Open mike 18/05/2010

16 comments on “Open mike 18/05/2010 ”

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1. Tigger 1

   18 May 2010 at 8:27 am

   The continued use of government PR as ‘opinion’ by the major papers is embarrassing.
   http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10645644
   Note to Granny Herald – when Finlayson is selling us a deal it isn’t his opinion, he’s just selling us something. You could title it Advertisement and it would be more accurate.
2. Samuel 2

   18 May 2010 at 8:59 am

   http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10645716

   An article in the NZ Herald this morning about the problem with transient rates of over 50% in some low decile schools because parents cannot afford decent accommodation. This is the end result of housing being treated as a get rich quick scheme rather than a social good for the benefit of all New Zealanders.

   If the left really wants to help the disadvantaged in our society (actually I have some serious doubts about whether Labour cares at all about the strugglers in our society) then concentrate on making housing affordable. Get foreign investors out of the NZ housing market. Take away the tax advantages. The biggest expense low/middle income people have is accommodation. The best thing you can do to improve outcomes for poor children is to make the purchase of a modest home achievable for low income workers if they want it.

   Quote : “Some children are moving several times a year – often in and out of the same primary schools – and some teachers cite examples of pupils who have been at up to nine schools in just a few years.

   Most of these children come from low socio-economic families. Their families move frequently because they can no longer afford their bills and move in with relatives, often into garages or crammed into small rooms.

   They then move again when having so many people in the same house becomes too stressful.

   Each time they move, the children are uprooted from school, making it difficult for them to progress in their learning, and to make friendships.”
3. randal 3

   18 May 2010 at 11:06 am

   today is let them eat cake day. and also leaky homes day.
   leaky homes occurred after new zealanders elected an extreme right wing pack of idiots who beleived that everybdoy was self regulated to do the right thing. hahahahahah hahahahaha.
   ythe result was houses built with untreated timber but that is only the tip of the ice berg.
   all those self regulated builders with no qualiifcations (who needs them those) erected buildings with no flashings on the joints.
   pretending that it was only untreated timber is to let the idiotes of the hook for their shabby pracises and more to the poin their shabby ideology.
   untreated timber is justa legal ficition to let the rest of it all slide away under the radar and prevent the whole truth from being told.
   • Bill 3.1

     18 May 2010 at 11:37 am

     But we can have lovely moist ginger bread houses?

     All good then innit…unless we eat the cake rather than use it to repair and build…
     • Tigger 3.1.1

       18 May 2010 at 12:24 pm

       Hickey has a piece on this. It does feel very apt, National fixing a problem they caused. Pity they’re using our money to do it.
   • ianmac 3.2

     18 May 2010 at 12:57 pm

     Randal at 3: “untreated timber is justa legal ficition to let the rest of it all slide away under the radar and prevent the whole truth from being told.”

     Exactly. I was reorganising some elderly parts of the bach and the timber framing non-gauged and untreated was still sound after more than four decades. In other words sound buildings last. The need from 2003 to only use heavily treated timber on external walls is nonsense!
     • Lanthanide 3.2.1

       18 May 2010 at 5:53 pm

       I don’t think it’s nonsense. If people refuse to do a proper job in the face of evidence (or are just too incompetent), then it seems reasonable to put in some rules that will help mitigate that problem.

       Of course it’d be best if people did a proper job and used proper materials, but it’s much easier to legislate and enforce proper materials than it is proper jobs.
4. Pascal's bookie 4

   18 May 2010 at 11:45 am

   Looks like the ‘no warming since ’98’ crowd need another talking point..

   http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/how-will-they-spin-this/
   • Bill 4.1

     18 May 2010 at 12:46 pm

     I still don’t understand why this interminable debate rumbles on. All the energy that goes into proving the point is energy not being spent on actually doing something. And maybe this suits many who accept climate change as real but who don’t want to grasp the nettle?

     If we look at the population in NZ who accept climate change and the spread of skills this %age of the population has and the infrastructure and technology at our disposal…and compare all that to a historical ‘newly’ colonised NZ and what they managed to do with far less of all those things (people, skills, technology and infrastructure), then any sane person has to ask why we are still stalled in a pre-action state.

     Are we so sunk in psychological dependence on our habitual and recognisable patterns and behaviours that we will do nothing…while disingenuously blaming those who argued against the realities of climate change…or the parliamentary representatives who failed to be our saviours?

     All the intellectualising while waiting for a 100% consensus before our communities embark on meaningful measures is beyond or beneath comprehension.
     • ianmac 4.1.1

       18 May 2010 at 1:04 pm

       Interesting interview with the guy from the International Combined Governments Climate Change people yesterday National Radio.
       A smog problem can be cured overnight by say a total ban on fires. But an atmosphere contaminated by fluro-carbons and CO2 (?) and others, will take hundreds of years to correct even if all pollutions stopped overnight. This means that you can’t wait for the pollution to become serious because its already too late!
       • Bill 4.1.1.1

         18 May 2010 at 1:11 pm

         Yup.

         But meanwhile ‘I’m’ going to carry on with the same old, same old because…..well, is it because ‘I’m’ being given just enough room to hope against hope and cling to the unsubstantiated belief that it will somehow transpire to be a chamber with a nice warm shower waiting at the end of this journey?
5. Kevin Welsh 5

   18 May 2010 at 12:48 pm

   Reported on Campbell Live yesterday, oil rig workers have struck an historic deal with a 30% (thirty!) pay rise to bring them in-line with the Australians working on an Australian owned rig off the Taranaki coast.

   Now, you don’t need to be a genius to see the ramifications of this deal. This will now spread to other rig workers in New Zealand for starters, and other industries where you have an Australian owned parent operating in New Zealand.

   Suffice to say that “Smile and Wave” was hardly ecstatic about the news, when asked for comment in yesterdays press conference, he just gave the usual blather about raising productivity and lower taxes being the path to wage nirvana. Surprising really, when the whole argument was about equal pay for the same work.

   (Captcha: minimum)
6. freedom 6

   18 May 2010 at 1:56 pm

   over the weekend I posted about the Herald’s grossly innaccurate reporting on the DeepWater Horizon event. (To recap, the herald reported “5,000 vessels involved in the clean up”, and “millions of miles of boom had been deployed”, which i pointed out would circle the globe eighty times)
   The true scale of this factless report from the Herald is highlighted by this press release from the BP site on May 17

   ” Over 650 vessels are involved in the response effort, including skimmers, tugs, barges and recovery vessels.”
   “The total length of boom deployed as part of efforts to prevent oil reaching the coast is now almost 1.7 million feet, ”
   http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=2012968&contentId=7062147

   i tried to find the post as i thought it was in ‘learning lessons..’ but the header says 6 comments yet only 4 are showing up
7. mickysavage 7

   18 May 2010 at 2:41 pm

   Heh

   David Cunliffe is having fun in the house. He has an advance copy of the a question to Blinglish and his answers and is finally able to ping Blinglish to comply with standing orders.

   Either they fell off the back of a truck or there is a very disgruntled piblic servant in Parliament.
8. freedom 8

   18 May 2010 at 5:43 pm

   Question,
   If Gerry Bulldozer and the PM are out surveying, and no-one is around and they fall down a sinkhole,
   do you put back the warning sign?
9. Armchair Critic 9

   18 May 2010 at 8:59 pm

   I’ve head David Garrett speaking in the house twice in the last couple of weeks, and both times I’ve been inspired to comment.

   Firstly on 6 May, speaking to (and opposing) the “Waikato-Tainui Raupatu Claims (Waikato River) Settlement Bill — Third Reading” he said:
   “The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act protects freedom of religious expression, but what makes this bill we are debating so dangerous is that it promotes one group’s belief or life view—ontology, I believe, is the technical term—over all others.”
   Unlike the neo-liberal revolution religion ushered in and forced upon NZ by Roger Douglas and the first ACT government.

   In the house today, speaking in support of the Three Strikes Bill, repeated his claim that it is a deterrent. Then he gave the example from California. The Hansard isn’t up yet, but essentially he said that the fact that there was a net outflow of convicted felons from California after it introduced its Three Strikes laws shows they are a deterrent. He said the criminals with two strikes left California and went to Arizona, Oregon and Washington (Washington State, I’m sure, rather than Washington, D.C.), where there are no Three Strikes laws.
   The Oxford Dictionary has deter defined as:
   “discourage from doing something through fear of the consequences”
   But if all it achieves is to get criminals to move out of state, that is not actually deterring people from committing crime, it is just getting them to commit crimes elsewhere. So there is no evidence of an overall reduction in crime, just a change in where the crime is committed. Might work somewhere big, like the USA, where it is easy enough to move to another part of the union. But in little old NZ there is nowhere to go, especially considering no country will grant anyone with two strikes against them a visa. No one with two strikes in NZ can use the California solution.
   And then there are all the other problems with the Three Strikes legislation.

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