I have long considered myself a “lefty,’ a “liberal” and a “progressive.” But I have despaired over the last 18 months at the behaviour of what I have often considered “my side.” The sinking of “fellow liberals” into a quagmire of political partisanship, political conspiracy theories, confirmation bias and hateful hostility to anyone daring to present an alternative viewpoint distresses me.
It seems that the “very good” in your comment basically means, “confirming my viewpoint”, Bill. Isn’t that pretty much the definition of “confirmation bias” (the focus of a lot of the article’s discussion?
I thought the one commenter on the site asked a lot of pertinent questions, pointing out inconsistencies in the argument being put forward.
It’s also telling that a person writing a post entitled “Fire and Fury” has this to say about the book: “ I even have my own copy but am unsure now whether to waste time reading it. Wile the mainstream media is promoting it, more rational comments suggest the book is a disaster.” How does this guy measure what is “more rational” if he hasn’t read it?
I’m currently reading “Fire and Fury”. It’s one person’s thinking, based on extensive observations and interviews. It doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not. It certainly isn’t the last word in Trump scholarship (in fact, it’s not a work of scholarship), but that’s hardly surprising this early in the regime. I would say that yes, there is a bias at work (the guy doesn’t like or respect Trump), but I’d also say that it’s not exactly hidden, and when he’s not sure about something he gives various possible explanations or scenarios.
I’m only halfway through the book and so far he’s not suggesting any direct collusion with the Russians – the focus is much more on the dysfunctional relationships within the administration. And whether or not you like Trump, it’s hard to argue that an admin that one year in has left so many critical positions unfilled, has fired so many close-in people and has invented positions for family members is functioning smoothly.
One last comment (a bit of a segue) – I note the author of Open Parachute is an anti-flouride campaigner. Not known for their pro-science, evidence-based approach…
[You note wrong. Very wrong. It’s not at all flash to throw a patently false accusation out there in order to undermine or discredit someone]- Bill
I think that Open Parachute person and others should make a point of stating whether they are talking about international matters or in this country. There is a lot of waffle about Trump, which is reasonable as he himself is full of waffle.
But there is a need for analysis about what is happening in NZ, and the rest of the world impinges on it. But criticising all lefties’ discussion, when the person seems to mean that which is happening about Trump, and North Korea, and Russia is a different matter to what happens on the ground here and is likely to happen in the near and medium future.
So will people please state their point of interest when they are dissing lefties?
I can’t change anything about Trump and watch with foreboding. But I may be able to influence things in NZ, and surely that is the main focus of many people here.
I think most feel in their bones and synapses all the blows to the left. Those who want to be progressives have to spend time looking at planning and testing which ways they think we should try and progress. That is of direct interest I believe to most of us here.
The rest is of interest and concern, but watching and trying to avoid stupid and toxic decisions overseas has to be balanced with the need to do so here. So please lefties with real concern about NZ social needs and climate change and business don’t take your minds away from each other, keep in touch. Please don’t think that you’ll stop taking part here in the discussion if you get annoyed, just drop in each day with something of interest, comment on one thing from someone you know is a mind worker, and then we will keep the intelligent conversation going. It will prevent TS from being affected by pollution from RW maliciousness or careless crap.
Keep putting into the clean stream of thought please, for the mental health of the people devoted to leftie ideas that are bent towards a successful, busy, fair society with the twin goals of kindness and practicality.
Open Parachute’s missive seemed more a complaint about tabloid populism in US politics and media but when has it ever been different? So someone wrote a book criticising Trump – big whoops – he invites it.
Are you or have you ever been a dental professional? Obviously not. Research by all the scientists in the field have proven without a shadow of doubt that fluoride is beneficial for teeth and reduces decay by 70% at the least.
That means its a “science, evidence- based approach”. RB did not use the word “policy” so stop throwing red herrings into conversations because you think it makes you look clever.
“Research by all the scientists in the field have proven without a shadow of doubt that fluoride is beneficial for teeth and reduces decay by 70% at the least.”
I recall that information from Dental lectures I attended admittedly a good many years ago now, But the information hasn’t changed. Go look the subject up Rosemary. There must be oodles of information available from the professionals in the field.
Who is saying Fluoride is a panacea for all ills? No-one here or elsewhere. But it does assist in the prevention of tooth decay especially among children.
Tests have proven as much. Children of the 60s, 70s and 80s who lived in areas where there was fluoridated water had a far lower incidence of tooth decay than those consuming non-fluoridated water.
Anne….much as I would love to get into this issue…I simply do not have the time right now.
Having to deal with the results of an OIA request for information from the Ministry of Health about a completely different issue under their purview.
I was sent a file of over 30 megabytes of scanned documents…much too large for me to share with other affected parties unless it is broken down into manageable portions. Which I can’t do because the file cannot be altered unless the Ministry does it.
Which they have…but still requires me to send four separate emails to 13 or so people with appropriate commentary.
AND, and, despite the monster 30 megabyte break -the -gmail file…I still haven’t got the information I requested.
Sighs. Rolls eyes.
Hopes Anne and others understand why when the Mystery of Health makes dogmatic statements regarding any issue my automatic reaction is to doubt their every word.
Yes, You have told us in the past about some of your experiences with the ministry and I have much sympathy for you Rosemary. I, too,
have been on the receiving end of a government ministry (not the same one as yours) whose attitude left a great deal to be desired.
So I understand your reluctance, but in the case of the fluoridation issue… most of the original research was carried out under the auspices of the WHO which, of course, is an apolitical international body whose findings can be relied upon as accurate.
The link is to a search of the moh site which yields study reviews, cost effectiveness analyses, and comparisons of decayed/missing/filled teeth in NZ schoolchildren based on their flouridated water status.
Fluoride or no fluoride…I don’t really give a toss either way…just get the bloody message through that weaning baby onto sugary drinks is really, really irresponsible.
And there are almost certainly kids in fluoridated areas who have awful teeth, and kids in non-fluoridated areas who drink fizz all the time and have not a filling between them.
Fact is, from a population perspective fluoridation is one of the best and easiest ways to improve kids’ teeth. Pointing to the results of one individual doesn’t count against that statement, even under experimental conditions.
My body is more than my teeth. If I replace rotten parts of my teeth with a mercury containing filler that is durable and seals against any further infection my teeth will be stronger.
But as is the case with mercury, fluoride is also a known poison to other parts of my body.
It has been decided that the poison effect outweighs the dental benefits for mercury and it is still an open question on the cost/benefit with regard to fluouride. Many antifluoride people are quite able to acknowledge the dental benefits of fluoride but believe that the poison effect is great enough to negate these benefits.
Everything in excess is poisonous or dangerous. Everything. Even water. Based on your hypothesis we’d all be dead in a week or so. Best to stop reading pseudo-scientific claptrap. It’s bad for you.
Exactly. Toxicologists have an expression, “The dose makes the poison”.
Everything has toxic effects at some dose, and everything has no toxic effects at another. To think of something as inherently “toxic” or “non-toxic” doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Fluoridation is a fantastic public health measure IMHO.
Youre exactly right. Everything has a level of toxicity and it is the level that is the key along with the exposure time. Also people who take the dcientific approach in which I include myself dont usually feel the need to resort to abuse. As you say. The science should speak for itself
I find that 70% figure hard to believe. Where did you get that from? My cousins were brought up in and still live in a non fluoride country and all 3 of them have zero fillings even well into middle age. I think diet has much more to do with it.
“Flouride, pro or anti is neither ‘science’ nor ‘evidence based’ policy…”
Is that your considered opinion? That (pro) fluoridation is neither ‘science’ nor ‘evidence-based’ policy?
As long as the city that hosts NZ’s Faculty of Dentistry (29th-best dental school in the world) continues to fluoridate its public water supply, I’ll be happy for the council that provides services for the city I live in to do so too.
Fluoride is a trace element with important roles in dental health. Dental caries are the most prevalent preventable disease in New Zealand; water fluoridation has been proven to be an effective public health strategy in the prevention of dental caries. We will be assessing the fluoride intakes of 120 children from schools in fluoridated and non-fluoridated regions of the South Island of New Zealand, using 24-hour urine samples, 24-hour duplicate diets, and tooth brushing analysis, and investigating the impact this has on fluoride intake and dental health.
Fluoride is added to the water to reduce tooth decay. The decision to add fluoride to the water is based on recommendations from the Ministry of Health. The council adds fluoride to water at a target dose rate of 0.75 mg/l in order to achieve dosing at the lower end of the Ministry of Health’s recommended range of 0.70 to 1.0 mg/l.
Fluoridation occurs only at Mt Grand and Southern water treatment plants, which service Metropolitan Dunedin, excluding Mosgiel.
Alternatively, it’s all a dental conspiracy, and fluoridation of tap water pollutes our precious bodily fluids, and actually weakens teeth ultimately channeling $$$ into the pockets of the evil dentists!
There is very little contemporary evidence, meeting the review’s inclusion criteria, that has evaluated the effectiveness of water fluoridation for the prevention of caries.
The available data come predominantly from studies conducted prior to 1975, and indicate that water fluoridation is effective at reducing caries levels in both deciduous and permanent dentition in children. Our confidence in the size of the effect estimates is limited by the observational nature of the study designs, the high risk of bias within the studies and, importantly, the applicability of the evidence to current lifestyles. The decision to implement a water fluoridation programme relies upon an understanding of the population’s oral health behaviour (e.g. use of fluoride toothpaste), the availability and uptake of other caries prevention strategies, their diet and consumption of tap water and the movement/migration of the population. There is insufficient evidence to determine whether water fluoridation results in a change in disparities in caries levels across SES. We did not identify any evidence, meeting the review’s inclusion criteria, to determine the effectiveness of water fluoridation for preventing caries in adults.
There is insufficient information to determine the effect on caries levels of stopping water fluoridation programmes.
There is a significant association between dental fluorosis (of aesthetic concern or all levels of dental fluorosis) and fluoride level. The evidence is limited due to high risk of bias within the studies and substantial between-study variation.
You missed out the bit where they excluded any study that couldn’t provide a “before and after” picture, and also the bit where they said that
The introduction of water fluoridation resulted in children having 35% fewer decayed, missing and filled baby teeth and 26% fewer decayed, missing and filled permanent teeth. We also found that fluoridation led to a 15% increase in children with no decay in their baby teeth and a 14% increase in children with no decay in their permanent teeth. These results are based predominantly on old studies and may not be applicable today.
Meh. Even if we periodically de-flouridated the entire country and then refluoridated 12 years later, you’d still be unconvinced. And be pissed at nationwide experimentation.
Every single year comparisons in school kids based on fluoridation levels show a increase from fluoridated to nonfluoridated catchments.
At some stage calling the quacky waggly thing a duck is a pretty dafe assumption.
Don’t make assumptions, or crystal ball on my behalf, McFlock….
Your comment leaves the impression that FL in or FL out is the start and end of the metric for reporting….
Surely you’re not that simplistic…
If you weren’t, you might have provided links to the data captured, to which you refer…and provided some analysis on the limitations of the data…Cochrane did…
Besides empirical evidence being an alien concept for you, you confuse “studied a topic to my satisfaction” with “can be bothered writing a text book in order to improve the ‘impression’ of some internet stoner on an acid trip”.
I note the author of Open Parachute is an anti-flouride campaigner.
Is he perchance also a CC denier? Does he believe the moon landing was a fake?
Is he one of those who is convinced the Twin Towers tragedy was an inside job eg. the CIA?
If they’re one pf the above they are usually all of them. I think I will continue to bypass Open Parachute.
And we can remember this particular learning. If ever we want to upset a thread, just put something about fluoride, or perhaps 1080, vaccinations, feminists, rape culture, cats being forbidden….into it, and the cogs and wheels will start turning and all the afficianados will come out and enter the fray. And take it all away. Household hint No. 1.
Well, since RB has got things all arse over tit (ie – Open Parachute belongs to a blogger in favour of fluoridation), I guess you’ll row back on the groundless stuff about moon landings and what not?
Or is it open season on any one who doesn’t toe a particular anti-Trump line?
And if not “moon landing, 9/11” or whatever, then does the mere fact someone doesn’t witlessly jump aboard the anti-Trump bandwagon mean they’re as well being seen as a “moon landing, 9/11” etc flake…and worthy only of opprobrium and dismissal?
I guess the answer to that query is largely “yes”.
He’s far from the only person on the left to observe “The sinking of “fellow liberals” into a quagmire of political partisanship, political conspiracy theories, confirmation bias and hateful hostility to anyone daring to present an alternative viewpoint distresses me.”
A fair few of the comments in this sub-thread serve to illustrate that “hateful hostility” he mentions. And all off the back of a mistake or a lie on the part of Red Blooded that would have taken ‘one click and two seconds’ to get to the bottom of.
From Open Parachute
Fluoridation articles
Some of the anti-fluoridation propaganda can get pretty extreme. Even the less extreme material is often misleading.
I have collected below links to my articles where I debunk these myths and expose the misinformation.
Well, sorry about that… I admit that I didn’t check out the two sections of the blog devoted to fluoride (one labeled “Fluoride” and one “The Fluoride Debate”). Please note that an error isn’t the same as a lie, though, Bill. Usually when people refer to something like “the Fluoride debate” or “the climate change debate” they’re trying to suggest that there is a debate, not trying to refute it.
Perhaps you could see my comment (without having read the appropriate sections of the blog) as being akin to the blogger’s confident commentary on Fire and Fury, without having read the book.
Bill, it’s sometimes hard to respond to you, because it pretty much guarantees ad hominem attack and abuse. Thanks to Drowsy M. Kram, for pointing out that I did actually apologise. (Have you ever done that, I wonder?)
Perhaps you’ve noticed that I often (although not always) disagree with you. This is sometimes because of a difference in values and sometimes because I believe you’re drawing false conclusions based on limited (or misinterpreted) evidence. Even when I think you’re making a mistake, I don’t call you a liar, though, and the reason is that to be a liar, you have to be purposefully promoting something that you know to be untrue. I didn’t do that in my comment above. I’ve admitted a mistake, I’ve explained what caused it and I’ve apologised for it.
[I wrote in relation to your false accusation, and because I’m not a mind reader, that it was a mistake or a lie. You don’t get to play victim in this and also accuse me of making definitive statements I never made. Take a week off. Next Wed.] – Bill
I understand RB – I also find it difficult to communicate with Bill. Although I also often disagree with his POV, I do find his posts thought provoking but usually refrain from participating in discussion on his posts to avoid the ad hominems etc. So thanks for saying to him what I have not had the courage to say!
I also hope that you have read the last two paras of my comment at 1.2.3.3.2 below. As indicated, my suggestion to check out someone”s background was not aimed at you as much as the other people who commented more specifically on fluoridation issues in the thread below your original 1.2 comment. I note that that ‘conversation’ is still continuing. Perhaps they should read some of Ken Perrott’s research articles …
There’s a general comment in Daily Review about moderation (a reminder of how it works).
But for a more specific comment here, I looked at r-b’s comments once Bill had started moderating and what I see is someone arguing about the moderation and taking up a moderator’s time. That’s me coming in and looking from the outside, with no real investment in the conversation.
For me that stuff is hugely problematic and it’s the experience of a number of authors that if you don’t put a strong boundary up then you just have to keep dealing with increasing amounts of shit over time. That’s why some of us moderate the way we do.
If you don’t like how Bill debates, then don’t get involved in those discussions. If you don’t like how he moderates, then figure out where the boundaries are in terms of respect on his terms and take your chances if you want to argue about it (hint, calling a moderator baas is likely to up the ante).
“If you don’t like how Bill debates, then don’t get involved in those discussions. If you don’t like how he moderates, then figure out where the boundaries are in terms of respect on his terms and take your chances if you want to argue about it ”
Or write to the site admin stating your reasons why you think a moderator has lost the illusion of impartiality.
[that is an option too, and that will sometimes lead to a discussion in the back end about a particular moderation, which can be useful. But to be really honest, what I’m seeing here from commenters is not ok. It’s largely disrespectful and some of it looks personal.
btw, moderation isn’t about impartiality. It’s about a number of things including protecting the site, protecting the community and protecting the authors. Needless to say if one thinks that attacking an author is going to lessen the protection around authors, one is really really missing how moderation here works. I suggest people read the note in Daily Review – weka]
It’s definitely an option I recommend people take, but worth noting, reply to lprent directly, and not the generic standard address.
The address is on the contact page, and it does state to use for complaints and operational matters.
Bill it seems to me that you are not infrequently redolent of the very types you complain of in your endorsement of Ken’s Open Parachute piece. You enjoy exceptionalism do you Bill ? Tirades OK for you……slam the same in others. Things are reaching the pitch they did when CV was at his worst. Losing interest……as are others.
I endorse the right of people and their opinions not to be just summarily dismissed by association with the peddling of demonstratively and patently false accusations…not just because it’s a shite thing to do, but because it can make this site vulnerable to legal action.
RB making a mistake and acknowledging it exposes the site to legal action? Just trying to make sense of your justifications: would you please clarify that?
I’m concerned Bill. We don’t want to lose regular good thoughtful feisty commenters. I detect a tendency for all moderators to tighten up too much now the election is over. I believe that you could sit back and let the regulars snap a bit and only step in when there was good reason.
There seems to be micro management entering into the style of the blog. But the long-time commenters are part of the pillars of the blog, and stuck it out and learned a fair bit about how the discussion should go. It should be a discussion between equals, not hand slapping for this and that like schoolkids. A stand-down for a while would be rare for the regulars. but they could suggest it for some of the newbies who just want to disrupt and haven’t a clue to bless themselves with. I’d like to see more relaxation and less didactic approach, and it would be easier on the mods.
We like respect and enjoy TS. Perhaps we need to get a bit sloppy and sentimental like Chris Knox. People who want to be in a good place in coming years need to stick together with others the same. ‘Cause it’s you that I love
And it’s true that I love
And it’s love not given lightly
But I knew this was love
And it’s you that I love
And it’s more than what it might be
I’ll just keep repeating this. It’s not a discussion amongst equals when commenters have a go at authors. Authors take precedence.
I really hope marty and rb come back, both are big assets to this site. But I’m way more concerned about losing authors. No-one seems too concerned about the lack of posts or authors currently. When I see the commentariat putting energy into how to support authors or the site or making the place that new authors might want to come to, I’ll probably see the comments about moderation as being more pertinent.
Just to add to this post by Bill, when I did a quick scroll through of the replies to Bill’s original post at 1 on the Open Parachute posts (without reading these), something was gnawing in my memory – and this increased when the subject of fluoride came up and the resultant discussion as to whether the Open Parachute author was anti-fluoride (and anti-CC etc).
A quick check of the About Me on the Open Parachute site and its sections on fluoridation, and from there the Researchgate link, confirmed the reason for my disquiet.
Ken Parrott, author at open Parachute is not just another blogger – he probably has far higher professional qualifications, experience etc etc in the field of fluoridation than anyone here on TS.
The links also include this very recent (Dec 2017) Scoop article on an article just published in the British Dental Journal by New Zealand researcher Dr Ken Perrott highlighting flaws in a 2015 research paper, widely cited by fluoride opponents, that had reported a connection between fluoridation and ADHD. On a quick glance, it appears to be a good example of a pro-science, evidence-based approach to peer review
Not criticizing anyone who commented, but just suggesting that it sometimes does pay to take a minute or so to check out professional backgrounds etc, before making claims that someone is this, that or the other. It helps to avoid egg on face syndrome – I know from previous personal experience of this!
(EDIT – I see that Bill has now added a further reply to RB … Mine is aimed a bit wider than RB as i had no problem most of RB’s post at 1.2.
Here we go again @Anne (it seems) – re something a bit funny has happened this early new year.
I’m not sure if its just that contributors are wearing the undies someone bought them for Christmas – two sizes too small, or whether there is something other than fluoride in the water.
Roll on 2018, and we’ll see if it’s all as sustainable as we would like, or whether we’ll shoot ourselves in the tootsies
Gold. A commenter on the “Fire and Fury” thread writes:
I’m waiting for all information before jumping to conclusions.
The blogger responds:
That is more or less my position – and why I call the media promoted story of Russian Collusion as fact a “myth.”
Er, yes – declaring something “a myth” is what normal people always do when they’re “waiting for all information before jumping to conclusions.” That one’s almost funnier than his comments about everyone else suffering from confirmation bias.
Reporting Russian Collusion as “fact” is, in terms of there being no presentation of concrete evidence on which to base the conclusion that it actually happened, kinda creating a myth.
But hey, here’s Greenwald from last year, because he’s far more erudite and in depth than me.
But no matter. It’s a claim about nefarious Russian control. So it’s instantly vested with credibility and authority, published by leading news outlets, and then blindly accepted as fact in most elite circles. From now on, it will simply be Fact – based on the New York Times article – that the Kremlin aggressively and effectively weaponized Twitter to manipulate public opinion and sow divisions during the election, even though the evidence for this new story is the secret, unverifiable assertions of a group filled with the most craven neocons and national security state liars.
That’s how the Russia narrative is constantly “reported,” and it’s the reason so many of the biggest stories have embarrassingly collapsed. It’s because the Russia story of 2017 – not unlike the Iraq discourse of 2002 – is now driven by religious-like faith rather than rational faculties.
No questioning of official claims is allowed. The evidentiary threshold which an assertion must overcome before being accepted is so low as to be non-existent.
I’m struggling to think of a high-profile official investigation into something or someone that didn’t also involve public speculation out the wazoo, so it’s hardly surprising that this one also has its partisan followers.
OJ Simpson springs to mind, as does the attempted Clinton impeachment.
Is “Russiagate” another deception like Iraqi WMDs? ‘
Yes
The media is corralling people’s thinking by spreading this lie.
Just as they did over WMD, Vietnam, McCarthyism. If we are lied to enough times, then most believe.
Fortunately there are independent journalists like Patrick Cockburn, and Eva Bartlett who have told us the truth about what has been happening in Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, Russia, the US and Iran.
Thank you Bill for sharing these important stories that go against the neoliberal lies.
Israel has been buying usa politics for decades ….. wielding so much power and influence,…. that the usa Govt did a white wash and covered up when Israel killed or injured around 200 u.s navy sailors.
At the time of the attack and attempted sinking “The Jewish council could influence 169 of the 270 elctoral votes needed to win the white house”
“The Israelis used code-names to protect their white house agents” …
Does anyone seriously believe the Russians have anywhere near the involvement or influence on U.S politics than Israel ???
I wish I could share your apparent relief or enthusiasm francesca.
Unfortunately, we’re in a kind of cultural morass that sits somewhere between that which surrounded Iraqi WMD and McCarthyism. My impression is the latter was more enthusiastically taken up by the public at large than the former.
I could be wrong on that front, but assuming I’m not, I’d suggest the level of acceptance of Trump/Russia blah tends more towards the McCarthy side of any WMD/McCarthy scale than it does towards any WMD side.
Media and elites had to sell the idea of WMD to a skeptical public, whereas this stuff…fck, it’s just getting gobbled up.
“I have long considered myself a “lefty,’ a “liberal” and a “progressive.” But I have despaired over the last 18 months at the behaviour of what I have often considered “my side.” The sinking of “fellow liberals” into a quagmire of political partisanship, political conspiracy theories, confirmation bias and hateful hostility to anyone daring to present an alternative viewpoint distresses me.
Hear, hear Ken.”
The problem with those kinds of very generalised statements is we have no idea who he is talking about. And that just creates confusion.
(and there is no single anti-Trump movement, hard to get past a headline like that).
Well, I took it to refer to anyone expressing “hostility to anyone daring to present an alternative viewpoint…”
And that being in relation to the rather specific anti-trump bandwagon running on allegations of collusion with Russia; rubbishy innuendo (that is not to be called out), and baseless gossip (also not to be called out).
On Russia, supposed collusion is to be treated as an accepted truth. The evidence will be forthcoming (apparently). Asking for concrete evidence now (after 18 months) is kinda “not cricket” and worthy of (in Ken’s words) “hostility”.
I don’t think Ken was implying there is a single anti_Trump movement, but was referring to ‘the’ anti-Trump movement – bones that both his pieces give flesh to.
Most of the political people on the left I speak with in the real world get that. Notwithstanding, it’s true to say we don’t tend to engage in political discussions with those who stray too far from our own views in real world situations.
Glen Greenwald an others have pointed all this out and termed it as a new McCarthyism. I don’t think they are wrong in having that view.
On Russia, supposed collusion is to be treated as an accepted truth.
Is it? There’s evidence that it happened, but evidence has to be weighted and considered before you can claim it’s proof of anything.
The closest thing we have to first hand knowledge of the motivation behind the investigation is Glenn Simpson’s testimony to Congress, in which he states that he and Steele became concerned that Trump is the victim of blackmail. Other fascinating nuggets include Trump claiming he does business deals in Russia when no such deals exist (which I take to mean that no property changes hands, no companies are registered and so-on – at least on paper), and that the FBI has a source in Trump’s organisation* (whether it predates his run for office remains unclear).
Assuming Simpson isn’t just lying about his motivation, that sheds an entirely different light on latter events.
When Trump says “there was no collusion”, perhaps that’s because he’s being extorted and blackmailed instead. Or perhaps But But But Hillary framed him or something.
Or perhaps it’s all just weak-sauce bs, as you seem convinced of.
*which means, btw, that their evidence probably won’t see the light of day until any trial occurs, for obvious reasons.
PS: Simpson says Steele severed links with the FBI because he came to the conclusion that they were interfering in the election. Make of that what you will.
So far yes, It’s all weak-sauce bs as far as I’m concerned.
That’s qualitatively different from being convinced it will all wind up being nothing more than weak-sauce bs. That’s merely a suspicion, and one that grows the longer no concrete evidence is produced.
There will be others, but Greenwald seems to be particularly surgical and thorough in his approach to supposedly factual claims being made by mainstream liberal outlets, and has very good pieces mapping out the who’s who of those behind pushing (many now debunked) “collusion and interference” stories through those outlets.
it’s completely possible (and probable, really) that the CIA possesses hard evidence that could establish Russian attribution — it’s their job to have such evidence, and often to keep it secret.
If such evidence exists it would no doubt provide part of the case against Trump or his henchmen, and wouldn’t be revealed until then, just like anything provided by the FBI’s purported mole.
Its continued absence until then should be expected. I certainly wouldn’t firm up my position on that basis.
Why would concrete evidence being provided to underpin claims of the Russian government hacking DNC emails “no doubt provide part of the case against Trump…” ?
Also, there’s no mention of the FBI or an FBI mole in the piece you linked to.
Did you link to the wrong piece? Or are you just taking random Russia/Trump stuff and throwing it all in the same pot hoping to conjure up a Trump stew?
Wild projection/speculation about stew aside, I discussed Glenn Simpson’s testimony (in which he mentioned the mole) at 1.6.1.1.
Why would concrete evidence being provided to underpin claims of the Russian government hacked DNC emails “no doubt provide part of the case against Trump…” ?
For the reasons Biddle outlines in the article I linked: because it would validate the provenance of the phishing attack on the DNC, and thus provide strong evidence that anyone possessing that information (and offering it to Trump) was also working for the Russian government.
It would add context and flavour to any eventual charges or case for impeachment, for sure.
So unless it can be shown that the DNC emails were offered to Trump, then…
Well, if the CIA has Putin briefing Guccifer they probably have that conversation too. However, Trump’s people believed that’s what they were being offered, according to Papadopoulos.
As for CNN’s apparent eagerness to believe, I think you’ll find juries are harder to convince than journalists, so that’s another red herring.
All these false dichotomies are pretty tiring anyway. Cheers.
I bring this up because I just watched an interview with Guardian journalist Luke Harding, who recently released a bestseller called Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win. The host of The Real News, Aaron Maté, repeatedly pressed him on concrete examples of proven collusion, and the result was embarrassing—Harding had a whole heap of nothing.
Harding wasn’t prepared for what amounted to a skeptical interviewer. I have no doubt that if Paste’s writers were present, …….and Harding’s stumbling incompetence doesn’t necessarily mean there was no collusion. That said, a simple fact remains: The man who wrote the book on Trump-Russia collusion can’t point to a single concrete instance of said collusion.
That’s pretty damning, right?
You can watch the video below, or read the transcript.
The most revealing quote of all. I’m a storyteller.
Not a journalist, then.
LUKE HARDING: Yeah. Right. Don’t kind of quite appreciate the nature of Vladimir Putin’s state. I mean I lived there for four years. I was there for between 2007 and 2011. I was eventually kind of kicked out for writing stories about kleptocracy, about Putin’s fortune, about human rights, about journalists. I’m not sure if you know, but some of my friends in Moscow who are journalists have been murdered. This is not a nice or benign regime. It’s-
AARON MATÉ: [crosstalk 00:10:04] I’m certainly not arguing that Vladimir Putin is a nice person or that he has great policies, but to me though, that doesn’t automatically mean that he waged a massive influence campaign that got Donald Trump elected. Part of the reason why I’m skeptical of that is that, again, there still is actual … There’s zero evidence so far. There’s a lot of supposition and innuendo.
LUKE HARDING: Well I’m a journalist. I’m a storyteller. I’m not head of the CIA or the NSA…
This article in the Guardian is worth checking out. It’s about PFIs (the British equivalent to PPPs), with a particular focus on the implications for the public sector when it’s left picking up the bill for (oh, so efficient!) private sector companies if they fail/declare bankruptcy when delivering public sector services or infrastructure.
So is the concern that a public company gets to run on private business lines and go for profit and big salaries, but if it strikes a bump and loses money, or is damaged and goes bust, then the taxpayer enters the picture and picks up the tab and pays out all the other business players involved?
I have to say that I don’t know enough about the NZ situation to say that things are exactly the same here, but in Britain at least, it seems that the economic benefits of PFIs were sold on the theory that they were a lower cost to the public purse than straight government funding, but that was only (marginally) true if the idea of “risk transfer” was factored in: “When you examine the claims made for the efficiency of the private sector, you soon discover that they boil down to the transfer of risk. Value for money hangs on the idea that companies shoulder risks the state would otherwise carry. But in cases like this (building hospitals), even when the company takes the first hit, the risk ultimately returns to the government. In these situations, the very notion of risk transfer is questionable.”
“The costing of risk is notoriously subjective. Because it involves the passage of a fiendishly complex contract through an unknowable future, you can make a case for almost any value. A study published in the British Medical Journal revealed that, before the risk was costed, every hospital scheme it investigated would have been built much more cheaply with public funds. But once the notional financial risks had been added, building them through PFI came out cheaper in every case, although sometimes by less than 0.1%.
Not only was this exercise (as some prominent civil servants warned) bogus, but the entire concept is negated by the fact that if collapse occurs, the risk ripples through the private sector and into the public.”
Thinking about risk in ventures and assessing it over time and possible cost and so on. Is that what is called actuarial? Anyway I just mention something that got into my head when reading about the great oil spill from a tanker near Alaska. I think it was the Exxon. The risk of the transport of oil had been assessed and it was felt likely that there might be an accident once in 25 years. To protect and mitigate against that there were requirements made of government keeping an overview, and shipping kept in the area for the especial purpose of handling large spills and damage to this large oil tanker.
25 years and perhaps an even shorter time, seems to be too long for people in general, and even government or business, to maintain a watching brief with the awareness and readiness as required by the assessment papers. When the disastrous accident happened, the government overview had been scaled back and to an extent the watchdog role had been captured by the company and industry, and the safety vessels with remedial equipment had been sent off to distant posts, and were
days, weeks away when needed urgently to deal with a very bad spill.
So government can not contract out effectively as it is the entity where the buck stops, and no other entity is going to take responsibility for the services or safety in the same way as the government does, as supposedly serving and answering to its citizens.
Carrillion is a very salient and timely lesson…PPPs (by any name) exist to enable the use of accounting deception (which no one believes) …even without the collapses and public bailouts they are a foolishly expensive method of funding capital expenditure/public service due to the shareholder returns, inflated salaries, self serving bonus culture and race to the bottom in terms of quality (both in construction and service) to win……another appalling example of short- termism.
I hadn’t gone to the link at the beginning of the thread and in case if others haven’t, the below paras are the start of an important column relating to the collapse of some ambitious entity called Carrillion.
Again the “inefficient” state mops up the disasters caused by “efficient” private companies. Just as the army had to step in when G4S failed to provide security for the London 2012 Olympics, and the Treasury had to rescue the banks, the collapse of Carillion means that the fire service must stand by to deliver school meals.
Two hospitals, both urgently needed, that Carillion was supposed to be constructing, the Midland Metropolitan and the Royal Liverpool, are left in half-built limbo, awaiting state intervention. Another 450 contracts between Carillion and the state must be untangled, resolved and perhaps rescued by the government.
We have the penetration of our business opportunities by these international and overseas-modelled companies. Profitable business is their game, and the game is moulded around contracts that are set rock-hard by legalities, if not in any physical legal form, probably all on-line.
The music suitable to the acting out of the whole enterprise, I think would be Chess. The satirising that I know and enjoy best, would be from the Telegraph’s Alex by Peattie and Taylor.
They are on a robot theme at present, and the robots are coming off second best to the simple cunning of stock traders. May as well laugh while business goes on going forward. I like January 15. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/alex/?cc=10151369
Our medias bias will not give much coverage to another rip off and the failures of Privitization ….. or as its modern bastard children are called …. PPP’s, PFI’s, charter schools etc
Its core national party ideology .
With a PPP failure the money is burned and contracted services do not get delivered … Meaning tax payers will pay twice
Even worse in the latest failure from england…. their contracted company also destroyed half a billion pounds of workers pension money …
Here’s a Swedish PPP scam example, which our media has probably never reported on …. As it also involves our Ex PMs line of work ….
“Swedish authorities in 2010 gave a single bidder the contract in a so called public-private partnership (PPP) – not only to build the hospital but also account for the financing and maintenance for decades to come.”
“” (Mission: Investigation) can now reveal that large sums in the prestigious project is routed to the tax haven of Luxembourg.”
Yes, One News reported this last night, interviewing the head of the NZ Veterinary Association who said that even if owners were unaware of it, most of these dogs suffer and that their breathing problems are like trying to breathe through a pillow. I note the SPCA are also in favour.
My neighbour, died recently of emphysema. Very sad. There was the difficulty in breathing and talking made it worse and it was hard to listen to the effort. It seems unfair to the dogs to put them through that state of limiting breathing.
A newly drafted United States nuclear strategy that has been sent to President Trump for approval would permit the use of nuclear weapons to respond to a wide range of devastating but non-nuclear attacks on American infrastructure, including what current and former government officials described as the most crippling kind of cyberattacks.
[…]
But the biggest difference lies in new wording about what constitutes “extreme circumstances.”
In the Trump administration’s draft, those “circumstances could include significant non-nuclear strategic attacks.” It said that could include “attacks on the U.S., allied, or partner civilian population or infrastructure, and attacks on U.S. or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or warning and attack assessment capabilities.”
The draft does not explicitly say that a crippling cyberattack against the United States would be among the extreme circumstances. But experts called a cyberattack one of the most efficient ways to paralyze systems like the power grid, cellphone networks and the backbone of the internet without using nuclear weapons.
It appears that the totalitarian dystopia of countless sci-fi movies is almost upon us. (Or am I just late to the party??) This tender…
NZ Police are seeking proposals from suitably experienced, qualified and resourced companies to provide the ABIS 2 (Automated Biometric Identification Solution) Facial Image Identification and Management, Scar, Mark and Tattoo, and Clothing database Technology Solution(s).
The Police seem to try to remain separate from Parliament, though supporting stable government.
Are they under any control at all then? Or just sort of contracted by the gummint and get paid a budget amount, and set targets to reduce, contain crime etc. but the details of how becomes ‘an operational matter’. How much are the police serving the country, or developing into a self-motivated force, with its own individual practices only loosely related to current morals and ethics?
I have high hopes for Cabinet Minister, Tracey Martin. If she can match her deeds with her verbal down to earth, commonsense approach, she will be a very good minister in the Lab. led government.
Yep. If National were honest about what they really thought they would have called it the:
“Ministry for the Children of Hopeless People Who Can’t Survive in the Glorious Economic System Instituted by Dear Leader, Economic Genius, Overlord of the South, Rugged Individualist and Teemingly Fertile Lord English”.
But they settled for ‘Vulnerable’ – nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Time and time again we see that private companies are more efficient
than the State – but only in relation to transferring profits to
shareholders and key managers, not to actually producing the goods and
services that they are contracted to provide.
Let this be a lesson to governments – the previous National
governments saw failures that cost taxpayers; will the LGNZF
government be fooled the same way?
The reality is that financing costs are cheaper for the government
than for anyone else – that is an immediate benefit for not having
partnerships with private companies that finance at higher rates. Then
there is control, and whether quality and risk are actually managed
well – for if anything goes wrong, the taxpayer ends up footing a
higher bill.
_________________
There is another perspective than mitigating financial risk – it is the time frame of the different parties. That of business is only a few years, and getting shorter. Under National, some roading projects were contracted to special purpose companies set up by interested parties to undertake the work entirely on borrowed money – those tendering had little capital of their own invested in the project. When the first Labour government decided to build social housing, they used government employees for design, engineering, planning, plans; they used largely contractors to do detailed work, but they used government employees to supervise the work and ensure that standards were understood and maintained. They built to last – and many state houses from that era are now regarded as well built, if now dated in style, and are still being used ovr 60 years later.
As an example of how we have fallen from those standards, consider the Defence Department. They moved out of their Stout Street headquarters, purpose built for them many years ago, to a new building in Aitken Street. In recent years the old building, which was structurally very sound, had become too small and in need of refurbishment. It was sold to a private developer who did that work and now leases it to another governmetn department. Meanwhile, the Aitken Street building is I am told being pulled down as it is now an earthquake risk. Similarly Statistics New Zealand moved to a new building which partially collapsed, fortunately not killing anyone, but leaving many archives lost as the building remains unsafe – in both cases while earlier buildings built with long term use in mind rather than “lowest cost is all that matters,” remain standing and able to be used.
Taking a longer view can be difficult – sometimes a slower project can only deliver full benefits in the next parliamentary term or even later, but running a system that respects employees with proper training programmes and high business ethics can bear fruit in a lot of other ways as those people move into other jobs in the private sector. Fair dealing used to mean something in business, and still does in some parts of the country. I believe the current government can afford to plan for a second term; provided they pander to short termism enough to be elected, but deliver enough permanent solutions in that second term to have a very good chance of a third term.
Addled dotard claims he has the best brain because he found his way through a dementia screen.
He blamed his three immediate predecessors, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, for failing to resolve the crisis and, a day after his doctor gave him a perfect score on a cognitive test, suggested he had the mental acuity to solve it.
“I guess they all realized they were going to have to leave it to a president that scored the highest on tests,” he said.
He can’t see how his son and son in law having contact with Russians during an election campaign who offer to dish dirt on his opponent isn’t collusion and meddling, but at least we know he can tell a lion, from a rhino, from a camel.
With regard to privacy, in the case of receiving a state funded benefit, I think most people would agree that if the conditions for receiving the benefit are met, even if one of those conditions require revealing who the father is, then equality under the law has been met. Though I don’t believe it is a law that benefits must be paid to citizens – they are just policies of the government at the time.
If privacy is the main concern, then the government has no need to know how much money I earn to tax me.
You appear to have no understanding of NZ’s obligations and responsibilities resulting from NZ’s ratification of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ratification of other related International Conventions and Covenants etc since 1948 relating to things like the rights of the child, the rights of persons with disabilities, elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, status of refugees to name but a few of these – all of which are enshrined in various pieces of NZ legislation.
IMO this statement in your comment is astounding in its ignorance – “Though I don’t believe it is a law that benefits must be paid to citizens – they are just policies of the government at the time.”
If you really believe that then you obviously have no understanding of other pieces of NZ legislation such as the various iterations of the Social Security Act etc that have been enacted in NZ over the last 80 years since 1938 with the introduction of the first Labour Government’s social welfare programme – and which set out both rights and obligations of both the government and the recipients of welfare payments.
It seems property investors are fleeing the rental market with Labour’s policies being one of the driving factors.
With a sufficient number of new homes from Kiwibuild being years away, coupled with an insufficient number of new state homes proposed thus far, Labour are likely to face an increase in the number of homelessness and tenants facing soaring rents (along with their related ills) over its first term. Risking widespread voter disillusionment.
How will Labour overcome this? Will they buy private rentals and turn them into state rentals? Will they buy and turn private rentals into Kiwibuild homes?
Will they be forced to house more in motels? Giving the opposition their stick to hit them with.
How will Labour overcome this? Will they buy private rentals and turn them into state rentals? Will they buy and turn private rentals into Kiwibuild homes?
Hold it. Every one look at BM becoming a stable genius. How amazing it is the house prices will go up. Your a real fucking genius you know that BM… Amazing…
You know at some point when investors make shitty investments they should actually lose out on it when it goes tits up. I mean. My god, the government can’t keep bailing out unsophisticated investors all the time.
Nah. It’s like BM is reading from a script or something… Like he’s given these messages to say with out even understanding the words that are coming of his keyboard and when ever he goes off script he just comes across as a Nigerian con artist. He’s worthless.
In Wellington, it will, if it became known the government was buying existing rentals and they were desperate for them, then it becomes a seller’s market and you can start asking above the going rate.
Not like the government has to go to the bank and get a mortgage.
Anyway, the big issue is that people have taken their rentals off the market, so unless the government can convince these people to either sell their rentals to the government or put them back on the market it will make no difference.
The problem still is there’s not enough rentals, complete fuck up by Labour.
I mean that’s the definition of a property bubble. If the government purchase above market rates then who will pay the next trench up of house prices… See the false ideology? People want security not a Ponzi scheme.
Regardless of it being Wellington or not, they would merely be shoring up the downfall in demand, thus largely maintaining current market prices, not increasing them.
Due to the poor condition of a number of rentals (especially in Wellington) and the fact the Government’s budget will be limited, one would expect offers will be realistic, despite any perceived desperation.
We’ve already had BMs hysteria over drug testing state houses, and not even been unfit for habitation. Now BMs so thick in the head he dosnt even understand that he’s pushing a Ponzi scam. He’s a totally con.
If you think all rentals and tenants are the same then you’re insane… Because when BM assumes that all tenants and rentals are the same it’s actually mathematically impossible for BM to derive a supply curve…
I mean… Fuck me… This is why I don’t educate flaky virtue signallers.
If carefully managed a glut of homes for sale that eases pricing in the ‘1st home’ category could be a good thing. I think it would be interesting to see what price range of properties investors are selling up. Gut feel tells me it won’t be the expensive end of the rental market, those tenants are better placed to absorb increases. The renters that are finally able to afford a starter home of their own will be making their previous rental home available to others with their move.
At this stage, easing pricing to widen accessibility to more first home buyers would more than likely require prices to fall. And a falling housing market would exacerbate the new Government’s problems. Which is one reason why Labour campaigned on slowing the rate of increase, not dropping the current value of homes.
Investors selling up basic boxes in West and South Auckland could see an over supply in one sector of the market, prices easing in that under 500k sector. I guess there would be a spill-over to the 1.5 million dollar McMansions but that sector could remain quite buoyant. Investors won’t be pumping stock into that sector, not increasing the supply.
The problem is with the realestate industry needing sales volume, so pretty much convincing retirees to sell the family home for a million and scale down. The problem is those scaled down beach homes or what ever… Is closing in on the million dollar average. And this is usually the one nest egg for retirement so it’s like once the money gone. Then what?
If there’s continued down turn in construction then there will be a recession kiwi style so consideration must be given to keeping the kiwi home, not selling.
“1st home ownership take-up is the highest it’s been for 5 years “
With record high immigration, thus new immigrants looking for their first NZ home, it’s not that surprising.
“Those first home buyers are vacating rental homes”
While some of them will be, evidently it’s done little to ease the current rental shortage problem with demand exceeding supply. Which suggests it’s more a case of new immigrants buying their first homes squeezing locals out, hence forcing more to rent.
While it will be largely centered around the lower end of the market and in areas with a high number rentals, it won’t be solely limited to that end or area of the market. So yes, their will be spillover. Along with a heighten risk it could all quickly unravel.
Buyers are far less inclined to buy in a declining market, preferring to hold off (thus adding to the downward spiral) expecting to save thousands as they anticipate prices to further decline.
The world dodged a bullet when the warmonger lost…oh
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday committed the United States to an indefinite military presence in Syria, citing a range of policy goals that extend far beyond the defeat of the Islamic State as conditions for American troops to go home.
New Zealand is the most wasteful country in the developed world but investment in organic waste facilities could reduce that by almost a third.
Research published on Waste Management World has found New Zealand produces 3.68kg of waste per capita per day, the worst in the developed world and the 10th worst of countries worldwide surveyed.
The greed of farmers, the weakness of neoliberal politicians and the devastating impact of irrigation
Its consequences.
Millan Ruka on Facebook
Millan Ruka I paddled this beautiful living river around 2009. Now its life force has been sucked from it and nobody cares (except Matt Coffey). The RMA has clauses to stop this greed but our leaders do not have the will or the guts to implement restrictions. Come on Labour Coalition instruct the Local Government to put immediate restrictions on irrigation
Before you condemn Fox News as the most outrageous media outlet in
the world, have a look at the English version of French state television.
France 24 News, 11 p.m., FACE TV (Sky Channel 83), Tuesday 16 Jan. 2018
We are depressingly accustomed to television “news” being often little more than a conduit of state propaganda, whether it’s on the BBC, ABC (the Australian one), RT, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera, PBS, CBS, ABC (the American one), NBC, MSNBC, Fox News, and our own TVNZ and NewsHub. As craven as all of the above are, however, the other night I saw something that equalled, perhaps even surpassed, all of the above for sheer brass-plated, malicious, bloody-minded dishonesty: I watched the first ten minutes of the English version of France 24.
The alarm bells were ringing on this from the first live cross on the very first item, about the call for the PLO to cut its ties with Israel. That cross was to “our correspondent in the region, Irris Makler.” Now, long-time listeners will remember that we encountered this shamelessly one-sided Israeli-Australian back in July 2011 when RNZ National wheeled her on to talk about a convoy of peace activists trying to break the illegal blockade of Gaza. She joked to Kathryn Ryan that the Gaza peace convoy was “dead in the water”, sneered that there were “celebrities like Alice Walker” on board, and ignored the presence of the 86-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein. [1] A week later, she was still defaming peace protestors, this time for Deutsche-Welle. [2])
It turns out that Irris Makler has not changed her modus operandi in the slightest: “You know Palestinians will pay a price internationally,” she intoned darkly. Then she claimed, in contradiction to all evidence, that the Oslo agreements had led to “great changes” in the Occupied Territories.
Unbelievably, there was worse to come. The newsreader, one Alexander Aucott, introduced the next item, about Ahed Tamimi, the 16 year old Palestinian girl arrested and charged for slapping an armed IDF soldier. He read out, with a straight face, that she had been:
caught on film pushing, kicking, and hitting the soldiers, who did not respond. The video provoked outrage in Israel, but she has been hailed as a hero by Palestinians.”
Alexander Aucott should have mentioned that just before Ahed Tamimi slapped one of the soldiers who’d invaded her yard, she had learned that her 15-year-old cousin Mohammed had been shot in the head at close range by an Israeli soldier. But for some reason Aucott—or more likely, his scriptwriter—chose to ignore all that and instead portray her as an aggressor and the soldier as a victim. It’s not many years since French state media and scurrilous tabloids approvingly covered the Sarkozy government’s loading of gypsies on to trains and expelling them from France. Clearly, honesty and integrity still count for little or nothing in the French state media.
The impression of shabbiness and lack of professionalism was only magnified by the appearance of Alexander Aucott, who looks like a young, scruffy clone of Neil Kinnock, and glowers at the camera reproachfully as he mouths his loaded lines. The wretchedness of all this was only magnified by its following immediately after a brilliant Democracy Now! special on Martin Luther King.
Well all Stuff and rhe Herald provide is propaganda and fake news.
Hence the apathy and ignorance of some many New Zealanders.
So many people vote against their own interests, supporting ghastly neoliberal policies that ruin society and the environment.
The media corral people into opinions by repeating the lies.
France 24 is fake news. At least it was on Tuesday night. And I’m sure it regularly and dependably delivers such nasty propaganda; I don’t think Mr Aucott’s gruesome performance was an aberration.
Trump is a direct result of the Clinton’s. Why do I say this well first Trump and the Clinton’were associates and Bill would have told trump about the Mana that A President of America has and this would have made Trump obsessed with the goal of becoming President in my view. Bill was that obsessed with getting that Mana back through Hillary that he minupulated the Democratic party to get Hillary as there front runner candidate and not Bernice Sanders and wallar we have Trump as President the way trump is behaving is because of what Bill told Trump. I say if it looks like one talks like one than he is a Racist Bigot who panders to his polling that is what is keeping him in power and he will use anything through anyone under the bus say anything to keep this Mana that he is intoxicated with. This is a very dangerous man with the world future in his hands and you know what comes first in trumps world Trump. Is this the person whom is supposed to look after all Americans wellbeing Ana to kai
Sorry about the heat morning rumble you should have got the bug spray out and sprayed the sandflys lol. They won’t shut you down that would make OUR Mana even greater I wonder what happened to that South Waikato airial of yours last year???????. I figure out that when I get a random phone call unanswered my phone is been hacked they can’t stop me using it for posting on the standard but they can listen and use the camera and also change my alarm and turn alarm off. Every time the sandflys try and spin shit about me they end up with shit in there face. This will allways happen because I have done nothing.
Its cool being famous from Pokai Tikapa Waiomatatini Tairawhiti I go into the Putaruru supermarket and there is a lot of chatting and excitement going down I start shopping and when I got to the checkout everyone’s vanished. The sandflys have followed me into the shop and told/bullied everyone and told them to not let me know that I’m well known. I have been going into this supermarkets for 12 years off and on The same thing happens at Rotorua pack and save they are so _____ its not funny Ka kite ano
We are very pleased to publish this submission is from Lucinda Stoan. She is a social justice activist, mother, and educator, based in Washington State in the US. This detailed and comprehensive source-linked overview of trans issues and what is at stake will be useful for many people, especially in ...
New Zealand's Underarm Banker: It bears recalling that the “independence” of the Reserve Bank Governor was for decades held up by neoliberal capitalists as the most compelling justification for passing the Reserve Bank Act. Interesting, is it not, how the ruling class’s support for the Bank’s independence lasted no longer than ...
Rubbish In, Rubbish Out: Put all this together, and it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that anyone who responds positively to a pollster’s request to “answer a few questions” is just ever-so-slightly weird. Desperately lonely? Some sort of psephological train-spotter? Political party member primed to skew the poll for or against ...
“Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.” ― Martin Luther King Jr. A long and bitter court feud between former Conservative Party leader Colin Craig and Jordan Williams has been settled, with an apology and compensation from Williams. On Tuesday, Craig sent out ...
Some people seem to want to close down any critical discussion of the current research into the relationship between water fluoride and child IQ. They appear to argue that claims made by researchers should not be open to critical review and that the claims be accepted without proper consideration ...
The government has been congratulating itself over the passage of the Zero Carbon Act, which sets out long-term emissions targets. Meanwhile, Climate Action Tracker has the shameful reality: those targets are insufficient:While New Zealand is showing leadership by having passed the world’s second-ever Zero Carbon Act in November 2019, under ...
The government introduced a Racing Industry Bill today. As an urban who horse racing as pointless-to-cruel, and gambling as a tax on stupidity and/or hope, this isn't normally a bill which would interest me in the slightest, beyond grumpiness at more government money for a dying industry. But there is ...
Check. Check. One, two, three, four. Is this thing ON? Hello readers, I logged in last night (yeah, it’s been a while) to mark THE END of the landmark legal case, Jordan Williams v Colin Craig, which (gulp) reached The Supreme Court, in which New Zealand’s most-defamed man was suing the politician he ...
Before The Birth: Israel’s most fervent supporters set their clocks ticking in Biblical times. They cite the kingdoms of David and Solomon as proof that, in the words of the Exodus movie’s theme-song: “This land is mine.” The majority of Israel’s backers, however, start their clocks in 1933 – the year Adolf ...
In an unreliable, strange and confusing world, Public Address is proud to present a measure of comfort and stability by annually asking everyone what words or phrases sum up the year that's been – and then giving some of them consumer goods as prizes for being clever or simply lucky.Well, ...
Both my parents are pretty handy – and they seem to have the right tools for most jobs in the garage and they know how to fix practically anything. A similar story could be told about their generation’s experience in the workforce – being a generalist was not unusual and ...
When it was revealed that NZ First had tried to enrich itself from public office via the Provoncial Growth Fund, the Prime Minister assured us that everything was OK as Shane Jones, the Minister responsible for the fund, had recused himself. Except it seems that that recusal came very late ...
Today is a Member's Day, and probably the last one of the year. After the marathon of the End of Life Choice Act, most of the bills up for debate today are uncontentious. First up is the second reading of Chlöe Swarbrick's Election Access Fund Bill. This will be followed ...
The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee has reported back on the government's odious and tyrannical control orders bill. As expected, the fraudulent select committee process has made no significant changes (partly because they couldn't agree, but mostly because it was a stitch-up from the start, with no intention of ...
Yesterday, the government released its draft Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill, which will be put to a non-binding referendum at the next election. I'm not a drug policy expert, but Russell Brown is, and he thinks its pretty good. And pretty obviously, it will be a massive improvement on the ...
As you're probably aware, the draft bill outlining the proposed legal cannabis regime to be put to a referendum late next year was published yesterday, and has already attracted a flurry of comment. It's notable that a good deal of the comment is about proposals that aren't actually new.A minimum ...
One of the big problems in New Zealand climate change policy is the government working at cross-purposes with itself. It wants to reduce fossil fuel use, but encourages oil and gas exploration. It wants to reduce transport emissions, but then builds enormous new roads. The problem could be avoided if ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzAccording to the United Nations, food shortages are a threat ...
Last year, the government announced it was ending offshore oil exploration by no longer issuing new permits. The idea was that the industry would then die off as permits expired. Except almost immediately the government revealed its bad faith, by saying they would extend permits and alter conditions to keep ...
The government introduced the Education and Training Bill to Parliament yesterday. Its a massive bill, which replaces both existing Education Acts, as well as various other bits of legislation (including some which are still proceeding through the House). I'll leave the serious analysis to teachers and people who actually know ...
Amelia SharmanThere’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to micro-credentials, those bits of bite-sized learning that can help workers stay on top of technological change. What’s a micro-credential? While definitions vary, micro-credentials can be understood as short courses that allow people to learn new skills or have an existing competency recognised. ...
All Smiles Now: Claire Szabo is taking up her presidential role after serving as the CEO of Habitat For Humanity. Which is absolutely perfect! After KiwiBuild was so comprehensively mismanaged by Phil Twyford, the party has not only elected a new president from a thoroughly respectable not-for-profit, but one who ...
While much of the NZ left has transitioned to postmodern and identity politics in relation to transgender ideology, there are some very good articles about that deploy Marxist methodology in relation to this subject. The one below is from the British marxist group Counterfire and appeared on their site here ...
by Daphna Whitmore At Golden Oaks, a luxurious country retreat in the Hudson Valley, pregnant women have the best care money can buy. From the organic food, personalised exercise programmes, private yoga instruction and daily massages Golden Oaks looks like a country lodge for the upper class. Set some time ...
When Labour was running for election in 2017, it felt it needed to demonstrate "fiscal responsibility" and signed itself up to masochistic "budget responsibility rules". It was a fool's errand: the sorts of voters who demand fiscal responsibility are also the sorts of voters who believe that labour can never ...
Writing in Stuff, Joel MacManus looks at what we need to do to meet the Zero Carbon Act's targets. The core of it:1. Convert 85 per cent of vehicles on the road to electric. 2. Eliminate fossil fuels from all industrial heating up to 300 degrees Celsius. 3. Double our ...
Professors Janet Hoek and Richard Edwards, Emeritus Professor Phil Gendall, Jude Ball, Dr Judith McCool, Anaru Waa, Dr Becky FreemanRecent media reports have presented conflicting evidence on youth vaping in NZ. While some NZ school principals report concerns about increasing vaping on school grounds and confiscating vapes, ASH Year ...
“America the Beautiful!”, staunch defender of democracy, freedom and… a whole lot of despotic tyrants that play nice with what is called “the Washington Consensus.” America is indeed capable of immense good, but like any Nation, and most assuredly any aspirant to the mantle of Empire, great, immense evil. All ...
Image credit:The beginner’s guide to blogging I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is ...
1080 is used to control pests in NZ. Its use is contested by a noisy few. A new report claims high levels of 1080 in rats washed up on a beach. Flora and Fauna of Aotearoa (F&F) won’t name the laboratory that did their testing. It has sparked a hunt ...
What Kind Of Empire? The thing for Kiwis to decide is what kind of empire they want to belong to. The kind that, while offering its own citizens democratic rights, demands absolute obedience from its “friends”? Or, the kind that, while authoritarian at home, takes a relaxed attitude to the ...
It hasn't been a good week for the Conservatives, pollwise. All major recent polls are showing their lead shrinking.Comparing each pollster's current (between 29/11 and 22/11) and previous most recent poll.Com Res - Conservative lead down 3 points.You Gov - Conservative lead down 1 point.Kantar - Conservative lead down 4 ...
Within quick succession, Countdown maths wizard and twitterer Rachel Riley, alleged comedian David Baddiel and prominent lawyer Andrew Julius have all expressed very similar opinions / ideas:
These #3billboards are going round London today, organised by ex-Labour people, horrified by what their party has become. Their principles haven’t changed, they’re ...
So, there have been a bunch of bad polls out for Labour, and even the Leftie's friend, Survation, have recently given the Conservatives a rip-snorting 11% lead. You Gov's much vaunted MRP poll - which pretty much nailed the result in 2015 - is currently predicting a comfortable majority for ...
The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to declare a climate emergency:The European parliament has declared a global “climate and environmental emergency” as it urged all EU countries to commit to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The vote came as scientists warned that the world may have already crossed ...
Pure Fear: Worse than Heroin, this drug’s addictive power was terrifying. People under its influence didn’t drift off to Elysium. Nor did it persuade inadequate individuals that they could conquer the world. No, this drug – pure crystal methamphetamine, “P” for short – unlocked the gates of Hell itself. It ...
As the rate of measles infection, and of deaths, continues to climb in Samoa, antivaccination activists infectious disease proponents seem intent on doubling down on their claims about vaccination. (Check pretty much any news-media FB post about measles & you’ll see exactly what I mean.) Unfortunately, some of them have ...
Samoa are experiencing a devastating measles epidemic. It is possible that 2-3% of the population will ultimately be infected by the time it is over. Hopefully the mass immunisation campaign currently under way can mitigate some of this, for many it is too late. The first question many people ask ...
Meghan Murphy is a Canadian writer and journalist She runs the Feminist Current website which she founded in 2012. She was a keynote speaker for the Feminism2020 conference in Wellington this month. When Massey University cancelled the original venue booking Feminism2020 was hosted in Parliament by MP David Seymour. Meghan ...
Text and photos by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh Colombia has lived through one week of protests against the economic measures taken by president Duque. What looked like a protest that would fizzle out after its first day on November 21st is still going strong. Part of the reason for the continuance ...
Around a million billion pass through you each second, almost all originating from our sun, but few of them are likely to interact with you enroute. I was reading in a physics magazine earlier in the week about the nature of neutrinos. These are extremely numerous elementary particles, but only ...
By Pallab GhoshThere’s value in covering new research advances, even when the underlying science is unsettled. But there are also risks.The recent announcement that scientists discovered water on the planet K2-18b, 110 light years away, prompted a media swoon. News stories, including a piece written by me, billed ...
I wrote this review a couple of years ago when I was still in the process of getting my head around the politics of transgenderism, and specifically the claim that intersex conditions lend support to the notion that sex is ‘socially constructed’. Since writing this review I have come across ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzHow much does our use of air travel contribute to the ...
Minor planet/asteroid (2309) Mr. Spock is named not for the character in Star Trek, but for a cat that was itself imperturbable, logical, intelligent and had pointed ears. In a preceding blog post I introduced one of my favourite asteroids, (2472) Bradman, and also mentioned (6581) Sobers amongst a few ...
Today the death toll from measles in Samoa rose to 32. All but four of the dead were less than 5 years old. Absolutely terrible, heartbreaking, news. That statistic alone should be enough to give the lie to the common claim by antivaccination activists plague enthusiasts that “measles is a ...
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh It is late here in Bogotá, almost 11.30pm on Monday the 25th of November as I write this. The day began full of hope with yet more massive marches throughout the country, a mix of the International Day of Non-Violence Against Women and the National Strike. ...
Anti-fluoride activists are rubbing their hands in glee over what they claim is “yet another study” showing fluoride harms the brains of children. But their promotion relies on IQ relationships which the paper’s authors acknowledge disappearing when outliers or other factors are considered. And they completely ignore other relationships ...
The feature below is the conclusion of A History of Economic Thought, whose author was a leading Marxist economist in Russia in the early 20th century, Isaac Ilyich Rubin. The book arose from a course he ran at Moscow University following the Russian Revolution. First published in Russian in 1929, ...
There are many thousands of asteroids with formal names, some humdrum but other more noteworthy (depending on your predilections). One of my favourites, the name of which I was involved in suggesting, is (2472) Bradman, named for the Australian cricketing great. As a minor planet (synonym: asteroid) spotter, I have ...
Tory manifesto: big on austerity, low on promise, non-existent on delivery. The Tories: the party so big on ambition they couldn't be arsed writing a manifesto. MLK: "I have a dream!"BJ: "I'll just have a nap." Labour: Broadband!Tories: Narrow minds! Labour have hope, dreams and ambition. The Tories will save ...
The Ministry of Health has announced that “people under the age of 50 travelling from New Zealand to Samoa, Tonga, Philippines and Fiji” are now on the list of national priorities for MMR vaccination. Given the outbreaks of measles in Samoa, Tonga, Philippines and Fiji, the Ministry of Health is ...
Hong Kong has been protesting for six months for, demanding democracy, human rights, and an end to police violence. Today, they went to the polls in district council elections - a low-level of government with virtually no power, similar to community boards in New Zealand. But while the positions themselves ...
Text and photos by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh On Friday 22nd of November a curfew came into effect and troops were deployed on the streets, here in Bogota. It was the first time since September 1977 that a curfew had been imposed on the city. The decision was a cynical pre-planned ...
Meanwhile, while the government is planning to restore voting rights to prisoners, National is promising to turn our prisons into US-style slave-labour camps:The Opposition is proposing compulsory education, training or employment for prisoners who are serving sentences of two years or more. [...] On Sunday, National Party Leader Simon Bridges ...
Excerpts from Being and Being Bought, by Kajsa Ekis Ekman Spinifex Press, 2013. Ekman, a Swedish journalist and critic, brings together a Marxist and feminist analysis of prostitution and surrogacy in this groundbreaking book. This is the second part of a synopsis and brief commentary of the book by Daphna ...
Dalmeet Singh ChawlaIn 2008, psychologists proposed that when humans are shown an unfamiliar face, they judge it on two main dimensions: trustworthiness and physical strength. These form the basis of first impressions, which may help people make important social decisions, from who to vote for to how long a ...
Claas Kirchhelle, University of Oxford; Adam Roberts, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and Andrew Singer, Centre for Ecology & HydrologyAntibiotics are among the most important medicines known to humankind, but we are running out of this crucial resource. Decisive action is needed if we are to retain access to ...
Things That Make You Go - Hmmmm: “All right. Let me come at this another way. I’m guessing that what you’ve got in that box contains names, dates, bank account numbers – all the details you need to put Winston Peters and Jacinda Ardern squarely in the cross-hairs. So, the first ...
Coasters Turn Out In Droves: It’s precisely the widening gulf between those with actual experience of things like guns, chainsaws and drilling machines, and those who regulate their use, that accounts for the angry crowd at Greymouth’s Messenger Park on Sunday, 17 November 2019. In the rarefied atmosphere where decisions ...
There are perennial arguments about the circumstances of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, and in particular whether more than one shooter is required by the evidence (such as the Zapruder film). Those who know little about physics frequently claim that the sharp backwards motion of JFK’s head as ...
Apparently, some people enjoy washing their cars. Each to his or her own, I suppose. I mean, some people like duck shooting, some people follow Coronation Street, and some people’s idea of a good day out is to sit on a grass bank at Seddon Park and watch cricket all ...
Last week we learned that New Zealand First had apparently tried to enrich itself from public office, with a dodgy forestry company linked to a number of NZ First figures sticking its hand out repeatedly for government money. Today in Question Time Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones had his ...
Finally, governments seem slowly to be beginning to act on climate change. But its not enough. While they're publicly signing up to targets, they're planning to destroy the world by continuing fossil fuel extraction:The world’s nations are on track to produce more than twice as much coal, oil and gas ...
Stuff has begun interviewing NZ First's secret donors, and it turns out that its as bad as we expected. They start with racing industry figure Garry Chittick, who is predictably grumpy about NZ First's coalition choices. Meanwhile, I'm looking at the list of pork NZ First has effectively given its ...
Stag At Bay: Twelve years ago, Winston Peters was still robust enough to come back from the political crucifixion which his political and media enemies had prepared for him. In his seventies now, the chances of a second resurrection are slim. We should, therefore, prepare for the last gasp of ...
Satellites pass over NZ all the time (literally). Here I focus on the 187 Planet Labs ‘Dove’ Earth-imaging satellites, and I show that one can determine in advance where they will be, enabling scientists on the ground to correlate their environmental and other data collection with opportunities to get imaging ...
The Council of Disobedient Women has learned that the Prefect of Aro Valley has been promoted to a new role with the blessing of the Pope of Wellington. Softy Jejune Parson has been appointed Mother Superior of Woke Wellington for the work she has been doing calling out heretics, ...
Mark Patterson, Spokesperson for Primary Industries New Zealand First spokesperson for Primary Industries, Mark Patterson, has called for awareness to be raised and more stringent biosecurity checks to be put in place for African Swine Fever (ASF), a widespread virus that is uncontrolled in most of Asia and a serious ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Human Rights A critical step has been taken to end gender based violence against women and girls in Parliament this evening. New Zealand First Spokesperson for Human Rights Jenny Marcroft MP has welcomed the passing of the first reading of the Crimes (Definition of Female ...
New Zealand First MP Shane Jones says it's time to recognise market forces haven't led to the expected reduction in Māori smoking rates and try a new approach. The Party had recently invoked the agree to disagree clause in their Coalition Agreement with the Labour Party, and will not support ...
Live from the Whanganui Opera House, on the final day of the 2019 Labour Party Conference, Jacinda Ardern announced the largest investment in school property in 25 years. ...
The Coalition Government will be banning foreign donations to political parties and candidates, ahead of next year’s general elections. Legislation will be introduced to Parliament and passed under urgency – emphasising the need for such restrictions to safeguard our democracy. The bill introduces a new requirement that party secretaries and ...
Associate Transport Minister Shane Jones opened Taipā's $19 million bridge recently, improving transport infrastructure in the Northland region. The two-lane bridge is 107m long with a 2.5m-wide shared walking and cycling path, and will reduce the congestion that the old one-lane bridge was notorious for. The project had also included ...
The Overseas Investment Office have rejected the application of Mercury Agriculture LP, which is 92 per cent controlled by Canadian interests, to purchase more than 2000 hectares of South Canterbury and Otago land. Mercury wanted to buy 2000ha at Rangitata, 1494ha near Ashburton, 816ha near Cromwell and 212ha near Temuka. ...
This weekend was Labour's 103rd Party Conference! We welcomed over 500 of our Labour whānau in red to Whanganui, where we reflected on the last two years in Government, and looked ahead to 2020 and beyond. We know the long-term challenges facing New Zealand won't be tackled overnight, but we're making ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced that the Provincial Growth Fund will invest $9.6 million to seal the final unsealed section of State Highway 43 from Stratford to Taumarunui. The Minister said sealing the 12-kilometre gravel section of the highway – also called the “Forgotten World Highway” - through ...
Former Finance Minister and former chair of the Tax Working Group, Sir Michael Cullen, has voiced his support for New Zealand First’s decision to oppose the planned increase in tobacco excise tax. In an interview with The Weekend Collective, he said that increasing the price was no longer effective in ...
Māori are natural storytellers. On the marae we use stories to tell our history, to teach the next generation life lessons and to let people know, in our most creative of ways, who we are and where we have come from. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First has invoked the ‘Agree to Disagree’ provisions of the Coalition Agreement because it cannot support the announced 11.46 percent increase in the tobacco excise from 1 January 2020. “Studies show that the automatic tobacco excise increases are having less effect ...
Taupō-based company Geo40 has made a breakthrough in extracting near battery-grade lithium from geothermal fluid which its says could be a gamechanger. Its chief executive John Worth said the earth mineral was highly prized, with battery-grade lithium selling for US$10,000 (NZ$15,600) a tonne. Geo40 was founded in 2010 to find ...
Crown research institute AgResearch Ltd, as part of its Future Footprint plan, had intended to relocate top scientists and support staff — particularly those focused on sheep genetics and genomics — from Invermay to Lincoln. However, those plans seem to have been shelved at the request of the Coalition Government. ...
Ten engineering firms in Southland are receiving a total of $2.13 million in Provincial Growth Fund funding to lift productivity and create new jobs. Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced in Invercargill that the 10 engineering and manufacturing firms would receive funding to assist them with buying equipment that ...
The number of new residents to New Zealand is the lowest it has been in nearly two decades and it has earned the ire of the immigration industry. The industry alleges that 'Trump-style extreme vetting' is being put in place aimed at keeping a lid on immigration numbers. June Ranson, ...
The Royal New Zealand Air Force is one step closer to modernising its fleet after the United States State Department recently approved the sale of five new C-130J Hercules aircraft to New Zealand. Arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin, in Fort Worth, Texas, will provide the aircraft, but as a "foreign military ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones wants to create a log barging facility at Hicks Bay and turn the area into a Special Economic Zone. The move would be part of protecting New Zealand's forests from being depleted by India and China, he said. It follows his announcement last week to strengthen ...
New Zealand First supports the changes recommended by the Winter Grazing Taskforce to improve animal welfare outcomes through the winter months, and the establishment of a pan-sector action group to implement them. New Zealand First Primary Industries Spokesperson Mark Patterson says the report highlights areas of concern about the animal ...
Former prime ministers Helen Clark and Sir John Key, formerly from the Labour and National parties respectively, have joined forces in support of New Zealand First’s plan to relocate Auckland's port to Whangārei. While Ms Clark and Sir John spent their political careers on opposite sides of the political divide, ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is in Japan for the Foreign Ministers' meeting of the G20 grouping of countries as one of nine "invited" countries. He has used the opportunity to cast a spotlight on the plight of Pacific countries, calling out countries which still offered subsidies or Government assistance to ...
It's been a great week of progress: we've celebrated Children's Day, we've made communities safer with 1800 new police, and we've seen almost 90% of eligible schools take up Government funding to scrap school donations - taking pressure off the families of more than 416,000 students. ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister of Forestry The Government will further strengthen New Zealand’s wood processing sector as part of our focus on ‘value over volume’ in our forestry industry, Forestry Minister Shane Jones says. Minister Jones will today meet with forestry representatives in Northland to signal new measures to help the ...
New Zealand First are celebrating the announcement of an investment of $3.5 million into five new trapping devices. These are a range of bait and trap devices, all designed to be left unattended for long periods of time. NZ First conservation spokesperson Jenny Marcroft says that this latest development will ...
Jenny Marcroft, Spokesperson for Conservation New Zealand First is proud to announce the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) has allocated $3.5 million to develop innovative predator control approaches which will reduce the need for repeated 1080 use. $19.5 million of PGF funding was announced for Predator Free 2050 Limited in February ...
Darroch Ball, Spokesperson for Police New Zealand First is proud to have delivered on a key Coalition Agreement commitment to adding 1800 new frontline police, with the graduation of Recruit Wing 332 in Porirua today. Law and Order Spokesperson Darroch Ball says increasing police numbers and boosting their resources was one ...
Clayton Mitchell, Spokesperson for Consumer Affairs The ‘wheel clamping’ Bill that will cap clamper fees to $100 passed its third readinginParliament today. New Zealand First welcomes The Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill to combat predatory wheel clamping behaviour in what is currently a largely unregulated business. Cowboy clampers are: gouging ...
Jenny Marcroft, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First welcomes the passage of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission Bill through its first reading in Parliament. “Today’s progress takes serious action on the mental health and addiction crisis the country is facing,” says New Zealand First Health Spokesperson Jenny Marcroft. “The re-establishment ...
Mark Patterson, Spokesperson for Primary Industries Today the Government announced the delivery of the promise to protect New Zealand interests by applying a new National Interest Test to the sales of our most sensitive and high risk assets to overseas buyers. This further strengthening of the Overseas Investment Act will ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has announced further support as the Government of Samoa responds to a serious measles outbreak. “New Zealand will deploy a further 18 vaccination nurses, bringing the total to 30 working in Samoa over the next ...
The Coalition Government is delivering on its promise to protect New Zealanders’ interests by applying a new national interest test to the sales of our most sensitive and high-risk assets to overseas buyers. Under current Overseas Investment Act (OIA) rules, assets such as ports and airports, telecommunications infrastructure, electricity and ...
Rt Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First Allegations raised this morning by Stuff Limited / Fairfax concern a party matter but I am confident that New Zealand First has operated within electoral laws, now and for the last 27 years. Declarable donations were declared to the Electoral Commission. Our ...
The chairman of the Upper North Island Supply Chain Strategy (UNISCS) working group, Wayne Brown, has hit back at critics of his group’s recommendations to relocate the Ports of Auckland cargo operations to Whangarei’s deepwater port of Northport. The working group's recommendation to close Auckland waterfront to all but cruise ...
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Fletcher Tabuteau, is travelling to Germany, Poland, Austria, and Spain next week to bolster New Zealand’s political and trade relationships in Europe. While in Spain, Mr Tabuteau will represent New Zealand at the 14th Asia-Europe (ASEM) Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Madrid. “New Zealand strongly supports ...
“I’ve spoken to Minister Faafoi, who has apologised for his poor handling of this issue,” Jacinda Ardern said. “I have confidence in Kris as a hardworking and effective Minister, but this should have been dealt with in a much clearer manner, and I’ve made my views on that very clear ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters met with Tongan Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pohiva Tu'i'onetoa in Wellington today. The pair signed a Statement of Partnership setting out joint priorities for cooperation out to 2023. “We welcomed Prime Minister Tu'i'onetoa on his first visit to New Zealand as Prime Minister. Tonga ...
The Minister of Police Stuart Nash says his sympathies are with the family of a man who died after being shot by Police in Kurow. “Initial reports are that Police were called by a family member to help the man who was threatening to harm himself,” Mr Nash says. “However ...
Healthier waterways, better productivity and farmer wellbeing are front and centre in a new project involving more than 1000 Southland farmers and growers. Minister of Agriculture Damien O’Connor today announced that the Thriving Southland Change and Innovation Project is the first region-wide extension programme supported by the $229 million Sustainable ...
Work to look after nature and restore freshwater quality in Te Hoiere/Pelorus River catchment is getting a significant boost, thanks to new Government funding support Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage announced in Canvastown today. “Every New Zealander should be able to swim in their local river without getting sick, and ...
Eight Queen’s Counsel have been appointed under a process that includes the new criterion of a commitment to improving access to justice, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. “The new criterion was included this year. It emphasises that excellence and leadership in the profession can be seen through a wider, community ...
Onslow College in Wellington will get 20 new classrooms for more than 400 students, Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. The much-needed investment will relieve growth pressure the school has been experiencing for some time. Seven existing classrooms which have deteriorated over time will also be replaced, bringing the total ...
More than 250 young New Zealanders will add international experience to their education, thanks to the latest Prime Minister’s Scholarships for Asia (PMSA) and Latin America (PMSLA), Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. This round of scholarships supports 252 recent graduates or current students to undertake study, research or internships ...
Consumers will benefit from a more competitive, transparent retail fuel market as a result of changes the Government will be making in response to the findings of the Commerce Commission’s study of the fuel sector. “We accept the Commission’s findings and, as the Prime Minister has said, we’re ready to ...
Five new cancer medicines have now been funded this year, meaning thousands of people have more treatment options PHARMAC has today announced that it has approved two new medicines for funding – fulvestrant for breast cancer and olaparib for ovarian cancer. This follows earlier decisions on advanced lung cancer treatment alectinib, ...
The Minister of Local Government, Hon Nanaia Mahuta says the Government will consider making changes to local electoral legislation before the 2022 elections to fix the problems that have arisen where elections are settled by a coin toss. The Minister says the recount process in the Murupara- Galatea ward at ...
New Zealand will sign up to new international maritime regulations to reduce ship emissions and lift air quality around ports and harbours, Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter announced today. Subject to completion of the Parliamentary treaty examination process, New Zealand will sign up to Annex VI of MARPOL, an ...
New legislation to transform our urban areas and create sustainable, inclusive and thriving communities will tomorrow be introduced to Parliament, Urban Development Minister Phil Twyford said. “The Urban Development Bill gives Kāinga Ora-Homes and Communities the tools it needs to partner with councils, communities, mana whenua and private developers to ...
Today’s launch of He taonga te Tamaiti: Every child a taonga: The Early Learning Action Plan 2019-2029 provides the foundation for long-lasting changes to early learning, Education Minister Chris Hipkins says. “Early learning will be one of the Government’s top education priorities going into 2020,” Chris Hipkins said. ...
Major decisions made by the Government will now be considered under a climate change lens, Minister for Climate Change James Shaw announced today. “Cabinet routinely considers the effects of its decisions on human rights, the Treaty of Waitangi, rural communities, the disability community, and gender – now climate change will ...
Education Minister Chris Hipkins today announced the appointment of Māori education specialist Dr Wayne Ngata and Business NZ head Kirk Hope to the Board of the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC). Dr Alastair MacCormick has been reappointed for another term. “Wayne Ngata, Kirk Hope and Alastair MacCormick bring a great deal ...
The next phase of the Pike River Re-entry project is underway, Minister Responsible for Pike River Re-entry Andrew Little says. “Fresh air will be pumped into the Pike River Mine drift this week, following acceptance of the plan for re-entry beyond the 170m barrier by New Zealand’s independent health and ...
New Zealand consumers will have greater certainty about their insurance cover when they need to make claims as a result of proposed government changes. “Insurance is vitally important in supporting consumers and businesses to be financially resilient when unexpected events happen,” Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Kris Faafoi said. ...
The Crown is providing an opportunity for the hapu of Ngāpuhi to rebuild its framework from the ground up for collective negotiations to deal with its historical Treaty claims, Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Andrew Little and Minister for Māori Development Nanaia Mahuta announced today. The Crown is also ...
A Bill enabling referendums to be held with the 2020 General Election has passed its third reading. Justice Minister Andrew Little says the Act is important for upholding the integrity of New Zealand’s electoral process. “The Government has committed to holding a referendum on legalising recreational cannabis at the next ...
The first release of public information on the two referendums to be held at next year’s General Election was made today with an informative new Government website going live. Additionally, the draft Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill has been released, showing the strict controls on cannabis that will apply if ...
The Government is taking action to protect New Zealand from foreign interference in our elections by banning foreign donations to political parties and candidates, Justice Minister Andrew Little announced today. Legislation will be introduced to Parliament this afternoon and passed under urgency. “There’s no need for anyone other than New ...
Governments and tech companies are holding a two-day workshop, hosted by YouTube/Google in Wellington, to test the Christchurch Call Shared Crisis Response Protocol. The workshop aims to refine and strengthen the response in the event of a terrorist attack with online implications. Companies, governments, civil society experts and NGOs will ...
The new independent Cancer Control Agency has formally opened today, delivering on the Government’s plan to improve cancer care in New Zealand. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister of Health David Clark marked the occasion by announcing the membership of the Advisory Council that will be supporting ...
Small businesses who deal with government departments are set to be paid faster and have improved cash flow as a result, under a new strategy released today. The Government is backing recommendations from the Small Business Council (SBC) and has agreed to implement three initiatives immediately to support business and ...
The Education and Training Bill 2019, introduced in Parliament today, proposes the biggest education changes in decades and is an important step towards improving success for all our learners, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said. “The Bill’s rewrite of education legislation is long overdue. Indeed one Education Act, parts of which ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio will travel to Bali to represent New Zealand at the 12th Bali Democracy Forum that will be held on the 5-6 December. “The Forum is a valuable opportunity for Asia-Pacific countries to share experiences and best practice in building home-grown democracy and fostering ...
A package of new and expanded technology and other tools will encourage responsible camping and help communities and local councils better manage freedom camping this summer, Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis announced today. “Our Government has been investing to improve the freedom camping experience for everyone because we want to support ...
The government is laying the groundwork to understanding our genes – work that can help us tackle some of our biggest health challenges, like heart disease and diabetes, says Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods. $4.7 million has been invested in the Genomics Aotearoa Rakeiora programme. The programme will ...
Nearly every state schools will receive a capital injection next year valued at $693 per student to bring forward urgent school property improvements, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. The one-off cash injection is the first project to be announced from the Government’s infrastructure package ...
The Government has decided to bring forward major investments in New Zealand’s infrastructure to future proof the economy. “Cabinet has agreed to a significant boost to infrastructure investment. I have directed the Treasury to help bring together a package of projects that can be brought into the Government’s short and ...
It is a great pleasure to be with you today in Whanganui. Like the Prime Minister I grew up with the TV clip of Selwyn Toogood booming “What do you say Whanganui, the money or the bag?” to an unsuspecting ‘It’s in the Bag’ audience. For those under the age ...
New Zealand’s newest Great Walk, the Paparoa Track, was officially opened in Blackball today by the Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage alongside the family members of the Pike 29 and Ngāti Waewae. Local mayors and MP for the West Coast Hon Damien O’Connor were also in attendance. “Paparoa National Park ...
Minister of Defence Ron Mark turned the first sod of earth on the infrastructure works for the new P-8A Poseidon fleet at RNZAF Base Ohakea today. “The Coalition Government’s investment in Ohakea will ensure the Royal New Zealand Air Force can manage, maintain and task the new fleet efficiently ahead ...
Civil Defence Minister Hon Peeni Henare today announced the establishment of the new National Emergency Management Agency from 1 December 2019. The National Emergency Management Agency will replace the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management. It will be an autonomous departmental agency, hosted by the Department of the Prime ...
New Zealand tertiary students with top grades and a passion for space will once again be offered the opportunity to work with the world’s best and brightest at NASA, Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford announced today. Recipients of the New Zealand Space Scholarship are nominated by the Ministry of Business, ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced further support to Samoa in the wake of an ongoing measles outbreak in the country. Additional medical supplies and personnel, including a third rotation of New Zealand’s emergency medical assistance team (NZMAT), further nurse vaccinators, intensive care (ICU) specialists and Samoan-speaking medical professionals, will ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says new data showing a sharp drop in the number of people who can’t afford to visit their GP is a sign of real progress. One year after the Government made it cheaper for about 600,000 Kiwis to visit their doctor, results of the New ...
The Trade for All Advisory Board has released its recommendations for making New Zealand’s trade policy deliver for all New Zealanders. The report was today welcomed by Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker. “Trade is crucial to this country’s economy and well-being, and the benefits need to flow to all ...
Dr Ben Jansen is Oceania's leading prescriber of cannabis medicines, and a co-founder of the Hemp Foundation.org.nz “I’d like to thank the Labour Party and Chris Woodney. Thanks to his policy remit at Labours national conference, and Labours full support, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Soong, Senior Lecturer in Teacher Education Practice, School of Education, University of South Australia Australian 15 year olds were around three and a half years behind their counterparts in China in maths, according to the OECD’s latest results for education systems ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dimitri Perrin, Senior Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology More than a year ago, the world was shocked by Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui’s attempt to use CRISPR technology to modify human embryos and make them resistant to HIV, which led to the birth ...
Cabinet minister Kris Faafoi has apologised to the Prime Minister for his messages to Jason Kerrison regarding an immigration case, but will not lose his job. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders University The decision to merge the Department of Communications and the Arts with Transport, Infrastructure and Regional development (dropping the “Arts” entirely) ends a year in which Australian politics has been deeply confused over its ...
A historic referendum on independence has been completed in Bougainville. Johnny Blades of RNZ was there. People in the autonomous Papua New Guinea region of Bougainville have voted in an historic independence referendum. The long-anticipated referendum is the ultimate provision of 2001’s Bougainville Peace Agreement, which followed a brutal, protracted ...
Dairy farmers had some Xmas cheer this week, as dairy giant Fonterra told them the forecast payout would be the fourth-highest-ever, at the mid-point of its farmgate milk price range. The $7.30kg/ms means the cash payout for the season will reach $11.2bn, a rise of about $400m from the earlier forecast. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlin Syme, PhD in Vertebrate Palaeontology, The University of Queensland When you find dinosaur skeletons, how can you tell how old the dinosaur was? Like, if the skeleton is from a child dinosaur or an adult dinosaur? – Henry, aged 8. ...
The Council of Licenced Firearms Owners (COLFO) has had to clarify the law with Police and receive their reassurance that while the amnesty for ammunition was not extended to 20 December, Police will act as if it has been. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 We Are Here: An Atlas of Aotearoa by Chris McDowall & Tim Denee (Massey University Press, $70)Superlative ...
This week a petition with more than 15,000 signatures was presented at parliament to Nicola Willis, MP and opposition spokesperson for Early Childhood Education. Also attending were Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick and Hon Nikki Kaye. ...
It’s that time of year again when, for the third year running, a new A Christmas Prince movie is released. Sam Brooks was in front of a TV screen for the latest instalment’s debut on Netflix last night, and here catalogues the many stupid, wild, and wildly stupid things he ...
One of the most highly rated members of Jacinda Ardern’s Cabinet is under pressure over assurances given in relation to an immigration case. How bad could it get, asks Toby Manhire.There has never been a New Zealand prime minister more engaged with contemporary homegrown music than Jacinda Ardern. She’s forever ...
Kris Faafoi, Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media; Minister ofCommerce and Consumer Affairs;Minister of Government Digital Services; Associate Minister forHousing; MP for Mana.The latest allegations of a corruption scandal involving a Cabinet minister suggests this government is far too loose when it comes to providing access to power ...
The National Party cannot credibly critique the Government’s hikes to fuel tax while it refuses to commit to reversing these hikes, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, “Simon Bridges has lambasted ...
Newspaper staff were among those to express dismay and fury during the frenzy of denunciations that followed publication of an ill-considered cartoon about Samoa and the measles epidemic. The Spinoffrecorded their reactions under the heading ODT cartoonist infuriates his colleagues with Sāmoa measles epidemic ‘joke’. It also reproduced the ...
New Zealand Police Association condemns comments made by People Against Prisons Aotearoa following the fatal police shooting of an armed man who had made threats of suicide. ...
A new poem by Harry Ricketts. The Writing Life You want to write.You want to be published.You want to be read. You want to be a cult figure.You want to be reviewed.You want to write. You want to win prizes.You want to be anthologised.You want to be read. You want to be taught in schools ...
As Christmas is near, it’s time to set the record straight on some of the most commonly misunderstood aspects of employment law that apply to the festive season. ...
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.Kris Faafoi immigration case Fiona Connor and Tova O’Brien (Newshub): ‘I’m on it bro’: Messages show Kris Faafoi offering help to ...
The Minister of Local Government Nanaia Mahuta has announced changes to prevent Māori wards being voted down by referendums are off the table, saying she believes such a change is not possible within the coalition. ...
It’s officially the festive season, and what does that mean? An office Secret Santa with a budget of $20 and you’ve picked your boss. Instead of settling for a bottle of average wine and a ribbon, follow our essential guide on what to get those unique workmates.At last year’s Secret ...
The shooting of a suicidal man in Southland shows that police armament is dangerous, says criminal justice group People Against Prisons Aotearoa. The shooting comes just over a month into the controversial trial of heavily armed police teams in 3 regions ...
The Prime Minister should deal urgently with reports Cabinet Minister Kris Faafoi offered to help a friend over an immigration case, National Party leader Simon Bridges says. ...
The families of top former All Blacks are likely to donate their loved ones’ brains to research so the effect of head impacts in sport can be studied. ...
A woman who went on a Tinder date with the man who murdered Grace Millane tells her story, and issues a warning to other women to trust their instincts when something doesn’t feel right.First published on Newshub.co.nzI went on a date with Grace Millane’s killer while her body lay in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gottfried Lechner, Associate Professor and Director of the Institute for Telecommunications Research, University of South Australia, University of South Australia Satellites are becoming increasingly important in our lives, as they help us meet a demand for more data, exchanged at higher speeds. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Terry Goldsworthy, Associate Professor in Criminology, Bond University According to the latest figures, homicides in Australia are at historic lows and compare well against international trends. So what do the trends tell us and why is the homicide rate in Australia declining? ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy O’Rourke, Senior Lecturer, School of Architecture, The University of Queensland Welcome to the next article in our Designing Hospitals series, where we explore how architecture and design shape our hospitals and medical centres. Today, we look at what Indigenous people tell ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW The latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results are bad news for Australian students, parents, employers and policymakers. Pretty much everyone. Australian 15-year-olds are now below the OECD average in mathematics, and our results in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danielle Clode, Senior Research Fellow in Creative Writing, Flinders University It is only mid-November but we have to walk early to avoid the heat. A northerly wind picks up clouds of dust and pollen, sending dirty billows across the paddocks. The long ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Changes coming to fuel market, anti-vaxxer arrested in Samoa, and banks told to hold more capital.New recommendations to increase competition in the fuel market have been made by the Commerce Commission, reports the NZ Herald. Their conclusion is that it isn’t competitive ...
This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list and described by ReadingRoom literary editor Steve Braunias. ...
An alliance of top researchers is trying to keep New Zealand ahead of complex health challenges from overuse of antibiotics, threats to freshwater quality and emerging infectious diseases. ...
The birthplace of the Labour Party is once again at the forefront of a new movement, this time harnessing the power of the collective to step away from coal towards a low carbon future.Blackball is a small place with a huge history. This week the town, 29 kilometres from Greymouth, ...
Life expectancy is increasing all the time, and now actuaries and retirement experts say young people need far more information on what they’ll need to do with their money if they live to 100. Don’t worry, we’re here to help. The message from the Retirement Income Interest Group of the New ...
German politician Joschka Fischer has had a remarkable career. From street violence and helping to set up the Green party, he matured into the foreign minister and vice-chancellor of a united Germany, serving until 2005. His understanding of power politics led him to support the use of force in the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Scott Morrison said it with a straight face, and repetition for emphasis. “I’m very pleased, very pleased, with the performance of all of my ministers,” he declared on Thursday. This ringing if unconvincing universal endorsement ...
PARENTS AROUND THE WORLD PLEA FOR URGENT CLIMATE ACTION 222 parents groups from 27 countries have released a heartfelt joint plea calling on negotiators at this year’s UN climate summit – COP25 – in Madrid to push for ambitious and urgent ...
Government proposals to overhaul insurance contract laws should make the whole process of taking out insurance easier and simpler to understand for consumers, says Financial Advice New Zealand. ...
Despite New Zealand First lobbying hard at the Cabinet table, the Finance Minister says the case to move Auckland's port operations north has not yet been made. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Tomnay, Assoc. Professor / Director of Centre for Excellence in Rural Sexual Health, University of Melbourne Around one in six Australian women have had an abortion by their mid-30s. These women come from all age groups and demographics: some are mothers ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roslyn Petelin, Course coordinator, The University of Queensland Reports this week about the demise of the Apostrophe Protection Society may have been greatly exaggerated. The Apostrophe Protection Society was set up in 2001 in the UK by retired journalist John Richards with ...
Today the Court of Appeal released their decision to allow Helen Milner (The Black Widow) to have the last remaining body samples of the husband she murdered, in an attempt to prove her innocence by trying to see if he had an underlying heart condition. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Pearse, Lecturer, Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney Federal Labor this week commemorated a dubious anniversary – a decade of climate policy failure. And it pointed the finger of blame squarely at the Greens. Labor claimed that had the Greens ...
The recent statement by Simon Tyler on behalf of the National Provident Fund and the Government Superannuation Fund, that environmental and social goals must be balanced with financial risk and reward, displays conceptual confusion about the role of ethical ...
A bill designed to deal with terrorists returning from overseas has hit its latest speed bump as human rights groups raise concerns that it could be used to stifle press freedom. ...
by David Barber “To read,” says Jim Flynn, Emeritus Professor of Politics at Otago University, “is to enter a magic realm in which people are more interesting, informed, amusing and intelligent than anyone you encounter in everyday life.” It is a realm that half of New Zealand 15-year-olds never enter, ...
Democracy in New Zealand is suffering from a Parliament which under-performs in its scrutiny of human rights. A new report says human rights oversight by select committees examining potential legislation is weak and ad hoc. Human rights obligations and ...
Children’s Commissioner, Judge Andrew Becroft, calls the Breaking Down Porn report, released today by the Chief Censor, a ‘wake-up call’ for all New Zealanders. “I welcome today’s report. It’s a wake-up call and a catalyst for a national ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Scott Morrison has announced a dramatic overhaul of the federal public service, cutting the number of departments and creating several new mega ones, while removing five secretaries. The departments will be reduced from 18 to ...
New information has emerged showing it was the New Zealand First chief of staff who identified potential conflicts of interest between a forestry company and two senior government ministers. ...
Open Mike 18/01/2018 
We are very pleased to publish this submission is from Lucinda Stoan. She is a social justice activist, mother, and educator, based in Washington State in the US. This detailed and comprehensive source-linked overview of trans issues and what is at stake will be useful for many people, especially in ...3 hours ago
Newshub last night reported that Broadcasting Minister Kris Faafoi had apparently promised to help out a mate with an immigration issue. While its normal for people to approach MPs for assistance in this area, when you're a Minister, the rules are different: as the Cabinet Manual says, Ministers must "at ...7 hours ago
New Zealand's Underarm Banker: It bears recalling that the “independence” of the Reserve Bank Governor was for decades held up by neoliberal capitalists as the most compelling justification for passing the Reserve Bank Act. Interesting, is it not, how the ruling class’s support for the Bank’s independence lasted no longer than ...12 hours ago
“Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.” ― Martin Luther King Jr. A long and bitter court feud between former Conservative Party leader Colin Craig and Jordan Williams has been settled, with an apology and compensation from Williams. On Tuesday, Craig sent out ...24 hours ago
Some people seem to want to close down any critical discussion of the current research into the relationship between water fluoride and child IQ. They appear to argue that claims made by researchers should not be open to critical review and that the claims be accepted without proper consideration ...1 day ago
In an unreliable, strange and confusing world, Public Address is proud to present a measure of comfort and stability by annually asking everyone what words or phrases sum up the year that's been – and then giving some of them consumer goods as prizes for being clever or simply lucky.Well, ...1 day ago
Both my parents are pretty handy – and they seem to have the right tools for most jobs in the garage and they know how to fix practically anything. A similar story could be told about their generation’s experience in the workforce – being a generalist was not unusual and ...1 day ago
While much of the NZ left has transitioned to postmodern and identity politics in relation to transgender ideology, there are some very good articles about that deploy Marxist methodology in relation to this subject. The one below is from the British marxist group Counterfire and appeared on their site here ...4 days ago
“America the Beautiful!”, staunch defender of democracy, freedom and… a whole lot of despotic tyrants that play nice with what is called “the Washington Consensus.” America is indeed capable of immense good, but like any Nation, and most assuredly any aspirant to the mantle of Empire, great, immense evil. All ...5 days ago
Image credit: The beginner’s guide to blogging I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is ... 5 days ago
It hasn't been a good week for the Conservatives, pollwise. All major recent polls are showing their lead shrinking.Comparing each pollster's current (between 29/11 and 22/11) and previous most recent poll.Com Res - Conservative lead down 3 points.You Gov - Conservative lead down 1 point.Kantar - Conservative lead down 4 ...6 days ago
The Council of Disobedient Women has learned that the Prefect of Aro Valley has been promoted to a new role with the blessing of the Pope of Wellington. Softy Jejune Parson has been appointed Mother Superior of Woke Wellington for the work she has been doing calling out heretics, ...2 weeks ago
Mark Patterson, Spokesperson for Primary Industries New Zealand First spokesperson for Primary Industries, Mark Patterson, has called for awareness to be raised and more stringent biosecurity checks to be put in place for African Swine Fever (ASF), a widespread virus that is uncontrolled in most of Asia and a serious ...1 day ago
Live from the Whanganui Opera House, on the final day of the 2019 Labour Party Conference, Jacinda Ardern announced the largest investment in school property in 25 years. ...3 days ago
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Fletcher Tabuteau, is travelling to Germany, Poland, Austria, and Spain next week to bolster New Zealand’s political and trade relationships in Europe. While in Spain, Mr Tabuteau will represent New Zealand at the 14th Asia-Europe (ASEM) Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Madrid. “New Zealand strongly supports ...3 hours ago
Dr Ben Jansen is Oceania's leading prescriber of cannabis medicines, and a co-founder of the Hemp Foundation.org.nz “I’d like to thank the Labour Party and Chris Woodney. Thanks to his policy remit at Labours national conference, and Labours full support, ...1 hour ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Soong, Senior Lecturer in Teacher Education Practice, School of Education, University of South Australia Australian 15 year olds were around three and a half years behind their counterparts in China in maths, according to the OECD’s latest results for education systems ...2 hours ago
Cabinet minister Kris Faafoi has apologised to the Prime Minister for his messages to Jason Kerrison regarding an immigration case, but will not lose his job. ...3 hours ago
A historic referendum on independence has been completed in Bougainville. Johnny Blades of RNZ was there. People in the autonomous Papua New Guinea region of Bougainville have voted in an historic independence referendum. The long-anticipated referendum is the ultimate provision of 2001’s Bougainville Peace Agreement, which followed a brutal, protracted ...3 hours ago
Dairy farmers had some Xmas cheer this week, as dairy giant Fonterra told them the forecast payout would be the fourth-highest-ever, at the mid-point of its farmgate milk price range. The $7.30kg/ms means the cash payout for the season will reach $11.2bn, a rise of about $400m from the earlier forecast. ...3 hours ago
The Government is investing up to $9 million in a project that it says will help Southland farmers use their land more sustainably. ...7 hours ago
Donation legislation, the infinite monkey theory and the angriest man in NZ politics. Not to mention Paula Bennett's black-market oregano. ...7 hours ago
Newspaper staff were among those to express dismay and fury during the frenzy of denunciations that followed publication of an ill-considered cartoon about Samoa and the measles epidemic. The Spinoff recorded their reactions under the heading ODT cartoonist infuriates his colleagues with Sāmoa measles epidemic ‘joke’. It also reproduced the ...8 hours ago
You do not have to sacrifice short term returns in order to invest sustainably. ...9 hours ago
Winston Peters says the NZ First foundation is similar to the National Party’s foundation. Here’s how it isn’t. ...11 hours ago
The families of top former All Blacks are likely to donate their loved ones’ brains to research so the effect of head impacts in sport can be studied. ...11 hours ago
The Finance Minister Grant Robertson won’t be drawn on how much new capital requirements for banks will hit consumers. ...11 hours ago
Yet again, NZ schools have received a 'fail' when it comes to bullying but there could be an evidence-based solution. ...12 hours ago
This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list and described by ReadingRoom literary editor Steve Braunias. ...14 hours ago
Sky Sport News presenter Kate King previews a massive weekend for Kiwi sportswomen ...14 hours ago
A handy guide to all you need to know about impeachment. ...14 hours ago
An alliance of top researchers is trying to keep New Zealand ahead of complex health challenges from overuse of antibiotics, threats to freshwater quality and emerging infectious diseases. ...14 hours ago
NZ is seeing an increasing number of retail 'events' imported from overseas - how long before our spending is exhausted? ...15 hours ago
German politician Joschka Fischer has had a remarkable career. From street violence and helping to set up the Green party, he matured into the foreign minister and vice-chancellor of a united Germany, serving until 2005. His understanding of power politics led him to support the use of force in the ...18 hours ago
Despite New Zealand First lobbying hard at the Cabinet table, the Finance Minister says the case to move Auckland's port operations north has not yet been made. ...1 day ago
The year has provided tests for the PM's party, government, and the country as a whole - but she is confident 2020 will bring success. ...1 day ago
ACC is failing to live by the climate principles it proclaims. ...1 day ago
A bill designed to deal with terrorists returning from overseas has hit its latest speed bump as human rights groups raise concerns that it could be used to stifle press freedom. ...1 day ago
The final version of the Commerce Commission's report says both the retail and wholesale fuel markets are dysfunctional. ...1 day ago
by David Barber “To read,” says Jim Flynn, Emeritus Professor of Politics at Otago University, “is to enter a magic realm in which people are more interesting, informed, amusing and intelligent than anyone you encounter in everyday life.” It is a realm that half of New Zealand 15-year-olds never enter, ...1 day ago
Two very good posts over at Open Parachute.
The first begins –
Hear, hear Ken.
Fire and Fury.
Russiagate
…Clinton’s story…
I suppose that’s one way to pretend that Papadopoulos and Flynn’s testimony doesn’t exist.
It exists… so far it has not contained any facts relevant to the assertion of collusion
😆
Is that why they lied about meeting Russians claiming they had dirt on But But But Hillary?
Is it? …… . What do you know!
Xanthe – “so far” – an advisedly ‘safe’ while backhanded way of expressing your own confirmation bias.
You dont understand “confirmation bias”
It seems that the “very good” in your comment basically means, “confirming my viewpoint”, Bill. Isn’t that pretty much the definition of “confirmation bias” (the focus of a lot of the article’s discussion?
I thought the one commenter on the site asked a lot of pertinent questions, pointing out inconsistencies in the argument being put forward.
It’s also telling that a person writing a post entitled “Fire and Fury” has this to say about the book: “ I even have my own copy but am unsure now whether to waste time reading it. Wile the mainstream media is promoting it, more rational comments suggest the book is a disaster.” How does this guy measure what is “more rational” if he hasn’t read it?
I’m currently reading “Fire and Fury”. It’s one person’s thinking, based on extensive observations and interviews. It doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not. It certainly isn’t the last word in Trump scholarship (in fact, it’s not a work of scholarship), but that’s hardly surprising this early in the regime. I would say that yes, there is a bias at work (the guy doesn’t like or respect Trump), but I’d also say that it’s not exactly hidden, and when he’s not sure about something he gives various possible explanations or scenarios.
I’m only halfway through the book and so far he’s not suggesting any direct collusion with the Russians – the focus is much more on the dysfunctional relationships within the administration. And whether or not you like Trump, it’s hard to argue that an admin that one year in has left so many critical positions unfilled, has fired so many close-in people and has invented positions for family members is functioning smoothly.
One last comment (a bit of a segue) – I note the author of Open Parachute is an anti-flouride campaigner. Not known for their pro-science, evidence-based approach…
[You note wrong. Very wrong. It’s not at all flash to throw a patently false accusation out there in order to undermine or discredit someone]- Bill
I think that Open Parachute person and others should make a point of stating whether they are talking about international matters or in this country. There is a lot of waffle about Trump, which is reasonable as he himself is full of waffle.
But there is a need for analysis about what is happening in NZ, and the rest of the world impinges on it. But criticising all lefties’ discussion, when the person seems to mean that which is happening about Trump, and North Korea, and Russia is a different matter to what happens on the ground here and is likely to happen in the near and medium future.
So will people please state their point of interest when they are dissing lefties?
I can’t change anything about Trump and watch with foreboding. But I may be able to influence things in NZ, and surely that is the main focus of many people here.
I think most feel in their bones and synapses all the blows to the left. Those who want to be progressives have to spend time looking at planning and testing which ways they think we should try and progress. That is of direct interest I believe to most of us here.
The rest is of interest and concern, but watching and trying to avoid stupid and toxic decisions overseas has to be balanced with the need to do so here. So please lefties with real concern about NZ social needs and climate change and business don’t take your minds away from each other, keep in touch. Please don’t think that you’ll stop taking part here in the discussion if you get annoyed, just drop in each day with something of interest, comment on one thing from someone you know is a mind worker, and then we will keep the intelligent conversation going. It will prevent TS from being affected by pollution from RW maliciousness or careless crap.
Keep putting into the clean stream of thought please, for the mental health of the people devoted to leftie ideas that are bent towards a successful, busy, fair society with the twin goals of kindness and practicality.
Well said, grey.
Open Parachute’s missive seemed more a complaint about tabloid populism in US politics and media but when has it ever been different? So someone wrote a book criticising Trump – big whoops – he invites it.
I was ignoring you earlier because you were being a leftie fundamentalist.
+100 well said Grey.
Death to careless crap.
Life to clean streams of thought.
The point that should be made is that there is a split between the right and Left of Labour and they must be brought back to heel.
I note the author of Open Parachute is an anti-flouride campaigner. Not known for their pro-science, evidence-based approach…
Flouride, pro or anti is neither ‘science’ nor ‘evidence based’ policy…
That you made ‘one last comment’ serves to show you’ve not read or understand the ‘flouride’ debate…
So you did a fart in the lift…then walked away…
Are you or have you ever been a dental professional? Obviously not. Research by all the scientists in the field have proven without a shadow of doubt that fluoride is beneficial for teeth and reduces decay by 70% at the least.
That means its a “science, evidence- based approach”. RB did not use the word “policy” so stop throwing red herrings into conversations because you think it makes you look clever.
“Research by all the scientists in the field have proven without a shadow of doubt that fluoride is beneficial for teeth and reduces decay by 70% at the least.”
Citation, please?
I recall that information from Dental lectures I attended admittedly a good many years ago now, But the information hasn’t changed. Go look the subject up Rosemary. There must be oodles of information available from the professionals in the field.
There is ‘oodles’ of information…some of which appears to contradict your “…all the scientist in the field have proven….” narrative.
Yet, today, when a community swamps a free dental service there is no mention of fluoride as a preventative to tooth decay.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?
c_id=1&objectid=11976798
Fluoride is not, and never will be, a panacea for dental health.
Who is saying Fluoride is a panacea for all ills? No-one here or elsewhere. But it does assist in the prevention of tooth decay especially among children.
Tests have proven as much. Children of the 60s, 70s and 80s who lived in areas where there was fluoridated water had a far lower incidence of tooth decay than those consuming non-fluoridated water.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/panacea
Edit: it took me 10 secs to come up with updated information:
http://www.ehinz.ac.nz/indicators/drinking-water-quality/oral-health-of-children/
Anne….much as I would love to get into this issue…I simply do not have the time right now.
Having to deal with the results of an OIA request for information from the Ministry of Health about a completely different issue under their purview.
I was sent a file of over 30 megabytes of scanned documents…much too large for me to share with other affected parties unless it is broken down into manageable portions. Which I can’t do because the file cannot be altered unless the Ministry does it.
Which they have…but still requires me to send four separate emails to 13 or so people with appropriate commentary.
AND, and, despite the monster 30 megabyte break -the -gmail file…I still haven’t got the information I requested.
Sighs. Rolls eyes.
Hopes Anne and others understand why when the Mystery of Health makes dogmatic statements regarding any issue my automatic reaction is to doubt their every word.
“…when the Mystery of Health makes dogmatic statements regarding any issue my automatic reaction is to doubt their every word.”
Don’t mistake incompetence for duplicity.
Yes, You have told us in the past about some of your experiences with the ministry and I have much sympathy for you Rosemary. I, too,
have been on the receiving end of a government ministry (not the same one as yours) whose attitude left a great deal to be desired.
So I understand your reluctance, but in the case of the fluoridation issue… most of the original research was carried out under the auspices of the WHO which, of course, is an apolitical international body whose findings can be relied upon as accurate.
knock yourself out.
The link is to a search of the moh site which yields study reviews, cost effectiveness analyses, and comparisons of decayed/missing/filled teeth in NZ schoolchildren based on their flouridated water status.
700ppm-1000ppm is optimal for tooth health.
Oh my goodness! My kids have been brought up on untreated tank water….and barely a filling between them.
OTOH….even well into their twenties, they still act really, really guilty if they’re caught with a can of fizzy.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/78269090/rotten-to-the-core–our-childrens-dental-decay-problem
Terrible parent am I…
Fluoride or no fluoride…I don’t really give a toss either way…just get the bloody message through that weaning baby onto sugary drinks is really, really irresponsible.
And there are almost certainly kids in fluoridated areas who have awful teeth, and kids in non-fluoridated areas who drink fizz all the time and have not a filling between them.
Fact is, from a population perspective fluoridation is one of the best and easiest ways to improve kids’ teeth. Pointing to the results of one individual doesn’t count against that statement, even under experimental conditions.
Anne, leaving aside the obvious and many misinformed comments in your response….
You’ve made no mention of K2 or its place in the the body’s function with tooth development and maintenance…
The ‘fluoride dental industry’ is….not what you think…that is clear from the statements you’ve made…
Oh piss off. You come across to me as a fraud suffering from some sort of Dunning Kruger disorder.
Anne…
You responded to my comment which I had posted to someone else, and when you don’t like my reply to your interruption. …you tell me to “piss off”…
That’s itrational….
You seem to believe WHO are independent and apolitical…which of course they are not…
No surprise that you think I’m a fraud…
I don’t think you’re a fraud. Dunning-Kruger is the inability to recognise your own incompetence, whereas fraud involves an element of malice.
My body is more than my teeth. If I replace rotten parts of my teeth with a mercury containing filler that is durable and seals against any further infection my teeth will be stronger.
But as is the case with mercury, fluoride is also a known poison to other parts of my body.
It has been decided that the poison effect outweighs the dental benefits for mercury and it is still an open question on the cost/benefit with regard to fluouride. Many antifluoride people are quite able to acknowledge the dental benefits of fluoride but believe that the poison effect is great enough to negate these benefits.
Everything in excess is poisonous or dangerous. Everything. Even water. Based on your hypothesis we’d all be dead in a week or so. Best to stop reading pseudo-scientific claptrap. It’s bad for you.
Exactly. Toxicologists have an expression, “The dose makes the poison”.
Everything has toxic effects at some dose, and everything has no toxic effects at another. To think of something as inherently “toxic” or “non-toxic” doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Fluoridation is a fantastic public health measure IMHO.
Youre exactly right. Everything has a level of toxicity and it is the level that is the key along with the exposure time. Also people who take the dcientific approach in which I include myself dont usually feel the need to resort to abuse. As you say. The science should speak for itself
I find that 70% figure hard to believe. Where did you get that from? My cousins were brought up in and still live in a non fluoride country and all 3 of them have zero fillings even well into middle age. I think diet has much more to do with it.
Your ‘position’ seems devoid of nuance.
“Flouride, pro or anti is neither ‘science’ nor ‘evidence based’ policy…”
Is that your considered opinion? That (pro) fluoridation is neither ‘science’ nor ‘evidence-based’ policy?
As long as the city that hosts NZ’s Faculty of Dentistry (29th-best dental school in the world) continues to fluoridate its public water supply, I’ll be happy for the council that provides services for the city I live in to do so too.
Alternatively, it’s all a dental conspiracy, and fluoridation of tap water pollutes our precious bodily fluids, and actually weakens teeth ultimately channeling $$$ into the pockets of the evil dentists!
A former lecturer of mine used to say by way of an easily understood scenario:
A person would have to drink a full bath of fluoridated water in one sitting before they succumbed to any detrimental effects.
They’d also succumb to hyponatremia after the first seven-or-eight litres.
Dosage rears its fact-based head again.
You’ve misinterpreted my comment, completely…
And then you’ve posted irrelevant details…
I have misinterpreted some comments on this site, and am trying to learn. Which of your fluoride-related comments @1.2.2 did I misinterpret?
http://www.cochrane.org/CD010856/ORAL_water-fluoridation-prevent-tooth-decay
NOTE: Large extract cut/paste
Authors’ conclusions:
There is very little contemporary evidence, meeting the review’s inclusion criteria, that has evaluated the effectiveness of water fluoridation for the prevention of caries.
The available data come predominantly from studies conducted prior to 1975, and indicate that water fluoridation is effective at reducing caries levels in both deciduous and permanent dentition in children. Our confidence in the size of the effect estimates is limited by the observational nature of the study designs, the high risk of bias within the studies and, importantly, the applicability of the evidence to current lifestyles. The decision to implement a water fluoridation programme relies upon an understanding of the population’s oral health behaviour (e.g. use of fluoride toothpaste), the availability and uptake of other caries prevention strategies, their diet and consumption of tap water and the movement/migration of the population. There is insufficient evidence to determine whether water fluoridation results in a change in disparities in caries levels across SES. We did not identify any evidence, meeting the review’s inclusion criteria, to determine the effectiveness of water fluoridation for preventing caries in adults.
There is insufficient information to determine the effect on caries levels of stopping water fluoridation programmes.
There is a significant association between dental fluorosis (of aesthetic concern or all levels of dental fluorosis) and fluoride level. The evidence is limited due to high risk of bias within the studies and substantial between-study variation.
You missed out the bit where they excluded any study that couldn’t provide a “before and after” picture, and also the bit where they said that
It’s all in the link , McFlock
Nothing was missed…you managed to find it
The outdated information speaks for itself…it’s all unreliable…
🙄
“We don’t know everything, therefore we know nothing”.
Meh. Even if we periodically de-flouridated the entire country and then refluoridated 12 years later, you’d still be unconvinced. And be pissed at nationwide experimentation.
Every single year comparisons in school kids based on fluoridation levels show a increase from fluoridated to nonfluoridated catchments.
At some stage calling the quacky waggly thing a duck is a pretty dafe assumption.
Don’t make assumptions, or crystal ball on my behalf, McFlock….
Your comment leaves the impression that FL in or FL out is the start and end of the metric for reporting….
Surely you’re not that simplistic…
If you weren’t, you might have provided links to the data captured, to which you refer…and provided some analysis on the limitations of the data…Cochrane did…
But you didn’t…
Besides empirical evidence being an alien concept for you, you confuse “studied a topic to my satisfaction” with “can be bothered writing a text book in order to improve the ‘impression’ of some internet stoner on an acid trip”.
I note the author of Open Parachute is an anti-flouride campaigner.
Is he perchance also a CC denier? Does he believe the moon landing was a fake?
Is he one of those who is convinced the Twin Towers tragedy was an inside job eg. the CIA?
If they’re one pf the above they are usually all of them. I think I will continue to bypass Open Parachute.
It should be noted that the spelling is fluoride. Flour is finely ground something usually grains.
Well-spotted, Greywarshark. A silly typo.
And we can remember this particular learning. If ever we want to upset a thread, just put something about fluoride, or perhaps 1080, vaccinations, feminists, rape culture, cats being forbidden….into it, and the cogs and wheels will start turning and all the afficianados will come out and enter the fray. And take it all away. Household hint No. 1.
If they’re one pf the above they are usually all of them.
Not a very considered position, Anne…’life’ is more nuanced than that statement of generalized ‘missive’…
It leads to opinions being formed from ignorance, which is ultimately, hypocritical thinking…
Well, since RB has got things all arse over tit (ie – Open Parachute belongs to a blogger in favour of fluoridation), I guess you’ll row back on the groundless stuff about moon landings and what not?
Or is it open season on any one who doesn’t toe a particular anti-Trump line?
And if not “moon landing, 9/11” or whatever, then does the mere fact someone doesn’t witlessly jump aboard the anti-Trump bandwagon mean they’re as well being seen as a “moon landing, 9/11” etc flake…and worthy only of opprobrium and dismissal?
I guess the answer to that query is largely “yes”.
He’s far from the only person on the left to observe “The sinking of “fellow liberals” into a quagmire of political partisanship, political conspiracy theories, confirmation bias and hateful hostility to anyone daring to present an alternative viewpoint distresses me.”
A fair few of the comments in this sub-thread serve to illustrate that “hateful hostility” he mentions. And all off the back of a mistake or a lie on the part of Red Blooded that would have taken ‘one click and two seconds’ to get to the bottom of.
From Open Parachute
Well, sorry about that… I admit that I didn’t check out the two sections of the blog devoted to fluoride (one labeled “Fluoride” and one “The Fluoride Debate”). Please note that an error isn’t the same as a lie, though, Bill. Usually when people refer to something like “the Fluoride debate” or “the climate change debate” they’re trying to suggest that there is a debate, not trying to refute it.
Perhaps you could see my comment (without having read the appropriate sections of the blog) as being akin to the blogger’s confident commentary on Fire and Fury, without having read the book.
You made a fucking accusation based on nothing, nada and zilch. And you made the accusation with the sole purpose of undermining someone.
Your attempt at some innocent moi “an error isn’t the same as a lie” bullshit is just plain sickening.
A straight up apology would have been appropriate.
“fucking” “bullshit” “sickening”, all in response to a comment that begins “Well, sorry about that…”
Thankfully, red-blooded apologised for her error; imagine the invective if she hadn’t.
Bill, it’s sometimes hard to respond to you, because it pretty much guarantees ad hominem attack and abuse. Thanks to Drowsy M. Kram, for pointing out that I did actually apologise. (Have you ever done that, I wonder?)
Perhaps you’ve noticed that I often (although not always) disagree with you. This is sometimes because of a difference in values and sometimes because I believe you’re drawing false conclusions based on limited (or misinterpreted) evidence. Even when I think you’re making a mistake, I don’t call you a liar, though, and the reason is that to be a liar, you have to be purposefully promoting something that you know to be untrue. I didn’t do that in my comment above. I’ve admitted a mistake, I’ve explained what caused it and I’ve apologised for it.
[I wrote in relation to your false accusation, and because I’m not a mind reader, that it was a mistake or a lie. You don’t get to play victim in this and also accuse me of making definitive statements I never made. Take a week off. Next Wed.] – Bill
I understand RB – I also find it difficult to communicate with Bill. Although I also often disagree with his POV, I do find his posts thought provoking but usually refrain from participating in discussion on his posts to avoid the ad hominems etc. So thanks for saying to him what I have not had the courage to say!
I also hope that you have read the last two paras of my comment at 1.2.3.3.2 below. As indicated, my suggestion to check out someone”s background was not aimed at you as much as the other people who commented more specifically on fluoridation issues in the thread below your original 1.2 comment. I note that that ‘conversation’ is still continuing. Perhaps they should read some of Ken Perrott’s research articles …
I didn’t do that in my comment above. I’ve admitted a mistake, I’ve explained what caused it and I’ve apologised for it.
That doesn’t count for much with some people. I hope we’ll see you back again later, although it would be understandable if we didn’t.
+1
It’s not like you to employ weasel words though, PM. Feet, meet eggshells 🙁
Yeah, but I got bored the last time I was banned – mud-wrestling gimps at Kiwiblog palls quickly.
There’s a general comment in Daily Review about moderation (a reminder of how it works).
But for a more specific comment here, I looked at r-b’s comments once Bill had started moderating and what I see is someone arguing about the moderation and taking up a moderator’s time. That’s me coming in and looking from the outside, with no real investment in the conversation.
For me that stuff is hugely problematic and it’s the experience of a number of authors that if you don’t put a strong boundary up then you just have to keep dealing with increasing amounts of shit over time. That’s why some of us moderate the way we do.
If you don’t like how Bill debates, then don’t get involved in those discussions. If you don’t like how he moderates, then figure out where the boundaries are in terms of respect on his terms and take your chances if you want to argue about it (hint, calling a moderator baas is likely to up the ante).
“If you don’t like how Bill debates, then don’t get involved in those discussions. If you don’t like how he moderates, then figure out where the boundaries are in terms of respect on his terms and take your chances if you want to argue about it ”
Or write to the site admin stating your reasons why you think a moderator has lost the illusion of impartiality.
[that is an option too, and that will sometimes lead to a discussion in the back end about a particular moderation, which can be useful. But to be really honest, what I’m seeing here from commenters is not ok. It’s largely disrespectful and some of it looks personal.
btw, moderation isn’t about impartiality. It’s about a number of things including protecting the site, protecting the community and protecting the authors. Needless to say if one thinks that attacking an author is going to lessen the protection around authors, one is really really missing how moderation here works. I suggest people read the note in Daily Review – weka]
It’s definitely an option I recommend people take, but worth noting, reply to lprent directly, and not the generic standard address.
The address is on the contact page, and it does state to use for complaints and operational matters.
+1
Bill it seems to me that you are not infrequently redolent of the very types you complain of in your endorsement of Ken’s Open Parachute piece. You enjoy exceptionalism do you Bill ? Tirades OK for you……slam the same in others. Things are reaching the pitch they did when CV was at his worst. Losing interest……as are others.
I endorse the right of people and their opinions not to be just summarily dismissed by association with the peddling of demonstratively and patently false accusations…not just because it’s a shite thing to do, but because it can make this site vulnerable to legal action.
Hows about you?
RB making a mistake and acknowledging it exposes the site to legal action? Just trying to make sense of your justifications: would you please clarify that?
No. That’s not what I wrote. Can you not read?
edit – in response to your edit. My comment was explaining something.
Yes baas. Edit: yes baas.
[Too many levels of offence there OAB. 8 days (you managed to skip a step 😉 ] – Bill
+ 1 Mate I’m gone. Wishing all those I enjoyed reading lots of good vibes – mauriora
I hope you’ll be back Marty. You’ve educated me more than once.
Appreciate your take on things, Marty.
Hope you’ll be back.
I’m concerned Bill. We don’t want to lose regular good thoughtful feisty commenters. I detect a tendency for all moderators to tighten up too much now the election is over. I believe that you could sit back and let the regulars snap a bit and only step in when there was good reason.
There seems to be micro management entering into the style of the blog. But the long-time commenters are part of the pillars of the blog, and stuck it out and learned a fair bit about how the discussion should go. It should be a discussion between equals, not hand slapping for this and that like schoolkids. A stand-down for a while would be rare for the regulars. but they could suggest it for some of the newbies who just want to disrupt and haven’t a clue to bless themselves with. I’d like to see more relaxation and less didactic approach, and it would be easier on the mods.
We like respect and enjoy TS. Perhaps we need to get a bit sloppy and sentimental like Chris Knox. People who want to be in a good place in coming years need to stick together with others the same.
‘Cause it’s you that I love
And it’s true that I love
And it’s love not given lightly
But I knew this was love
And it’s you that I love
And it’s more than what it might be
I’ll just keep repeating this. It’s not a discussion amongst equals when commenters have a go at authors. Authors take precedence.
I really hope marty and rb come back, both are big assets to this site. But I’m way more concerned about losing authors. No-one seems too concerned about the lack of posts or authors currently. When I see the commentariat putting energy into how to support authors or the site or making the place that new authors might want to come to, I’ll probably see the comments about moderation as being more pertinent.
Just to add to this post by Bill, when I did a quick scroll through of the replies to Bill’s original post at 1 on the Open Parachute posts (without reading these), something was gnawing in my memory – and this increased when the subject of fluoride came up and the resultant discussion as to whether the Open Parachute author was anti-fluoride (and anti-CC etc).
A quick check of the About Me on the Open Parachute site and its sections on fluoridation, and from there the Researchgate link, confirmed the reason for my disquiet.
Ken Parrott, author at open Parachute is not just another blogger – he probably has far higher professional qualifications, experience etc etc in the field of fluoridation than anyone here on TS.
https://openparachute.wordpress.com/about-me/
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ken_Perrott?ev=hdr_xprf
A google search on his name/country NZ also provides a wealth of links re his background in the fluoride field, including a guest post a couple of years ago on TDB.
https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=Ken+Perrott+NZ&rlz=1C1LDJZ_enNZ499&source=lnt&tbs=ctr:countryNZ&cr=countryNZ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjloKSRi-DYAhVKa7wKHU1ACRAQpwUIIQ&biw=1024&bih=724
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/02/11/guest-post-ken-perrott-making-sense-of-the-fluoride-debate/
The links also include this very recent (Dec 2017) Scoop article on an article just published in the British Dental Journal by New Zealand researcher Dr Ken Perrott highlighting flaws in a 2015 research paper, widely cited by fluoride opponents, that had reported a connection between fluoridation and ADHD. On a quick glance, it appears to be a good example of a pro-science, evidence-based approach to peer review
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE1712/S00027/fluoridation-is-not-linked-to-adhd.htm
Not criticizing anyone who commented, but just suggesting that it sometimes does pay to take a minute or so to check out professional backgrounds etc, before making claims that someone is this, that or the other. It helps to avoid egg on face syndrome – I know from previous personal experience of this!
(EDIT – I see that Bill has now added a further reply to RB … Mine is aimed a bit wider than RB as i had no problem most of RB’s post at 1.2.
Here we go again @Anne (it seems) – re something a bit funny has happened this early new year.
I’m not sure if its just that contributors are wearing the undies someone bought them for Christmas – two sizes too small, or whether there is something other than fluoride in the water.
Roll on 2018, and we’ll see if it’s all as sustainable as we would like, or whether we’ll shoot ourselves in the tootsies
They’ll settle down. 😉
Gold. A commenter on the “Fire and Fury” thread writes:
I’m waiting for all information before jumping to conclusions.
The blogger responds:
That is more or less my position – and why I call the media promoted story of Russian Collusion as fact a “myth.”
Er, yes – declaring something “a myth” is what normal people always do when they’re “waiting for all information before jumping to conclusions.” That one’s almost funnier than his comments about everyone else suffering from confirmation bias.
Reporting Russian Collusion as “fact” is, in terms of there being no presentation of concrete evidence on which to base the conclusion that it actually happened, kinda creating a myth.
But hey, here’s Greenwald from last year, because he’s far more erudite and in depth than me.
Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet?
I’m struggling to think of a high-profile official investigation into something or someone that didn’t also involve public speculation out the wazoo, so it’s hardly surprising that this one also has its partisan followers.
OJ Simpson springs to mind, as does the attempted Clinton impeachment.
No questioning of official claims is allowed.
Writes the man busily questioning official claims. Now there’s a myth being created.
You for the excellent links.
Is “Russiagate” another deception like Iraqi WMDs? ‘
Yes
The media is corralling people’s thinking by spreading this lie.
Just as they did over WMD, Vietnam, McCarthyism. If we are lied to enough times, then most believe.
Fortunately there are independent journalists like Patrick Cockburn, and Eva Bartlett who have told us the truth about what has been happening in Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, Russia, the US and Iran.
Thank you Bill for sharing these important stories that go against the neoliberal lies.
Israel has been buying usa politics for decades ….. wielding so much power and influence,…. that the usa Govt did a white wash and covered up when Israel killed or injured around 200 u.s navy sailors.
At the time of the attack and attempted sinking “The Jewish council could influence 169 of the 270 elctoral votes needed to win the white house”
“The Israelis used code-names to protect their white house agents” …
Does anyone seriously believe the Russians have anywhere near the involvement or influence on U.S politics than Israel ???
At last!
I wish I could share your apparent relief or enthusiasm francesca.
Unfortunately, we’re in a kind of cultural morass that sits somewhere between that which surrounded Iraqi WMD and McCarthyism. My impression is the latter was more enthusiastically taken up by the public at large than the former.
I could be wrong on that front, but assuming I’m not, I’d suggest the level of acceptance of Trump/Russia blah tends more towards the McCarthy side of any WMD/McCarthy scale than it does towards any WMD side.
Media and elites had to sell the idea of WMD to a skeptical public, whereas this stuff…fck, it’s just getting gobbled up.
“I have long considered myself a “lefty,’ a “liberal” and a “progressive.” But I have despaired over the last 18 months at the behaviour of what I have often considered “my side.” The sinking of “fellow liberals” into a quagmire of political partisanship, political conspiracy theories, confirmation bias and hateful hostility to anyone daring to present an alternative viewpoint distresses me.
Hear, hear Ken.”
The problem with those kinds of very generalised statements is we have no idea who he is talking about. And that just creates confusion.
(and there is no single anti-Trump movement, hard to get past a headline like that).
Well, I took it to refer to anyone expressing “hostility to anyone daring to present an alternative viewpoint…”
And that being in relation to the rather specific anti-trump bandwagon running on allegations of collusion with Russia; rubbishy innuendo (that is not to be called out), and baseless gossip (also not to be called out).
On Russia, supposed collusion is to be treated as an accepted truth. The evidence will be forthcoming (apparently). Asking for concrete evidence now (after 18 months) is kinda “not cricket” and worthy of (in Ken’s words) “hostility”.
I don’t think Ken was implying there is a single anti_Trump movement, but was referring to ‘the’ anti-Trump movement – bones that both his pieces give flesh to.
Most of the political people on the left I speak with in the real world get that. Notwithstanding, it’s true to say we don’t tend to engage in political discussions with those who stray too far from our own views in real world situations.
Glen Greenwald an others have pointed all this out and termed it as a new McCarthyism. I don’t think they are wrong in having that view.
On Russia, supposed collusion is to be treated as an accepted truth.
Is it? There’s evidence that it happened, but evidence has to be weighted and considered before you can claim it’s proof of anything.
The closest thing we have to first hand knowledge of the motivation behind the investigation is Glenn Simpson’s testimony to Congress, in which he states that he and Steele became concerned that Trump is the victim of blackmail. Other fascinating nuggets include Trump claiming he does business deals in Russia when no such deals exist (which I take to mean that no property changes hands, no companies are registered and so-on – at least on paper), and that the FBI has a source in Trump’s organisation* (whether it predates his run for office remains unclear).
Assuming Simpson isn’t just lying about his motivation, that sheds an entirely different light on latter events.
When Trump says “there was no collusion”, perhaps that’s because he’s being extorted and blackmailed instead. Or perhaps But But But Hillary framed him or something.
Or perhaps it’s all just weak-sauce bs, as you seem convinced of.
The length of the investigation is a red herring.
*which means, btw, that their evidence probably won’t see the light of day until any trial occurs, for obvious reasons.
PS: Simpson says Steele severed links with the FBI because he came to the conclusion that they were interfering in the election. Make of that what you will.
So far yes, It’s all weak-sauce bs as far as I’m concerned.
That’s qualitatively different from being convinced it will all wind up being nothing more than weak-sauce bs. That’s merely a suspicion, and one that grows the longer no concrete evidence is produced.
There will be others, but Greenwald seems to be particularly surgical and thorough in his approach to supposedly factual claims being made by mainstream liberal outlets, and has very good pieces mapping out the who’s who of those behind pushing (many now debunked) “collusion and interference” stories through those outlets.
Sam Biddle, The Intercept.
If such evidence exists it would no doubt provide part of the case against Trump or his henchmen, and wouldn’t be revealed until then, just like anything provided by the FBI’s purported mole.
Its continued absence until then should be expected. I certainly wouldn’t firm up my position on that basis.
Why would concrete evidence being provided to underpin claims of the Russian government hacking DNC emails “no doubt provide part of the case against Trump…” ?
Also, there’s no mention of the FBI or an FBI mole in the piece you linked to.
Did you link to the wrong piece? Or are you just taking random Russia/Trump stuff and throwing it all in the same pot hoping to conjure up a Trump stew?
Wild projection/speculation about stew aside, I discussed Glenn Simpson’s testimony (in which he mentioned the mole) at 1.6.1.1.
For the reasons Biddle outlines in the article I linked: because it would validate the provenance of the phishing attack on the DNC, and thus provide strong evidence that anyone possessing that information (and offering it to Trump) was also working for the Russian government.
It would add context and flavour to any eventual charges or case for impeachment, for sure.
It’s worth reading Simpson’s testimony first-hand, if you have the time.
So unless it can be shown that the DNC emails were offered to Trump, then…
Yeah, CNN and a host of others already tried to run on that (“Proof” they said). it didn’t really end well for them 😉
https://theintercept.com/2017/12/09/the-u-s-media-yesterday-suffered-its-most-humiliating-debacle-in-ages-now-refuses-all-transparency-over-what-happened/
So unless it can be shown that the DNC emails were offered to Trump, then…
Well, if the CIA has Putin briefing Guccifer they probably have that conversation too. However, Trump’s people believed that’s what they were being offered, according to Papadopoulos.
As for CNN’s apparent eagerness to believe, I think you’ll find juries are harder to convince than journalists, so that’s another red herring.
All these false dichotomies are pretty tiring anyway. Cheers.
CNN lied through their fcking back teeth.
Will you be ok?
Collusion.
There is none.
Author of Trump-Russia Collusion Book Can’t Name Single Instance of Collusion in 30-Minute Interview
Like one of those repeat comedies that has you laughing as hard the second time around as the first. 🙂
The most revealing quote of all.
I’m a storyteller.
Not a journalist, then.
Luke Harding is further evidence of how far the Guardian has slid in the past 15 years.
“Pretty damning”.
This book about daffodils doesn’t mention Friesian Cows once!
Was the existence of the daffodils dependent upon the presence of Friesian cows?
No?
No matter whether mention is made of cows or not then.
Yawn. An argument with Hornetinthemiddle has more substance.
I wonder if Wolff’s Faulkner reference has any substance.
This article in the Guardian is worth checking out. It’s about PFIs (the British equivalent to PPPs), with a particular focus on the implications for the public sector when it’s left picking up the bill for (oh, so efficient!) private sector companies if they fail/declare bankruptcy when delivering public sector services or infrastructure.
So is the concern that a public company gets to run on private business lines and go for profit and big salaries, but if it strikes a bump and loses money, or is damaged and goes bust, then the taxpayer enters the picture and picks up the tab and pays out all the other business players involved?
Basically, yes.
I have to say that I don’t know enough about the NZ situation to say that things are exactly the same here, but in Britain at least, it seems that the economic benefits of PFIs were sold on the theory that they were a lower cost to the public purse than straight government funding, but that was only (marginally) true if the idea of “risk transfer” was factored in: “When you examine the claims made for the efficiency of the private sector, you soon discover that they boil down to the transfer of risk. Value for money hangs on the idea that companies shoulder risks the state would otherwise carry. But in cases like this (building hospitals), even when the company takes the first hit, the risk ultimately returns to the government. In these situations, the very notion of risk transfer is questionable.”
“The costing of risk is notoriously subjective. Because it involves the passage of a fiendishly complex contract through an unknowable future, you can make a case for almost any value. A study published in the British Medical Journal revealed that, before the risk was costed, every hospital scheme it investigated would have been built much more cheaply with public funds. But once the notional financial risks had been added, building them through PFI came out cheaper in every case, although sometimes by less than 0.1%.
Not only was this exercise (as some prominent civil servants warned) bogus, but the entire concept is negated by the fact that if collapse occurs, the risk ripples through the private sector and into the public.”
Thinking about risk in ventures and assessing it over time and possible cost and so on. Is that what is called actuarial? Anyway I just mention something that got into my head when reading about the great oil spill from a tanker near Alaska. I think it was the Exxon. The risk of the transport of oil had been assessed and it was felt likely that there might be an accident once in 25 years. To protect and mitigate against that there were requirements made of government keeping an overview, and shipping kept in the area for the especial purpose of handling large spills and damage to this large oil tanker.
25 years and perhaps an even shorter time, seems to be too long for people in general, and even government or business, to maintain a watching brief with the awareness and readiness as required by the assessment papers. When the disastrous accident happened, the government overview had been scaled back and to an extent the watchdog role had been captured by the company and industry, and the safety vessels with remedial equipment had been sent off to distant posts, and were
days, weeks away when needed urgently to deal with a very bad spill.
So government can not contract out effectively as it is the entity where the buck stops, and no other entity is going to take responsibility for the services or safety in the same way as the government does, as supposedly serving and answering to its citizens.
Carrillion is a very salient and timely lesson…PPPs (by any name) exist to enable the use of accounting deception (which no one believes) …even without the collapses and public bailouts they are a foolishly expensive method of funding capital expenditure/public service due to the shareholder returns, inflated salaries, self serving bonus culture and race to the bottom in terms of quality (both in construction and service) to win……another appalling example of short- termism.
I hadn’t gone to the link at the beginning of the thread and in case if others haven’t, the below paras are the start of an important column relating to the collapse of some ambitious entity called Carrillion.
Again the “inefficient” state mops up the disasters caused by “efficient” private companies. Just as the army had to step in when G4S failed to provide security for the London 2012 Olympics, and the Treasury had to rescue the banks, the collapse of Carillion means that the fire service must stand by to deliver school meals.
Two hospitals, both urgently needed, that Carillion was supposed to be constructing, the Midland Metropolitan and the Royal Liverpool, are left in half-built limbo, awaiting state intervention. Another 450 contracts between Carillion and the state must be untangled, resolved and perhaps rescued by the government.
We have the penetration of our business opportunities by these international and overseas-modelled companies. Profitable business is their game, and the game is moulded around contracts that are set rock-hard by legalities, if not in any physical legal form, probably all on-line.
The music suitable to the acting out of the whole enterprise, I think would be Chess. The satirising that I know and enjoy best, would be from the Telegraph’s Alex by Peattie and Taylor.
They are on a robot theme at present, and the robots are coming off second best to the simple cunning of stock traders. May as well laugh while business goes on going forward. I like January 15.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/alex/?cc=10151369
Our medias bias will not give much coverage to another rip off and the failures of Privitization ….. or as its modern bastard children are called …. PPP’s, PFI’s, charter schools etc
Its core national party ideology .
With a PPP failure the money is burned and contracted services do not get delivered … Meaning tax payers will pay twice
Even worse in the latest failure from england…. their contracted company also destroyed half a billion pounds of workers pension money …
Here’s a Swedish PPP scam example, which our media has probably never reported on …. As it also involves our Ex PMs line of work ….
“Swedish authorities in 2010 gave a single bidder the contract in a so called public-private partnership (PPP) – not only to build the hospital but also account for the financing and maintenance for decades to come.”
“” (Mission: Investigation) can now reveal that large sums in the prestigious project is routed to the tax haven of Luxembourg.”
https://www.icij.org/investigations/luxembourg-leaks/controversial-swedish-hospital-partnership-has-luxembourg-links/
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/granskning/ug/new-karolinska-advanced-tax-scheme-in-luxembourg
Trade Me making change in dog breed advertising that seems very ethical – reported
by The Wireless.
http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/pugs-prohibited-trade-me-bans-sale-of-brachycephalic-breeds
Yes, One News reported this last night, interviewing the head of the NZ Veterinary Association who said that even if owners were unaware of it, most of these dogs suffer and that their breathing problems are like trying to breathe through a pillow. I note the SPCA are also in favour.
My neighbour, died recently of emphysema. Very sad. There was the difficulty in breathing and talking made it worse and it was hard to listen to the effort. It seems unfair to the dogs to put them through that state of limiting breathing.
I see Treasury has admitted an error, again!! It is amazing when they get it right.
Straight out of Doctor Strangelove.
A newly drafted United States nuclear strategy that has been sent to President Trump for approval would permit the use of nuclear weapons to respond to a wide range of devastating but non-nuclear attacks on American infrastructure, including what current and former government officials described as the most crippling kind of cyberattacks.
[…]
But the biggest difference lies in new wording about what constitutes “extreme circumstances.”
In the Trump administration’s draft, those “circumstances could include significant non-nuclear strategic attacks.” It said that could include “attacks on the U.S., allied, or partner civilian population or infrastructure, and attacks on U.S. or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or warning and attack assessment capabilities.”
The draft does not explicitly say that a crippling cyberattack against the United States would be among the extreme circumstances. But experts called a cyberattack one of the most efficient ways to paralyze systems like the power grid, cellphone networks and the backbone of the internet without using nuclear weapons.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/us/politics/pentagon-nuclear-review-cyberattack-trump.html
It appears that the totalitarian dystopia of countless sci-fi movies is almost upon us. (Or am I just late to the party??) This tender…
NZ Police are seeking proposals from suitably experienced, qualified and resourced companies to provide the ABIS 2 (Automated Biometric Identification Solution) Facial Image Identification and Management, Scar, Mark and Tattoo, and Clothing database Technology Solution(s).
https://www.gets.govt.nz/NZP/ExternalTenderDetails.htm?id=19367937
We already know who you are…
That’s OK PR – we know who you are too 🙂
Dammit, not again!
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OPWZw48US2w/maxresdefault.jpg
The Police seem to try to remain separate from Parliament, though supporting stable government.
Are they under any control at all then? Or just sort of contracted by the gummint and get paid a budget amount, and set targets to reduce, contain crime etc. but the details of how becomes ‘an operational matter’. How much are the police serving the country, or developing into a self-motivated force, with its own individual practices only loosely related to current morals and ethics?
@ phantom snowflake (7)
Some say China is the future we’re closely tying ourselves too.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/100399747/in-china-facial-recognition-is-sharp-end-of-a-drive-for-total-surveillance
I have high hopes for Cabinet Minister, Tracey Martin. If she can match her deeds with her verbal down to earth, commonsense approach, she will be a very good minister in the Lab. led government.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/ministry-vulnerable-children-today-drops-its-name
Yep. If National were honest about what they really thought they would have called it the:
“Ministry for the Children of Hopeless People Who Can’t Survive in the Glorious Economic System Instituted by Dear Leader, Economic Genius, Overlord of the South, Rugged Individualist and Teemingly Fertile Lord English”.
But they settled for ‘Vulnerable’ – nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
That;s all changed AB. The old term was far too blatant.
I agree, Anne – I think she’ll be great – she has a huge task ahead of her though, and a lot of hurting people who want everything done yesterday
I’m also looking forward to Labour dropping the term “vulnerable workers”…
http://communitylaw.org.nz/community-law-manual/chapter-15-being-employed/vulnerable-workers-additional-protections-in-certain-industries-chapter-15/
From usenet (yes it still exists!)
__________________
Time to bring back the Ministry of Works
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/16/pfi-bosses-carillion-money-george-monbiot
Time and time again we see that private companies are more efficient
than the State – but only in relation to transferring profits to
shareholders and key managers, not to actually producing the goods and
services that they are contracted to provide.
Let this be a lesson to governments – the previous National
governments saw failures that cost taxpayers; will the LGNZF
government be fooled the same way?
The reality is that financing costs are cheaper for the government
than for anyone else – that is an immediate benefit for not having
partnerships with private companies that finance at higher rates. Then
there is control, and whether quality and risk are actually managed
well – for if anything goes wrong, the taxpayer ends up footing a
higher bill.
_________________
There is another perspective than mitigating financial risk – it is the time frame of the different parties. That of business is only a few years, and getting shorter. Under National, some roading projects were contracted to special purpose companies set up by interested parties to undertake the work entirely on borrowed money – those tendering had little capital of their own invested in the project. When the first Labour government decided to build social housing, they used government employees for design, engineering, planning, plans; they used largely contractors to do detailed work, but they used government employees to supervise the work and ensure that standards were understood and maintained. They built to last – and many state houses from that era are now regarded as well built, if now dated in style, and are still being used ovr 60 years later.
As an example of how we have fallen from those standards, consider the Defence Department. They moved out of their Stout Street headquarters, purpose built for them many years ago, to a new building in Aitken Street. In recent years the old building, which was structurally very sound, had become too small and in need of refurbishment. It was sold to a private developer who did that work and now leases it to another governmetn department. Meanwhile, the Aitken Street building is I am told being pulled down as it is now an earthquake risk. Similarly Statistics New Zealand moved to a new building which partially collapsed, fortunately not killing anyone, but leaving many archives lost as the building remains unsafe – in both cases while earlier buildings built with long term use in mind rather than “lowest cost is all that matters,” remain standing and able to be used.
Taking a longer view can be difficult – sometimes a slower project can only deliver full benefits in the next parliamentary term or even later, but running a system that respects employees with proper training programmes and high business ethics can bear fruit in a lot of other ways as those people move into other jobs in the private sector. Fair dealing used to mean something in business, and still does in some parts of the country. I believe the current government can afford to plan for a second term; provided they pander to short termism enough to be elected, but deliver enough permanent solutions in that second term to have a very good chance of a third term.
Do the work and run the counterfactual then.
The state builds everything as you want, and what happens next?
Addled dotard claims he has the best brain because he found his way through a dementia screen.
He blamed his three immediate predecessors, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, for failing to resolve the crisis and, a day after his doctor gave him a perfect score on a cognitive test, suggested he had the mental acuity to solve it.
“I guess they all realized they were going to have to leave it to a president that scored the highest on tests,” he said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-exclusive/exclusive-trump-says-russia-helping-north-korea-skirt-sanctions-pyongyang-getting-close-on-missile-idUSKBN1F62KO
He can’t see how his son and son in law having contact with Russians during an election campaign who offer to dish dirt on his opponent isn’t collusion and meddling, but at least we know he can tell a lion, from a rhino, from a camel.
Great stuff, from the idiot president.
Got my hands on his cognitive assessment.
https://archive.li/G9OSa/b5b35d2d6e586e46ef4374c2b2984ebd599cd7e9.jpg
Funny
🙂
You have to be a genius to answer that.
And a score of 40 out of 30 is absolutely amazing!
It’s a well known fact that some geniuses are raving mad.
You know how Einstein’s primary school grades were terrible? Well mine were even worse!
[lifted from Calvin and Hobbs]
I was referring to the copy of the “examination” joe linked to Anne. It is a joke.
If you have a look at the link you will see what I mean.
My reply was a light hearted quip too at Trump’s expense. Didn’t want to upset Bill by being too explicit. 😉
That was great. Bill and his mate Dr. Ken will not be pleased though.
Surprising result, but whatevs. At least he’s fit enough to stand trial…
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11976860
Let the rorting commence!
A gift for you.
When you already have this:
Several exemptions can be granted such as if the mother is at risk of violence, or if there is insufficient evidence of who the father is.
Why change it?
For example, articles seven and twelve of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
With regard to privacy, in the case of receiving a state funded benefit, I think most people would agree that if the conditions for receiving the benefit are met, even if one of those conditions require revealing who the father is, then equality under the law has been met. Though I don’t believe it is a law that benefits must be paid to citizens – they are just policies of the government at the time.
If privacy is the main concern, then the government has no need to know how much money I earn to tax me.
I don’t give a shit what you and “most people” agree on. Human rights are universal, no matter how many justifications you can come up with.
+1 in respect of OAG’s response to you.
You appear to have no understanding of NZ’s obligations and responsibilities resulting from NZ’s ratification of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ratification of other related International Conventions and Covenants etc since 1948 relating to things like the rights of the child, the rights of persons with disabilities, elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, status of refugees to name but a few of these – all of which are enshrined in various pieces of NZ legislation.
IMO this statement in your comment is astounding in its ignorance – “Though I don’t believe it is a law that benefits must be paid to citizens – they are just policies of the government at the time.”
If you really believe that then you obviously have no understanding of other pieces of NZ legislation such as the various iterations of the Social Security Act etc that have been enacted in NZ over the last 80 years since 1938 with the introduction of the first Labour Government’s social welfare programme – and which set out both rights and obligations of both the government and the recipients of welfare payments.
Trouble brewing for the new Government.
It seems property investors are fleeing the rental market with Labour’s policies being one of the driving factors.
With a sufficient number of new homes from Kiwibuild being years away, coupled with an insufficient number of new state homes proposed thus far, Labour are likely to face an increase in the number of homelessness and tenants facing soaring rents (along with their related ills) over its first term. Risking widespread voter disillusionment.
How will Labour overcome this? Will they buy private rentals and turn them into state rentals? Will they buy and turn private rentals into Kiwibuild homes?
Will they be forced to house more in motels? Giving the opposition their stick to hit them with.
“Trouble brewing for the new Government.”
You’re excited, I can tell!!
I don’t find a potential increase in the number of homelessness and tenants facing soaring rents exciting, Robert.
How will Labour overcome this? Will they buy private rentals and turn them into state rentals? Will they buy and turn private rentals into Kiwibuild homes?
That’s going to force up house prices.
Desperate government = ask for whatever you want.
Hold it. Every one look at BM becoming a stable genius. How amazing it is the house prices will go up. Your a real fucking genius you know that BM… Amazing…
It will offset falling investor and owner buyer demand. Thus, will make little if any net difference to demand, hence market price.
You know at some point when investors make shitty investments they should actually lose out on it when it goes tits up. I mean. My god, the government can’t keep bailing out unsophisticated investors all the time.
It’s not about bailing out investors (which maybe an unintended consequence) it’s about securing homes for people and families.
Nah. It’s like BM is reading from a script or something… Like he’s given these messages to say with out even understanding the words that are coming of his keyboard and when ever he goes off script he just comes across as a Nigerian con artist. He’s worthless.
In Wellington, it will, if it became known the government was buying existing rentals and they were desperate for them, then it becomes a seller’s market and you can start asking above the going rate.
Not like the government has to go to the bank and get a mortgage.
Anyway, the big issue is that people have taken their rentals off the market, so unless the government can convince these people to either sell their rentals to the government or put them back on the market it will make no difference.
The problem still is there’s not enough rentals, complete fuck up by Labour.
I mean that’s the definition of a property bubble. If the government purchase above market rates then who will pay the next trench up of house prices… See the false ideology? People want security not a Ponzi scheme.
Regardless of it being Wellington or not, they would merely be shoring up the downfall in demand, thus largely maintaining current market prices, not increasing them.
Due to the poor condition of a number of rentals (especially in Wellington) and the fact the Government’s budget will be limited, one would expect offers will be realistic, despite any perceived desperation.
We’ve already had BMs hysteria over drug testing state houses, and not even been unfit for habitation. Now BMs so thick in the head he dosnt even understand that he’s pushing a Ponzi scam. He’s a totally con.
he does understand supply and demand
If you think all rentals and tenants are the same then you’re insane… Because when BM assumes that all tenants and rentals are the same it’s actually mathematically impossible for BM to derive a supply curve…
I mean… Fuck me… This is why I don’t educate flaky virtue signallers.
If carefully managed a glut of homes for sale that eases pricing in the ‘1st home’ category could be a good thing. I think it would be interesting to see what price range of properties investors are selling up. Gut feel tells me it won’t be the expensive end of the rental market, those tenants are better placed to absorb increases. The renters that are finally able to afford a starter home of their own will be making their previous rental home available to others with their move.
At this stage, easing pricing to widen accessibility to more first home buyers would more than likely require prices to fall. And a falling housing market would exacerbate the new Government’s problems. Which is one reason why Labour campaigned on slowing the rate of increase, not dropping the current value of homes.
Investors selling up basic boxes in West and South Auckland could see an over supply in one sector of the market, prices easing in that under 500k sector. I guess there would be a spill-over to the 1.5 million dollar McMansions but that sector could remain quite buoyant. Investors won’t be pumping stock into that sector, not increasing the supply.
Great spin potential for Jacinda’s mob.
“Does the Prime Minister acknowledge that 2000 rental homes have had ‘For Sale’ signs hammered into their verges in the last 3 months?”
“Yes, 1st home ownership take-up is the highest it’s been for 5 years and rising. Those first home buyers are vacating rental homes.”
The problem is with the realestate industry needing sales volume, so pretty much convincing retirees to sell the family home for a million and scale down. The problem is those scaled down beach homes or what ever… Is closing in on the million dollar average. And this is usually the one nest egg for retirement so it’s like once the money gone. Then what?
If there’s continued down turn in construction then there will be a recession kiwi style so consideration must be given to keeping the kiwi home, not selling.
“1st home ownership take-up is the highest it’s been for 5 years “
With record high immigration, thus new immigrants looking for their first NZ home, it’s not that surprising.
“Those first home buyers are vacating rental homes”
While some of them will be, evidently it’s done little to ease the current rental shortage problem with demand exceeding supply. Which suggests it’s more a case of new immigrants buying their first homes squeezing locals out, hence forcing more to rent.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/property/100675144/rentals-in-hot-demand-and-shortage-wont-ease-anytime-soon-trade-me
@ David Mac (12.3.1.1)
While it will be largely centered around the lower end of the market and in areas with a high number rentals, it won’t be solely limited to that end or area of the market. So yes, their will be spillover. Along with a heighten risk it could all quickly unravel.
Buyers are far less inclined to buy in a declining market, preferring to hold off (thus adding to the downward spiral) expecting to save thousands as they anticipate prices to further decline.
The world dodged a bullet when the warmonger lost…oh
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday committed the United States to an indefinite military presence in Syria, citing a range of policy goals that extend far beyond the defeat of the Islamic State as conditions for American troops to go home.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/us-troops-will-stay-in-syria-to-counter-strategic-threat-from-iran/2018/01/17/eeed9d16-fb8f-11e7-9b5d-bbf0da31214d_story.html?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.04b2a86d0a7a
Not clean.
Not green.
Wasteful.
‘Idiotic systems’: NZ most wasteful country in developed world
The greed of farmers, the weakness of neoliberal politicians and the devastating impact of irrigation
Its consequences.
Millan Ruka on Facebook
Photo 1
Photo 2
Photo 3
A history lesson…….
Before you condemn Fox News as the most outrageous media outlet in
the world, have a look at the English version of French state television.
France 24 News, 11 p.m., FACE TV (Sky Channel 83), Tuesday 16 Jan. 2018
We are depressingly accustomed to television “news” being often little more than a conduit of state propaganda, whether it’s on the BBC, ABC (the Australian one), RT, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera, PBS, CBS, ABC (the American one), NBC, MSNBC, Fox News, and our own TVNZ and NewsHub. As craven as all of the above are, however, the other night I saw something that equalled, perhaps even surpassed, all of the above for sheer brass-plated, malicious, bloody-minded dishonesty: I watched the first ten minutes of the English version of France 24.
The alarm bells were ringing on this from the first live cross on the very first item, about the call for the PLO to cut its ties with Israel. That cross was to “our correspondent in the region, Irris Makler.” Now, long-time listeners will remember that we encountered this shamelessly one-sided Israeli-Australian back in July 2011 when RNZ National wheeled her on to talk about a convoy of peace activists trying to break the illegal blockade of Gaza. She joked to Kathryn Ryan that the Gaza peace convoy was “dead in the water”, sneered that there were “celebrities like Alice Walker” on board, and ignored the presence of the 86-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein. [1] A week later, she was still defaming peace protestors, this time for Deutsche-Welle. [2])
It turns out that Irris Makler has not changed her modus operandi in the slightest: “You know Palestinians will pay a price internationally,” she intoned darkly. Then she claimed, in contradiction to all evidence, that the Oslo agreements had led to “great changes” in the Occupied Territories.
Unbelievably, there was worse to come. The newsreader, one Alexander Aucott, introduced the next item, about Ahed Tamimi, the 16 year old Palestinian girl arrested and charged for slapping an armed IDF soldier. He read out, with a straight face, that she had been:
Alexander Aucott should have mentioned that just before Ahed Tamimi slapped one of the soldiers who’d invaded her yard, she had learned that her 15-year-old cousin Mohammed had been shot in the head at close range by an Israeli soldier. But for some reason Aucott—or more likely, his scriptwriter—chose to ignore all that and instead portray her as an aggressor and the soldier as a victim. It’s not many years since French state media and scurrilous tabloids approvingly covered the Sarkozy government’s loading of gypsies on to trains and expelling them from France. Clearly, honesty and integrity still count for little or nothing in the French state media.
The impression of shabbiness and lack of professionalism was only magnified by the appearance of Alexander Aucott, who looks like a young, scruffy clone of Neil Kinnock, and glowers at the camera reproachfully as he mouths his loaded lines. The wretchedness of all this was only magnified by its following immediately after a brilliant Democracy Now! special on Martin Luther King.
[1] /open-mike-04072011/#comment-347912
[2] /open-mike-11072011/#comment-350723
Take a look into the ‘free speech’ laws in France…
They’re currently seeking to control ‘fake news’…
No doubt you’re already aware…
No, he’s lucky, there are no fake news laws in NZ.
Well all Stuff and rhe Herald provide is propaganda and fake news.
Hence the apathy and ignorance of some many New Zealanders.
So many people vote against their own interests, supporting ghastly neoliberal policies that ruin society and the environment.
The media corral people into opinions by repeating the lies.
France 24 is fake news. At least it was on Tuesday night. And I’m sure it regularly and dependably delivers such nasty propaganda; I don’t think Mr Aucott’s gruesome performance was an aberration.
Trump is a direct result of the Clinton’s. Why do I say this well first Trump and the Clinton’were associates and Bill would have told trump about the Mana that A President of America has and this would have made Trump obsessed with the goal of becoming President in my view. Bill was that obsessed with getting that Mana back through Hillary that he minupulated the Democratic party to get Hillary as there front runner candidate and not Bernice Sanders and wallar we have Trump as President the way trump is behaving is because of what Bill told Trump. I say if it looks like one talks like one than he is a Racist Bigot who panders to his polling that is what is keeping him in power and he will use anything through anyone under the bus say anything to keep this Mana that he is intoxicated with. This is a very dangerous man with the world future in his hands and you know what comes first in trumps world Trump. Is this the person whom is supposed to look after all Americans wellbeing Ana to kai
trump is the world’s biggest mana muncher.
Sorry about the heat morning rumble you should have got the bug spray out and sprayed the sandflys lol. They won’t shut you down that would make OUR Mana even greater I wonder what happened to that South Waikato airial of yours last year???????. I figure out that when I get a random phone call unanswered my phone is been hacked they can’t stop me using it for posting on the standard but they can listen and use the camera and also change my alarm and turn alarm off. Every time the sandflys try and spin shit about me they end up with shit in there face. This will allways happen because I have done nothing.
Its cool being famous from Pokai Tikapa Waiomatatini Tairawhiti I go into the Putaruru supermarket and there is a lot of chatting and excitement going down I start shopping and when I got to the checkout everyone’s vanished. The sandflys have followed me into the shop and told/bullied everyone and told them to not let me know that I’m well known. I have been going into this supermarkets for 12 years off and on The same thing happens at Rotorua pack and save they are so _____ its not funny Ka kite ano