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.
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The following was my submission made on the “Fast Track Approvals Bill”. This potential law will give three Ministers unchecked powers, un-paralled since the days of Robert Muldoon’s “Think Big” projects.The submission is written a bit tongue-in-cheek. But it’s irreverent because the FTAB is in itself not worthy of respect. ...
One Could Reduce Child Poverty At No Fiscal CostFollowing the Richardson/Shipley 1990 ‘redesign of the welfare state’ – which eliminated the universal Family Benefit and doubled the rate of child poverty – various income supplements for families have been added, the best known being ‘Working for Families’, introduced in 2005. ...
Buzz from the Beehive A few days ago, Point of Order suggested the media must be musing “on why Melissa is mute”. Our article reported that people working in the beleaguered media industry have cause to yearn for a minister as busy as Melissa Lee’s ministerial colleagues and we drew ...
1. What was The Curse of Jim Bolger?a. Winston Peters b. Soon after shaking his hand, world leaders would mysteriously lose office or shuffle off this mortal coilc. Could never shake off the Mother of All Budgetsd. Dandruff2. True or false? The Chairman of a Kiwi export business has asked the ...
Jack Vowles writes – New Zealand is said to be suffering from ‘serious populist discontent’. An IPSOS MORI survey has reported that we have an increasing preference for strong leaders, think that the economy is rigged toward the rich and powerful, and political elites are ignoring ‘hard-working people’. ...
Chris Trotter writes – MELISSA LEE should be deprived of her ministerial warrant. Her handling – or non-handling – of the crisis engulfing the New Zealand news media has been woeful. The fate of New Zealand’s two linear television networks, a question which the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications ...
TL;DR: The podcast above features co-hosts and , along with regular guests Robert Patman on Gaza and AUKUS II, and on climate change.The six things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the ...
Policymakers rarely wish to make plain or visible their desire to dismantle environmental policy, least of all to the young. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above between Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent ...
I like to keep an eye on what’s happening in places like the UK, the US, and over the ditch with our good mates the Aussies. Let’s call them AUKUS, for want of a better collective term. More on that in a bit.It used to be, not long ago, that ...
TL;DR: The global economy will be one fifth smaller than it would have otherwise been in 2050 as a result of climate damage, according to a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and published in the journal Nature. (See more detail and analysis below, and ...
New Zealand is said to be suffering from ‘serious populist discontent’. An IPSOS MORI survey has reported that we have an increasing preference for strong leaders, think that the economy is rigged toward the rich and powerful, and political elites are ignoring ‘hard-working people’. The data is from February this ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is understood to be planning a major speech within the next fortnight to clear up the confusion over whether or not New Zealand might join the AUKUS submarine project. So far, there have been conflicting signals from the Government. RNZ reported the Prime Minister yesterday in ...
Life throws curveballs, and sometimes, those curveballs necessitate wiping your iPhone clean and starting anew. Whether you’re facing persistent software glitches, preparing to sell your device, or simply wanting a fresh start, knowing how to factory reset iPhone without a computer is a valuable skill. While using a computer with ...
Gone are the days when communication was limited to landline phones and physical proximity. Today, computers have become powerful tools for connecting with people across the globe through voice and video calls. But with a plethora of applications and methods available, how to call someone on a computer might seem ...
Open access notables Glacial isostatic adjustment reduces past and future Arctic subsea permafrost, Creel et al., Nature Communications:Sea-level rise submerges terrestrial permafrost in the Arctic, turning it into subsea permafrost. Subsea permafrost underlies ~ 1.8 million km2 of Arctic continental shelf, with thicknesses in places exceeding 700 m. Sea-level variations over glacial-interglacial cycles control ...
The operating system (OS) is the heart and soul of a computer, orchestrating every action and interaction between hardware and software. But have you ever wondered where on a computer is the operating system generally stored? The answer lies in the intricate dance between hardware and software components, particularly within ...
Laptops have become essential tools for work, entertainment, and communication, offering portability and functionality. However, with rising energy costs and growing environmental concerns, understanding a laptop’s power consumption is more important than ever. So, how many watts does a laptop use? The answer, unfortunately, isn’t straightforward. It depends on several ...
Screen recording has become an essential tool for various purposes, such as creating tutorials, capturing gameplay footage, recording online meetings, or sharing information with others. Fortunately, Dell laptops offer several built-in and external options for screen recording, catering to different needs and preferences. This guide will explore various methods on ...
A cracked or damaged laptop screen can be a frustrating experience, impacting productivity and enjoyment. Fortunately, laptop screen repair is a common service offered by various repair shops and technicians. However, the cost of fixing a laptop screen can vary significantly depending on several factors. This article delves into the ...
Gaming laptops represent a significant investment for passionate gamers, offering portability and powerful performance for immersive gaming experiences. However, a common concern among potential buyers is their lifespan. Unlike desktop PCs, which allow for easier component upgrades, gaming laptops have inherent limitations due to their compact and integrated design. This ...
The annual inventory report of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions has been released, showing that gross emissions have dropped for the third year in a row, to 78.4 million tons: All-told gross emissions have decreased by over 6 million tons since the Zero Carbon Act was passed in 2019. ...
Experiencing a locked computer can be frustrating, especially when you need access to your files and applications urgently. The methods to unlock your computer will vary depending on the specific situation and the type of lock you encounter. This guide will explore various scenarios and provide step-by-step instructions on how ...
While the world has largely transitioned to digital communication, faxing still holds relevance in certain industries and situations. Fortunately, gone are the days of bulky fax machines and dedicated phone lines. Today, you can easily send and receive faxes directly from your computer, offering a convenient and efficient way to ...
In our increasingly digital world, home computers have become essential tools for work, communication, entertainment, and more. However, this increased reliance on technology also exposes us to various cyber threats. Understanding these threats and taking proactive steps to protect your home computer is crucial for safeguarding your personal information, finances, ...
In the ever-evolving world of technology, server-based computing has emerged as a cornerstone of modern digital infrastructure. This article delves into the concept of server-based computing, exploring its various forms, benefits, challenges, and its impact on the way we work and interact with technology. Understanding Server-Based Computing: At its core, ...
The absolute brass neck of this guy.We want more medical doctors, not more spin doctors, Luxon was saying a couple of weeks ago, and now we’re told the guy has seven salaried adults on TikTok duty. Sorry, doing social media. The absolute brass neck of it. The irony that the ...
Buzz from the Beehive Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones relishes spatting and eagerly takes issue with environmentalists who criticise his enthusiasm for resource development. He relishes helping the fishing industry too. And so today, while the media are making much of the latest culling in the public service to ...
Having written, taught and worked for the US government on issues involving unconventional warfare and terrorism for 30-odd years, two things irritate me the most when the subject is discussed in public. The first is the Johnny-come-lately academics-turned-media commentators who … Continue reading → ...
Eric Crampton writes – Kainga Ora is the government’s house building agency. It’s been building a lot of social housing. Kainga Ora has its own (but independent) consenting authority, Consentium. It’s a neat idea. Rather than have to deal with building consents across each different territorial authority, Kainga Ora ...
Muriel Newman writes – The Coalition Government says it is moving with speed to deliver campaign promises and reverse the damage done by Labour. One of their key commitments is to “defend the principle that New Zealanders are equal before the law.” To achieve this, they have pledged they “will not advance ...
Chris Trotter writes – The absence of anything resembling a fightback from the public servants currently losing their jobs is interesting. State-sector workers’ collective fatalism in the face of Coalition cutbacks indicates a surprisingly broad acceptance of impermanence in the workplace. Fifty years ago, lay-offs in the thousands ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
The Government’s newly announced review of methane emissions reduction targets hints at its desire to delay Aotearoa New Zealand’s urgent transition to a climate safe future, the Green Party said. ...
The Government must commit to the Maitai School building project for students with high and complex needs, to ensure disabled students from the top of the South Island have somewhere to learn. ...
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey and his Government colleagues have made a meal of their mental health commitments, showing how flimsy their efforts to champion the issue truly are, says Labour Mental Health spokesperson Ingrid Leary. ...
Māori are yet to see anything from this Government except cuts, reversals and taking our people backwards, Māori Development spokesperson Willie Jackson said. ...
The Coalition Government’s refusal to commit to ongoing funding for social housing is seeing the sector pull back on developments and families watch their dreams of securing a home fade away, says Labour Housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
The Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...
Changes to the Resource Management Act will align consenting for coal mining to other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The inconsistent treatment of coal mining compared with other extractive activities is burdensome red tape that fails to acknowledge ...
Trade, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay has concluded productive discussions with ministerial counterparts in Beijing today, in support of the New Zealand-China trade and economic relationship. “My meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao reaffirmed the complementary nature of the bilateral trade relationship, with our Free Trade Agreement at its ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today paid tribute to Singapore’s outgoing Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Meeting in Singapore today immediately before Prime Minister Lee announced he was stepping down, Prime Minister Luxon warmly acknowledged his counterpart’s almost twenty years as leader, and the enduring legacy he has left for Singapore and South East ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. While in Singapore as part of his visit to South East Asia this week, Prime Minister Luxon also met with Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and will meet with Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has made further appointments to the Board of Antarctica New Zealand as part of a continued effort to ensure the Scott Base Redevelopment project is delivered in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The Minister has appointed Neville Harris as a new member of the Board. Mr ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis will travel to the United States on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the Five Finance Ministers group, with counterparts from Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. “I am looking forward to meeting with our Five Finance partners on how we can work ...
The coalition Government has today announced purrfect and pawsitive changes to the Residential Tenancies Act to give tenants with pets greater choice when looking for a rental property, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Pets are important members of many Kiwi families. It’s estimated that around 64 per cent of New ...
State Highway 1 (SH1) through Wellington City is heavily congested at peak times and while planning continues on the duplicate Mt Victoria Tunnel and Basin Reserve project, the Government has also asked NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) to consider and provide advice on a Long Tunnel option, Transport Minister Simeon Brown ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters have condemned Iran’s shocking and illegal strikes against Israel. “These attacks are a major challenge to peace and stability in a region already under enormous pressure," Mr Luxon says. "We are deeply concerned that miscalculation on any side could ...
Hundreds of people in little over a week have turned out in Northland to hear Regional Development Minister Shane Jones speak about plans for boosting the regional economy through infrastructure. About 200 people from the infrastructure and associated sectors attended an event headlined by Mr Jones in Whangarei today. Last ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti has today thanked outgoing Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora Chair Dame Karen Poutasi for her service on the Board. “Dame Karen tendered her resignation as Chair and as a member of the Board today,” says Dr Reti. “I have asked her to ...
The NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has signalled their proposed delivery approach for the Government’s 15 Roads of National Significance (RoNS), with the release of the State Highway Investment Proposal (SHIP) today, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Boosting economic growth and productivity is a key part of the Government’s plan to ...
New Zealand is renewing its connections with a world facing urgent challenges by pursuing an active, energetic foreign policy, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Our country faces the most unstable global environment in decades,” Mr Peters says at the conclusion of two weeks of engagements in Egypt, Europe and the United States. “We cannot afford to sit back in splendid ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has announced the Australian Governor-General, His Excellency General The Honourable David Hurley and his wife Her Excellency Mrs Linda Hurley, will make a State visit to New Zealand from Tuesday 16 April to Thursday 18 April. The visit reciprocates the State visit of former Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced that Medsafe has approved 11 cold and flu medicines containing pseudoephedrine. Pharmaceutical suppliers have indicated they may be able to supply the first products in June. “This is much earlier than the original expectation of medicines being available by 2025. The Government recognised ...
New Zealand and the United States have recommitted to their strategic partnership in Washington DC today, pledging to work ever more closely together in support of shared values and interests, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The strategic environment that New Zealand and the United States face is considerably more ...
April 11, 2024 Joint Declaration by United States Secretary of State the Honorable Antony J. Blinken and New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs the Right Honourable Winston Peters We met today in Washington, D.C. to recommit to the historic partnership between our two countries and the principles that underpin it—rule ...
By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor in Honiara Solomon Islands’ incumbent prime minister Manasseh Sogavare has been re-elected in the East Choiseul constituency. It is the opening move in the political chess match to form the country’s next government. Returning officer Christopher Makoni made the declaration late last night after ...
Headline: The moment of friction. – 36th Parallel Assessments In strategic studies “friction” is a term that it is used to describe the moment when military action encounters adversary resistance. “Friction” is one of four (along with an unofficial fifth) “F’s” in military strategy, which includes force (kinetic mass), ...
The Fast-track Bill, if passed, would allow three Ministers, unchallenged and unchecked, to approve the immediate extraction and exhaustion of one-off resources. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne iamharin/Shutterstock For many people, the term “bulk billed” refers to a GP visit they don’t have to pay ...
Emmas Hislop, Sidnam and Wehipeihana discuss what’s in a name. Emma Sidnam: Hello Emmas! Thank you so much for agreeing to do this with me. My first question for you is related to what’s been on my mind for a while. It’s very important. You see we’ve recently had some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Sievers, Research Fellow, Global Wetlands Project, Australia Rivers Institute, Griffith University Chris Brown Humans love the coast. But we love it to death, so much so we’ve destroyed valuable coastal habitat – in the case of some types of habitat, ...
Josh Thomson on the 80s milk ad jingle he can’t stop singing, the beauty of The Simpsons, why Jersey Shore is as good as Shakespeare and more. For someone who spends a lot of time on our screens, popping up in everything from 7 Days to Taskmaster, Educators to Good ...
In apparent defiance of the Biden administration, the Netanyahu government has now initiated missile strikes against Iran. Last Saturday night (Sunday morning in New Zealand) Iran launched more than 300 drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles against Israeli military targets. With the assistance of US, UK and possibly French forces, ...
Māori representation brings a perspective that encompasses not only the interests of Māori communities but also a broader, holistic approach to environmental stewardship and community well-being, principles deeply embedded in Te Ao Māori (the Māori ...
This week in Auckland, a group of young people took over the microphone at a ministerial press conference, to explain why they oppose the Fast-Track Approvals Bill. One young woman said, ‘We’re here because we love Aotearoa New Zealand. We want to raise our children in an environment that’s thriving, ...
The summer was wonderful. Evie was wonderful, too; finally a teenager, finally worthy of long, hot days. She shaved her legs for the first time and bought cut-off shorts from the op-shop that made them look long. She got a Warehouse singlet so tight on her new shape that her ...
When Thomas James was on his solo camp as part of Outward Bound, the keen outdoorsman didn’t find it too challenging, as others often do. In what might just be the perfect illustration of his character, he saw it as a great opportunity to solve a few problems. “I thought, ...
From the unstable and drippy to the hi-tech and pretty, here’s our ranking of all the tunnels you can drive through in this country. The first tunnel seems to have been built in 2200BC in Babylonia, kicking off a global phenomenon for digging holes in order to get places more ...
Lucinda Bennett on the art of being greedy but resourceful. This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. When I picture the market, it is always this time of year. Crisp air, dripping nose, counting coins with cold fingers. Sunlight pale, filtered through specks of dew still ...
Zoë Colling’s favourite piece in the ‘That’s So Last Century’ collection is a lubrication chart for a sewing machine from the ’60s. It’s about the size of a postcard, and carefully maintained. “I like it that this piece of ephemera highlights that manual and technical side of the skill involved ...
Kia Ora Gaza A passionate haka reverberated through Auckland International Airport as a medical team of three New Zealand doctors received an emotional farewell from a big crowd of supporters before flying to Turkey to join the international Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. The doctors, who left Auckland yesterday, hope to ...
With submissions closing today, Macassey-Pickard says groups around the country have been supporting a huge range of people to make their submissions. ...
Our response to the new legislation is informed by targeted conversations with practitioners working in the system and through an implementation lens. ...
The new ‘Fast-track Approvals Bill’ would give just three Ministers the power to approve or deny development projects. They would avoid the usual checks and balances that are in place to protect rivers, land, the ocean, and communities. ...
COMMENTARY:By Eugene Doyle Helen Clark, how I miss you. The former New Zealand Prime Minister — the safest pair of hands this country has had in living memory — gave a masterclass on the importance of maintaining an independent foreign policy when she spoke at an AUKUS symposium held ...
The government's released the list of organisations provided with information on how to apply - just hours before public submissions on the bill close. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milton Speer, Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney Before climate change really got going, eastern Australia’s flash floods tended to concentrate on our coastal regions, east of the Great Dividing Range. But that’s changing. Now ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Finkel, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University Sia Duff / South Australian Museum In February, the South Australian Museum “re-imagined” itself. In the face of rising costs and inadequate government funds, CEO David Gaimster, who took the reins last June, declared ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Pearce, Professor, School of Allied Heath, Human Services & Sport, La Trobe University, La Trobe University This week, Collingwood AFL player Nathan Murphy announced his retirement, brought on by his concussion history and ongoing issues. The 24-year-old’s seemingly sudden retirement, ...
The Mental Health Foundation provides support and resources for those facing the loss of their job, so it’s wrong in the very week the Government adds another 1000 jobs to its tally of cuts, that this is happening. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company Decay, terror, revulsion. These are three of the central themes of Thomas Bernhard’s rarely performed play The President. The Austrian is one of the greatest ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says threats by ministers Shane Jones and David Seymour to reform or close down the Waitangi Tribunal were “ill-considered”, as legal experts say the ministers may have breached Cabinet Manual conventions. “I think those comments are ill-considered and we expect all ministers to actually exercise good ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ye In (Jane) Hwang, Postdoctoral Research Associate at School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney Shutterstock You’d be hard pressed to find any aspect of daily life that doesn’t require some form of digital literacy. We need only to look back ten ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Newton, Professor of Exercise Medicine, Edith Cowan University Pexels/RDNE stock project You’re not in your 20s or 30s anymore and you know regular health checks are important. So you go to your GP. During the appointment they measure your waist. ...
A new poem by Evangeline Riddiford Graham. Mitochondrial Problem I. It was long drive to Kansas for the man and his dog but you have to understand he said She doesn’t fly. Which calls to mind not carsick shitting barking or whining but a dog who chooses not to as ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)Hot off the press, this debut ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Wajnryb McDonald, PhD candidate in Criminology, University of Sydney Less than 24 hours after Ashlee Good was murdered in Bondi Junction, her family released a statement requesting the media take down photographs they had reproduced of Ashlee and her family without ...
Chief executive Shaun Robinson said it has not had any government funding cut, but government-funded contracts have not kept pace with rising costs. ...
The Ministry of Health has delayed the release of its evidence brief on the safety, reversibility and mental health and wellbeing outcomes for puberty blockers. While we wait, Julia de Bres speaks to those with firsthand experience. Best practice gender-affirming healthcare is based on trans people’s self-determination and agency. The ...
Barcelona’s city streets have gone from traffic-clogged to pedestrian-friendly. How? Superblocks. Ellen Rykers explains. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week I read a great interview with renowned urbanist Janette Sadik-Khan by The Spinoff’s Wellington editor Joel MacManus: “You can reimagine streets, ...
Student groups ‘Climate Action VUW’, Schools Strike 4 Climate and VUWSA will be on the street in Wellington today, the last day for submissions on the Fast-track Approvals Bill, with a message that the fight against the Government’s ‘War on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sofia Ammassari, Research Fellow, Griffith University Since 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity has grown exponentially – and so has the formidable organisational machine of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). These two factors will be key to delivering the BJP a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon Hyndman, Associate Professor of Education (Adjunct) & Senior Manager (BCE), Charles Sturt University During COVID almost all Australian students and their families experienced online learning. But while schools have long since gone back to in-person teaching, online learning has not gone ...
Yes, they’re better for the environment. No, that’s not a good enough reason for me to use them. Once every 26 days or so, my period arrives, and if struck by an act of God, I am caught red-crotched without products. How, after 17 years of this, do I still ...
“It will cause significant harm to our environment and communities. It is completely at odds with New Zealanders’ relationship with nature and our need for a low-carbon, sustainable economic future." ...
The Chair of the National Maori Authority, Matthew Tukaki, has warned a Parliamentary Select Committee that fast-tracking legislation is a perilous practice that undermines the core tenets of democracy, transparency, and accountability. ...
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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.