but we have to start now. We can’t keep saying ‘tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow’,” she said.
“There are ways to save energy (such as turning off lights, walking instead of driving) and help the planet which will then help the reef.”
It has taken her six years to get the story right.
“It’s not as easy as people think. You have to make sure, when you are an author/illustrator, the words and pictures have to be as one,” she said.
“There has to be highs and lows and resolution and problems.
“All that has to be there in a big adventure to keep children’s attention.
“I had many iterations of this book and each publisher would say ‘we really love the idea of it, however you can’t tell children there is no hope’.
“It was really hard for me to provide a publisher with a story of hope and solutions.
Ka kite ano links below.
No fish the sandfly is stuffing with my other computer the little churchy boy who thinks he is perfect is not getting his way is brating out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgVVG5EknuI
I love my Crayfish but like I have stated the Quota management system is a system set up for the neo bankers it does not preserve our fishes razing and lowering the Quoter at the wim of the bankers it looks like shonky and his m8 new that CRA2 has nearly collapsed and chose to ignore the situation to keep the dollars flowing into there economy .Eco Maori backs the calls to ban fishing in CRA2 of at the very least drop the recreational take to 2 fish pre person as CRA 2 has the highest population in Aotearoa hence the over fishing every man and his dog has a boat and crayfish are so easy to catch with a pot. Cleaning up shonkys mess once again is Our coalition Government
Environmentalists want to take crayfish off the menu this summer, with a three-year ban on catching the delicacy in the Hauraki Gulf and Bay of Plenty.
Stocks of the Kiwi favourite were once prolific in the waters that stretch between Waipu and the East Cape.
But Forest and Bird say the crustaceans – also known as rock lobster – are now “functionally extinct” in the area.
The Government is currently considering whether to slash the daily allowance for recreational fishers from six to three crayfish.
READ MORE:
* Big cuts to crayfish catch limits from Auckland to East Cape
* Hauraki Gulf marine life has fallen by more than half since 1925, report finds
* Crayfish ‘functionally extinct’ in the Hauraki Gulf “Crayfish in this area are in very serious trouble,” Forest and Bird marine advocate Katrina Goddard said. “The population has basically collapsed.
“In 2017, they estimated there is just 20 per cent of the population left.”
When stocks drops below ten per cent, the fishery must close – and Goddard says that threshold may have been reached in some areas.
It follows huge enforced cuts to the commercial catch in April, down from 200 tonnes to 80 tonnes. Ka kite ano links below
Kia ora Newshub I say the government’s plan to make the roads safer with the wire rope safty barriers is cool ka pai July .
Many thanks to all the people at the UN Climate meeting in Poland who hammered out a agreement Ka pai as Jamie Shaw said trying to get 200 od people to come to a agreement is a hard task on its own.
Ka pai to the Wellington company for plans to get a electric Ferry that’s the way of the future and I am sure you will get heaps of passengers because of the ferry being green energy powered .
Going over the Alps for Africans refugees is a hard way to get to a good life in France and dangerous journey its just shows how desperate they are .
The Bhutanese conjoined twins look happy all the best to them Good on the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne .
Ka kite ano
I see Peter Williams from TV1 News is retiring ka pai E hoa you have been a good kiwi role male role model for our youth all the best 40 years A There has to be some major changes in how we live our lives in the next few years ka kite ano https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHCob76kigA
I have China to thank for Solar panels price dropping faster than anyone predicted .
The cost $100 for a 100 watt panel to set up a small 2000 watt off grid solar system will only cost me $4000 and with gas power hot water and cooking that size system wold be ok for 2 people . It is now cheaper to build a solar powered power station than it is to burn Coal fools who back as in the past when some one has backed the wrong Horse will lose there ASS.
Shenzhen’s silent revolution: world’s first fully electric bus fleet quietens Chinese megacity
All 16,000 buses in the fast-growing Chinese megacity are now electric, and soon all 22,000 taxis will be too Y
ou have to keep your eyes peeled for the bus at the station in Shenzhen’s Futian central business district these days. The diesel behemoths that once signalled their arrival with a piercing hiss, a rattle of engine and a plume of fumes are no more, replaced with the world’s first and largest 100% electric bus fleet.
Shenzhen now has 16,000 electric buses in total and is noticeably quieter for it. “We find that the buses are so quiet that people might not hear them coming,” says Joseph Ma, deputy general manager at Shenzhen Bus Group, the largest of the three main bus companies in the city. “In fact, we’ve received requests to add some artificial noise to the buses so that people can hear them. We’re considering it.” The benefits from the switch from diesel buses to electric are not confined to less noise pollution: this fast-growing megacity of 12 million – which was a fishing village until designated China’s first “special economic zone” in the 1980s – is also expected to achieve an estimated reduction in CO2 emissions of 48% and cuts in pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, non-methane hydrocarbons and particulate matter. Shenzhen Bus Group estimates it has been able to conserve 160,000 tonnes of coal per year and reduce annual CO2 emissions by 440,000 tonnes. Its fuel bill has halved.
Ka kite ano links below
Eco Maori trys his best not to waste anything we need to change the way we live to preserve the future
Why 2m kilos of Christmas cheese will end up in the bin … and how to cut back on your household’s waste in UnitedKingdom .
But for many households the Christmas cheeseboard has become an elaborate affair – often resulting in a vast amount of waste. Now, as a new survey estimates that 2.2m kilograms of cheese from the festive dining table will be chucked in the bin this year, specialists are urging shoppers to aim for a “zero waste” cheeseboard. “If you buy cheese that tastes amazing you’re far less likely to waste it,” said Dominic Coyte of Borough Cheese Company. “In my house I tend to end up with lots of small bits left, so I grate and freeze it. Freezing can affect the texture so it loses its rigidity, but it’s still good to use for cheese on toast or in sauces or gratins. The remainders of a boxed soft cheese can also be baked in the oven with garlic, rosemary and white wine – day-old bread with a bit of bite is ideal for dipping in it.”
The new research from Borough Market shows that the average seasonal platter will be heaving with up to five pieces of cheese, yet six in 10 consumers surveyed (57%) admitted they will throw much of it away. According to the findings, two-thirds (63%) are planning to serve at least one cheeseboard over the festive period, while one in five (22%) will push the boat out and offer three or more. links below Ka kite ano.
Trillions of dollars of investments are being taken out of carbon-intensive companies. Governments must now take notice
Eco Maori is calling on the Vaticain Bank to drop its investments in carbon for the future. If they don’t it will be there money lost as shares slid in value the writing on the wall
Here is were the people can stop the carbon barrons in there tracks everyone demand that there saving not to be invested in carbon companys the will go broke and slid into OUR History books. Ana to kai/ take that.
We can’t count on governments alone to do the work necessary – governments, from Canada and America to Russia and Saudi Arabia to China and India, are still too often beholden to the fossil fuel companies. We need to keep pushing hard on those companies – and we will.The list of institutions that have cut their ties with this most destructive of industries encompasses religious institutions large and small (the World Council of Churches, the Unitarians, the Lutherans, the Islamic Society of North America, Japanese Buddhist temples, the diocese of Assisi); philanthropic foundations (even the Rockefeller family, heir to the first great oil fortune, divested its family charities); and colleges and universities from Edinburgh to Sydney to Honolulu are on board, with more joining each week. Forty big Catholic institutions have already divested; now a campaign is urging the Vatican bank itself to follow suit. Ditto with the Nobel Foundation, the world’s great art museums, and every other iconic institution that works for a better world.Thanks to the efforts of groups such as People & Planet (and to the Guardian, which ran an inspiring campaign), half the UK’s higher education institutions are on the list. And so are harder-nosed players, from the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund (at a trillion dollars, the largest pool of investment capital on Earth) to European insurance giants such as Axa and Allianz. It has been endorsed by everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to Barack Obama to Ban Ki-moon (and, crucially, by Desmond Tutu, who helped run the first such campaign a generation ago, when the target was apartheid).Now the contagion seems to be spreading to the oil and gas sector, where Shell announced earlier this year that divestment should be considered a “material risk” to its business. That’s how oil companies across the world are treating it – in the US, petroleum producers have set up a website designed to discredit divestment,. and for a while had me under round-the-clock public surveillance. The pressure is not preventing anyone from acting: when Yale arrested 48 brave students who were occupying its investment offices last week, they left chanting: “We’ll be back Eco Maori know what thats like lol Links below ka kite ano P.S Kiwis can demand that our Kiwisave not be invested in carbon to.
This forest is a rear phenomenon and is being negatively affected by climate change like the Great reefs and Ice cap’s at a much faster rate than scientists’ pridicted
“All of us scientists, not just in America but around the world, know that climate change is being exacerbated. Being caused by human activities, by overconsumption, by use of fossil fuels. And for our leadership to take exactly the wrong turn, to remove ourselves from the Paris treaty, to encourage coal mining …
“What I feel I need to do is to bring my science, bring my understanding of what’s going on in the tropical cloud forest and other ecosystems to the people, to policymakers.
“I think that scientists are becoming more political. We have become less afraid to speak out against the political regimes that are making these wrong decisions. In the past, even ten years ago, my fellow scientists would not be making these statements.”
Nadkarni reflects on the change. “You know each species that moves or disappears has repercussions in terms of the ecosystem as a whole. Now the plants are a little bit harder to see. But I know when I climb in the forest, that compared with when I started here 39 years ago, the canopy dwelling plants – the mosses, the filmy ferns – they were much more abundant, much more plush, much more … just wet, than they are now.”
For millenium the WEALTHY have silenced the TRUTH TELLER’s OUR scientist to protect there power now we have the 21 century communication device the internet and social media now the game is changing mostly for the better for human kind
Links below the sandflys are stuffing with my computer once again Eco Maori will never give up the fight for a good future for OUR grandchildren ka kite ano
Kia ora Newshub That is awsome busting those men who were importing Meth into Aotearoa many thanks to all involved in the bust 25 years jail.
Colndolences to the whano of the people who dyed in the plane crash in Raglan .
To much to the 84 year Kiwi lady who survived being losed in Australia outback desert.
There you go the slave labour in Hawkes bay apple picking industry they will have displaced hundreds of kiwi workers. Is this some one elses mess once again.
One has to respect Tangaroa and creatures climate change and over fishing will cause more of these shark attack incident’s all around Papatuanuku.
We got gift cards for Chrismas presents so easy and the mokopunas get to chose there presents
Its good that Pharmac is getting the medicine for Hep C Ka pai many people will have a much better life because of this move.
Rocketlab that is good news for Peter Beck his team Aotearoa and Mahia
Eco Maori seen the story in the stuff website I support the cut the ban some people are more worryed about the putea lost instead of the loss of the fishes.
Its about time the Lawsociety change the law profession system to hold powerful lawers to acount for the way the treat wahine or anyone.
Printed veins and body parts is the way of the future its exciting times in the health profession . Ka kite ano
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka KotahiThe fact that a ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st CenturyThe SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims StuffSteve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
Every year, in the Budget, Parliament forks out money to government agencies to do certain things. And every year, as part of the annual review cycle, those agencies are meant to report on whether they have done the things Parliament gave them that money for. Agencies which consistently fail to ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – Recent events in American universities point to an underlying crisis of coherent thinking, an issue that increasingly affects the progressive left across the Western world. This of course is nothing new as anyone who can either remember or has read of the late ...
The thing about life’s little victories is that they can be followed by a defeat.Reader Darryl told me on Monday night:Test again Dave. My “head cold” last week became COVID within 24 hours, and is still with me. I hear the new variants take a bit longer to show up ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Angus Deaton on rethinking his economics IMFLocal scoop: The people behind Tamarind, the firm that left a $500m cleanup bill for taxpayers at Taranaki’s Tui oil well, are back operating in Taranaki under a different company name. Jonathan ...
Normally when we talk about accessing public transport it’s about improving how easy it is to get to, such as how easy is it to cross roads in a station/stop’s walking catchment, is it possible to cycle to safely, do bus connections work, or even if are there new routes/connections ...
Politicians are not renowned for telling the truth. Some tell us things that are verifiably not true. They offer statements that omit critical pieces of information. Gloss over risks, preferring to offer the best case scenario.Some not truths are quite small, others amusing in their transparency. There are those repeated ...
The pressure is mounting on the Government as it finalises its Budget Policy Statement, but yet more predicted revenue ‘goes missing’. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Climate Commission has delivered another funding blow to the National-ACT-NZ First coalition Government’s tax-cutting plans, potentially carving $1.4 billion off the ‘climate ...
The Government now faces the prospect of having to watch another tax raise the price of petrol when, only six days ago, it abolished the Auckland Regional Fuel tax. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon argued that the regional fuel tax imposed costs on lower-income people with less fuel-efficient vehicles and that ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
The government’s attack on Māori health this week is committing tangata-whenua to a premature death, says Te Pāti Māori. “The government have begun their onslaught on Māori health with the abolishment of the Māori Health Authority and smokefree laws in the same day” said health spokesperson and co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. ...
Today marks a tragic milestone for New Zealanders as the Coalition Government side with big tobacco to repeal the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Act 2022, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins and Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
This year’s Pacific Language Weeks celebrate regional unity and the contribution of Pacific communities to New Zealand culture, says Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti. Dr Reti announced dates for the 2024 Pacific Language Weeks during a visit to the Pasifika festival in Auckland today and says there’s so ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
Auckland Council is opposing a fast-track development backed by Sir John Kirwan and Spark NZ, because it doesn’t meet stringent new climate adaptation requirements The post Surf-data centre faces new 3.8C climate warming rules appeared first on Newsroom. ...
When the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was introduced in 2009 it was firmly targeted at gangs and drugs. The legislation means police no longer need a conviction to seize assets that criminals can’t prove were paid for legitimately, as long as their alleged offences are punishable by more than a ...
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Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
SailGP’s races feature in-your-face action, with agile, hydro-foiling catamarans tacking and jibing for the title over several days. However, public comments ahead of the global series’ return to New Zealand have left this past year’s controversy in the shadows, as a key appointment attracts criticism from dolphin advocates. A year ...
Opinion: We are fast approaching a fundamental change in prisons. As the number of people on custodial remand looks set to overtake the number of sentenced prisoners, the main function of prisons in New Zealand may become incarcerating un-sentenced people who may not be guilty of offending. We have already ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
The letters, which were published last week, were addressed to Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri, National Democrat Party (NasDem) Chairperson Surya Paloh, National Awakening Party (PKB) Chairperson Muhaimin Iskandar, Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) President Ahmad Syaikhu and United Development Party (PPP) Chairperson Muhammad Mardiono. In ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
The government says it still intends to deliver tax cuts by July, but will not lock them in until they have got them past their coalition partners. ...
Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII has hosted members of the Green Party Caucus at Tuurangawaewae Marae in Ngaaruawahia. The audience follows the King’s Hui-aa-Motu on 20 January, where more than 10,000 people gathered to discuss national ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Rachael Potter, Research Associate and Lecturer in Work and Organisational Psychology, University of South Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Pregnant women and workers with children are often unfairly treated by their bosses and colleagues, despite laws to protect against workplace discrimination ...
Reacting to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s refusal to rule out introducing new taxes at the budget, Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns Manager, Connor Molloy, said: “Today’s refusal to rule out new taxes suggests the Government is nothing more ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne Aila Images/Shutterstock Aged-care workers will receive a significant pay increase after the Fair Work Commission ruled they ...
He’s bringing ‘Sophie’ back, yeah. Goodshirt’s ‘Sophie’ music video is one of the most instantly recognisable New Zealand music videos of all time. Featuring a woman listening to the song on headphones while her entire house is burgled behind her, the video won the New Zealand music award for Best ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Blaxland, Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University A year ago, the AUKUS agreement was formally announced between Australian and UK Prime Ministers Anthony Albanese and Rishi Sunak and US President Joe Biden. The agreement mapped out the “optimal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andreas Helwig, Associate Professor, Electro-Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern Queensland SmartS/Shutterstock Steam locomotives clattering along railway tracks. Paddle steamers churning down the Murray. Dreadnought battleships powered by steam engines. Many of us think the age of steam has ended. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carrie Leonetti, Associate Professor of Law, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Victims who experience family violence in Aotearoa New Zealand are treated differently, depending on which part of the justice system they turn to for help. But a new member’s bill ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Tesch, Visiting Fellow at the ANU Centre for European Studies, Australian National University In perhaps the least surprising news of the year, Vladimir Putin has triumphed at the Russian ballot box and been enthroned for the fifth time as president. He ...
The Papua New Guinea Supreme Court has stopped a byelection for the Madang Open seat being held until an appeal filed by former MP Bryan Kramer is concluded. Kramer had appealed to the Supreme Court over a National Court decision not to review his application of the Leadership Tribunal decision ...
By Miriam Zarriga in Port Moresby Despite a “historic” ceasefire agreement in Papua New Guinea between Enga authorities and tribal leaders after months of bitter warfare, a young woman has been found brutally killed near Kaekin village, Wapenamanda. Despite the peace agreement and signing concluded in Port Moresby last Thursday ...
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Finally, I can agree with Federated Farmers.
They polled their membership and have submitted against the proposed sale of Alpine Energy by the Timaru District Council.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/news/109247554/federated-farmers-warns-against-alpine-energy-sale
Hi Ad,
Well said, – maybe you will also be interested in also learning this other selloff now of public assets happening in another region of Hawkes Bay which is not in time with Labour’s new “wellbeing budget’ policies is it because this selling of our public assets is not sustainable for us to save our own incomes from our assets because they are shrinking as we speak?
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/business/354080/council-considers-selling-stake-in-napier-port
Now today 15th December 2018 the HB Regional Council have made the same stupid proposal of sale of their Napier Port, and others have submitted against the sale of their own public owned Port.
The burning Question is; what is the new Labour lead Government doing to stop this rash of new right wing National party efforts to steal more assets from the public while under the Labour lead Government?????
So the questions now is;
“Why are Labour/NZ First coalition seeming to be comfortable under their watch over NZ politics,still allowing more robbing of NZ taxpayers assets by right wing overseas financial interests assets of public assets to be sold under their watch”?????
John Key’s ‘NZ Inc” rorting manipulation is obviously still very alive under a labour lead Government it seems,
Is there no end to stealing of our remaining assets?
“Yet, while the rich are getting richer, those in the bottom 40 percent have not seen an increase in net worth in three years, from June 2015 to June 2018.”
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/378268/the-richest-households-are-now-worth-1-point-75-million-survey
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/378307/how-can-nz-close-the-gap-between-rich-and-poor
If the Napier port doesn’t go to a referendum, or an LTP process, or both, then it will culminate in the local government elections next year. All to play for if your local activists want to have a crack CG.
HBRC did not cover themselves in glory over the Ruitaniwha dam, and they have also failed to form a clear business plan for the Napier port which has well over capacity. If they had one they would not be in this undercapitalized dilemma.
If I were Rick Barker I would be calling Shane Jones for some money before Shane Jones comes down and ritually humiliates them first.
Hell if a tiny little poverty-stricken outfit like Ohope can come up with a plan and a funding application and get government to listen with tens of millions, why can’t Napier?
@Cleangreen, the government needs to reverse the profit/investment side of councils and public bodies and keep them focused on their main functions which have been lost and minimised.
We would have less leaky building and better water quality and public transport and public services if councils were not always focused on personal building projects aka stadiums, Westfield malls and marina’s.
Get rid of the COO’s and all that overhead and make the council asset COO’s work together not against each other like they used too.
What structure would you have in mind, and how would that be better?
Remove the ‘shareholder profits’ being the most important from the COO’s and have them all under the council again. It is more important that all COO’s work together to make a better city and environment, not just short term profit. Long term stability should be equally important.
Reform the salaries so that the executives get the same as the councillors and no more.
Try and pay fair salaries for people who are very good at their job rather than have a lot of people who don’t know what they are doing or are bullies in a political fiefdom covering their asses all the time.
Remove the bloodsucking private lawyers from the councils and get the council to employ a few top lawyers on salary whose job it is to actually make a fair city and increase social aims, not to bill as many private billing hours as possible and drag out litigation to make more profit, for bad outcomes. (Council had their own unitary plan removed because it was considered non compliant, they can’t even understand their own planning rules, nobody happy with leaky building outcomes).
So let me float a boat out for you on a couple of ideas.
I agree there’s too many entities. But.
There’s an accountability v expertise balance to be had somewhere.
You’re proposing something akin to one big single government department run by Cabinet, rather than Ministries with Ministers.
That might be fine for a while, until you try and hold people accountable for something. Stuff always goes wrong, and you need to roast, wrinse, and repeat.
On long term stability, I would argue that something like Christchurch Holdings or Dunedin City Holdings allows for more stability in the sustained dividends each year for Council policies and programmes than one agglomerated entity with multiple departments. Bureaucrats get to fudge the books more easily when they are covered from democratic scrutiny.
Agree with your point about supporting in-house lawyers.
@ Ad that’s exactly what is happening at present, aka council and their COO are NOT accountable, stuff always going wrong and it’s not getting any better under the current system.
The council has to much bloat mostly because they have expanded well outside their capabilities aka private building, Westfield malls, cruise ships… They need to reign it all back to essential core services, have different departments, (on salaries like the Mayor and councillors not fat cats) like ports, transport or what have you but under the council umbrella and under democratic control.
Personally think the Ports of Auckland needs to move out of central Auckland anyway, too much congestion and bottle neck to have it there with the prime land.
What do you define as “essential core services” for any Council?
Everyone has a different list.
To me, both local and central government need to be able to take more risks, not less, because the public need is so great.
Typical examples: Invercargill, Dunedin, and Christchurch Councils are all busily owning and rebuilding their town centres – as only the public sector can do. That means taking on a lot of property market risk.
There was a time when councils took on so much risk in real estate that they were able to manage much of the rental housing market including rental price – because they built and owned so many Council flats and houses.
There’s always limits to intervention – but this is the era to rebuild them not lessen them.
You’re channelling ACT there which means the result will be worse than you expect but exactly what ACT wants – the continued selling of state assets.
The ports need to be pulled into central government ownership and then run as a government service/department so as to get the best efficiency going. Having them competing with each other actually prevents efficiency as it encourages landing goods at the cheapest place rather than at the best place.
Cleangreen
I doubt that more well off households have had much increase in the three years of June 2015 to June 2018. Virtually all the big increases in property values (the main store of value in NZ) had occurred by mid 2015. There has been no increases in Auckland since 2016, in fact probably some softening.
So I imagine that pretty much everyones wealth has been pretty static in the last three years.
Yes Good move. Finally they see selling Assets is a dumb move.
Federal Reserve is now insolvent according to its own accounts released yesterday.
No news coverage which in itself is newsworthy.
Most of the financial sector is actually insolvent..
..we live in the time of The Great Con
and the splatter will be immense when it finally caves in on itself
“Appalling news from the UK today, with a report from the TUC showing that the average worker is earning a third less in real terms than they did in 2008:”
http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2018/12/torches-and-pitchforks-time.html
Another reason Brexit happened and why the UK were negligent in deciding in 2004 not to impose any labour restrictions on the expanded EU like other countries in Europe did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_enlargement_of_the_European_Union
When you have a big influx of workers, labour rates fall.
NZ is facing increasing poverty because like the UK our government has welcomed in as many new workers as possible which benefited some people at the expense and long term stability of social and financial cohesion here and created a fragile economy that increasingly relies on Ponzi’s to function while at the same time rocketing up the cost of living from housing, transport, food, power, fuel, insurance, water, rates, services… Also hiding the figures by for example calling someone working 1 hour a week, ’employed’.
Thanks savenz for that info. I thought that UK couldn’t do anything about influx of immigrants. Has Key been talking about his success in NZ in forcing down ages with substitute workers?
And a great interchange with Ad and you discussing. Should be put up on a post of its own, hopefully? All of 1 and perhaps have the cheeky heading of Economics for Dummies etc. Everyone would read it then, to prove to themselves that they weren’t actually dummies. Hah.
Jobs, who needs jobs when you have the promise of robots.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/asurequality/news/article.cfm?c_id=1504636&objectid=12175723
We can’t even grow food without polluting the place, and now we’re going to prove our incompetence by using robots to carry on with our shitty systems.
Soon the robots will be growing peas. After around a dozen sprays of pesticide, fungicide and herbicide, the peas will be converted to stringy protein, then, magic – the peas are meat.
It wont be country of origin you’ll need on the label, it will be organism of origin.
Now eat your meat.
“We are already industry leaders but my mandate is clear. It’s not about maintaining our position, it’s about defining and ensuring it in the future”
The writing is on the wall that we require sustainable solutions and a return to biodiversity. AsureQuality has no intention of aligning with the needs of the planet or society. They’re living in lalaland. Robots to grow the food, people to…. fuck right off, actually, workers are so demanding.
Profits, dear boy, we must consider the prophets.
When we do have all these robots doing cafes, restaurants, horticulture, farming, service work, wonder how we will afford all the unemployed people and retraining of people (if even possible) who have been bought into NZ and given permanent residency on the basis of low level skills that are about to be made redundant?
There’ll be an easy fix via robots for unwanted population. This is the age of post-Holocaust, and we as a broad culture still have not learned from that trauma to our concept of ourselves. The concept of euthanasia by personal choice can’t be countenanced because that is people thinking and acting for their own and society’s benefit., and recalls the Holocaust. But the drive behind the Holocaust continues just in different ways. Killing people in wars, in skirmishes, by cunning devices – bombs, grenades, manufactured in their millions; if people are in the way of the small group who respond or initiate the vast powers’ requirements, that killing continues unabated by pleas, the UN, or simple respect for others’ lives, souls and rights.
In the interim, neo lib has flowed into the cracks of our bewilderment with its cunning concepts of humans as simple push-button pigeons whose emotions override any semblance of rationality we delve for. We do everything for profit they say, either physical or to our mental state, our concepts of wellbeing, and are never really altruistic, we get a mental feelgood, a payoff.
Under this concept we have no souls, so suggest everyone who wants a better future for people clutch their souls and keep ithem shiny and good, because the neolib-economic human robots versed in the black arts will try and steal them. And the way to keep our souls is to care and sacrifice something of ourselves for the sake of other people’s wellbeing and also that of animals lives and welfare, people and animals first, and in parallel with environmental nurture.
There’s the acrid smell of Luddite in the air – and it’s very encouraging!
There will always be workers, there will always be fewer and fewer low paid and shit jobs. Robotics is just the same as mechanization, which has been with us for a wee while and the sky has not fallen in.
Headline unemployment at 3.6% and falling is going to force more investment in agricultural robotics. Great to see productivity being forced through labour shortages.
That’s a good thing.
I hear you little birdie Ad, chirpy-cheap-cheap.
Actually, it’s how fewer people can control more land requiring fewer people. In this manner pesky health regulations regarding workers and cide applications can just be shelved, and spray operators can go away too. No witnesses, no lawsuits. No workers, more profit.
It’s a brave new world in which robots roam a poisoned landscape. Some zap weeds with poison, others kill the bugs…
People are moved into smart boxes in cities. They are completely dependent on everything being plugged in. They order the smart food on smart devices which gets delivered smartly by other smart devices. The media says they caught a criminal gang pinching water. The robots got them though.
And now, sports.
Unemployment should be higher. Start with social media influencers, advertising executives, electronic billboard manufacturers, portfolio advisers, corporate science mouthpieces, everything that is Hosking, industrial agriculture, the oil industry, and the Producer of City of 100 Lovers.
WTB
You are so sharp, don’t cut yourself though, we need every drop of energy you have to keep churning out your vision of reality to mix with ours.
And for others who want to arrive at their visions from outside the blog try reading John Wyndham and his stories that think about how people will cope and act in different situations rather than the more traditional War of the Worlds SF. John called his stuff ‘logical fantasy’ and had a few reject slips before his publishers decided to give his approach some page room.
The Day of the Triffids is a good start. Read the book and let your mind create the scene, not just watch someone else’s version.
At present on Trademe there is a good selection for $7 each plus post, a short story The Eternal Eve about being probably the last fertile woman in the human race and how an independent woman reacts to that – that’s in an anthology Time Untamed, good reading all of them $3, Pick 4 SF for $12 and three are John Wyndham’s. And that’s just from the used group, lots of new issues. Give yourself some reading, either new or a reprise, for Christmas. Now that’s an idea.
Another idea – in Hastings? Hang out at ::
The Little Red Bookshop -.
Their huge collection of affordable books is a local treasure. As their website puts it, they are “proprietors of the best little second hand bookshop in Hastings, New Zealand. We may, on occasion, seem a touch irreverent, but hopefully in the nicest possible way”.
I knew it….
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-snorted-adderall-apprentice-tom-arnold-noel-casler-1257787%3famp=1
@3:40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9afSmPEQDo&feature=youtu.be
Hold the Christmas ham.
Superbugs resistant to antibiotics may be present in pork imported from Spain and Australia. However, because New Zealand does not test any products, no-one knows.
To date, MPI had not tested imported products for antimicrobial resistance.
MPI would not ban the import of the products because it was confident in New Zealand’s food safety systems. Note, a food safety system that doesn’t test for antimicrobial resistance.
Additionally, no figures exist for how many New Zealanders die from superbugs.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/109360391/animal-welfare-group-warns-of-potential-superbugs-in-imported-pork
Thanks for the Heads-up The Chairman. And salient points.
.
A 7-year-old Guatemalan girl died last week while in Border Patrol’s (CBP) custody. But a statement the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) released Thursday night about her death raises more questions than it answers.
The Washington Post reported that CBP told them the girl “died of dehydration and shock after she was taken into Border Patrol custody last week for crossing from Mexico into the United States illegally with her father and a large group of migrants along a remote span of New Mexico desert.”
According to CBP, the girl was traveling with a group of 163 migrants and was in CBP custody for more than eight hours before she started having seizures. She was transported to a hospital in El Paso, where she died. CBP says she “reportedly had not eaten or consumed water for several days.”
The timeline raises questions about whether CBP provided the girl, identified by the Guatemalan foreign ministry as Jackeline Caal, with food or water during the hours she was in their custody. But instead of addressing that concern, DHS, which oversees CBP, initially released a statement about Caal’s death that appears to try to shift blame onto her and her father for making the trek to the US in the first place.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/14/18140697/guatemalan-girl-dehydration-death-border-patrol-custody-dhs
Gee The Standard; – thanks to all the supporters here for us to keep public ownership of our Napier Port , as we do not want it privatised as we need the HBRC to “protect our residential and wider environment from harm that privateers would do by using the port as a dirty industrial activity as seen in other places around the globe.
we were given a tour of the tauranga Port and were impressed at the operations there as they are using far more rail freight whereas Napier needs to get Government support funding to restore the Rail services to Napier Port to encourage more rail freight again as should have happened years ago after the failed tragic sale of our public rail to privateers in 1993.
Ad we are scheduled to meet the HBRC CEO James Palmer 25th January and will raise that issue thanks very much for that. – Appreciated.
Jacinda Ardern named politician of the year by Tracy Watkins. Watkins said it was no contest and gave her 9:5 out of 10
Wishing Ms ardern a very merry Xmas and a restful holiday. Well earned, thank you jacinda
Just sayin’ 🙂
Best overall front bench
Too many of Labour’s front bench are yet to shine and they are leaning heavily on Ardern, Peters and Robertson. National’s front bench, in contrast, has been a machine, picking up in Opposition where they left off in government. They have consistently scored hits against the Government, have run hard on issues and scandals, and have made question time a ‘must watch’ again after years of irrelevance.
In short, National is fielding the best Opposition front bench we have seen in years and if it wasn’t for the Jami-Lee Ross train wreck, would get a near perfect score. But it’s hard to look past the fact that Ross was a key member of the front bench. The only reason National hasn’t been docked more points is because of the speed with which the caucus has recovered and moved on.
National 7.5/10. Labour 6/10
Housing spokeswoman Judith Collins: The joke goes that Collins could count on one finger the number of votes for her in the last leadership contest. Twelve months on, she is seen as the most likely successor to Bridges if his leadership fails. That’s an extraordinary turnaround for the woman who has had more political revivals than Lazarus. Love her or hate her, people know who she is.
8/10
Cometh the hour cometh the woman…
The most reliably robotic part of National is stabbing each other in the back, punching holes in their own waterline, and stammering in front of the camera.
9/10 for self-harm.
It’s not comical
The National Party seems to attract and recruit persons of low IQ. Paula Bennett and Simon Bridges are but two who just don’t seem to cope with ordinary demands of everyday life. Let alone politics.
So they rely on contrived fiction, and childlike cunning – constantly spewing a cloud of unknowing.
There is not a single person in the National Caucus who has standing.
On the recent Final Reading of the Bill to Decriminalise Medicinal Marijuana, not one National speaker mentioned the suffering and Pain of seriously ill persons.
I can only put the callous behaviour of National as a Cluster of Low Intelligence. They have been incompetent for over a decade now.
Their denial of housing crisis; their slovenly care of miners and loggers; their sales of Assets; their outrageous costs of Heating; their sickening slobering over wealthy friends – while hundreds of thousands live in Poverty …their cavalier approach to everything. Sir John Key has sold and is selling; everything that the people of New Zealand own.
Sir John Key is for people destruction unlimited.
That strange Judith Collins who somehow got a job as Minister of Police, and immediately forbade them to attend to home Burglary! For Petes Sake. She is the weird epitome of National.
Observer Tokoroa
You are saying what everyone is thinking, good one.
No they don’t.
As for IQ I would bet observers is in the lower quadrant if compared with national caucus.
Quartile
Hi James,
“As for IQ I would bet observers is in the lower quadrant if compared with national caucus.”
I am of the opinion that emotional intelligence and compassion are higher in the Labour front bench than the opposition’s.
Both attributes are more important than intelligence in leaders.
Opinions are like ….. etc
You’re talking out of your ….. etc jimbo.
James, Speaking of intellect – when I posted recently that CanTeen, the AYA cancer service, was about to axe most of their staff and close their regional offices, you accused me of “bullshit and spin”.
Subsequent media coverage has shown my comment was 100% accurate.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, James. On this forum you constantly exhibit a paucity of intellectual capacity. Could I suggest that, in future, you refrain from comment on subjects you are ignorant about?
And, yes, I realise that will render you mute.
You spin spin spin
Can you read, James? Please try.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/109307641/youth-cancer-charity-calls-on-australian-counsellors-after-17-local-jobs-cut
National are so good at opposition I’m hoping they stay there for along time
If you have access to a teenager (no sniggering), they might be able to show you a sarcasm emoticon that your contribution is missing.
You sound uncannily like Tracy Watkins…
National good front bench, same about theleaks
Audrey Young will have to have stern words with Tracey. By her assessment Jacinda is not doing very well and:
“Jacinda Ardern was forced to abandon her prime ministerial distance from the case of imprisoned Czech drug-smuggler Karel Sroubek.
She admitted she had received a text from a mutual acquaintance of hers and Sroubek’s commending her on the decision to let him stay in New Zealand (since reversed).
It confirmed a connection between her and the case, albeit a tenuous one, that National had clearly had a whiff of some weeks ago.”
There you go. Naughty Jacinda’s phone received a text. Damned.
“Simon Bridges trucked on in customary fashion, receiving no recognition for doing a reasonable job as Leader of the Opposition.” Good on yer Simon.
“”It was the news that Education Minister Chris Hipkins had agreed to support a member’s bill by former Education Minister Nikki Kaye to advance second language teaching in primary schools…….
….But an Opposition MP winning the support of Labour for a bill with such momentous and positive outcomes….
For that reason, Nikki Kaye is my Backbencher of the Year (runner-up is Maureen Pugh for her meteoric rise from obscurity).” (Not that any credit due the Government of course.
Rubbish from Audrey.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=12177022
Audrey is blinded by bitter rage and a loss of status.
Her blue dye has entered her eyes and brain to such a degree it is impossible to be reasonable let alone kind.
She bats for the National Cricket Club. (Thanks Mac1)
🙂 In cricketing parlance for batting she would be known as a ‘ferret’. They’re the ones who go in after the ‘rabbits’ .
Yes what a load of crap from A Y.
Anyone who thinks Simon is doing a reasonable job is deluded
Watkins is simply being a realist.
She works for Fairfax, and all their newspapers are going down the gurgler. Tracey, and probably all their “journalists”, will be out of a job by the end of 2019.
There are, on the other hand a lot of current vacancies for press secretaries in ministerial offices at the moment. What better way to get on the approved list of appointees than sucking up to the boss of the area?
Of course she is going to say nice things about the current lot of incompetents.
I mean to say. Twyford, the walking disaster zone, gets 6.5?
Not hard to get a good score when you hardly turn up
Who is hardly turning up Chris T?
Are we there yet? The kid in the backseat being annoying. Collins boring triads against the govt, have you built them yet. Are they built yet…
National were told to watch him, they so did not, worse a new govt was woefully misinformed. No remorse, they just keep blaming others.
Have you noticed how absolutely silent Bennett is.
Next time our beaches are closed from sewage
Think of the leadership and build build build too bad about inadequate infrastructure
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11992287
Ask yourself ,why all this development within the CBD when they haven’t solved the stormwater/Sewage issue – The Central Inceptor hasn’t commenced yet.
https://www.watercare.co.nz/About-us/News-media/Central-Interceptor-one-step-closer-to-start-date
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12008976
In 45 years, we have killed 60% of Earth’s wildlife
https://www.cntraveller.in/story/45-years-killed-60-earths-wildlife/?fbclid=IwAR0_fG50cNZfW-vpt4DZJ5JrCqnWCbi_qcko-6ObkDi_g8x0RQQAifeoY6Y
And by century’s end, we’ll have killed the lot.
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/115/25/6506/F1.large.jpg?width=800&height=600&carousel=1
Today, the biomass of humans (≈0.06 Gt C; SI Appendix, Table S9) and the biomass of livestock (≈0.1 Gt C, dominated by cattle and pigs; SI Appendix, Table S10) far surpass that of wild mammals, which has a mass of ≈0.007 Gt C (SI Appendix, Table S11).
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506
OMG Auckland after the thunderstorms last night it’s more like Brisbane it’s so humid.
Reporting in from Cyclone Owen; it’s passed inland to the south of us but we surely had a wet, stormy night. Lots of lightening and rain, plenty of wind but not damaging.
It’s dropped the temperature a into the mid-20’s so it’s not like working as a sauna attendant as it was last week.
The interesting observation; cyclones have been relatively rare in the Gulf of Carpentaria
http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/history/gulf.shtml
Now we’ve had two good ones, two years running.
Another cool cyclone story; about two months ago I was in Panama when Hurricane Michael hit Florida. That storm was so huge that it literally sucked all the rain out of the entire Caribbean afterwards. Where we were it was the middle of the wet season when it normally pisses down every day; but after Michael we had two whole weeks of dry weather.
What is there about you that attracts these storms?
Two of them when you were in the Gulf of Carpentaria and one when you were in the Caribbean, all within the last couple of years seems a bit more than a coincidence.
I had heard about Typhoid Mary, who caused a number of outbreaks of the disease as she moved around the New York area about a hundred years ago but you are surely the first person who appears to cause cyclones.
“Mary immigrated to the United States in 1883 and subsequently made her living as a domestic servant, most often as a cook. It is not clear when she became a carrier of the typhoid bacterium (Salmonella typhi). However, from 1900 to 1907 nearly two dozen people fell ill with typhoid fever in households in New York City and Long Island where Mary worked. The illnesses often occurred shortly after Mary began working in each household, but, by the time the disease was traced to its source in a household where she had recently been employed, Mary had disappeared.”
Can you control your powers? It would surely be incredibly useful if you could cause the rain without the wind. The farmers in the Murray/Darling area would pay you a fortune to break the drought there.
Did that warned thunderstorm earlier this afternoon near Rodney cause any problems?
It looked quite big on the Metservice warning graphic a couple of hours ago.
Nothing reported, but in the Kaipara they breed em tough
Brexit the movie.
https://youtu.be/xH-oScnJXB0
+10
I thought it was a straight faced satire but perhaps not Poission. Capturing the missing votes? Before the other side do.
The unmobilized mass mobilized,
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2016-07-04/the-2-8-million-non-voters-who-delivered-brexit
I guess there’s a sequel in the works, too.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/12/benedict-cumberbatch-on-playing-my-husband-dominic-cummings/
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/109281229/council-foils-grand-plans-for-head-hunters-headquarters-in-tokoroa
Awesome bit of work by the council.
This gang needs to be squashed like the toxic bug it is .
Wonder what they did with the Black Power pad that was just round the corner from the police station.
Palmy’s Mothers pad has been swallowed up by the distribution hub build out Railway road.
Not sure but these hh s are a growing force recruiting flat out . Nz will regret not going to war on them .
Going to war on them won’t help.
Getting them re-engaged with society will.
Mate I played rugby as a teen with a guy who is near the top in tauranga
Was a nice guy good parents no reason to be a drug dealer going round with a bunch young thugs for his shadows . But he does
There not lost boys they are people who have chosen the life they live .
They are very different from your kid from a poor house looking to belong .
Still better to re-engage than an outright war.
Meet the new guy.
https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1073707029129117696
Things like this make me glad I’m in NZ, you’ve got this guy or proven liar Elizabeth Warren
What a choice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50iwBkPbliw
I thought Elizabeth Warren was a pretty good sort – what has she lied about?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLI3SU33tIc
Her native american background, saying her parents had to elope because of being native american and she also benefited by Harvard hiring her and being Harvards first women of colour
When it turns out that she might be 1/64th and 1/1,024th, from 6 to 10 generations ago, and that that ancestry is actually Mexican, Peruvian, and Colombian
You or I might have more native ancestry than she does
OOoh she has to have a blood test to prove what she feels she is and how The Whites (Pinks) treat her. You are a petty poop PR.
The Boston Globe debunked the lie that Warren was appointed on the back of her claimed heritage.
The Globe closely reviewed the records, verified them where possible, and conducted more than 100 interviews with her colleagues and every person who had a role in hiring decisions about Warren who could be reached. In sum, it is clear that Warren was viewed as a white woman by the hiring committees at every institution that employed her.
Warren’s political enemies have long pushed a narrative that her unsubstantiated claims of Native American heritage turbocharged her legal career. But it is clear that Warren was viewed as a white woman by the hiring committees at every institution that employed her.
.
Among the records were some never examined before by a newspaper, including one key form that a University of Pennsylvania professor kept tucked away for three decades.
That previously undisclosed report reveals that the hiring committee at Penn, where Warren worked from 1987 to 1995, viewed her as a white female applicant. Moreover, the committee went to some pains to explain on this form why she was selected over several minorities to fill a faculty position.
Not until she had been teaching at Penn for two years did she authorize the university to change her personnel designation from white to Native American, the records show.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2018/09/01/did-claiming-native-american-heritage-actually-help-elizabeth-warren-get-ahead-but-complicated/wUZZcrKKEOUv5Spnb7IO0K/story.html
btw, Warren was a Republican at the time she was hired and changed her affiliation when she ran for Senate in the mid 90’s
How dare they treat her as a white person when she self-identifies as a native American.
No wonder they hid that form away. They would all have been fired if that information had become known that they had treated her as being white!.
On the other hand I can see why she would change her designation to the false one of being native-American at about the same time as she switched from registering as a Republican to being a Democrat. Both sorts of people are fantasists and derangement on her part was clearly setting in.
Only the Peruvian wouldn’t be native American.
https://www.iflscience.com/environment/organic-food-is-worse-for-the-climate-than-nonorganic-food/?fbclid=IwAR2NCjDTI866MK6-mohoVVP_4P9PthksJUDaeOJGG6Us0istpJzDxy3qP4o
Pardon the expression but its food for thought 🙂
Those figures are nonsense. Forcing organic systems to be grown like conventional fields and then saying see! – buy our fertiliser.
Never mind the loss of soil structure and subsequent hardpan, erosion and flooding, never mind the loss of insects, fungi and other soil microbiota, never mind the loss of soil organic matter and carbon. Never mind the rivers, the dead patches in the oceans. Never mind the pollinators, the predators, the birds that eat them. Never mind the water cleansing, or the pathogen and toxin reducing activities of the soil. Never mind the ever increasing lawsuits. Never mind the ever increasing deserts.
Because science.
👍
Pucky’s link and his reasons for posting it leave me a little saddened. In some ways, he seems a thoughtful guy, in others, plain daft. WTB’s response is nuanced, well reasoned and accurately applied, but Pucky, through his non-response, will collect a dullard or two for his cause. So it goes, but we don”t have to admire such duplicity, such ingenuousness. Food for thought, Pucky?
Nah.
Just dum sh*t.
‘K?
Blind adherence to anything is not good, unquestioning obedience is not good, all things should be questioned
But mostly I just follow IFL on facebook because it generally has interesting topics
You seem to be good with the compost PR.
IFLS is as sub-par as sciblogs NZ…
I personally will not click links to either site…
I f-ken love science…
The ‘quality’ is foreshadowed through the sites name…
heh
https://twitter.com/CarlMullan/status/1073354704460099584
Seems Mick Mulvaney‘s been appointed acting Chief of Staff.
Bugger. I’m gutted Chris Christie apparently turned it down. Never mind, maybe he’ll have a change of heart when they have to go through the process again in a few Scaramuccis.
Looks like a smockscreen to covfefe that nobody wants the job.
We all pay into this Aotearoa health insurance company shonky and joice turned it into a stock market trading toy for his rich m8 on the stock market to suck cash out of Kiwis in return for stuffed up service no service so his m8 had more money to trade.
Here is how a neo capitalist runs OUR Accident Compensation Corporation shonky flips the actual function of services provided by ACC and makes the staff compete to keep people in poverty and hard ship all the fools backing national will feel the sharp end of the captilist stick if they get a long term INJURY. I see the CEO of the Rotorua hospital has resigned my 10 year old grand daughter is still in pain thanks to the sandflys &——-
The $8m doctor: ACC pays for ‘wholly speculative diagnosis that does not accord with the clinical facts’, judge says The agency regularly calls in Christchurch’s Dr Bill Turner to reassess patients who have been granted ACC entitlements for chronic pain; court judgments show ACC consistently uses Turner’s opinions to cancel entitlements or cover.
In some cases, Turner considers the pain is in the sufferer’s head. In most cases, there is no question the patients are in severe pain: the only question is whether the pain is caused by injury – or is a vague “syndrome” as Turner sometimes argues. On numerous occasions he has assessed the pain as a syndrome, and nothing to do with the pig hunting accidents, car crashes and other injuries the claimants suffered. A former ACC employee told Stuff that ACC branches across the country compete to “exit” clients off their books before they reach 70, 180 or 365 days of cover. A weekly “traffic light” report indicates how the branch is performing and managers encourage case managers to look for people to get off their books.
“I’m one of the lucky ones,” Gordon said. “Although I’ve got this constant chronic pain to deal with, I can still do my job, and can avoid taking too many drugs. But some people would lose a life line with decisions like this and get totally crushed.”
LIFE SENTENCE WITHOUT REVIEW
Review decisions are final, often life-changing for the claimant and worth thousands of dollars in compensation and treatment. Ka kite ano link below
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/107963931/the-8m-doctor-acc-pays-for-wholly-speculative-diagnosis-that-does-not-accord-with-the-clinical-facts-judge-says
Kia ora from R&R Sugar is a man made substance in its natrual form its ok but the way it refined and bleached it’s not good. drop sugar out of your diet when is the government going to do the logical and sceneable thing and tax sugar out off reach of our mokopuna . The main goal in a good diet is unprocessed food as in prosessing food they put poison it the food to colour it and to stop bacteria growing in the food hence the poison stops food spoiling that’s a fact. Te Hakari was a really important phenomenon for the maori of old we made sure we put the best kai in the whenua in a hakari for the guest this was a thing of pride hence no whenua no good hakari no mana. The one food I have not seen since I was nine was steamed corn bread in tinfoil
that was the best kai Eco Maori liked .
Kina Paua Ika tuna koura. I agree that unless the doctor has stated you need a diet thats when you go on one the rest in the media are just fads to make some one money. Just eat less fatty foods IE cut the fat off and feed it to the pets no sugar grow your own organic vegetables as it the traces of chemicals in our food’s that slowly kill us causing cancer hence the cancer rate is rising fast in our Papatuanuku I love a good hangi the Papatuanuku waste 1 3rd of the food prouduced the logical and cheaps way to feed the Papatuanuku is to solve the waste problem not try and do gods work and grow synthetic meat that could have who nose what in it and big companys have shown they can not be trusted to do the good things
Ka kite ano Happy new year to the R&R Team.
I disagree re fats but mostly love your post. the fats is a whole other argument, but basically, the natural ones got a bad rap so industry could sell you lots of cheap nasty vegetable based ‘healthy’ alternatives.
I am now growing sugar cane in Auckland and so others might do the same. It needs full northern aspect, shelter, and plenty of water and compost. There are many types of crushers online I actually go to a restaurant he crushes it and keeps half. But crushers are available, or you can just make a traditional one out of bamboo – youtube is your friend. The sap can be rendered down to jaggery, or with fruit to make preserves, or just drunk. It’s great with vodka and a twist of lemon!
Prepare and plant a patch in Autumn by laying sections of cane in a trench and burying. youtube it. It’ll pop in spring.
Alternative sweeteners you can ‘grow’ are stevia, and honey. Stevia is a herb used in many drinks etc but has thousands of years of traditional use. It is not everyone’s cup of tea. I like using it in some things e.g. fruit, and not others e.g. hot drinks.
Honey… If you have a section surrounded by plant life… Beekeepers may put a hive on your property and tend it and you get some of the honey. Sweet deal.
Gardens. Because exercise, health, diet, sun, community, medicine, life.
Lets get this straight the #METO movement is not anti Men Its all about treating wahine with the respect they deserve the neo’s of the world are scared about losing contro and power hence they are trying to BRAND the #METO movement as anti Men
There’s nothing like a daughter to make Dad see the world differently
Barbara Ellen
While many men miraculously manage not to be chauvinists all by themselves, for others a daughter could prove a wake-up call that is stronger, more visceral than any number of #MeToo campaigns. At which point, big and small inequalities that may have passed almost unnoticed regarding women they’ve known and even loved (mothers, sisters, friends) are thrown into unprecedented sharp focus. As I say, an education – that “man’s world” could start looking very different when a father’s “mighty girl” has to navigate it.
My eldest child is a wahine my eldset mokopuna is a wahine 70 % of my whano are wahine what really convinced me to back the #METO movement was Eco Maori’s challenges our male dominant society has thrown at me and the BIG MESS this male dominated society is making of OUR World at the minute hence I figured out that man has been deliberately suppressing mana wahine for thousands of years as some new that Wahine would kick there asses in the board room into doing the humane thing and put people’s welbeing before there profit. Ka kite ano links below.
P.S having beautiful daughters and granddaughters did open my EYE’s to one never stops learning .
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/15/nothing-like-a-daughter-to-made-dad-see-the-world-differently
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXWh1Z2Q4n8
All our Coral Reef’s around the world are dying because off climate change and 30% of Australia Great Barrier Reef dyed of in a heat wave in 2016 and thats a crying shame . The Reef of the world are the nursery of the Oceans no reef no fish no fish masse human starvation we have to forget about politicians and make changes to our life styles to save our grandchildren future ourselves My carbon foot print has dropped a lot in the last six months .
Dr Pillans hoped despite the gloom and doom about the reef’s future, her story would give children hope that they could do something to help.
Her key message was greenhouse gas emissions had to be cut now.
“I don’t think it’s too late, but we have to start now. We can’t keep saying ‘tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow’,” she said.
“There are ways to save energy (such as turning off lights, walking instead of driving) and help the planet which will then help the reef.”
It has taken her six years to get the story right.
“It’s not as easy as people think. You have to make sure, when you are an author/illustrator, the words and pictures have to be as one,” she said.
“There has to be highs and lows and resolution and problems.
“All that has to be there in a big adventure to keep children’s attention.
“I had many iterations of this book and each publisher would say ‘we really love the idea of it, however you can’t tell children there is no hope’.
“It was really hard for me to provide a publisher with a story of hope and solutions.
Ka kite ano links below.
https://www.centralnorthburnetttimes.com.au/news/marine-biologist-pens-book-to-inspire-children-to-/3599059/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-DQNTKOO1M
No fish the sandfly is stuffing with my other computer the little churchy boy who thinks he is perfect is not getting his way is brating out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgVVG5EknuI
I love my Crayfish but like I have stated the Quota management system is a system set up for the neo bankers it does not preserve our fishes razing and lowering the Quoter at the wim of the bankers it looks like shonky and his m8 new that CRA2 has nearly collapsed and chose to ignore the situation to keep the dollars flowing into there economy .Eco Maori backs the calls to ban fishing in CRA2 of at the very least drop the recreational take to 2 fish pre person as CRA 2 has the highest population in Aotearoa hence the over fishing every man and his dog has a boat and crayfish are so easy to catch with a pot. Cleaning up shonkys mess once again is Our coalition Government
Environmentalists want to take crayfish off the menu this summer, with a three-year ban on catching the delicacy in the Hauraki Gulf and Bay of Plenty.
Stocks of the Kiwi favourite were once prolific in the waters that stretch between Waipu and the East Cape.
But Forest and Bird say the crustaceans – also known as rock lobster – are now “functionally extinct” in the area.
The Government is currently considering whether to slash the daily allowance for recreational fishers from six to three crayfish.
READ MORE:
* Big cuts to crayfish catch limits from Auckland to East Cape
* Hauraki Gulf marine life has fallen by more than half since 1925, report finds
* Crayfish ‘functionally extinct’ in the Hauraki Gulf “Crayfish in this area are in very serious trouble,” Forest and Bird marine advocate Katrina Goddard said. “The population has basically collapsed.
“In 2017, they estimated there is just 20 per cent of the population left.”
When stocks drops below ten per cent, the fishery must close – and Goddard says that threshold may have been reached in some areas.
It follows huge enforced cuts to the commercial catch in April, down from 200 tonnes to 80 tonnes. Ka kite ano links below
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/109355321/dwindling-crayfish-numbers-sparks-call-for-fishing-ban P.S We all want OUR mokopunas to be-able to see and taste crayfish or that matter any fish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxOzDRr206g
Kia ora Newshub I say the government’s plan to make the roads safer with the wire rope safty barriers is cool ka pai July .
Many thanks to all the people at the UN Climate meeting in Poland who hammered out a agreement Ka pai as Jamie Shaw said trying to get 200 od people to come to a agreement is a hard task on its own.
Ka pai to the Wellington company for plans to get a electric Ferry that’s the way of the future and I am sure you will get heaps of passengers because of the ferry being green energy powered .
Going over the Alps for Africans refugees is a hard way to get to a good life in France and dangerous journey its just shows how desperate they are .
The Bhutanese conjoined twins look happy all the best to them Good on the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne .
Ka kite ano
I see Peter Williams from TV1 News is retiring ka pai E hoa you have been a good kiwi role male role model for our youth all the best 40 years A There has to be some major changes in how we live our lives in the next few years ka kite ano
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHCob76kigA
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM7MFYoylVs
I have China to thank for Solar panels price dropping faster than anyone predicted .
The cost $100 for a 100 watt panel to set up a small 2000 watt off grid solar system will only cost me $4000 and with gas power hot water and cooking that size system wold be ok for 2 people . It is now cheaper to build a solar powered power station than it is to burn Coal fools who back as in the past when some one has backed the wrong Horse will lose there ASS.
Shenzhen’s silent revolution: world’s first fully electric bus fleet quietens Chinese megacity
All 16,000 buses in the fast-growing Chinese megacity are now electric, and soon all 22,000 taxis will be too Y
ou have to keep your eyes peeled for the bus at the station in Shenzhen’s Futian central business district these days. The diesel behemoths that once signalled their arrival with a piercing hiss, a rattle of engine and a plume of fumes are no more, replaced with the world’s first and largest 100% electric bus fleet.
Shenzhen now has 16,000 electric buses in total and is noticeably quieter for it. “We find that the buses are so quiet that people might not hear them coming,” says Joseph Ma, deputy general manager at Shenzhen Bus Group, the largest of the three main bus companies in the city. “In fact, we’ve received requests to add some artificial noise to the buses so that people can hear them. We’re considering it.” The benefits from the switch from diesel buses to electric are not confined to less noise pollution: this fast-growing megacity of 12 million – which was a fishing village until designated China’s first “special economic zone” in the 1980s – is also expected to achieve an estimated reduction in CO2 emissions of 48% and cuts in pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, non-methane hydrocarbons and particulate matter. Shenzhen Bus Group estimates it has been able to conserve 160,000 tonnes of coal per year and reduce annual CO2 emissions by 440,000 tonnes. Its fuel bill has halved.
Ka kite ano links below
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/dec/12/silence-shenzhen-world-first-electric-bus-fleet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo3DGtdL7zA
A Eco Maori video for the moment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_fHScmyWTA
Eco Maori trys his best not to waste anything we need to change the way we live to preserve the future
Why 2m kilos of Christmas cheese will end up in the bin … and how to cut back on your household’s waste in UnitedKingdom .
But for many households the Christmas cheeseboard has become an elaborate affair – often resulting in a vast amount of waste. Now, as a new survey estimates that 2.2m kilograms of cheese from the festive dining table will be chucked in the bin this year, specialists are urging shoppers to aim for a “zero waste” cheeseboard. “If you buy cheese that tastes amazing you’re far less likely to waste it,” said Dominic Coyte of Borough Cheese Company. “In my house I tend to end up with lots of small bits left, so I grate and freeze it. Freezing can affect the texture so it loses its rigidity, but it’s still good to use for cheese on toast or in sauces or gratins. The remainders of a boxed soft cheese can also be baked in the oven with garlic, rosemary and white wine – day-old bread with a bit of bite is ideal for dipping in it.”
The new research from Borough Market shows that the average seasonal platter will be heaving with up to five pieces of cheese, yet six in 10 consumers surveyed (57%) admitted they will throw much of it away. According to the findings, two-thirds (63%) are planning to serve at least one cheeseboard over the festive period, while one in five (22%) will push the boat out and offer three or more. links below Ka kite ano.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/16/cheese-uk-waste-mountain-christmas-borough-market
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR3o6y2j2xk
Trillions of dollars of investments are being taken out of carbon-intensive companies. Governments must now take notice
Eco Maori is calling on the Vaticain Bank to drop its investments in carbon for the future. If they don’t it will be there money lost as shares slid in value the writing on the wall
Here is were the people can stop the carbon barrons in there tracks everyone demand that there saving not to be invested in carbon companys the will go broke and slid into OUR History books. Ana to kai/ take that.
We can’t count on governments alone to do the work necessary – governments, from Canada and America to Russia and Saudi Arabia to China and India, are still too often beholden to the fossil fuel companies. We need to keep pushing hard on those companies – and we will.The list of institutions that have cut their ties with this most destructive of industries encompasses religious institutions large and small (the World Council of Churches, the Unitarians, the Lutherans, the Islamic Society of North America, Japanese Buddhist temples, the diocese of Assisi); philanthropic foundations (even the Rockefeller family, heir to the first great oil fortune, divested its family charities); and colleges and universities from Edinburgh to Sydney to Honolulu are on board, with more joining each week. Forty big Catholic institutions have already divested; now a campaign is urging the Vatican bank itself to follow suit. Ditto with the Nobel Foundation, the world’s great art museums, and every other iconic institution that works for a better world.Thanks to the efforts of groups such as People & Planet (and to the Guardian, which ran an inspiring campaign), half the UK’s higher education institutions are on the list. And so are harder-nosed players, from the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund (at a trillion dollars, the largest pool of investment capital on Earth) to European insurance giants such as Axa and Allianz. It has been endorsed by everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to Barack Obama to Ban Ki-moon (and, crucially, by Desmond Tutu, who helped run the first such campaign a generation ago, when the target was apartheid).Now the contagion seems to be spreading to the oil and gas sector, where Shell announced earlier this year that divestment should be considered a “material risk” to its business. That’s how oil companies across the world are treating it – in the US, petroleum producers have set up a website designed to discredit divestment,. and for a while had me under round-the-clock public surveillance. The pressure is not preventing anyone from acting: when Yale arrested 48 brave students who were occupying its investment offices last week, they left chanting: “We’ll be back Eco Maori know what thats like lol Links below ka kite ano P.S Kiwis can demand that our Kiwisave not be invested in carbon to.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/16/divestment-fossil-fuel-industry-trillions-dollars-investments-carbon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0DWsd0EkyU
This forest is a rear phenomenon and is being negatively affected by climate change like the Great reefs and Ice cap’s at a much faster rate than scientists’ pridicted
“All of us scientists, not just in America but around the world, know that climate change is being exacerbated. Being caused by human activities, by overconsumption, by use of fossil fuels. And for our leadership to take exactly the wrong turn, to remove ourselves from the Paris treaty, to encourage coal mining …
“What I feel I need to do is to bring my science, bring my understanding of what’s going on in the tropical cloud forest and other ecosystems to the people, to policymakers.
“I think that scientists are becoming more political. We have become less afraid to speak out against the political regimes that are making these wrong decisions. In the past, even ten years ago, my fellow scientists would not be making these statements.”
Nadkarni reflects on the change. “You know each species that moves or disappears has repercussions in terms of the ecosystem as a whole. Now the plants are a little bit harder to see. But I know when I climb in the forest, that compared with when I started here 39 years ago, the canopy dwelling plants – the mosses, the filmy ferns – they were much more abundant, much more plush, much more … just wet, than they are now.”
For millenium the WEALTHY have silenced the TRUTH TELLER’s OUR scientist to protect there power now we have the 21 century communication device the internet and social media now the game is changing mostly for the better for human kind
Links below the sandflys are stuffing with my computer once again Eco Maori will never give up the fight for a good future for OUR grandchildren ka kite ano
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/dec/16/head-in-the-clouds-climate-change-nalini-nadkarni-costa-rica-monteverde
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDUJCfnvC0M
Cheeseboards – the modern equivalent of the fondue.
Kia ora Newshub That is awsome busting those men who were importing Meth into Aotearoa many thanks to all involved in the bust 25 years jail.
Colndolences to the whano of the people who dyed in the plane crash in Raglan .
To much to the 84 year Kiwi lady who survived being losed in Australia outback desert.
There you go the slave labour in Hawkes bay apple picking industry they will have displaced hundreds of kiwi workers. Is this some one elses mess once again.
One has to respect Tangaroa and creatures climate change and over fishing will cause more of these shark attack incident’s all around Papatuanuku.
We got gift cards for Chrismas presents so easy and the mokopunas get to chose there presents
Its good that Pharmac is getting the medicine for Hep C Ka pai many people will have a much better life because of this move.
Rocketlab that is good news for Peter Beck his team Aotearoa and Mahia
Eco Maori seen the story in the stuff website I support the cut the ban some people are more worryed about the putea lost instead of the loss of the fishes.
Its about time the Lawsociety change the law profession system to hold powerful lawers to acount for the way the treat wahine or anyone.
Printed veins and body parts is the way of the future its exciting times in the health profession . Ka kite ano