Your biggest problem is who’s going to be the boss? Who is going to make the hard decisions. It’s all well and good to have a collective, but you have to have a leader or you will just be stuck in committees.
Democratic election of “the boss” is required. All workers discuss, vote on and approve overall strategy and budgets. They then democratically select “the boss” (preferably from amongst their own number) who will carry out that strategy day to day and week to week.
The boss is also democratically replaceable, and should receive no more than 25% more than the pay the other workers receive.
You do not need a leader to make hard decisions if the people involved in the cooperative have all the necessary information to make decisions. Needing a leader is a lie told by authoritative types.
Effectively a different way of delivering (primarily software development) projects. The point I was making is that they are non-hierarchical and somewhat akin to a workers co-op in a micro sense.
In this instance it is because the team can more efficiently deal with change through collaborative effort. In a lot of ways they have much greater control over their own “destiny” if you will as their work practices aren’t dictated to them – they define them themselves.
Not at all. In the “agile team” construct the workers employment status maintains much less relevance to what (I assume) it would within a workers co-op.
What will the big bosses do when the workers realise that the big bosses don’t add value to the core business of the enterprise to justify their 5x or 10x higher salaries?
So the guy on $150K pa gets tossed out, and the remaining 10 workers each get a raise from $50K pa to $65K pa.
Sounds fair. (If he’s actually good for something other than “management” they could offer to rehire him at their rates of course…my how the tables could quickly turn).
“You do not need a leader to make hard decisions if the people involved in the cooperative have all the necessary information to make decisions. Needing a leader is a lie told by authoritative types.”
I find both of those sentences at odds with the reality of human existence to a very large extent.
When the other Mr Key got back stage with his family for the photo-op with a recent touring female artist, what strings would have been pulled for that one.
I can imagine the conversation going something like…
“… the Prime Minister is out the back and he would like his family to come and meet you…”
Just wondering when the Prime Minister bit ends and Joe Citizen kicks in. Would be terrible to think that he used his official status to garner favour.
I think most international superstars who come to Aotearoa really do so with a desire to meet with our great PM and his family. His brilliance shines forth from Aotearoa like a beacon and they feel humbled in his presence. In a recent poll undertaken by Penguins R Us, only the Dalai Lama was voted anywhere near FJK in the “Inspiring leaders I’d cut off both my arms and kick myself repeatedly in the goolies to meet”.
I do not think there is any substance to your suspicions.
Hospital admission rates for skin infection in young children in New Zealand are higher than in other developed countries and have steadily increased over the past 20 years
Figures provided to DFNZ under the Official Information Act show just 17 pupils in decile one schools received special assessment conditions for external NCEA exams in 2014. Just under 1300 pupils in decile 10 schools received help.
This perpetuates what amounts to systemic discrimination against students at lower decile schools, where SACs can make all the difference between achieving or not achieving NCEA qualifications
Regarding Dunedin Hospital’s frozen meals being trucked in from Auckland, someone has written some thoughtful comments to the Southern District Health Board and here’s the letter [edited] for your information:
Dear Sir,
I am a retired psychiatrist, who worked for the Dunedin Hospital Board for many years. I am writing on behalf of many others I have spoken to in the Dunedin community, of which I have been part for 36 years.
I recently wrote a letter to the Otago Daily Times on this issue, and have been urged to bring our concerns to the attention of the Southern District Health Board (SDHB) members.
There are two related issues:
[1] Food Services should not be privatised. This is not simply a matter of jobs being lost locally and renovated kitchens standing idle. It is inhumane to talk about money-saving as a primary object, rather about human beings who are unwell.
Psychologically, as well as physiologically, food is very important for all people. We are hard-wired to associate food with care and motherly love, which makes us feel secure and cared-for. Natural endorphins thus released help healing. Part of this is the feeling of intimacy and individual care local cooking provided. “If you don’t
like the chicken, I will see what the kitchen can fix up for you.” They do not need carefully devised, nutritionally accurate airline-type food sent from some hub where cost-saving is the main focus at the bottom line of the spreadsheet.
Local food comes with concern and love from our own community. Everybody knows each other: two degrees of separation here, not six.
When food cooked on site the delicious aromas drift up to stimulate flagging appetites, as occurs in the home.
[2] Greater and longer lasting risks and problems will be faced by the SDHB if they accept Compass Group as their contract food service. They are the largest contract food service in the world, based in the UK, but having operations in over 50 countries. It is a multinational organisation, listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent
of the FTSE 100 Index. Compass Group may seem to offer a good deal, but additional costs may be covert, like the recently discovered ‘setting up costs’. They are out to make as much money for their shareholders as they can, and are not offering a ‘good deal’ to Otago and Southland out of goodwill. They want to make money out of us. Our sick and infirm are commodities to them. And the money will mainly leave NZ. They will pay a little tax, exploiting our tax loop-holes perfectly legally, and will siphon away the money that needs to be circulating in NZ for New Zealanders.
Once locked into a contract with a multinational like this, the SDHB will find themselves riding a tiger. Multinationals can start to demand terms in the decision-making process regarding service delivery, and may take this out of the SDHB’s hands, as they can have recourse to the Investor States Disputes Settlement [ISDS] if they deem that their free access to making profit is being impaired in some way. If the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement comes in, this is more likely to happen. They could bring objections in from one of their many other sites in countries who are signatories.
For example, NZ has laws about the ingredients in food, both how they are sourced, and whether they are GE free, to name but two. One can speculate how they will avoid meeting these laws in the search for the cheapest ingredients, or failing that, take the issue to the ISDS, which is an off-shore tribunal and costs to contest objections are
huge. Besides, the tribunal is weighted in favour of the multinational.
It would be better, if hospital food services must be privatised, to give the contract to a New Zealand-based and owned firm, even if it seems not to save as much money. It may well be cheaper in the long run. Of course, care must be taken that that company is not covertly owned by a multinational itself, as can be the case.
Please give the above earnest consideration before action is taken.
North @ 8: Cheers! I thought it was a superb letter when it was shown to me.
Someone pointed out what naughty multi-nat profit-making Compass was up to a few years ago on the Facebook page ‘Stop Dunedin Hospital From Being Downgraded’ that can be viewed publicly (without needing to log in with one’s personal account):
Heh. I wondered what was behind that comment and had to refresh my own mind! I have stayed away from commenting on The Standard. About a year now. But TPPA, mass surveillance issues, and other things are bringing me back. Some interesting developments in recent months with grassroots and community activities have competed for my time and energy. But some of the stuff offline might make it here.
It is a fine letter, but as I mostly read the ODT online I haven’t seen how much of it got printed. [edit; rereading the above, I see it was addressed to the SDHB and not to the ODT editor; hope they read it with an open mind]
However I noted this in Saturday’s article (more about the immediate meals on wheels programme than the creeping corporate takeover of hospital meals and kitchens):
Grey Power Otago president Jo Millar said the board should have been more open from the start about the ”ridiculous” idea.
”What facilities are there going to be if they can’t truck this food down south in the mid-winter?
”How long is the food going to be in frozen storage?
”We have no idea what the quality of those meals are going to be coming down from Auckland – absolutely none.”
Meals would be heated before delivery, but Mrs Millar said many older people ate in the evening.
Heating meals twice was potentially ”extremely unsafe”.
She also feared the new meals for the hospital patients would lack nutritional value…
Compass Group New Zealand issued a statement yesterday saying the company could utilise sea or air links if road transport was blocked.
The company used the latest freezing technology for meals, which ensured maximum nutrient retention.
”Compass Group intends to work closely with volunteer organisations in Dunedin and Invercargill who deliver meals, to improve the information available and communication to recipients on safely handling their meals when they are received,” chief operating officer Julian Baldey said.
Which implies that if these; “volunteer organisations in Dunedin and Invercargill who deliver meals”, were to refuse to do so if Compass was the provider, then the entire proposal would fall flat on its face. This is a clear case of privitising profit and externalising costs to the public.
If Compass had to foot the bill for delivering the meals, then the SDHB would be more likely looking at a cost rather than saving to implement the scheme. Also, who would be paying for the cost of this air-freighting of meals? As a backup plan it seems flawed, as the kind of weather that would take out the road &/or ferry from Auckland down South, would also likely disrupt the; “sea or air links”.
Which implies that if these; “volunteer organisations in Dunedin and Invercargill who deliver meals”, were to refuse to do so if Compass was the provider, then the entire proposal would fall flat on its face. This is a clear case of privitising profit and externalising costs to the public.
Volunteers delivering the meals for frail people are providing aid to their community hospital which is an organisation providing free or low cost treatment and assistance to the community.
If companies or business trusts, even not-for-profit charities (which are often businesses with a plastic halo) like Compass are to take over and carry out this unsatisfactory system of food supply then a generous mileage should be paid to the volunteers. Otherwise they will be squeezing profit out of this very personal service to the community, and from the human activity of food provision.
The provision from outside the location is a waste of energy and will cause additional stress in the case of disaster or bad weather, wondering if the wagons are going to get through to the beleaguered citizens under seige by events. It
stretches the supply lines too far, which has led to great disasters. For instance in Russia
It is an idea thought up by brain-atrophied business economists and taken up probably by the person who hired the person who hired the thieving and conniving IT techology fellow who cost the Southern District Health Board $16.9 million. The Sensible Sentencing Trust is on this occasion rightly outraged that the fraudster Swann is being released from prison halfway through, and has not accounted for much of the lost funds.
Also the Southern District Health Board has not received help from the Ministry of Health in auditing an amount paid to a private health concern Southern Link Health, run by independent practitioners. Only under $1 million of spending for savings on service contracts has been accounted for, although $6.2 million was paid. And accrued interest has meant that the amount in contention is now $15 million!
The Health Board is in an unhealthy position. It needs an overhaul. But in trying to cut service costs it has got into a quagmire. The government has wiped a contract with a company which had a similar objective because its expenses were going up and the savings were down. Now this new efficiency move in Otago seems likely to be another costly boo-boo, and bound to cause heartache to managers and workers and possibly heartburn to patients.
It is a Trojan horse the Southern District Health Board is ushering in, that will open up spewing out little men who will pop out and grab sack fulls of money in exchange for sack fulls of chaff.
The ODT’s editorial from Saturday also covered this:
”The latest details of the proposal to outsource Dunedin and Invercargill hospital food services leave a bad taste in the mouth for southerners….
” There is – rightly – a healthy amount of scepticism about the reality of ”savings”, the transparency of procedures, not to mention the flow-on effects and local impact of health proposals….
”It is to be hoped other counterproposals may offer a more palatable solution, which can retain jobs and services locally. ”
Mean time – in China. Things are looking different and the same – but this I found to be very new – as in middle class China seems to be a questioning the status quo.
Positive and Hopeful for the future. But need our support.
That is a marvellous letter @ 6 ! The humanity (and the patent common sense) it conveys deepens my contempt for the Keys and the Joyces and the self-seeking sycophants who back them. They deserve to go down in history for the fetid moral crooks they are !
When does a fee become a tax? When the employer revokes your professional body that you pay a fee for, and creates a new organisatio with the same name but employer controlled, directing your proffessional fees to the employer ends.
Caught a news conference on te Chinese channel, english translation provided, and was shocked, China is introducing a deposits guarentee. I maybe misheard but what if its true?
China big notes its economic performance. The fact is they have ghost cities full of surplus real estate. Their demand for raw materials has dropped, as Australia has learned lately. I don’t think the country will collapse, but there is some belt-tightening afoot.
This was an interesting interview on 9toNoon this morning. A very engaging baskeball player and now wine expert from NZ on his career and development. I loved hearing how well he had done and his thoughtful and positive attitude. NZs who are doing it – let’s hear more of it, and learn from them!
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/20171057
Former Tall Black’s love letter to basketball ( 25′ 41″ )
10:07 John Saker was a Tall Black from 1975 until 1987. He was one of the first New Zealanders to get a basketball scholarship to a US University, and then became the country’s first professional player, taking up a contract with a French side. During that stint in France, a love of wine blossomed, inspiring a secondary career as a wine writer. John Saker remains passionate about basketball, his latest book is called Open Looks and is a kind of a love letter to the sport.
One thing that struck me – he said that basketball is attracting in NZ a lot of brown players, keen and doing well. Can we get behind that sport, rather than the thuggish and increasingly amoral and injury-causing rugby, and have good things happening for teams of integrated and hopeful young teenagers in South Auckland? Please make it so.
If you did not hear it, I found this interview on RNZ National Nine to Noon this morning very enlightening in respect of the definitions used by NSA etc of terms such as “mass collection”, “mass surveillance” and “Full Take”.
Kathryn Ryan was interviewing “… Bruce Schneier is a US technology and security expert whose latest book “Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World”, highlights just how much information is being gathered by governments and corporations through our use of phones and computers.”
Ryan took the opportunity to question Schneler closely about what the terms “mass collection” etc meant when used by the NSA etc in view of Key’s dissembling in this regard.
Schneler’s explanations were excellent – clear and understandable; and IMO provided confirmation that Key knows full well how these terms are used in the international 5 Eyes setting.
Also on radionz this a.m. something on data surveillance and how many have their fingers in your daily soup of communications?
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/20171051
Personal data collection and your technology footprint ( 18′ 44″ )
09:35 How much do you know about what others might know about you, from your use of technology? How do you minimise your online footprint on things you’d rather keep private?
Bruce Schneier is a US technology and security expert whose latest book “Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World”, highlights just how much information is being gathered by governments and corporations through our use of phones and computers.
NB I went to give a UNICEF donation towards Vanuatu and found they insisted on my address, phone number and email just so I could give them money they need. Talk about highwaymen without pistols! They didn’t get my money or my details. Stuff them I gave to someone else. Did you know that some professional fund raisers give under 10% of what they raise to the actual charity. Nice work extorting money, when you get it.
Encouraging, almost hopeful rallying cry from Bill McKibben on climate change. I love the bit about how it’s not the leaders that matter, it’s the pressure being brought to bear by the radicals and sane people.
Pressure is growing. A relentless climate movement is starting to win big, unprecedented victories around the world, victories which are quickly reshaping the consensus view.
The official view: all eyes are on Paris, where negotiators will meet in December for a climate conference that will be described as “the most important diplomatic gathering ever” and “a last chance for humanity.” Heads of state will jet in, tense closed-door meetings will be held, newspapers will report that negotiations are near a breaking point, and at the last minute some kind of agreement will emerge, hailed as “a start for serious action”.
The actual story: what happens at Paris will be, at best, one small part of the climate story, one more skirmish in the long, hard-fought road to climate sanity. What comes before and after will count more. And to the extent Paris matters, its success will depend not on the character of our leaders but on how much a resurgent climate movement has softened up the fossil fuel industry, and how much pressure the politicians feel to deliver something.
The good news is, that pressure is growing. In fact, that relentless climate movement is starting to win big, unprecedented victories around the world, victories which are quickly reshaping the consensus view – including among investors – about how fast a clean energy future could come. It’s a movement grounded in the streets and reaching for the photovoltaic rooftops, and its thinking can be easily summarised in a mantra: Fossil freeze. Solar thaw. Keep it in the ground.
Triumph is not certain – in fact, as the steadily rising toll of floods and droughts and melting glaciers makes clear, major losses are guaranteed. But for the first time in the quarter-century since global warming became a major public issue the advantage in this struggle has begun to tilt away from the Exxons and the BPs and towards the ragtag and spread-out fossil fuel resistance, which is led by indigenous people, young people, people breathing the impossible air in front-line communities. The fight won’t wait for Paris – the fight is on every day, and on every continent.
Fed Farmers Waikato have called for a moratorium on dairy conversions in the area (apparently most farm there are still small family owned farms). Good for them.
Lewis’s suggestion for a moratorium was heard “with interest” by the Waikato Regional Council’s industry and infrastructure manager Brent Sinclair.
In an emailed statement, Sinclair said the council would be happy to discuss further with Federated Farmers exactly what they were looking to achieve in terms of managing water quality in the region.
Dairy conversions were not regulated in the council’s regional plan, so it lacked hard data on the number of such conversions that have taken place or been planned in the past few years.
It’s never ceases to amaze me just how strongly the regional councils are still dragging the chain on environmental protection.
“Dairy conversions were not regulated in the council’s regional plan, ”
Dairy conversions require a number of buildings to be built or converted, especially the buildings where the milk collection equipment will be installed. These buildings require building permits, and in many cases food safety certificates, so for the Council to say ‘we don’t know’ is a bit fibby.
Yes, absolutely – my comment was prodding the reality that the info exists. Regional Councils have access to such info and it is a completely reasonable way to at least get a ball park picture of the recent number of conversions. But of course it is far easier and less troublesome to simply tell the public ‘ we don’t know’.
Seen on The Standard now and then: The best way to not have problems from the police/CIA/GCSB is to not break the law (yeah, it surprised me at first too)
Pippa Wetzell clearly perturbed by the frivolous approach of Mike Hosking this evening Seven Sharp, Television One, Monday 16 March 2015
Mike Hosking, Pippa Wetzell
Watching the following travesty a few minutes ago, I got the feeling that Pippa Wetzell was trying to treat the crap script she’d been handed with as much seriousness as she could muster. In spite of being in an utterly frivolous environment, she has obviously made up her mind to do her best. The contra king Hosking, on the other hand, is not serious in the slightest, and Wetzell seemed to acknowledge this when he made his idiotic comment about “strange countries like Russia”….
PIPPA WETZELL: Where’s Vladimir Putin? He hasn’t been seen for ten days. Top rumors on the internet are, one, that he’s dead and, two, that he’s been attending the birth of his love child.
MIKE “CONTRA” HOSKING: He could be on holiday in the Seychelles.
PIPPA WETZELL: Maybe he’s sick. They don’t want the image of the macho man on horseback to be diminished.
MIKE “CONTRA” HOSKING: There’ll be a big vacuum. There’s always a vacuum in strange countries like Russia.
At that point, Pippa Wetzell frowns in consternation and disapproval. Hosking simply chunters on, oblivious to anything but the sound of his own voice….
Actually, Paul, I think it’s poor old Pippa Wetzell that deserves a medal. I don’t have to put up with that boor, and only listen to and watch him occasionally. Pippa Wetzell, on the other hand, had no escape last night. To her credit, she made her contempt for him quite clear.
One has to be cautious to come to any definite conclusions yet, because, there seems to be no big money going in generally for either of the candidates, except in minute amounts of mostly 1 dollar or so which is quite unusual. I am suspecting that there is some kind of cunning manipulation going on to scare the Nat supporters to go and vote for their ‘super’ candidate.
At the moment, here are the waiting orders:
Current Top 10 Buy Orders Quantity (Stocks) Price Per Share
1 $0.5610
5 $0.5510
1 $0.5510
1 $0.5410
5 $0.5375
1 $0.5310
5 $0.5250
1 $0.5210
1 $0.5110
1 $0.5010
Current Top 10 Sell Orders Quantity (Stocks) Price Per Share
1 $0.5710
1 $0.5810
1 $0.5910
1 $0.6010
1 $0.6100
1 $0.6110
1 $0.6210
3 $0.6275
1 $0.6310
15 $0.6380
I’VE OFTEN WONDERED if South African immigrants passing through towns like Kerikeri and Kaikohe ever wonder how we do it. In their homeland, through the bitter years of Apartheid, keeping the races segregated required pass laws, Alsatian dogs, tear gas, rubber bullets and, all-too-often, live rounds. Not here. Not in ...
Below is the list of gender-critical material which appeared on Redline from July 31, 2019 to September 30, 2019. Sports categories must be by sex, not gender identity Queer theory glossary Woke misogyny and homophobia: a gay critique of trans ideology Another unfortunate experiment? New Zealand’s transgender health policy and ...
Smart Energy Europe: A Plan to provide 100% of ALL ENERGY using Renewable Energy to EuropeIntroductionAll Energy renewable energy systems are often commented on here at Skeptical Science. Many comments suggest that it will be difficult, expensive or impossible to use renewable energy to power the world. To ...
The government released its Action for Healthy Waterways package today, ostensibly with the goal of cleaning up our rivers and making them swimmable within a generation. Doing that, of course, requires confronting the cow in the room: the dairy industry which causes most of the pollution. But while they've imposed ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzI would like to know if New Zealand’s carbon emissions ...
Remember KiwiBuild? Previously the government's flagship policy, it was supposed to build thousands of new homes every year for kiwi families. But instead of flooding the market, we've got a pathetic dribble: The Government's former flagship housing policy is so far behind schedule it will take more than 400 years ...
Don Franks Now Covid-19 restrictions allow gatherings of a hundred, an urgent hui needs calling. A special conference of the Council of Trade Unions. Today, workers face the greatest attack on employment, pay and conditions since the depression, we need a strong united union voice. As it stands now, organised ...
George Henderson New Zealand schools have introduced a climate change resource that suggests children “eat less meat and dairy”, even though teachers will not know how much meat or dairy any child in their care has eaten. Opinion pieces in the papers have called for the reduction of meat and ...
Questioning the number of district health boards in New Zealand has got to the extent that “too many DHBs” has become a perceived truth requiring no further elaboration. It is rarely challenged by policy advisers, academics, and journalists. But when one drills down further it becomes clear that the number ...
The emergence of a new National party leader, seemingly out of nowhere, has – not surprisingly – raised a number of questions as to who Todd Mulller actually is and what makes him tick. He has been an MP for some time but seems to have hidden his light under ...
Costa Rica has become the first country in Central America to recognise same-sex marriage: The first same-sex weddings have taken place in Costa Rica, the first Central American country to equalise its marriage legislation. A lesbian couple became the first to tie the knot in a ceremony that took ...
There's a new twist in the Winston Peters secret donation story. It appears that a significant chunk of NZ First's secret laundered donations goes straight into the pockets of the people administering the scheme: Tens of thousands in donor's funds given to the New Zealand First Foundation were spent paying ...
Is Todd Muller the Ned Flanders of the National Party? This is how he’s been characterised by political commentator Gordon Campbell, who suggests the change in leadership is, in Simpsons terms, akin to swapping the scary and cruel Monty Burns for Homer Simpson’s compassionate but conservative neighbour. There’s almost a ...
We all know that many so-called journalists and political commentators in New Zealand work directly or indirectly for political parties or for certain political factions. This was obviously the case when pundit for hire Matthew Hooton launched a campaign against then National Party leader, Simon Bridges, over their numerous polling ...
Let's Roll! The easy victory over a Bridges-led National Party which the Left had every cause to anticipate just a few days ago is no longer in the offing. Our enemy’s position has changed. His numbers are swelling. A rapid thrust to the left, followed by an audacious outflanking manoeuvre ...
New National Party leader Todd Muller has been interviewed about his policies, and has promised to restart offshore fossil fuel exploration if elected: The Bay of Plenty MP rolled former leader Simon Bridges last week, but says the party has not changed its stance on previous promises. "That is ...
Anyone who keeps an eye on evidence around cannabis and public health will be familiar with the Christchurch Health and Development Study. It's one of two local longitudinal studies frequently cited with respect to cannabis and youth development. But in a new article in the New Zealand Medical Journal, it is ...
In the age of covid we are Jacinda’s team of five million, except for some. There has rarely been a more blatant case of discrimination against beneficiaries than Grant Robertson’s announcement yesterday that people who have lost their jobs because of the coronavirus will receive weekly payments of $490 per week for 12 weeks and $250 per week for part time ...
It was 75 years ago this month that Germany surrendered and the Allies celebrated VE (Victory in Europe) Day. Millions of people around the world had been killed and many more injured or captured. It was an end to war not just for Europeans, but their allies too, in countries across Africa. But its impact is ...
Well, we are out of lockdown, essentially. I did end up getting the wage subsidy while we were on levels 3 and 4 but I would have been fine if we didn’t. The first day of level 2, the Thursday, the office opened again for the people who weren’t able ...
Watching Todd Muller make his first speech as the newly minted Leader of the Opposition after Simon Bridges’ defenestration on Friday brought to mind a headmaster addressing a school assembly. He showed no particular desire to ingratiate himself with his audience although the occasional flash of self-deprecating humour indicated a ...
The government has announced another income support scheme for people affected by the economic aftershocks of the pandemic: a $490 a week tax-free payment for the newly unemployed, which you can get even if you have a working partner. Which is great, because its supporting people who need help, but ...
The Greens have released their party list, and it contains a few surprises. The one that's getting all the news is that the membership are clearly fans of Chlöe Swarbrick, and she has worked hard to earn that. But they've also favoured incumbent protection over new blood, and in the ...
age credit:Science and Politics – Skeptically.org It seems impossible to keep politics out of science. It’s a pity because politics can end up forcing science to produce the results desired by ...
Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Matthew Parry, Dr Ayesha Verrall, Prof Michael Baker, Prof Martin Eichner (author details*)This blog details a recent modelling study we conducted. In it we estimated that it would take between 27 and 33 days of no new detected cases of COVID-19 for there to be ...
The 2015 Schol Bio paper included a question about a group of birds known as honeycreepers, specifically, the 56 species endemic to the Hawaiian islands. (Or, were endemic: 18, or perhaps 19, are still living; the others are extinct.) Students who’ve already had a look at this paper as part of ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Climate Feedback Article Review... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... What a Week’s Disasters Tell Us About Climate and the PandemicExtreme weather presents an even bigger threat ...
Todd Muller has made a good start to his leadership, though it would obviously be pretty stupid to extrapolate too much from the first couple of days. Nevertheless, as a matter of speculation, it is interesting to think what success on his part might say about the preferences of the ...
A guest post by Hamish Price.“A leader is a dealer in hope.”— Napoléon BonaparteCatholics have a name for potential successors to a dead pope. Papabile. The small coterie of distinguished cardinals who have what it takes to step up. Todd Muller has always been one.I first met Muller at a National ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, May 17 through Sat, May 23, 2020Editor's ChoiceMore than 80 killed in India and Bangladesh as Cyclone Amphan heaps misery on coronavirus-hit areasA man salvages items from ...
Two poor political polls within the same week had seen National for the first time in over a decade dropping major support in the face of a competent and assured COVID-19 health response from the Coalition government. Step forward the relatively unknown Todd Muller, who by Friday afternoon had secured ...
SUNDAY MAY 24The Luminaries (TVNZ 1, 8.30pm). There are an awful lot of indeterminate accents in The Luminaries; even lead Eve Hewson seems undecided about being Irish, and she is Irish. Fair play, accents can go badly wrong, so perhaps not over-egging was a consideration. Marton Csokas, always impeccable, and Himesh Patel ...
Let’s be honest; Simon Bridges was a disaster of a political leader. If he wasn’t attempting to criticise the Government’s perfectly good policy initiatives that the public generally supported, he was fudging his lines after getting caught out in yet another lie. When Jami-Lee Ross said Bridges “is a flawed individual ...
The media treat budgets as bit of a circus: lots of theatre and soon forgotten. For a serious economist they show how a team of economists is thinking about the wider economy. The 2020 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) was the most difficult forecasting exercise in the history of ...
Air NZ shed 1,300 workers, Fletchers about to sack 1000. Economists Strateg.Ease predict over 12,400 jobs gone by March next year in central Auckland alone. Here’s Don Franks during the 2008 election campaign when he stood for the Workers Party. He’s talking about fightback strategies, ideas that he believes are ...
One of these MPs is the new leader of the National party. Can you pick which? (Source: Office of the Clerk/Parliamentary Service) National has chosen its new leader, and as expected, it is an old bald white man. Totally representative of modern New Zealand, then. But its not ...
Five years ago, Know Your Stuff didn't have a name. They were just a group of people from the festival community who began testing party drugs onsite because they'd seen the consequences of people taking substances they couldn't identify or didn't understand. They didn't want to see people in their ...
Last week, an article on Newsroom made it clear how the funder / provider split - a core part of our public service - was used to enable underfunding. The government holds the purse strings, but dumps responsibility for its decisions on providers, so they get the blame for poor ...
Dr Jaijus Pallippadan-Johny1, Dr John McDermott2, Rodney Jones1 and Michael Duddin1 (1 Wigram Capital Advisors, Auckland; 2Motu Economic and Policy Research, Wellington)In this blog, we introduce our modelling approach to estimating the transmissibility of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic. We demonstrate the usefulness of ...
The Illusions Of Power: Does Jacinda Ardern, like Abraham Lincoln, wake in the dark watches of the night still enveloped in the terrors of life-and-death decision-making? Maybe – maybe not. She’s a twenty-first century prime minister, not so susceptible, perhaps, to the deep religious feeling and romanticism that was such ...
Well, that seals it. The supposedly more National sympathetic One News-Colmar Brunton poll has tonight delivered Simon Bridges’ National Party a worst result than the Newshub-Reid Research three days agoi.On tonight’s numbers Labour sits at an “unprecedented” 59 percent, while National has slumped 17 percent to 29 percent. Anything in ...
The National Party are quite simply a party out of time…Literally, insofar as the 2020 Election is concerned, and certainly in terms of their ideological positioning which has grown far more trenchantly extreme in the last few years in particular, under the leadership of both Simon Bridges, and Paula ...
If tonight’s 1News-Colmar Brunton poll result is anywhere near the 31% recorded in Monday’s Newshub-Reid Research poll, Simon Bridges will surely be dog tucker when his caucus colleagues meet tomorrow to vote on the National Party leadership. The momentum is with newcomer Todd Muller, who seems likely to be installed ...
At last year's Splore festival Listening Lounge sessions, one of the most popular discussions was the one on psychedelic therapy. So for this year's festival, I brought back two of the participants from that panel – Dr Will Evans and Amadeus Diamond – and was delighted to be able to ...
The government is reportedly looking at "helicopter money" - giving cash directly to people to spend - as a way of stimulating the economy in the wake of the pandemic. But its not just central government: Palmerston North City Council is looking at the same thing, though on a much ...
Mahmoud Elkhodr, CQUniversity AustraliaNew Zealanders finally have access to the government’s new tracing app to help people monitor their movements as lockdown continues to ease. As businesses can now open, the NZ COVID Tracer app allows people to keep a register of the places they visit. This “digital diary” ...
Eyes Left! On the face of it, the election of Todd Muller and Nikki Kaye is a no-brainer. New Zealanders are clearly in no mood for a “dirty little street-fighter” and, if the polls are any indication, resent strongly Bridges’ implication that they are. To be at all competitive with ...
Tahu Kukutai, University of Waikato; Helen Moewaka Barnes, Massey University; Tim McCreanor, Massey University, and Tracey McintoshAs schools and businesses reopen and attention shifts to the longer-term repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is critical that Māori be involved in decision making more equitably than has so far happened. ...
Dane Giraud from The Free Speech Coalition talks with Redline writer and editor Daphna Whitmore on cancel culture, gender ideology, postmodernism and irrationalism. They look at the free speech implications of issues like the Twitter mob, the Government’s proposed emergency police powers, and the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Free Speech interview ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzAlmost every threat to modern humanity can be traced simply ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee is holding an inquiry into the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 which was rushed through Parliament last week, and has called for submissions. Submissions are due by Sunday, 28 June 2020. You can either submit online through the form above, or by posting dead ...
While the world is currently struggling with the pandemic, we have another crisis to deal with as well: climate change. Fortunately, not everyone has forgotten about it, with Spain announcing ambitious plans to go net-zero by 2050: Under the law, which still needs to be approved by Parliament, the government ...
Children used in this study were from Lintingkou town (a normal-fluoride/control area) and Dakoutun town (a high-fluoride area) in Baodi district of Tianjin, China. The towns are 25 km apart. Anti-fluoridation activists on ...
When we see how the pandemic is being handled in the rest of the world, we can thank our lucky stars that we live here, in New Zealand, and under our current government, led by Jacinda Ardern. The latest polls suggest that this is exactly how Kiwis feel. But the ...
Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Sophie Febery, Dr Ling Chan, Dr Jennifer Summers, Prof Michael BakerThe concepts of an Alert Level system, household “bubbles”, and social event size limits are all valuable pandemic control measures. Nevertheless, better “source control” of COVID-19 at various Alert Levels by requiring masks in ...
This is a repost from the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund blog, by CSLDF Executive Director Lauren Kurtz The COVID-19 pandemic illuminates the crucial role scientists at university, state, and local laboratories in the United States and abroad play in protecting public health and safety—and shows that global research must be done ...
Arguments by religious folk that they are being discriminated against under the Level 2 pandemic restrictions in NZ, which limit church services to ten people or less when schools, restaurants, malls and other service outlets are allowed to host many more people under voluntary self-distancing protocols, got me to think ...
Now that the initial wave has passed, and we are (hopefully) safe in our national bubble, the government is thinking about how to keep the economy ticking over, and how to salvage the bits (like tourism) that are now useless. And for that particular industry, she has mentioned a great ...
There’s been a lot of conjecture concerning the reasons behind the National Party’s fall to 30% in the latest Newshub-Reid Research poll. Some commentators have correctly ascertained that the current leader, Simon Bridges, has been consistently getting his tone wrong! Others believe that the shift in support is all about ...
It probably was too good to last. The blessed peace on the roads that I wrote about here began eroding even before we left Level 4 of the Covid-19 restrictions – and on day one of Level 3, with the tradies rushing to catch upon their work, the double-cab utes ...
Missing From The Electoral Action: The radical Left's last forlorn hope, the "Missing Million", is generally despised by mainstream New Zealand and mistrusted by the respectable members of their own communities. They have moved well beyond the reach of conventional electoral politics.TO SAY the Left’s reaction to Grant Robertson’s “Recovery ...
by Don Franks As we face new unknowns against Covid 19, there’s something reassuring about level 2’s basic rules. “Physical distancing- keep your distance when out and about. Two metres in public and in retail stores, like supermarkets. One metre in most other environments like workplaces, cafes, restaurants, and gyms.” ...
Richard Shaw, Massey UniversityOnce upon a very different time, British cabinet minister Michael Gove sneered that “people have had enough of experts from organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.” But that was then and this is now. One or two ...
From its name, you would think the Environmental protection Authority was there to protect the environment. But we've had another reminder that nothing could be further from the truth, with its decision to allow a toxic, burned-out Korean fishing boat to be dumped at sea: The ship's owner, Dong Won ...
Story of the Week... El Niño/La Niña Update... Toon of the Week... Graphic of the Week... Climate Feedback Article Review... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... The Largest Arctic Science Expedition in History Finds Itself on Increasingly ...
It was just a month ago that the chief executive of Rotorua Lakes Council, Geoff Williams, described suggestions his executive team should consider taking pay cuts as “immoral”. Williams told the NZ Herald: “I am very fortunate to have around me an extremely committed, dedicated and hardworking executive team who ...
“Every day, we see the powers that promulgate laws that oblige one to take certain routes and [those] that do not follow these indications or do not want them to be part of their legislation, are accused and politely persecuted” – Pope Francis What does the Government’s decision to limit ...
The Green Party says major freshwater reforms announced today provide the strongest ever protections of our waterways, to help ensure the next generation can swim in the rivers of Aotearoa. ...
The Green Party has begun the process for a Select Committee inquiry into student accommodation, which has been exposed during COVID-19 as an under-regulated sector that straddles students with unfair debt. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Hon Megan Woods, Minister of Research, Science and Innovation Hon Dr David Clark, Minister of Health Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods, and Health Minister David Clark today announced a COVID-19 vaccine strategy, ...
Budget 2020 is about rebuilding together, supporting jobs, getting business moving and the books back into the black. It’s an integral part of our COVID-19 economic response, and our plan to grow our economy and get New Zealand moving again.Here’s a quick look at the five top things you ...
The Coalition Government has approved $206 million in essential upgrades at Ōhakea Air Base. Defence Minister Ron Mark said the money would be spent on improving old infrastructure. He said safety issues would be addressed, as well as upgrades to taxiways, accommodation and fresh, storm and waste water systems. "This ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First “I am not persisting with this case just for myself, but for all people who have had their privacy breached. Privacy of information is a cornerstone of our country’s democracy. Without it our society truly faces a bleak future. We now ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones has introduced a Bill to Parliament that he says will "force more transparency, integrity and respect" for the domestic wood-processing sector through the registration of log traders and practice standards. The Forests (Regulation of Log Traders and Forestry Advisers) Amendment Bill had its first reading in ...
Green MP Golriz Ghahraman is joining over 300 lawmakers from around the world in calling on the big banks and the IMF to forgive the debt of developing countries, in the wake of the COVID crisis. ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones says concerns that carbon foresters are planting pine trees that will never be harvested are the result of "misinformation". "The billion tree strategy is an excellent idea, unfortunately from time to time it's tainted by misinformation spread by the National Party or their grandees, hiding in scattered ...
The Green Party welcomes funding in the budget to reunite more refugees with their families, ensuring they have the best chance at a new life in Aotearoa New Zealand. ...
This year’s Budget is about rebuilding New Zealand together in the face of COVID-19. Jobs are central to how we’re going to do that.There’s a lot of targeted investment for employment in this year’s Budget, with announcements on creating new jobs, training people for the jobs we have, and supporting ...
Speaking to Stuff's Coronavirus NZ podcast, Foreign Minister Winston Peters revealed China tried to dissuade New Zealand from going into lockdown.“Without speaking out of turn, they wanted a discussion as to why we were doing it, because they thought it was an overreaction,” Mr Peters told Stuff’s Coronavirus NZ podcast.He also ...
The Coalition Government is making changes to the Overseas Investment Act to ensure New Zealand assets don't fall into the hands of foreign ownership in the economic aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Associate Minister of Finance David Parker announced the Act will be amended to bring forward a national interest ...
A quick start to a trans-Tasman bubble could see the tourism industry make a swift recovery, according to Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters. "I believe tourism will turn around dramatically faster than people think," Mr Peters told reporters after Thursday's Budget. "Why? Because I think the Tasman bubble is [going ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First Please check against deliveryhttps://vimeo.com/418303651 Budget 2020: Jobs, Business and Balance Introduction Acknowledgements to all Cabinet colleagues, and party ministers Tracey Martin, Shane Jones and Ron Mark, Under-Secretary Fletcher Tabuteau and to caucus colleagues. Thank you for your support, your ...
The 2020 Budget includes significant support to stabilise New Zealand’s family violence services, whose work has been shown to be so essential throughout the COVID-19 lockdown. ...
The Green Party says huge new investment in public and transitional housing will get thousands more families into the warm, safe homes they deserve. ...
The Green Party says the $1.1 billion environmental investment in this year’s budget to create thousands of green jobs will help jump start a sustainable recovery from the COVID crisis. ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said today the Coalition Government told foreigners at the start of the Covid-19 crisis that if their circumstances had changed dramatically, they should go home. "And 50,000 did," Mr Peters said. Official advice to Cabinet revealed there is potentially 380,000 foreigners and migrant workers in ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand First welcomes the decision today to go to Alert Level 2 from midnight Wednesday, says Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters. Alert Level 2 will mean a return to work for the vast majority of New Zealand’s businesses. A return ...
Nurses now look set to get more protection from violence at work, under a proposed new law.This after NZ First MP Darroch Ball's "Protection for First Responders Bill", which introduces a six-month minimum sentence for assaults on first responders, will now also cover emergency department healthcare workers. The ...
Darroch Ball MP, New Zealand First Law and Order Spokesperson An amendment to the ‘Protection of First Responders Bill’ is being tabled which will see emergency department healthcare workers included in the legislation. “During this COVID-19 crisis we have seen reports of violence and specifically increased incidents of spitting towards ...
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones is breathing new life into the proposal to move Auckland's port to Whangārei to help in the economic recovery post Covid-19 pandemic.If New ZealandFirst was returned in the September general election, Minister Jones said a priority would be development of an "economic haven" at Northport, ...
Views sought on Order in Council to help fast track the reinstatement of the Christ Church Cathedral The Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Hon Poto Williams, will be seeking public written comment, following Cabinet approving the drafting of an Order in Council aimed at fast-tracking the reinstatement of the ...
The law setting out New Zealanders’ basic civil and human rights is today one step towards being strengthened following the first reading of a Bill that requires Parliament to take action if a court says a statute undermines those rights. At present, a senior court can issue a ‘declaration of ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today reiterated the deep concern of the New Zealand Government following confirmation by China’s National People’s Congress of national security legislation relating to Hong Kong. “New Zealand shares the international community’s significant and long-standing stake in Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability,” Mr Peters said. “New Zealand ...
Thousands of artists and creatives at hundreds of cultural and heritage organisations have been given much-needed support to recover from the impact of COVID-19, Prime Minister and Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Jacinda Ardern announced today. “The cultural sector was amongst the worst hit by the global pandemic,” Jacinda ...
Key New Zealand assets will be better protected from being sold to overseas owners in a way contrary to the national interest, with the passage of the Overseas Investment (Urgent Measures) Bill. The Bill, which passed its third reading in Parliament today, also cuts unnecessary red tape to help attract ...
Setting higher health standards at swimming spots Requiring urban waterways to be cleaned up and new protections for urban streams Putting controls on higher-risk farm practices such as winter grazing and feed lots Setting stricter controls on nitrogen pollution and new bottom lines on other measures of waterway health Ensuring ...
The Government is on the verge of reaching its target of state sector boards and committees made up of at least 50 percent women, says Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter and Minister for Ethnic Communities Jenny Salesa. For the first time, the Government stocktake measures the number of Māori, ...
The Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister and Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media Minister, Kris Faafoi, has today announced the appointment of Tristan Gilbertson as the new Telecommunications Commissioner and member of the Commerce Commission. “Mr Gilbertson has considerable experience in the telecommunications industry and a strong reputation amongst his peers,” ...
The Ministry of Education and NZEI Te Riu Roa have agreed to settle the pay equity claim for teacher aides, Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. This will see more than 22,000 teacher aides, mostly women, being valued and paid fairly for the work they do. “Teacher aides are frontline ...
Subcontractors will have greater certainty, more cashflow support and job security with new changes to retention payments under the Construction Contracts Act says Minister for Building and Construction, Jenny Salesa. A recent review of the retentions money regime showed that most of the building and construction sector is complying with ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong have marked the first anniversary of the New Zealand-Singapore Enhanced Partnership with a virtual Leaders’ Meeting today. The Enhanced Partnership, signed on 17 May 2019, provides the framework for cooperation across the four main areas of trade, defence and ...
On 17 May 2019, New Zealand and Singapore established an Enhanced Partnership to elevate our relations. The Enhanced Partnership – based on the four pillars of trade and economics, security and defence, science, technology and innovation, and people-to-people links – has seen the long-standing relationship between our countries strengthen over the ...
State-Owned Enterprises Minister Winston Peters has welcomed KiwiRail’s announcement that it is seeking a preferred shipyard to build two new rail-enabled ferries for the Cook Strait crossing. “This Government is committed to restoring rail to its rightful place in New Zealand. Bigger, better ships, with new technology are yet another ...
Better protection for seabirds is being put in place with a new National Plan of Action to reduce fishing-related captures, Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash and Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage announced today. The National Plan of Action for Seabirds 2020 outlines our commitment to reduce fishing-related captures and associated seabird ...
Almost $1 billion in interest-free loans for small businesses More than 55,000 businesses have applied; 95% approved Average loan approx. $17,300 90% of applications from firms with ten or fewer staff A wide cross-section of businesses have applied, the most common are the construction industry, accommodation providers, professional firms, and ...
Thousands of children will have healthier lungs after the Government’s ban on smoking in cars with kids becomes law, says Associate Minister of Health Jenny Salesa. This comes after the third reading of Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill earlier today. “This law makes it ...
The special Epidemic Response Committee (ERC) has successfully concluded its role, Leader of the House Chris Hipkins said today. The committee was set up on 25 March by the agreement of Parliament to scrutinise the Government and its actions while keeping people safe during levels 4 and 3 of lockdown. ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today announced four diplomatic appointments: New Zealand’s Ambassador to Belgium, High Commissioners to Nauru and Niue, and Ambassador for Counter-Terrorism. “As the world seeks to manage and then recover from COVID-19, our diplomatic and trade networks are more important than ever,” Mr Peters said. “The ...
New Zealanders will be better protected from online harm through a Bill introduced to Parliament today, says Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin. “The internet brings many benefits to society but can also be used as a weapon to spread harmful and illegal content and that is what this legislation targets,” ...
New Zealand’s world-first plan to eradicate the cattle disease Mycoplasma bovis is on track the latest technical data shows, says Agriculture and Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor. “Two years ago the Government, DairyNZ and Beef + Lamb New Zealand and industry partners made a bold decision to go hard and commit ...
Further support for New Zealanders affected by 1-in-100 year global economic shock 12-week payment will support people searching for new work or retraining Work programme on employment insurance to support workers and businesses The Government today announced a new temporary payment to support New Zealanders who lose their jobs due ...
The Provincial Growth Fund will play a vital role in New Zealand’s post-COVID-19 recovery by creating jobs in shorter timeframes through at least $600 million being refocused on projects with more immediate economic benefits, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. The funding is comprised of repurposed Provincial Growth ...
Government exempts some home improvements from costly consents Homeowners, builders and DIYers will soon have an easier time making basic home improvements as the Government scraps the need for consents for low-risk building work such as sleep-outs, sheds and carports – allowing the construction sector to fire back up quicker ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says the New Zealand Government has reacted with concern at the introduction of legislation in China’s National People’s Congress relating to national security in Hong Kong. “We have a strong interest in seeing confidence maintained in the ‘one country, two systems’ principle under which Hong ...
The Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio, says the theme for the 2020 Samoa Language Week is a perfect fit for helping our Pacific communities cope with the unfolding COVID-19 crisis, and to prepare now for the journey ahead as New Zealand focuses on recovery plans and rebuilding New ...
A nearly 40-year programme to protect one of New Zealand’s most critically endangered birds is paying off, with a record number of adult kakī/black stilt recently recorded living in the wild, the Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage announced today. “Thanks to the team effort involved in the Department of Conservation’s ...
The story of the Waikato-Tainui Treaty process and its enduring impact on the community is being told with a five-part web story launched today on the 25th anniversary of settlement, announced Associate Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Carmel Sepuloni. “I am grateful to Waikato-Tainui for allowing us to help capture ...
Taita College in the Hutt Valley will be redeveloped to upgrade its ageing classrooms and leaky roofs, Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. “The work is long overdue and will make a lasting difference to the school for generations to come,” Chris Hipkins said. “Too many of our schools are ...
The Government is allocating $36.72 million to projects in regions hard hit economically by COVID-19 to keep people working, Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford and Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. Projects in Hawke’s Bay, Northland, Rotorua and Queenstown will be funded from the Government’s $100 million worker ...
A $35m boost to financial capability service providers funded by MSD will help New Zealanders manage their money better both day to day and through periods of financial difficulty, announced Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni. “It’s always been our position to increase support to key groups experiencing or at risk ...
Dunedin barrister Melinda Broek has been appointed as a District Court Judge with Family Court jurisdiction to be based in Rotorua, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. Ms Broek has iwi affiliations to Ngai Tai. She commenced her employment in 1996 with Scholefield Cockroft Lloyd in Invercargill specialising in family and ...
The Coalition Government has approved a business case for $206 million in upgrades to critical infrastructure at Royal New Zealand Air Force Base Ohakea, with the first phase starting later this year, Defence Minister Ron Mark announced today. The investment will be made in three phases over five years, and ...
Transport Minister Phil Twyford today released the Ministry of Transport’s review of the organisational culture at the Civil Aviation Authority. Phil Twyford says all employees are entitled to a safe work environment. “I commissioned this independent review due to the concerns I had about the culture within the CAA, and ...
Ensuring that Stats NZ’s direction and strategy best supports government policy decisions will be a key focus for a new Governance Advisory Board announced today by the Minister for Statistics, James Shaw. The new Governance Advisory Board will provide strategic advice to Stats NZ to ensure it is meeting New ...
Environment Judge David Kirkpatrick of Auckland has been appointed as the Principal Environment Judge, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. Judge Kirkpatrick was appointed an Environment Judge in February 2014. From December 2013 to July 2016 he was Chair of the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel. Prior to appointment he ...
A programme to connect marae around the country to the internet has received $1.4 million to expand to include urban marae in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media Minister Kris Faafoi and Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. The funding for the Marae Connectivity Programme ...
The Government will provide $500,000 to the Hawke’s Bay Mayoral Drought Relief Fund to help farmers facing one of the worst droughts in living memory, says Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor. “Yesterday afternoon I received a letter from Hawke's Bay's five local Government leaders asking me to contribute to the Fund. ...
Budget 2020 provides a major investment in New Zealand’s documentary heritage sector, with a commitment to leasing a new Archives Wellington facility and an increase in funding for Archives and National Library work. “Last year I released plans for a new Archives Wellington building – a purpose-built facility physically connected ...
Government Ministers are asking significant private enterprises to adopt prompt payment practices in line with the state sector, as a way to improve cashflow for small businesses. The Ministers of Finance, Small Business, Commerce and Consumer Affairs have written to more than 40 significant enterprises and banking industry representatives to ...
Maori Arts and Crafts will continue to underpin the heart of the tourism sector says Minister for Maori Development Nanaia Mahuta. “That’s why we are making a core investment of $7.6 million to Te Puia New Zealand Māori Arts and Crafts Institute, over two years, as part of the Government’s ...
We’ve published The Auditor-General’s strategic intentions to 2025 . Our strategic intentions describe the outcomes and impacts we are ultimately working towards, and the strategy we have developed to help get us there. Every three years, we publish ...
A new first-person photography game set in a dystopian Tauranga under lockdown is the best work of Māori science-fiction this decade, writes Dan Taipua.Umurangi Generation is a first-person photography game set din the shitty future. Designed and developed by Naphtali Faulkner (aka Veselekov) the game has you move about a ...
“Queen’s Birthday holiday is the most irrelevant public holiday on our calendar. It’s time for a holiday that actually reflects Aotearoa’s unique place in the world” said Lewis Holden, Campaign Chair of New Zealand Republic. New Zealand Republic ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Fredericks, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Engagement), The University of Queensland National Reconciliation Week is a time of reflection, talking and sharing of histories, cultures and achievements. It is a time to think about our relationships as Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. This year’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thami Croeser, Research Officer, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University As Australia re-opens, the bars, cafes and restaurants that give life to our streets face a tough ask: stay open and stay afloat with just a fraction of the customers. From June ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week announced plans for a potential “grand bargain” on industrial relations. Speaking at the National Press Club, he framed the issue as one of boosting economic productivity: We must ...
A low toothfish catch hits Sanford's result, but it is less affected by Covid-19 as factories kept working in Level 4 and a high-margin strategy pays off ...
The milestone pay settlement for teacher aides is both good news for gender pay equity and for valuing the education of disabled children, says Disability Rights Commissioner Paula Tesoriero. “The pay rates have negatively impacted women disproportionately ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Dahlen, Professor of Midwifery, Associate Dean Research and HDR, Midwifery Discipline Leader, Western Sydney University Group B streptococcal (GBS) is a common bacteria that likes to live in the human gut and migrate down the rectum, vagina and sometimes to the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hitchcock, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, University of Canberra Each year the ocean is inundated with 4.8 to 12.7 million tonnes of plastic washed in from land. A big proportion of this plastic is between 0.001 to 5 millimetres, and called “microplastic”. But ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Malcolm Burt, Amusement academic and disruptive media researcher, CQUniversity Australia In the not-so-distant past I commuted fairly hefty distances in a fairly garbage car. But you didn’t hear me complaining – I had an extensive library of podcasts (or “my stories” as ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level two – read The Spinoff’s giant explainer about what that means here. For official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is funded by The Spinoff Members. To support this ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Mixed views on freshwater rules, pay equity settlement for teacher aides, and concerns raised about new internet filtering proposal.The final form of a major package of freshwater reforms was announced yesterday, and it was notable how little anger came from ...
Up-to-date data on breaches of the $10 billion wage subsidy scheme are not being provided, with Carmel Sepuloni's office saying it is "not something we're interested in". ...
This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list and described by Steve Braunias.FICTION 1 Auē by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $35) Hard-out story of a tragic family, and winner of the best novel of the year at the 2020 Ockham New ...
A case over the treatment of pigs in New Zealand will be in court in less than two weeks. Pat Baskett takes a look at the potential impacts of the outcome. Phoebe was a pig I wrote about some years ago. Her life was a misery. She lived in a ...
Tāmati Kruger speaks to Rod Oram about Tūhoe's response to Covid-19 in the Te Urewera mountains, and how the iwi is looking to a much stronger NZ society that's aware of its obligations to be a far wiser caretaker of our natural resources. ...
Those working to stop family violence must keep consider both victims and the violent - but those at greatest risk of harm must be paramount, writes Julia TolmieIf we are to stop family violence, then offenders need to stop using violence. It follows that we need to engage more ...
How many languages do you think are spoken in New Zealand on a daily basis? Five, 10, 50? The answer is that more than 160 languages. That being the case, how do we make sure all our children are receiving the best possible education? Dr Corinne Seals from Te Herenga ...
After a pandemic-induced lockdown, a ministry pulls services from terror victims because of “minimal contact”. David Williams reports Imam Abdul Alabi Lateef opens the new, sturdy door at Christchurch’s Linwood Islamic Centre which, little more than a year ago, was the scene of a terrorist attack. The first thing he ...
The government is heralding its $700m Te Mana o te Wai package as a game-changer for the health of New Zealand waterways. But for freshwater scientist Russell Death, it’s a bitter disappointment.Two weeks into alert level two, it seems we have already forgotten all those resolutions about the pandemic being ...
The prime minister yesterday announced a package including $25m to ‘provide artists whose projects are funded by Creative NZ with jobs.’ An even more substantial investment in the creative arts will help drive our post-Covid recovery, argues Paul Millar.When Covid-19 forced the postponement of the popular international literary festival WORD ...
How can the country return to normal and still keep the good things about lockdown? That includes kinder politics, and working from home. New Zealand’s Covid-19 pandemic isn’t done and dusted quite yet. But considering daily new cases are now odds-on to be zero, what lessons have we learned from the past ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra It was Greg Combet, one-time ACTU secretary and former Labor minister, who got Christian Porter and Sally McManus together in the early days of the pandemic. Recalling what happened, Porter told the Australian Financial Review ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristy Hess, Associate Professor (Communication), Deakin University With swift and savage force, the COVID-19 pandemic has inadvertently attacked Australia’s local news media ecology, which was already battling a weakened immune system. As a researcher working on Australia’s largest academic study into the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael (Mike) Joy, Senior Researcher; Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand’s government has been praised for listening to health experts in its pandemic response, but when it comes to dealing with pollution ...
Rod Oram spoke to the leaders of 16 Kiwi businesses over seven weeks, during which they and their businesses rose to meet unprecedented demands. Here's what he learned. ...
Tenants in the commercial property market continue to wait for Covid-19 relief while government coalition partners Labour and New Zealand First hammer out a deal. ...
They call themselves the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing, but they’re not a church, and the treatment they sell is called Miracle Mineral Supplement – but it’s chlorine dioxide, commonly known as bleach. Susan Strongman reports for RNZ.A New Zealand website is advising people with symptoms of coronavirus ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Keith Rankin. On Project Syndicate – and in other places in recent months – orthodox US economist Kenneth Rogoff has presented the case for deeply negative interest rates. Another financial sacred cow falls; yes, interest rates can be negative, even substantially negative. It can take ...
The Government is cracking down on nitrogen fertiliser use and asking councils to speed up their planning processes in order to clean up the country's waterways, Marc Daalder reports One in five farmers will have to reduce the amount of nitrogen fertiliser they are using under a new rule announced ...
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to New Zealand investor and business advisor David Bell. As a university professor ...
The calls for public health specialists for more taxpayer funding could be taken more seriously if they stopped wasting money on pointless public relations campaigns under the guise of public health, says the New Zealand Taxpayers' Union . Union Executive ...
The New Zealand College of Midwives is calling on the Government to release details of the funding allocated to maternity services in this year’s budget, and is supporting their GP colleagues in asking the Minister of Health to immediately release Heather ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Esterman, Professor of Biostatistics, University of South Australia Australia’s chief medical officer Brendan Murphy told a senate inquiry earlier this week our COVID-19 public health response had avoided about 14,000 deaths. This is in contrast to his deputy Paul Kelly, who ...
By Sri Krishnamurthi, contributing editor Pacific Media Watch Homegrown Australian television shows to the tune of $17.1 million will be broadcast in the Pacific in a bid believed intended to stymie China’s diplomatic and media rise in the region. Shows such as The Voice, Border Security, Neighbours and are to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nik Thompson, Senior Lecturer, Curtin University Data is the new oil, and online platforms will siphon it off at any opportunity. Platforms increasingly demand our personal information in exchange for a service. Avoiding online services altogether can limit your participation in society, ...
By RNZ News New Zealand has reported no new cases of covid-19 coronavirus today, but the death toll has risen to 22 to include a woman who died after recovering from the disease. Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said there were only eight active cases in the country and ...
Fisheries New Zealand is seeking public feedback on a draft Pāua Fisheries Plan and a proposed subdivision of the pāua fishery along the Kaikōura and Canterbury coasts, known as the PAU3 quota management area. “Splitting the quota management ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jarrod Haar, Professor of Human Resource Management, Auckland University of Technology When New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said recently, “I’ve heard lots of people suggesting we should have a four-day week”, she inevitably ignited debate. Ardern was not, as some critics ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Bricknell, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Health, CQUniversity Australia Now we have fewer cases of COVID-19, and restrictions are lifting, many of us are thinking of rejuvenating our social lives by heading to our local cafe or favourite restaurant. What can we ...
Former Race Relations Commissioner, Gregory Fortuin says he agrees with Judith Collins that no one should be superficially judge on skin colour and ethnicity . Fortuin was responding to Collins’ reported outburst about "sick of being demonised" ...
The government says it allowed the Avatar film crew back into New Zealand in spite of the current border closures because the making of the film offers “significant economic value” to our country. But this criterion is being applied unevenly. What ...
New Zealand Defence Force bases in Auckland are attacking their water use as the region battles one of the worst droughts in recent history. The taps are being turned off at Devonport Naval Base, RNZAF Base Auckland at Whenuapai, Papakura Military ...
The Kahui Wai Maori Advisory group welcomed the announcement made by the Hon David Parker, Minister for the Environment today of the new rules designed to clean up our waterways. At the heart of the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management ...
Water New Zealand says the Government’s Action for Healthy Waterways package provides a sensible and realistic way forward and will result in much-needed improvements in freshwater quality. Acting CEO John Mackie says it’s vital that there is no ...
When Claire Freeman became a wheelchair user at age 17, the questions she had about how she might enjoy sex were dismissed and she was made to feel like that part of her life was over. Here she flips the script with some advice on how to find pleasure on ...
As companies in New Zealand’s property development and building sectors digest opportunities presented by the Budget, what they need most urgently to move forwards is Resource Management Act and policy reform in order to rebuild together, says the ...
“We are pleased to see that the Government’s freshwater reforms announced today respond to some of the issues raised, and recommendations made, by the irrigation sector,” says Elizabeth Soal, Chief Executive of IrrigationNZ. “But there is ...
The government is imposing tough rules on water quality despite over 17,000 submissions, many of them complaining the move would impose a huge financial burden. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Dickinson, Professor, Public Service Research, UNSW COVID-19 has had a significant impact on all Australians, but there are very good reasons why the impact might be more keenly felt by people with disability and their carers. Our new research on behalf ...
Freshwater campaigners are frustrated the Government has delayed a crucial decision on nitrogen pollution for a further 12 months until after the election. “We have urged the Government many times to put in place clear and unequivocal limits for ...
The government has just announced a whole lot of new rules and policies for freshwater with the aim of urgently stopping degradation and cleaning up rivers over the long term.What’s all this then? A massive package of work on freshwater quality has just been announced in an attempt to halt further ...
The Environmental Defence Society (EDS) has welcomed the announcement by Ministers David Parker, Damien O’Connor and James Shaw this morning of the much-awaited freshwater reforms. “This package of changes to the present regulatory settings largely delivers ...
Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) has welcomed the Government’s announcement of a set of targeted tools to improve the quality of freshwater. LGNZ is the peak body representing New Zealand’s 78 local councils, providing a unified voice for ...
Many families facing newfound financial hardship due to COVID-19 may not be seeking help – believing they should be able to manage on their own or unaware they qualify for support, according to Good Shepherd NZ. The charitable organisation provides ...
Changes to central government Essential Freshwater regulations reflect farmer feedback, Federated Farmers says. "While we’re still working through the detail, the high level policy decisions indicate the government has heeded some of the rural ...
The Council of Trade Unions is congratulating teacher aides in achieving an historic pay equity offer from the government to settle their long standing concerns. "What this offer from the government does is acknowledge the historic under valuation of ...
Freshwater reforms a significant step forward The Government's policy announced today is a significant step forward in reducing pollution in our rural and our urban waterways caused by intensive farming and through council's neglect. However, there ...
Thursday, 28th May: Greenpeace is today welcoming the Government’s move to place a cap on synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, but says more controls are needed to protect freshwater. The fertiliser cap was announced today as part of the Government’s ...
Following today’s announcements on the government’s response to the future of freshwater, it appears that despite the chorus of calls for a change in how the post-COVID future of Aotearoa is shaped - and following many months of engagement, consultation ...
Horticulture New Zealand says the Government’s decisions around freshwater recognise the importance of growing fresh fruit and vegetables in this country. ‘We applaud the Government for the pragmatic approach it is taking to meeting the long-term freshwater ...
NZ’s primary exports held up well in April, again proving the country’s farming industries are sustaining the economy despite many sectors being stricken by the Covid-19 pandemic. Almost coincidentally, a UMR probe of public opinion about farming revealed a sharp swing in perception. Instead of the negativity that had been ...
In a world where players have unfettered access to fans through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, it raises the question of whether traditional media still has a role to play. But as Scotty Stevenson explains, a player-driven model powered by social media can only go so far. Among the many weird and ...
Two statements from the Beehive yesterday were enlightening for taxpayers trying to keep tabs on the burgeoning billions being spent on facilitating the economic recovery. One statement told us how much is being handed out to small businesses. Correction. One statement told us how much is being loaned to small ...
Emily Writes celebrates wholesome shows and the rise of cosy television.The world is frightening right now. From Covid-19 to climate change, just watching the news can be overwhelming let alone going outside. This horror is the perfect environment for what I call Soft TV to flourish. Wholesome reality TV isn’t ...
Open mike 16/03/2015 
Open mike is your post.
I’VE OFTEN WONDERED if South African immigrants passing through towns like Kerikeri and Kaikohe ever wonder how we do it. In their homeland, through the bitter years of Apartheid, keeping the races segregated required pass laws, Alsatian dogs, tear gas, rubber bullets and, all-too-often, live rounds. Not here. Not in ...3 hours ago
Below is the list of gender-critical material which appeared on Redline from July 31, 2019 to September 30, 2019. Sports categories must be by sex, not gender identity Queer theory glossary Woke misogyny and homophobia: a gay critique of trans ideology Another unfortunate experiment? New Zealand’s transgender health policy and ...9 hours ago
Smart Energy Europe: A Plan to provide 100% of ALL ENERGY using Renewable Energy to Europe Introduction All Energy renewable energy systems are often commented on here at Skeptical Science. Many comments suggest that it will be difficult, expensive or impossible to use renewable energy to power the world. To ...16 hours ago
The government released its Action for Healthy Waterways package today, ostensibly with the goal of cleaning up our rivers and making them swimmable within a generation. Doing that, of course, requires confronting the cow in the room: the dairy industry which causes most of the pollution. But while they've imposed ...20 hours ago
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz I would like to know if New Zealand’s carbon emissions ...20 hours ago
Don Franks Now Covid-19 restrictions allow gatherings of a hundred, an urgent hui needs calling. A special conference of the Council of Trade Unions. Today, workers face the greatest attack on employment, pay and conditions since the depression, we need a strong united union voice. As it stands now, organised ...1 day ago
Questioning the number of district health boards in New Zealand has got to the extent that “too many DHBs” has become a perceived truth requiring no further elaboration. It is rarely challenged by policy advisers, academics, and journalists. But when one drills down further it becomes clear that the number ...2 days ago
The emergence of a new National party leader, seemingly out of nowhere, has – not surprisingly – raised a number of questions as to who Todd Mulller actually is and what makes him tick. He has been an MP for some time but seems to have hidden his light under ...2 days ago
We all know that many so-called journalists and political commentators in New Zealand work directly or indirectly for political parties or for certain political factions. This was obviously the case when pundit for hire Matthew Hooton launched a campaign against then National Party leader, Simon Bridges, over their numerous polling ...3 days ago
Anyone who keeps an eye on evidence around cannabis and public health will be familiar with the Christchurch Health and Development Study. It's one of two local longitudinal studies frequently cited with respect to cannabis and youth development. But in a new article in the New Zealand Medical Journal, it is ...3 days ago
In the age of covid we are Jacinda’s team of five million, except for some. There has rarely been a more blatant case of discrimination against beneficiaries than Grant Robertson’s announcement yesterday that people who have lost their jobs because of the coronavirus will receive weekly payments of $490 per week for 12 weeks and $250 per week for part time ...3 days ago
Well, we are out of lockdown, essentially. I did end up getting the wage subsidy while we were on levels 3 and 4 but I would have been fine if we didn’t. The first day of level 2, the Thursday, the office opened again for the people who weren’t able ...3 days ago
age credit: Science and Politics – Skeptically.org It seems impossible to keep politics out of science. It’s a pity because politics can end up forcing science to produce the results desired by ... 4 days ago
The National Party are quite simply a party out of time… Literally, insofar as the 2020 Election is concerned, and certainly in terms of their ideological positioning which has grown far more trenchantly extreme in the last few years in particular, under the leadership of both Simon Bridges, and Paula ...1 week ago
Children used in this study were from Lintingkou town (a normal-fluoride/control area) and Dakoutun town (a high-fluoride area) in Baodi district of Tianjin, China. The towns are 25 km apart. Anti-fluoridation activists on ... 1 week ago
Arguments by religious folk that they are being discriminated against under the Level 2 pandemic restrictions in NZ, which limit church services to ten people or less when schools, restaurants, malls and other service outlets are allowed to host many more people under voluntary self-distancing protocols, got me to think ...1 week ago
The Green Party says major freshwater reforms announced today provide the strongest ever protections of our waterways, to help ensure the next generation can swim in the rivers of Aotearoa. ...21 hours ago
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Hon Megan Woods, Minister of Research, Science and Innovation Hon Dr David Clark, Minister of Health Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods, and Health Minister David Clark today announced a COVID-19 vaccine strategy, ...3 days ago
Budget 2020 is about rebuilding together, supporting jobs, getting business moving and the books back into the black. It’s an integral part of our COVID-19 economic response, and our plan to grow our economy and get New Zealand moving again. Here’s a quick look at the five top things you ...4 days ago
Views sought on Order in Council to help fast track the reinstatement of the Christ Church Cathedral The Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Hon Poto Williams, will be seeking public written comment, following Cabinet approving the drafting of an Order in Council aimed at fast-tracking the reinstatement of the ...1 hour ago
We’ve published The Auditor-General’s strategic intentions to 2025 . Our strategic intentions describe the outcomes and impacts we are ultimately working towards, and the strategy we have developed to help get us there. Every three years, we publish ...49 mins ago
A new first-person photography game set in a dystopian Tauranga under lockdown is the best work of Māori science-fiction this decade, writes Dan Taipua.Umurangi Generation is a first-person photography game set din the shitty future. Designed and developed by Naphtali Faulkner (aka Veselekov) the game has you move about a ...1 hour ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Fredericks, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Engagement), The University of Queensland National Reconciliation Week is a time of reflection, talking and sharing of histories, cultures and achievements. It is a time to think about our relationships as Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. This year’s ...2 hours ago
A low toothfish catch hits Sanford's result, but it is less affected by Covid-19 as factories kept working in Level 4 and a high-margin strategy pays off ...2 hours ago
Up-to-date data on breaches of the $10 billion wage subsidy scheme are not being provided, with Carmel Sepuloni's office saying it is "not something we're interested in". ...3 hours ago
This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list and described by Steve Braunias. FICTION 1 Auē by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $35) Hard-out story of a tragic family, and winner of the best novel of the year at the 2020 Ockham New ...4 hours ago
A case over the treatment of pigs in New Zealand will be in court in less than two weeks. Pat Baskett takes a look at the potential impacts of the outcome. Phoebe was a pig I wrote about some years ago. Her life was a misery. She lived in a ...5 hours ago
Tāmati Kruger speaks to Rod Oram about Tūhoe's response to Covid-19 in the Te Urewera mountains, and how the iwi is looking to a much stronger NZ society that's aware of its obligations to be a far wiser caretaker of our natural resources. ...5 hours ago
Those working to stop family violence must keep consider both victims and the violent - but those at greatest risk of harm must be paramount, writes Julia Tolmie If we are to stop family violence, then offenders need to stop using violence. It follows that we need to engage more ...5 hours ago
How many languages do you think are spoken in New Zealand on a daily basis? Five, 10, 50? The answer is that more than 160 languages. That being the case, how do we make sure all our children are receiving the best possible education? Dr Corinne Seals from Te Herenga ...5 hours ago
After a pandemic-induced lockdown, a ministry pulls services from terror victims because of “minimal contact”. David Williams reports Imam Abdul Alabi Lateef opens the new, sturdy door at Christchurch’s Linwood Islamic Centre which, little more than a year ago, was the scene of a terrorist attack. The first thing he ...5 hours ago
How can the country return to normal and still keep the good things about lockdown? That includes kinder politics, and working from home. New Zealand’s Covid-19 pandemic isn’t done and dusted quite yet. But considering daily new cases are now odds-on to be zero, what lessons have we learned from the past ...5 hours ago
Rod Oram spoke to the leaders of 16 Kiwi businesses over seven weeks, during which they and their businesses rose to meet unprecedented demands. Here's what he learned. ...16 hours ago
The Government is cracking down on nitrogen fertiliser use and asking councils to speed up their planning processes in order to clean up the country's waterways, Marc Daalder reports One in five farmers will have to reduce the amount of nitrogen fertiliser they are using under a new rule announced ...17 hours ago
NZ’s primary exports held up well in April, again proving the country’s farming industries are sustaining the economy despite many sectors being stricken by the Covid-19 pandemic. Almost coincidentally, a UMR probe of public opinion about farming revealed a sharp swing in perception. Instead of the negativity that had been ...23 hours ago
Two statements from the Beehive yesterday were enlightening for taxpayers trying to keep tabs on the burgeoning billions being spent on facilitating the economic recovery. One statement told us how much is being handed out to small businesses. Correction. One statement told us how much is being loaned to small ...23 hours ago
Hi there all, could any of y’all point me in the direction of resources on how to run a workers run business?
No, but you can google Riccardo Semler for an interesting example of how to turn a large existing business into a worker-run business.
Hi gsays, there are a few articles and videos on workers cooperatives on Films for Action.
I watched one recently that referenced a website that has a lot of resources for those just starting out. Can’t remember which one though, sorry.
hi there molly and felix, thanx for that.
a rare inside day today so i will investigate.
Try these guys. I’m sure that they’ll be happy to help.
Your biggest problem is who’s going to be the boss? Who is going to make the hard decisions. It’s all well and good to have a collective, but you have to have a leader or you will just be stuck in committees.
Democratic election of “the boss” is required. All workers discuss, vote on and approve overall strategy and budgets. They then democratically select “the boss” (preferably from amongst their own number) who will carry out that strategy day to day and week to week.
The boss is also democratically replaceable, and should receive no more than 25% more than the pay the other workers receive.
You do not need a leader to make hard decisions if the people involved in the cooperative have all the necessary information to make decisions. Needing a leader is a lie told by authoritative types.
+1
It’s skill to work in a leaderless group, but a learnable skill.
Indeed. Have a look at Agile teams in an I.T context – they are self organising and self managing and it works exceptionally well.
what’s an Agile team?
Effectively a different way of delivering (primarily software development) projects. The point I was making is that they are non-hierarchical and somewhat akin to a workers co-op in a micro sense.
That’s interesting. Do you know why that structure has evolved or been adopted?
In this instance it is because the team can more efficiently deal with change through collaborative effort. In a lot of ways they have much greater control over their own “destiny” if you will as their work practices aren’t dictated to them – they define them themselves.
Are they contractors rather than employees then?
Not at all. In the “agile team” construct the workers employment status maintains much less relevance to what (I assume) it would within a workers co-op.
What will the big bosses do when the workers realise that the big bosses don’t add value to the core business of the enterprise to justify their 5x or 10x higher salaries?
They’re going to get fired and they won’t like it.
So the guy on $150K pa gets tossed out, and the remaining 10 workers each get a raise from $50K pa to $65K pa.
Sounds fair. (If he’s actually good for something other than “management” they could offer to rehire him at their rates of course…my how the tables could quickly turn).
Or they could hire another three people at $50k each.
I think we’d see the massive incomes disappearing really quick along with the poverty that they induce.
“You do not need a leader to make hard decisions if the people involved in the cooperative have all the necessary information to make decisions. Needing a leader is a lie told by authoritative types.”
I find both of those sentences at odds with the reality of human existence to a very large extent.
In what way?
Democracy at work
http://www.democracyatwork.info/
Also search for Richard Wolff economist, on YouTube.
here is one of his articles from 2012 that touches on a broad range of the issues
http://rdwolff.com/content/richard-d-wolff-can-we-remake-our-workplaces-be-more-democratic
For the doomers and eschatologists among us, I enjoyed this one:
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/14/when_humans_go_extinct_how_life_will_evolve_after_were_gone/
Another wonderful National Northland by-election billboard doing the rounds on Twitter and Facebook to cheer your Monday morning!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAICtGCVEAALfwL.jpg:large
Apparently, this one is on Waiteitei Road, Wellsford.
Just shows the wheels really have come off Joyce’s campaign rig. This photo is creating quite a lot good jokes on Facebook.
“Sabin uncovered”
“Who needs Teflon John”
“The liar unmasked!”
When the other Mr Key got back stage with his family for the photo-op with a recent touring female artist, what strings would have been pulled for that one.
I can imagine the conversation going something like…
“… the Prime Minister is out the back and he would like his family to come and meet you…”
Just wondering when the Prime Minister bit ends and Joe Citizen kicks in. Would be terrible to think that he used his official status to garner favour.
I think most international superstars who come to Aotearoa really do so with a desire to meet with our great PM and his family. His brilliance shines forth from Aotearoa like a beacon and they feel humbled in his presence. In a recent poll undertaken by Penguins R Us, only the Dalai Lama was voted anywhere near FJK in the “Inspiring leaders I’d cut off both my arms and kick myself repeatedly in the goolies to meet”.
I do not think there is any substance to your suspicions.
@ Murray R
It’s all right you didn’t need to put sarc in your piece – we all knew it was farce! And some force in that farce too.
By the way I know I’m going to seem a dolt, but what is the F in FJK? You don’t have to spell it out, just give me a steer on it.
It’s a shortened version of MLTJK, or Make Love To John Key. Saves typing, which I like doing because I’m a lazy lefty.
Child health in the news – preventable hospital admissions
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/67402054/sugar-rush
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/67362116/healthy-homes-maybe
Also dyslexic children get more help if they’re in high decile schools.
can you post the link to Peratas response?
The national-led government is committed to raising achievement…. National Standards… Charter schools
Nah – just joking. Did you expect a response from her?
Regarding Dunedin Hospital’s frozen meals being trucked in from Auckland, someone has written some thoughtful comments to the Southern District Health Board and here’s the letter [edited] for your information:
North @ 8: Cheers! I thought it was a superb letter when it was shown to me.
Someone pointed out what naughty multi-nat profit-making Compass was up to a few years ago on the Facebook page ‘Stop Dunedin Hospital From Being Downgraded’ that can be viewed publicly (without needing to log in with one’s personal account):
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-Dunedin-Hospital-from-being-downgraded/670234713085374
Jim Nald you always add value to comments and the post when you join in the discussion. Thanks.
Heh. I wondered what was behind that comment and had to refresh my own mind! I have stayed away from commenting on The Standard. About a year now. But TPPA, mass surveillance issues, and other things are bringing me back. Some interesting developments in recent months with grassroots and community activities have competed for my time and energy. But some of the stuff offline might make it here.
Great. See you round.
It is a fine letter, but as I mostly read the ODT online I haven’t seen how much of it got printed. [edit; rereading the above, I see it was addressed to the SDHB and not to the ODT editor; hope they read it with an open mind]
However I noted this in Saturday’s article (more about the immediate meals on wheels programme than the creeping corporate takeover of hospital meals and kitchens):
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/336234/frozen-meals-south-slammed
Which implies that if these; “volunteer organisations in Dunedin and Invercargill who deliver meals”, were to refuse to do so if Compass was the provider, then the entire proposal would fall flat on its face. This is a clear case of privitising profit and externalising costs to the public.
If Compass had to foot the bill for delivering the meals, then the SDHB would be more likely looking at a cost rather than saving to implement the scheme. Also, who would be paying for the cost of this air-freighting of meals? As a backup plan it seems flawed, as the kind of weather that would take out the road &/or ferry from Auckland down South, would also likely disrupt the; “sea or air links”.
+100
Volunteers delivering the meals for frail people are providing aid to their community hospital which is an organisation providing free or low cost treatment and assistance to the community.
If companies or business trusts, even not-for-profit charities (which are often businesses with a plastic halo) like Compass are to take over and carry out this unsatisfactory system of food supply then a generous mileage should be paid to the volunteers. Otherwise they will be squeezing profit out of this very personal service to the community, and from the human activity of food provision.
The provision from outside the location is a waste of energy and will cause additional stress in the case of disaster or bad weather, wondering if the wagons are going to get through to the beleaguered citizens under seige by events. It
stretches the supply lines too far, which has led to great disasters. For instance in Russia
It is an idea thought up by brain-atrophied business economists and taken up probably by the person who hired the person who hired the thieving and conniving IT techology fellow who cost the Southern District Health Board $16.9 million. The Sensible Sentencing Trust is on this occasion rightly outraged that the fraudster Swann is being released from prison halfway through, and has not accounted for much of the lost funds.
Also the Southern District Health Board has not received help from the Ministry of Health in auditing an amount paid to a private health concern Southern Link Health, run by independent practitioners. Only under $1 million of spending for savings on service contracts has been accounted for, although $6.2 million was paid. And accrued interest has meant that the amount in contention is now $15 million!
The Health Board is in an unhealthy position. It needs an overhaul. But in trying to cut service costs it has got into a quagmire. The government has wiped a contract with a company which had a similar objective because its expenses were going up and the savings were down. Now this new efficiency move in Otago seems likely to be another costly boo-boo, and bound to cause heartache to managers and workers and possibly heartburn to patients.
It is a Trojan horse the Southern District Health Board is ushering in, that will open up spewing out little men who will pop out and grab sack fulls of money in exchange for sack fulls of chaff.
we are also seeing the result of nationals leadership… dont vote for dont expect anything
The ODT’s editorial from Saturday also covered this:
”The latest details of the proposal to outsource Dunedin and Invercargill hospital food services leave a bad taste in the mouth for southerners….
” There is – rightly – a healthy amount of scepticism about the reality of ”savings”, the transparency of procedures, not to mention the flow-on effects and local impact of health proposals….
”It is to be hoped other counterproposals may offer a more palatable solution, which can retain jobs and services locally. ”
http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/editorial/336197/proposal-hard-stomach
not to mention the difficulties in dealing with food allergies and associated issues
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11417950
great stuff.
the outrage reserved for a vacuous tv show would be better directed to tbis kind of thing.
what a horrid little lot we are becoming.
Mean time – in China. Things are looking different and the same – but this I found to be very new – as in middle class China seems to be a questioning the status quo.
Positive and Hopeful for the future. But need our support.
https://libcom.org/blog/free-womens-day-five-statements
On the support front. Ukrainian friends in need.
https://libcom.org/news/join-international-solidarity-campaign-alexander-kolchenko-11032015
That is a marvellous letter @ 6 ! The humanity (and the patent common sense) it conveys deepens my contempt for the Keys and the Joyces and the self-seeking sycophants who back them. They deserve to go down in history for the fetid moral crooks they are !
When does a fee become a tax? When the employer revokes your professional body that you pay a fee for, and creates a new organisatio with the same name but employer controlled, directing your proffessional fees to the employer ends.
Caught a news conference on te Chinese channel, english translation provided, and was shocked, China is introducing a deposits guarentee. I maybe misheard but what if its true?
China’s banking system is under a lot of strain presently…
China big notes its economic performance. The fact is they have ghost cities full of surplus real estate. Their demand for raw materials has dropped, as Australia has learned lately. I don’t think the country will collapse, but there is some belt-tightening afoot.
FYI
http://reece.liberty.me/2015/03/09/25-statist-propaganda-phrases-and-how-to-rebut-them/
Thanks for the, laughter break. 🙂
This was an interesting interview on 9toNoon this morning. A very engaging baskeball player and now wine expert from NZ on his career and development. I loved hearing how well he had done and his thoughtful and positive attitude. NZs who are doing it – let’s hear more of it, and learn from them!
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/20171057
Former Tall Black’s love letter to basketball ( 25′ 41″ )
10:07 John Saker was a Tall Black from 1975 until 1987. He was one of the first New Zealanders to get a basketball scholarship to a US University, and then became the country’s first professional player, taking up a contract with a French side. During that stint in France, a love of wine blossomed, inspiring a secondary career as a wine writer. John Saker remains passionate about basketball, his latest book is called Open Looks and is a kind of a love letter to the sport.
One thing that struck me – he said that basketball is attracting in NZ a lot of brown players, keen and doing well. Can we get behind that sport, rather than the thuggish and increasingly amoral and injury-causing rugby, and have good things happening for teams of integrated and hopeful young teenagers in South Auckland? Please make it so.
If you did not hear it, I found this interview on RNZ National Nine to Noon this morning very enlightening in respect of the definitions used by NSA etc of terms such as “mass collection”, “mass surveillance” and “Full Take”.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/20171051/personal-data-collection-and-your-technology-footprint
Kathryn Ryan was interviewing “… Bruce Schneier is a US technology and security expert whose latest book “Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World”, highlights just how much information is being gathered by governments and corporations through our use of phones and computers.”
Ryan took the opportunity to question Schneler closely about what the terms “mass collection” etc meant when used by the NSA etc in view of Key’s dissembling in this regard.
Schneler’s explanations were excellent – clear and understandable; and IMO provided confirmation that Key knows full well how these terms are used in the international 5 Eyes setting.
thanks for this and the li k
+1
Also on radionz this a.m. something on data surveillance and how many have their fingers in your daily soup of communications?
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/20171051
Personal data collection and your technology footprint ( 18′ 44″ )
09:35 How much do you know about what others might know about you, from your use of technology? How do you minimise your online footprint on things you’d rather keep private?
Bruce Schneier is a US technology and security expert whose latest book “Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World”, highlights just how much information is being gathered by governments and corporations through our use of phones and computers.
NB I went to give a UNICEF donation towards Vanuatu and found they insisted on my address, phone number and email just so I could give them money they need. Talk about highwaymen without pistols! They didn’t get my money or my details. Stuff them I gave to someone else. Did you know that some professional fund raisers give under 10% of what they raise to the actual charity. Nice work extorting money, when you get it.
Encouraging, almost hopeful rallying cry from Bill McKibben on climate change. I love the bit about how it’s not the leaders that matter, it’s the pressure being brought to bear by the radicals and sane people.
Pressure is growing. A relentless climate movement is starting to win big, unprecedented victories around the world, victories which are quickly reshaping the consensus view.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/09/climate-fight-wont-wait-for-paris-vive-la-resistance
Fed Farmers Waikato have called for a moratorium on dairy conversions in the area (apparently most farm there are still small family owned farms). Good for them.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/dairy/67402931/greens-welcome-federated-farmers-proposal-for-dairy-moratorium
Lewis’s suggestion for a moratorium was heard “with interest” by the Waikato Regional Council’s industry and infrastructure manager Brent Sinclair.
In an emailed statement, Sinclair said the council would be happy to discuss further with Federated Farmers exactly what they were looking to achieve in terms of managing water quality in the region.
Dairy conversions were not regulated in the council’s regional plan, so it lacked hard data on the number of such conversions that have taken place or been planned in the past few years.
It’s never ceases to amaze me just how strongly the regional councils are still dragging the chain on environmental protection.
“Dairy conversions were not regulated in the council’s regional plan, ”
Dairy conversions require a number of buildings to be built or converted, especially the buildings where the milk collection equipment will be installed. These buildings require building permits, and in many cases food safety certificates, so for the Council to say ‘we don’t know’ is a bit fibby.
That would be district councils though wouldn’t it?
Yes, absolutely – my comment was prodding the reality that the info exists. Regional Councils have access to such info and it is a completely reasonable way to at least get a ball park picture of the recent number of conversions. But of course it is far easier and less troublesome to simply tell the public ‘ we don’t know’.
Rural regional councils are controlled by farmers.
Seen on The Standard now and then: The best way to not have problems from the police/CIA/GCSB is to not break the law (yeah, it surprised me at first too)
https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/11009161_10205735667009177_2212671886105859833_n.jpg?oh=67afb16967bb133dba7cd98a2122a8b4&oe=55B6CFE0&__gda__=1433411231_c34b8bf03cc7bf10dfe75e3e3f56b023
Pippa Wetzell clearly perturbed by the frivolous approach of Mike Hosking this evening
Seven Sharp, Television One, Monday 16 March 2015
Mike Hosking, Pippa Wetzell
Watching the following travesty a few minutes ago, I got the feeling that Pippa Wetzell was trying to treat the crap script she’d been handed with as much seriousness as she could muster. In spite of being in an utterly frivolous environment, she has obviously made up her mind to do her best. The contra king Hosking, on the other hand, is not serious in the slightest, and Wetzell seemed to acknowledge this when he made his idiotic comment about “strange countries like Russia”….
PIPPA WETZELL: Where’s Vladimir Putin? He hasn’t been seen for ten days. Top rumors on the internet are, one, that he’s dead and, two, that he’s been attending the birth of his love child.
MIKE “CONTRA” HOSKING: He could be on holiday in the Seychelles.
PIPPA WETZELL: Maybe he’s sick. They don’t want the image of the macho man on horseback to be diminished.
MIKE “CONTRA” HOSKING: There’ll be a big vacuum. There’s always a vacuum in strange countries like Russia.
At that point, Pippa Wetzell frowns in consternation and disapproval. Hosking simply chunters on, oblivious to anything but the sound of his own voice….
You deserve a medal for listening to that popinjay and narcissist.
Actually, Paul, I think it’s poor old Pippa Wetzell that deserves a medal. I don’t have to put up with that boor, and only listen to and watch him occasionally. Pippa Wetzell, on the other hand, had no escape last night. To her credit, she made her contempt for him quite clear.
The Prime Minister is both seriously worried and very defensive when PMsplaining why his State Visit to Japan has been shortened.
Pity the poor constituents in Northland though with every man and his dog dropping by to explain why the should still vote National!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/67418640/john-key-shortens-japan-trip-for-northland-byelection
Yes, there’ll be no TPPA for him to sign with Japan if Winston wins in Northland.
I believe the TPP will not be going to the Parliament for a vote though – Key doesn’t need a majority in the House for it.
It says a lot that he’s shortening such trips.
Looks like even the NACT leaning pundits on ipredict are now putting their money on Winston winning Northland:
https://www.ipredict.co.nz/app.php?do=contract_detail&contract=BE15.NTD.OTHER
Would this be the result of the Nat’s internal polling?
One has to be cautious to come to any definite conclusions yet, because, there seems to be no big money going in generally for either of the candidates, except in minute amounts of mostly 1 dollar or so which is quite unusual. I am suspecting that there is some kind of cunning manipulation going on to scare the Nat supporters to go and vote for their ‘super’ candidate.
At the moment, here are the waiting orders:
Current Top 10 Buy Orders Quantity (Stocks) Price Per Share
1 $0.5610
5 $0.5510
1 $0.5510
1 $0.5410
5 $0.5375
1 $0.5310
5 $0.5250
1 $0.5210
1 $0.5110
1 $0.5010
Current Top 10 Sell Orders Quantity (Stocks) Price Per Share
1 $0.5710
1 $0.5810
1 $0.5910
1 $0.6010
1 $0.6100
1 $0.6110
1 $0.6210
3 $0.6275
1 $0.6310
15 $0.6380
Some of them would be auto generated of course.
It is really annoying they are still only allowed to say Sabin resigned for personal reasons, rather than the real reason.
“every man and his dog dropping by “
More like, the Prime Minister and his dogs dropping by at taxpayer’s huge expense for their party benefit.
Apparently they are being billeted.
That is actually what Keys said.