Open Mike 17/01/2019

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, January 17th, 2019 - 130 comments
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130 comments on “Open Mike 17/01/2019 ”

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  1. Morrissey 1
    17 January 2019 at 8:26 am

    The Theatre of Aggravation, or, How to Drive Jeremy Kyle insane with vexation.

    This strikes me as one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. This young guy’s prank on Jeremy Kyle and his producers seems perfect in its planning and execution. It’s effective because it is simple—diabolically simple—and it puts him in a position of power over the impotently raging Kyle.

    • Sacha 1.1
      17 January 2019 at 8:39 am

      https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12190789

      This person must have you slapping your thighs – or is it only admirable when young men are antisocial?

      • Morrissey 1.1.1
        17 January 2019 at 9:11 am

        Antisocial? He’s showing up that ratbag Jeremy Kyle on his own show. What better service could anyone render to the British television-watching public?

        Those louts in Flaxmere are something else entirely. They’re aggravating the community, whereas the young man on the Jeremy Kyle farce was skilfully winding up one of the most loathsome shitheads on television. The audience realized it too, as is obvious by the general amusement in the studio.

        • Sacha 1.1.1.1
          17 January 2019 at 10:21 am

          Your understanding of what happens in the world is .. interesting.

          • Morrissey 1.1.1.1.1
            17 January 2019 at 10:35 am

            Could you develop your argument a little, Sacha?

            Passive-aggressive non-observations like that just make you look lazy.

            • Sacha 1.1.1.1.1.1
              17 January 2019 at 10:49 am

              Some of us have actual work to do – and have learned not to pointlessly wrestle pigs.

              • Morrissey …
                17 January 2019 at 12:01 pm

                Again, that gnomic, ethereal quality to your writing. What on earth do you mean?

                And if you’re so busy, what the hell are you hanging about on this site for?

        • greywarshark 1.1.1.2
          17 January 2019 at 10:32 am

          How can you manage to function on all levelsd Morrissey? If you spend your time watching a whole show devoted to playing the role of an authoritarian headmaster or parent dressing down someone and badmouthing him, you haven’t got your focus on what is important as our world disappears, and our culture of intelligence and respect for people and authentic society also disappears.

          • Morrissey 1.1.1.2.1
            17 January 2019 at 10:39 am

            Jeremy Kyle is one of the vilest, most hateful carriers of the message that the poor are lazy and drug-addled good-for-nothings. This young man reduced him to a state of near apoplexy. That’s funny on one level—and important on another.

            To occasionally turn the tables on these ideologues and make them angry is cathartic. Guy Williams did something similar to Paul Henry.

    • bwaghorn 2.1
      17 January 2019 at 10:05 am

      I’m picking labour are quiet (is that the right quiet?) To be opposition at the mo but might as well mess with the story’s at every chance.

  3. James 3
    17 January 2019 at 9:03 am

    I’m noticing that some post are still not coming thru when using an iPhone (others like open mike always work)

    In this case it’s no confidence? Post. I open it and see nothing inc the post itself.

  4. greywarshark 4
    17 January 2019 at 9:51 am

    The ‘force of nature’ tourists apparently are from Liverpool. One says he was brought up in London. But people talk about them bring Irish, but does that mean Northern Ireland actually. A different way of being Irish there. Reading Maeve Binchy it seems that many of her characters if they leave Ireland, go to England, so who knows.

    This one quote from a piece in the paper.
    Instead, John Johnson said they come from a good family and his grandfather was the “10th richest man in England”.
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12190622

    I wondered how such a low life family could afford for so many to to take an overseas trip. I wonder how they got their money. They have a feeling that we have been unfair towards them. They project an image of being so innocent and good and consider they haven’t been treated well. There is a lesson for this country; people who are too sensitive, paranoid and untruthful aren’t tourists worth having.

    • gsays 5.1
      17 January 2019 at 11:04 am

      Seems strange that you would use the same mechanism (referendum), to get out of the weeds as that which got you in there, in the first place.

      Brexit is a good example of my reservations around binding referenda.

      • Draco T Bastard 5.1.1
        17 January 2019 at 11:25 am

        It wasn’t the referendum that was the problem. It was, IMO, that the political ‘leaders’ (even the ones making noises about leaving) weren’t expecting it to return the result that it did and so didn’t have a plan in place to actually leave the EU. After all, none of the politicians actually wanted to leave the EU.

        When it did return a ‘leave’ vote they all panicked. How could the voters betray them all like that? Don’t they realise just how good it is being in the EU? And then we got the massive agitation about remaining and having another referendum.

        The politicians really don’t seem to understand that making the rich richer isn’t good economic policy.

      • greywarshark 5.1.2
        17 January 2019 at 1:28 pm

        Politics in a democracy is like the Olympics. The contest rolls around regularly and you have minor practice events in between. The referendum was one, and there needs to be a re-run, a grudge match to see if the score can be improved.

    • Sanctuary 5.2
      17 January 2019 at 11:04 am

      Why on earth should Labour support a second referendum?

      • Dennis Frank 5.2.1
        17 January 2019 at 11:37 am

        Sad to see the Greens in UK doing this. The nasty remainer meme must’ve gotten in and taken control of their wee brains.

        To answer your question, the remainers think democracy is flawed, but they’re too dishonest to say so. Since it failed to deliver the right result, it must be repeated until it does deliver the right result. Their assumption seems to be that voters were temporarily insane when they voted in the first referendum, but they have since returned to sanity. So sanity just needs another referendum to prevail.

        Since Labour wants to remain, they think, it just needs to get tough and support a second referendum. The EU overlords are nice people really, try and ignore what they actually do. And the Greens are going along with this turgid crap…

        • greywarshark 5.2.1.1
          17 January 2019 at 12:50 pm

          Cripes open a few windows into that murky room that results in the above Dennis. Have a walk in the woods along a new path.

          • Dennis Frank 5.2.1.1.1
            17 January 2019 at 1:54 pm

            Well, he asked a good question. I knew pro-Labour folk here were unlikely to produce a good answer. I felt the question deserved a worthy attempt!

            I don’t feel contaminated by trying to get my head into their groupthink. I just do it enough to detect the syndromes at play. Then I describe them in exaggerated language to break through the Labour non-comprehension barrier. My intent is to reveal the deep psychology motivating them. Since Labour folk are usually in denial of that, elucidation requires emphasis.

      • miravox 5.2.2
        17 January 2019 at 5:50 pm

        “Why on earth should Labour support a second referendum?”

        Because the first (non-binding) referendum was so full of illegal money and lies it should have been declared fraudulent, not held up as the ‘will of the people’.

        Also because they agreed to do so.

    • Adrian Thornton 5.3
      17 January 2019 at 11:10 am

      @joe90, Why would Corbyn/Labour do that? why not just let the Tories get on with their public slow motion self-immolation?

      • joe90 5.3.1
        17 January 2019 at 12:00 pm

        The will of the members.

        Labour delegates have approved a motion that would keep all options – including a fresh referendum – on the table if MPs are deadlocked over Brexit.

        It was passed by a show of hands at the party conference in Liverpool.

        The vast majority were in favour of the motion, with only a small number against.

        Leader Jeremy Corbyn – who has previously ruled out another EU referendum – has said he will respect the result of the vote.

        https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-45631792

    • SaveNZ 5.4
      17 January 2019 at 11:34 am

      I’m all for 2nd referendum there were too many dodgy things about the first one, including lies about how it was going to work out…. it seems that chaos and division and billion dollars in divorce bill as shown now, was not part of the LEAVE marketing.

      This was not an election, but a referendum, if the people of Britain still want to leave all be it, if they have changed their minds once the reality has set in, that is all good too.

      There is no pain or dishonesty, in checking twice if LEAVE is what the people want!

      • mikesh 5.4.1
        17 January 2019 at 2:26 pm

        And if that vote is to remain it will be one all. Do we then have a third referenedum. To be a sort of ‘decider’ referendum.

        • OnceWasTim 5.4.1.1
          17 January 2019 at 7:27 pm

          ” Do we then have a third referenedum. To be a sort of ‘decider’ referendum.”

          No – we leave ’em all to it and maybe let Liz and the enterage intervene. (I’m surprised she hasn’t already made her displeasure known). It’s even possible – even probable there are fierce Royal Chinese whispers going on in the background

          For me, it says a helluva lot as a sussoighty and ‘konomy that we’re still so attached to Mother and to the Land of the Free, and we still can’t figure out where to cut the apron strings.

          We should probably take advantage of the fact that we’re the pimple on the arse at end of the World and be thankful. Even on TS, I notice a shitload more interest in the things offshore than the things that are a complete fuckup within.
          Brexit. Que Sera Sera.
          instead, pontificate, worry, worry, worry.
          And then what?
          FFS! Leave the fuckers to their own bugger’s muddle and make sure we don’t allow this sort of shit to happen on our little pimple.

          • greywarshark 5.4.1.1.1
            18 January 2019 at 11:02 am

            Very colourful Once was Tim. We can turn out some pretty purple prose.
            Please don’t run down Queenie and the royal entourage. We can always do worse, and i believe that would be a sure thing if we changed to a republic here or they changed there. Thinking of Trump; thank goodness the Queen is content to be old and dignified and thoughtful and try to maintain the respect for her position, but I hope also, and with Charles, trying to ameliorate the UK downward slide under neo liberalism.

            But we do have trouble using our imaginations and cleverness to build us a better world. It is much easier to watch and listen to the shouts from the Colosseum of the World while Argentinian ants and other detractors of our stability eat away under our feet.

            That’s why i put items up from RadioNZ and yesterday from the Nelson Mail to make sure that they get a chance of being noticed. Did you see that stuff is likely to be sold? Do you think that NZs could raise a fund to buy if, being on-line it is national, and will our regional papers decline/drop away?

  6. Adrian Thornton 6
    17 January 2019 at 11:08 am

    Nice piece here from Media Lens giving a objective view on “Remembrance” and war, and how populations are manipulated into normalizing war ( as we are witnessing NZ is certainly not immune from the fetishizing of our role in the ‘great’ wars).
    It is quite a thought provoking article worth reading if you have the time.

    http://medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=890:remembrance-the-dehumanised&catid=57:alerts-2019&Itemid=252

    I especially like this 1935 quote from Smedley Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps major general, who at the time of his death was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history…
    ‘I spent thirty-three years and four months in active service as a member of our country’s most agile military force – the Marine Corps… And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.

    ‘Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City boys to collect revenues in. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras “right” for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.’

    • Dennis Frank 6.1
      17 January 2019 at 11:46 am

      And he became a true hero when he blew the whistle on the Wall St attempt to recruit him to lead a fascist coup. The best contemporary equivalent is John Perkins, which you will know if you’ve read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man

      “After publishing Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, Perkins continued with writing three other books on the topic, focusing on other aspects. A Game as Old as Empire: the Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption (2007), The Secret History of the American Empire (2007) and Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded – and What We Need to Do to Remake Them (2009).”

      • Morrissey 6.1.1
        17 January 2019 at 12:02 pm

        Excellent book. Reads like the concoction of a Hollywood script writer, but it’s apparently all true.

        • Dennis Frank 6.1.1.1
          17 January 2019 at 12:15 pm

          That’s my verdict too. I was very careful to check out the reaction from the establishment in making my assessment. If you haven’t got around to reading his other books, doing so is a good idea.

          If cost is a deterrent, try the library. I use this tool to buy online from the cheapest source: http://www.librarist.com/nz – enter the title, search, and the site will list all the buy options with dispatch cost included, cheapest at top of the list. Not always correct, I’ve noticed, so if you do use it, check that the purchase price at checkout matches your expectation. Reliable most of the time though.

          • Morrissey 6.1.1.1.1
            17 January 2019 at 12:30 pm

            Thanks for that, Dennis. Much appreciated!

          • greywarshark 6.1.1.1.2
            17 January 2019 at 1:52 pm

            I had a look at that. Usually I go straigt to Abe Books. I am unreasonable I suppose. But why should a novel when new cost $100 USA$? From a good selling women’s author.

            • Dennis Frank 6.1.1.1.2.1
              17 January 2019 at 2:01 pm

              Abe is the best deal sometimes, I buy from them, but often competitors undercut them. I usually pay from $14 to $30 in our dollars, total. A third of retail price here, on average. Most get here from USA or UK in a week or two.

              • greywarshark …
                17 January 2019 at 3:03 pm

                Okay Dennis, I have bought from overseas but the transport is v.high or so it seems to me. And depends on book, but I like to try buying from real bookseller here. One over in the east coast N>I.? We have lovely Page and Blackmore also Volume has joined. But I try to buy on Trade Me if poss. which encourages NZrs and NZ based wholesalers helping to keep lovely books going, along with the crafts involved in making them.

                I wonder what you think about this GST on low priced purchases. Will it help booksellers here? I think it will cut down on our ability to buy books overseas that are not available here. Already I have to check whether a bookseller is willing to ship to NZ. And if they had to muck about collecting and paying out GST I think Not! If the gummint wants GST it needs to get our Customs to collect it I think.

                And another thing it is hard getting certain other things here; I wanted an old-fashioned wind up alarm clock and paid $70 for a UK one and when it wouldn’t go I looked up the reviews and wondered if overseas they are just not interested in us, so far away and small. The reviews were very mixed and a bit cynical or resigned. But they were paying a lot less there. This clock I have to take back and go through the complaints bit, and try to get it mended when I thought I was buying quality and it would be okay for my lifetime. Boring story but all this choice you get in return for not having a working, local enterprise-oriented nation, it’s all phantasmagoria.

                • Exkiwiforces …
                  17 January 2019 at 3:48 pm

                  I don’t mind AbeBooks especially those hard to get book and I find them to be quite good with postage compared with likes of Amazon who charge like a wounded bull.

                  Fishpond pricing is pretty good as well for books, but when you have Page and Blackmore in Nelson with their knowledge and old fashion service why shop online? Being using them them as kid when they were separate bookshops.

                  Haven’t used Volume yet, so I don’t know much about

                  There is second hand bookshop on Hardy St on the left hand side and I think it’s about halfway down between Trafalgar and Rutherford st. As I usually found some bargains there and you can’t beat the book fair at Founders as well.

                  • Adrian Thornton …
                    17 January 2019 at 3:56 pm

                    Abebooks and Amazon are one and the same,…they are almost solely responsible for the demise and destruction of most local private bookshops….use only in emergencies is my advice…they are the enemy.

                    • Exkiwiforces …
                      17 January 2019 at 4:21 pm

                      I’ve stopped using Amazon, unfortunately AbeBooks has the various books that I need when make my 1/700 scale model ships or when I’m after a particular book that I can’t find.

                      There are 2 bookshops and 2 Secondhand bookshops in Darwin along with one model that doesn’t stock what I’m after, so its e-shopping for me atm.

                      Try to restrict my book buying from NZ and Australia shops but sometimes I have to get them the UK, Canada or the US.

                      For example I’ve been after a very rare book on the Rhodesian SAS by Barbara Cole. It was ranging from the high $500 to just 1k, but I managed to find in Dunedin from http://www.hardtofind.co.nz for about $70 all up. And I got a few more on my hit list which I might to pay though the nose for them.

                    • greywarshark …
                      17 January 2019 at 4:37 pm

                      I feel your pain Adrian. Honest.

                    • greywarshark …
                      18 January 2019 at 1:03 pm

                      Adrian
                      I have overlooked something. You have a bookshop I think. What is your shop web address? It would be good to know that.

                  • Adrian Thornton …
                    17 January 2019 at 4:37 pm

                    If you have time, troll ebay for book/model bargains, log into ebay UK (or Ebay Italy/France etc ) to see stuff that is local only shipping, and then just ask the seller to post to you before you bid, I do this with vintage racing bicycle parts, and get bits and pieces from Italy/France and the UK regularly.

                    • Exkiwiforces …
                      17 January 2019 at 4:47 pm

                      Thanks for that, I do troll eBay and Trademe on occasion. I was looking at Trademe last night for some old and rare UK/ Commonwealth Army Cap badges for my collection and found a few at the $8 mark.

                  • greywarshark …
                    18 January 2019 at 1:24 pm

                    Exkiwi
                    The second hand bookshop has gone from Hardy Street. But there is Bretts in Richmond. There is 4Antiques 4 Waimea Rd Neslon that has books though I am not sure of range. And there are books in op shops. The book fair is great if you have the stamina and if you went early on first day, and then a brief spell each morning you might be lucky to get what you hoped for or something special. I prefer buying on Trademe.

                    Am just getting one I heard on Radionz about ancient Nepalese woman who was married off at five and struggled making the best all her life. She managed to reach her goal of five good sons late in life, then long enough to get free of her husband, though she had to pay his gambling debts, and is now a shining example of triumph with a good and steady heart and work and smarts. Very inspirational.

                    Volume off Hardy Street, is run by Stella who used to be in P&B and Thomas Koed who has been here a long time, great mathematician I’ve heard. They take their books very seriously.

                    • Exkiwiforces …
                      26 January 2019 at 4:11 pm

                      I must try Volume, it was Thomas that got me on to AbeBooks in first place as I had a lot of 1st editions and 1st day covers in my library when it got destroyed in ADF removals from Melbourne to RAAF Tindal. Some of the prices to replace 1st editions are a little bit out of my league and let alone trying to replace the WW2 pamphlets from the Ministry of Food, Supply and across the 3 Forces as some were signed by very important people from the British/ Commonwealth. Had a couple of German ones as well from the Heers, DKM, Luftwaffe Flighter Pilots and some POW post cards as well that late grandmother managed to obtained from god only knows where.

                • Dennis Frank …
                  17 January 2019 at 3:54 pm

                  I get why you want to support local booksellers, to maintain a local economy. I’ve never really felt like that, tbh. I must be more pro-market than you. TradeMe, if it works for you, then okay, but I never thought of that either. I bought on Amazon years ago, regularly, until the new global system undercut them.

                  Yes re travel cost. Amazon nowadays usually has it around equal to purchase price. I’ve seen it significantly higher even! I tend to agree with eliminating gst for food produced here, in principle, to help poor folk, but I get that regulation/admin is a potential problem with that. I donate my excess garden produce to foodbank + neighbours.

                  Re wind-up alarm clocks, I search op shops, they have that kind of stuff. New Lynn still had an old clock shop when I left – maybe others around. I agree with your final point re craftsmanship decline.

                • Dennis Frank …
                  17 January 2019 at 4:11 pm

                  I wrote a lengthy response, posted it, but it failed to appear. I’ve learnt that sometimes the back arrow on the browser will return it to you, so you can re-post, but not this time. Bugger!

                  I’ll try to summarise it. I don’t really think about gst nowadays, but direct importing bypasses it anyway. I heard talk of closing that loophole but dunno if they have yet.

                  I’d try op-shops for the old wind-up alarm clock, particular if you travel to other towns & cities. New Lynn still had an old clock shop when I left – could be others around if you hunt, google or ask.

                  • Dennis Frank …
                    17 January 2019 at 4:14 pm

                    Oh, there it is above! Wasn’t there five minutes ago. Must’ve bounced off the ether, flown out the black hole, looped around the moon via the slingshot, & dropped back down into the Standard computer.

                    • te reo putake …
                      17 January 2019 at 6:33 pm

                      My bad, Dennis! There was a reasonably common word, that is also somebody’s handle, in moderation. That means whenever the word was used in a comment, it was held until manually released.

                    • Dennis Frank …
                      17 January 2019 at 8:06 pm

                      Oh, okay, no problem. Thanks for the explanation 👍

          • Molly 6.1.1.1.3
            17 January 2019 at 5:36 pm

            BetterWorldBooks is a good site as well.

            Used and new books and free shipping, it is also a certified B-Corporation with a high rating of 114/200 compared to the median of 50.9.

            • Dennis Frank 6.1.1.1.3.1
              17 January 2019 at 8:13 pm

              Yep, that’s one I’ve bought from recently. The commonest cheap source is the Book Depository, and the UK one often beats the Californian one. Sometimes the local one is cheapest (Fishpond). The cool thing about the Librarist is that you see them all listed on one page fast.

              • Molly …
                18 January 2019 at 12:57 pm

                I try to avoid Book Depository now that it has been bought by Amazon.

                I like BWB for their reuse of books, and their attempt to run a business along employee and community benefits as well as financial, so they are first choice usually.

        • Adrian Thornton 6.1.1.2
          17 January 2019 at 12:24 pm

          OK but who plays Perkins?, and more importantly who directs (director can be alive or dead for this challenge)….

          • Morrissey 6.1.1.2.1
            17 January 2019 at 12:37 pm

            Perkins: Sylvester Stallone

            CIA chief: Richard Thomas

            World Bank chief: Danny De Vito

            Various third world slobs, dictators, suckers: John Leguizamo, Jennifer Lopez, the guys from Flight of the Conchords, Dwayne The Rock Johnson

            Music: Ray Conniff

            Producer: Harvey Weinstein

            Director: Michael Winner

            • Adrian Thornton 6.1.1.2.1.1
              17 January 2019 at 12:53 pm

              Actually Stallone has had a few pretty good roles, he was great in Cop Land (1997) so I can go along with that, or Noah George Taylor if we can’t get Stallone.

              CIA Director – John Goodman

              World Bank Chief – Will Smith

              Director – Sam Peckinpah, got have some slow motion ultra violence in this one.

              Music – Anthony Braxton

              • Morrissey …
                17 January 2019 at 1:32 pm

                I loved Stallone in Cliffhanger, but nothing else.

                I wouldn’t hire Will Smith in a hundred years. I have zero respect for him.

                • Adrian Thornton …
                  17 January 2019 at 3:38 pm

                  They are actors, respecting them has nothing to do with it.
                  Will Smith is a pretty solid actor given the right role (I am Legend comes to mind) I can see him as the super smooth world bank chief that for some reason you can’t help but like even though you know he is probably the most morally bankrupt person in the movie.

                  “I loved Stallone in Cliffhanger, but nothing else.” what about the original Rambo? that my friend is a modern classic IMO.

                  • Morrissey …
                    17 January 2019 at 4:01 pm

                    Rambo 2, where he goes to Vietnam, is also brilliant. I found it extremely funny, but I’m not sure if it was supposed to be. Two favorite scenes for me:

                    1.) Rambo finally shows a non-psychopathic side to his character and admits he loves his beautiful Vietnamese assistant. At the moment he reveals his love for her, she stands up—unwisely it turns out, because she is immediately mown down by Communist machine-gun fire, and dies in her lover’s blood-soaked arms. Not a good career move by the Commies….

                    2.) The Vietnamese Commies, all unaware that they are about to die violently, walk past a wall of mud, in which we gradually discern a pair of bulging eyes; it’s Rambo!

                    As for Will Smith: he is a shallow poseur, as shown in this shameful 2012 press conference in the intellectual dead zone and moral wasteland that is Berlin. He blathers to the slack-jawed celebrity reporters: “I would absolutely vote, ahhhh, for Obama. Ummmmm.”

                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoYmY4luQoE

                    • Adrian Thornton …
                      17 January 2019 at 4:24 pm

                      If you like Rambo 2 for laughs then just check out this amazing scene from Rambo 3…I wonder if this gets rerun in the US much these days?

                      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vd7q7Ip234&t=2s

                      BTW, that is exactly the reason why Smith would be so good as the World Bank guy in our movie.

                    • Morrissey …
                      17 January 2019 at 4:28 pm

                      That incoherent delivery, full of “uh” and “aaaaahhh”, as well as the physical resemblance, makes him a pretty good doppelganger of the Bomber. He’s a shoo-in for the movie Hope and Change directed by Spike Lee.

            • greywarshark 6.1.1.2.1.2
              17 January 2019 at 2:14 pm

              Music
              Ray Conniff. You can do better than that. I can’t at the moment but I’ll work on it. So Anthony Braxton?

              What about hits from the past. –
              Fleetwood Mac Never Going Back Again
              David Brubeck Unsquare Dance and Take 5
              Blossom Dearie Bernie my Attorney
              Teddy Bears Picnic by Henry Hall (good atmospherics tongue in cheek)
              Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall Ink Spots
              You always hurt the one you love Mills Brothers
              “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” – Bing Crosby & The Andrews Sisters
              The Boxer Simon and Garfunkel

              • Adrian Thornton …
                17 January 2019 at 3:50 pm

                @ greywarshark.
                Braxton…absolutely, I’m thinking this movie is just a little on the edge, at times slightly weird, a tight well told story of course, but briefly at times the edges of reality are undefined etc…here is the soundtrack to when our ‘economic hitman’ is flying into some poor South American Country and we as an audience already know he going to fuck them up….

                Anthony Braxton Quartet, Montreux 1975

              • Morrissey …
                17 January 2019 at 4:13 pm

                Yes, Shark, I like all your choices. Ray Conniff, by the way, was at the heart of a storm at the White House in January 1972. Or at least one of his singers was….

                • greywarshark …
                  17 January 2019 at 4:34 pm

                  Well fancy that. Ray Conniff involved in that. Didn’t expect that.

                • Adrian Thornton …
                  17 January 2019 at 4:48 pm

                  That is the coolest thing I have seen in a long while…”and bless Daniel Ellsberg”..a one and a one and a one two three.. hit it..and on with the show, they hardly missed a beat, real pro’s!

                  • Morrissey …
                    17 January 2019 at 5:17 pm

                    Nowadays, they’d say “And bless Julian Assange.”

                    (Ellsberg, of course, is a staunch champion of Assange.)

      • Adrian Thornton 6.1.2
        17 January 2019 at 12:21 pm

        I haven’t read Perkins books, but I did listen to a number of his interviews at the time, it is one of those things that don’t really surprise you when you hear them…but you feel that they should.

        https://www.democracynow.org/2004/11/9/confessions_of_an_economic_hit_man

        Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions

        • Dennis Frank 6.1.2.1
          17 January 2019 at 12:43 pm

          Public/private partnership, used as a model for conducting foreign policy, to enable covert US imperialism to succeed as a strategy.

          “The first real economic hit man was back in the early 1950’s, Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy, who overthrew of government of Iran, a democratically elected government, Mossadegh’s government who was Time magazine person of the year; and he was so successful at doing this without any bloodshed — well, there was a little bloodshed, but no military intervention, just spending millions of dollars and replaced Mossadegh with the Shah of Iran. At that point, we understood that this idea of economic hit man was an extremely good one. We didn’t have to worry about the threat of war with Russia when we did it this way.”

          “So, at that point, the decision was made to use organizations like the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. to recruit potential economic hit men like me and then send us to work for private consulting companies, engineering firms, construction companies, so that if we were caught, there would be no connection with the government.”

          The method: “Well, the company I worked for was a company named Chas. T. Main in Boston, Massachusetts. We were about 2,000 employees, and I became its chief economist. I ended up having fifty people working for me. But my real job was deal-making. It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay.”

          “One of the conditions of the loan — let’s say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador — and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure — a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, “Look, you’re not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil.” And today we’re going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt.”

    • mpledger 7.1
      17 January 2019 at 11:34 pm

      It could be the other way around – having different brain structures makes certain teens more likely to try cannabis.

      It seems unlikely that a “smoking dope just once” would make such fundamental and measurable changes to brain structure.

  8. greywarshark 8
    17 January 2019 at 11:51 am

    News seen in our paper in Nelson:
    A long-term social centre Tahunanui Community Centre, has lost its grants and has been trying to find alternative finance and has got to the point of insolvency or liquidation. This is an example of how centres and groups which are important to being there for parents and community are just being left dangling by an irresponsible and uncaring government.
    Urgent meetings seem to be finding a way to prevent its loss.

    Another letter from a long-term right-wing tub-thumper of Nelson that linked the car-chasing and deaths so frequent to Labour banning corporal punishment in schools etc. Obviously the school system was very adequate in his day, he learned everything then so well that he has never had to learn anything since.

    Opinion piece on Brexit referring to a mock-up of likely future problems with transport at end of March if practical measures aren’t agreed about customs checkswhere experts say ‘every extra two minutes delay at customs would mean another 15 kms of trucks backed up on the roads leading to the cross-Channel terminals. There is mention of a 10,000 truck gridlock possibility. So they paid trucies to drive to empty land, and they drove in a convoy of 89 in convoy as a small example of how it would look on an empty road. There is talk of chaos and charter planes being needed ‘to bring scarce medicines in – supermarket shelves bare as UK imports 30% foof from EU. This writer considers that she is running ‘a game of chicken’.
    (Author Gwynne Dyer has written book: Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy (and Work).

    The mayor of Gdansk, Poland died after an attack while on the podium at a fundraiser event for Poland’s major charity. A convicted criminal stabbed him in his belly, waved the knife triumphantly, and used the microphone to address the audience.

    Antarctic ice loss increasing beyond modelling. The ice flow should be balanced by more snowfall but it seems that is not the case. Predictions are that the sea level will rise by one metre by 2100, they have gone up 18cm since 1900.
    The Antarctic lost 36 billion tonnes of melting ice to the ocean each year from 1979 to 1989. That figure rose to 228 billion tonnes lost PER YEAR beginning in 2009…National Academy of Sciences.
    I can’t understand how their figures work as, “(It takes about 326 billion tonnes of ice to produce one millimetre of global sea-level rise.)”

    KFC and Pizza Hut workers weren’t paid for basic wages for Christmas work. Some people had to sell items to enable them to meet expenses. There was an attempt to pay workers early apparently by Restaurant Brands pay system, but that fell down because of some glitch at Westpac. About 3,000 workers were affected and the difficulties extended to three weeks.

    Stuff Ltd is about to be sold by Channel Nine Entertainment which acquired it in
    it’s December Fairfiax Media buy. A broad group of companies are interested in Stuff, Nzs biggest digital platform. Their Neighbourly platform is growing and important. Stuff employs about 1,000 staff.

    Wilding conifers have been sprayed and died in Castle Hill Basin west of Christchurch. The Wilding Conifer Management Strategy 2015-2030 has eradicated over half a million hectares of wildings. The programme manager Shermon Smith is working to prevent the spread of these trees which grow in the wrong place, and out-compete native plants and wildlife, reduce precious water resources, smother valuable grazing land and harbour pests. They change the unique character of iconic natural landscapes.
    (I wonder if this is 20th century thinking and needs a thorough and fast rethink and a reneg of this project time.)

    Oakland Milk supplying milk to local Nelsonians, and supply to about 100 cafes and restaurants across the region, one of two working dairy farms in Nelson city. They specialise in milking cows with the A2A2 gene, that has a different beta protein
    discovered in the 1990s. A1 has a particular amino acid that A2 does not have.
    The milk is pasteurised but not homogenised. It is regarded as being more digestible, and also it has less lactose than ordinary milk which can have permeate which is a natural milk product, containing lactose added to it.

    • Cinny 8.1
      17 January 2019 at 12:21 pm

      Grey, this bit…. “Another letter from a long-term right-wing tub-thumper”. In the nelson mail? Remind me of the first name please. I only read the Nelson Mail online these days.

      If it’s who I’m thinking of, he spends near on ALL of his time writing letters and complaining, especially to the council(s) and has been doing so for decades.

      For every letter to the editor the paper publishes from him, there’s probably fifty more that they don’t.

      And speaking of cows, the Hare Krishna’s up the Mot Valley have been letting theirs crap in the river. Between two popular swimming holes.

      Not cool, rang the TDC about it.

      On the funny side, they were taking their tractor down to the river to pump and transport water to use. Gathering the water down stream from where their cows were soiling the river.

      Cheers for the above info, that’s really interesting, fingers in many pies.

      • mac1 8.1.1
        17 January 2019 at 1:47 pm

        I have heard the story, Cinny, haven’t verified it, that the way the Thames was returned to at least a state where fish could survive was that the Council ordered that users of river water had to have their intake downstream of their outflow. In other words, they got back what they put in………. like the Hare Krishnas of your story.

      • greywarshark 8.1.2
        17 January 2019 at 2:35 pm

        I think you’re onto it Cinny – Jim C.

        I have just started getting the paper, they are offering good sub. Now I find that the paper is up for sale and probably they are building good numbers of plugged in readers to give the company a good base for a good price. Pity we can’t buy it in NZ. We can get emotional about vanishing coastlines but about getting the facts man, and dedicated lovely journalists thinking deeply and widely and knowing how to spell and what to spell, well…

        I thought I would prove myself wrong – have been thinking the media down and so I would I decided, put up brief resumes of important matters. Bad that the Mayor of Gdansk got knifed. That might have something to do with the coal producing worker stir connected to Solidarity IIRC which started off in Gdansk.
        Another sign of worrying outpourings of anger at any one who tries to lead to a viable future.

        And there was one bit for those who like biographies of outstanding people, which often come out in obituaries. The guy who was working with Jorn Utzon, a Danish architect, designer of the Sydney Opera House, and carried on after he gave up, to the end and built that marvellous soaring shape along with his team for sure, and had to do ground-breaking thinking, calculations, solutions etc to bring it to fruition. He, Sir Jack Zunz died at 94 years in December. That was an Engineer!

        And he was quoted as saying that he learned from his boss Ove Arup the ‘”overarching lesson” in life, “that the only thing which matters in life are people – people, people, people”.’ He tangata – it sounds very like the Maori expression doesn’t it.

        • Cinny 8.1.2.1
          18 January 2019 at 10:10 am

          ROFL !!!! Yes that’s the one Grey. Massive time waster for council staff that old boy is, cup half empty type of bloke.

          The reason I stopped buying the paper is the smaller size. The larger size worked well for our household, useful for so many things, from making clothing patterns to wrapping up rubbish.

          I do miss reading the announcements, letters to the editor and the classifieds etc.

          That’s a wonderful quote, how cool the similarities to ‘He tangata’.

          We’ve a quote around here…. ‘kids come first… unless mum is losing her mind’ 🙂

          • greywarshark 8.1.2.1.1
            18 January 2019 at 10:45 am

            Well Cinny you make me think of a common spelling mistake I note around the blogs I read, and that is putting ‘loose’ for ‘lose’. So perhaps you could work that in reverse and it would read then ‘…unless mum is loosing her mind’! There is just so much around that screws one up mentally and physically – doesn’t it sound good to be loosing your mind – perhaps on a small regular daily basis?

            • Cinny 8.1.2.1.1.1
              18 January 2019 at 11:00 am

              School holidays, mind loss is to be expected ROFL.

              A loose mind does sound like fun lmao.

              TBH the kids have been pretty good, the weather is fantastic, the visitors who’ve stayed were amazing and being 15mins away from beaches and rivers is an absolute blessing.

              May your summer be filled with laughter and loose minds too Grey 🙂

    • Macro 9.1
      17 January 2019 at 5:10 pm

      Manafort lied through his teeth over and over again – otherwise, Mueller wouldn’t need 157 pages to detail those lies.

      There is a remarkable array of documents: emails, text messages, bank records, money transfer receipts, promissory notes, etc.

      Mueller has a mountain of evidence against Manafort – and I’ll bet against the rest of the tRump gang.

  10. Sabine 10
    17 January 2019 at 2:55 pm

    Anyone hear able to explain this in plain english?

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/01/15/polar-vortex-has-fractured-eastern-us-faces-punishing-stretch-winter-weather-just-underway/?utm_term=.0cdee9f16637&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1

    “The swirling winds tens of thousands of feet high in the sky above the Arctic — the dreaded polar vortex — broke apart into three parts to ring in 2019.”

    • McFlock 10.1
      17 January 2019 at 3:19 pm

      It’s nowhere near my area of knowledge, but in the finest tradition of the internet I’ll give it a go 🙂

      Firstly, I think of it like a scaled up tornado, a spinning clumn of air. It’s spinning because the earth rotates – like a wheel at the end of an axle.
      That sort of acts like an air curtain in a store, it contains cold polar air at the pole, but then it loses stability and fragments. So the cold air column slowly collapses and flows towards the equator in the traditional fashion.

      The end result is that until it fragments, the winter is more mild in the middle latitudes than if it just had the regular flow, but then the vortex breaks apart and you get blizzards and suchlike at the lower latitudes as a full winter’s worth of cold air flows towards the equator.

      • Sabine 10.1.1
        17 January 2019 at 3:56 pm

        so the fact that it split in three is not important? And it will have no consequence for us here ?

        cold winters, i remember them, – 33degrees was the best i experienced. Too boot in skirts, as we were required to wear them at work, us women folk. My windows froze over indoors. 1985/1986. Gosh it was cold.

        • McFlock 10.1.1.1
          17 January 2019 at 4:14 pm

          Nothing direct here from the northern one, but we have one at the south pole too.

          I suspect it’s like hurricane season – AGW doesn’t invent new events, just makes the more extreme events more common and more extreme. ISTR Descartes’ Meditations were written during a winter so cold he actually made a small nook for himself inside an oven.

          Then there was the Emmerich disaster movie that was based around the Gulf Stream stopping, causing the total and rapid collapse of the polar vortex to instantaneously freeze the 48 states (oh, and apparently Europe became an iceblock, too). Day After Tomorrow I think it was?

          So year, more frequent and worse cold snaps are part and parcel of it, like hurricanes, Canterbury tornados, and wildfires.

          • Sabine 10.1.1.1.1
            17 January 2019 at 9:33 pm

            the old fireplace in france are walk in worthy, my friend who lives in a very old house/village has one of these fireplaces. Amazing things.

    • Macro 10.2
      17 January 2019 at 4:54 pm

      What McFlock says – but to add a bit more.
      The Arctic polar vortex has been becoming extremely unstable over the past decade. These are the super winds at the top of the troposphere that circle the earth. They are the winds the airliners use to hasten their flight from Perth to Auckland for instance. It takes 71/2 hours to fly from Auckland to Perth but it can be as short as 5 1/2 to 6 hours on the way back with a 200mph wind behind.
      The reason the polar vortexes have been wavering more than normal is because of AGW. As the atmosphere warms – particularly over the polar regions* the gradient at the top of the atmosphere, where these winds are, has become less steep. So the winds have been wandering far more widely than they used to. Their normal path was a loosely sinusoidal wave around the arctic circle. However over recent years that path has become much less defined and it has has quite considerable climatic consequences as a result – causing blocking events where High or low pressure systems become stuck in one area resulting in massive heat waves – the European heat wave of 2004 is thought to be one – or long periods of incessant rain and cold.

      The Antarctic Polar Vortex has also shown some signs of disruption. Prof James Renwick at VUW has done some study on this, but I’m not sure of his most recent findings. The reason why the South polar vortex has been less disrupted is probably due to the fact that because Antarctica is such a massive heat sink, the atmosphere above the South Polar regions has been warming less rapidly than that of the North, and therefore the gradient at the top of the troposphere in the Southern hemisphere has been less severely affected by AGW.

      *The Arctic in particular has warmed far more rapidly than the Antarctic

  11. joe90 11
    17 January 2019 at 4:45 pm

    Something to ruin the day.

    https://twitter.com/ClimateHuman/status/1084906996967460864

    The year 2018 was not an easy one for planet Earth.

    Sure, wind and solar energy kept getting cheaper, and an electric car became America’s best-selling luxury vehicle. But the most important metric of climatic health—the amount of heat-trapping gas entering the atmosphere—got suddenly and shockingly worse.

    In the United States, carbon emissions leapt back up, making their largest year-over-year increase since the end of the Great Recession. This matched the trend across the globe. According to two major studies, greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide shot up in 2018—accelerating like a “speeding freight train,” as one scientist put it.

    […]

    When climate scientists want to tell a story about the future of the planet, they use a set of four standard scenarios called “representative concentration pathways,” or RCPs. RCPs are ubiquitous in climate science, appearing in virtually any study that uses climate models to investigate the 21st century. They’ve popped up in research about subjects as disparate as southwestern mega-droughts, future immigration flows to Europe, and poor nighttime sleep quality.

    Each RCP is assigned a number that describes how the climate will fare in the year 2100. Generally, a higher RCP number describes a scarier fate: It means that humanity emitted more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere during the 21st century, further warming the planet and acidifying the ocean. The best-case scenario is called RCP 2.6. The worst case is RCP 8.5.

    “God help us if 8.5 turns out to be the right scenario,” Jackson told me. Under RCP 8.5, the world’s average temperature would rise by 4.9 degrees Celsius, or nearly 9 degrees Fahrenheit. “That’s an inconceivable increase for global temperatures—especially when we think about them being global average temperatures,” he said. “Temperatures will be even higher in the northern latitudes, and higher over land than over the ocean.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/rcp-85-the-climate-change-disaster-scenario/579700/?

    • greywarshark 11.1
      17 January 2019 at 5:13 pm

      Thanks for that joe90. I hate it but we have to look at it and pass the word on to others who have trouble taking their blinkers off.

      We are all in this together but just when we need really good government thinking and consulting then going forward, we have allowed and enabled this flimsy edifice to sell itself on a gloss now, pay later basis. It allows faulty structures to be built on the same paradigm as the minds that conceive them. We have to make up for our foolishness ourselves, those of us who still try to think and trade honestly and not in derivatives of chicanery.

      What should we do about the above chart and its fierce message. The trouble is that its not only the dark parts that are shocking, the yellow is the same except for a shorter period of days per year.

      Practically the whole of Australia will be impossible, and that means that we could have them wanting to settle here and the rowdy ones we couldn’t send home. The Pacific Island people would be looking for us very soon to do more than talk. The powers of USA, Europe, Russia and China will be more than now.

      • Jenny - How to get there? 11.1.1
        17 January 2019 at 6:55 pm

        Practically the whole of Australia will be impossible, and that means that we could have them wanting to settle here and the rowdy ones we couldn’t send home. The Pacific Island people would be looking for us very soon to do more than talk…..

        So when can we expect the Australian boat people to start arriving?

        Should they be treated in the same brutal way that Australia treats those seeking sanctury in their country?

        I think that instead of allowing free entry for Australians*, we should put punitive immigration restrictions on Australians wanting to enter the country, at least on par with the ones we put on Pacific Islanders. Until Australians weigh in on their government to stop opening new coal mines.

        Merciless, cruel, ruthless?

        Maybe.

        But it is nothing to the cruel indifference Australians are showing towards Pacific Island Nations.

        “Pacific islands call for global ban on new coal mines”

        “Australia just approved one of the biggest coal mines in the world”

        *(except Aborigines)

        • greywarshark 11.1.1.1
          17 January 2019 at 7:30 pm

          Jenny How
          I think you have made my point well. I don’t know what to do about the Aussies. There are more of them than us and they have a fairly wrong-ended telescope view of the world. Whether we can strike a cultural relationship with them below their government’s noxious level I don’t know.

          I feel that thinking citizens need to form themselves into small, inter-connected groups that seek to find practical ways to interact and take NZ forward. Perhaps some would support a particular scientist who is dealing with one aspect, and melding the work within a network to cover all the needs. We need to nurture the country and we people as we do tasks that we envisage are the best way to prepare for the future. We also need to maintain the civility between citizens while enabling trust with some wariness, allowing honesty of expression that is not uncontrolled, and introduce our young ones to the benefit of a community. The good maraes do this, and we can copy Maori as is appropriate, and adopt practices that are in parallel with them, and work with them for a bi-partisan network where possible. Not forgetting other cultural groups needs. We can then get together and manage around the government groups who stride round or totter on high heels like Theresa May, working at their job to various levels of success, but not able to succeed as required because of structural problems, and proving every day they are not fit for purpose.

          At present Labour is doing its best but have lost precious years while National has been indulging their self-importance and capital accretion. Without a majority of concerned citizens aware of what was needed to have a decent country for all, we have been at the whim of the comfortably off who have voted back the people who have enabled their life style. And devil take the hindmost.

          That is really the same for the majority of Australians. So groups have to form and begin Citizens Friendship Groups and meet up with similar in Australia, who talk about common problems, keep in touch and exchange ideas; like a working model of this blog when it is operating well.

          • Jenny - How to get there? 11.1.1.1.1
            17 January 2019 at 10:28 pm

            Everyone getting together to sing Kumbayya is a fine ideal

            Meanwhile….

            In the real world….

            More than 100 Kiwis in hunger strike at Australian detention centres

            “Our side, we go for the head wound. Your side, you have pillow fights.” Steve Bannon

            “That so f–ked us up to hear him say that . . . watching him smirk as he said it. As soon as he left, we decided to watch the film . . . and put [it through] the pillow fight filter.” Michael Moore

            ‘Fahrenheit 11/9’

            “{I don’t know what to do about the Aussies. There are more of them than us…..” greywarshark

            This is not a numbers game Gray, it is a question of leadership, or more exactly a lack of leadership.

            We are not helpless, our leaders could stand with the Kiwi Prisoners in detention without trial. We could stand with the Pacific nations calling for Australia to cancel the Adani coal mine development,

            We could apply the same sanctions and restrictions on Australians coming to this country that we apply to Pacific Islanders, and indeed that Australians are increasingly applying to us.

            God knows, we have more than enough grounds.

            We need to tell Australia to back off or else.

            That if you don’t change your ways, the day will come when the cruelty that you are inflicting on others will come back to haunt you.

            Personally I am sick of playing pillow fights and continually losing.

            We need to learn from the Right and fight to win.

            • greywarshark 11.1.1.1.1.1
              18 January 2019 at 1:51 pm

              Jenny How
              Jeez everyone getting together singing Kumbaya – what a bloody put-down. Starting a cross nation friendship league would actually be doing something, forging relationships with people who do stuff, and try to think along positive action lines. Writing sad little comments to a blog isn’t going to amount to anything in the real world unless action of value follows.

              I suggest you don’t take me to task for suggesting something. You are suggesting standing with the Pacific nations. What are you doing about that yourself. Who have you approached to hold a meeting? Are you up to emulating Maire Leadbetter who stood for Timor Leste and kept it up for years – they have now got improvements but still have troubles.
              Words don’t solve problems, they just explain them. Ideas form and can help but they must be implemented. Telling Australia to back off or else.
              You sound like those brave ladies at the start of WW1 who went round issuing white feathers to any tall young lad they came upon.

              Start with starting a petition eh! You do it, yourself.
              And Maire:
              https://thespinoff.co.nz/author/marie-leadbetter/
              Maire has seen her file from the Security Intelligence Service.
              http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/1385256/Spied-on-since-she-was-10

              Her file, like most of the others released, contains material from private meetings.
              “I find that the hardest to accept,” Leadbeater said. “That small groups of people gathering together in private homes and offices should have someone planted in the meetings.

              “It’s pretty shocking really. It’s potentially very bad for democracy because it makes people anxious about involving themselves in free discussion of ideas and has a big impact on trust if you have to think to yourself `one of us could be a source’.”

              She was surprised to find her file contains a list of every member of the Palestine Human Rights Committee.
              Her file contained references to the state of her parents’ marriage, which the SIS thought would be strained by Elsie’s departure from the party.
              “It’s all wrong anyway,” Leadbeater said. “It’s unpleasant, inaccurate speculation about highly personal family issues.”

    • Andre 11.2
      17 January 2019 at 6:38 pm

      Now take a squiz at a map of where the highest population growth is happening.

      https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/922w41/a_map_i_made_of_world_subdivisions_by_population/

      It’s gonna be ugly when map B runs smack into map A.

      edit: despite the title, no I didn’t make this map, I pilfered it from da webz.

      • greywarshark 11.2.1
        17 January 2019 at 7:33 pm

        It’s already ugly in many parts of Africa, and if they were able to live in relative peace and quiet they would be likely to have a big fertility drop. Then places which have lost their traditional culture as in Saudi Arabia would probably be up in the high birth rates.

  12. joe90 12
    17 January 2019 at 5:18 pm

    Where Rudy gets out in front of the news and admits that it was his client’s campaign that colluded with a foreign power.

    https://twitter.com/existentialfish/status/1085722578726006784

  13. Jenny - How to get there? 13
    17 January 2019 at 5:44 pm

    Watch this date

    January 29, 2018

    Will it become a day marked in infamy?

    Is this the date that Donald Trump unilaterally ends the government shutdown by declaring a National State Of Emergency, and lays blame on the Democrats for forcing him to it?

    Is this the day that Donald Trump suspends the Constitution and begins to rule the US by fiat?

    Is the writing on the wall for the Democrats?

    Is this the day that the President announces that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat controlled Congress are no longer politically relevant?

    Nancy Pelosi begs Donald Trump to call off his State Of The Nation Speech.

    Pelosi Asks Trump to Delay State of the Union Address

    House speaker cites shutdown security concerns, suggests he could also submit speech in writing….

    Yeah, like that’s gonna happen

    • Sabine 13.1
      17 January 2019 at 9:51 pm

      I have read her letter, and i would not say its ‘begging’. she simply said not gonna happen cause government is closed asn we don’t have the security (not being paid either these guys) to assure your safety yada yada yada.
      Please write a letter as it used to be done, and feel free to have your address from the white house, where you have security.
      She did say tho that that could change by him simply opening the government. I think she just very subtly told him that they house ain’t his, and he and his little speech writer stephen miller ain’t gonna come piss on the floor.

      And donald trump already runs and rules the us as his personal little fiefdom. he has not staffed what about half of his government? what do you think is happening? you want to destroy government administration in the us you shut the government.
      what do you think is gonna happen? how long are the tsa screeners gonna work for free before they go waitressing again in order to pay rent? ice is not gonna get paid either, neither are the air controllers, the admin staff that hands out your lisences and approves your refunds for loans, etc etc etc. As grover northquist once said, He would want to see government so small you can drown it in a tub, and bannon the ugly stated that he would like to undo government – a bit like lenin. But hey its all good, these people should have known better then to try and get a job with the government, don’t they know that private business is best? Right, some 800.000 people directly, about a million or so direct contractors, and all the other businesses that depend on these guy working. just tough luck, right? Cause the shyster is gonna make America great again, he is gonna stop all the wars, will drain the swamp, and yippy yai yeah.

      for what its worth the dems know that they can’t do much other then maybe try to not just watch the country disintegrate.
      and yes i understand there are many here who literally give not a flying fuck about the average american – and please keep in mind that the orange turd did not win the popular vote – and that they can just simply die in a ditch cause empire and stuff. never mind the average us american never had any say in the doings of the empire, no more then we had in nz during the days of key and the likes like him.

      the question tho that the cheerleader of total destruction of governments that we don’t like should ask themselves, how would our country look like if someone like the orange turd would simply undo everything. And how many here would vote for total destruction?

      • Jenny - How to get there? 13.1.1
        17 January 2019 at 10:49 pm

        I have also read Pelosi’s letter. Telling Trump that he can’t give his State Of The Nation Address during the Shut Down, quibbling that because of the Shut Down there is not enough security available, is almost inviting Trump to declare a National Emergency, so that he can give his State Of The Union Address.

        Under a State Of National Emergency, Donald Trump can end the Shut Down on his terms and then requisition all the security and more that he needs. I hope the cameras are on Palosi’s face when that happens.

        • Sabine 13.1.1.1
          17 January 2019 at 11:10 pm

          Nope, telling him he is not invited to the floor of of the house is the privilege of the speaker of the House. She is the speaker of the House. Trump also does not have the privilege to go on the floor of the senate without being invited by Mitch McConnel. This is the privilege of the Speaker of the Senate.

          secondly, as she said, it used to be done in writing, he can do that. Its fully within the rules. The hourlong snore fest is a rather newish thing since the seventies i think.

          thirdly, security is an issue. NON essential staff and such.

          As for declaring a national emergency? The shitstain can declare a state of emergency any time he is on the shitter tweeting.
          It would still go to Congress, sign of there, or not, then go to the senate where……the republican majority would have to vote on it. That could be very interesting. At some stage even these guys will ask themselves what their chances of survival and shelf life are in the United states of Trump. I would venture a guess……unless they kiss his arse with abandon and use tongue, they are dead in the water. So they might not actually want to go there and if only for reasons of self preservation.

          He can do what he want, he can scream national emergency from the top of all the buildings and without congress and senate nothing would be done. Three equal parts of government.

          as per here

          United States
          Further information: Senate Report 93-549, Insurrection Act, and National Emergencies Act
          The Constitution explicitly provides some emergency powers:

          Congress may authorize the government to call forth the militia to execute the laws, suppress an insurrection or repel an invasion.
          Congress may authorize the government to suspend consideration of writs of habeas corpus “when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”
          Felony charges may be brought without presentment or grand jury indictment in cases arising “in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger.”
          A state government may engage in war without Congress’s approval if “actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”

          as for the last point, it will be very intersting to hear the government attorneys argue that ‘we are invaded by barefeet toddlers and their mothers, non bearing arms and such, so we need to shut down the government for good, and declare the shyster king.

          And then maybe some want to really think about the Shyster King and his red button and his arse kissing underlings. Cause, really it seems no one does.

          • Jenny - How to get there? 13.1.1.1.1
            18 January 2019 at 7:02 am

            You are wrong.

            Trump can and will (most probably) call a State of National Emergency to end the government shut down. Then he can walk right onto the floor of the senate without Pelosi’s approval or invite, and give his State Of The Union Address.

            All Pelosi is doing is helping Trump paint the Democrats as needlessly obstructionist.

  15. Jenny - How to get there? 15
    17 January 2019 at 8:04 pm

    In his build up to declaring a State of National Emergency and slating it back to the Democrats, Trump uses a big word.

    His supporters flock to Google

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/news-trend-watch/trump-alleges-democratic-intransigence-20190110

    Trending: ‘intransigence,’ ‘intransigent’
    Lookups spiked 4,800% on January 10, 2019
    Why are people looking up the words intransigence and intransigent?
    Intransigent and its stubborn younger sibling intransigence both were among our top lookups on January 10, 2019, after President Trump announced that he was cancelling his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, due to what he alleged was the embodiment of these two words by Democrats in Congress.

    Donald J. Trump
    ✔
    @realDonaldTrump
    Because of the Democrats intransigence on Border Security and the great importance of Safety for our Nation, I am respectfully cancelling my very important trip to Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. My warmest regards and apologies to the @WEF!

    56.5K people are talking about this

  16. CHCOff 16
    17 January 2019 at 11:06 pm

    Don’t agree with these strikes.

    If your Union’s woth it’s salt, it puts these issues as part of the conversation at election times.

    But has been silence for National’s 3 terms, now coming out of the woodwork. Anarchist neo-conservative rorting money.

    • Jenny - How to get there? 16.1
      18 January 2019 at 6:56 am

      Voting once every three years is not the be all, and end all, of democracy.

      Chcoff, if your argument was valid then we wouldn’t need unions at all.

      We wouldn’t need the right to protest, (or strike).

      Your argument is actually an extreme anti-democratic and Right Wing meme.

      • CHCOff 16.1.1
        18 January 2019 at 12:57 pm

        ‘Chcoff, if your argument was valid then we wouldn’t need unions at all.’

        That doesn’t make sense.

        No, the point being made was & remains one of the practicality to a form of democratic lobbying’s effectiveness & NOT misdirection.

        I have respect for Unions, in that they are a watered down echo of once were very effective societal institutions of demand & supply.

  17. Eco Maori 17
    18 January 2019 at 10:49 am

    The sea is part of our fabric of life and yet we treat tangaroa and wai water like a toilet pouring millions of tons of waste into the sea and riversevery day that is wrong.
    People overfish the seas and awa rivers cause fish stocks to collapse.
    Water creates life it has many fundamental uses 1life 2power generation 3farming 4industrial you get my point. Would be stuffed without WATER and the thing we are destroying our life source for MONEY we can servive with out money.
    We need to preserve all forms of water so that all our grandchildren have a future that is not going to have a big shortage of our life essence water . The capitlist men would love to have a situation like that they would literally charge people a arm and a leg for water and that is not OK. How do I know this well it has been uncovered in Amercia that the DRUG COMPANYS have been paying doctors to push sell there additive synthetic drug to the public all in the name of money killing thousands of people who they have there TRUST and wellbeing WTF thats CAPITALISM for you we must change this family destroying way that is what is happening all around the world
    ‘Stop treating seas as a sewer,’ MPs urge in bid for protection treaty
    Paris agreem ent for the sea recommended as rates of plastic pollution to skyrocket
    A new global agreement to protect the seas should be a priority for the government to stop our seas becoming a “sewer”, according to a cross-party group of MPs.
    Plastic pollution is set to treble in the next decade, the environmental audit committee warned, while overfishing is denuding vital marine habitats of fish, and climate change is causing harmful warming of the oceans as well as deoxygenation and acidification.
    The effects of plastic pollution are particularly poorly understood, the committee found in its report, published on Thursday. It found “a lack of data on the serious long-term harm and health implications of plastic particles entering the food chain” and accused the government of treating the oceans as “out of sight, out of mind”. One way of tackling the problem would be through a “Paris agreement for the sea”, the MPs recommended. Governments are still working on a possible new ocean protection treaty, under the UN. The MPs also called for the government to bring forward the target date of phasing out avoidable plastic waste from 2042, and urged greater action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

    Almost all world’s oceans damaged by human impact, study finds
    Read more

    Labour MP Mary Creagh, chair of the committee, said: “We have to stop treating our seas as a sewer. Plastic, chemicals and sewage are choking our oceans, polluting our water and harming every ocean species from plankton to polar bears. Supporting Indonesia and Malaysia to reduce plastic while simultaneously exporting our contaminated plastics to them shows the lack of a joined-up approach at the heart of the government’s strategy.”
    Advertisement

    Deep-sea mining also posed a new threat to the oceans, and should be closely regulated, the report suggested. Chemical pollution, including excess nutrients from fertilisers and mismanaged waste and contaminants, was identified as another problem needing attention Ka kite ano links below

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/17/stop-treating-seas-as-a-sewer-mps-urge-in-bid-for-protection-treaty

  18. Eco Maori 18
    18 January 2019 at 11:43 am

    The main reason WHY we are Sleepwalking into this Disaster its the old magicians TRICK serve up the masses a distraction so they don’t SEE the real dangers facing the WORLD.
    Those destractions are brexit and trump that is what I SEE in all forms of media .
    trump will flop out of the White House Britain will stay with Europe and we will not have done enough to combat climate change . The oil barons will be laughing at US and there huge bank ballances while billions suffer in hard ship that could be easly AVOIDED . Then we spend trillions trying to take the milk out of the tea its much cheaper and easer to not put the SHIT in the enviroment in the first place please WAKE UP people and lets focuse on providing all OUR grandchildren a happy healthy future
    “Sleepwalking into Catastrophe”
    In an annual World Economic Forum report, climate change, extreme weather and biodiversity loss were named among the highest global risks

    Climate change is the biggest threat to the planet, the World Economic Forum said yesterday in a sweeping catalog of global risks.
    The institution’s annual analysis of economic dangers worldwide named extreme weather, natural disasters, man-made environmental disasters, biodiversity loss and failure to adapt to climate change as the chief perils to society.
    Of all the risks to the globe, “it is in relation to the environment that the world is most clearly sleepwalking into catastrophe,” the WEF said in its Global Risks Report. “The results of climate inaction are becoming increasingly clear.”

    The report noted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s October analysis that “bluntly said … we have at most 12 years to make the drastic and unprecedented changes needed to prevent average global temperatures from rising” 1.5 degrees Celsius, roughly 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Limiting global temperature increase to that amount is the goal of the international Paris Agreement.
    Meeting that goal “will require unprecedented action to drive decarbonization of agriculture, energy, industry and transport,” the WEF report said. However, “it appears increasingly unlikely that the world will meet even the 2 C upper limit identified by the Paris Climate Agreement.”

    The Trump administration’s Fourth National Climate Assessment in November, meanwhile, said that “without significant reductions in emissions,” average global temperatures could rise 9 F by the turn of the century.
    The risk report pointed to the “accelerating pace” of biodiversity loss as a particular concern. Species abundance is down 60 percent since 1970, it said. That affects the human food chain, health and socio-economic development, “with implications for well-being, productivity, and even regional security.”
    Climate change as well is increasing strain on the global food system through changes in temperature, precipitation and extreme weather events, along with higher carbon emissions. The last four years have been the hottest on record, it said.Ka kite ano links below P.S Eco Maori is over those two short term issues Global Warming will affect human kind for the rest of the Papatuanuku life not a fraction of a second of life thats is how BIG global warming is.

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-forecast-world-is-sleepwalking-into-catastrophe/

  19. Eco Maori 19
    18 January 2019 at 4:37 pm

    The internet is just the start

  20. Eco Maori 20
    18 January 2019 at 4:40 pm

    money every way we live has to change

  21. Eco Maori 21
    18 January 2019 at 6:41 pm

    Kia ora Newshub That’s how a lot of bad people behave put on a victims hat when in the kaka one can not beat a video camera. Also Kiwis admire the Irish that guy doesn’t no Kiwis the Irish bars pack out on saints Patrick’s day and most people support it In Aotearoa. I say that the people pushing this study should check were there funding is coming from and keep a focus on carbon the magician oil barrons are at it again and some people fall for it hook line and sinker focus on getting carbon out of our lives. Australia is getting hot global warming is here did you hear about the Earthquake in Canberra 3.1 is that unusual or what. Sharks are not the problem people are moving into there domain not the other way around dusk and Dawn should be sign posted as no swimming time in high shark sighted place that’s feeding time for most predator.Come on who payed for that study national shonky CHILDREN who’s going to give weed to children tipcal scare tactics of the alt right LOL. That’s cool the find of old Maori Pa sights in the bay of Islands the problem I have with the archaeologist is that they are all Europe and any evedince that show Maori to be better than the European is buried they only date Maori been in Aotearoa for 7 to 800 years that’s way out they don’t want Maori to be seen as better sailor navigators than them. The Australian tangata whenua were dated at 10 thousand years to have settled there and now that date has been proved to be wrong by 30 thousand years ya see what Im getting at Ka kite ano P.S it’s all about keeping the image of the European being the superior culture .

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  • Why we have to challenge our national fiscal assumptions

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    The KakaBy Bernard Hickey
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  • Existential Crisis and Damaged Brains

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  • A speed limit is not a target, and yet…

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  • For the children – Why mere sentiment can be a misleading force in our lives, and lead to unex...

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  • A friend in uncertain times

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  • Weekly Roundup 19-July-2024

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  • The Hoon around the week to July 19

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  • Skeptical Science New Research for Week #29 2024

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  • Joint statement from the Prime Ministers of Canada, Australia and New Zealand

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  • AG reminds institutions of legal obligations

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  • More young people learning about digital safety

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  • Speech to the Conference for General Practice 2024

    Tēnā tātou katoa,  Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
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  • Employers and payroll providers ready for tax changes

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    23 hours ago
  • Experimental vineyard futureproofs wine industry

    An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
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    1 day ago
  • Funding confirmed for regions affected by North Island Weather Events

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  • Indonesian Foreign Minister to visit

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  • Strengthening partnership with Ngāti Maniapoto

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  • Transport Minister thanks outgoing CAA Chair

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  • Test for Customary Marine Title being restored

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    2 days ago
  • Opposition united in bad faith over ECE sector review

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    2 days ago
  • Kiwis having their say on first regulatory review

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  • Government upgrading Lower North Island commuter rail

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  • Government moves to ensure flood protection for Wairoa

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  • PM speech to Parliament – Royal Commission of Inquiry’s Report into Abuse in Care

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  • Government acknowledges torture at Lake Alice

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  • Government acknowledges courageous abuse survivors

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    3 days ago
  • Half a million people use tax calculator

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    3 days ago
  • Paid Parental Leave improvements pass first reading

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    3 days ago
  • Rebuilding the economy through better regulation

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    3 days ago
  • ‘Open banking’ and ‘open electricity’ on the way

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    3 days ago
  • Charity lotteries to be permitted to operate online

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    4 days ago
  • Accelerating Northland Expressway

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    4 days ago
  • Sir Don to travel to Viet Nam as special envoy

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    4 days ago
  • Grant Illingworth KC appointed as transitional Commissioner to Royal Commission

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  • NZ to advance relationships with ASEAN partners

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    4 days ago
  • Backing mental health services on the West Coast

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    4 days ago
  • NZ support for sustainable Pacific fisheries

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    4 days ago
  • Students’ needs at centre of new charter school adjustments

    Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
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    4 days ago
  • Commissioner replaces Health NZ Board

    In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today.  “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
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    5 days ago
  • Minister to speak at Australian Space Forum

    Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum.  While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation.  “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
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    5 days ago
  • Climate Change Minister to attend climate action meeting in China

    Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan.  “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
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    5 days ago
  • Oceans and Fisheries Minister to Solomons

    Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
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    7 days ago
  • Government launches Military Style Academy Pilot

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    7 days ago
  • Nine priority bridge replacements to get underway

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    1 week ago
  • Update on global IT outage

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    1 week ago
  • New Zealand, Japan renew Pacific partnership

    New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says.    “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says.    “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
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    1 week ago
  • New infrastructure energises BOP forestry towns

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  • 'Pacific Futures'

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    1 week ago

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