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.
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?
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.
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 🙂
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.
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.
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.
>>”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. “<<
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’.
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]
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.
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?
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. ]
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
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.
>>”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,”<<
“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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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Responding to the Government’s decision to give around $300 million to Amazon as a sweetener for filming a TV series in New Zealand, New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says: “As a matter of simple waste, this is striking, ...
I am very pleased with Air New Zealand’s Decision to backdown and withdraw their application to trademark into a logo Kia Ora. I said at the time that it was an ill conceived idea and poorly thought out – more importantly it should never have been ...
NZEI Te Riu Roa members will be joining with others across the union movement by wearing black and white in support of pay equity on Suffrage Day tomorrow, and urging the Government to commit to a settlement for teacher aides this year. ...
Yesterday’s announcement from the Minister for Immigration, to improve temporary work visas for migrant workers, provides some positive changes but more detail is needed. The Council of Trade Unions fundamentally supports the principle of making ...
FIRST Union today welcomed Westpac’s public admission of the significant gender pay gap in its workforce and reiterated its call for employers to work with unions to close this disparity, arguing that this work must begin at the bottom of the pay ...
Changes to the work visa system announced by the Minister of Immigration are not all positive for employers or migrants, comments Ms June Ranson, chair of the New Zealand Association for Migration and Investment (NZAMI) , a leading voice in the ...
The Dairy Workers Union (DWU) has welcomed the announcement from dairy company, Synlait, that they will be boosting parental leave entitlements significantly for working parents. ...
In June, the Children’s Commissioner announced a thematic review into Oranga Tamariki’s policies, processes and practice relating to care and protection issues for tamariki Māori aged 0-3 months. Today the Children’s Commissioner has released the full ...
“Closing the Gap” Tauranga, one of the area groups of Income Equality Aotearoa NZ Inc., has surveyed all candidates in the three local body elections to discover attitudes to some basic issues of the Western Bay region. We believe that this is ...
In response to DairyNZ's attempt to dismiss an economic report that highlighted dairy's role in the New Zealand economy is only three per cent of GDP, Fish & Game New Zealand Chief Executive Martin Taylor says: "If DairyNZ wishes to reject a report ...
Kiingi Tuuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII has successfully guided the mana whenua of lhumaatao to reach a consensus on the future of their whenua. ...
Two activists disguised as shareholders interrupted the AGM of a gold mining company in central Auckland this morning to inform shareholders their plans to mine for gold in conservation estate in the Karangahake Gorge were unwelcome. ...
The Capital and Coast District Health Board (CCDHB) has been labelled ‘NATO’ (no action, talk only) when it comes to child mental health, with just 0.6 full time staff (24 hours per week) for inpatient child psychology and just 0.8 full time staff ...
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL has awarded three New Zealand climate youth groups with its Ambassador of Conscience award, its highest recognition for human rights work, previously given to the likes of Nelson Mandela, Ai Weiwei and Malala Yousafzai. ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers' Union , in partnership with the Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance , has today published this year's Ratepayers' Report – online local government league tables – at www.ratepayersreport.nz . ...
NZUS Council executive director Jordan Small welcomes the news New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will meet with US President Donald Trump in New York next week. ...
The recent NZIER report trivialises the significant role the dairy sector plays in New Zealand’s economy – and fails to look at the specifics of the Government’s freshwater package, according to DairyNZ. DairyNZ chief executive Dr Tim Mackle said ...
This week, the New Zealand Parliament and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) will jointly host a seminar on tackling the global spread of illicit weapons. ...
In a landmark judgment issued this morning, the Court of Appeal confirmed that the Southern Response Concealment Class Action will proceed issued on an "opt out” basis. ...
Mainstream media, as the purveyors of truth and source of balanced information, took another backward step today with the announcement by Stuff that most New Zealand organisations had joined 170 media outlets from around the world in the “Covering ...
The goal of one million Kiwis having basic conversations in te reo by 2040 is unrealistic if more is not done to get serious about reo acquisition says the Māori Party. “While small steps have been taken to bolster efforts to increase the numbers of speakers, ...
Changes announced today by the Immigration Minister to employer-assisted visas will help businesses, but more work is needed to boost economic growth says Business Central. ...
DairyNZ Chief Executive Dr Tim Mackle is welcoming today’s announcement that the Government will be streamlining the employer assisted work visa process to help businesses and farms fill skills shortages. ...
Lawrence Yule MP wrote to our Office with concerns about the Department of Corrections' approach to procuring design and build services for rapid deployment of prison accommodation. We have published our response to Mr Yule on our website . ...
That from the chair of the Wellington Region of the College of Midwives, Siobhan Connor, following the news that Hutt Valley District Health Board is targeting midwives from overseas to help fill gaps in maternity units. ...
70% of New Zealand’s surface water take is allocated to Meridian’s Manapouri Power Scheme. But when Environment Minister David Parker asked to exempt the Scheme from his Freshwater Action Plan, he didn’t tell Cabinet that. ...
The Independent Police Conduct Authority has found that officers responded in a timely and appropriate manner as soon as they were aware that a fleeing driver had hit a pedestrian. ...
The Wellington Mayor's main rival in the upcoming local elections, Andy Foster, won't say how much Sir Peter Jackson has stumped up in a bid to get him elected. ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: GDP growth slows in the latest quarter, questions raised over utter NZDF incompetence, and NZTA sends money intended for light rail elsewhere.The numbers are in, and GDP growth has slowed down for the second quarter of the year. Radio NZ reports it ...
As climate change crumbles coasts, lengthens droughts and increases extreme weather events, New Zealand’s seed bank for threatened indigenous plants lacks on-going funding. ...
Steve Tew marked the magnitude of the day by openly attacking the Six Nations power bloc and suggesting former ABs should be free to play for Samoa, Tonga or Fiji. ...
A classical approach to freshwater policy only serves to enforce well-established views, argue Maria Armoudian and Nicolas Pirsoul. Here they offer some more innovative alternatives. ...
Freedom camping, public transport and affordable housing are challenges Queenstown’s Mayor Jim Boult says he’s uniquely poised to solve – if only people would do what they’re told.The Spinoff local election coverage is entirely funded by The Spinoff Members. For more about becoming a member and supporting The Spinoff’s journalism click ...
Broadcaster Mark Sainsbury is calling for a “champion for the elderly”. But the truth is, every single politician in parliament already fits that bill. Just look at the enduring nature of NZ Super, writes TOP leader Geoff Simmons. No doubt Mark Sainsbury’s call for an elderly commissioner to be created will ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra John Howard is remembered by his Liberal tribe as a reformer, but his legacy is mixed. The GST has endured but he essentially doomed his government when he let his ideological obsession with industrial relations ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liz Hanna, Honorary Senior Fellow, Australian National University This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. Global warming is accelerating, driven by the continuing rise in ...
Covering Climate Now: A new web series challenges the false idea that rangatahi Māori “aren’t engaged” in politics or civic participation, and presents what aims to be a more hopeful and inclusive alternative. The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is made possible thanks to Spinoff Members. Join us here!Over the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary Anne Kenny, Associate Professor, School of Law, Murdoch University Today, the Sri Lankan family who had resettled in the small town of Biloela in Queensland was given a last-minute reprieve in their fight to stay in Australia. A federal court judge ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sebastien Darchen, Senior Lecturer in Planning, The University of Queensland The crashing chords of punk echoed through the end of the 70s, heralding the arrival of a diverse bunch of subcultures. In Brisbane, none was more notable than the tribe known as ...
Covering Climate Now: As the temperature of the planet increases, so to does the number of documentaries about climate change. Jean Sergent watched all of them to bring you this harrowing listicle. Do you want to know which climate change documentaries will make you depressed and which will make you hopeful? ...
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Ian Taylor, founder of of Animation Research Ltd.This week on Business is Boring ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lucas Walsh, Professor, Education Policy and Practice, Youth Studies in the Faculty of Education. Latest books with Rosalyn Black include "Imagining Youth Futures: University Students in Post-Truth Times" and "Rethinking Youth Citizenship after the Age of Entitlement", Monash University Senator Jacqui Lambie ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dodd, Director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne Today on Media Files, a podcast on major themes and issues in the media, we meet Bastian Obermayer, the Pulitizer prize-winning journalist who led the Panama Papers investigation into global ...
Trade, women's economic empowerment, the Pacific and space were among the broad range of topics discussed between Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her Japanese counterpart. ...
Vegan lube? Faux feather strokers? Condoms made from employees paid the living wage? Emily Writes delves into the world of having ethical sex. There are many upsides to being vegan, but when it comes to getting down (and by that I mean rooting), it can be quite a challenge finding 100% ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is making no apology for her focus on the Christchurch Call at the United Nations next week and points to Facebook's recent action as a sign of early success. ...
Auckland mayoral candidate John Tamihere's latest verbal outrage moves his campaign strategy from the bellicose to the bizarre. Mark Jennings listens in at yet another debate. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Coates, Program Director, Household Finances, Grattan Institute Compared to the rest of the world, income inequality is not particularly high in Australia, nor is it getting much worse. The real problem is housing inequality. Rising house prices have increased wealth inequality. ...
A harrowing account of what it’s like trying to save your child from suicide, and the toll it takes on everyone involved.This essay discusses suicide in detail. Please proceed with caution.Last week there was a lot of stuff shared around suicide awareness, and I wanted to share something as well, ...
Chloe Blades reviews Kate Weinberg’s first novel, which is selling like mad and earning the London writer comparisons to Agatha Christie and Donna Tartt. It was always going to be unfair on whichever book I read after Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women; that divisive, genre-defying masterpiece on the manipulation of female desire. ...
Annual economic growth has slowed to its weakest level in nearly six years as growth in service industries offset construction and manufacturing weakness. ...
By Wansolwara staff in Suva Twelve leading journalists from 11 Pacific Island countries will converge in Suva, Fiji, this Friday to discuss critical issues affecting the region including climate change and natural disaster relief and recovery and regional security. The one-day “Capstone at The University of the South Pacific” (USP) Laucala ...
Covering Climate Now: The release of the new Nissan Leaf electric vehicle signals a shift in the role of cars in our society. Simon Day was at the launch of the new model. The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is made possible thanks to Spinoff Members. Join us here!According to ...
Covering Climate Now: Charging businesses for their greenhouse gas emissions seems simple enough, but in New Zealand, at least, emissions keep on rising. Is the system flawed, or is it how we’re implementing it?The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is made possible thanks to Spinoff Members. Join us here!Economists ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.Foreign affairs and trade Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): Global uncertainty and domestic troubles as Ardern heads ...
Covering Climate Now: Earlier this year, the climate change response (zero carbon) bill had its first reading. The public was then invited to submit their takes on it to the government. We assessed a few of the stranger ones.The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is made possible thanks to ...
Op-Ed by Luis Alfonso de Alba – UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Climate Action SummitLuis Alfonso de Alba – UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Climate Action SummitClimate change is not a far-away problem– it is causing huge damage right now in Asia-Pacific and around the world. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bill Bateman, Associate professor, Curtin University Every spring in Australia is heralded by reports of magpies swooping at people. While it is of little comfort to those at the receiving end of a surprise attack, such events are actually quite rare when ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics, Monash University There’s no shortage of special days throughout the year. Some — like International Literacy Day — speak to important issues in society. Others speak to our inner dag. Today marks one of the daggier days, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Pickles, Professor of History at the University of Canterbury and current Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi James Cook Research Fellow, University of Canterbury Today marks the passing of the much celebrated 1893 Electoral Act, 126 years ago, which made ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meagan Brennan, Clinical A/Prof Breast Physician, Westmead Breast Cancer Institute, University of Sydney Victorian Minister for Health Jenny Mikakos recently announced six new 3D breast screening machines would be rolled out across the state. These will be used to assess women recalled ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jon Brodie, Professorial Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University Few feel the pain of the Great Barrier Reef’s decline more acutely than the scientists trying to save it. Ahead of next week’s UN climate summit, two ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hilary Whitehouse, Associate Professor, James Cook University This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing our ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Youqing Fan, Lecturer, Western Sydney University Affordable housing is a critical problem for Australia’s biggest housing markets. Five Australian cities are in the top 25 with “severely unaffordable” housing in a 2019 Demographia survey of 91 major metropolitan markets. Sydney was ranked ...
Open Mike 15/05/2017 
BP, Z and Mobil all insist that petrol price hikes are temporary, “in a very literal sense.” The nation’s major petrol providers are trying to allay customer fears over prices, promising that they’ll move to lower them again “immediately” when the Middle East is returned to its formerly peaceful state. ...11 hours ago
South African coach Rassie Erasmus says he has no idea what they’re going to do about the boat. In a highly anticipated press conference this afternoon, All Blacks coach Steve Hansen has finally unveiled the team’s boat for its Rugby World Cup 2019 campaign. In a press conference that went ...12 hours ago
The Operation Burnham inquiry continued to question senior NZDF staff today, and their shoddy coverup over their knowledge of civilian casualties continue to fall apart. If you recall, first, we were asked to believe that it was all a series of "mistakes and errors": a senior officer with multiple degrees ...15 hours ago
Get Back Jojo! The elation in Mayor Phil Goff’s camp may be easily imagined as they watched social media light up in indignation at challenger John Tamihere’s "Sieg Heil to that" quip. Just when JT’s notoriously right-wing, sexist and homophobic stains were beginning to fade back into his ‘colourful’ past, ...1 day ago
Patrick Gower is good value when he's high. Not that I've ever, you know, got stoned with him. But in the second part of his documentary Patrick Gower on Weed, he does what you'd expect in a modern weed documentary and immerses himself – first with a doctor, then a ...1 day ago
We surveyed candidates on their attitudes to issues facing the Western Bay Region, find out what they think: “Closing the Gap” Tauranga, one of the area groups of Income Equality Aotearoa NZ Inc., has surveyed all candidates in the three local body elections to discover attitudes to some basic issues ...2 days ago
Please spread widely, and sign, to support science and rationalism over the new irrationalism sweeping universities and institutions. PROJECT NETTIE Sexual reproduction, the generation of offspring by fusion of genetic material from two different individuals, evolved over 1 billion years ago. It is the reproductive strategy of all higher animals ...2 days ago
Why is New Zealand climate change policy so crap? The Herald this morning has a long article on the twists and turns of climate change policy in New Zealand [paywalled / depaywall script], which shows where we've been. The short version is that the government first began worrying about this ...2 days ago
The All Blacks have been, for more than a century, arguably the most successful International sports team in the world. But they are more than that; even for those Kiwis who are immune to the charms of rugby (and there are more than a few), the All Blacks are ambassadors ...2 days ago
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In times of hysteria about the “World coming to an end” and “rising sea levels” so-called ‘Journalists’ who can barely spell words longer than four letters are having a ball! Though the majority of the Public have worked out that manmade climate change is nothing short of pseudo-science, and the ...3 days ago
3 days ago
Dangerous Foes: For those readers of Bowalley Road who feel disposed to dismiss any prospect of an Israeli destabilisation of New Zealand politics, the example of the United Kingdom repays close attention. Ever since the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the British Labour Party, the Israelis have sanctioned, funded and ...4 days ago
Make It 16, the youth-led campaign to lower New Zealand's voting age, is holding an official campaign launch at Parliament this Friday from 16:30. If you'd like to attend, you can register using EventBrite here. ...4 days ago
by Don Franks It was a lovely sunny Wellington afternoon with blue skies above the beaches. In Courtenay Place, political activists packed out a stuffy upstairs room for an important meeting. The assembled pacifists, anarchists, communists and independent young radicals of Peace Action Wellington felt the need for a mission ...4 days ago
From the Wall Street Journal:Inside a room of the ornately decorated Hotel du Palais during last month’s Group of Seven summit in Biarritz, France, President Trump awaited a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi. Mr. Trump looked over a gathering of American and Egyptian officials and called out in ...5 days ago
. . This blogpost is different to my usual format of reporting on issues… Since July 1011, I have blogged on a variety of political issues; near always political and/or environmental; mostly highly critical of the previous National Government. Other issues included Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and repression of ...6 days ago
Those close to the Police Minister believe the initiative may be the result of Nash “seeing a great deal” on AliExpress. In a move that comes seemingly out of nowhere, Police Minister Stuart Nash announced this afternoon that he expects all frontline staff to don bearskin hats, famously worn by ...7 days ago
Moving And Shaking: There was a time when people spoke matter-of-factly about the “labour movement” – a political phenomenon understood to embrace much more than the Labour Party. Included within the term’s definition was the whole trade union movement – many of whose members looked upon the Labour Party as ...7 days ago
By Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern I am every bit as angry as you are. I am every bit as disappointed as you must be. The people with power, oversight and the ability to do something about these processes within the Labour Party should be ashamed. Whoever those people are, I ...1 week ago
Two-Faced? Labour insiders' commitment to the neoliberal status quo puts them at odds with their party’s membership; its trade union affiliates; and a majority of Labour voters, but this only serves to strengthen the perception they have of themselves as a special elite. Among the lesser breeds, they’ll talk up a ...1 week ago
By Simon Bridges. The following is a press release from the office of Simon Bridges, leader of The National Party. Key ora, New Zealand. Happy Maori Language Week. Look, I’m writing to you today because I want to clear something up. There’s been a lot of kerfuffle around some things ...1 week ago
Dr. Christopher Labos and Jonathan Jarry discuss the recent Canadian fluoride/IQ research. They provide an expert analysis of the paper and its problems. Click on image to go to podcast. The critical debate about the recent ... 1 week ago
An ambitious plan to fly to Los Angeles petered out into a brief sight-seeing trip and a desire to return home and get some sleep before work tomorrow. Air New Zealand has confirmed a flight to Los Angeles last night was turned back about a quarter of the way into ...1 week ago
There appears to be consensus – by omission – that the concept of indigenous futures should be accepted at face value. So I scavenged the internet to see if I could locate an academic descriptor or a framework around how we think about it as a concept, and whether it ...1 week ago
Here’s another novelty chocolate to shove in your gob, New Zealand Cadbury could be seeking to make itself great again with a rumoured new release: Pineapple Trumps, a spin on its classic chocolate-encased pineapple treat and do-it-yourself tooth remover. The global confectionery manufacturer and bumbling “before” character in an infomercial, ...1 week ago
During my time in the Pentagon I had the privilege of sitting down with military leaders and defence and security officials from a variety of Latin American nations. Sometimes I was present as a subordinate assistant to a senior US defence department official, sometimes as part of a delegation that ...1 week ago
Kia ora, Aotearoa. It’s that magical time of year. Te Wiki o te Reo Māori. In English, the week that frightens talk radio. As you probably know by now, all your favourite media outlets are participating, some more successfully than others. Stuff has changed its name to Puna for the ...1 week ago
Lost In Political Space: The most important takeaway from this latest Labour sexual assault scandal, which (if I may paraphrase Nixon’s White House counsel’s, John Dean’s, infamous description of Watergate) is “growing like a cancer” on the premiership, is the Labour Party organisation’s extraordinary professional paralysis in the face of ...1 week ago
Bewhiskered Cassandra? Professor Hugh White’s chilling suggestion, advanced to select collections of academic, military and diplomatic Kiwi experts over the course of the past week, is that the assumptions upon which Australia and New Zealand have built their foreign affairs and defence policies for practically their entire histories – are ...2 weeks ago
The independent Interim Climate Change Committee today launched an eight-week, nationwide call for evidence on options available to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ...11 hours ago
The Wellington Mayor's main rival in the upcoming local elections, Andy Foster, won't say how much Sir Peter Jackson has stumped up in a bid to get him elected. ...18 mins ago
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: GDP growth slows in the latest quarter, questions raised over utter NZDF incompetence, and NZTA sends money intended for light rail elsewhere.The numbers are in, and GDP growth has slowed down for the second quarter of the year. Radio NZ reports it ...50 mins ago
As climate change crumbles coasts, lengthens droughts and increases extreme weather events, New Zealand’s seed bank for threatened indigenous plants lacks on-going funding. ...2 hours ago
Steve Tew marked the magnitude of the day by openly attacking the Six Nations power bloc and suggesting former ABs should be free to play for Samoa, Tonga or Fiji. ...2 hours ago
A classical approach to freshwater policy only serves to enforce well-established views, argue Maria Armoudian and Nicolas Pirsoul. Here they offer some more innovative alternatives. ...2 hours ago
A huge legal loophole that allows high-emitting projects to ignore climate concerns could make the zero carbon bill unworkable. ...2 hours ago
Freedom camping, public transport and affordable housing are challenges Queenstown’s Mayor Jim Boult says he’s uniquely poised to solve – if only people would do what they’re told.The Spinoff local election coverage is entirely funded by The Spinoff Members. For more about becoming a member and supporting The Spinoff’s journalism click ...3 hours ago
Broadcaster Mark Sainsbury is calling for a “champion for the elderly”. But the truth is, every single politician in parliament already fits that bill. Just look at the enduring nature of NZ Super, writes TOP leader Geoff Simmons. No doubt Mark Sainsbury’s call for an elderly commissioner to be created will ...3 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra John Howard is remembered by his Liberal tribe as a reformer, but his legacy is mixed. The GST has endured but he essentially doomed his government when he let his ideological obsession with industrial relations ...8 hours ago
The battle for Puriri Park is a microcosm of New Zealand's housing crisis. ...10 hours ago
At the UN, Jacinda Ardern will update the world on the Christchurch Call - but how did it come together, and where to next? ...11 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liz Hanna, Honorary Senior Fellow, Australian National University This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. Global warming is accelerating, driven by the continuing rise in ...13 hours ago
To tackle the crises of climate and unsustainability we need great cultural changes in civil society, business and politics. ...13 hours ago
Despite some early success the Government had lowering the prison population, remand is now on the rise. ...13 hours ago
Covering Climate Now: A new web series challenges the false idea that rangatahi Māori “aren’t engaged” in politics or civic participation, and presents what aims to be a more hopeful and inclusive alternative. The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is made possible thanks to Spinoff Members. Join us here!Over the ...14 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sebastien Darchen, Senior Lecturer in Planning, The University of Queensland The crashing chords of punk echoed through the end of the 70s, heralding the arrival of a diverse bunch of subcultures. In Brisbane, none was more notable than the tribe known as ...14 hours ago
Covering Climate Now: As the temperature of the planet increases, so to does the number of documentaries about climate change. Jean Sergent watched all of them to bring you this harrowing listicle. Do you want to know which climate change documentaries will make you depressed and which will make you hopeful? ...15 hours ago
Christchurch's economy continues to fall well below the national average due to declining rebuild activity. ...16 hours ago
Vegan lube? Faux feather strokers? Condoms made from employees paid the living wage? Emily Writes delves into the world of having ethical sex. There are many upsides to being vegan, but when it comes to getting down (and by that I mean rooting), it can be quite a challenge finding 100% ...17 hours ago
An investigation into the poisoning of cattle with 1080 on a King Country farm a year ago still has not been completed. ...18 hours ago
Auckland mayoral candidate John Tamihere's latest verbal outrage moves his campaign strategy from the bellicose to the bizarre. Mark Jennings listens in at yet another debate. ...18 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Coates, Program Director, Household Finances, Grattan Institute Compared to the rest of the world, income inequality is not particularly high in Australia, nor is it getting much worse. The real problem is housing inequality. Rising house prices have increased wealth inequality. ...18 hours ago
A harrowing account of what it’s like trying to save your child from suicide, and the toll it takes on everyone involved.This essay discusses suicide in detail. Please proceed with caution.Last week there was a lot of stuff shared around suicide awareness, and I wanted to share something as well, ...18 hours ago
Chloe Blades reviews Kate Weinberg’s first novel, which is selling like mad and earning the London writer comparisons to Agatha Christie and Donna Tartt. It was always going to be unfair on whichever book I read after Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women; that divisive, genre-defying masterpiece on the manipulation of female desire. ...19 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Rich, Lecturer in International Relations and Security Studies, Curtin University This week’s strikes on the Abqaiq and Khurais oil processing facilities in Saudi Arabia represent the latest in a pattern of actions by the Islamic Republic of Iran to escalate tensions ...19 hours ago
Annual economic growth has slowed to its weakest level in nearly six years as growth in service industries offset construction and manufacturing weakness. ...19 hours ago
By Wansolwara staff in Suva Twelve leading journalists from 11 Pacific Island countries will converge in Suva, Fiji, this Friday to discuss critical issues affecting the region including climate change and natural disaster relief and recovery and regional security. The one-day “Capstone at The University of the South Pacific” (USP) Laucala ...20 hours ago
Covering Climate Now: The release of the new Nissan Leaf electric vehicle signals a shift in the role of cars in our society. Simon Day was at the launch of the new model. The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is made possible thanks to Spinoff Members. Join us here!According to ...21 hours ago
Covering Climate Now: Charging businesses for their greenhouse gas emissions seems simple enough, but in New Zealand, at least, emissions keep on rising. Is the system flawed, or is it how we’re implementing it?The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is made possible thanks to Spinoff Members. Join us here!Economists ...21 hours ago
Op-Ed by Luis Alfonso de Alba – UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Climate Action Summit
New Zealand's largest bank has said it has no intention of selling off farm debt to overseas investors. ...23 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bill Bateman, Associate professor, Curtin University Every spring in Australia is heralded by reports of magpies swooping at people. While it is of little comfort to those at the receiving end of a surprise attack, such events are actually quite rare when ...23 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Rich, Lecturer in International Relations and Security Studies, Curtin University This week’s strikes on the Abqaiq and Khurais oil processing facilities in Saudi Arabia represent the latest in a pattern of actions by the Islamic Republic of Iran to escalate tensions ...23 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics, Monash University There’s no shortage of special days throughout the year. Some — like International Literacy Day — speak to important issues in society. Others speak to our inner dag. Today marks one of the daggier days, ...23 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meagan Brennan, Clinical A/Prof Breast Physician, Westmead Breast Cancer Institute, University of Sydney Victorian Minister for Health Jenny Mikakos recently announced six new 3D breast screening machines would be rolled out across the state. These will be used to assess women recalled ...23 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jon Brodie, Professorial Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University Few feel the pain of the Great Barrier Reef’s decline more acutely than the scientists trying to save it. Ahead of next week’s UN climate summit, two ...23 hours ago
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
The kardashians must have been busy then.
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?
It was number 2 story online.
it was opinion and if you don’t like it don’t read it – rather than read it and then moan about it.
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.
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!
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 🙂
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.
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.
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.
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. 🙂
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 !
“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
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. “<<
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.
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/
I’ll have a go; was it Alfred Ngaro of the “Mafiosa Party”?
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:
– /alfred-ngaro-reprimanded-for-being-naive/#comment-1329484
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.
The first one
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?
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.
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. ]
Has to be the WunderKid – Seymour.
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.
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.
Not very ethical misrepresenting what someone was saying.
I presume you knew that was how it was described at The Spinoff, is so you’ve been deceitful.
Kaye’s whole list is a deceitful, cherry-picked attribution fail. No wonder you admire it.
Stealing copy from The SpinOff, typical Pete. https://thespinoff.co.nz/auckland/15-05-2017/national-is-cloning-labours-identity-and-other-lessons-from-its-weekend-conference/
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]
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.
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?”
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.
see my moderator note above.
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?
Much ado about nothing (not my own words).
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.
roflnui. I’m so glad you wrote that because it’s way better than anything I could have done 😀
Like picking lint off an old cardy?
(something else for Pete to do, that is).
This is original source: https://www.national.org.nz/10_ways_national_is_helping_families_get_ahead
jeez, now nikki kaye is a plagiarist, too? You’re in a big club, petey boy
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,”<<
“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!
lol
one way to explain away a coding typo, I guess 🙂
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.
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
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.
looking at that, can NZ please get some decent architects and town planning rules too?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
John Oliver lets rip on Trump, Congress and then moving on to our Blinglish (starting at 10.15 to 15.20):