February breaks global temperature records by ‘shocking’ amounthttps://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/14/february-breaks-global-temperature-records-by-shocking-amount
Well, you know, we came marching out of Africa just not that long ago and spread around the globe, wiping out fellow species of human and Neanderthal on the way, reaching the farthest reaches like NZ in just the last millennium and ever since then we have just thickened up and thickened up until the current point where the natural environment is beginning to creak and break up, while we continue to thicken until, well, the natural environment is on the way to being in zoos only and we are as thick as ants crawling all over the entire place. This is the history and this is the future surely until some catastrophe wreaks havoc on the populace and the planet.
I don’t know, but I think we can be better as a species than the trivial, ignorant, self-centred, vacuous, unthinking and reactive model encouraged by the Herald.
No, that’s actually how the right-wing actually view things. They think that a dystopia is all we can ever hope to achieve and thus they only ever look out for #1 thus causing the dystopian vision that they have.
The NZ Wood Council says the free trade agreement with China is not working, they’ve been hit with multiple tariffs which make it hard to compete with China’s domestic wood product.
So much for free trade. Looking forward to TPP, anyone?
Because the political and business elite do not think in terms on nationality, unless it serves their purposes to do so. The non-elite have more in common with their equivalents in other countries than they do the rich and powerful from their own countries.
@ CV They are not even political or business elite – they are often just dumbo opportunists, un convicted white collar crims, or people with psychological disorders who just happened to have stumbled onto being able to control a country like some sort of public school, bully boy fiefdom with no rules having paid the MSM off.
I mean can we call Slater, Key, Brownlee, Bennett, Collins, English – political and business elite???
If they win another election, it will be like Lord of the Flies.
I actually blame the opposition too, if you can’t defeat these people and actually join forces against bullies for your own self presevation and get a few policies going that are reasonable and benefit most people and are relevant, what the F is going on?
Just copy Bernie Sanders, not only his policies but how to write and articulate them.
The opposition need to stop going on about pet issues, but start to articulate a bigger picture.
Free trade is really just turning into litegatious trade, where bigger and more wealthy parties win and stall all fights so that the little partners have to back down or spend all their time and money trying to fight. In short, it will just stall trade and innovation for NZ.
None of it bodes well.
With any agreement the detail is the most important. We all know ‘details’ or ‘potential consequences’ have never been a strong point with this government.
They can’t even get a convention centre or a supercity working or even public transport going. Lordy keep them away from exports.
They are like babes in the woods (but not so innocent) with economy and trade.
Would you let a bunch of 7 year olds loose with your ATM card, unlimited power to screw up a country and casks of wine? Pretty much Groser on the free trade trail with Fed farmers in tow. All being championed along by a currency speculator with zero scruples known as the smiling assassin, who gets off on making people redundant.
“A SHOCK JOCK who is politically WAY out of his depth.”
Did Toni Street take advice from Janet Wilson before she executed
Monday’s exquisite live-on-air attack on Mike “Contra” Hosking? Seven Sharp, Television One, Monday 14 March 2016
The glib little homilies scheduled for the end of each episode of Television One’s godawful Seven Sharp are usually not worth the wait. If it’s not thirty seconds of something banal, it’s something infuriating, like Mike “Contra” Hosking boasting, contrary to all evidence, how he gave Nicky Hager a “hard time”. [1] Anyone who actually makes a point of listening to them is either (a) bored, (b) stupid, ( c) bewildered, or (d) an aficionado of the dismal.
Tonight, however, the closing homilies followed an item that was actually interesting—about a dive bomb competition in Taupo. That’s why I was still watching when it came time for the sub-Father Ted routines. After the item was finished, Hosking’s offsider Toni Street stared at the camera, pausing just a little longer than would be comfortable. Then she delivered something she had clearly been planning for a long time: she let Hosking—and the viewers—know exactly what she thought of him.
But she could not afford to criticize him directly, of course; instead, she followed the time-honored tradition of criticizing someone who exhibits identical characteristics to the actual object of her scorn. [2] So to have a go at Hosking, she had to find a substitute target to attack. Who could be out there with a level of arrogance, pomposity, shallowness and overbearing conceitedness that approaches that of Mike Hosking?
After that tense extended pause at the end of the dive-bombing item, Toni Street launched her remarkable little insurrection. She began by talking about Megan Kelly, the Fox News broadcaster who suffered a nasty public attack by Donald Trump last year. Noting with satisfaction that Megan Kelly was now more popular than she had ever been, Street paused again, and then said this….
TONI STREET: The increase in her ratings indicates the support for someone who can out Donald Trump for what he is: a shock jock who is politically way out of his depth. …..
At the end of that remarkable little hatchet job, its victim immediately began thirty seconds of pedestrian and ill-informed comment about something else. He showed no apparent signs of appreciating he’d just been (metaphorically) tarred, feathered and kicked in the arse by someone who really despises him.
[2] What made it so effective was that Toni Street maintained her composure throughout. She wielded the hatchet with exemplary coolness. Media junkies will no doubt remember Janet Wilson’s far more hysterical hatchet job on her husband three years ago…. http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-22032013/#comment-607420
+100..Great !…thanks…that really is a good humorous expose on Hillary Clinton…although he didnt get into the more sinister stuff of what she did in Libya
Quote: “Unfortunately for the majority of the 3300 staff who were employed by Dick Smith, there’s probably zero chance of Kogan reviving any of the 393 physical stores in Australia and New Zealand. The deal was for the online stores only, plus the Dick Smith brand and its associated intellectual property.
Which is not to say that Kogan won’t open any stores. The retail entrepreneur was originally vehemently opposed to physical stores in favour of online shopping, but admitted in December last year that that absolute stance was wrong, and opened a pop-up shop in Melbourne’s posh Prahran. Kogan might just have to work out how to create a profitable physical presence to bring in the cash, as the online Dick Smith will be just a fraction of the size of the old company.” Quote end
In Christchurch alone there were 426 people on the social housing register – the millions of dollars spent on testing and treating P houses could have bought an extra 15 properties.
Then the government should probably stop taking a hundred million dollar dividend from HNZ every year.
That post of Georges just gets better and better … because Rachinger has accused me of being an alcoholic and Kitty Catkin has basically said that I suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder … and George and others believe that I am in cahoots with their mortal enemy. LOL.
Audrey writes another anti-Little piece. Poorly written and ambiguous really.
Except for this quote,
“But a tweet by Labour MP Iain Lees-Galloway summed up Labour’s view of Key as “a complete and utter banker”.
Naughty Iain!
What got me was her assertion that Labour have lost on the TPP front because of all the tariffs it drops. Really? we got a list of this amazing tariff smashing TPP does? cause from what I remember it was incredibly limited.
Audrey is a moll troll. Can’t be said any other way sorry. The National Party is in her bones and everything. And fittingly given that she is the Political Editor of The Harold.
Good cooperative Left Opposition work in Parliament yesterday..despite the noise and heckling:
Winston Peters in parliament asks John Key:
Why Is the government blocking a free trade deal with Russia?
Why is the government pouring massive taxpayer support into the Hollywood film industry, Skycity Casino, Rio Tinto and now the TPPA campaign ?
(…when the Democratic and Republican campaign leadership in the United States think it is a REAL DOG…and a big corporate protection racket against the interests of their workers and farmers)
Andrew Little asks John Key:
Whose side is the PM on?… the dairy farmers?… or the banks?
“Scrappy start to the week with John Key and Winston Peters having a right honourable stoush, each accusing the other of misleading the House and demanding an apology. The Speaker, David Carter, was having none of that and was repeatedly back on his feet restoring order. Questions for the prime minister were dominated by the pressure on dairy farmers from lower milk prices and servicing bank loans.”
Notice that Winston did not say it was Key who spoke of the $5billion. He asked about the reported comments of two Ministers re the $5billion. Key deflected all that by accusing Winston of “misleading the House.” Carter refused Winston the right to re-read his question which would have defeated Key’s deflection. Funny that!
Michael Hill want the Queenstown basin all for himself and other rich people, nobody else.
That other wanker Sam Neill wanted pretty much the same a few years ago.
They want to stop all the huge development that has taken place already to accommodate them and their silly big houses, and have no more happen. They want to very selfishly pull up the ladder – quelle surprise…
Well I suggest one way to do this is to require, in fact, a reversal of development to make the place like it was, with even less people than now. That would improve the place even more, according to Michael Hill’s logic.
So legislate and regulate to require that every time one of these wankers wishes to sell their silly big homes, or passes on to the afterlife, their property is required to be sold solely for farming and other non-residential type activities… that should see it right ….
Seriously, what planet do these rich bastards live on? They are actually divorced from reality
Queenstown provides a centre for investment and tourism in southern NZ and is a blessing to some extent to preserve the region when Dairy goes down, till Sheep fight their way up more, Beef can perhaps keep going, and Bluff doesn’t have oysters killed by that disease.
No more housing for the wealthy in Queenstown as suggested by Sam Neill would be good. But attractive small apartments for the workers at reasonable rents close to Queenstown, with shuttle buses at very reasonable cost, would be of value. That is what is needed and if they have a council that isn’t run by Mini-Cooper type people, then that will be what is presently being planned and implemented. Bets anyone?
Money Supply:
Currency isn’t expanded to account for growth, debt is expanded to match demand.
Banks do not expand money supply, they extend temporary credit based on demand to enable transactions.
Once the transaction has been completed and credit repaid the supplied credit zeros out and creases to exist.
Banks have been positioned to supply virtually all currency to enable all financial transactions, this basically means they take a percentage cut off the top of all production. This is the cost of doing business, and is inflation.
The current system relies on all wealth created being a result of work done.
Wealth created outside of production; non productive wealth creation can only be payed for by destroying wealth for another sector of the economy.
Instead of the pie getting bigger, the pie gets cut into smaller slices, borrowers and those without appreciating assets effected the most.
The pie did actually increase, that increase remaining with the wealthy and being the difference between the government stated inflation and true inflation.
And that is how it works, the government, the elite and the banks working together to transfer wealth from production to the lords and masters, the banks facilitating the theft and government either to stupid or corrupt to care.
Additionally:
In a consumer society where the consumers only product is their time, as technology improves and populations increase the consumer has less to trade, thus less demand/ ability to consume, which means less credit supplied by the banks, which kills businesses and eventually threatens the wealthy, hence the need for a UBI.
Some time ago I said Putin was a great man! I was mocked as having a wet dream! 🙁
But events have born me out:
1. He’s restored Russia’s sovereignty and self respect after the neoliberal trashing under Yeltsin.
2. His military intervention in Syria has produced the beginnings of peace with most of the actors willing to talk with each other for the first time compared to the U$ and Anglo and Turkish behaviour of pouring gasoline onto a raging fire.
3. He has exposed the Neocon Warshington war criminals for all who can be bothered to notice. And the western presstitute media that has relentlessly demonised and slandered him.
4. We may,it’s hoped get peace in the Ukraine eventually.
Don’t omit the murders of Politkovskaya, Litvinenko and Nemtsov, or of the civilian passengers of MH17, the civilians in the Moscow Theatre gassing, and many many more. Putin is a scumbag of epic proportions.
Just because the US involvement in the Ukraine was exceedingly seedy doesn’t give them godlike powers to rearrange events – or they’d do a better job. It would be better if the US were not involved – but it was Russia that shot down MH17. There is an abundance of physical evidence, and no evidence that bears scrutiny to the contrary.
The aircraft nonsense is largely discredited due to the lack of cannon damage in the debris. But equally important are the plethora of false stories Russian official sources serially released as they grasped desperately at straws to cover up their act of mass murder.
Stuart M
Scumbags of a determined character rise to the top when a nation’s systems of governance break down. They also can ooze through when there are pauses in the regular flow of society such as happens in USA. What caused Ronald Reagan to get up there, followed by Margaret Thatcher etc.? I forget. But they ooze upwards at cracks at pressure points like Christchurch liquefaction.
Putin might be the right person to be where he is with his KGB knowledge and ability to outmaneouvre others at home and those sly ones abroad. It’s considered that the Middle East scumbags removed by the USA scumbags, were preferable to the new ones. These days it is a time for pragmatism, go for the best scumbags available now, and work for 80% improvement, knowing that getting even 40% would be thankfully welcomed.
Perhaps we should have a popular vote on greatest scumbags since WW2.
Pot Pot and gang must be up there. Then who gassed people in their homes in the Middle East with one that would flow to the lowest point and be effective in cellars where women and children would be hiding?
“The worst part was when their venom turned toward me,” Troup wrote. “There were protestors around me who got ushered out, and then people started pointing at me, motioning for the Secret Service to ‘get him out of there.’ Now mind you, I hadn’t uttered a single word the entire rally, but people still said things like ‘Well what about this one? He needs to go too!’”
Ultimately, Troup left the event feeling as if he’d witnessed something darker and more insidious than a simple political rally.
“At that rally, I saw the scary underbelly of America I saw unadulterated hate, fueled by intentional misinformation,” Troup said. “These people who, just 2 hours ago, seemed like good and kind people, were now cheering for blood.”
It will be interesting if Anonymous can find anything incriminating on Trump …more than what we already know…(eg are there any hidden emails and secret associations and agendas like Hillary Clinton had in her closet)
‘Anonymous declares ‘total war’ on Trump, plans April attack (VIDEO)’
Interesting how spelling can get confused these days with all our aids. I see two ways to spell Sir Tipene O’Reagan/ O’Regan. Willie Jackson should know how to spell Sir Douglas Graham’s name after all the Maori Treaty negotiations yet it is Graeme in this article. http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/local-blogs/willie-jackson/8338152/Different-rules-for-Maori-and-Pakeha
But the article is interesting itself, worth a read. Sounds factual as might be expected from someone of the Jackson family, with a high position in Maori matters.
He writes about the tribe that have control of Lake Taupo wanting a fee of $58,000 from the Ironman contest for using it. He points out that the Ironman contest is an $800,000 event.
And this next quote is one of the angry, dismissive, racist comments at the end of the article. With all the efforts that NZ has made to get a better understanding of the unpleasant start of this colony, and the shameful behaviour adopted by businessmen/land speculators with an armed gang to back them, this reaction is more frequent than we thought possible. I went on to background the late Louis Crimp who was a Maori hater, and to read about him gives insight into the type of person that befouls good attempts to provide some reparation and set NZ up as a country of justice, fairness and equality.
What a shame the Ironman New Zealand organisers lack the mettle of their competitors.
What a shame they agreed to bribe the tribe.
What a shame they did not reply to the Tuwharetoa extortion demand of $58,000 thus:
“Dear tribe,
“Get stuffed.
“We refuse to pay you so much as a bent cent to swim in our largest lake.
“And it is our lake. Not your lake. It belongs to us. All of us.
“All the people of New Zealand.
In the item Jackson refers to John Ansell, who was connected with ACT. (But the Louis Crimp item below says Ansell left ACT – Advertising guru John Ansell quit the party after adverts he designed asking Kiwis if they were “Fed up with the Maorification of Everything” were cancelled.)
Willie Jackson commented on him: He’s running the Treaty Gate project where he accuses all and sundry of telling lies over New Zealand’s history and relationship with Maori.
He clearly puts little value on Maori culture and his main financial backer has been Invercargill millionaire Louis Crimp, who last year claimed most Pakeha despise Maori.
Louis Crimp was a multi millionaire, now dead. He was one of a group of old white men whose blood has turned to vinegar, and who appear to have little left in life but to hold onto all their money, and their little energy goes to putting the Maori in his or her lower place than their high chairs. I saw them in full flow during the Constitution Conversations a year or so ago.
About Louis Crimp ACT supporter to John Ansell: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10806938 The biggest donor to the Act Party says he gave the money to Don Brash and John Banks so they could stop special treatment for Maori who were “either in jail or on welfare”.
In an extraordinary interview with the Weekend Herald, Louis Crimp said he believed he had the support of Brash, Banks and other “white New Zealanders”.
Mr Crimp made the largest financial contribution to the Act Party for the 2011 election with a $125,520 donation.
Crimp said in another interview: http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/two-hours-louis-crimp-ck-126301 “I can’t smile properly because my face is petrified, it doesn’t move, it’s paralysed because I had cancer. I can only smile with one side. So I’ve just got a grimace.”
Mr Crimp has made millions through his various property ventures, and has gained many supporters in Invercargill for his charitable donations, including more than $1 million each to the SPCA and the St John Ambulance Service….
Mr Crimp says that from an early age he has was forced to “watch [his] pennies. I was the oldest boy in Southland who had a paper run, at the age of 16, because we were poor, my family”.
His income? Derived from housing – rented to Maori gang and then evicted them.
Derived from pokies, which he could rail against or utilise takings of at random: Mr Crimp is in no position to rail, with any integrity, against the foundation’s use of pokie proceeds. He has, himself, been one of the grandfathers of the pokies industry in Invercargill, albeit in rivalry with the trust. So his contempt can hardly stem from holding the machines themselves to be an intolerable social harm. Far from overbrimming with sympathy for the problems of pokie addiction, he wrote to our public opinion column in April referring witheringly to “the suckers who addict themselves to poker machines”…
it is Mr Crimp who has been caught up in notorious and inglorious misuses of pokie funds. This was in the 1990s, and involved decisions so imperious that they offended rules that were less strict than they are now. The Southland Pool Players’ Club, upon whose executive Mr Crimp had been a member, dispensed the money from pokies at one of Mr Crimp’s most high-profile establishments, Players’ pool hall, for a team of nine members, including Mr Crimp, to attend a pool competition in Australia. This was just part of what Internal Affairs inspectors described as “gross misapplication of proceeds”.
Undaunted, as he so often is, by official disapproval, Mr Crimp had then stuck his hand out for Players’ pokie profits to help pay the 1998 election expenses of Southland Action, a group of candidates which he led into the Invercargill City Council election race.
So unprincipled himself, but cunning as a shithouse rat, to shamelessly accuse others. http://fundypost.blogspot.co.nz/2012/05/louis-crimp-man-of-actions.html
Casino and share deals: http://shareinvestornz.blogspot.co.nz/2010/11/sky-city-entertainment-group-ltd.html The Christchurch Casino was purchased by SKC in June 2004, off Aspinall (NZ) Limited, which held a 40.5% shareholding in Christchurch Casinos Limited. The purchase price was NZ$93.75 million and in October 2010 SKC bought an 8.6 % stake held by Invercargill businessman Louis Crimp’s Southern Equities, to take their holding to near 50%. In 2008 SKC bought a 5.2% stake off their then business partner the Crowne Plaza Hotel, taking their ownership interest in Christchurch Casino to 45.7%. With the 8.6% stake then SKC control the company with a 54.3% stake.
Coarse in his speech, nastily prejudiced and as braindead and disgusting as a gutter drunk Crimp prompted Brian Rudman to comment on his backing ACT and Don Brash who Crimp hoped would pursue anti Maori policies: http://m.nzherald.co.nz/brian-rudman-on-auckland/news/article.cfm?c_id=1502866&objectid=11280946 Mr Crimp, you may recall, donated the money after Don Brash seized control of Act. Recalling Dr Brash’s notorious 2004 Orewa speech as National Party leader, Mr Crimp was hopeful his cash would ensure his anti-Maori views would be pursued. But in a follow-up interview on TV, the eccentric Mr Crimp soon went off subject and asked interviewer Jane Luscombe whether she’d ever had sex against a tree!
His Southland Times obituary says:
Crimp, an Invercargill businessman, philanthropist, former city councillor, character and longstanding critic of the Invercargill Licensing Trust, died at his home at 9.20pm last night.
Memorial – He knew what he was agin.
edited
@Brian
Yes he seemed evil and venal. You notice that the Southland Times obit was short, not unkind, and called him eccentric. ( And I noted what his memorial could be.)
I think he had so much money that he managed to suck in a fair few amoral buddies, such as the ones he gathered together to have a go at the Council. But to sweeten the report that he had been dipping his fingers in the pokie till, I think he felt it would be good PR to donate large to St Johns and the SPCA. He would have won some kudos there for helping these perennially cash strapped groups.
I was amazed at how despicable he was, and only his money meant that he couldn’t be ignored. And how low ACT was and is, is exemplified by them taking from him. Though it was only $125,000 or so, not millions. I think he was careful that his ‘philanthropy’-investments were sure to bring him advantage.
How many, I wonder, of our political parties are being funded by people who are such misanthropists like him. He seemed to despise everyone really.
Speaking of tin foil, the real economic crisis is happening in the daily lives of ordinary NZers.
A gram and a half for 100 bucks!? It’s daylight robbery: five times the average price for a gram and, at something like $300 per ounce wholesale (likely cheaper in larger, commercial amounts), a profit of $90 untaxed and straight into the black market.
Has Phil Goff really come out in favour of building a waterfront stadium in Auckland?
Be very afraid Auckland ratepayers.
The favoured candidate for the Mayoralty appears to be choosing a campaign slogan which starts “We’ve got to waste a billion or two, we’ve got to waste a billion or two”.
Even Len’s choo-choo isn’t as stupid.
“ignorant of your own one”
Like hell I am. It doesn’t mean Auckland have to repeat mistakes do they?
That was one of those things where the main proponent, Fran Wilde, managed to get a “loan” out of the local bodies that was promised to be repaid. It never was of course because you never do make money out of such things.
Melbourne is an exception but they have about 50 AFL games a year at the MCG and another 50 at Etihad stadium. The crowds probably range from 25,000 to 90,000 for the club games and 100,000 for the finals.
The Wellington cost $130 million I believe. However it is sunk money and we certainly can’t sell it. After all, who would buy it? At least they didn’t consider putting a roof on it.
Could be worse of course. The Olympic Stadium in Sydney went broke and ended up being owned by the ANZ I believe. They were silly enough to make a loan on the thing.
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The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
Te Rangi e tu nei (The sky above us) Te Papa e takoto nei (The land beneath us) Tatou katoa te hunga ora (To us all the living) Tena koutou katoa (Greetings) ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
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February breaks global temperature records by ‘shocking’ amounthttps://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/14/february-breaks-global-temperature-records-by-shocking-amount
Milk continues its slide
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/rural/299027/global-dairy-prices-drop-overnight
And the Herald thinks the goings on in the Bachelor are more important
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11606103
Well, you know, we came marching out of Africa just not that long ago and spread around the globe, wiping out fellow species of human and Neanderthal on the way, reaching the farthest reaches like NZ in just the last millennium and ever since then we have just thickened up and thickened up until the current point where the natural environment is beginning to creak and break up, while we continue to thicken until, well, the natural environment is on the way to being in zoos only and we are as thick as ants crawling all over the entire place. This is the history and this is the future surely until some catastrophe wreaks havoc on the populace and the planet.
what else can there be?
I don’t know, but I think we can be better as a species than the trivial, ignorant, self-centred, vacuous, unthinking and reactive model encouraged by the Herald.
+1 And we often are better than that. The Herald is an aberration.
No, that’s actually how the right-wing actually view things. They think that a dystopia is all we can ever hope to achieve and thus they only ever look out for #1 thus causing the dystopian vision that they have.
That’s not what I was saying.
I was pointing out that the views of the NZHerald aren’t an aberration. That it’s simply how RWNJs think.
So what were you saying?
That the culture at the herald is an aberration of humans.
That the culture at the herald is an aberration of humans.
I agree with you that we can be better, but we won’t be.
We can be better. Unfortunately it seems to me that humanity is at its best when things are at their worst.
Unfortunately the movie idiocracy is rapidly becoming a reality
The NZ Wood Council says the free trade agreement with China is not working, they’ve been hit with multiple tariffs which make it hard to compete with China’s domestic wood product.
So much for free trade. Looking forward to TPP, anyone?
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/299028/china-accused-of-unfair-play-on-forestry
+1 amirite
Oh, good – means that we can save our forests, use the wood to build houses in NZ instead and rebuild our saw-milling industry.
Yup however its a japanese company doing a fair amount of the extraction currently from mills in kaitaia, masterton and gisborne.
New Zealand will never solve its problems until it abandons neoliberalism and globalism.
Free trade deals are killing this country.
The political and business elite who work against the long term interests of their own people are killing this country.
Because the political and business elite do not think in terms on nationality, unless it serves their purposes to do so. The non-elite have more in common with their equivalents in other countries than they do the rich and powerful from their own countries.
+1
@ CV They are not even political or business elite – they are often just dumbo opportunists, un convicted white collar crims, or people with psychological disorders who just happened to have stumbled onto being able to control a country like some sort of public school, bully boy fiefdom with no rules having paid the MSM off.
I mean can we call Slater, Key, Brownlee, Bennett, Collins, English – political and business elite???
If they win another election, it will be like Lord of the Flies.
I actually blame the opposition too, if you can’t defeat these people and actually join forces against bullies for your own self presevation and get a few policies going that are reasonable and benefit most people and are relevant, what the F is going on?
Just copy Bernie Sanders, not only his policies but how to write and articulate them.
The opposition need to stop going on about pet issues, but start to articulate a bigger picture.
https://berniesanders.com/issues/
+100 saveNZ
+1 Paul
Free trade is really just turning into litegatious trade, where bigger and more wealthy parties win and stall all fights so that the little partners have to back down or spend all their time and money trying to fight. In short, it will just stall trade and innovation for NZ.
None of it bodes well.
With any agreement the detail is the most important. We all know ‘details’ or ‘potential consequences’ have never been a strong point with this government.
They can’t even get a convention centre or a supercity working or even public transport going. Lordy keep them away from exports.
They are like babes in the woods (but not so innocent) with economy and trade.
Would you let a bunch of 7 year olds loose with your ATM card, unlimited power to screw up a country and casks of wine? Pretty much Groser on the free trade trail with Fed farmers in tow. All being championed along by a currency speculator with zero scruples known as the smiling assassin, who gets off on making people redundant.
+1
The Free-trade deals are killing the world.
“A SHOCK JOCK who is politically WAY out of his depth.”
Did Toni Street take advice from Janet Wilson before she executed
Monday’s exquisite live-on-air attack on Mike “Contra” Hosking?
Seven Sharp, Television One, Monday 14 March 2016
The glib little homilies scheduled for the end of each episode of Television One’s godawful Seven Sharp are usually not worth the wait. If it’s not thirty seconds of something banal, it’s something infuriating, like Mike “Contra” Hosking boasting, contrary to all evidence, how he gave Nicky Hager a “hard time”. [1] Anyone who actually makes a point of listening to them is either (a) bored, (b) stupid, ( c) bewildered, or (d) an aficionado of the dismal.
Tonight, however, the closing homilies followed an item that was actually interesting—about a dive bomb competition in Taupo. That’s why I was still watching when it came time for the sub-Father Ted routines. After the item was finished, Hosking’s offsider Toni Street stared at the camera, pausing just a little longer than would be comfortable. Then she delivered something she had clearly been planning for a long time: she let Hosking—and the viewers—know exactly what she thought of him.
But she could not afford to criticize him directly, of course; instead, she followed the time-honored tradition of criticizing someone who exhibits identical characteristics to the actual object of her scorn. [2] So to have a go at Hosking, she had to find a substitute target to attack. Who could be out there with a level of arrogance, pomposity, shallowness and overbearing conceitedness that approaches that of Mike Hosking?
After that tense extended pause at the end of the dive-bombing item, Toni Street launched her remarkable little insurrection. She began by talking about Megan Kelly, the Fox News broadcaster who suffered a nasty public attack by Donald Trump last year. Noting with satisfaction that Megan Kelly was now more popular than she had ever been, Street paused again, and then said this….
TONI STREET: The increase in her ratings indicates the support for someone who can out Donald Trump for what he is: a shock jock who is politically way out of his depth. …..
At the end of that remarkable little hatchet job, its victim immediately began thirty seconds of pedestrian and ill-informed comment about something else. He showed no apparent signs of appreciating he’d just been (metaphorically) tarred, feathered and kicked in the arse by someone who really despises him.
[1] http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-15032015/#comment-985614
[2] What made it so effective was that Toni Street maintained her composure throughout. She wielded the hatchet with exemplary coolness. Media junkies will no doubt remember Janet Wilson’s far more hysterical hatchet job on her husband three years ago….
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-22032013/#comment-607420
So you support Hillary
@Adam +100 – that is very funny!!! Someone should show it to NZ media and the Labour party.
+100..Great !…thanks…that really is a good humorous expose on Hillary Clinton…although he didnt get into the more sinister stuff of what she did in Libya
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/13/exposing-libyan-agenda-closer-look-hillarys-emails
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/01/13/what-hillary-knew-about-libya
I see Paula Bennett has figured out how to respond to the dairy crisis.
single mums, the worlds most dangerous being
and then there is this – but I am sure the rock star economy will provide with well paying jobs for these soon to be unemployed people.
I wonder what happened to the 700+ people that lost their jobs with Fonterra a few month back, wonder if they are back into work?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11606127
Quote: “Unfortunately for the majority of the 3300 staff who were employed by Dick Smith, there’s probably zero chance of Kogan reviving any of the 393 physical stores in Australia and New Zealand. The deal was for the online stores only, plus the Dick Smith brand and its associated intellectual property.
Which is not to say that Kogan won’t open any stores. The retail entrepreneur was originally vehemently opposed to physical stores in favour of online shopping, but admitted in December last year that that absolute stance was wrong, and opened a pop-up shop in Melbourne’s posh Prahran. Kogan might just have to work out how to create a profitable physical presence to bring in the cash, as the online Dick Smith will be just a fraction of the size of the old company.” Quote end
Then the government should probably stop taking a hundred million dollar dividend from HNZ every year.
OH MY GOD !!!
Just saw a post that George wrote about me last night … with people like Rachinger chiming in with their opinions about me.
It’s mostly bull-shit and it is a very carefully manipulated piece of text.
I said last week that I thought Pete George was losing it … and I still think it.
As for Rachinger … everybody will see soon enough who he really is.
The stats on YourNZ have dropped recently … so George won’t be happy about that.
Good to know that in my absence … I am still useful to him as “Click-Bait” fodder. LOL.
That post of Georges just gets better and better … because Rachinger has accused me of being an alcoholic and Kitty Catkin has basically said that I suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder … and George and others believe that I am in cahoots with their mortal enemy. LOL.
http://yournz.org/2016/03/15/mike-c-and-lf/
Audrey writes another anti-Little piece. Poorly written and ambiguous really.
Except for this quote,
“But a tweet by Labour MP Iain Lees-Galloway summed up Labour’s view of Key as “a complete and utter banker”.
Naughty Iain!
What got me was her assertion that Labour have lost on the TPP front because of all the tariffs it drops. Really? we got a list of this amazing tariff smashing TPP does? cause from what I remember it was incredibly limited.
Audrey is a moll troll. Can’t be said any other way sorry. The National Party is in her bones and everything. And fittingly given that she is the Political Editor of The Harold.
Good cooperative Left Opposition work in Parliament yesterday..despite the noise and heckling:
Winston Peters in parliament asks John Key:
Why Is the government blocking a free trade deal with Russia?
Why is the government pouring massive taxpayer support into the Hollywood film industry, Skycity Casino, Rio Tinto and now the TPPA campaign ?
(…when the Democratic and Republican campaign leadership in the United States think it is a REAL DOG…and a big corporate protection racket against the interests of their workers and farmers)
Andrew Little asks John Key:
Whose side is the PM on?… the dairy farmers?… or the banks?
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/inparliament/audio/201793289/today-in-parliament-for-15-march-2016-evening-edition
“Scrappy start to the week with John Key and Winston Peters having a right honourable stoush, each accusing the other of misleading the House and demanding an apology. The Speaker, David Carter, was having none of that and was repeatedly back on his feet restoring order. Questions for the prime minister were dominated by the pressure on dairy farmers from lower milk prices and servicing bank loans.”
Notice that Winston did not say it was Key who spoke of the $5billion. He asked about the reported comments of two Ministers re the $5billion. Key deflected all that by accusing Winston of “misleading the House.” Carter refused Winston the right to re-read his question which would have defeated Key’s deflection. Funny that!
Michael Hill want the Queenstown basin all for himself and other rich people, nobody else.
That other wanker Sam Neill wanted pretty much the same a few years ago.
They want to stop all the huge development that has taken place already to accommodate them and their silly big houses, and have no more happen. They want to very selfishly pull up the ladder – quelle surprise…
http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/news/77806483/cap-tourists-and-development-to-keep-arrowtown-special–sir-michael-hill
Well I suggest one way to do this is to require, in fact, a reversal of development to make the place like it was, with even less people than now. That would improve the place even more, according to Michael Hill’s logic.
So legislate and regulate to require that every time one of these wankers wishes to sell their silly big homes, or passes on to the afterlife, their property is required to be sold solely for farming and other non-residential type activities… that should see it right ….
Seriously, what planet do these rich bastards live on? They are actually divorced from reality
Queenstown provides a centre for investment and tourism in southern NZ and is a blessing to some extent to preserve the region when Dairy goes down, till Sheep fight their way up more, Beef can perhaps keep going, and Bluff doesn’t have oysters killed by that disease.
No more housing for the wealthy in Queenstown as suggested by Sam Neill would be good. But attractive small apartments for the workers at reasonable rents close to Queenstown, with shuttle buses at very reasonable cost, would be of value. That is what is needed and if they have a council that isn’t run by Mini-Cooper type people, then that will be what is presently being planned and implemented. Bets anyone?
Thinking out loud….Big lies and flawed models:
Money Supply:
Currency isn’t expanded to account for growth, debt is expanded to match demand.
Banks do not expand money supply, they extend temporary credit based on demand to enable transactions.
Once the transaction has been completed and credit repaid the supplied credit zeros out and creases to exist.
Banks have been positioned to supply virtually all currency to enable all financial transactions, this basically means they take a percentage cut off the top of all production. This is the cost of doing business, and is inflation.
The current system relies on all wealth created being a result of work done.
Wealth created outside of production; non productive wealth creation can only be payed for by destroying wealth for another sector of the economy.
Instead of the pie getting bigger, the pie gets cut into smaller slices, borrowers and those without appreciating assets effected the most.
The pie did actually increase, that increase remaining with the wealthy and being the difference between the government stated inflation and true inflation.
And that is how it works, the government, the elite and the banks working together to transfer wealth from production to the lords and masters, the banks facilitating the theft and government either to stupid or corrupt to care.
Additionally:
In a consumer society where the consumers only product is their time, as technology improves and populations increase the consumer has less to trade, thus less demand/ ability to consume, which means less credit supplied by the banks, which kills businesses and eventually threatens the wealthy, hence the need for a UBI.
Some time ago I said Putin was a great man! I was mocked as having a wet dream! 🙁
But events have born me out:
1. He’s restored Russia’s sovereignty and self respect after the neoliberal trashing under Yeltsin.
2. His military intervention in Syria has produced the beginnings of peace with most of the actors willing to talk with each other for the first time compared to the U$ and Anglo and Turkish behaviour of pouring gasoline onto a raging fire.
3. He has exposed the Neocon Warshington war criminals for all who can be bothered to notice. And the western presstitute media that has relentlessly demonised and slandered him.
4. We may,it’s hoped get peace in the Ukraine eventually.
Don’t omit the murders of Politkovskaya, Litvinenko and Nemtsov, or of the civilian passengers of MH17, the civilians in the Moscow Theatre gassing, and many many more. Putin is a scumbag of epic proportions.
Hi Stuart
MH17 has conclusively been shown to have been caused by the U$ backed Ukrainians, that Putin had anything to do with this atrocity is another slander of the western presstitute media.http://www.globalresearch.ca/meet-the-pilot-who-shot-down-malaysian-boeing-mh-17-vladislav-voloshin-the-plane-was-in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time/5421363
Nonsense – and that is why the Dutch investigators found conclusively against Russia.
If you’re interested in the facts most of them are here:
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2015/10/08/mh17-the-open-source-evidence/
http://www.goodfellow.com/E/Tin-Foil.html
Just because the US involvement in the Ukraine was exceedingly seedy doesn’t give them godlike powers to rearrange events – or they’d do a better job. It would be better if the US were not involved – but it was Russia that shot down MH17. There is an abundance of physical evidence, and no evidence that bears scrutiny to the contrary.
The aircraft nonsense is largely discredited due to the lack of cannon damage in the debris. But equally important are the plethora of false stories Russian official sources serially released as they grasped desperately at straws to cover up their act of mass murder.
I agree, Stuart. I replied in the wrong place.
Stuart M
Scumbags of a determined character rise to the top when a nation’s systems of governance break down. They also can ooze through when there are pauses in the regular flow of society such as happens in USA. What caused Ronald Reagan to get up there, followed by Margaret Thatcher etc.? I forget. But they ooze upwards at cracks at pressure points like Christchurch liquefaction.
Putin might be the right person to be where he is with his KGB knowledge and ability to outmaneouvre others at home and those sly ones abroad. It’s considered that the Middle East scumbags removed by the USA scumbags, were preferable to the new ones. These days it is a time for pragmatism, go for the best scumbags available now, and work for 80% improvement, knowing that getting even 40% would be thankfully welcomed.
Perhaps we should have a popular vote on greatest scumbags since WW2.
Pot Pot and gang must be up there. Then who gassed people in their homes in the Middle East with one that would flow to the lowest point and be effective in cellars where women and children would be hiding?
+100 johnm
johnm, here is Pussy Riot to sing to you, why you are wrong.
A black man goes to a Trump rally.
“The worst part was when their venom turned toward me,” Troup wrote. “There were protestors around me who got ushered out, and then people started pointing at me, motioning for the Secret Service to ‘get him out of there.’ Now mind you, I hadn’t uttered a single word the entire rally, but people still said things like ‘Well what about this one? He needs to go too!’”
Ultimately, Troup left the event feeling as if he’d witnessed something darker and more insidious than a simple political rally.
“At that rally, I saw the scary underbelly of America I saw unadulterated hate, fueled by intentional misinformation,” Troup said. “These people who, just 2 hours ago, seemed like good and kind people, were now cheering for blood.”
http://fusion.net/story/280795/donald-trump-dayton-rally/
It will be interesting if Anonymous can find anything incriminating on Trump …more than what we already know…(eg are there any hidden emails and secret associations and agendas like Hillary Clinton had in her closet)
‘Anonymous declares ‘total war’ on Trump, plans April attack (VIDEO)’
https://www.rt.com/usa/335725-anonymous-total-war-trump/
Today is a BFD – 691 Democrat delegates and 358 Republican delegates are up for grabs.
AP Eastern U.S. Verified account
@APEastRegion
As the polls begin to close, a quick reminder of what’s at stake in tonight’s primary elections. #Elections2016
https://twitter.com/APEastRegion/status/709880203661746180
edit: forgot the results/tracker
http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president
http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/delegate-count-tracker
Interesting how spelling can get confused these days with all our aids. I see two ways to spell Sir Tipene O’Reagan/ O’Regan. Willie Jackson should know how to spell Sir Douglas Graham’s name after all the Maori Treaty negotiations yet it is Graeme in this article.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/local-blogs/willie-jackson/8338152/Different-rules-for-Maori-and-Pakeha
But the article is interesting itself, worth a read. Sounds factual as might be expected from someone of the Jackson family, with a high position in Maori matters.
He writes about the tribe that have control of Lake Taupo wanting a fee of $58,000 from the Ironman contest for using it. He points out that the Ironman contest is an $800,000 event.
And this next quote is one of the angry, dismissive, racist comments at the end of the article. With all the efforts that NZ has made to get a better understanding of the unpleasant start of this colony, and the shameful behaviour adopted by businessmen/land speculators with an armed gang to back them, this reaction is more frequent than we thought possible. I went on to background the late Louis Crimp who was a Maori hater, and to read about him gives insight into the type of person that befouls good attempts to provide some reparation and set NZ up as a country of justice, fairness and equality.
What a shame the Ironman New Zealand organisers lack the mettle of their competitors.
What a shame they agreed to bribe the tribe.
What a shame they did not reply to the Tuwharetoa extortion demand of $58,000 thus:
“Dear tribe,
“Get stuffed.
“We refuse to pay you so much as a bent cent to swim in our largest lake.
“And it is our lake. Not your lake. It belongs to us. All of us.
“All the people of New Zealand.
In the item Jackson refers to John Ansell, who was connected with ACT. (But the Louis Crimp item below says Ansell left ACT – Advertising guru John Ansell quit the party after adverts he designed asking Kiwis if they were “Fed up with the Maorification of Everything” were cancelled.)
Willie Jackson commented on him:
He’s running the Treaty Gate project where he accuses all and sundry of telling lies over New Zealand’s history and relationship with Maori.
He clearly puts little value on Maori culture and his main financial backer has been Invercargill millionaire Louis Crimp, who last year claimed most Pakeha despise Maori.
Louis Crimp was a multi millionaire, now dead. He was one of a group of old white men whose blood has turned to vinegar, and who appear to have little left in life but to hold onto all their money, and their little energy goes to putting the Maori in his or her lower place than their high chairs. I saw them in full flow during the Constitution Conversations a year or so ago.
About Louis Crimp ACT supporter to John Ansell:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10806938
The biggest donor to the Act Party says he gave the money to Don Brash and John Banks so they could stop special treatment for Maori who were “either in jail or on welfare”.
In an extraordinary interview with the Weekend Herald, Louis Crimp said he believed he had the support of Brash, Banks and other “white New Zealanders”.
Mr Crimp made the largest financial contribution to the Act Party for the 2011 election with a $125,520 donation.
Crimp said in another interview:
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/two-hours-louis-crimp-ck-126301
“I can’t smile properly because my face is petrified, it doesn’t move, it’s paralysed because I had cancer. I can only smile with one side. So I’ve just got a grimace.”
Mr Crimp has made millions through his various property ventures, and has gained many supporters in Invercargill for his charitable donations, including more than $1 million each to the SPCA and the St John Ambulance Service….
Mr Crimp says that from an early age he has was forced to “watch [his] pennies. I was the oldest boy in Southland who had a paper run, at the age of 16, because we were poor, my family”.
His income? Derived from housing – rented to Maori gang and then evicted them.
Derived from pokies, which he could rail against or utilise takings of at random:
Mr Crimp is in no position to rail, with any integrity, against the foundation’s use of pokie proceeds. He has, himself, been one of the grandfathers of the pokies industry in Invercargill, albeit in rivalry with the trust. So his contempt can hardly stem from holding the machines themselves to be an intolerable social harm. Far from overbrimming with sympathy for the problems of pokie addiction, he wrote to our public opinion column in April referring witheringly to “the suckers who addict themselves to poker machines”…
it is Mr Crimp who has been caught up in notorious and inglorious misuses of pokie funds. This was in the 1990s, and involved decisions so imperious that they offended rules that were less strict than they are now. The Southland Pool Players’ Club, upon whose executive Mr Crimp had been a member, dispensed the money from pokies at one of Mr Crimp’s most high-profile establishments, Players’ pool hall, for a team of nine members, including Mr Crimp, to attend a pool competition in Australia. This was just part of what Internal Affairs inspectors described as “gross misapplication of proceeds”.
Undaunted, as he so often is, by official disapproval, Mr Crimp had then stuck his hand out for Players’ pokie profits to help pay the 1998 election expenses of Southland Action, a group of candidates which he led into the Invercargill City Council election race.
So unprincipled himself, but cunning as a shithouse rat, to shamelessly accuse others.
http://fundypost.blogspot.co.nz/2012/05/louis-crimp-man-of-actions.html
Casino and share deals:
http://shareinvestornz.blogspot.co.nz/2010/11/sky-city-entertainment-group-ltd.html
The Christchurch Casino was purchased by SKC in June 2004, off Aspinall (NZ) Limited, which held a 40.5% shareholding in Christchurch Casinos Limited. The purchase price was NZ$93.75 million and in October 2010 SKC bought an 8.6 % stake held by Invercargill businessman Louis Crimp’s Southern Equities, to take their holding to near 50%. In 2008 SKC bought a 5.2% stake off their then business partner the Crowne Plaza Hotel, taking their ownership interest in Christchurch Casino to 45.7%. With the 8.6% stake then SKC control the company with a 54.3% stake.
Coarse in his speech, nastily prejudiced and as braindead and disgusting as a gutter drunk Crimp prompted Brian Rudman to comment on his backing ACT and Don Brash who Crimp hoped would pursue anti Maori policies:
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/brian-rudman-on-auckland/news/article.cfm?c_id=1502866&objectid=11280946
Mr Crimp, you may recall, donated the money after Don Brash seized control of Act. Recalling Dr Brash’s notorious 2004 Orewa speech as National Party leader, Mr Crimp was hopeful his cash would ensure his anti-Maori views would be pursued. But in a follow-up interview on TV, the eccentric Mr Crimp soon went off subject and asked interviewer Jane Luscombe whether she’d ever had sex against a tree!
His Southland Times obituary says:
Crimp, an Invercargill businessman, philanthropist, former city councillor, character and longstanding critic of the Invercargill Licensing Trust, died at his home at 9.20pm last night.
Memorial – He knew what he was agin.
edited
Crimp was a nasty man. A favourite of Fair Go. His Southland Times obituary was disgusting – he was an evil character with no grace.
@Brian
Yes he seemed evil and venal. You notice that the Southland Times obit was short, not unkind, and called him eccentric. ( And I noted what his memorial could be.)
I think he had so much money that he managed to suck in a fair few amoral buddies, such as the ones he gathered together to have a go at the Council. But to sweeten the report that he had been dipping his fingers in the pokie till, I think he felt it would be good PR to donate large to St Johns and the SPCA. He would have won some kudos there for helping these perennially cash strapped groups.
I was amazed at how despicable he was, and only his money meant that he couldn’t be ignored. And how low ACT was and is, is exemplified by them taking from him. Though it was only $125,000 or so, not millions. I think he was careful that his ‘philanthropy’-investments were sure to bring him advantage.
How many, I wonder, of our political parties are being funded by people who are such misanthropists like him. He seemed to despise everyone really.
Speaking of tin foil, the real economic crisis is happening in the daily lives of ordinary NZers.
A gram and a half for 100 bucks!? It’s daylight robbery: five times the average price for a gram and, at something like $300 per ounce wholesale (likely cheaper in larger, commercial amounts), a profit of $90 untaxed and straight into the black market.
http://thespinoff.co.nz/16-03-2016/a-nation-in-crisis-new-zealands-catastrophic-marijuana-shortage/
You should move up north weka, no shortage and cheap if your in the know.
Lol, I’m good thanks. I just thought it was a funny article all things considered.
Has Phil Goff really come out in favour of building a waterfront stadium in Auckland?
Be very afraid Auckland ratepayers.
The favoured candidate for the Mayoralty appears to be choosing a campaign slogan which starts “We’ve got to waste a billion or two, we’ve got to waste a billion or two”.
Even Len’s choo-choo isn’t as stupid.
Clearly you’re ignorant of your own one Wellingtonian.
“ignorant of your own one”
Like hell I am. It doesn’t mean Auckland have to repeat mistakes do they?
That was one of those things where the main proponent, Fran Wilde, managed to get a “loan” out of the local bodies that was promised to be repaid. It never was of course because you never do make money out of such things.
Melbourne is an exception but they have about 50 AFL games a year at the MCG and another 50 at Etihad stadium. The crowds probably range from 25,000 to 90,000 for the club games and 100,000 for the finals.
The Wellington cost $130 million I believe. However it is sunk money and we certainly can’t sell it. After all, who would buy it? At least they didn’t consider putting a roof on it.
Could be worse of course. The Olympic Stadium in Sydney went broke and ended up being owned by the ANZ I believe. They were silly enough to make a loan on the thing.
‘How the West Got It Wrong as the Syrian Civil War Developed’ by Robert Fisk
Five years ago, we were high on Arab revolutions, and journalists were growing used to ‘liberating’ Arab capitals
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/15/how-west-got-it-wrong-syrian-civil-war-developed