Yes.Fully Pfizered.Got stinking cold like symptoms for a week & felt like I had been punched in the arm from the first shot.Second one was uneventful except for a strange compusion to buy 5 copies of windows 11.Well worth it though.
I had the arm ache on the first jab too, but no other side effects. Though I am waiting 3 months for my second, which the booking system isn't too cooperative about. Would have been getting my second tomorrow, I had even set up a vax-date with a friend to get both of our second jabs at the same time and place (so we'd have someone to talk to during the quarter hour waiting after). But then I did a bit of research about optimal interdose intervals – 6 weeks is definitely better than 3; 12 may a bit marginal, but slightly better than that even. My companion just wants it over and done with.
Instead, I will be driving them back after and keeping an eye on them for a bit to be sure they don't have too many side-effects. Seems to vary a lot depending on the person
I must be the biggest Charlie in this lot. 74 yrs old – got 1st jab 6 weeks ago. But had heard English Doctor saying 5-6 weeks was a better gap, so asked for my 2nd jab last Saturday. But just before that, out came the news that 8 – 12 weeks was optimum. So I went in and asked for another 3 weeks' delay. I will now get my second jab on Sept 4.
I thought at the time, just my luck if… and guess what.
Groundswell leader, Jamie McFadden, interviewed by John Campbell on TV1 Breakfast, this morning.
(This is not a direct transcript)
J.M. Only a 'few bad people', are letting us down. And the government should not be making policy that ‘penalises’ everybody.
Not once in the whole interview did Jamie McFadden mention the word 'climate change'.
For that mattter neither did John Campbell.
John Campbell tried to ask Jamie McFadden about nitrate pollution
J.M. What Groundswell are saying about water, we need to look at each catchment.
(No mention of climate).
Maybe both McFadden and Campbell need to read this;
It’s time to freak out about methane emissions
This lesser-known greenhouse gas will make or break a “decisive decade” for climate change.
By Rebecca Leber, Vox, Aug 12, 2021
……Even though methane is not nearly as well understood as carbon, it’s playing an enormous role in the climate crisis. It’s at least 80 times as effective at trapping heat than carbon in a 20-year period, but starts to dissipate in the atmosphere in a matter of years. If this is the “decisive decade” to take action, as the Biden administration has said, then a methane strategy has to be at the center of any policy for tackling global warming.
Methane could mean the difference between a rapidly warming planet changing too quickly and drastically for humanity to handle, and buying the planet some much-needed time to get a handle on the longer-term problem of fossil fuels and carbon pollution….
Farmers are doing what every other business will do as the need to respond to CC bites – fight to protect profitable business models, their decision-making autonomy and a way of life they like. They will obscure this core material fact with fluffy stuff (some of it partly true, some of it greenwash) about feeding the nation, caring about the land, and already doing what is needed in their own way and own time. Meanwhile they will be hard-nosed in trying to install sympathetic governments.
This is how humanity fails in its response to CC – by not seeing that fear of economic insecurity drives behaviours that are rational in the short term, but in the long term are pathological. The idea of an economically just transition needs to be embedded, and soon, but I am not hopeful.
You have plenty of reckons about the Farmers stance, fair enough. They may be true or not. But you do point out some interesting stuff – including fear.
Loads of fear going round. Justifiable and understandable. We should address or at least acknowledge these fears, of both farmers, and persons who fear farmers will stall climate mitigation.
We all know who really stalled climate mitigation. It's big oil, and governments in bed with them. Finding other industries and individuals to take the heat off the big players – those most culpable, is a dirty trick at best, but I'm more inclined to call it sociopathic and self centred murderous and criminal negligence.
They (govts and corporate PR) keep pushing onus onto individuals, and their broad sweeping laws are similar to their broad sweeping statements – largely pointless, but masterful in misdirection.
Now I'd much prefer a Labour to Nat led government, but the neo-lib BS is rife with both. They'd be flying everywhere if not for covid. It's all do as I say not as I do. Feckless wannabes using ecology (which they know fuck all about) to hit others over the head with.
What impact does the NZ government have on big oil? Outside of trying to transition NZ off fossil fuels which is what kicked off this ground swell issue.
In NZ our biggest contributor is Agriculture. We can sit back and cry about big fossil fuel all we want, but if we aren't addressing what we control then who are we to lecture anyone?
Given that methane is so bad (I accept that) shouldn't a large part of any carbon tax go towards the people working on the methane vaccine? Cows arnt hoingcaway here or over seas .
Imho there are two ways to decrease the quantity of methane emitted by farmed ruminants: (1) Decrease the number of ruminants, and (2) Decrease the average amount of methane each ruminant emits. Farmers could (try to) do both.
(1) is in the farmers' fields/court – stock numbers change over time, so it's doable.
(2) Plenty of research on this in NZ and globally; more needed – might be doable.
The idea of a "methane vaccine" calls to mind the farmer protests (in 2003) against a ‘Fart Tax’, which was proposed as a way of funding research into (2).
Based on historical and recent farmer protests, I believe an impartial observer would conclude that many farmers are (still) more concerned about maintaining methane emissions than they are about global warming. Open to Groundswell protesters persuading me otherwise, but they need to do better than this:
"MAD COW"
"PRETTY COMMUNIST"
"CINDY –> STALIN"
"MAGA – Make Ardern Go Away"
"JACINDAis aCOMMUNIST BITCH", and
"What does Jacinda & Toilet Paper have in common?
They are both Full of S*#T"
They really do.
A image from the 4 Sept 2003 protest at Parliament by farmers concerned about the proposed fart tax. The tax has been proposed on ruminant emissions to finance research into emission reduction. Images from the National Party media unit.
The vaccine is well under way , the nz scientists working on give them a reasonable chance of succeeding, but buy all means cherry pick the loonier grunts from the worst morons to have a crack at farmers in general.
… but buy all means cherry pick the loonier grunts from the worst morons to have a crack at farmers in general.
Thanks bwaghorn, will try to remember your invitation for next time – I predict we have even loonier grunts from even worse morons to ‘look forward to’, although hopefully none from a future Prime Minister.
I've been (peripherally) involved in supervising some post-graduate students trying to identify factors associated with low methane emissions – smaller rumens are looking promising for sheep.
One thing the scientists grizzle about is having to down tools every year while they go cap-in-hand for more funding. Who knows how much further down the methanogen vaccine track we'd be now if it wasn't for those 'fart tax' protests.
Talk about a sector shooting itself in the foot. Carry on…
If farmers would rather not pay taxes (such as a 'fart tax') to fund research aimed at mitigating the methane emissions of farmed ruminants then it's no skin off my old nose, but it's not a farsighted stance, imho. Carpe diem!
Btw, NZ ranks 6th in the world (behind Brunei, Grenada, Bahrain, Turkmenistan and Barbados) for per capita methane emissions, and 15th for per capita total GHG emissions (CO2 + methane).
Per capita seems like a stupid measure too me.
after all NZ Ag feeds over 30 million people, factor that into your per capita and we are one of the best in the world.
if change your formula to per hectare again the best in the world.
Intriguing opinion – I quite like per capita measures as a way of highlighting individual responsibilities, and whether (or not) NZers are punching above their weight, as we do for both methane emissions (bad) and food production (pretty good).
If we can agree that ruminant methane emissions are bad (for spaceship Earth, and so for the 'crew'), and that food production is good (for the crew, if not for the spaceship), then it only remains to figure out how to minimise the bad while retaining sufficient 'good'.
How hard can it be, how much longer might it take, and would it really be as bad as the Groundswell movement apparently believes it to be?
Yep, it’s bleak, says expert who tested 1970s end-of-the-world prediction
“The key finding of my study is that we still have a choice to align with a scenario that does not end in collapse. With innovation in business, along with new developments by governments and civil society, continuing to update the model provides another perspective on the challenges and opportunities we have to create a more sustainable world.”
Some more good news – just hope against hope it doesn't come to that.
Actually the claim that it "disappears" is rather a false one. Yes methane may break down over a period of years, but into what? CO2 and water vapour – both Greenhouse gases.
The most effective sink of atmospheric methane is the hydroxyl radical in the troposphere, or the lowest portion of Earth's atmosphere. As methane rises into the air, it reacts with the hydroxyl radical to create water vapor and carbon dioxide. The mean lifespan of methane in the atmosphere was estimated at 9.6 years as of 2001; however, increasing emissions of methane over time reduce the concentration of the hydroxyl radical in the atmosphere.[41]With less OH˚ to react with, the lifespan of methane could also increase, resulting in greater concentrations of atmospheric methane.[75]
If it is not destroyed in the troposphere, methane will last approximately 120 years before it is eventually destroyed in Earth's next atmospheric layer: the stratosphere. Destruction in the stratosphere occurs the same way that it does in the troposphere: methane is oxidized to produce carbon dioxide and water vapor. Based on balloon-borne measurements since 1978, the abundance of stratospheric methane has increased by 13.4%±3.6% between 1978 and 2003.[76]
Groundswell New Zealand says it is planning a "major nationwide protest event" in November, following a lack of response by the Government to its concerns.
Although a date was yet to be set and details of the event outlined, spokesman Bryce McKenzie, of West Otago, said it would be "of a scale and impact that will be significant in New Zealand's history".
This is extremely good timing for the farmers to protest against this government.
The government is in poll freefall and is a long way from bottoming out. This team want that third term like a bastard.
In response, I suspect the government will show that they are listening carefully (even though there are very few votes to be turned in it), and walk back bunches of the water protection provisions.
Very, very hard to see Mahuta's water governance reforms lasting.
The green left have long since been given notice that they are not going to get their climate reforms in without a fight, and should have been able to arrange some kind of supportive counter-march by now. The first protest happened and the green left just sat back.
Instead the field of civic action has been left free for the rural community to rise up and do it all again. So they are. And now have a much better chance of changing the government's mind as a result.
This is probably a super naive question, but why don't they just talk it through with the appropriate minister(s) and see if they can get some compromise? Seems like it went from being an issue to an OTT response very quickly. What have I missed?
We keep broad-brushing the issue, and due to this failing to learn. Some of it we might push back on, some of it is entirely valid. Ignoring it will create a large voting block that takes from the left, who are simply being insulting, and making statements that show their own cognitive dissonance.
Turning farms into pine is one of their issues. Who is the pine benefitting, cos it's an ecological insult to NZ.
We're all concerned with mitigating climate. What are all these farmer bashing townies doing?
The farming industry is lagging badly, like tourism. We need the farmers that want action on climate to organise and be public. Lefties bashing farmers won't help that happen.
In fact farmers like this one, and I know others, like him/her, tell me they get shouted down and drowned out in rural meetings by the Groundswell types.
yep, I get that in my area… not possible to have a proper discussion with most.. it instantly becomes a bomb-fest of useless loud one-liners, interspersed with derogatory comments about women politicians most commonly… been like it for decades
My mild mannered and not 'greenie' b-i-l planted and fenced his stream edges over 25 years ago and was suitably thought of as being odd and weird then. His sheep and cattle farm was able to transition, on the lower areas to dairy run-off in environmental safety. He keeps a good eye on the leased part of his property as some of the workers below herd manager levels can be a bit out of control and lacking in sense.
The point is they pay their subs but just don't go to the Fed Farmers meetings to share or be shouted down. . Therefore innovation on the ground, localised, often does not filter out very far.
The point also about living in a rural community especially for the more feisty 'incomers' used to living in towns, or rural thinkers is that to keep ahead you have to really stand schtum & basically 'shut-up.'. There is little tolerance in some rural communities for anyone who is deemed to rock the boat……in all sorts of ways from speaking out on low quality education strategies adopted by BoTs right through to changes in farming practices.
Sometimes regulation or legislation or the threat of such is the only way to get the community working together to get the best from it rather than waiting for it to evolve incrementally, It won't happen incrementally as we saw with the response to the delay in higher farming standards and this:
The Howl, in my circle were seen by some as a wing of the Nats or worse, and totally out of touch with CC because of the focus on utes and because the organisers had not thought through the impact of having silly off message signs about 'communism' and 'the treaty' and 'cindy' etc carried by the participants.
Another thing that puzzles my non greenie b-i-l are why there are different environmental standards for putting in things such as wood burners between those living in towns and those living in the country, His point is that smoke/particulate matter is released into the atmosphere whether in town or country and polluted air is polluted air.
The country towns used by this couple have incredibly poor or non- existent refuse or /recycling facilities. My sister travels 2 hours every couple of months to to cities with proper recycling facilities. Luckily they buy low plastic etc and have good storage. With reliance on tank water and water supply schemes getting contaminated sometimes they need to buy in drinking water.
The lack of proper recycling facilities leads to the continuation of the ubiquitous gut hole.
So dealing with waste in rural town and hinterlands is usually poor in comparison with cities.
Particulate rules for fireplaces are more about health than emissions.
Cities like Christchurch and Hamilton sit in basins, so particulates and smog hang around in the basin. Causing smog, visibility and health effects. Other places, conveniently, get them blown out to sea. Where it is ," someone else's problem".
For those places fireplace rules are less stringent.
I agree that different rules for different places can seem puzzling.
I used to stay on rellies farms, most long dead now. And the farms sold on.
Most of the streams were planted with trees and fenced.
They were proud of the thriving native stream life, "unlike those overseas rivers" where they are to polluted to support life. Lots of native eels, Koura etc.
Greens, of course, were a thing of the future
I wonder what they would have thought about the overloaded with nutrients, and dying, rivers and lakes we see now
Those "farmer bashing townies" city businesses, and their employees, have for decades complied with safety and environmental requirements, and community regulations, way in excess of the fraction farmers have been dragged kicking and screaming into compliance with. Anyone who thinks farmers are being bashed, when they have simply lost their social licence, because of their own attitudes, is showing"cognitive dissonance". Farming is fast losing the huge amount of urban goodwill and support they once enjoyed. And it is entirely their own fault. Which saddens me because I have many farming relatives who are quietly getting on with it, looking at better ways of farming. Who didn’t join in the pro pollution protests
No because I understand that when they are referring to townies, they are not intending to tar all townies with the same brush. The same as when they used a broad "lefties" term.
I chose to take their argument in the best possible light. That allows for the actual gist of the argument to be considered as opposed to derailing into a discussion about "not all men".
I'm both a townie and a leftie. Are these two words really an issue? A micro-aggression?
It's either ridiculously woke or shouting down groups. Some people need to get the fuck over themselves and stop being so precious about every damn thing.
How will we ever have conversations when most of it is derailed by all this mud slinging? Trot out the worst offenders, attach them to the entire group. Ignore or mock their issues. USA, coming your way.
And no, I'm not pointing at anyone in particular not everything said is about yourselves specifically.
'these farmer bashing townies' implies I'm talking about the townies who are farmer bashing. This really needs no qualification.
No crashcart I'm not addressing you specifically, who seem to have a grip on the silliness of all the lumping in, and the leaping to defend ourselves from nothing… it's just where this point has fallen in the conversation.
Oh I don’t know. I think DB Brown might be a leftie masquerading as a farmer. Something about the writing style seems familiar.
let’s just say I don’t think you will ever see WTB in the same room as DB Brown.
WTB kindly allowed one of their comments to be published as a post, and asked for the name on the post to be DB Brown. That was in a comment on the front end, hardly a secret.
one of the reasons I put up the post is because WTB has over time provided interesting and thoughtful commentary on TS, often presenting counter points outside the binary narratives we too often get stuck in. I find it refreshing and stimulating to my own thought processes.
we often don’t like our beliefs being challenged, are more used to that coming from rw commenters but personally I’m finding the debate better when the dissent is varied in source.
Nope, because it had been approved previously and as far back as 2018, it appears 🙂
The thing with this is when the same person uses two different names interchangeably it can confuse others, which is why I tend to ask them to stick one user handle and one e-mail address. But DB Brown has not done this, so all good 🙂
DBB may be a bit of a Darkhorse. There has certainly been a good Draught around lately. At Uni in the late 60's we were required to sign a register that passed around the lecture theatre lecture in order to get "Terms" to sit the final exams. DB Lager, D Brown, L Red, M Mouse, and D Duck were very regular attendees 🙂
Neither are townies, or those on welfare, or lefties! It appears farming is a "sacred cow" we are not allowed to upset with reality.
In fact Farmers who are trying to clean up their act who talk to me agreeing about the pro pollution protests, are telling me they are a minority. And, unfortunately most are cleaning up their act because Fonterra and regulations are making them. Not from conviction.
KJT "city businesses, and their employees, have for decades complied with safety and environmental requirements, and community regulations, way in excess of the fraction farmers have been dragged kicking and screaming into compliance with."
Was exactly my point yesterday
These issues are the exact same as faced by everyone in business – in type and scale. Yet the others don't cry about it to anything like the same extent. And they certainly don't get exceptions made for them (e.g. excused from the ETS).
I am yet to see this point answered, but have my eyes peeled.
……This is extremely good timing for the farmers to protest against this government.
The government is in poll freefall and is a long way from bottoming out. This team want that third term like a bastard….
Ad, if you are so sure that this government support is in freefall and has not yet bottomed out, then all Groundswell have to do, is wait and vote them out. No need for protest action.
It will take a lot to convince me that this government will lose the next election. If the government stay on track. If they continue to stay on top of their pandemic response, if they continue to keep New Zealanders safe, while the rest of the world is in covid torment, then Labour will win the next election.
If Labour Government, finally get on top of the housing crisis, then in my opinion Labour will win the next two elections after that, as well.
The Right, (including Groundswell), sense that this Government is not going away any time soon. Knowing, they are not going to get their way from any compliant National led administration, Groundswell are using direct protest pressure to try and convince the current government into backing down over its environmental protection regulations.
This is why Groundswell supporters feel the need to hold these protests.
Those Groundswell people are entitled to protest. We are a democracy. If they name call and deny science people will call them out. I know who will look silly, and it won't be Jacinda or Labour.
There is also that issue of disorder and violence, which history shows us result in disproportionate bruises and arrests among those who oppose Massey's Cossacks. Better to let the tractor crowd wander aimlessly and rage against the rising sealevels like king Knut. It aint the Chch shooters that get surveilled or arrested, it's the Keith Lockes.
……The green left have long since been given notice that they are not going to get their climate reforms in without a fight, and should have been able to arrange some kind of supportive counter-march by now. The first protest happened and the green left just sat back……
Ad, yes you are right, we on the Left are prepared to fight for climate reforms, using peaceful and democratic means, and where necessary non-violent civil disobedience. And be prepared to be arrested for it, if that is what it takes.
We will not be organising any counter-march to Groundswell.
My advice to the Left; Do not be drawn into a street brawl with the right wing losers of Groundswell.
Ad if you are trying to incite some sort of confrontation to embarrass the government then you are going the right way about it.
We have no objection to Groundswell holding their protest march in November, that is their democratic right. If they break the law, I fully expect the authorities to act to arrest them, as they so often do for Left protesters, let see how committed these right wing protesters really are to their beliefs.
My feeling; If Groundswell's November protest is anything like their last protest, with the same racist and sexist and climate change denying and conpiracy messaging, they will disgrace themselves in the eyes of most New Zealanders without the Left having to do anything.
If we are so smug we can't even organise a counter-protest to support the government, we stand a much greater chance of losing out of sheer self-righteousness.
If we are so smug we can't even organise a counter-protest to support the government, we stand a much greater chance of losing out of sheer self-righteousness.
Not can't, won't.
Greenies etc won't organise a counter protest to support the government because we believe the government is dragging the chain and/or cementing in neoliberal systems that are problematic from a green perspective.
There were some "counter-protests" at the first "howlin'" – Extinction Rebellion people sat on a pedestrian crossing and halted the "mighty convoy" of tractors and Utes in one centre – and received abuse for their troubles ("Get the freaks off the road" one son of the soil intoned, repeatedly). Similar responses were mounted elsewhere and the reactions were the same.
Jenny htgt @10:22 am makes the valid point that the ill-disciplined, mysogynistic, racist etc. messages that accompanied the first howlin' harmed the whole protest, but I would suggest those "cowboys" will be reined-in by now and the idiotic placards won't appear again…unless… 🙂
I'm curious what the media reporting was of the XR actions, and what the wider community thought. It's a tactical mistake imo for XR to target rural people in conservative communities, and I'd ask what they are trying to achieve.
XR in the UK has been so successful because they were very smart (head and heart) in how they impacted on the general population. You have to meet people half way and bring them along.
Going hard against the banks, Fonterra, Big Oil is a different matter, still needs some intuitive sense.
The power that XR UK has isn't in stopping traffic, it comes from somewhere else. Trying to import the techniques without the kaupapa isn't going to work (imho).
Don't waste your heart and mind trying to pull down what is already destroying itself 🙂 Not my words.
“The wave of the future is on the local level. Don’t waste your heart and mind trying to pull down what is already destroying itself. But come into where you’re almost below the radar and reorganize life. We want communities where we live and work and fight for the future.” – Joanna Macy
Ha! Well, yes, but you'd only want to throw yourself into the sty and wrestle if you were confident of gaining something significant from the engagement. What do you suggest greenies might gain from waving placards at huge farm vehicles?
Televisual glory, of course! More Twitter feeds than you can shake a stick at. Something to rally the team again. Like we used to do in Helen Clark's second term.
Groundswell are proposing to toot us into submission:
"The first event is on this Friday 20th August 2021 under the banner of "CAN YOU HEAR US".
At 12:30 pm all around New Zealand, Groundswell NZ are calling for 2 minutes of show of support by every car, bike, truck, train – anything with a horn, tooting in support of our campaign.
Then this will be repeated every Friday for the following 3 weeks."
I propose a counter-campaign under the banner "STFU" – the placards will be easy to produce 🙂
Doubtless they'll come down hard on the trouble-makers, as they do with any other protester.
"Groundswell NZ is calling for all landowners to decline access for councils or their agents wanting to undertake mapping or information gathering on private land. Groundswell NZ has identified serious implications with this information gathering that landowners are largely unaware of."
Today's events will have will have effectively canceled this Friday's effort, they will be pushing the Essential Service definition to go into town to protest. That'll be an interesting interaction with the police officer.
Going much past this week and calving / lambing will be getting into full swing, and lots else will be making the farm a pretty busy place. And that's assuming we're only in lockdown for 3 – 7 days.
They won't have the spare time they had last month when about all that was happening on farm was feeding out maybe once a day. Once we get to late November farms will be before daylight to well after dusk, 7 days a week workplaces. If farmers can find time to play around protesting then, their protestations about staff shortages are waffle.
The irony is that the National Standards malarkey came about because the District focused approach of the RMA was too hard and gave some perverse boundary issues. There's a pretty stark example at Queensbury (just out of Wanaka) where quite intensive grazing is allowed in Central Otago but not just down the road in Queenstown Lakes District. Unfortunately the boundary goes through a farm unit. There's lots of other examples around the Country and this did farmer's heads in. So they petitioned the previous government for consistency between Districts, hence National Environmental Standards.
Now the current Government is getting those National Standards in place farmers are realising why the RMA took a District and catchment specific approach.
It's still been pretty outrageous to see the regional catchment regulator Otago Regional Council take such a soft stance, since they cover those catchments you mention. Witness their stated inability to regulate for air quality even though it is one of their statutory jobs. So residents like Cromwell suffer through it.
ORC has been a waste of space since it was formed. It's always been farmer and Dunedin dominated and as soon as something comes up that will restrict farming it rapidly becomes dysfunctional. The deemed permit fiasco and Manuherikia minimum flow / overallocation show how difficult ORC are finding things. Both issues aren't totally of their own making, multiple governments going back to year dot have been involved and it's left to the local level to try and sort the differences, which are almost insurmountable without someone / something being badly hurt.
The irony is that the National Standards malarkey came about because the District focused approach of the RMA was too hard and gave some perverse boundary issues. There's a pretty stark example at Queensbury (just out of Wanaka) where quite intensive grazing is allowed in Central Otago but not just down the road in Queenstown Lakes District. Unfortunately the boundary goes through a farm unit. There's lots of other examples around the Country and this did farmer's heads in. So they petitioned the previous government for consistency between Districts, hence National Environmental Standards.
Now the current Government is getting those National Standards in place farmers are realising why the RMA took a District and catchment specific approach."
…
That is very interesting and well worth keeping front of mind, as this is one of their major whinges.
Not hours after the last Groundswell tractor chugged home, in a cloud of diesel fumes, the rains began to fall.
MetService issued a red warning – only the third in its history. A month’s average rainfall came down in two days in parts of the West Coast.
More than 2000 people were forced from their homes, major roads were closed, paddocks submerged, and Buller and Marlborough had to declare local states of emergency.
I wonder if Mr Dalton has found that there really isn't that much interest in the America's Cup anymore and that there aren't people willing to pay him enormous amounts of money for the "privilege" of holding it?
Well the Government must take this chance to tell him NO. We don't need it and we don't want it. We are free of the stupid thing and we want to stay that way. At least I, and people I have talked to about it, don't want it. Trevor Mallard probably would love to have it back but he really shouldn't count.
Don't, under any circumstances, offer Dalton anything. Kick him out of his taxpayer funded quarters in Auckland and tell him to pay for his own inflated standard of living in the future. He has been ripping off the New Zealand taxpayer, and the Auckland ratepayer, for far too long.
"At its core, the regenerative approach is about finding balance between the land a farmer has, and what it can naturally support.
This means less fertilisers, no irrigation, no imported feed – just the natural cycles of sun, air, water and soil that have produced life for time eternal.
Regenerative farmers say if this balance is struck, animals actually become part of the natural cycle of the land, instead of overwhelming it. All that poo and pee becomes natural fertiliser, instead of pollution."
The natural fertility builds up with rotational grazing… this was the way we ( my husband and I and other young farmers ) were farming fifty years ago – before us my great grandfather, my grandfather and my father, until agricultural scientists influenced him otherwise , were farming more like what you would now call “regenerative” farming. Our children are farming sustainably and are financially penalised because they do. eg land rates are geared to the returns of unsustainable farming !
A fortnight ago, driven to despair by long waiting lists, inadequate staffing levels and inefficient working conditions, the departmental health and safety representative lodged a provisional improvement notice (Pin) with the SDHB.
A Pin is a statutory device under the Health and Safety at Work Act which requires a workplace to display the notice and take steps within eight days to address the safety issues raised or face possible further action.
That eight-day period has expired, and the Pin has been referred to WorkSafe for further action.
The HSR complaint was due to; understaffing and poor facilities in the old Dunedin hospital. Meaning that ED nurses had run out of toilets to cry in, while suffering mental distress from being unable to do their work safely in a professional environment.
Pressure of high patient numbers and low staffing levels routinely meant staff went into the toilets to cry, emergency department health and safety representative Anne Daniels said.
Last Thursday, after a nurse told her there were no toilets free to cry in, Ms Daniels lodged a provisional improvement notice (Pin) with the Southern District Health Board…
‘‘This nurse said, ‘Who gives a damn? Someone will die’,’’ Ms Daniels said.
‘‘The Pin is the last straw. We have been living this for the past 18 months.
‘‘We have been compromising and making do for too long, and we can no longer do that.’’
I am curious if Little, as; Minister of Health, is liable for this negligence? It wouldn't surprise me if the DHBs are constructed specifically so as to provide a cutout for ministerial responsibility, the legalese is fairly impenetrable to a nonlawyer (PCBU = Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking). I imagine the SDHB will be looking for someone to do the time (or pay the fine) for them:
A person who commits an offence against subsection (1) is liable on conviction,—
(a) for an individual who is not a PCBU or an officer of a PCBU, to a term of imprisonment not exceeding 5 years or a fine not exceeding $300,000, or both:
(b) for an individual who is a PCBU or an officer of a PCBU, to a term of imprisonment not exceeding 5 years or a fine not exceeding $600,000, or both:
(c) for any other person, to a fine not exceeding $3 million.
One would have expected that, with an ailment called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, the respiratory bit would be enough to clue folk up.
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
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 ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
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. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
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 ...
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Everyone here got their shots now?
Getting my first lot of billgatesmindcontrol5Gspacelaser microchips installed tomorrow.
Got mine – my phone reception is a whole lot better now
Yes.Fully Pfizered.Got stinking cold like symptoms for a week & felt like I had been punched in the arm from the first shot.Second one was uneventful except for a strange compusion to buy 5 copies of windows 11.Well worth it though.
I had the arm ache on the first jab too, but no other side effects. Though I am waiting 3 months for my second, which the booking system isn't too cooperative about. Would have been getting my second tomorrow, I had even set up a vax-date with a friend to get both of our second jabs at the same time and place (so we'd have someone to talk to during the quarter hour waiting after). But then I did a bit of research about optimal interdose intervals – 6 weeks is definitely better than 3; 12 may a bit marginal, but slightly better than that even. My companion just wants it over and done with.
Instead, I will be driving them back after and keeping an eye on them for a bit to be sure they don't have too many side-effects. Seems to vary a lot depending on the person
Waiting on my provider.
I'll get my first shot on Saturday.
Booked mine last night, Monday week for the 1st,
Yes Two each, all done. Sons have had their first.
All three in my household are done, x 2.
Mild sore shoulders for a couple of days, nothing to complain about.
Last week of June I had my second jab.
I must be the biggest Charlie in this lot. 74 yrs old – got 1st jab 6 weeks ago. But had heard English Doctor saying 5-6 weeks was a better gap, so asked for my 2nd jab last Saturday. But just before that, out came the news that 8 – 12 weeks was optimum. So I went in and asked for another 3 weeks' delay. I will now get my second jab on Sept 4.
I thought at the time, just my luck if… and guess what.
Groundswell leader, Jamie McFadden, interviewed by John Campbell on TV1 Breakfast, this morning.
(This is not a direct transcript)
J.M. Only a 'few bad people', are letting us down. And the government should not be making policy that ‘penalises’ everybody.
Not once in the whole interview did Jamie McFadden mention the word 'climate change'.
For that mattter neither did John Campbell.
John Campbell tried to ask Jamie McFadden about nitrate pollution
J.M. What Groundswell are saying about water, we need to look at each catchment.
(No mention of climate).
Maybe both McFadden and Campbell need to read this;
Jamie McFadden did a good job and the Minister who followed was pretty average articulating how the new legislation will assist.
Jamie McFadden "did a good job" having a go at the government for putting in legislation that "penalises" everybody, because of a few "bad people".
By Jamie's logic, we should not put in place traffic legislation against speeding that "penalises" everbody, because a few "bad people" speed.
Good Job Jamie.
If the Minister stays as unconvincing as this, it will indeed be a good job by Jamie.
Come to think of it, do we really need laws against murder? Most of us aren't murderers.
Well it depends, killing people while driving drunk or just badly is pretty much a home D offense.
Farmers are doing what every other business will do as the need to respond to CC bites – fight to protect profitable business models, their decision-making autonomy and a way of life they like. They will obscure this core material fact with fluffy stuff (some of it partly true, some of it greenwash) about feeding the nation, caring about the land, and already doing what is needed in their own way and own time. Meanwhile they will be hard-nosed in trying to install sympathetic governments.
This is how humanity fails in its response to CC – by not seeing that fear of economic insecurity drives behaviours that are rational in the short term, but in the long term are pathological. The idea of an economically just transition needs to be embedded, and soon, but I am not hopeful.
You have plenty of reckons about the Farmers stance, fair enough. They may be true or not. But you do point out some interesting stuff – including fear.
Loads of fear going round. Justifiable and understandable. We should address or at least acknowledge these fears, of both farmers, and persons who fear farmers will stall climate mitigation.
We all know who really stalled climate mitigation. It's big oil, and governments in bed with them. Finding other industries and individuals to take the heat off the big players – those most culpable, is a dirty trick at best, but I'm more inclined to call it sociopathic and self centred murderous and criminal negligence.
They (govts and corporate PR) keep pushing onus onto individuals, and their broad sweeping laws are similar to their broad sweeping statements – largely pointless, but masterful in misdirection.
Now I'd much prefer a Labour to Nat led government, but the neo-lib BS is rife with both. They'd be flying everywhere if not for covid. It's all do as I say not as I do. Feckless wannabes using ecology (which they know fuck all about) to hit others over the head with.
What impact does the NZ government have on big oil? Outside of trying to transition NZ off fossil fuels which is what kicked off this ground swell issue.
In NZ our biggest contributor is Agriculture. We can sit back and cry about big fossil fuel all we want, but if we aren't addressing what we control then who are we to lecture anyone?
Given that methane is so bad (I accept that) shouldn't a large part of any carbon tax go towards the people working on the methane vaccine? Cows arnt hoingcaway here or over seas .
Imho there are two ways to decrease the quantity of methane emitted by farmed ruminants: (1) Decrease the number of ruminants, and (2) Decrease the average amount of methane each ruminant emits. Farmers could (try to) do both.
(1) is in the farmers' fields/court – stock numbers change over time, so it's doable.
(2) Plenty of research on this in NZ and globally; more needed – might be doable.
The idea of a "methane vaccine" calls to mind the farmer protests (in 2003) against a ‘Fart Tax’, which was proposed as a way of funding research into (2).
Based on historical and recent farmer protests, I believe an impartial observer would conclude that many farmers are (still) more concerned about maintaining methane emissions than they are about global warming. Open to Groundswell protesters persuading me otherwise, but they need to do better than this:
They really do.
A image from the 4 Sept 2003 protest at Parliament by farmers concerned about the proposed fart tax. The tax has been proposed on ruminant emissions to finance research into emission reduction. Images from the National Party media unit.
The vaccine is well under way , the nz scientists working on give them a reasonable chance of succeeding, but buy all means cherry pick the loonier grunts from the worst morons to have a crack at farmers in general.
Thanks bwaghorn, will try to remember your invitation for next time – I predict we have even loonier grunts from even worse morons to ‘look forward to’, although hopefully none from a future Prime Minister.
I've been (peripherally) involved in supervising some post-graduate students trying to identify factors associated with low methane emissions – smaller rumens are looking promising for sheep.
One thing the scientists grizzle about is having to down tools every year while they go cap-in-hand for more funding. Who knows how much further down the methanogen vaccine track we'd be now if it wasn't for those 'fart tax' protests.
Talk about a sector shooting itself in the foot. Carry on…
Cap on hand for more funding you say.
You mean tax money paid from people like farmers?
If farmers would rather not pay taxes (such as a 'fart tax') to fund research aimed at mitigating the methane emissions of farmed ruminants then it's no skin off my old nose, but it's not a farsighted stance, imho. Carpe diem!
Btw, NZ ranks 6th in the world (behind Brunei, Grenada, Bahrain, Turkmenistan and Barbados) for per capita methane emissions, and 15th for per capita total GHG emissions (CO2 + methane).
https://www.worlddata.info/greenhouse-gas-by-country.php
Per capita seems like a stupid measure too me.
after all NZ Ag feeds over 30 million people, factor that into your per capita and we are one of the best in the world.
if change your formula to per hectare again the best in the world.
[fixed typo in e-mail address]
Intriguing opinion – I quite like per capita measures as a way of highlighting individual responsibilities, and whether (or not) NZers are punching above their weight, as we do for both methane emissions (bad) and food production (pretty good).
If we can agree that ruminant methane emissions are bad (for spaceship Earth, and so for the 'crew'), and that food production is good (for the crew, if not for the spaceship), then it only remains to figure out how to minimise the bad while retaining sufficient 'good'.
How hard can it be, how much longer might it take, and would it really be as bad as the Groundswell movement apparently believes it to be?
Some more good news – just hope against hope it doesn't come to that.
And I keep hearing some of the less aware farmers claiming that methane is not a problem because it disappears after only 12 years.
Yet they keep on producing more of that same methane every year.
How can it disappear when they keep on producing it?
Actually the claim that it "disappears" is rather a false one. Yes methane may break down over a period of years, but into what? CO2 and water vapour – both Greenhouse gases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane
Groundswell New Zealand says it is planning a "major nationwide protest event" in November, following a lack of response by the Government to its concerns.
Although a date was yet to be set and details of the event outlined, spokesman Bryce McKenzie, of West Otago, said it would be "of a scale and impact that will be significant in New Zealand's history".
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/howl-of-a-protest-ii-groundswell-planning-even-larger-action-from-farmers/XGKNVUPK2MLXUA2VXGBJHWSHDQ/
This is extremely good timing for the farmers to protest against this government.
The government is in poll freefall and is a long way from bottoming out. This team want that third term like a bastard.
In response, I suspect the government will show that they are listening carefully (even though there are very few votes to be turned in it), and walk back bunches of the water protection provisions.
Very, very hard to see Mahuta's water governance reforms lasting.
The green left have long since been given notice that they are not going to get their climate reforms in without a fight, and should have been able to arrange some kind of supportive counter-march by now. The first protest happened and the green left just sat back.
Instead the field of civic action has been left free for the rural community to rise up and do it all again. So they are. And now have a much better chance of changing the government's mind as a result.
This is probably a super naive question, but why don't they just talk it through with the appropriate minister(s) and see if they can get some compromise? Seems like it went from being an issue to an OTT response very quickly. What have I missed?
They do not want a compromise. They expect their decades-long veto over any meaningful environmental action involving agribusiness to continue.
Oh. Thanks for the explanation.
Greens more or less decided that giving the nut jobbery pro pollution protests, even more oxygen, is counterproductive.
Considering they will eventually fall over their own cognitive dissonance.
Yup, enough rope …
We keep broad-brushing the issue, and due to this failing to learn. Some of it we might push back on, some of it is entirely valid. Ignoring it will create a large voting block that takes from the left, who are simply being insulting, and making statements that show their own cognitive dissonance.
Turning farms into pine is one of their issues. Who is the pine benefitting, cos it's an ecological insult to NZ.
We're all concerned with mitigating climate. What are all these farmer bashing townies doing?
"We're all concerned with mitigating climate."
But some are more concerned than others.
The farming industry is lagging badly, like tourism. We need the farmers that want action on climate to organise and be public. Lefties bashing farmers won't help that happen.
https://twitter.com/TerriLDonaldson/status/1427175533595353093
In fact farmers like this one, and I know others, like him/her, tell me they get shouted down and drowned out in rural meetings by the Groundswell types.
I wasn't suggesting they try and change Groundswell, but set up their own version of Fed Farmers and get their own movements going.
Groundswell is as much trying to change FedFarmers as it is the Government, https://www.ruralnewsgroup.co.nz/rural-news/rural-opinion/rural-voices-failing-farmers
Some farmers see Fed Farmers as a branch of the Green Party, so there's a fair bit of diversity there.
Prior to the Howl there was a lot of Fed activity trying to tone it down and get rid of the lunatic fringe. Groundswell co-operated, with varying success. https://www.odt.co.nz/rural-life/rural-people/rural-group%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98wild-conspiracy-theories%E2%80%99-criticised
I am sure they do have contacts for reassurance. Some rural communities it is hard to be 'different' in any way.
yep, I get that in my area… not possible to have a proper discussion with most.. it instantly becomes a bomb-fest of useless loud one-liners, interspersed with derogatory comments about women politicians most commonly… been like it for decades
My mild mannered and not 'greenie' b-i-l planted and fenced his stream edges over 25 years ago and was suitably thought of as being odd and weird then. His sheep and cattle farm was able to transition, on the lower areas to dairy run-off in environmental safety. He keeps a good eye on the leased part of his property as some of the workers below herd manager levels can be a bit out of control and lacking in sense.
The point is they pay their subs but just don't go to the Fed Farmers meetings to share or be shouted down. . Therefore innovation on the ground, localised, often does not filter out very far.
The point also about living in a rural community especially for the more feisty 'incomers' used to living in towns, or rural thinkers is that to keep ahead you have to really stand schtum & basically 'shut-up.'. There is little tolerance in some rural communities for anyone who is deemed to rock the boat……in all sorts of ways from speaking out on low quality education strategies adopted by BoTs right through to changes in farming practices.
Sometimes regulation or legislation or the threat of such is the only way to get the community working together to get the best from it rather than waiting for it to evolve incrementally, It won't happen incrementally as we saw with the response to the delay in higher farming standards and this:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/rural/2021/07/animal-welfare-campaigners-condemn-otago-southland-farmers-caught-grazing-stock-on-substandard-paddocks.html
The Howl, in my circle were seen by some as a wing of the Nats or worse, and totally out of touch with CC because of the focus on utes and because the organisers had not thought through the impact of having silly off message signs about 'communism' and 'the treaty' and 'cindy' etc carried by the participants.
Another thing that puzzles my non greenie b-i-l are why there are different environmental standards for putting in things such as wood burners between those living in towns and those living in the country, His point is that smoke/particulate matter is released into the atmosphere whether in town or country and polluted air is polluted air.
The country towns used by this couple have incredibly poor or non- existent refuse or /recycling facilities. My sister travels 2 hours every couple of months to to cities with proper recycling facilities. Luckily they buy low plastic etc and have good storage. With reliance on tank water and water supply schemes getting contaminated sometimes they need to buy in drinking water.
The lack of proper recycling facilities leads to the continuation of the ubiquitous gut hole.
So dealing with waste in rural town and hinterlands is usually poor in comparison with cities.
Particulate rules for fireplaces are more about health than emissions.
Cities like Christchurch and Hamilton sit in basins, so particulates and smog hang around in the basin. Causing smog, visibility and health effects. Other places, conveniently, get them blown out to sea. Where it is ," someone else's problem".
For those places fireplace rules are less stringent.
I agree that different rules for different places can seem puzzling.
I used to stay on rellies farms, most long dead now. And the farms sold on.
Most of the streams were planted with trees and fenced.
They were proud of the thriving native stream life, "unlike those overseas rivers" where they are to polluted to support life. Lots of native eels, Koura etc.
Greens, of course, were a thing of the future
I wonder what they would have thought about the overloaded with nutrients, and dying, rivers and lakes we see now
Those "farmer bashing townies" city businesses, and their employees, have for decades complied with safety and environmental requirements, and community regulations, way in excess of the fraction farmers have been dragged kicking and screaming into compliance with. Anyone who thinks farmers are being bashed, when they have simply lost their social licence, because of their own attitudes, is showing"cognitive dissonance". Farming is fast losing the huge amount of urban goodwill and support they once enjoyed. And it is entirely their own fault. Which saddens me because I have many farming relatives who are quietly getting on with it, looking at better ways of farming. Who didn’t join in the pro pollution protests
Farmers aren't a hive mind, why talk about them as if they are?
Nor are "townies" but I have yet to see you pull DB Brown on it.
I don't read every comment on TS. Did you call them on it?
No because I understand that when they are referring to townies, they are not intending to tar all townies with the same brush. The same as when they used a broad "lefties" term.
I chose to take their argument in the best possible light. That allows for the actual gist of the argument to be considered as opposed to derailing into a discussion about "not all men".
I'm both a townie and a leftie. Are these two words really an issue? A micro-aggression?
It's either ridiculously woke or shouting down groups. Some people need to get the fuck over themselves and stop being so precious about every damn thing.
How will we ever have conversations when most of it is derailed by all this mud slinging? Trot out the worst offenders, attach them to the entire group. Ignore or mock their issues. USA, coming your way.
And no, I'm not pointing at anyone in particular not everything said is about yourselves specifically.
'these farmer bashing townies' implies I'm talking about the townies who are farmer bashing. This really needs no qualification.
No crashcart I'm not addressing you specifically, who seem to have a grip on the silliness of all the lumping in, and the leaping to defend ourselves from nothing… it's just where this point has fallen in the conversation.
Having been around for a while, I doubt DB Brown's sincerity, and see him as our newest troll, masquerading as a leftie.
Oh I don’t know. I think DB Brown might be a leftie masquerading as a farmer. Something about the writing style seems familiar.
let’s just say I don’t think you will ever see WTB in the same room as DB Brown.
Perhaps you could stop speculating about commenters’ identities and comment on their comments rather, yes? Thanks in advance.
WTB kindly allowed one of their comments to be published as a post, and asked for the name on the post to be DB Brown. That was in a comment on the front end, hardly a secret.
one of the reasons I put up the post is because WTB has over time provided interesting and thoughtful commentary on TS, often presenting counter points outside the binary narratives we too often get stuck in. I find it refreshing and stimulating to my own thought processes.
we often don’t like our beliefs being challenged, are more used to that coming from rw commenters but personally I’m finding the debate better when the dissent is varied in source.
The avatars are identical. Still, Jim’s was a frivolous comment, IMO.
@Incognito, the name change didn't trip the filter?
Nope, because it had been approved previously and as far back as 2018, it appears 🙂
The thing with this is when the same person uses two different names interchangeably it can confuse others, which is why I tend to ask them to stick one user handle and one e-mail address. But DB Brown has not done this, so all good 🙂
I thought it frivolous at first but then wondered if Jim was just pointing out in a humourous way that the DBB is a leftie.
All good, but my sense of humour took a dive yesterday …
Understandable.
DBB may be a bit of a Darkhorse. There has certainly been a good Draught around lately. At Uni in the late 60's we were required to sign a register that passed around the lecture theatre lecture in order to get "Terms" to sit the final exams. DB Lager, D Brown, L Red, M Mouse, and D Duck were very regular attendees 🙂
Neither are townies, or those on welfare, or lefties! It appears farming is a "sacred cow" we are not allowed to upset with reality.
In fact Farmers who are trying to clean up their act who talk to me agreeing about the pro pollution protests, are telling me they are a minority. And, unfortunately most are cleaning up their act because Fonterra and regulations are making them. Not from conviction.
KJT "city businesses, and their employees, have for decades complied with safety and environmental requirements, and community regulations, way in excess of the fraction farmers have been dragged kicking and screaming into compliance with."
Was exactly my point yesterday
These issues are the exact same as faced by everyone in business – in type and scale. Yet the others don't cry about it to anything like the same extent. And they certainly don't get exceptions made for them (e.g. excused from the ETS).
I am yet to see this point answered, but have my eyes peeled.
Ad, if you are so sure that this government support is in freefall and has not yet bottomed out, then all Groundswell have to do, is wait and vote them out. No need for protest action.
It will take a lot to convince me that this government will lose the next election. If the government stay on track. If they continue to stay on top of their pandemic response, if they continue to keep New Zealanders safe, while the rest of the world is in covid torment, then Labour will win the next election.
If Labour Government, finally get on top of the housing crisis, then in my opinion Labour will win the next two elections after that, as well.
The Right, (including Groundswell), sense that this Government is not going away any time soon. Knowing, they are not going to get their way from any compliant National led administration, Groundswell are using direct protest pressure to try and convince the current government into backing down over its environmental protection regulations.
This is why Groundswell supporters feel the need to hold these protests.
They may have decided to let them make fools of themselves unmolested.
That's quite a risk to take.
I wouldn't bet against it.
Those Groundswell people are entitled to protest. We are a democracy. If they name call and deny science people will call them out. I know who will look silly, and it won't be Jacinda or Labour.
There is also that issue of disorder and violence, which history shows us result in disproportionate bruises and arrests among those who oppose Massey's Cossacks. Better to let the tractor crowd wander aimlessly and rage against the rising sealevels like king Knut. It aint the Chch shooters that get surveilled or arrested, it's the Keith Lockes.
Is Knut, Canute? Does not compute 🙂
Cnut is the patron saint of proof readers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great
Knut is more the way the Danes wrote it – it ain't easy carving a C into a runestick with a knife. Spelling standardized a bit later on.
Ad, yes you are right, we on the Left are prepared to fight for climate reforms, using peaceful and democratic means, and where necessary non-violent civil disobedience. And be prepared to be arrested for it, if that is what it takes.
We will not be organising any counter-march to Groundswell.
My advice to the Left; Do not be drawn into a street brawl with the right wing losers of Groundswell.
Ad if you are trying to incite some sort of confrontation to embarrass the government then you are going the right way about it.
We have no objection to Groundswell holding their protest march in November, that is their democratic right. If they break the law, I fully expect the authorities to act to arrest them, as they so often do for Left protesters, let see how committed these right wing protesters really are to their beliefs.
My feeling; If Groundswell's November protest is anything like their last protest, with the same racist and sexist and climate change denying and conpiracy messaging, they will disgrace themselves in the eyes of most New Zealanders without the Left having to do anything.
You just sound like you're too posh to push.
If we are so smug we can't even organise a counter-protest to support the government, we stand a much greater chance of losing out of sheer self-righteousness.
Sounds like you'll be out protesting even if nobody else is, you firebrand, you. Can you lead a protest of one from the back?
Not can't, won't.
Greenies etc won't organise a counter protest to support the government because we believe the government is dragging the chain and/or cementing in neoliberal systems that are problematic from a green perspective.
Labourites won't because they don't.
There were some "counter-protests" at the first "howlin'" – Extinction Rebellion people sat on a pedestrian crossing and halted the "mighty convoy" of tractors and Utes in one centre – and received abuse for their troubles ("Get the freaks off the road" one son of the soil intoned, repeatedly). Similar responses were mounted elsewhere and the reactions were the same.
Jenny htgt @10:22 am makes the valid point that the ill-disciplined, mysogynistic, racist etc. messages that accompanied the first howlin' harmed the whole protest, but I would suggest those "cowboys" will be reined-in by now and the idiotic placards won't appear again…unless… 🙂
Will be interesting to see how they develop.
I'm curious what the media reporting was of the XR actions, and what the wider community thought. It's a tactical mistake imo for XR to target rural people in conservative communities, and I'd ask what they are trying to achieve.
XR in the UK has been so successful because they were very smart (head and heart) in how they impacted on the general population. You have to meet people half way and bring them along.
Going hard against the banks, Fonterra, Big Oil is a different matter, still needs some intuitive sense.
The power that XR UK has isn't in stopping traffic, it comes from somewhere else. Trying to import the techniques without the kaupapa isn't going to work (imho).
I agree.
Don't waste your heart and mind trying to pull down what is already destroying itself 🙂 Not my words.
“The wave of the future is on the local level. Don’t waste your heart and mind trying to pull down what is already destroying itself. But come into where you’re almost below the radar and reorganize life. We want communities where we live and work and fight for the future.” – Joanna Macy
that's a stunningly good quote. I'm working through their active hope process at the moment, seeing a lot of potential for good responses.
That is wet Ad.
Something about wrestling, and the coating you'll receive comes to mind.
Aye true but that is politics. In every respect this is a shit fight.
Ha! Well, yes, but you'd only want to throw yourself into the sty and wrestle if you were confident of gaining something significant from the engagement. What do you suggest greenies might gain from waving placards at huge farm vehicles?
Televisual glory, of course! More Twitter feeds than you can shake a stick at. Something to rally the team again. Like we used to do in Helen Clark's second term.
Groundswell are proposing to toot us into submission:
"The first event is on this Friday 20th August 2021 under the banner of "CAN YOU HEAR US".
At 12:30 pm all around New Zealand, Groundswell NZ are calling for 2 minutes of show of support by every car, bike, truck, train – anything with a horn, tooting in support of our campaign.
Then this will be repeated every Friday for the following 3 weeks."
I propose a counter-campaign under the banner "STFU" – the placards will be easy to produce 🙂
I wonder if the cops will enforce the rules about unreasonable use of horns as much as they RUC-checked all the tractors peddling through town? lol
Doubtless they'll come down hard on the trouble-makers, as they do with any other protester.
"Groundswell NZ is calling for all landowners to decline access for councils or their agents wanting to undertake mapping or information gathering on private land. Groundswell NZ has identified serious implications with this information gathering that landowners are largely unaware of."
Isn't this inciting civil disobedience?
Well, it's a strategy I guess.
Counter protest STFU – funny AF.
Today's events will have will have effectively canceled this Friday's effort, they will be pushing the Essential Service definition to go into town to protest. That'll be an interesting interaction with the police officer.
Going much past this week and calving / lambing will be getting into full swing, and lots else will be making the farm a pretty busy place. And that's assuming we're only in lockdown for 3 – 7 days.
They won't have the spare time they had last month when about all that was happening on farm was feeding out maybe once a day. Once we get to late November farms will be before daylight to well after dusk, 7 days a week workplaces. If farmers can find time to play around protesting then, their protestations about staff shortages are waffle.
They'll be out taking photos of muddy livestock on muddy farms while the farmers are all in town on their tractors.
🙂
Drones to counter the drone.
The irony is that the National Standards malarkey came about because the District focused approach of the RMA was too hard and gave some perverse boundary issues. There's a pretty stark example at Queensbury (just out of Wanaka) where quite intensive grazing is allowed in Central Otago but not just down the road in Queenstown Lakes District. Unfortunately the boundary goes through a farm unit. There's lots of other examples around the Country and this did farmer's heads in. So they petitioned the previous government for consistency between Districts, hence National Environmental Standards.
Now the current Government is getting those National Standards in place farmers are realising why the RMA took a District and catchment specific approach.
It's still been pretty outrageous to see the regional catchment regulator Otago Regional Council take such a soft stance, since they cover those catchments you mention. Witness their stated inability to regulate for air quality even though it is one of their statutory jobs. So residents like Cromwell suffer through it.
ORC has been a waste of space since it was formed. It's always been farmer and Dunedin dominated and as soon as something comes up that will restrict farming it rapidly becomes dysfunctional. The deemed permit fiasco and Manuherikia minimum flow / overallocation show how difficult ORC are finding things. Both issues aren't totally of their own making, multiple governments going back to year dot have been involved and it's left to the local level to try and sort the differences, which are almost insurmountable without someone / something being badly hurt.
Graeme "
The irony is that the National Standards malarkey came about because the District focused approach of the RMA was too hard and gave some perverse boundary issues. There's a pretty stark example at Queensbury (just out of Wanaka) where quite intensive grazing is allowed in Central Otago but not just down the road in Queenstown Lakes District. Unfortunately the boundary goes through a farm unit. There's lots of other examples around the Country and this did farmer's heads in. So they petitioned the previous government for consistency between Districts, hence National Environmental Standards.
Now the current Government is getting those National Standards in place farmers are realising why the RMA took a District and catchment specific approach."
…
That is very interesting and well worth keeping front of mind, as this is one of their major whinges.
Genieus – November's generally drier than July, but beware in Southland, where Groundswell might yet meet ‘Let the River Swell‘.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/americas-cup/126093589/americas-cup-small-chance-of-nz-hosting-next-defence
I wonder if Mr Dalton has found that there really isn't that much interest in the America's Cup anymore and that there aren't people willing to pay him enormous amounts of money for the "privilege" of holding it?
Well the Government must take this chance to tell him NO. We don't need it and we don't want it. We are free of the stupid thing and we want to stay that way. At least I, and people I have talked to about it, don't want it. Trevor Mallard probably would love to have it back but he really shouldn't count.
Don't, under any circumstances, offer Dalton anything. Kick him out of his taxpayer funded quarters in Auckland and tell him to pay for his own inflated standard of living in the future. He has been ripping off the New Zealand taxpayer, and the Auckland ratepayer, for far too long.
Good explanation from Baz:
"At its core, the regenerative approach is about finding balance between the land a farmer has, and what it can naturally support.
This means less fertilisers, no irrigation, no imported feed – just the natural cycles of sun, air, water and soil that have produced life for time eternal.
Regenerative farmers say if this balance is struck, animals actually become part of the natural cycle of the land, instead of overwhelming it. All that poo and pee becomes natural fertiliser, instead of pollution."
https://www.renews.co.nz/dairy-cant-manage-its-crap-but-innovative-farmers-are-trying-to-fix-that/
Yes Robert ,
The natural fertility builds up with rotational grazing… this was the way we ( my husband and I and other young farmers ) were farming fifty years ago – before us my great grandfather, my grandfather and my father, until agricultural scientists influenced him otherwise , were farming more like what you would now call “regenerative” farming. Our children are farming sustainably and are financially penalised because they do. eg land rates are geared to the returns of unsustainable farming !
The Pin has been pulled out of the grenade:
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/health/worksafe-steps-over-ed-concerns
The HSR complaint was due to; understaffing and poor facilities in the old Dunedin hospital. Meaning that ED nurses had run out of toilets to cry in, while suffering mental distress from being unable to do their work safely in a professional environment.
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/health/someone-will-die-ed-staff-take-legal-action-work-conditions
I am curious if Little, as; Minister of Health, is liable for this negligence? It wouldn't surprise me if the DHBs are constructed specifically so as to provide a cutout for ministerial responsibility, the legalese is fairly impenetrable to a nonlawyer (PCBU = Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking). I imagine the SDHB will be looking for someone to do the time (or pay the fine) for them:
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2015/0070/latest/DLM5976917.html
Interesting short discussion about Delta variant.
https://twitter.com/marcdaalder/status/1427405469795061761
More here
https://twitter.com/Anna_bw/status/1427407262226599936
The consensus with aerosol science is that covid spread is mostly due to it being airborne.(formites less so)
https://twitter.com/jljcolorado/status/1391111720526024708
Deltas viral load is 1000x greater then its antecedent strains.
One would have expected that, with an ailment called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, the respiratory bit would be enough to clue folk up.
You would think the obvious would hold,but like masks and a number of studies on masks that were not even wrong,heuristics are often constrained.
https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1425428696748462080
Community case in AK again.Stop flights out at once.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/126097187/covid19-health-officials-investigating-new-community-case-in-auckland
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/126097187/covid19-health-officials-investigating-new-community-case-in-auckland
lets hope that once more we get lucky.
We were lucky with Wellington and Tauranga to name 2, eventually the odds mean that we will have an outbreak.
My thoughts go out to our already under stressed health workers, should this case expand to others.
honestly, i would not want to be a health worker atm, they are made of better stuff then i am.
+1 Sabine
https://twitter.com/henrycooke/status/1427458032280117251?s=21
take care out there today folks.