Open Mike 15/05/2017

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, May 15th, 2017 - 55 comments
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55 comments on “Open Mike 15/05/2017 ”

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  1. Ed 1
    15 May 2017 at 7:01 am

    We need a better media.
    One not owned by foreign billionaires and multinational finance corporations.

    No wonder so many New Zealanders are only capable of infantile political conversations.
    This is the garbage they are fed.
    It would appear that the only thing about the French elections that interests our 4th estate is the age of the President’s wife.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11855835

    • tc 1.1
      15 May 2017 at 7:35 am

      The kardashians must have been busy then.

    • Psycho Milt 1.2
      15 May 2017 at 7:38 am

      Personally, if I were looking for analysis of overseas elections, I wouldn’t go to the lifestyle section and read the opinion columnists therein, but maybe that’s just me?

    • Ed 1.3
      15 May 2017 at 7:38 am

      Garner and Espiner running 2 separate branches of the National Party’s comms team on this morning’s radio at 7.10 a.m.
      Both with the same message.
      Labour’s housing party is bad.

      Espiner a puppet of the establishment and Garner a muppet.
      Rich speculators need muppets and puppets like them.

      • Craig H 1.3.1
        15 May 2017 at 8:46 am

        Figures… Here’s Hosking to cheer us up:

        http://m.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/video.cfm?c_id=466&gal_cid=466&gallery_id=175950

        Actually reasonably positive!

      • jcuknz 1.3.2
        15 May 2017 at 9:37 am

        LIttles housing proposals is a GREAT IDEA with disasterous unintended consequences for the ordinary working renter like rent increases between $80 and $400 per week …. but of course the government will make it up one way or the other , figures depend on which RNZ commentator is correct.
        Thank goodness I am an owner with his own home and nothing else or I would be stung by this GREAT IDEA 🙂

        • Craig H 1.3.2.1
          15 May 2017 at 2:20 pm

          Unless Labour also built 100,000 additional houses along with 20-30,000 Housing NZ houses (2-3K p.a. over 10 years), in which case private landlords who try increasing rents too much might just find that they have empty houses instead.

  2. Ad 2
    15 May 2017 at 7:45 am

    This guy Rob Quist is trying to get Montana to turn Democrat.
    Something like trying to overturn Jackie Blue in Waitaki.

    He does it with some policy tendencies that would make an urban lefties’ hair curl – such as protecting the Second Amendment by shooting his tv – but his core message is reversing economic inequality. Also too many millionaires trying to represent good folk. And then taking a risk on medical marijuana. Plus wear a Stetson.

    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/13/montana-special-election-rob-quist-democrat-215128

    It made me think about the kind of candidate it would take to really pull away a hard-held rural seat away from National.

    • Andre 2.1
      15 May 2017 at 9:59 am

      Montana isn’t particularly solid Republican. As the article points out, currently the governor and one of the senators are Democrats. It’s more of a mystery why Montanans reliably go Republican for their one House seat.

      Winston’s already shown one way to win in deep-blue New Zealand. High profile with local roots. But with MMP there’s even the question of whether winning the seat is a worthwhile goal if it means the local MP has to go significantly off-message from the rest of the party.

    • Sabine 2.2
      15 May 2017 at 3:42 pm

      he does live there.
      he is a respected folks musician there.
      he is a ‘montana’an”

      hence he does as people in Montana do and still likes to advocate for social justice?
      Oh dear, let’s all clutch our pearls. 🙂

  3. bwaghorn 3
    15 May 2017 at 7:59 am

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11855979

    councils having to turn a blind eye to dodgy flats , no housing crisis in nz !

  4. The Chairman 4
    15 May 2017 at 9:03 am

    “Our members are not going to subsidise public transport by taking a cut in their terms and conditions of employment.”

    Union threatens industrial action on a scale never seen before
    http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/92573940/wellington-bus-services-will-stop-as-drivers-meet-to-discuss-dire-new-employer

  5. Rosemary McDonald 5
    15 May 2017 at 9:49 am

    More shitting in our pond…will we ever learn?

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/92472364/high-levels-of-ecoli-found-in-creek-that-runs-into-treasured-springs

    >>”Te Waikoropupu Springs is the southern hemisphere’s largest coldwater springs and has some of the clearest waters ever measured on earth.

    Levels as high as 20,000 E-coli per 100 ml were discovered at the boundary where the creek runs into the reserve after testing by by Friends of Golden Bay at four different sites from November 2016 – April, 2017.

    The new National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management states that safe swimmable levels should not exceed 540 E-coli per 100 ml and for drinking it is less than 1 E-coli per 100 ml. “<<

  6. Rosemary McDonald 6
    15 May 2017 at 10:10 am

    And on the subject of degrading our ‘pristine’ environment…

    …DOC achieves what must surely be an all time low….or conversely an all time high (on the tacky scale.)

    http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/330769/doc's-'moa-town'-plan-doesn't-fly-with-conservationists

    The only development needed in this area is to improve access…both the road from the main highway (it may have improved since last I visited) and to perhaps raise the category of at least some of the tracks from ‘easy’ to ‘wheelchair friendly’.

    http://www.doc.govt.nz/Documents/parks-and-recreation/tracks-and-walks/west-coast/karamea-walks-brochure.pdf

    The concrete earmarked for giant moa could be redeployed to facilitate this.

    Please.

  7. Pete George 7
    15 May 2017 at 12:06 pm

    An MP from which party presented this list at a conference in the weekend?

    An MP from which party presented this list at a conference in the weekend?

    1. People living in warmer, drier homes.
    2. Grants for first-home buyers.
    3. Better healthcare.
    4. More paid parental leave.
    5. More jobs and higher incomes.
    6. Benefits raised to help children and others in hardship.
    7. More police to keep communities safer.
    8. Putting more money in your pockets.
    9. Breakfasts in schools.
    10. Better education for our children.

    [link from whence PG plagiarised now added – weka]

    https://thespinoff.co.nz/auckland/15-05-2017/national-is-cloning-labours-identity-and-other-lessons-from-its-weekend-conference/

    • Robert Guyton 7.1
      15 May 2017 at 12:14 pm

      I’ll have a go; was it Alfred Ngaro of the “Mafiosa Party”?

      • Pete George 7.1.1
        15 May 2017 at 12:31 pm

        No. What Ngaro said has been widely publicised and widely and strongly criticised (as it should have been), as I’m sure you know.

        In case you weren’t aware there’s another post for bagging Ngaro here:
        – https://thestandard.org.nz/alfred-ngaro-reprimanded-for-being-naive/#comment-1329484

        • Robert Guyton 7.1.1.1
          15 May 2017 at 1:19 pm

          I do know, Pete, yes. I also know this is the Open Mike thread, where all sorts of issues can be discussed. So, not Alfred “The Don” Ngaro, eh!
          Chester Borrows? Nah, he’s been tied up in the courts and hasn’t had much to say since…Mike Sabin? Not sure what happened to him and haven’t heard a peep from him for a while…John Key? Was it John “Dunnarunna” Key? Joyce and al have also been busy defending this and that in the court lately; the copyright stuff, remember, so probably not them…I give up. Willie Jackson? He’s ascending at the moment. It might have been him.

    • McFlock 7.3
      15 May 2017 at 12:35 pm

      Give us another clue: did the MP announce a coherent way to put each or any of those goals within reach of lower income NZers or other NZers in need, or was it a thinly- disguised way to funnel more money to their private-sector chums and throw a few crumbes to everyone else?

    • The decrypter 7.4
      15 May 2017 at 12:38 pm

      Pete. What do you want me to say? Slip me a backhander and I can help . Seems like it probably is national . If not you won’t reply.

      • The decrypter 7.4.1
        15 May 2017 at 12:44 pm

        Times up,–no reply so must have been the Maori party.

        [lprent: Beware of the pwned heresy. My instinctive response to fools who use it like you appear to have just done is to demonstrate exactly how long I can ‘pwn’ them for with a substantial ban. It is not useful in online debates and usually leads to tiresome stupidly repetitive flame wars of the type that I detest. Don’t try to set the victory conditions. Learn to agree to disagree. Or you’ll find that I and other moderators will demonstrate our lack of agreement with your choice of tactic. This is your warning. ]

    • Pete 7.5
      15 May 2017 at 12:59 pm

      Has to be the WunderKid – Seymour.

    • lprent 7.6
      15 May 2017 at 1:03 pm

      Perhaps a better question is which party has a history of actually substantially delivering on their actual promises. Conversely which party has a history of promising and never delivering even a fraction of what they promised.

      Looking at the overall levels of actual police relative to population is probably a good place to start.

      National is busy promising more police yet again. Of course if you look at their performance over the last 3 National governments, all you ever see is a static level of police staff against a rising population. At the end of their term of office, we always find rising crime levels and a drop in solving crimes as the inevitable consequence….

      God, I remember 1999. That was the era when you couldn’t get police to attend any burglaries unless someone got sent to hospital. Consequently burglaries were endemic. It looks like the same thing is happening again – but in South Auckland it is aggravated robbery.

    • Ethica 7.7
      15 May 2017 at 1:23 pm

      It was Nikki Kaye and she was saying what she wished she had concentrated on in her years in Parliament, but unfortunately she joined the wrong party.

      • Pete George 7.7.1
        15 May 2017 at 2:01 pm

        Not very ethical misrepresenting what someone was saying.

        The list was reeled off by education minister Nikki Kaye. It’s her 10-point list of accomplishments by the government.

        I presume you knew that was how it was described at The Spinoff, is so you’ve been deceitful.

        • One Anonymous Bloke 7.7.1.1
          15 May 2017 at 2:39 pm

          Kaye’s whole list is a deceitful, cherry-picked attribution fail. No wonder you admire it.

      • Pete George 7.8.1
        15 May 2017 at 1:57 pm

        Not stealing anything. It’s simple to find where it came from, but as an exercise in seeing how overlapped party policies have become it was better to put a bit of distance to the source.

        Including the link initially would have defeated the purpose.

        [you cut and pasted without attribution and now you have this moderator’s attention. I don’t care what your rationales or intent were, if you are going to take other people’s work, then link or cite. If you can’t figure out how to do that without ruining your personal fun for the day, maybe find something else to do – weka]

        • McFlock 7.8.1.1
          15 May 2017 at 2:03 pm

          Dude, you literally cut&pasted someone else’s list without any attribution whatsoever, or even any indication that it was someone else’s list and you’d say whose after we played your wee game.

          • Pete George 7.8.1.1.1
            15 May 2017 at 2:14 pm

            You really didn’t know it was someone else’s list?

            My comment actually repeated this twice (accidentally): “An MP from which party presented this list at a conference in the weekend?”

            • McFlock 7.8.1.1.1.1
              15 May 2017 at 2:29 pm

              No, I thought you were just a bit shit at pasting. Sometimes if I really want to hack out a thought or a comment and know it’ll take a few edits, I’ll write it in a text editor rather than using the wordpress comment box, and then paste it in as a complete comment. But I try to always clearly identify which bits are mine and which bits are other peoples’. And is the line you pasted twice even from the post you plagiarised? I couldn’t find it. So are you arguing that your comment obviously contained unoriginal work because an original line was pasted twice?

              But even so, the concept of oh look I’m just a bit shit at pasting, so you should have inferred that not a single word of ‘my’ comment was original work by me is still a piss-poor excuse for plagiarism.

            • weka 7.8.1.1.1.2
              15 May 2017 at 3:02 pm

              see my moderator note above.

              • Pete George …
                15 May 2017 at 3:34 pm

                Whatever, but do you realise the list has been copied from somewhere else and maybe was just copy/pasted into that article with no linked provided?

                • Robert Guyton …
                  15 May 2017 at 3:36 pm

                  Much ado about nothing (not my own words).

                • McFlock …
                  15 May 2017 at 4:05 pm

                  Oh, so you maybe only plagiarised a plagiarist?

                  Hmmm. It’s not really plagiarising, though, because after the teaser the Spinoff author writes :”The list was reeled off by education minister Nikki Kaye.” That looks like an attribution to me.

                  Basically, you tried to do teasing question thing that the Spinoff did, but the only thing you didn’t steal was actually doing it properly and without plagiarism.

                  • weka …
                    15 May 2017 at 4:11 pm

                    roflnui. I’m so glad you wrote that because it’s way better than anything I could have done 😀

        • Robert Guyton 7.8.1.2
          15 May 2017 at 4:44 pm

          Like picking lint off an old cardy?

          (something else for Pete to do, that is).

      • McFlock 7.9.1
        15 May 2017 at 5:23 pm

        jeez, now nikki kaye is a plagiarist, too? You’re in a big club, petey boy

  8. Rosemary McDonald 8
    15 May 2017 at 12:10 pm

    Mike King, member of the New Zealand Suicide Prevention External Advisory Panel has told Coleman that the new draft plan is a crock…and he’s quit the panel.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11856284

    >>”The plan has buried all new ideas in such impenetrable language they are beyond recognition and unlikely to ever see the light of day. It is a strategy that is so broad in its effort to please everyone it will eventually collapse under the weight of public expectation. This will please no one except you and the politicians you serve,”<<

  9. Robert Guyton 9
    15 May 2017 at 1:23 pm

    “pwn” pronounced in the same way as the verb own, the tail of the p being “silent”.
    I’d never seen the idea of “the tail of the p being “silent”. What a curiosity!

    • McFlock 9.1
      15 May 2017 at 2:12 pm

      lol

      one way to explain away a coding typo, I guess 🙂

    • greywarshark 9.2
      15 May 2017 at 2:34 pm

      Hard to keep up Robert. Before something comes to mean anything it is replaced by a new slang word. I’ve just looked up pwn which seems to mean I’ve power-won-owned from you.

      And leetspeak is supposed to come from elite speak which apparently comes from hacker elites and includes a sense of humour so you don’t have to say a joke. Must be like the elite jokes of commercial travellers so often repeated that they were numbered, and a bloke just had to say that reminds me of #14 to have everyone rolling on the floor.

    • lprent 9.3
      15 May 2017 at 3:58 pm

      It was probably originally a typo of ‘owned’. However it was picked up by several online communities starting in the early online games.

      I think that I ran across it on the BBS’es or usenet in the mid-90s. Apparently it fell out of the modem or early net games like doom or quake.

      Those games were the reason that I had multiple phone lines at home (later followed by ISDN lines) in the early 90s. Some serious hours ‘wasted’ socialising online whilst exploring graphic effects. 🙂

      Incidentally, this opinion piece from the NY Times amused me this morning. An addiction to Zelda rather than the rocket launcher.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/opinion/the-nintendo-switch-of-my-dreams.html?_r=0

      I have not actually touched a Nintendo Switch with my own hands or even been in the same room as one, but from my sophisticated online snooping, I can tell you that the controller vibrates and can be detached, and the graphics are elaborate, unlike the pixelated eight-bit renderings of my memories, punctuated by a primitive synthesizer score. In the several decades I’ve been out of the game, the Nintendo has grown up. What a reunion it would be, the two of us together again as adults, I often think.

      I’m at a point in my life when a lot of big decisions need to be made. My partner, Michael, annoyingly wants to talk about them. I want the opiate release of a Nintendo Switch.

      I’ve dropped Michael many hints to this effect. I’ve signed him up for the notification, too. If he is the one who actually buys it, then I am absolved of responsibility, and my life of lying on the couch absorbed in escapist gameplay can begin.

  10. NZJester 10
    15 May 2017 at 2:56 pm

    TYT has a good video looking at Sweden’s booming economy.
    They have upped their Taxes and social welfare and unemployment has dropped and their economy is growing.

    • weka 10.1
      15 May 2017 at 3:04 pm

      looking at that, can NZ please get some decent architects and town planning rules too?

      • adam 10.1.1
        15 May 2017 at 3:32 pm

        As for architecture – have you been to Auckland weka? It has to be in the top ten ugliest cities in the world. You can’t walk down a street in this place without some nightmare slapping your eyes with ugly acid. As for the city center’s, shining example of Muppet’s with no taste. Albany has to take the cake, being a grey monstrosity devoted to bad taste and cost cutting.

        This is one ugly city, thank goodness the folk who live in it are nice.

        • weka 10.1.1.1
          15 May 2017 at 4:14 pm

          haven’t been in Auckland for 25 year 🙂 The thing about NZ is that we had beautiful buildings like in that picture and we just tossed that out. Even the plain, mid range buildings are ugly, how did we manage that?

        • Draco T Bastard 10.1.1.2
          15 May 2017 at 4:43 pm

          Albany has to take the cake, being a grey monstrosity devoted to bad taste and cost cutting.

          That pretty much describes a lot of what NZ has been doing for decades.

          IIRC, the outside of the Skytower was supposed to be either tiled or painted to make it look better. Still bare concrete and looking bloody horrible.

    • ianmac 10.2
      15 May 2017 at 4:21 pm

      Pretty good summary of Sweden’s socialist Economy NZJ. And they didn’t even mention the Free Public Health System or the falling Prison rates. Shock in USA to have Public Health for all. Impossible.

      Wonder how NZ ers would respond to higher taxes to fund Mental Health, Hospitals, Employment and Housing. Reckon many would applaud that on condition that the money was so spent.

      • NZJester 10.2.1
        15 May 2017 at 5:42 pm

        Sweden’s growth is like what we used to have in New Zealand before the National Party tore it all down with their mantra of trickle-down economics and lowering taxes. It shows how higher taxes actually improve an economy rather than stagnate it like the trickle-down economics model does. New Zealand needs to only look at the results from our past when we used to do what Sweden has now done to see it is the way to go here also. Up the P.A.Y.E. and dump the G.S.T.
        At the end of the day, the lower wages after tax will be more than made up for in the lower cost of food and colthing, as well as the enormous savings in free healthcare for the average worker. Businesses will be able to afford higher wages due to increased profits from more money kept flowing in our economy, instead of being siphoned off overseas.

  11. rhinocrates 11
    15 May 2017 at 5:46 pm

    John Oliver lets rip on Trump, Congress and then moving on to our Blinglish (starting at 10.15 to 15.20):