I recommend Powershop. They have a $50 friend referral promotion at the moment: you and your friend both get $50 credit when they sign up. I’d be happy to refer you but I’d need your email address to do so. Let me know if you’re interested and we can work out how to exchange ‘real’ addresses anonymously.
Using Powershops detailed price history, I calculated I was about $20 ahead compared to one of the companies (Mercury I think), but only because I purchased every available special that powershop had. If I hadn’t, I would have been slightly behind.
Powershop also have the 30 minute power usage chart if you’ve got a smart meter, so you can see over the last 4 weeks how much power you used in any given 30 minute block. Since I am on a day/night meter, this lets me hightlight periods of high usage, remember what I was doing at the time, and make a conscious decision to defer that power usage to the night period when the power is cheaper.
Puchasing power in advance is something that powershop offers though, and this year although they put their prices up by 5% (thanks to Transpower etc), they gave us the opportunity to buy power in advance at the ‘current’ price.
I should also add with Powershop that all of these features are entirely optional: you can just treat it like any other power company “set and forget” and they’ll automatically bill you your usage at the end of the month. But you can also buy power in advance (months, or just the current month), track your power usage and buy specials etc. If you’ve got a smart meter it is all fully automatic. If you don’t then you’ll need to enter your own meter reads.
They are more or less all the same. They all use the same contractors for their field work, and a lot of them have the same billing system. Contact, Genesis and Pulse have GenTrack and MERC have SAP. Reading/billing are done on a 20 day cycle, with Genesis/Contact being read 2 monthly and the rest monthly.
Due to so many people switching there has been huge instances with data getting mixed up. For example if you live in Devon Street, New Plymouth, and switched to CEL, you might just end up getting signed in as a customer in Devon St, Rotorua.
And dont get me started on smart meters. The amount of issues that people are having after having one installed are horrendus, things not working, fuses blowing, part power, etc and so on.
“The average farm worker is now earning $5500 a year more than the national average wage and salary, according to a Federated Farmers/Rabobank survey, and pay levels for most pastoral farm positions have continued to increase.”
A little more journo work and The Herald would have discovered that farm workers need to work 80 to 100 hours a week to get this. Many farmers require “couples” so often this is a combined household income, the conditions in dairy farms with over 500 cows are atrocious….come on Herald, do your work, do an hourly rate.
‘A little more journo work and The Herald would have discovered that ….’
2 issues with that statement, 1. They aren’t jouno’s but press release recyclers and 2. ‘work’ as in research and verifiability of facts from disparate sources doesn’t happen in granny’s world.
They’ve done their work which is giving a soapbox to their backers being the wealthy elite under the illusion the story has actually been validated.
Same’s true for orchardists and fruit pickers, where I’m from. Only the greedies have trouble finding staff, usually corporate farmers. Give decent pay and conditions, voila, no problem finding staff. They should try it sometime.
Labour would consider allowing the GCSB to spy on New Zealanders in limited circumstances but …
In reversal of the usual rule, everything after the “but” is bullshit, and I’d take the “limited” with a grain of salt, several Siberian mines and the Red Sea.
I think that this position is pretty good.
“”An inquiry’s necessary because it’s not just about the GCSB, it’s also about the SIS and the relationship with the police. It’s right across the board and what I don’t want to do is to have a narrow, quick-fix Bandaid type of solution for something that is much more fundamental.”
The essential point is that a full enquiry be held first. Surely you would expect the facts and consequences of any “reform” be considered? There is a probability that Mr Key will rush through changes without an enquiry and in a way to suit the National agenda.
What would you choose?
Band aid or decisions based on an enquiry?
FFS if a NZ citizen needs to be surveilled it should be a police job with police protections in place, not the job of the spooks – whose role is to keep a watch on the activities of foreign powers.
Or does Labour think that we should head down the US route where the bullshit ‘terrorism’ flag is waved around in order to justify expansion of state security powers over local citizens.
All this from Shearer, Mr Mercernary Man himself. How reassuring.
Read Trotter on the subject: he asks the question of “why a non military appointee?”
The answer he has is that the whole spy / surveillance thing has moved away from foreign nations (posing a national sovereignty threat) to the enforcement of international private interests (commercial copyright etc).
Exactly DTB. Shearer has sold out our rights to not be spied on before the process has even begun. I don’t think they’ll kick up much of a fuss even at an inquiry, because they would want to spy on the same people that Key does. Given a golden opportunity to make a stand, he falls over in a puddle of his own dribble.
Apart from the egregious contempt for civil liberties, which Labour has long played fast and loose with (Hello Goff!), I’m pissed off by Shearer’s own utter, utter, utter stupidity. Once again, when an issue seems to be gaining some traction, Shearer barges in trying to prove how important and statesman-like he is and once again he fucks it up for everyone.
His brain-fade over his bank account might have been an honest mistake, but he gave ammunition to National – who can now say “He’s incompetent or a liar, take your pick. Do you trust this man with the country’s finances?”
Now it’s going to be, “But he supports expanded GCSB powers too,” thereby marginalising the Green campaign on the issue and undermining his own frigging deputy Robertson’s own work.
What’s he going to say in a debate?
“Well, ah, I mean… I mean I meant… within… I mean, ah, with appropriate safeguards…. and I do disagree – yes, I disagree – I’m making a stand here! I disagree… I mean I might, I might disagree over your placement of a comma on line twelve of… um, something you released…. um… oh dear, where’s my bit of paper…”
Key’s just going to smirk and crush him with a soundbite.
He’s worse than wrong, he’s a phuqyng idiot. Again.
One week, Dear God, please, one week without Shearer being a dick.
Shearer’s performance or lack thereof doesn’t matter in the slightest.
In fact whichever talking head is Labour Leader is of zero importance to me personally, since I’m an Alliance supporter (although somehow I always end up reflexively smashing at the Cunliffe devotees but not the Shearer bearers, whoops).
Because in the end Labour is only there to facilitate the Greens and Mana, who will make it all good in the end.
CV, you’re shit enough at channelling that you should be on Sensing Murder. You’re batting zero for … how many now?
I already gave my response to rhino’s passionate soliloquy. Which was that I really didn’t think enough of it or the perceived issue it lampooned to bother giving either a response.
Is this an Own Goal ?
In this morning’s Herald – “ Party may support law change to allow GCSB to keep watch on Kiwis but only if full intelligence review held. Labour would consider allowing the GCSB to spy on New Zealanders in limited circumstances but only if that was recommended by a full independent review of intelligence agencies, party leader David Shearer says.”
Who writes this stuff for them FFS. Why put “we support spying” and then only if you bother to read on do you find the conditions.
Why not
condemn the behaviour
demand the big look at intelligence
suggest a parliamentary committe to oversea intelligence
then in the small print at the bottom “if recommended anfd there are asfeguards we may agree”
David Shearer – the man who thoughtfully brings his own banana skins to slip on in case someone has forgotten to provide them (or mango skins, whatever).
How are judges appointed? Well since National got into power you’ll find ‘is friend of Chris Finlayson’ was a criteria. Finlayson to certain friend in Sydney law firm ‘Want to be a judge? Just let me know’.
See The Herald this morning. It is valid for the Law Commission to identify and discuss myriad aspects of our legal system, the role of the judiciary among them. It is valid for a government to engage in the debate which follows, of course.
My real concern is that in its destructive worship of austerity, its singlemindedness in retention of power, and its doubtless taste for authoritarianism, this government will unhesitatingly sully legitimate debate on the question of where and how the judiciary sits in the justice system.
Recall Simon Power’s risible ticking-off of the Chief Justice for her mature and informed comments about the justice system a couple of years ago. Risible indeed coming from a life-long National Party arse-wipe joke of a man.
On many occasions this government has sunk to the depths of defamation, pejorativeness and abuse of practitioners in law and other areas. Non-exhaustively, legal aid lawyers, Justice Binnie, teachers, unions.
It is routine. First blame the practitioners. Then, assisted by the patently shallow “journalism” of child-scribes on their way up and that of accommodating older hacks, sell the lunacy that less gas in the tank of any particular vehicle will naturally see it go further, more safely and more efficiently. When the vehicle conks out halfway down the road of ill-considered and often ridiculous “reforms” – blame the practitioners.
In terms of convention the judiciary may not be such a sitting-duck but of course McVicar and the SST could always be relied upon to spew out anything the spin-doctors vetoed. More or less the same result.
It is alarming to see this government and the delightedly malevolent Judith Collins poking and prodding in matters constitutional. They are just too dishonest and not nearly as competent as they claim.
I’m reminded of Glenda Jackson re Thatcher – the cost of everything, the value of nothing.
We’d be better off if the judiciary ran a review of the government. I can’t see this as anything but an attempt to scare any slight remnant of independence out of our judges and make them even more overtly political.
I’m not a big fan of judges in general, but I’m a sworn enemy of the WhaleSpew/MacVicar types who carry on with the rubbish that NAct MPs believe but can’t say in public.
lately i have had no luck getting html into comments. I do not understand what the fault is.
below was copy pasted direct from FAQ and even that didn’t work. As you can see bold and italic worked but strikeout and underline do not. i see others with underline and strikeout in comments so it is pretty confusing, Any ideas ? Anyone ?
bold; write my text
italic; write my text
strikeout. write my text
underline. write my text
can you write what you did for strikeout but put a space between each character so i can see the actual keystrokes.
test:
i wrote w o r d (with spaces) (afteredit: greater than less than characters did not show up just shows the ‘word’ inside them
word (as html text in FAQ, no spaces)
test after edit:
still nada, what am I doing wrong?
Tungsten, my friend tungsten; (just in case we need some confirmation without bias, i ghosted out of the shower yesterday and was working through Seven Nations Army in my head, turned the radio on (had been off to save power), Hauraki, and who woulda’ thunk it; this has happened many times before, Test-ReTest and all those Validity / Reliability study requirements; now gonna try this encode HTML stuff; could be some time… 🙂
thanks to everybody who persevered, yet it was felix’s link that helped the ghost back to the other side. now, if I could just materialize a root from branch office
🙂
Well, this is a change, and encouraging if it continues. Two articles today from the Dominion Post critical of the Key Govt.
The first one is about Buffoon Bridges’ anti democratic anti marine protest law
We kow we are never going to see the full text till after it has been signed off. Even if only half of the known details are true, the TPPA is a suidice agreement for the self-determination of all Nations who sign it and those that don’t will be signed up to something equally dangerous. No profit is worth our sovereignty as a Nation. No Nation should put profit before its people. I do not care what a court says, a Corporation is not a person and this single legal distinction, more than any war or financial scandal or illegal election is single handedly responsible for the ongoing destruction of real Democracy.
“Six hundred US corporate advisors have negotiated and had input into the TPP, and the proposed draft text has not been made available to the public, the press or policymakers.”
I am sure this is one of those passages of reality that Groser would rather we ignore
Thanks for the link, freedom (interesting website, “Free Malaysia Today”). It’s pretty critical of the US and its role in promoting neoliberalism internationally – not sure where it is re- Malaysian politics.)
This bit from the article is worrying:
The proposed legislation on Intellectual Property will have enormous ramifications for TPP signatories, including Internet termination for households, businesses, and organizations as an accepted penalty for copyright infringement.
Signatory nations would essentially submit themselves to oppressive IP restrictions designed by Hollywood’s copyright cartels, severely limiting their ability to digitally exchange information on sites like YouTube, where streaming videos are considered copyrightable.
“Broader copyright and intellectual property rights demands by the US would lock up the Internet, stifle research and increase education costs, by extending existing generous copyright from 70 years to 120 years, and even making it a criminal offense to temporarily store files on a computer without authorization. The US, as a net exporter of digital information, would be the only party to benefit from this,” said Patricia Ranald, convener of the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network.
After a quick scan I’m not sure either where its editorial biases lie.
Right now Malaysia is in the midst of “election fever” – according to the radio, TV, and newspapers. The current government, headed by Najib, will likely be returned to power. The only question is by what margin.
I’ve only been here since January so I’m not up to speed on who the main players are except for the aforementioned Najib. The glaringly obvious thing here is that politics are very much “racial”. The Malays, which make up over half of the population, will likely as not vote for the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) backed Barisan Nasional party – Barisan Nasional has ruled the country since Malaysia became independent of the UK. The Chinese, who as a block control a great deal of the country’s finances and commercial entities, will make deals that will best serve their community. The Indians, well they don’t have the numbers or financial clout, will go along to get along.
As an “orang putih” I get an earfull from the locals about the different “races” when we are out of earshot from any who might overhear. The Malays moan about the Chinese, the Chinese complain that the Malays don’t play fair because of their demographic advantage, and the Indians swear that they can never catch a break.
Very interesting…here’s a speech I found on youtube given by Hannah Yeoh, a young Malaysian state politician…speaking (in part) on women in Malaysian politics; honestly she seems way more talented than a shit load of our hapless NZ ones.
CV
Those Asians always showing us up. Just when we get to sit complacently at the supposed top of the pile, someone still thinking comes along and rains on our parade.
Hay, here’s a thought brother, trade in one of those suits ya don’t need, you’ve got them all in spades anyway, and help a brother into a new set of Flat-Screen-PC compatible wheels; though, now i’m back on the race-course, Harvey or Noel might be interested; Frek, when you examine the backgrounds of, oh I don’t know, your average Act or NZ First candidate tracey, Virgil, “Brains”, Kyrano, Aloysius or even Tin-Tin would be better mariners.
including Internet termination for households, businesses, and organizations as an accepted penalty for copyright infringement
Was wondering how the flow of information would be stemmed, just stop people from accessing it!
Nothing the establishments despise/fear more, than the sharing of information amongst the plebs.
The internet has been a doubled edged sword for the planets rulers, while it provides them with greater capabilities to control, than ever before equally it provides greater ability for people to learn, and understand the frauds being perpetuated against humanity.
Taking complete control of the narratives/information flows, will be very high on the list of outcomes!
I would just like to repeat this anecdote from my burn ed colleague ghostrider; apparently, after checking out some interesting mark-downs at his local exorbitantly priced supermarket he struck up a conversation with a lady-pensioner (probably spying the flash mobility-scooter got him going), anyway, this lady was originally from Dartmoor (the UK one) and it seemed that her husband had been a principal who was very conversant re politics; they got talking about the lovely day, politics and the young of today, as you do, and regarding Thatcher, she considered her an important person to British political history (lets leave it at that) yet she COULD NOT STAND JOHN KEY. kinda makes me wonder what it is about him that revs Fran O’Sullivan’s motor running.
Rogue T
The answer is obviously that Jokeyhen is an upstart, johnny-come-lately, nouveau riche person of no standing in British class lines. Thatcher and others were excused their un-aristo starts because they were successful and Thatcher was a good swot. And she knew how to dress like a lady, even attempting to eclipse the Queen. (Who probably would have liked to e(clip)se her round the ears.)
Thatcher was also a bloody serious and capable pollie. When she went in to fuck the miners she did so front on and full on. Key just shuffled apologetically around the edges. Plenty of right wing NAT hardliners think that Key just needs to harden the frak up, and has needed to for the last, oh, four and a half years.
FWIW the sentencing regime works on the principle of precedent. Judges don’t have autonomy on sentences like the Herald seem to believe, they have to follow sentencing guidelines which are legislated by Govt. Whenever there’s a law change to sentencing the first sentences of the new laws are carefully analysed by the Chief Justice and discussed with all of the judges around the country. Any mistakes are quickly rectified before they become a precedent, from thereon they all have to follow the precedents set.
The reason they use precedent is to ensure uniformity in sentencing. If they don’t have uniformity the crim can appeal their sentence on the grounds that someone else got a much lighter sentence for a similar offence. It’s pretty basic stuff.
If sentences are wrong it’s because the law is wrong or some judges are not following the guidelines properly. The Chief Justice (I think) is in charge of monitoring the performance of judges in that respect, those who get it wrong are supposed to be warned & reprimanded.
So, without knowing what sentences were handed down for similar offences previously, the Herald’s survey is a pointless attack on judges who may just be doing their job.
Can’t make that conclusion from what’s been said there. Most likely scenario is the actual law is dictating those sentences, or that’s the precedents that have been set.
The judges’ job is to do what the written laws tell them. Their sentencing has a built-in check & balance via the appeals process. If the judge’s reading of the law, and subsequent sentencing, is wildly out you’ll see an appeal against the sentence either by the Crown or by the offender.
Too many people have this expectation that judges can suddenly get ‘tougher’ on offenders. They can’t, for that to happen the law has to be changed and judges don’t make the law (nor should they)
You are obviously not informed about Feminist Doctrine.
Here, let me help you:
“All men are rapists and that’s all they are” — Marilyn French
“The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race.” — Sally Miller Gearhart, in The Future – If There Is One – Is Female.
“Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women’s bodies.” — Andrea Dworkin
Feminism was hijacked years ago by man haters and lesbians, it is an ideology of hate.
It helps explain why the Left is so broken, bogged down in Identity Politics and the hyper relativism of trendy Post Modern Philosophy
Don’t you understand the difference between what a character in a book says and what the book’s author thinks? Probably just another symptom of hate. You should probably get that looked at.
yes, i stumbled, fell over, the announcement of this party; the whities sure seemed to be a-feared of change (have very little awareness of the inevitability of demographics, and too much money to hate)
they were just plays on words for friends electric, you know, “friends” ;synth pop never really got better after Foxx, Krautrock, Ultravox and Numan imo (just kidding around). Anyway, you sometimes seem bright enough to read the signs; how do you think the domestic politics of NZ are going to impact demographics anyway; Maori role increases, Pasifika role increases, SE Asian role increases, Sub-continent increases, African increases, Middle-Eastern increases; while it is conceded that there is a drift towards conservatism in the post-empire after-taste hang-over, one size will definitely not fit all or do you not read beyond own subscriptions? and Gender politics, well, thanks to the roles of genetics, history, culture and language they are essential; I could write 500 Shades of Grey transcribing the utterances men make of their women in the pub, the work-place, the sports-club (well, maybe the gyms) and the smoko-rooms; Hell, I was a misogynist myself deep down for years;and, on the other side of the coin, how many women prefer their own, or the company of women to their husbands / partners, but you go ahead, flame-on.
Ansell is always happy to claim all the technological and cultural developments for himself and other Europeans. For example, he talks about Maori wanting money because some dams have been built and says they didn’t know how to build dams or turbines. Does he or any of his pathetic followers know how to do anything useful at all? Would he use a computer if he knew Turing was gay?
Pathetic and scared little people who should be flushed back down the sewer from whence they came.
A commentator on radionz this morning said that broadly 70% of NZ dairy farmers (I think just the dairy sector) had 30% equity in their businesses. After all this wealth that is being frequently talked about, dairy farmers are still in the poo. WTF I can’t understand it.
I There was a drought about 2008 that equalled the present one. I thought though that the backbone of the country’s economy, dairy, had more calcium in it. How can we raise some serious concern about the country and people’s welfare with the wider peopulation so we can get beyond this stale stalemate of 61 to 59, a risable Majority, and get some things done and new approaches trialled and get into new world mode with eagerness to conserve the good, progress in advantagous ways and improve our low levels of attainment????
Green on. Vote Green, join the Green Party, donate to the Green Party. Ditto Mana (although I still think party voting GP is better strategically than Mana).
What we want is a Labour led govt that doesn’t rely on Peters or Dunne.
That article exemplifies exactly why we shouldn’t use economics as the justification for caring for and protecting the environment. Just like with the clean, green brand and using the economic imperative of that as justification for ecological sensitivity, using the ETS etc is bound to fail. As soon as the economics don’t stack up, the trees will come tumbling down.
We need to value and revere nature for its own inherent worth, irrespective of what it can do for use and not because of the five second dollar value we can place on it.
That aside, anyone who converts to dairy from now on (apart from small/med scale farmers using sustainable management) is siding with evil and deserves all the approbation that will come their way.
“A commentator on radionz this morning said that broadly 70% of NZ dairy farmers (I think just the dairy sector) had 30% equity in their businesses. After all this wealth that is being frequently talked about, dairy farmers are still in the poo. WTF I can’t understand it. ”
It looks to be down to farms being way overpriced here, likely due to the amount of foreign buyers pushing the prices up. A typical Kiwi has to borrow huge sums to buy into a farm and the cost of capital is often too high for the income the farms generate. They make a living but rarely enough extra cash to pay down the principal on the mortgage
Eric Watson had a commentary in the Herald talking about his dairy farm investment in Georgia USA. He claimed the climate there is better for dairying which makes the yields per cow & hectare better and yet the price of farmland there is considerably less than here so the returns are much higher.
(If it was so great there though you have to wonder why foreigners buy our farms when the Yanks have such bargains to be had.)
Bassett, the executive director of the Paradigm Research Group, wants the U.S. government to lift what he calls the “truth embargo” and acknowledge that extraterrestrials are real and are engaging the human race.
Bassett and his allies are taking over the National Press Club in downtown D.C. from April 29 to May 3 to host the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure. “What we are going to do is bring the largest concentration of witnesses ever assembled in one place, at one time, and they are going to testify exactly as if they were in a real congressional hearing,” Bassett explained. Former members of Congress are being tapped to run the hearings, while witnesses, including former astronaut (and sixth man on the moon) Edgar Mitchell, are coming in from around the world. A film production crew from Los Angeles will film the whole thing, turning “Truth Embargo” into a documentary.
The Fermi paradox isn’t based in reality: “But no convincing evidence of this exists.”
In 2007 The National Press Club held a press conference in which a group of high-profile witnesses described their experiences. The moderator for the conference was Fife Symington, who described what he saw regarding the Phoenix Lights UFOs. Symington was the Arizona governor at that time. There was also good coverage of the Rendlesham Forest incident.
cha know, (refs not handy) but the introduction to me Oxford identifies the most influential philosophers beginning with Socrates…Plato…Aristotle…fec…wheres ya memory when ya need it…Aquinas…Augustine…Hobbes…Bacon…Berkeley…Locke…Kant…Kierkegaard…Spinoza….Liebniz…Hegel…Heidegger…Wittgenstein… (not in chronological order and some of these have been added personally), yet the list ends with Nietzsche. imho opinion, everything philosophical in the west ends and begins with Nietzsche (call it a hunch)… / and then on to Giddens, Foucault, Bourdieu, DERRIDA (k-p) Habermas and Goffman as the most cited in the Humanities Lit. (T.H.E), so I pray the feckin politicians listen to the philosophers and european sociologists for a change, yet I won’t be holding my breath or a torch for them.*sigh* anyway, appreciating all this sh*t comes naturally to me bad self; it certainly is not a worm-hole, it is liberating yet confining at the same time, as you can imaginitively see, and yes, it requires a fair amount of panadol sometimes, or some other distraction to shut the feckin brain off for a while. Oh Well, such is life, onwards and upwards 🙂 from my first stay in hospital, oo oo oo, what more’s a poor boy do…” ‘I Can’t Help Myself…when I get this feeling, I wanna be someone else…” Hope you have laughed and cried with me along the way. 🙂
We killed God yes….will we be arrested before getting to attend the Dionysian event with the 100 grumpy white guys (or are they the ones who really should be arrested). Or do we plead guilty to killing God and all his creation?
Every now and then an image comes along that highlights how lost we are as a society.
Sure, this image has been designed for a campaign, but it is still as edifying as the circumstance it portrays.
check social networks, street posters, car decals and other unexpected places for local events
Maybe some rich person out there wants to take out a Newspaper page or two on behalf of all kiwis who do not have a real voice in this discussion. (oh to have the resources of the hate machine)
This is not about party poitics, it is about self-determination and sending a message to Parliament
This is for Kiwis who want to say, once again, NO ASSET SALES
Seven was Sharp on the relaxation of drug laws post-Power
Take a L.E.A.P
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
-“prohibition creates gangsters”
-“criminalises consensual exchange”
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In a recent interview with RNZ (14th of January), NZ Council of Civil Liberties Chair Thomas Beagle, in response to Simon Bridges condemnation of the post-Trump Twitter purge of local far Right and other accounts, said the following: “Cos the thing about freedom of expression is that it’s not just ...
Let’s be clear: if Trump is not politically killed off once and for all, he will become a MAGA Dracula, rising from the dead to haunt US politics for years to come and giving inspiration to his wretched family of grifters and thousands of deplorables well into the next decade. ...
Since its demise as an imperial power, and especially its deindustrialisation under Thatcher, the UK's primary economic engine has been its role as a money laundry, using its network of overseas territories as tax havens to enable rich people around the world to steal from the societies they live in. ...
Last month OMV quit the Great South Basin and surrendered its offshore exploration permits outside of Taranaki. This month, Australian-owned Beach Energy has done the same: Beach Energy Resources New Zealand has decided to abandon all of its oil and gas exploration permits off the South Island coast, including ...
The new Northland case has been linked to the South African strain of Covid-19, one of a number of new, more contagious Covid variants. Here’s how they emerge and why. Let’s start with the basics. The genetic material of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for Covid-19 is a strand of RNA ...
MARVIN HUBBARD, US citizen by birth, New Zealand citizen by choice, Quaker and left-wing activist, has been broadcasting his show, "Community or Chaos", on Otago Access Radio for the best part of 30 years. On 24 November last year, I spoke with him about the outcome of the 2020 General ...
This is a guest blog post by Daniel Tamberg, Potsdam, co-founder and director of SCIARA GmbH. The non-profit organisation SCIARA is developing and operating a flexible software platform for scientific simulation games that allows thousands of players to explore, design and understand possible climate futures together. Decision-makers in politics, business, ...
Yesterday's Gone: Cold shivers are running up and down the spines of conservatives everywhere. Donald Trump may have gone, but all the signs point to there being something much more momentous in the wind-shift than a simple return to the status quo ante. A change is gonna come. ONE COULD ...
Is it possible to live and let live in the post-Trump era? The online campaign to vilify Christopher Liddell, ex-White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Assistant to Trump, makes for an interesting case study. Liddell is a New Zealander whose illustrious career in corporate America once earned him plaudits ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 17, 2021 through Sat, Jan 23, 2021Editor's Choice12 new books explore fresh approaches to act on climate changeAuthors explore scientific, economic, and political avenues for climate action ...
This discussion is from a Twitter thread by Martin Kulldorff on 20 December 2020. He is a Professor at Harvard Medical School specialising in disease surveillance methods, infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety. His Twitter handle is @MartinKulldorff #1 Public health is about all health outcomes, not just a single ...
The Treasury forecasts suggest the economy is doing better than expected after the Covid Shock. John Kenneth Galbraith was wont to say that economic forecasting was designed to make astrology look good. Unfair, but it raises the question of the purpose of economic forecasts. Certainly the public may treat them ...
Q: Will the COVID-19 vaccines prevent the transmission of the coronavirus and bring about community immunity (aka herd immunity)? A: Jury not in yet but vaccines do not have to be perfect to thwart the spread of infection. While vaccines induce protection against illness, they do not always stop actual ...
Joe Biden seems to be everything that Donald Trump was not – decent, straightforward, considerate of others, mindful of his responsibilities – but none of that means that he has an easy path ahead of him. The pandemic still rages, American standing in the world is grievously low, and the ...
Keana VirmaniFrom healthcare robots to data privacy, to sea level rise and Antarctica under the ice: in the four years since its establishment, the Aotearoa New Zealand Science Journalism Fund has supported over 30 projects.Rebecca Priestley, receiving the PM Science Communication Prize (Photo by Mark Tantrum) Associate Professor ...
Nothing more from me today - I'm off to Wellington, to participate in the city's annual roleplaying convention (which has also eaten my time for the whole week, limiting blogging despite there being interesting things happening). Normal bloggage will resume Tuesday. ...
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weaponscame into force today, making the development, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons illegal in international law. Every nuclear-armed state is now a criminal regime. The corporations and scientists who design, build and maintain their illegal weapons are now ...
"Come The Revolution!" The key objective of Bernard Hickey’s revolutionary solution to the housing crisis is a 50 percent reduction in the price of the average family home. This will be achieved by the introduction of Capital Gains, Land, and Wealth taxes, and by the opening up of currently RMA-protected ...
by Daphna Whitmore Twitter and Facebook shutting down Trump’s accounts after his supporters stormed Capitol Hill is old news now but the debates continue over whether the actions against Trump are a good thing or not. Those in favour of banning Trump say Twitter and Facebook are private companies and ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Democrats now control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives for the first time in a decade, albeit with razor thin Congressional majorities. The last time, in the 111th Congress (2009-2011), House Democrats passed a carbon cap and trade bill, but it died ...
Session thirty-three was highly abbreviated, via having to move house in a short space of time. Oh well. The party decided to ignore the tree-monster and continue the attack on the Giant Troll. Tarsin – flying on a giant summoned bat – dumped some high-grade oil over the ...
Last night I stayed up till 3am just to see then-President Donald Trump leave the White House, get on a plane, and fly off to Florida, hopefully never to return. And when I woke up this morning, America was different. Not perfect, because it never was. Probably not even good, ...
Watching today’s inauguration of Joe Biden as the United States’ 46th president, there’s not a lot in common with the inauguration of Donald Trump just four destructive years ago. Where Trump warned of carnage, Biden dared to hope for unity and decency. But the one place they converge is that ...
Dan FalkBritons who switched on their TVs to “Good Morning Britain” on the morning of Sept. 15, 2020, were greeted by news not from our own troubled world, but from neighboring Venus. Piers Morgan, one of the hosts, was talking about a major science story that had surfaced the ...
Sara LutermanGrowing up autistic in a non-autistic world can be very isolating. We are often strange and out of sync with peers, despite our best efforts. Autistic adults have, until very recently, been largely absent from media and the public sphere. Finding role models is difficult. Finding useful advice ...
Doug JohnsonThe alien-like blooms and putrid stench of Amorphophallus titanum, better known as the corpse flower, draw big crowds and media coverage to botanical gardens each year. In 2015, for instance, around 75,000 people visited the Chicago Botanic Garden to see one of their corpse flowers bloom. More than ...
Getting to Browser Tab Zero so I can reboot the computer is awfully hard when the one open tab is a Table of Contents for the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and every issue has more stuff I want to read. A few highlights: Gugler et al demonstrating ...
Timothy Ford, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Charles M. Schweik, University of Massachusetts AmherstTo mitigate health inequities and promote social justice, coronavirus vaccines need to get to underserved populations and hard-to-reach communities. There are few places in the U.S. that are unreachable by road, but other factors – many ...
Israel chose to pay a bit over the odds for the Pfizer vaccine to get earlier access. Here’s The Times of Israel from 16 November. American government will be charged $39 for each two-shot dose, and the European bloc even less, but Jerusalem said to agree to pay $56. Israel ...
Orla is a gender critical Marxist in Ireland. She gave a presentation on 15 January 2021 on the connection between postmodern/transgender identity politics and the current attacks on democratic and free speech rights. Orla has been active previously in the Irish Socialist Workers Party and the People Before Profit electoral ...
. . America: The Empire Strikes Back (at itself) Further to my comments in the first part of 2020: The History That Was, the following should be considered regarding the current state of the US. They most likely will be by future historians pondering the critical decades of ...
Nathaniel ScharpingIn March, as the Covid-19 pandemic began to shut down major cities in the U.S., researchers were thinking about blood. In particular, they were worried about the U.S. blood supply — the millions of donations every year that help keep hospital patients alive when they need a transfusion. ...
Sarah L Caddy, University of CambridgeVaccines are a marvel of medicine. Few interventions can claim to have saved as many lives. But it may surprise you to know that not all vaccines provide the same level of protection. Some vaccines stop you getting symptomatic disease, but others stop you ...
Back in 2016, the Portuguese government announced plans to stop burning coal by 2030. But progress has come much quicker, and they're now scheduled to close their last coal plant by the end of this year: The Sines coal plant in Portugal went offline at midnight yesterday evening (14 ...
The Sincerest Form Of Flattery: As anybody with the intestinal fortitude to brave the commentary threads of local news-sites, large and small, will attest, the number of Trump-supporting New Zealanders is really quite astounding. IT’S SO DIFFICULT to resist the temptation to be smug. From the distant perspective of New Zealand, ...
RNZ reports on continued arbitrariness on decisions at the border. British comedian Russell Howard is about to tour New Zealand and other acts allowed in through managed isolation this summer include drag queen RuPaul and musicians at Northern Bass in Mangawhai and the Bay Dreams festival. The vice-president of the ...
As families around the world mourn more than two million people dead from Covid-19, the Plan B academics and their PR industry collaborator continue to argue that the New Zealand government should stop focusing on our managed isolation and quarantine system and instead protect the elderly so that they can ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 10, 2021 through Sat, Jan 16, 2021Editor's ChoiceNASA says 2020 tied for hottest year on record — here’s what you can do to helpPhoto by Michael Held on Unsplash ...
Health authorities in Norway are reporting some concerns about deaths in frail elderly after receiving their COVID-19 vaccine. Is this causally related to the vaccine? Probably not but here are the things to consider. According to the news there have been 23 deaths in Norway shortly after vaccine administration and ...
Happy New Year! No, experts are not concerned that “…one of New Zealand’s COIVD-1( vaccines will fail to protect the country” Here is why. But first I wish to issue an expletive about this journalism (First in Australia and then in NZ). It exhibits utter failure to actually truly consult ...
All nations have shadows; some acknowledge them. For others they shape their image in uncomfortable ways.The staunch Labour supporter was in despair at what her Rogernomics Government was doing. But she finished ‘at least, we got rid of Muldoon’, a response which tells us that then, and today, one’s views ...
Grigori GuitchountsIn November, Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific journals, made an attention-grabbing announcement: More than 30 of its most prestigious journals, including the flagship Nature, will now allow authors to pay a fee of US$11,390 to make their papers freely available for anyone to read ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gary Yohe, Henry Jacoby, Richard Richels, and Benjamin Santer Imagine a major climate change law passing the U.S. Congress unanimously? Don’t bother. It turns out that you don’t need to imagine it. Get this: The Global Change Research Act of 1990 was passed ...
“They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”WHO CAN FORGET the penultimate scene of the 1956 movie classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The wild-eyed doctor, stumbling down the highway, trying desperately to warn his fellow citizens: “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”Ostensibly science-fiction, the movie ...
TheOneRing.Net has got its paws on the official synopsis of the upcoming Amazon Tolkien TV series. It’s a development that brings to mind the line about Sauron deliberately releasing Gollum from the dungeons of Barad-dûr. Amazon knew exactly what they were doing here, in terms of drumming up publicity: ...
Since Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration in 1953, US presidents have joined an informal club intended to provide support - and occasionally rivalry - between those few who have been ‘leaders of the free world’. Donald Trump, elected on a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ and a constant mocker of his predecessors, ...
For over a decade commentators have noted the rise of a new brand of explicitly ideological politics throughout the world. By this they usually refer to the re-emergence of national populism and avowedly illiberal approaches to governance throughout the “advanced” democratic community, but they also extend the thought to the ...
The US House of Representatives has just impeached Donald Trump, giving him the dubious honour of being the only US President to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans voted for impeachement, making it the most bipartisan impeachment ever. The question now is whether the Senate will rise to the occasion, and ...
Kieren Mitchell; Alice Mouton, Université de Liège; Angela Perri, Durham University, and Laurent Frantz, Ludwig Maximilian University of MunichThanks to the hit television series Game of Thrones, the dire wolf has gained a near-mythical status. But it was a real animal that roamed the Americas for at least 250,000 ...
Tide of tidal data rises Having cast our own fate to include rising sea level, there's a degree of urgency in learning the history of mean sea level in any given spot, beyond idle curiosity. Sea level rise (SLR) isn't equal from one place to another and even at a particular ...
Well, some of those chickens sure came home bigly, didn’t they… and proceeded to shit all over the nice carpet in the Capitol. What we were seeing here are societal forces that have long had difficulty trying to reconcile people to the “idea” of America and the reality of ...
In the wake of Donald Trump's incitement of an assault on the US capitol, Twitter finally enforced its terms of service and suspended his account. They've since followed that up with action against prominent QAnon accounts and Trumpers, including in New Zealand. I'm not unhappy with this: Trump regularly violated ...
Peter S. Ross, University of British ColumbiaThe Arctic has long proven to be a barometer of the health of our planet. This remote part of the world faces unprecedented environmental assaults, as climate change and industrial chemicals threaten a way of life for Inuit and other Indigenous and northern ...
Susan St John makes the case for taxing a deemed rate of return on excessive real estate holdings (after a family home exemption), to redirect scarce housing resources to where they are needed most. Read the full article here ...
I’m less than convinced by arguments that platforms like Twitter should be subject to common carrier regulation preventing them from being able to decide who to keep on as clients of their free services, and who they would not like to serve. It’s much easier to create competition for the ...
The hypocritical actions of political leaders throughout the global Covid pandemic have damaged public faith in institutions and governance. Liam Hehir chronicles the way in which contemporary politicians have let down the public, and explains how real leadership means walking the talk. During the Blitz, when German bombs were ...
Over the years, we've published many rebuttals, blog posts and graphics which came about due to direct interactions with the scientists actually carrying out the underlying research or being knowledgable about a topic in general. We'll highlight some of these interactions in this blog post. We'll start with two memorable ...
Yesterday we had the unseemly sight of a landleech threatening to keep his houses empty in response to better tenancy laws. Meanwhile in Catalonia they have a solution for that: nationalisation: Barcelona is deploying a new weapon in its quest to increase the city’s available rental housing: the power ...
A growing public housing waiting list and continued increase of house prices must be urgently addressed by Government, Green Party Co-leader Marama Davidson said today. ...
The green light for New Zealand’s first COVID-19 vaccine could be granted in just over a week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today. “We’re making swift progress towards vaccinating New Zealanders against the virus, but we’re also absolutely committed to ensuring the vaccines are safe and effective,” Jacinda Ardern said. ...
The Minister for ACC is pleased to announce the appointment of three new members to join the Board of ACC on 1 February 2021. “All three bring diverse skills and experience to provide strong governance oversight to lead the direction of ACC” said Hon Carmel Sepuloni. Bella Takiari-Brame from Hamilton ...
The Government is investing $9 million to upgrade a significant community facility in Invercargill, creating economic stimulus and jobs, Infrastructure Minister Grant Robertson and Te Tai Tonga MP Rino Tirikatene have announced. The grant for Waihōpai Rūnaka Inc to make improvements to Murihiku Marae comes from the $3 billion set ...
[Opening comments, welcome and thank you to Auckland University etc] It is a great pleasure to be here this afternoon to celebrate such an historic occasion - the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This is a moment many feared would never come, but ...
The Government is providing $3 million in one-off seed funding to help disabled people around New Zealand stay connected and access support in their communities, Minister for Disability Issues, Carmel Sepuloni announced today. The funding will allow disability service providers to develop digital and community-based solutions over the next two ...
Border workers in quarantine facilities will be offered voluntary daily COVID-19 saliva tests in addition to their regular weekly testing, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. This additional option will be rolled out at the Jet Park Quarantine facility in Auckland starting on Monday 25 January, and then to ...
The next steps in the Government’s ambitious firearms reform programme to include a three-month buy-back have been announced by Police Minister Poto Williams today. “The last buy-back and amnesty was unprecedented for New Zealand and was successful in collecting 60,297 firearms, modifying a further 5,630 firearms, and collecting 299,837 prohibited ...
Upscaling work already underway to restore two iconic ecosystems will deliver jobs and a lasting legacy, Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “The Jobs for Nature programme provides $1.25 billion over four years to offer employment opportunities for people whose livelihoods have been impacted by the COVID-19 recession. “Two new projects ...
The Government has released its Public Housing Plan 2021-2024 which outlines the intention of where 8,000 additional public and transitional housing places announced in Budget 2020, will go. “The Government is committed to continuing its public house build programme at pace and scale. The extra 8,000 homes – 6000 public ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has congratulated President Joe Biden on his inauguration as the 46th President of the United States of America. “I look forward to building a close relationship with President Biden and working with him on issues that matter to both our countries,” Jacinda Ardern said. “New Zealand ...
A major investment to tackle wilding pines in Mt Richmond will create jobs and help protect the area’s unique ecosystems, Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor says. The Mt Richmond Forest Park has unique ecosystems developed on mineral-rich geology, including taonga plant species found nowhere else in the country. “These special plant ...
To further protect New Zealand from COVID-19, the Government is extending pre-departure testing to all passengers to New Zealand except from Australia, Antarctica and most Pacific Islands, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “The change will come into force for all flights arriving in New Zealand after 11:59pm (NZT) on Monday ...
Bay Conservation Cadets launched with first intake Supported with $3.5 million grant Part of $1.245b Jobs for Nature programme to accelerate recover from Covid Cadets will learn skills to protect and enhance environment Environment Minister David Parker today welcomed the first intake of cadets at the launch of the Bay ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
The commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Ruapekapeka represents an opportunity for all New Zealanders to reflect on the role these conflicts have had in creating our modern nation, says Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Kiri Allan. “The Battle at Te Ruapekapeka Pā, which took ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Véronique Duché, A.R. Chisholm Professor of French, University of Melbourne In this series, writers pay tribute to fictional detectives on the page and on screen. When I first heard that Rowan Atkinson was to put on Maigret’s velvet-collared overcoat, I wondered ...
Auckland writer Olivia Hayfield* explains how she resurrected 16th-century playwright Christopher Marlowe to star in her new novel, Sister to Sister. Olivia Hayfield is a pen name. Real name: Sue Copsey. When I’m planning my modern retellings of historical tales, I read widely on the characters and see who leaps out at ...
The Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine could be approved as early as next week, Marc Daalder reports Medsafe will be asked to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine against Covid-19 on February 2, the Government has announced. The Medicines Assessment Advisory Committee (MAAC) is an independent panel that provides advice on some medicine approvals in ...
COMMENT:By Bryan Kramer, PNG’s Minister of Police who has defended Commissioner Manning’s appointment today in The National My last article, announcing that I intend to make a submission to the National Executive Council (NEC) to amend the Public Service regulation to no longer require the Commissioner of Police to ...
The Point of Order Trough Monitor was triggered today by the announcement of a $9 million handout for Southlanders – sorry, some Southlanders. The news came from the office of Grant Robertson who, as Minister of Finance, prefers to invest public money rather than give it away – especially when ...
Few people outside of her campaign team gave Chlöe Swarbrick any chance of winning in Auckland Central this year – but the Green Party MP was too busy to listen. Here’s how they turned the electorate green.First published November 12, 2020.Three Ticks Chlöe is part of Frame, a series of short ...
Interactions between parents and healthcare providers could have a big impact on the wellbeing of our children, according to new research. The way parents and healthcare providers interact has lasting implications for children’s health, new research has found – and that includes immunisation uptake.Released today, the report is based on research ...
The Opposition starts the political year calling for emergency, temporary legislation to free up house building National leader Judith Collins has set five priorities for her party over the next three years - but excluded climate change, education and Crown-Māori relations. Giving her first 'state of the nation' speech as party ...
One of the biggest challenges facing the Ardern government is in public health. New Zealand may have escaped the pressures heaped on other health systems by the Covid-19 pandemic but its health service has had its problems, not least those exposed in the first report from Heather Simpson and her ...
New Zealand’s Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins has revealed that 14 close contacts of the Northland community case have returned negative test results. Yesterday he announced two close contacts – her husband and hair dresser – were negative. In his tweet, Hipkins described the news as “encouraging”. However, New ...
Pacific Media Watch newsdesk Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the arbitrary and opaque experiments that Google is conducting with its search engine in Australia, with the consequence that many national news websites are no longer appearing in the search results seen by some users. The Australian, ABC, Australian Financial ...
Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta says councils can take stronger action against companies dumping contaminated waste water, even though they have identified loopholes in the law on fines. ...
Drag Race Down Under, part of the popular RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise, is filming in New Zealand. In their own words, local drag talent share what drag means to them and how it might be impacted by the show.RuPaul’s Drag Race is, quite simply, a television phenomenon. Love it or ...
For a long time, weighted blankets were considered a specialist device. Now they’re popular with even the most normal sleepers.Growing up, Temple Grandin spent time on her aunt’s cattle ranch in America, watching cow after stressed cow enter a squeeze chute and come out calm as the dead sea. She ...
Increased provisional tax thresholds, immediate low-value asset write offs and allowing the deferral of tax payments and use of money interest (UOMI) write offs were the most popular tax measures introduced by the Government to help businesses survive ...
The latest fleeing driver statistics show the numbers of incidents sky-rocketing out of control through 2020 with Police deciding the only tactic is to give up on chasing altogether, says Sensible Sentencing Trust. “The inconvenient truth is ...
With new revelations of the appalling racism behind Israel’s refusal to provide Covid-19 vaccines to 4.5 million Palestinians under its occupation and control, PSNA has renewed our call for the government to speak out alongside the United Nations ...
The Youth of NZ will be standing up for climate action once again, on January 26th outside of Parliament for School Strike 4 Climate NZ’s 100 Days 4 Action campaign rally. “COVID-19 may have stopped us in our tracks in the past. However, I tend ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Parwinder Kaur, Associate Professor | Director, DNA Zoo Australia, University of Western Australia Koalas are unique in the animal kingdom, living on a eucalyptus diet that would kill other creatures and drinking so little their name comes from the Dharug word gula, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By S. Anna Florin, Research fellow, University of Wollongong Archaeological research provides a long-term perspective on how humans survived various environmental conditions over tens of thousands of years. In a paper published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution, we’ve tracked rainfall in northern ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Binoy Kampmark, Senior Lecturer in Global Studies, Social Science & Planning, RMIT University Since 2005, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has been one of the most stable and enduring of political forces, both in Europe and on the global stage. During her 16 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Véronique Duché, A.R. Chisholm Professor of French, University of Melbourne In this series, writers pay tribute to fictional detectives on the page and on screen. When I first heard that Rowan Atkinson was to put on Maigret’s velvet-collared overcoat, I wondered ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. Experts are calling for hotels with sub-par ventilation systems to no longer be used as managed isolation facilities as health officials investigate how a Northland woman became infected with Covid-19 while staying at the Pullman hotel, Rowan Quinn reports. ...
Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for January 26, keeping you up to date with the latest local and international news. Reach me on stewart@thespinoff.co.nzOur Members make The Spinoff happen! Every dollar contributed directly funds our editorial team – click here to learn more about how you can support us ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Questions to be answered about case in the community, major companies flagrantly breaching wastewater consents, and Tenancy Tribunal decisions harming abuse survivors.As of this morning, we’re still waiting on some crucial information about the situation in Northland, after a person travelled ...
With democracy what now separates the US from its adversaries, Wellington can bet on more continuity than change in Washington’s hardline view of China. ...
We continue our week-long examination of writer Roderick Finlayson. Today: his daughter Kate on his doomed love for Poti Mita, whose family inspired him to write short stories about Māori life in the 1930s We all knew of Poti Mita and how important Pukehina was to Dad. He wanted ...
Sleepyhead is chopping and changing its ambitious plan to build a super-factory and a community of 1100 medium density houses on a block of farmland in the north Waikato. Sydney Turner set his grandsons Craig and Graeme to work on the factory floor, building mattresses. Now Craig and Graeme Turner own ...
Helen Petousis-Harris looks at the potential complications of vaccinating older New Zealanders - and how we should prepare Two weeks ago health authorities in Norway reported some concerns about deaths in frail elderly after receiving their Covid-19 vaccine. Are these deaths related to the vaccine? Probably not but here are ...
A change of plans for round-the-world single-handed sailor Elana Connor means she's helping Kiwi kids in foster care to go sailing - as she also seeks to 'demystify' the sport for women. Elana Connor wears a silver necklace engraved with the word “Fearlessness”. As she sails solo around the globe, it reminds her that ...
New Zealand rose to the occasion in its response to Covid-19. Will it do the same for climate change? Jack Santa Barbara looks ahead to the Climate Change Commission report. New Zealand’s management of the Covid pandemic clearly demonstrated the benefits of paying attention to the science and prioritising human wellbeing ...
Was Covid-19 and lockdown the catalyst for a new future for healthcare or did it just expose systemic inequity? In the latest of a series on the country's future infrastructure needs, Tim Murphy looks at how the long push to shift health's focus from hospitals to the community might have received a nudge ...
Not only is the New Zealand summer in danger of coming to a grinding halt, but we increase the risk that an almighty wreck might follow shortly afterwards. Here's what we can do, writes Dr Sarb Johal. While the rest of the world is wrestling with virulent new strains of the ...
For two decades, under both National and Labour governments, housing costs have risen far faster than wages. Here’s a horrific graph that shows by just how much.Last Thursday saw the first of what will no doubt be dozens of housing-related set pieces from Labour, wherein they announced 8,000 public and ...
The new Northland case has been linked to the South African strain of Covid-19, one of a number of new, more contagious Covid variants. Here’s how they emerge and why.Let’s start with the basics. The genetic material of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for Covid-19 is a strand of RNA made ...
New Zealand’s richest citizen, Graeme Hart, has seen his fortune increase by NZ$3,494,333,333 since March 2020 – a sum equivalent to over half a million New Zealanders receiving a cheque for NZ$6,849 each, reveals a new analysis from Oxfam today. The New Zealand ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tauel Harper, Lecturer, Media and Communication, UWA, University of Western Australia With a vaccine rollout impending, key groups have backed calls for the Australian government to force social media platforms to share details about popular coronavirus misinformation. An open letter was put ...
Selling out ACT’s Waitangi Day State of the Nation Address is set to sell out again. If you’d like to start the political year right over brunch with fellow ACT supporters (Saturday 6 February 10am-12pm, Mt Eden), please buy your tickets ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Kirkness, Postdoctoral research fellow, Macquarie University As government COVID updates have become a daily part of our lives over the past 12 months, so too has the sight of sign language interpreters on our screens. This has understandably had a huge ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Dwyer, Associate Professor, Department of Media and Communications, University of Sydney Executives from Google and Facebook have told a Senate committee they are prepared to take drastic action if Australia’s news media bargaining code, which would force the internet giants to ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. Hundreds of companies have dumped contaminants - like blood, fat, and toxic chemicals such as ammonia and sulphides - into sewers in breach of their trade waste consents over the past year, RNZ can reveal. Anusha Bradley reports. Frank ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Morag Kobez, Associate lecturer, Queensland University of Technology In this series, our writers explore how food shaped Australian history – and who we are today. The history of cheese in Australia has, until recent decades, been a rather tasteless affair. Not so ...
On the edge of the Mataura River, a disused paper mill is filled with thousands of bags of toxic waste. Locals want to find out who’s responsible for it – and they want it gone before disaster strikes.First published November 10, 2020.The Paper Mill is part of Frame, a series ...
At the Chorus Fibre Lab, José Barbosa peeked behind the curtain of the internet and found something beautiful and very, very fast. The human mind is a daily swarm of notions, speculations, ruminations, thoughts and otherwise base-level brain puffs. Just to get through the grind of survival, we’ve evolved to mentally ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. The Ministry of Health is confident the Northland community case came directly from the Pullman Hotel and there is no missing link. In a press conference this afternoon, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield confirmed the strain of Covid in the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Longden, Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Heat is more dangerous than the cold in most Australian regions. About 2% of deaths in Australia between 2006 and 2017 were associated with the heat, and the estimate increases to ...
Levin GP Glenn Colquhoun talks with books editor Catherine Woulfe about his new collection of poetry, Letters to Young People.Glenn Colquhoun is an acclaimed and accomplished poet. He has published four collections, including Playing God, in December 2002, which sold a massive 10,000 copies. He’s won a clutch of Montanas ...
Contrasting reactions to news of Grainne Moss’s resignation as Oranga Tamariki chief executive inevitably can be found in the blogosphere. Lindsay Dawson has recorded the ACT Party’s response to the resignation and hailed it as “spot on”. The statement was made in the name of Karen Chhour, described as a ...
Zendaya has been around for a decade, but she’s gone from Disney prodigy to pop star to acclaimed actress. Here are the highlights of the 24-year-old’s already impressive career.Shaking it up: Zendaya on DisneyThe world’s first encounter with Zendaya was a little Disney show called Shake It Up, a series ...
What’s it like to have your life governed by your gut? It’s crap, frankly.On my birthday last year I was given a bottle of fancy Aesop post-poo drops which clear the air after rigorous bowel activity – though on reflection, it may have been more of a gift for my ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. Negative tests results for two of the closest contacts of a woman who tested positive for Covid-19 after leaving managed isolation is a good sign, says Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins. Two of the closest contacts of a woman ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Dyer, Associate Professor, RMIT University At a dinner party, or in the schoolyard, the question of favourite colour frequently results in an answer of “blue”. Why is it that humans are so fond of blue? And why does it seem to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Megan Davis, Pro Vice-Chancellor Indigenous UNSW and Professor of Law, UNSW We are on the eve of the nation’s annual ritual of celebrating the arrivals, while not formally recognising the ancient peoples who were dispossessed. Each year the tensions spill over, rendering ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Bright, Senior Lecturer of Addiction, Edith Cowan University While the public focus remains on COVID vaccines, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) continues to evaluate a range of proposals around the provision of medical treatments in Australia. The regulatory body is currently ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Wilkinson, Professor, School of the Built Environment, University of Technology Sydney Many of us who endured lockdowns in Australia are familiar with the surge in energy bills at home. But for older Australians who depend on the Age Pension for income, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael P. Cameron, Associate Professor in Economics, University of Waikato Population growth plays a role in environmental damage and climate change. But addressing climate change through either reducing or reversing growth in population raises difficult moral questions that most people would prefer ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Sonnemann, Fellow, School Education, Grattan Institute School is back for 2021, and some students will get extra help this year. Students who fell behind in their learning during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 will be eligible for extra tutoring in Victoria ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Duffy, Lecturer, School of Business, Western Sydney University Australia Day used to be an obvious and uncontroversial occasion for brands to endear themselves to Australian consumers. No longer. There has been a decided shift over the past decade in commercial attitudes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Mendelssohn, Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, University of Melbourne In January 1971, Art News published Linda Nochlin’s Why have there been no great women artists? Her ...
Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for January 25, keeping you up to date with the latest local and international news. Reach me on stewart@thespinoff.co.nz7.40am: Two close contacts of new Covid case test negativeThe husband of the new Northland case of Covid-19 has tested negative for the virus, along with ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission Hundreds of staff won't come into work on Monday after a 56-year-old woman who later tested positive for Covid-19 visited about 30 locations in Northland and Auckland - a blow to businesses desperately holding on after a hard year. Harry ...
Will be shopping around for a new power supplier today!
I recommend Powershop. They have a $50 friend referral promotion at the moment: you and your friend both get $50 credit when they sign up. I’d be happy to refer you but I’d need your email address to do so. Let me know if you’re interested and we can work out how to exchange ‘real’ addresses anonymously.
Will talk to my partner and get back to you.Thanks.
Powershop only work out cheaper when you have spare cash you can buy up winter power in summer and vice versa.
Nah, not true.
Using Powershops detailed price history, I calculated I was about $20 ahead compared to one of the companies (Mercury I think), but only because I purchased every available special that powershop had. If I hadn’t, I would have been slightly behind.
Powershop also have the 30 minute power usage chart if you’ve got a smart meter, so you can see over the last 4 weeks how much power you used in any given 30 minute block. Since I am on a day/night meter, this lets me hightlight periods of high usage, remember what I was doing at the time, and make a conscious decision to defer that power usage to the night period when the power is cheaper.
Puchasing power in advance is something that powershop offers though, and this year although they put their prices up by 5% (thanks to Transpower etc), they gave us the opportunity to buy power in advance at the ‘current’ price.
I should also add with Powershop that all of these features are entirely optional: you can just treat it like any other power company “set and forget” and they’ll automatically bill you your usage at the end of the month. But you can also buy power in advance (months, or just the current month), track your power usage and buy specials etc. If you’ve got a smart meter it is all fully automatic. If you don’t then you’ll need to enter your own meter reads.
They are more or less all the same. They all use the same contractors for their field work, and a lot of them have the same billing system. Contact, Genesis and Pulse have GenTrack and MERC have SAP. Reading/billing are done on a 20 day cycle, with Genesis/Contact being read 2 monthly and the rest monthly.
Due to so many people switching there has been huge instances with data getting mixed up. For example if you live in Devon Street, New Plymouth, and switched to CEL, you might just end up getting signed in as a customer in Devon St, Rotorua.
And dont get me started on smart meters. The amount of issues that people are having after having one installed are horrendus, things not working, fuses blowing, part power, etc and so on.
C’mon Fa’afoi…do ya job and stick it to Collins if you can!!!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/8549984/Patience-wears-thin-in-police-force
“The average farm worker is now earning $5500 a year more than the national average wage and salary, according to a Federated Farmers/Rabobank survey, and pay levels for most pastoral farm positions have continued to increase.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10877550
Quote from the NZ Herald.
A little more journo work and The Herald would have discovered that farm workers need to work 80 to 100 hours a week to get this. Many farmers require “couples” so often this is a combined household income, the conditions in dairy farms with over 500 cows are atrocious….come on Herald, do your work, do an hourly rate.
‘A little more journo work and The Herald would have discovered that ….’
2 issues with that statement, 1. They aren’t jouno’s but press release recyclers and 2. ‘work’ as in research and verifiability of facts from disparate sources doesn’t happen in granny’s world.
They’ve done their work which is giving a soapbox to their backers being the wealthy elite under the illusion the story has actually been validated.
In fact farmers around here that pay decent wages are having no trouble at all finding good staff, even for 90 hour weeks.
You will find that the ones, as usual, who complain about lack of staff, expect 100 hour weeks for less than 500 dollars.
Sounds about right. Decent pay, enough staff so that other staff can take their time off, and you won’t have to try and employ cheap foreign labour.
Same’s true for orchardists and fruit pickers, where I’m from. Only the greedies have trouble finding staff, usually corporate farmers. Give decent pay and conditions, voila, no problem finding staff. They should try it sometime.
Who says Shearer won’t listen?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10877541
Labour would consider allowing the GCSB to spy on New Zealanders in limited circumstances but …
In reversal of the usual rule, everything after the “but” is bullshit, and I’d take the “limited” with a grain of salt, several Siberian mines and the Red Sea.
I think that this position is pretty good.
“”An inquiry’s necessary because it’s not just about the GCSB, it’s also about the SIS and the relationship with the police. It’s right across the board and what I don’t want to do is to have a narrow, quick-fix Bandaid type of solution for something that is much more fundamental.”
The essential point is that a full enquiry be held first. Surely you would expect the facts and consequences of any “reform” be considered? There is a probability that Mr Key will rush through changes without an enquiry and in a way to suit the National agenda.
What would you choose?
Band aid or decisions based on an enquiry?
Then what Labour should have said was that an inquiry was needed but not to say that they would support the spying before that inquiry.
FFS if a NZ citizen needs to be surveilled it should be a police job with police protections in place, not the job of the spooks – whose role is to keep a watch on the activities of foreign powers.
Or does Labour think that we should head down the US route where the bullshit ‘terrorism’ flag is waved around in order to justify expansion of state security powers over local citizens.
All this from Shearer, Mr Mercernary Man himself. How reassuring.
Read Trotter on the subject: he asks the question of “why a non military appointee?”
The answer he has is that the whole spy / surveillance thing has moved away from foreign nations (posing a national sovereignty threat) to the enforcement of international private interests (commercial copyright etc).
The police and the NZDF can quite easily do the jobs that the SIS and GSCB do.
Exactly DTB. Shearer has sold out our rights to not be spied on before the process has even begun. I don’t think they’ll kick up much of a fuss even at an inquiry, because they would want to spy on the same people that Key does. Given a golden opportunity to make a stand, he falls over in a puddle of his own dribble.
Apart from the egregious contempt for civil liberties, which Labour has long played fast and loose with (Hello Goff!), I’m pissed off by Shearer’s own utter, utter, utter stupidity. Once again, when an issue seems to be gaining some traction, Shearer barges in trying to prove how important and statesman-like he is and once again he fucks it up for everyone.
His brain-fade over his bank account might have been an honest mistake, but he gave ammunition to National – who can now say “He’s incompetent or a liar, take your pick. Do you trust this man with the country’s finances?”
Now it’s going to be, “But he supports expanded GCSB powers too,” thereby marginalising the Green campaign on the issue and undermining his own frigging deputy Robertson’s own work.
What’s he going to say in a debate?
“Well, ah, I mean… I mean I meant… within… I mean, ah, with appropriate safeguards…. and I do disagree – yes, I disagree – I’m making a stand here! I disagree… I mean I might, I might disagree over your placement of a comma on line twelve of… um, something you released…. um… oh dear, where’s my bit of paper…”
Key’s just going to smirk and crush him with a soundbite.
He’s worse than wrong, he’s a phuqyng idiot. Again.
One week, Dear God, please, one week without Shearer being a dick.
I think you’d have a better chance of finding a snowball in hell.
Let me channel McFlock for a second here:
Shearer’s performance or lack thereof doesn’t matter in the slightest.
In fact whichever talking head is Labour Leader is of zero importance to me personally, since I’m an Alliance supporter (although somehow I always end up reflexively smashing at the Cunliffe devotees but not the Shearer bearers, whoops).
Because in the end Labour is only there to facilitate the Greens and Mana, who will make it all good in the end.
So everyone, please relax. There is no problem.
CV, you’re shit enough at channelling that you should be on Sensing Murder. You’re batting zero for … how many now?
I already gave my response to rhino’s passionate soliloquy. Which was that I really didn’t think enough of it or the perceived issue it lampooned to bother giving either a response.
Is this an Own Goal ?
In this morning’s Herald – “ Party may support law change to allow GCSB to keep watch on Kiwis but only if full intelligence review held. Labour would consider allowing the GCSB to spy on New Zealanders in limited circumstances but only if that was recommended by a full independent review of intelligence agencies, party leader David Shearer says.”
Who writes this stuff for them FFS. Why put “we support spying” and then only if you bother to read on do you find the conditions.
Why not
condemn the behaviour
demand the big look at intelligence
suggest a parliamentary committe to oversea intelligence
then in the small print at the bottom “if recommended anfd there are asfeguards we may agree”
That paragraph was written by the Herald staffer, not Shearer. The article is here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10877541
RBCV
+1
David Shearer – the man who thoughtfully brings his own banana skins to slip on in case someone has forgotten to provide them (or mango skins, whatever).
+1
a mild mango chicken with raita and papadoms to go please
http://i.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/8549746/Blunt-message-to-Telecom-staff
Is on $4.7 mill pay package. Institutes wage freeze, ‘me included’. Forgets to say whether his ‘incentive’ (3/4 of his package) is part of freeze…
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10877551
How are judges appointed? Well since National got into power you’ll find ‘is friend of Chris Finlayson’ was a criteria. Finlayson to certain friend in Sydney law firm ‘Want to be a judge? Just let me know’.
add QC to that now.
See The Herald this morning. It is valid for the Law Commission to identify and discuss myriad aspects of our legal system, the role of the judiciary among them. It is valid for a government to engage in the debate which follows, of course.
My real concern is that in its destructive worship of austerity, its singlemindedness in retention of power, and its doubtless taste for authoritarianism, this government will unhesitatingly sully legitimate debate on the question of where and how the judiciary sits in the justice system.
Recall Simon Power’s risible ticking-off of the Chief Justice for her mature and informed comments about the justice system a couple of years ago. Risible indeed coming from a life-long National Party arse-wipe joke of a man.
On many occasions this government has sunk to the depths of defamation, pejorativeness and abuse of practitioners in law and other areas. Non-exhaustively, legal aid lawyers, Justice Binnie, teachers, unions.
It is routine. First blame the practitioners. Then, assisted by the patently shallow “journalism” of child-scribes on their way up and that of accommodating older hacks, sell the lunacy that less gas in the tank of any particular vehicle will naturally see it go further, more safely and more efficiently. When the vehicle conks out halfway down the road of ill-considered and often ridiculous “reforms” – blame the practitioners.
In terms of convention the judiciary may not be such a sitting-duck but of course McVicar and the SST could always be relied upon to spew out anything the spin-doctors vetoed. More or less the same result.
It is alarming to see this government and the delightedly malevolent Judith Collins poking and prodding in matters constitutional. They are just too dishonest and not nearly as competent as they claim.
I’m reminded of Glenda Jackson re Thatcher – the cost of everything, the value of nothing.
We’d be better off if the judiciary ran a review of the government. I can’t see this as anything but an attempt to scare any slight remnant of independence out of our judges and make them even more overtly political.
I’m not a big fan of judges in general, but I’m a sworn enemy of the WhaleSpew/MacVicar types who carry on with the rubbish that NAct MPs believe but can’t say in public.
“givin’ us a Heart Attack, Heart Attack…”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10877548
lately i have had no luck getting html into comments. I do not understand what the fault is.
below was copy pasted direct from FAQ and even that didn’t work. As you can see bold and italic worked but strikeout and underline do not. i see others with underline and strikeout in comments so it is pretty confusing, Any ideas ? Anyone ?
bold; write my text
italic; write my text
strikeout. write my text
underline. write my text
strikeout:
here’s my textunderline: testing never tried this before
PS: I used :strike, not strikeout
try ul not u
testing ul:
see if this works
can you write what you did for strikeout but put a space between each character so i can see the actual keystrokes.
test:
i wrote w o r d (with spaces) (afteredit: greater than less than characters did not show up just shows the ‘word’ inside them
word (as html text in FAQ, no spaces)
test after edit:
still nada, what am I doing wrong?
[left angle bracket]strike[right angle bracket]Text[left angle bracket]/strike[right angle bracket] should give
TextBTW, you have to have the WYSIWYG editor off to use HTML coding.
bold; write my text
italic; write my text
bold and italic work, which is why I am expressing my confusion
word🙂ok by using the whole word ‘strike’ it seems to function, so why not just ‘s’ as per FAQ?
‘b’ ‘i’ etc work for bold etc 😕
it’s a weird old world
Success!!!
Can’t seem to get underline to work, but it’s not something I would use anyway.
BTW, you have to have the WYSIWYG editor off to use HTML coding.
There is no WYSIWYG editor at the moment.
http://www.ironspider.ca/format_text/fontstyles.htm
my test, as cut and paste from FAQs
bold; write my text
italic; write my text
strikeout. write my text
underline. write my text
strikeoutfreedom, here it is, just change the bracket type.
(strike)strikeout(/strike)
underline doesn’t work a (u), or (underline)
test in Safari
strike
strikedoesn’t make any difference, tried it both ways, numerous times
I wonder if it is something to do with being on Ubuntu ? but that really makes no sense as the bold and italic work fine. 😕
StrikeoutBold
Italic
Underline
..to jump on the bandwagon.
Okay, so <u> and </u> get stripped out, and don’t appear in the editor.
“UL” is unordered list
does it work?
Edit: nope.
freedom, try a different browser.
What do you mean both ways?
Show us what you are actually typing, but use () brackets.
(s)wordythingtofillspace(/s)
test below with angle brackets
wordythingtofillspace
p.s. I only use firefox browser.
freedom (s)whatever(/s) doesn’t work. You need to write this
(strike)whatever(/strike)
Nope, that’s got nothing to do with it as the interpretation is done by the server once the comment has been posted.
go on strikeedit – ah what fun
confusing :x:
i suggest a strong cup of tea for everyone and if possible, play with a nearby kitten to alleviate aggro 🙂
as i do not have a kitten nearby i will make do with using powertools instead
leaving it alone now before i do something crazy like trying
underline😎didn’t we have The Day We Went To Bangor
😆
it’s gremlins man, those damn gremlins are out and they’ve been fed
http://gentlemint.com/media/images/2012/10/11/83bbbdba.jpg.505x650_q85.jpg
Tungsten, my friend tungsten; (just in case we need some confirmation without bias, i ghosted out of the shower yesterday and was working through Seven Nations Army in my head, turned the radio on (had been off to save power), Hauraki, and who woulda’ thunk it; this has happened many times before, Test-ReTest and all those Validity / Reliability study requirements; now gonna try this encode HTML stuff; could be some time… 🙂
Stone Cold
thanks to everybody who persevered, yet it was felix’s link that helped the ghost back to the other side. now, if I could just materialize a root from branch office
🙂
…didn’t hurt a bit ya’ big freakin spooky blouse, whatta ya playin’ at; getta beard-cut and getta feel job…
right, oops, left to the macrons and other little funny punctuation marks above the gaelic now and we’ll all be tickety boo in the cave Longshanks.
bullet point — doesn’t work with <ol> <ul> <li> 🙁
This line of text is not underlined. — so <span> and <u> don’t work either
tyre flat; a second opinion doc. you”ll know what they say about ritual parking
Well, this is a change, and encouraging if it continues. Two articles today from the Dominion Post critical of the Key Govt.
The first one is about Buffoon Bridges’ anti democratic anti marine protest law
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/8550388/Proposed-sea-protest-law-a-big-blow-to-human-rights
The second one written in a mildly piss take style about Key’s trip to China
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/politics/8548292/Dear-friend-Key-and-party-feted
TPPA is not a good thing
http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2013/04/14/msians-must-reject-the-us-trade-deal/
We kow we are never going to see the full text till after it has been signed off. Even if only half of the known details are true, the TPPA is a suidice agreement for the self-determination of all Nations who sign it and those that don’t will be signed up to something equally dangerous. No profit is worth our sovereignty as a Nation. No Nation should put profit before its people. I do not care what a court says, a Corporation is not a person and this single legal distinction, more than any war or financial scandal or illegal election is single handedly responsible for the ongoing destruction of real Democracy.
“Six hundred US corporate advisors have negotiated and had input into the TPP, and the proposed draft text has not been made available to the public, the press or policymakers.”
I am sure this is one of those passages of reality that Groser would rather we ignore
Thanks for the link, freedom (interesting website, “Free Malaysia Today”). It’s pretty critical of the US and its role in promoting neoliberalism internationally – not sure where it is re- Malaysian politics.)
This bit from the article is worrying:
After a quick scan I’m not sure either where its editorial biases lie.
Right now Malaysia is in the midst of “election fever” – according to the radio, TV, and newspapers. The current government, headed by Najib, will likely be returned to power. The only question is by what margin.
I’ve only been here since January so I’m not up to speed on who the main players are except for the aforementioned Najib. The glaringly obvious thing here is that politics are very much “racial”. The Malays, which make up over half of the population, will likely as not vote for the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) backed Barisan Nasional party – Barisan Nasional has ruled the country since Malaysia became independent of the UK. The Chinese, who as a block control a great deal of the country’s finances and commercial entities, will make deals that will best serve their community. The Indians, well they don’t have the numbers or financial clout, will go along to get along.
As an “orang putih” I get an earfull from the locals about the different “races” when we are out of earshot from any who might overhear. The Malays moan about the Chinese, the Chinese complain that the Malays don’t play fair because of their demographic advantage, and the Indians swear that they can never catch a break.
Very interesting…here’s a speech I found on youtube given by Hannah Yeoh, a young Malaysian state politician…speaking (in part) on women in Malaysian politics; honestly she seems way more talented than a shit load of our hapless NZ ones.
CV
Those Asians always showing us up. Just when we get to sit complacently at the supposed top of the pile, someone still thinking comes along and rains on our parade.
Waffle. She didn’t. It was quite something to experience a politician who doesn’t waffle and sidestep.
Another superb example of the wonder and beauty of Multiculturalism.
where has all this bonhomie lately come from bonhomme?
And that is a notable question.
Hay, here’s a thought brother, trade in one of those suits ya don’t need, you’ve got them all in spades anyway, and help a brother into a new set of Flat-Screen-PC compatible wheels; though, now i’m back on the race-course, Harvey or Noel might be interested; Frek, when you examine the backgrounds of, oh I don’t know, your average Act or NZ First candidate tracey, Virgil, “Brains”, Kyrano, Aloysius or even Tin-Tin would be better mariners.
now, there’s a an Echo Gaudette from the Beach.
Was wondering how the flow of information would be stemmed, just stop people from accessing it!
Nothing the establishments despise/fear more, than the sharing of information amongst the plebs.
The internet has been a doubled edged sword for the planets rulers, while it provides them with greater capabilities to control, than ever before equally it provides greater ability for people to learn, and understand the frauds being perpetuated against humanity.
Taking complete control of the narratives/information flows, will be very high on the list of outcomes!
Its not about money, its about control!
a Boo-Boo for Mister Park-Ranger
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10877508
Racists and the Queens Chain
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10877574
Matthias = Truth (We Can Remember It For You Wholesale)
from the UFB; Let SeE, and the BBC espionage studies in the DPRK
‘Tree Tree 1 2 3 Treee turn into Cow for me! (my name’s Mud Wiggle and I eat Mud)
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10877519
(God ; too big a part to comment , Silly Sausage)
I would just like to repeat this anecdote from my burn ed colleague ghostrider; apparently, after checking out some interesting mark-downs at his local exorbitantly priced supermarket he struck up a conversation with a lady-pensioner (probably spying the flash mobility-scooter got him going), anyway, this lady was originally from Dartmoor (the UK one) and it seemed that her husband had been a principal who was very conversant re politics; they got talking about the lovely day, politics and the young of today, as you do, and regarding Thatcher, she considered her an important person to British political history (lets leave it at that) yet she COULD NOT STAND JOHN KEY. kinda makes me wonder what it is about him that revs Fran O’Sullivan’s motor running.
Rogue T
The answer is obviously that Jokeyhen is an upstart, johnny-come-lately, nouveau riche person of no standing in British class lines. Thatcher and others were excused their un-aristo starts because they were successful and Thatcher was a good swot. And she knew how to dress like a lady, even attempting to eclipse the Queen. (Who probably would have liked to e(clip)se her round the ears.)
Thatcher was also a bloody serious and capable pollie. When she went in to fuck the miners she did so front on and full on. Key just shuffled apologetically around the edges. Plenty of right wing NAT hardliners think that Key just needs to harden the frak up, and has needed to for the last, oh, four and a half years.
How many people know how our justice system works? The media don’t seem to.
Granny looks to be having a go at judges and sentencing, can expect more of this I think;
“You be the Judge”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10877196
FWIW the sentencing regime works on the principle of precedent. Judges don’t have autonomy on sentences like the Herald seem to believe, they have to follow sentencing guidelines which are legislated by Govt. Whenever there’s a law change to sentencing the first sentences of the new laws are carefully analysed by the Chief Justice and discussed with all of the judges around the country. Any mistakes are quickly rectified before they become a precedent, from thereon they all have to follow the precedents set.
The reason they use precedent is to ensure uniformity in sentencing. If they don’t have uniformity the crim can appeal their sentence on the grounds that someone else got a much lighter sentence for a similar offence. It’s pretty basic stuff.
If sentences are wrong it’s because the law is wrong or some judges are not following the guidelines properly. The Chief Justice (I think) is in charge of monitoring the performance of judges in that respect, those who get it wrong are supposed to be warned & reprimanded.
So, without knowing what sentences were handed down for similar offences previously, the Herald’s survey is a pointless attack on judges who may just be doing their job.
Doesn’t seem to be working
Can’t make that conclusion from what’s been said there. Most likely scenario is the actual law is dictating those sentences, or that’s the precedents that have been set.
The judges’ job is to do what the written laws tell them. Their sentencing has a built-in check & balance via the appeals process. If the judge’s reading of the law, and subsequent sentencing, is wildly out you’ll see an appeal against the sentence either by the Crown or by the offender.
Too many people have this expectation that judges can suddenly get ‘tougher’ on offenders. They can’t, for that to happen the law has to be changed and judges don’t make the law (nor should they)
There is a “story” behind the NBR firewall that a new “One Law For All” Party is about to be set up. Seemly 100 grumpy white men turned up for a John Amsell gig in Have-a-lot North. Read more on http://www.treatygate.wordpress.com . That site sees Willie Jackson as a Kiwi incarnation of Robert Mugabe!
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/poll-result-would-you-consider-voting-one-law-all-party.
An untypically poorly written piece in the NBR.
” 100 grumpy white men turned up”
As compared to the 100 angry lesbians who turnout for Feminists Against Men gigs.
Oh Well, it was good while it lasted said the Mac to the Nicks.
” 100 grumpy white men turned up”
As compared to the 100 angry lesbians who turnout for Feminists Against Men gigs.
No, and I w i l l s p e a k s l o w l y n o w…
It’s 100 grumpy white men as compared to everyone else. Geddit?
So how come you been out of power for 2 terms then?
Why the constant whining on here by the Far Left that Labour just isn’t really them anymore?
I haven’t been out of power for two terms, I’m still as powerful as I ever was.
I have become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Nah, KP, they just said they were lesbians to stop your unwelcome advances. They were angry though.
Snap 🙂
MO
Masterly riposte.
You are obviously not informed about Feminist Doctrine.
Here, let me help you:
“All men are rapists and that’s all they are” — Marilyn French
“The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race.” — Sally Miller Gearhart, in The Future – If There Is One – Is Female.
“Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women’s bodies.” — Andrea Dworkin
Feminism was hijacked years ago by man haters and lesbians, it is an ideology of hate.
It helps explain why the Left is so broken, bogged down in Identity Politics and the hyper relativism of trendy Post Modern Philosophy
still a neo-platonist then?
Don’t you understand the difference between what a character in a book says and what the book’s author thinks? Probably just another symptom of hate. You should probably get that looked at.
I’m fairly sure that k_p doesn’t understand the difference between fiction and reality 🙂
Aww KP, find a nice man who’ll understand you. You’ll be less bitter, and think of how much you’ll have in common.
yes, i stumbled, fell over, the announcement of this party; the whities sure seemed to be a-feared of change (have very little awareness of the inevitability of demographics, and too much money to hate)
personally, we could do with an Unbelievable Party for the Body Electric
” the whities sure seemed to be a-feared of change”
What about the brownies and the yellowies?
Your electronic music is tame and boring.
Try BK Revolution as a contrast – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qnvf2fDEcBE
they were just plays on words for friends electric, you know, “friends” ;synth pop never really got better after Foxx, Krautrock, Ultravox and Numan imo (just kidding around). Anyway, you sometimes seem bright enough to read the signs; how do you think the domestic politics of NZ are going to impact demographics anyway; Maori role increases, Pasifika role increases, SE Asian role increases, Sub-continent increases, African increases, Middle-Eastern increases; while it is conceded that there is a drift towards conservatism in the post-empire after-taste hang-over, one size will definitely not fit all or do you not read beyond own subscriptions? and Gender politics, well, thanks to the roles of genetics, history, culture and language they are essential; I could write 500 Shades of Grey transcribing the utterances men make of their women in the pub, the work-place, the sports-club (well, maybe the gyms) and the smoko-rooms; Hell, I was a misogynist myself deep down for years;and, on the other side of the coin, how many women prefer their own, or the company of women to their husbands / partners, but you go ahead, flame-on.
me, i prefer The Company of Strangers.
“Try BK Revolution as a contrast”
Doesn’t stand up nearly as well after ten years as Pulsing does after 30.
Revolution is an awesome hard house track – instant classic!
Ordinary, even at the time.
Some interesting remarks from Ansell about maori being less evolved that pakeha on that site, Boadicea.
And by “interesting” I mean “horrible, ignorant and disgraceful”.
that’s alright mama, that’s alright with we; public addresses are easy to see.
Ansell is always happy to claim all the technological and cultural developments for himself and other Europeans. For example, he talks about Maori wanting money because some dams have been built and says they didn’t know how to build dams or turbines. Does he or any of his pathetic followers know how to do anything useful at all? Would he use a computer if he knew Turing was gay?
Pathetic and scared little people who should be flushed back down the sewer from whence they came.
Ugh! John Ansell. “one law for all” sounds alot like “one nation”. Same deal. Remember that crazy Pauline Hanson?
http://www.qhatlas.com.au/sites/default/files/imagecache/Large/db5084.jpg
Surely hope John and Pauline don’t get together and have a baby.
funny, I was just thinking how universally loathed Hekia Parata is becoming; swimming to the Banks.
A commentator on radionz this morning said that broadly 70% of NZ dairy farmers (I think just the dairy sector) had 30% equity in their businesses. After all this wealth that is being frequently talked about, dairy farmers are still in the poo. WTF I can’t understand it.
I There was a drought about 2008 that equalled the present one. I thought though that the backbone of the country’s economy, dairy, had more calcium in it. How can we raise some serious concern about the country and people’s welfare with the wider peopulation so we can get beyond this stale stalemate of 61 to 59, a risable Majority, and get some things done and new approaches trialled and get into new world mode with eagerness to conserve the good, progress in advantagous ways and improve our low levels of attainment????
Labour on i guess
Green on. Vote Green, join the Green Party, donate to the Green Party. Ditto Mana (although I still think party voting GP is better strategically than Mana).
What we want is a Labour led govt that doesn’t rely on Peters or Dunne.
and nothing helps control droughts and protect Dairy Farmers like deforestation,
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10877519
hang on 😕
That article exemplifies exactly why we shouldn’t use economics as the justification for caring for and protecting the environment. Just like with the clean, green brand and using the economic imperative of that as justification for ecological sensitivity, using the ETS etc is bound to fail. As soon as the economics don’t stack up, the trees will come tumbling down.
We need to value and revere nature for its own inherent worth, irrespective of what it can do for use and not because of the five second dollar value we can place on it.
That aside, anyone who converts to dairy from now on (apart from small/med scale farmers using sustainable management) is siding with evil and deserves all the approbation that will come their way.
“A commentator on radionz this morning said that broadly 70% of NZ dairy farmers (I think just the dairy sector) had 30% equity in their businesses. After all this wealth that is being frequently talked about, dairy farmers are still in the poo. WTF I can’t understand it. ”
It looks to be down to farms being way overpriced here, likely due to the amount of foreign buyers pushing the prices up. A typical Kiwi has to borrow huge sums to buy into a farm and the cost of capital is often too high for the income the farms generate. They make a living but rarely enough extra cash to pay down the principal on the mortgage
Eric Watson had a commentary in the Herald talking about his dairy farm investment in Georgia USA. He claimed the climate there is better for dairying which makes the yields per cow & hectare better and yet the price of farmland there is considerably less than here so the returns are much higher.
(If it was so great there though you have to wonder why foreigners buy our farms when the Yanks have such bargains to be had.)
DH
Innteeresting.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/extraterrestrial-truthers-holding-hearings-in-d.c.-next-month/article/2525371
Bassett, the executive director of the Paradigm Research Group, wants the U.S. government to lift what he calls the “truth embargo” and acknowledge that extraterrestrials are real and are engaging the human race.
Bassett and his allies are taking over the National Press Club in downtown D.C. from April 29 to May 3 to host the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure. “What we are going to do is bring the largest concentration of witnesses ever assembled in one place, at one time, and they are going to testify exactly as if they were in a real congressional hearing,” Bassett explained. Former members of Congress are being tapped to run the hearings, while witnesses, including former astronaut (and sixth man on the moon) Edgar Mitchell, are coming in from around the world. A film production crew from Los Angeles will film the whole thing, turning “Truth Embargo” into a documentary.
ahhh, yes its a Paradoxical Circle indeed.
yet, gotta go and have some lunch before Of Gods and Men…
The Fermi paradox isn’t based in reality: “But no convincing evidence of this exists.”
In 2007 The National Press Club held a press conference in which a group of high-profile witnesses described their experiences. The moderator for the conference was Fife Symington, who described what he saw regarding the Phoenix Lights UFOs. Symington was the Arizona governor at that time. There was also good coverage of the Rendlesham Forest incident.
Its a bit upsetting Ghost, since Nietzsche declared God dead, things have gone from bad to worse at Dionysian events for blokes.
primarily (somethings happening here, what it is, aint exactly clear, we gotta stop, Children, whats that sound, everybody look what’s going down…)
Yeah, and the 100 grumpy white men could make a good party dubious,…good boozers generally, not sure how fertile that makes them.
Just to clarify what Nietzsche actually meant.
cha know, (refs not handy) but the introduction to me Oxford identifies the most influential philosophers beginning with Socrates…Plato…Aristotle…fec…wheres ya memory when ya need it…Aquinas…Augustine…Hobbes…Bacon…Berkeley…Locke…Kant…Kierkegaard…Spinoza….Liebniz…Hegel…Heidegger…Wittgenstein… (not in chronological order and some of these have been added personally), yet the list ends with Nietzsche. imho opinion, everything philosophical in the west ends and begins with Nietzsche (call it a hunch)… / and then on to Giddens, Foucault, Bourdieu, DERRIDA (k-p) Habermas and Goffman as the most cited in the Humanities Lit. (T.H.E), so I pray the feckin politicians listen to the philosophers and european sociologists for a change, yet I won’t be holding my breath or a torch for them.*sigh* anyway, appreciating all this sh*t comes naturally to me bad self; it certainly is not a worm-hole, it is liberating yet confining at the same time, as you can imaginitively see, and yes, it requires a fair amount of panadol sometimes, or some other distraction to shut the feckin brain off for a while. Oh Well, such is life, onwards and upwards 🙂 from my first stay in hospital, oo oo oo, what more’s a poor boy do…” ‘I Can’t Help Myself…when I get this feeling, I wanna be someone else…” Hope you have laughed and cried with me along the way. 🙂
Hospital…get well!
We killed God yes….will we be arrested before getting to attend the Dionysian event with the 100 grumpy white guys (or are they the ones who really should be arrested). Or do we plead guilty to killing God and all his creation?
“hospital” when a wee nipper; Alls Good here, Cheers.
Every now and then an image comes along that highlights how lost we are as a society.
Sure, this image has been designed for a campaign, but it is still as edifying as the circumstance it portrays.
http://sphotos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/559643_10152770476095602_543951126_n.jpg
A picture is worth millions of words freedom. Ouch!
lol
China’s Q1 QDP Growth Slows, oops
apparently there is a real haircut correction going on in the Asian and affiliated markets
-“huge decimation losses”
With Trimmings
http://www.times-age.co.nz/news/teachers-stage-protest-march/1829521
this was over 200 people in Masterton on a Saturday
Masterton
Get the idea Kiwis are losing their patience ?
how’s yours?
National Day of Action
April 27
Wellington
http://postimg.org/image/ywaocfttv/
check social networks, street posters, car decals and other unexpected places for local events
Maybe some rich person out there wants to take out a Newspaper page or two on behalf of all kiwis who do not have a real voice in this discussion. (oh to have the resources of the hate machine)
This is not about party poitics, it is about self-determination and sending a message to Parliament
This is for Kiwis who want to say, once again, NO ASSET SALES
here is a blank title image, just add your local event details and share
http://s5.postimg.org/s4k99l4uf/doa_blank.jpg
Seven was Sharp on the relaxation of drug laws post-Power
Take a L.E.A.P
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
-“prohibition creates gangsters”
-“criminalises consensual exchange”