“Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light”
Dreaming, when Dawn’s left hand was in the sky.
I heard a voice within the tavern cry,
Awake my little ones and fill the cup!
Before life’s liquor in its cup be dry.
Heh. My morning serenade for many years to rouse sluggish offspring. Unsurprisingly, none are into either the dawn chorus or poetry.
“And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop’t we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help — for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.
“For in and out, above, about, below,
‘Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Play’d in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.
Is the bible an entertainer with a contract requiring it not to say anything that might damage the company’s brand? Because, otherwise it’s not clear what you’re on about.
While somehow saying anything about the Sultan of Brunei, who passes laws stoning these same people to death gets defined as Islamophobia. /sarc right back at you
“Maybe we can rationally assess the chances of Leviticus being enacted in any modern western nation”
We can answer that with one word: Pence.
So quite high.
“So today, I want to close with faith. Faith in the good people of this nation of faith, the United States of America. And from our founding, have cherished that foundation of belief and cherish it still.
Faith in our President, whose deep commitment to religious liberty at home and abroad has been evident every day of this administration.
Faith in all of you and the nations represented here, and your renewed commitment to the cause of religious liberty in your nations and around the world.
And I also close with faith that, from this renewed beginning today, we will make progress on behalf of religious liberty in the years ahead. And my faith ultimately comes from what’s in my heart.
And in the ancient words inscribed on our Liberty Bell, displayed in Philadelphia, the words of the ancient text of Leviticus that read, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, and unto [all] the inhabitants thereof.” We’ve done it throughout our history. And I know that as each one of us renew our commitment to proclaim liberty throughout all of our lands, that freedom will prevail, for as the Bible tells us, “where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” So freedom always wins when Faith in Him is held high.
After nearly 24 hours of declining to clarify its position, the State Department finally sent The Daily Beast a statement saying the U.S. was “concerned” about the new law, minutes after we published a story noting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the department’s silence.
However, when asked by The Daily Beast, Pompeo and the Department of State declined to directly condemn, or state an objection to, the stoning to death of LGBT people.
[…]
The Daily Beast again asked if Pompeo or the Department of State objected to the stoning to death of LGBT people under the new law. A spokesperson would not address this question directly, and instead referred us to the statement above.
A request for comment by The Daily Beast to Vice President Mike Pence, given his influence when it comes to U.S. foreign policy, went unresponded to.
Pence is on the extreme right. The Westboro Baptist Church also occupies that space and has views on homosexuality that are based on teachings found in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, which they interpret to mean that homosexual behaviour is detestable and that homosexuals should be put to death.
Maybe I missed the point where Pence proposed ” that homosexuals should be put to death” and this will be introduced as US law if he became President.
Also I missed any realistic analysis of the likelihood of such a law actually being implemented in the USA. As contrasted to at least four Islamic countries where is law right now.
Yep I’m sure he would – I wonder how many Christian so called moderates would turn their heads and pretend not to see or hear the truth of that bigotry. Not many I hope but history might not hold that up.
So Folau is a bigot while the rulers of Saudi, Yemen, Mauritania, Brunei and all our allegedly moderate Muslim ‘brothers and sisters’ throughout the world who hold to the much the same views …. are what exactly?
bigots too if they act or say bigoted things – same with Ardern and t.rump, Corbyn or Sanders – doesn’t distinguish between skin colour, religion, gender, country or what your hair colour is.
They self allocate and implicate their group when they say the group believes in the same bigotry – in other words they say the group is bigoted not the individual.
“Wakey, wakey rise and shine
Bushell’s coffee’s on the line”
From a time when husband and his mate did shift work on top of a day job, as you did then before “wimmin” went out to work, as of right and to share the load, plus you could and had the incentive that you could become established as a family more quickly. One or other “wife” would drop them down some dinner and it seemed normal, pretty stress-free for a year or more – their was a lot of comradeship and it almost in hindsight seemed like fun.
Not so easy now with those sorts of jobs automated and getting from one place to another in the centres traffic-wise pretty much would make it impossible from what I can see.
What a shame that the local fruit season demands – with decent incentives – aren’t seen as such. Here it is kiwifruit but the many who once did it of all ages to top up funds for travel or even necessities find the 12 hour shifts that are the standard I understand a bit hard around home, other jobs etc given they are short term option and not even semi-permanent.
Damn – right RSS column has been picking up posts from this site somehow. Looks like I will have to find time to fix it – it is now preventing the column from displaying.
Easter + ANZAC next week and with a couple of days break I’m off work for 10 days from friday.
* Request made in full awareness that a totally legitimate response is if I don’t like what’s happening I can fuck right off and run my own blog just the way I want it.
I think lprent works out when to do things for himself adam. And I think he gets both pride and satisfaction, and irritation and irony about TS probably in equal measures.
In the meantime Jack Ma, the billionaire of Alibaba fame is demanding 72 hour weeks to be the norm:
China’s wealthiest man, with an estimated net worth of more than $50 billion, has created a stir on social media after declaring that staff should adhere to a “996” work schedule: from 9:00am to 9:00pm, six days a week.
And as a side note, not many people would know that the origins of the 40 hour week was in Victoria in the 1850’s gold rush. The main street of Ballarat has dividing strip with about 20 or so interesting historic monuments of all kinds; but the one that surprised me the most was this:
The Utopian Socialist Robert Owen coined the slogan “Eight hours’ labour, Eight hours’ recreation, Eight hours’ rest” in 1817. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Owen
Marx wrote in Capital “By extending the working day, therefore, capitalist production…not only produces a deterioration of human labour power by robbing it of its normal moral and physical conditions of development and activity, but also produces the premature exhaustion and death of this labour power itself.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
Victorian Masons used their labour power to strike successfully for an eight-hour day but they still worked 6 days a week. The 40hr week only was made law in 1948 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_labour_movement
John Maynard Keynes thought that increased labour productivity would lead to a 15-hour work week. “But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while.”
We work more, more productivley for less
*Green Party MP Golriz, – she has no environmental credibility at all.
So when did she complain about the excessive over use of trucks and underuse of rail”
She is dumb on the ruining of our planet by the massive emissions of tyre dust and diesel exhaust from all those 34 tyres on every truck in the fleet of 35 000 trucks emissions from each truck isn’t she just.
Had second thoughts after praising the PM & govt yesterday. The continued stalling on the climate change legislation is a big problem. It informs the public that the issue is not a priority. They ought not to keep sending out that signal!
At the very least, they owe us an explanation. “We’re working on it” is an excuse that has worn thin from over-use. If NZF is indeed doing the stalling, make the buggers accountable to the public!
What use is a PM that allows the tail to wag the dog? Ardern ought to realise that her boast about climate change being her generational issue is being diminished in its political effect by the ongoing lack of follow-through. Precisely what is the hold-up? She’d better sort it fast – or publicise exactly who is doing the stalling.
what is the current level of co2 in the atmosphere? clearly it’s not part of the weather report, it’s of no interest. Simply put, we don’t have to care about co2 since the media have decided not to inform us about co2 actual levels. Politicians are not there if the media isn’t. It’s inevitable that continued co2 rises will hit, even has, tipping points in the planet’s climate. And worse, given we won’t react until we have measured the irreversible trend, that any media needs immediate evidence for emotional sensationalism we will never get to any real action on climate change. Sure, transitional fads, but if climate does radically shift our race has no ability to preempt said disaster. cross fingers.
“Not just an attack on press freedom, not just intimidation, but it says: Even if you’re exposing WAR CRIMES, we’re coming after you.”
At the 6:00 minute mark, the clip from MSNBC shows where Te Reo Putake gets his major talking point re WikiLeaks. It’s false of course, and Paul Jay deals with it at the 11:30 mark….
Assange’s health has been seriously undermined according to
“Dr. Sondra Crosby, an associate professor of medicine and public health at Boston University and an expert on the physical and psychological impact of torture, has evaluated detainees held by the United States, including at its prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. She quietly began meeting with and evaluating Assange in 2017 inside the embassy where he had sought refuge.”
Just to be clear: the women—not “the complainants”—were harried and bamboozled into complying with this obscene and ridiculous scheme to destroy Assange. However, despite the strenuous efforts of Marianne Ny and her incompetent henchmen, they both quickly made it clear that the charges were a fantasy.
Spy vs. Spy is funny in the pages of Mad magazine; in real life it’s sinister and extremely dangerous.
Of course that won’t stop you carrying on pushing these black lies, any more than we can expect the DNC and its media mouthpieces like Rachel Maddow to pull back from their equally absurd and evidence-free assertions that Trump is a “Russian agent.”
And your little dig about “the matrix” is certainly a step higher on the evolutionary ladder than sneering about tinfoil helmets.
Appreciate your perseverance in the face of reality. Don’t know why you’re doing it for free though; at least the likes of Hosking are paid to spew their bile.
You keep saying “the complainant”. The women roped into this obscene engine of destruction both clearly stated the charges were bogus. The “complainant” is the U.S. government and its vassals.
And, yes, it is a conspiracy.
Interestingly, you seem to place great faith in the integrity of the Swedish prosecution service, as if complete and utter refutation would lead it to simply abandon a case in which it was so heavily invested. How are Swedish prosecutors any more trustworthy than, say, the New Zealand prosecutors who forced Peter Ellis into prison on equally bizarre and outlandish charges?
The lawyer in that link, Elisabeth Massi Fritz, isn’t part of the prosecution service. She is working for the complainant. When the complainant’s lawyer wants the case reopened, the term “complainant” seems appropriate.
So is Elisabeth Massi Fritz committing professional misconduct and lying about who her client is or her client’s wishes? Or is your “bogus” claim itself questionable?
In all your life McFlock have you ever campaigned for any other alleged rape victims?
Demanded that their testimony be accepted and that the accused be punished?
Thought not.
So why are you so especially interested in this case?
What the Swedes are calling rape in this instance , is what I call bad sexual etiquette. Save your tears for forceful entry and assault, where a man uses his superior strength against a woman , and his penis as a weapon.
So one commenter is saying it’s all made up, another commenter is saying people only care because of a vendetta against the accused, and you’ve come up with minimisation of what occurred and that other rapes are much worse so this doesn’t really count.
Standard rape-culture bingo card, right there.
I really don’t know which position is more contemptible to hold.
What level of “sex without consent” do you consider to be more than mere bad manners? Where on your hierarchy of sexual molestation do you think Assange would have to be in order for you to want him to appear before a court?
I find your disgust and outrage disproportionate to the event.
You are probably never likely to experience a violent rape.
If thats the law in Sweden, thats the law in Sweden.
Saudi Arabia also has some unforgiving laws, which have to be obeyed by all .So does Indonesia over drug laws.
Where do you get the idea I dont believe Assange should have his day in court?More assumptions on your part.
I think he has every right to the opportunity to clear his name.
He was granted asylum lawfully as a political refugee, and Sweden could have upheld that with assurances that status would be honoured by them
No rendition or extradition while Assange was in their custody.
Instead the Swedes put political considerations above the rights of the complainants and the accused.
And the Bingo card is a fizzer No prize for you. You have to have them all on the same card McF
Legally, it’s rape here, it’s rape in Sweden, it’s rape in the UK. Poor etiquette isn’t a crime in any of those countries.
People don’t minimise the alleged crimes of other people they think should go to court. Make up your mind.
By the way, you do realise that the bulk of my disgust isn’t levelled at Assange (who at least provides entertainment by having been hoist by his own paranoid petard), but with folks here who repeat the same lies and minimisations for almost a decade, copying every rape denialist trope ever used to get a rich frat-boy or a Harvey Weinstein off a sexual assault charge? You lot are contemptible.
The NZ legal conditions for defining rape are numerous, partly because a wife can claim rape against her husband; agreement without pressure comes into the consideration. This:
Conspiracy type comments I’ve heard on the web re: Assange that I think are interesting enough to post here
1. He is being carried out because if he doesn’t set foot on the ground he cannot be properly charged
2. The purpose of his arrest is not to actually punish him, but to put critical evidence before the public so they can see behind the scenes
3. Because this isn’t a “real” arrest (?!) he will be released later on.
Maori Council executive member and Chair of Suicide Prevention Australia Matthew Tukaki talked with Guyon Espiner this morning about the lack of action from the government on addressing our appalling suicide stats.
Come, come.
Guyon shuts anyone who might embarrass the Government down as you must surely have observed.
The only people he allows to proceed uninterrupted are members of the current Government. They get total fawning attention.
If you think he allows members of the current Government to proceed uninterrupted and they get total fawning attention, either you need a new radio or I do.
Briscoes seem to have quite a lot of models for sale.
The cheapest is apparently $14.99.
Since you obviously need a new radio I suggest you get down there at once. http://homeware.www.briscoes.co.nz/shopping/Radio
“A woman turned to Lifeline in desperation. First of all she texted them and got replies that the service was experiencing long wait times. She then called, and was on hold for 30 minutes. Eventually she gave up and hung up. Lifeline has been around for 50 years and Robin Gault of the University of Otago says Lifeline should get funding in this year’s Budget and people should get immediate attention when they call.”
There was regular links during the previous govts terms illustrating the volume of service cuts and defunding of them…
It was staggering the high numbers of service cut…as it was unthinkable given the dollar values being removed from those services…
A few hundred thousand here..aggregate totals being a handul of million of I recall…yet the social value of the safety nets was immeasureable in reality…
I get that it is not a straight forward exercise to start up such services even if funding was available…and that some services may have been..or may be started up in different form…
If it were my decision it would have been a key campaign issue…to fundm..and start up every single support service shut down by NACT…
And it would have had it done by now…if I was the PM…
Notre Dame and Lateral Thinking
by CRAIG MURRAY, 15 April 2019
France is a country which has spent hundreds of billions of euros on nuclear Weapons of Mass Destruction, and hundreds of billions of euros on other military capabilities. France possesses the technological capability to utterly flatten a city the size of Paris in minutes. Yet it does not possess the technological capability to prevent one of its greatest buildings from being destroyed by fire.
If the many trillions spent all around the world on the research, development and production of instruments of destruction had been devoted to peaceful purposes instead, what new technologies might we have now? It is not a huge step in lateral thinking to imagine that in such a world, more might have been available to save Notre Dame – and Grenfell – than too short ladders and hoses squirting water.
I posted this simple idea on twitter a couple of hours ago. As with all my twitter posts, right wing trolls came in to dispute my point very quickly. Their posts are worth reading because they so stunningly miss the point. They talk about standard lengths of firefighting ladders and about water pressure. They appear completely unable to even register, let alone extrapolate from, the notion that had the resources mankind has squandered on agents of destruction been better used, we might have different technologies.
John Stuart Mill once stated in parliament: “I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.” I have always believed that right wing “thought” is a misnomer, and right wing views are rather characterised by absence of meaningful intellectual activity. Furthermore, those touted as right wing “thinkers”, such as Roger Scruton, Patrick Minford or David Starkey, if studied with any rigour, are the greatest proof of this. But it is seldom that you see such clear evidence as the responses to that little tweet. If I had devised that tweet as an experiment to demonstrate the hypothesis of the intellectual incapacity of the conservative mind, it could not have worked better.
My condolences to all for the loss of a great building. One day, perhaps mankind will learn that we do not in reality defend what we have by spending vast amounts of our available resources and capacity for communal activity in preparing to destroy as much as we are physically capable of destroying.
French governments have wasted, and continue to waste, billions—actually, trillions—of francs/euros on weapons of mass destruction and on wars of aggression/repression all over the world. None of this criminal aggression has popular assent.
If French politicians cared about French culture and French treasures like Notre Dame it might be a mitigating factor. But clearly they do not.
This program is getting a lot of buy-in and the organisers are very keen for people to see how well it is succeeding in cutting down on violent events that have put our domestic violence figures high. It may be similar to Celia Lashlie’s ideas that she were proving helpful to people losing it and messing up everyone’s lives. RIP Celia. I think others are going ahead with the plans she and they instigated. It
might be a good thing for those of us who see the need for improvements for people in NZ and don’t know where to start to get involved in.
Domestic violence awareness roadtrip – born out of tragedy
From Nine To Noon, 9:20 am today
Listen duration 15′ :02″
David White’s daughter was murdered a decade ago, now he’s traveling the country to raise awareness of domestic violence.
The 74 year old is now more than half-way through a nationwide road trip, speaking to community groups from Invercargill to the Far North.
His campaign slogan is Harm Ends Futures Begin. David White’s daughter, Helen Meads was killed by her husband in 2009.
A very good programme, and well done to Kathryn Ryan giving for David White space to deliver his message.
Ten years on and he still audibly grieves.
Two major things popped out…one was that domestic violence affects ALL sections of the community and merely blaming poverty is a cop-out, and the other was that he recognised the real value of cross party (political) discussions on this issue.
…and fortunately there is plenty of spare cash floating around to pay for it.
France’s benevolent wealthy have stepped up to the plate and dug deep for Notre Dame…
” French business leaders have already pledged more than a billion NZ dollars for the reconstruction of the cathedral. Billionaire François-Henri Pinault, chairman and CEO of the Kering group that owns the Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent fashion brands, has pledged €100m. Another €200m was pledged by Bernard Arnault’s family and their company LVMH – a business empire which includes Louis Vuitton and Sephora. French cosmetics giant L’Oreal and its founding Bettencourt family have promised to give a further €200m. Total, the French oil giant, has pledged €100m. Air France said in a statement that the company would offer free flights to anyone involved in the reconstruction. ”
So it is just as well that the-gloss-wearing-off-rapidly Macron reversed the contentious Wealth Tax that drove the Worthies from French soil….
“Macron’s move to replace the tax with a levy targeting only real estate in last week’s 2018 budget was used by political opponents to brand him the “president of the rich”, a label the ex-Rothschild banker has been struggling to shake off since taking office in May.
In a visit to a Whirlpool factory in his native town of Amiens, scene of a showdown six months ago with his then far-right challenger Marine Le Pen in the presidential election contest, Macron defended the policy.
“It’s all well and good to want to spread wealth, but you first need to produce, to create wealth before redistributing, that’s how it works,” he told journalists. ”
“These injuries caused by police during the protests mostly result from the uses of the security forces’ “defensive bullets” known as Flashballs or LBDs and stun grenades which contain a dose of TNT.
Police are forbidden from aiming the bullets at people’s faces but as already mentioned at least a dozen people have suffered serious eye injuries including the permanent loss of sight, by these rubber bullets.
After an appeal by France Info some 51 victims of police Flashball came forward. Some had been seriously maimed including one named Vanessa Langard who was hit in the face by the so-called “defence bullet”.
“My eye has lost three quarters of its vision. I can just see shapes and colours now and it’s not going to get any better,” she said.
Four people have reportedly had part of their hands blown off as a consequence of the use of the grenades. ”
I guess this is the outcome when the electorate has a choice between someone like Macron and a child of the ultra far right.
Donald Trump was reluctant to expel suspected Russian spies after the novichok chemical weapons attack in Salisbury, viewing the poisoning of a defector as “part of legitimate spy games”, according to a new report.
According to the New York Times, Trump reacted sceptically to a British request in March 2018 for a strong punitive response to the use of the nerve agent against the former spy, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. A local resident, Dawn Sturgess, was killed three months later when she came in contact with the chemical.
It marked the first chemical weapon attack on European soil since the first world war…
… The incident is cited as an example of the persuasive skills of the then deputy CIA director (now director), Gina Haspel.
She is said to have presented the expulsion of 60 accredited Russian diplomats – the course eventually taken – as the “strong option”.
She also showed the president pictures of young children who had been hospitalised as a result of the Salisbury attack, as well as photographs of ducks that had been killed because of the carelessness in handling the deadly nerve agent on the part of the two Russian intelligence operatives alleged to have carried out the attack.
“Mr Trump fixated on the pictures of the sickened children and the dead ducks. At the end of the briefing, he embraced the strong option,” the report said…
… Trump has separately been reported as having been furious when he found out that the US had expelled far more Russians than Germany or France, who each ordered four Russian officials to leave.
According to a report last April in the Washington post, Trump had told his officials that the US would match the European response, but his aides interpreted that to total European expulsions, not individual countries.
“I don’t care about the total!” an administration official cited in the Washington Post report recalled Trump screaming.
Goodness me Marty.
So Haspel(the torture Queen) deliberately misrepresenting the facts (no children were hospitalised , no ducks died)is a good thing???
Totally fabricated evidence to manipulate a gullible and emotionally infantile president is a good thing now?
The ends justify the means eh, its a slippery slope
I just though t.rumps actions and reactions were funny – “I don’t care about the total” – those officials misinterpreted his utterances? – ha ha I bet they did.
You can do all the other stuff – I feel okay with what I think happened on those days.
Unfortunately that slippery slope is ancient history these days francesca..these days folk seem happy to support anyone and any action as long as they follow the ‘Trump (Assange) Worst Man on earth Ever’ narrative.
Haspel, Mueller*, George Bush, Alec Baldwin….all now looked upon with benign fondness by so some called liberals/left wingers/centrists/whatever .
Political language especially as regurgitated by the msm and journalists who should know better, like those at The Guardian,…. “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind” Orwell. (my italics)
*Though maybe not now he’s failed to deliver the promised ‘goods’…apparently helping start a disastrous war by purposefully lying about Saddam Hussein’s WMD’s was entirely forgivable..the Collusion Report…not so much.
Yes,
preferential blinkering I see, beats critical thinking every time.
Of course Trumps responses are totally buffoonish, and totally predictable.
Whats new?
But fabricated information is a dangerous tool to
put in front of such a President, and for that to go unremarked in the article is worrying.
But anyway
Whooosh!
There were news reports about 3 children being given bread to feed the ducks and 48 people were assessed in hospital I believe – not so strange to mention then I think. Still could be wrong and morally there may be issues giving this information to t.rump and expecting some coherent response. But he did expel the people so…
Yes, but no children were hospitalised and no ducks died, you really can’t extrapolate that from the fact that 40 people got worried and Skripal fed ducks and gave bread to the kids from his novichoked hands .
One thing is not the other
Maybe its “truthiness” is ok for you
And for you the ends justifies the means, so…
Yes well i’ve put the reports up with links and you have some issues with those reports. All good although I would caution about ascribing anything to me – ask and I shall tell otherwise don’t speculate please.
On March 16 Steven Davies, “Consultant in Emergency Medicine” at Salisbury hospital, wrote the following letter to the Times in response to an article that had appeared there two days earlier.This is the text of the letter:
“Sir, Further to your report (“Poison Exposure Leaves Almost 40 Needing Treatment”, Mar 14), may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve-agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning. Several people have attended the emergency department concerned that they may have been exposed. None had symptoms of poisoning and none has needed treatment. Any blood tests performed have shown no abnormality. No member of the public has been contaminated by the agent involved.
STEPHEN DAVIES, Consultant in Emergency Medicine, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust”
There are precisely zero reports of ducks killed by bread from either the kids or Skripal.
Some looking up stuff too – truth stranger than fiction
Last December, a trio of astronomers set the record for the most distant object ever discovered in the solar system. Because the small world is located about three times farther from the Sun than Pluto, the researchers dubbed it Farout. Now, not to be outdone (even by themselves), the same group of boundary pushers have announced the discovery of an even more far-flung object. And since the new find sits a couple billion miles farther out than Farout, the team has fittingly nicknamed it Farfarout.
The discovery of Farfarout, which is about 140 astronomical units from the Sun (where 1 AU equals the distance between Earth and the Sun), is quite impressive by its own right. But Farfarout and its nearer sibling are not just record-breakers, they could be trend-setters. Depending on how their orbits shake out, the two may add to a growing pile of evidence that hints at the existence of an elusive super-Earth lurking in the fringes of our solar system: Planet Nine.
Golly that is exciting about Farfarout. I think we should all stop worrying about our little planet and petty little crises and put all our money into exploring the huge universe that we live in. And when we have used up this planet Earth and killed off everyone in various ways including bacteria and viruses, in a parody of Jules Verne The War of the Worlds, the few scientists and their bloated backers that are left can all bugger off and have a great time eating pies in the sky, and singing about their obsessions as in Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
Liberalism is sweeping populism away and now people don’t like liberalism. What next – what next. He is making me think of a song ‘You call everybody darling’ but here the word is ‘Nazi’. He makes the very salient point that if that word is spread around so widely applied to everyone – what do you call a Nazi when you want to point to a real one?
Jonathan Pie so hot, that you need oven gloves to get near him.
There is so much here that you have to listen twice.
I’m slightly surprised by this – given the number of days in April that involve NZ holidays/gatherings or important dates for US nutbars or important dates from WW2 and for Nazi nutbars, I expected the threat level to remain high until early May.
“Apparently, linguists who have loaded a thousand languages into their minds, despair trying to understand gabbleducks. What they say is nonsensical, but frustratingly close to meaning. There’s no reason for them to have such complex voice boxes, especially to communicate with each other, as on the whole they are solitary creatures and speak to themselves. When they meet it is usually only to mate or fight, or both. There’s also no reason for them to carry structures in their skulls capable of handling vastly complex languages. Two thirds of their large brains they seem to use hardly at all. Science, in their case, often supports myth.”
Brilliant Sci Fi story in that link (audio story too!!!) – Neal Asher is one of my favorite writers – space opera though so get ready for a big ride if you start reading his work.
What are your deficiencies? And what have you done about them – this could be good learning for me as we are at vastly different stages on the journey as you have stated.
Yeah I suppose with the way you talk to people online it’s good for you not to share too much.
Over the years I’ve found those most critical of others (like you are) often are the most in need of their own advice. This is the way it works.
It seems like people don’t trust you from what you say. Trust has to be earned One Two. You need to show you can be trusted. You know this stuff so just a reminder to tap you onto the path again.
Good luck on your journey – as they say, the master is just around the next corner.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/387253/watch-live-govt-rules-out-capital-gains-tax
Oh it isn’t the government’s fault, it is that wonky steel that got imported from overseas. The government just buckles under pressure. And poor Mr Robertson so rotund and roly poly doesn’t look as if he would be able to stand up to lean and hungry capitalists in a row coming at him like an All Black charge.
Doesn’t it seem sometimes as if the All Blacks have almost become favourite enforcers for the National Party; when they retire sportspeople like them, if they are in good standing, can get good jobs as part of a government goodie bag.
It seems a fanciful idea, but in our present state of nimble government, Jack has to be quick to keep up with pollies.
Anyone else remember back around three years ago when the convergence moonbats were telling us Hair Farce One was going to be some kind of peacenik once he was prez?
The Senate just voted 54-46 and the House 247-175 to withdraw US involvement from the Yemen massacre. But the Tangerine Palpatine gets some sort of jollies from his Saudi mates murdering Yemenis by the thousands, so he vetoed it.
You do realize, I take it, that the killing in Yemen—and in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and several states in Africa— was greenlighted by Obama well before the arrival of Trump?
I share your distaste and disgust for the Tangerine One, and acknowledge that he’s even worse than what went before. However, he’s not doing anything radically different from any president before him.
What is radically different is this is the first time Congress has ever explicitly told a president to stop the malicious war games. That’s an enormous step by itself.
Any previous president would take that as a big sign to rethink what was being done. But not the deranged dotard.
And the convergence moonbat game of whining “but Obama” really isn’t an argument. I really can’t be arsed looking up the facts to play that game.
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
Open access notablesIce acceleration and rotation in the Greenland Ice Sheet interior in recent decades, Løkkegaard et al., Communications Earth & Environment:In the past two decades, mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated, partly due to the speedup of glaciers. However, uncertainty in speed derived from satellite products ...
Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Government’s official website – arrived in Point of Order’s email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
It's hard times try to make a livingYou wake up every morning in the unforgivingOut there somewhere in the cityThere's people living lives without mercy or pityI feel good, yeah I'm feeling fineI feel better then I have for the longest timeI think these pills have been good for meI ...
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
Every day now just seems to bring in more fresh meat for the grinder.In their relentlessly ideological drive to cut back on the “excessive bloat” (as they see it) of the previous Labour-led government, on the mountains of evidence accumulated in such a short period of time do not ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Megan Valére SosouMarket gardening site of the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè (Image credit: Megan Valère Sossou) For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough ...
Buzz from the Beehive Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ...
Morning in London Mother hugs beloved daughter outside the converted shoe factory in which she is living.Afternoon in London Travelling writer takes himself and his wrist down to A&E, just to be sure. Read more ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – The recent announcement of the University Advisory Group, chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, makes very clear where the Government’s focus and priorities lie. The remit of the Advisory Group is that Group members will consider challenges and opportunities for improvement in the university sector including: ...
Eric Crampton writes – The Reserve Bank of New Zealand desperately wants to find reasons to have workstreams in climate change. It makes little sense. They’ve run another stress test on the banks looking to see if they could find a prudential regulation case. They couldn’t. They ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Pundits from the left and the right are arguing that National’s Fast Track Bill that is designed to speed up infrastructure decisions could end up becoming mired in a cesspool of corruption. Political commentator ...
Looking at the headlines this morning it’s hard to feel anything other than pessimistic about the future of humanity.Note that I’m not speaking about the future of mankind, but the survival of our humanity. The values that we believe in seem to be ebbing away, by the day.Perhaps every generation ...
Swabbing mixed breed baby chicks to test for avian influenzaUh oh. Bird flu – often deadly to humans – is not only being transmitted from infected birds to dairy cows, but is now travelling between dairy cows. As of last Friday, Bloomberg News reports, there were 32 American dairy herds ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
What is it with the mining industry? Its not enough for them to pillage the earth - they apparently can't even be bothered getting resource consent to do so: The proponent behind a major mine near the Clutha River had already been undertaking activity in the area without a ...
Photo # 1 I am a huge fan of Singapore’s approach to housing, as described here two years ago by copying and pasting from The ConversationWhat Singapore has that Australia does not is a public housing developer, the Housing Development Board, which puts new dwellings on public and reclaimed land, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Reactions to news of the government’s readiness to make urgent changes to “the resource management system” through a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) suggest a balanced approach is being taken. The Taxpayers’ Union says the proposed changes don’t go far enough. Greenpeace says ...
I’m starting to wonder if Anna Burns-Francis might be the best political interviewer we’ve got. That might sound unlikely to you, it came as a bit of a surprise to me.Jack Tame can be excellent, but has some pretty average days. I like Rebecca Wright on Newshub, she asks good ...
Chris Trotter writes – Willie Jackson is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also ...
Graeme Edgeler writes – This morning [April 21], the Wellington High Court is hearing a judicial review brought by Hon. Karen Chhour, the Minister for Children, against a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal. This is unusual, judicial reviews are much more likely to brought against ministers, rather than ...
Both of Parliament’s watchdogs have now ripped into the Government’s Fast-track Approvals Bill. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s political economy and beyond on the morning of Tuesday, April 23 are:The Lead: The Auditor General,John Ryan, has joined the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah SpengemanPeople wait to board an electric bus in Pune, India. (Image credit: courtesy of ITDP) Public transportation riders in Pune, India, love the city’s new electric buses so much they will actually skip an older diesel bus that ...
The infrastructure industry yesterday issued a “hurry up” message to the Government, telling it to get cracking on developing a pipeline of infrastructure projects.The hiatus around the change of Government has seen some major projects cancelled and others delayed, and there is uncertainty about what will happen with the new ...
Hi,Over the weekend I revisited a podcast I really adore, Dead Eyes. It’s about a guy who got fired from Band of Brothers over two decades ago because Tom Hanks said he had “dead eyes”.If you don’t recall — 2001’s Band of Brothers was part of the emerging trend of ...
Buzz from the Beehive The 180 or so recipients of letters from the Government telling them how to submit infrastructure projects for “fast track” consideration includes some whose project applications previously have been rejected by the courts. News media were quick to feature these in their reports after RMA Reform Minister Chris ...
It would not be a desirable way to start your holiday by breaking your back, your head, or your wrist, but on our first hour in Singapore I gave it a try.We were chatting, last week, before we started a meeting of Hazel’s Enviro Trust, about the things that can ...
Calling all journalists, academics, planners, lawyers, political activists, environmentalists, and other members of the public who believe that the relationships between vested interests and politicians need to be scrutinised. We need to work together to make sure that the new Fast-Track Approvals Bill – currently being pushed through by the ...
Feel worried. Shane Jones and a couple of his Cabinet colleagues are about to be granted the power to override any and all objections to projects like dams, mines, roads etc even if: said projects will harm biodiversity, increase global warming and cause other environmental harms, and even if ...
Bryce Edwards writes- The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. ...
Michael Bassett writes – If you think there is a move afoot by the radical Maori fringe of New Zealand society to create a parallel system of government to the one that we elect at our triennial elections, you aren’t wrong. Over the last few days we have ...
Without a corresponding drop in interest rates, it’s doubtful any changes to the CCCFA will unleash a massive rush of home buyers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Monday, April 22 included:The Government making a ...
Sunday was a lazy day. I started watching Jack Tame on Q&A, the interviews are usually good for something to write about. Saying the things that the politicians won’t, but are quite possibly thinking. Things that are true and need to be extracted from between the lines.As you might know ...
In our Weekly Roundup last week we covered news from Auckland Transport that the WX1 Western Express is going to get an upgrade next year with double decker electric buses. As part of the announcement, AT also said “Since we introduced the WX1 Western Express last November we have seen ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 29 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Stats NZ releases its statutory report on Census 2023 tomorrow.Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers a pre-Budget speech at ...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 14, 2024 thru Sat, April 20, 2024. Story of the week Our story of the week hinges on these words from the abstract of a fresh academic ...
The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. The Government says this will ...
This is a column to say thank you. So many of have been in touch since Mum died to say so many kind and thoughtful things. You’re wonderful, all of you. You’ve asked how we’re doing, how Dad’s doing. A little more realisation each day, of the irretrievable finality of ...
Identifying the engine type in your car is crucial for various reasons, including maintenance, repairs, and performance upgrades. Knowing the specific engine model allows you to access detailed technical information, locate compatible parts, and make informed decisions about modifications. This comprehensive guide will provide you with a step-by-step approach to ...
Introduction: The allure of racing is undeniable. The thrill of speed, the roar of engines, and the exhilaration of competition all contribute to the allure of this adrenaline-driven sport. For those who yearn to experience the pinnacle of racing, becoming a race car driver is the ultimate dream. However, the ...
Introduction Automobiles have become ubiquitous in modern society, serving as a primary mode of transportation and a symbol of economic growth and personal mobility. With countless vehicles traversing roads and highways worldwide, it begs the question: how many cars are there in the world? Determining the precise number is a ...
Maintaining a safe and reliable vehicle requires regular inspections. Whether it’s a routine maintenance checkup or a safety inspection, knowing how long the process will take can help you plan your day accordingly. This article delves into the factors that influence the duration of a car inspection and provides an ...
Mazda Motor Corporation, commonly known as Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Fuchu, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. The company was founded in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd., and began producing vehicles in 1931. Mazda is primarily known for its production of passenger cars, but ...
Your car battery is an essential component that provides power to start your engine, operate your electrical systems, and store energy. Over time, batteries can weaken and lose their ability to hold a charge, which can lead to starting problems, power failures, and other issues. Replacing your battery before it ...
In most states, you cannot register a car without a valid driver’s license. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. Exceptions to the RuleIf you are under 18 years old: In some states, you can register a car in your name even if you do not ...
Mazda, a Japanese automotive manufacturer with a rich history of innovation and engineering excellence, has emerged as a formidable player in the global car market. Known for its reputation of producing high-quality, fuel-efficient, and driver-oriented vehicles, Mazda has consistently garnered praise from industry experts and consumers alike. In this article, ...
Struts are an essential part of a car’s suspension system. They are responsible for supporting the weight of the car and damping the oscillations of the springs. Struts are typically made of steel or aluminum and are filled with hydraulic fluid. How Do Struts Work? Struts work by transferring the ...
Car registration is a mandatory process that all vehicle owners must complete annually. This process involves registering your car with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and paying an associated fee. The registration process ensures that your vehicle is properly licensed and insured, and helps law enforcement and other authorities ...
Zoom is a video conferencing service that allows you to share your screen, webcam, and audio with other participants. In addition to sharing your own audio, you can also share the audio from your computer with other participants. This can be useful for playing music, sharing presentations with audio, or ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
The pair opened their first fully collaborative exhibition, Nina for Flowers, last Saturday. Gabi Lardies visited their studio to find out who Nina is and what working together was like.‘It didn’t start out like, ‘This is a show about Nina,’” says Josephine Jelicich, gripping a thermos of peppermint tea. ...
Thank you, Dr Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner, for your brilliant invention. I’m another mid-20s Kiwi who had an OE last year. I hopped on my bicycle where France meets the Atlantic and cycled east. I pedalled through the Loire Valley, down rivers lined with willows and ancient wisteria-draped chateaus. I relished ...
Asia Pacific Report From France to Australia, university pro-Palestine protests in the United States have now spread to several countries with students pitching on-campus camps. And students at Columbia and other US universities remain defiant as campuses have witnessed the biggest protests since the anti-Vietnam war and anti-apartheid eras in ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)New Zealand Government’s Fast Track legislation. Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government ...
Tara Ward talks to presenter Naomi Toilalo about the new TV show that turns food waste into a three course feast. Naomi Toilalo is standing in the warehouse at Good Neighbour Tauranga, helping unpack the two-and-a-half tonnes of rejected food that will arrive at the community support hub that day. ...
Scout is our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Scout’s human, Avril, for her support. Dog name: Scout (named after the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird – she inherited the independent spirit ...
Megan Alatini takes us through her life in TV, including ‘terrible’ daytime TV, the class of Carol Hirschfeld and her most embarrassing TrueBliss moment. When she responded to a vague newspaper ad asking “do you have what it takes to be a popstar?” 25 years ago, Megan Alatini never guessed ...
A new exhibition in Wellington showcases the faces behind your local goods and services. Back in 1977, when I was a fine arts student at the University of Canterbury, I took a series of photographs of Christchurch shopkeepers. The photos were for a calendar – a project for my end ...
Toomaj and his resistance to tyranny through his songs have become an icon for the youth of Iran, so his sentence has hit the nation hard. Toomaj Salehi is not the first artist to pay the price for standing with the people. ...
My cousin Dylan and I spotted these big eels under the bridge that summer. We watched them lounging under the dark weed, facing into the flow of water, their mouths frozen open. Dylan and I couldn’t stop thinking about those eels. The night we went down to the creek, we ...
Newsroom, home of satire. My long-running weekly satirical series The Secret Diary has moved to Newsroom and will appear every Saturday, with Victor Billot’s wildly popular satirical Odes continuing to appear every Sunday. Diaries, Odes – while serious political columnists toil at meaningful opinions and stroke their chins to an ...
Tara Ward unravels the many nuanced layers of a cartoon about talking dogs.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. It’s not often an episode of a children’s cartoon has adults sobbing into their sleeves, but that’s exactly what happened this week when ...
Working as a doctor in developing countries to help communities achieve better health outcomes is nothing short of a life goal for Jessica Tater. The University of Otago medical student has her sights firmly set on joining the international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) when she qualifies ...
There’s an island in the far reaches of Auckland’s territory, sitting off the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula, 30 minutes by air from the city or four hours on the slow boat. Aotea Great Barrier is off-grid, it has a population of fewer than a thousand people … and most ...
Asia Pacific Report An Australian author and advocate, Jim Aubrey, today led a national symbolic one minute’s silence to mark the “blood debt” owed to Papuan allies during the Second World War indigenous resistance against the invading Japanese forces. “A promise to most people is a promise,” Aubrey said in ...
Asia Pacific Report The Freedom Flotilla is ready to sail to Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. All the required paperwork has been submitted to the port authority, and the cargo has been loaded and prepared for the humanitarian trip to the besieged enclave. However, organisers received word of an “administrative ...
Pacific Media Watch Palestine solidarity protesters today demonstrated at the Auckland headquarters of Television New Zealand, accusing the country’s major TV network of broadcasting “propaganda” backing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. About 50 protesters targeted the main entrance to the TVNZ building near Sky Tower and also picketed a side ...
Opinion by Lynley Hood. Forty years on from my 1985 Fulbright Grant, my disquiet over the war in Gaza evoked some troubling questions. The answer to my first question – What is the primary purpose of the Fulbright Programme? – was on the Fulbright NZ website. It says: US Senator, ...
The ministers responsible for green-lighting major projects need to be open about potential conflicts of interest, says Transparency International. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University It has been a particularly distressing start to the year. There is little that can ease the current grief of individuals, families and communities who have needlessly lost a loved one to men’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Lichen, the first described example of symbiosis.AdeJ Artventure/Shutterstock Once known only to those studying biology, the word symbiosis is now widely used. Symbiosis is the intimate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Hemsley, Head, Childhood Dementia Research Group, Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University Olena Ivanova/Shutterstock “Childhood” and “dementia” are two words we wish we didn’t have to use together. But sadly, around 1,400 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University The government’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has just published its second report. It was set up by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth in 2022 to provide: ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne The Queensland state election will be held in October. A YouGov poll for The Courier Mail, conducted April 9–17 from a sample ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Naeni, PhD candidate at Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University There’s been much talk in recent months about what a possible second Donald Trump presidency in the United States could mean for Europe, Russia’s war in Ukraine, the ...
A brief round-up of submissions on the controversial proposed law. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week, submissions on the controversial Fast-track Approvals Bill closed just hours after the government released a list of stakeholder organisations who were sent letters advising how they could ...
A poem from Robin Peace’s new collection Detritus of Empire: feather / grass / rock. Cereal giving I see a woman’s hands, see her curious hands break a stalk as she walks through the tall prairie, the savannah, the steppe, wherever it was. See her idly bite the grass that ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)A handsomely produced (debossed cover, lovely ...
The Commissioner's decision validates the longstanding efforts of the local community and ensures that Awataha Marae will be managed to serve the needs of the local community, particularly for hosting tangihanga. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Salles, Associate professor, University of Sydney Examples of Australian landscapes.Unsplash Seventy thousand years ago, the sea level was much lower than today. Australia, along with New Guinea and Tasmania, formed a connected landmass known as Sahul. Around this time – ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Castagna, Lecturer, Creative Writing, Western Sydney University Day Day Market, ParramattaPhoto: Garry Trinh I live on the edge of Parramatta, Australia’s fastest-growing city, on the kind of old-fashioned suburban street that has 1950s fibros constructed in the post-war housing boom, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Ryan, Teaching Fellow in Economics, University of Waikato GettyImagesfatido/Getty Images There is an ongoing global debate over whether the high inflation seen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic can be lowered without a recession. New Zealand is not ...
The ‘Wicked Game’ heartthrob is in his late 60s now. That didn’t stop him putting on a lively, goofy and very sparkly show. Apart from ‘Wicked Game’, which graces a sultry playlist of mine simply called 💋, my last sustained Chris Isaak listening session took place when I was about ...
Analysis - Two ministers were stripped of portfolios in a warning to Cabinet, drama broke out at the Waitangi Tribunal, and the gang patch ban bill ran into opposition. ...
Tara Ward makes an impassioned plea for some vital pop culture merch. In April 1999, I became obsessed with a new reality television show called Popstars. Every Tuesday night, five strangers transformed into music royalty before my very eyes as Joe, Keri, Carly, Erika and Megan were chosen to form ...
PNG Post-Courier In the early hours of ANZAC Day, aerial photographs captured an impressive gathering of Australians and Papua New Guineans at Isurava in the Northern (Oro) Province. The solemn dawn service yesterday was held at a site steeped in history, where some of the fiercest battles of World War ...
The PSA is shocked that Oranga Tamariki has used the cost cutting drive to downgrade its commitment to Te Ao Māori and remove many specialist Māori roles. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland There can be no more powerful symbol of the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea than the prime ministers of these neighbouring countries walking together on the ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Viktoria Kahui, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Economics, University of Otago Getty Images/Amy Toensing Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing. One emerging concept focuses on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Colin Bednall, Associate Professor in Management, Swinburne University of Technology marvent/Shutterstock Finding the best person to fill a position can be tough, from drafting a job ad to producing a shortlist of top interview candidates. Employers typically consider information from ...
Wondering where to host your next BYO? Whether its a small gathering or a massive party, we’ve got some recommendations. I was first introduced to the concept of BYOs at Dunedin’s India Gardens, a legendary but sadly defunct establishment, which purveyed enormous quantities of mango chicken to Aotearoa’s drunkest future ...
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The sector says it’s hopeful her replacement Paul Goldsmith will be able to throw it a lifeline, after six months with a minister deemed missing in action, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign ...
The government can't just rely on axing public sector jobs and has to do more to cut spending, says the chief economist at a free market think tank. ...
Rock The Vote NZ, known for its advocacy for minor party unity and its role within the Freedoms NZ Coalition during the 2023 General Election, celebrates this merger as a strategic enhancement of its operational strength and outreach. ...
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It’s not that long ago Eliza McCartney was seriously wondering if the Paris Olympics would be her pole vaulting swansong. After years of being hounded by injury after injury, the Rio Olympics bronze medallist was still confident she would compete at her second Olympics in Paris in July, unless something ...
FICTION 1 Take Two by Danielle Hawkins (Allen & Unwin, $36.99) There’s commercial fiction, like this book, and then there’s quality fiction, quality writers, quality literature; the forthcoming Auckland Writers Festival is full of quality, and ReadingRoom has two tickets to give away to the following events: Paul Lynch (Dublin ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Friday 26 April appeared first on Newsroom. ...
You can’t have missed the Gallipoli story as the movies, documentaries, essays and books capture what it was like for New Zealand troops in their eight-month campaign on the Peninsula. But this Anzac Day the Auckland War Memorial Museum has published a book that sheds light on a little-known aspect of the ...
“Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light”
Dreaming, when Dawn’s left hand was in the sky.
I heard a voice within the tavern cry,
Awake my little ones and fill the cup!
Before life’s liquor in its cup be dry.
Heh. My morning serenade for many years to rouse sluggish offspring. Unsurprisingly, none are into either the dawn chorus or poetry.
Get up, get up, you lazy heads
Get up you lazy sinners:
We need the sheets for tablecloths
And it’s nearly time for dinner!
That was ours.
Wakey, wakey hands off snakey
I was gonna keep it to myself, but now that you’ve led the dive into the gutter: Drop your cocks and grab your socks
Hands above the covers
What’s the time
Half past nine
Hang your britches on the line.
My father’s refrain. Guess his father refrained it to him.
Oh Goody! Can I play too, please?
“And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop’t we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help — for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.
Fitzgerald took some liberties, but the result is excellent. It takes a poet to translate a poet.
Aye, indeed. I like this verse also:
“For in and out, above, about, below,
‘Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Play’d in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.
If Israel Folau is to be banished and thrown out
Then surely so too must the bible be banished and thrown out
As many have pointed out – only to be politely ignored
such are we humans eh…
little credibility
Some pampered religious crackpot got fired because he shot his mouth off in direct violation of his employment agreement, tough luck.
exactly – boo hoo for him
If Stuff is to be believed then your statement is wrong.
They are saying that there was nothing in his contract about commenting n Social Media. Therefore he can’t be in direct violation of the contract by doing so.
They may have other, more general, grounds for sacking him but his contract doesn’t appear to have been breached.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/international/112093460/rugby-australia-yet-to-hear-from-israel-folau-but-face-unwanted-dilemma
It wasn’t the fact that he spouted that crap, it was that he used his position to highlight it. People in ‘high places’ have a social responsibility
People in high places shouldn’t quote the bible?
That’s a goody
Is the bible an entertainer with a contract requiring it not to say anything that might damage the company’s brand? Because, otherwise it’s not clear what you’re on about.
Good to see you standing up for Israel Folau’s right to vilify , disparage an harass those people he chooses to. /SARC
While somehow saying anything about the Sultan of Brunei, who passes laws stoning these same people to death gets defined as Islamophobia. /sarc right back at you
I have even less time for the Sultan than I do Folau though I wonder if Folau would make homosexuality criminal again if he could like the Sultan did.
Maybe we can rationally assess the chances of Leviticus being enacted in any modern western nation.
And while doing that let’s wait for the chorus of condemnation from imam’s all around the western world for the Sultan’s actual law making shall we?
“Maybe we can rationally assess the chances of Leviticus being enacted in any modern western nation”
We can answer that with one word: Pence.
So quite high.
“So today, I want to close with faith. Faith in the good people of this nation of faith, the United States of America. And from our founding, have cherished that foundation of belief and cherish it still.
Faith in our President, whose deep commitment to religious liberty at home and abroad has been evident every day of this administration.
Faith in all of you and the nations represented here, and your renewed commitment to the cause of religious liberty in your nations and around the world.
And I also close with faith that, from this renewed beginning today, we will make progress on behalf of religious liberty in the years ahead. And my faith ultimately comes from what’s in my heart.
And in the ancient words inscribed on our Liberty Bell, displayed in Philadelphia, the words of the ancient text of Leviticus that read, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, and unto [all] the inhabitants thereof.” We’ve done it throughout our history. And I know that as each one of us renew our commitment to proclaim liberty throughout all of our lands, that freedom will prevail, for as the Bible tells us, “where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” So freedom always wins when Faith in Him is held high.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-vice-president-pence-ministerial-advance-religious-freedom/
Great, but nothing about stoning adulterers and gays. Just saying.
A wink and a nudge…
After nearly 24 hours of declining to clarify its position, the State Department finally sent The Daily Beast a statement saying the U.S. was “concerned” about the new law, minutes after we published a story noting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the department’s silence.
However, when asked by The Daily Beast, Pompeo and the Department of State declined to directly condemn, or state an objection to, the stoning to death of LGBT people.
[…]
The Daily Beast again asked if Pompeo or the Department of State objected to the stoning to death of LGBT people under the new law. A spokesperson would not address this question directly, and instead referred us to the statement above.
A request for comment by The Daily Beast to Vice President Mike Pence, given his influence when it comes to U.S. foreign policy, went unresponded to.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/pompeo-and-trump-admin-silent-on-bruneis-law-to-stone-lgbt-people-to-death?
Pence is on the extreme right. The Westboro Baptist Church also occupies that space and has views on homosexuality that are based on teachings found in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, which they interpret to mean that homosexual behaviour is detestable and that homosexuals should be put to death.
Maybe I missed the point where Pence proposed ” that homosexuals should be put to death” and this will be introduced as US law if he became President.
Also I missed any realistic analysis of the likelihood of such a law actually being implemented in the USA. As contrasted to at least four Islamic countries where is law right now.
Yep I’m sure he would – I wonder how many Christian so called moderates would turn their heads and pretend not to see or hear the truth of that bigotry. Not many I hope but history might not hold that up.
So Folau is a bigot while the rulers of Saudi, Yemen, Mauritania, Brunei and all our allegedly moderate Muslim ‘brothers and sisters’ throughout the world who hold to the much the same views …. are what exactly?
bigots too if they act or say bigoted things – same with Ardern and t.rump, Corbyn or Sanders – doesn’t distinguish between skin colour, religion, gender, country or what your hair colour is.
Yes. Maybe it’s what individuals say and act out which is important; not which group they’ve been allocated to.
They self allocate and implicate their group when they say the group believes in the same bigotry – in other words they say the group is bigoted not the individual.
They’ve got fuckall chance of playing in a pro rugby team too I’d say Rodlog.
Trading partners
He is us, isn’t he? The PM certainly thinks so. People in your society hold religious views you don’t like, suck it up.
“He is us” wow and here I am thinking he is Australian.
“Wakey, wakey rise and shine
Bushell’s coffee’s on the line”
From a time when husband and his mate did shift work on top of a day job, as you did then before “wimmin” went out to work, as of right and to share the load, plus you could and had the incentive that you could become established as a family more quickly. One or other “wife” would drop them down some dinner and it seemed normal, pretty stress-free for a year or more – their was a lot of comradeship and it almost in hindsight seemed like fun.
Not so easy now with those sorts of jobs automated and getting from one place to another in the centres traffic-wise pretty much would make it impossible from what I can see.
What a shame that the local fruit season demands – with decent incentives – aren’t seen as such. Here it is kiwifruit but the many who once did it of all ages to top up funds for travel or even necessities find the 12 hour shifts that are the standard I understand a bit hard around home, other jobs etc given they are short term option and not even semi-permanent.
Damn – right RSS column has been picking up posts from this site somehow. Looks like I will have to find time to fix it – it is now preventing the column from displaying.
Easter + ANZAC next week and with a couple of days break I’m off work for 10 days from friday.
May I request some attention to something strange in linking to comments? *
If you link to a comment as part of a sentence like this https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-17-04-2019/#comment-1608587 it seems to work fine. As does embedding the link.
But if you put it by itself as if it’s a separate paragraph like this:
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-17-04-2019/#comment-1608587
it seems to drop the hash comment-number and just go to the post. Same if you link to, say instructions on how to link cleanly in the FAQ https://thestandard.org.nz/faq/comment-formatting/#linking or the same link standing alone
https://thestandard.org.nz/faq/comment-formatting/#linking
* Request made in full awareness that a totally legitimate response is if I don’t like what’s happening I can fuck right off and run my own blog just the way I want it.
Can I suggest you actually have a break lprent! And the standard people actually live with the fact you having a break.
I know, dirt socialist thing to say.
I think lprent works out when to do things for himself adam. And I think he gets both pride and satisfaction, and irritation and irony about TS probably in equal measures.
An interesting result from a Melbourne company:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-17/killing-hump-day-business-that-shuts-wednesdays-workers-happier/10985332
In the meantime Jack Ma, the billionaire of Alibaba fame is demanding 72 hour weeks to be the norm:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-16/alibaba-founder-jack-ma-says-staff-should-work-996/11021610
And as a side note, not many people would know that the origins of the 40 hour week was in Victoria in the 1850’s gold rush. The main street of Ballarat has dividing strip with about 20 or so interesting historic monuments of all kinds; but the one that surprised me the most was this:
https://bih.federation.edu.au/index.php/The_Eight_Hour_Day_Movement
The Utopian Socialist Robert Owen coined the slogan “Eight hours’ labour, Eight hours’ recreation, Eight hours’ rest” in 1817.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Owen
Marx wrote in Capital “By extending the working day, therefore, capitalist production…not only produces a deterioration of human labour power by robbing it of its normal moral and physical conditions of development and activity, but also produces the premature exhaustion and death of this labour power itself.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
Victorian Masons used their labour power to strike successfully for an eight-hour day but they still worked 6 days a week. The 40hr week only was made law in 1948
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_labour_movement
John Maynard Keynes thought that increased labour productivity would lead to a 15-hour work week. “But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while.”
We work more, more productivley for less
On the politic front,
*So Bridges is a goner?
*Green Party MP Golriz, – she has no environmental credibility at all.
So when did she complain about the excessive over use of trucks and underuse of rail”
She is dumb on the ruining of our planet by the massive emissions of tyre dust and diesel exhaust from all those 34 tyres on every truck in the fleet of 35 000 trucks emissions from each truck isn’t she just.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1904/S00106/greenhouse-gas-inventory-shows-need-for-action.htm
https://www.transport.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Research/Documents/Fleet-reports/1b33252a3d/The-NZ-Vehicle-Fleet-2017-Web.pdf
Because…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1efOs0BsE0g&ab_channel=thejuicemedia
Had second thoughts after praising the PM & govt yesterday. The continued stalling on the climate change legislation is a big problem. It informs the public that the issue is not a priority. They ought not to keep sending out that signal!
At the very least, they owe us an explanation. “We’re working on it” is an excuse that has worn thin from over-use. If NZF is indeed doing the stalling, make the buggers accountable to the public!
What use is a PM that allows the tail to wag the dog? Ardern ought to realise that her boast about climate change being her generational issue is being diminished in its political effect by the ongoing lack of follow-through. Precisely what is the hold-up? She’d better sort it fast – or publicise exactly who is doing the stalling.
what is the current level of co2 in the atmosphere? clearly it’s not part of the weather report, it’s of no interest. Simply put, we don’t have to care about co2 since the media have decided not to inform us about co2 actual levels. Politicians are not there if the media isn’t. It’s inevitable that continued co2 rises will hit, even has, tipping points in the planet’s climate. And worse, given we won’t react until we have measured the irreversible trend, that any media needs immediate evidence for emotional sensationalism we will never get to any real action on climate change. Sure, transitional fads, but if climate does radically shift our race has no ability to preempt said disaster. cross fingers.
“Not just an attack on press freedom, not just intimidation, but it says: Even if you’re exposing WAR CRIMES, we’re coming after you.”
At the 6:00 minute mark, the clip from MSNBC shows where Te Reo Putake gets his major talking point re WikiLeaks. It’s false of course, and Paul Jay deals with it at the 11:30 mark….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfuIqkzflc4
Thank you. Another very good discussion on this issue, where disinformation is almost overwhelming dominating the mainstream ‘media’
Assange’s health has been seriously undermined according to
“Dr. Sondra Crosby, an associate professor of medicine and public health at Boston University and an expert on the physical and psychological impact of torture, has evaluated detainees held by the United States, including at its prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. She quietly began meeting with and evaluating Assange in 2017 inside the embassy where he had sought refuge.”
https://theintercept.com/2019/04/15/julian-assange-health-medical-care/
No sympathy for Assange’s suffering from Chris Trotter or Jim Mora….
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/01/an-unusually-inane-and-depraved-edition.html
self harm is often poorly understood.
You’re correct: ultimately he harmed himself by exposing those massacres of civilians. Manning too: let her rot.
If only every journalist were as compliant and amenable to the authorities as, say, our own Mike Hosking, or those drones at the BBC.
If only they’d gone after that narcissistic prick Ellsberg in the same way they went after Assange.
Ellsberg. The very name brings out in hives all who love and trust our politicians, our spies, our military top brass. Narcissist that he was, and is.
Don’t forgetthe alleged sexual assaults. They were pretty damaging, too.
Key word: “alleged”. As in “manufactured by U.S. spooks and totally discredited.”
The foul and equally fictional denunciations of dissidents in Red China and Soviet Russia were pretty damaging, too.
You’re still a rape enabler when someone you like is accused, then.
?????
Fantasies concocted by criminals do not constitute rape.
Just to be clear: you’re saying that the two complainants are, 100% without a shadow of a doubt, lying?
Just to be clear: the women—not “the complainants”—were harried and bamboozled into complying with this obscene and ridiculous scheme to destroy Assange. However, despite the strenuous efforts of Marianne Ny and her incompetent henchmen, they both quickly made it clear that the charges were a fantasy.
Spy vs. Spy is funny in the pages of Mad magazine; in real life it’s sinister and extremely dangerous.
Of course that won’t stop you carrying on pushing these black lies, any more than we can expect the DNC and its media mouthpieces like Rachel Maddow to pull back from their equally absurd and evidence-free assertions that Trump is a “Russian agent.”
Must be awesome to be able to read the matrix like that.
Funnily enough, the representative of one of the complainants doesn’t seem to agree with you.
So the swedish prosecutors and the claimant’s lawyer are part of a sophisticated lie on behalf of the yanks? Sounds totally legit /sarc
Thanks for the helpful “sarc” note.
And your little dig about “the matrix” is certainly a step higher on the evolutionary ladder than sneering about tinfoil helmets.
Appreciate your perseverance in the face of reality. Don’t know why you’re doing it for free though; at least the likes of Hosking are paid to spew their bile.
So the lawyer wanting the case reactivated – do you think she’s working for the complainant, or just another CIA plant?
You keep saying “the complainant”. The women roped into this obscene engine of destruction both clearly stated the charges were bogus. The “complainant” is the U.S. government and its vassals.
And, yes, it is a conspiracy.
Interestingly, you seem to place great faith in the integrity of the Swedish prosecution service, as if complete and utter refutation would lead it to simply abandon a case in which it was so heavily invested. How are Swedish prosecutors any more trustworthy than, say, the New Zealand prosecutors who forced Peter Ellis into prison on equally bizarre and outlandish charges?
Focus, mos.
The lawyer in that link, Elisabeth Massi Fritz, isn’t part of the prosecution service. She is working for the complainant. When the complainant’s lawyer wants the case reopened, the term “complainant” seems appropriate.
So is Elisabeth Massi Fritz committing professional misconduct and lying about who her client is or her client’s wishes? Or is your “bogus” claim itself questionable?
In all your life McFlock have you ever campaigned for any other alleged rape victims?
Demanded that their testimony be accepted and that the accused be punished?
Thought not.
So why are you so especially interested in this case?
Ford/Kavanaugh comes quickest to mind.
One or two others, incl offline. Even had to be there for one friend as she testified in court against her attacker.
In short, your thought was an incorrect assumption.
How many people accused of rape have you defended?
What the Swedes are calling rape in this instance , is what I call bad sexual etiquette. Save your tears for forceful entry and assault, where a man uses his superior strength against a woman , and his penis as a weapon.
So one commenter is saying it’s all made up, another commenter is saying people only care because of a vendetta against the accused, and you’ve come up with minimisation of what occurred and that other rapes are much worse so this doesn’t really count.
Standard rape-culture bingo card, right there.
I really don’t know which position is more contemptible to hold.
What level of “sex without consent” do you consider to be more than mere bad manners? Where on your hierarchy of sexual molestation do you think Assange would have to be in order for you to want him to appear before a court?
I find your disgust and outrage disproportionate to the event.
You are probably never likely to experience a violent rape.
If thats the law in Sweden, thats the law in Sweden.
Saudi Arabia also has some unforgiving laws, which have to be obeyed by all .So does Indonesia over drug laws.
Where do you get the idea I dont believe Assange should have his day in court?More assumptions on your part.
I think he has every right to the opportunity to clear his name.
He was granted asylum lawfully as a political refugee, and Sweden could have upheld that with assurances that status would be honoured by them
No rendition or extradition while Assange was in their custody.
Instead the Swedes put political considerations above the rights of the complainants and the accused.
And the Bingo card is a fizzer No prize for you. You have to have them all on the same card McF
Legally, it’s rape here, it’s rape in Sweden, it’s rape in the UK. Poor etiquette isn’t a crime in any of those countries.
People don’t minimise the alleged crimes of other people they think should go to court. Make up your mind.
By the way, you do realise that the bulk of my disgust isn’t levelled at Assange (who at least provides entertainment by having been hoist by his own paranoid petard), but with folks here who repeat the same lies and minimisations for almost a decade, copying every rape denialist trope ever used to get a rich frat-boy or a Harvey Weinstein off a sexual assault charge? You lot are contemptible.
The NZ legal conditions for defining rape are numerous, partly because a wife can claim rape against her husband; agreement without pressure comes into the consideration. This:
What is consent?
A person consents to sexual activity if they do it actively, freely, voluntarily and consciously without being pressured into it.
https://www.police.govt.nz/advice/sexual-assault/sexual-assault-and-consent
Assange though he already had had intercourse with the woman. I think is blamed for having it again without her consent, because she was asleep.
It seems that the approach of the recent protective law is to define everything precisely, and try to cover every possible situation.
Conspiracy type comments I’ve heard on the web re: Assange that I think are interesting enough to post here
1. He is being carried out because if he doesn’t set foot on the ground he cannot be properly charged
2. The purpose of his arrest is not to actually punish him, but to put critical evidence before the public so they can see behind the scenes
3. Because this isn’t a “real” arrest (?!) he will be released later on.
three lols in a row…
Maori Council executive member and Chair of Suicide Prevention Australia Matthew Tukaki talked with Guyon Espiner this morning about the lack of action from the government on addressing our appalling suicide stats.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018691361/suicide-how-do-you-know-when-someone-is-struggling
Seems our Aussie cousins have a To Do list, yet here…nothing.
Mr. Tukaki was just getting to the actual cause of the delay…..(around 5 mins)
“I think they run the risk of being held captive by the Ministry of Health and the public service who are well versed in the dark arts….”
….when buggering damn, Guyon cut him off.
Come, come.
Guyon shuts anyone who might embarrass the Government down as you must surely have observed.
The only people he allows to proceed uninterrupted are members of the current Government. They get total fawning attention.
If you think he allows members of the current Government to proceed uninterrupted and they get total fawning attention, either you need a new radio or I do.
“either you need a new radio or I do.”
Briscoes seem to have quite a lot of models for sale.
The cheapest is apparently $14.99.
Since you obviously need a new radio I suggest you get down there at once.
http://homeware.www.briscoes.co.nz/shopping/Radio
How many of the (life line like) support services shut down (defunded) by NACT have been started up again by the current govt…
That’s a very good question.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/thepanel/audio/2018690785/lifeline-funding
“A woman turned to Lifeline in desperation. First of all she texted them and got replies that the service was experiencing long wait times. She then called, and was on hold for 30 minutes. Eventually she gave up and hung up. Lifeline has been around for 50 years and Robin Gault of the University of Otago says Lifeline should get funding in this year’s Budget and people should get immediate attention when they call.”
There was regular links during the previous govts terms illustrating the volume of service cuts and defunding of them…
It was staggering the high numbers of service cut…as it was unthinkable given the dollar values being removed from those services…
A few hundred thousand here..aggregate totals being a handul of million of I recall…yet the social value of the safety nets was immeasureable in reality…
I get that it is not a straight forward exercise to start up such services even if funding was available…and that some services may have been..or may be started up in different form…
If it were my decision it would have been a key campaign issue…to fundm..and start up every single support service shut down by NACT…
And it would have had it done by now…if I was the PM…
Notre Dame and Lateral Thinking
by CRAIG MURRAY, 15 April 2019
France is a country which has spent hundreds of billions of euros on nuclear Weapons of Mass Destruction, and hundreds of billions of euros on other military capabilities. France possesses the technological capability to utterly flatten a city the size of Paris in minutes. Yet it does not possess the technological capability to prevent one of its greatest buildings from being destroyed by fire.
If the many trillions spent all around the world on the research, development and production of instruments of destruction had been devoted to peaceful purposes instead, what new technologies might we have now? It is not a huge step in lateral thinking to imagine that in such a world, more might have been available to save Notre Dame – and Grenfell – than too short ladders and hoses squirting water.
I posted this simple idea on twitter a couple of hours ago. As with all my twitter posts, right wing trolls came in to dispute my point very quickly. Their posts are worth reading because they so stunningly miss the point. They talk about standard lengths of firefighting ladders and about water pressure. They appear completely unable to even register, let alone extrapolate from, the notion that had the resources mankind has squandered on agents of destruction been better used, we might have different technologies.
John Stuart Mill once stated in parliament: “I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.” I have always believed that right wing “thought” is a misnomer, and right wing views are rather characterised by absence of meaningful intellectual activity. Furthermore, those touted as right wing “thinkers”, such as Roger Scruton, Patrick Minford or David Starkey, if studied with any rigour, are the greatest proof of this. But it is seldom that you see such clear evidence as the responses to that little tweet. If I had devised that tweet as an experiment to demonstrate the hypothesis of the intellectual incapacity of the conservative mind, it could not have worked better.
My condolences to all for the loss of a great building. One day, perhaps mankind will learn that we do not in reality defend what we have by spending vast amounts of our available resources and capacity for communal activity in preparing to destroy as much as we are physically capable of destroying.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/1117866272358846464
France has played a role in destroying nation states…obliterating numerous ancient sites around the region…
French governments have wasted, and continue to waste, billions—actually, trillions—of francs/euros on weapons of mass destruction and on wars of aggression/repression all over the world. None of this criminal aggression has popular assent.
If French politicians cared about French culture and French treasures like Notre Dame it might be a mitigating factor. But clearly they do not.
Indeed.
The complaints of the modern young hedonist. Has some lines in the sand, but self-centred, observational about his culture rather than integrated into his society and country.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/news/112079021/9-things-i-dont-miss-about-australia-when-i-go-overseas
Good news. Swimming dog found oil rig. Keep paddling is the answer in life I guess, we might get to a safe place.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/112093018/dog-rescued-swimming-220-kilometres-off-thailands-coast-by-oil-rig-workers
And good news about people getting together to save Notre Dame treasures. They kept working to make things better than they would have been. Keeping paddling example!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/112093160/notre-dame-fire-how-human-chain-saved-treasures-as-design-of-building-foiled-firefighters
This program is getting a lot of buy-in and the organisers are very keen for people to see how well it is succeeding in cutting down on violent events that have put our domestic violence figures high. It may be similar to Celia Lashlie’s ideas that she were proving helpful to people losing it and messing up everyone’s lives. RIP Celia. I think others are going ahead with the plans she and they instigated. It
might be a good thing for those of us who see the need for improvements for people in NZ and don’t know where to start to get involved in.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018691367/domestic-violence-awareness-roadtrip-born-out-of-tragedy
life and society crime
Domestic violence awareness roadtrip – born out of tragedy
From Nine To Noon, 9:20 am today
Listen duration 15′ :02″
David White’s daughter was murdered a decade ago, now he’s traveling the country to raise awareness of domestic violence.
The 74 year old is now more than half-way through a nationwide road trip, speaking to community groups from Invercargill to the Far North.
His campaign slogan is Harm Ends Futures Begin. David White’s daughter, Helen Meads was killed by her husband in 2009.
A very good programme, and well done to Kathryn Ryan giving for David White space to deliver his message.
Ten years on and he still audibly grieves.
Two major things popped out…one was that domestic violence affects ALL sections of the community and merely blaming poverty is a cop-out, and the other was that he recognised the real value of cross party (political) discussions on this issue.
Harm Ends Futures Begin campaigner David White started off down South and he now is in the Waikato-Coromandel 17-24 April.
He then goes to Tamaki Makaurau on 25 April
starting Papakura.
last in Rodney 23 May
Then Te Tai Tokerau
Whangarei 27 May
Northland Where? 28 May
And finally to visit Spirits Bay.
https://whiteribbon.org.nz/2019/02/18/harm-ends-futures-begin-with-david-white/
And more good news re the Cathedral Rebuild…
‘We can rebuild it, better than before!!!’, or words to that effect…
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018691351/notre-dame-fire-experts-assess-damage-ready-to-rebuild
…and fortunately there is plenty of spare cash floating around to pay for it.
France’s benevolent wealthy have stepped up to the plate and dug deep for Notre Dame…
” French business leaders have already pledged more than a billion NZ dollars for the reconstruction of the cathedral. Billionaire François-Henri Pinault, chairman and CEO of the Kering group that owns the Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent fashion brands, has pledged €100m. Another €200m was pledged by Bernard Arnault’s family and their company LVMH – a business empire which includes Louis Vuitton and Sephora. French cosmetics giant L’Oreal and its founding Bettencourt family have promised to give a further €200m. Total, the French oil giant, has pledged €100m. Air France said in a statement that the company would offer free flights to anyone involved in the reconstruction. ”
So it is just as well that the-gloss-wearing-off-rapidly Macron reversed the contentious Wealth Tax that drove the Worthies from French soil….
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-tax/macron-fights-president-of-the-rich-tag-after-ending-wealth-tax-idUSKCN1C82CZ
“Macron’s move to replace the tax with a levy targeting only real estate in last week’s 2018 budget was used by political opponents to brand him the “president of the rich”, a label the ex-Rothschild banker has been struggling to shake off since taking office in May.
In a visit to a Whirlpool factory in his native town of Amiens, scene of a showdown six months ago with his then far-right challenger Marine Le Pen in the presidential election contest, Macron defended the policy.
“It’s all well and good to want to spread wealth, but you first need to produce, to create wealth before redistributing, that’s how it works,” he told journalists. ”
In the meantime, the motley assortment of the disaffected, the Yellow Vests lick their wounds…https://www.thelocal.fr/20190129/france-in-numbers-police-violence-during-yellow-vest-protests
“These injuries caused by police during the protests mostly result from the uses of the security forces’ “defensive bullets” known as Flashballs or LBDs and stun grenades which contain a dose of TNT.
Police are forbidden from aiming the bullets at people’s faces but as already mentioned at least a dozen people have suffered serious eye injuries including the permanent loss of sight, by these rubber bullets.
After an appeal by France Info some 51 victims of police Flashball came forward. Some had been seriously maimed including one named Vanessa Langard who was hit in the face by the so-called “defence bullet”.
“My eye has lost three quarters of its vision. I can just see shapes and colours now and it’s not going to get any better,” she said.
Four people have reportedly had part of their hands blown off as a consequence of the use of the grenades. ”
I guess this is the outcome when the electorate has a choice between someone like Macron and a child of the ultra far right.
Classic t.rump
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/apr/16/trump-novichok-attack-skripal-poisoning-spy-game
Goodness me Marty.
So Haspel(the torture Queen) deliberately misrepresenting the facts (no children were hospitalised , no ducks died)is a good thing???
Totally fabricated evidence to manipulate a gullible and emotionally infantile president is a good thing now?
The ends justify the means eh, its a slippery slope
I just though t.rumps actions and reactions were funny – “I don’t care about the total” – those officials misinterpreted his utterances? – ha ha I bet they did.
You can do all the other stuff – I feel okay with what I think happened on those days.
Unfortunately that slippery slope is ancient history these days francesca..these days folk seem happy to support anyone and any action as long as they follow the ‘Trump (Assange) Worst Man on earth Ever’ narrative.
Haspel, Mueller*, George Bush, Alec Baldwin….all now looked upon with benign fondness by so some called liberals/left wingers/centrists/whatever .
Political language especially as regurgitated by the msm and journalists who should know better, like those at The Guardian,…. “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind” Orwell. (my italics)
*Though maybe not now he’s failed to deliver the promised ‘goods’…apparently helping start a disastrous war by purposefully lying about Saddam Hussein’s WMD’s was entirely forgivable..the Collusion Report…not so much.
Yep Siobhan , as long as its against Trump, all is forgiven and” kinda truthy ” is good enough
Yes,
preferential blinkering I see, beats critical thinking every time.
Of course Trumps responses are totally buffoonish, and totally predictable.
Whats new?
But fabricated information is a dangerous tool to
put in front of such a President, and for that to go unremarked in the article is worrying.
But anyway
Whooosh!
There were news reports about 3 children being given bread to feed the ducks and 48 people were assessed in hospital I believe – not so strange to mention then I think. Still could be wrong and morally there may be issues giving this information to t.rump and expecting some coherent response. But he did expel the people so…
“48 people were assessed in hospital in relation to the incident
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43315636
Yes, but no children were hospitalised and no ducks died, you really can’t extrapolate that from the fact that 40 people got worried and Skripal fed ducks and gave bread to the kids from his novichoked hands .
One thing is not the other
Maybe its “truthiness” is ok for you
And for you the ends justifies the means, so…
Yes well i’ve put the reports up with links and you have some issues with those reports. All good although I would caution about ascribing anything to me – ask and I shall tell otherwise don’t speculate please.
You’d see the funny side though wouldn’t you mardymardy.
grow up gabby
I geddit mardymardy, good one, lol heh.
48 people were assessed …but not hospitalised
Fabricated evidence
but he did expel the people so…
thats all right then?
Yes well i’ve put the reports up with links and you have some issues with those reports.
Have you tried a search for some links to show the fabrication? Might pay to.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russia-salisbury-poison-fears-allayed-by-doctor-vf9v0zg0m
On March 16 Steven Davies, “Consultant in Emergency Medicine” at Salisbury hospital, wrote the following letter to the Times in response to an article that had appeared there two days earlier.This is the text of the letter:
“Sir, Further to your report (“Poison Exposure Leaves Almost 40 Needing Treatment”, Mar 14), may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve-agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning. Several people have attended the emergency department concerned that they may have been exposed. None had symptoms of poisoning and none has needed treatment. Any blood tests performed have shown no abnormality. No member of the public has been contaminated by the agent involved.
STEPHEN DAVIES, Consultant in Emergency Medicine, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust”
There are precisely zero reports of ducks killed by bread from either the kids or Skripal.
Awesome – glad that’s sorted.
“Several people have attended the emergency department concerned that they may have been exposed. ”
Maybe they got mixed up with that.
“mixed up” is not how I would describe the BBC’s habit of blatantly misconstruing the truth.
Some looking up stuff too – truth stranger than fiction
http://astronomy.com/news/2019/03/a-map-to-planet-nine-charting-the-solar-systems-most-distant-worlds
Golly that is exciting about Farfarout. I think we should all stop worrying about our little planet and petty little crises and put all our money into exploring the huge universe that we live in. And when we have used up this planet Earth and killed off everyone in various ways including bacteria and viruses, in a parody of Jules Verne The War of the Worlds, the few scientists and their bloated backers that are left can all bugger off and have a great time eating pies in the sky, and singing about their obsessions as in Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
In the meantime there is a relatively cheap $69 million contract to Musk to bounce off an asteroid though I don’t know whether that is to protect the body of our planet or the spyware satellites floating around it.
https://www.fin24.com/Economy/World/nasa-awards-musk-69m-to-fly-spacex-rocket-into-asteroid-20190416
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hrn6vnOjRs
Liberalism is sweeping populism away and now people don’t like liberalism. What next – what next. He is making me think of a song ‘You call everybody darling’ but here the word is ‘Nazi’. He makes the very salient point that if that word is spread around so widely applied to everyone – what do you call a Nazi when you want to point to a real one?
Jonathan Pie so hot, that you need oven gloves to get near him.
There is so much here that you have to listen twice.
NZ threat level being downgraded.
I’m slightly surprised by this – given the number of days in April that involve NZ holidays/gatherings or important dates for US nutbars or important dates from WW2 and for Nazi nutbars, I expected the threat level to remain high until early May.
Never mind flockers, there’s bound to be a disaster somewhere for you to laugh at.
Your comments over the last wee while bring a smile, for a start.
Yours don’t.
A horse walks into a bar. Barman says “why the long face?”
Horse says, ‘I trod in a flocker on the way in.’
Is your brain having some time out gabby. Not funny or clever – the only reason for reading you.
Barman replies “A flocker? Nah, that flocker was a MiserySchmitt”
Stuka that up your Junka lol
Horse says, ‘Same thing.’
You’re reminding me of a gabbleduck
“Apparently, linguists who have loaded a thousand languages into their minds, despair trying to understand gabbleducks. What they say is nonsensical, but frustratingly close to meaning. There’s no reason for them to have such complex voice boxes, especially to communicate with each other, as on the whole they are solitary creatures and speak to themselves. When they meet it is usually only to mate or fight, or both. There’s also no reason for them to carry structures in their skulls capable of handling vastly complex languages. Two thirds of their large brains they seem to use hardly at all. Science, in their case, often supports myth.”
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/asher_08_15_reprint/
Brilliant Sci Fi story in that link (audio story too!!!) – Neal Asher is one of my favorite writers – space opera though so get ready for a big ride if you start reading his work.
You’re not a linguist though…are you marty….
The angry tantrums and abuse… say you aren’t…
Yeah you’re probably right buckle but compared to you we are all lacking aren’t we.
It’s okay I sense you’re lonely and frightened today – I’ll be your wee buddy mate.
Your sense (sensors) require calibrating, marty…they’re way off…
Each of us have deficiencies, marty…putting in the effort to identify and understand them, is a discipline…
Working to improve them…a lifes journey…
We’re all at different stages…that’s all…
What are your deficiencies? And what have you done about them – this could be good learning for me as we are at vastly different stages on the journey as you have stated.
We’re – We (general term) are…(All human beings)…
It is highly improbable, if not impossible for two people to be at the same stage of development…unlimited variables involved…
I was mirroring your use of ‘we are’…not pointing at any difference between our journeys…
I’m not into sharing personal experiences online…some folks do…that’s fine…I choose not to be overt with details I share…
Yeah I suppose with the way you talk to people online it’s good for you not to share too much.
Over the years I’ve found those most critical of others (like you are) often are the most in need of their own advice. This is the way it works.
It seems like people don’t trust you from what you say. Trust has to be earned One Two. You need to show you can be trusted. You know this stuff so just a reminder to tap you onto the path again.
Good luck on your journey – as they say, the master is just around the next corner.
Drunkard at the end of the bar says “holy schmitt, a talking horse!”
A couple of months after being granted unexplained relief from sanctions, and despite tariffs on Canadian aluminium for national security reasons, Manafort bestie Oleg Deripaska and co are going to build a new aluminium production plant in McConnell’s state.
But coal.
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/14/694769097/trump-tweet-fails-to-save-kentucky-coal-fired-power-plant
No CGT. Supposedly NZers don’t want one. Cowards.
pity. Not just this govt, but under her leadership.
Provides point of difference for Greens, though – I suspect they’d be for it.
Capital Gains Tax dead.
Boomers win. All else: ……. ouch
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/387253/watch-live-govt-rules-out-capital-gains-tax
Oh it isn’t the government’s fault, it is that wonky steel that got imported from overseas. The government just buckles under pressure. And poor Mr Robertson so rotund and roly poly doesn’t look as if he would be able to stand up to lean and hungry capitalists in a row coming at him like an All Black charge.
Doesn’t it seem sometimes as if the All Blacks have almost become favourite enforcers for the National Party; when they retire sportspeople like them, if they are in good standing, can get good jobs as part of a government goodie bag.
It seems a fanciful idea, but in our present state of nimble government, Jack has to be quick to keep up with pollies.
Ardern…what a coward.
Stick to photo ops and feelgood interviews.
Lol, retaining power and a position at the trough obviously far more important.
Winning the next election obviously far more important.
If Labour is only interested in staying in power why the fuck did they waste so much taxpayer money doing a TWG.
You’re seriously reducing the worth of the tax working group to expansion of the CGT?
100% Brutus Bang on there.
Green Party is throwing their toys all out of the crib today also.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/04/17/green-party-start-their-campaign-to-curtail-free-speech-the-danger-of-millennial-micro-aggression-policing-culture-defining-hate-speech/
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Anyone else remember back around three years ago when the convergence moonbats were telling us Hair Farce One was going to be some kind of peacenik once he was prez?
The Senate just voted 54-46 and the House 247-175 to withdraw US involvement from the Yemen massacre. But the Tangerine Palpatine gets some sort of jollies from his Saudi mates murdering Yemenis by the thousands, so he vetoed it.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-veto-yemen-saudi-bill_n_5cb667ace4b082aab08de6a4
You do realize, I take it, that the killing in Yemen—and in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and several states in Africa— was greenlighted by Obama well before the arrival of Trump?
I share your distaste and disgust for the Tangerine One, and acknowledge that he’s even worse than what went before. However, he’s not doing anything radically different from any president before him.
What is radically different is this is the first time Congress has ever explicitly told a president to stop the malicious war games. That’s an enormous step by itself.
Any previous president would take that as a big sign to rethink what was being done. But not the deranged dotard.
And the convergence moonbat game of whining “but Obama” really isn’t an argument. I really can’t be arsed looking up the facts to play that game.
Fair comment, Andre!