Interesting comment re the riots in England from a scotish and welsh perspective: why are the riots being reported as UK or British when they relate only to a few cities in ENGLAND
Maybe this sort of sentiment is assumed:
“With gratitude for the past and confidence in the future we range ourselves without fear beside Britain. Where she goes, we go; where she stands, we stand.”
Meh, my Scottish and Irish mates are laughing their asses off at the English falling apart
🙁 That’s why I have a problem with Scottish and Irish people – especially the Irish. Schadenfreude is their thing! (My Scottish-descended mother made my English father’s life hell – I used to pray that he would divorce her, when I was a child. Not to mention her constantly rubbing in that she came from a higher social class than he did)
Vicky, I am a Scot; whenever a Scot wins a medal at the Olympics, they are a Brit, when they are English, they are, simply, English.
If Andy Murray ever wins Wimbledon, he’ll be British, but as he continues to flop, he’ll continue to be Scottish.
Whenever England football fans riot, they are British, when they behave they mysteriously become British.
It should also be noted that generally speaking the first ‘cannon fodder’ in both world wars were from where?
Had to laugh my arse off the other day when I read the Labour Party in Scotland (having been trounced in recent Scottish elections for being out of touch and arrogant….jeez, that’s a familiar refrain for Labour Parties that, innit?) was having a go at the SNP for daring to point out that the riots were English. Not Scottish. Not British. Just English. And further, that Scottish society was very different to English society.
As a commentator in one of the Scottish papers pointed out (paraphrasing) the underclass in Scotland …or any class, bar the public school class of whatever year class… would baulk at being seen to be taking directions from English sources.
Hi Pete just a brief summary from the Wiki article on teenage pregnancy.
How about you have a read and then get back on the notion of “responsibility”…
1. Poverty is associated with increased rates of teenage pregnancy
2. Women exposed to abuse, domestic violence, and family strife in childhood are more likely to become pregnant as teenagers, and the risk of becoming pregnant as a teenager increases with the number of adverse childhood experiences
3. Studies have also found that boys raised in homes with a battered mother, or who experienced physical violence directly, were significantly more likely to impregnate a girl
4. Studies have also found that girls whose fathers left the family early in their lives had the highest rates of early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy. Girls whose fathers left them at a later age had a lower rate of early sexual activity, and the lowest rates are found in girls whose fathers were present throughout their childhood
5. Low educational expectations have been pinpointed as a risk factor.
6. Teenage pregnancy is also attributed the occurrence of adolescent pregnancy to a breakdown of communication between parents and child and also to inadequate parental supervision
7. Foster care youth are more likely than their peers to become pregnant as teenagers.
8. Teens exposed to the most sexual content on TV are twice as likely as teens watching less of this material to become pregnant before they reach age 20
9. More than 80% of teen pregnancies are unintended
10. There is little evidence to support the common belief that teenage mothers become pregnant to get benefits, welfare, and council housing. Most knew little about housing or financial aid before they got pregnant and what they thought they knew often turned out to be wrong
11. A UK study found that 70% of women who gave birth in their teens had experienced adolescent domestic violence.
12. Teenage girls who are pregnant or mothers are more likely to commit suicide than girls who aren’t pregnant or mothers
13. One study in 2001 found that women who gave birth during their teens completed secondary-level schooling 10–12% as often as those who didn’t, and pursued post-secondary education 14–29% as often as women who waited until age 30 to have children.
14. Teenage Motherhood may actually make economic sense for young women with less money, some research suggests. For instance, long-term studies by Duke economist V. Joseph Hotz and colleagues, published in 2005, found that by age 35, former teen moms had earned more in income, paid more in taxes, were substantially less likely to live in poverty and collected less in public assistance than similarly poor women who waited until their 20s to have babies
15. What appears crucial to success is that adolescents know where they can go to obtain information and services, can get there easily and are assured of receiving confidential, non-judgmental care, and that these services and contraceptive supplies are free or cost very little. In addressing high rates of unplanned teen pregnancies, scholars agree that the problem must be confronted from both the biological and cultural contexts.
I’m sure there is plenty more ‘real’ research out there, if you were interested in looking, but I guess your prejudices suit you just fine.
Thanks, Puddlegum. A diverse lot aren’t we? (women who have children while teenagers, that is).
I can’t believe I forgot the one that got me started on the whole ‘responsibility’ thing…
A review of California’s 1990 vital statistics found that men older than high school age fathered 77 percent of all births to high school-aged girls (ages 16–18), and 51 percent of births to junior high school-aged girls (15 and younger). Men over age 25 fathered twice as many children of teenage mothers than boys under age 18, and men over age 20 fathered five times as many children of junior high school-aged girls as did junior high school-aged boys. A 1992 Washington state study of 535 adolescent mothers found that 62 percent of the mothers had a history of being raped or sexual molested by men whose ages averaged 27 years
Anyway, I guess this post has gone in the into PeteG’s ‘do not reply’ bucket.
The best way to mitigate teenage pregnancy is to ensure that those at risk are properly engaged in the school system rather than fall through the cracks.
In addition, it might piss off the god botherers (their way only causes misery and hatred) , but having increased access to contraceptives and abortion on demand can help here as well. Bob McCroskie can jump of a bridge for all I care.
For those that do make mistakes, funding teen parent units in every school, and alternative schools for those unsuited to the mainstream system would be good as well.
The school system needs to play a big part here. IMO they are too busy trying to attract international students and focusing on their top students to give a shit about those at the bottom.
It’s not getting any better for the Murdochs as the reporter jailed for admitting hacking members of the Royal family dobs in the former NOW editor Andy Coulson and leaves the Murdochs’ evidence in Parliament looking weak at best and outright lies at worst.
The whole edifice is rotten. The rotten Murdochs will be called to answer to a rotten parliament. Credibility minus for all parties…..more riots to come in reaction to further rotten powers given to a rotten police force.
Today, from the UK, comes another shining example of what happens when you privatise strategic assets such a power companies.
Note the comment further down the article from RWE npower’s Cheif Commercial Officer Kevin Miles
Miles pointed out that npower’s price increases were significantly below the tariff increases of between 10% and 19% on gas and electricity introduced by its rivals .
Of course, all of it’s so called rivals are also privately owned.
And behind the privatised state assets are the rich, the ma and pa investors and the pension fund owners who live amongst us…all holding shares in our servitude. We rub shoulders with our malefactors daily.
Anybody know what the ‘unnamed bill’ is? http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/82682/parliament-in-urgency
Newstalk ZB this morning: Simon Power’s office refuses to say what it is, other that it is not related to new policy. Newstalk understands it as being ‘sensitive’ and correcting legislation passed by former Labour Govt…
Dame Lesley Max on “Eight Months to Mars”
Afternoons with Jim Mora, Monday August 15, 2011
Take yourself back two and a half years. You’re listening to NewstalkZB, around 11.30 p.m., on Sunday, January 4th, 2009. The internationally condemned Israeli assault on Gaza is at its bloodiest point, and the host Oliver Driver has, unusually for a radio talkback host, been making some intelligent comments about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Showing what happens if there’s a host with a few clues, the standard of talkback this evening has been of an exceptionally high standard. But at 11:30, the calibre, temper and tone of the discussion plummet catastrophically.
A particularly harsh and adamant woman, identifying herself as “Lesley”, is on the line. She is having none of this namby-pamby so-called sympathy for the victims.
LESLEY: These people are terrorists and they deserve everything that is happening to them. I’ve just come back from Israel, and I can tell you the Arabs are happy. These people in Gaza are terrorists! OLIVER DRIVER: But the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations say the people killed are almost entirely women and children. LESLEY: Nonsense! I’ve just come back from Israel. OLIVER DRIVER: Human Rights Watch and B’tselem have condemned Israel, and they unequivocally call it a massacre. LESLEY: Absolute nonsense! I have just come back from Israel, and I saw NOTHING that suggested there was ANY trouble at all! OLIVER DRIVER: So let me get this right, Lesley. You’re saying that the Red Cross, and all of the the U.N. observers, and Human Rights Watch, and Doctors Without Borders, and the doctors and nurses from the hospitals in Gaza, and all those reporters—they’re all wrong? LESLEY: [snarling] Yes they are WRONG! All of them! You see, these people are TERRORISTS….
Cue ten minutes more of uninterrupted hateful ranting. Finally, the host decides enough is enough….
OLIVER DRIVER: Okay. Thank you very much for your call, Lesley.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Oliver Driver, clearly shaken and disturbed by that call, gave no indication that he knew the identity of “Lesley”. He would no doubt have been surprised to learn that she was in fact a prominent member of the Auckland social scene, and a recipient of royal honours for her charity work with disadvantaged children.
The caller was none other than Dame Lesley Max, who lives a bizarre double life, balancing out the good work she does—urban tree-planting and running a children’s charity—by obsessively monitoring talkback radio and barking out intolerant rants as in the example above. If you suffer from insomnia some time, tune in to NewstalkZB or Radio Live for a few minutes: chances are pretty good that you’ll hear Dame Lesley shouting her crazed and unconditional support for Israel over the airwaves.
Late-night and early-morning talk radio is not her only outlet, though. In January 2002, during another time of escalated Israeli aggression, this time in the occupied West Bank, Dame Lesley was the guest of Chris Laidlaw on his Sunday morning show. Throughout the interview, she refused to call the victims “Palestinians”, and insisted on calling them “terrorists”—in fact, she managed to use the word “terrorists” no less than TWENTY times. (I counted.) Laidlaw never once pulled her up, or challenged her use of language.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It was with considerable interest, therefore, that I learned Monday’s guest for the “Eight Months to Mars” segment on Jim Mora’s programme was to be Dame Lesley Max. “Eight Months to Mars” is supposed to be whimsical and lighthearted, but I just knew that Dame Lesley would not forsake the opportunity to slip in a little pro-Israel propaganda if she could possibly get away with it. And in the affable and indulgent Jim Mora, she had the perfect vehicle….
JIM MORA: And who, Dame Lesley Max, would you like to accompany you on this voyage to Mars? DAME LESLEY MAX: Oh! There are so MANY! Let me see. I would have Lady Diana Cooper, Bill Clinton (LOVE that Southern accent!), Theodore Dalrymple— MORA: Oh yes! Isn’t he amazing! DAME LESLEY: He’s just lovely! I spent a simply entrancing afternoon with him once. [1] MORA: He’s just a brilliant man! DAME LESLEY: I would also have to have along with me Dr Zoe During, Charles Dickens, Kathryn Ryan! MORA: Oh yes. Ha ha ha ha ha! DAME LESLEY: Boris Johnson, Stephen Fry, and Richard Burton—as long as he doesn’t bring along his cigarettes! MORA: Ha ha ha ha ha! But what a voice he had! DAME LESLEY: What I like about these people is the breadth of their minds, and the wit of their conversation. Did you see Boris Johnson on Who Do You Think You Are?, Jim? MORA: No.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MORA: Let’s talk about you, now. What makes you such a humanitarian worker? DAME LESLEY: My mother was very empathetic. MORA: You had a happy, idyllic North Shore childhood? DAME LESLEY: I was a voracious reader. So I knew early on that all the world was not like my home in Milford, I was fully aware that children get killed. I guess that desire for protecting the vulnerable is just embedded in me, in my DNA. I dunno. MORA: Interesting you’d take Dalrymple to Mars because he laments the providential role of the state. DAME LESLEY: Mmmmmm. MORA: So you are trying to AWAKEN the human spirit. DAME LESLEY: Mmmmm. Definitely. MORA: And what keepsakes would you take with you? See, these are the little things that fascinate me.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MORA: If an alien asked you to describe the planet Earth, what would you say? DAME LESLEY: Oh, I would say that it was full of plenty, beauty, happiness, starvation, misery, oppression. [2] All of those things. MORA: What would you miss about Earth? DAME LESLEY: Gardens, trees [3], grass, water [4], hills. MORA: What would you be glad to leave behind? DAME LESLEY: News of babies being kicked to death. Distortion and malice arising from journalistic malpractice. I’m thinking here of those poor, defamed Israeli victims of the earthquake. MORA: You’re finding anti-Semitism everywhere, more and more? DAME LESLEY: [carefully] No, I wouldn’t like to call it anti-Semitism. But there was an unholy glee in the media. It was like a cat bringing a dead mouse into the house and batting it about to see if it can get a bit more out of it. MORA: Ha ha ha ha ha! That’s a GREAT analogy! All right, let’s go to your last musical choice. DAME LESLEY: This is Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti singing a duet from Rigoletto. MORA: All the best with your work, Dame Lesley. It’s SO important.
Tell Jim Mora (politely but clearly) what you think of his providing an uninterrupted forum to people like Dame Lesley Max. His email address is…. afternoons@radionz.co.nz
I’ve made a point to email Jim to ask him for more people like Lesley to appear on his show in future.
I have no problem with him talking to anybody, even a canting hypocrite like Dame Lesley Max. What I object to is his failure to challenge or to even demur at some of the outrageous and offensive things people like her say.
In this case, it was Mora himself who made the ridiculous and cranky charge that investigating Israelis is anti-Semitism. Dame Lesley was smart enough to resile from the statement, and make herself seem sensible and restrained.
She must have been very pleased that Mora had done the crude defamatory work for her, and let her, on this occasion, seem to rise above it.
It won’t be a problem Lower standard Joyce will privatize it to so we will hear only what they want us to hear no independent point of view .Fox news i suspect oh no my emails are being hacked as we speak
I sent a short but polite email off to afternoons@radionz.co.nz after Monday’s panel. The complete fabrication of data they discussed regarding the Iowa Straw Poll is a telling portent of our coming Election. Perhaps, just perhaps if the community presents them with requests for the most basic journalistic integrity, then they will at least reduce the fabrication, even if it does not lead to any more balance in the content.
I include the email below
I would sincerely accept criticism or comment as a basis towards understanding viewpoints of National Radio broadcasting standards at this time, especially leading up to is expected to be the most socially radical and economically pivotal election in decades.
” To whom it may concern
I have been increasingly worried by many of the views recently
expressed on the panel. It is a rare day i hear anything attempting to portray a factual, an
honest or even a balanced view of the current political and financial
situation in New Zealand or abroad.
Today though i was simply disgusted by the tragically innacurate
statements made earlier regarding the Iowa Straw Poll. That later
paled with the arrogant and ignorant comments broadcast by a panelist
in regards to food costs. I respectfully ask that you please remind
your panelists 3/4 of New Zealand do not live in Auckland. Not
everyone has access to a farmer’s market.
The elitist attitude being fomented by your panel is progressively
costing you listeners. I have been a listener of the show for many years and I personally
know a dozen people or more who no longer listen and i find myself not
listening more often. More basic research, honest journalism and less
parroting of press releases might go a long way to reversing the
trend.
As a State-owned broadcaster, there are responsiblities aligned
with your privilidged positions, the most demanding must be to
accurately broadcast information.
I posit you are failing your responsibilties
In the meantime, mik e, you should tell Jim Mora (politely but clearly) what you think of his providing a propaganda forum for the likes of Dame Lesley Max. His email address is…. afternoons@radionz.co.nz
Yeah he’s lets his guests waffle on about any thing they like but he also has Bernard Hickey Cris Trotter Bomber Bradbury .But he is a right whinger because soon as they have finished he denigrates them ever so subtlely.
I have stopped listening to Jim Mora these days, he just gets on my nerves more and more!
Well then, you need to tell him that, politely of course. You might like to mention your disgust at the way he encourages people like Dame Lesley Max and Stephen Franks and Dr. Michael Bassett, instead of challenging them…. afternoons@radionz.co.nz
Lesley Max has a chapter all to herself in a book on the New Zealand Jewish community published a few years back. Needless to say, she spends an inordinate amount of space on New Zealanders’ supposed “misconceptions” about “poor old Israel”.
In your RNZ rendition (above), she appears wonderfully ignorant of not only ‘Theodore Dalrymple’s’ strong criticism of Israel (and of Conrad Black’s bias in this regard), but also of Stephen Fry’s membership of the British Independent Jewish Voices – a group, of course, strongly critical of mainstream Jewry’s Israel-Right-Or-Wrong default setting.
…she spends an inordinate amount of space on New Zealanders’ supposed “misconceptions” about “poor old Israel”.
She’s a fanatic, and that’s exactly what we would expect of her.
The really disturbing thing about her appearance on Mora’s show was when Mora asked her, in apparent seriousness: “You’re finding anti-Semitism everywhere, more and more?”
That’s nonsense, of course, and Mora knows it perfectly well. But he still said it. He therefore released Dame Lesley from her fanatic’s duty of saying just that, and allowed her to pose as a moderate: “No, I wouldn’t like to call it anti-Semitism…”
Of course she wouldn’t like to call it anti-Semitism—she didn’t have to, because her infinitely obliging and understanding host did it for her.
It’s irresponsible and a betrayal of his listeners.
You, and others who care about decency and standards, should email Jim and tell him what you think of his behaviour…. afternoons@radionz.co.nz
“Finance Minister Bill English said he had not seen the detail of the sale yesterday and it was yet to be seen if the cost to the Government would increase further.
”We have been focused very much on reducing cost to tax-payers through this whole exercise,” he said. ”
quick question Bill, how does one focus on something one has no details of?
I don’t think he’s moved to the right in his own head, but he has grown intellectually flabby. I think he’s like Jim Mora in many ways—in spite of his misgivings, he bends over backwards to be “impartial”. That means he lets right wing callers have their say, and he will usually try to find common ground with them. I noticed on last Sunday night’s show that he was repeating idiotic far right slogans about the London riots, and didn’t seem to have the courage to say what he no doubt really thinks.
A few years ago, crazed callers like “Lesley” (actually Dame Lesley Max) would at least know they were in for an argument with Oliver, but now, sadly, he seems to have been tamed by the NewstalkZB machine.
Thats the only way you can get a job on talk back these days!being a redneck jerk
You mean, I think, “being a bigoted jerk.” Please don’t use the term “redneck” as a substitute for “bigot”. That’s a slur on working people and farmers. The worst, most pitiless bigots in this country are not “rednecks” but pampered, privileged, complacent businessmen (think Alisdair Thompson) and right-wing commentators (Stephen Franks, Garth George, Paul Holmes, Michael Laws, Christine Rankin, Leighton Smith).
The Press has a story on New Zealand’s own Leonardo da Vinci … the artist formerly known as John Key.
You know that guy in your office who has a job title and a suit and a desk, but you find yourself wondering what he does all day? Apparently, “he does a lot of doodles” …
While David Cameron and co. attempt to pin the recent London riots on some slide in morality, they ignore the historical background – as outlined in this highly illuminating article – that this city has been the traditional site for radical protest and rioting by the English poor for centuries:
“The ‘London mob’ has been an object of fear for London’s wealthy almost since the city was founded. The size and nature of London made it repeatedly open to radicalization. Large groups of people lived and worked together and developed ideas against authority in a way which there was much less opportunity to do in rural areas or small towns. As a seat of government, London was the natural centre of protest against monarchy and then parliament.
The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 ended in London when the citizens opened the gates of the capital and allowed tens of thousands of peasants led by John Ball and Wat Tyler to enter (and ransack) the City. They burnt down John of Gaunt’s palace at the Savoy and executed the Lord Chancellor as part of their protest at the poll tax. They broke open the most notorious prisons in the City. Then, as now, some innocents (in this case Flemish cloth traders perceived as commercial rivals) were victims. The peasants forced the King to grant them their freedom until the leaders of the revolt were tricked by Richard II and routed at Smithfield. But the revolt burnt itself into the mind of the aristocracy and the poll tax was effectively abolished….”
Once again, an item about expensive lambs being killed by hypothermia on NZ farms… The thing is, it happens every year! And every year the news media come over all surprised…. I don’t know why lambing always takes place in winter, and why NZ farmers don’t keep livestock in barns, and afaik never have! When my father came here in 1951, he had been told that NZ was “tropical” – he soon learned different! (It’s got colder every year, yet the farmers pretend surprise as every year their lambs die.)
I’ve recently bough the album ‘Infected’ by The The ($7.99 in the bargain bin at The Warehouse) – my emphasis on notable lines!
Considering this was released in the early 1980’s, how poignant are the lyrics of the song Heartland to the UK riots?
Beneath the old iron bridges, across the victorian parks,
& all the frightened people running home before dark,
Past the Saturday morning cinema–
that lies crumbling to the ground,
& the piss stinking shopping centre in the new side of town.
I’ve come to smell the seasons change, & watch the city,
as the sun goes down again.
CHORUS
Here comes another winter, of long shadows & high hopes,
Here comes another winter, waitin for utopia,
waitin for hell to freeze over.
This is the land, where nothing changes, the land of red buses & blue blooded babies, This is the place, where pensioners are raped,
& the hearts are being cut, from the welfare state, Let the poor drink the milk, while the rich eat the honey, Let the bums count their blessings, while they count the money.
So many people, can’t express what’s on their minds,
Nobody knows them & nobody ever will, Until their backs are broken & their dreams are stolen, & they can’t get what they want, then they’re gonna get angry! Well it ain’t written in the papers, but its written on the walls The way this country is divided to fall,
So the cranes are moving on the skyline–
Trying to knock down–this town
But the stains on the heartland, can never be removed,
from this country, that’s sick, sad, and confused.
CHORUS
The ammunition’s being passed, and the lords been praised,
But the wars on the televisions will never be explained,
All the bankers gettin sweaty, beneath their white collars,
As the pound in our pocket, turns into a dollar.
This is the 51st state–of the U. S. A.
(Repeat and fade.)
the U.S. continues its odd and long history of flowing all economic gains
to corporations and the very rich and basically none to the average hour worked.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that we are facing weak demand. For 30 years to the year 2000, consumers compensated for their lack of progress in hourly wages partly by working harder and longer and in greater numbers (i.e., a higher participation
rate) and partly by borrowing. But in the 10 years after 2000, the participation rate in the workforce has dropped dramatically (see Exhibit 2) and hours worked per person has flattened so that the only way for individuals to grow their consumption more recently was by borrowing even more and, to some extent, by speculating in housing.
…
Today the artifi cial sugar-coating of increasing debt has been removed and we must live with the reality that an average hour’s work has not received a material increase for 40 years (see Exhibit 3). Without increased debt and without gains in hourly wages, how can there be sustained broad gains in consumption? Only Chanel suits, Hermes scarves, BMWs, and their ilk have very strong sales, and these top-end items are just too small a fraction to carry the day.
You might have heard that Hosni Mubarak’s trial is no longer going to be broadcast. He’s being tried for corruption and violence against the protesters in Tahrir Square and has pleaded not guilty to all charges. The consequences of justice not being done in this case are significant, but there are bigger implications to what is essentially state control of the media…
Just thought I would mention this; I had morning tea with Tama Iti this morning. What a thoroughly pleasant and respectful bloke.
Listened to a Tuhoe presentation on how they want to improve their community, which was totally clear, whanau focused and thinking long term. I hope many of their people stand for Mana.
A woman who has lived in New Zealand for four years and left her abusive husband has been denied residency because of his convictions for crimes against her.
The plight of Charmain Timmons and her children, who are now illegal immigrants, has outraged Women’s Refuge, which says the Paraparaumu family should not have to suffer twice because of his cruelty.
“It’s wrong in so many ways,” said refuge chief executive Heather Henare. “She is being punished. She is someone who has come over here with the best of intentions to have a better life…and now she’s going to be sent back because she was unfortunate enough to be a victim of domestic violence.”
Timmons, 37, has been granted the rights of a resident by some government departments, as she has had legal aid, a benefit and is enrolled to vote.
and
The couple needed to send in their passports and a $1050 fee but Timmons left her husband before the process was completed. As a result, she and the children were illegal immigrants, and she was told she had to leave the country.
“I decided I had to get out of the relationship because it was becoming violent and abusive and it was psychologically and emotionally very damaging,” she told the Sunday Star-Times.
He left New Zealand for eight months before returning this year on a two-year visitor’s permit.
She said moving back to England would be a huge upheaval for the children, now aged seven and nine, who regarded themselves as New Zealanders.
“They don’t want to be anywhere else. They know of England but their roots are here now. I haven’t done anything wrong. I just want to provide a safe, secure environment for my children.”
Why has it taken so long to act? A genuine question.
And, why did Wilkinson claim in Parliament that the government would be waiting till after the Commission concluded to act on staffing of mines inspectors but knew at the time that a departmental review was looking into staffing and would report back prior to the Commission announcing its findings?
And, why won’t Wilkinson admit that abolishing the mines inspectorate in the late 90s was a bad idea.
Anybody who gives a damn about the environment should have a read of Idiot/Savant’s latest blog @ NRT. National is purposefully fucking the ETS up by overallocating subsidies. Effectively the public is paying polluters to pollute more, and thus discrediting the scheme entirely. Pisses me right off!
France and Germany Propose Joint Financial Transactions Tax
Surprise surprise high frequency bot traders and big banks don’t like it. I hope Merkel and Sarkozy push it through against the financial sector, and that this is not just a distraction or a feint.
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“We wuz robbed!” is the classic cry of the disappointed losers of a closely contested sporting contest – it is very much to the credit of the Black Caps that we heard no such sentiment from them following the stunning ...
The Youth Parliament is being held this week, and some of the youth MPs are campaigning for a lower voting age:Molly Doyle, 17, is one Youth MP who wants this to change. She is part of a non-partisan campaign run ...
Up till now, Australia has made its living by digging up coal and exporting it to other countries, destroying the global climate in the process. But now they have a new option: exporting solar power:The desert outside Tennant Creek, deep ...
Later this month, thousands of people are expected to march to parliament as part of the #HandsOffOurTamaraki movement. At its heart, the movement is about preserving whānau and demanding that the state stop removing children from their whānau, hapū and iwi. ...
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh The recent statements made by the former FARC commander, Carlos Lozada (legal name Julian Gallo), where, from his seat in Congress, he praised the Colombian Army demonstrate how low the farianos have sunk. Lozada began by ...
A Woman’s Place is on the Podium was a public meeting in London on 10 July to discuss women’s sports and the impact of transwomen competing against women. The venue was sold out with a packed hall of 750 people. ...
Last month I talked about the no-fly movement: people who refuse to fly or limit it to absolute necessity to avoid destroying the climate. Now, that movement has a somewhat surprising new member: Dutch airline KLM:Dutch airline KLM has launched ...
In the 1960's, humanity faced a terrible threat: global thermonuclear war. Nuclear weapons were uniquely destructive and dangerous, and if more countries got them, the logic of MAD and the pre-emptive strike would put us on a hair-trigger to destruction. ...
An occasional series where I will ponder allegations of anti-Semitism directed at the British Labour Party and its members.In this case, we are thinking about an allegedly anti-Semitic image shared by a Labour Party member. Its origins appear to be ...
Matariki has been and gone, but this year we saw a couple of op-eds arguing that it should be a public holiday, replacing the foreign monarch's fake birthday. And now, New Zealand Republic - a group which campaigns for an ...
The discussion on the quality of economic advice, which we reported last week, has spilled over into a discussion about whether so many senior appointments should be of non-New Zealanders. Recall I discussed the failure to develop career paths within ...
When Nicky Hager revealed US footage of the Operation Burnham raid, obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act, one of the obvious questions was whether Ministers had seen it - and in particular, whether they'd been told that it ...
Northern Ireland is the Alabama of the UK: a backwards region where women and gay people are denied fundamental rights. But Westminster has just decided to fix that:MPs have voted resoundingly to extend same-sex marriage and access to abortion to ...
There's a problem with "synthetic cannabis", and not just the one you think. It's the name.We're in the midst of a wave of news stories that link synthetic drugs to serious harm, through deadly road accidents and accidental overdoses (which ...
Ranjit Kauri, The Dancing Maharani and Other Stories, Swansea, Head and Heart, 2019, £6.99; reviewed by Don Franks Working people are not the same country to country. Our struggles for a better life take place in surroundings of very different ...
Let's Do Them! All Jacinda Ardern has to do to clinch the 2020 General Election is frighten the bejesus out of the electorate by describing in the most graphic terms imaginable what will happen to all the positive beginnings her ...
It may be that we have all misinterpreted the somewhat surprising “bromance” between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. It has been all too easy to assume that it is Kim who is cosying up to Trump rather than the ...
by Michael Roberts So the full circle is completed. The corrupt pro-business conservative New Democracy party in Greece that was ousted by the anti-capitalist Syriza party in 2015 has been returned to office in yesterday’s general election, with an outright ...
When the Australian government passed a series of new spy laws over the last few years, they pinky-promised that they wouldn't use them to spy on journalists and subvert freedom of the press. They lied:The anti-encryption laws passed by the ...
From 1975 to 1989, the spy agencies of South America's right-wing military dictatorships cooperated in Operation Condor, a joint campaign of extermination against the continent's left. Roughly 400,000 people were imprisoned, 30,000 disappeared, and 60,000 murdered - kidnapped, tortured, executed, ...
When she was standing for office, Jacinda Ardern promised she would take abortion out of the Crimes Act. And to be fair, there was some early action on that, with an immediate referral of the issue to the Law Commission ...
When the government introduced the Zero Carbon Bill, people rightly asked what they planned to do to reduce transport emissions, which basicly had no policy at all other than the ETS. Today, they responded, announcing a "feebate" system which would ...
At almost every level, the problem with medicinal cannabis is a lack of good information. In the US, FDA regulations make it hard to research. Most doctors aren't familiar with what research there is and most patients don't know either. ...
Redline is critical of Corbyn for his political weaknesses, but he’s no anti-Semite. There is no substance to the McCarthyist witch-hunt being run by the right wing, and the pro-Israel lobby inside and outside the Labour Party in the UK. ...
The government's billion trees program is the sort of policy which could make a real difference to our emissions and the fight against climate change. But climate scientist Jim Salinger isn't convinced:The Forestry Minister Shane Jones' one billion trees won't ...
Last month the government was celebrating another surplus. Meanwhile, children are starving:One in five children are living in households where putting food on the table is a struggle, according to a new report from the Ministry of Health. It found ...
Show Me The Money! The alternative to state funding of infrastructure is, of course, to fund it by taking on massive amounts of private debt. On this issue, at least, Auckland mayoral challenger, Tamihere, has some solid points to make. ...
If we are to avoid making the earth uninhabitable, we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to practically nothing over the next decade. But that will still leave us with the problem of the carbon we have already emitted, which ...
Former Waikato DHB CEO Nigel Murray allegedly misused public funds, spending more than $120,000 of public money on unjustified travel. He was forced to resign and the Serious Fraud Office began an investigation. But despite the SFO finding that the ...
Jeremy Corbyn, we are told, is being advised – not least by his deputy (as well as by some of his would-be successors) – that he must come “off the fence” on the Brexit issue if he wants to bolster ...
The End of Life bill has been read a second time and is now heading for the House for further debate. Personally, I support the proposal. I don't ever epect to take advantage of the Bill's provisions myself, but as ...
Before the substantive issue which this column is about – whether there has been a deterioration in the economic advice given to the government – a paragraph about the budget leaks.read more ...
Below is a translation of the editorial in the June 24 round of weekly workplace bulletins issued all over France by the revolutionary workers’ organisation Lutte Ouvriere. Last Saturday, 8,000 people took to the streets of Belfort (eastern France) to ...
Why hasn't Parliament followed the lead set by our local authorities and declared a climate emergency? The answer is the National Party:The Prime Minister’s admission that she is open to the idea of declaring a climate change emergency is nothing ...
Back in May the government released its Zero Carbon Bill. While much of the bill was welcome, there was one big exception: it contained a secrecy clause, requiring the Climate Change Commission to maintain secrecy over practically everything it does. ...
by Phil Duncan This past week has marked the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Stonewall Inn riots in Christopher Street, New York, the event generally regarded as kicking off the gay liberation movement. Quite a few articles have ...
Southland - land of coal-burning dairy farmers - has become the first region in the country to explicitly vote against declaring a climate emergency. Their reason? They didn't want to "devalue" the word "emergency". Its an argument addressed powerfully in ...
New Zealand has a problem with police chases: officers going after fleeing drivers like rabid dogs, without any consideration for proportionality or public safety, often with fatal results. And according to an in-depth article in the Guardian today, the UK ...
Welcome to another heaping helping of research publications related to climate change drivers and mechanisms, the effects of climate change and how we might yet grope our way into systems approaches to dealing with the mess we're making, despite ourselves. ...
Holly Lawford-Smith is a senior lecturer in political philosophy at the University of Melbourne. She’s currently writing a book about radical feminism. This article appeared on Feminist Current Academics should be standing together in defence of universities’ fundamental values: the ...
The Otago Daily Times has an in-depth article about the future of wind energy in New Zealand, and it is looking bright:The news that wind will play the leading role in New Zealand’s energy future was put up in lights ...
If the sight of schoolkids striking for a future has been filling you with hope, good news: they want you to join them on September 27:Students will take to the streets again demanding action on climate change, and this time ...
The People's "Friend": In this masterpiece of revolutionary propaganda, the homicidal political psychopath, Jean-Paul Marat, has been transformed by Jacques-Louis David, the French Revolution's most accomplished artist, into a martyred hero of the ordinary people of Paris. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, ...
The principle of one person, one vote doesn’t apply for local elections. In fact, you don’t even need to be a person to have voting rights. Welcome to the ratepayer roll. While the ratepayer roll accounts for less than 1% ...
I have been working my way through a 47,000 document tranche of declassified US government communications related to Argentina and the “Dirty War” of 1976-83. I grew up in Argentina in the period leading up to the March 24, 1976 ...
To express concern about foreign ownership and control in New Zealand is often to invite accusations of xenophobia and economic illiteracy. It is worthwhile, therefore, to rehearse the grounds for that concern, and to explore the various forms it can ...
It must be a day ending in Y because the Guardian - remember when it used to be a good paper1 - is running another spurious story about Corbyn's leadership being threatened over anti-Semitism.The headline the Guardian runs is: "MPs tell ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Jun 23 through Sat, June 29, 2019 Editor's Pick When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez met Greta Thunberg: 'Hope is contagious'Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and ...
A new digital platform aims to make it easier for small businesses to access services from multiple government agencies, leaving them more time to focus on their own priorities. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister for Small Business Stuart Nash ...
Million-dollar start to gun collection eventsPolice Minister Stuart Nash says a solid start has been made to the gun buyback and amnesty after the first weekend of community collection events. “Gun owners will walk away with more than ...
Police Minister Stuart Nash has praised Police and gun owners after the first firearms collection event saw a busy turnout at Riccarton Racecourse in Christchurch. “Police officers and staff have put a tremendous effort into planning and logistics for the ...
Seventy-eight new Police constables are heading out to the regions following today’s graduation of a new recruit wing from the Royal New Zealand Police College. Police Minister Stuart Nash says the record high number of new Police officers being recruited, ...
Fonterra’s use of coal has been the target of numerous grassroots campaigns in recent years. Last year 350 Aotearoa affiliated groups, Fossil Free Aoraki and 350 Nelson launched a petition dismissing the dairy giant’s initial target of no new ...
Information sessions on proposals for The Medicinal Cannabis Scheme take place in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch over the next fortnight. The sessions are open to anyone with an interest in learning more about the proposed scheme. ...
“Our children are our most vulnerable, most innocent victims and we do not want to see any more children harmed by these ‘known sex offenders’. The safety of our community must be the paramount consideration.” ...
“The announcement that Fonterra will immediately stop installing any new coal boilers or increasing capacity to burn coal is the signal that the biomass fuel supply industry welcomes” said Brian Cox, Executive Officer of the Bioenergy Association. ...
18 July 2019-- Coal Action Network Aotearoa (CANA) today welcomed Fonterra’s commitment to build no new coal plants, a “no brainer” for the climate crisis the world faces. The group has been urging this transition for six years now and ...
The increase in demand for cage-free eggs is set to continue according to animal rights organisation SAFE, who says the egg industry should expect this and prepare. ...
Wellington, New Zealand – 350 Pacific made a formal submission to the New Zealand Government’s Environment Parliamentary Select Committee on the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill, led by the Pacific Climate Warriors (PCWs) based in ...
There used to be a school of thought on the centre right side of politics that the best way to neuter the Greens as a political force would be to let them have a spell in government. Then, according to ...
Today (18 July) is Nelson Mandela International Day when the United Nations highlights the importance of humane conditions of imprisonment. In New Zealand our prisons are overcrowded and understaffed. At 214 prisoners per 100,000 people, we have the fifth ...
NZEI Te Riu Roa will take legal action over the lengthy delay in implementing pay increases for teachers. Novopay announced yesterday that teachers would have to wait until 11 September to see pay increases that they won when they settled ...
EDS has filed its submission on the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill. The Bill sets targets for greenhouse gas reductions, provides for the government to set a series of carbon budgets, and sets up a new, independent, Climate ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union has identified an absurd case of mission creep at Wellington City Council: the decision to spend $21,750 on two Consumer NZ investigations into different brands of bike lights. ...
The Motor Trade Association is welcoming the release of the Government’s new draft road safety strategy. MTA Chief Executive Craig Pomare says the association is pleased to see vehicle safety has been made a priority in the Road to Zero ...
The Department of Conservation continue to repeat the same old story about attacks on staff and how it is affecting their role in protecting our precious wildlife. NZ herald https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12249704 ...
The government's silence on the fact that the country's second-largest milk processor is on the brink of becoming 25% Chinese Government owned has been deafening. ...
School Strike 4 Climate NZ welcomes the coalition Government’s endeavour to take action on reducing agricultural emissions but is disappointed at the weak stance that the Government has taken on the issue. ...
The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) has issued a formal warning under the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 (AML/CFT Act) to seven reporting entities within the Regus Management Limited (RNZML) designated business ...
The Northland Regional Council (NRC) has voted to exclude all GM/GE precautionary provisions in its regional plan, despite years of community engagement showing support for such protection. There is a sense of betrayal following the way the NRC Chairman ...
New Zealand’s ‘mission-driven’ charities working in international aid are showing early signs of changing the way they work, in particular prioritising building the capacity and resilience of local communities to do their own development. ...
Teachers will have to wait until 11 September for pay increases won as part of their collective agreement negotiations settled in June, according to an update sent to schools today from Novopay. ...
July 16 (BusinessDesk) - Energy Minister Megan Woods says the government “won’t die in a ditch” if its goal of 100 percent renewable electricity generation isn't reached by 2035. ...
The Electricity Networks Association (ENA) is welcoming the Government’s response to the Interim Climate Change Committee (ICCC) Report released today. Graeme Peters, chief executive of the ENA, said one of the key recommendations, endorsed by the ...
An article* published this month in the Journal of Health Organization and Management raises questions over the way health board members are elected and whether the boards are even needed. ...
NZEI Te Riu Roa's kindergarten teacher members will vote on a proposed settlement to their collective agreement after four days of negotiations with the Ministry of Education and kindergarten employers. ...
Vector has today welcomed the ICCC’s report on Accelerated Electrification . Vector agrees that accelerating the electrification of transport and process heat will play a major role in reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Initiatives to ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is calling on the Porirua City Council to cancel its underwriting of a proposed Canadian-led privately owned adventure park slated for public land after a similar project created a huge liability for Christchurch ...
Youth climate change campaigners Generation Zero welcome the Interim Climate Change Committee’s (ICCC’s) reports: Accelerated Electrification and Action on agricultural emissions ; which were finally released by the Government today, almost three months ...
Fish & Game New Zealand notes the announcement today that the Government and the intensive agriculture leadership have reached a ‘historic consensus’ and are exploring using a formal sector-government agreement instead of bringing agriculture ...
The independent Interim Climate Change Committee’s report on Accelerated Electrification was released today by the Minister for Energy and Resources, Hon Dr Megan Woods. ...
The independent Interim Climate Change Committee’s report Action on agricultural emissions was released today by the Minister for Climate Change, Hon James Shaw and the Minister of Agriculture, Hon Damien O’Connor. ...
Please find attached embargoed copies of two media statements from the Interim Climate Change Committee http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/1907/Embargoed_Interim_Climate_Change_Committee_Accelerated_electrification_MEDIA_STATEMENT.pdf ...
Greenpeace Executive Director, Dr Russel Norman, has reacted with disbelief that the Government’s latest climate proposal includes an option for dairy to voluntarily deal with their emissions over the next six years. ...
This week’s “Youth Parliament” is an expensive waste of time that promotes taxpayer-funded junketeering, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union . “We shouldn’t be training kids on the joys of the trough,” says Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson ...
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones admitted on Q+A tonight that the state of New Zealand’s infrastructure planning is “dismal” and the government needs to get on with building “rather than writing more reports about it.” ...
DairyNZ has released its submission on the Zero Carbon Bill and is calling on the Government to revise the methane target in the Bill to one that does not put at risk New Zealand’s world-leading dairy sector. Farm profit could ...
July 15 (BusinessDesk) - Foreign Minister Winston Peters will have bi-lateral meetings with two of US president Donald Trump's most hawkish defence and security advisers in a five day trip to Washington D.C. ...
Youth climate change campaigners Generation Zero are calling for Members of Parliament to show political courage as the Zero Carbon Bill goes through the crucial Select Committee process. ...
Annual net migration was provisionally estimated at 50,200 (± 800) in the year ended December 2018 compared with 52,600 in the previous year, Stats NZ said today. ...
New Zealanders have the opportunity to contribute to the government’s Review of Retirement Income Policies, including questions around Superannuation and KiwiSaver. Submissions are now open for the Review, being run by the Commission for Financial ...
Yesterday at Mataatua Marae the Tamaki Makaurau Electorate of the Māori party congratulated Rangi Mclean who was appointed to the Vice president Tāne role of the party nation-wide executive. ...
The funding crisis facing the disability sector has become more urgent following the disturbing news that the Ministry of Health will not increase contract prices for providers this year, the New Zealand Disability Support Network said today. ...
The growing number of working poor is an alarming indicator that the regulatory Minimum Wage does not cut it said Closing the Gap spokesperson Peter Malcolm. ...
Historic hui gives overwhelming agreement for a Māori Inquiry The inquiry into state run Oranga Tamariki will be led by whanau, kaimahi and Māori leaders. ...
Drug infiltration into our maximum security prisons is putting prisoners and staff at unnecessary risk, and one tool that would be of huge benefit is a full body scanner. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe University Australia’s relations with China will be further complicated by the news that Australian citizen Yang Hengjun is set to be charged with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Kyne, Senior Research Fellow in conservation biology, Charles Darwin University More than 28,000 species around the world are threatened, according to the Red List of Threatened Species compiled by the International ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics, Centre For Applied Philosophy & Public Ethics (CAPPE), Charles Sturt University Two Australian universities, University of Technology Sydney and Curtin University, are conducting internal reviews of ...
The dairy and red meat sectors are playing games and employing delaying tactics rather than facing up to the climate change challenge, says Rod Oram. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne The next US presidential election will be held on November 3, 2020. Incumbent president Donald Trump will almost certainly be ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has doubled down on her criticism of Australia's deportation policy as "corrosive", ahead of her meeting with counterpart Scott Morrison. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Larkin, Senior Lecturer in Musicology, University of Sydney Review: Whiteley, Opera Australia, Sydney. Opera Australia’s newest production, Whiteley, brings together three Australian icons. Elena Kats-Chernin, the doyenne of Australian composers, has ...
By RNZ Pacific The United Nations in Papua New Guinea is boosting its presence in the Highlands as it works with the government to improve access to justice for tribal communities. The acting resident coordinator said the massacre of ...
A children’s television presenter, New Zealand’s first supermodel, and bloody Cocksy! Jordan Hamel pays tribute to the Kiwi icons that helped get him through his life.Adolescence was not a great time for me. Depression, anxiety, sexuality, awkward social interactions, emotional ...
The House - The Youth Parliament has beat the real thing to the punch by declaring a climate change emergency this week. Youth Press Gallery member Sophie Dixon reports. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rona Macniven, Research Fellow, University of Sydney Indigenous Australians have a long and proud heritage in both traditional sports and games, and in modern sport through the achievements of people like Johnathan ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alice Gorman, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders University It’s 50 years since the two Apollo 11 astronauts – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin – spent 22 hours collecting samples, ...
The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in reality television and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s.It’s a wacky, wacky week on The Real Pod this week. But is it wackier than the fact that Gilda Kirkpatrick saw a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neal Hughes, Senior Economist, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) Water prices in the southern Murray-Darling Basin have reached their highest levels since the worst of the Millennium ...
It seems inevitable that New Zealand will soon officially be in a state of emergency over climate change, with a declaration likely to be passed in Parliament. Is this a good thing? The debate over moving into official emergency status ...
The newsreader turned talkback host Peter Williams (not Peter Williams) is furious about the mainstream refusal to acknowledge the cheesiness of the moon.I’m sorry but my head still hurts.Yesterday I blew to smithereens the so-called “consensus” on the “science” around ...
Every fish on the iconic New Zealand Commercial Fish Species poster, ranked. There are a few staples of the quintessential fish and chip shop: sticky plastic curtains, soggy paper tickets with a little red number, tin pottles of Wattie’s tomato sauce, ...
Eligible home owners will be able to claim grants for energy-efficient heaters this winter as part of the government's Warmer Kiwi Homes programme. ...
MediaRoom this week: the Media Council backs reporters asking questions, urges caution linking a group to the Christchurch attacks, muses on news vs advertising and wants corrections published faster. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Even though we can see the Moon shining brightly in the night sky – and sometimes in daylight – it’s hard to put into ...
By Pacific Media Centre NewsdeskIndonesian President Joko Widodo’s threat to pursue anyone who impedes investment is worrying environmental activists who claim that such actions could criminalise those fighting for the environment, reports CNN Indonesia.Jokowi made the threat ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Monica Barratt, Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University A NSW Coronial Inquest investigating a series of drug-related deaths at Australian music festivals has heard evidence of ...
The Netball World Cup grand final is tie-proof and won't end in any kind of super over. RNZ's netball reporter Ravinder Hunia who's in Liverpool explains why. ...
Party Line is a new audio work by Evangeline Riddiford Graham that reinvestigates the Cartwright Inquiry, medical mispractice and misogyny through the lens of the #metoo era. In a red room six handsets dangle from the ceiling on their spiral cords. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neil R Jordan, Lecturer, UNSW Humans and dogs go way back. From wolf totems to the big bad wolf of fact and fairy tale, through sheepdogs, lap dogs, and labradoodles, our relationships ...
For Auckland is a new Spinoff podcast of civic conversations with people working to create and sustain a better Auckland for all. In episode three, host Timothy Giles speaks to Grace Stratton about accessibility, in fashion and in Auckland.She’s launched ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s contentForeign affairs and trade Peter Dunne (Newsroom): Beware, nice ...
Human rights activists and refugees are calling on the PM to use her international profile to speak out against China’s persecution of religious groups. ...
Instead of buying a cuppa in exchange for a place to work, Coffee Supreme is flipping the script.For the last 25 years, Coffee Supreme has stuck to what it does best, which is sourcing, roasting, brewing and selling some seriously ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Blaskovich, Senior Research Officer, The University of Queensland Artistic depictions of several chemical elements feature in a new exhibition from today as part of Australia’s celebrations for the International Year of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Hopkins, Senior Lecturer, Australian National University In 2017, a small group of male prisoners participated in an eight-week yoga program at the Alexander Maconochie Centre(AMC), which houses all adult prisoners in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ramon Zenel Shaban, Clinical Chair and Professor of Infection Prevention and Disease Control at the University of Sydney, University of Sydney “Travel safe, travel far, travel wide, and travel often,” saysNomadic ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Bone, Lecturer, Massey University A majority of academic staff at some of Australia’s top universities work in casual or fixed-term positions. This reflects a trend towards casualisation in academia, and other ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Smith, Professor of Archaeology, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape in south-west Victoria is the first Indigenous Australian landscape to be gazetted on ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will touch down in Melbourne this afternoon, four months after her planned visit to the city was called off due to the Christchurch terror attack. ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Union to take legal action against Novopay, building site sediment damaging waterways, and the govt’s road safety strategy explained.Teachers are taking legal action against Novopay, amidst the news their payrise ...
The lawyer representing bankrupt blogger Cameron Slater in a defamation case has been trying since February to withdraw from the case, but a judge keeps declining. Tim Murphy reports. ...
Net migration, skills shortage, and the challenge for employers to hire the people they need are frequent themes in our media, but there is a talent pool trained right here many are overlooking. ...
The young Kiwi sprinters who won relay bronze at the World University Games - setting a new NZ record - can still go much faster on the world stage. ...
Open mike 17/08/2011 
I have been reading and listening to the aftermath of Trump’s comments about the four female first term Democratic representatives, all of whom are “people of color.” I found the US coverage interesting both as evidence of partisanship and the ...10 hours ago
The Herald reports that the housing shortage / bubble has hit a new level:New Zealand is short of 130,000 homes, the tally having risen lately by 30,000, two economists say. Jarrod Kerr and Jeremy Couchman, Kiwibank economists said: "This time ...11 hours ago
The proposed Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill treats biogenic methane emissions differently from all other carbon emissions. The latter are to be measured net so that emissions from fossil fuels can be offset by carbon stored in trees. ...1 day ago
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh This article aims to answer a simple question, whether the conflict is only a rural one or whether it is also urban. The verb ‘to be’ is conjugated in the present tense as ,despite what some ...1 day ago
2 days ago
On Sunday July 7, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter announced their intention to review the Ministry of Health’s Funded Family Care policy and repeal Part 4Aof the 2000 NZ Public Health and Disability Act. These are festering injustices ...3 days ago
Belle is a lovely fifteen year-old border collie who belongs to our friends and neighbours at Bryan’s Beach, Michael and Judy Corboy. Belle, in her old age, can hardly see or hear, but – as a constant participant at social ...3 days ago
A Woman’s Place is on the Podium was a public meeting in London on 10 July to discuss women’s sports and the impact of transwomen competing against women. The venue was sold out with a packed hall of 750 people. ...5 days ago
An occasional series where I will ponder allegations of anti-Semitism directed at the British Labour Party and its members.In this case, we are thinking about an allegedly anti-Semitic image shared by a Labour Party member. Its origins appear to be ...1 week ago
1 week ago
2 weeks ago
Welcome to another heaping helping of research publications related to climate change drivers and mechanisms, the effects of climate change and how we might yet grope our way into systems approaches to dealing with the mess we're making, despite ourselves. ...2 weeks ago
The People's "Friend": In this masterpiece of revolutionary propaganda, the homicidal political psychopath, Jean-Paul Marat, has been transformed by Jacques-Louis David, the French Revolution's most accomplished artist, into a martyred hero of the ordinary people of Paris. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, ...2 weeks ago
The principle of one person, one vote doesn’t apply for local elections. In fact, you don’t even need to be a person to have voting rights. Welcome to the ratepayer roll. While the ratepayer roll accounts for less than 1% ...2 weeks ago
Image Credit: Blog Writing Tips. I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the ... 3 weeks ago
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Jun 23 through Sat, June 29, 2019 Editor's Pick When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez met Greta Thunberg: 'Hope is contagious' Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and ...3 weeks ago
A new digital platform aims to make it easier for small businesses to access services from multiple government agencies, leaving them more time to focus on their own priorities. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister for Small Business Stuart Nash ...3 days ago
Fonterra’s use of coal has been the target of numerous grassroots campaigns in recent years. Last year 350 Aotearoa affiliated groups, Fossil Free Aoraki and 350 Nelson launched a petition dismissing the dairy giant’s initial target of no new ...10 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe University Australia’s relations with China will be further complicated by the news that Australian citizen Yang Hengjun is set to be charged with ...2 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Kyne, Senior Research Fellow in conservation biology, Charles Darwin University More than 28,000 species around the world are threatened, according to the Red List of Threatened Species compiled by the International ...4 hours ago
The dairy and red meat sectors are playing games and employing delaying tactics rather than facing up to the climate change challenge, says Rod Oram. ...6 hours ago
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has doubled down on her criticism of Australia's deportation policy as "corrosive", ahead of her meeting with counterpart Scott Morrison. ...7 hours ago
A controversial selection is on track to be the All Blacks' X-factor star at the Rugby World Cup. ...7 hours ago
By Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk The Indonesian government is furious over the Oxford City Council’s decision to award West Papuan activist Benny Wenda the Honorary Freedom of the City accolade, reports Kumparan. “Indonesia strongly condemns the award by the ...7 hours ago
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Interesting comment re the riots in England from a scotish and welsh perspective: why are the riots being reported as UK or British when they relate only to a few cities in ENGLAND
Maybe this sort of sentiment is assumed:
“With gratitude for the past and confidence in the future we range ourselves without fear beside Britain. Where she goes, we go; where she stands, we stand.”
Meh, my Scottish and Irish mates are laughing their asses off at the English falling apart. They always knew it would happen.
🙁 That’s why I have a problem with Scottish and Irish people – especially the Irish. Schadenfreude is their thing! (My Scottish-descended mother made my English father’s life hell – I used to pray that he would divorce her, when I was a child. Not to mention her constantly rubbing in that she came from a higher social class than he did)
Vicky, I am a Scot; whenever a Scot wins a medal at the Olympics, they are a Brit, when they are English, they are, simply, English.
If Andy Murray ever wins Wimbledon, he’ll be British, but as he continues to flop, he’ll continue to be Scottish.
Whenever England football fans riot, they are British, when they behave they mysteriously become British.
It should also be noted that generally speaking the first ‘cannon fodder’ in both world wars were from where?
Had to laugh my arse off the other day when I read the Labour Party in Scotland (having been trounced in recent Scottish elections for being out of touch and arrogant….jeez, that’s a familiar refrain for Labour Parties that, innit?) was having a go at the SNP for daring to point out that the riots were English. Not Scottish. Not British. Just English. And further, that Scottish society was very different to English society.
As a commentator in one of the Scottish papers pointed out (paraphrasing) the underclass in Scotland …or any class, bar the public school class of whatever year class… would baulk at being seen to be taking directions from English sources.
Were they responsible in the first place?
Many teenage girls getting pregnant and relying on a benefit have not exactly excelled in self control, self management and responsibility.
Yes, state welfare has to fork out so they can live.
No, it shouldn’t automatically be a free pass with no responsibilities or requirements.
Morning Pete, two consecutive comments so far today that make no sense. Are you going to go for the trifecta?
I hope so. Although the TAB payout is so minimal I should still earn myself a hot chocolate with the bet.
Hi Pete just a brief summary from the Wiki article on teenage pregnancy.
How about you have a read and then get back on the notion of “responsibility”…
1. Poverty is associated with increased rates of teenage pregnancy
2. Women exposed to abuse, domestic violence, and family strife in childhood are more likely to become pregnant as teenagers, and the risk of becoming pregnant as a teenager increases with the number of adverse childhood experiences
3. Studies have also found that boys raised in homes with a battered mother, or who experienced physical violence directly, were significantly more likely to impregnate a girl
4. Studies have also found that girls whose fathers left the family early in their lives had the highest rates of early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy. Girls whose fathers left them at a later age had a lower rate of early sexual activity, and the lowest rates are found in girls whose fathers were present throughout their childhood
5. Low educational expectations have been pinpointed as a risk factor.
6. Teenage pregnancy is also attributed the occurrence of adolescent pregnancy to a breakdown of communication between parents and child and also to inadequate parental supervision
7. Foster care youth are more likely than their peers to become pregnant as teenagers.
8. Teens exposed to the most sexual content on TV are twice as likely as teens watching less of this material to become pregnant before they reach age 20
9. More than 80% of teen pregnancies are unintended
10. There is little evidence to support the common belief that teenage mothers become pregnant to get benefits, welfare, and council housing. Most knew little about housing or financial aid before they got pregnant and what they thought they knew often turned out to be wrong
11. A UK study found that 70% of women who gave birth in their teens had experienced adolescent domestic violence.
12. Teenage girls who are pregnant or mothers are more likely to commit suicide than girls who aren’t pregnant or mothers
13. One study in 2001 found that women who gave birth during their teens completed secondary-level schooling 10–12% as often as those who didn’t, and pursued post-secondary education 14–29% as often as women who waited until age 30 to have children.
14. Teenage Motherhood may actually make economic sense for young women with less money, some research suggests. For instance, long-term studies by Duke economist V. Joseph Hotz and colleagues, published in 2005, found that by age 35, former teen moms had earned more in income, paid more in taxes, were substantially less likely to live in poverty and collected less in public assistance than similarly poor women who waited until their 20s to have babies
15. What appears crucial to success is that adolescents know where they can go to obtain information and services, can get there easily and are assured of receiving confidential, non-judgmental care, and that these services and contraceptive supplies are free or cost very little. In addressing high rates of unplanned teen pregnancies, scholars agree that the problem must be confronted from both the biological and cultural contexts.
I’m sure there is plenty more ‘real’ research out there, if you were interested in looking, but I guess your prejudices suit you just fine.
Now that’s the kind of information people need to know.
Good stuff rosy!
Thanks, Puddlegum. A diverse lot aren’t we? (women who have children while teenagers, that is).
I can’t believe I forgot the one that got me started on the whole ‘responsibility’ thing…
Anyway, I guess this post has gone in the into PeteG’s ‘do not reply’ bucket.
Jeez, Squirrel boy, thats rather nasty of you…
The best way to mitigate teenage pregnancy is to ensure that those at risk are properly engaged in the school system rather than fall through the cracks.
In addition, it might piss off the god botherers (their way only causes misery and hatred) , but having increased access to contraceptives and abortion on demand can help here as well. Bob McCroskie can jump of a bridge for all I care.
For those that do make mistakes, funding teen parent units in every school, and alternative schools for those unsuited to the mainstream system would be good as well.
The school system needs to play a big part here. IMO they are too busy trying to attract international students and focusing on their top students to give a shit about those at the bottom.
An unnecessary sneer. You were doing well up until then, but I presume you couldn’t resist dishing out some hatred yourself.
I dunno, I quite like that expression – how about happy clappies or fish badge on the car people?
It’s not getting any better for the Murdochs as the reporter jailed for admitting hacking members of the Royal family dobs in the former NOW editor Andy Coulson and leaves the Murdochs’ evidence in Parliament looking weak at best and outright lies at worst.
The whole edifice is rotten. The rotten Murdochs will be called to answer to a rotten parliament. Credibility minus for all parties…..more riots to come in reaction to further rotten powers given to a rotten police force.
Yep. Big mistake letting someone go to prison for you and not honouring the dishonourable agreement you made with him. Big, big mistake.
How can all this be? Old man Murdoch’s apology in front of the committee was so sincere and moving. He had truly seen the light.
/sarc
Their lawyers have turned on them too having been released from the client privilege thingy.
Today, from the UK, comes another shining example of what happens when you privatise strategic assets such a power companies.
Note the comment further down the article from RWE npower’s Cheif Commercial Officer Kevin Miles
Of course, all of it’s so called rivals are also privately owned.
And in a privately owned power system, there are ticket clippers galore.
And behind the privatised state assets are the rich, the ma and pa investors and the pension fund owners who live amongst us…all holding shares in our servitude. We rub shoulders with our malefactors daily.
Does anyone have any idea as to when the plague of locusts might be due?
As soon as NACT gets re-elected.
Anybody know what the ‘unnamed bill’ is?
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/82682/parliament-in-urgency
Newstalk ZB this morning: Simon Power’s office refuses to say what it is, other that it is not related to new policy. Newstalk understands it as being ‘sensitive’ and correcting legislation passed by former Labour Govt…
Dame Lesley Max on “Eight Months to Mars”
Afternoons with Jim Mora, Monday August 15, 2011
Take yourself back two and a half years. You’re listening to NewstalkZB, around 11.30 p.m., on Sunday, January 4th, 2009. The internationally condemned Israeli assault on Gaza is at its bloodiest point, and the host Oliver Driver has, unusually for a radio talkback host, been making some intelligent comments about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Showing what happens if there’s a host with a few clues, the standard of talkback this evening has been of an exceptionally high standard. But at 11:30, the calibre, temper and tone of the discussion plummet catastrophically.
A particularly harsh and adamant woman, identifying herself as “Lesley”, is on the line. She is having none of this namby-pamby so-called sympathy for the victims.
LESLEY: These people are terrorists and they deserve everything that is happening to them. I’ve just come back from Israel, and I can tell you the Arabs are happy. These people in Gaza are terrorists!
OLIVER DRIVER: But the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations say the people killed are almost entirely women and children.
LESLEY: Nonsense! I’ve just come back from Israel.
OLIVER DRIVER: Human Rights Watch and B’tselem have condemned Israel, and they unequivocally call it a massacre.
LESLEY: Absolute nonsense! I have just come back from Israel, and I saw NOTHING that suggested there was ANY trouble at all!
OLIVER DRIVER: So let me get this right, Lesley. You’re saying that the Red Cross, and all of the the U.N. observers, and Human Rights Watch, and Doctors Without Borders, and the doctors and nurses from the hospitals in Gaza, and all those reporters—they’re all wrong?
LESLEY: [snarling] Yes they are WRONG! All of them! You see, these people are TERRORISTS….
Cue ten minutes more of uninterrupted hateful ranting. Finally, the host decides enough is enough….
OLIVER DRIVER: Okay. Thank you very much for your call, Lesley.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Oliver Driver, clearly shaken and disturbed by that call, gave no indication that he knew the identity of “Lesley”. He would no doubt have been surprised to learn that she was in fact a prominent member of the Auckland social scene, and a recipient of royal honours for her charity work with disadvantaged children.
The caller was none other than Dame Lesley Max, who lives a bizarre double life, balancing out the good work she does—urban tree-planting and running a children’s charity—by obsessively monitoring talkback radio and barking out intolerant rants as in the example above. If you suffer from insomnia some time, tune in to NewstalkZB or Radio Live for a few minutes: chances are pretty good that you’ll hear Dame Lesley shouting her crazed and unconditional support for Israel over the airwaves.
Late-night and early-morning talk radio is not her only outlet, though. In January 2002, during another time of escalated Israeli aggression, this time in the occupied West Bank, Dame Lesley was the guest of Chris Laidlaw on his Sunday morning show. Throughout the interview, she refused to call the victims “Palestinians”, and insisted on calling them “terrorists”—in fact, she managed to use the word “terrorists” no less than TWENTY times. (I counted.) Laidlaw never once pulled her up, or challenged her use of language.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It was with considerable interest, therefore, that I learned Monday’s guest for the “Eight Months to Mars” segment on Jim Mora’s programme was to be Dame Lesley Max. “Eight Months to Mars” is supposed to be whimsical and lighthearted, but I just knew that Dame Lesley would not forsake the opportunity to slip in a little pro-Israel propaganda if she could possibly get away with it. And in the affable and indulgent Jim Mora, she had the perfect vehicle….
JIM MORA: And who, Dame Lesley Max, would you like to accompany you on this voyage to Mars?
DAME LESLEY MAX: Oh! There are so MANY! Let me see. I would have Lady Diana Cooper, Bill Clinton (LOVE that Southern accent!), Theodore Dalrymple—
MORA: Oh yes! Isn’t he amazing!
DAME LESLEY: He’s just lovely! I spent a simply entrancing afternoon with him once. [1]
MORA: He’s just a brilliant man!
DAME LESLEY: I would also have to have along with me Dr Zoe During, Charles Dickens, Kathryn Ryan!
MORA: Oh yes. Ha ha ha ha ha!
DAME LESLEY: Boris Johnson, Stephen Fry, and Richard Burton—as long as he doesn’t bring along his cigarettes!
MORA: Ha ha ha ha ha! But what a voice he had!
DAME LESLEY: What I like about these people is the breadth of their minds, and the wit of their conversation. Did you see Boris Johnson on Who Do You Think You Are?, Jim?
MORA: No.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
MORA: Let’s talk about you, now. What makes you such a humanitarian worker?
DAME LESLEY: My mother was very empathetic.
MORA: You had a happy, idyllic North Shore childhood?
DAME LESLEY: I was a voracious reader. So I knew early on that all the world was not like my home in Milford, I was fully aware that children get killed. I guess that desire for protecting the vulnerable is just embedded in me, in my DNA. I dunno.
MORA: Interesting you’d take Dalrymple to Mars because he laments the providential role of the state.
DAME LESLEY: Mmmmmm.
MORA: So you are trying to AWAKEN the human spirit.
DAME LESLEY: Mmmmm. Definitely.
MORA: And what keepsakes would you take with you? See, these are the little things that fascinate me.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
MORA: If an alien asked you to describe the planet Earth, what would you say?
DAME LESLEY: Oh, I would say that it was full of plenty, beauty, happiness, starvation, misery, oppression. [2] All of those things.
MORA: What would you miss about Earth?
DAME LESLEY: Gardens, trees [3], grass, water [4], hills.
MORA: What would you be glad to leave behind?
DAME LESLEY: News of babies being kicked to death. Distortion and malice arising from journalistic malpractice. I’m thinking here of those poor, defamed Israeli victims of the earthquake.
MORA: You’re finding anti-Semitism everywhere, more and more?
DAME LESLEY: [carefully] No, I wouldn’t like to call it anti-Semitism. But there was an unholy glee in the media. It was like a cat bringing a dead mouse into the house and batting it about to see if it can get a bit more out of it.
MORA: Ha ha ha ha ha! That’s a GREAT analogy! All right, let’s go to your last musical choice.
DAME LESLEY: This is Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti singing a duet from Rigoletto.
MORA: All the best with your work, Dame Lesley. It’s SO important.
[1] Obviously Dame Lesley hasn’t actually READ much of Dalrymple….
http://www.democratsdiary.co.uk/2008/02/enlightenment-or-unreason-william.html
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wd_1PEtAF8
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjLGeZ2q6Ac
[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qbRSPN3RJg
Tell Jim Mora (politely but clearly) what you think of his providing an uninterrupted forum to people like Dame Lesley Max. His email address is….
afternoons@radionz.co.nz
I’ve made a point to email Jim to ask him for more people like Lesley to appear on his show in future.
I’ve made a point to email Jim to ask him for more people like Lesley to appear on his show in future.
I have no problem with him talking to anybody, even a canting hypocrite like Dame Lesley Max. What I object to is his failure to challenge or to even demur at some of the outrageous and offensive things people like her say.
In this case, it was Mora himself who made the ridiculous and cranky charge that investigating Israelis is anti-Semitism. Dame Lesley was smart enough to resile from the statement, and make herself seem sensible and restrained.
She must have been very pleased that Mora had done the crude defamatory work for her, and let her, on this occasion, seem to rise above it.
It won’t be a problem Lower standard Joyce will privatize it to so we will hear only what they want us to hear no independent point of view .Fox news i suspect oh no my emails are being hacked as we speak
I sent a short but polite email off to afternoons@radionz.co.nz after Monday’s panel. The complete fabrication of data they discussed regarding the Iowa Straw Poll is a telling portent of our coming Election. Perhaps, just perhaps if the community presents them with requests for the most basic journalistic integrity, then they will at least reduce the fabrication, even if it does not lead to any more balance in the content.
I include the email below
I would sincerely accept criticism or comment as a basis towards understanding viewpoints of National Radio broadcasting standards at this time, especially leading up to is expected to be the most socially radical and economically pivotal election in decades.
” To whom it may concern
I have been increasingly worried by many of the views recently
expressed on the panel. It is a rare day i hear anything attempting to portray a factual, an
honest or even a balanced view of the current political and financial
situation in New Zealand or abroad.
Today though i was simply disgusted by the tragically innacurate
statements made earlier regarding the Iowa Straw Poll. That later
paled with the arrogant and ignorant comments broadcast by a panelist
in regards to food costs. I respectfully ask that you please remind
your panelists 3/4 of New Zealand do not live in Auckland. Not
everyone has access to a farmer’s market.
The elitist attitude being fomented by your panel is progressively
costing you listeners. I have been a listener of the show for many years and I personally
know a dozen people or more who no longer listen and i find myself not
listening more often. More basic research, honest journalism and less
parroting of press releases might go a long way to reversing the
trend.
As a State-owned broadcaster, there are responsiblities aligned
with your privilidged positions, the most demanding must be to
accurately broadcast information.
I posit you are failing your responsibilties
sincerely
(name witheld)”
Well done, freedom! Tell your friends to protest by email as well.
In the meantime, mik e, you should tell Jim Mora (politely but clearly) what you think of his providing a propaganda forum for the likes of Dame Lesley Max. His email address is….
afternoons@radionz.co.nz
Yeah he’s lets his guests waffle on about any thing they like but he also has Bernard Hickey Cris Trotter Bomber Bradbury .But he is a right whinger because soon as they have finished he denigrates them ever so subtlely.
I have stopped listening to Jim Mora these days, he just gets on my nerves more and more!
Just a question – what earthquake was she referring to?
Christchurch, Feb 2011. The Israelis were the suspected Mossad agents.
Oh thanks, I had misunderstood…
I have stopped listening to Jim Mora these days, he just gets on my nerves more and more!
Well then, you need to tell him that, politely of course. You might like to mention your disgust at the way he encourages people like Dame Lesley Max and Stephen Franks and Dr. Michael Bassett, instead of challenging them….
afternoons@radionz.co.nz
Thanks Morrissey, I will!
Lesley Max has a chapter all to herself in a book on the New Zealand Jewish community published a few years back. Needless to say, she spends an inordinate amount of space on New Zealanders’ supposed “misconceptions” about “poor old Israel”.
In your RNZ rendition (above), she appears wonderfully ignorant of not only ‘Theodore Dalrymple’s’ strong criticism of Israel (and of Conrad Black’s bias in this regard), but also of Stephen Fry’s membership of the British Independent Jewish Voices – a group, of course, strongly critical of mainstream Jewry’s Israel-Right-Or-Wrong default setting.
…she spends an inordinate amount of space on New Zealanders’ supposed “misconceptions” about “poor old Israel”.
She’s a fanatic, and that’s exactly what we would expect of her.
The really disturbing thing about her appearance on Mora’s show was when Mora asked her, in apparent seriousness: “You’re finding anti-Semitism everywhere, more and more?”
That’s nonsense, of course, and Mora knows it perfectly well. But he still said it. He therefore released Dame Lesley from her fanatic’s duty of saying just that, and allowed her to pose as a moderate: “No, I wouldn’t like to call it anti-Semitism…”
Of course she wouldn’t like to call it anti-Semitism—she didn’t have to, because her infinitely obliging and understanding host did it for her.
It’s irresponsible and a betrayal of his listeners.
You, and others who care about decency and standards, should email Jim and tell him what you think of his behaviour….
afternoons@radionz.co.nz
New to me.
https://americathegrimtruth.wordpress.com/
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/business/5455771/Cost-of-SCF-collapse-still-uncertain
“Finance Minister Bill English said he had not seen the detail of the sale yesterday and it was yet to be seen if the cost to the Government would increase further.
”We have been focused very much on reducing cost to tax-payers through this whole exercise,” he said. ”
quick question Bill, how does one focus on something one has no details of?
Shame that Oliver Driver has moved to the right. He was an interesting talk back host a few years ago but now his show is not worth listening to.
I don’t think he’s moved to the right in his own head, but he has grown intellectually flabby. I think he’s like Jim Mora in many ways—in spite of his misgivings, he bends over backwards to be “impartial”. That means he lets right wing callers have their say, and he will usually try to find common ground with them. I noticed on last Sunday night’s show that he was repeating idiotic far right slogans about the London riots, and didn’t seem to have the courage to say what he no doubt really thinks.
A few years ago, crazed callers like “Lesley” (actually Dame Lesley Max) would at least know they were in for an argument with Oliver, but now, sadly, he seems to have been tamed by the NewstalkZB machine.
Thats the only way you can get a job on talk back these days!being a redneck jerk
Thats the only way you can get a job on talk back these days!being a redneck jerk
You mean, I think, “being a bigoted jerk.” Please don’t use the term “redneck” as a substitute for “bigot”. That’s a slur on working people and farmers. The worst, most pitiless bigots in this country are not “rednecks” but pampered, privileged, complacent businessmen (think Alisdair Thompson) and right-wing commentators (Stephen Franks, Garth George, Paul Holmes, Michael Laws, Christine Rankin, Leighton Smith).
The Press has a story on New Zealand’s own Leonardo da Vinci … the artist formerly known as John Key.
You know that guy in your office who has a job title and a suit and a desk, but you find yourself wondering what he does all day? Apparently, “he does a lot of doodles” …
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/press-communities/5459157/Spot-the-difference
Enjoy the gallery of Key “originals”.
Obviously, they’re all fakes. If they were genuine they’d have an arrow pointing North with ‘Hawaii this way’ written on it.
While David Cameron and co. attempt to pin the recent London riots on some slide in morality, they ignore the historical background – as outlined in this highly illuminating article – that this city has been the traditional site for radical protest and rioting by the English poor for centuries:
Is that the same squeaky clean David Cameron as on these links?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/camerons-cronies-the-bullingdon-clubs-class-of-87-436192.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6860668.ece
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/10/david_cameron_riot_condemnation_bullingdon_club_irony
http://www.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DJepgOym09dg&rct=j&q=david%20cameron%20bullingham%20club&ei=RFZLTsDLHcm4rAfey4n9Bg&usg=AFQjCNFvx_SCsdbsmUKhLtNKFhrye-u8HQ&cad=rja
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/may/06/daily-mirror-david-cameron-bullingdon-club
The bloke who was a member of the Bullingham Club, a group of toffs who engaged in riot like pranks? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullingdon_Club
The word hypocrite springs to mind!
Yeah – wonder if he’s ever going to dob himself in for past “misdeeds”. Don’t hold your breath.
Yep and Nick Clegg burnt down a greenhouse or two when he was 16… or did he? Good interview Mr Clifford.
Sympathies, enough said
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10745636
Once again, an item about expensive lambs being killed by hypothermia on NZ farms…
The thing is, it happens every year! And every year the news media come over all surprised…. I don’t know why lambing always takes place in winter, and why NZ farmers don’t keep livestock in barns, and afaik never have! When my father came here in 1951, he had been told that NZ was “tropical” – he soon learned different! (It’s got colder every year, yet the farmers pretend surprise as every year their lambs die.)
I’ve recently bough the album ‘Infected’ by The The ($7.99 in the bargain bin at The Warehouse) – my emphasis on notable lines!
Considering this was released in the early 1980’s, how poignant are the lyrics of the song Heartland to the UK riots?
Jeremy Grantham fund manages over US$100B
And this is what he has to say:
PS this man also gets resource depletion.
http://www.gmo.com/websitecontent/JGLetter_Pt2_DangerChildrenatPlay_2Q11.pdf
Anyone hear Joky Hen in The House today waxing lyrical from his prepared speech about the greatness of our current but retiring Governor General.
Shame he didn’t recognise these qualities in the Gov.Gen. when he played along with Paul Henry’s racism on Breakfast TV last year.
Cue for an Andy Williams 1958 classic here
…Are you sincere, when you say, “I love you?”
Are you sincere, when you say, “I’ll be true?” …
The Trial Will Not Be Televised
You might have heard that Hosni Mubarak’s trial is no longer going to be broadcast. He’s being tried for corruption and violence against the protesters in Tahrir Square and has pleaded not guilty to all charges. The consequences of justice not being done in this case are significant, but there are bigger implications to what is essentially state control of the media…
Just thought I would mention this; I had morning tea with Tama Iti this morning. What a thoroughly pleasant and respectful bloke.
Listened to a Tuhoe presentation on how they want to improve their community, which was totally clear, whanau focused and thinking long term. I hope many of their people stand for Mana.
Respectful bloke he may be, but as far as I’m concerned, hell can freeze over before his lot get the Urerewas.
Remember, public ownership of our national parks is a core left issue.
Anyone seen this?
and
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/5331696/Govt-tries-to-deport-bashed-wife
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dont-deport-Charmain-Timmons-and-her-children/133369646758117?sk=wall
A messy attempt by Kate Wilkinson to tidy things up before the election.
Why has it taken so long to act? A genuine question.
And, why did Wilkinson claim in Parliament that the government would be waiting till after the Commission concluded to act on staffing of mines inspectors but knew at the time that a departmental review was looking into staffing and would report back prior to the Commission announcing its findings?
And, why won’t Wilkinson admit that abolishing the mines inspectorate in the late 90s was a bad idea.
Have a listen
here
but not for the answers …
Anybody who gives a damn about the environment should have a read of Idiot/Savant’s latest blog @ NRT. National is purposefully fucking the ETS up by overallocating subsidies. Effectively the public is paying polluters to pollute more, and thus discrediting the scheme entirely. Pisses me right off!
France and Germany Propose Joint Financial Transactions Tax
Surprise surprise high frequency bot traders and big banks don’t like it. I hope Merkel and Sarkozy push it through against the financial sector, and that this is not just a distraction or a feint.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44163841
what about no rumpty for randy rugby rooters till the a/b’s bring home the bacon.