It may seem a strange thing for a city dweller to worry about.
But,
Still no rain.
Well not here in Papakura at least.
Black heavy clouds that normally would guarantee a rainfall just hang over the suburb.
Our lawn has not grown for months. While the grass dies, strange new weeds, (probably with deeper roots) are raise their heads. I witnessed a man mowing his dust yesterday, Clouds of it billowing up around him as he pushes his lawnmower around his section. Could this be a metaphor for business as usual?
Is this how it ends? Trudging around in diminishing circles mindlessly repeating rituals that have lost all meaning, and could be doing us harm?
Our world, as we know it, is dying. Who can deny it?
Scientists and politicians here and overseas talk of the “New Normal”. The National Government warn farmers that there will no more bailout for droughts after this one.
Meanwhile in the next borough, Fonterra continue with their plan to cook to climate, with a new coal mine. Are they mowing a dead lawn? Are they just ignorant, or are their actions more sinister and cynical than that?
Is it that they don’t give a damn?
At the flea market I bumped into a well known local ACT supporter who accused me of “frightening people”. I replied, “people should be frightened. Go to Australia, people are frightened, some are terrified.” With the crazy illogic of the Right. He loudly accused me of “making things worse”.
“How could I make things worse”, I retorted.
Its light drizzle in central AKL, but what happened to the *predicted cyclone*.
Heavy black clouds, but no rain – Who would to try explain why when AKL is covered in clouds that look like they only belong on the tropics right before a 2-3 hour deluge, are these things hanging around AKL without dispensing SFA??
Re your encounter with the act supoorter, yes thats the response of a scared weak human being, with no ability to review their own belief system!
Re Fonterra – If the permits are given, then its also those who allow the mine to go ahead that are sinister, along with whomever applied the pressure to get it through!
Maybe time for the anticipated exodus from the dying cities to begin while people still can – just don’t all come here lol – pouring down here in the bay but we are always greener than most from grass to voting. We do tend to get lots of lines across the sky but it has always been a convergence point here for the whales, people and I suppose the demented. Good luck up there.
Yes, cities are killers, no questions about that, they kill the mind and soul, and not only steal energy, they can turn positive energy negative with ease.
It will be time to depart soon, that is for sure, I expect many people who are now tied to a mortage and invested in this dying/decaying city, might be wishing they were not so tied to it, but hey, people make their choices.
We will need alot of luck up here, appreciate the sentiment bro!
Problem is a bit like whale strandings – when the sand is felt on their belly it is too late for them to get off and they have to wait for the next high tide and when the city is gnawing the belly it will be too late to move too and notwithstanding rising sea levels the next high tide may be quite a wait.
No need for everyone to leave the cities. Cities have lots of valuable resources and infrastructure that we will need in the future. We can transform much of the city. Suburbs can be retrofitted into sustainable communities and villages.
Learn first how to harvest water đ Not just collecting water in cisterns/tanks, but how to make use of the water that hits the ground, channelling it to where you grow food. Re-use grey water for gardening. Plant trees! and create local microclimates. The shadier it is the better you can do with low rainfall. Many people in the world have lived successfully for long periods of time in places alot drier that Auckland đ
A 2000 year old food forest in the Moroccan desert with plants that would probably do ok in the Auckland region, but adapting forest design for the sub tropics.
There is a lot of overcast cloud over Te Whanganui a Tara as I write, but no sign of moisture as yet. Rain is forecast for this afternoon. The grass outside looks like something from an Australian drought – but this one is Aotearoan.
Dr. Salinger was right to call it “historic”, in fact he and other climate scientists have been right all along, but don’t expect any thanks from a government relying on the fading charm of former trading floor manager.
Yes thick black clouds over Papakura too. A slight breeze. Rain must be nearly here. There is a mist on the top of the Hunuas. Maybe it is raining up there.
Yep. Good to see some continuing light rain in Auckland this morning, though this hasn’t been the area most in need.
I guess the welcome sight makes up for it putting an end to my plans today for using my day off work – yesterday it was the sniffles, today the rain… and there goes my little bit of annual leave.
Hope everyone has been out clearing there gutters, as with the lack of rain all those leaves, moss etc building up and blocking the down pipes. Result for internal gutters water getting in, traditional guttering systems overflows.
Excellent ‘post’ Jenny; yes, weeds with deeper roots emerge and re-establish; observed a few folk mowing their dust and slivers to within a mil of nothing too.
We’ve had heavy drizzle all thru the night – this is over the eastern hills and towards the east coast of the mid-north. But the rain fall is patchy – doesn’t happen everywhere. We had a similar rainy patch in February – lasted three days. Keeping our place green but probably not enough for local farmers. Elsewhere in the north this hasn’t happened – its very brown in Far North.
The bloody face of coal. With almost identical circumstances to Pike River, Coal Keeps Killing
As well as being dangerous to mine, and unhealthy for the people in nearby communities, coal is the number 1 cause of anthropomorphic CO2 emissions
The coal industry is brutal, it is sick, it is dirty, And It is Dying. This monstrous industry belongs in the 19th century, yet it stumbles and lurches, unwelcome into the 21st. No doubt, eventually, like all slavering grotesque monsters it will die a horrible and well deserved death. The danger is, if this death is latter, rather than sooner, that it threatens to take us all with it.
In other news on coal:
In the Australian capital of coal, New Castle, residents march against coal.
In other news China puts a legislative cap on coal:
âCoal consumption will peak below 4 billion tonnes,â Jiang Kejun, who led the modelling team that advised the State Council on energy use scenarios, told Fairfax Media.
âItâs time to make change,â said Dr Jiang, who is director of the Energy Research Institute under the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). âThereâs no market for further development of energy-intensive industry.â
The imminent stabilisation of coal usage, if broadly achieved, would mark a stunning turn-around for a nation that is estimated to have burned 3.9 billion tonnes last year, which is nearly as much as the rest of the world combined.
The move would also bring some relief in the fight against global warming.
And it would trigger a negative income shock to Australia, the worldâs biggest exporter or coal and iron ore, with significant implications for government budget forecasts.
And the short sighted managers of solid energy wonder why the price of coal has dropped through the floor. They must know that they are working in a dying industry. (In more ways than one). (They have been informed of this inevitable crisis by environmentalists and scientists for more than a decade now.
The Chinese government’s restrictions on coal, are driven by environmental concerns:
Chinese officials and analysts acknowledge that state-owned enterprises, regional leaders and their political patrons have resisted or ignored previous edicts.
But they say the economic growth is now ready to be weaned from its addiction to coal and the State Council decision – including to apportion responsibilities to local governments and enterprises – shows a stronger political consensus has been reached to mobilise the bureaucracy.
Pan Jiahua, who heads a team of climate change economists at China’s leading think tank, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told Fairfax Media that the State Councilâs endorsement of the energy target had the effect of elevating it into a âpolitical requirementâ.
He said officials in local governments and state-owned enterprises would now be judged partly on their ability to meet energy targets while a long list of green slogans, incentives and policies were translating into concrete measures.
Professor Pan said energy security remained the primary motivation behind the measures but last monthâs record pollution readings in North China had contributed to the hardening of political will.
âChinese people have done enough tolerating such bad air,â he said.
We are reliving the last dying days of the asbestos mining industry. Why prolong the pain? When will our policy makers stop trying to make money out of this dying industry, regardless to the cost, to the environment, to lives, to the climate?
Are they idiots?
Or, as the residents of New Castle claim, just “F**king Greedy”, with no respect for human life.
“We have concluded that pollution from T4 is a significant threat to public health. Most affected will be 32,000 people living alongside the coal corridor from Newcastle to Rutherford and 23,000 children who live within half a kilometre or attending schools within half a kilometre of the coal rail and the 23,000 residents living close to Kooragang Island.
What we find most objectionable is that the T4 proposal is their denial that any disease burden will be imposed on the residents from noise and pollution.
T4 pollution comes with an unpaid health bill. It’s cost will be charged to the victims and their famillies and to all of us who pay for the national health budget. This coal dust bill is not trivial. T4 activities along the rail corridor and coal loader will add 363 tonnes of small particles called PM10 into the air each year. Coal loader expansion will make already poor air quality even worse.
Midwives Association, Associate Professor Nick Higginbotham
The same coal particles that the Associate Professor of mid wives Nick Higginbottom identifies as being a hazard to the health of the people of New Castle. Are soon to be released here, into the air upwind of this country’s biggest reservoir, the Mangatangi Dam. Fonterra is planning to dig a brand new open cast mine at Mangatangi due east of the reservoir that supplies the bulk of Auckland’s drinking water.
Auckland Coal Action has called on Aucklanders to put a stop to this new coal mine. This is in line with the official Green Party policy of No New Coal Mines in Aotearoa.
Fonterra is the third biggest single consumer of coal after Huntly Power Station and Glenbrook Steel Mill. (Dairy industry as a whole, may consume more than Glenbrook making Dairying number 2. Unfortunately figures for the total consumption of coal by the total Dairy Industry are hard to come by).
Trend setter, Fonterra plans to dig a brand new open cast coal mine, just south of Auckland.
Though having owned the land for nearly 20 years, Fonterra were unable to mine it for it’s known coal reserves. I surmise that Fonterra were unable, or unwilling to meet the strict Auckland Regional compliance regulations.
But it seems, there is more than one way to skin a cat. (or a climate).
In the creation of the Super City the Southern Auckland boundary which contained Mangatangi, (including the Mangatangi reservoir, the biggest in the country, providing the bulk of Auckland’s drinking water), was moved North.
The prevailing winds are from the West, the Mangatangi Reservoir, in particular, is almost directly down wind of the open cast mine. Coal dust is notorious for being contaminated with heavy metal residues.
Are the local residents of Mangatangi/Mangatawhiri concerned?
Yes, they are.
Should you be too?
Yes you should.
Anti-climate change pressure group Auckland Coal Action has teamed up with local residents of Mangatangi and Mangatawhiri to oppose Fonterra’s plans for the new open cast coal mine at Mangatangi.
They are calling for as many people as possible to make submissions to the Waikato Regional Council.
We think we have problems with nz governments and their wasteful spending and profligacy in their chosen directions (while not having money for essential services and citizen support).
I just heard on radionz someone saying that people in usa are monitoring the development of the F35 plane which is supposed to cost 1 Trillion $ over 35 years, and is not going well.
Watching Bill English on Q&A. When he says that “in 2009 the government was facing a decade of deficits because of the Labour Party”…what does he mean? I understand that Labour/Cullen run surpluses throughout its term in government???
The National Party also have this on their website.
It was a ridiculous statement put out by the treasury, showing that if current spending levels were left unchanged, the government would face deficits for the next decade. National jumped on it and trumpeted it as if Labour were reckless, irresponsible and had driven the country into the ground.
Of course Labour would have changed spending priorities if they had won the 2008 election (Labour were promising a mini-budget to respond to the then-unfolding financial crisis), just as National changed spending priorities themselves – and we’re still going to be in deficit in 2014/2015, almost a decade after the 2008 election anyway.
Thanks M and L. Oh now I understand, that is ridiculous. So Labours decade of deficits relates to the treasuries projected deficits from 2010 to 2020??? How the fuck does this get labelled as “Labours” decade of deficits.
How this National government maintains its support in the Polls is beyond belief. English’s idea of dealing with climate change is setting up mass irrigation schemes and letting farmers sort the issue out. Then in the Solid Energy issue he openly admits that National encouraged SE to have a 40% Debt to Equity ratio, the Directors state that that is too high and were only prepared to go as high as 35%. For this the Directors get fired for driving debt too high. Whhaaaattt?
Why does this abysmal governments hopelessness not convert to movements in the polls? I wonder if it has something to do with a Shearer lead government, also containing Winston scares people. And although I quite like Hone/Mana’s policies, I wonder if the thought of Shearer leading with Hone and Winston also scares the shit out of the middle class swing voters. Buggered if I know but something is stopping people from moving their votes back to Labour.
There’s every chance there will be another high non-vote in 2014. People who refuse to vote for National, but can’t see any alternative government- in-waiting which works for them.
I reckon the Greens will be a big winner in this scenario and have a good chance of breaking over 13%.
Poor reporting so that people don’t have all the facts, an even poorer understanding of economics (hell, if economists don’t know what an economy is that’s not really surprising) and an unsupported belief that National are better economic managers than Labour despite the fact that National always run the economy into the ground and Labour fixes it (well, they did kinda fix it until the 1980s and then they really screwed it up).
I blame the lack of a coherent, readily characterised position on Labour’s part. It seems that, afraid of being characterised as “yeah, yeah, tax and spend” Labour have opted to try and avoid characterisation altogether. Hence it is very hard to see what a coalition of the left would look like. Think about Labour’s return to the front benches under Helen Clark. There was a clear position from which concessions to smaller parties might be made. Labour’s commitment to this position was underwritten by a pledge card.
The present fear of characterisation leaves the party unable to meaningfully commit itself. The housing policy, for example, concentrates on means, with the assumption that the claimed ends will follow. There is no “we will do whatever it takes to make housing affordable, re-establish manufacturing, etc.” In a similar vein, their challenges to the welfare reforms are generally technical rather than moral. And we have seen the limp possible-policy response to asset sales, which was their flagship policy in 2011. Such equivocation cannot hope to galvanise voters.
It was a load of bollocks. Basically, Treasury looked at the GFC, panicked and, because they’re all ideologues, blamed the Labour governments spending rather than the socio-economic system that caused the crash.
. . . Bill English had to swallow the proverbial dead rat this morning and effectively acknowledge that Michael Cullen had done something right in his stewardship of the Government’s finances in the past nine years.
Having condemned his predecessor for many years for paying off debt too quickly, English said: “I want to stress that New Zealand starts from a reasonable position in dealing with the uncertainty of our economic outlook.”
“In New Zealand we have room to respond. This is the rainy day that Government has been saving up for,” he told reporters at the Treasury briefing on the state of the economy and forecasts . . .
The nervous chuckling of radio broadcasters
Sunday Morning with Chris Laidlaw, National Radio, 17 March 2013
Chris Laidlaw is one of this country’s more serious-minded and intelligent broadcasters. He goes out of his way to be fair and even-handed, and he has attracted many high quality guests on to his show, including dissidents normally shunned by the mainstream media, such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein.
He also has one of the very best feature writers in the country, Wayne Brittenden, who in his “Counterpoint” segment every week provides an unflinching, often startling in-depth backgrounder to current news issues.
Today, just after the 8 o’clock news, during his rundown of the programme, Chris Laidlaw said this: “At 11:40 Wayne Brittenden talks about the American soldier who is on trial for releasing hundreds of thousands of official documents to Wikileaks.” Then he chuckled, and quipped: “Which makes him flavour of the month at the Pentagon!” And he chuckled again.
Such behaviour is not just irritating, it is concerning for two reasons. (1) The American soldier (Bradley Manning) is not on trial for releasing hundreds of thousands of documents, he is on trial for blowing the whistle on atrocities and war crimes committed by U.S. occupation troops in Iraq. No doubt Laidlaw knows that, but he obediently read out the misleading words anyway. (2) The chuckle didn’t just happen. He did not chuckle while reading out anything else, only while reading out about Bradley Manning. This is, I believe, because Laidlaw realized that he was wading into extremely dangerous territory, and the consequences of even MENTIONING, let alone giving a fair hearing to, an official enemy are dire. Chuckling is a distancing mechanism, an almost subconscious way of protecting yourself from the charge of taking all this radical stuff too seriously.
That’s why Jim Mora chuckled incessantly recently whenever he even mentioned the name of official enemy Hugo ChĂĄvez. It’s not that Mora is a raving right winger like many of his guests, it’s just that he realizes it’s risky to go out on a limb and tell the truth unflinchingly.
A few years ago, Brian Edwards shrewdly assessed the behaviour of journalist/PR shill Bill Ralston: “He is an intelligent man who is afraid of being seen to be intelligent.” Replace the word “intelligent” with “principled”, and you have a perfect description of the timid “liberals” on Radio New Zealand National.
You should have listened to the broad cast program on climate change. Laughing and giggles and unfunny jokes all through it.
I’ll be damned.
Now I understand why. It was a distancing tactic. They were too frightened to seriously discuss this issue in case they ruffled the feathers of powerful interest groups who could harm their careers.
I will right now, go and look up the link. And listen again with new ears.
“itâs just that he realizes itâs risky to go out on a limb and tell the truth unflinchingly”
I agree. Man-made earthquakes are not funny things. Another way of looking at it is when they lie blatantly about something, then you know that the issue is an important one. Like common law, for example.
Methinks you may overcook Laidlaw’s chuckle there Morrissey. Doesn’t strike me that Laidlaw is an individual to be cowed either consciously or subliminally.
Thanks anyway for the reminder to listen to the Brittenden interview @ 11.40 am. Didn’t hear the chuckle myself so won’t be adamant about it but are there possibly legs in Laidlaw actually doing a bit of a snidey at the expense of the monstrously fruit-saladed boys and girls at the Pentagon ? It was only an intro after all.
As to Mora on the other hand…….well, he’s more a fulsomely charming dinner guest than anything else. The one whom for whatever self-preening reason brings the finest wine at the table and the only one whose demeanour is ineffably affable from start to finish.
Anyway, raining steadily in the Mid-North for a few hours and just now quite solidly
My ruggedly individualistic, freedom-loving, self-reliant, ACT-voting silverbeet and herbs are positvely humming. For today anyway they can safely eschew the vile-welfarism attendant in Nanny North’s watering.
I do, however, think that his slight chuckle didn’t just arise because he thinks the persecution of Bradley Manning is funny.
Don’t get me wrong: I believe Laidlaw is a brave and independently-minded broadcaster, but even he is not immune to pressure. Chuckling like that is the verbal equivalent of wincing; it signals uncertainty and discomfort.
It’s far from the gales of laughter that resound in Jim Mora’s studio whenever something delicate, like government crimes or human rights, comes up for discussion.
“Watching Bill English on Q&A. When he says that âin 2009 the government was facing a decade of deficits because of the Labour Partyâ⊔
Is there something wrong with your memory?
Do you not recall when Cullen (one of the nastiest MP’s we have ever had) proudly stood in the house and said he “had spent it all, there is nothing left”
Cullen did not care that he led NZ into the recession before any other country in the world, he did not care that he wasted surpluses of the like we had never seen before he just wanted to make sure that the nation suffered because it had the temerity to turn it’s back on the Clark government, the most corrupt government in our nations history.
Poor Bruv, in his world sensible economic management by a government is an affront to everything he read in the Ayn Rand books and therefore cannot be real.
I’d always thought that was Labour in UK with a quote that there’s ‘no money left’ when they lost the election. If it was Cullen I’d be keen to read what that was all about.
Ignoring your poor grasp of history… Just consider this.
Ok – so given your view on the situation in 2009 – how does that explain why Bill English, supposedly faced with a decade of deficits, promptly went out and caused not one but two rounds of additional tax cuts to worsen the revenue situation and to increase the possible deficit. Which then grew faster in almost any terms than we have ever seen before, including during the oil shocks of the 70’s.
Steve Keen also a big supporter of a tough capital gains tax, which would do more to stop another housing bubble developing, it could also lead to another reduction in the cash rate (which we desperately need, particularly now that the drought will cost the country $2b), which could lower the exchange rate.
The War on Drugs fits in very nicely with the War on Black and Indigenous Youth, the War on Sustainable Peasant Agriculture, and the War for Serco’s Profits. It has very little to do with drugs, but allowed the US and A to criminalise a whole generation of black and Latino youth for private profit. Until terrorism came along as a convenient excuse, it was the rationale of choice for increasing Police powers and moving us towards an oppressive lawn order society.
Many of these public figures, from ex-presidents to ex-police chiefs, are happy to come out against it once they’re no longer in office. It’s about time they started taking a stand while they can still do something.
End the ridiculous war on drugs – legalise everything. It couldn’t possibly be worse than what we’ve got and the evidence from countries like Portugal suggests it could be much better.
Agreed Olsen. Isn’t it starkly ironic that the last geezer of the poltical class who had anything vaguely sensible to say about it all was the hapless Don Brash ?
And the laddies and lasses of the media (and forgive me for understanding that most’ve been and still may be into it…..the dak anyway)………well……..they roasted the old duffer. While shortly thereafter saying “Yeah, OK” re Botox Banks and his complete loss of memory about a chopper trip to the Dotcom mansion.
The War on Drugs fits in very nicely with the War on Black and Indigenous Youth, the War on Sustainable Peasant Agriculture, and the War for Sercoâs Profits
Michelle Alexander argues that the get-tough-on-crime policies that began in the early 1970s were enacted in an effort to push back the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. This effort, she says, has been successful. Prof. Alexander spoke at the University of Tennessee at an event hosted by the university’s Africana Studies Program
The banks in Cyprus are broke, as is Cyprus as a state – part of the EU. To get their bankers, and the state, out of the hole caused by profligate spending and bad speculation by its banks – much of it in Greece – Cyprus has frozen all bank deposits and is to impose a ‘one-time tax’ of 6.75% on all bank deposits under EU100,000 and a ‘levy’ of 10% on all deposits of more than EU100,000.
So in effect if you were a saver you get 6.75% or 10% taken from your savings without warning over the weekend. If you were a spendthrift, or poor, it doesn’t touch you.
Do do we cheer, or look on in horror? Do we say that the ordinary Cypriot who might have been saving for a house, or a holiday, or a daughter’s wedding, or retirment is just getting what he deserves for being a capitalist? Do we say that spending all you earn on the flashiest life-style possible is the way to go ‘cos they can’t tax that? Do we say that anyone who earns more than they absolutely need and chooses to save it rather than spend it should be forced to underwrite the profligacy and bad investment decisons of others?
The Germans, who are largely responsible for forcing this on the Cypriots as the price of yet another bank bail-out, argue that quite a lot of money deposited in Cypriot banks is ‘dirty money’ from Russia, which makes it all right to also take money from the savings accounts of Cypriot mums and dads, and a great many pensioners from other European countries that retired there. Would you feel happy about money being seized from your bank account without any forewarning, or legal approval, because your bank is also used by crooks?
Is there any longer any reason to believe your money is safe in the bank?
Fair ’nuff. I’m seriously considering pulling back on what I keep in the bank for day-to-day expenses and that ‘rainy day’
But that begs the question what do I do with surplus cash? Buy more Mighty River Power shares? Increase my stake in Australia and the US? Replace my 2-year-old SUV with a new one I neither need nor want? Buy a house in Auckland and rent it out?
Dammitm, I can’t even give it to the RC Church for the benefit of my soul, seeing as how Pope Francis I wants the church to be Poor.
Tried that by buying a mussel farm and spending $thousands tripling its size, making work for locals in the work-boats and processing factories, fighting the protestors who think the Sounds should be kept pristine for Aucklanders and Wellingtonians to look at and fish out on their holidays, and sold out when uncontrolled expansion of the industry (just like mine) doubled the growing time between harvests, while the high dollar and greedy middlemen meant I was subsidising sea-food restaurants in Los Angeles and New York or supermarket chains in Europe.
Tried that by sinking $thousands into Windflow Technology Limited. Haven’t yet had a cent back over 13 years but helped create plenty of new jobs that have come and gone, and might have done some real good for New Zealand employment, technical reputation and the environment had any Government of either colour done any more than make encouraging noises and jumped at the ‘green’ photo-ops.
Did that by supporting Moa Beer’s IPO last year – but oh dear, the stick I’ll get from commentators at this site for being a rentier and not earning an honest living toiling in the fields from dawn to dusk.
I agree. Apart from bars, brothels, drug-dealing, various forms of accounting and tax fraud … it’s become bloody hard to find any decent business in this country that an ordinary person might personally own and invest in. (And I’m not counting that den of thieves otherwise called the NZX).
I’ve put some time and effort over the last five years looking at various businesses, but they’re been either boring and wouldn’t hold my interest, or they’ve place too high a value on their capital assets.
One example was a food growing and processing business that looked good, but on a turnover of about $150k they were asking 1.5m. Sure there was a substantial asset …. but nowhere near enough cashflow to sustain it. Two years later it’s still on the market.
Lots of dying businesses like old motels, or businesses that are only really worth the knowledge and networking of the existing owner. Or businesses that are slowly but surely being out-competed by cheap Asians. And plenty of others where you are really just buying a job with low pay and long hours.
Provincial New Zealand is being slowly strangled and Auckland/ChCh are madhouses. No wonder Australia beckons for so many.
Many business are at best allow the owner to earn a living wage and take advantage of some tax concessions with all the real gains in any property that the business operates from increasing in value and able to be released (untaxed) if kept separate in some other form ae.g. a trust when the business is sold. So property is we’re the gains in wealth reside, no wonder our fixation with property and govts lack of will power to address the issue.
RL
That comment sounds like a real gem of truth that can only come from an objective and experienced investor.
It seems to me that we are living mainly on the remains of past endeavours and the playing field has been tilted so far that the sort of new business that we need just can’t get a hold.
bad12
I followed up yesterday on your comment that handling links is something you want to do. I haven’t seen a mention that you have seen it. If you are interested then see it around
9.1….
prism ⊠at Open Mike
16 March 2013 at 2:23 pm
No Tiresias, I’m not going to abuse you because you’ve got bucks to invest. Some of my best friends…….hahaha.
No seriously – what I find OK about you, as far as I can recall your contributions, is that unlike many, many immature, insecure, nothing people with a few bob, you’re not up yourself and you’re not a pissy little wannabee John Key cargo-cultist with two shitty rental properties angling at rackrenting a third. The types that remind me of that ridiculous carpet advertisment no longer on TV – some weathered middle aged plus dame with the “darling darling” accent – “Oh yes…….we bought carpet brand X for both our investment properties”.
You seem not to be the modern representation of the insecure fuck who borrows a pair of boots to walk 20 miles to vote Tory, and then dines out on his voting choice forever and bloody ever. Kia Ora.
Mind you with negative interest rates in the US and most of Europe, and the idiot example of asset confistication in Cyprus, keeping cash in your mattress is making a lot of sense.
Lolz, so go and be an investor then and add to the madness, if you have spare cash coming in the best place for it is buried in the ground especially where your able to at least increase the cache by the rate of inflation,
If your into a spot of anarchy then and know how the banks play the game with your money there’s a couple of ways that i wont elucidate that you can be a little mischievous,
In the ground tho is best for those with a historical perspective on what happens at some time after the slave masters have totally stuffed the money system and debt bonds tk on a physical life as debt bombs…
Lolz, said like a true capitalist, if and when the whole system goes tits up, (which it would have at the point of the GFC if Obama hadn’t got the presses smokin), some liquid cash will be the necessity as changing gold into cash in a hurry will not be possible,
Yes it is possible that Government might at some stage in the future issue a different scrip but i would dare suggest that should they do so gold will be of little worth as any action that requires a change of scrip will probably have them coming after the gold at the same time…
“Money should never have been safe in banks. Theyâre private enterprise taking risks and risks have a habit of falling due.”
That’s only true since the rules against mixing ‘trading banks’ with High Street Banks were relaxed.
When exactly the same things as are happening now, with banks going under and taking ordinary people’s savings with them in the “Great Depression” (now World Depression 1?), the eventual intelligent response was first to separate the gambling side of banking from the boring High Street banking and subject the latter to stringent regulation to protect savers and depositors, and secondly to ‘guarantee’ deposits to prevent a panicked withdrawal of funds at the first whiff of trouble – a bank run.
Proving that they are incapable of learning from history, politicians in the US and Europe beginning with Ronald Reagan began relaxing the separation of banking until it ceased to exist and the High Street banks where you kept your money began to be able to gamble with it again in the 1990s. Now, this week-end, the second rung of that essential underpinning of the entire capitalist system has been pulled away.
The whole concept of ‘money’ and the running of the modern world depends upon trust – trust that the paper you earn with your labour can be exchanged for goods and services – which itself depends upon trust that that paper can be placed, deposited and collected through a bank. Undermine that trust, which the morons of the EU have now done, and the foundation of modern society, the idea that paper or binary digits on a bank’s computer is worth something fixed that can be relied upon, starts crumbling.
Money invested in a bank is a risk like any other investment as you are giving it to the bank to play with, but money deposited with a bank should be as safe as houses because you are placing it there for safe-keeping.
Exactly Tiresias. As Steven Keen put it the correct role for banks was to “act as trusted bookkeepers” for the credit transactions that enabled normal day to day commerce.
The problem arose when we allowed them to exploit this privileged position to print money and gamble with it.
Would you entrust the Government of the Day to have the power to print money – especially three months out from an election or at any time when their ‘policies’ turn to custard?
Banks are allowed to ‘print’ money by lending xtimes what they are holding on deposit, and that worked fine while the ‘x times’ (Basil III) was set at an intelligent level and was rigorously policed and enforced. Unfortunately the regulators have been asleep at the wheel – at best – for years and allowing banks to creatively account their way around the rule.
For myself I would prefer to return to Glass-Steagall and proper regulation rather than launch off experimentally into a whole new monetary theory, and I’ve a hope that the brown-pants lessons the current crop of politicians and regulators are learning – particularly if Cyprus triggers another banking crisis – might scare them back into line for another generation or so.
Would you entrust the Government of the Day to have the power to print money â especially three months out from an election or at any time when their âpoliciesâ turn to custard?
If everybody could see what they’re doing – yes.
Banks are allowed to âprintâ money by lending xtimes what they are holding on deposit, and that worked fine while the âx timesâ (Basil III) was set at an intelligent level and was rigorously policed and enforced.
No it didn’t. Even with those regulations in place the banks had produced too much money. It was that pressure of excess money that led the banksters to lobby for the lifting of regulations as well as the regulatory capture that they ended up with. In other words, even with those regulations in place the system would have collapsed simply because there wasn’t enough investment vehicles making any sort of return for the amount of money around (there’s a link lying around somewhere with a World Bank economist saying something about it).
For myself I would prefer to return to Glass-Steagall and proper regulationâŠ
Definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If nothing changes then nothing changes.
Which is why I also suggested a government deposit where the money is safe.
The problem with guaranteeing private bank deposits is that it encourages banks to take greater and greater risks knowing that the government will bail them out. We need to take that guarantee away but at the same time give them somewhere safe to put their money.
If you’re interested in “whether it could happen here”, have a read about the Reserve Bank’s “Open Bank Resolution”. Coupled with the lack of any Government guarantee for deposited funds then yes, it very much could happen here..
Watch your thoughts
-they become words
Watch your words
-they become actions
Watch your actions
-they become habits
Watch your habits
-they become character
Watch your character
It becomes your destiny
đ “it’s evolution baby” (He is still my only master though, otherwise might get into trouble; meant to say to “redbaiter” “some of my closest friends and neighbours operate both collectively AND brandish the insignia of ubermensch, know what I mean đ no need to hide behind the skirts of the law or white pick it fences)
Even modern surveys, such as the one by Sir Alistair Hardy’s Religious Research Unit in Oxford (see The Spiritual Nature of Man, A Study of Contemporary Religious Experience, Oxford 1979) show that an “incredible” 36% of people have had some kind of religious or mystical experience.
‘For moments together my heart stood still between delight and sorrow to find how rich was the gallery of my life, and how thronged the wretched Steppenwolf with high eternal stars and constellations….My life had become weariness. It had wandered in a maze of unhappiness….It was bitter with the salt of all human beings; yet it had laid up riches, riches to be (fond) of. It had been, for all it’s wretchedness, a princely life. Let the little way to death be as it might- the kernel of this life of mine was noble. It came of high descent (son of Robert) and turned, not on trifles, but on the stars.”
unlike “…the old mill of the mind
Consuming it’s rag and bone…”
“The Buddha’s teaching was wholly concerned with untying the knots in (people’s) minds so that they can be open to reality and free from the greed and ignorance which binds them like chains. I discovered , through (mindfulness), that seeing things in their suchness- the word the Buddha uses for the essential nature of all things- seeing them as I did once without any barrier of “me” to get in the way, was one of the great aims of Buddhism. This was a big relief to me because I didn’t want pious talk or a guilty feeling that I should attend some sort of church. I wanted, and found, a straightforward acceptance that man’s deepest need is not to live by bread alone but to transcend all his thoughts and feelings and to know the meaning of timeless reality, and of God.”
Damn. Something locked up at the server side. It did it *after* the the backup was done, so it is likely that it was something to do with the transaction log processing.
Ok – flag this for a late night session and some more research on the ‘quick’ vs buffered feature of the mysqldump.
“His supporters ADORED him—we don’t see that in Anglo-Saxon societies
Paul Buchanan on Hugo ChĂĄvez
Radio New Zealand National, Sunday 17 March 2013
Generally interesting and fair, as one would expect from a commentator as respected and decent as Paul Buchanan. However, there is still some muddle-headed stuff here, especially when Laidlaw allows Buchanan to make the ridiculous, stereotyped statement that “Anglo-Saxons” don’t get carried away with adoration of their leaders like South Americans do. That will come as a surprise to anyone who watched the wedding of Kate to Prince William, and to anyone who listened just over an hour later to Laidlaw interviewing Sir Don MacKinnon, who raved like a young lover about how he ardently admires the Queen: “We don’t see enough of her laugh! She has a GREAT chuckle!”
Then, near the end of the interview, he lets Buchanan get away, unchallenged, with the assertion that ChĂĄvez “did not systematically torture or kill”, which implies that he did some torturing and killing. Of course, the democratically elected ChĂĄvez government did not kill or torture anyone, not even the vilest of the extreme right wing saboteurs who never stopped attempting to ruin him.
Anyway, here are the highlights that I managed to jot down….
CHRIS LAIDLAW: We move now to Venezuela. Hugo ChĂĄvez, that ebullient, populist politician died just over a week ago. This rumbustious country has hit some real head winds when it comes to stability. We’re joined by Paul Buchanan, an academic and former CIA operative who spent many years living in South America, and knows the Venezuela situation very closely. Paul, ChĂĄvez called his regime BolĂvarian. What did he mean by that?
Paul Buchanan proceeds to give a quick outline of BolĂvar and the ways that ChĂĄvez resembled him.
LAIDLAW: But Simon BolĂvar wasn’t the bombastic [snicker] character ChĂĄvez [snicker] was, was he?
PAUL BUCHANAN: Hugo ChĂĄvez was a nationalist populist, similar in many ways to Juan PerĂłn. He was very personality driven. And the trouble with this is the same as with every populist regime: it is inherently unstable. This movement will fragment and splinter over the next few years.
LAIDLAW: Really? And then you’ve got trouble?
<bBUCHANAN: Indeed.
LAIDLAW: I’ve been reading around ChĂĄvez [snicker] and it seems to me that his appeal was very Cuban-like, he was like a televangelist.
BUCHANAN: His supporters adored him, in fact they are deifying him as we speak. And that’s something you don’t see in Anglo-Saxon societies.
LAIDLAW: He claimed rather flamboyantly that he’d been poisoned. [snicker] What do you make of that?
BUCHANAN: Well this is the unfortunate thing. He called Bush “the Devil” at the U.N. There was a coup against him 2002 and the United States was the only government that recognized the coup. If you’re going to run a coup, you must make sure the guy doesn’t surviveâŠ
LAIDLAW: Yeah. [snicker]
BUCHANAN: You don’t let him return.
LAIDLAW: Ha ha ha!
BUCHANAN: He did not systematically torture or kill. He did bring about the abridgments of basic freedoms, but it was all legal.
LAIDLAW: He started to stack the judiciary, civil service and the armed forces.
BUCHANAN: He did a lot of good things, but he was resisted, from the beginning, by the middle classes and the United States.
Maybe Anglo-Saxon societies don’t adore the democratically elected, but only those who attain their exalted positions by accident of birth? Or maybe only cringing Tories who need a structured class system to give their lives meaning do the adoration bit? Or maybe, just maybe, the CIA agent doesn’t know what he’s talking about?
The quake was centred on Motutapu Island, next to the volcanic island of Rangitoto. There are unconfirmed reports that smoke was rising from Motutapu.”
Auckland Herald
I wouldn’t be concerned. There are lots of sandstone cliffs on Motutapu. The “smoke” may have been a dust plume from a landslide.
Yes, Jenny I figured that. Whoever wrote it would have been well aware it was dust but anything for sensation. Unless of course they’re as thick as I suspect many of these reporters/journalists are…
Here in south east manukau the house shock, but from the time given of the 2 moderate shakes, it must have been the 2nd one that was noticeable. Yet one member of the family made comment before the 2nd of “what was that”, and then a wee precursor truck/train rumble that comes before the rattle.
Anne, my son sent me the same photo after the fairly recent earthquakes in Melbourne – I think it was last year and we all had a chuckle at the irony. I felt the two jolts in Swanson – the second was rather stronger and gave our house a good rattle. The forces of nature are not to be snuffed at, but I can appreciate the Cantabrians giving us Jafas the metaphorical fingers.
Ron Keam, who knows a few things about Kiwi volcanoes, once told me that Rangitoto had been of a different type to all the other Auckland volcanoes. He said it was too early to say whether this was a good or a bad thing.
Interesting thing is on RNZ – just before the 5pm news bulletin – I heard the tail end of a panel discussion chaired by Kim Hill. It was a recording (I think) and ‘Sir’ Bob Harvey was issuing a warning about the Auckland waterfront and pointing out (I paraphrase)… from the bridge through to Mechanics Bay is land reclaimed by the bare hands of many thousands of men and their donkeys and horses. He intimated it was therefore vulnerable to natural disasters. Two minutes later, RNZ was reporting the earthquake.
My sister-in-law … and perhaps the very best person in the whole extended family. It sometimes seems so very cruel that the best are taken first. A devastated husband, two teenage sons and many, many friends left to grieve.
Update: More details.. Which needless to say doesn’t make matters any better at all.
[lprent: Fixed the first link, correctly I hope. My sincere condolences – that kind of accident is just devastating because it is completely unexpected. ]
Sorry for your loss. Seems even sadder now there’s a name and a face behind the headline.
I gave up riding a bike back and forth to work, a couple of years back. Mainly because of the broken glass all over the place (clean and green, my arse) and forever having to repair punctures or buy tyres and tubes, but bad, unsafe and disrespectful kiwi driving was a big part of my decision.
We lost the one I felt was the “very best person in the whole extended family” in tragic circumstances, last year. I’m still very sad, and still can’t get my head around it.
I hope the funeral, tough as it will be, brings everyone in to grieve together.
It isn’t hard to find stories about the deaths and injuries on truckers and inflicted by truckers these days. Most have ratshit working conditions.
We really really need to fix the oversight of the health and safety aspects on NZ industry these days, separate it from the economic development side (what idiot put it in there) and give it some funding to inspect and investigate. The current system just isn’t working. I believe that is top of the recommendations from the Pike River commission.
My condolences, RL.
When I was riding a bicycle to university in Auckland in the 90s, too many drivers had the attitude of that creep in Wellington. Put them in a protective metal cage and they basically become predators looking for a victim more fragile than themselves. I also rode motorbikes for years, sometimes in large groups, and couldn’t help contrasting the different attitudes from car drivers.
With the cult of self that has become more prevalent in every aspect of Kiwi life since, I can only imagine that the situation would have worsened. Thirty years of neoliberal governance does not encourage civilised behaviour.
That’s awful news RL. Condolences. I am glad that the boys will be old enough to remember their mother.
On a related note I have a good friend who does rural contracting work road side. He regularly cops abuse from sports cyclists unhappy at road closures and who are more than happy to sail past the guys working and operating machinery ignoring all and every warning (verbal and sign posted) given to them.
Surprisingly enough, I have no problem blaming neoliberalism for the lack of manners and concern for others shown by these sports cyclists as well. You get the same sort of thing walking along the riverside in Brisbane. Wearing lycra seems to have a similar effect to being behind the wheel of a Remuera tractor.
You’re so right. It does sometimes seem the best are taken first
I lost an old friend going back to my childhood not so long ago. She was one of the very best in every sense of the word. Not surprisingly her funeral was a big one. Take care…
when I first encountered the net of (un) evolved public opinion facilitated by open media and blog commentary I was astounded, and saddened by the extremities of polarization that were occurring in our “society”. and that rant against cyclists? Case rested!
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Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
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Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
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I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
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TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is Americaâs un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is Americaâs Octavian, the Republicâs youthful undertaker â and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMPâS SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the âilliberalâ prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent talking about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s release of its first Emissions Reduction Plan;University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor and special guest Dr Karin von ...
Open access notablesImproving global temperature datasets to better account for non-uniform warming, Calvert, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society:To better account for spatial non-uniform trends in warming, a new GITD [global instrumental temperature dataset] was created that used maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to combine the land surface ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi MÄori rallied against the Crownâs attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hÄ«koi of a generation and the birth of Te PÄti MÄori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Governmentâs move to dilute child poverty targets is a reminder that it is actively choosing to preserve hardship for thousands of households. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israelâs illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinianâs have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinianâs who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israelâs occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Governmentâs disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whÄnau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they canât escape on ...
Te PÄti MÄori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. âThis announcement is just another example of the governmentâs anti-Tiriti, anti-MÄori agenda.â Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. âSeymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
Nationalâs Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now itâs been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didnât declare and said wasnât pre-arranged. ...
Te PÄti MÄori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. âReinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of MÄori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. âThis legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whÄnau out onto the street for no reasonâ said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. âTheir solution to the housing ...
âNationalâs campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,â Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
âThere are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,â Jan Tinetti said. ...
âThis government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this governmentâs agenda and the future of our mokopuna,â said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
âTodayâs climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,â Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how theyâre taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. âThe Abuse in Care Inquiryâs report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faithâbased institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Governmentâs online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. âIt is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
TÄnÄ tÄtou katoa, NgÄ mihi te rangi, ngÄ mihi te whenua, ngÄ mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealandâs payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. âThe Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre â Te PokapĆ« WÄina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. âThe research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. âRegions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesiaâs Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. âIndonesia is important to New Zealandâs security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,â says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kĆrero, he kĆrero, he kĆrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of NgÄti Maniapoto, Minister for MÄori Development Tama Potaka says. âMy thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust â NgÄti Maniapoto for bringing their important kĆrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.âI have received Ms Fredricâs resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,â Mr Brown says.âOn behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliamentâs test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. âSection 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are âdangerous changesâ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. âIssues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. âThe level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations Iâve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatƫ rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawkeâs Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. Itâs the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care âWhanaketia â through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,â was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry âWhanaketia â through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. âTax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. âIt includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. âCompetitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. âUnder current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and WhangÄrei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. âFor too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. âIt is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,â Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. âI am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. âASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,â Mr Peters says. âThis will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. âThis $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,â Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. âThis support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealandâs commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. âCabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. âThe previous governmentâs botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. âNew Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. âAttending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,â Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the regionâs fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministersâ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Governmentâs plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. âOn the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.âIncreasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. âNew Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,â Mr Peters says. âWe are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, itâs a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealandâs foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kÄkÄ shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro â winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 â died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Wattsâ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Governmentâs emissions reduction plan. Now Iâve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayersâ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. âThey didnât explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still havenât. Thereâs no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character sheâd like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. âIf the phone rings, I have to answer it,â Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of PĆneke writer Flora Feltham.In âThe Raw Materialâ, the longest essay in Flora Felthamâs dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. âPounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the bandâs perfect weekend and new release. âGood speakers, good food, good music, no distractionsâ: thatâs all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Prettiesâ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this yearâs showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing â a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our Whatâs Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babuâs humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field â especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the âteal waveâ into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the worldâs most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman â specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Googleâs parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the cityâs eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, itâs predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Ă kerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether youâd have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out whatâs next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because itâs not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te RĆ«nanga Nui o NgÄ Kura Kaupapa MÄori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa MÄori ...
If you havenât started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. Thereâs the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my motherâs furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The governmentâs announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old MÄori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,â Mr Tipa says. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Booksâ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkinsâ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any MÄori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among MÄori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this weekâs mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its âget tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing â the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the bodyâs immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Mike Lewinski/Flickr, CC BY On any clear night, if you gaze skywards long enough, chances are youâll see a meteor streaking through the sky. Some nights, however, are better than others. At ...
Despite having no bars or other designated spaces for lesbians, Auckland boasts a small but mighty lesbian museum. So how did it get here? The past 18 months has brought increasing hostility towards the queer community across Aotearoa. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshullâs anti-trans rally in Tamaki Makaurau last March led to a ...
Poneke Antifascist Coalition has invited Wellingtonians to stand in solidarity with the Kanak people at 12pm today outside the French Embassy in Wellington. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Strategic Studies, Griffith University Drones are the signature technology of the Ukraine war. A few miniature aircraft designs were used in the warâs early days, but an incredible array of drones have now evolved. There are different types, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Slee, Associate Professor, Clinical Academic Neurologist, Flinders University Francisco Gonzelez/Unsplash Migraine is many things, but one thing itâs not is âjust a headacheâ. âMigraineâ comes from the Greek word âhemicraniaâ, referring to the common experience of migraine being predominantly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee White, Senior Lecturer and Horizon Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Australia was slow to introduce minimum building standards for energy efficiency. The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) only came into force in 2003. Older homes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Sherwood, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney The past century of human-induced warming has increased rainfall variability over 75% of the Earthâs land area â particularly over Australia, Europe and eastern North America, new research shows. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Heynen, Program Coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland A temporary stadium in the Champ-de-Mars, ParisEkaterina Pokrovsky/Shutterstock As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the sustainability of the event is coming under scrutiny. The organisers have promoted ...
A night of karaoke and community in a pub that feels like a memory. Youâd barely even notice it, unless you knew to look. Tucked away behind a liquor store on busy Constable Street is the capitalâs last great pub. Newtown Sports Bar is an emblem of the pub culture ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Wright, Professor in Marine Geology, University of Canterbury Louise Corcoran/Getty Images The decline in the number of doctoral candidates at New Zealand universities is a worrying sign for the countryâs effort to build a knowledge-based economy. Aotearoa New Zealandâs ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurie Berg, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney defotoberg/Shutterstock Migrant worker exploitation is entrenched in workplaces across Australia. Tragically, a deep fear of immigration consequences means most unlawful employer conduct goes unreported. On Wednesday, however, the government officially launched a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Tasmania Paris is about to host its third summer Olympics. While we donât yet know what the legacy of this yearâs games will be, letâs take the opportunity to reflect on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University In the wake of the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, there were calls from bothsides of US politics, as well as internationally, to reduce the brutal, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Rathbone, Senior Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University Two high-profile assaults on Australians in Paris have raised concerns about security ahead of the Olympic Games. On Saturday evening, a young woman was allegedly sexually assaulted by a ...
Dying is inevitable and, so it seems, is it costing a lot, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in todayâs extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.The cost of dying ...
The government took Joyce Harris's first baby and sent her off to a girls' home. Half a century on - and out of oceans of hurt - it asked her to be a mother figure. ...
Itâs the deadliest fictional town in the country, but which death has been the most bonkers? Alex Casey looks back at 10 seasons of The Brokenwood Mysteries to find out. Warning: The following ranking story contains famous New Zealand actors appearing to be dead (not alive). The Spinoff has been ...
Water cremation is the biggest thing to happen to the death industry in the last 100 years. Alex Casey meets the people trying to bring it to Aotearoa. Through a set of mirrored doors down the industrial end of Christchurchâs St Asaph Street, death is getting a new lease on ...
NONFICTION 1 The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin, $37.99) 2 The Life of Dai by Dai Henwood and Jaquie Brown (HarperCollins, $39.99) 3 A Life Less Punishing by Matt Heath (Allen & Unwin, $37.99) 4 Waitohu by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $35) ...
It may seem a strange thing for a city dweller to worry about.
But,
Still no rain.
Well not here in Papakura at least.
Black heavy clouds that normally would guarantee a rainfall just hang over the suburb.
Our lawn has not grown for months. While the grass dies, strange new weeds, (probably with deeper roots) are raise their heads. I witnessed a man mowing his dust yesterday, Clouds of it billowing up around him as he pushes his lawnmower around his section. Could this be a metaphor for business as usual?
Is this how it ends? Trudging around in diminishing circles mindlessly repeating rituals that have lost all meaning, and could be doing us harm?
Our world, as we know it, is dying. Who can deny it?
Scientists and politicians here and overseas talk of the “New Normal”. The National Government warn farmers that there will no more bailout for droughts after this one.
Meanwhile in the next borough, Fonterra continue with their plan to cook to climate, with a new coal mine. Are they mowing a dead lawn? Are they just ignorant, or are their actions more sinister and cynical than that?
Is it that they don’t give a damn?
At the flea market I bumped into a well known local ACT supporter who accused me of “frightening people”. I replied, “people should be frightened. Go to Australia, people are frightened, some are terrified.” With the crazy illogic of the Right. He loudly accused me of “making things worse”.
“How could I make things worse”, I retorted.
Its light drizzle in central AKL, but what happened to the *predicted cyclone*.
Heavy black clouds, but no rain – Who would to try explain why when AKL is covered in clouds that look like they only belong on the tropics right before a 2-3 hour deluge, are these things hanging around AKL without dispensing SFA??
Re your encounter with the act supoorter, yes thats the response of a scared weak human being, with no ability to review their own belief system!
Re Fonterra – If the permits are given, then its also those who allow the mine to go ahead that are sinister, along with whomever applied the pressure to get it through!
Maybe time for the anticipated exodus from the dying cities to begin while people still can – just don’t all come here lol – pouring down here in the bay but we are always greener than most from grass to voting. We do tend to get lots of lines across the sky but it has always been a convergence point here for the whales, people and I suppose the demented. Good luck up there.
Hey Marty,
Yes, cities are killers, no questions about that, they kill the mind and soul, and not only steal energy, they can turn positive energy negative with ease.
It will be time to depart soon, that is for sure, I expect many people who are now tied to a mortage and invested in this dying/decaying city, might be wishing they were not so tied to it, but hey, people make their choices.
We will need alot of luck up here, appreciate the sentiment bro!
Time to keep building houses and roads as if people will still want to live in an Auckland with 2M people. 40% of NZers on 0.3% the land area.
I see population projections which show that Auckland is going to hit 2M in 2035. 12 years from now.
That’s 500,000 more people than today, or a full third more than 2013. That’s fucked and its not going to work.
Problem is a bit like whale strandings – when the sand is felt on their belly it is too late for them to get off and they have to wait for the next high tide and when the city is gnawing the belly it will be too late to move too and notwithstanding rising sea levels the next high tide may be quite a wait.
No need for everyone to leave the cities. Cities have lots of valuable resources and infrastructure that we will need in the future. We can transform much of the city. Suburbs can be retrofitted into sustainable communities and villages.
Learn first how to harvest water đ Not just collecting water in cisterns/tanks, but how to make use of the water that hits the ground, channelling it to where you grow food. Re-use grey water for gardening. Plant trees! and create local microclimates. The shadier it is the better you can do with low rainfall. Many people in the world have lived successfully for long periods of time in places alot drier that Auckland đ
A 2000 year old food forest in the Moroccan desert with plants that would probably do ok in the Auckland region, but adapting forest design for the sub tropics.
http://www.permaculture.co.uk/videos/2000-year-old-food-forest
City food forests. Google ‘urban farming’ too, there is a renaissance in the US of this (all cities used to have farms, even in NZ).
http://beaconfoodforest.weebly.com/
Chch plans for the Avon –
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/christchurch-mail/8217472/Land-could-feed-city
Now you are talking.
There is a lot of overcast cloud over Te Whanganui a Tara as I write, but no sign of moisture as yet. Rain is forecast for this afternoon. The grass outside looks like something from an Australian drought – but this one is Aotearoan.
Dr. Salinger was right to call it “historic”, in fact he and other climate scientists have been right all along, but don’t expect any thanks from a government relying on the fading charm of former trading floor manager.
Yes thick black clouds over Papakura too. A slight breeze. Rain must be nearly here. There is a mist on the top of the Hunuas. Maybe it is raining up there.
It has started.
It’s like music. It is so exciting. Oh my God! My towels, I should have got them in before.
Where are the umbrellas? We had a big stripey one. The dog is just sitting out in the rain.
The dog is still just standing there. I think it has forgotten what rain looks like.
Relax. Geoff Palmer will turn up and remind us we live in an irreducibly pluvial country any time now….
A light drizzle has fallen over Wellington. Where are those water containers .. ?
Yep. Good to see some continuing light rain in Auckland this morning, though this hasn’t been the area most in need.
I guess the welcome sight makes up for it putting an end to my plans today for using my day off work – yesterday it was the sniffles, today the rain… and there goes my little bit of annual leave.
Had about 20 minutes of light rain in central AKL – More than the drizzle, but hardly rain.
Its stopped for the time being, perhaps blown over..
Will we get more, or is that it!
Hope everyone has been out clearing there gutters, as with the lack of rain all those leaves, moss etc building up and blocking the down pipes. Result for internal gutters water getting in, traditional guttering systems overflows.
Bit early in the year for gutter cleaning. Need to wait until the last leaves have fallen.
Still light rain/drizzle here in New Lynn. Hasn’t stopped.
OM “it’s Yesterday once more” muzza
Jenny, post 1 is a great comment, thanks.
Excellent ‘post’ Jenny; yes, weeds with deeper roots emerge and re-establish; observed a few folk mowing their dust and slivers to within a mil of nothing too.
Identicon time
+1
Well, if you don’t like them being at the mercy of the SysOp then wander over to Gravatar and supply your own đ
Can’t quite make out what yours is DTB.
Try my Facebook page where it can be seen at full size.
Yeah. Look at all of these ones I haven’t tried yet – click the image to see the image fullsize.
A new race of Transformers!
We’ve had heavy drizzle all thru the night – this is over the eastern hills and towards the east coast of the mid-north. But the rain fall is patchy – doesn’t happen everywhere. We had a similar rainy patch in February – lasted three days. Keeping our place green but probably not enough for local farmers. Elsewhere in the north this hasn’t happened – its very brown in Far North.
The bloody face of coal. With almost identical circumstances to Pike River, Coal Keeps Killing
As well as being dangerous to mine, and unhealthy for the people in nearby communities, coal is the number 1 cause of anthropomorphic CO2 emissions
The coal industry is brutal, it is sick, it is dirty, And It is Dying. This monstrous industry belongs in the 19th century, yet it stumbles and lurches, unwelcome into the 21st. No doubt, eventually, like all slavering grotesque monsters it will die a horrible and well deserved death. The danger is, if this death is latter, rather than sooner, that it threatens to take us all with it.
In other news on coal:
In the Australian capital of coal, New Castle, residents march against coal.
http://indymedia.org.au/2013/03/16/coal-dust-and-climate-change-newcastle-residents-march-against-proposed-t4-coal-loader
In other news China puts a legislative cap on coal:
And the short sighted managers of solid energy wonder why the price of coal has dropped through the floor. They must know that they are working in a dying industry. (In more ways than one). (They have been informed of this inevitable crisis by environmentalists and scientists for more than a decade now.
The Chinese government’s restrictions on coal, are driven by environmental concerns:
We are reliving the last dying days of the asbestos mining industry. Why prolong the pain? When will our policy makers stop trying to make money out of this dying industry, regardless to the cost, to the environment, to lives, to the climate?
Are they idiots?
Or, as the residents of New Castle claim, just “F**king Greedy”, with no respect for human life.
The same coal particles that the Associate Professor of mid wives Nick Higginbottom identifies as being a hazard to the health of the people of New Castle. Are soon to be released here, into the air upwind of this country’s biggest reservoir, the Mangatangi Dam. Fonterra is planning to dig a brand new open cast mine at Mangatangi due east of the reservoir that supplies the bulk of Auckland’s drinking water.
Auckland Coal Action has called on Aucklanders to put a stop to this new coal mine. This is in line with the official Green Party policy of No New Coal Mines in Aotearoa.
Fonterra Cooks the Climate
Fonterra is the third biggest single consumer of coal after Huntly Power Station and Glenbrook Steel Mill. (Dairy industry as a whole, may consume more than Glenbrook making Dairying number 2. Unfortunately figures for the total consumption of coal by the total Dairy Industry are hard to come by).
Trend setter, Fonterra plans to dig a brand new open cast coal mine, just south of Auckland.
Though having owned the land for nearly 20 years, Fonterra were unable to mine it for it’s known coal reserves. I surmise that Fonterra were unable, or unwilling to meet the strict Auckland Regional compliance regulations.
But it seems, there is more than one way to skin a cat. (or a climate).
In the creation of the Super City the Southern Auckland boundary which contained Mangatangi, (including the Mangatangi reservoir, the biggest in the country, providing the bulk of Auckland’s drinking water), was moved North.
Who knew?
Mangatangi, including the Mangatangi Reservoir, the Upper Mangatawhiri Reservoir and the proposed mine, are all now, in the newly created borough of North East Waikato, part of the Waikato Region where consents are easier to obtain, and compliance regulations far looser than under Auckland Regional governance.
The prevailing winds are from the West, the Mangatangi Reservoir, in particular, is almost directly down wind of the open cast mine. Coal dust is notorious for being contaminated with heavy metal residues.
Are the local residents of Mangatangi/Mangatawhiri concerned?
Yes, they are.
Should you be too?
Yes you should.
Anti-climate change pressure group Auckland Coal Action has teamed up with local residents of Mangatangi and Mangatawhiri to oppose Fonterra’s plans for the new open cast coal mine at Mangatangi.
They are calling for as many people as possible to make submissions to the Waikato Regional Council.
You can help.
Details on how to make a submission are here:
http://aucklandcoalaction.org/2013/02/28/submissions-on-proposed-new-coal-mine-at-mangatangimangatawhiri/
Numbers Count.
If you make a submission, ask for the right to speak to it.
Remember; NUMBERS COUNT!
Protect Auckland’s drinking water from coal dust contamination!
Become a climate change hero!
Be able to look your grandchildren in the eye!
Fill in a submission form!
Address the council!
This is your chance!
Have your say!
Excellent Efforts Jenny
Good stuff Jenny, very informative.
Thanks.
We think we have problems with nz governments and their wasteful spending and profligacy in their chosen directions (while not having money for essential services and citizen support).
I just heard on radionz someone saying that people in usa are monitoring the development of the F35 plane which is supposed to cost 1 Trillion $ over 35 years, and is not going well.
RT have been following the story
http://rt.com/usa/pentagon-f35-report-combat-012/
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d51_1365201326
Going pretty well to me. Tons of vids of it.
It’s wet on the ground in Nelson. Light but steady so far. When did it last rain here can’t think?
Watching Bill English on Q&A. When he says that “in 2009 the government was facing a decade of deficits because of the Labour Party”…what does he mean? I understand that Labour/Cullen run surpluses throughout its term in government???
The National Party also have this on their website.
When you lie, you have to be very intelligent if you’re not going to be caught out.
Do you think Bill English, or any of his National Party colleagues, has the intelligence to avoid being caught out?
Well done, saarbo, you’ve rumbled the Double Dipper of Dipton beautifully….
It was a ridiculous statement put out by the treasury, showing that if current spending levels were left unchanged, the government would face deficits for the next decade. National jumped on it and trumpeted it as if Labour were reckless, irresponsible and had driven the country into the ground.
Of course Labour would have changed spending priorities if they had won the 2008 election (Labour were promising a mini-budget to respond to the then-unfolding financial crisis), just as National changed spending priorities themselves – and we’re still going to be in deficit in 2014/2015, almost a decade after the 2008 election anyway.
Thanks M and L. Oh now I understand, that is ridiculous. So Labours decade of deficits relates to the treasuries projected deficits from 2010 to 2020??? How the fuck does this get labelled as “Labours” decade of deficits.
How this National government maintains its support in the Polls is beyond belief. English’s idea of dealing with climate change is setting up mass irrigation schemes and letting farmers sort the issue out. Then in the Solid Energy issue he openly admits that National encouraged SE to have a 40% Debt to Equity ratio, the Directors state that that is too high and were only prepared to go as high as 35%. For this the Directors get fired for driving debt too high. Whhaaaattt?
Why does this abysmal governments hopelessness not convert to movements in the polls? I wonder if it has something to do with a Shearer lead government, also containing Winston scares people. And although I quite like Hone/Mana’s policies, I wonder if the thought of Shearer leading with Hone and Winston also scares the shit out of the middle class swing voters. Buggered if I know but something is stopping people from moving their votes back to Labour.
There’s every chance there will be another high non-vote in 2014. People who refuse to vote for National, but can’t see any alternative government- in-waiting which works for them.
I reckon the Greens will be a big winner in this scenario and have a good chance of breaking over 13%.
Poor reporting so that people don’t have all the facts, an even poorer understanding of economics (hell, if economists don’t know what an economy is that’s not really surprising) and an unsupported belief that National are better economic managers than Labour despite the fact that National always run the economy into the ground and Labour fixes it (well, they did kinda fix it until the 1980s and then they really screwed it up).
I blame the lack of a coherent, readily characterised position on Labour’s part. It seems that, afraid of being characterised as “yeah, yeah, tax and spend” Labour have opted to try and avoid characterisation altogether. Hence it is very hard to see what a coalition of the left would look like. Think about Labour’s return to the front benches under Helen Clark. There was a clear position from which concessions to smaller parties might be made. Labour’s commitment to this position was underwritten by a pledge card.
The present fear of characterisation leaves the party unable to meaningfully commit itself. The housing policy, for example, concentrates on means, with the assumption that the claimed ends will follow. There is no “we will do whatever it takes to make housing affordable, re-establish manufacturing, etc.” In a similar vein, their challenges to the welfare reforms are generally technical rather than moral. And we have seen the limp possible-policy response to asset sales, which was their flagship policy in 2011. Such equivocation cannot hope to galvanise voters.
Around 2011? 2012? he also said something along the lines of “NZ was left in good shape to handle to GFC”
Yep. English said that the GFC was the rainy day that the government had been saving up for.
It was a load of bollocks. Basically, Treasury looked at the GFC, panicked and, because they’re all ideologues, blamed the Labour governments spending rather than the socio-economic system that caused the crash.
‘
Its bullshit, of course.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/audrey-young/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501219&objectid=10548753&pnum=1
The nervous chuckling of radio broadcasters
Sunday Morning with Chris Laidlaw, National Radio, 17 March 2013
Chris Laidlaw is one of this country’s more serious-minded and intelligent broadcasters. He goes out of his way to be fair and even-handed, and he has attracted many high quality guests on to his show, including dissidents normally shunned by the mainstream media, such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein.
He also has one of the very best feature writers in the country, Wayne Brittenden, who in his “Counterpoint” segment every week provides an unflinching, often startling in-depth backgrounder to current news issues.
Today, just after the 8 o’clock news, during his rundown of the programme, Chris Laidlaw said this: “At 11:40 Wayne Brittenden talks about the American soldier who is on trial for releasing hundreds of thousands of official documents to Wikileaks.” Then he chuckled, and quipped: “Which makes him flavour of the month at the Pentagon!” And he chuckled again.
Such behaviour is not just irritating, it is concerning for two reasons. (1) The American soldier (Bradley Manning) is not on trial for releasing hundreds of thousands of documents, he is on trial for blowing the whistle on atrocities and war crimes committed by U.S. occupation troops in Iraq. No doubt Laidlaw knows that, but he obediently read out the misleading words anyway. (2) The chuckle didn’t just happen. He did not chuckle while reading out anything else, only while reading out about Bradley Manning. This is, I believe, because Laidlaw realized that he was wading into extremely dangerous territory, and the consequences of even MENTIONING, let alone giving a fair hearing to, an official enemy are dire. Chuckling is a distancing mechanism, an almost subconscious way of protecting yourself from the charge of taking all this radical stuff too seriously.
That’s why Jim Mora chuckled incessantly recently whenever he even mentioned the name of official enemy Hugo ChĂĄvez. It’s not that Mora is a raving right winger like many of his guests, it’s just that he realizes it’s risky to go out on a limb and tell the truth unflinchingly.
A few years ago, Brian Edwards shrewdly assessed the behaviour of journalist/PR shill Bill Ralston: “He is an intelligent man who is afraid of being seen to be intelligent.” Replace the word “intelligent” with “principled”, and you have a perfect description of the timid “liberals” on Radio New Zealand National.
You should have listened to the broad cast program on climate change. Laughing and giggles and unfunny jokes all through it.
I’ll be damned.
Now I understand why. It was a distancing tactic. They were too frightened to seriously discuss this issue in case they ruffled the feathers of powerful interest groups who could harm their careers.
I will right now, go and look up the link. And listen again with new ears.
“itâs just that he realizes itâs risky to go out on a limb and tell the truth unflinchingly”
I agree. Man-made earthquakes are not funny things. Another way of looking at it is when they lie blatantly about something, then you know that the issue is an important one. Like common law, for example.
Methinks you may overcook Laidlaw’s chuckle there Morrissey. Doesn’t strike me that Laidlaw is an individual to be cowed either consciously or subliminally.
Thanks anyway for the reminder to listen to the Brittenden interview @ 11.40 am. Didn’t hear the chuckle myself so won’t be adamant about it but are there possibly legs in Laidlaw actually doing a bit of a snidey at the expense of the monstrously fruit-saladed boys and girls at the Pentagon ? It was only an intro after all.
As to Mora on the other hand…….well, he’s more a fulsomely charming dinner guest than anything else. The one whom for whatever self-preening reason brings the finest wine at the table and the only one whose demeanour is ineffably affable from start to finish.
Anyway, raining steadily in the Mid-North for a few hours and just now quite solidly
My ruggedly individualistic, freedom-loving, self-reliant, ACT-voting silverbeet and herbs are positvely humming. For today anyway they can safely eschew the vile-welfarism attendant in Nanny North’s watering.
It is exciting as someone said.
Love it North (possibly the laughing discomfort of dissonance Mozza)
Doesnât strike me that Laidlaw is an individual to be cowed either consciously or subliminally.
You’re correct in that he is not easily cowed. It’s hard to intimidate someone who has survived THIS….
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lrao8j533u1qgfwr0o1_500.jpg
I do, however, think that his slight chuckle didn’t just arise because he thinks the persecution of Bradley Manning is funny.
Don’t get me wrong: I believe Laidlaw is a brave and independently-minded broadcaster, but even he is not immune to pressure. Chuckling like that is the verbal equivalent of wincing; it signals uncertainty and discomfort.
It’s far from the gales of laughter that resound in Jim Mora’s studio whenever something delicate, like government crimes or human rights, comes up for discussion.
Another dispatch from the U$K class war of austerity. The Artist Taxi driver. đ đ
The bedroom tax an obscene ideological Govt attack on the vulnerable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-4NYsPJN_8&list=UUGThM-ZZBba1Zl9rU-XeR-A
Weekend edition of the BBC Sucks o Cocks News
Re bedroom Tax.
“âHitting the poorestâ: UK-wide protests against âBedroom Taxâ”
http://rt.com/news/uk-bedroom-tax-protests-365/
“Watching Bill English on Q&A. When he says that âin 2009 the government was facing a decade of deficits because of the Labour Partyâ⊔
Is there something wrong with your memory?
Do you not recall when Cullen (one of the nastiest MP’s we have ever had) proudly stood in the house and said he “had spent it all, there is nothing left”
Cullen did not care that he led NZ into the recession before any other country in the world, he did not care that he wasted surpluses of the like we had never seen before he just wanted to make sure that the nation suffered because it had the temerity to turn it’s back on the Clark government, the most corrupt government in our nations history.
Hmmmm it seems you don’t know much about NZ Government in the 19th century…
Labour paid back foreign debt by the billion.
National is accruing it by the billion.
The liberal/conservative tables have switched, it seems.
19th century? Shome mishtake, shurely?
Poor Bruv, in his world sensible economic management by a government is an affront to everything he read in the Ayn Rand books and therefore cannot be real.
In the days that the New Zealand Company ran the land đ
Did Cullen actually say that? Do you have a link?
I’d always thought that was Labour in UK with a quote that there’s ‘no money left’ when they lost the election. If it was Cullen I’d be keen to read what that was all about.
Ignoring your poor grasp of history… Just consider this.
Ok – so given your view on the situation in 2009 – how does that explain why Bill English, supposedly faced with a decade of deficits, promptly went out and caused not one but two rounds of additional tax cuts to worsen the revenue situation and to increase the possible deficit. Which then grew faster in almost any terms than we have ever seen before, including during the oil shocks of the 70’s.
Is there something wrong with your memory?
BUT the tax cuts were going to ignite growth!!
Oops
Last day to help Steve Keen’s Minsky simulation project reach US$70,000
On Kickstarter here
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2123355930/minsky-reforming-economics-with-visual-monetary-mo
I believe this quantitative macroeconomic simulator will help change the science and art of the economic profession. And as you know, it needs it.
Thanks Cv, interesting.
Steve Keen also a big supporter of a tough capital gains tax, which would do more to stop another housing bubble developing, it could also lead to another reduction in the cash rate (which we desperately need, particularly now that the drought will cost the country $2b), which could lower the exchange rate.
I put in $500.
Awesome.
did everyone miss helen clarks’ drug-u-turn yesterday..?
..and her coming out as an end-prohibition warrior..?
…the corporate media certainly did..
http://whoar.co.nz/2013/helen-clark-the-head-of-the-united-nations-development-program-has-publicly-slammed-global-strategies-to-combat-drugs/
phillip ure..
Why did you link to your site? All you did was quote a few phrases from another site and then link to that other site.
Here’s the Yahoo news link for those that don’t want to reward the link whore.
Thing about the ‘War on Drugs’ is that it just ain’t about drugs. The ‘War’ is a nice reason to militarise society and quell opposition to stuff like – oh I dunno – neoliberal economic agandas. Peter Watt has done some very good stuff on this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sxwAMAlCZu4 and a comprehensive source for his work http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/peterw
The War on Drugs fits in very nicely with the War on Black and Indigenous Youth, the War on Sustainable Peasant Agriculture, and the War for Serco’s Profits. It has very little to do with drugs, but allowed the US and A to criminalise a whole generation of black and Latino youth for private profit. Until terrorism came along as a convenient excuse, it was the rationale of choice for increasing Police powers and moving us towards an oppressive lawn order society.
Many of these public figures, from ex-presidents to ex-police chiefs, are happy to come out against it once they’re no longer in office. It’s about time they started taking a stand while they can still do something.
End the ridiculous war on drugs – legalise everything. It couldn’t possibly be worse than what we’ve got and the evidence from countries like Portugal suggests it could be much better.
Agreed Olsen. Isn’t it starkly ironic that the last geezer of the poltical class who had anything vaguely sensible to say about it all was the hapless Don Brash ?
And the laddies and lasses of the media (and forgive me for understanding that most’ve been and still may be into it…..the dak anyway)………well……..they roasted the old duffer. While shortly thereafter saying “Yeah, OK” re Botox Banks and his complete loss of memory about a chopper trip to the Dotcom mansion.
Save me !
I wouldn’t go that far. I’d go so far as to legalise the drugs that we know the effects of but not unknowns?
âThe New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
Michelle Alexander argues that the get-tough-on-crime policies that began in the early 1970s were enacted in an effort to push back the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. This effort, she says, has been successful. Prof. Alexander spoke at the University of Tennessee at an event hosted by the university’s Africana Studies Program
Here’s an interesting development.
The banks in Cyprus are broke, as is Cyprus as a state – part of the EU. To get their bankers, and the state, out of the hole caused by profligate spending and bad speculation by its banks – much of it in Greece – Cyprus has frozen all bank deposits and is to impose a ‘one-time tax’ of 6.75% on all bank deposits under EU100,000 and a ‘levy’ of 10% on all deposits of more than EU100,000.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/16/cyprus-savings-levy-imposed-eurozone
So in effect if you were a saver you get 6.75% or 10% taken from your savings without warning over the weekend. If you were a spendthrift, or poor, it doesn’t touch you.
Do do we cheer, or look on in horror? Do we say that the ordinary Cypriot who might have been saving for a house, or a holiday, or a daughter’s wedding, or retirment is just getting what he deserves for being a capitalist? Do we say that spending all you earn on the flashiest life-style possible is the way to go ‘cos they can’t tax that? Do we say that anyone who earns more than they absolutely need and chooses to save it rather than spend it should be forced to underwrite the profligacy and bad investment decisons of others?
The Germans, who are largely responsible for forcing this on the Cypriots as the price of yet another bank bail-out, argue that quite a lot of money deposited in Cypriot banks is ‘dirty money’ from Russia, which makes it all right to also take money from the savings accounts of Cypriot mums and dads, and a great many pensioners from other European countries that retired there. Would you feel happy about money being seized from your bank account without any forewarning, or legal approval, because your bank is also used by crooks?
Is there any longer any reason to believe your money is safe in the bank?
Yep. Steve Keen writes a little more about it here. He predicts that this could be the start of an old fashioned EU bank run.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2123355930/minsky-reforming-economics-with-visual-monetary-mo/posts
Do you reckon such a run will include the UK which isn’t part of the EU currency?
Eventually yes. England suffered bank runs in 2008 too. The banking system is as weak as todays paper in this rain. Don’t trust it.
Madness in the European Union
It is always “raining” somewhere Draco; pull up a pew…
to the final query Tiresias; NO!
Fair ’nuff. I’m seriously considering pulling back on what I keep in the bank for day-to-day expenses and that ‘rainy day’
But that begs the question what do I do with surplus cash? Buy more Mighty River Power shares? Increase my stake in Australia and the US? Replace my 2-year-old SUV with a new one I neither need nor want? Buy a house in Auckland and rent it out?
Dammitm, I can’t even give it to the RC Church for the benefit of my soul, seeing as how Pope Francis I wants the church to be Poor.
Problems, problems.
Help build businesses which employ people and crate new jobs.
Tried that by buying a mussel farm and spending $thousands tripling its size, making work for locals in the work-boats and processing factories, fighting the protestors who think the Sounds should be kept pristine for Aucklanders and Wellingtonians to look at and fish out on their holidays, and sold out when uncontrolled expansion of the industry (just like mine) doubled the growing time between harvests, while the high dollar and greedy middlemen meant I was subsidising sea-food restaurants in Los Angeles and New York or supermarket chains in Europe.
Tried that by sinking $thousands into Windflow Technology Limited. Haven’t yet had a cent back over 13 years but helped create plenty of new jobs that have come and gone, and might have done some real good for New Zealand employment, technical reputation and the environment had any Government of either colour done any more than make encouraging noises and jumped at the ‘green’ photo-ops.
Did that by supporting Moa Beer’s IPO last year – but oh dear, the stick I’ll get from commentators at this site for being a rentier and not earning an honest living toiling in the fields from dawn to dusk.
I agree. Apart from bars, brothels, drug-dealing, various forms of accounting and tax fraud … it’s become bloody hard to find any decent business in this country that an ordinary person might personally own and invest in. (And I’m not counting that den of thieves otherwise called the NZX).
I’ve put some time and effort over the last five years looking at various businesses, but they’re been either boring and wouldn’t hold my interest, or they’ve place too high a value on their capital assets.
One example was a food growing and processing business that looked good, but on a turnover of about $150k they were asking 1.5m. Sure there was a substantial asset …. but nowhere near enough cashflow to sustain it. Two years later it’s still on the market.
Lots of dying businesses like old motels, or businesses that are only really worth the knowledge and networking of the existing owner. Or businesses that are slowly but surely being out-competed by cheap Asians. And plenty of others where you are really just buying a job with low pay and long hours.
Provincial New Zealand is being slowly strangled and Auckland/ChCh are madhouses. No wonder Australia beckons for so many.
Many business are at best allow the owner to earn a living wage and take advantage of some tax concessions with all the real gains in any property that the business operates from increasing in value and able to be released (untaxed) if kept separate in some other form ae.g. a trust when the business is sold. So property is we’re the gains in wealth reside, no wonder our fixation with property and govts lack of will power to address the issue.
RL
That comment sounds like a real gem of truth that can only come from an objective and experienced investor.
It seems to me that we are living mainly on the remains of past endeavours and the playing field has been tilted so far that the sort of new business that we need just can’t get a hold.
bad12
I followed up yesterday on your comment that handling links is something you want to do. I haven’t seen a mention that you have seen it. If you are interested then see it around
9.1….
prism ⊠at Open Mike
16 March 2013 at 2:23 pm
Tourist accommodation sector is flailing here; Ships Cruise in and out ya sea
No Tiresias, I’m not going to abuse you because you’ve got bucks to invest. Some of my best friends…….hahaha.
No seriously – what I find OK about you, as far as I can recall your contributions, is that unlike many, many immature, insecure, nothing people with a few bob, you’re not up yourself and you’re not a pissy little wannabee John Key cargo-cultist with two shitty rental properties angling at rackrenting a third. The types that remind me of that ridiculous carpet advertisment no longer on TV – some weathered middle aged plus dame with the “darling darling” accent – “Oh yes…….we bought carpet brand X for both our investment properties”.
You seem not to be the modern representation of the insecure fuck who borrows a pair of boots to walk 20 miles to vote Tory, and then dines out on his voting choice forever and bloody ever. Kia Ora.
Wrap it in plastic and bury it…
Which achieves what, exactly?
Mind you with negative interest rates in the US and most of Europe, and the idiot example of asset confistication in Cyprus, keeping cash in your mattress is making a lot of sense.
Lolz, so go and be an investor then and add to the madness, if you have spare cash coming in the best place for it is buried in the ground especially where your able to at least increase the cache by the rate of inflation,
If your into a spot of anarchy then and know how the banks play the game with your money there’s a couple of ways that i wont elucidate that you can be a little mischievous,
In the ground tho is best for those with a historical perspective on what happens at some time after the slave masters have totally stuffed the money system and debt bonds tk on a physical life as debt bombs…
Well, better is to convert your paper, which can be made worthless overnight by Government fiat, into gold and then bury that in the garden.
Lolz, said like a true capitalist, if and when the whole system goes tits up, (which it would have at the point of the GFC if Obama hadn’t got the presses smokin), some liquid cash will be the necessity as changing gold into cash in a hurry will not be possible,
Yes it is possible that Government might at some stage in the future issue a different scrip but i would dare suggest that should they do so gold will be of little worth as any action that requires a change of scrip will probably have them coming after the gold at the same time…
Money should never have been safe in banks. They’re private enterprise taking risks and risks have a habit of falling due.
The only place money should be safe is in a government deposit where it merely sits there gaining no interest.
“Money should never have been safe in banks. Theyâre private enterprise taking risks and risks have a habit of falling due.”
That’s only true since the rules against mixing ‘trading banks’ with High Street Banks were relaxed.
When exactly the same things as are happening now, with banks going under and taking ordinary people’s savings with them in the “Great Depression” (now World Depression 1?), the eventual intelligent response was first to separate the gambling side of banking from the boring High Street banking and subject the latter to stringent regulation to protect savers and depositors, and secondly to ‘guarantee’ deposits to prevent a panicked withdrawal of funds at the first whiff of trouble – a bank run.
Proving that they are incapable of learning from history, politicians in the US and Europe beginning with Ronald Reagan began relaxing the separation of banking until it ceased to exist and the High Street banks where you kept your money began to be able to gamble with it again in the 1990s. Now, this week-end, the second rung of that essential underpinning of the entire capitalist system has been pulled away.
The whole concept of ‘money’ and the running of the modern world depends upon trust – trust that the paper you earn with your labour can be exchanged for goods and services – which itself depends upon trust that that paper can be placed, deposited and collected through a bank. Undermine that trust, which the morons of the EU have now done, and the foundation of modern society, the idea that paper or binary digits on a bank’s computer is worth something fixed that can be relied upon, starts crumbling.
Money invested in a bank is a risk like any other investment as you are giving it to the bank to play with, but money deposited with a bank should be as safe as houses because you are placing it there for safe-keeping.
Exactly Tiresias. As Steven Keen put it the correct role for banks was to “act as trusted bookkeepers” for the credit transactions that enabled normal day to day commerce.
The problem arose when we allowed them to exploit this privileged position to print money and gamble with it.
And we need to take away the privilege of printing money from them as well.
Would you entrust the Government of the Day to have the power to print money – especially three months out from an election or at any time when their ‘policies’ turn to custard?
Banks are allowed to ‘print’ money by lending xtimes what they are holding on deposit, and that worked fine while the ‘x times’ (Basil III) was set at an intelligent level and was rigorously policed and enforced. Unfortunately the regulators have been asleep at the wheel – at best – for years and allowing banks to creatively account their way around the rule.
For myself I would prefer to return to Glass-Steagall and proper regulation rather than launch off experimentally into a whole new monetary theory, and I’ve a hope that the brown-pants lessons the current crop of politicians and regulators are learning – particularly if Cyprus triggers another banking crisis – might scare them back into line for another generation or so.
If everybody could see what they’re doing – yes.
No it didn’t. Even with those regulations in place the banks had produced too much money. It was that pressure of excess money that led the banksters to lobby for the lifting of regulations as well as the regulatory capture that they ended up with. In other words, even with those regulations in place the system would have collapsed simply because there wasn’t enough investment vehicles making any sort of return for the amount of money around (there’s a link lying around somewhere with a World Bank economist saying something about it).
Definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
If nothing changes then nothing changes.
Which is why I also suggested a government deposit where the money is safe.
The problem with guaranteeing private bank deposits is that it encourages banks to take greater and greater risks knowing that the government will bail them out. We need to take that guarantee away but at the same time give them somewhere safe to put their money.
If you’re interested in “whether it could happen here”, have a read about the Reserve Bank’s “Open Bank Resolution”. Coupled with the lack of any Government guarantee for deposited funds then yes, it very much could happen here..
Watch your thoughts
-they become words
Watch your words
-they become actions
Watch your actions
-they become habits
Watch your habits
-they become character
Watch your character
It becomes your destiny
-Frank Outlaw đ
RT đ
đ “it’s evolution baby” (He is still my only master though, otherwise might get into trouble; meant to say to “redbaiter” “some of my closest friends and neighbours operate both collectively AND brandish the insignia of ubermensch, know what I mean đ no need to hide behind the skirts of the law or white pick it fences)
Even modern surveys, such as the one by Sir Alistair Hardy’s Religious Research Unit in Oxford (see The Spiritual Nature of Man, A Study of Contemporary Religious Experience, Oxford 1979) show that an “incredible” 36% of people have had some kind of religious or mystical experience.
‘For moments together my heart stood still between delight and sorrow to find how rich was the gallery of my life, and how thronged the wretched Steppenwolf with high eternal stars and constellations….My life had become weariness. It had wandered in a maze of unhappiness….It was bitter with the salt of all human beings; yet it had laid up riches, riches to be (fond) of. It had been, for all it’s wretchedness, a princely life. Let the little way to death be as it might- the kernel of this life of mine was noble. It came of high descent (son of Robert) and turned, not on trifles, but on the stars.”
unlike “…the old mill of the mind
Consuming it’s rag and bone…”
“The Buddha’s teaching was wholly concerned with untying the knots in (people’s) minds so that they can be open to reality and free from the greed and ignorance which binds them like chains. I discovered , through (mindfulness), that seeing things in their suchness- the word the Buddha uses for the essential nature of all things- seeing them as I did once without any barrier of “me” to get in the way, was one of the great aims of Buddhism. This was a big relief to me because I didn’t want pious talk or a guilty feeling that I should attend some sort of church. I wanted, and found, a straightforward acceptance that man’s deepest need is not to live by bread alone but to transcend all his thoughts and feelings and to know the meaning of timeless reality, and of God.”
Let the LeShan know what the “right” hand is doing;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_LeShan
Henri, Henri, “The Love Shack is a little old place where we can get together…”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Bergson
been weeding
“I’m addicted to feeling
Stealing love isn’t stealing
Can’t you see that I understand your mind?
I’m a walking believer
I’m a ghost and a healer
I’m a soldier for hire
Killing all you admire
And you live in the cloud but that will change…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTaVHM6HGuQ
13 : 14 The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death”
Lose you head and gain a world.
Quite right.
The delays right now are due to testing a bug fix for the backups – they failed last night due to a permissions error.
Damn. Something locked up at the server side. It did it *after* the the backup was done, so it is likely that it was something to do with the transaction log processing.
Ok – flag this for a late night session and some more research on the ‘quick’ vs buffered feature of the mysqldump.
Europe (Cyprus) suffers it’s first unexpected “National Bank Holiday”.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-16/europe-does-it-again-cyprus-depositor-haircut-bailout-turns-saver-panic-bank-runs-br
So much for safe as money in the bank.
And coming to a bank near you:
http://www.businessinsider.com/cyprus-bailout-risks-europe-bank-runs-2013-3
“His supporters ADORED him—we don’t see that in Anglo-Saxon societies
Paul Buchanan on Hugo ChĂĄvez
Radio New Zealand National, Sunday 17 March 2013
Generally interesting and fair, as one would expect from a commentator as respected and decent as Paul Buchanan. However, there is still some muddle-headed stuff here, especially when Laidlaw allows Buchanan to make the ridiculous, stereotyped statement that “Anglo-Saxons” don’t get carried away with adoration of their leaders like South Americans do. That will come as a surprise to anyone who watched the wedding of Kate to Prince William, and to anyone who listened just over an hour later to Laidlaw interviewing Sir Don MacKinnon, who raved like a young lover about how he ardently admires the Queen: “We don’t see enough of her laugh! She has a GREAT chuckle!”
Then, near the end of the interview, he lets Buchanan get away, unchallenged, with the assertion that ChĂĄvez “did not systematically torture or kill”, which implies that he did some torturing and killing. Of course, the democratically elected ChĂĄvez government did not kill or torture anyone, not even the vilest of the extreme right wing saboteurs who never stopped attempting to ruin him.
Anyway, here are the highlights that I managed to jot down….
CHRIS LAIDLAW: We move now to Venezuela. Hugo ChĂĄvez, that ebullient, populist politician died just over a week ago. This rumbustious country has hit some real head winds when it comes to stability. We’re joined by Paul Buchanan, an academic and former CIA operative who spent many years living in South America, and knows the Venezuela situation very closely. Paul, ChĂĄvez called his regime BolĂvarian. What did he mean by that?
Paul Buchanan proceeds to give a quick outline of BolĂvar and the ways that ChĂĄvez resembled him.
LAIDLAW: But Simon BolĂvar wasn’t the bombastic [snicker] character ChĂĄvez [snicker] was, was he?
PAUL BUCHANAN: Hugo ChĂĄvez was a nationalist populist, similar in many ways to Juan PerĂłn. He was very personality driven. And the trouble with this is the same as with every populist regime: it is inherently unstable. This movement will fragment and splinter over the next few years.
LAIDLAW: Really? And then you’ve got trouble?
<bBUCHANAN: Indeed.
LAIDLAW: I’ve been reading around ChĂĄvez [snicker] and it seems to me that his appeal was very Cuban-like, he was like a televangelist.
BUCHANAN: His supporters adored him, in fact they are deifying him as we speak. And that’s something you don’t see in Anglo-Saxon societies.
LAIDLAW: He claimed rather flamboyantly that he’d been poisoned. [snicker] What do you make of that?
BUCHANAN: Well this is the unfortunate thing. He called Bush “the Devil” at the U.N. There was a coup against him 2002 and the United States was the only government that recognized the coup. If you’re going to run a coup, you must make sure the guy doesn’t surviveâŠ
LAIDLAW: Yeah. [snicker]
BUCHANAN: You don’t let him return.
LAIDLAW: Ha ha ha!
BUCHANAN: He did not systematically torture or kill. He did bring about the abridgments of basic freedoms, but it was all legal.
LAIDLAW: He started to stack the judiciary, civil service and the armed forces.
BUCHANAN: He did a lot of good things, but he was resisted, from the beginning, by the middle classes and the United States.
Maybe Anglo-Saxon societies don’t adore the democratically elected, but only those who attain their exalted positions by accident of birth? Or maybe only cringing Tories who need a structured class system to give their lives meaning do the adoration bit? Or maybe, just maybe, the CIA agent doesn’t know what he’s talking about?
And now for some awesome pictures of lightning.
Volcano photography is the best.
Auckland just experienced a shake, I would take it to be about 3.4 from check experiences any other guesses on the size
Guess was 3.0 not 3.4 fron Chch experience
http://www.geonet.org.nz/quakes/region/aucklandnorthland/felt
Those guys at geometry are on to it
Close, 3.9 on Geonet, good call.
Two shakes about 5 mins apart. Second one stronger than the first. Nothing compared to CHCH but jeez… they’re scary.
Nothing in Papakura
Seems that it did not affect South Auckland.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/8437017/Quakes-rattle-Auckland
“rare” “localised”
Rare and localised….
Yeah, and why is that then!
Auckland earthquake
Hi Anne.
The link you gave said this:
I wouldn’t be concerned. There are lots of sandstone cliffs on Motutapu. The “smoke” may have been a dust plume from a landslide.
Yes, Jenny I figured that. Whoever wrote it would have been well aware it was dust but anything for sensation. Unless of course they’re as thick as I suspect many of these reporters/journalists are…
I’d agree about the “smoke”.
But something that shallow next to the last magma extrusion is really interesting. I wonder if there is still the magma pool down there.
Hmmm. I didn’t notice it. Interesting though.
You wouldn’t where you are. It looks like it was localised to the “harbour area”
I didn’t feel it either, but I was having a nice doze on a very comfortable bed.
The Herald is reporting that some people at Muriwai and Hunua felt it.
Here in south east manukau the house shock, but from the time given of the 2 moderate shakes, it must have been the 2nd one that was noticeable. Yet one member of the family made comment before the 2nd of “what was that”, and then a wee precursor truck/train rumble that comes before the rattle.
Odd. I’d expect that the basalt intrusion would have blocked the shock at Muriwai. I guess I should dig out a geological map of Auckland
We will rebuild
Love it.
Anne, my son sent me the same photo after the fairly recent earthquakes in Melbourne – I think it was last year and we all had a chuckle at the irony. I felt the two jolts in Swanson – the second was rather stronger and gave our house a good rattle. The forces of nature are not to be snuffed at, but I can appreciate the Cantabrians giving us Jafas the metaphorical fingers.
I felt it and I believe I’m further out west than Karol is.
Ron Keam, who knows a few things about Kiwi volcanoes, once told me that Rangitoto had been of a different type to all the other Auckland volcanoes. He said it was too early to say whether this was a good or a bad thing.
Interesting thing is on RNZ – just before the 5pm news bulletin – I heard the tail end of a panel discussion chaired by Kim Hill. It was a recording (I think) and ‘Sir’ Bob Harvey was issuing a warning about the Auckland waterfront and pointing out (I paraphrase)… from the bridge through to Mechanics Bay is land reclaimed by the bare hands of many thousands of men and their donkeys and horses. He intimated it was therefore vulnerable to natural disasters. Two minutes later, RNZ was reporting the earthquake.
Cyclist struck and killed by truck.
My sister-in-law … and perhaps the very best person in the whole extended family. It sometimes seems so very cruel that the best are taken first. A devastated husband, two teenage sons and many, many friends left to grieve.
It’s going to be a hard funeral.
And what to say about this man? Fine upstanding employer and all.
Update: More details.. Which needless to say doesn’t make matters any better at all.
[lprent: Fixed the first link, correctly I hope. My sincere condolences – that kind of accident is just devastating because it is completely unexpected. ]
Sorry for your loss. Seems even sadder now there’s a name and a face behind the headline.
I gave up riding a bike back and forth to work, a couple of years back. Mainly because of the broken glass all over the place (clean and green, my arse) and forever having to repair punctures or buy tyres and tubes, but bad, unsafe and disrespectful kiwi driving was a big part of my decision.
I’m very sad for your loss – all the best to you and your loved ones at this terrible time.
Very sorry for your loss Red Logix.
We lost the one I felt was the “very best person in the whole extended family” in tragic circumstances, last year. I’m still very sad, and still can’t get my head around it.
I hope the funeral, tough as it will be, brings everyone in to grieve together.
Red, very sorry to hear about your familys loss.
The article about David Ware, for me sums up whats gone wrong with NZ, the attitude is not the exception any more, has not been for many years.
The other link (assuming it was different), does not seem to work.
Kia kaha
While fixing the link on RL’s comment, I noticed that right next to it on the herald site there was a article
Pedestrian hit by truck
It isn’t hard to find stories about the deaths and injuries on truckers and inflicted by truckers these days. Most have ratshit working conditions.
We really really need to fix the oversight of the health and safety aspects on NZ industry these days, separate it from the economic development side (what idiot put it in there) and give it some funding to inspect and investigate. The current system just isn’t working. I believe that is top of the recommendations from the Pike River commission.
Sorry to read about your loss, RL. Also my condolences to the rest of her family. Too sad.
My condolences, RL.
When I was riding a bicycle to university in Auckland in the 90s, too many drivers had the attitude of that creep in Wellington. Put them in a protective metal cage and they basically become predators looking for a victim more fragile than themselves. I also rode motorbikes for years, sometimes in large groups, and couldn’t help contrasting the different attitudes from car drivers.
With the cult of self that has become more prevalent in every aspect of Kiwi life since, I can only imagine that the situation would have worsened. Thirty years of neoliberal governance does not encourage civilised behaviour.
Very sad for your loss.
Sympathies go out to you RL,
Take care
Condolences to you and your family, RL.
I bike to work and I have observed some careless driving on the road. Sometimes I wonder when I’ll be next.
Very sad to hear of your loss Redlogix.
Condolences.
Sounds like that upstanding businessman who killed a 15 y/o for putting graffiti on his fence.
So very very sorry to hear of such a tragic loss. The pain and grief is so very distressing. Thoughts are with you and your family RL.
That’s awful news RL. Condolences. I am glad that the boys will be old enough to remember their mother.
On a related note I have a good friend who does rural contracting work road side. He regularly cops abuse from sports cyclists unhappy at road closures and who are more than happy to sail past the guys working and operating machinery ignoring all and every warning (verbal and sign posted) given to them.
Surprisingly enough, I have no problem blaming neoliberalism for the lack of manners and concern for others shown by these sports cyclists as well. You get the same sort of thing walking along the riverside in Brisbane. Wearing lycra seems to have a similar effect to being behind the wheel of a Remuera tractor.
Damn.
Just awful RL, condolences to you and your family. Be generous in your care for each other as you manage your lives through this tragedy.
My deepest condolences Redlogix.
You’re so right. It does sometimes seem the best are taken first
I lost an old friend going back to my childhood not so long ago. She was one of the very best in every sense of the word. Not surprisingly her funeral was a big one. Take care…
So sorry to hear of your loss RL.
So sorry for your loss RL and family.
http://folksong.org.nz/ho-kihoki/ho-ki_hoki.mp3
Sad news RL.
My sincere condolences for your loss RedLogix; my heart goes out to you and yours at this sad time.
I invoke a short prayer Red.
when I first encountered the net of (un) evolved public opinion facilitated by open media and blog commentary I was astounded, and saddened by the extremities of polarization that were occurring in our “society”. and that rant against cyclists? Case rested!