Open mike 15/12/2024

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, December 15th, 2024 - 18 comments
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18 comments on “Open mike 15/12/2024 ”

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  1. bwaghorn 1
    15 December 2024 at 9:47 am

    https://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=166480

    Hopefully the people of otaki fight bag like the people of manawatu did , and force minister brown out of town with his double dipping tolls.

    • Mike the Lefty 1.1
      15 December 2024 at 9:57 am

      I know that the new Manawatu-Woodville road was never originally intended to be a toll road, ostensibly because it was a replacement rather than a by-pass, but I'm not sure if the new northern Horowhenua expressway is in the same category.

      By the way, I heard a story once that the objections to the by-pass were mostly by property owners headed by one Nathan Guy – the National Party ex-MP for Otaki who apparently likes by-passes except when they go near HIS property.

      Not sure if it is accurate, but here it is anyway.

      • bwaghorn 1.1.1
        15 December 2024 at 10:41 am

        In the fine print of an article I read the other day brown is slipping through the ability to toll existing roads, I pay road users , tolls is double dipping, in the past I was open to tolls but my views have changed

    • Mac1 1.2
      15 December 2024 at 10:09 am

      Brown is certainly creating a heap of resistance.

      https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/12/13/such-a-load-of-s-speed-limits-test-tasman-mayors-patience/?

      It's all noise and 'look at me', while the Minister of Transport's need for speed exhausts our patience.

      • Bearded Git 1.2.1
        15 December 2024 at 1:36 pm

        Yeah I heard several people a couple of months ago on RNZ whinging about the speed limit being raised from 80 to 100 somewhere, because they felt much safer at 80.

        The problem for Brown is the lower limits have been in long enough for people to realise that they are actually a good idea.

  2. Jenny 2
    15 December 2024 at 11:12 am

    Good on the Labour Party.

    This bodes well for the future of our environmental protections under a Labour led administration.

    The business pundits are always saying, 'We need certainty'.

    Let's give them certainty. Let's ask our opposition leaders to announce now, that a Labour led administration will scrap the fast track legislation.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/131678615/give-us-certainty-sustainable-business-leaders-plead-after-climate-assessment.

    Give us certainty, sustainable business leaders plead after climate assessment

    Olivia Wannan

    April 06, 2023 •05:00am

    …..with climate policies currently being jettisoned under the Hipkins-led Government, climate-concerned businesses may need to step up their efforts, they have warned.

    ……

    “It seems as if the only businesses speaking out about political change are in favour of not adapting,” she [Dewar] says. “All this chopping and changing that we’ve seen from Labour is infuriating… When things are scrapped or shelved, we all need to make a noise about it.”

    [TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]

    • James Thrace 2.1
      15 December 2024 at 8:18 pm

      Imo, the focus should be on eliminating plastics and moving to hemp as a sustainable and renewable resource.

      Everything plastic can be made from hemp. The upshot is that one crop of hemp in an acreage takes out as much CO2 in one year as a radiata plantation in an acreage does in 10 years.

      It would be the best of both worlds.

      The “downside” to having hemp containers is they tend to last around 3-6 months depending on usage, but when they’re done, they can be composted. There would be enough of them being produced that replacement hemp containers wouldn’t cost that much as the supply would more than meet demand.

      I would rather the environmental focus shift to a move away from plastics than be so heavily focused on CO2 which is ultimately a beneficial gas for plants, and especially hemp.

      • Jenny 2.1.1
        16 December 2024 at 8:09 am

        Plastic pollution is a vile and disgusting practice.

        Banning All plastic packaging in this country, would create a demand for paper bags and wrapping. And set an example for the world. If the fibre for producing paper bags and wrapping paper came from hemp, and it is more sustainable than pine trees, I'm not opposed.

        Make Paper Great Again

        Think of all the jobs that could be saved and created at Kinleith our biggest paper manufacturer

        https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/12/10/hundreds-attend-meeting-over-proposed-partial-closure-of-kinleith-mill/

        We're here tonight to listen [and] do everything our party can to advocate for you, to work with you, and we see a chance to come to a real solution," he [Winston Peters] told the crowd."

        Green MP Tamatha Paul, who is from Tokoroa, told 1News she wanted the mill to stay.

        A number of mill and plant closures have rocked communities across the country this year, including the Ruapehu District's largest employer Winstone Pulp International shuttering two mills in the central North Island.

        Seventy-five jobs were also confirmed to go at Oji's paper recycling mill in Auckland's Penrose last month.

        "It's not surprising, people don't consume newspapers as much any more….." [Christopher Luxon PM]

      • Jenny 2.1.2
        18 December 2024 at 10:13 pm

        James Thrace @2.1

        15 December 2024 at 8:18 pm

        Imo, the focus should be on eliminating plastics…..

        I would rather the environmental focus shift to a move away from plastics than be so heavily focused on CO2 which is ultimately a beneficial gas for plants,….

        CO2 may be beneficial for plants Jim, but too much is no good for the climate. But you may be on to something about the other dangers of plastics.

        Plastic chemicals linked to hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide

        A review of chemical exposures across 38 countries finds common plastic products are linked to millions of cases of heart disease and thousands of strokes

        By Grace Wade

        16 December 2024

        https://www.new scientist.com/article/2460960-plastic-chemicals-linked-to-hundreds-of-thousands-of-deaths-worldwide/?

        https://www.newscientist.com/article/2460960-plastic-chemicals-linked-to-hundreds-of-thousands-of-deaths-worldwide/

        …..in 2015, about 5.4 million cases of coronary artery disease and 346,000 strokes were associated with BPA exposure and that roughly 164,000 deaths in people between 55 and 64 years old may have been due to DEHP.

        How much should we worry about the health effects of microplastics?

        A flurry of studies has found microplastics in nearly every organ in the human body, from the brain to the testicles. But very few have revealed whether these tiny bits of plastic impact our health

        By Grace Wade

        25 September 2024

        It seems every few months, we discover microplastics in a new part of the body. We have found them in our livers, kidneys, lungs and guts. They have even shown up in human breast milk and blood. Last week, they turned up again in eight people’s olfactory bulbs, a brain structure crucial for smell.

        These plastic fragments are so small – less than 5 millimetres in size – they can make their way into our bodies through food, water and even the air…

        https://www.newscientist.com/article/2449545-how-much-should-we-worry-about-the-health-effects-of-microplastics/

        [Added corrected link and missing second link that appears to require [a] subscription (i.e. it’s just spam and pretty useless for discussion here on TS – Incognito]

  3. adam 3
    15 December 2024 at 12:56 pm

    CEO's are the….

  5. SPC 5
    15 December 2024 at 1:45 pm

    Councils seek protection (litigation action) from insurers (and homeowners) over flood protection failure.

    https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/12/13/councils-calling-for-law-change-to-protect-them-from-insurers/

  6. Jenny 6
    15 December 2024 at 3:31 pm

    Words fail me

  7. joe90 7
    15 December 2024 at 6:38 pm

    Tl,dr: racism, perceived grievances, too many browns/poors doing better than they should do and a desire to have somebody to look down on.

    .

    A Disease of Affluence

    Trump's supporters are not motivated by economic anxiety, but by its opposite.

    […]

    A mean and slavish people

    The narrative that hardship makes people tribal, and nativist, and mean, and vindictive—that toleration is only possible in a society of pure affluence—reflects a dark view of human nature. If that is true, then socialism, or even a progressive liberalism, isn’t. Those things aren’t compatible. It’s also a much more condescending view than whatever is ascribed to sneering affluent liberals by those who hold it.

    But it isn’t true. The core of the MAGA base isn’t people who can’t afford enough $2 packs of pasta and $3 jars of tomato sauce to feed their children. I’m not saying that person doesn’t exist, but statistically they’re not representative. MAGA is someone who earns $70,000 a year and is angry that their overpriced Whole Foods costs a bit more. MAGA is someone who is angry that they might have to shift from buying their goods at a middle-class-coded supermarket to the cheaper, working-class-coded supermarket.

    The American Republic has been pulled down, possibly past the point of no return, by affluent people. People who have lives their ancestors would have literally killed for. Who on average spend 10% of their pay on groceries, the lowest in the country’s history, not to mention human history. Who are lashing out at others at the slightest inconvenience, because they want to lash out at others.

    Americans are prosperous, but without any deep sense of obligations to others. We are a highly commercial, individualist people, and when we let go of even a thin liberal conception of the public good, we become nasty, petty, small, vindictive and irrational. J.S. Mill, a philosopher who truly prized individual development, also warned of its dangers in isolation:

    The spirit of a commercial people will be… essentially mean and slavish wherever public spirit is not cultivated by an extensive participation of the people in the business of government.

    https://www.liberalcurrents.com/a-disease-of-affluence/

      • thinker 7.1.1
        15 December 2024 at 8:30 pm

        I think it was Mussolini who explained that communism was state control of corporations while fascism was corporate control of the state.

        There doesn't seem to be any room left for capitalism, unless capitalism is a divide between/separation of corporates and the state, which appears not to be the case (anymore?).

        I'm still thinking about what to make of it.

    • Jenny 7.2
      16 December 2024 at 10:16 am

      The millions of Americans who work in the factories in packing houses, in the service industries, those who do the cleaning and caring in retirement villages and in the hospitals and schools; who live pay check to pay check, vastly outnumber the more affluent middle classes,

      The middle classes though less numerous than the blue collar working classes, vastly out number the millionaire class.

      The middle classes are more affluent, more educated, with more access to resources and leisure, are able to lift their heads up above the struggle to make ends meet, that consumes the working poor and blue collar class.

      The middle classes have at different times and different circumstances been the decisive class in society.

      Where they go, society follows.