WW3 on the horizon Hillary and the US military are itching to have a go at Russia and to try out their new toys, looks like Jill Stein is the only viable alternative?
Yes, but same as in NZ, not enough people are ready to vote that way yet. Stein won’t be president this time round, so as I understand it, people are safe to vote for her if not in marginal states, but if they are in marginal states they risk splitting the vote and giving the presidency to Trump. Which would be worse than Clinton. Whatever things we want to see changed in the world will be so much harder to achieve under a Trump presidency than a Clinton one.
thats just sad weka . your advice is dont vote for what you believe in so you acknowlege that there is no democracy and vote for statis quo, you are deluded if you think “what we want to see changed” is down that road
Yes, there is bugger all democracy in the US. I’m a pragmatic voter, and I vote in accordance with my ethics. If that means voting Clinton in order to further the Green Party and allied values, so be it. I’ve been in two minds about the whole thing and whether a protest vote and a Trump presidency was worth the risk, but I now believe that a Trump presidency will do so much damage to the culture that it will take years to undo and we simply don’t have that time.
At least with Clinton there will be room to be an activists and progress the most urgent issues. Under Trump I expect that to be actively oppressed. I suppose at that point one could argue that it’s better to let things get very bad in the short term in the hope that people will wake up, but I don’t believe people will wake up that way. The other argument is to let the US degenerate into a defacto civil war and maybe that will bring the empire down. Pretty risky strategy, but I’d be interested in hearing the argument.
Thanks weka thats a fair and reasoned argument. Interesting to hear jill stein views that voting for the lesser evil has been a “race to the bottom” . In my case i am not in any way promoting the idea that we should let thigs get worse to “wake people up”. But rather in clinton I see a guarantee of business as usual which I believe will destroy us. I am not supporting trump in any sense but what i do think is that he is unlikely to just do what he is told and I also believe that he owes a lot less “favours” (and that hillary is totally compromised on that front). So all of that is enough to make me really unsure what would be the best choice (if it was mine to make)
One of the first things the incoming National govt did in 1990 was cut funding to community groups (and ‘restructure’ what was left). I haven’t looked this up but I seem to remember that for instance they cut the Ministry of Women’s Affairs grants, which meant that the organisations doing the work on the fringes (where all good change arises) were screwed.
This isn’t a lesser of evils argument. This is a ‘we’re going to lose this vital aspect of our ability to effect change’ argument. And it’s not just funding. The activists I follow in the US are afraid that with Trump the lives of people already on the margins is going to get much much worse, and those are the communities that hold the activist heart.
Likewise in NZ, in 1990, it wasn’t just the cuts to funding, but it was cuts to benefits, so the people that were doing that activist work suddenly found their backs to the wall in their personal lives as well and unable to keep up with the work they were doing in the same way. I don’t think that was planned by National so much as a desirable side effect of their policies. With Trump it will be intentional.
You perhaps forget that it was the lessor of evil fourth labour government in 1984 that dismantled NZ government and established neoliberal corporate greed in its place ?
The fundimentals of all that you describe above were enacted by the fourth labour government and as NZ voters have chosen one or the other lessor evil for the last three decades. In each case the government has continued on that path
I’ve never voted Labour, always to the left. I’m not sure why you would think I forget about Labour in the 80s.
“The fundimentals of all that you describe above were enacted by the fourth labour government”
Actually, no. My point is that even under the worst that the neoliberal left does they still don’t directly try and suppress activism (although I’m sure someone will now be able to provide some examples). But now we are back to the lesser of evils argument. Given we can’t change the past, for where we are at now, in my politics protecting the people that are working for change is a very high priority. Otherwise we’re going down a deep dark hole worse than what is happening now.
It’s not that the things we want to change will be harder, it’s that change will happen in the wrong direction. Meaning there will be a lot of lost ground to make up when (if) things swing back to being able to move in a good direction.
I don’t have that much respect for Pilger these days. He quite obviously doesn’t understand rape culture and/or thinks it is unimportant (that’s based on his approach to the Assange situation).
Then I read things like this,
As presidential election day draws near, Clinton will be hailed as the first female president, regardless of her crimes and lies – just as Barack Obama was lauded as the first black president and liberals swallowed his nonsense about “hope”. And the drool goes on.
It’s just boring, superficial, ‘the liberals are useless’ type commentary. All he is doing there is exactly what pro-Trump or anti-Clinton people are accusing liberals of doing, creating divisions from the old mentality that if you want to change something you have to bash it (pretty much the kaupapa at the standard most of the time).
And this,
In the US, Bernie Sanders has promised to support Clinton if or when she’s nominated. He, too, has voted for America’s use of violence against countries when he thinks it’s “right”. He says Obama has done “a great job”.
FFS, Sanders was running for president, of course he is going to say Obama did a great job. If he came out and said that Obama is a war monger, he’d not get the nomination. Any person who becomes the president of the US is going to be a war monger, so now we are just back at the lesser of evils argument.
“Where are those who will shatter the silence? Or do we wait until the first nuclear missile is fired?”
In the age of the internet there is no silence. Silence is not the problem at this point.
I understand the issues that are behind some of the anti-Clinton arguments, and the pro-Trump ones. One of the things that has happened on ts is that the main person criticising Clinton has also been promoting Trump. That’s always going to be a problem on a left wing site. But worse, he’s done this in the context of a long history of trying to poison the well of his once natural allies. Lots of people here can’t stand the incessant hatred and I think that’s a big part of why the anti-Clinton argument gets combatted so strongly.
There are definitely moderate lefties here who will argue a pragmatic vote for Clinton line, and the ones I respect like McFlock and Lanth are a boon. If we had a different culture here, the conversation would have been going quite differently, and instead of the Trump-esque being forwarded, we would have learned some things and actually talked about what the issues are for Trump voters in the US and why they vote Trump.
We would also be having the conversation that Bill suggests, which is that lefties should be gearing up to put as much pressure on Clinton as possible assuming that she wins. Unfortunately I think what we can look forward to is more Trump-esque culture being pushed, and so expect people to react to that.
tl;dr, I understand the arguments you aand others are putting forward and I still disagree with you that voting Trump is a good thing to do. Further, I doubt that you understand why I think Trump would be more dangerous. Because of the current debate culture we haven’t really gotten to those conversations. Pity.
If you have gone off Pilger and Stein because they have done dilIgence on the Assange case then you need to do the same. Sorry i cant help you with that on this forum i dont intend to discuss that matter further with you until you have done so. For you to voice further uninformed prejudice will only further injustice. All i ask is that when you have become properly informed on Assange that you re-evaluate your opinions of Pilger and Stein
If you have gone off Pilger and Stein because they have done dilIgence on the Assange case then you need to do the same. Sorry i cant help you with that on this forum i dont intend to discuss that matter further with you until you have done so. For you to voice further uninformed prejudice will only further injustice. All i ask is that when you have become properly informed on Assange that you re-evaluate your opinions of Pilger and Stein
I haven’t gone off Stein due to the Assange case, in fact I haven’t gone off Stein at all. Please don’t misrepresent my views. And if you think me having some criticisms of some of the things Stein does = ‘gone off’ then you really are not listening to what I am saying.
I’ve engaged in good faith with you, but I note that you’ve come into this subthread, asked me to read something you recommended, and when I do and respond to that, in depth, you basically ignore my points and instead make out I am uniformed and prejudiced without backing that up. I’m well informed on the Assange case, having been debating about that on ts for years, and I don’t take kindly to people telling me that I’m ignorant just because I disagree with their position or politics.
(and, I seriously doubt that you have an analysis of rape culture and where Pilger fits into that, so don’t start lecturing me about being informed).
Argue the damn points, or by all means stop talking to me, because I’m sick of the whole trolly nature of people saying if you just read/watch what I do you will think like I do, instead of people being willing to debate their actual views.
Also, if you are going to accuse me of being uninformed or prejudiced then make a case for that. Otherwise it’s just an ad hom that wastes everyone’s time.
“I’m sick of the whole trolly nature of people saying if you just read/watch what I do you will think like I do, instead of people being willing to debate their actual views”.
+ 100 and something Paul should note he is also a pilger RT tragic
Ok i give it a go
1 loss of respect for pilger because he “dosnt understand rape culture based on his stance on assange” …… You have not availed yourself of the facts !
2 You reject identity politics and dont understand that it is just a kinder more caring left form of prejudice. … ok i think it is prejudice and agree with pilger that it is a significant part of the problem
3 agreed sanders as a democratic candidate had to follow party line
4 ad hominum rant … not going to engage with that
5 i would suggest that there is ample blame to share for the failure of this forum to have reasoned discussion of the likely outcome of trump or clinton victory and agree that a reasoned discussion of how we like minded (sort of) people might best respond in either case could be more encouraged
Ok i give it a go
1 loss of respect for pilger because he “dosnt understand rape culture based on his stance on assange” …… You have not availed yourself of the facts !
Yes, I have. I’ve had many many conversations here about Assange, and some of those have included people running rape apology lines quoting Pilger. So I followed their links and did the reading to see what was going on, and sadly Pilger was doing the same shit. Please note that I am not making a statement about the guilt or not of Assange, I am talking about the behaviour and politics of left wing people.
You can disagree with my conclusions about Pilger but you cannot claim that I am uninformed.
2 You reject identity politics and dont understand that it is just a kinder more caring left form of prejudice. … ok i think it is prejudice and agree with pilger that it is a significant part of the problem
If Pilger is against identity politics that’s another good reason to not respect him now. We will have to agree to disagree on the value of identity politics, but I will point out that I think it’s the underlying basis of the bad blood on ts at the moment. I don’t hold out much hope for CV, but there are others, yourself included, where we might find some common ground or at least some better understanding.
5 i would suggest that there is ample blame to share for the failure of this forum to have reasoned discussion of the likely outcome of trump or clinton victory and agree that a reasoned discussion of how we like minded (sort of) people might best respond in either case could be more encouraged
Nice 🙂
“whats tl;dr ?”
too long; didn’t read. It’s usually just a summation of what someone was trying to get across.
Once upon a time before i ever engaged with this forum i found myself in the position of having to take a stance or not on the Assange case. I did what was required of me which was due diligence i sought out as many original source documents as i could find, not media reports of, but actual source and you will be suprised as i was just how many actual reliable first hand documents there are on this matter. On the basis of this information i formed an opinion. Now i am not going to argue this with you but I can catagorically state that in my informed opinion you weka based on your statements posted on this site are not in posession of the information availiable. i simply do not believe you have done diligence on this. Take it or leave it but that is my informed opinion.
Do you get that I don’t have a position on the Assange case, and that all my comments in reference to the Assange case are about rape culture and the behaviour of lefties. What do you think that means?
Nonsense….. if “Pilger does not understand rape culture on the basis of his stance on the Assange case” then you are making an uninformed judgment on Assange. Thats just misdirection ,…. and prejudice
A correct conclusion reached via an invalid path can still draw criticism for that path. If you ask me “what’s two plus two” and I say “my car has four wheels, so four”, wouldn’t you criticise my methodology even though the answer is correct?
Weka’s comment was on the path the pilger has taken to try to persuade people that Assange is a victim. Regardless of whether Assange is actually innocent, pilger’s comments (which I haven’t read recently so won’t comment on) apparently struck Weka as being typical rape apology lines.
“giving the presidency to Trump. Which would be worse than Clinton”
It appears Ms Stein does not agree with your analysis, at least in respect of who is likely the more dangerous war-mongerer of the two. She clearly sees Trump as the safer option. From 2.10 in the clip…
Haven’t watched the whole thing, but basically she is saying vote for her. She’s not saying if you don’t vote for me vote for Trump, which is what my comment was about.
Obviously she has to say vote for her, but if people in marginal states vote for her and as a result the presidency goes to Trump, my points above about activism, including peace movement, anti-nuclear etc will get harder.
It still gobsmacks me that people trust what Trump says about his foreign policy intentions.
(and Stein is not without her blindspots in areas either).
Stein’s comments about right-wing extremism growing out of the policies of the Clintons is very relevant to your observations about what the nats did in the 1990s. Either silence and even at times support from the opposition gave the right a heck of a head start when it comes to how culture has changed in NZ.
Yes, that is of course self-evident, but I was referring more to the tag-team they’ve both become since then. That’s how the culture has shifted so dramatically and what has no doubt played such a large part in the rise of Key as a phenomenon.
@Paul – it’s being spinned various ways as being pro immigration as well as curbing immigration in the media. Like Labour and the TPPA, think it is a middle of the road policy that might not appeal to either. (Too far or not far enough).
With the lack of jobs and lack of job conditions and the burden on our health and social welfare system, feel that 1% or approx 45,000 new migrants per year is still too much immigration.
Also concerned at the amount of political donations being given to pro immigration policy. AKA the Nats and Phil Goff for his Mayoral run.
We need a radical rethink of the NZ economy. Are we just going to be a giant house building and milk and log economy being asset stripped, or can a political party think bigger than that and have a vision of the new local and sustainable economy?
Personally think Labour and Greens are so busy focusing on point issues on a day to week basis they are failing to unite under a bigger vision of a change of direction for New Zealand.
It is a vision that will get people to the polls (even if that vision is just Change the government).
My view is the best Green campaign was the one with the Kids next to the forests and in nature.
Can’t even think of the last good Labour campaign… But I do think the Helen Clark approach of having a killer policy (Interest free student loans etc) has been mimicked by the Natz (Tax Cuts, more tax cuts, oh did I say Tax cuts?). So Labour will not win on that, they need to unite people against National with an alternate vision for New Zealand. (p.S Work longer and harder and have more taxes for middle NZ was not a Vote Positive, last election).
Personally think Labour and Greens are so busy focusing on point issues on a day to week basis they are failing to unite under a bigger vision of a change of direction for New Zealand.
I don’t think either of them see a real need for a real change.
Labour has always been a pro-capitalist party and probably always will be.
The Greens see a need to protect the environment, make life better for the majority even if that costs the rich but they still seem to be hanging on to capitalism and even consumerism (ie, promoting electric cars).
Labour need a plan otherwise they are just looked as a light weight version of National or as Ron Marks NZF states Red and Blue, just like Pepsi and Coke there is no difference?
I think NZF will get 15-20% of the vote unless MSM do another snow job/dirty tricks job on Winston like the Nats have done at previous elections, at least he knows what he is talking about and isn’t a show pony like our current PM?
Well he does understand quite a lot about how corruption and injustice is carried forward in NZ. He has had a heck of a immersive education on this over the last five years. his involvement would be a (desperately needed) boost for democracy
Even if he wins the extradition case he still won’t cause the nats any trouble. It’d be great if he did but he’s got no idea about strategy – the way he personally fronted the Internet/Mana campaign for example, and doesn’t seem to deliver on anything big that he promises. I’ve got nothing against the guy and hope he deals to the US government, and I know the media went to town on him as soon as the image of folklore hero wore off, but as far as politics goes he just ain’t got it.
I have to agree. The fact that he tweets that he is going to do something but won’t tell us what it is suggests he didn’t learn what a huge fuck up the moment of truth was (we still haven’t had an explanation afaik). Whatever goodwill or interest that was on the left I think is largely gone. I also hope he doesn’t get extradited and fuck the US prosecutors, but this looks like another ego trip and self-serving. He’s live in NZ long enough to know that money can’t buy everything, but here he goes again.
If you close down the discussion about immigration citing racism, you are suppressing the issues or making them simplistic. Immigration and Globalism are linked and Globalism is being used to drive 21st century society, but is it the right direction or is it propping up neoliberalism which would fail without globalism?
i.e. Is immigration being used as a vehicle to cannibalise people into commodity by plussing and misusing more people into and out of countries?
The other interesting thing about immigration is that New Zealand has one in four of its population born in another country while one in four people born in New Zealand (who are still alive) live abroad.
Why do one in four New Zealanders live abroad? Are our most educated forced to live elsewhere and grow other countries economies because our short sighted anti science, anti arts, anti intellectuctual government policies and poor wages and conditions mean that they can’t work in this country?
Is it a problem, we replace them with chefs and Kiwi fruit pickers who need government subsidy for the employer low wages and then wonder why we have poor productivity?
Are we so busy trying to make a profit from university education for foreign students we fail to concentrate on NZ students quality education and enabling them to stay in the country with a decent job and prospects?
Very few good jobs in NZ for qualified people we do not have the critical mass here, most of our NZ owned companies have collapsed or have been taken over by multi nationals. The current Government would rather companies import cheap overseas third world product ie railway wagons from China rather than manufacture here in NZ.
Very few good jobs in NZ for qualified people we do not have the critical mass here
That’s the myth that used to stop us developing our economy but it is just that – a myth. If we have the productivity available so that all other necessary products are available with spare labour and resources left over then we can do it.
And we do have that productivity and those resources available.
Once you start looking at the economy in physical terms then whole new vistas open up and we find that we’re not as constrained as the capitalists would like us to believe.
So, why do the capitalists want us to believe that we’re constrained, that we’re poor when we’re not?
IMO, it’s because that artificial constraint allows them to be rich in the first place.
Personally think the ‘we don’t have the critical mass’ here to create well paid jobs is a croc….
It’s not about quantity it is about quality.
We can never compete with China and India for a low wage economy, even if we keep up record immigration. We need to ditch the low wage economy and go high tech, high creativity, high wage economy.
Nowadays we don’t even need physical products, books can be down loaded, IP can be down loaded, and so forth.
I’m against the TPPA for many reasons, but it also will discriminate against Kiwis for IP and enable the giants to gain monopolies. It will kill the new economy.
Are our most educated forced to live elsewhere and grow other countries economies because our short sighted anti science, anti intellectuctual government policies and poor wages and conditions mean that they can’t work in this country?
Pretty much.
There was a lot of hope in the 1960s and even 1970s about manufacturing high tech stuff and not just being a farm. That hope got lost in the 1980s. It seems to be coming back slowly now but it’s pretty much along the lines that if you want to do anything that even mildly challenging then you have to leave the country as our ‘leaders’ keep doing the cheap stuff rather than the pushing the hard investment to build our economy.
Lets face it, we cannot rely upon the private sector to provide anything without taking us to the cleaners. And even then we may not get it.
“The regions need jobs to boost their economies”
What type of jobs?
Just moving the government out there isn’t really going to cut it. What we should be looking at is R&D and manufacturing hubs. Look to extraction and processing of the resources we have in NZ as well. And, no, don’t sell them. Extract silicon, turn it into silicon chips and then sell it. This is what the government should be doing.
The government funds the R&D and builds the factories to produce electronics here. We do not sell those factories. Instead, we allow anyone to produce whatever they design in them for a small fee. Same way that China and Taiwan produce electronics under license.
Having them here and owned by the government does two things:
1. It forces us to do R&D to keep them current
2. It provides access for NZ electronics innovators to produce next generation stuff without having to sell out to offshore companies just to get their stuff made. Which means the profits stay here as well.
Do that across many, if not all, industries and we’ll start to see our economy develop. After thirty years of privatisation we know that leaving it to the private sector won’t do that.
It is a lot easier to just lease out your fishing quotas which were gifted by the Government rather than do the fishing and processing yourselves, and it is a lot easier to sell whole logs rather than processing here in NZ, likewise easier selling whole carcasses of meat rather than further processing. Selling whole milk powder is a lot easier than further processing into wholesale or value added products.
NZ Government and businessmen are not interested in producing value added product, New Zealand has never had a long term growth strategy apart from selling State Assets and borrowing from the US Bankers and the Federal Reserve?
Look what happened to the Railways and the BNZ when they got into private hands, the BNZ was a gold plated business which was virtually stripped overnight by the Merchant Bankers. The Rural Bank was virtually given away by the Government-mindless stuff?
I would force corporations who do not
pay their taxes
pay living wages
compensate for the damage (their externalities) they cause to society.
to exit New Zealand.
Lets see how long you stay in government after you force Google, Facebook, Apple, etc to leave New Zealand.
Given that they pay taxes on their NZ PROFITS (not revenue that is so often quoted) how can you bitch about their taxes – without looking ill informed (hint – you didnt). Where are all the profits on the southern cross cable? – are they all in NZ? – oops – lets stop that as well.
Oil companies pay alot of their tax overseas also – so lets close down those pesky petrol stations.
Pay living wages – really? You are going to force that on multinationals ignoring NZ companies (like some owned by posters on here who cannot pay a “working wage”?
Part of me says thank God you arnt in government – the other part of me wishes you were because National would be in power for a generation.
Well jimbo, you change the law to prevent the exportation of preprofit revenue. So ‘licensing fees’ and ‘loan repayments’ are sourced from profits rather than being used to lower profits.
“If you close down the discussion about immigration citing racism, you are suppressing the issues or making them simplistic.”
I’m not suggesting that save. I’m saying that we can (theoretically at least) have a discussion about immigration that avoids racism. That was an invitation to have a discussion about immigration that avoids racism, and inherent in that is that we need to be more careful about how we say things and look at our own prejudices.
I have not owned a car for six years – although this is an easier decision for me than for others due to excellent public transport where I live.
Given the ever increasing demand for oil, diesel and petrol in NZ, is it enough to rely on environmentally concerned people to stop driving cars?
If we have to rely on people’s choice there has to be a massive change in current thinking. I see a focus on public transport from the Greens, but nothing much more from across the political spectrum about how we curtail demand.
I definitely don’t think it is enough on its own (see my posts on climate change for other ideas), and I didn’t suggest stopping driving cars. But I do think that at some point those of us calling for change have to make the connection between that and our own behaviour.
It reminds me of all the protests around industry when I was younger e.g. people not wanting wood processing plants in their neighbourhood. But very few people were making the connection between that and them living in houses made of processed timber. When we start making those connections and acting on them, then we will see faster change than replying on the government to sort it out. They’re trailing, we’re leading, and they will follow when we get it right.
How many of the people here in these conversations who want urgent action on CC are limiting how much they drive? I think a fair few are, and I think there are also people who want to keep their lifestyles and have other people make the changes for them. We don’t have time for that.
People using Park and Ride have been pinged for more than $1 million in fines in the past five years.
(Just another way to encourage people to use public transport sarc. Great spot to target the poor for fines as well!)
Apparently P&R are often full by 7am. One would think this would mean AT would try to make more space so that they can get more commuters on public transport.. I guess if commuters find there is no space they just drive into work and don’t use the public transport or park illegally and have to pay the fine.
AT are actually doing quite a bit to make public transport in Auckland better – but it’s going to take time after decades of there not being enough investment to even maintain it never mind to actually expand it.
Of course, they still need to flip from focussing on cars to focussing on public transport but that has a lot to do with the governments and how they dictate how money will be spent.
AT being in the news for their corrupt culture and targeting WOF checks at P&R (for the working poor who can’t afford a warrant) isn’t really the way to go. As is chopping down the Pohutakawa six and prosecuting people for road vege and plants, not a good look.
Oh and there is the lack of public transport – not sure how long AT has been going but there is probably better public transport in practically every other city in the world. Even third world countries have better public transport than we have. Yes its government, but it is also local government’s fault.
I didn’t say that they were perfect, just that they had been working hard to improve public transport in the city but it will take time after decades of neglect.
(Interesting article about Ken Loach and his life, including how he was bought up a Tory, never questioned it until going to university, had many of his films banned at one point and was in middle class poverty, made a commercial for McDonalds and the death of his son and his views on the UK Labour party).
Thanks for that. Perhaps you’ve seen this classic clip of Ken Loach at his brilliant best, reducing one of Thatcher’s former henchmen to gibbering, incoherent fury….
Why I have trouble believing Andrew Little on child poverty
by Janet McAllister, The Spinoff, October 12, 2016
When it comes to cutting the granite rock of child poverty, it takes a lot more than a plastic pair of pinking snips. These are the reasons that Andrew Little hasn’t (yet) convinced me he’s serious about ensuring poor kids can eat and stuff.
He didn’t mention money
Families are poor because they don’t have enough money. It’s not because somehow, randomly, this generation is more financially feckless than any other. The gaps between rich and poor are growing so fast even the OECD, not the most rabidly pinko outfit, is telling us we need to redistribute more wealth.
One reason families don’t have enough money is because family welfare hasn’t kept pace with other sources of income. For example, here’s a graph from the Ministry of Social Development, showing average household earnings rising on a lovely steady slope for the past 30 years while sole parent support (the benefit formerly known as the DPB) and other benefits got cut in Ruth Richardson’s “Mother of All Budgets” era and have mostly been flatlining since then.
Being sceptical about Andrew Little does not imply one is a supporter of the National Party, just as detesting that war-monger Hillary Clinton does not make one a Trump supporter.
Although the writer makes a point, why beat up Andrew Little instead of National, The Maori Party and UNF for poverty?
My point is that there seems to be an agenda there by Spinoff writers. They are the youth Herald luring them in just like Slater lures in the punters with pro smoking and bike type stories and plants his ideas…
They are getting them in with younger graphics but it’s pretty similar shit to Granny under the covers. RHOA, anti Green while pretending to be Green, and solving poverty by more development, more blame and immigration.
The worst thing that could happen to Labour is that they destabilise the leader… so articles that doing that are helping National the most.
If MSM had not destabilised and smeared David Cunliffe last election Labour might have won. Apparently there was only about 10,000 votes in it. And 1 million people were put off voting.
Hear, Hear, Save nz. David was the only one Labour has with the nous and acumen to beat Key. He was destroyed by Dirty Politics and Labours ABC club of neolibs and, as you say , our pathetic media.
There’s no mystery. The article is a reply to a column published at the Spinoff by Andrew Little about child poverty.
A lot is being made about the Spinoff endorsing Bill Ralston over Mike Lee, but they explained themselves very clearly: they were endorsing candidates based on their support for the Unitary Plan.
They also endorsed Phil Goff and semi-endorsed Chloe Swarbrick, City Vision’s Cathy Casey, the Greens’ Julie Zhu and Richard Leckinger, Labour’s Efeso Collins, Alf Filipaina and Ross Clow, Penny Hulse, and semi-endorsed our own Greg Presland.
One of the reason’s that Labour are losing so many votes is that they excuse and work with the enablers…
And there was an interesting analysis done on how the balance of council power would have been right if Ralston had got in. Development focus and endorsements and supporting a National loving right wing politically connected MSM candidate than supporting a left wing, public servant shows the political and focus of the Spinoff.
BTW – the unitary plan has not helped poverty and the homeless. Affordable housing was removed from the unitary plan.
Maybe you love the Spinoff – but left wing politically it is not. And there are better things to read like http://werewolf.co.nz
Mike Lee has done some good things during his long council career. However, the way he behaved over the Unitary Plan has really blotted his copybook with focused groups like Generation Zero. That is all The Spinoff’s associated coverage reflected: on urban planning and transport, Lee’s recent stances resulted in low scores. He wasn’t being assessed as a ‘left-wing public servant’.
The Unitary Plan (held up in court by coastal nimbys) can’t fix poverty – for that, we need to change the government. And for that, we need smarter analysis than has been offered up by too many on the left for the last 9 years.
Yep and we have Ralston to the rescue – sorry not buying that today.
No ones saying Lee is perfect, but Ralston to the rescue… Spinoff and their supporters showed where they stand. As long as Auckland gets developed and their mates make money, they will back any political figure. It’s not about poverty, it’s not about affordability, it is about development and less regulation for that development.
That’s the success of Nat Lite policy. You have Act, you have the Natz, on the right wing MSM and to make sure they surround the marketing messages you have Spinoff trying to get Labour and the Greens all singing from the same song sheet on issues with very small differences so there is not much alternative.
As for generation zero, anyone can put up a website and claim to want to reduce carbon admissions… maybe half of them are there of the right reasons, but what is the end result they are advocating? Are they just mimicking right policy with greenwashing?
The National government claim to be green and supporting the poor all the time. Gen Zero claim to support youth, and its so handy that they are a group supporting the developers and working with PPP’s too! That way MSM can do their interviews with lobby groups that ‘appear’ to support a broad range of ages and views.
Go cycling. Go PPP’s. Go unitary plan!
After all that where are we on climate change? Any closer, sorry need a more radical plan than that and there needs to be real support for the environment not a bunch of marketing saavy young lobbyists talking to other lobbyists and pretending to support younger people through development.
Also did not see anything about increased solar panels in the unitary plan… one of the apparent missions of generation zero is independence from fossil fuels. Bit of glaring oversight.. and could easily have been put in. Just like affordable housing.
So the rampant lobbyists for climate change seem to politically pushing through legalisation but does not really seem to helping climate change…
Plenty of scope for candidates to talk about solar energy in their survey. Not as if GenZero were the ones writing the Unitary Plan. Picking the right targets is another thing the left needs to get way better at.
Even a cursory glance shows a huge gap between what Gen Zero are doing and RW CC policy in NZ. I think you are conflating RW with neoliberal. Gen Zero generation are the children of Rogernomics. They’ve adapted. I have some problems with what they do, but they are the progressive people of privilege who are actually doing something about CC other than demanding that something be done. Yes, they will use neoliberal tools, not least because the left doesn’t offer them anything to work with.
Weka they are a lobby group. But I agree they are a few of the children of Rogernomics who are adapting. Maybe they are well meaning.
But the planet is lost if Gen zero is considered the standard for how youth to see Green issues only as something like putting in SkyPath that it is a PPP and charges cyclists and walkers.
In that way, I think they are dangerous to the Green movement as they want so little and what little they want is compromised. And because they are so Green Lite they are celebrated by the MSM and council as looking like they are addressing issues, that they are not.
I wouldn’t say GZ are the standard, so much as they are the more visible ones because of their privilege.
Can you link to the pay for cycle path thing?
I would probably agree with you their danger to the Green movement, except NZ had a long time to get behind the Greens in parliament and it’s only since the Greens have become more mainstream that they’ve made more headway. In other words, I think GZ are a reflection of where we are as a society, and the consequences of neoliberalism.
I also think that place like ts are not going to appeal to GZ (or many Greens) because the culture here is pretty toxic, so in that sense we can’t collaborate and cross-pollinate. If we want to make change we have to work together and I think that means not writing off groups because they have a different culture.
Making Skypath user-pays is not Gen Zero’s idea. It’s a result of council and govt agencies refusing to pay fairly for all modes. And you’re being ridiculous to claim GenZero is only focused on the North Shore or the inner isthmus.
Gen Zero is actually taking youth votes away from the Green party, because they are really supporting National party policy but through a Green washed Lens. One way to reduce Green messages is to flood the market so that everything is Green, climate change becomes something that a paid cycleway can fix.
The reply button to you is not working but here is the link to Gen Zero who are lobbying for the PPP Skypath.
I think a pathway is a great idea. I just don’t agree with the funding of it as why should cyclists and walkers pay? How is that helping fossil fuel reduction and is that fair?
+1 I agree with your assessment people of privilege … likewise their campaigns for cycle tracks end at Pt Chev and their focus on transport is the North Shore.
They want congestion charging because they don’t live past zone 2 and not sure what happens out on the far reaches of the super city.. not hipster people like them.
I don’t know Auckland very well, so always good to have things like that pointed out. Yes, middle class and liberal is how I would describe it, and I do think they are well meaning. I come out of a solid upper middle class, liberal family and one of the core characteristics is the disconnect from what life is like for people that don’t have that privilege. Even though I was quite political, I didn’t start to understand until my early 20s when I was working with working class women. Big learning curve, but even now decades later, and an adulthood of stepping in and out of the underclass myself, I can see there is still so much I don’t get simply due to lack of experience and exposure. For the people I know that have never had to step out of their privilege I think for the most part they just don’t get it.
I don’t know what to do about that, other than push the politics of identity, because that is where people tend to wake up.
No it’s more subtle than that. They are just using the Green issues for their own purposes but not in a community way in a lobbyist way to promote themselves and get sponsorship deals and give media interviews and MSM are picking them up as ‘the green voice of youth’. It’s just social facilitation and fabrication. We saw that in the unitary plan, where all media was about implementing the unitary plan and there was zero space given to putting in real green issues and alternatives. I mean National’s big thing when they got elected was the National cycleway but that does not make them a carbon friend of the environment.
” No it’s more subtle than that. They are just using the Green issues for their own purposes but not in a community way in a lobbyist way to promote themselves ”
That would be a fair descrption of the green party
The unitary plan is more of the same anti-democratic rubbish we are getting from all form of government these days. Show me in the plan where people are actually listened too? Oh you can’t, because once again its more of the top down we know better – lies and shrill we get feed all the time.
I for one, am sick and tired of technocratic know it all’s. Society run this way is an abject failure. No wait – some wingnut will come and say it’s all good, and I’m just complaining. Or worse, someone who is supposedly on the left will…
“Janet McAllister is happily semi-retired without the assets. She writes theatre reviews for NZ Herald and Cultural Baggage columns for Metro magazine.”
“Harvard University just got a $10 million grant to study Black poverty in Boston area. The dining hall staff are on strike for living wages.” tweet from Bill Humphrey.
+1 Gangnam Style – our brave new world, the elite are fighting poverty so hard… just keep writing those 8 figure checks, eventually they will find a way to ‘afford’ to pay living wages…
What confuses me is that I come to The Standard for left wing analysis and comment and am confronted with a right wing rape apologist as a contributor.
I mean, if CV had just shown up yesterday would his rhetoric be tolerated in this fashion?
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
[putting my moderator hat on, that comment did step over the bounds in terms of attacking an author on their own post. As I say below, if you want to talk about left wing debate on ts in general, better to do it in OM, and please bear in mind that there are very good reasons for not attacking authors – weka]
IMO no. But authors are highly valued on principle (the site wouldn’t exist without them) and so there is a general rule against attacking them. Better to just have a go at the arguments, including where they are disingenuous and misleading as in this case.
The other option is to put our energy into supporting the posts that we like. Tell the authors that you enjoy that you like their posts, and why, and encourage them to write more. Comment on their posts more than you do on these ones.
I share your frustration though.
edit, if you want to talk about the general state of left wing debate on ts, please take it to Open Mike.
It can be a fine line sometimes, but I think calling an author a rape apologist under a post where there is nothing about rape apology (haven’t read the post, am guessing) steps over the line (despite him running rape apology lines elsewhere). If there was rape apology in the post, then point that out and make comment on it first. Likewise any other politics going on e.g. right wing. That’s how I see it, other moderators/authors might see it differently.
I think what CV is doing is damaging the community, but there are limits to what can be done about that I’m afraid. The commentariat does have some power in this though too.
I also think that the value of the site is being undermined by the amount of rape apology and subsequent arguing going on, but ts doesn’t have a very good reputation on that score anyway, and it’s part of a much bigger problem here.
Micky is solidly left wing and has a post up today. Just saying 😉
I understand and apologies if I overstepped the mark.
If I were so inclined could I at some time in the future submit a piece? If I found the time of course
Definitely! Make the time*, we need some new blood 🙂 Once you have something ready, drop a comment in front of me or one of the other authors and we will work from there (emailing the main contribution email doesn’t always work). Feel free to do a draft and ask for feedback on that too, there are some editorial type boundaries to consider. cheers.
*what I find is that if I stop commenting for a while time magically appears 😉 Often what I am writing in comments can be made into a post anyway.
I would like to read something from you if you do find the time.
I share your frustration with the way CV has started to dominate so much dialogue on the Standard. There have always been right wingers commenting here but there used to be a lot more left wing voices to counter their views. Quite a few of the people I enjoyed reading seem to have given up. Their reasons for doing so will be varied, I suspect.
I gave up engaging with CV a long time ago – I treat him the same as the more rabid right wingers (don’t feed the troll). Occasionally I will respond to one of his acolytes but it isn’t really worth the bother. I never read his posts, and I don’t bother even scrolling through the comments if I see by the side bar that he is dominating the conversation on anybody else’s posts.
Nearly everybody else who writes a post here puts up something worth reading so I do still look at the Standard a couple of times a day. There is no doubt , however, that CV devalued this site for me.
+100 CV…if you are pushed off this site i will happily go with you ( I waste too much of my valuable time here)
…you are one of the reasons I come here ( and imo you are more Left and more genuinely for women’s rights to speak out , than many here ie you are more of a Feminist imo)
…I also suspect the bullying attacks on you from some quarters are one reason people are staying away…some who don’t generally contribute have come out and defended you
…and why these personal attacks …???….imo because you are very effective, well read, articulate and intelligent
…as yu know i dont always agree with you on certain issues, but we can disagree vigorously and generally I can learn from your point of view
…and you are certainly never bullying or abusive when in disagreement…so I am never intimidated as I am with some here
Please do. What I have seen of your blogs, you would make a very good contributor. I possibly will disagree with you, but I am sure any post by you will be of a high standard. As Weka said “we need new blood”
Good points Karen – it’s the blatant dishonesty that irks me the most. I just can’t take anything cv says seriously – too far gone imo and puffed up with pride in the infallibility of his views. Still it takes all sorts so we just get on with it.
That’s not really a very fair characterisation though. If for the sake of argument CV wasn’t here, there would still be a wide variety of opinion from the regulars. Just because many of us are fucked off with CV’s behaviour doesn’t mean we all think alike or say the same stuff.
CV used to have some valid points on many issues. Now he’s a sloganeer on some pretty fucked up politics and the good stuff he says in amongst that gets drowned out by the bullshit. The degree to which he now mirrors the values and behaviours of Trump is pretty disturbing. I don’t mean he is like Trump as a person (he’s not), but that the misleading and disingenuous stuff alongside the slogans just looks creepy when it’s in the context of promoting Trump.
At a point people chose whether to listen or not. We each have our own point. If I want rwnj arguments I can go to those sites. I don’t, that is why I’m here
Myself I’d call him alt-right rather than RW. And he’s definitely running lines against the left and it’s range of politics, which is what I think marty meant.
I’m going to call bullshit on this talk of CV being right wing.
I think he, like many of us, are fed up with the Labour caucus. Since 1984 we’ve been waiting for the Labour Party to apologise for Rogernomics and to amend it’s ways. To hell with trying to please the middle ground – that just leaves us with the wafflers we’ve got now.
I think CV’s stand against the current Labour crowd is totally justified and he is probably the most competent writer on this site.
This world is changing faster than ever before and needs new enlightened approaches, not a bunch of National lite drivel to placate the ‘middle’.
But there are so many other tension points and divisions in politics than only with the alt-right (CV), and the dumb-right (BM), and that’s the problem. The debate has become pretty narrow here at the Standard and for that reason I can understand people’s frustration.
I appreciate it when you make comments like this Karen, because I too think people are leaving for at least in part those reasons. If you have posts/topics you’d like to see, please say. Can’t guarantee they will happen, but it’s good to know what people want to read. Otherwise we’re just judging off where the commenters go and that’s not necessarily a useful thing to do.
I’d call CV hard left. And I’d call AD centre right. And in my view if Labour placed itself between CV and AD in it’s policies (and I think both used or currently volunteer for Labour, but may be wrong) they would be a lot more appealing to the missing voters.
It’s people like james who are more a waste for me as they would never vote left in a million years, so why post here.
I think CV is proposing to vote NZF. If he was in the US it’d be Trump. Those aren’t the votes of someone on the hard left. CV himself says he’s not left wing.
Pretty sure Ad votes on the left, so calling him centre right only makes sense if you shift the Overton window and don’t take into consideration the last 30 years 😉 Which might be a valid thing to do but it’s not conducive to good communication.
CV does not identify as left. He has reiterated that recently so he is a long long way from hard left. This is just the way it is. I accept his own description of himself – good on him for being honest about that I say.
When did CV say he might vote Green? I know he has voted Mana in the past but he’s said to me repeatedly he wouldn’t vote Green because it’s not s good cultural fit. Voting Green seemed the best political fit for him until this year.
CV hard left? You must be joking.
I can see how someone could have thought CV was left wing a year ago but for quite some time now I would have to say Weka’s assessment as alt-right is spot on.
Funny you should mention Stein, because one of the things that makes him more alt right is his views on gender and other identity politics. I’d agree with you that historically many of the policies he supports are left, but in recent times that seems outweighed by the fact that Trump is a better cultural fit.
why post here – sorry if you like an echo chamber of only people who go “key bad” “left good”. But I come on here to engage with a few post and to laugh at stupid comments some make.
It was a dull troll post the first time it was first put up.
James a man happy to defend a government responsibility a surge in homelessness, declining workers rights and poverty.
What do you stand for?
If you try to reply to the post as opposed to deflecting and asking me questions, it will probably get you better replies.
Whats trolling about it – Kim Dotcom is saying that hes back with another election plan.
Im just saying it worked so well last time – and now he’s even less popular. It can only be good for National. Personally I hope he joins up with Mana again.
Your extreme right wing politics suggest you are a fool, but if you can’t see that commenting on Kim Dotcom is trolling, there is little hope.
I have no intention of discussing distraction topic points of a rwnj, when there are clearly more important issues to discuss.
And you know that.
Hmm i am not so sure….. if lab/grn continue to believe that dotcom is a bigger threat to them then nats then James is probably correct, however it they come to their senses maby not
” trolling
Being a prick on the internet because you can. Typically unleashing one or more cynical or sarcastic remarks on an innocent by-stander, because it’s the internet and, hey, you can. ”
“Being a prick on the internet because you can. Typically unleashing one or more cynical or sarcastic remarks on an innocent by-stander, because it’s the internet and, hey, you can. ”
You mean like OAB the other day telling Dr Wayne Mapp that he can “Fuck off”..?
Don’t bother, I’ve found the original file and as usual, a selectively quoted lie.
It’s symbolic and it’s not going to go away. They’re all hanging on to it. So you know Bernie Sanders is getting lots of support from the most radical environmentalists because he’s out there every day bashing the Keystone pipeline. And, you know, I’m not into it for that. I’ve been– my view is I want to defend natural gas. I want to defend repairing and building the pipe lines we need to fuel our economy. I want to defend fracking under the right circumstances. I want to defend, you know, new, modern [inaudible]. I want to defend this stuff. And you know, I’m already at odds with the most organized and wildest. They come to my rallies and they yell at me and, you know, all the rest of it. They say, ‘Will you promise never to take any fossil fuels out of the earth ever again?’ No. I won’t promise that. Get a life, you know. So I want to get the right balance and that’s what I’m [inaudible] about– getting all the stakeholders together. Everybody’s not going to get everything they want, that’s not the way it’s supposed to work in a democracy, but everybody needs to listen to each other.
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012
“Since May 2015, the Step Up Taranaki Trust has been touring the region, capturing scenes of people dancing to the Patea Maori Club’s hit song Poi E.”
Nothing like a bit of cultural colonisation to sell NZ to the world. Mr Key features in it, can’t get to Waitangi this year, but happy for the video cameo.
Must be the kind of charities Key is thanking, since they have their funding cut some of these services will have to go back to volunteering their services.
A third of all budget advisory services to get their funding cut.
“Christian Assist manager Ken Ogden said his trust would probably give up its current office in Avondale and revert to the way it started in 1991 as a volunteer-based agency operating from a local church.”
The thing about the WikiLeaks emails: they're releasing innocuous stuff to build their credibility. https://t.co/Gc8nEKwHwP— IG Admin Audit (@OnTacticsBook) October 15, 2016
Then, once you're primed to believe them, they'll release a fabricated bombshell. This is old school Russian agitprop.— IG Admin Audit (@OnTacticsBook) October 15, 2016
The Clinton Campaign knows this, and they're trying to short circuit it with this essay.— IG Admin Audit (@OnTacticsBook) October 15, 2016
4,723,900 people in New Zealand. Quite a change from 2014. Thousands who voted in 2014 have died. Thousands have come on the voting roll and thousands of immigrants have become permanent residents or citizens and thus able to vote. They are aspirational for a brighter future and given the booming economy I wonder how likely it is that they will vote for more tax and less freedom.
I would love to see a debate between Paul Moon and Norman Finkelstein on the blockade issue. No place for Mike Hoskings in that, but maybe he could provide some luxury snacks from Nosh.
We could invite our very own Sir Geoffrey Palmer. Though given Sir Geoffs connection to Álvaro Uribe I guess you would have to be very careful not to cause offence. Uribes and his brother are not exactly the type to turn the other cheek.
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
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Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
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Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
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TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Pacific Media Watch Earthwise hosts Lois and Martin Griffiths. Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths on Plains FM 96.9 community radio talk to Dr David Robie, a New Zealand author, independent journalist and media educator with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region. David talks about the struggle to raise awareness ...
Pacific Media Watch Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was held for 12 hours at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, says Israeli forces rounded up Palestinian journalists at the facility and made them kneel on the ground for hours, while naked and blindfolded. “The occupation forces handcuffed and blindfolded us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute chinasong, Shutterstock Electricity customers in four Australian states can breathe a sigh of relief. After two years in a row of 20% price increases, power prices have finally stabilised. In many places they’re ...
Chumbawamba have reportedly issued the deputy PM a cease-and-desist notice after he used their song 'Tubthumping' before his state of the nation speech. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
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NZ journalist suggests Trump’s endgame may be setting up a lucrative and influential cable channel to the right of Fox: http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/315682/will-trump-outfox-the-right
Trump is breaking the traditional (and obsolete) right-left paradigm.
Lolz, that’s right, he wants to replace it with fascism 🙄
Sunday morning and you’re reduced to sloganeering already CV? Give us a break eh?
WW3 on the horizon Hillary and the US military are itching to have a go at Russia and to try out their new toys, looks like Jill Stein is the only viable alternative?
Yes, but same as in NZ, not enough people are ready to vote that way yet. Stein won’t be president this time round, so as I understand it, people are safe to vote for her if not in marginal states, but if they are in marginal states they risk splitting the vote and giving the presidency to Trump. Which would be worse than Clinton. Whatever things we want to see changed in the world will be so much harder to achieve under a Trump presidency than a Clinton one.
thats just sad weka . your advice is dont vote for what you believe in so you acknowlege that there is no democracy and vote for statis quo, you are deluded if you think “what we want to see changed” is down that road
Yes, there is bugger all democracy in the US. I’m a pragmatic voter, and I vote in accordance with my ethics. If that means voting Clinton in order to further the Green Party and allied values, so be it. I’ve been in two minds about the whole thing and whether a protest vote and a Trump presidency was worth the risk, but I now believe that a Trump presidency will do so much damage to the culture that it will take years to undo and we simply don’t have that time.
At least with Clinton there will be room to be an activists and progress the most urgent issues. Under Trump I expect that to be actively oppressed. I suppose at that point one could argue that it’s better to let things get very bad in the short term in the hope that people will wake up, but I don’t believe people will wake up that way. The other argument is to let the US degenerate into a defacto civil war and maybe that will bring the empire down. Pretty risky strategy, but I’d be interested in hearing the argument.
Thanks weka thats a fair and reasoned argument. Interesting to hear jill stein views that voting for the lesser evil has been a “race to the bottom” . In my case i am not in any way promoting the idea that we should let thigs get worse to “wake people up”. But rather in clinton I see a guarantee of business as usual which I believe will destroy us. I am not supporting trump in any sense but what i do think is that he is unlikely to just do what he is told and I also believe that he owes a lot less “favours” (and that hillary is totally compromised on that front). So all of that is enough to make me really unsure what would be the best choice (if it was mine to make)
That’s the lesser of evils argument right?
One of the first things the incoming National govt did in 1990 was cut funding to community groups (and ‘restructure’ what was left). I haven’t looked this up but I seem to remember that for instance they cut the Ministry of Women’s Affairs grants, which meant that the organisations doing the work on the fringes (where all good change arises) were screwed.
This isn’t a lesser of evils argument. This is a ‘we’re going to lose this vital aspect of our ability to effect change’ argument. And it’s not just funding. The activists I follow in the US are afraid that with Trump the lives of people already on the margins is going to get much much worse, and those are the communities that hold the activist heart.
Likewise in NZ, in 1990, it wasn’t just the cuts to funding, but it was cuts to benefits, so the people that were doing that activist work suddenly found their backs to the wall in their personal lives as well and unable to keep up with the work they were doing in the same way. I don’t think that was planned by National so much as a desirable side effect of their policies. With Trump it will be intentional.
You perhaps forget that it was the lessor of evil fourth labour government in 1984 that dismantled NZ government and established neoliberal corporate greed in its place ?
The fundimentals of all that you describe above were enacted by the fourth labour government and as NZ voters have chosen one or the other lessor evil for the last three decades. In each case the government has continued on that path
I’ve never voted Labour, always to the left. I’m not sure why you would think I forget about Labour in the 80s.
“The fundimentals of all that you describe above were enacted by the fourth labour government”
Actually, no. My point is that even under the worst that the neoliberal left does they still don’t directly try and suppress activism (although I’m sure someone will now be able to provide some examples). But now we are back to the lesser of evils argument. Given we can’t change the past, for where we are at now, in my politics protecting the people that are working for change is a very high priority. Otherwise we’re going down a deep dark hole worse than what is happening now.
It’s not that the things we want to change will be harder, it’s that change will happen in the wrong direction. Meaning there will be a lot of lost ground to make up when (if) things swing back to being able to move in a good direction.
I think Trump would actively suppress activism, so yeah, I think it would be harder.
please pleas weka read this…. all of it. At the vey least you will learn where some of us are comeing from!
https://newmatilda.com/2016/03/23/john-pilger-why-hillary-clinton-is-more-dangerous-than-donald-trump/
I don’t have that much respect for Pilger these days. He quite obviously doesn’t understand rape culture and/or thinks it is unimportant (that’s based on his approach to the Assange situation).
Then I read things like this,
As presidential election day draws near, Clinton will be hailed as the first female president, regardless of her crimes and lies – just as Barack Obama was lauded as the first black president and liberals swallowed his nonsense about “hope”. And the drool goes on.
It’s just boring, superficial, ‘the liberals are useless’ type commentary. All he is doing there is exactly what pro-Trump or anti-Clinton people are accusing liberals of doing, creating divisions from the old mentality that if you want to change something you have to bash it (pretty much the kaupapa at the standard most of the time).
And this,
In the US, Bernie Sanders has promised to support Clinton if or when she’s nominated. He, too, has voted for America’s use of violence against countries when he thinks it’s “right”. He says Obama has done “a great job”.
FFS, Sanders was running for president, of course he is going to say Obama did a great job. If he came out and said that Obama is a war monger, he’d not get the nomination. Any person who becomes the president of the US is going to be a war monger, so now we are just back at the lesser of evils argument.
“Where are those who will shatter the silence? Or do we wait until the first nuclear missile is fired?”
In the age of the internet there is no silence. Silence is not the problem at this point.
I understand the issues that are behind some of the anti-Clinton arguments, and the pro-Trump ones. One of the things that has happened on ts is that the main person criticising Clinton has also been promoting Trump. That’s always going to be a problem on a left wing site. But worse, he’s done this in the context of a long history of trying to poison the well of his once natural allies. Lots of people here can’t stand the incessant hatred and I think that’s a big part of why the anti-Clinton argument gets combatted so strongly.
There are definitely moderate lefties here who will argue a pragmatic vote for Clinton line, and the ones I respect like McFlock and Lanth are a boon. If we had a different culture here, the conversation would have been going quite differently, and instead of the Trump-esque being forwarded, we would have learned some things and actually talked about what the issues are for Trump voters in the US and why they vote Trump.
We would also be having the conversation that Bill suggests, which is that lefties should be gearing up to put as much pressure on Clinton as possible assuming that she wins. Unfortunately I think what we can look forward to is more Trump-esque culture being pushed, and so expect people to react to that.
tl;dr, I understand the arguments you aand others are putting forward and I still disagree with you that voting Trump is a good thing to do. Further, I doubt that you understand why I think Trump would be more dangerous. Because of the current debate culture we haven’t really gotten to those conversations. Pity.
If you have gone off Pilger and Stein because they have done dilIgence on the Assange case then you need to do the same. Sorry i cant help you with that on this forum i dont intend to discuss that matter further with you until you have done so. For you to voice further uninformed prejudice will only further injustice. All i ask is that when you have become properly informed on Assange that you re-evaluate your opinions of Pilger and Stein
If you have gone off Pilger and Stein because they have done dilIgence on the Assange case then you need to do the same. Sorry i cant help you with that on this forum i dont intend to discuss that matter further with you until you have done so. For you to voice further uninformed prejudice will only further injustice. All i ask is that when you have become properly informed on Assange that you re-evaluate your opinions of Pilger and Stein
I haven’t gone off Stein due to the Assange case, in fact I haven’t gone off Stein at all. Please don’t misrepresent my views. And if you think me having some criticisms of some of the things Stein does = ‘gone off’ then you really are not listening to what I am saying.
I’ve engaged in good faith with you, but I note that you’ve come into this subthread, asked me to read something you recommended, and when I do and respond to that, in depth, you basically ignore my points and instead make out I am uniformed and prejudiced without backing that up. I’m well informed on the Assange case, having been debating about that on ts for years, and I don’t take kindly to people telling me that I’m ignorant just because I disagree with their position or politics.
(and, I seriously doubt that you have an analysis of rape culture and where Pilger fits into that, so don’t start lecturing me about being informed).
Argue the damn points, or by all means stop talking to me, because I’m sick of the whole trolly nature of people saying if you just read/watch what I do you will think like I do, instead of people being willing to debate their actual views.
Also, if you are going to accuse me of being uninformed or prejudiced then make a case for that. Otherwise it’s just an ad hom that wastes everyone’s time.
“I’m sick of the whole trolly nature of people saying if you just read/watch what I do you will think like I do, instead of people being willing to debate their actual views”.
+ 100 and something Paul should note he is also a pilger RT tragic
Ok i give it a go
1 loss of respect for pilger because he “dosnt understand rape culture based on his stance on assange” …… You have not availed yourself of the facts !
2 You reject identity politics and dont understand that it is just a kinder more caring left form of prejudice. … ok i think it is prejudice and agree with pilger that it is a significant part of the problem
3 agreed sanders as a democratic candidate had to follow party line
4 ad hominum rant … not going to engage with that
5 i would suggest that there is ample blame to share for the failure of this forum to have reasoned discussion of the likely outcome of trump or clinton victory and agree that a reasoned discussion of how we like minded (sort of) people might best respond in either case could be more encouraged
whats tl;dr ?
Ok i give it a go
1 loss of respect for pilger because he “dosnt understand rape culture based on his stance on assange” …… You have not availed yourself of the facts !
Yes, I have. I’ve had many many conversations here about Assange, and some of those have included people running rape apology lines quoting Pilger. So I followed their links and did the reading to see what was going on, and sadly Pilger was doing the same shit. Please note that I am not making a statement about the guilt or not of Assange, I am talking about the behaviour and politics of left wing people.
You can disagree with my conclusions about Pilger but you cannot claim that I am uninformed.
2 You reject identity politics and dont understand that it is just a kinder more caring left form of prejudice. … ok i think it is prejudice and agree with pilger that it is a significant part of the problem
If Pilger is against identity politics that’s another good reason to not respect him now. We will have to agree to disagree on the value of identity politics, but I will point out that I think it’s the underlying basis of the bad blood on ts at the moment. I don’t hold out much hope for CV, but there are others, yourself included, where we might find some common ground or at least some better understanding.
5 i would suggest that there is ample blame to share for the failure of this forum to have reasoned discussion of the likely outcome of trump or clinton victory and agree that a reasoned discussion of how we like minded (sort of) people might best respond in either case could be more encouraged
Nice 🙂
“whats tl;dr ?”
too long; didn’t read. It’s usually just a summation of what someone was trying to get across.
Once upon a time before i ever engaged with this forum i found myself in the position of having to take a stance or not on the Assange case. I did what was required of me which was due diligence i sought out as many original source documents as i could find, not media reports of, but actual source and you will be suprised as i was just how many actual reliable first hand documents there are on this matter. On the basis of this information i formed an opinion. Now i am not going to argue this with you but I can catagorically state that in my informed opinion you weka based on your statements posted on this site are not in posession of the information availiable. i simply do not believe you have done diligence on this. Take it or leave it but that is my informed opinion.
Do you get that I don’t have a position on the Assange case, and that all my comments in reference to the Assange case are about rape culture and the behaviour of lefties. What do you think that means?
I did due diligence on that.
Nonsense….. if “Pilger does not understand rape culture on the basis of his stance on the Assange case” then you are making an uninformed judgment on Assange. Thats just misdirection ,…. and prejudice
No.
A correct conclusion reached via an invalid path can still draw criticism for that path. If you ask me “what’s two plus two” and I say “my car has four wheels, so four”, wouldn’t you criticise my methodology even though the answer is correct?
Weka’s comment was on the path the pilger has taken to try to persuade people that Assange is a victim. Regardless of whether Assange is actually innocent, pilger’s comments (which I haven’t read recently so won’t comment on) apparently struck Weka as being typical rape apology lines.
“giving the presidency to Trump. Which would be worse than Clinton”
It appears Ms Stein does not agree with your analysis, at least in respect of who is likely the more dangerous war-mongerer of the two. She clearly sees Trump as the safer option. From 2.10 in the clip…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8lD-RQ2AhQ
Haven’t watched the whole thing, but basically she is saying vote for her. She’s not saying if you don’t vote for me vote for Trump, which is what my comment was about.
Obviously she has to say vote for her, but if people in marginal states vote for her and as a result the presidency goes to Trump, my points above about activism, including peace movement, anti-nuclear etc will get harder.
It still gobsmacks me that people trust what Trump says about his foreign policy intentions.
(and Stein is not without her blindspots in areas either).
“(and Stein is not without her blindspots in areas either).”
Yep – I seriously think the only adult left in the US political system is Bernie (and probably Warren)
Pretty sure Sanders has blindspots too, doesn’t everyone? 🙂
Yep !
Stein’s comments about right-wing extremism growing out of the policies of the Clintons is very relevant to your observations about what the nats did in the 1990s. Either silence and even at times support from the opposition gave the right a heck of a head start when it comes to how culture has changed in NZ.
Do you mean that Key’s NACT have grown from the fertiliser of Labour being neutral or supportive of RW policy?
Or that the 90s National grew out of the 80s Labour? (that’s self evident I think).
Yes, that is of course self-evident, but I was referring more to the tag-team they’ve both become since then. That’s how the culture has shifted so dramatically and what has no doubt played such a large part in the rise of Key as a phenomenon.
Trump ain’t right wing nor is he a conservative
raving marxist
Greens change tack on immigration
At last.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/politics/greens-govt-immigration-curbs-not-enough-2016101512
@Paul – it’s being spinned various ways as being pro immigration as well as curbing immigration in the media. Like Labour and the TPPA, think it is a middle of the road policy that might not appeal to either. (Too far or not far enough).
With the lack of jobs and lack of job conditions and the burden on our health and social welfare system, feel that 1% or approx 45,000 new migrants per year is still too much immigration.
Also concerned at the amount of political donations being given to pro immigration policy. AKA the Nats and Phil Goff for his Mayoral run.
We need a radical rethink of the NZ economy. Are we just going to be a giant house building and milk and log economy being asset stripped, or can a political party think bigger than that and have a vision of the new local and sustainable economy?
Thinking logically and future economic planning is not part of the equation, it is about getting re-elected?
Personally think Labour and Greens are so busy focusing on point issues on a day to week basis they are failing to unite under a bigger vision of a change of direction for New Zealand.
It is a vision that will get people to the polls (even if that vision is just Change the government).
My view is the best Green campaign was the one with the Kids next to the forests and in nature.
Can’t even think of the last good Labour campaign… But I do think the Helen Clark approach of having a killer policy (Interest free student loans etc) has been mimicked by the Natz (Tax Cuts, more tax cuts, oh did I say Tax cuts?). So Labour will not win on that, they need to unite people against National with an alternate vision for New Zealand. (p.S Work longer and harder and have more taxes for middle NZ was not a Vote Positive, last election).
I don’t think either of them see a real need for a real change.
Labour has always been a pro-capitalist party and probably always will be.
The Greens see a need to protect the environment, make life better for the majority even if that costs the rich but they still seem to be hanging on to capitalism and even consumerism (ie, promoting electric cars).
Labour need a plan otherwise they are just looked as a light weight version of National or as Ron Marks NZF states Red and Blue, just like Pepsi and Coke there is no difference?
Unless Labour and the Greens act decisively here, New Zealand First are going to be the big winners.
I think NZF will get 15-20% of the vote unless MSM do another snow job/dirty tricks job on Winston like the Nats have done at previous elections, at least he knows what he is talking about and isn’t a show pony like our current PM?
That would be the internet party
Yay for Kim Dotcom – he has announced hes coming back for this election.
god no please tell me your joking
Well he does understand quite a lot about how corruption and injustice is carried forward in NZ. He has had a heck of a immersive education on this over the last five years. his involvement would be a (desperately needed) boost for democracy
Nope. He tweeted it the other day.
your barstard mates are paying him to come back, i know it.!!! (joke )
But he’s also full of shit so nothing will come of it.
That will depend somewhat on the outcome of his high court appeal due shortly
Even if he wins the extradition case he still won’t cause the nats any trouble. It’d be great if he did but he’s got no idea about strategy – the way he personally fronted the Internet/Mana campaign for example, and doesn’t seem to deliver on anything big that he promises. I’ve got nothing against the guy and hope he deals to the US government, and I know the media went to town on him as soon as the image of folklore hero wore off, but as far as politics goes he just ain’t got it.
Its a new world !
I have to agree. The fact that he tweets that he is going to do something but won’t tell us what it is suggests he didn’t learn what a huge fuck up the moment of truth was (we still haven’t had an explanation afaik). Whatever goodwill or interest that was on the left I think is largely gone. I also hope he doesn’t get extradited and fuck the US prosecutors, but this looks like another ego trip and self-serving. He’s live in NZ long enough to know that money can’t buy everything, but here he goes again.
+100 save nz
Watch Susan Devoy doesn’t get involved you are racist if you discuss immigration here in NZ.
Probably because too often immigration discussions include racism. They don’t have to, so I guess we have a choice here today.
If you close down the discussion about immigration citing racism, you are suppressing the issues or making them simplistic. Immigration and Globalism are linked and Globalism is being used to drive 21st century society, but is it the right direction or is it propping up neoliberalism which would fail without globalism?
i.e. Is immigration being used as a vehicle to cannibalise people into commodity by plussing and misusing more people into and out of countries?
The issue is exploitation by multinational corporations.
But the corporations are only able to do that by buying the politicians ears with Lobbyists and cash. Making that illegal would be a good start.
The other interesting thing about immigration is that New Zealand has one in four of its population born in another country while one in four people born in New Zealand (who are still alive) live abroad.
Why do one in four New Zealanders live abroad? Are our most educated forced to live elsewhere and grow other countries economies because our short sighted anti science, anti arts, anti intellectuctual government policies and poor wages and conditions mean that they can’t work in this country?
Is it a problem, we replace them with chefs and Kiwi fruit pickers who need government subsidy for the employer low wages and then wonder why we have poor productivity?
Are we so busy trying to make a profit from university education for foreign students we fail to concentrate on NZ students quality education and enabling them to stay in the country with a decent job and prospects?
Very few good jobs in NZ for qualified people we do not have the critical mass here, most of our NZ owned companies have collapsed or have been taken over by multi nationals. The current Government would rather companies import cheap overseas third world product ie railway wagons from China rather than manufacture here in NZ.
That’s the myth that used to stop us developing our economy but it is just that – a myth. If we have the productivity available so that all other necessary products are available with spare labour and resources left over then we can do it.
And we do have that productivity and those resources available.
Once you start looking at the economy in physical terms then whole new vistas open up and we find that we’re not as constrained as the capitalists would like us to believe.
So, why do the capitalists want us to believe that we’re constrained, that we’re poor when we’re not?
IMO, it’s because that artificial constraint allows them to be rich in the first place.
Personally think the ‘we don’t have the critical mass’ here to create well paid jobs is a croc….
It’s not about quantity it is about quality.
We can never compete with China and India for a low wage economy, even if we keep up record immigration. We need to ditch the low wage economy and go high tech, high creativity, high wage economy.
Nowadays we don’t even need physical products, books can be down loaded, IP can be down loaded, and so forth.
I’m against the TPPA for many reasons, but it also will discriminate against Kiwis for IP and enable the giants to gain monopolies. It will kill the new economy.
Pretty much.
There was a lot of hope in the 1960s and even 1970s about manufacturing high tech stuff and not just being a farm. That hope got lost in the 1980s. It seems to be coming back slowly now but it’s pretty much along the lines that if you want to do anything that even mildly challenging then you have to leave the country as our ‘leaders’ keep doing the cheap stuff rather than the pushing the hard investment to build our economy.
Or as I put it on Facebook:
It is a lot easier to just lease out your fishing quotas which were gifted by the Government rather than do the fishing and processing yourselves, and it is a lot easier to sell whole logs rather than processing here in NZ, likewise easier selling whole carcasses of meat rather than further processing. Selling whole milk powder is a lot easier than further processing into wholesale or value added products.
NZ Government and businessmen are not interested in producing value added product, New Zealand has never had a long term growth strategy apart from selling State Assets and borrowing from the US Bankers and the Federal Reserve?
And that is the point of different that Labour needs to fight for.
Value ADDl Get rid of low wage economy.
gifted by the Government
Compensation for the mass confiscation of land and resources isn’t a “gift”.
Look what happened to the Railways and the BNZ when they got into private hands, the BNZ was a gold plated business which was virtually stripped overnight by the Merchant Bankers. The Rural Bank was virtually given away by the Government-mindless stuff?
Are you an MP Draco? I would never have guessed
Sorry – for some reason I thought you were the original poster!
I would force corporations who do not
pay their taxes
pay living wages
compensate for the damage (their externalities) they cause to society.
to exit New Zealand.
Goodbye Uber.
Goodbye McDonalds.
Goodbye Allied Domecq
Really?
How the hell would you do this?
Lets see how long you stay in government after you force Google, Facebook, Apple, etc to leave New Zealand.
Given that they pay taxes on their NZ PROFITS (not revenue that is so often quoted) how can you bitch about their taxes – without looking ill informed (hint – you didnt). Where are all the profits on the southern cross cable? – are they all in NZ? – oops – lets stop that as well.
Oil companies pay alot of their tax overseas also – so lets close down those pesky petrol stations.
Pay living wages – really? You are going to force that on multinationals ignoring NZ companies (like some owned by posters on here who cannot pay a “working wage”?
Part of me says thank God you arnt in government – the other part of me wishes you were because National would be in power for a generation.
Well jimbo, you change the law to prevent the exportation of preprofit revenue. So ‘licensing fees’ and ‘loan repayments’ are sourced from profits rather than being used to lower profits.
Who do not pay tax and only pay minimum wages and undercut local producers and distributors=new world order which our PM JK subscribes to?
“If you close down the discussion about immigration citing racism, you are suppressing the issues or making them simplistic.”
I’m not suggesting that save. I’m saying that we can (theoretically at least) have a discussion about immigration that avoids racism. That was an invitation to have a discussion about immigration that avoids racism, and inherent in that is that we need to be more careful about how we say things and look at our own prejudices.
+100 save nz
Dependency on oil? How do we stop using oil… prevent supply, or restrict demand?
The daily volumes of oil and petrol imported into New Zealand. Figures are from 2012, but are increasing annually:
110,000 barrels of crude oil daily
25,000 barrels of gasoline
http://www.indexmundi.com/energy/?country=nz&product=gasoline&graph=imports
15 to 20 supertankers bring oil monthly to the Marsden Point refinery – each one with up to 750,000 barrels capacity of oil in their cargo tanks
159 litres in one barrel of oil
Citizens can also make the connection between their own lives and oil production. We can choose to use less.
I have not owned a car for six years – although this is an easier decision for me than for others due to excellent public transport where I live.
Given the ever increasing demand for oil, diesel and petrol in NZ, is it enough to rely on environmentally concerned people to stop driving cars?
If we have to rely on people’s choice there has to be a massive change in current thinking. I see a focus on public transport from the Greens, but nothing much more from across the political spectrum about how we curtail demand.
I definitely don’t think it is enough on its own (see my posts on climate change for other ideas), and I didn’t suggest stopping driving cars. But I do think that at some point those of us calling for change have to make the connection between that and our own behaviour.
It reminds me of all the protests around industry when I was younger e.g. people not wanting wood processing plants in their neighbourhood. But very few people were making the connection between that and them living in houses made of processed timber. When we start making those connections and acting on them, then we will see faster change than replying on the government to sort it out. They’re trailing, we’re leading, and they will follow when we get it right.
How many of the people here in these conversations who want urgent action on CC are limiting how much they drive? I think a fair few are, and I think there are also people who want to keep their lifestyles and have other people make the changes for them. We don’t have time for that.
No it’s not. We have to make it so that even owning a car is simply too expensive. Which, as climate change now proves, it actually is.
People using Park and Ride have been pinged for more than $1 million in fines in the past five years.
(Just another way to encourage people to use public transport sarc. Great spot to target the poor for fines as well!)
Apparently P&R are often full by 7am. One would think this would mean AT would try to make more space so that they can get more commuters on public transport.. I guess if commuters find there is no space they just drive into work and don’t use the public transport or park illegally and have to pay the fine.
AT are actually doing quite a bit to make public transport in Auckland better – but it’s going to take time after decades of there not being enough investment to even maintain it never mind to actually expand it.
Of course, they still need to flip from focussing on cars to focussing on public transport but that has a lot to do with the governments and how they dictate how money will be spent.
AT being in the news for their corrupt culture and targeting WOF checks at P&R (for the working poor who can’t afford a warrant) isn’t really the way to go. As is chopping down the Pohutakawa six and prosecuting people for road vege and plants, not a good look.
Oh and there is the lack of public transport – not sure how long AT has been going but there is probably better public transport in practically every other city in the world. Even third world countries have better public transport than we have. Yes its government, but it is also local government’s fault.
I didn’t say that they were perfect, just that they had been working hard to improve public transport in the city but it will take time after decades of neglect.
Ken Loach: ‘If you’re not angry, what kind of person are you?’
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/15/ken-laoch-film-i-daniel-blake-kes-cathy-come-home-interview-simon-hattenstone
(Interesting article about Ken Loach and his life, including how he was bought up a Tory, never questioned it until going to university, had many of his films banned at one point and was in middle class poverty, made a commercial for McDonalds and the death of his son and his views on the UK Labour party).
Thanks for that. Perhaps you’ve seen this classic clip of Ken Loach at his brilliant best, reducing one of Thatcher’s former henchmen to gibbering, incoherent fury….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2nvaTLVQKk
Why I have trouble believing Andrew Little on child poverty
by Janet McAllister, The Spinoff, October 12, 2016
When it comes to cutting the granite rock of child poverty, it takes a lot more than a plastic pair of pinking snips. These are the reasons that Andrew Little hasn’t (yet) convinced me he’s serious about ensuring poor kids can eat and stuff.
He didn’t mention money
Families are poor because they don’t have enough money. It’s not because somehow, randomly, this generation is more financially feckless than any other. The gaps between rich and poor are growing so fast even the OECD, not the most rabidly pinko outfit, is telling us we need to redistribute more wealth.
One reason families don’t have enough money is because family welfare hasn’t kept pace with other sources of income. For example, here’s a graph from the Ministry of Social Development, showing average household earnings rising on a lovely steady slope for the past 30 years while sole parent support (the benefit formerly known as the DPB) and other benefits got cut in Ruth Richardson’s “Mother of All Budgets” era and have mostly been flatlining since then.
Read more…
http://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/12-10-2016/andrew-little-says-hes-determined-to-slash-child-poverty-heres-why-im-not-convinced/
More beat up of Andrew Little, by Bill Ralston for Council supporters, the Spinoff.
What is their agenda?
How many anti National articles are in the Spinoff? The way the media tells it, Labour is more at fault than National for the nations ills…
Being sceptical about Andrew Little does not imply one is a supporter of the National Party, just as detesting that war-monger Hillary Clinton does not make one a Trump supporter.
Although the writer makes a point, why beat up Andrew Little instead of National, The Maori Party and UNF for poverty?
My point is that there seems to be an agenda there by Spinoff writers. They are the youth Herald luring them in just like Slater lures in the punters with pro smoking and bike type stories and plants his ideas…
They are getting them in with younger graphics but it’s pretty similar shit to Granny under the covers. RHOA, anti Green while pretending to be Green, and solving poverty by more development, more blame and immigration.
The worst thing that could happen to Labour is that they destabilise the leader… so articles that doing that are helping National the most.
All very good points, my friend.
If MSM had not destabilised and smeared David Cunliffe last election Labour might have won. Apparently there was only about 10,000 votes in it. And 1 million people were put off voting.
I call bullshit on your comments again.
There are a ton of reasons people didnt vote – nothing at all to point that a million were put off because of the media.
I know you like to make stuff up to fit what you are trying to say – but it just aint so.
Hear, Hear, Save nz. David was the only one Labour has with the nous and acumen to beat Key. He was destroyed by Dirty Politics and Labours ABC club of neolibs and, as you say , our pathetic media.
Don’t blame the media it only happened/worked because his ‘colleagues’ undermined him…
The media are a big part of the problem
They serve the agenda of big business.
Exactly savenz-the Spinoff has an agenda here.
Its a moot point anyway-the mob in power have proved don’t give a toss about child poverty so there really is no alternative to voting Lab/Gr bloc.
Child poverty is collateral damage from neoliberalism and globalisation.
There’s no mystery. The article is a reply to a column published at the Spinoff by Andrew Little about child poverty.
A lot is being made about the Spinoff endorsing Bill Ralston over Mike Lee, but they explained themselves very clearly: they were endorsing candidates based on their support for the Unitary Plan.
They also endorsed Phil Goff and semi-endorsed Chloe Swarbrick, City Vision’s Cathy Casey, the Greens’ Julie Zhu and Richard Leckinger, Labour’s Efeso Collins, Alf Filipaina and Ross Clow, Penny Hulse, and semi-endorsed our own Greg Presland.
I get that other “leftwing” bloggers have been making a huge deal out of The Spinoff being some massive rightwing conspiracy, but right now the headline story in their Politics section interviews people like Tame Iti, Coco Solid, Marianne Elliott and David Farrier about Five Eyes and government surveillance.
http://thespinoff.co.nz/society/15-10-2016/acutely-aware-of-the-reality-of-state-surveillance-tame-iti-and-other-nz-artists-on-the-chilling-effect/
So … yeah. Not the Terrible Media Beat-Up you’re looking for.
One of the reason’s that Labour are losing so many votes is that they excuse and work with the enablers…
And there was an interesting analysis done on how the balance of council power would have been right if Ralston had got in. Development focus and endorsements and supporting a National loving right wing politically connected MSM candidate than supporting a left wing, public servant shows the political and focus of the Spinoff.
BTW – the unitary plan has not helped poverty and the homeless. Affordable housing was removed from the unitary plan.
Maybe you love the Spinoff – but left wing politically it is not. And there are better things to read like http://werewolf.co.nz
Mike Lee has done some good things during his long council career. However, the way he behaved over the Unitary Plan has really blotted his copybook with focused groups like Generation Zero. That is all The Spinoff’s associated coverage reflected: on urban planning and transport, Lee’s recent stances resulted in low scores. He wasn’t being assessed as a ‘left-wing public servant’.
The Unitary Plan (held up in court by coastal nimbys) can’t fix poverty – for that, we need to change the government. And for that, we need smarter analysis than has been offered up by too many on the left for the last 9 years.
Yep and we have Ralston to the rescue – sorry not buying that today.
No ones saying Lee is perfect, but Ralston to the rescue… Spinoff and their supporters showed where they stand. As long as Auckland gets developed and their mates make money, they will back any political figure. It’s not about poverty, it’s not about affordability, it is about development and less regulation for that development.
That’s the success of Nat Lite policy. You have Act, you have the Natz, on the right wing MSM and to make sure they surround the marketing messages you have Spinoff trying to get Labour and the Greens all singing from the same song sheet on issues with very small differences so there is not much alternative.
As for generation zero, anyone can put up a website and claim to want to reduce carbon admissions… maybe half of them are there of the right reasons, but what is the end result they are advocating? Are they just mimicking right policy with greenwashing?
The National government claim to be green and supporting the poor all the time. Gen Zero claim to support youth, and its so handy that they are a group supporting the developers and working with PPP’s too! That way MSM can do their interviews with lobby groups that ‘appear’ to support a broad range of ages and views.
Go cycling. Go PPP’s. Go unitary plan!
After all that where are we on climate change? Any closer, sorry need a more radical plan than that and there needs to be real support for the environment not a bunch of marketing saavy young lobbyists talking to other lobbyists and pretending to support younger people through development.
Also did not see anything about increased solar panels in the unitary plan… one of the apparent missions of generation zero is independence from fossil fuels. Bit of glaring oversight.. and could easily have been put in. Just like affordable housing.
So the rampant lobbyists for climate change seem to politically pushing through legalisation but does not really seem to helping climate change…
http://details.aucklandelections.nz/criteria
Plenty of scope for candidates to talk about solar energy in their survey. Not as if GenZero were the ones writing the Unitary Plan. Picking the right targets is another thing the left needs to get way better at.
Even a cursory glance shows a huge gap between what Gen Zero are doing and RW CC policy in NZ. I think you are conflating RW with neoliberal. Gen Zero generation are the children of Rogernomics. They’ve adapted. I have some problems with what they do, but they are the progressive people of privilege who are actually doing something about CC other than demanding that something be done. Yes, they will use neoliberal tools, not least because the left doesn’t offer them anything to work with.
Weka they are a lobby group. But I agree they are a few of the children of Rogernomics who are adapting. Maybe they are well meaning.
But the planet is lost if Gen zero is considered the standard for how youth to see Green issues only as something like putting in SkyPath that it is a PPP and charges cyclists and walkers.
In that way, I think they are dangerous to the Green movement as they want so little and what little they want is compromised. And because they are so Green Lite they are celebrated by the MSM and council as looking like they are addressing issues, that they are not.
I wouldn’t say GZ are the standard, so much as they are the more visible ones because of their privilege.
Can you link to the pay for cycle path thing?
I would probably agree with you their danger to the Green movement, except NZ had a long time to get behind the Greens in parliament and it’s only since the Greens have become more mainstream that they’ve made more headway. In other words, I think GZ are a reflection of where we are as a society, and the consequences of neoliberalism.
I also think that place like ts are not going to appeal to GZ (or many Greens) because the culture here is pretty toxic, so in that sense we can’t collaborate and cross-pollinate. If we want to make change we have to work together and I think that means not writing off groups because they have a different culture.
Skypath information.
http://www.partnershipsbulletin.com/news/view/90301
Sorry, I meant Gen Zero’s involvement in the path thing.
Making Skypath user-pays is not Gen Zero’s idea. It’s a result of council and govt agencies refusing to pay fairly for all modes. And you’re being ridiculous to claim GenZero is only focused on the North Shore or the inner isthmus.
For detailed background, check Transportblog’s many posts about Skypath:
http://transportblog.co.nz/?s=skypath&submit.x=0&submit.y=0
Thanks Sacha.
Gen Zero is actually taking youth votes away from the Green party, because they are really supporting National party policy but through a Green washed Lens. One way to reduce Green messages is to flood the market so that everything is Green, climate change becomes something that a paid cycleway can fix.
The real messages do not get through.
How are they taking Green youth votes? Do you mean they tell people to vote National?
The reply button to you is not working but here is the link to Gen Zero who are lobbying for the PPP Skypath.
I think a pathway is a great idea. I just don’t agree with the funding of it as why should cyclists and walkers pay? How is that helping fossil fuel reduction and is that fair?
http://www.generationzero.org/seapath
+1 I agree with your assessment people of privilege … likewise their campaigns for cycle tracks end at Pt Chev and their focus on transport is the North Shore.
They want congestion charging because they don’t live past zone 2 and not sure what happens out on the far reaches of the super city.. not hipster people like them.
I don’t know Auckland very well, so always good to have things like that pointed out. Yes, middle class and liberal is how I would describe it, and I do think they are well meaning. I come out of a solid upper middle class, liberal family and one of the core characteristics is the disconnect from what life is like for people that don’t have that privilege. Even though I was quite political, I didn’t start to understand until my early 20s when I was working with working class women. Big learning curve, but even now decades later, and an adulthood of stepping in and out of the underclass myself, I can see there is still so much I don’t get simply due to lack of experience and exposure. For the people I know that have never had to step out of their privilege I think for the most part they just don’t get it.
I don’t know what to do about that, other than push the politics of identity, because that is where people tend to wake up.
No it’s more subtle than that. They are just using the Green issues for their own purposes but not in a community way in a lobbyist way to promote themselves and get sponsorship deals and give media interviews and MSM are picking them up as ‘the green voice of youth’. It’s just social facilitation and fabrication. We saw that in the unitary plan, where all media was about implementing the unitary plan and there was zero space given to putting in real green issues and alternatives. I mean National’s big thing when they got elected was the National cycleway but that does not make them a carbon friend of the environment.
” No it’s more subtle than that. They are just using the Green issues for their own purposes but not in a community way in a lobbyist way to promote themselves ”
That would be a fair descrption of the green party
The unitary plan is more of the same anti-democratic rubbish we are getting from all form of government these days. Show me in the plan where people are actually listened too? Oh you can’t, because once again its more of the top down we know better – lies and shrill we get feed all the time.
I for one, am sick and tired of technocratic know it all’s. Society run this way is an abject failure. No wait – some wingnut will come and say it’s all good, and I’m just complaining. Or worse, someone who is supposedly on the left will…
The Unitary Plan is just a spatial planning document. It’s not the council’s overarching Plan including how they engage citizens. That’s here: http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/planspoliciesprojects/plansstrategies/theaucklandplan/Pages/theaucklandplan.aspx
Nobody is arguing they are currently doing a good job of working with Aucklanders. Satisfaction rating reflects that.
“Janet McAllister is happily semi-retired without the assets. She writes theatre reviews for NZ Herald and Cultural Baggage columns for Metro magazine.”
Meet the reality behind that cuddly audience member Ken Bone
Jono and Ben called this idiot “cute” on Friday night. In fact, he’s anything but…
http://gizmodo.com/ken-bone-forgot-to-delete-his-porn-comments-1787780939
“Harvard University just got a $10 million grant to study Black poverty in Boston area. The dining hall staff are on strike for living wages.” tweet from Bill Humphrey.
+1 Gangnam Style – our brave new world, the elite are fighting poverty so hard… just keep writing those 8 figure checks, eventually they will find a way to ‘afford’ to pay living wages…
What confuses me is that I come to The Standard for left wing analysis and comment and am confronted with a right wing rape apologist as a contributor.
I mean, if CV had just shown up yesterday would his rhetoric be tolerated in this fashion?
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
[putting my moderator hat on, that comment did step over the bounds in terms of attacking an author on their own post. As I say below, if you want to talk about left wing debate on ts in general, better to do it in OM, and please bear in mind that there are very good reasons for not attacking authors – weka]
IMO no. But authors are highly valued on principle (the site wouldn’t exist without them) and so there is a general rule against attacking them. Better to just have a go at the arguments, including where they are disingenuous and misleading as in this case.
The other option is to put our energy into supporting the posts that we like. Tell the authors that you enjoy that you like their posts, and why, and encourage them to write more. Comment on their posts more than you do on these ones.
I share your frustration though.
edit, if you want to talk about the general state of left wing debate on ts, please take it to Open Mike.
I certainly do not mean to attack an author or The Standard policy. Just expressing a frustration and confusion
It can be a fine line sometimes, but I think calling an author a rape apologist under a post where there is nothing about rape apology (haven’t read the post, am guessing) steps over the line (despite him running rape apology lines elsewhere). If there was rape apology in the post, then point that out and make comment on it first. Likewise any other politics going on e.g. right wing. That’s how I see it, other moderators/authors might see it differently.
I think what CV is doing is damaging the community, but there are limits to what can be done about that I’m afraid. The commentariat does have some power in this though too.
I also think that the value of the site is being undermined by the amount of rape apology and subsequent arguing going on, but ts doesn’t have a very good reputation on that score anyway, and it’s part of a much bigger problem here.
Micky is solidly left wing and has a post up today. Just saying 😉
I understand and apologies if I overstepped the mark.
If I were so inclined could I at some time in the future submit a piece? If I found the time of course
Definitely! Make the time*, we need some new blood 🙂 Once you have something ready, drop a comment in front of me or one of the other authors and we will work from there (emailing the main contribution email doesn’t always work). Feel free to do a draft and ask for feedback on that too, there are some editorial type boundaries to consider. cheers.
*what I find is that if I stop commenting for a while time magically appears 😉 Often what I am writing in comments can be made into a post anyway.
I would like to read something from you if you do find the time.
I share your frustration with the way CV has started to dominate so much dialogue on the Standard. There have always been right wingers commenting here but there used to be a lot more left wing voices to counter their views. Quite a few of the people I enjoyed reading seem to have given up. Their reasons for doing so will be varied, I suspect.
I gave up engaging with CV a long time ago – I treat him the same as the more rabid right wingers (don’t feed the troll). Occasionally I will respond to one of his acolytes but it isn’t really worth the bother. I never read his posts, and I don’t bother even scrolling through the comments if I see by the side bar that he is dominating the conversation on anybody else’s posts.
Nearly everybody else who writes a post here puts up something worth reading so I do still look at the Standard a couple of times a day. There is no doubt , however, that CV devalued this site for me.
Learn to live outside your echo chamber and broaden your horizons, is my recommendation.
+100 CV…if you are pushed off this site i will happily go with you ( I waste too much of my valuable time here)
…you are one of the reasons I come here ( and imo you are more Left and more genuinely for women’s rights to speak out , than many here ie you are more of a Feminist imo)
…I also suspect the bullying attacks on you from some quarters are one reason people are staying away…some who don’t generally contribute have come out and defended you
…and why these personal attacks …???….imo because you are very effective, well read, articulate and intelligent
…as yu know i dont always agree with you on certain issues, but we can disagree vigorously and generally I can learn from your point of view
…and you are certainly never bullying or abusive when in disagreement…so I am never intimidated as I am with some here
+1 Chooky
Well said Chooky, I think the Colonial has some very valid points at times.
Well I might just do it
Please do. What I have seen of your blogs, you would make a very good contributor. I possibly will disagree with you, but I am sure any post by you will be of a high standard. As Weka said “we need new blood”
Good points Karen – it’s the blatant dishonesty that irks me the most. I just can’t take anything cv says seriously – too far gone imo and puffed up with pride in the infallibility of his views. Still it takes all sorts so we just get on with it.
I think CV’s got some valid points on many issues.
If the site gets too clicky and everyone says the same stuff, what is the point of reading it?
That’s not really a very fair characterisation though. If for the sake of argument CV wasn’t here, there would still be a wide variety of opinion from the regulars. Just because many of us are fucked off with CV’s behaviour doesn’t mean we all think alike or say the same stuff.
CV used to have some valid points on many issues. Now he’s a sloganeer on some pretty fucked up politics and the good stuff he says in amongst that gets drowned out by the bullshit. The degree to which he now mirrors the values and behaviours of Trump is pretty disturbing. I don’t mean he is like Trump as a person (he’s not), but that the misleading and disingenuous stuff alongside the slogans just looks creepy when it’s in the context of promoting Trump.
At a point people chose whether to listen or not. We each have our own point. If I want rwnj arguments I can go to those sites. I don’t, that is why I’m here
You can call CV many things but RWNJ – I don’t think so.
I’m not sure what the extremist is even on about. Is he describing Julian Assange?
Myself I’d call him alt-right rather than RW. And he’s definitely running lines against the left and it’s range of politics, which is what I think marty meant.
That’s often the logic here. If you’re not a mainstream lovin’ centrist leftie you must be a rwnj.
I think nut job was too harsh cos there is a method in the madness so sorry cv for that.
Yes weka has it correct – and chris just my view, and I’m hard left fyi, no need to taint others
I’m going to call bullshit on this talk of CV being right wing.
I think he, like many of us, are fed up with the Labour caucus. Since 1984 we’ve been waiting for the Labour Party to apologise for Rogernomics and to amend it’s ways. To hell with trying to please the middle ground – that just leaves us with the wafflers we’ve got now.
I think CV’s stand against the current Labour crowd is totally justified and he is probably the most competent writer on this site.
This world is changing faster than ever before and needs new enlightened approaches, not a bunch of National lite drivel to placate the ‘middle’.
But there are so many other tension points and divisions in politics than only with the alt-right (CV), and the dumb-right (BM), and that’s the problem. The debate has become pretty narrow here at the Standard and for that reason I can understand people’s frustration.
I appreciate it when you make comments like this Karen, because I too think people are leaving for at least in part those reasons. If you have posts/topics you’d like to see, please say. Can’t guarantee they will happen, but it’s good to know what people want to read. Otherwise we’re just judging off where the commenters go and that’s not necessarily a useful thing to do.
I’d call CV hard left. And I’d call AD centre right. And in my view if Labour placed itself between CV and AD in it’s policies (and I think both used or currently volunteer for Labour, but may be wrong) they would be a lot more appealing to the missing voters.
It’s people like james who are more a waste for me as they would never vote left in a million years, so why post here.
I think CV is proposing to vote NZF. If he was in the US it’d be Trump. Those aren’t the votes of someone on the hard left. CV himself says he’s not left wing.
Pretty sure Ad votes on the left, so calling him centre right only makes sense if you shift the Overton window and don’t take into consideration the last 30 years 😉 Which might be a valid thing to do but it’s not conducive to good communication.
Nope CV has said he is considering voting Green too or Mana.
CV does not identify as left. He has reiterated that recently so he is a long long way from hard left. This is just the way it is. I accept his own description of himself – good on him for being honest about that I say.
When did CV say he might vote Green? I know he has voted Mana in the past but he’s said to me repeatedly he wouldn’t vote Green because it’s not s good cultural fit. Voting Green seemed the best political fit for him until this year.
CV hard left? You must be joking.
I can see how someone could have thought CV was left wing a year ago but for quite some time now I would have to say Weka’s assessment as alt-right is spot on.
I’m just going on policies he’s advocating as being hard left. What policies does he talk about that see him as right? Supporting Jill Stein? sarc.
Funny you should mention Stein, because one of the things that makes him more alt right is his views on gender and other identity politics. I’d agree with you that historically many of the policies he supports are left, but in recent times that seems outweighed by the fact that Trump is a better cultural fit.
Good to see this cul-de-sac getting a lot of mileage again.
why post here – sorry if you like an echo chamber of only people who go “key bad” “left good”. But I come on here to engage with a few post and to laugh at stupid comments some make.
I thought I posted this before – but perhaps there was a post error.
I see Kim Dotcom is back with plans to change the government again:
https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/786436817092382720
“I’m getting ready for 2017 NZ election. This time I’ll spend far less, corrupt media won’t stop me, will change Govt with brilliant plan!”
I wonder if this brilliant plan will involve Mana again.
This can only be good news for John Key and a National 4th term….
[it’s still where you put it, in yesterday’s OM – weka]
Ahh – sorry weka – I posted in the wrong thread and hadnt refreshed.
Doh!
It was a dull troll post the first time it was first put up.
James a man happy to defend a government responsibility a surge in homelessness, declining workers rights and poverty.
What do you stand for?
If you try to reply to the post as opposed to deflecting and asking me questions, it will probably get you better replies.
Whats trolling about it – Kim Dotcom is saying that hes back with another election plan.
Im just saying it worked so well last time – and now he’s even less popular. It can only be good for National. Personally I hope he joins up with Mana again.
Even better if he gets Bradbury back on board.
Your extreme right wing politics suggest you are a fool, but if you can’t see that commenting on Kim Dotcom is trolling, there is little hope.
I have no intention of discussing distraction topic points of a rwnj, when there are clearly more important issues to discuss.
And you know that.
Hmm i am not so sure….. if lab/grn continue to believe that dotcom is a bigger threat to them then nats then James is probably correct, however it they come to their senses maby not
Look James, if you argue with their way of thinking or don’t agree with what they are saying…..You are a troll !
btw, this is Open Mike !!
” trolling
Being a prick on the internet because you can. Typically unleashing one or more cynical or sarcastic remarks on an innocent by-stander, because it’s the internet and, hey, you can. ”
Urban dictionary.
“Being a prick on the internet because you can. Typically unleashing one or more cynical or sarcastic remarks on an innocent by-stander, because it’s the internet and, hey, you can. ”
You mean like OAB the other day telling Dr Wayne Mapp that he can “Fuck off”..?
Wayne is hardly innocent.
Hillary Clinton: “I want to defend fracking.” Climate change environmentalists should “Get a life,” #PodestaEmails8
https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/787355043821416448
I am sure that Hillary’s “public position” on the issue is nicer than this.
lol…wikileaks is such a pestilence…
Could you link to the original email. Ta in advance.
Don’t bother, I’ve found the original file and as usual, a selectively quoted lie.
It’s symbolic and it’s not going to go away. They’re all hanging on to it. So you know Bernie Sanders is getting lots of support from the most radical environmentalists because he’s out there every day bashing the Keystone pipeline. And, you know, I’m not into it for that. I’ve been– my view is I want to defend natural gas. I want to defend repairing and building the pipe lines we need to fuel our economy. I want to defend fracking under the right circumstances. I want to defend, you know, new, modern [inaudible]. I want to defend this stuff. And you know, I’m already at odds with the most organized and wildest. They come to my rallies and they yell at me and, you know, all the rest of it. They say, ‘Will you promise never to take any fossil fuels out of the earth ever again?’ No. I won’t promise that. Get a life, you know. So I want to get the right balance and that’s what I’m [inaudible] about– getting all the stakeholders together. Everybody’s not going to get everything they want, that’s not the way it’s supposed to work in a democracy, but everybody needs to listen to each other.
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails//fileid/9617/2478
Oh, and because balance –
Thanks joe i knew it had been twisted because 99% of the trumpties proclamations are.
I love the massive US fracking and shale oil bubble which has almost made the US “energy independent” (for now).
Remind me who was in charge of the White House. Paris agreement signing Obama wasn’t it?
Wrong election again – it is 2016 today
Yeah CV that was 2012 . Dont you get that fracking is no longer an issue in 2016? Get with the times man!
This is sickening. Key thanking charity workers for trying to make a “kinder New Zealand”. Lying, greedy, hypocritical piece of fucking trash.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/85386421/final-scenes-captured-for-poi-e-dance-video-project
Good on key. Cannot imaging them inviting Andrew little to be part of it.
“Since May 2015, the Step Up Taranaki Trust has been touring the region, capturing scenes of people dancing to the Patea Maori Club’s hit song Poi E.”
Nothing like a bit of cultural colonisation to sell NZ to the world. Mr Key features in it, can’t get to Waitangi this year, but happy for the video cameo.
Must be the kind of charities Key is thanking, since they have their funding cut some of these services will have to go back to volunteering their services.
A third of all budget advisory services to get their funding cut.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11730011
“Christian Assist manager Ken Ogden said his trust would probably give up its current office in Avondale and revert to the way it started in 1991 as a volunteer-based agency operating from a local church.”
When you list the alleged incidents Trump does appear to be worse than a pig.
Allegation of rape in 1989, made public in 1993
[…]
Allegation of sexual assault in 1992 and 1993, made in a court filing in 1997
[…]
Allegation of rape in 1994, made public in a court filing in April 2016
[…]
Allegation of unwanted kissing in 1997, made public in May 2016
[..]
Allegations of groping in 2013, made public in June 2016
[…]
Allegation of a hostile work environment between 2004 and 2015, published October 3, 2016
[…]
Allegations of walking in on young pageant contestants changing in 1997 and 2001, made public October 11 and 12, 2016
[…]
Two allegations of sexual assault in early 1980s and 2005, reported October 12, 2016
[…]
Allegation of groping in 2003, reported October 12, 2016
[…]
Allegation of sexual assault in December 2005, reported October 12, 2016
[…]
Allegation of sexual assault in early 1990s, reported October 14, 2016
[…]
Allegation of sexual assault in 2007, reported October 14, 2016
[…]
Allegation of of grabbing and unwanted kissing attempt in late 90s, reported October 15, 2016
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/allegations-women-have-made-against-donald-trump-n665731?cid=sm_tw
The SNL second debate. Not one of their best, but still good for a few snorts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5bj0G4o9i8
Allegedly how (some of?) the Dem e-mail accounts were hacked.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/russian-hackers-faked-gmail-password-form-to-invade-dnc-emai?utm_term=.vag800pQnO#.vukb33eA6Y
Old school.
https://twitter.com/OnTacticsBook/status/787441395946622976
Impossible. Wikileaks is a hero to the left. Julian should be hailed as such – there is no way they would ever fabricate anything.
That’s dirty politics and only the right do that right ?
4,723,900 people in New Zealand. Quite a change from 2014. Thousands who voted in 2014 have died. Thousands have come on the voting roll and thousands of immigrants have become permanent residents or citizens and thus able to vote. They are aspirational for a brighter future and given the booming economy I wonder how likely it is that they will vote for more tax and less freedom.
Desperate trolling.
fisiani seems thrilled thousands of people have died. Typical individualism.
Fisiani takes no pleasure in any death. A beloved friend died last week. You should apologise.
If you don’t think somthing is wrong with our media.
Check out this piece.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/85075657/paul-moon-david-cumin-and-juliet-moses-flotilla-became-ship-of-fools
I know its from a few days ago, but it’s worth reflecting on.
Because you add this…
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/85381134/perfect-mike-hosking-on-luxury-items-and-sexuallycharged-shopping-trips-with-john-key
And we really are in lala land…
I would love to see a debate between Paul Moon and Norman Finkelstein on the blockade issue. No place for Mike Hoskings in that, but maybe he could provide some luxury snacks from Nosh.
We could invite our very own Sir Geoffrey Palmer. Though given Sir Geoffs connection to Álvaro Uribe I guess you would have to be very careful not to cause offence. Uribes and his brother are not exactly the type to turn the other cheek.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlLm1Ym3Pbc
A hard rain’s gonna fall, friend.