Would be great if Fran O’Sullivan were as tough on the self-interested lackeys of virulent neo-liberalism as she is on Liam Messam. Of course she is not because by and large she is ‘with’ the former.
Messam articulates for people in the ‘lied-to’, dismissed as irrelevant, poor end of town. If The Gauche Greedy Man can have Crosby Textor (and the likes of Fran) the rest can have Messam and Weepu.
John Key has turned the All Blacks into political players so he/they will just have to suck it up when these newly minted players come up with comments they don’t like.
Ha fucking ha
edit: that is a terrible piece by O’Sullivan. All rant and polemic, no analysis or evidence in support. Crappola
Sadly it shows how ignorant Fran O’Sullivan is, as there is a clear connection between signing the TPP and further environmental degradation.
But she knew that, didn’t she?
So what does that make this article?
Words that come to mind.
spin
propaganda
misinformation
lap dog
With articles like this in the Herald, I think NZ was selected for the signing of the TPP as we have a compliant servile media.
Brewer – “……whiny little shit stirrer” – TC…..how perfect ! I could add ‘self important little punk-arse’. Reminds me of some plastic construct out of “The Thunderbirds”. Where the fuck is Lady Pamela ?
I was working at the china business summit here in Akld a few months ago.
Fran got up at the start when the PM was delayed and started dissing the labour parties proposed CGT for housing investors. I thought WTF, a lazy cheap put down at a supposed business summit.. (it’s all on record as the event was videoed)
I lost all respect for that woman right there and then.
(sorry, slightly OT)
Mind you, a few years earlier many got up and publicly stated they’d never do business with china because their lifes work had been stolen and manufactured by factories that quoted them for manufacturing said items. Many of the “fakes” had the samples’ serial number stamped on the product!
oops, too late to edit but..
To clarify the point she mentioned the Nats had been looking at doing it for a while and that labour were too slow on the uptake.
Isn’t he just? His own articles and the editorials he writes are incredibly patronising. The man is hardly one of life’s peers but he sure likes to lord it over us peasants.
If the Herald display their usual form they’ll with-hold the comments until his column falls off the first page and readers have moved on, he’s rarely well received by readers who heap (well deserved) scorn on him.
It’s notable he’s used the same bullet points as the TPP fan club who have been trolling this site. It’s obviously been well rehearsed.
Lizzie Marvelly: The only debate is what to do about child poverty
‘The idea that people living in poverty are somehow to blame for their fate is attractive if one wants to absolve oneself from any sense of responsibility, but it is a notion that I find deeply sad. When did we become so hardened and self-centred that we began to believe that those poorer than us deserve their suffering? When did we become so divorced from our own communities that we stopped caring about the families around us?
For those who are unperturbed by the idea of Kiwi kids going without, the financial impact of poverty is hard to ignore. Poverty is correlated with any number of negative social statistics and often a breeding ground for crime and sickness. With thousands of Kiwi kids growing up in deprivation, our health and justice systems are in for an expensive hit when they reach adulthood.
The wellbeing of our children should never be up for political debate. Nor should we feel disempowered.
There are so many things we could do to make the lives of Kiwi kids better: feeding kids in school, bringing back a means-tested child benefit like the one scrapped in the “mother of all budgets”, requiring a warrant of fitness for rental properties to prevent children growing up in cold, damp, leaky houses, and simply helping out in our neighbourhoods.
The first step, however, is for us to look out into our communities and really see other people, to realise that even in the most privileged areas, poverty is just five minutes down the road. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s real.’
The first step, however, is for us to look out into our communities and really see other people, to realise that even in the most privileged areas, poverty is just five minutes down the road. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s real.’
I guess you could say this kind of thing is a step in the right direction – using “innocent” children to pull the strings of hardened hearts etc. But it reminds of the TV ad about breast cancer which seemed to be mainly pitched at men. The “this could be your wife, lover, sister, mother…..” line, which seemed to assume that men wouldn’t support a breast cancer appeal unless it was personalised to something that might affect them. Because otherwise, why should men care about a disease that hurts and kills many women, but is rare in men? A join-the-dots, dumb-it-down, empathy lesson for the compassion-challenged, and a pretty offensive assumption.
If our communities have a serious problem with seeing others in our midst who are not just like us, as being fully human and worthy of human rights, care, and respect, I don’t think this kind of coddling is the right approach. It might raise some bucks in the short term, but it dog-whistles the very predjudices it is claiming to refute by appeasing rather than challenging.
The only debate is what to do about child poverty pfft. If only it were that simple, we wouldn’t have to radically change the way we live or think or behave, just make a few minor adjustments.
Telling true stories, providing information, refuting lies, these are all essential, but the framing is wrong to me.
I don’t know exactly, but a more honest, less manipulative framing.
The line between advertising and journalism is blurred.
Information needs to be clearly presented, not dumbed-down. People really don’t need to be spoon-fed and have their chins wiped. We can challenge without attacking, individually, the comfortable and complacent, or the just holding it together, keeping up appearances and anxious, amongst us, but also without going to the other extreme and appeasing them and their crumbling picture of the world.
Go Lizzie Marvelly. There is no one framing which will appeal to all, just saying. Communities have become siloed. If you live in a well-to-do area and your kids attend a decile 10 school, it is easy to believe that poverty is a myth.
Making compassion fashionable is valid if it raises awareness that doesn’t seem to be initiated in any other way. Women need to lead in this area and Lizzie is doing a great job imho.
Some people need to be manipulated- forced to confront the consequences of their mean spiritness.
Music can also provide a framing.
On the turning away
From the pale and downtrodden
And the words they say
Which we won’t understand
“Don’t accept that what’s happening
Is just a case of others’ suffering
Or you’ll find that you’re joining in
The turning away”
It’s a sin that somehow
Light is changing to shadow
And casting it’s shroud
Over all we have known
Unaware how the ranks have grown
Driven on by a heart of stone
We could find that we’re all alone
In the dream of the proud
On the wings of the night
As the daytime is stirring
Where the speechless unite
In a silent accord
Using words you will find are strange
And mesmerized as they light the flame
Feel the new wind of change
On the wings of the night
No more turning away
From the weak and the weary
No more turning away
From the coldness inside
Just a world that we all must share
It’s not enough just to stand and stare
Is it only a dream that there’ll be
No more turning away?
Songwriters: GILMOUR, MOORE
…it dog-whistles the very predjudices it is claiming to refute by appeasing rather than challenging.
just saying, I could not agree more! And it applies to a raft of issues. A month or so ago, a Hikoi for Housing in Auckland attracted about 400 marchers. On the following weekend a march against climate change attracted 15,000. Yes, in the big picture climate change is more important, but so long as the fundamental power imbalance goes unchallenged, our protests only end up giving them material for furthering their own agendas; e.g. “If you care about climate change you will accept the doubling of electricity prices,” or similar. The same with child poverty – Paula Rebstock is already making noises that suggest increased fostering as the answer, and I made a comment about this a couple of weeks ago.
“The only debate is what to do about child poverty pfft.”
The other problem I have with this is that it allows the deserving poor memes to continue which in turn allows the neoliberalis to keep treating so many people like shit. Whenever I hear the child poverty line now I think of two things. One is what happens to those children when they turn 18? Because as far as I can tell, the ones who’ve had poverty allievement targeting are just going to get thrown back on the scrapheap once they become adults if they’re not lucky enough to have a job or good physical and mental health etc.
The other is the people who have no families, particularly single people with mental health problems. Their mental health is instrinsically tied to poverty (i.e. mental health improves alongside improvement in general wellbeing), and once they become unable to work they are essentially stuck in a poverty/mental illness cycle unless they have family to support them. People in that situation, in the context of ‘the only debate is child poverty’, are the undeserving poor. Which is extremely fucked.
I get why child poverty is focussed on. For socially intelligent people, if you address child poverty you are in fact addressing family poverty (not so much for the neoliberals and socially inept), and that in turn creates more healthy societies.
It’s also been a pragmatic approach politically in a climate where people are afraid to be seen too much on the side of the welfare bludgers. But that last one is starting to look like a trap, and I can easily imagine a Labour-led government still not standing up for some of the most vulernable people in society because it’s taken part in the deserving poor meme too much. Little seems to belief that all people deserve wellbeing and only time will tell if he puts his money where his mouth is.
This is something I have been thinking about for some time. The emphasis on children is to try and soften hearts of those who basically don’t give a shit about rising inequality. It may occasionally get some rich people to donate to a food in schools programme but they will still vote National or Act.
It is actually very easy for wealthy people to ignore poverty now because they no longer have to have any dealings with poor people. They live such blinkered lives, only interacting with other wealthy people, who share their belief that they deserve to be in the positions they are. Justifying wealth in the face of poverty can only be done if you either deny poverty exists or you blame those in poverty for the situation they are in. Focusing on children is an attempt to thwart the latter of these but all that happens is the parents are blamed instead.
I don’t know what the answer is but somehow the idea of the deserving wealthy has to be exposed for the lie that it is. Instead of appealing to hearts perhaps engendering guilt may help.
What does help is when their punk kids end up in court and then end up in Serco and get seriously smashed over. Then they’re full of concern. Oh yes…..turning to me, ‘uncle’, to ‘fix it’. As I’ve experienced in my own John Key loving family.
Nah, it’s not enough …….unfortunately it’s never gonna change until people lose their fascination with some surly, entitled punk lying on a beach in Hawaii playing with some gargoyle bimbo’s hair. LFLS.
I have to admit to also being uncomfortable with the use of ‘child poverty’. I’ve tried to accept it, thinking I’d get used to it over time, but I still get the same intuitive negative reaction as when I first heard it the term. It just clashes, there’s something not right about it.
I think I dislike it largely because it, perhaps unintentionally, dismisses adult poverty & hardship. Children certainly are more vulnerable and need better protection but that doesn’t mean adults should be ignored.
Many of the children in poverty today will be adults in poverty tomorrow and if we keep focussing on children yesterdays children will constantly be forgotten.
It is you who’s got it wrong DH. Do not say “child poverty” because that suggests blindness about poverty in the round ??? Stop it ! The bastards who couldn’t give a fuck about poverty, wherever it is, just love this pettifogging.
I’ve always taken it as read that the adult parents of poverty kids are themselves in poverty. That’s how come their kids are in poverty. Fair ?
Sure, you disagree with the effectiveness and/or direction of the political strategy, but that doesn’t negate the thinking behind it or why poverty groups frame it this way.
And I disagree that it’s a zero sum game; that those who highlight child poverty are not unaware or don’t care about adult poverty.
I think you’ve read too much into it. I don’t want or expect ‘framing’, that’s inherently dishonest and insulting. It’s about poverty so why not just call it that?
People connect to stories, we learn through stories, we share values through stories, we relate to others through stories.
By focussing on child poverty we do not have to navigate how the child became poor; were they a lazy drug addict? or injured and can no longer work? or were there simply not enough well paying jobs? or jobs at all?
Everyone can relate to a child.
A child is not worthy or unworthy, they are an innocent. They have not yet had time to become worthy or unworthy.
We can imagine ourselves as that child.
Looking at child poverty first gives people a relatable “in” to the issue.
From there we can look at the symptoms of poverty as well as the causes. This is where we encounter the worthy/unworthy or poverty as a moral failing type arguments.
The difference being that we have already established that poverty is not a choice – because children do not have the same level of autonomy and agency that adults possess.
We can easily see how a child growing up in poverty will be denied opportunities to flourish.
One might then ask the question; those adults in poverty, aren’t they just kids that have grown up?
framing it as child poverty reinforces the worthy poor meme, because it means we can talk about the poor children instead of their shitty parents and the bludgers. Who are still being pilloried btw.
Herald then closes – “It’s academic whether research funded for a worthy social cause or public health campaign is comparable to a commercial conflict of interest.” Academic ? Like meaningless ? Really ?
Do focus dear Gran’ editorial writer. Or at least be honest. If you’re saying it’s churlish to question the dynamic of ‘report bought and paid for by corporate’ then out with it dear Gran’.
That’s just how this shit works. It works the same in publicly-funded research as it does in privately-funded research. There’s no way any public-sector health organisations are going to fund someone like Fox, who doesn’t buy the official dogma that alcohol “causes” violence. Likewise, the reason we’ve had counter-productive nutrition advice for the last 40 years is that, once the official US bodies settled on a dogma, anyone who didn’t accept it didn’t get their research funded by those bodies. This is an excellent reason for not allowing academics to argue from authority and refusing to accept their pronouncements at face value – don’t believe any of this “studies show” bullshit unless you’ve read the studies and the findings are convincing.
In Fox’s case, her argument is compelling on a logical basis alone. If Kypri et al have an equally compelling counter-argument, they should front with it – you could claim they have, in that they’re publishing a rebuttal in Addiction, but if they’re going to trash-talk Fox to the media, they need to also get their compelling counter-argument in the media or on the open web, otherwise they just look like bad losers.
There’s no such thing in science as “official dogma”.
Dr Fox is based in the UK, not in the US.
This is an excellent reason for not allowing academics to argue from authority and refusing to accept their pronouncements at face value – don’t believe any of this “studies show” bullshit unless you’ve read the studies and the findings are convincing.
I am curious to know whether you have read the 99-page report by Fox?
”In Fox’s case, her argument is compelling on a logical basis alone.”
Which “argument” might that be? Do you mean that Fox stated a “hypothesis”? Do you mean that it appealed (!) to your (!) common sense? In any case, a compelling argument can still be wrong.
Kypri et al did not ”trash-talk Fox to the media”; some of their critique was highlighted in another recent NZH article.
I am also curious to know whether you have read the article by Kypri et al in Addiction?
There’s no such thing in science as “official dogma”.
Maybe not, but there sure as hell is in the social sciences, which is what the field of public health falls under.
Which “argument” might that be?
The argument for rejecting the claim that alcohol “causes” violence. The strongest elements of that argument are:
1. If alcohol caused drinkers of it to become violent, we could expect to see levels of violence match amount of alcohol consumed when we look at different cultures. We don’t see that – level of drinking and level of drunken violence vary wildly across cultures.
2. If alcohol causes drinkers of it to become violent, we could expect to see all or most drunk individuals committing acts of violence or agression. We don’t see that – most people don’t commit drunken violence, and the people who do commit drunken violence don’t do it every time they drink.
In any case, a compelling argument can still be wrong.
Sure. And maybe Kypri et al have something that totally refutes Fox’s argument But if they did, I expect they would have mentioned it to the Herald.
I am curious to know whether you have read the 99-page report by Fox?
Nope, just the summary. I was more interested in her argument that alcohol doesn’t cause violence than in what her recommendations might be.
I haven’t read the report PM but if your point number two is correct then Fox fails on this count straight away.
“If alcohol causes drinkers of it to become violent, we could expect to see all or most drunk individuals committing acts of violence or aggression. We don’t see that – most people don’t commit drunken violence, and the people who do commit drunken violence don’t do it every time they drink.”
Most people know that when people become intoxicated their personalities undergo a change from when they were sober. They also appear to lose inhibitions which would constrain their behaviour if they were sober.
This exhibits in various ways:
Harmless:
Happy Drunk. Someone who is the life of the party jumping around, joking, having a great old time.
Sleepy Drunk. They drink their box of alcohol and then fall asleep snoring cradling their bottle like a baby.
Not so Harmless:
Jealous Drunk. Drinks as their ex is seeing someone else. Jealousy rears up and Jealous Drunk decides to go sort them out – usually ends in blood and tears.
Angry Drunk. Once intoxicated decided the world is against them and decides to fight anyone and everyone and to smash stuff up.
Driving Drunk. Most people know that driving and intoxication don’t go together.
Vulnerable Drunk. Intoxicated to the point of unconsciousness. Vulnerable to being exploited/assaulted by others. (Females are especially vulnerable)
Thefts of money etc. Also includes those who can’t walk properly and end up injuring themselves.
Sexual Drunks. When intoxicated they decide they need to get it off with anyone or everyone – tends to lead to sexual assault complaints.
Cody Drunks. The special mix of alcohol and caffeine tends to cause Cody drunks to end up in trouble with the Police.
See Dr Fox. I could have made a lot more compelling arguments than your nonsense. All for free as well.
You could make some compelling arguments? Feel free to do so. However, be aware that the content of your comment above offers no evidence to refute Fox’s claim that alcohol doesn’t cause violence. All your different categories of drunks suggest that culture and personality are the determining factors for the category, not alcohol.
The Spirit Level (ie: its supporting research) has it that alcohol and drug abuse, being mental health issues, are proportional to inequality. So is violence.
That said “drunken violence” is certainly a thing where culture permits it.
If you want an example of the ‘paid’ report Psycho Milt, have a look at the rubbish (at God knows what cost maybe $3 hundy plus to the dame) ‘report’, completed by ‘Dame’ Margaret Bazley into legal aid.
No one, judges down, imagines that her report was other than a piece of paid for crappola.
The “respected now retired senior civil servant” and her ‘report’ (which she acknowledged was but anecdotally based) paved the way for this –
There’s your ‘paid for’ shit Psycho. Up a notch……Dame Rebstock……Oh God……seven, eight hundy ? A mill’ ? Forty hours a week for two and a half months. Bang ! A mill’.
I enjoy your semi-religious choice of words: “dogma” and “sure as hell”. You sound very assured and an expert on Social Sciences and Public Health; please don’t tell acrophobic 😉
Alcohol causes violence, just like smoking causes cancer, but it is not the only contributing factor nor is it a black & white situation in that it causes violence in each and every case or individual.
As you will hopefully appreciate, the human brain is quite possibly the most complex structure in the (known) Universe. To liken the effects of alcohol on the human brain and thus human behaviour to a simple on-off mechanism for causing violence is overly simplistic. In other words, just because alcohol does not invariably cause violence it does not mean that it does not cause violence at all!
I’d also like to emphasise that Kypri et al do not exclude other individual and contextual factors but point out that Fox is wrong to categorically ‘argue’ that alcohol does not cause violence.
I am also curious to know whether you have read the article by Kypri et al in Addiction?
Looks like it hasn’t been published yet. It’s not in either of the issues published so far this year, and a search for Kypri and Fox turned up nothing.
I thought you were a university librarian!? Anyway, a simple Google search gave it as 2nd hit, after the article in the NZH that I linked to in my previous comment:
The full article is behind a pay-wall but I assume you will have access, won’t you?
I think you ought to read it to form a more balanced opinion on this topic. In any case, the NZH is not the place where the scientific debate should take place.
I’ve had a look at it. Their counter-argument that alcohol does cause violence is that epidemiological studies have shown it does. Thing is, epidemiological studies are an excellent tool for finding the cause of infectious diseases, but for anything beyond that they’re useless. 70 years ago it was reasonable for social scientists to imagine that epidemiology might be applicable to things other than infectious diseases, but the resulting decades of “research” consisting of correlation = causation errors backed up by confirmation bias has done more to reduce the sum total of human knowledge than increase it. Epidemiological studies certainly have found that alcohol is associated with violence, and if I wanted I could do a study that found breast cancer is associated with wearing skirts – in short, epidemiology is worthless for establishing causation in this and most other cases.
Their “evidence-based” policy is similarly worthless. The evidence is that reducing the night-time availability of alcohol reduces the number of instances of violence. Well, duh. No shit, Sherlock? By the same token, imposing a night-time curfew on private motor vehicles would reduce the instances of reckless/dangerous driving causing injury/death, but that is not evidence that private motor vehicles cause crashes, nor is it evidence that a night-time curfew on private motor vehicles would be good public policy. Instead, we pay attention to the obvious fact that some people do aggressive and dangerous things in cars and we concentrate on dealing with those people. Fox’s findings support the same approach with drunken violence, and we’d be better off making policy on that basis.
The counter-arguments by Kypri et al are indeed based on but not limited to population studies.
You’re also partly correct that epidemiological methods have limitations, as do all methods, and that they do not establish causation per se. However, to state that ”epidemiological studies are an excellent tool for finding the cause of infectious diseases, but for anything beyond that they’re useless” is frankly absurd.
Your analogies are flawed as none come even close to the intake (consumption) of a powerful drug (alcohol) and its complex effects on the human brain.
You discard all (!) the evidence (and more) provided by Kypri et al as “useless” and “worthless” and judge the 7-week field study by Dr Fox, which included 10 focus groups (approximately 100 participants) convened by market research companies (!), as a sound basis for policy making!? Despite the many methodological shortcomings of her study!?
Subtle approaches will usually not work on those who have thick skins and little compassion.
A faux “dogwhistle” might initially hook their attention, that may not otherwise have been gained. The key is to then provide information that gradually arouses the empathy and sense of unfairness of child poverty.
To anyone with a well developed sense of fairness, this approach will seem wrong, but there are many people who have little or no ability to imagine what it would be like to be in any different situation other than their own. These people need dots.
My point is we need a variety of approaches to cover a wide spectrum of people.
What technique would work best on Paula Rebstock, for example?
What would the cyclists really like? Cycling advocate Patrick Morgan spells it out
“The “gold standard” for a kerbside cycleway was to have no off-street parking at all, so cyclists and motorists had no limits on their visibility, he said.”
And what does councillor Andy Foster, responsible for this shambles say?
“the council would perform a safety audit once the cycleway was finished, and would “tweak” the design to alleviate safety issues.
That could involve removing car parks to improve visibility and painting yellow lines to stop people from parking over driveways, he said.”
I expect that after a string of accidents on The Parade the councillor’s will decide to remove all parking in the area and claim that how could they possibly have known that it would have been a flop.
Foster was also responsible for the farce of the $11 million redevelopment of Victoria Street of which the DomPost said
“One of its most recent cycling projects – in Victoria St – was poorly designed, with one stretch regularly crossed by turning traffic, and another traffic lane that ran directly into car parks.”
This, I understand, also leads the cyclists into pedestrians waiting to cross the road.
Meanwhile the Council does nothing about building an emergency reservoir that would supply water to the main hospital after an earthquake. Not sexy enough for us seems to be their view.
My God, Paul you must think I have amazing powers. Sometimes your imagination runs away with you.
I can, of course, jump tall buildings in a single bound.
I can run faster than a speeding locomotive.
However I don’t have your powers.
Please enlighten us. What did you do about some of these things yesterday that solved these problems?
What did you do about the Oil Crash? Vowing that your next car will be a V8 doesn’t count.
About inequality? Leaving a tip with the waitress when you had a latte in Ponsonby doesn’t really count.
Syria, Iraq? Offering incantations to your voodoo gods to make Barack Obama’s hair fall out doesn’t really help.
So what specifically did you do to help resolve these problems?
I prefer to concentrate on things I can actually do something to improve.
But but , what about the national cycleway of national importance as advocated and paid for with tax payers money by the National led Government? I think there was even a picutre of the leader of the National Party opening the national cycleway of national importance as a major achievement of the National led Government?
Would you consider this too a huge waste of citizens money, or are you only upset cause it is your rates that are spend by someone who is not playing in your National Party Team?
as for cycling being unsafe in NZ, it is not the cycleway that is unsafe….it is a way to cycle on, so fairly stationary, what is unsafe is that the a. people in cars do generally give not a shit about anyone else in traffic, b. people in nz are generally crappy drivers, and absent of compulsory driving lessons these crappy drivers will teach their kids to become crappy drivers, c. give way and indicate are things of courtesy only and courtesy on NZ roads is over rated, and last but least anyone of these lycra clad sportsbike/race bike travelling fullahs and fullettes generally ride their bikes like they drive their cars.
The cycleway is fine Alwyn, its the people that are the problem.
What a lot of assumptions you make Sabine.
“the national cycleway of national importance”.
I haven’t heard of anything quite like that. If you mean things like the cycleways in the Napier/Hastings area I think they are an excellent idea. If you mean the cycle trail in Central Otago I think it is fine.
If you mean the insane Island Bay exercise on The Parade I think it is stupid.
“your National Party Team”
I’m not connected in any way to the National Party. Your imagination is running riot. I have commented before that over the last 30 years or so I have voted almost equally National and Labour. At the moment of course the Labour Party are in such a mess they are unworthy of anyone’s vote.
“it is not the cycleway that is unsafe”. I suppose that is like the argument about gun control. You know “It’s not guns that kill people. It’s people who kill people” Therefore I, who is a good person, should be allowed to own an AK47.
Do you live in Wellington? Have you seen the appalling mess that is being created with their cycleway activities?
I agree about the standard of driving in New Zealand, and that the cyclists are at least as mad. Most Wellington roads though are very narrow and are overloaded. Making them even narrower by chopping out a couple of metres on each side for a cycle lane and expecting the traffic to keep operating safely is mad.
I, as a pedestrian, have never been hit by a car. I have twice been knocked down by a cyclist. In both cases it was in Oriental Bay where cycles are allowed on the footpath. They travel at high speed. They catch up and pass people, who don’t hear them coming, with no warning at all. No self respecting cyclist, indulging their fantasies of being in the Tour de France peleton, would ever fit, or use, a bell.
On one of those occasions I was walking, rather unsteadily, on crutches. The cyclist who hit me swore at me for not keeping on a straight path. Is it any wonder I think that they are imbeciles? In most parts of Wellington cycling is dangerous. tick to the cycle trails along the Hutt River for your exercise. They are proper cycleways and are admirable creations.
I love how you pop in with your date scone recipe just when things are heating up on a thread Trollwyn……when your cuzzies are shown to be no less than Key-slurping trollsters lost for words.
I suppose you know what you are talking about.
God knows it doesn’t make much sense to normal minds.
I think you need to have your prescription reviewed.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc said it was pulling the plug on its smallest store format and closing 269 stores globally, including 154 in the United States, in a restructuring that will affect 16,000 workers.
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer by sales, said the move would reduce diluted earnings per share by 20 cents to 22 cents, with nearly all of that to be booked in the fourth quarter ending this month.
Poor people being to poor to shop at the buisness that helped make many of the poor.
The Walmart model has come full circle. Warehouse to follow soon?
A petition against New Zealand signing the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement has gathered over 11,000 signatures in just two days.
The Government is denying a date has been set for the signing of the deal despite an official statement by Chile saying it will be done in New Zealand on 4 February.
Barry Coates from the ‘It’s Our Future Coalition’ set up the petition and said he expected more people to sign it.
“If we continue at that rate we’ll be in the hundreds of thousands of signatures. This petition particularly says to the Government ‘don’t sign the TPPA’. It’s a crucial point when our government signs it and we don’t think that they have a mandate to sign the agreement and this petition gives people a chance to say no.”
Barry Coates said the deal was designed to serve the interests of large corporations rather than those of people or the planet.
Because it’s the MSM, they don’t link to the petition. Anyone know where it is? Is it this ActionStation one?
Sign the petition if you want. Does that make you feel good. Excellent. Really go for signatures and get 400,000 names (and email adresses to exploit) I trump you with 4,000,000 people. That’s correct Four Million who will not sign such a petition. How can the government not have a mandate to sign it? They have a mandate to work for New Zealand. Our negotiaters worked long and hard to get a deal that gains us access to 40% of the world’s GDP. Get involved in our exporting companies. Put your efforts there. The possibilities of growth are tremendous but only if we buckle down and work hard. I believe we can. The Left know the price of everything but ignore the value. The public understand that our negotiaters have been tough and given us the best deal possible at this time. We are better in than out in the cold.
In other words, the person with the biggest stick wins. Problem is, that strategy brings us AGW, poverty and war. Which I’m sure you don’t mind, but many of us do.
“That’s correct Four Million who will not sign such a petition.”
Hyperbole much? You really don’t understand what a mandate is. It’s not making up shit about what other people want on the basis of them not doing something. But I can’t understand you might think it is given that the govt you voted for behaves like this all the time. They don’t have a mandate to do what they want no matter how you want to spin it.
Can you provide a link to that ridiculous claim? Do you seriously not understand the problems our exporters have due to trade restrictions from these 11 countries?
They have no mandate because most people don’t want it fisi.
That’s called democracy – and a government who are not traitors respects it.
But the Key kleptocracy is only there for what they can steal and thus the wants and needs of kiwis mean nothing to them.
What a shameful group of parasites you have chosen to befriend fisi – thieves and scoundrels with nothing to offer but lies. I guess there’s a reason you fit right in.
Yeah I had some trouble finding that petition too, it’s not on the “It’s Our Future” facebook page either…
So, I’m not sure how it’s getting so many signatures when it’s not being advertised. Maybe people are just finding it through the front page of http://www.actionstation.org.nz
In our view, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ plan for comprehensive financial reform is critical for avoiding another “too-big-to-fail” financial crisis. The Senator is correct that the biggest banks must be broken up and that a new 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act, separating investment from commercial banking, must be enacted. Wall Street’s largest banks are now far bigger than they were before the crisis, and they still have every incentive to take excessive risks.
No major Wall Street executive has been indicted for the fraudulent behavior that led up to the 2008 crash, and fines imposed on the banks have been only a fraction of the banks’ potential gains. In addition, the banks and their lobbyists have succeeded in watering down the Dodd-Frank reform legislation, and the financial institutions that pose the greatest risk to our economy have still not devised sufficient “living wills” for winding down their operations in the event of another crisis.
Secretary Hillary Clinton’s more modest proposals do not go far enough. They call for a bit more oversight and a few new charges on shadow banking activity, but they leave intact the titanic financial conglomerates that practice most shadow banking. As a result, her plan does not adequately reduce the serious risks our financial system poses to the American economy and to individual Americans. Given the size and political power of Wall Street, her proposals would only invite more dilution and finagle.
The only way to contain Wall Street’s excesses is with reforms sufficiently bold and public they can’t be watered down. That’s why we support Senator Sanders’s plans for busting up the biggest banks and resurrecting a modernized version of Glass-Steagall.
There was a furore over a whistleblower on the USA Federal watchdog program for reporting on banks and controlling their excessive enthusiasm! She said that this watchdog had been munted. The banks had captured it and when anyone in the group tried to perform their legal function they got shafted.
The financial institutions are too big, with big pockets. If a frontal attack is not mounted, perhaps with some side fireworks to deflect some of the aggressive defensive moves, the opportunity may be lost. There may be a tipping point, there may have been one, there may be a window of opportunity now. Let’s push this economist alternative and try to do better than Sisyphus. (Look him up on Wikipedia.)
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 ...
Te Rangi e tu nei (The sky above us) Te Papa e takoto nei (The land beneath us) Tatou katoa te hunga ora (To us all the living) Tena koutou katoa (Greetings) ...
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 ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
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Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
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Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
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Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
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In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
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A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
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A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
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Would be great if Fran O’Sullivan were as tough on the self-interested lackeys of virulent neo-liberalism as she is on Liam Messam. Of course she is not because by and large she is ‘with’ the former.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11574627
Messam articulates for people in the ‘lied-to’, dismissed as irrelevant, poor end of town. If The Gauche Greedy Man can have Crosby Textor (and the likes of Fran) the rest can have Messam and Weepu.
In Fran O’Sullivan’s view, people like Messam aren’t allowed a view.
She believes in plutocracy, not democracy.
John Key has turned the All Blacks into political players so he/they will just have to suck it up when these newly minted players come up with comments they don’t like.
Ha fucking ha
edit: that is a terrible piece by O’Sullivan. All rant and polemic, no analysis or evidence in support. Crappola
Sadly it shows how ignorant Fran O’Sullivan is, as there is a clear connection between signing the TPP and further environmental degradation.
But she knew that, didn’t she?
So what does that make this article?
Words that come to mind.
spin
propaganda
misinformation
lap dog
With articles like this in the Herald, I think NZ was selected for the signing of the TPP as we have a compliant servile media.
O’shillivan writes on behalf of the national party as do pretty much all the remaining herald regulars. A fairly ordinary business commentator also.
Brewer gets in a pathetic piece about NIMBY development in his precious orakei ward also today the whiny little shit stirrer.
Brewer – “……whiny little shit stirrer” – TC…..how perfect ! I could add ‘self important little punk-arse’. Reminds me of some plastic construct out of “The Thunderbirds”. Where the fuck is Lady Pamela ?
I was working at the china business summit here in Akld a few months ago.
Fran got up at the start when the PM was delayed and started dissing the labour parties proposed CGT for housing investors. I thought WTF, a lazy cheap put down at a supposed business summit.. (it’s all on record as the event was videoed)
I lost all respect for that woman right there and then.
(sorry, slightly OT)
Mind you, a few years earlier many got up and publicly stated they’d never do business with china because their lifes work had been stolen and manufactured by factories that quoted them for manufacturing said items. Many of the “fakes” had the samples’ serial number stamped on the product!
oops, too late to edit but..
To clarify the point she mentioned the Nats had been looking at doing it for a while and that labour were too slow on the uptake.
Labour were too slow on the uptake, and its become clear now that Labour were never seriously committed to the policy because they have dropped it.
John Roughan pimps for the TPP.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11574580
He has form after his hagiography of Key.
http://www.trademe.co.nz/books/nonfiction/biography/politics/auction-1007331709.htm
And was it him that wrote this servile editorial the other day?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11573339
Adjectives that come to mind.
Shameful, treasonous, compliant, cheerleading
Emmerson
‘The Ministry of Sound.
Trust us we know what we’re doing’
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11574577
That editorial could only have been written by Roughan.
I thought that straight away. Pompous little prat!!
“Pompous little prat!!”
Isn’t he just? His own articles and the editorials he writes are incredibly patronising. The man is hardly one of life’s peers but he sure likes to lord it over us peasants.
If the Herald display their usual form they’ll with-hold the comments until his column falls off the first page and readers have moved on, he’s rarely well received by readers who heap (well deserved) scorn on him.
It’s notable he’s used the same bullet points as the TPP fan club who have been trolling this site. It’s obviously been well rehearsed.
Lizzie Marvelly: The only debate is what to do about child poverty
‘The idea that people living in poverty are somehow to blame for their fate is attractive if one wants to absolve oneself from any sense of responsibility, but it is a notion that I find deeply sad. When did we become so hardened and self-centred that we began to believe that those poorer than us deserve their suffering? When did we become so divorced from our own communities that we stopped caring about the families around us?
For those who are unperturbed by the idea of Kiwi kids going without, the financial impact of poverty is hard to ignore. Poverty is correlated with any number of negative social statistics and often a breeding ground for crime and sickness. With thousands of Kiwi kids growing up in deprivation, our health and justice systems are in for an expensive hit when they reach adulthood.
The wellbeing of our children should never be up for political debate. Nor should we feel disempowered.
There are so many things we could do to make the lives of Kiwi kids better: feeding kids in school, bringing back a means-tested child benefit like the one scrapped in the “mother of all budgets”, requiring a warrant of fitness for rental properties to prevent children growing up in cold, damp, leaky houses, and simply helping out in our neighbourhoods.
The first step, however, is for us to look out into our communities and really see other people, to realise that even in the most privileged areas, poverty is just five minutes down the road. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s real.’
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11574600
The first step, however, is for us to look out into our communities and really see other people, to realise that even in the most privileged areas, poverty is just five minutes down the road. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s real.’
http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-holes
I guess you could say this kind of thing is a step in the right direction – using “innocent” children to pull the strings of hardened hearts etc. But it reminds of the TV ad about breast cancer which seemed to be mainly pitched at men. The “this could be your wife, lover, sister, mother…..” line, which seemed to assume that men wouldn’t support a breast cancer appeal unless it was personalised to something that might affect them. Because otherwise, why should men care about a disease that hurts and kills many women, but is rare in men? A join-the-dots, dumb-it-down, empathy lesson for the compassion-challenged, and a pretty offensive assumption.
If our communities have a serious problem with seeing others in our midst who are not just like us, as being fully human and worthy of human rights, care, and respect, I don’t think this kind of coddling is the right approach. It might raise some bucks in the short term, but it dog-whistles the very predjudices it is claiming to refute by appeasing rather than challenging.
The only debate is what to do about child poverty pfft. If only it were that simple, we wouldn’t have to radically change the way we live or think or behave, just make a few minor adjustments.
Telling true stories, providing information, refuting lies, these are all essential, but the framing is wrong to me.
So what is the ‘right’ framing Just Saying ?
I don’t know exactly, but a more honest, less manipulative framing.
The line between advertising and journalism is blurred.
Information needs to be clearly presented, not dumbed-down. People really don’t need to be spoon-fed and have their chins wiped. We can challenge without attacking, individually, the comfortable and complacent, or the just holding it together, keeping up appearances and anxious, amongst us, but also without going to the other extreme and appeasing them and their crumbling picture of the world.
Go Lizzie Marvelly. There is no one framing which will appeal to all, just saying. Communities have become siloed. If you live in a well-to-do area and your kids attend a decile 10 school, it is easy to believe that poverty is a myth.
Making compassion fashionable is valid if it raises awareness that doesn’t seem to be initiated in any other way. Women need to lead in this area and Lizzie is doing a great job imho.
Some people need to be manipulated- forced to confront the consequences of their mean spiritness.
Music can also provide a framing.
Yeah, but the song you linked to is a good example of appealing to people’s hearts and challenging their thinking without pandering or appeasing.
Different framing altogether:
On the turning away
From the pale and downtrodden
And the words they say
Which we won’t understand
“Don’t accept that what’s happening
Is just a case of others’ suffering
Or you’ll find that you’re joining in
The turning away”
It’s a sin that somehow
Light is changing to shadow
And casting it’s shroud
Over all we have known
Unaware how the ranks have grown
Driven on by a heart of stone
We could find that we’re all alone
In the dream of the proud
On the wings of the night
As the daytime is stirring
Where the speechless unite
In a silent accord
Using words you will find are strange
And mesmerized as they light the flame
Feel the new wind of change
On the wings of the night
No more turning away
From the weak and the weary
No more turning away
From the coldness inside
Just a world that we all must share
It’s not enough just to stand and stare
Is it only a dream that there’ll be
No more turning away?
Songwriters: GILMOUR, MOORE
…it dog-whistles the very predjudices it is claiming to refute by appeasing rather than challenging.
just saying, I could not agree more! And it applies to a raft of issues. A month or so ago, a Hikoi for Housing in Auckland attracted about 400 marchers. On the following weekend a march against climate change attracted 15,000. Yes, in the big picture climate change is more important, but so long as the fundamental power imbalance goes unchallenged, our protests only end up giving them material for furthering their own agendas; e.g. “If you care about climate change you will accept the doubling of electricity prices,” or similar. The same with child poverty – Paula Rebstock is already making noises that suggest increased fostering as the answer, and I made a comment about this a couple of weeks ago.
http://thestandard.org.nz/sir-lynton-crosby-and-dame-paula-restock/#comment-1113555
“The only debate is what to do about child poverty pfft.”
The other problem I have with this is that it allows the deserving poor memes to continue which in turn allows the neoliberalis to keep treating so many people like shit. Whenever I hear the child poverty line now I think of two things. One is what happens to those children when they turn 18? Because as far as I can tell, the ones who’ve had poverty allievement targeting are just going to get thrown back on the scrapheap once they become adults if they’re not lucky enough to have a job or good physical and mental health etc.
The other is the people who have no families, particularly single people with mental health problems. Their mental health is instrinsically tied to poverty (i.e. mental health improves alongside improvement in general wellbeing), and once they become unable to work they are essentially stuck in a poverty/mental illness cycle unless they have family to support them. People in that situation, in the context of ‘the only debate is child poverty’, are the undeserving poor. Which is extremely fucked.
I get why child poverty is focussed on. For socially intelligent people, if you address child poverty you are in fact addressing family poverty (not so much for the neoliberals and socially inept), and that in turn creates more healthy societies.
It’s also been a pragmatic approach politically in a climate where people are afraid to be seen too much on the side of the welfare bludgers. But that last one is starting to look like a trap, and I can easily imagine a Labour-led government still not standing up for some of the most vulernable people in society because it’s taken part in the deserving poor meme too much. Little seems to belief that all people deserve wellbeing and only time will tell if he puts his money where his mouth is.
+1 just saying
This is something I have been thinking about for some time. The emphasis on children is to try and soften hearts of those who basically don’t give a shit about rising inequality. It may occasionally get some rich people to donate to a food in schools programme but they will still vote National or Act.
It is actually very easy for wealthy people to ignore poverty now because they no longer have to have any dealings with poor people. They live such blinkered lives, only interacting with other wealthy people, who share their belief that they deserve to be in the positions they are. Justifying wealth in the face of poverty can only be done if you either deny poverty exists or you blame those in poverty for the situation they are in. Focusing on children is an attempt to thwart the latter of these but all that happens is the parents are blamed instead.
I don’t know what the answer is but somehow the idea of the deserving wealthy has to be exposed for the lie that it is. Instead of appealing to hearts perhaps engendering guilt may help.
Oops.
My words have become attached to my name!
….and here’s me thinking we had a new commenter with a truly cryptic moniker!
What does help is when their punk kids end up in court and then end up in Serco and get seriously smashed over. Then they’re full of concern. Oh yes…..turning to me, ‘uncle’, to ‘fix it’. As I’ve experienced in my own John Key loving family.
Nah, it’s not enough …….unfortunately it’s never gonna change until people lose their fascination with some surly, entitled punk lying on a beach in Hawaii playing with some gargoyle bimbo’s hair. LFLS.
I have to admit to also being uncomfortable with the use of ‘child poverty’. I’ve tried to accept it, thinking I’d get used to it over time, but I still get the same intuitive negative reaction as when I first heard it the term. It just clashes, there’s something not right about it.
I think I dislike it largely because it, perhaps unintentionally, dismisses adult poverty & hardship. Children certainly are more vulnerable and need better protection but that doesn’t mean adults should be ignored.
Many of the children in poverty today will be adults in poverty tomorrow and if we keep focussing on children yesterdays children will constantly be forgotten.
+1
It does not dismiss adult poverty. Framing it as child poverty is done to bypass the “worthy poor” argument.
Because it doesn’t matter if a childs parents are any good or not, only a monster would deny innocent children an opportunity to succeed.
Sure it does. You just dismissed adult poverty. You said nothing about denying adults the opportunity to succeed, you only mentioned children.
You were quite patronising there too btw.
It is you who’s got it wrong DH. Do not say “child poverty” because that suggests blindness about poverty in the round ??? Stop it ! The bastards who couldn’t give a fuck about poverty, wherever it is, just love this pettifogging.
I’ve always taken it as read that the adult parents of poverty kids are themselves in poverty. That’s how come their kids are in poverty. Fair ?
Didn’t mean to be patronising.
Sure, you disagree with the effectiveness and/or direction of the political strategy, but that doesn’t negate the thinking behind it or why poverty groups frame it this way.
And I disagree that it’s a zero sum game; that those who highlight child poverty are not unaware or don’t care about adult poverty.
Ok.
I think you’ve read too much into it. I don’t want or expect ‘framing’, that’s inherently dishonest and insulting. It’s about poverty so why not just call it that?
Framing is not inherently dishonest or insulting.
People connect to stories, we learn through stories, we share values through stories, we relate to others through stories.
By focussing on child poverty we do not have to navigate how the child became poor; were they a lazy drug addict? or injured and can no longer work? or were there simply not enough well paying jobs? or jobs at all?
Everyone can relate to a child.
A child is not worthy or unworthy, they are an innocent. They have not yet had time to become worthy or unworthy.
We can imagine ourselves as that child.
Looking at child poverty first gives people a relatable “in” to the issue.
From there we can look at the symptoms of poverty as well as the causes. This is where we encounter the worthy/unworthy or poverty as a moral failing type arguments.
The difference being that we have already established that poverty is not a choice – because children do not have the same level of autonomy and agency that adults possess.
We can easily see how a child growing up in poverty will be denied opportunities to flourish.
One might then ask the question; those adults in poverty, aren’t they just kids that have grown up?
framing it as child poverty reinforces the worthy poor meme, because it means we can talk about the poor children instead of their shitty parents and the bludgers. Who are still being pilloried btw.
Herald opens – “Academic research into public health problems has an uncanny way of confirming the concerns of its funder.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11574567
Herald then closes – “It’s academic whether research funded for a worthy social cause or public health campaign is comparable to a commercial conflict of interest.” Academic ? Like meaningless ? Really ?
Do focus dear Gran’ editorial writer. Or at least be honest. If you’re saying it’s churlish to question the dynamic of ‘report bought and paid for by corporate’ then out with it dear Gran’.
That’s just how this shit works. It works the same in publicly-funded research as it does in privately-funded research. There’s no way any public-sector health organisations are going to fund someone like Fox, who doesn’t buy the official dogma that alcohol “causes” violence. Likewise, the reason we’ve had counter-productive nutrition advice for the last 40 years is that, once the official US bodies settled on a dogma, anyone who didn’t accept it didn’t get their research funded by those bodies. This is an excellent reason for not allowing academics to argue from authority and refusing to accept their pronouncements at face value – don’t believe any of this “studies show” bullshit unless you’ve read the studies and the findings are convincing.
In Fox’s case, her argument is compelling on a logical basis alone. If Kypri et al have an equally compelling counter-argument, they should front with it – you could claim they have, in that they’re publishing a rebuttal in Addiction, but if they’re going to trash-talk Fox to the media, they need to also get their compelling counter-argument in the media or on the open web, otherwise they just look like bad losers.
There’s no such thing in science as “official dogma”.
Dr Fox is based in the UK, not in the US.
I am curious to know whether you have read the 99-page report by Fox?
”In Fox’s case, her argument is compelling on a logical basis alone.”
Which “argument” might that be? Do you mean that Fox stated a “hypothesis”? Do you mean that it appealed (!) to your (!) common sense? In any case, a compelling argument can still be wrong.
Kypri et al did not ”trash-talk Fox to the media”; some of their critique was highlighted in another recent NZH article.
I am also curious to know whether you have read the article by Kypri et al in Addiction?
There’s no such thing in science as “official dogma”.
Maybe not, but there sure as hell is in the social sciences, which is what the field of public health falls under.
Which “argument” might that be?
The argument for rejecting the claim that alcohol “causes” violence. The strongest elements of that argument are:
1. If alcohol caused drinkers of it to become violent, we could expect to see levels of violence match amount of alcohol consumed when we look at different cultures. We don’t see that – level of drinking and level of drunken violence vary wildly across cultures.
2. If alcohol causes drinkers of it to become violent, we could expect to see all or most drunk individuals committing acts of violence or agression. We don’t see that – most people don’t commit drunken violence, and the people who do commit drunken violence don’t do it every time they drink.
In any case, a compelling argument can still be wrong.
Sure. And maybe Kypri et al have something that totally refutes Fox’s argument But if they did, I expect they would have mentioned it to the Herald.
I am curious to know whether you have read the 99-page report by Fox?
Nope, just the summary. I was more interested in her argument that alcohol doesn’t cause violence than in what her recommendations might be.
I haven’t read the report PM but if your point number two is correct then Fox fails on this count straight away.
“If alcohol causes drinkers of it to become violent, we could expect to see all or most drunk individuals committing acts of violence or aggression. We don’t see that – most people don’t commit drunken violence, and the people who do commit drunken violence don’t do it every time they drink.”
Most people know that when people become intoxicated their personalities undergo a change from when they were sober. They also appear to lose inhibitions which would constrain their behaviour if they were sober.
This exhibits in various ways:
Harmless:
Happy Drunk. Someone who is the life of the party jumping around, joking, having a great old time.
Sleepy Drunk. They drink their box of alcohol and then fall asleep snoring cradling their bottle like a baby.
Not so Harmless:
Jealous Drunk. Drinks as their ex is seeing someone else. Jealousy rears up and Jealous Drunk decides to go sort them out – usually ends in blood and tears.
Angry Drunk. Once intoxicated decided the world is against them and decides to fight anyone and everyone and to smash stuff up.
Driving Drunk. Most people know that driving and intoxication don’t go together.
Vulnerable Drunk. Intoxicated to the point of unconsciousness. Vulnerable to being exploited/assaulted by others. (Females are especially vulnerable)
Thefts of money etc. Also includes those who can’t walk properly and end up injuring themselves.
Sexual Drunks. When intoxicated they decide they need to get it off with anyone or everyone – tends to lead to sexual assault complaints.
Cody Drunks. The special mix of alcohol and caffeine tends to cause Cody drunks to end up in trouble with the Police.
See Dr Fox. I could have made a lot more compelling arguments than your nonsense. All for free as well.
You could make some compelling arguments? Feel free to do so. However, be aware that the content of your comment above offers no evidence to refute Fox’s claim that alcohol doesn’t cause violence. All your different categories of drunks suggest that culture and personality are the determining factors for the category, not alcohol.
The Spirit Level (ie: its supporting research) has it that alcohol and drug abuse, being mental health issues, are proportional to inequality. So is violence.
That said “drunken violence” is certainly a thing where culture permits it.
If you want an example of the ‘paid’ report Psycho Milt, have a look at the rubbish (at God knows what cost maybe $3 hundy plus to the dame) ‘report’, completed by ‘Dame’ Margaret Bazley into legal aid.
No one, judges down, imagines that her report was other than a piece of paid for crappola.
The “respected now retired senior civil servant” and her ‘report’ (which she acknowledged was but anecdotally based) paved the way for this –
http://www.lawsociety.org.nz/news-and-communications/latest-news/2012/justice-andrew-tippings-final-sitting-speech
There’s your ‘paid for’ shit Psycho. Up a notch……Dame Rebstock……Oh God……seven, eight hundy ? A mill’ ? Forty hours a week for two and a half months. Bang ! A mill’.
I enjoy your semi-religious choice of words: “dogma” and “sure as hell”. You sound very assured and an expert on Social Sciences and Public Health; please don’t tell acrophobic 😉
Alcohol causes violence, just like smoking causes cancer, but it is not the only contributing factor nor is it a black & white situation in that it causes violence in each and every case or individual.
As you will hopefully appreciate, the human brain is quite possibly the most complex structure in the (known) Universe. To liken the effects of alcohol on the human brain and thus human behaviour to a simple on-off mechanism for causing violence is overly simplistic. In other words, just because alcohol does not invariably cause violence it does not mean that it does not cause violence at all!
I’d also like to emphasise that Kypri et al do not exclude other individual and contextual factors but point out that Fox is wrong to categorically ‘argue’ that alcohol does not cause violence.
just because alcohol does not invariably cause violence it does not mean that it does not cause violence at all!
That’s not the argument that’s being made.
Fascinating reply! You confirmed that it is the argument in 4.1.1.1:
”The argument for rejecting the claim that alcohol “causes” violence.”
The key-word is “causes”, of course.
Missed this earlier:
I am also curious to know whether you have read the article by Kypri et al in Addiction?
Looks like it hasn’t been published yet. It’s not in either of the issues published so far this year, and a search for Kypri and Fox turned up nothing.
I thought you were a university librarian!? Anyway, a simple Google search gave it as 2nd hit, after the article in the NZH that I linked to in my previous comment:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.13149/abstract
The full article is behind a pay-wall but I assume you will have access, won’t you?
I think you ought to read it to form a more balanced opinion on this topic. In any case, the NZH is not the place where the scientific debate should take place.
I’ve had a look at it. Their counter-argument that alcohol does cause violence is that epidemiological studies have shown it does. Thing is, epidemiological studies are an excellent tool for finding the cause of infectious diseases, but for anything beyond that they’re useless. 70 years ago it was reasonable for social scientists to imagine that epidemiology might be applicable to things other than infectious diseases, but the resulting decades of “research” consisting of correlation = causation errors backed up by confirmation bias has done more to reduce the sum total of human knowledge than increase it. Epidemiological studies certainly have found that alcohol is associated with violence, and if I wanted I could do a study that found breast cancer is associated with wearing skirts – in short, epidemiology is worthless for establishing causation in this and most other cases.
Their “evidence-based” policy is similarly worthless. The evidence is that reducing the night-time availability of alcohol reduces the number of instances of violence. Well, duh. No shit, Sherlock? By the same token, imposing a night-time curfew on private motor vehicles would reduce the instances of reckless/dangerous driving causing injury/death, but that is not evidence that private motor vehicles cause crashes, nor is it evidence that a night-time curfew on private motor vehicles would be good public policy. Instead, we pay attention to the obvious fact that some people do aggressive and dangerous things in cars and we concentrate on dealing with those people. Fox’s findings support the same approach with drunken violence, and we’d be better off making policy on that basis.
The counter-arguments by Kypri et al are indeed based on but not limited to population studies.
You’re also partly correct that epidemiological methods have limitations, as do all methods, and that they do not establish causation per se. However, to state that ”epidemiological studies are an excellent tool for finding the cause of infectious diseases, but for anything beyond that they’re useless” is frankly absurd.
Your analogies are flawed as none come even close to the intake (consumption) of a powerful drug (alcohol) and its complex effects on the human brain.
You discard all (!) the evidence (and more) provided by Kypri et al as “useless” and “worthless” and judge the 7-week field study by Dr Fox, which included 10 focus groups (approximately 100 participants) convened by market research companies (!), as a sound basis for policy making!? Despite the many methodological shortcomings of her study!?
I do admire your mental gymnastics though 😉
Subtle approaches will usually not work on those who have thick skins and little compassion.
A faux “dogwhistle” might initially hook their attention, that may not otherwise have been gained. The key is to then provide information that gradually arouses the empathy and sense of unfairness of child poverty.
To anyone with a well developed sense of fairness, this approach will seem wrong, but there are many people who have little or no ability to imagine what it would be like to be in any different situation other than their own. These people need dots.
My point is we need a variety of approaches to cover a wide spectrum of people.
What technique would work best on Paula Rebstock, for example?
I think being forced to live on, say, $15000 a year in Auckland for 2 years would sort Paula Rebstock out a bit.
Another few million wasted by the Wellington City Council
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/75932119/cyclists-agree-that-wellingtons-island-bay-cycleway-is-unsafe
What would the cyclists really like? Cycling advocate Patrick Morgan spells it out
“The “gold standard” for a kerbside cycleway was to have no off-street parking at all, so cyclists and motorists had no limits on their visibility, he said.”
And what does councillor Andy Foster, responsible for this shambles say?
“the council would perform a safety audit once the cycleway was finished, and would “tweak” the design to alleviate safety issues.
That could involve removing car parks to improve visibility and painting yellow lines to stop people from parking over driveways, he said.”
I expect that after a string of accidents on The Parade the councillor’s will decide to remove all parking in the area and claim that how could they possibly have known that it would have been a flop.
Foster was also responsible for the farce of the $11 million redevelopment of Victoria Street of which the DomPost said
“One of its most recent cycling projects – in Victoria St – was poorly designed, with one stretch regularly crossed by turning traffic, and another traffic lane that ran directly into car parks.”
This, I understand, also leads the cyclists into pedestrians waiting to cross the road.
Meanwhile the Council does nothing about building an emergency reservoir that would supply water to the main hospital after an earthquake. Not sexy enough for us seems to be their view.
As if the issues caused by Wellington Council are the most pressing the world and NZ at the moment…
Serious climate change consequences
TPP
Oil Crash
China imploding
Inequality
Unemployment
Syria, Iraq
My God, Paul you must think I have amazing powers. Sometimes your imagination runs away with you.
I can, of course, jump tall buildings in a single bound.
I can run faster than a speeding locomotive.
However I don’t have your powers.
Please enlighten us. What did you do about some of these things yesterday that solved these problems?
What did you do about the Oil Crash? Vowing that your next car will be a V8 doesn’t count.
About inequality? Leaving a tip with the waitress when you had a latte in Ponsonby doesn’t really count.
Syria, Iraq? Offering incantations to your voodoo gods to make Barack Obama’s hair fall out doesn’t really help.
So what specifically did you do to help resolve these problems?
I prefer to concentrate on things I can actually do something to improve.
poor design, incompetent approvals, inflated cost/benefit scenarios, no accountability or responsibility, welcome to NZ of the 21st century.
But but , what about the national cycleway of national importance as advocated and paid for with tax payers money by the National led Government? I think there was even a picutre of the leader of the National Party opening the national cycleway of national importance as a major achievement of the National led Government?
Would you consider this too a huge waste of citizens money, or are you only upset cause it is your rates that are spend by someone who is not playing in your National Party Team?
https://www.national.org.nz/news/news/media-releases/detail/2014/08/18/$100-million-for-urban-cycleways
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11442581
another little write up on the 3 million for a Northland cycleway, and for what its worth the Leader of the National Party complies with the law and wears a helmet 🙂
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/68226606/3-million-to-Northland-cycle-way
a review of 2009, i like the paragraph named economy, and how the economy and the employment stats where spurred into growth with the building of the national cycleway of national importance.
http://liberation.typepad.com/liberation/2010/12/review-of-new-zealand-politics-in-2009.html
as for cycling being unsafe in NZ, it is not the cycleway that is unsafe….it is a way to cycle on, so fairly stationary, what is unsafe is that the a. people in cars do generally give not a shit about anyone else in traffic, b. people in nz are generally crappy drivers, and absent of compulsory driving lessons these crappy drivers will teach their kids to become crappy drivers, c. give way and indicate are things of courtesy only and courtesy on NZ roads is over rated, and last but least anyone of these lycra clad sportsbike/race bike travelling fullahs and fullettes generally ride their bikes like they drive their cars.
The cycleway is fine Alwyn, its the people that are the problem.
What a lot of assumptions you make Sabine.
“the national cycleway of national importance”.
I haven’t heard of anything quite like that. If you mean things like the cycleways in the Napier/Hastings area I think they are an excellent idea. If you mean the cycle trail in Central Otago I think it is fine.
If you mean the insane Island Bay exercise on The Parade I think it is stupid.
“your National Party Team”
I’m not connected in any way to the National Party. Your imagination is running riot. I have commented before that over the last 30 years or so I have voted almost equally National and Labour. At the moment of course the Labour Party are in such a mess they are unworthy of anyone’s vote.
“it is not the cycleway that is unsafe”. I suppose that is like the argument about gun control. You know “It’s not guns that kill people. It’s people who kill people” Therefore I, who is a good person, should be allowed to own an AK47.
Do you live in Wellington? Have you seen the appalling mess that is being created with their cycleway activities?
I agree about the standard of driving in New Zealand, and that the cyclists are at least as mad. Most Wellington roads though are very narrow and are overloaded. Making them even narrower by chopping out a couple of metres on each side for a cycle lane and expecting the traffic to keep operating safely is mad.
I, as a pedestrian, have never been hit by a car. I have twice been knocked down by a cyclist. In both cases it was in Oriental Bay where cycles are allowed on the footpath. They travel at high speed. They catch up and pass people, who don’t hear them coming, with no warning at all. No self respecting cyclist, indulging their fantasies of being in the Tour de France peleton, would ever fit, or use, a bell.
On one of those occasions I was walking, rather unsteadily, on crutches. The cyclist who hit me swore at me for not keeping on a straight path. Is it any wonder I think that they are imbeciles? In most parts of Wellington cycling is dangerous. tick to the cycle trails along the Hutt River for your exercise. They are proper cycleways and are admirable creations.
I love how you pop in with your date scone recipe just when things are heating up on a thread Trollwyn……when your cuzzies are shown to be no less than Key-slurping trollsters lost for words.
Well done Trollwyn !
I suppose you know what you are talking about.
God knows it doesn’t make much sense to normal minds.
I think you need to have your prescription reviewed.
Emmerson on the TPP
ugh ugh ouch
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/walmart-layoffs_5698fe89e4b0b4eb759e101d
Wal-Mart Stores Inc said it was pulling the plug on its smallest store format and closing 269 stores globally, including 154 in the United States, in a restructuring that will affect 16,000 workers.
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer by sales, said the move would reduce diluted earnings per share by 20 cents to 22 cents, with nearly all of that to be booked in the fourth quarter ending this month.
Poor people being to poor to shop at the buisness that helped make many of the poor.
The Walmart model has come full circle. Warehouse to follow soon?
RNZ were reporting this a couple of days ago,
TPPA petition gets thousands of signatures
A petition against New Zealand signing the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement has gathered over 11,000 signatures in just two days.
The Government is denying a date has been set for the signing of the deal despite an official statement by Chile saying it will be done in New Zealand on 4 February.
Barry Coates from the ‘It’s Our Future Coalition’ set up the petition and said he expected more people to sign it.
“If we continue at that rate we’ll be in the hundreds of thousands of signatures. This petition particularly says to the Government ‘don’t sign the TPPA’. It’s a crucial point when our government signs it and we don’t think that they have a mandate to sign the agreement and this petition gives people a chance to say no.”
Barry Coates said the deal was designed to serve the interests of large corporations rather than those of people or the planet.
Because it’s the MSM, they don’t link to the petition. Anyone know where it is? Is it this ActionStation one?
http://www.actionstation.org.nz/dontsign (20,000 signatures).
Can’t see it on the ‘It’s Our Future Coalition’ website (which is bizarre),
http://itsourfuture.org.nz/
Sign the petition if you want. Does that make you feel good. Excellent. Really go for signatures and get 400,000 names (and email adresses to exploit) I trump you with 4,000,000 people. That’s correct Four Million who will not sign such a petition. How can the government not have a mandate to sign it? They have a mandate to work for New Zealand. Our negotiaters worked long and hard to get a deal that gains us access to 40% of the world’s GDP. Get involved in our exporting companies. Put your efforts there. The possibilities of growth are tremendous but only if we buckle down and work hard. I believe we can. The Left know the price of everything but ignore the value. The public understand that our negotiaters have been tough and given us the best deal possible at this time. We are better in than out in the cold.
In other words, the person with the biggest stick wins. Problem is, that strategy brings us AGW, poverty and war. Which I’m sure you don’t mind, but many of us do.
“That’s correct Four Million who will not sign such a petition.”
Hyperbole much? You really don’t understand what a mandate is. It’s not making up shit about what other people want on the basis of them not doing something. But I can’t understand you might think it is given that the govt you voted for behaves like this all the time. They don’t have a mandate to do what they want no matter how you want to spin it.
You know we already have access to that 40% of the world’s GDP right? International trade has been going on for how many centuries now?
Can you provide a link to that ridiculous claim? Do you seriously not understand the problems our exporters have due to trade restrictions from these 11 countries?
Fisiani. A cheap brochure for something. Or other. Or other.
They have no mandate because most people don’t want it fisi.
That’s called democracy – and a government who are not traitors respects it.
But the Key kleptocracy is only there for what they can steal and thus the wants and needs of kiwis mean nothing to them.
What a shameful group of parasites you have chosen to befriend fisi – thieves and scoundrels with nothing to offer but lies. I guess there’s a reason you fit right in.
Yeah I had some trouble finding that petition too, it’s not on the “It’s Our Future” facebook page either…
So, I’m not sure how it’s getting so many signatures when it’s not being advertised. Maybe people are just finding it through the front page of http://www.actionstation.org.nz
and it just breaks the heart to see this.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/terminally-ill-helen-kelly-calls-for-referendum-on-legalising-cannabis
Any comments on how significant this is?
http://www.occupydemocrats.com/170-top-economists-pen-letter-backing-bernie-sanders-plan-to-break-up-the-biggest-banks/
There was a furore over a whistleblower on the USA Federal watchdog program for reporting on banks and controlling their excessive enthusiasm! She said that this watchdog had been munted. The banks had captured it and when anyone in the group tried to perform their legal function they got shafted.
The financial institutions are too big, with big pockets. If a frontal attack is not mounted, perhaps with some side fireworks to deflect some of the aggressive defensive moves, the opportunity may be lost. There may be a tipping point, there may have been one, there may be a window of opportunity now. Let’s push this economist alternative and try to do better than Sisyphus. (Look him up on Wikipedia.)
Ziggy’s stardust.
Brian Eno
@dark_shark
David Bowie Tribute: Starman Gets His Own Constellation http://www.psfk.com/2016/01/david-bowie-tribute-
https://twitter.com/dark_shark/status/688151460345819138