Great comment. Women have battled for hundreds of years to gain equality yet now it is being given away by the confusing of sex with gender. How much easier is it to dehumanise the female sex by weakening its very existence?
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
"Women" have the solution in their own hands. It is the parties of "women", particularly "leftist women" who are pushing this nonsense. Perhaps it is time for the feminists to simply just say "No" to their own politicians.
So society is the cause. Society has made these people violent. They are not violent because men, they are violent because society. Which explains why violence is not limited to men.
Well, it's always been a criticism that men have long been over represented in the running of society (governance both corporate and state). So violence certainly is because men.
Of course, men have a greater say in the running of society so bear a greater degree of responsibility, but it isn't exclusive by any means (think birth, baby, toddler, school, all dominated by women), so therefore not 'because men' at all according to the logic in your comments.
Muttonbird and vto: Violence is an expression of anger and aggression, mostly because of hurt pride, loss of a possession, loss of rank amongst peers. Since men have most possessions in material terms which goes hand in hand with rank, believing that women are just another thing to own, they react to any perceived loss with defend or destroy. Whether a car or a women would not matter. Add alcohol, drugs or a mental illness……
He was raised i guess by his parents. He was raised by society, school, sports clubs, the parents of his mates, his grand parents etc etc etc. And he was raised well enough to join the Police force.
And then he went out and he killed a women who was walking home at 9 pm at night.
Did you make your own decisions today or did you not? If you did, then you are at fault for all the good and the bad things you are going to do today. And tomorrow and so on and so forth. Nor your mother, not your father, not your nana, poppa, or teachers. You are today responsible for your decisions.
lets start again shall we… you answer mine then I will be happy to answer yours… "You contradict yourself… if the person was raised by all of those people then how can only that person solely be at fault?"
"if the person was raised by all of those people then how can only that person solely be at fault?"
Where has someone said it is all solely the violent person's fault? Be specific.
I mean, if the copper killed Sarah Everard, he has a huge amount of responsibility in that action. More than whatever his mother did. But still, context matters, humans are social beings with many influences on their development. This isn't a hard thing to understand.
Your question seems like a set up, because you already know how the responses will go.
Yes, i said that.
I said that the man who managed until now to be a cop – is now in the slammer for killing a women. And you know what would have happened had he not decided that killing that women was a good idea, he would not be in the slammer and she would still be alive.
And that dear VTO is on him. No matter his past, until that moment it did not hinder him from living a decent life – unless it is found out like others that got caught to be a serial killer – and even then its not the fault of his mother, father or even the evil witch from the west. It is still his fault and to the end of his days he will be nothing more then a cowardly murderer who is to blame for his own demise.
The Dunedin study has shown it is a combo of genes and environment.
Men who are violent towards women most often have characterlogical disturbance, i.e a personality disorder. Unless the violence is situational i.e. precipitated by social stressors.
maybe stop trying to imply that women are just as responsible for violence as men and see how you get on. That some women are also violent doesn't negate the fact that most violence is done by men.
And yes, not all men, and yes, men can be victims too. But the arguments I have seen you make here are generally misleading and run along the lines that men aren’t responsible for violence as a class.
"the arguments I have seen you make here are generally misleading" and run along the lines that men aren’t responsible for violence as a class."
Sorry, I disagree vehemently about the "misleading" allegation. Perhaps you could back that up with some evidence.
..
"nd run along the lines that men aren’t responsible for violence as a class."
I don't believe they are responsible for violence as a class, correct. Not exclusively, no way.
That is what I am testing and trying to tease out, to see how that belief holds up. Hence these few questions. This is a good place to test this belief, no?
I'm going to break a four year silence here. Just for the moment, then I'll go back to self-censorship. If vto is prepared to go against the flow here, then I've little excuse to remain silent either.
The male of almost all higher order species is larger, stronger and more aggressive. Humans are no exception – our biology ensures that males will always be the more physically dangerous of the two genders. In addition, well understood processes of female sexual selection will always ensure this remains the case.
Secondly the overall homicide rate in NZ is low and declining, over the past 30 years it has almost halved and is now about 0.7 per 100,000. In common with many other developed nations like, Norway, Finland, Germany – the ratio of male to female victims is almost 50:50. And while each murder is both deplorable and a tragedy, and rightly shocks and appalls the wider community, we should not confuse impact with frequency. In NZ there are usually between 30-50 murders per year, and 15-20 of the victims will be women. (And a sadly high number will be children). Murder is an extreme outlier event.
Combining these two realities, that men are on average somewhat more aggressive than women, and that homicide is in essence an extreme act of aggression – the nature of the overlapping distribution curves ensures that almost all the perpetrators at the extreme will be men. While at the same time the vast, vast majority of men will not be murderers, violent, nor even slightly brutal.
This means that most men react to events like Sarah Everard's death with a crystal clear conviction of condemnation. We fully embrace a criminal justice system whose primary purpose is the capture, conviction and incarceration of the perpetrators of these crimes. No if's, no maybe's, we hold the them personally accountable. And for this reason we reject all attempts at making all men guilty for the crimes of a few. The history of all such group guilt pogroms is uniformly catastrophic.
We should understand that while all men have an innate capacity for evil, it is only weak and depraved men who lack the strength of character to control it. That being the exact opposite message being fed to us, that masculinity and it's associated qualities of strength, confidence, discipline and the capacity to provide and protect, are somehow 'brutal' and 'toxic'.
If there is a positive framework here, it is that humans also have a remarkable capacity to modify and redirect their biological instincts through socialisation and development. For example unlike most species, human males can tolerate each other in large groups, and routinely work toward massive common goals. And as modernity produces increasing wealth, lower resource competition has substantially reduced male on male aggression in much of the developed world. A glance at recorded history demonstrates this effect dramatically – large reductions in violence over long periods of time.
However this is not the whole story, and I think vto that you touch closely on something important that's often overlooked in these discussions. Look at this wiki page on Homicide by Gender – then order the table by % male victims (or female). What I'm seeing is that relatively undeveloped nations like Panama or Colombia that experience high levels of poverty and inequality tend to have high rates of homicide and high fractions of male victims, while relatively prosperous ones like Germany and NZ tend toward much lower total rates, but a 50:50 split between the sex of the victim.
I'm not at all clear what this means. One obvious interpretation is that as we've successfully reduced the more tractable, material causes of violence, we're left with the more difficult ones buried deeper within human fallibility. When we ask why such profoundly baffling, appalling crimes as these occur, the answers we get are not likely to be simple or comforting. The Dunedin Study (and many others), which I admire greatly, has been instrumental in casting flickers of light into these crawlspaces of our psyche, but translating these insights into a wider understanding of usable actions is still missing.
The ideal number of homicides is of course zero, but getting there isn't going to be a matter of shouting loud slogans, or wielding manipulative guilt and shaming tactics. It's going to take time and clear-eyed consideration from both sexes.
Great post red, to be read alongside the other views expressed here.
I do genuinely like to put my thoughts up for testing, hence bouncing back into this arena briefly. I appreciate that today the responses to my points have been reasonably reasonable, weka and sabine particularly, thanks. I welcome your tests..
We should understand that while all men have an innate capacity for evil, it is only weak and depraved men who lack the strength of character to control it.
Do you actually really believe that, or did you only type that to feel better about that whole story.
So let me ad this to your kumbaya
The fine upstanding man that rape, maim, abuse, and kill women are our fathers, our stepfathers, our brothers, our uncles, our grandfathers, the mates of our male relatives, they are teachers, priests, coaches, doctors, and generally non of them are considered any less manly then the non violent one. And you know why? Until they are found out no one knows about their little kink.
The question is not whether we're innocent or not, but whether we have the capacity to control our dark urges safely. And people who either pretend they're harmless or fail to confront their capacity for evil, are the ones most likely to fall at the moment when an opportunity or temptation crosses their path.
but whether we have the capacity to control our dark urges safely
dark urges? controlling them safely?
That really just makes all men beast and women and children must be careful around all these beasts, lest they drop their guard and boom…..abuse, rape, beatings, violence, death.
Hey RL – I appreciate the effort and thought you have put into this. Like all your long posts, though I have areas of disagreement, I salute the good intentions.
I just think it's all a bit wrong-headed. When women are justifiably enraged, they just don't care about the niceties of your argument. No woman holds you personally responsible for what another man does and they already know that most men don't do this stuff. But what is terrifying and exhausting is that they can't tell in advance which man might or might not do such things. There are no clear predictors until something extremely scary happens. How do you expect them to regard us (men) as a whole, if that is the reality?
I think the best thing we can do as blokes is to express our horror, try to be good people in all our dealings with others, and keep quiet for a while.
They appear hopelessly lost – not even able to get traction against far-right genocidal lunatics like the Tories who have100,000+ unnecessary deaths on their hands. Too busy purging their own left and running in terror from the Murdoch propaganda machine.
He reminds me of NZ Labour's, Stuart Nash and Anna Lorke both of whom I used to think had for some reason missed to opportunity to represent what seemed to be their natural party..ie;National…I no longer hold this view and have come to realize that they represent (New) Labour NZ perfectly, and it is I who is out of step with what Labour is today, staunch and committed purveyors of laz a faire free market liberalism…oh well.
An explainer about the moderation on the Women and male violence post. Comments there are for women only. It's not always possible to tell if a commenter is male or female, so there's a benefit of the doubt. I've moved some comments to OM yesterday and today. If I've made a mistake, my apologies, please let me know and I will sort it out.
It helps to read the whole post that authors put up, or at least read the ending because that's where moderation notes often go.
Women are not a feeling – you cannot identify into womanhood by popping lippy, heels and and a dress/wig on. They are men.
Women are a fact. Biology matters. By the way, the staggering 'deaths of trans every year' is 320 or so. When you go to bed tonight, 137 biological women will have been killed. And tomorrow. And tomorrow And tomorrow. So the stats that men in dresses are more at risk than actual biological women is a lie and a reprehensible one at that.
"you cannot identify into womanhood by popping lippy, heels and and a dress/wig on."
Thats barely even the definition of cross dressing…its what blokes at the rugby club do every now and then.
Its absolutely not the definition of 'Trans'.
Your stats are also meaningless. Even by your daft definition of trans (and, in that spirit, entirely ignoring women who identify as men)…these crimes are not accurately recorded. Nor are they contextualised as per head of relevant population.
the men in dresses framing is inflammatory, reinforces prejudice, and imo makes it harder to discuss the issues.
Self-ID will allow any male person to say they are a woman, it won't just be trans women. It will include men who cross dress, males who ID as non-binary, and men generally who will do that for a range of reasons. Can you see the problem there?
Totally agree Grace……..100%. Unfortunately one of the first things our new womans affairs minister has spoken about is changing Births deaths and marriages, so will become possible to change your biological sex/gender without question.
I realize she is also minster of internal affairs but from my research this is the first or possibly one of the first statements she has made about her port folios and as I woman I feel incredible let down that this is the case.
Trans gender is a health issue. It has to be because if people want to transition and I believe there are some people who this is very very real for they have to consult with Drs who will prescribe the appropriate drugs and surgery.
You'd think that people attacking the so-called terfs would be the first to realise that their behaviour is more consistent with what men do than anything else. But then I guess they’d say that was anti-non-binary.
Hi Grace, I'm going to move your comments to Open Mike, because I think they're opening up a discussion that is not best to have under this particular post at this time (eg if I leave your comments here, then I will have to allow people that disagree, and then we will be having a fight over gender instead of talking about the issues in the post). Hope that makes sense. I moved someone arguing against Rosemary's comment yesterday for the same reason. Open Mike is a better place to discuss what you raise right now.
Some outrageously crappy journalism here. It is by an Australian, Luke Malpass, so no surprises.
The irony is, in the short run at least, the politics of deportees works in both prime ministers’ political favour. Australia gets to be tough on non-citizen crimes, which is popular with its population (and one suspects would be here as well), while New Zealand gets to stand up to Australia.
How on earth does rising crime including gun crime, increased gang membership, and poor mental health of deportees 'work in Jacinda Ardern's political favour'?
Malpass reduces everything to international tuff guy posturing as if that is all that is important.
IMO, withdrawing the landing rights to an aircraft that happens to be carrying 501s is quite different, diplomatically speaking, to refusing New Zealanders a right of return.
After all, if they arrive here we can't deny them entry. If they can't get here is another issue entirely that makes the first one moot. Besides, it could hardly make the trans-Tasman relationship any worse to smugly dance on the head of a pin logically while Dutton and Scomo have splenetic hissy fits at being "stuck" with the 501s and we get to smirk for a change.
Well no worries then, we can do that without the 501. We just wait another few month, homelessness will be up, unemployment for women will be up, benefits will even less hold up, babies will still die on average of 1 every 5 weeks and so on and so forth.
Maybe that will be enough social upheaval for Ardern to finally do something with that clear majority other then of course not upsetting her national voters. Mind, it is not as of today, so who knows.
Ardern playing the "powerless compassionate" leader is the main thing she does well, in your opinion? The PM’s not the only one acting up/out, imho. At least you wrote "main".
Oh the power and the passion
Oh the temper of the time
Oh the power and the passion
Sometimes you've got to take the hardest line
yeah, that was last march, and then we locked the doors and then we had elections and just before the election the PM told us that no she would not increase benefits.. And the reserve bank gave lots of cheap money to rich people making houses even cheaper and the PM said she don't mind if house prices raise too much……..never was 'too much' defined. And then came out a raport on child poverty, and statistically they achieved something, but poor urchins in their emergency housing would not be able to tell. And crime is up, but lets blame Oz for that.
And unemployment is good on average, but never mind the details. And wages are up – on average, thanks to all the jobs lost on the low income scale.
Yeah, nothing much got done, a bit of tinkering here and there a trickle down on us if you so will, and that is all the government seem to be good for.
But hey the Lion King will have a show if you have the money to pay the ticket.
Gee, lucky the pandemic, otherwise who could be blamed.
Key did spend a bit of capital, floating the ideas of mining in National Parks and a new flag, plus transferring public wealth into private hands.
Who was the last 'grown-up' NZ PM, do you reckon – Clark? Or English, at least until he promoted the tinned spaghetti pizza?
Seems to me Ardern is different because she's not in politics to make the rich richer. But that could just be good marketing, and why else would anyone be in politics anyway?
Maybe the major societal issues, e.g. inequality, were simply allowed to ‘drift‘ until they became too big to tackle in any meaningful way that didn't also risk social upheaval, such that (in the short-term) deferral (BAU) is the safest politcal choice? Time will tell.
If all Ardern is good for or at is to win elections for Labour she might want to consider a change of job and make better use of her talents.
The rich are getting richer, aren’t they?
Reserve Bank figures show households that own property and have money in stocks and term deposits made over $250 billion of tax-free capital gains in Labour’s first term.
There is a weird but undeniable correlation between people buying Lotto tickets and winning the Jackpot. The odds of winning in the housing market are heaps better than with Lotto. Similarly, the losers of the housing market are much bigger losers than in Lotto.
If all Ardern is good for or at is to win elections for Labour she might want to consider a change of job and make better use of her talents.
A talent for winning general elections (two on the trot now) is highly prized in politics – many affiliated with opposition political parties are hoping and praying that Ardern is planning a career change, but I doubt they're motivated by any consideration of how the PM might make better use of her talents.
The rich are getting richer, aren’t they?
Bank on it – the momentum in the growth of inequality in NZ (and globally) makes it tough to stop, let alone reverse. A huge majority of NZ politicians come from the 'winning side' of inequality, and even if their origins were on the 'losing side', they're all winners now – can’t be helped.
I guess you’re saying that NZ politicians represent middle NZ. The rich will be ok, no matter who leads Government. Some poor might become slightly less poor, depending on who leads Government.
Education and decent job used to be a ticket to buy your own house but no longer unless you want to commute for a couple of hours or longer, each way, each day.
Deferring significant changes to BAU will be popular and sustainable for a decade or three, and will suit me personally. But I wonder about the distribution of wealth, and living standards, in post-2050 NZ.
A few weeks ago I floated the idea (it won’t be original) of a parliamentary quota (say 12 MPs) drawn from the most poverty-stricken (or ‘least wealthy‘, if that’s preferable) 10% of NZ society.
And maybe such a quota would foster greater political recognition and understanding of the need for transformative resilience to improve "intergenerational societal stability" (nice phrase that).
Honestly I don't know what's more likely; a 10% parliamentary quota for those mired in poverty, or a reversal of current trends in inequality.
Change and tighten tax rules around investment in residential property.
Introduce mandatory property managers/landlords who have to adhere to a professional code & standards and rules & regulations similar to real estate agents and financial advisors, for example. Weed out the cowboys and bad apples.
Introduce local rates for empty homes and unoccupied land (land-banking) and make these progressive over time and dependent on zone (i.e. zones of high need for new dwellings). Don’t stomp on it, build on it and occupy it.
Build more State Housing. Build, build, and build.
Make Public Transport from suburbs in & out of CBD more attractive.
Discourage street parking in city zones (like European cities).
Encourage more high-rise apartment-style buildings in cities (like European cities).
This is just a quick suck of the thumb. Naysayers will have a field day, as usual. They need to STFU; only constructive criticism is needed, the rest is just distractive and divertive noise.
Key didn't talk well, he was semi-coherent most of the time. But I know what you mean – he could be mistaken for someone who was talking well if you already agreed with him and weren't really listening. Key achieved plenty – he managed to change virtually nothing and maintain a status quo that already hugely advantaged his supporters. And he got a few little things in that widened that advantage – like power company partial privatisation.
Aside from that, the comparison is apt – Ardern is emerging as an adroit manager of the status quo with a few little shifts here and there. It is storing up bigger problems for the future.
We need to write to the MPs and Tinetti most of all (minister of women AND internal affairs).
As for the MPs pushing this shit, they need to STFU. Transing the gay away is the NEW conversion therapy! To not be able to talk to anyone about their gender confusion is obscene. 80% grow out of it if not constantly groomed. It's a men's right's movement disguised in a dress and the large numbers of girls wanting to opt out of womanhood should make people look deeper, the rise of porn, the demise of critical thinking instead we have inclusive niceness (fuck that bs), instead they're laughingly referring them to radical double mastectomys. #NeverKowtow
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
So it is looking more and more like the worlds press were co-opted (rather like the invasion of Iraq) into supporting a illegal military strike by the USA,the UK and France in Syria off the back of a OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) report that was intentionally tampered with to support claims of a Chemical gas attack in Douma in April 2018.
Five former officials from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have joined a group of prominent signatories to urge the OPCW to address the controversy surrounding its investigation of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018.
Sadly and unsurprisingly the worlds media who like well trained puppets went hysterical over the initial allegations and (doctored) OPCW report, with endless coverage and interviews on the subject…have now closed the wagons and remain silent..except one MSM show, Tucker Carlson, it is indeed a tragic position the so called Left (Liberals) have got themselves into that a reactionary rightwinger is the only person with a platform, who has shown the integrity to expose this conspiracy…where are Maddow, Kim Hill, RNZ now?…
Liberal media is exposed yet again as being little more than pro war tools of power if that is what is expected of them…and yet they wring their hands constantly about the lack of trust in MSM. I doubt even Orwell couldn't have foreseen the absolute acquiescence to power that our media display.
I seem to remember nine to noon doing quite a bit of coverage of the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018.
I am sure you must be aware new information has surfaced around this incident, five ex OPCW officials (included the ex head of the OCPW José Bustani) and many others have recently co-signed a 'Statement of Concern' over the OPCW report that lead directly to the USA, UK and France bombing inside Syria.
I suggest RNZ look into this new information, and inform the public of what you find there, and if needed correct any misinformation you might have unintentionally disseminated.
Thanks I appreciate that, yes some of the locals make it pretty hard going on occasion, but I am not known for backing down from a just fight, especially when you know history is going to be on your side when the dust settles.
This isn't sweet to contemplate. After Covid19 and before the next epidemic, there will be diabetes arising from a population that has left many bereft of jobs at decent pay and prone to quick-fix hamburgers, calorie stoking alcohol and debilitation from drug social cohorts. Not a healthy nation, not 100% Pure. Love our people Labour and concentrate on being there for all the people for the basics, responding to what people say will help them.
Sugar tax? Take a stiff drink if that is needed to help you steel yourself against the cries of businesspeople. I have just paid out large GST on repairs I had to get done to the house and you don't think twice about socking that hefty impost on ordinary people. So get with a sugar tax and other health requirements – using my GST – I will see something good arise because of my payments then.
…Each month, around 50 people lose a limb to the disease and New Zealand's current cost of treatment sits at more than $2.1 billion a year.
A PwC report commissioned by Diabetes New Zealand, the university of Otago's Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre and Healthier Lives National Science Challenge, predicts things are set to get a lot worse.
It claims the number of people with type 2 diabetes could rise by as much as 90 percent across the next two decades inflicting a "staggering" bill on taxpayers.
sugar tax is a blunt and unwieldy instrument that is only going to be useful alongside other, better approaches. Reduce poverty (including the housing crisis), take GST off fresh foods and things like whole grains and meat, do health promotion via helping people to garden and cook (those that want to). Do R and D to support healthy takeaways and easy to access food. Lead on societal change so that people aren't as stressed and have more time to eat healthy foods.
Why not do something along with considering making other changes? I can't understand people who don't embrace the idea of small changes that make a start on improving something because it won't solve the whole problem. Take a laxative I say, if a person is constipated, and also eat more vegs and fibre in future. Just get things moving FGS!
the main political argument against sugar taxes is that it penalises poor people. They can't afford to buy healthy food, and with a sugar tax they are a) paying more proportionally than people who can afford healthy food, and b) are being made more poor. It's just not good strategy unless it's done alongside poverty reduction.
Going to be watching this tonight on telly here in Oz. Finally the rest of world are waking up to the 100% pure bullshit (sorry for the language) of NZ’s clean green image.
And now Ngāi Tahu, New Zealand’s wealthiest Maori tribe, is launching an unprecedented legal case seeking “rangatiratanga”, or chieftainship, over most of the South Island’s freshwater, a move that could reset who has authority over the country’s waterways.
"What do you mean by that?….Why don’t you just spit it out; you’re usually not that shy or speak in riddles." man, and people call me touchy and aggresive, lol.
so then the idea that we have no community transmission is somewhat faulty. We either have a plague hotel out there and that accounts for the rise in shed virus in the waste water or we have people in the open public that is currently shedding virus.
People who have been infected may continue to shed virus after they are no longer infectious. Published data suggests that this can continue for weeks after the initial illness.
…
Therefore, how long shedding in faeces occurs in most of the COVID-19 cases in New Zealand is an unknown. What we do know is that this post infectious shedding by people will produce much lower levels of virus in faeces …
interesting. What's happening that the virus is still in the body for such a long time but not infectious? I get that viruses aren't technically alive, but are they still replicating, just not causing illness? Or they're still infectious just at much lower levels? Can't quite figure that out, as I think symptoms of viral illness are often driven by the body's response to the virus (haven't read about that and covid though) eg fever.
Apparently, faecal sampling might be better in picking up asymptomatic cases than nose swabs. Shedding of virus in faeces is also longer. Since infection is thought to spread through tiny droplets in the air, faeces are safe unless you have brain fart 😉
BTW, shedding is the offspring of the virus; virus replication occurs inside a host cell. The shed virus particles can cause infection and also are the stuff that gets detected using our standard tests.
Waste water detection is done in the US a lot to control outbreaks in university dormitories. They lock the students in when it shows its face in the waste water. Hence why i ask. but then she'll be right until the next outbreak right?
The Ministry of Health might need to update their COVID-19: What to expect at your vaccination webpage to include, under "Side effects", "Enlarged lymph nodes in breast/ armpits."
With the Astra Zeneca vaccine rollout currently suspended across Europe due to concerns about blood clots it behooves the vaccine manufacturers and purchasing governments to be certain they have fully informed potential recipients.
I have never heard of a vaccine causing this particular side effect. I haven't seen swollen breast /armpit lymph nodes as a Covid 19 symptom either.
One of the things that concerns me is that it's really hard to know what is going on. I haven't had/made time to get as informed as I want to be (or as I will need to be once the government decides to open the borders and let covid in), so all I'm seeing are headlines that are somewhat alarming, comments like yours, PR from various health agencies, and 'trust us, we know what we are doing, it will all be fine' messaging from the science heads on social media. I think the situation is complex, and novel. We don't actually know what the deal is with covid or the vaccine yet. I'd prefer honesty around that.
For countries like the UK and the US, it makes sense to me to risk side effects for the public health benefits of containing covid. But we're still not having the conversation about how the people with side effects will be looked after. You and I certainly don't trust the MoH, lol, although for somewhat different reasons I think. Mostly I think everyone is stressed to fuck, and we're doing really well under great pressure, but that doesn't mean things are at their best or that there aren't issues that need to be addressed (some urgently).
"It can also happen in response to other vaccines beyond COVID-19.
"It’s actually sort of a good sign that your body is responding to this vaccine and creating those great antibodies to fight off COVID virus in the event that you ever come in contact with it," said Dr. Constance Lehman, chief of Breast Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital".
As a gay man whose experienced violence, , sexual abuse and discrimination from men as well as women (on all counts ) and has always felt like an observer in society rather than a participant, I think posts and discussions about men that exclude men are counterproductive and cause more division and defensiveness than achieve anything positive.
In my experience the men who get the most defensive about #notallmen are victims of sexual abuse who have been silenced, by society, which doesn't take male sex abuse victims seriously, it's extremely triggering as a victim of abuse to be lumped in with abusers on a personal and mental level, it makes you feel powerless.
I remember at the hight of #metoo when men were coming out about sex abuse and men were told that it wasn't there moment , this is about women, instead of a teaching moment about all victims of sexual abuse it excluded the majority of victims voices from being heard and thus became a man v women thing. It excludes gay men, trans men, bi men, often trans women, non binary people , lesbians, women who have been victims of women and yes straight men.
That sucks. It sucks because women deserve movements like this but men do too, I'm sorry but male sexual abuse isn't taken seriously, it just isn't. Add to the fact that the few studies that have been done about women abusing men and women abusing women sexually show it's actually pretty common, in most countries though it's not even against the law or seen as possible, which is infuriating when I was plyed with liquor and forced into a three way by two women who thought they could fix my sexuality, men and women I talked to about it laughed at me, and speaking to my straight friends women forcing themselves on women and men or being sexually violent is weirdly common but noone talks about it because it's just seen as a joke and a woman letting off steam and I know women hate this as much as men but when we talk about to each other it's always combative or seen as what aboutism, I feel the only way we'll ever get a societal change is by a genderless movement of all sexual abuse victims coming together and learn together as long as we exclude victims these movements will continue to come and go.
These men that do this are not indicative of a majority of men, as a gay dude I know very well what it's like to be lumped in with sexual deviants (the old gay men are more likely to be child molesters trope still hasn't died out) and it makes ya really defensive, these aren't men, it's disturbed and mentally ill and disgusting individuals that we need to get better at identifying women and me should be able to walk the streets at night, it is not women's fault it is not the victims fault. It's the predators fault, it's the society that doesn't take these crimes seriouslys fault.
It's not going to go away until all victims come together and again excluding male victims from the conversation and lumping them in with the abusers hasn't and won't achieve anything, it's just not,
I'm probably going to be attacked for this post but I'm actually genuinely almost begging for whatever movement that comes next about sexual abuse to be inclusive not segregated because otherwise you are excluding gay men, trans men, often transwomen, bi men, non binary and yes straight men who bare the brunt of the abuse from the conversation and are simply talking to yourselves because those not included tune out and attack because we're being spoken at not heard, and in no way am I minimizing the violence and fear women have when out alone at night , I'm just shining a search light saying hey, we're here too, wanna be allies and get something done?
Well I hear ya. Unfortunately as long as this discussion is locked into a 'critical theory oppressor vs oppressed' framework there isn't a lot that most men can safely say here.
Best of luck though. Just writing it all out in detail helps a lot, even if no-one ever sees it.
the thing I don't get is why men won't organise around this. And the trans/NB people. Then we can ally across the sectors.
Women didn't get support or services handed to them. We went out and made it happen. Women set up Rape Crisis and Women's Refuge and ran them for many years without state sanctioning. When you see feminists being active out there in the world, that's women stepping up and making that happen. Why don't men do that too? Genuine question.
One main reason that many women won't give up segregation and work with men on this is because there is a long history of women's needs being subsumed once men are involved. Having said that, there are women and men working on this. Maori tend to work together more. The non-violence work I've seen has involved men and women. Maybe check in with those groups and see what is being done and find a way of getting involved?
The focus on male violence isn't saying that men are bad. It's saying that men as a class have a massive problem that needs a resolution. Violence *is gendered even if not all violence is done by men. Until men take responsibility for that and sort themselves out, we're at an impasse. By which I mean that men need to be addressing violence within their own class and coming up with solutions.
It employs just over 210 staff and has produced paper and packaging products, lately mostly for export, for more than 80 years.
Its management said all staff would be made redundant, with most completing their roles by the end of June.
The company would cease production on 21 June and then begin the decommissioning of the plant, with an expected final closure date of 30 June, it said.
A number of options were being explored for both the plant and the site, but no decisions had yet been made.
A shameful nonsense alright. I actually worked in that plant back in the 80's for a period. I have great memories of the place.
One of my tasks was to enter the big MG (Machine Glaze) dryer hood and take some surface samples from a high intensity Cesium 137 source to ensure it had not leaked. From memory it was around 80degC in this space. We had to go in there every six months and it entailed getting into an air cooled protective suit, and then with a colleague standing just outside and keeping you on a belay so they could haul you out, you had around 3 minutes to complete the test and get out.
Usually I barely lasted 90 secs.
Big amazing machines that most people never really see in action. Sad to see so much of it lost from NZ. Still the good news is that new industries are emerging all the time, I'm hearing good things from old colleagues back in NZ in the industrial automation sector about how busy they are.
Great to hear an enginner's view. But that thing about automation – we will automate ourselves out of a life soon. That attitude of desiring efficiency and the other one of getting the fat out of the system, so to speak, and having a 'lean machine' will be the death knell to a community. Unless families live together and reduce expenses, on a small lifestyle block, and the workers will put their wages in to the family budget. Last century's ideas are no longer possible. Less jobs and you don't seem to register the effect on the whole population.
A good question that I don't have a ready made answer for. In my observation automation is best thought of as an enabler of change rather than a killer of jobs. Certainly some old jobs do disappear, but others tend to arise on the back of the increased productivity.
This is best seen when you consider the nature of work over the past 200 odd years of industrialisation. In 1820 the vast majority of men worked at hard labouring jobs, in fields, mines, ships, and warehouses. Most women laboured to keep households fed, clean and both the young and elderly cared for. Most jobs were highly physical, dangerous or dreary in the extreme.
Compare with the modern world, consider how the vast majority of jobs simply didn't exist even just a few generations ago. And while many of us grizzle about being bored or detest the bullshit nature of many roles – there is simply no comparison with the kind of work our great-grandparents had to tolerate. Moreover industrialisation and automation mean that far more jobs are accessible to women outside of the household, greatly expanding their opportunities as never before.
Seen from this broad perspective it looks like automation has generally expanded both the quantity and quality of work over long periods of time.
But I accept at least two major proviso's. One is that when new technologies displace experienced workers, it's very hard for them to recover a new place in life. Especially older workers with experience and skills that are suddenly no longer needed. That's a shattering experience for many.
The other is perhaps more speculative, but just because more industrialisation and automation has so far produced more and better work for most people, it doesn't necessarily follow that this will always be the case. Maybe there is some critical point where the sheer capacity of new automation and AI assisted tech simply overwhelms our capacity to find new roles for humans?
I honestly don't know the answer to this – but if it helps I'm reasonably confident that we're not close to such a tipping point. Despite all the hype, most automation at present is still pretty dumb, doing very basic, repetitive tasks that typically bore humans witless anyway. People are still very much at the centre of all enterprises, not the machines. Not yet anyway.
This is a bit of a corporate advert, full of well aged marketing bumpf, but it does give a taste for real world automation capabilities from one of the big global vendors. You'll note there are still plenty of people in the mix, but all are educated and professional. Blue collar need not apply – and this is definitely a social challenge we haven't yet talked about much. Also note that this brand new facility is located in the USA – not China. Automation means there is little competitive advantage in cheap labour anymore.
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 27 were:1. The Minister for Ford Rangers strikes againTransport Minister Simeon Brown was again the busiest of the Cabinet ministers this week, announcing an ...
You got a fast carAnd I want a ticket to anywhereMaybe we make a dealMaybe together we can get somewhereAny place is betterYesterday’s newsletter, Trust In Me, on the report of abuse in state care, and by religious organisations, between 1950 and 2019, coupled with the hypocrisy of Christopher Luxon ...
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
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What are the traits a person has who commits minor – major harm on a woman because she is a woman or identifies as one.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Great comment. Women have battled for hundreds of years to gain equality yet now it is being given away by the confusing of sex with gender. How much easier is it to dehumanise the female sex by weakening its very existence?
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
"Women" have the solution in their own hands. It is the parties of "women", particularly "leftist women" who are pushing this nonsense. Perhaps it is time for the feminists to simply just say "No" to their own politicians.
On another note, a sign that Cressida Dick is finished. Can the left offer some praise through clenched teeth at the symbolism of this…..https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9359087/Maskless-Kate-Middleton-pays-emotional-visit-Sarah-Everard-memorial.html
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Yeah nah not on board in the same form or to the same extent as you and others weka
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
but I am curious as to who raises these violent people and how they end up like this..
who?
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Society.
So society is the cause. Society has made these people violent. They are not violent because men, they are violent because society. Which explains why violence is not limited to men.
Well, it's always been a criticism that men have long been over represented in the running of society (governance both corporate and state). So violence certainly is because men.
Of course, men have a greater say in the running of society so bear a greater degree of responsibility, but it isn't exclusive by any means (think birth, baby, toddler, school, all dominated by women), so therefore not 'because men' at all according to the logic in your comments.
Jordan Peterson fan, are you?
I don't think you're going to make many friends by blaming violence toward women, on women.
It's a bloody ridiculous suggestion, and that's being nice.
I did not blame it on women, I agreed with you i.e. society (which is made up of both men and women, isn't it)
Muttonbird and vto: Violence is an expression of anger and aggression, mostly because of hurt pride, loss of a possession, loss of rank amongst peers. Since men have most possessions in material terms which goes hand in hand with rank, believing that women are just another thing to own, they react to any perceived loss with defend or destroy. Whether a car or a women would not matter. Add alcohol, drugs or a mental illness……
The traits you raise anger, aggression, hurt pride, loss of possession and rank when reinforced by society violence impacts???
He was raised i guess by his parents. He was raised by society, school, sports clubs, the parents of his mates, his grand parents etc etc etc. And he was raised well enough to join the Police force.
And then he went out and he killed a women who was walking home at 9 pm at night.
And it was all his fault. And only his fault.
surely.
You contradict yourself… if the person was raised by all of those people then how can only that person solely be at fault?
Doesn't make sense.
do you have a brain?
do you make your own decisions today?
or are all the people that are somewhat involved in raising the child that you once were still responsible for the decision that you take today?
Is that how you navigate life? you are never at fault, it must be the others? Does that make sense to you?
You don't have to be rude ('do you have a brain') – that is rather aggressive and abusive.
So you consider that a person's background, upbringing or environment has no impact on how they conduct themselves on a daily basis?
sorry, do i need to ask you again?
Did you make your own decisions today or did you not? If you did, then you are at fault for all the good and the bad things you are going to do today. And tomorrow and so on and so forth. Nor your mother, not your father, not your nana, poppa, or teachers. You are today responsible for your decisions.
Does this answer your question?
you answered my question with more questions
so i returned the favour
lets start again shall we… you answer mine then I will be happy to answer yours… "You contradict yourself… if the person was raised by all of those people then how can only that person solely be at fault?"
I think Sabine is trying to say the person should be accountable or responsible for their own actions.
sure, accountability and responsibility no problem, but not cause
to remedy must deal with cause
oh he knows what i am saying.
yes i do, hence my replies
"if the person was raised by all of those people then how can only that person solely be at fault?"
Where has someone said it is all solely the violent person's fault? Be specific.
I mean, if the copper killed Sarah Everard, he has a huge amount of responsibility in that action. More than whatever his mother did. But still, context matters, humans are social beings with many influences on their development. This isn't a hard thing to understand.
Your question seems like a set up, because you already know how the responses will go.
it is in response to the nature of so many posts which proceed "its men men men" and brook no dissenting view at all.
it is near-impossible to discuss this here, and always has been
"Where has someone said it is all solely the violent person's fault? Be specific."
here… sabine: "And it was all his fault. And only his fault." … just up there in this very sub-thread
Yes, i said that.
I said that the man who managed until now to be a cop – is now in the slammer for killing a women. And you know what would have happened had he not decided that killing that women was a good idea, he would not be in the slammer and she would still be alive.
And that dear VTO is on him. No matter his past, until that moment it did not hinder him from living a decent life – unless it is found out like others that got caught to be a serial killer – and even then its not the fault of his mother, father or even the evil witch from the west. It is still his fault and to the end of his days he will be nothing more then a cowardly murderer who is to blame for his own demise.
The Dunedin study has shown it is a combo of genes and environment.
Men who are violent towards women most often have characterlogical disturbance, i.e a personality disorder. Unless the violence is situational i.e. precipitated by social stressors.
Yep, that study is very interesting …
I'm too scared to outline here what else that study found in relation to this issue. I would get beaten to an online standard pulp.
maybe stop trying to imply that women are just as responsible for violence as men and see how you get on. That some women are also violent doesn't negate the fact that most violence is done by men.
And yes, not all men, and yes, men can be victims too. But the arguments I have seen you make here are generally misleading and run along the lines that men aren’t responsible for violence as a class.
"stop trying to imply that women are just as responsible for violence as men"
I have not done that.
see here "Of course, men have a greater say in the running of society so bear a greater degree of responsibility"
and here "sure, accountability and responsibility no problem, but not cause"
"the arguments I have seen you make here are generally misleading" and run along the lines that men aren’t responsible for violence as a class."
Sorry, I disagree vehemently about the "misleading" allegation. Perhaps you could back that up with some evidence.
..
"nd run along the lines that men aren’t responsible for violence as a class."
I don't believe they are responsible for violence as a class, correct. Not exclusively, no way.
That is what I am testing and trying to tease out, to see how that belief holds up. Hence these few questions. This is a good place to test this belief, no?
I'm going to break a four year silence here. Just for the moment, then I'll go back to self-censorship. If vto is prepared to go against the flow here, then I've little excuse to remain silent either.
The male of almost all higher order species is larger, stronger and more aggressive. Humans are no exception – our biology ensures that males will always be the more physically dangerous of the two genders. In addition, well understood processes of female sexual selection will always ensure this remains the case.
Secondly the overall homicide rate in NZ is low and declining, over the past 30 years it has almost halved and is now about 0.7 per 100,000. In common with many other developed nations like, Norway, Finland, Germany – the ratio of male to female victims is almost 50:50. And while each murder is both deplorable and a tragedy, and rightly shocks and appalls the wider community, we should not confuse impact with frequency. In NZ there are usually between 30-50 murders per year, and 15-20 of the victims will be women. (And a sadly high number will be children). Murder is an extreme outlier event.
Combining these two realities, that men are on average somewhat more aggressive than women, and that homicide is in essence an extreme act of aggression – the nature of the overlapping distribution curves ensures that almost all the perpetrators at the extreme will be men. While at the same time the vast, vast majority of men will not be murderers, violent, nor even slightly brutal.
This means that most men react to events like Sarah Everard's death with a crystal clear conviction of condemnation. We fully embrace a criminal justice system whose primary purpose is the capture, conviction and incarceration of the perpetrators of these crimes. No if's, no maybe's, we hold the them personally accountable. And for this reason we reject all attempts at making all men guilty for the crimes of a few. The history of all such group guilt pogroms is uniformly catastrophic.
We should understand that while all men have an innate capacity for evil, it is only weak and depraved men who lack the strength of character to control it. That being the exact opposite message being fed to us, that masculinity and it's associated qualities of strength, confidence, discipline and the capacity to provide and protect, are somehow 'brutal' and 'toxic'.
If there is a positive framework here, it is that humans also have a remarkable capacity to modify and redirect their biological instincts through socialisation and development. For example unlike most species, human males can tolerate each other in large groups, and routinely work toward massive common goals. And as modernity produces increasing wealth, lower resource competition has substantially reduced male on male aggression in much of the developed world. A glance at recorded history demonstrates this effect dramatically – large reductions in violence over long periods of time.
However this is not the whole story, and I think vto that you touch closely on something important that's often overlooked in these discussions. Look at this wiki page on Homicide by Gender – then order the table by % male victims (or female). What I'm seeing is that relatively undeveloped nations like Panama or Colombia that experience high levels of poverty and inequality tend to have high rates of homicide and high fractions of male victims, while relatively prosperous ones like Germany and NZ tend toward much lower total rates, but a 50:50 split between the sex of the victim.
I'm not at all clear what this means. One obvious interpretation is that as we've successfully reduced the more tractable, material causes of violence, we're left with the more difficult ones buried deeper within human fallibility. When we ask why such profoundly baffling, appalling crimes as these occur, the answers we get are not likely to be simple or comforting. The Dunedin Study (and many others), which I admire greatly, has been instrumental in casting flickers of light into these crawlspaces of our psyche, but translating these insights into a wider understanding of usable actions is still missing.
The ideal number of homicides is of course zero, but getting there isn't going to be a matter of shouting loud slogans, or wielding manipulative guilt and shaming tactics. It's going to take time and clear-eyed consideration from both sexes.
Great post red, to be read alongside the other views expressed here.
I do genuinely like to put my thoughts up for testing, hence bouncing back into this arena briefly. I appreciate that today the responses to my points have been reasonably reasonable, weka and sabine particularly, thanks. I welcome your tests..
Do you actually really believe that, or did you only type that to feel better about that whole story.
So let me ad this to your kumbaya
The fine upstanding man that rape, maim, abuse, and kill women are our fathers, our stepfathers, our brothers, our uncles, our grandfathers, the mates of our male relatives, they are teachers, priests, coaches, doctors, and generally non of them are considered any less manly then the non violent one. And you know why? Until they are found out no one knows about their little kink.
Stand by it 100%.
All humans, male and female, have their secret little kinks.
The question is not whether we're innocent or not, but whether we have the capacity to control our dark urges safely. And people who either pretend they're harmless or fail to confront their capacity for evil, are the ones most likely to fall at the moment when an opportunity or temptation crosses their path.
but whether we have the capacity to control our dark urges safely
dark urges? controlling them safely?
That really just makes all men beast and women and children must be careful around all these beasts, lest they drop their guard and boom…..abuse, rape, beatings, violence, death.
Hey RL – I appreciate the effort and thought you have put into this. Like all your long posts, though I have areas of disagreement, I salute the good intentions.
I just think it's all a bit wrong-headed. When women are justifiably enraged, they just don't care about the niceties of your argument. No woman holds you personally responsible for what another man does and they already know that most men don't do this stuff. But what is terrifying and exhausting is that they can't tell in advance which man might or might not do such things. There are no clear predictors until something extremely scary happens. How do you expect them to regard us (men) as a whole, if that is the reality?
I think the best thing we can do as blokes is to express our horror, try to be good people in all our dealings with others, and keep quiet for a while.
Yes your point here is totally accepted.
Thank you.
these people dont end up violent because man
surely
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Sturmer, the King of Nothing, continues his plummet to oblivion
In most of Australia and in New Zealand, Labour is deservedly the most trusted political party. The very opposite is the case in the U.K.
https://twitter.com/alexnunns/status/1371472853976154113
They are up 6 points since last year.
Once vaccine rollout starts in earnest I'd expect the'd lose a bit of that.
They appear hopelessly lost – not even able to get traction against far-right genocidal lunatics like the Tories who have100,000+ unnecessary deaths on their hands. Too busy purging their own left and running in terror from the Murdoch propaganda machine.
He reminds me of NZ Labour's, Stuart Nash and Anna Lorke both of whom I used to think had for some reason missed to opportunity to represent what seemed to be their natural party..ie;National…I no longer hold this view and have come to realize that they represent (New) Labour NZ perfectly, and it is I who is out of step with what Labour is today, staunch and committed purveyors of laz a faire free market liberalism…oh well.
Turn Labour Left!
An explainer about the moderation on the Women and male violence post. Comments there are for women only. It's not always possible to tell if a commenter is male or female, so there's a benefit of the doubt. I've moved some comments to OM yesterday and today. If I've made a mistake, my apologies, please let me know and I will sort it out.
It helps to read the whole post that authors put up, or at least read the ending because that's where moderation notes often go.
Some of us did listen Weka, and I appreciate the post, thank you.
Women are not a feeling – you cannot identify into womanhood by popping lippy, heels and and a dress/wig on. They are men.
Women are a fact. Biology matters. By the way, the staggering 'deaths of trans every year' is 320 or so. When you go to bed tonight, 137 biological women will have been killed. And tomorrow. And tomorrow And tomorrow. So the stats that men in dresses are more at risk than actual biological women is a lie and a reprehensible one at that.
http://www.terfisaslur.com go look at some REAL hatred.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
"you cannot identify into womanhood by popping lippy, heels and and a dress/wig on."
Thats barely even the definition of cross dressing…its what blokes at the rugby club do every now and then.
Its absolutely not the definition of 'Trans'.
Your stats are also meaningless. Even by your daft definition of trans (and, in that spirit, entirely ignoring women who identify as men)…these crimes are not accurately recorded. Nor are they contextualised as per head of relevant population.
How your comment is being allowed I do not know.
the men in dresses framing is inflammatory, reinforces prejudice, and imo makes it harder to discuss the issues.
Self-ID will allow any male person to say they are a woman, it won't just be trans women. It will include men who cross dress, males who ID as non-binary, and men generally who will do that for a range of reasons. Can you see the problem there?
Totally agree Grace……..100%. Unfortunately one of the first things our new womans affairs minister has spoken about is changing Births deaths and marriages, so will become possible to change your biological sex/gender without question.
I realize she is also minster of internal affairs but from my research this is the first or possibly one of the first statements she has made about her port folios and as I woman I feel incredible let down that this is the case.
Trans gender is a health issue. It has to be because if people want to transition and I believe there are some people who this is very very real for they have to consult with Drs who will prescribe the appropriate drugs and surgery.
You'd think that people attacking the so-called terfs would be the first to realise that their behaviour is more consistent with what men do than anything else. But then I guess they’d say that was anti-non-binary.
UK High Court banned puberty blockers for under 16s bc it's wrong to sterilise your kids.
UK government backtracked on changing self-ID law last year. Can anyone get the Minister of Women to note this important step?
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Hi Grace, I'm going to move your comments to Open Mike, because I think they're opening up a discussion that is not best to have under this particular post at this time (eg if I leave your comments here, then I will have to allow people that disagree, and then we will be having a fight over gender instead of talking about the issues in the post). Hope that makes sense. I moved someone arguing against Rosemary's comment yesterday for the same reason. Open Mike is a better place to discuss what you raise right now.
Comments moved from here https://thestandard.org.nz/women-and-male-violence
Some outrageously crappy journalism here. It is by an Australian, Luke Malpass, so no surprises.
How on earth does rising crime including gun crime, increased gang membership, and poor mental health of deportees 'work in Jacinda Ardern's political favour'?
Malpass reduces everything to international tuff guy posturing as if that is all that is important.
As I said, typical white, Australian, male.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/124544841/mates-or-mugs-the-australian-relationship-is-now-frosty-on-several-fronts
It works exceedingly well for Ardern because she gets to play the "powerless compassionate" leader one more time.
Its the main thing she does well.
Is she powerless though?
Surely nz can refuse entry to the planes into our airspace that cart the 501s ?
Not if he's a citizen.
IMO, withdrawing the landing rights to an aircraft that happens to be carrying 501s is quite different, diplomatically speaking, to refusing New Zealanders a right of return.
After all, if they arrive here we can't deny them entry. If they can't get here is another issue entirely that makes the first one moot. Besides, it could hardly make the trans-Tasman relationship any worse to smugly dance on the head of a pin logically while Dutton and Scomo have splenetic hissy fits at being "stuck" with the 501s and we get to smirk for a change.
That's a pretty dark thing to propose.
Dumb comment. The inference being the more social upheaval in New Zealand the better for Ardern.
Well no worries then, we can do that without the 501. We just wait another few month, homelessness will be up, unemployment for women will be up, benefits will even less hold up, babies will still die on average of 1 every 5 weeks and so on and so forth.
Maybe that will be enough social upheaval for Ardern to finally do something with that clear majority other then of course not upsetting her national voters. Mind, it is not as of today, so who knows.
Perfectly true. She's popular mainly because she does well in a crisis, and we've had at least one a year.
Ardern playing the "powerless compassionate" leader is the main thing she does well, in your opinion? The PM’s not the only one acting up/out, imho.
At least you wrote "main".
She's looking more and more like Key.
Talks well. Doesn't achieve much.
And the consistent popularity of them both shows it’s largely what we want.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/124545395/more-than-100000-sign-up-for-free-vocational-training-courses
One of the things which has hampered our infrastructure and housing builds is labour. Here's a government achieving much in that space.
You've been out of sorts since misspelling Berenstain Bears the other day, and having it pointed out.
Let it go.
Water governance reform: voluntary and nothing happened.
Health reform: nothing after the report
Mental health: lots of funding and no plan after 2 years, and excuses for Christchurch trauma assistance
Secondary education reform: after pay increase, nothing happened
Electricity reform: nothing happened
Social welfare reform: four minor changes over 22 recommendations
Tax reform: a small increase for the highest minority, otherwise nothing
Economic development: place ten dollar bill on photocopier, place photocopier on the window ledge, press print $30 billion times
Any of the social development goals: static measurements
Housing price reform: 1.5 terms in and we may get an announcement soon
Public housing waiting lists: multiple times worse under Labour
Police reform: nada
Crime: gang numbers way up
Under-employment and working poverty: about the same as National
Local government reform: zip
Climate change reform: un-enacted recommendations after 1.5 terms
Sure be happy with vocational training. And a public holiday and a minor minimum wage increase. But there's no need to sell New Zealand short.
I'm trying to remember what happened in March last year which might have changed the landscape…
…nope, but it'll come to me eventually.
Raise your sights.
I'm going to keep running the ruler over this government as the pre-budget announcements come out.
Turn Labour Effective.
One of the very few celebrated governments in the post-pandemic world right now. You might have seen the news.
Relative to others the Ardern government is spectacular. Relative to base issues and ignoring Covid (which you can't), I'll agree, it's incremental.
yeah, that was last march, and then we locked the doors and then we had elections and just before the election the PM told us that no she would not increase benefits.. And the reserve bank gave lots of cheap money to rich people making houses even cheaper and the PM said she don't mind if house prices raise too much……..never was 'too much' defined. And then came out a raport on child poverty, and statistically they achieved something, but poor urchins in their emergency housing would not be able to tell. And crime is up, but lets blame Oz for that.
And unemployment is good on average, but never mind the details. And wages are up – on average, thanks to all the jobs lost on the low income scale.
Yeah, nothing much got done, a bit of tinkering here and there a trickle down on us if you so will, and that is all the government seem to be good for.
But hey the Lion King will have a show if you have the money to pay the ticket.
Gee, lucky the pandemic, otherwise who could be blamed.
According to you @10.1, the PM's success is mainly down to doing "powerless compassionate" well. Sounds a bit ‘girlie‘.
How would you sum up Sir John's schtick?
Boyish with beer and sausages. Also popular and unwilling to spend massive political capital. Same as Ardern.
Key did spend a bit of capital, floating the ideas of mining in National Parks and a new flag, plus transferring public wealth into private hands.
Who was the last 'grown-up' NZ PM, do you reckon – Clark? Or English, at least until he promoted the tinned spaghetti pizza?
Seems to me Ardern is different because she's not in politics to make the rich richer. But that could just be good marketing, and why else would anyone be in politics anyway?
Maybe the major societal issues, e.g. inequality, were simply allowed to ‘drift‘ until they became too big to tackle in any meaningful way that didn't also risk social upheaval, such that (in the short-term) deferral (BAU) is the safest politcal choice? Time will tell.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/23-03-2017/a-statistical-analysis-of-john-keys-legacy/
If all Ardern is good for or at is to win elections for Labour she might want to consider a change of job and make better use of her talents.
The rich are getting richer, aren’t they?
Hello! Anybody home?
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/when-winning-matters-more-than-taxing-wealth
One doesn't "make" capital gains. They just happen. Serendipitously.
There is a weird but undeniable correlation between people buying Lotto tickets and winning the Jackpot. The odds of winning in the housing market are heaps better than with Lotto. Similarly, the losers of the housing market are much bigger losers than in Lotto.
A talent for winning general elections (two on the trot now) is highly prized in politics – many affiliated with opposition political parties are hoping and praying that Ardern is planning a career change, but I doubt they're motivated by any consideration of how the PM might make better use of her talents.
Bank on it – the momentum in the growth of inequality in NZ (and globally) makes it tough to stop, let alone reverse. A huge majority of NZ politicians come from the 'winning side' of inequality, and even if their origins were on the 'losing side', they're all winners now – can’t be helped.
I can feel your fatalism 😉
I guess you’re saying that NZ politicians represent middle NZ. The rich will be ok, no matter who leads Government. Some poor might become slightly less poor, depending on who leads Government.
Education and decent job used to be a ticket to buy your own house but no longer unless you want to commute for a couple of hours or longer, each way, each day.
Deferring significant changes to BAU will be popular and sustainable for a decade or three, and will suit me personally. But I wonder about the distribution of wealth, and living standards, in post-2050 NZ.
A few weeks ago I floated the idea (it won’t be original) of a parliamentary quota (say 12 MPs) drawn from the most poverty-stricken (or ‘least wealthy‘, if that’s preferable) 10% of NZ society.
Honestly I don't know what's more likely; a 10% parliamentary quota for those mired in poverty, or a reversal of current trends in inequality.
Tighten or re-direct the money-tap.
Change and tighten tax rules around investment in residential property.
Introduce mandatory property managers/landlords who have to adhere to a professional code & standards and rules & regulations similar to real estate agents and financial advisors, for example. Weed out the cowboys and bad apples.
Introduce local rates for empty homes and unoccupied land (land-banking) and make these progressive over time and dependent on zone (i.e. zones of high need for new dwellings). Don’t stomp on it, build on it and occupy it.
Build more State Housing. Build, build, and build.
Make Public Transport from suburbs in & out of CBD more attractive.
Discourage street parking in city zones (like European cities).
Encourage more high-rise apartment-style buildings in cities (like European cities).
This is just a quick suck of the thumb. Naysayers will have a field day, as usual. They need to STFU; only constructive criticism is needed, the rest is just distractive and divertive noise.
Key didn't talk well, he was semi-coherent most of the time. But I know what you mean – he could be mistaken for someone who was talking well if you already agreed with him and weren't really listening. Key achieved plenty – he managed to change virtually nothing and maintain a status quo that already hugely advantaged his supporters. And he got a few little things in that widened that advantage – like power company partial privatisation.
Aside from that, the comparison is apt – Ardern is emerging as an adroit manager of the status quo with a few little shifts here and there. It is storing up bigger problems for the future.
Sick burn.
i don't think anyone gives a penny as to what 'we' want.
define 'we'.
and please remember that arderns majority comes at the courtesy of national voters. Maybe the 'we' should be replaced by 'national' voters.
Her time will come and it'll be sooner not later if she keeps towing the line.
We need to write to the MPs and Tinetti most of all (minister of women AND internal affairs).
As for the MPs pushing this shit, they need to STFU. Transing the gay away is the NEW conversion therapy! To not be able to talk to anyone about their gender confusion is obscene. 80% grow out of it if not constantly groomed. It's a men's right's movement disguised in a dress and the large numbers of girls wanting to opt out of womanhood should make people look deeper, the rise of porn, the demise of critical thinking instead we have inclusive niceness (fuck that bs), instead they're laughingly referring them to radical double mastectomys. #NeverKowtow
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
So it is looking more and more like the worlds press were co-opted (rather like the invasion of Iraq) into supporting a illegal military strike by the USA,the UK and France in Syria off the back of a OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) report that was intentionally tampered with to support claims of a Chemical gas attack in Douma in April 2018.
Five former officials from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have joined a group of prominent signatories to urge the OPCW to address the controversy surrounding its investigation of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018.
Statement of Concern: https://couragefound.org/2021/03/stat…
Sadly and unsurprisingly the worlds media who like well trained puppets went hysterical over the initial allegations and (doctored) OPCW report, with endless coverage and interviews on the subject…have now closed the wagons and remain silent..except one MSM show, Tucker Carlson, it is indeed a tragic position the so called Left (Liberals) have got themselves into that a reactionary rightwinger is the only person with a platform, who has shown the integrity to expose this conspiracy…where are Maddow, Kim Hill, RNZ now?…
Liberal media is exposed yet again as being little more than pro war tools of power if that is what is expected of them…and yet they wring their hands constantly about the lack of trust in MSM. I doubt even Orwell couldn't have foreseen the absolute acquiescence to power that our media display.
Email to RNZ….
Good morning Kathryn,
I seem to remember nine to noon doing quite a bit of coverage of the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018.
I am sure you must be aware new information has surfaced around this incident, five ex OPCW officials (included the ex head of the OCPW José Bustani) and many others have recently co-signed a 'Statement of Concern' over the OPCW report that lead directly to the USA, UK and France bombing inside Syria.
Statement of Concern: https://couragefound.org/2021/03/stat…
I suggest RNZ look into this new information, and inform the public of what you find there, and if needed correct any misinformation you might have unintentionally disseminated.
Best
Adrian
I admire your tenacity Adrian especially when some in an attempt to shut you up offer only criticism of the messengers.
Thanks I appreciate that, yes some of the locals make it pretty hard going on occasion, but I am not known for backing down from a just fight, especially when you know history is going to be on your side when the dust settles.
This isn't sweet to contemplate. After Covid19 and before the next epidemic, there will be diabetes arising from a population that has left many bereft of jobs at decent pay and prone to quick-fix hamburgers, calorie stoking alcohol and debilitation from drug social cohorts. Not a healthy nation, not 100% Pure. Love our people Labour and concentrate on being there for all the people for the basics, responding to what people say will help them.
Sugar tax? Take a stiff drink if that is needed to help you steel yourself against the cries of businesspeople. I have just paid out large GST on repairs I had to get done to the house and you don't think twice about socking that hefty impost on ordinary people. So get with a sugar tax and other health requirements – using my GST – I will see something good arise because of my payments then.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/438448/numbers-with-type-2-diabetes-could-almost-double-in-two-decades-report
…Each month, around 50 people lose a limb to the disease and New Zealand's current cost of treatment sits at more than $2.1 billion a year.
A PwC report commissioned by Diabetes New Zealand, the university of Otago's Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre and Healthier Lives National Science Challenge, predicts things are set to get a lot worse.
It claims the number of people with type 2 diabetes could rise by as much as 90 percent across the next two decades inflicting a "staggering" bill on taxpayers.
sugar tax is a blunt and unwieldy instrument that is only going to be useful alongside other, better approaches. Reduce poverty (including the housing crisis), take GST off fresh foods and things like whole grains and meat, do health promotion via helping people to garden and cook (those that want to). Do R and D to support healthy takeaways and easy to access food. Lead on societal change so that people aren't as stressed and have more time to eat healthy foods.
Why not do something along with considering making other changes? I can't understand people who don't embrace the idea of small changes that make a start on improving something because it won't solve the whole problem. Take a laxative I say, if a person is constipated, and also eat more vegs and fibre in future. Just get things moving FGS!
the main political argument against sugar taxes is that it penalises poor people. They can't afford to buy healthy food, and with a sugar tax they are a) paying more proportionally than people who can afford healthy food, and b) are being made more poor. It's just not good strategy unless it's done alongside poverty reduction.
Going to be watching this tonight on telly here in Oz. Finally the rest of world are waking up to the 100% pure bullshit (sorry for the language) of NZ’s clean green image.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-16/new-zealand-rivers-pollution-100-per-cent-pure/13236174
Just to get you in the mood Scud…(Actually not a bad ad as ads go, pity about the 100%BS tag.)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-16/new-zealand-rivers-pollution-100-per-cent-pure/13236174
Enjoy!
Or the more complete quotation:
What do you mean by that?
Is that a red flag for you RedLogix? Or something for you to support and celebrate?
Why don’t you just spit it out; you’re usually not that shy or speak in riddles.
"What do you mean by that?….Why don’t you just spit it out; you’re usually not that shy or speak in riddles." man, and people call me touchy and aggresive, lol.
Most likely a good thing.
Maori Guardianship rather than Western "Take it before some other bugger does".
Wet Liberal – Rangatiratanga = Guardianship
Ethno Activist – Rangatiratanga = Ownership
Lazy Labeller – Bumper Sticker = Reality
It's my experience that activists like using broad and soothing terms in public. Less so in private.
But let's assume Ngai Tahu's good intentions for the time being.
Expect the worst, hope for the best.
I go by the Maori response so far.
When rights are acknowledged, the Maori response has tended to be community spirited and generous.
Question: how many people would need to shed the virus into the waste water for it to be a detected albeit 'weak'.
https://www.esr.cri.nz/our-expertise/covid-19-response/other-covid-19-work/wastewater-faqs/
So how many people in Papatoetoe have covid to lead to a weak sample? Or where else could this positive waste water sample come from?
According to the FAQ, “our test is sensitive enough to discover approximately 10 cases in an area of 100,000 people”.
How many people live in Papatoetoe?
Now I understand what triggered your question 🙂
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300253937/covid19-weak-positive-test-result-in-papatoetoe-wastewater-two-new-cases-in-miq
this is from 2018
43,599
so then the idea that we have no community transmission is somewhat faulty. We either have a plague hotel out there and that accounts for the rise in shed virus in the waste water or we have people in the open public that is currently shedding virus.
Nope. Did you read either link?
i did, hence my questions.
My understanding is that he virus needs to come from somewhere. So where is it coming from?
Ok, sorry.
interesting. What's happening that the virus is still in the body for such a long time but not infectious? I get that viruses aren't technically alive, but are they still replicating, just not causing illness? Or they're still infectious just at much lower levels? Can't quite figure that out, as I think symptoms of viral illness are often driven by the body's response to the virus (haven't read about that and covid though) eg fever.
Apparently, faecal sampling might be better in picking up asymptomatic cases than nose swabs. Shedding of virus in faeces is also longer. Since infection is thought to spread through tiny droplets in the air, faeces are safe unless you have brain fart 😉
BTW, shedding is the offspring of the virus; virus replication occurs inside a host cell. The shed virus particles can cause infection and also are the stuff that gets detected using our standard tests.
Waste water detection is done in the US a lot to control outbreaks in university dormitories. They lock the students in when it shows its face in the waste water. Hence why i ask. but then she'll be right until the next outbreak right?
Apples and oranges.
both are fruit? does that comment also have meaning?
It is a well-known expression in the English language. Look it up.
The Ministry of Health might need to update their COVID-19: What to expect at your vaccination webpage to include, under "Side effects", "Enlarged lymph nodes in breast/ armpits."
This advice was issued in February ,and there are various reports from minor media around the world. Some women are understandably very concerned. Swollen lymph nodes are mentioned in Pfizer's Consumer Medical information, but it does not specifically mention breast and armpit nodes. It should do.
With the Astra Zeneca vaccine rollout currently suspended across Europe due to concerns about blood clots it behooves the vaccine manufacturers and purchasing governments to be certain they have fully informed potential recipients.
I have never heard of a vaccine causing this particular side effect. I haven't seen swollen breast /armpit lymph nodes as a Covid 19 symptom either.
Yes, very good comment. It is not that rare a symptom either.
One of the things that concerns me is that it's really hard to know what is going on. I haven't had/made time to get as informed as I want to be (or as I will need to be once the government decides to open the borders and let covid in), so all I'm seeing are headlines that are somewhat alarming, comments like yours, PR from various health agencies, and 'trust us, we know what we are doing, it will all be fine' messaging from the science heads on social media. I think the situation is complex, and novel. We don't actually know what the deal is with covid or the vaccine yet. I'd prefer honesty around that.
For countries like the UK and the US, it makes sense to me to risk side effects for the public health benefits of containing covid. But we're still not having the conversation about how the people with side effects will be looked after. You and I certainly don't trust the MoH, lol, although for somewhat different reasons I think. Mostly I think everyone is stressed to fuck, and we're doing really well under great pressure, but that doesn't mean things are at their best or that there aren't issues that need to be addressed (some urgently).
Lymph nodes are part of your normal immune response.
Swollen ones can happen with other vaccines as well. And, of course with actual viral/bacterial infection.
The concern is because they can also be a sign of cancer and other problems.
Expected with other vaccines as well.
Swollen lymph nodes can be side effect of COVID-19 vaccine and confused for cancer, doctors say (ktvu.com)
"It can also happen in response to other vaccines beyond COVID-19.
"It’s actually sort of a good sign that your body is responding to this vaccine and creating those great antibodies to fight off COVID virus in the event that you ever come in contact with it," said Dr. Constance Lehman, chief of Breast Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital".
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/q-and-a/clips/courage-is-needed-to-solve-the-country-s-housing-crisis-reserve-bank-governor
RBNZ Governor calling for Gov action
on housing…..again
Re the violence against women post.
As a gay man whose experienced violence, , sexual abuse and discrimination from men as well as women (on all counts ) and has always felt like an observer in society rather than a participant, I think posts and discussions about men that exclude men are counterproductive and cause more division and defensiveness than achieve anything positive.
In my experience the men who get the most defensive about #notallmen are victims of sexual abuse who have been silenced, by society, which doesn't take male sex abuse victims seriously, it's extremely triggering as a victim of abuse to be lumped in with abusers on a personal and mental level, it makes you feel powerless.
I remember at the hight of #metoo when men were coming out about sex abuse and men were told that it wasn't there moment , this is about women, instead of a teaching moment about all victims of sexual abuse it excluded the majority of victims voices from being heard and thus became a man v women thing. It excludes gay men, trans men, bi men, often trans women, non binary people , lesbians, women who have been victims of women and yes straight men.
That sucks. It sucks because women deserve movements like this but men do too, I'm sorry but male sexual abuse isn't taken seriously, it just isn't. Add to the fact that the few studies that have been done about women abusing men and women abusing women sexually show it's actually pretty common, in most countries though it's not even against the law or seen as possible, which is infuriating when I was plyed with liquor and forced into a three way by two women who thought they could fix my sexuality, men and women I talked to about it laughed at me, and speaking to my straight friends women forcing themselves on women and men or being sexually violent is weirdly common but noone talks about it because it's just seen as a joke and a woman letting off steam and I know women hate this as much as men but when we talk about to each other it's always combative or seen as what aboutism, I feel the only way we'll ever get a societal change is by a genderless movement of all sexual abuse victims coming together and learn together as long as we exclude victims these movements will continue to come and go.
These men that do this are not indicative of a majority of men, as a gay dude I know very well what it's like to be lumped in with sexual deviants (the old gay men are more likely to be child molesters trope still hasn't died out) and it makes ya really defensive, these aren't men, it's disturbed and mentally ill and disgusting individuals that we need to get better at identifying women and me should be able to walk the streets at night, it is not women's fault it is not the victims fault. It's the predators fault, it's the society that doesn't take these crimes seriouslys fault.
It's not going to go away until all victims come together and again excluding male victims from the conversation and lumping them in with the abusers hasn't and won't achieve anything, it's just not,
I'm probably going to be attacked for this post but I'm actually genuinely almost begging for whatever movement that comes next about sexual abuse to be inclusive not segregated because otherwise you are excluding gay men, trans men, often transwomen, bi men, non binary and yes straight men who bare the brunt of the abuse from the conversation and are simply talking to yourselves because those not included tune out and attack because we're being spoken at not heard, and in no way am I minimizing the violence and fear women have when out alone at night , I'm just shining a search light saying hey, we're here too, wanna be allies and get something done?
You're welcome and free to discuss anything here, and pretty much anywhere else on the planet, except this one post for women only. Get over it.
I don’t feel love.
Must you be an utter utter bastard?
Corey Humm is articulating his opinion. Get over it.
Corey.
Well I hear ya. Unfortunately as long as this discussion is locked into a 'critical theory oppressor vs oppressed' framework there isn't a lot that most men can safely say here.
Best of luck though. Just writing it all out in detail helps a lot, even if no-one ever sees it.
It is so offensive to disempower anyone who has been sexually abused. Sexual abuse is a serious matter due to being an act of violence.
I am a female incase you are not sure. I respect your view.
the thing I don't get is why men won't organise around this. And the trans/NB people. Then we can ally across the sectors.
Women didn't get support or services handed to them. We went out and made it happen. Women set up Rape Crisis and Women's Refuge and ran them for many years without state sanctioning. When you see feminists being active out there in the world, that's women stepping up and making that happen. Why don't men do that too? Genuine question.
One main reason that many women won't give up segregation and work with men on this is because there is a long history of women's needs being subsumed once men are involved. Having said that, there are women and men working on this. Maori tend to work together more. The non-violence work I've seen has involved men and women. Maybe check in with those groups and see what is being done and find a way of getting involved?
The focus on male violence isn't saying that men are bad. It's saying that men as a class have a massive problem that needs a resolution. Violence *is gendered even if not all violence is done by men. Until men take responsibility for that and sort themselves out, we're at an impasse. By which I mean that men need to be addressing violence within their own class and coming up with solutions.
It employs just over 210 staff and has produced paper and packaging products, lately mostly for export, for more than 80 years.
Its management said all staff would be made redundant, with most completing their roles by the end of June.
The company would cease production on 21 June and then begin the decommissioning of the plant, with an expected final closure date of 30 June, it said.
A number of options were being explored for both the plant and the site, but no decisions had yet been made.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/438499/whakatane-mill-to-close-in-june-all-staff-to-be-made-redundant
Provincial Growth Fund – once was Shane Jones.
Now six 'Surge' areas, one of which is Bay of Plenty which would incorporate Whakatane Mills. https://www.growregions.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Guide-to-the-Provincial-Growth-Fund.pdf
We can prop up Rio Tinto, do the same for Whakatane and our newsprint. Save us from the dreaded shrinkage of life into the on-line dictatorship.
A shameful nonsense alright. I actually worked in that plant back in the 80's for a period. I have great memories of the place.
One of my tasks was to enter the big MG (Machine Glaze) dryer hood and take some surface samples from a high intensity Cesium 137 source to ensure it had not leaked. From memory it was around 80degC in this space. We had to go in there every six months and it entailed getting into an air cooled protective suit, and then with a colleague standing just outside and keeping you on a belay so they could haul you out, you had around 3 minutes to complete the test and get out.
Usually I barely lasted 90 secs.
Big amazing machines that most people never really see in action. Sad to see so much of it lost from NZ. Still the good news is that new industries are emerging all the time, I'm hearing good things from old colleagues back in NZ in the industrial automation sector about how busy they are.
Great to hear an enginner's view. But that thing about automation – we will automate ourselves out of a life soon. That attitude of desiring efficiency and the other one of getting the fat out of the system, so to speak, and having a 'lean machine' will be the death knell to a community. Unless families live together and reduce expenses, on a small lifestyle block, and the workers will put their wages in to the family budget. Last century's ideas are no longer possible. Less jobs and you don't seem to register the effect on the whole population.
A good question that I don't have a ready made answer for. In my observation automation is best thought of as an enabler of change rather than a killer of jobs. Certainly some old jobs do disappear, but others tend to arise on the back of the increased productivity.
This is best seen when you consider the nature of work over the past 200 odd years of industrialisation. In 1820 the vast majority of men worked at hard labouring jobs, in fields, mines, ships, and warehouses. Most women laboured to keep households fed, clean and both the young and elderly cared for. Most jobs were highly physical, dangerous or dreary in the extreme.
Compare with the modern world, consider how the vast majority of jobs simply didn't exist even just a few generations ago. And while many of us grizzle about being bored or detest the bullshit nature of many roles – there is simply no comparison with the kind of work our great-grandparents had to tolerate. Moreover industrialisation and automation mean that far more jobs are accessible to women outside of the household, greatly expanding their opportunities as never before.
Seen from this broad perspective it looks like automation has generally expanded both the quantity and quality of work over long periods of time.
But I accept at least two major proviso's. One is that when new technologies displace experienced workers, it's very hard for them to recover a new place in life. Especially older workers with experience and skills that are suddenly no longer needed. That's a shattering experience for many.
The other is perhaps more speculative, but just because more industrialisation and automation has so far produced more and better work for most people, it doesn't necessarily follow that this will always be the case. Maybe there is some critical point where the sheer capacity of new automation and AI assisted tech simply overwhelms our capacity to find new roles for humans?
I honestly don't know the answer to this – but if it helps I'm reasonably confident that we're not close to such a tipping point. Despite all the hype, most automation at present is still pretty dumb, doing very basic, repetitive tasks that typically bore humans witless anyway. People are still very much at the centre of all enterprises, not the machines. Not yet anyway.
This is a bit of a corporate advert, full of well aged marketing bumpf, but it does give a taste for real world automation capabilities from one of the big global vendors. You'll note there are still plenty of people in the mix, but all are educated and professional. Blue collar need not apply – and this is definitely a social challenge we haven't yet talked about much. Also note that this brand new facility is located in the USA – not China. Automation means there is little competitive advantage in cheap labour anymore.