John Roughan writes a wilfully ignorant piece on Climate Change.
It is wilfully ignorant if he wishes to claim to be a serious journalist.
Wonder if he’s watched Alister Barry’s ‘Hot Air’? As a New Zealand journalist, he should have.
Or if not, has he read the book ‘Merchants of Doubt’ by Conway and Oreskes. The film based on it is showing at the NZ Festival. I recommend he watches it.
If he does, he will realise how ridiculous the following statement of his is.
“But if the worst that can happen is a rise of a metre in sea levels and a few degrees in mean temperatures over a century, I think we’ll cope.”
Yes, that’s right Roughan is saying, without any Science to back himself up (apart from a chat with a pschchologist), that a 2 per cent temperature rise isn’t much.
Climate change is according to him “on a political mission.” Yet it is clear from his snide comments about obesity and sugar taxes that the main reason for this article being written was political. For some context , Roughan wrote the hagiography of Key. Despite his claims , it is Roughan who is using politics to muddy the Science.
Shame on the Herald for publishing this climate denial piece in 2015.
I sent this to the moderators a couple of days ago. It may have got spammed out, so I thought I’d post it in open mike, in reduced form. Being an elite technophobe, I didn’t know how to transfer the chart boxes. they disappeared when I cut an pasted from word. So it’s slightly unclear.
I was having a poke around on Skykiwi to see what I could find about local Chinese opinions of Labour’s press release on Chinese (sounding) investment in the Auckland real estate market, and I found the item below. Skykiwi is NZ’s most popular Chinese language website. Here’s the translation:
Are Chinese really speculating on the real estate market? Skykiwi stats tell you NZ Chinese perspectives.
Skykiwi has broken down your comments on three different NZ Herald articles into different categories…within the circle of Chinese people, perspectives are clashing and very intense, and are certainly not monolithic.
Is Labour discriminating against Chinese people?
Percentage Number of commenters
Yes 46% 67
No 25% 36
Neutral 10% 15
Other 19% unstated
Chinese people in the Auckland housing market
Percentage Commenter No.
Chinese speculation is driving up house prices 36% 52
Overseas investment should be restricted 12% 18
Chinese house purchasing is reasonable 32% 46
Other 20% 29
Do you support what Labour is saying?
Percentage Number of commenters
Support 39% 26
Opposed 31% 21
Neutral 18% 12
Invalid 12% unstated
We also took a vote on the question: are Chinese buyers pushing up Auckland house prices?
Vote percentage Vote number
Yes 61% 1515
No 19% 467
说不好 (literally, say not good(?)) 19% 471
Notes:
The item was written by the editorial team, published on the 13th, and according to the website has had nearly 9,000 views. You can see the original here, with pretty pie charts: http://money.skykiwi.com/realestate/2015-07-13/201290.shtml
I agree with Fran O’Sullivan.
‘Labour must dig deeper in foreign buyer data.’
‘What Labour should do is spend some funds and buy data from Quotable Value itself (something that Labour MP Phil Twyford, who ran the story, admitted he considered) so they have a tighter, fact-based arsenal when the issue is next raised.’
Which brings me to a slightly off topic point. Why has the access to land information moved so far beyond the reach of the general public? It’s collected with public money and yet it costs over $500 to even look at any part of the data base. Once it was possible to go into a LINZ office and have at least a basic look at data before having to spend money. I can understand it not being a free for all on the internet but why cannot the data be accessed at a kiosk at a local governement office?
‘Whangarei dairy farmer Alex Wright said many farmers were in a dire situation and, following comments from Minister for Economic Development Steven Joyce, the Government’s view that struggling dairy farmers were resilient was out of touch with reality.
“They talk about farmers being resilient – well, you can be resilient for a certain amount of time, but if you reach the point where you can’t function your business because you can’t even pay for the basics to run the business, then I feel that the government are just sitting on the fence.
She said the Government should be putting pressure on the banks to act more compassionately towards struggling farmers.
Janette Walker, a negotiator working with heavily indebted farmers, said banks were putting pressure on family members to put up their own properties as guarantees.
She said there was a risk that parents could lose their own homes.
“40 percent of farmers are not going to make any money this year, and probably at the same for the following season. Some of them may have to sell some assets, some of them may have to exit farming.”
Ms Walker said banks had been cutting off cashflow for struggling dairy farmers in particular and demanding more security for further loans.’
The only words I have to describe bankers cannot be typed here.
2 questions.
1. What were the 4 Australian banks’ profit last year?
2. Wonder who will buy the farms at rock bottom prices? Foreign speculators?
This was all so very clear and obvious when times were good……
eh? Why the crying? This scene has been played out so very many times over the generations in New Zealand that anybody who cries now and thinks it is something new is a frikkin’ idiot.
If people didn’t want to deal with banks when they get mean and tough, then they should quite simply not have had anything to do with them. Everybody knows that banks are cunts. Full bloody stop.
Idiots
The entire scene is loaded with the idiocy of humanity
idiots for making deals with banks
idiots idiots idiots
short term thinking with no regard for history past and present – no wonder people have got themselves into trouble
People simply turn a blind eye to the fatal flaws in our farming/banking sector because of la-la land dreamy romantic poorly thought out notions of farming heaven.
If by saying they are “hard to avoid” you mean that it is not possible to be a farmer unless you have a banker then the entire premise of the current approach to farming is resting in a pile of cowshit steaming away in the morning sun……
“wonder who will buy the farms at rock bottom prices? Foreign speculators?”
This will be what pretty much every single farmer that is in debt-trouble will be eyeing nervously…. hoping that those foreign buyers who have ramped up demand and prices for farmland will stay ……. but sheesh, if all you;ve got is hope then you’ve got nothing..
But foreign buyers should be banned. And the voting farmer will be watching this political issue nervously too…
If this happened right now you would see farmland values plummet like never before in NZ….. I mean, if the number of buyers of New Zealand farmland was restricted to only New Zealand residents,….. ask yourself……. total meltdown…….
…….
the lessons from this???
watch out for banks. watch out for foreign ownership. both of these distort our lands and our people….. they should both fuck off
I have come to the conclusion that the provision of credit into a society is, in the big sense, a common good and as such should be controlled by parameters that reflect that….
Currently the banking structures are anything but for the common good ….
(it is in the common good due mostly to the massive impact it has on society – ether for better or for worse. It is such an enormous player that to leave it in private hands is not right)
You talk about “the idiocy of humanity”, and then you say that credit should not be in private hands, i.e. it should be under the control of a public body / Government.
But a public body is made up of individual humans, and as you say, humanity is prone to ‘idiocy’?
What I don’t understand is why you think a group of idiots in a public body will be any more effective than a group of idiots in a private one?
What I don’t understand is why you think a group of idiots in a public body will be any more effective than a group of idiots in a private one?
1. The government gets to regulate public services better than it does private corporations
2. Public servants are more accountable than the private corporations
Really, the problem we have is that we’ve allowed the private sector to work solely for greed while destroying the public service that actually built NZ.
“What I don’t understand is why you think a group of idiots in a public body will be any more effective than a group of idiots in a private one?”
The answer is simple.
Those of the private body have a mandate to make a profit from the creation of credit for its shareholders.
Those of the public body have a mandate to manage the creation of credit for the benefit of all of us.
So you see the agenda of each is different.
I have come to the conclusion that the provision of credit into a society is, in the big sense, a common good and as such should be controlled by parameters that reflect that….
The Government could restart the Rural Bank (its circumstances like this its forerunner facilities were created for in the late 1800s…) and buy back land from farmers for a fair price; or allow farmers to refinance their mortgages at a lower interest rate – with some employment and environmental strings attached of course.
And ignore The Lost Sheep. Who is desperate to try and derail productive discussion here.
I’m concerned about that as well but the farmers are asking for the government to step in and save the farmers and the government only has two options for that:
1. Cough up money to cover the farmers debt or
2. Pass legislation preventing the sale of farms to foreigners
And this government definitely won’t do the second so that only leaves the first and they probably won’t do that one either – unless the banks also demand it to protect them.
So, basically, the farmers are asking for a government handout.
This is a basic summary of the NDPs ethics/background:
“New Democrats seek a future that brings together the best of the insights and objectives of Canadians who, within the social democratic and democratic socialist traditions, have worked through farmer, labour, co-operative, feminist, human rights and environmental movements, and with First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples, to build a more just, equal, and sustainable Canada within a global community dedicated to the same goals.”
Good to see a party focused on sustainability and equality gaining ground on the conservatives in Canada. The NDP won the last election in Alberta, which was an achievement because Alberta is the “oil state,” and had been a strong hold of the conservatives for quite some time.
People who like money too much ought to be kicked out of politics, Uruguayan President José Mujica told CNN en Español in an interview posted online Wednesday.
“We invented this thing called representative democracy, where we say the majority is who decides,” Mujica said in the interview. “So it seems to me that we [heads of state] should live like the majority and not like the minority.”
“I’m not against people who have money, who like money, who go crazy for money,” Mujica said. “But in politics we have to separate them. We have to run people who love money too much out of politics, they’re a danger in politics… People who love money should dedicate themselves to industry, to commerce, to multiply wealth. But politics is the struggle for the happiness of all.”
I especially like that last sentence because it shows the start contrast between NZ traditional values and the current govt that believes that some people deserve happiness more than others and if the other’s needs don’t get met, well that’s just how the game goes.
yeah!!!! politics is the struggle for the happiness of all… i say we should start right right away with ejecting people who love money from our political landscape. who’s with me?
Weka WP just stuck with saying we have been saying foreign investment is a problem for years. He desisted Tova’s overgeneralizations and stuck to his points. When she said “aren’t you worried that Labour is stealing your voters?” (or words to that effect) he just replied, we welcome them saying it.
Any kept going back to young NZders not being able to buy their own homes.
What I noticed that when the panel talked, the discussion with Mark Solomon dominated including the case with the board member and the wood pigeons (sorry I haven’t followed that story fully), rather than commenting on Winston and what he was saying about housing affordability………………….They completely omitted commenting on it.
Gower, garner, hoskins, henry etc don’t possess the professional subtelty to hide their shilling for the NACT regime.
It’s what happens when the bar is so low and the pool so small that the over paid/hyped personalities end up tinking they’re above and beyond it all with an arrogant smugness they can’t mask.
The living systems that conservationists seek to protect in some parts of this country are a parody of the natural world, kept, through intensive management, in suspended animation, like a collection in a museum. An ecosystem is not just a place. It is also a process. I believe their diminished state also restricts the scope of human life. We head for the hills to escape the order and control that sometimes seem to crush the breath out of us. When we get there, we discover that the same forces prevail. Even our national parks are little better than wet deserts.
The same could be said about our natural environment here in NZ and our farms are the ‘wet deserts’ that he refers to there.
Hey Colonial Viper – can you give me a link to that item re Russia/banning GMOs please.
We have a situation developing where the Govt thru MPI will be overriding local council regulations which ban GMOs, so they can bring in forestry which is genetically engineered (I think we’re talking radiata pine) even into those districts which ban GMOs. So I’d be interested to read why Russia is doing this. Might add to our ammunition to try and stop the govt. on this issue.
Thanks CR. I’ll go thru all these for useful info ….. and pass on to people in the north up here who are really angry at this govt tactic of trying to by-pass what they’ve spent over a decade trying to achieve – a GE Free region.
And this is why the private sector can’t do many government services (Health, social security, etc) any cheaper than the government:
And the true fallacy is that of scalable products. In a PSO [Professional Services Organization], there are a very small number of services that would actually achieve scale and drive advantage. Remember that a scalable product is where the marginal unit cost of sales is negligible—in other words, the cost structure is predominantly fixed. This is precisely the opposite of the cost structure of most professional services firms.
With the typical PSO, each additional engagement will incur substantial variable costs in the form of compensation (a direct expense). The fixed costs are typically negligible in considering the overall profitability of an engagement. In these cases, scale is never achieved—the service is not scalable and additional growth leads to either steady, or declining, margins.
Many government services are personal requiring one on one personal meetings and thus economies of scale simply cannot be applied.
Have you ever asked yourself this question, “Do I have what it takes to be a National/Labour (delete one) supporter?” and thought that you were not good enough?
Have you ever wished that you could sip your lattes in a Parnell cafe while reading the property press to reassure yourself that your Point Chevalier villa is retaining its inflated value and tut-tutting over the difficulties faced by first-time home buyers without feeling in the least bit hypocritical?
Have you ever wanted to be able to pay lip service to social justice so that you could impress your friends at dinner parties without the stress and possible embarrassment of actually committing to it or marching for it?
Have you ever wanted to utter the phrase “I’m not a racist, but…” without the least sense of self-awareness or irony?
When you talk about “swallowing dead rats”, haven’t you always wished that someone else had to swallow them instead of you?
Have you ever felt stifled by vestigial principles and never been able to say “but in the real world…” without feeling that you’re making excuses?
NOW you can aspire to be a genuine National/Labour (delete one) Supporter!
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As a Basic National/Labour (delete one) Supporter, you will enjoy many benefits, including having a specially-selected minority acquaintance so that you can claim to understand their experience and empathise with them. This acquaintance will be guaranteed to have no embarrassing contrary views and will validate your stances at all times (please indicate whether you require a socioeconomic, ethnic or sexual/gender minority acquaintance).
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“As a Basic National/Labour (delete one) Supporter, you will enjoy many benefits, including having a specially-selected minority acquaintance so that you can claim to understand their experience and empathise with them. This acquaintance will be guaranteed to have no embarrassing contrary views and will validate your stances at all times (please indicate whether you require a socioeconomic, ethnic or sexual/gender minority acquaintance).”
That is very good indeed rhino – keep this stuff coming, kia kaha!!!
For a time Edwin Rozario was forced to live off of bread and milk after his boss – Wellington businesswoman Michelle Spooner – failed to pay his wages.
Spooner’s $7700 debt to the software developer is still outstanding despite a ruling by the Employment Relations Authority to stump up with the cash by the end of March – the same day her company, MC2IT, was liquidated.
So, when is the government going to move in with the Proceeds of Crime Act (not paying employees is a crime and she’s obviously benefited from it) and take everything from her and then pay her employees?
Come now Draco, if an employer is held responsible for that, what will we have next? The world will end. No, employees must be skilled managers of their managers, psychotherapists, political genius’, to assist the employer to understand themselves. And if the employer has to abuse and drive the employee into poverty during that treatment, then it is the employees fault for not realising the employer is just plain human. What does an employee know about their situation? Nothing. The cost must be on the employee, because to scare the employer into thinking they’re incompetent would damage their self esteem and goal of popular gratitude and social status without effort. Employees must be able to make up for employer’s incompetence and illegal behaviours with assistance from legislation. Employers are simply people that are too big to fail.
What is it with this winter. So far I had a nasty flu that knocked me over for about 5 days back in May/June. Now I have a headcold (I think) that has knocked me over for 2 and half days. That is finally dissipating.
This is after having a flu jab earlier in the year.
Am I being unlucky or is this just a lousy year for colds?
Lousy year I think. Paper said “they” (medical people) are recording more strains of previously unseen flu than last few years.
Anecdotally, I haven’t been sick for five years or so. Now, two colds, in the last month. Shoulda taken the woman’s advice at the supermarket an not used the tongs for grabbing muffins all those last years. Let the immune system beef up a bit. Maybe licking the windows of the bus will help.
if you want to greatly increase the work load on your immune system, exposing yourself to a dozen versions of flu virus simultaneously via a flu jab might help.
Lol, when you don’t use the tongs you feel like a rebel and you also feel there is an old lady nearby looking into your soul. That’s been my experience anyway.
Drink heaps. Stay warm…wear a hat for godsakes! Eat garlic, onions, make soup from same.
Take manuka and propolis when the lurgy looms. And lemons.
Take 1000 mg of Vit C x 2 daily.
Get outside in the fresh air….take your portable interweb device if you have to.
IMHO….the flu jab is a scam. The viruses causing such ills are constantly changing and adapting…clever little buggers….much better if you strengthen your immune system.
Tried all that Grandma ! This is the first year I’ve ever been laid down like this ….. raided friends’ trees for lemons and limes – nothing works – and yes – maybe the flu jab wasn’t such a good idea !!
It would be interesting to see who has got the flu who had the jab and who didn’t.
Anecdotally, from my own experience, it seems more people get the flu who get the jab than those who don’t.
This is why I don’t get the flu jab – I couldn’t afford to be put out of action for weeks at a time with flu. I’ve never had the flu, or the vaccine, but have had immune-related chronic ailments (which have been resolved thankfully), and wouldn’t put anything into my system that could stress my immune system.
We’re in the dark ages of understanding the immune system and how it interacts with bacteria, stress, and the environment.
What stage do you think it’s at?
Are you familiar with research about the links between the role of gut bacteria and diabetes, allergies, obesity, IBD?
Are enough measures being taken in NZ to reduce antibiotic over-use?
Do you consider antibiotic over-use a major problem?
Does the presence of gut bacteria play a role in the efficacy of vaccines?
ER to state we are in the dark ages in relation to understanding the immune system was clearly incorrect as the scientific community has increased its knowledge immensely during the last 50 and dramatically in the last 5-10 years in almost all areas.
In relation to gut bacteria it is not an area of expertise for me although no – one in the medical area would deny that gut flora are extremely important in relation to the body’s wellbeing.
In NZ we do have sufficient measures in place to limit antibiotic usage although unfortunately there are far less measures in place throughout the world especially in India and South East Asia.
Regarding gut flora and efficacy of vaccines it depends which vaccines one is discussing, there is some limited evidence in animal models to suggest that influenza vaccine and polio vaccine that there is decreased efficacy when there is a strongly suppressed gut flora.
“although no – one in the medical area would deny that gut flora are extremely important in relation to the body’s wellbeing”
I think you will find many people that will disagree with you on that. You probably don’t get to hear the stories of people whose doctors write off such concerns.
Of course antibiotics have done some amazing things. And yes, they’re still incredibly useful. But can you honestly say that getting to MRSA etc in such a short period of time wasn’t because of misuse? And currently isn’t because of willful misuse?
Yes Methicillin resistant S. Aureus would have been unlikely to have developed without S. Aureus being exposed to methicillin.
Not sure why you’re accusing me of being patronising ? I was just making the point that antibiotics are still very useful and will continue to be so into the future.
You seemed to be assuming that I get my information from stories from the MSM, and that I somehow am not capable of analysing the validity of my sources. That’s patronising.
It’s not just methicillin right? Nice neutral framing but you avoided my point.
@ Weka from our provious discussion the only conclusions I can make about you is that you are usually polite and tend to be more on the ‘natural medicine” side of a debate rather than the “pharmaceutical, surgical intervention” side.
“@ Weka from our provious discussion the only conclusions I can make about you is that you are usually polite and tend to be more on the ‘natural medicine” side of a debate rather than the “pharmaceutical, surgical intervention” side.”
nsd, I find you considerably better than most in these debates 🙂 but your comment represents a profound misundersanding of my view. I don’t see it as two sides. Conventional medicine is important. Natural medicine is important. We need both and other things besides.
With due respect, I think your framing of things in the above duality is part of the problem (a framing which lots of people here also use).
Besides all that, I don’t see how that relates to my comment about being patronising.
True enough – but given the rapid rate at which bugs are evolving in response to antibiotics – how much longer do you think they will remain generally useful?
Asking this in the context of a relative dying of a drug-resistant pneumonia just a week ago.
Watching the move of antibiotic resistance bacterial infections from hospitals to becoming established in communities, and the only word I can think of is criminal. It’s not like medical people and health authorities didn’t know what the problem was.
And we haven’t even gotten to the use of antibiotics in growing food or how they’re acting in the environment.
That’s a fair call, Even when antibiotics are used appropriately, they contribute to the rise of drug-resistant bacteria because they don’t destroy every bug they target.
Bacteria (and many viruses) live on an evolutionary fast track, so germs that survive treatment with one antibiotic soon learn to resist others.
There’s no doubt that MRSA in particular is the result of decades of often unnecessary antibiotic use. For years, antibiotics have been prescribed for colds, flu and other viral infections that don’t respond to these drugs.
That being said antibiotics (both those used now any new agents) will continue to be useful for long into the future.
For years, antibiotics have been prescribed for colds, flu and other viral infections that don’t respond to these drugs.
Yet they are frequently needed to treat the secondary bacterial infections which so often follow in the footsteps of the viral attack.
And I do believe these secondary attacks happen because people do not look after themselves properly. Simple supportive care that our grandmothers often knew about has gone awol these days – because too many people think that if they get ill it’s not something they have to take seriously because ultimately the drugs will fix it if necessary.
And as weka hints above – given the rampant misuse of antibiotics outside strict medicinal use, and your own understanding of how rapidly bugs evolve – your sanguinary attitude here baffles me a little.
“Yet they are frequently needed to treat the secondary bacterial infections which so often follow in the footsteps of the viral attack.”
More occasionally needed, I would think that most GPs in NZ would send the patient home with some paracetamol for the fever of a viral infection and instructions for bed rest and to call if no improvement in 48 hours or if the symptoms are worsening before Rxing antibiotics.
I also agree that people don’t look after themselves – too many people feel they have to turn up at work rather than resting at home.
“… your sanguinary attitude here baffles me a little.”
Don’t know why, yes antibiotics are overused worldwide and bacteria evolve rapidly, however very broad spectrum resistance is still relatively rare and we continue to improve rXing protocols and development of new medicines.
Why on earth would someone agree to take paracetamol to suppress a fever response generated and used by the body to fight off a viral infection? Sheeesh.
I now wear a beanie wool hat in bed when I am crook. It really makes a heck of difference – especially as my heads yields to male pattern baldness.
Mind you there are down sides. Last night when after the fever broke, I found myself living in a wet morass of sweat. I’d gone to bed with a duvet, merino carriage blanket, thick cotton PJ’s, terrycloth dressing gown, and wool hat because I was still cold despite Lyn complaining about getting roasted.
I had to get up at 0530, have a shower, change, and discard everything I was wearing into the basket. Everything including the wool hat was completely soaked. Then I crashed on the couch with another duvet and set of carriage blankets.
You are blinkin’ lucky lprent that you’ve only been knocked out for 5 days with flu and 2 1/2 days with head cold.
My flu lasted a full two weeks, then recovery period of another two weeks with slow energy returning plus relapses and just now – after 3 days of feeling good and energised – I’ve blinkin’ got another viral throat infection. Its non-stop and anecdotal comments from friends and neighbours (and the doctors’ rooms) say its happening to heaps of people. (and i had a flu jab too !) whatever it is, its nasty and hanging around ! Yeah – its a lousy year for colds/flu/sore throats !
You are blinkin’ lucky lprent that you’ve only been knocked out for 5 days with flu and 2 1/2 days with head cold.
That is probably because I go to bed immediately after I get a onset. Trying to work as a programmer just doesn’t work if you are sick. You make bad mistakes a lot, and if you don’t catch them or they get missed in code reviews, then they will hang around in the code.
So after a few awful experiences of trying to deal with the downstream costs of that kind of thing, I have a cunning strategy. As soon as I am sure that my error rate is rising with the sore throat / headache / sneezing / coughing or whatever – I head for bed. And I stay there until I am sure that my body has handled it.
I get hired to write code and make machines do what we want them to do. I sure as hell don’t get hired to make mistakes because I am crook. Most years this means that I have a day or two off. This year is a bit crazy so far.
Yeah – that’s what others up here in the north are saying …… its a long-lasting bug whatever sort it is.
(and by the way, I too head for bed when feeling crook – hotwater bottles, lemon and honey drinks – but NOTHING worked this time !)
Well…full of sympathy for you both…but got to go….feeling a vague tickley prickely thingy coming on….can’t think why!
Raw onion and cheese sandwich methinks, then off to me virginal couch.
Seriously though….Grandma was right about the losing heat through your head thing, but I think she mean’t before you get the lurgy…you know, as a prophylactic measure. When you’re feverish…might pay to leave it off to let the heat escape!
My partner insists on shaving his head…then…wears a bloody hat to bed because he’s cold.
Yes – absolutely delicious limes. Big and juicy. And heaps of them on my friend’s tree. I made lime marmalade a while back (before the flu bug hit) – first time ever – just delicious !
Incidentally, the worst bug I ever had was around 1991/2 during a contract with Telecom. I was doing some insane hours working on some prototype code that was probably a little beyond what the 80386’s it was running on could really do.
I’d been working through some flu bug. When we stopped and I ‘relaxed’, then it really started to get bad. A month later I went to doctor and immediately got stuffed on antibiotics to kill the pneumonia . It took near 6 weeks before I was fully operational again.
That is why I have ever since then stopped working and live hot and sweaty in bed when a bug gets me.
Yes I linked to that yesterday in another context. An interesting read. Not sure if I agree with his conclusions entirely, but the argument is neatly constructed and challenging.
Critically he’s assuming the technology infrastructure underpinning his argument will be a permanent feature of future life. That’s not a given.
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For over a decade commentators have noted the rise of a new brand of explicitly ideological politics throughout the world. By this they usually refer to the re-emergence of national populism and avowedly illiberal approaches to governance throughout the “advanced” democratic community, but they also extend the thought to the ...
The US House of Representatives has just impeached Donald Trump, giving him the dubious honour of being the only US President to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans voted for impeachement, making it the most bipartisan impeachment ever. The question now is whether the Senate will rise to the occasion, and ...
Kieren Mitchell; Alice Mouton, Université de Liège; Angela Perri, Durham University, and Laurent Frantz, Ludwig Maximilian University of MunichThanks to the hit television series Game of Thrones, the dire wolf has gained a near-mythical status. But it was a real animal that roamed the Americas for at least 250,000 ...
Tide of tidal data rises Having cast our own fate to include rising sea level, there's a degree of urgency in learning the history of mean sea level in any given spot, beyond idle curiosity. Sea level rise (SLR) isn't equal from one place to another and even at a particular ...
Well, some of those chickens sure came home bigly, didn’t they… and proceeded to shit all over the nice carpet in the Capitol. What we were seeing here are societal forces that have long had difficulty trying to reconcile people to the “idea” of America and the reality of ...
In the wake of Donald Trump's incitement of an assault on the US capitol, Twitter finally enforced its terms of service and suspended his account. They've since followed that up with action against prominent QAnon accounts and Trumpers, including in New Zealand. I'm not unhappy with this: Trump regularly violated ...
Peter S. Ross, University of British ColumbiaThe Arctic has long proven to be a barometer of the health of our planet. This remote part of the world faces unprecedented environmental assaults, as climate change and industrial chemicals threaten a way of life for Inuit and other Indigenous and northern ...
Susan St John makes the case for taxing a deemed rate of return on excessive real estate holdings (after a family home exemption), to redirect scarce housing resources to where they are needed most. Read the full article here ...
I’m less than convinced by arguments that platforms like Twitter should be subject to common carrier regulation preventing them from being able to decide who to keep on as clients of their free services, and who they would not like to serve. It’s much easier to create competition for the ...
The hypocritical actions of political leaders throughout the global Covid pandemic have damaged public faith in institutions and governance. Liam Hehir chronicles the way in which contemporary politicians have let down the public, and explains how real leadership means walking the talk. During the Blitz, when German bombs were ...
Over the years, we've published many rebuttals, blog posts and graphics which came about due to direct interactions with the scientists actually carrying out the underlying research or being knowledgable about a topic in general. We'll highlight some of these interactions in this blog post. We'll start with two memorable ...
Yesterday we had the unseemly sight of a landleech threatening to keep his houses empty in response to better tenancy laws. Meanwhile in Catalonia they have a solution for that: nationalisation: Barcelona is deploying a new weapon in its quest to increase the city’s available rental housing: the power ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters, PhD The 2020 global wildfire season brought extreme fire activity to the western U.S., Australia, the Arctic, and Brazil, making it the fifth most expensive year for wildfire losses on record. The year began with an unprecedented fire event ...
NOTE: This is an excerpt from a digital story – read the full story here.Tess TuxfordKo te Kauri Ko Au, Ko te Au ko Kauri I am the kauri, the kauri is me Te Roroa proverb In Waipoua Forest, at the top of the North Island, New ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Coming attraction: IPCC's upcoming major climate assessmentLook for more emphasis on 'solutions,' efforts by cities, climate equity ... and outlook for emissions cuts in ...
Ringing A Clear Historical Bell: The extraordinary images captured in and around the US Capitol Building on 6 January 2021 mirror some of the worst images of America's past.THERE IS A SCENE in the 1982 movie Missing which has remained with me for nearly 40 years. Directed by the Greek-French ...
To impact or not to impeach? I understand why some of those who are justifiably aghast at Trump’s behaviour over recent days might still counsel against impeaching him for a second time. To impeach him, they argue, would run the risk of making him a martyr in the eyes of ...
The Capitol Building, Washington DC, Wednesday, 6 January 2021. Oh come, my little one, come.The day is almost done.Be at my side, behold the sightOf evening on the land.The life, my love, is hardAnd heavy is my heart.How should I live if you should leaveAnd we should be apart?Come, let me ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 3, 2021 through Sat, Jan 9, 2021Editor's ChoiceAfter the Insurrection: Accountability, Reform, and the Science of Democracy The poisonous lies and enablers of sedition--including Senator Hawley, pictured ...
This article, guest authored by Prof. Angela Gallego-Sala & Dr. Julie Loisel, was originally published on the Carbon Brief website on Dec 21, 2020. It is reposted below in its entirety. Click here to access the original article and comments. Peatlands Peatlands are ecosystems unlike any other. Perpetually saturated, their ...
The assault on the US Capitol and constitutional crisis that it has caused was telegraphed, predictable and yet unexpected and confusing. There are several subplots involved: whether the occupation of the Michigan State House in May was a trial run for the attacks on Congress; whether people involved in the ...
On Christmas Eve, child number 1 spotted a crack in a window. It’s a double-glazed window, and inspection showed that the small, horizontal crack was in the outermost pane. It was perpendicular to the frame, about three-quarters of the way up one side. The origins are a mystery. It MIGHT ...
Anne-Marie Broudehoux, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)Will the COVID-19 pandemic prompt a shift to healthier cities that focus on wellness rather than functional and economic concerns? This is a hypothesis that seems to be supported by several researchers around the world. In many ways, containment and physical distancing ...
Does the US need to strike a grand bargain with like-minded countries to pool their efforts? What does this tell us about today’s global politics? Perhaps the most remarkable editorial of last year was the cover leader of the London Economist on 19 November 2020. Shortly after Joe Biden was ...
Alexander Gillespie, University of Waikato and Valmaine Toki, University of WaikatoAotearoa New Zealand likes to think it punches above its weight internationally, but there is one area where we are conspicuously falling behind — the number of sites recognised by the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. Globally, there are 1,121 ...
An event organised by the Auckland PhilippinesSolidarity group Have a three-course lunch at Nanam Eatery with us! Help support the organic farming of our Lumad communities through the Mindanao Community School Agricultural Foundation. Each ticket is $50. Food will be served on shared plates. To purchase, please email phsolidarity@gmail.com or ...
"Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here." Prisons are places of unceasing emotional and physical violence, unrelieved despair and unforgivable human waste.IT WAS NATIONAL’S Bill English who accurately described New Zealand’s prisons as “fiscal and moral failures”. On the same subject, Labour’s Dr Martyn Findlay memorably suggested that no prison ...
This is a re-post from Inside Climate News by Ilana Cohen. Inside Climate News is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here. Whether or not people accept the science on Covid-19 and climate change, both global crises will have lasting impacts on health and ...
. . American Burlesque As I write this (Wednesday evening, 6 January), the US Presidential election is all but resolved, confirming Joe Biden as the next President of the (Dis-)United State of America. Trump’s turbulent political career has lasted just four years – one of the few single-term US presidents ...
The session started off so well. Annalax – suitably chastised – spent a pleasant morning with his new girlfriend (he would say paramour, of course, but for our purposes, girlfriend is easier*). He told her about Waking World Drow, and their worship of Her Ladyship. And he started ...
In a recent column I wrote for local newspapers, I ventured to suggest that Donald Trump – in addition to being a liar and a cheat, and sexist and racist – was a fascist in the making and would probably try, if he were to lose the election, to defy ...
When I was preparing for my School C English exam I knew I needed some quotes to splash through my essays. But remembering lines was never my strong point, so I tended to look for the low-hanging fruit. We’d studied Shakespeare’s King Lear that year and perhaps the lowest hanging ...
When I went to bed last night, I was expecting today to be eventful. A lot of pouting in Congress as last-ditch Trumpers staged bad-faith "objections" to a democratic election, maybe some rioting on the streets of Washington DC from angry Trump supporters. But I wasn't expecting anything like an ...
Melted ice of the past answers question today? Kate Ashley and a large crew of coauthors wind back the clock to look at Antarctic sea ice behavior in times gone by, in Mid-Holocene Antarctic sea-ice increase driven by marine ice sheet retreat. For armchair scientists following the Antarctic sea ice situation, something jumps out in ...
Christina SzalinskiWhen Martha Field became pregnant in 2005, a singular fear weighed on her mind. Not long before, as a Cornell University graduate student researching how genes and nutrients interact to cause disease, she had seen images of unborn mouse pups smaller than her pinkie nail, some with ...
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidates for President and Vice President respectively for the US 2020 Election, may have dispensed with the erstwhile nemesis, Trump the candidate – but there are numerous critical openings through which much, much worse many out there may yet see fit to ...
I don’t know Taupō well. Even though I stop off there from time to time, I’m always on the way to somewhere else. Usually Taupō means making a hot water puddle in the gritty sand followed by a swim in the lake, noticing with bemusement and resignation the traffic, the ...
Frances Williams, King’s College LondonFor most people, infection with SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – leads to mild, short-term symptoms, acute respiratory illness, or possibly no symptoms at all. But some people have long-lasting symptoms after their infection – this has been dubbed “long COVID”. Scientists are ...
Last night, a British court ruled that Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the US. Unfortunately, its not because all he is "guilty" of is journalism, or because the offence the US wants to charge him with - espionage - is of an inherently political nature; instead the judge accepted ...
Is the Gender Identity Movement a movement for human liberation, or is it a regressive movement which undermines women’s liberation and promotes sexist stereotypes? Should biological males be allowed to play in women’s sport, use women-only spaces (public toilets, changing rooms, other facilities), be able to have access to everything ...
Ian Whittaker, Nottingham Trent University and Gareth Dorrian, University of BirminghamSpace exploration achieved several notable firsts in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, including commercial human spaceflight and returning samples of an asteroid to Earth. The coming year is shaping up to be just as interesting. Here are some of ...
Michael Head, University of SouthamptonThe UK has become the first country to authorise the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for public use, with roll-out to start in the first week of 2021. This vaccine is the second to be authorised in the UK – following the Pfizer vaccine. The British government ...
So, Boris Johnson has been footering about in hospitals again. We should be grateful, perhaps, that on this occasion the Clown-in-Chief is only (probably) getting in the way and causing distractions, rather than taking up a bed, vital equipment and resources and adding more strain and danger to exhausted staff.Look at ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... SkS in the News... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Many Scientists Now Say Global Warming Could Stop Relatively Quickly After Emissions Go to ZeroThat’s one of several recent ...
The situation in the UK is looking catastrophic.Cases: over *70,000* people who were tested in England on 29th December tested positive. This is *not* because there were more tests on that day. It *is* 4 days after Christmas though, around when people who caught Covid on Christmas Day might start ...
by Don Franks For five days over New Year weekend, sixteen prisoners in the archaic pre WW1 block of Waikeria Prison defied authorities by setting fires and occupying the building’s roof. They eventually agreed to surrender after intervention from Maori party co-leader Rawiri Waititi. A message from the protesting men had stated: ...
Lost Opportunity: The powerful political metaphor of the Maori Party leading the despised and marginalised from danger to safety, is one Labour could have pre-empted by taking the uprising at Waikeria Prison much more seriously. AS WORD OF Rawiri Waititi’s successful intervention in the Waikeria Prison stand-off spreads, the Maori ...
Dear friends, it’s been a covidious year,A testing time for all of us here—Citizens of an island nationIn a state of managed isolation,A team (someone said) five million strong,Making it up as we went along:Somehow in typical Kiwi fashion,Without any wild excess ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Dec 27, 2020 through Sat, Jan 2, 2021Editor's Choice7 Graphics That Show Why the Arctic Is in Trouble Arctic Sea Ice: NSIDC It’s no secret that the Arctic is ...
One of the books I read in 2020 was She, by H. Rider Haggard (1887). I thoroughly enjoyed it, as being an exemplar of a good old-fashioned adventure story. I also noted with amusement ...
Scottish doctor Malcolm Kendrick looks at the pandemic and the responses to it 30th December 2020 I have not written much about COVID19 recently. What can be said? In my opinion the world has simply gone bonkers. The best description can be found in Dante’s Inferno, written many hundreds of ...
I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or the numbers seem very low please check this out. After correcting send me the URL for your ...
The deed is done, the doers undoneHad I been a Brit, I would have voted ‘Remain’ rather than Brexit (or ‘Leave’). Instead, I have been bemused by the comic theatre of British politics, fascinated by what the Brits actual think and professionally interested by the revelations of the complexity of ...
But Will She Keep Smiling? Kindness is as kindness does. And the one thing kindness cannot do is force people to be kind. Understanding that was the single most important factor in the Prime Minister’s success at stamping out the Coronavirus. She took New Zealanders with her; she encouraged them ...
Completed reads for 2020: The History of the Britons, by NenniusThe Annales CambriaeThe Life of King Alfred, by AsserThe Wood Beyond the World, by William MorrisThe Life of Merlin, by Geoffrey of MonmouthThe History of the Kings of Britain, by Geoffrey of MonmouthThe Life of Gildas, by Caradoc ...
As per my blog tradition, here is where my blog viewers came from in 2020: United StatesUnited KingdomCanadaAustraliaNew ZealandBrazilGermanySpainSwedenThe Netherlands The top four remain as per 2019. After four years at #6, New Zealand gains a spot. Brazil is up four, and The Netherlands jumps from #16 to #10. ...
As we welcome in the new year, our focus is on continuing to keep New Zealanders safe and moving forward with our economic recovery. There’s a lot to get on with, but before we say a final goodbye to 2020, here’s a quick look back at some of the milestones ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
The commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Ruapekapeka represents an opportunity for all New Zealanders to reflect on the role these conflicts have had in creating our modern nation, says Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Kiri Allan. “The Battle at Te Ruapekapeka Pā, which took ...
Babies born with tongue-tie will be assessed and treated consistently under new guidelines released by the Ministry of Health, Associate Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall announced today. Around 5% to 10% of babies are born with a tongue-tie, or ankyloglossia, in New Zealand each year. At least half can ...
The prisoner disorder event at Waikeria Prison is over, with all remaining prisoners now safely and securely detained, Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis says. The majority of those involved in the event are members of the Mongols and Comancheros. Five of the men are deportees from Australia, with three subject to ...
Travellers from the United Kingdom or the United States bound for New Zealand will be required to get a negative test result for COVID-19 before departing, and work is underway to extend the requirement to other long haul flights to New Zealand, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins confirmed today. “The new PCR test requirement, foreshadowed last ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has added her warm congratulations to the New Zealanders recognised for their contributions to their communities and the country in the New Year 2021 Honours List. “The past year has been one that few of us could have imagined. In spite of all the things that ...
Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment David Parker has congratulated two retired judges who have had their contributions to the country and their communities recognised in the New Year 2021 Honours list. The Hon Tony Randerson QC has been appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio says the New Year’s Honours List 2021 highlights again the outstanding contribution made by Pacific people across Aotearoa. “We are acknowledging the work of 13 Pacific leaders in the New Year’s Honours, representing a number of sectors including health, education, community, sports, the ...
The Government’s investment in digital literacy training for seniors has led to more than 250 people participating so far, helping them stay connected. “COVID-19 has meant older New Zealanders are showing more interest in learning how to use technology like Zoom and Skype so they can to keep in touch ...
New virus variants and ongoing high rates of diseases in some countries prompt additional border protections Extra (day zero or day one) test to be in place this week New ways of reducing risk before people embark on travel being investigated, including pre-departure testing for people leaving the United Kingdom ...
Hundreds more Cook Islanders are expected to begin criss-crossing the Pacific, Air NZ will triple the number of flights to Rarotonga next week, and about 300 managed isolation places will be freed up for Kiwis returning from other parts of the world. When Thomas Tarurongo Wynne took a job in Wellington at ...
SPECIAL REPORT:By Ena Manuireva in Auckland It seems a long time ago – some 124 days – since Mā’ohi Nui deplored its first covid-19 related deaths of an elderly woman on 11 September 2020 followed by her husband just hours later, both over the age of 80. The local ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Turnbull, Postdoctoral research associate, UNSW A global coalition of more than 50 countries have this week pledged to protect over 30% of the planet’s lands and seas by the end of this decade. Their reasoning is clear: we need greater protection ...
The Reserve Bank Governor’s apology and claim he will ‘own the issue’ is laughable given the lack of answers and timing of its release. Jordan Williams, a spokesman for the Taxpayers’ Union said: “It’s been five days since they came clean, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olga Kokshagina, Researcher – Innovation & Entrepreneurship, RMIT University Are too many online meetings and notifications getting you down? Online communication tools – from email to virtual chat and video-conferencing – have transformed the way we work. In many respects they’ve made ...
The Reserve Bank acknowledges information about some of its stakeholders may have been breached in a malicious data hack. The Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has commissioned an independent inquiry into how stakeholders' information was compromised when hackers breached a file sharing service used by the bank. “We ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlin Syme, PhD in Vertebrate Palaeontology, The University of Queensland This story contains spoilers for Ammonite Palaeontologist Mary Anning is known for discovering a multitude of Jurassic fossils from Lyme Regis on England’s Dorset Coast from the age of ten in 1809. ...
A tribute to the sitcoms of old? In the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Yup. Sam Brooks reviews the audacious WandaVision.Nothing sends a chill up my spine like the phrase “Marvel Cinematic Universe”. Since launching in 2008 with Iron Man, the MCU has become a shambling behemoth, with over 23 films (not ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University The alt-right, QAnon, paramilitary and Donald Trump-supporting mob that stormed the US Capitol on January 6 claimed they were only doing what the so-called “founding fathers” of the US had done in ...
The Point of Order Ministerial Workload Watchdog and our ever-vigilant Trough Monitor were both triggered yesterday by an item of news from the office of Conservation Minister Kititapu Allan. The minister was drawing attention to new opportunities to dip into the Jobs for Nature programme (and her statement was the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andreas Kupz, Senior Research Fellow, James Cook University In July 1921, a French infant became the first person to receive an experimental vaccine against tuberculosis (TB), after the mother had died from the disease. The vaccine, known as Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG), is ...
The first Friday Poem for 2021 is by Wellington poet Rebecca Hawkes.While you were partying I studied the bladeI your ever-loving edgelord God-emperorof the bot army & bitcoin mine subsistingon an IV drip of gamer girl bathwaterfinally my lonelinessis your responsibility………. you seeI need a girlfriend assigned to me by the ...
The arming of police officers in Canterbury was inevitable with the growing numbers and brazenness of the gangs across the country – this should be a permanent step, says Sensible Sentencing Trust. “It is unfortunate that we have come to the point ...
Celebrations in Aotearoa New Zealand to mark the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will begin on Thursday 21 January with ICAN Aotearoa New Zealand’s Wellington and online event, and continue on Friday ...
Hardly anyone is using their Covid Tracer app. Something needs to change.As the mercury approaches 30°C in Aotearoa, there is a good deal of slipping and slopping, but, let’s face it, piss-all scanning. As few as around 500,000 QR codes are being scanned by users of the NZ Covid Tracer ...
On the East Coast, a group of Māori-owned enterprises is innovating to create new revenue streams while doing what they love.New Zealand’s remote and sparsely populated regions are typically not the best places to create thriving brick-and-mortar businesses. In small communities miles away from any major centres, there are so ...
As we reach the height of summer, it’s not too late to do a safety check on your gas bottle. The Environmental Protection Authority’s Safer Homes programme has some tips and tricks to keep in mind before you fire up the grill. "If you’ve ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1Troy: The Siege of Troy Retold by Stephen Fry (Michael Joseph, $37)If you’re in any way unsure about ...
“We may as well knock on the gang headquarters around this country and tell them we all give up," says Darroch Ball co-leader of Sensible Sentencing Trust. “It is simply outrageous that violent offender, James Tuwhangai, has been released from ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Ireland, Israel, and Lebanon. Chart by Keith Rankin. The countries with the most recent large outbreaks of Covid19 are those with large numbers of recent recorded cases, but yet to record the deaths that most likely will result. In this camp, this time, are Ireland, Israel ...
RuPaul is in Aotearoa, kicking back in managed isolation to await the filming of an Australasian version of her hugely popular reality show Drag Race. But not everyone is happy about, explains Eli Matthewson. The world’s most famous drag queen, RuPaul, is in New Zealand, the government confirmed earlier this week ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Melleuish, Professor, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong What can we make of Clive Palmer? This week, he announced his United Australia Party (UAP) would not contest the upcoming West Australian state election on March 13. After a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gisela Kaplan, Emeritus Professor in Animal Behaviour, University of New England Have you ever seenmagpies play-fighting with one another, or rolling around in high spirits? Or an apostlebird running at full speed with a stick in its beak, chased by a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jen Jackson, Program Director, Centre for Policy Development, and Associate Professor of Education, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University Childcare centres across Australia are suffering staff shortages, which have been exacerbated by the COVID crisis. Many childcare workers across Australia left when parents started ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Barrett, Senior Lecturer in Taxation, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Rhetoric plays an important role in tax debate and therefore tax policy. If your side manages to gain traction in the public imagination with labels such as “death ...
*This article was first published on The Conversation and is republished with permission* Whoever leads the Republican Party post-Trump will need to consider how they will maintain the rabid support of his “base”, while working to regain more moderate voters who defected from the party in the 2020 election. In a historic ...
Covid-19 fears accelerated banks’ moves towards cashless transactions. But the Reserve Bank is fighting to protect cash, and those who still use it. ...
Good morning and welcome to this one-off edition of The Bulletin, covering major stories from the last few weeks.A quick preamble to this: Today’s special edition of The Bulletin is all about filling you in on some of the stories you might have missed over the summer period. Perhaps you had ...
Summer reissue: In this episode of Bad News, Alice Snedden is forced to confront her own mortality before hosting a very special dinner party to get to grips with the euthanasia debate.First published August 27, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is ...
The contrast between the words of John F Kennedy and today’s anti-democratic demagogue is inescapable, writes Dolores Janiewski I still remember three eloquent speeches by an American president. One happened in January 1961 and spoke about a “torch being passed to a new generation”. Two years later and one day apart, ...
The debate over cutting down a large macrocarpa to make way for a new residential development has highlighted a wider agreement between developers and protesters: that we also need to be planting far more trees. At the corner of Great North Road and Ash Street in Avondale, a 150-year-old macrocarpa stands its ground ...
More infectious variants of Covid-19 are increasingly being intercepted at the country’s borders, but the minister running New Zealand’s response is resisting pressure to accelerate vaccination plans despite demands from health experts as well as political friends and foes, Justin Giovannetti reports.New Zealand’s first Covid-19 jabs will be administered in ...
As CEO of her iwi rūnanga, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer was on the frontline protecting her community during the first outbreak of Covid-19. Now that more virulent strains threaten to breach our borders, the Māori Party co-leader calls on the government to introduce much stricter measures.As we enter the New Year I ...
The Prada Cup challenger series starts today. Suzanne McFadden goes behind the scenes of the world's only live yachting regatta to see what's in store for the next five weeks. At 6am on race days, Iain Murray wakes up and immediately checks the weather outside his Auckland window. “It’s all ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Raquel Peel, Lecturer, University of Southern Queensland This story contains spoilers for Bridgerton The first season of Bridgerton, Netflix’s new hit show based on Julia Quinn’s novels, premiered on December 25 last year. The show is set in London, during the ...
The New Zealand government believes its own negotiations with Rio Tinto will be resolved "fairly quickly" now there is certainty about the future of the Tiwai Point smelter. ...
Amanda Thompson and her family are attempting to cut back on the meat, so they gave all the vego sausies the local supermarket had to offer a hoon on the barbie. Here are the results.I was a vegetarian once. Even the best of us take a well-meaning wrong turn on ...
The Taxpayers’ Union welcomes the call by Wellington City Councillor Fleur Fitzsimons for a shift to land value based rates charges. Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, "Local government leaders across the country should join in Fitzsimons’s call ...
It’s been described as ‘pointless revenge’, but impeaching the president has a firm moral purpose, argues Michael Blake – setting a limit to what sorts of action a society will accept.A House majority, including 10 Republicans, voted today to impeach President Trump for “incitement of insurrection”. The vote will initiate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bryan Cranston, Lead Academic Teacher – Politics & Social Science (Swinburne Online), Swinburne University of Technology In a historic vote today, Donald Trump became the only US president to be impeached twice. By a margin of 232–197, the Democrat-controlled US House of ...
Hurrah. The PM is back to posting her announcements on the government’s official website, her deputy is back in the business of self-congratulation, Rio Tinto is back in the business of sucking up cheap electricity to produce aluminium at Tiwai Point, near Bluff. And overseas students (some, anyway) can come ...
The electricity sector, Government and people of Southland are rejoicing after Tiwai Point aluminium smelter owner Rio Tinto announced the major industrial would be open until the end of 2024, Marc Daalder reports Stakeholders in the electricity sector and across Southland are celebrating the extension of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter's ...
If you’ve been on social media this week, you may well have come across a surge in interest in sea shanties. We asked a veteran of the style why. In case you missed it, soon may the Wellerman come, to bring us sugar and tea and rum. If that sentence is even ...
“It is basic human decency to speak up and protect any vulnerable child from harm, so withholding information in child abuse cases and allowing the abuse to happen by not speaking up is, put simply, a cowardly move,” says Jess McVicar Co-Leader ...
Allowing 1,000 returning international students back to New Zealand is the right move by the Government, and hopefully we will be able to welcome more, says ExportNZ Executive Director Catherine Beard. "International education has contributed ...
A majority of the House of Representatives have voted to make Donald Trump the first US president ever to be impeached twice, formally charging him in his waning days in power with inciting an insurrection just a week after a violent mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol. Follow the ...
The Youth of NZ will be standing up for climate action once again on January 26th outside of Parliament for School Strike 4 Climate NZ’s 100 Days 4 Action campaign rally. “We believe it is vital to hold our new Labour-led government to account ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is calling on Rotorua Lakes District Council to urgently release the engineering report on the public safety and structural integrity of the visible foundation-misalignment and lean of the City’s Hemo Gorge monument to government ...
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John Roughan writes a wilfully ignorant piece on Climate Change.
It is wilfully ignorant if he wishes to claim to be a serious journalist.
Wonder if he’s watched Alister Barry’s ‘Hot Air’? As a New Zealand journalist, he should have.
Or if not, has he read the book ‘Merchants of Doubt’ by Conway and Oreskes. The film based on it is showing at the NZ Festival. I recommend he watches it.
If he does, he will realise how ridiculous the following statement of his is.
“But if the worst that can happen is a rise of a metre in sea levels and a few degrees in mean temperatures over a century, I think we’ll cope.”
Yes, that’s right Roughan is saying, without any Science to back himself up (apart from a chat with a pschchologist), that a 2 per cent temperature rise isn’t much.
Climate change is according to him “on a political mission.” Yet it is clear from his snide comments about obesity and sugar taxes that the main reason for this article being written was political. For some context , Roughan wrote the hagiography of Key. Despite his claims , it is Roughan who is using politics to muddy the Science.
Shame on the Herald for publishing this climate denial piece in 2015.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11482780
I sent this to the moderators a couple of days ago. It may have got spammed out, so I thought I’d post it in open mike, in reduced form. Being an elite technophobe, I didn’t know how to transfer the chart boxes. they disappeared when I cut an pasted from word. So it’s slightly unclear.
I was having a poke around on Skykiwi to see what I could find about local Chinese opinions of Labour’s press release on Chinese (sounding) investment in the Auckland real estate market, and I found the item below. Skykiwi is NZ’s most popular Chinese language website. Here’s the translation:
Are Chinese really speculating on the real estate market? Skykiwi stats tell you NZ Chinese perspectives.
Skykiwi has broken down your comments on three different NZ Herald articles into different categories…within the circle of Chinese people, perspectives are clashing and very intense, and are certainly not monolithic.
Is Labour discriminating against Chinese people?
Percentage Number of commenters
Yes 46% 67
No 25% 36
Neutral 10% 15
Other 19% unstated
Chinese people in the Auckland housing market
Percentage Commenter No.
Chinese speculation is driving up house prices 36% 52
Overseas investment should be restricted 12% 18
Chinese house purchasing is reasonable 32% 46
Other 20% 29
Do you support what Labour is saying?
Percentage Number of commenters
Support 39% 26
Opposed 31% 21
Neutral 18% 12
Invalid 12% unstated
We also took a vote on the question: are Chinese buyers pushing up Auckland house prices?
Vote percentage Vote number
Yes 61% 1515
No 19% 467
说不好 (literally, say not good(?)) 19% 471
Notes:
The item was written by the editorial team, published on the 13th, and according to the website has had nearly 9,000 views. You can see the original here, with pretty pie charts:
http://money.skykiwi.com/realestate/2015-07-13/201290.shtml
I agree with Fran O’Sullivan.
‘Labour must dig deeper in foreign buyer data.’
‘What Labour should do is spend some funds and buy data from Quotable Value itself (something that Labour MP Phil Twyford, who ran the story, admitted he considered) so they have a tighter, fact-based arsenal when the issue is next raised.’
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11482897
Which brings me to a slightly off topic point. Why has the access to land information moved so far beyond the reach of the general public? It’s collected with public money and yet it costs over $500 to even look at any part of the data base. Once it was possible to go into a LINZ office and have at least a basic look at data before having to spend money. I can understand it not being a free for all on the internet but why cannot the data be accessed at a kiosk at a local governement office?
Bankers putting the squeeze on farmers.
‘Whangarei dairy farmer Alex Wright said many farmers were in a dire situation and, following comments from Minister for Economic Development Steven Joyce, the Government’s view that struggling dairy farmers were resilient was out of touch with reality.
“They talk about farmers being resilient – well, you can be resilient for a certain amount of time, but if you reach the point where you can’t function your business because you can’t even pay for the basics to run the business, then I feel that the government are just sitting on the fence.
She said the Government should be putting pressure on the banks to act more compassionately towards struggling farmers.
Janette Walker, a negotiator working with heavily indebted farmers, said banks were putting pressure on family members to put up their own properties as guarantees.
She said there was a risk that parents could lose their own homes.
“40 percent of farmers are not going to make any money this year, and probably at the same for the following season. Some of them may have to sell some assets, some of them may have to exit farming.”
Ms Walker said banks had been cutting off cashflow for struggling dairy farmers in particular and demanding more security for further loans.’
The only words I have to describe bankers cannot be typed here.
2 questions.
1. What were the 4 Australian banks’ profit last year?
2. Wonder who will buy the farms at rock bottom prices? Foreign speculators?
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/279050/banks-give-'benefit-of-doubt'-to-farmers-bnz
This was all so very clear and obvious when times were good……
eh? Why the crying? This scene has been played out so very many times over the generations in New Zealand that anybody who cries now and thinks it is something new is a frikkin’ idiot.
If people didn’t want to deal with banks when they get mean and tough, then they should quite simply not have had anything to do with them. Everybody knows that banks are cunts. Full bloody stop.
Idiots
The entire scene is loaded with the idiocy of humanity
idiots for making deals with banks
idiots idiots idiots
short term thinking with no regard for history past and present – no wonder people have got themselves into trouble
Yes it is very unwise to depend on banks.
They are are to hard to avoid, though.
They are not hard to avoid, I disagree.
People simply turn a blind eye to the fatal flaws in our farming/banking sector because of la-la land dreamy romantic poorly thought out notions of farming heaven.
If by saying they are “hard to avoid” you mean that it is not possible to be a farmer unless you have a banker then the entire premise of the current approach to farming is resting in a pile of cowshit steaming away in the morning sun……
“wonder who will buy the farms at rock bottom prices? Foreign speculators?”
This will be what pretty much every single farmer that is in debt-trouble will be eyeing nervously…. hoping that those foreign buyers who have ramped up demand and prices for farmland will stay ……. but sheesh, if all you;ve got is hope then you’ve got nothing..
But foreign buyers should be banned. And the voting farmer will be watching this political issue nervously too…
If this happened right now you would see farmland values plummet like never before in NZ….. I mean, if the number of buyers of New Zealand farmland was restricted to only New Zealand residents,….. ask yourself……. total meltdown…….
…….
the lessons from this???
watch out for banks. watch out for foreign ownership. both of these distort our lands and our people….. they should both fuck off
Nationalise banks.
I have come to the conclusion that the provision of credit into a society is, in the big sense, a common good and as such should be controlled by parameters that reflect that….
Currently the banking structures are anything but for the common good ….
(it is in the common good due mostly to the massive impact it has on society – ether for better or for worse. It is such an enormous player that to leave it in private hands is not right)
Because if you put a bunch of humans into a group and call them a government, they lose the ability to act like idiots?
what?
You talk about “the idiocy of humanity”, and then you say that credit should not be in private hands, i.e. it should be under the control of a public body / Government.
But a public body is made up of individual humans, and as you say, humanity is prone to ‘idiocy’?
What I don’t understand is why you think a group of idiots in a public body will be any more effective than a group of idiots in a private one?
1. The government gets to regulate public services better than it does private corporations
2. Public servants are more accountable than the private corporations
Really, the problem we have is that we’ve allowed the private sector to work solely for greed while destroying the public service that actually built NZ.
“What I don’t understand is why you think a group of idiots in a public body will be any more effective than a group of idiots in a private one?”
The answer is simple.
Those of the private body have a mandate to make a profit from the creation of credit for its shareholders.
Those of the public body have a mandate to manage the creation of credit for the benefit of all of us.
So you see the agenda of each is different.
+1
The Government could restart the Rural Bank (its circumstances like this its forerunner facilities were created for in the late 1800s…) and buy back land from farmers for a fair price; or allow farmers to refinance their mortgages at a lower interest rate – with some employment and environmental strings attached of course.
And ignore The Lost Sheep. Who is desperate to try and derail productive discussion here.
Well its tough really. When you take a loan, you know the outcome. This has been known about for some time.
So, that would be the farmers asking for more handouts from the government?
Don’t be wrong…I’m only concerned at more of our land being sold to overseas speculators
I’m concerned about that as well but the farmers are asking for the government to step in and save the farmers and the government only has two options for that:
1. Cough up money to cover the farmers debt or
2. Pass legislation preventing the sale of farms to foreigners
And this government definitely won’t do the second so that only leaves the first and they probably won’t do that one either – unless the banks also demand it to protect them.
So, basically, the farmers are asking for a government handout.
there are many ways to structure this “hand out” to serve the interests of the nation, and the environment.
NDP now has a clear lead in Canada’s complicated three-way Federal Election campaign.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/07/17/ndp-captures-lead-in-public-support-forum-poll-says.html
Looked at the graph Scott. Where does the NDP sit? Left or Right?
This is a basic summary of the NDPs ethics/background:
“New Democrats seek a future that brings together the best of the insights and objectives of Canadians who, within the social democratic and democratic socialist traditions, have worked through farmer, labour, co-operative, feminist, human rights and environmental movements, and with First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples, to build a more just, equal, and sustainable Canada within a global community dedicated to the same goals.”
Good to see a party focused on sustainability and equality gaining ground on the conservatives in Canada. The NDP won the last election in Alberta, which was an achievement because Alberta is the “oil state,” and had been a strong hold of the conservatives for quite some time.
fascinating: does this mean Harper is on the slide?
nice piece on the sausage factory of Chinese GDP measurement.
http://www.baldingsworld.com/2015/07/15/considering-the-veracity-of-chinese-gdp/
basically no one has a clue. and they keep changing measurement criteria so the stats aren’t even internally reliable over time.
yep…when the Chinese leadership says that growth will be 7.5% next year, that is EXACTLY what they mean lol
Old article but bears reposting,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/23/mujica-rich-people-politics_n_6036892.html
I especially like that last sentence because it shows the start contrast between NZ traditional values and the current govt that believes that some people deserve happiness more than others and if the other’s needs don’t get met, well that’s just how the game goes.
Just wish we had a leader like Mujica.
One with more visionary aspirations than just money and materialism.
We do have leaders like that but not enough of the NZ people vote for them. What does that tell us?
to many new zealanders are self interested jerks? maybe we shouldn’t let people who love money vote either
Sounds like a nice idea but people who love money never do that.
yeah!!!! politics is the struggle for the happiness of all… i say we should start right right away with ejecting people who love money from our political landscape. who’s with me?
Just watched The Nation……Winston Peters, I have to say was stunning re Labour and overseas investors………
in what way anker?
Weka WP just stuck with saying we have been saying foreign investment is a problem for years. He desisted Tova’s overgeneralizations and stuck to his points. When she said “aren’t you worried that Labour is stealing your voters?” (or words to that effect) he just replied, we welcome them saying it.
Any kept going back to young NZders not being able to buy their own homes.
What I noticed that when the panel talked, the discussion with Mark Solomon dominated including the case with the board member and the wood pigeons (sorry I haven’t followed that story fully), rather than commenting on Winston and what he was saying about housing affordability………………….They completely omitted commenting on it.
Thanks, I’ll check it out when it goes up online.
I would honestly be interested to know what you think.
I do value your opinions even though we may not have seen eye to eye over Labour release of Band T data….
Winston was good. She couldn’t sidetrack him or put words into his mouth. He basically said he’s glad that Labour agrees with him.
haven’t had a chance today anker, thanks.
http://itsourfuture.org.nz/tova-obrien-interviews-winston-peters/
Hi Weka,
transcript from yesterday. I mostly disagree what WP says about water, so ignore that.
Its more how he doesn’t give the interviewer an inch.
What a patronizing comment from Tova at the end. Speaks to me that he gets under their skin!
cheers.
They are complicit, that’s why.
In the 1940s there was a term for them.
Quislings.
More on the Nation……Paddy introducing the panelists “for National Press secretary and a good friend of mine” (Ben Thomas?????? I think).
Former National Press secretary and Paddy introduces him as a a good friend of his. He’s not even trying to pretend or hide it anymore
Gower, garner, hoskins, henry etc don’t possess the professional subtelty to hide their shilling for the NACT regime.
It’s what happens when the bar is so low and the pool so small that the over paid/hyped personalities end up tinking they’re above and beyond it all with an arrogant smugness they can’t mask.
George Monbiot: Let’s make Britain wild again and find ourselves in nature
The same could be said about our natural environment here in NZ and our farms are the ‘wet deserts’ that he refers to there.
George Monbiot is inspirational.
just read a piece saying Russia is banning all GMOs from the fields and the shelves. Somme governments understand what this century has to be about.
Hey Colonial Viper – can you give me a link to that item re Russia/banning GMOs please.
We have a situation developing where the Govt thru MPI will be overriding local council regulations which ban GMOs, so they can bring in forestry which is genetically engineered (I think we’re talking radiata pine) even into those districts which ban GMOs. So I’d be interested to read why Russia is doing this. Might add to our ammunition to try and stop the govt. on this issue.
Hi Jenny:
http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/03/16/4517
http://www.globalresearch.ca/gmo-free-russia-government-approves-bill-that-would-ban-gmo-cultivation-breeding-and-imports/5426431
http://www.rt.com/news/russia-import-gmo-products-621/
http://www.inquisitr.com/1692271/monsanto-eliminated-russia-officially-bans-gmos/
http://www.globalmeatnews.com/Industry-Markets/Russia-continues-to-tighten-GMO-legislation
Thanks CR. I’ll go thru all these for useful info ….. and pass on to people in the north up here who are really angry at this govt tactic of trying to by-pass what they’ve spent over a decade trying to achieve – a GE Free region.
And this is why the private sector can’t do many government services (Health, social security, etc) any cheaper than the government:
Many government services are personal requiring one on one personal meetings and thus economies of scale simply cannot be applied.
The farce of “centrism”:
Dear Sir/Madam (select one assigned at birth),
Have you ever asked yourself this question, “Do I have what it takes to be a National/Labour (delete one) supporter?” and thought that you were not good enough?
Have you ever wished that you could sip your lattes in a Parnell cafe while reading the property press to reassure yourself that your Point Chevalier villa is retaining its inflated value and tut-tutting over the difficulties faced by first-time home buyers without feeling in the least bit hypocritical?
Have you ever wanted to be able to pay lip service to social justice so that you could impress your friends at dinner parties without the stress and possible embarrassment of actually committing to it or marching for it?
Have you ever wanted to utter the phrase “I’m not a racist, but…” without the least sense of self-awareness or irony?
When you talk about “swallowing dead rats”, haven’t you always wished that someone else had to swallow them instead of you?
Have you ever felt stifled by vestigial principles and never been able to say “but in the real world…” without feeling that you’re making excuses?
NOW you can aspire to be a genuine National/Labour (delete one) Supporter!
For the time of this strictly limited never-to-be-repeated offer we are offering you the opportunity to be assessed to determine whether you have what it takes to be a National/Labour (delete one) supporter. There are many advantages to becoming a National/Labour (delete one) Supporter and we offer a full range of package deals.
As a Basic National/Labour (delete one) Supporter, you will enjoy many benefits, including having a specially-selected minority acquaintance so that you can claim to understand their experience and empathise with them. This acquaintance will be guaranteed to have no embarrassing contrary views and will validate your stances at all times (please indicate whether you require a socioeconomic, ethnic or sexual/gender minority acquaintance).
As a Special National/Labour (delete one) Supporter, we will send MPs to your exclusive box at a sports stadium to provide valuable photo opportunities that will enable you to present yourself as influential and well-connected in the halls of government. As an added service, they will provide charming conversation and help you to dispose of your excess chardonnay.
As a Prospective Partnership National/Labour (delete one) Supporter, we will ensure that you are first in line for any future Public-Private Partnerships with a chance to have personally crafted legislation composed just for you, written by hand in Comic Sans on a Maui Dolphin vellum scroll.
Just call this number below and you will be contacted by a National/Labour (delete one) representative to begin the process of assessing whether you can become a fully-accredited National/Labour (delete one) Supporter!
(Please note, persons and groups considered politically expendable by our focus groups need not apply)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRysrnWZ1SI
“As a Basic National/Labour (delete one) Supporter, you will enjoy many benefits, including having a specially-selected minority acquaintance so that you can claim to understand their experience and empathise with them. This acquaintance will be guaranteed to have no embarrassing contrary views and will validate your stances at all times (please indicate whether you require a socioeconomic, ethnic or sexual/gender minority acquaintance).”
That is very good indeed rhino – keep this stuff coming, kia kaha!!!
good god you are a devil, RC
Wellington businesswoman dodges paying former employee thousands
So, when is the government going to move in with the Proceeds of Crime Act (not paying employees is a crime and she’s obviously benefited from it) and take everything from her and then pay her employees?
Come now Draco, if an employer is held responsible for that, what will we have next? The world will end. No, employees must be skilled managers of their managers, psychotherapists, political genius’, to assist the employer to understand themselves. And if the employer has to abuse and drive the employee into poverty during that treatment, then it is the employees fault for not realising the employer is just plain human. What does an employee know about their situation? Nothing. The cost must be on the employee, because to scare the employer into thinking they’re incompetent would damage their self esteem and goal of popular gratitude and social status without effort. Employees must be able to make up for employer’s incompetence and illegal behaviours with assistance from legislation. Employers are simply people that are too big to fail.
What is it with this winter. So far I had a nasty flu that knocked me over for about 5 days back in May/June. Now I have a headcold (I think) that has knocked me over for 2 and half days. That is finally dissipating.
This is after having a flu jab earlier in the year.
Am I being unlucky or is this just a lousy year for colds?
Lousy year I think. Paper said “they” (medical people) are recording more strains of previously unseen flu than last few years.
Anecdotally, I haven’t been sick for five years or so. Now, two colds, in the last month. Shoulda taken the woman’s advice at the supermarket an not used the tongs for grabbing muffins all those last years. Let the immune system beef up a bit. Maybe licking the windows of the bus will help.
if you want to greatly increase the work load on your immune system, exposing yourself to a dozen versions of flu virus simultaneously via a flu jab might help.
Three actually – none active as I’m sure you know.
A/California/7/2009 (NYMC X-181) (A/California/7/2009 (H1N1) – like): 15 μg haemagglutinin per dose
A/South Australia/55/2014 (IVR-175) (A/Switzerland/9715293/2013 (H3N2) – like): 15 μg haemagglutinin per dose
B/Phuket/3073/2013 (B/Phuket/3073/2013 – like): 15 μg haemagglutinin per dose
Lol, when you don’t use the tongs you feel like a rebel and you also feel there is an old lady nearby looking into your soul. That’s been my experience anyway.
that;s deep lol
Grandma here.
Drink heaps. Stay warm…wear a hat for godsakes! Eat garlic, onions, make soup from same.
Take manuka and propolis when the lurgy looms. And lemons.
Take 1000 mg of Vit C x 2 daily.
Get outside in the fresh air….take your portable interweb device if you have to.
IMHO….the flu jab is a scam. The viruses causing such ills are constantly changing and adapting…clever little buggers….much better if you strengthen your immune system.
Grandma out.
Tried all that Grandma ! This is the first year I’ve ever been laid down like this ….. raided friends’ trees for lemons and limes – nothing works – and yes – maybe the flu jab wasn’t such a good idea !!
It would be interesting to see who has got the flu who had the jab and who didn’t.
Anecdotally, from my own experience, it seems more people get the flu who get the jab than those who don’t.
🙄
This is why I don’t get the flu jab – I couldn’t afford to be put out of action for weeks at a time with flu. I’ve never had the flu, or the vaccine, but have had immune-related chronic ailments (which have been resolved thankfully), and wouldn’t put anything into my system that could stress my immune system.
We’re in the dark ages of understanding the immune system and how it interacts with bacteria, stress, and the environment.
“We’re in the dark ages of understanding the immune system and how it interacts with bacteria, stress, and the environment.”
Um no we’re not.
[G’day, Doc! Can you check the spelling of your handle next time you post? Noth not north sends you into moderation. Cheers, TRP]
Will do TRP, thanks for that.
What stage do you think it’s at?
Are you familiar with research about the links between the role of gut bacteria and diabetes, allergies, obesity, IBD?
Are enough measures being taken in NZ to reduce antibiotic over-use?
Do you consider antibiotic over-use a major problem?
Does the presence of gut bacteria play a role in the efficacy of vaccines?
ER to state we are in the dark ages in relation to understanding the immune system was clearly incorrect as the scientific community has increased its knowledge immensely during the last 50 and dramatically in the last 5-10 years in almost all areas.
In relation to gut bacteria it is not an area of expertise for me although no – one in the medical area would deny that gut flora are extremely important in relation to the body’s wellbeing.
In NZ we do have sufficient measures in place to limit antibiotic usage although unfortunately there are far less measures in place throughout the world especially in India and South East Asia.
Regarding gut flora and efficacy of vaccines it depends which vaccines one is discussing, there is some limited evidence in animal models to suggest that influenza vaccine and polio vaccine that there is decreased efficacy when there is a strongly suppressed gut flora.
“although no – one in the medical area would deny that gut flora are extremely important in relation to the body’s wellbeing”
I think you will find many people that will disagree with you on that. You probably don’t get to hear the stories of people whose doctors write off such concerns.
well we blew the advantage of antibiotics in the first 50 years we had them. 50 years, in the context of evolution. How fucking stupid is that?
No don’t believe all the stories in the MSM – antibiotics are still extremely valuable tools in all sorts of conditions.
Much of our modern surgery as an example would be hugely curtailed without antibiotics.
Patronising much?
Of course antibiotics have done some amazing things. And yes, they’re still incredibly useful. But can you honestly say that getting to MRSA etc in such a short period of time wasn’t because of misuse? And currently isn’t because of willful misuse?
Yes Methicillin resistant S. Aureus would have been unlikely to have developed without S. Aureus being exposed to methicillin.
Not sure why you’re accusing me of being patronising ? I was just making the point that antibiotics are still very useful and will continue to be so into the future.
You seemed to be assuming that I get my information from stories from the MSM, and that I somehow am not capable of analysing the validity of my sources. That’s patronising.
It’s not just methicillin right? Nice neutral framing but you avoided my point.
@ Weka from our provious discussion the only conclusions I can make about you is that you are usually polite and tend to be more on the ‘natural medicine” side of a debate rather than the “pharmaceutical, surgical intervention” side.
“@ Weka from our provious discussion the only conclusions I can make about you is that you are usually polite and tend to be more on the ‘natural medicine” side of a debate rather than the “pharmaceutical, surgical intervention” side.”
nsd, I find you considerably better than most in these debates 🙂 but your comment represents a profound misundersanding of my view. I don’t see it as two sides. Conventional medicine is important. Natural medicine is important. We need both and other things besides.
With due respect, I think your framing of things in the above duality is part of the problem (a framing which lots of people here also use).
Besides all that, I don’t see how that relates to my comment about being patronising.
True enough – but given the rapid rate at which bugs are evolving in response to antibiotics – how much longer do you think they will remain generally useful?
Asking this in the context of a relative dying of a drug-resistant pneumonia just a week ago.
Watching the move of antibiotic resistance bacterial infections from hospitals to becoming established in communities, and the only word I can think of is criminal. It’s not like medical people and health authorities didn’t know what the problem was.
And we haven’t even gotten to the use of antibiotics in growing food or how they’re acting in the environment.
That’s a fair call, Even when antibiotics are used appropriately, they contribute to the rise of drug-resistant bacteria because they don’t destroy every bug they target.
Bacteria (and many viruses) live on an evolutionary fast track, so germs that survive treatment with one antibiotic soon learn to resist others.
There’s no doubt that MRSA in particular is the result of decades of often unnecessary antibiotic use. For years, antibiotics have been prescribed for colds, flu and other viral infections that don’t respond to these drugs.
That being said antibiotics (both those used now any new agents) will continue to be useful for long into the future.
For years, antibiotics have been prescribed for colds, flu and other viral infections that don’t respond to these drugs.
Yet they are frequently needed to treat the secondary bacterial infections which so often follow in the footsteps of the viral attack.
And I do believe these secondary attacks happen because people do not look after themselves properly. Simple supportive care that our grandmothers often knew about has gone awol these days – because too many people think that if they get ill it’s not something they have to take seriously because ultimately the drugs will fix it if necessary.
And as weka hints above – given the rampant misuse of antibiotics outside strict medicinal use, and your own understanding of how rapidly bugs evolve – your sanguinary attitude here baffles me a little.
“Yet they are frequently needed to treat the secondary bacterial infections which so often follow in the footsteps of the viral attack.”
More occasionally needed, I would think that most GPs in NZ would send the patient home with some paracetamol for the fever of a viral infection and instructions for bed rest and to call if no improvement in 48 hours or if the symptoms are worsening before Rxing antibiotics.
I also agree that people don’t look after themselves – too many people feel they have to turn up at work rather than resting at home.
“… your sanguinary attitude here baffles me a little.”
Don’t know why, yes antibiotics are overused worldwide and bacteria evolve rapidly, however very broad spectrum resistance is still relatively rare and we continue to improve rXing protocols and development of new medicines.
Why on earth would someone agree to take paracetamol to suppress a fever response generated and used by the body to fight off a viral infection? Sheeesh.
@ CV true enough, however, people, parents in particular, like to avoid the pain and discomfort associated with fevers.
I now wear a beanie wool hat in bed when I am crook. It really makes a heck of difference – especially as my heads yields to male pattern baldness.
Mind you there are down sides. Last night when after the fever broke, I found myself living in a wet morass of sweat. I’d gone to bed with a duvet, merino carriage blanket, thick cotton PJ’s, terrycloth dressing gown, and wool hat because I was still cold despite Lyn complaining about getting roasted.
I had to get up at 0530, have a shower, change, and discard everything I was wearing into the basket. Everything including the wool hat was completely soaked. Then I crashed on the couch with another duvet and set of carriage blankets.
Reminds me. I have to change the bedding
You are blinkin’ lucky lprent that you’ve only been knocked out for 5 days with flu and 2 1/2 days with head cold.
My flu lasted a full two weeks, then recovery period of another two weeks with slow energy returning plus relapses and just now – after 3 days of feeling good and energised – I’ve blinkin’ got another viral throat infection. Its non-stop and anecdotal comments from friends and neighbours (and the doctors’ rooms) say its happening to heaps of people. (and i had a flu jab too !) whatever it is, its nasty and hanging around ! Yeah – its a lousy year for colds/flu/sore throats !
That is probably because I go to bed immediately after I get a onset. Trying to work as a programmer just doesn’t work if you are sick. You make bad mistakes a lot, and if you don’t catch them or they get missed in code reviews, then they will hang around in the code.
So after a few awful experiences of trying to deal with the downstream costs of that kind of thing, I have a cunning strategy. As soon as I am sure that my error rate is rising with the sore throat / headache / sneezing / coughing or whatever – I head for bed. And I stay there until I am sure that my body has handled it.
I get hired to write code and make machines do what we want them to do. I sure as hell don’t get hired to make mistakes because I am crook. Most years this means that I have a day or two off. This year is a bit crazy so far.
Yeah – that’s what others up here in the north are saying …… its a long-lasting bug whatever sort it is.
(and by the way, I too head for bed when feeling crook – hotwater bottles, lemon and honey drinks – but NOTHING worked this time !)
Well…full of sympathy for you both…but got to go….feeling a vague tickley prickely thingy coming on….can’t think why!
Raw onion and cheese sandwich methinks, then off to me virginal couch.
Seriously though….Grandma was right about the losing heat through your head thing, but I think she mean’t before you get the lurgy…you know, as a prophylactic measure. When you’re feverish…might pay to leave it off to let the heat escape!
My partner insists on shaving his head…then…wears a bloody hat to bed because he’s cold.
Cheer up guys…this too shall pass.
PS…Far North home grown limes…..yum!
Yes – absolutely delicious limes. Big and juicy. And heaps of them on my friend’s tree. I made lime marmalade a while back (before the flu bug hit) – first time ever – just delicious !
It really is a bad season for colds and flus…
Oh well grin and moan about it. That stops it getting too exasperating.
Incidentally, the worst bug I ever had was around 1991/2 during a contract with Telecom. I was doing some insane hours working on some prototype code that was probably a little beyond what the 80386’s it was running on could really do.
I’d been working through some flu bug. When we stopped and I ‘relaxed’, then it really started to get bad. A month later I went to doctor and immediately got stuffed on antibiotics to kill the pneumonia . It took near 6 weeks before I was fully operational again.
That is why I have ever since then stopped working and live hot and sweaty in bed when a bug gets me.
Me too.Yes a bad year for colds.It’s the persistent after cough cough cough that gets me. Any remedies welcomed.
Rodel – try Gee’s Linctus for night-time. Buy at a chemist. Helps you sleep.
(It’s got morphine in it. Great knock-out when you’re desperate) !
JK Thanks. Got some. – Vix original vapoDrops also good.
86 year old neighbour, never ill – She swears by cider vinegar and honey
“The end of capitalism has begun” A little light reading from today’s Guardian.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun
Yes I linked to that yesterday in another context. An interesting read. Not sure if I agree with his conclusions entirely, but the argument is neatly constructed and challenging.
Critically he’s assuming the technology infrastructure underpinning his argument will be a permanent feature of future life. That’s not a given.