Resident Standard poster Eddy is, actively dissuading political parties and activists from giving any support to the wharfies, calling on the Greens and even Occupy Activists to join the Labour Party in turning their back on these workers.
Eddie refuses to admit that this dispute is about union busting, repeating the right wing narrative about this dispute, that it is all about wage demands. Eddie has a closed mind (and heart), when it comes to this dispute.
Compare this to the Greens, Denise Roche’s statement on this dispute. Roche prefers to keep an open mind, going right to the heart of the matter in questioning the management’s motives:
I wonder what the management’s real aims are, given that the company had previously drawn up a strategy to contract out the workforce
Denise Roche
Read Denise Roche full post on Frogblog
Compare Denise post to Eddie’s post against giving support to the wharfies.
Some have compared the Port of Auckland dispute to the 1890 waterfront dispute, 1913 general strike, and 1951 lockout. They want Labour and the Greens to get involved. Actually, this is no 1951 redux.
Eddie
Eddie justifies his call to withhold support from the wharfies, by minimising their struggle in comparison with past struggles.
Only 300 workers in one port are involved at present and there have been a few hours delays for a handful of ships on the 5 days of striking. Those disputes (in the past) were about workers trying to win fundamental gains: the right to form unions, the right to paid breaks, the right to a fair pay increase. They were about the fundamental balance of power between capital and labour.
Eddie
Eddie refuses to contemplate the idea that this dispute is also about principle, instead spreading the lie that this dispute is all about wage levels between competing companies, and ignoring the central issue of the dispute, management’s intention to contract out all the union jobs.
This dispute is about a business trying to cuts its wage bill so that it can undercut a competitor.
Eddie
Not once in his post does Eddie even mention the words “contracting out”.
If this is what Labour supporters like Eddie are openly admitting to in public, I can only imagine the hidden pressure the Labour Party is putting on the Greens, left activists and other unionists to distance themselves from the wharfies.
To the Green Party, Occupy Activists and all trade unionists in Aotearoa, Stay strong, resist the demand of the Labour Party to betray the wharfies by withholding your support. Instead do the opposite.
Eddies unspoken sub-text, that the wharfies struggle, “is about a business trying to cuts its wage bill”, Is that, if only the workers made more concessions, this dispute would be over and their jobs would be saved.
Eddie is either ignorant of the facts or being deliberately misleading.
Eddie has omitted the fact that MUNZ has made every concession the company have asked for.
The company is also offering workers a 10% wage increase, to workers to leave the union.
Eddie claimed, that unlike disputes of the past, the wharfies struggle is not about workers trying to win fundamental gains: the right to form unions, the right to paid breaks, the right to a fair pay increase. About the fundamental balance of power between capital and labour.
This is exactly what this struggle is about.
To consciously promote this lie, is to expose yourself as an active enemy of working people.
My hope is that someone in the Labour Party with some authority, will have the courage to speak up and distance the Labour Party from Eddie’s views.
I’m quite impressed by the pressure that is starting to build momentum, for Labour to “step up”. From party members, and the wider left.
I think the chances of Labour leadership giving the wharfies unequivocal support are about the same as those for me winning lotto. But hey – I have every confidence that I will win it one day.
btw Jenny – I appreciate your work here at The Standard.
Here, EDDIE thought it would have been excellent for Shearer to speak out on the following (in fact penning the words FOR Shearer), saying that it would “consolidate his (Shearer’s) brand”:
So perhaps EDDIE is pushing for Shearer not to get involved on the side of the union and PoA workers at this stage, because doing so wouldn’t fit ‘Shearer’s brand’. Whatever that is.
“We will protect the right of workers to negotiate for fair pay rises. We will continue to argue that workers are an asset, not a cost, to business, and they deserve fair pay. We do not agree that workers have to lift their productivity before wages can rise – increases have been outstripping wages for decades and the share of GDP that goes to workers here is much lower than in Australia”
Now, this paragraph has direct application to the PoA dispute.
So why would Shearer not say the exact words above while speaking about the PoA dispute not in specifics but in terms of Labour’s principles.
If Shearer did not want to get involved personally at this stage (and tactically there might be sense there), then why not allow one of his spokespeople to issue a press release about the dispute, supporting worker rights to good faith bargaining and standing firm against downgrading of their job security.
I feel these are questions worth asking.
PS does anyone ever talk about Gandhi’s “brand”? Martin Luther King’s “brand”? Michael Joseph Savage’s “brand”? Norman Kirk’s “brand”? I find this part of it fucking ridiculous.
‘PS does anyone ever talk about Gandhi’s “brand”? Martin Luther King’s “brand”? Michael Joseph Savage’s “brand”? Norman Kirk’s “brand”? I find this part of it fucking ridiculous.”
Modern drivel speak along the lines of the corporate credo, mission statement etc etc.
Every time I hear someone quoting them I’m reminded of a line I read in the UK years ago –
Oh dear. I sure hope my lotto outlook is brighter.
From Idiot Savant at ‘No Right Turn’:
Useless
So its come to this: after a week of silence on the Ports of Auckland dispute, the Labour Party has come out and confirmed that it is in fact a useless waste of space:
Yesterday Labour industrial relations spokeswoman Darien Fenton, who has been spotted on the picket line at the port, said her party was not taking sides in the dispute.
“We’ve been hoping that the parties will settle this, that they’ll find a way through this.”
Ms Fenton said Mr Shearer had been in regular touch with both sides, “and he’s in contact with me and we’re all discussing it regularly”.
“Our strong view at this point is it’s not helpful for politicians to get involved.”
Its not quite Walter Nash’s “neither for nor against”, but it amounts to the same thing. Faced with a test of its core values, Labour flunked, preferring to sit on the fence than speak up. And as a result, their party’s name is now an exercise in false advertising. What does Labour stand for now? It’s certainly not labour. Instead, all they offer is an alternative set of political managers, a different set of bums on seats. And this is supposed to inspire people to turn out and vote for them? The only thing it inspires me to do is look for a party that actually appears to believe in something.
But its not just a case of undermining their brand. Labour has just sent a clear message to its supporters that that support is a one-way street. You can support them, but they won’t support you. No self-respecting person should accept such a one-sided relationship.
according to that most right wing of right wing media outlets the dompost, the dispute is about lumbering the POAL with all the costs while the stevedoring is privatised.
that was yesterday for $1.60.
I must check the library to day to see if anything has changed.
Much of the net will soon be dark… many websites are being taken down in protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), which are backed by big entertainment and media interests.
The 18th January 2012 marks the day when sites like Google (not a full blackout), Wikipedia, Reddit and BoingBoing will go black in protest. The blackout will be in effect for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC.
The Jackal has ceased transmission in support of killing the bill. #SOPASTRIKE
SOPA has already been canned by the house. Senate is still going ahead with PIPA AFAIK but without the house passing it, it doesn’t really matter much. Also the executive (white house) issued a statement saying they were very cautious about it; I reckon if it came to it Obama probably would have pocket-veto’d it.
Hey Lanth – just as Obama said he had serious concerns about the NDAA and its detention without trial of US citizens on US soil clause, and that he might veto it?
Jenny tried that this morning. For anyone with post editing (at least), her post today showed up as complete black. She’d managed to put in a empty color box div that covered the whole post by default.
I haven’t been annoying the trolls for a while and thought today was an excellent day to do just that.
Here is a new video detailing the different elements of the collapse of the three WTC buildings on 911.
Bombs in the basement and the lobby and three pyroclastic flows as hot as a vocano’s pyroclastic flow are some of the puzzling and unexplained issues addressed here.
You should totally use it in conversation. My boyfriend and I have. It’s fun to watch people’s slight double-take “did I really hear that right?” reactions before they just assume that actually you said his name properly.
How’s Richad Gage’s petition coming along? Has he reached critical mass yet? I mean he has been gathering signatures for a good number of years he surely must have close to 100,000 people. It can’t take that long to get support especially when you have the ‘truth’ behind you.
It’ll all come out at the upcoming Toronto conference, Gosman. That’s where the truth will finally be revealed and the guilty parties will be named.
No wait, they already had the Toronto conference and, er, nothing happened. It’s a conspiracy, I tells ya! The NWO engineered the truthers to spontaneously explode under the weight of their own prejudices by igniting the hot air they produce in a series of giant waffle makers that were smuggled into the hall disguised as aircraft.
Damn George W. Bush, the smartest, cleverest and most dangerous drunk and coke addled illuminati to ever walk the earth. Quick, pass the Koolaid, I feel the rapture coming on!
VOR doesn’t realise that these things take time. Unlike a nano-thermite charge which can cut through an inch of rebar as if it were butter left out on a summers day.
The above link is well worth a look imo. Bomber hosts David Cunliffe and ‘Back-Benchers’ presenter, Wallace Chapman, and they discuss their predictions for 2012. They all impress, in their different ways.
RIP Stratos. Still very pissed-off about Stratos and TV 7
Agree, freewiew is becoming a joke and Sky’s the winner under the nats….funny that.
Heartland going behind sky’s paywall is a typical example of taxpayer funded content lining their mates pockets. wonder where recycling rick will pop up next being a good old blueboy.
I watched that this morning, what a great panel. Cunliffe is an exceptionally cool cat. Love listening to him speak, his personality and his politics. Great mix of relaxed, authoritative, friendly and accessible. I think Labour have it right, if Shearer fails to fire, there’s a well oiled machine ready go…
I watch this wishing more than ever that David Cunliffe was leading our country right now. Or was it’s Finance Minister.
When you think of all the talent that has come out of bfM and craccum matured through our broadcasting system it is also sad that at the moment Wallace Chapman and Bomber can’t get a wider audience for their work. bFm still misses Chapman’s ads.
Only marginal bright spot is the talk of cooperation between Labour and the other opposition parties, that they would ‘hunt like a pack’. I mean this simply has to happen strategically when you look at the way the Nats have used ACT, Maori party and UF.
Wish Cunliffe had looked this relaxed on previous tv appearances, rather than tried to look finance ministerial. Joyce/Key always look relaxed- it gives them authority even when they are talking crap or spinning moonbeams.
However I draw the limit at fire and forget trolls. If people respond to critics with thought, even if they avoid the questions raised, then they are fulfilling the requirements of the site because they are engaging with people.
Think it through. It is a self-correcting problem. If they wind up with noone bothering to interact with them then their comments by definition become fire and forget (or in the worst cases they wind up talking to themselves) trolls. Then I’d act.
It is the responsibility of commentators to be relevant to the others here. Otherwise they’ll start losing their ability to comment…. evil eh? 😈
I don’t like how the rss feed only shows a snip-it of story, it used to show the whole think.
This means it takes me more time to read your posts and on somedays this will mean I wont read them at all.
Please please go back to the old system, your not loosing money over the difference and if you are are doing it for the vanity of page view then you know you could use feedburner to count how many people are reading your rss feed.
The triggering problem was with people reading just the initial RSS feed and responding to that because the client side RSS systems weren’t picking up the revisions. Posts often get a bit of editing just after publishing. I noticed several people doing it and it irritated me (Cactus Kate being the triggering example).
But as the sysop I have been very concerned about RSS for some time as well because the RSS feeds are now starting to rival the spambots for overseas data volumes (and a lot of those appear to be spambots).
Even the traffic for RSS feeds for identifiable people is increasing. Presumably because many people aren’t using aggregation systems like feedburner. I’m always concerned about data volumes especially overseas traffic because if I can keep those down then I can use smaller and cheaper servers.
To give you an idea of the problem. The main server is currently in NZ. It is convenient to keep in NZ because it massively improves performance for the 95+% of our readers who are in NZ. When I moved it back here I set it up with near realtime replication with a server in the US and routed all overseas traffic outside Oceania to it. The problem was as that we ramped up in posts and comments towards the election the replication traffic broke our overseas datacap.
The NZ server has free local traffic and a 60GB overseas traffic datacap that costs $3/GB over that cap. That is mostly because of the costing model for the Southern Cross cable which is horrendous for local servers. Replication was costing us hundreds of dollars per month. So I pulled all of the traffic to NZ and relegated the US server to a warm backup. However as we got closer to the election the overseas traffic kept increasing and shows little sign of dropping post-election. It is now starting to cost us over the cap.
There are a few humans using the overseas data for reading the sites. But mostly it is robots like RSS feeds, spambots and search engines. I’m happy to tolerate the search engines crawling the site (~20GB per month) and I can mostly use SEO tuning to minimize their impacts on our data. Spambots I tend to remove using .htaccess and other tools and their traffic has been reducing.
But the RSS feeds have been most of the the overseas traffic increase. Based on the posts that they picking up (comments have a different pattern) they’re crawling the whole site. So presume they’ve bots and I don’t think that there are too many humans using it.
So I can leave the RSS with full posts. But I’d have to move the server out of NZ to get around these poxy overseas data caps, thereby reducing the service for most of the readers. Or I can massively reduce the size of the RSS posts and piss a few people off – incidentally the people who cost us without helping to pay for the site.
Sorry – RSS is becoming a liability in NZ. If I can figure out a way of doing it, I’ll probably get around to putting full feeds on something like feedburner. But I can’t leave the RSS’s wide open.
Why not put the RSS feed on a cheaper USA server, speed isn’t really an issue for rss data.
Have to come to the site to read the story would cost you more as the amount of data on a web page vs RSS feed is much greater. 1mb vs 30kb … (public service ads + comments)
Having the RSS data there would not cost so much, if the cost is so much, then use a vpn service like astrill so you can send your data through a NZ vpn address (national data cost) to the USA for $5 a month (vpn cost).
I don’t see much spam on the standard and rss would not be the problem, the user signup would the problem there.
If you update a post from it’s original (rss copy) then have a note saying that it has been updated.
Please reconsider, as a Labour movement (not party) I thought it would be in the Standards ideology to make it as easy as possible to read your content and not make a task more labour intensive that it need be.
I would second the request for a return to full RSS feeds, if at all possible. I read blogs first on my smartphone and the ones that have full RSS feeds are so much easier to read via Google Reader.
For blogs that don’t have full RSS feeds (like Pundit and now The Standard), I generally only read every 2-3 days on my main PC. Even then I still use Google Reader, but it’s so much easier to read websites on a PC screen. (I still appreciate the mobile version of The Standard, but no real comparison to a RSS feed).
Why not put the RSS feed on a cheaper USA server, speed isn’t really an issue for rss data.
Have to come to the site to read the story would cost you more as the amount of data on a web page vs RSS feed is much greater. 1mb vs 30kb … (public service ads + comments)
I think you missed the point.
I don’t care about the cost of people reading the pages inside NZ. Local bandwidth is effectively ‘free’, ie part of the server base cost. But the RSS feed is currently open not only to NZ, but also to the rest of the world and that is where I have a problem. About 90% of the RSS post traffic is from outside the country, probably has nothing to do with human readers, and any overseas traffic has a cap on it beyond which we get charged an excess.
Now I could cut off the RSS for everything outside NZ, which would be easy to do and would get rid of the GB’s of overseas traffic that cause the issue. That would also cut off such overseas sources as feedburner and google reader.
I could have moved the whole server offshore and got around the ridiculous local overseas caps. But that would slow the site for the vast majority of users to satisfy a small minority who use RSS.
I could have done something tricky like a VPN, but bearing in mind the likelihood of violating terms of service with the subsequent demands on my time, I wasn’t really that interested in complicating my own life.
So I compromised and changed it to exactly what is seen when people go to the front page. That should drop the overseas traffic down far enough that we don’t wind up paying excesses for overseas traffic while still keeping the RSS feed open.
Please reconsider, as a Labour movement (not party) I thought it would be in the Standards ideology to make it as easy as possible to read your content and not make a task more labour intensive that it need be.
It is exactly as easy as it is for everyone else who reads on the site. You are wanting it to be easier.
After I get this code release for work done at the end of Feburary and I start having more free time, I’ll have a look at what else can be done. But in the meantime this solution gets rid of my current problem while limiting only a few readers.
I suspect that the ideal will be to restrict the full RSS feed to inside NZ and to a limited number of overseas aggregating servers like google reader, feedburner, and the like.
Would there be any issues if I data minded the page to build a full RSS feed?
BTW, I don’t think a VPN would break any terms, it would just tunnel traffic through a 2nd NZ service (local data) to the USA. The Astrill NZ service has no worries with data as they provide enough bandwidth for people outside NZ to view TVonDemand.
“Sure, employers can seek reasonable efficiencies, effective labour utilisation and a fair return on investment. The Ports are an important part of our transport infrastructure and they need to be operating as productively and efficiently as possible.
But good faith bargaining and working together to find common ground is the way to achieve this, not wholesale redundancies and contracting out.”
and most importantly which has not been said loudly enough by anyone:
“Three deaths at the Ports of Tauranga in the last 15 months should make us all question the safety of contracted out stevedoring firms who compete with each other for business.
No worker has died at the Ports of Auckland for 18 years.”
Will the POT be charged? Or are we seeing people as expendable like those at Foxxconn in China where they put nets on the sides of their buildings to prevent suicides? It’s a slippery slope and we are heading down not up.
EDIT: see that I/S isn’t buying it as too little too late, and an attempt to mouth words to placate supporters (like me) without actually doing anything or helping the union.
“Sure, employers can seek reasonable efficiencies, effective labour utilisation and a fair return on investment. The Ports are an important part of our transport infrastructure and they need to be operating as productively and efficiently as possible.
But good faith bargaining and working together to find common ground is the way to achieve this, not wholesale redundancies and contracting out.”
No mention of
1) The difference between assets owned for the public good and those for the maximum profit of private shareholders.
2) No analysis of the wider economic benefits of having a port, i.e. the assessment only deals with the port in isolation.
3) The externalisation of costs on to the community from the withdrawal of wages and dependable permanent employment.
4) The demands of the Auckland City Council for ever higher returns on investment without investigating whether the assumptions behind those demands are at all feasible.
The vitriolic racist comments by Michael Laws regarding the recent rape case involving overseas visitors is disturbing to say the least.
His continual use of “Feral Maori ” is insulting and foul . As far as I know there has be no mention of the race of the offender in this case . The regular ranting against Maori by Laws makes one wonder if he is becoming mentally unbalanced.
‘ makes one wonder if he is becoming mentally unbalanced.’ already has been for some time PP, pretty sure it’s why radio Live use him, shock jock = ratings amongst certain listener groups.
The fact he’s still on air shows both how p’weak our broadcasting rules are and how desperate Mediaworks are for exposure.
The vitriolic racist comments by Michael Laws regarding the recent rape case involving overseas visitors is disturbing to say the least.
His continual use of “Feral Maori ” is insulting and foul
I hadn’t heard these comments, but they seem typical of him… 🙁
Yes M. Laws is a racist prick.
I saw him on TV talking about Maori and violent crime and had to wonder why anybody would want the opinion of a fuckwit who talks about shooting newsroom staff.
hot off the MSN news.
Phil Twyford has stepped up to bat for the watersiders.
dont blow it Phil.
you know whats at stake.
and once you’re gone you cant come back.
when you’re out of the blue and into the black.
Oxy Morgan has flicked his Kiwi Saver business, no doubt pocketing a hansom sum in the proses
The oxymoron of Gareth Morgan is that he talks about climate change in one breath, then the next one he is promoting something that locks us into more climate change (for the bad) as the few awake people understand Kiwi Saver is based on continued economic growth. And for Russell Norman’s fictional 25 year old that growth must continue for the next 45 years.
Morgan also likes to fly around the world to go joyriding on his motor bike. His footprint must be the size of several small African villages ;).
“This (austerity) is akin to a doctor telling a patient suffering from pneumonia to go on a diet and get more exercise. While exercise is important, it assumes a healthy patient. If the patient is sick, he must build up his strength until he is physically capable of exercising again…
Balance sheet recessions, which occur when businesses and households rush to pay down debt in spite of zero interest rates, are a kind of pneumonia. The only way to treat them is for the government to become the borrower and spender of last resort with fiscal stimulus aimed at propping up aggregate demand.”
Is reality at some point going to catch up with the Right, now that their ideologies are truly being put to the test, and are failing?
“it would also be obtuse not to recognise that a private-sector and market failure is at the heart of the current crisis; or to reconsider the role that new forms of public ownership could play in a modern economy in the light of China’s experience…”
Other than Greece the Sovereign debt in Europe has escalated as a result of the recession which resulted from the GFC which was the result of Greenspan and his gaggle of Ayn Rand Theocrats believing the invisible hand was all that was needed and failed to see the sub-prime bubble and the CDS’s triggering and subsequent wipe out of Lehman Bros & AIG.. yada yada..
Your Free market caused this crisis Gosman, Greek debt isn’t a get out of jail free card for any but the least informed or the faithful.
Evidently C & T have found a new recruit who managed to slither his way onto the Back Benches panel and started spouting the ‘politics is boring/ hard to understand’ memes…..
Talk about blatent, its not fucking Shortland St buddy, though I hope for your sake you are being paid per word because your delivery has only served to convince me that the right is woefully short on talent.
As for Jorden whoever , now he’s an expert!!!? I thought one of the most important outcomes from winning the referendum was so that we never had to listen to/ look at that annoying prat again.
Wallace, I like your show, but you have got to do a better job of filtering out the lizards.
which part of gosman is the windup key and when is the spring going to break.
the whole thing is a failure of the so called free market.
where is there a free market?
show us all so we can be as enlightened as you!
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Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
Open access notablesIce acceleration and rotation in the Greenland Ice Sheet interior in recent decades, Løkkegaard et al., Communications Earth & Environment:In the past two decades, mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated, partly due to the speedup of glaciers. However, uncertainty in speed derived from satellite products ...
Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Government’s official website – arrived in Point of Order’s email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
It's hard times try to make a livingYou wake up every morning in the unforgivingOut there somewhere in the cityThere's people living lives without mercy or pityI feel good, yeah I'm feeling fineI feel better then I have for the longest timeI think these pills have been good for meI ...
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
Every day now just seems to bring in more fresh meat for the grinder.In their relentlessly ideological drive to cut back on the “excessive bloat” (as they see it) of the previous Labour-led government, on the mountains of evidence accumulated in such a short period of time do not ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Megan Valére SosouMarket gardening site of the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè (Image credit: Megan Valère Sossou) For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough ...
Buzz from the Beehive Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ...
Morning in London Mother hugs beloved daughter outside the converted shoe factory in which she is living.Afternoon in London Travelling writer takes himself and his wrist down to A&E, just to be sure. Read more ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – The recent announcement of the University Advisory Group, chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, makes very clear where the Government’s focus and priorities lie. The remit of the Advisory Group is that Group members will consider challenges and opportunities for improvement in the university sector including: ...
Eric Crampton writes – The Reserve Bank of New Zealand desperately wants to find reasons to have workstreams in climate change. It makes little sense. They’ve run another stress test on the banks looking to see if they could find a prudential regulation case. They couldn’t. They ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Pundits from the left and the right are arguing that National’s Fast Track Bill that is designed to speed up infrastructure decisions could end up becoming mired in a cesspool of corruption. Political commentator ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
Happy May Day. Join a union. Q: What’s worse than a staff break room where the only place to sit and have a cup of tea is on a teetering stack of old pornography magazines? A: Your boss replacing the magazine stacks with chairs that are “heartily encrusted with ...
By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor Former opposition leader Matthew Wale has been announced as the second prime ministerial candidate ahead of the election in Solomon Islands tomorrow. He will face off against former foreign affairs minister Jeremiah Manele, who was announced by the Coalition for National Unity and Transformation ...
We get but one birthday a year – why not make it last as long as possible by scheduling as many meals with friends and family as you can? This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. How do you celebrate your birthday? Do you celebrate at ...
A Koi Tū discussion paper released today proposes sweeping changes to New Zealand’s media industry. The principal’s key author, Gavin Ellis, explains how journalists have a key role to play in making others value their role in society. This is an abridged version of a piece first published on knightlyviews.com ...
The Government’s spending cuts are again targeting support for Māori with proposed reform of the agency charged with advising on Māori wellbeing and development. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Douglas, Honorary Senior Lecturer, UNSW Aviation., UNSW Sydney The history of budget jet airlines in Australia is a long road littered with broken dreams. New entrants have consistently struggled to get a foothold. Low-cost carrier Bonza has just become the industry’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rosalind Dixon, Director, Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, UNSW Sydney Australia is finally having a sustained conversation about violence against women and what we can do about it. It is more than time. Australian women and girls continue to experience ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne stockfour/Shutterstock Preliminary bulk billing data released this week shows a 2.1% rise in bulk billing up to March. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Schulz, Senior Lecturer, University of Adelaide Australia is once again grappling with how we can stop gendered violence in our country. Protests over the weekend show there is enormous community anger over the number of women who are dying and National ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University AnastasiaDudka/Shutterstock What if the government was doing everything it could to stop thieves making off with our money, except the one thing that could really work? That’s how it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erin Harrington, Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies, University of Canterbury The Conversation It seems to be a time of old favourites. This month our experts have recommended two new seasons – the second season of Alone Australia (although ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland A bright Eta Aquariid meteor photobombed this photo of comet C/2020 F8 (SWAN) in May 2020.Jonti Horner Meteors – commonly known as shooting stars – can be seen on any night of the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Flannery, Honorary fellow, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock Current concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in Earth’s atmosphere are unprecedented in human history. But CO₂ levels today, and those that might occur in coming decades, did occur millions of years ago. ...
Winston Peters has been keen to dismiss speculation on our involvement in Aukus but will give a speech tonight on the direction of our foreign policy, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Usmar, Lecturer in Critical Media Literacies, Auckland University of Technology Getty Images With the coalition government’s ban of student mobile phones in New Zealand schools coming into effect this week, reaction has ranged from the sceptical (kids will just get ...
Hospitals around the country are not allowed to make a single hiring decision without the approval of Te Whatu Ora's head office, including for cleaners and administration staff. ...
A new report on protecting journalism and democracy in New Zealand recommends a levy be charged on global platforms like Facebook and Google to fund media firms undertaking public interest reporting. It also calls for the reinstatement of a powerful Broadcasting Commission to distribute public funding for journalism and other ...
On International Workers' Day, also known as May Day, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi and the wider union movement are celebrating the proud history of the labour movement during a tough time for working people. ...
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Resident Standard poster Eddy is, actively dissuading political parties and activists from giving any support to the wharfies, calling on the Greens and even Occupy Activists to join the Labour Party in turning their back on these workers.
Eddie refuses to admit that this dispute is about union busting, repeating the right wing narrative about this dispute, that it is all about wage demands. Eddie has a closed mind (and heart), when it comes to this dispute.
“1951 it ain’t for now“, says Eddie.
Compare this to the Greens, Denise Roche’s statement on this dispute. Roche prefers to keep an open mind, going right to the heart of the matter in questioning the management’s motives:
Read Denise Roche full post on Frogblog
Compare Denise post to Eddie’s post against giving support to the wharfies.
Eddie justifies his call to withhold support from the wharfies, by minimising their struggle in comparison with past struggles.
Eddie refuses to contemplate the idea that this dispute is also about principle, instead spreading the lie that this dispute is all about wage levels between competing companies, and ignoring the central issue of the dispute, management’s intention to contract out all the union jobs.
Not once in his post does Eddie even mention the words “contracting out”.
If this is what Labour supporters like Eddie are openly admitting to in public, I can only imagine the hidden pressure the Labour Party is putting on the Greens, left activists and other unionists to distance themselves from the wharfies.
To the Green Party, Occupy Activists and all trade unionists in Aotearoa, Stay strong, resist the demand of the Labour Party to betray the wharfies by withholding your support. Instead do the opposite.
Kia Kaha
Solidarity forever.
You sure like to repeat Eddie’s name a lot, don’t you?
Eddies unspoken sub-text, that the wharfies struggle, “is about a business trying to cuts its wage bill”, Is that, if only the workers made more concessions, this dispute would be over and their jobs would be saved.
Eddie is either ignorant of the facts or being deliberately misleading.
Eddie has omitted the fact that MUNZ has made every concession the company have asked for.
The company is also offering workers a 10% wage increase, to workers to leave the union.
Eddie claimed, that unlike disputes of the past, the wharfies struggle is not about workers trying to win fundamental gains: the right to form unions, the right to paid breaks, the right to a fair pay increase. About the fundamental balance of power between capital and labour.
This is exactly what this struggle is about.
To consciously promote this lie, is to expose yourself as an active enemy of working people.
My hope is that someone in the Labour Party with some authority, will have the courage to speak up and distance the Labour Party from Eddie’s views.
I’m quite impressed by the pressure that is starting to build momentum, for Labour to “step up”. From party members, and the wider left.
I think the chances of Labour leadership giving the wharfies unequivocal support are about the same as those for me winning lotto. But hey – I have every confidence that I will win it one day.
btw Jenny – I appreciate your work here at The Standard.
+1 Ditto to both points
Here, EDDIE thought it would have been excellent for Shearer to speak out on the following (in fact penning the words FOR Shearer), saying that it would “consolidate his (Shearer’s) brand”:
http://thestandard.org.nz/shearers-address-in-reply/
So perhaps EDDIE is pushing for Shearer not to get involved on the side of the union and PoA workers at this stage, because doing so wouldn’t fit ‘Shearer’s brand’. Whatever that is.
Now, this paragraph has direct application to the PoA dispute.
So why would Shearer not say the exact words above while speaking about the PoA dispute not in specifics but in terms of Labour’s principles.
If Shearer did not want to get involved personally at this stage (and tactically there might be sense there), then why not allow one of his spokespeople to issue a press release about the dispute, supporting worker rights to good faith bargaining and standing firm against downgrading of their job security.
I feel these are questions worth asking.
PS does anyone ever talk about Gandhi’s “brand”? Martin Luther King’s “brand”? Michael Joseph Savage’s “brand”? Norman Kirk’s “brand”? I find this part of it fucking ridiculous.
‘PS does anyone ever talk about Gandhi’s “brand”? Martin Luther King’s “brand”? Michael Joseph Savage’s “brand”? Norman Kirk’s “brand”? I find this part of it fucking ridiculous.”
Modern drivel speak along the lines of the corporate credo, mission statement etc etc.
Every time I hear someone quoting them I’m reminded of a line I read in the UK years ago –
‘Punch, it’s a load of fucking old wank!’
Oh dear. I sure hope my lotto outlook is brighter.
From Idiot Savant at ‘No Right Turn’:
Useless
So its come to this: after a week of silence on the Ports of Auckland dispute, the Labour Party has come out and confirmed that it is in fact a useless waste of space:
Yesterday Labour industrial relations spokeswoman Darien Fenton, who has been spotted on the picket line at the port, said her party was not taking sides in the dispute.
“We’ve been hoping that the parties will settle this, that they’ll find a way through this.”
Ms Fenton said Mr Shearer had been in regular touch with both sides, “and he’s in contact with me and we’re all discussing it regularly”.
“Our strong view at this point is it’s not helpful for politicians to get involved.”
Its not quite Walter Nash’s “neither for nor against”, but it amounts to the same thing. Faced with a test of its core values, Labour flunked, preferring to sit on the fence than speak up. And as a result, their party’s name is now an exercise in false advertising. What does Labour stand for now? It’s certainly not labour. Instead, all they offer is an alternative set of political managers, a different set of bums on seats. And this is supposed to inspire people to turn out and vote for them? The only thing it inspires me to do is look for a party that actually appears to believe in something.
But its not just a case of undermining their brand. Labour has just sent a clear message to its supporters that that support is a one-way street. You can support them, but they won’t support you. No self-respecting person should accept such a one-sided relationship.
Posted by Idiot/Savant
according to that most right wing of right wing media outlets the dompost, the dispute is about lumbering the POAL with all the costs while the stevedoring is privatised.
that was yesterday for $1.60.
I must check the library to day to see if anything has changed.
Much of the net will soon be dark… many websites are being taken down in protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), which are backed by big entertainment and media interests.
The 18th January 2012 marks the day when sites like Google (not a full blackout), Wikipedia, Reddit and BoingBoing will go black in protest. The blackout will be in effect for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC.
The Jackal has ceased transmission in support of killing the bill. #SOPASTRIKE
SOPA has already been canned by the house. Senate is still going ahead with PIPA AFAIK but without the house passing it, it doesn’t really matter much. Also the executive (white house) issued a statement saying they were very cautious about it; I reckon if it came to it Obama probably would have pocket-veto’d it.
SOPA will be suspended until there’s a broader consensus among lawmakers about the legislation… it has not been canned.
Hey Lanth – just as Obama said he had serious concerns about the NDAA and its detention without trial of US citizens on US soil clause, and that he might veto it?
And then quietly just signed it?
Jenny tried that this morning. For anyone with post editing (at least), her post today showed up as complete black. She’d managed to put in a empty color box div that covered the whole post by default.
I must remember that technique….
I did wonder why that happened.
’twas Jenny Michie. She probably slipped and hit one of the controls on the edit bar for the post. I think I might remove that one.
Good grief. I am a complete technophobe. What can I say, except oops and thanks for rescuing me (again).
P.S. Have I invented something?
If I have, I can ensure you it was completely accidental.
Oops sorry, I meant Jenny Michie in her post.
I haven’t been annoying the trolls for a while and thought today was an excellent day to do just that.
Here is a new video detailing the different elements of the collapse of the three WTC buildings on 911.
Bombs in the basement and the lobby and three pyroclastic flows as hot as a vocano’s pyroclastic flow are some of the puzzling and unexplained issues addressed here.
Enjoy!
I’m pretty sure all the 9/11 hijackers were Iranian. Osama Bin Laden was also Iranian! The Iranians must pay!
And Ahmadinajad financed it all!!!
I always think of the phrase “I’m a dinner jacket” when I hear his name 🙂
You should totally use it in conversation. My boyfriend and I have. It’s fun to watch people’s slight double-take “did I really hear that right?” reactions before they just assume that actually you said his name properly.
We go with “I’m in a dinner jacket” though.
🙂
How’s Richad Gage’s petition coming along? Has he reached critical mass yet? I mean he has been gathering signatures for a good number of years he surely must have close to 100,000 people. It can’t take that long to get support especially when you have the ‘truth’ behind you.
It’ll all come out at the upcoming Toronto conference, Gosman. That’s where the truth will finally be revealed and the guilty parties will be named.
No wait, they already had the Toronto conference and, er, nothing happened. It’s a conspiracy, I tells ya! The NWO engineered the truthers to spontaneously explode under the weight of their own prejudices by igniting the hot air they produce in a series of giant waffle makers that were smuggled into the hall disguised as aircraft.
Damn George W. Bush, the smartest, cleverest and most dangerous drunk and coke addled illuminati to ever walk the earth. Quick, pass the Koolaid, I feel the rapture coming on!
I’m impressed VoR.
I’m also quite interested in finding out more about this Toronto conference. No really I am.
So Travellerev what was the deal with that? Was it meant to be some sort of life changing event or just more much ado about nothing?
Don’t drink the Koolaid, VOR
VOR doesn’t realise that these things take time. Unlike a nano-thermite charge which can cut through an inch of rebar as if it were butter left out on a summers day.
http://www.tumeke.blogspot.com/
The above link is well worth a look imo. Bomber hosts David Cunliffe and ‘Back-Benchers’ presenter, Wallace Chapman, and they discuss their predictions for 2012. They all impress, in their different ways.
RIP Stratos. Still very pissed-off about Stratos and TV 7
Agree, freewiew is becoming a joke and Sky’s the winner under the nats….funny that.
Heartland going behind sky’s paywall is a typical example of taxpayer funded content lining their mates pockets. wonder where recycling rick will pop up next being a good old blueboy.
I watched that this morning, what a great panel. Cunliffe is an exceptionally cool cat. Love listening to him speak, his personality and his politics. Great mix of relaxed, authoritative, friendly and accessible. I think Labour have it right, if Shearer fails to fire, there’s a well oiled machine ready go…
Agree about others being ready to go, not so sure about a well oiled machine…..with rusty relics like Mallard still around the neck.
This is depressing watching.
I watch this wishing more than ever that David Cunliffe was leading our country right now. Or was it’s Finance Minister.
When you think of all the talent that has come out of bfM and craccum matured through our broadcasting system it is also sad that at the moment Wallace Chapman and Bomber can’t get a wider audience for their work. bFm still misses Chapman’s ads.
wait- really really depressing.
Only marginal bright spot is the talk of cooperation between Labour and the other opposition parties, that they would ‘hunt like a pack’. I mean this simply has to happen strategically when you look at the way the Nats have used ACT, Maori party and UF.
Wish Cunliffe had looked this relaxed on previous tv appearances, rather than tried to look finance ministerial. Joyce/Key always look relaxed- it gives them authority even when they are talking crap or spinning moonbeams.
lprent please do something about the geek on here who keeps talking about the other posters but never addressing the issues.
Which one? There are several…
However I draw the limit at fire and forget trolls. If people respond to critics with thought, even if they avoid the questions raised, then they are fulfilling the requirements of the site because they are engaging with people.
Think it through. It is a self-correcting problem. If they wind up with noone bothering to interact with them then their comments by definition become fire and forget (or in the worst cases they wind up talking to themselves) trolls. Then I’d act.
It is the responsibility of commentators to be relevant to the others here. Otherwise they’ll start losing their ability to comment…. evil eh? 😈
I don’t like how the rss feed only shows a snip-it of story, it used to show the whole think.
This means it takes me more time to read your posts and on somedays this will mean I wont read them at all.
Please please go back to the old system, your not loosing money over the difference and if you are are doing it for the vanity of page view then you know you could use feedburner to count how many people are reading your rss feed.
Thanks
The triggering problem was with people reading just the initial RSS feed and responding to that because the client side RSS systems weren’t picking up the revisions. Posts often get a bit of editing just after publishing. I noticed several people doing it and it irritated me (Cactus Kate being the triggering example).
But as the sysop I have been very concerned about RSS for some time as well because the RSS feeds are now starting to rival the spambots for overseas data volumes (and a lot of those appear to be spambots).
Even the traffic for RSS feeds for identifiable people is increasing. Presumably because many people aren’t using aggregation systems like feedburner. I’m always concerned about data volumes especially overseas traffic because if I can keep those down then I can use smaller and cheaper servers.
To give you an idea of the problem. The main server is currently in NZ. It is convenient to keep in NZ because it massively improves performance for the 95+% of our readers who are in NZ. When I moved it back here I set it up with near realtime replication with a server in the US and routed all overseas traffic outside Oceania to it. The problem was as that we ramped up in posts and comments towards the election the replication traffic broke our overseas datacap.
The NZ server has free local traffic and a 60GB overseas traffic datacap that costs $3/GB over that cap. That is mostly because of the costing model for the Southern Cross cable which is horrendous for local servers. Replication was costing us hundreds of dollars per month. So I pulled all of the traffic to NZ and relegated the US server to a warm backup. However as we got closer to the election the overseas traffic kept increasing and shows little sign of dropping post-election. It is now starting to cost us over the cap.
There are a few humans using the overseas data for reading the sites. But mostly it is robots like RSS feeds, spambots and search engines. I’m happy to tolerate the search engines crawling the site (~20GB per month) and I can mostly use SEO tuning to minimize their impacts on our data. Spambots I tend to remove using .htaccess and other tools and their traffic has been reducing.
But the RSS feeds have been most of the the overseas traffic increase. Based on the posts that they picking up (comments have a different pattern) they’re crawling the whole site. So presume they’ve bots and I don’t think that there are too many humans using it.
So I can leave the RSS with full posts. But I’d have to move the server out of NZ to get around these poxy overseas data caps, thereby reducing the service for most of the readers. Or I can massively reduce the size of the RSS posts and piss a few people off – incidentally the people who cost us without helping to pay for the site.
Sorry – RSS is becoming a liability in NZ. If I can figure out a way of doing it, I’ll probably get around to putting full feeds on something like feedburner. But I can’t leave the RSS’s wide open.
Interestingly the prices for international data have gone down by 44%, “coincidentally” at the same time a new trans-tasman cable plan was announced.
So hopefully data will become cheaper in the next few months.
Why not put the RSS feed on a cheaper USA server, speed isn’t really an issue for rss data.
Have to come to the site to read the story would cost you more as the amount of data on a web page vs RSS feed is much greater. 1mb vs 30kb … (public service ads + comments)
Having the RSS data there would not cost so much, if the cost is so much, then use a vpn service like astrill so you can send your data through a NZ vpn address (national data cost) to the USA for $5 a month (vpn cost).
I don’t see much spam on the standard and rss would not be the problem, the user signup would the problem there.
If you update a post from it’s original (rss copy) then have a note saying that it has been updated.
Please reconsider, as a Labour movement (not party) I thought it would be in the Standards ideology to make it as easy as possible to read your content and not make a task more labour intensive that it need be.
I would second the request for a return to full RSS feeds, if at all possible. I read blogs first on my smartphone and the ones that have full RSS feeds are so much easier to read via Google Reader.
For blogs that don’t have full RSS feeds (like Pundit and now The Standard), I generally only read every 2-3 days on my main PC. Even then I still use Google Reader, but it’s so much easier to read websites on a PC screen. (I still appreciate the mobile version of The Standard, but no real comparison to a RSS feed).
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-18012012/#comment-427898
The problem for me is that we can’t keep bleeding overseas bandwidth and the associated high costs for the few humans that read the channel.
I don’t have time until March at the earliest (I’m moving house in march after I finish my current project) to look for a better fix.
Catching up (been a tad busy).
I think you missed the point.
I don’t care about the cost of people reading the pages inside NZ. Local bandwidth is effectively ‘free’, ie part of the server base cost. But the RSS feed is currently open not only to NZ, but also to the rest of the world and that is where I have a problem. About 90% of the RSS post traffic is from outside the country, probably has nothing to do with human readers, and any overseas traffic has a cap on it beyond which we get charged an excess.
Now I could cut off the RSS for everything outside NZ, which would be easy to do and would get rid of the GB’s of overseas traffic that cause the issue. That would also cut off such overseas sources as feedburner and google reader.
I could have moved the whole server offshore and got around the ridiculous local overseas caps. But that would slow the site for the vast majority of users to satisfy a small minority who use RSS.
I could have done something tricky like a VPN, but bearing in mind the likelihood of violating terms of service with the subsequent demands on my time, I wasn’t really that interested in complicating my own life.
So I compromised and changed it to exactly what is seen when people go to the front page. That should drop the overseas traffic down far enough that we don’t wind up paying excesses for overseas traffic while still keeping the RSS feed open.
It is exactly as easy as it is for everyone else who reads on the site. You are wanting it to be easier.
After I get this code release for work done at the end of Feburary and I start having more free time, I’ll have a look at what else can be done. But in the meantime this solution gets rid of my current problem while limiting only a few readers.
I suspect that the ideal will be to restrict the full RSS feed to inside NZ and to a limited number of overseas aggregating servers like google reader, feedburner, and the like.
Would there be any issues if I data minded the page to build a full RSS feed?
BTW, I don’t think a VPN would break any terms, it would just tunnel traffic through a 2nd NZ service (local data) to the USA. The Astrill NZ service has no worries with data as they provide enough bandwidth for people outside NZ to view TVonDemand.
No problem. There are some traps for scanners, but their params are pretty wide to handle the search engine spiders and the national library.
I don’t see much spam on the standard and rss would not be the problem, the user signup would the problem there.
There should be none. However that doesn’t mean that the buggers down’t spend a lot of effort trying to get in.
Darien Fenton on Labour and the POA dispute:
“Sure, employers can seek reasonable efficiencies, effective labour utilisation and a fair return on investment. The Ports are an important part of our transport infrastructure and they need to be operating as productively and efficiently as possible.
But good faith bargaining and working together to find common ground is the way to achieve this, not wholesale redundancies and contracting out.”
and most importantly which has not been said loudly enough by anyone:
“Three deaths at the Ports of Tauranga in the last 15 months should make us all question the safety of contracted out stevedoring firms who compete with each other for business.
No worker has died at the Ports of Auckland for 18 years.”
Will the POT be charged? Or are we seeing people as expendable like those at Foxxconn in China where they put nets on the sides of their buildings to prevent suicides? It’s a slippery slope and we are heading down not up.
EDIT: see that I/S isn’t buying it as too little too late, and an attempt to mouth words to placate supporters (like me) without actually doing anything or helping the union.
No mention of
1) The difference between assets owned for the public good and those for the maximum profit of private shareholders.
2) No analysis of the wider economic benefits of having a port, i.e. the assessment only deals with the port in isolation.
3) The externalisation of costs on to the community from the withdrawal of wages and dependable permanent employment.
4) The demands of the Auckland City Council for ever higher returns on investment without investigating whether the assumptions behind those demands are at all feasible.
The vitriolic racist comments by Michael Laws regarding the recent rape case involving overseas visitors is disturbing to say the least.
His continual use of “Feral Maori ” is insulting and foul . As far as I know there has be no mention of the race of the offender in this case . The regular ranting against Maori by Laws makes one wonder if he is becoming mentally unbalanced.
‘ makes one wonder if he is becoming mentally unbalanced.’ already has been for some time PP, pretty sure it’s why radio Live use him, shock jock = ratings amongst certain listener groups.
The fact he’s still on air shows both how p’weak our broadcasting rules are and how desperate Mediaworks are for exposure.
I hadn’t heard these comments, but they seem typical of him… 🙁
Yes M. Laws is a racist prick.
I saw him on TV talking about Maori and violent crime and had to wonder why anybody would want the opinion of a fuckwit who talks about shooting newsroom staff.
hot off the MSN news.
Phil Twyford has stepped up to bat for the watersiders.
dont blow it Phil.
you know whats at stake.
and once you’re gone you cant come back.
when you’re out of the blue and into the black.
Oxy Morgan has flicked his Kiwi Saver business, no doubt pocketing a hansom sum in the proses
The oxymoron of Gareth Morgan is that he talks about climate change in one breath, then the next one he is promoting something that locks us into more climate change (for the bad) as the few awake people understand Kiwi Saver is based on continued economic growth. And for Russell Norman’s fictional 25 year old that growth must continue for the next 45 years.
Morgan also likes to fly around the world to go joyriding on his motor bike. His footprint must be the size of several small African villages ;).
yeah, and he let slater and hooton and farrar run riot over maori and jw’s when he owned trademe.
he’s pretty slimy.
For Gosman
“This (austerity) is akin to a doctor telling a patient suffering from pneumonia to go on a diet and get more exercise. While exercise is important, it assumes a healthy patient. If the patient is sick, he must build up his strength until he is physically capable of exercising again…
Balance sheet recessions, which occur when businesses and households rush to pay down debt in spite of zero interest rates, are a kind of pneumonia. The only way to treat them is for the government to become the borrower and spender of last resort with fiscal stimulus aimed at propping up aggregate demand.”
http://pragcap.com/deficits-are-good-during-a-balance-sheet-recession?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Is reality at some point going to catch up with the Right, now that their ideologies are truly being put to the test, and are failing?
“it would also be obtuse not to recognise that a private-sector and market failure is at the heart of the current crisis; or to reconsider the role that new forms of public ownership could play in a modern economy in the light of China’s experience…”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/17/china-success-challenges-america-britain
Which part of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe is indicative of the failure of the free market?
Other than Greece the Sovereign debt in Europe has escalated as a result of the recession which resulted from the GFC which was the result of Greenspan and his gaggle of Ayn Rand Theocrats believing the invisible hand was all that was needed and failed to see the sub-prime bubble and the CDS’s triggering and subsequent wipe out of Lehman Bros & AIG.. yada yada..
Your Free market caused this crisis Gosman, Greek debt isn’t a get out of jail free card for any but the least informed or the faithful.
Evidently C & T have found a new recruit who managed to slither his way onto the Back Benches panel and started spouting the ‘politics is boring/ hard to understand’ memes…..
Talk about blatent, its not fucking Shortland St buddy, though I hope for your sake you are being paid per word because your delivery has only served to convince me that the right is woefully short on talent.
As for Jorden whoever , now he’s an expert!!!? I thought one of the most important outcomes from winning the referendum was so that we never had to listen to/ look at that annoying prat again.
Wallace, I like your show, but you have got to do a better job of filtering out the lizards.
which part of gosman is the windup key and when is the spring going to break.
the whole thing is a failure of the so called free market.
where is there a free market?
show us all so we can be as enlightened as you!