However, Russia itself had its own neo-nazi groups. And, as the article points out, Putin was using some of these groups for his own ends. Also, Putin has strong parallels with Hitler. For instance, the Z symbol being parallel to the swastika. The mass meetings that Putin has held trying to galvanise support. The war crimes, and apparent attempts at genocide etc.
So, those who still bleat about Nazis in Ukraine need to think about where the problem truly is.
So, those who still bleat about Nazis in Ukraine need to think about where the problem truly is.
The problem lies with the US. Even if Russia wins in Ukraine the US, like Robert the Bruce, will keep on trying until Russia is crushed. Who will be their next lot of "cannon fodder" after the Ukraine? The Finns. perhaps?
Putting aside the fact that you are not answering my comment about Nazism in Russia, what you are asserting is complete nonsense.
It doesn't take much history research to realise that there is no way that Ukraine, Finland, Poland et al will willingly submit to Russia regardless of whether they are getting help from the west. Sure, Ukraine would likely be occupied by Russia now if it wasn't for the west. But the Ukrainians would still be fighting via an insurgency. There is no way they would be giving up. It would end up being another Afghanistan for Russia.
All that the west is doing is enabling the Ukrainians to fight more effectively. And it isn’t like the west is forcing these weapons down the Ukrainian’s throats. Ukraine is not getting anything like what they are asking for. If anything, the west has been dragging its heels in supplying weaponary.
And, your myopic focus on the US is a bit ridiculous considering that a lot of heavy weaponary is now coming from NATO countries, including heavy tanks.
Russia is the aggressor, the war will and can not end until Russia stops attacking.
Ukraine is the defender, the war will and can not end while Ukraine keeps defending.
As long as Russia keeps attacking, Ukraine will never stop resisting.
Even if the West withdraw their support for Ukraine. Ukrainians will fight an insurgent gorilla war against the Russia Federation occupation for as long as it takes. And Russia eventually withdraws.
France could not win in Vietnam.
America could not win in Vietnam
The USSR could not win in Afghanistan
America could not win in Afghanistan
The US war in Afghanistan is America's longest war and the US still could not win against an insurgent population.
No matter how long the Russian Federation continues the war they cannot win in Ukraine. History is against them.
The Post WW2 Ukrainian Insurgency wasn't snuffed out until 1956 in far Western Ukraine with help from Kim Philby & Anthony Blunt who passed information onto the KGB when Para Drops were due etc and successful penetration of the UPA.
When Khrushchev & his deputy for West Ukrainian affairs A.A. Stoiantsev started to run show following a massive restructuring within NKVD & the Ukrainian Communist Party Apparatus in Western Ukraine.
There was another Ukrainian Insurgency during the Inter-War Period but there is next to no information on it & it's probably a fair assumption that Holodomor probably has alot to do with destroying all of the oral & written History?
Russia won't "win" in Ukraine. That chance went up in smoke when they failed to capture Kiev in the first 72 hours of the invasion. The rest of the war is essentially a face saving exercise for Putin to allow him to shift the blame for any defeat somewhere else.
The only way Tsar Poot's can take Kivi now? If he changes his axis advance on 2 separate broad Armoured fronts attacking either side of Kivi from Belarus and encircle the city unlike the previous attempt on a very narrow front which favour the Ukranian Defenders.
But Poot's Logistics is so shit house, its ability to gain any form of Air Parity over the Battle Space is a complete joke & its unlikely the Army would achieve its objective without massive losses manpower & equipment.
The Russians still have to locate the Ukranian Theater Reserve Troops & its Armoured Corp Reserve Commanded by an ex Russian Officer who is Ukranian born. Who with the Chief of General Staff help plan & led the auturm offensive has disappear off the radar again with his merry band of Armoured Knights & Panzer Grenadiers (Mech Infantry).
Most if not all of Poot's FSU & SF Units have been captured, so he is running out of eyes & ears on ground in the rear. Thats an interesting story there from what I've heard.
Unless Poot's finds the Ukranian Reserves and it Armoured Corp, this phase of the War is going to be an old fashion meat grinder of Infantry Frontal Attacks with Artillery Support with Long Range/ Deep Fires using UAV's, Missiles on Civilian Tgts by the Russians. The Ukrainian's hitting Russian Military Tgt's & Log Hubs until Summer rolls in, with one eye on Belarus again.
The UK government is going to use a “section 35” order to block Scottish legislation for the first time. It is daring the SNP to make the legislation a cause in their fight for another referendum (the self ID gender legislation is not popular in Scotland).
… UK ministers are concerned about the potential impact on the Equality Act and its protections for women-only spaces, as well as the implications for UK-wide documents.
Yes, they all signed on to it. L, N, G and A. Every single one happy to throw women and children under the gravy train that is gender ideology, 'gender' affirmation and medical care in the form of extreme body modification. So much gravy!!!!
disclaimer:
women – adult human females (large gametes havers)
boy – human male child (small gamete havers)
girl – human female child (large gamete havers)
hard to tell what's happened there but I would guess either the removed tweet used the word man but the tweets saying male survived (which is interesting). Or it's the tweet saying male that got her suspended.
Well that is a science we are to deny. Men are what ever men say they are, and women (the ones born without penises) better shut up, put up and swallow.
The McCarthy led majority in the House of Representatives is threatening the world economy, refusing to enable funding for US debt repayment unless there are cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
I guess that explains why a reply upthread got eaten when I went to copy a quote from another tab. I may leave it until later in the week to comment on the site. Cheers for all the work you put in to keep it going anyway; lprent.
Any nation with a CGT, an assets/land tax, wealth tax or estate tax will gather some revenue from the huge increase in wealth at some point in time. Only a nation with no taxes in any of these areas will fail to do so … such as … well here in New Zealand.
The ideal time to have introduced a CGT would have been two years ago.
If it is started during a decline in asset values, then there will be a lot of tax credits floating around that need to be soaked up before a CGT starts generating income for the government.
Not that I am a fan of CGTs. If it were levied across all assets (including the family home) then it would probably be OK. But if there are lots of exclusions it starts becoming less and less workable IMO.
The issue becomes complex when you look at kinds of capital gain resulting from activities other than real estate speculation and inflation.
An engineering or manufacturing business, and some forms of horticulture or agriculture, may grow their business through improvements, R&D, growing their customer base and so forth. They ought not to be treated identically to rent-seeking entities inflicting a deadweight cost upon the economy.
When it gets to valuing business assets etc, it just becomes God's gift to valuers and creates unnecessary churn on business activity, and is not good for employers or employees.
And if it is limited to houses, but not privately owned ones, it starts looking quite lite-weight in terms of revenue gained. Especially if the housing market is quite flat or declining.
So, you either end up with something that is highly complex in terms of exclusions, or something that is a nightmare in terms of administration for those it is inflicted on.
So, you either end up with something that is highly complex in terms of exclusions, or something that is a nightmare in terms of administration for those it is inflicted on.
And yet some well-to-do countries have a CGT – compare NZ and Norway.
Pity those 'poor' Nordmenn inflicted with their highly complexnightmare
The Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation was an agreement between Ukraine and Russia, signed in 1997, which fixed the principle of strategic partnership, the recognition of the inviolability of existing borders, and respect for territorial integrity and mutual commitment not to use its territory to harm the security of each other.
Of course after the events of 2014 (Russian support for secession in the Donbass and annexation of Crimea) there came a review.
History and Content of the Treaty
The Treaty was signed on 31 May 1997 by the second President of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma and the first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin. The Treaty entered into force on 1 April 1999.
The Treaty was concluded for ten years, but provided for the possibility to be renewed automatically for successive 10-year periods, if neither party intended to terminate the Treaty (Article 40). If the party did intend to terminate the Treaty, it had to notify the other party at least six months before the expiry of the current 10-year period. In 2008, the Treaty was automatically renewed for another ten years. On 17 September 2018, President Poroshenko initiated the process of the Treaty termination before another 10-year renewal. On 21 September 2018, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs notified the Russian Federation about the intention not to renew the treaty.
Russian View on Termination
The Kremlin Press Secretary criticised Ukrainian move towards termination of the Treaty, calling it ‘shooting yourself in the foot’. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded with denying the violation of the Treaty and ‘declared readiness’ to hold negotiations to update the bilateral legal framework, which ‘may admittedly have become somewhat outdated.’ The Russian Federation also accused Ukraine in violation of a number of provisions of the Treaty, including Article 6 of the Treaty, prescribing the parties ‘not to enter into any agreements with any countries directed against the other party’ and Article 12 of the Treaty, ensuring the ‘protection of the ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious identity of national minorities on their territory’ and promoting ‘the creation of equal opportunities and conditions for the study of […] the Russian language in Ukraine.’ According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, these provisions were violated by Ukraine’s ratification of the Memorandum of Understanding between Ukraine and the Alliance on Host Nation Support for NATO Operations, amending Ukraine’s Military Doctrine to proclaim the strategic goal of joining NATO, and adopting a number of laws ‘waging a consistent offensive against the Russian language and the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine’
Of course Russian interference in its internal politics has had an impact on Ukraine 's perception of its place as a nation state in the world.
During my tenure in Kyiv, State Department–sponsored public opinion polling never showed a majority of Ukrainian public support for NATO membership. Private sector polling showed that as late as 2012, only 28 percent of Ukrainians wished to join NATO. Not surprisingly, pro-Russian sentiment was stronger in the east, but the largest plurality was for neutrality. The 2014 Russian seizure of Crimea and the fomenting of a violent separatist movement in eastern Ukraine sharply shifted Ukrainian public opinion. A poll by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation in June 2017 found 69 percent supported joining the alliance.
That 1997 Friendship Treaty was seen as an extension of the Lisbon Protocol & Budapest Memorandum.
The Friendship Treaty was to provide a foundation stone to Russia Guarantees that it signed. From what I can gather things began to slowly change when Poot's replace Yeltsin as the Russian President.
This was also during a period in Ukraine where corruption was also starting to taking root which allowed the Russian Mafia to move in, which btw are linked to Poot's & slowly the snowball/ avalanche got bigger until the young population of Ukraine realise the old corrupt farts running the show wanted to go back to a backward looking Russia instead of forward looking EU.
Thence the uprising in 2014 where basically Western Ukraine booted out Poot's Toady's. Now when we go back through History from now ie previous National Polling Results & through to Imperial Russia Eastern Ukraine has naturally aligned itself with Russia. But it isn't much in IRT percentage points or population.
One could see similarities to Nth'en Ireland, the former Yugoslavia or the divide between West & East German through the political & religious lenses.
In April 1963, King was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, after he defied a state court’s injunction and led a march of black protesters without a permit, urging an Easter boycott of white-owned stores. A statement published in The Birmingham News, written by eight moderate white clergymen, criticized the march and other demonstrations.
This prompted King to write a lengthy response, begun in the margins of the newspaper. He smuggled it out with the help of his lawyer, and the nearly 7,000 words were transcribed. The eloquent call for “constructive, nonviolent tension” to force an end to unjust laws became a landmark document of the civil-rights movement. The letter was printed in part or in full by several publications, including the New York Post, Liberation magazine, The New Leader, and The Christian Century.
The Atlantic published it in the August 1963 issue, under the headline “The Negro Is Your Brother.”
Cancelled our Herald sub in 2005 after a particularly disgusting front page feature after the Election night that I will not repeat here. I won't have it in the house, and I "return to sender" the 6 monthly exhortations to renew my sub with exactly what I think of them written on the envelope.
I actually find the NZ Herald quite left leaning. Other than Steven Joyce a lot of the writers lean to the left. I think Stuff is even more left leaning.
Looks that way. Keep 'em lean and hungry – they're not starving – hur hur hur.
Why poverty in New Zealand is everyone's concern
Liang describes poverty as a "heritable condition" that perpetuates and amplifies through generations: "It is also not hard to see how individual poverty flows into communities and society, with downstream effects on economics, crime and health, as well as many other systems. Loosen one strand and everything else unravels."
A Kete Half Empty Poverty is your problem, it is everyone's problem, not just those who are in poverty. – Rebecca, a child from Te Puru
The Herald is traditionally a centre-right newspaper, and was given the nickname "Granny Herald" into the 1990s.
The Herald's stance on the Middle East is supportive of Israel, as seen most clearly in its 2003 censorship and dismissal of cartoonist Malcolm Evans following his submission of cartoons critical of Israel.
In 2007, an editorial strongly disapproved of some legislation introduced by the Labour-led government, the Electoral Finance Act, to the point of overtly campaigning against the legislation.
sure. And your 'centre right' position is why you see NZH as a left leaning paper. But what you consider centre right is actually solid right wing. It’s a feature of the Overton Window.
My wife insists on a Herald subscription, even though it is more a newsletter than a paper these days. Its all about the crossword before work. I am horrified, but she makes me breakfast most days so I can live with my compromised principles.
Crosswords, like many other puzzles, can be bought in book form. Though I must confess the most visited pages of my daily paper, aka 'the two minute silence', are the puzzles. That and the death notices….. The first keeps me alive, the second tells me I am.
It was the same name, in full. Then I got to the name of his wife, and kids, and discovered I could start breathing again. And yes, it was disconcerting for a few seconds.
Just about every person I know has been dumping their herald subscriptions – online or paper – mostly because the news that they provide is either just a repeat from offshore, or it is what I'd class as unsupported opinions sourced off of the net.
As far as I can tell, you now have to be way older than me and operating a sub by rote, or you'd class twitter as being a legitimate well researched news source to still be on the site.
Even their business news was total drivel last time I looked at it. These days I have a subscription to and read BusinessDesk instead. There is a pile of hard information in what is in BD with a lot less of the bullshit spin that seems to be in all parts of the NZH these days.
Can't read the Herald comments – but if anyone wants to see a range of (probably) similar ones – the article has also been opened for comments on the Herald's facebook page (I've converted to a tinyurl – since the actual FB link was 5 lines long!)
If anybody deserves to drown in their own bodily fluids. Fuckers.
//
In November, 80 smiling faces appeared on the front page of a fringe Canadian newspaper called Druthers. The headline read: “80 Canadian MDs VAXXED and Dead.”
Underneath each photograph: the doctor’s name, age, hometown, date of death, occupation and a few words about how they died. Many simply say “died unexpectedly.”
In many cases, this is true. But not in the way it is implied.
[…]
Social media was awash with dire warnings of the fourth booster, and the three doctors’ names were jotted down alongside an expanding group of Canadian physicians whose deaths were falsely linked to the vaccine, without cause or explanation.
The burgeoning conspiracy theory was soon picked up by tech-millionaire turned anti-vaccination advocate Steve Kirsch, who in August wrote about “14 young Canadian docs” who died after getting a shot of COVID vaccine.
In November, U.S. conservative radio show host Stew Peters, who also produced Died Suddenly, claimed in a Facebook video that “hundreds” of Canadian doctors had died. The video has reached countries as far away as New Zealand, spawning other country-specific, dead-doctor theories.
people were moaning on twitter yesterday about the full lockdowns and how people weren't allowed to go for a run out in the fresh air. As always, I can't tell if the moaners are really fucking stupid (as if everyone can be trusted to go on a run and not congregate), or disingenuous.
I don’t know what they think is going on with the pandemic. I guess in five years when we can more easily see the burden of repeated infections they’ll have a deeper kind of denial.
I don't think that's cognitive dissonance. Not entirely sure what it is tbh, other than it's batshit. Cognitive dissonance seems to me that people know something is real but they dissociate from it. Brad is on another planet altogether.
And when the penny drops that infection, and especially multiple infections, likely knocks holes in acquired immunity..hooboy..
If you have a kid at home, there’s a good chance they spent the last couple of months snotty, feverish, barfy or worse. Young people in particular have been pummelled by the tridemic of RSV, influenza and Covid-19—and you’ve probably heard that “immunity debt” is to blame. Even Justin Trudeau has parroted this popular theory that our immune systems have gotten weak after two years of coddling behind masks and under lockdowns. There’s just one problem: “It is totally, totally wrong,” says Colin Furness, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information who believes that Covid infections, not public health measures, are to blame for weakened immunity. Here, he explains why.
"China’s population shrank in 2022 for the first time in more than 60 years, a new milestone in the country’s deepening demographic crisis with significant implications for its slowing economy.
The population declined in 2022 to 1.411 billion, down some 850,000 people from the previous year, China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced during a Tuesday briefing on annual data."
"Since sampling is not perfectly uniform, it is not possible to pinpoint the number of people in each age group nationwide; but the overall pattern of the age distribution is consistent with past censuses. It suggests that post-1990 births continued to decline faster than I had predicted, and in fact did not peak in 2004 or 2011. That means China’s real population is not 1.41 billion (the official figure) and could be even smaller than my own estimate of 1.28 billion. It also means that China’s economic, social, foreign, and defense policies – as well as those of the United States and other countries toward China – are based on erroneous demographic data."
I am not a criminologist or organisational sociologist, so I cannot offer a data-driven opinion on the effectiveness of military-syle so-called ‘boot camps” when it comes to rehabilitating juvenile delinquents and youth offenders. They are popular in the US and … Continue reading → ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 27 were:1. The Minister for Ford Rangers strikes againTransport Minister Simeon Brown was again the busiest of the Cabinet ministers this week, announcing an ...
You got a fast carAnd I want a ticket to anywhereMaybe we make a dealMaybe together we can get somewhereAny place is betterYesterday’s newsletter, Trust In Me, on the report of abuse in state care, and by religious organisations, between 1950 and 2019, coupled with the hypocrisy of Christopher Luxon ...
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
Te Rangi e tu nei (The sky above us) Te Papa e takoto nei (The land beneath us) Tatou katoa te hunga ora (To us all the living) Tena koutou katoa (Greetings) ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
RNZ News New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s security detail has cut a media briefing short over protesters in Auckland. He was holding a press conference yesterday after a walkabout with police to discuss concerns with businesses in the CBD. Luxon was talking with media when one of his security ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Austin, Lecturer in Theatre, The University of Melbourne There has never been an opening ceremony quite like it. For the first time in Olympic Games history, the ceremony took place outside a stadium arena. Despite a rainy and miserable Paris ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Åkerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
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 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Mike Lewinski/Flickr, CC BY On any clear night, if you gaze skywards long enough, chances are you’ll see a meteor streaking through the sky. Some nights, however, are better than others. At ...
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One of the stated reasons for the invasion of Ukraine was so Ukraine could be "denazified". That is despite the far right only winning 2.15% of the vote in the 2019 election.
However, Russia itself had its own neo-nazi groups. And, as the article points out, Putin was using some of these groups for his own ends. Also, Putin has strong parallels with Hitler. For instance, the Z symbol being parallel to the swastika. The mass meetings that Putin has held trying to galvanise support. The war crimes, and apparent attempts at genocide etc.
So, those who still bleat about Nazis in Ukraine need to think about where the problem truly is.
So, those who still bleat about Nazis in Ukraine need to think about where the problem truly is.
The problem lies with the US. Even if Russia wins in Ukraine the US, like Robert the Bruce, will keep on trying until Russia is crushed. Who will be their next lot of "cannon fodder" after the Ukraine? The Finns. perhaps?
Putting aside the fact that you are not answering my comment about Nazism in Russia, what you are asserting is complete nonsense.
It doesn't take much history research to realise that there is no way that Ukraine, Finland, Poland et al will willingly submit to Russia regardless of whether they are getting help from the west. Sure, Ukraine would likely be occupied by Russia now if it wasn't for the west. But the Ukrainians would still be fighting via an insurgency. There is no way they would be giving up. It would end up being another Afghanistan for Russia.
All that the west is doing is enabling the Ukrainians to fight more effectively. And it isn’t like the west is forcing these weapons down the Ukrainian’s throats. Ukraine is not getting anything like what they are asking for. If anything, the west has been dragging its heels in supplying weaponary.
And, your myopic focus on the US is a bit ridiculous considering that a lot of heavy weaponary is now coming from NATO countries, including heavy tanks.
What does Russia vs USA/USA vs Russia have to do with nations defending themselves from foreign invasion (England of Scotland or Russia of Ukraine)?
Sounds logical.
The USA is trying to destroy Russia, by forcing Russia to plan and conduct unprovoked invasions of her neighbours.
How many times has Ukraine invaded Russia lately?
"Even if Russia wins in Ukraine….." Mikesh
Mikesh, there's no chance of that ever happening.
Russia can never win in Ukraine.
Russia is the aggressor, the war will and can not end until Russia stops attacking.
Ukraine is the defender, the war will and can not end while Ukraine keeps defending.
As long as Russia keeps attacking, Ukraine will never stop resisting.
Even if the West withdraw their support for Ukraine. Ukrainians will fight an insurgent gorilla war against the Russia Federation occupation for as long as it takes. And Russia eventually withdraws.
France could not win in Vietnam.
America could not win in Vietnam
The USSR could not win in Afghanistan
America could not win in Afghanistan
The US war in Afghanistan is America's longest war and the US still could not win against an insurgent population.
No matter how long the Russian Federation continues the war they cannot win in Ukraine. History is against them.
The Post WW2 Ukrainian Insurgency wasn't snuffed out until 1956 in far Western Ukraine with help from Kim Philby & Anthony Blunt who passed information onto the KGB when Para Drops were due etc and successful penetration of the UPA.
When Khrushchev & his deputy for West Ukrainian affairs A.A. Stoiantsev started to run show following a massive restructuring within NKVD & the Ukrainian Communist Party Apparatus in Western Ukraine.
There was another Ukrainian Insurgency during the Inter-War Period but there is next to no information on it & it's probably a fair assumption that Holodomor probably has alot to do with destroying all of the oral & written History?
Russia won't "win" in Ukraine. That chance went up in smoke when they failed to capture Kiev in the first 72 hours of the invasion. The rest of the war is essentially a face saving exercise for Putin to allow him to shift the blame for any defeat somewhere else.
The only way Tsar Poot's can take Kivi now? If he changes his axis advance on 2 separate broad Armoured fronts attacking either side of Kivi from Belarus and encircle the city unlike the previous attempt on a very narrow front which favour the Ukranian Defenders.
But Poot's Logistics is so shit house, its ability to gain any form of Air Parity over the Battle Space is a complete joke & its unlikely the Army would achieve its objective without massive losses manpower & equipment.
The Russians still have to locate the Ukranian Theater Reserve Troops & its Armoured Corp Reserve Commanded by an ex Russian Officer who is Ukranian born. Who with the Chief of General Staff help plan & led the auturm offensive has disappear off the radar again with his merry band of Armoured Knights & Panzer Grenadiers (Mech Infantry).
Most if not all of Poot's FSU & SF Units have been captured, so he is running out of eyes & ears on ground in the rear. Thats an interesting story there from what I've heard.
Unless Poot's finds the Ukranian Reserves and it Armoured Corp, this phase of the War is going to be an old fashion meat grinder of Infantry Frontal Attacks with Artillery Support with Long Range/ Deep Fires using UAV's, Missiles on Civilian Tgts by the Russians. The Ukrainian's hitting Russian Military Tgt's & Log Hubs until Summer rolls in, with one eye on Belarus again.
What happens in Summer is anyone's guess atm?
The UK government is going to use a “section 35” order to block Scottish legislation for the first time. It is daring the SNP to make the legislation a cause in their fight for another referendum (the self ID gender legislation is not popular in Scotland).
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-64288757
Pity nobody blocked self ID here.
Agree!
Wholeheartedly!
Yes, they all signed on to it. L, N, G and A. Every single one happy to throw women and children under the gravy train that is gender ideology, 'gender' affirmation and medical care in the form of extreme body modification. So much gravy!!!!
disclaimer:
women – adult human females (large gametes havers)
boy – human male child (small gamete havers)
girl – human female child (large gamete havers)
Meanwhile, (Watson is a detrans woman)
https://twitter.com/wekatweets/status/1615115810594512896
hard to tell what's happened there but I would guess either the removed tweet used the word man but the tweets saying male survived (which is interesting). Or it's the tweet saying male that got her suspended.
Well that is a science we are to deny. Men are what ever men say they are, and women (the ones born without penises) better shut up, put up and swallow.
Here’s a thought experiment for Francecsa, and the other Putin apologists.
Back before Te Tirit was signed, New Zealand was governed by Australia.
What could happen is that some idiot Aussie PM, (Morrison?) needing a poll boost claims that NZ is Australia’s by right, and launches an invasion.
Does Aotearoa defend itself, and call upon its allies the USA and GB to help? Or does it roll over?
According to our resident Russophiles, it rolls over.
The McCarthy led majority in the House of Representatives is threatening the world economy, refusing to enable funding for US debt repayment unless there are cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
They're going to do it.
https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1615080979042893825
Had a report of caching issues between desktop and mobile for people not logged in, so I have chopped the max cache time to minutes.
I'm going to adjust it a bit for just the HTML. But there may a bit of fiddling over today and some mysterious slowdowns.
I guess that explains why a reply upthread got eaten when I went to copy a quote from another tab. I may leave it until later in the week to comment on the site. Cheers for all the work you put in to keep it going anyway; lprent.
Any nation with a CGT, an assets/land tax, wealth tax or estate tax will gather some revenue from the huge increase in wealth at some point in time. Only a nation with no taxes in any of these areas will fail to do so … such as … well here in New Zealand.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2023/01/top-1-percent-captured-nearly-twice-as-much-new-wealth-as-rest-of-world-over-last-two-years.html
Greens a 1% tax on net wealth over $1M is one party with a policy fit for the modern world. TOP has an across the board land tax.
The ideal time to have introduced a CGT would have been two years ago.
If it is started during a decline in asset values, then there will be a lot of tax credits floating around that need to be soaked up before a CGT starts generating income for the government.
Not that I am a fan of CGTs. If it were levied across all assets (including the family home) then it would probably be OK. But if there are lots of exclusions it starts becoming less and less workable IMO.
The issue becomes complex when you look at kinds of capital gain resulting from activities other than real estate speculation and inflation.
An engineering or manufacturing business, and some forms of horticulture or agriculture, may grow their business through improvements, R&D, growing their customer base and so forth. They ought not to be treated identically to rent-seeking entities inflicting a deadweight cost upon the economy.
I agree. And another reason I am not a fan.
When it gets to valuing business assets etc, it just becomes God's gift to valuers and creates unnecessary churn on business activity, and is not good for employers or employees.
And if it is limited to houses, but not privately owned ones, it starts looking quite lite-weight in terms of revenue gained. Especially if the housing market is quite flat or declining.
So, you either end up with something that is highly complex in terms of exclusions, or something that is a nightmare in terms of administration for those it is inflicted on.
And yet some well-to-do countries have a CGT – compare NZ and Norway.![wink wink](https://cdn2.thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/plugins/ark-wysiwyg-comment-editor/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/wink_smile.png?x42494)
Pity those 'poor' Nordmenn inflicted with their highly complex nightmare
Yes they do. But, again it seems very complex.
https://www.tradeclub.standardbank.com/portal/en/market-potential/norway/taxes
We do have, in effect, a very simple CGT on property called the Bright line test.
The question would be whether the marginal gain by widening the net would be worth the effort.
"Very complex" or "very simple" might depend on where you're sitting![wink wink](https://cdn2.thestandard.org.nz/wp-content/plugins/ark-wysiwyg-comment-editor/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/wink_smile.png?x42494)
Only one way to find out for sure. https://taxworkinggroup.govt.nz/
Once upon a time
The Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation was an agreement between Ukraine and Russia, signed in 1997, which fixed the principle of strategic partnership, the recognition of the inviolability of existing borders, and respect for territorial integrity and mutual commitment not to use its territory to harm the security of each other.
Of course after the events of 2014 (Russian support for secession in the Donbass and annexation of Crimea) there came a review.
http://opiniojuris.org/2019/05/01/termination-of-the-treaty-of-friendship-between-ukraine-and-russia-too-little-too-late-%EF%BB%BF/
Ukraine and its history with NATO.
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_37750.htm#:~:text=A%20few%20years%20later%2C%20in,individual%20partner%20countries%20and%20NATO.
Of course Russian interference in its internal politics has had an impact on Ukraine 's perception of its place as a nation state in the world.
https://afsa.org/did-nato-expansion-really-cause-putins-invasion
That 1997 Friendship Treaty was seen as an extension of the Lisbon Protocol & Budapest Memorandum.
The Friendship Treaty was to provide a foundation stone to Russia Guarantees that it signed. From what I can gather things began to slowly change when Poot's replace Yeltsin as the Russian President.
This was also during a period in Ukraine where corruption was also starting to taking root which allowed the Russian Mafia to move in, which btw are linked to Poot's & slowly the snowball/ avalanche got bigger until the young population of Ukraine realise the old corrupt farts running the show wanted to go back to a backward looking Russia instead of forward looking EU.
Thence the uprising in 2014 where basically Western Ukraine booted out Poot's Toady's. Now when we go back through History from now ie previous National Polling Results & through to Imperial Russia Eastern Ukraine has naturally aligned itself with Russia. But it isn't much in IRT percentage points or population.
One could see similarities to Nth'en Ireland, the former Yugoslavia or the divide between West & East German through the political & religious lenses.
Because it's MLK day.
https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/status/1614654819851010048
In April 1963, King was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, after he defied a state court’s injunction and led a march of black protesters without a permit, urging an Easter boycott of white-owned stores. A statement published in The Birmingham News, written by eight moderate white clergymen, criticized the march and other demonstrations.
This prompted King to write a lengthy response, begun in the margins of the newspaper. He smuggled it out with the help of his lawyer, and the nearly 7,000 words were transcribed. The eloquent call for “constructive, nonviolent tension” to force an end to unjust laws became a landmark document of the civil-rights movement. The letter was printed in part or in full by several publications, including the New York Post, Liberation magazine, The New Leader, and The Christian Century.
The Atlantic published it in the August 1963 issue, under the headline “The Negro Is Your Brother.”
https://archive.li/XjXWD
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/letter-from-a-birmingham-jail/552461/
Simon Wilson doing his best to talk up the Labour party, but the NZ Herald has opened the comments……..not too many of them going his way.
Unfortunately it is paywalled so unless you subscribe you cant really get the gist of it.
Simon Wilson: The 2023 election is a choice between the best Government yet, and the worst – NZ Herald
And you posted it because supporters of the government subscribe to RW rags. Right?
/
lots of left wing people here have NZH subs.
Fools and their money…
I don't have a Herald subscription.
1. I don't subscribe to any other news sites either but I do have far too many subscriptions elsewhere. Enough is enough.
2. By subscribing to the NZ Herald you are directly contributing to their overt, overall RW campaign for a change in government. Don't do it!
Cancelled our Herald sub in 2005 after a particularly disgusting front page feature after the Election night that I will not repeat here. I won't have it in the house, and I "return to sender" the 6 monthly exhortations to renew my sub with exactly what I think of them written on the envelope.
I don't even look at them on line.
I actually find the NZ Herald quite left leaning. Other than Steven Joyce a lot of the writers lean to the left. I think Stuff is even more left leaning.
it looks that way because you are so far right wing.
Looks that way. Keep 'em lean and hungry – they're not starving – hur hur hur.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/16-08-2022/the-side-eyes-two-new-zealands-the-table
I consider myself centre right.
But The Herald is centre right:
Therefore, by definition, you must be far right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Zealand_Herald
sure. And your 'centre right' position is why you see NZH as a left leaning paper. But what you consider centre right is actually solid right wing. It’s a feature of the Overton Window.
My wife insists on a Herald subscription, even though it is more a newsletter than a paper these days. Its all about the crossword before work. I am horrified, but she makes me breakfast most days so I can live with my compromised principles.
I just discovered Newsroom's crossword (online, so not quite the same, but still).
Crosswords, like many other puzzles, can be bought in book form. Though I must confess the most visited pages of my daily paper, aka 'the two minute silence', are the puzzles. That and the death notices….. The first keeps me alive, the second tells me I am.
It'd be a bit disconcerting if you read your own death notice 😈
Ah, but bloggers and online personas as just constructs and figments of imagination and implication 😉
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/482544/romance-writer-s-fake-death-reminds-us-the-author-is-a-construct
I did do that once.
It was the same name, in full. Then I got to the name of his wife, and kids, and discovered I could start breathing again. And yes, it was disconcerting for a few seconds.
🙂
I once played the banjo, yes shock horror, in a show, "Spamalot", for a song called 'I am not dead yet."
Here's a video from "The Holy Grail"of the original scene.
And the song.from Spamalot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTg0WpJLyhA
it's the pattern of a new crossword every day that's attractive I think. Different than getting a book all at once.
I bought The Listener a few weeks ago and did the cryptic crossword, really enjoyed it. It used to be a regular weekly staple.
RWH. A regular treat.
Indeed. Not such a fan of Mr Tossman.
Just about every person I know has been dumping their herald subscriptions – online or paper – mostly because the news that they provide is either just a repeat from offshore, or it is what I'd class as unsupported opinions sourced off of the net.
As far as I can tell, you now have to be way older than me and operating a sub by rote, or you'd class twitter as being a legitimate well researched news source to still be on the site.
Even their business news was total drivel last time I looked at it. These days I have a subscription to and read BusinessDesk instead. There is a pile of hard information in what is in BD with a lot less of the bullshit spin that seems to be in all parts of the NZH these days.
Ummm.. nonpaywalled article at BD to give non-readers an idea of the relative quality. "Hotel bill for MIQ surpassed $1 billion"
Almost worth taking the time to write a opinion post on.
Please do.
Lots of access via a local library subscription but not the easiest format for reading.
Another pointless comment from you. When will you start contributing to debate?
So why don't you do a cut and paste, or if that offends then cut & paste the gist from your issue and put it on here with the link.
I am not surprised that the NZH subscribers have pushed back but good on him for writing such an article.
a full cut and paste will get the ire of the mods, but certainly a selection of quotes would work.
Can't read the Herald comments – but if anyone wants to see a range of (probably) similar ones – the article has also been opened for comments on the Herald's facebook page (I've converted to a tinyurl – since the actual FB link was 5 lines long!)
https://tinyurl.com/ymaxe3x6
Well done.
If anybody deserves to drown in their own bodily fluids. Fuckers.
//
In November, 80 smiling faces appeared on the front page of a fringe Canadian newspaper called Druthers. The headline read: “80 Canadian MDs VAXXED and Dead.”
Underneath each photograph: the doctor’s name, age, hometown, date of death, occupation and a few words about how they died. Many simply say “died unexpectedly.”
In many cases, this is true. But not in the way it is implied.
[…]
Social media was awash with dire warnings of the fourth booster, and the three doctors’ names were jotted down alongside an expanding group of Canadian physicians whose deaths were falsely linked to the vaccine, without cause or explanation.
The burgeoning conspiracy theory was soon picked up by tech-millionaire turned anti-vaccination advocate Steve Kirsch, who in August wrote about “14 young Canadian docs” who died after getting a shot of COVID vaccine.
In November, U.S. conservative radio show host Stew Peters, who also produced Died Suddenly, claimed in a Facebook video that “hundreds” of Canadian doctors had died. The video has reached countries as far away as New Zealand, spawning other country-specific, dead-doctor theories.
https://globalnews.ca/news/9405373/covid-conspiracy-theory-doctors-canada/
people were moaning on twitter yesterday about the full lockdowns and how people weren't allowed to go for a run out in the fresh air. As always, I can't tell if the moaners are really fucking stupid (as if everyone can be trusted to go on a run and not congregate), or disingenuous.
I don’t know what they think is going on with the pandemic. I guess in five years when we can more easily see the burden of repeated infections they’ll have a deeper kind of denial.
The finding out stage will be along soon enough.
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1613944007138189313
I don't get how people cannot see this nor the cumulative effect. The cognitive dissonance is astoundingly strong.
Yep.
I don't think that's cognitive dissonance. Not entirely sure what it is tbh, other than it's batshit. Cognitive dissonance seems to me that people know something is real but they dissociate from it. Brad is on another planet altogether.
And when the penny drops that infection, and especially multiple infections, likely knocks holes in acquired immunity..hooboy..
If you have a kid at home, there’s a good chance they spent the last couple of months snotty, feverish, barfy or worse. Young people in particular have been pummelled by the tridemic of RSV, influenza and Covid-19—and you’ve probably heard that “immunity debt” is to blame. Even Justin Trudeau has parroted this popular theory that our immune systems have gotten weak after two years of coddling behind masks and under lockdowns. There’s just one problem: “It is totally, totally wrong,” says Colin Furness, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information who believes that Covid infections, not public health measures, are to blame for weakened immunity. Here, he explains why.
https://torontolife.com/city/i-was-appalled-to-see-the-prime-minister-making-those-comments-a-u-of-t-epidemiologist-on-the-myth-of-immunity-debt-and-the-real-reason-everyones-getting-sick/
China just shrank.
I remember back in the day China was just a source of perpetual youth and drive.
Looks like their population growth just peaked a decade earlier than expected.
China records first population decline in 60 years | CNN Business
"China’s population shrank in 2022 for the first time in more than 60 years, a new milestone in the country’s deepening demographic crisis with significant implications for its slowing economy.
The population declined in 2022 to 1.411 billion, down some 850,000 people from the previous year, China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced during a Tuesday briefing on annual data."
(641) China Population Pyramid 1950-2100 – YouTube
"Since sampling is not perfectly uniform, it is not possible to pinpoint the number of people in each age group nationwide; but the overall pattern of the age distribution is consistent with past censuses. It suggests that post-1990 births continued to decline faster than I had predicted, and in fact did not peak in 2004 or 2011. That means China’s real population is not 1.41 billion (the official figure) and could be even smaller than my own estimate of 1.28 billion. It also means that China’s economic, social, foreign, and defense policies – as well as those of the United States and other countries toward China – are based on erroneous demographic data."
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/chinese-population-smaller-than-stated-and-shrinking-fast-by-yi-fuxian-2022-07