“A massive shale formation found in the Kiwi Nation is so huge and untouched, the New Zealand Herald reports: ‘It’s literally leaking oil and gas’
“An independent report released in October 2012 says this shale field could hold more oil than the combined reserves of Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Royal Dutch Shell…
“Geologists have discovered at least 300 spots where oil and gas are bubbling at the surface.
“These two companies (both trading below $10 a share) control over 5,000 square miles of the emerging oil field… and production has already started….
“On the North Island of New Zealand — about 268 miles from Auckland — sits the small town of Hastings.
“For decades there’s been nothing remarkable about this small port town… until now.
“Massive oil deposits surrounding Hastings have been found that are 10x larger than the infamous Bakken oil field.
“And the major permit holders to these deposits are two companies that I’m about to detail for you today….
“The geographical similarities between the Bakken and East Coast Basin are striking.
“And the government can already see the dollar signs.
“The Taranaki Basin on the North Island is already under development. So it’s clear the officials there are embracing fracking as a tool to their economic growth.
“‘I would love to see other regions experience the same economic boost, and fracking is one of the technologies than can allow that to happen.’ — Energy and Resources Minister Phil Heatley”
[lprent: How many aliases does one person need? There are 5 handles being used from this IP today, several of them new.
Adding your IP to auto-spam for my attention until I either find out this is an organisation with a static IP or I get a reduction in the numbers of handles being used. ]
[lprent: An explanation would be more useful. At present I’m allowing through a couple of handles like the one you wrote 8 minutes before this one. Lexing the comments tends to indicate a single person rather than many.
The previous slow shift in handles could be just outright laziness. But three new handles in a day is clearly deliberate.
I could always ban that IP from being able to even read the site. Any resulting screams will allow me to find out if the IP is shared. ]
Don’t know if this was intentional Lynn, but I just posted a comment, went off while it was loading and when I came back to the tab I found that wiki astroturfing page had loaded. I used the back button on the browser and got the “Your access to this site has been limited” message page. Funny.
Edit: I actually lost the comment I was making – couldn’t back space to the text box page, and reloading gave me a blank text box. I did recover it using Lazarus, but normally I can find a way to get ts to let me reuse the txt I’d typed before.
Some of the numbers highlight the extreme wealth and inequality within our country now.
What a sad shadow of the nation Micky Savage envisioned.
(The corporate media just loves telling the stories and tittle tattle of ‘the rich and famous.’)
This explains why Auckland house prices are continuously increasing, this possibly means (Spithall investing in Auckland residential property market) that their are some pretty sophisticated investment advisors backing the Auckland property market…scarey for renters because rental cost tends to increase with the value of homes.
Tim Watkin on the RNZ panel on Monday reckoned that given the demand for housing in Auckland it would be nearly impossible to bring the cost of housing down in Auckland…he was responding to Chris Trotter suggesting that the Greens/Labour housing policy would reduce house prices in NZ. Auckland house prices are a huge problem, I cant see how the problem can be fixed without reducing the cost of homes?
Really need to reduce the attractiveness of investment housing I think.
Yes multiple property ownership is a huge problem.
More houses for some, like Coutts and Spithill, so none left for others.
Easy one to solve.
Capital gains tax.
Inheritance tax.
And bring down houses in the common good.
Selfish property speculators need to make some sacrifices.
Unfortunately neither Capital gains nor inheritance taxes will effect the Auckland property market,
The middle class have a love affair, fueled off of tax breaks and accommodation supplement payments for 2nd and 3rd properties as rental invesments,
”The surge of former owner-occupied houses becoming rentals was most evident in Mt Eden,(up 19%), Mt Wellington(up 24%), and Remuera (up 10%)”, unquote Bernard Hickey,
In 20 years across New Zealand 100,000 formerly owner-occupier homes have become rental investments, like Working for Families paid to the middle class, no political party is willing to directly address the real problem of ‘housing affordability’ for first home buyers,
Besides more than a few of the politicians being heavily ‘invested’ themselves it would be political suicide for any Government to directly threaten the middle classes fatted golden cow…
And it’s more than that. It’s also physical. You can’t cram 35% of your country’s population in 0.21% of your land area and not expect serious problems. It’s stupid.
“And it’s more than that. It’s also physical. You can’t cram 35% of your country’s population in 0.21% of your land area and not expect serious problems. It’s stupid.”
Not necessarily. It would depend on population density overall.
What is also obvious is that with so many MP’s having rental properties (and Trusts to hide them) one would not expect any MP’s to vote for any bill that affected their income streams.
Maybe a good socialist government could expect its MP’s to not be involved in property speculation?
Yes, but the main group affected by over priced housing isnt 1st home buyers, it is actually people who rent homes (Rent is a function of the house valuation). This is why over priced housing is the No 1 issue in New Zealand’s poverty issue. House price increases have contributed more to inequality than any other one factor. But it is an incredibly difficult issue, because a reduction in house valuations will probably slow the economy/spending down leading to all of the negative consequences that this brings.
Many people over the years have been picking a housing bubble burst in Auckland but it keeps climbing, and it does seem that governments (Both L & N) havent been keen on reigning it in regardless of the negative consequences for home renters, generally our poorest.
Obviously one answer is for state houses to do away with market based rents, to break the relationship between house valuation and rental cost. Labours existing policy will help increase supply of housing, combine this with CGT I would imagine that these initiatives will be helpful. But apparently demand in Auckland is still going to outstrip supply by quite a margin so I reckon stopping the tax deductibility of investment housing will have the biggest impact. I cannot understand what the point of encouraging people to invest in rental housing is…it simply transfers wealth from the poor to the wealthy.
The Labour/Green housing plans removes some of the demand from the Auckland housing market, building and selling 10,000 100m homes in a year would remove that whole segment of new home buyer from the market while not unduly effecting that market as the homes will not be sold on the free market,
There will still be a huge demographic wishing to buy into the current Auckland market including those who are upwardly mobile wanting a bigger, better home and a large swathe of the middle class still in love with rental property,
While that middle class get to claim interest payments on the rental from their personal tax and also collect the accommodation supplement via the tenants this form of investment will continue unabated,
i would assume that if rules are not put in place for the Labour/Green housing to have a Government buy back based upon original price plus equity those lucky enough to be put onto the ‘property ladder’ by such Government largesse will go on to continue the house price inflation in Auckland by using these properties as leverage in the future to gain ‘rental investments’,
i had a little chuckle at last nights Campbell Live which featured a school teacher earning 50 grand a year who could not ‘afford’ to live in a house Her mother had sold Her,
My pick is that She not only gets the tax rebate on interest paid on that property but the tenant also collects the maximum amount of accommodation subsidy which all up gives Her an extra dip into the tax base of 2 or 300 a week,
The monetarism attached to the Neoliberal ethos finds this ‘rewarding’ of the winners in society to be a far better use of the tax base than it does the building of State Housing which would have achieved the same dampening effect in the Auckland housing market by removing a mass of tenants thus dampening the demand for rental properties,
The faces may change,but, i fear the song, as far as the bread and butter issues for those who occupy the bare seats of the ‘have not’s’ table, will remain largely the same…
The trouble with the housing market is it is very heavily geared and therefore prices are strongly driven by mortgage interest rates. International interest rates have been close to 200-300 year lows with central banks worldwide printing money in an attempt to kickstart the global economy after the GFC.
As wages have moved up little in the last decade a large component driving house prices is the reduction in interest rates.
For example interest rates were around 11% in 2008 and now are around 5.5%. Effectively a homebuyer with a small deposit borrowing just $400,000 in 2009 can today effectively service a loan of $800,000. This is particularly true with rental investors as they heavily gear to capture tax advantages.
The thing that will really bring property prices down with a thump is an upward movement in interest rates. This is starting to happen internationally as central banks tentatively remove the life support of QE. Select 1year at the bottom of this graph to see the almost doubling of rate in 10year US treasurys during the last few months.
The current situation in Auckland looks like a very fast inflating bubble. Any trend upwards in interest rates is likely to deflate this market rapidly as landlords and homeowners struggle to service the increase in loan repayments and the sellers overwhelm the buyers.
Which would tend to suggest that the next Labour/Green Government will need to take control of fixing interest rates,
What you are saying is a recipe for the Government presiding at the point where interest rates start the upward lurch to not be the Government at the election following…
Which would tend to suggest that the next Labour/Green Government will need to take control of fixing interest rates
Trouble is that’s not really practical for a Government to take control of interest rates particularly in a small country like NZ. If the international cost of money goes up because lenders are demanding a bigger risk premium then there’s little the Government can do to control the cost of lending under current legislation.
What you are saying is a recipe for the Government presiding at the point where interest rates start the upward lurch to not be the Government at the election following…
Not neccessarily – would depend on who the electorate decided to blame. The finger could well be pointed at the banking community rather than the Government. It would also depend on how the Government dealt with any such “crisis”. If they chose to protect the banks rather than the electorate, as in Cyprus, they would certainly be out at the next election.
“Which would tend to suggest that the next Labour/Green Government will need to take control of fixing interest rates”
Yes because that generally works out so well.
Why do you persist in pursuing fantasies? The next Labour/Green Government is not going to take control of fixing interest rates. For so many reasons that seem obvious to the whole world except for you sitting in your safe subsidised house.
The NZ Government already subtly controls interest rates, via the nominally independent Reserve Bank. I think what Bad12 is suggesting is that the guidance and parameters be changed, presumably along with changes to the inflation band targetting.
Perhaps if you ever decide to holiday in NZ you might spend some time familiarising yourself with how things are done here. In the meantime, you could learn a thing or two here:
Which basically requires the reserve bank to kill the rest of the economy, whenever Auckland house prices, or wages, rise.
Originally enacted, as a circuit breaker, to cap excessive inflation in the 80’s, politicians have kept it, long past its use by date, because in their limited view, what works once, briefly, will work perpetually.
It could be argued that it was somewhat successful in curbing very high inflation, on that limited occasion, though others would note that the end of very high inflation ended with the slowing of the rise in oil prices.
Now, every time the New Zealand productive economy struggles off its knees, the reserve bank delivers another knockout.”
Actually the State, us, should take over the issuance of debt altogether. And get away from paying through the nose for US banks to lend us money “printed” in the USA and China”.
I do believe that without any significant increase in median incomes the bubble will burst in the more over extended areas such as Auckland. Whether this happens slowly over time, with real values falling gradually, or suddenly, really depends on what happens in global financial markets.
What I am sure of is that being highly leveraged in the Auckland market at the moment is a high risk place to be.
The next step is a policy programme to take Labour into the 2014 election. Whether or not I vote for Labour will depend on what policies that Labour will adopt for that particular campaign.
Policies that could be of use to Labour (which can capture core votes and can be appealing to centre voters):
Encourage co-ops in all shapes and sizes
An investment fund for oil, gas and mining royalties
A grand accord on mining — allowing mining to go ahead in some areas with other areas being locked up and having the key thrown away.
two things I would love to see considered
1. Establishing worker representation on boards of private companies.
2. Identifying what we could call Companies of significant interest to NZ and the state taking a shareholding. We could model it along the lines of the current regimes sell off of state assets. I am sure we would get support from National if we did that
I would suggest a stake in Fletcher’s and Fulton Hogan’s as a good start to further the interests of the people of New Zealand
EPMU members should be wondering why their execs wanted to make a recommendation to vote for Robertson.
Seems like Union members should bring their execs back to planet Labour
It has parallels with the Caucus: too many MP were out of synch with the membership and the country.
Er, not actually the case, Boadicea. The EPMU senior leadership made no recommendation and asked the voting delegates to consult with their members and vote accordingly. Which is what happened and I assume the EPMU vote was similar to the overall affiliate vote; overwhelmingly in favour of DC.
“Thing is, merely saying someone is not sexist does not alter reality if they truly are. Tony Abbott has been Prime Minister for a week and has just announced his ministry and cabinet. Of eighteen cabinet ministers chosen by Abbott, only one, Julie Bishop, the new Foreign Minister, is a woman. In Gillard’s cabinet, there were seven. Of the 12 parliamentary secretaries chosen by Abbott, only one there is female, too. Abbott has excused his selection by saying that he’s “disappointed” there aren’t more women in his cabinet, but that it’s been chosen “on merit” and there are women “knocking on the door” of cabinet in the outer ministry – still, of course, heavily outnumbered by men. That Abbott’s cabinet contains a Treasurer who couldn’t correctly add up a costings document, an Attorney General who believes religious rights trump human rights and an agriculture minister who thinks equal marriage rights for gay couples might somehow affect his daughters’ chances of finding husbands, the “merit” defence does not carry much weight. Especially not, as the Labor Opposition Leader pointed out today, Australia now has less female representation at cabinet level than Afghanistan.”
“Unruly, reckless, often crude, and always curious, the Franks (as Muslims called them) were, like the Japanese at the other end of Eurasia, aware of the innumerable ways in which civilized neighbours excelled their own attainments. By 1500, therefore, Western Europeans had acquired an impressive array of learning from their Byzantine and Muslim neighbours, and had imported an equally impressive array of technologies from distant China. In short, they profited greatly in terms of wealth and power from their uninhibited sampling of ideas, goods, and practices circulating within the Old World Web. This held fateful consequences for America and world history after 1500.
By 1000, in the lands between the Loire and Elbe rivers, mounted knights and moldboard plow teams capable of cultivating flat, water-logged clay soils protected and supported one another very efficiently. From this core area, knights of Latin Christendom expanded their domain in every direction. Moldboard agriculture followed behind, but never caught up with the military frontier because climatic differences made the heavy plows impracticable in dry Mediterranean lands, as well as in Irish bogs and in the freezing winters of northeast Europe.
Within limits set by the mild winters and year-round rainfall the Gulf Stream and prevailing westerly winds brought to the plains, agricultural production swelled as peasant villagers developed a sustainable type of farming that employed labour almost uniformly throughout the year. By dividing arable land into three fields- one sown in autumn to harvest in late spring, one sown in spring for autumn harvest and one left fallow to be plowed (for weed control) in summer- plow teams could work almost all year round, interrupted only for Christmas and during weeks when planting and harvesting required everyone’s urgent effort. This regime allowed a single plowman’s share of cultivated land to amount to about thirty acres- far more than needed to feed himself, family and domestic animals.
Cooperative cultivation of open fields in NW Europe therefore permitted peasants to sustain fighting men who had a clear self-interest in guarding them against destructive raiders, together with priests and monks who attended to their relations with God. Surpluses extended the demand for artisans’ wares into peasant homes, furthering urban skills and tightening local trade and transport links. And when noble and clerical rent and tax receivers developed a taste for superior artisan products and commodities from afar, urban dwellers, recruited from the fringes of society, often led by pirate traders, began to supply them with their wants.
Tightening their links with the rest of the Old World Web, Western Europeans encountered far more sophisticated and more highly skilled peoples than themselves.Yet, as long as local agricultural and artisanal production expanded as rapidly as they did between 1000 and 1270, and Christian knights continued to be generally successful in battle, crude Westerners could feel confidant that God was on their side as they plumbed foreigners’ knowledge and skills for purposes of their own.
By 1500, Europe’s population was little, if at all, larger than in 1300 (famine and plague) even though by that time transport and industry were far more efficient. Stout, seaworthy ships now connected all the coasts of Europe, and interregional specialization and exchange had gathered momentum as an ever larger proportion of the population began to enter the market, thus replicating China’s commercialization after a delay of three to four centuries (dumbasses 😉 ); but unlike in China, European rulers and clerics failed to maintain control over the merchants and bankers who managed the new interregional economy.
European merchants and bankers attended to their own defense by gaining political control of a number of sovereign city-states. They could then deal more or less as equals with other local rulers, who found it impossible to do without loans or to repay their debts without concessions to bankers’ and merchants’ interests.Since moneyed men were continually on the lookout for anything that might turn a profit, a self-sustaining process of economic, social and technological change gathered headway wherever political conditions conceded it the freedom to operate. Time and again, local interests and traditional ways of doing things were displaced by politically protected economic innovators. This situation still persists today, having first transformed European society, and then infected the whole world, marking modern times off from earlier, more stable forms of society.
Urban self-government in Europe had another distinctive dimension. In Muslim and Chinese society, members of a single, sometimes extended family managed most economic enterprises. The strength of family ties made it difficult or impossible to trust outsiders, thus limiting the scale of most undertakings. Europeans found it easier to trust fellow citizens, regardless of blood relations or not.Extended family ties were unusually weak in most of Western Europe.
Self-government, in short, could be applied to common enterprises far afield as well as at home, so that large-scale private undertakings, far beyond the scope of any single family became routine and familiar. Shipbuilding and mining attained special vigor due to this sort of risk sharing among multiple private investors. As a result, by 1500 the supply of base metals- especially iron- available to Europeans far surpassed what other peoples had at their disposal.
It is plausible to believe that transfamilial commercial enterprise in the towns of medieval Europe derived from the practices of rural plow teams. Towns were unhealthful places and had to maintain themselves by attracting manpower from the countryside. In the heartlands of Western Europe, such rural recruits brought with them the habit of working in plow teams whose members came from different families. If a plowman failed to do his share of the work, or did not deal honestly with his fellows, penalties were dire indeed. Aggrieved neighbours could easily exclude him from plow teams.Such discipline, requiring mutual trust and cooperation beyond the limits of blood relations and short-sighted investment, prepared Europeans to trust one another.
However, such commercial flexibility came at the cost of the security and human warmth that extended families can provide, and the peace that imperial states can impose.
Indeed, endless rivalry and violence prevailed. 😎
When is John Key going to stop his private sector ways of doing business over the phone, and follow the LAWFUL requirements of the Public Records Act 2005 and ensure full and accurate records are created and maintained, in his ‘public service’ role as Prime Minister of New Zealand?
“At question time in Parliament today, Prime Minister John Key defended comments that Chorus may go broke if the Commerce Commission pressed ahead with plans for a sharp cut in the regulated price on the copper lines, saying Cabinet had received advice based on commercial and in-confidence briefings between Chorus and Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
In his post-Cabinet press conference yesterday, Key said he could not recall where the advice had come from.
He said today that those briefings probably would have come after he received a phone call from Chorus chair Sue Sheldon in December last year when she shared her view on the impact of the regulator’s draft decision and gave the government “some understanding of the issues they would face.”
From the many, consistent and frustrated comments I get from people from overseas who have moved here, NZ would have to have the worst quality of media information in the English speaking world (and prob beyond). Including America; where at least you can get some intelligent channels and well-thought out articles in news papers.
Congratulations NZ Media. /sarc
(**How about you re-assess your audience, you fuck-wits.**)
Release of Previously Classified August 29, 2013 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Opinion
Today the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court released a previously classified opinion reauthorizing the collection of bulk telephony metadata under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. The opinion affirms that the bulk telephony metadata collection is both lawful and constitutional. The release of this opinion is consistent with the President’s call for more transparency on these valuable intelligence programs.
ooh, 300 Tractors organised by the Grower Action Group (Hort.) churn into protest the HBRC management of water at Hastings today; “RWSS takes focus away from the very real concerns of the Heretaunga Plains.
oh, and fingerprints and DNA to be exchange between NZ and The US.
Welcome to Stuckyville, Have a Nice Day 🙂
Acc changes afoot. Newer and bigger cars which guzzle petrol will have lower levies and older cheaper cars higher. Guess which part of society owns which cars?
You mean because they weigh more and can only be built bigger to reach those lower emission standards, whereas an electric car can have its engine in its wheel opening up space in the car proper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Properties_of_water
Did you know water at just above freezing actually gets slightly more dense at 4 degrees. Can you imagine that, that the sea warming from 0 at the poles actually gets denser for a time and so shrinks, and once globally water is all above 4 degrees, the real effects of sea expansion will begin as the water is not linear as it gets warmer.
Economically young people, those wanting to have time and money to spare, are refraining from buying cars, and demanding to live and work in cities that have good public transport and housing spread. Unlike Auckland, our one and only, where the elite still dithers over public transport, still has to finalize plans to build density, where all the incentives to build at the top tier of housing still exist, and make it hard for those property developers to build where the demand is.
Welcome to NZ, the rest of the world is doing away high emission vehicles and so not engaging in stupid comparisons with our notorious fleet of old bombers. If its a good idea, you can be assured that NZ will talk it to death, and delay the solutions.
This is the latest in a overall plot — yes, I will call it that — to have ACC behave like just another insurance companies and start turning down more and more claims.
When people enjoy their levy cuts, they need to realise that they came in the the backs of long term claiment, thrown off ACC, onto a benefit and into hardship.
I’d prefer they spent what they have on ensuring as full rehabilitation as possible e.g. physio, pain management and psychological needs, and for them to stop declining accidents as ‘degenerative conditions’ just because someone isn’t 20 anymore or had a medical condition way back when.
The problem will be under Part 6A the staff from Novopay will all need to be taken on by a new contractor…. Lets hope Novopay behave like Labour and ignore the intent of this policy Labour plan to make everyone else abide by.
[lprent: You haven’t explained what 6A is, nor its relevance to the topic. Moved to OpenMike. Banned for a week for what looks like a out of context comment without explanation. Banned for a further 6 weeks – one per comment I had to move. ]
Yep – On the subject of rewarding failure … I can see why you lovers of power at any price and say anything to get elected get shitty when Part 6A is pointed out – Part 6A is all about rewarding failure.
Guess it’s too much to ask for you people to objectively look at how insane that policy is ?
What do you see are the National-led government’s main successes in the last 5 years?
– Asset sales? How’s that MRP price going.
– Economic growth? Yeah right.
– Assisted exporters? That dollar’s still 6th-highest traded in the entire world
– Run the books into a surplus? Not yet and not likely.
– Reconstructed Christchurch? Tui billboard
– Made the place less violent to children, or decreased poverty? Nope.
Looking forward to going to the hustings on all of that.
Count the days pal because your allies are walking dead.
Surely it would be possible to write a program to keep mentioning Part 6A automatically regardless of relevance or context like this, and isn’t there something in the site policy about that?
Reading all the things he worked on and is credited with discovering – he was amazing. And his name is engraved on the Eiffel Tower with 72 other great French brains. Do we have a place in New Zealand that has this sort of graffiti on it? All our clever people noted on marble or something and which we could hear details through a headset as we walked around looking at them?
8 New areas of oil exploration up for offer from the Nacts next year.
Twice as big as the previous auctions.
434,000 km2
yet,
of the original 23 proposed last auction, only 10 were eventually taken up.
Companies are struggling to find investment; competing internationally.
Government struggling to find buyers.
been another EQC privacy mix-up apparently; Wellington and Seddon clients receiving combinations of theirs and others claim details, etc. (I could mail them a chisel, or whip up a filing cabinet, flatpack will do).
Getting referred to the wiki page for astroturfing when I try thestandard.org.nz – I only got in to post by clicking a link in my web history.
Either someone’s hacked into the site or the admins joke is on me.
If I were clever I’d have linked straight to the poem and not the yahoo q+a.
If I were dishonest I’d have edited my post once I found out who actually wrote it.
clever is for jugglers
the unedited was seen
thoughts are not final
the printed word is.
as a two finger 😉 typer , assembling as I go, oftentimes the intention is incomplete on some comments ie, the closing quote marks and refs. for eg. J.R McNiell and William H. McNeil, The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View 😉 of World History. New York. 2003; pp 137-142. sigh. know lie, and numbers once you have them are TooLish.
Look! Chum, no hands at 60MPH; beware looking over the shoulder and ride that Full Moon Fever.
(easy-peasy Japanesee) no more do’h. Old Hat.sigh. nostalgia aye. Abandon romanticism. (great link) Still synthesizing music.
A person who used 5 different identities this morning, has seen my warning, not responded, and who now can read a page on astroturfing whenever they look at the site – at least until they get another IP, start to use a direct RSS feed through our proxy, or discover the joys of getting a proxy through our anti-spam software. I like to spread the workload…
apparently there has been another privacy breach by EQC, mailing combinations of two claiments details combined to a number of folk. Maybe I could mail them a chisel, or a flatpack filing cabinet to assemble.
“Please be aware that EQC has received a substantial increase of Official Information requests in recent months and a response will take longer to prepare than the 20 working day statutory timeframe. If you consider that your request should be given priority, for example you are experiencing severe health or financial issues, please advise us as soon as possible with supporting documentation so that we may consider whether your request should be escalated.
Presently your request may face a 5-6 month delay as EQC works through the significant demand for such information. EQC is addressing this by employing further staff and implementing smarter systems. This timeframe will be periodically reviewed with the aim of getting a response to you sooner.”
(Emphasis added).
@#&*%$* what can I say, if you follow me and do as your told and don’t cause any trouble we have a nice room where you can shower with your friends, otherwise sit in the rain and mud till you change your mind, EQC the stone in your shoe.
It seems no lessons have been learned from the GFC. When you read anything about it, it’s likely to blame sub-prime mortgages, but these were only a symptom. The real problem is the derivatives market, played with fantasy money and run by computers using algorithms based on an equation which the operators don’t understand. Within capitalism, there are no long term solutions, but short term ones could be:
1. Prison for anyone involved in the derivatives market. Fraud is the only word to adequately describe what they are doing.
2. A financial transactions tax, which would act to slow down the rate of transactions and damp out the problems a little.
3. An enforced limit on the number of speculative transactions that any dealer can make over a given time period. One a week might be reasonable.
4. Computers running trading algorithms should only be available to a trader who can publish an article on financial mathematics and the applicability of the Black-Scholes equation in a peer reviewed mathematical journal. In the hands of anyone else, they are weapons of mass destruction and severe penalties should be applied.
In defence of mathematics – the actual equation is good maths. It just doesn’t describe the economy or the financial market in any way, shape or form. The “econophysicists” and others who try to use Fokker-Planck or stochastic differential equations to do this are modelling it as Brownian motion with a few bells and whistles. They are assuming that the Central Limit Theorem applies and the distribution of events will be Gaussian – the famous Bell curve. That’s what these equations describe. Following this approach, we should get an average of one financial crisis every century or two, at the most. Extreme events should be very rare, but they’re not. The maths is great, it’s just irrelevant.
The main problem is that the traders don’t care. They know that we’ll bail them out. Again and again. Well, about time we bailed them up instead. Against a wall.
Very good Murray, that’s nicely put, and on the mark!
The underwriting of many orders of magnitude worth of planetary energy supply, or human existence, is most likely past the point of no return, but they knew the outcomes when the path was cleared back in the 90’s.
Now everything that is necessary to keep it together, is laid out, and when the time is right, they will collapse the lot, but that’s a little way off still, IMO!
well, that was worth waiting up for Murray Olsen. (had a primary teacher Mr. Olsen, seemed like a kind chap). All the best for the improvement of your health.
Nick Smith old lizard eyes continuing govt sleaze misleading public and parliament yesterday PinoKeyo lied about sue sheldon of Chorus ph call $600 million bail out today leak of internal email at doc proves nick smith sent a directive demanding to read any recommendations opposing hawksbay dam!
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Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
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Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
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The NZQA proposal released to staff today would involve a net loss of 35 roles. There are 66 roles being disestablished with 13 of those currently vacant, and 31 new roles proposed, said Fleur Fitzsimons Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga ...
Alex Casey talks to Loren Taylor, the writer, director and star of new film The Moon is Upside Down, about assembling her dream ensemble cast, toilet paper pads and turning literal dreams into reality. There’s a moment in The Moon is Upside Down where frazzled anaesthetist Briar (Loren Taylor) gets ...
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Workers at a major ASB contact centre in Auckland have voted to take strike action and withdraw their labour following disappointing pay negotiations with the employer and an "offer" to workers that would leave them worse off than the previous year. ...
As the government tries to get the country back on track with a school phone ban, Tara Ward has an idea for where they should turn their attention to next.New Zealand students returned to school on Monday morning, but their cellphones did not. The government’s new phone ban began ...
The Labour Party is demanding Peters be stood down, saying "he's embarrassed the country" with a "totally unacceptable" attack on a prominent AUKUS critic. ...
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance, whose members were victims of a China-backed cyber attack, is discussing forming a standing committee to deal with foreign influence. ...
The PSA is concerned that the voluntary redundancies being offered to staff by Stats NZ will impact on the agency’s ability to deliver on its core functions. ...
Results ranged from surprisingly yum to soul-destroying. I love cooking. The kitchen is a hearth of culinary creation, of sensory delights, of gastronomic poetry. I also can’t afford anything nice. Why does a pack of instant noodles and some milk cost ten bucks? I love you, Aotearoa, but I miss ...
By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor Police in Solomon Islands are on high alert ahead of the election of the prime minister today. The two candidates for the top job are former foreign affairs minister Jeremiah Manele at the head of the Coalition for National Unity and Transformation, which is ...
He’s fine but it feels like I’m losing a friend and it’s making me bitter. How do I say ‘enough is enough’? Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzHey Hera,I’ve recently moved in with a girlfriend, her partner Steve, and his friend. We all live in a lovely little house. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Chartres, Senior Research Fellow, Faculty of Medicine & Health, University of Sydney shutterstockAhmet Misirligul/Shutterstock You go to the gym, eat healthy and walk as much as possible. You wash your hands and get vaccinated. You control your health. This is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacqueline Hendriks, Research Fellow and Lecturer, Curtin University Children and young people may be seeing news headlines about men murdering women or footage of people rallying to call for action. Perhaps they or their friends have even gone to the protests. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Balanzategui, Senior Lecturer in Media, RMIT University ABC “Bluey mania” shows no sign of abating. Bluey’s season finale, The Sign, was the most viewed ABC program of all time on iView. A “hidden” follow-up episode, aptly named The Surprise, created ...
Labour market figures came in softer than the Reserve Bank had forecast, but they won’t be enough to move the needle on interest rates, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Unemployment ...
The campaign will engage the community and encourage submissions on the bill to the New Zealand government by the closing submission deadline of Friday 31st of May 2024 4pm. ...
The paper raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand's political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency plays in that. ...
The Urban Habitat Collective was an attempt to built an innovative new form of apartment building in Wellington. Here’s why it failed, and why the idea could still work, writes co-founder Bronwen Newton. When we started the Urban Habitat Collective in November 2018, we thought we were starting a revolution, ...
Two decades ago this week, a controversial law that attempted to define ownership of the foreshore and seabed prompted a formidable display of outrage and kōtahitanga as 15,000 marched to parliament. Jamie Tahana looks back.‘Hīkoi, hīkoi,” they chanted by the thousands as the biggest Māori march in a generation ...
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Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Thursday 2 May appeared first on Newsroom. ...
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ANALYSIS:By Olli Hellmann, University of Waikato When New Zealanders commemorate Anzac Day today on April 25, it’s not only to honour the soldiers who lost their lives in World War I and subsequent conflicts, but also to mark a defining event for national identity. The battle of Gallipoli against ...
“A massive shale formation found in the Kiwi Nation is so huge and untouched, the New Zealand Herald reports: ‘It’s literally leaking oil and gas’
“An independent report released in October 2012 says this shale field could hold more oil than the combined reserves of Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Royal Dutch Shell…
“Geologists have discovered at least 300 spots where oil and gas are bubbling at the surface.
“These two companies (both trading below $10 a share) control over 5,000 square miles of the emerging oil field… and production has already started….
“On the North Island of New Zealand — about 268 miles from Auckland — sits the small town of Hastings.
“For decades there’s been nothing remarkable about this small port town… until now.
“Massive oil deposits surrounding Hastings have been found that are 10x larger than the infamous Bakken oil field.
“And the major permit holders to these deposits are two companies that I’m about to detail for you today….
“The geographical similarities between the Bakken and East Coast Basin are striking.
“And the government can already see the dollar signs.
“The Taranaki Basin on the North Island is already under development. So it’s clear the officials there are embracing fracking as a tool to their economic growth.
“‘I would love to see other regions experience the same economic boost, and fracking is one of the technologies than can allow that to happen.’ — Energy and Resources Minister Phil Heatley”
http://stockgumshoe.com/reviews/crisis-and-opportunity/new-zealands-bakken-sniffing-around-christian-dehaemers-oil-teaser/
[lprent: How many aliases does one person need? There are 5 handles being used from this IP today, several of them new.
Adding your IP to auto-spam for my attention until I either find out this is an organisation with a static IP or I get a reduction in the numbers of handles being used. ]
Have a nice day, lprent ! Kia Ora.
[lprent: An explanation would be more useful. At present I’m allowing through a couple of handles like the one you wrote 8 minutes before this one. Lexing the comments tends to indicate a single person rather than many.
The previous slow shift in handles could be just outright laziness. But three new handles in a day is clearly deliberate.
I could always ban that IP from being able to even read the site. Any resulting screams will allow me to find out if the IP is shared. ]
No answer. I hope you like this page… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing
Because that is all you will see of this site for a while.
file? pls.
Don’t know if this was intentional Lynn, but I just posted a comment, went off while it was loading and when I came back to the tab I found that wiki astroturfing page had loaded. I used the back button on the browser and got the “Your access to this site has been limited” message page. Funny.
Edit: I actually lost the comment I was making – couldn’t back space to the text box page, and reloading gave me a blank text box. I did recover it using Lazarus, but normally I can find a way to get ts to let me reuse the txt I’d typed before.
Sorry made a slip in .htaccess while consigning a non responsive malefactor to an informative page… (not you)
Ah, jiust like the Bakken shale…splendid…and the energy return on energy invested is?????? Probably too fekken much.
A beautiful morning light today. Not a Mallard to be seen.
Delightful.
Are you some kind of duck hunter ?
[lprent: suspected astroturfer now on auto-spam until I get an explanation. ]
I heard that the big DC sat sat and sat patiently in the mai mai then bang, duck dinner.
The media’s fascination with multi-millionaires and their big toys.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11126180
It is even more disturbing that his tenants didnt know who he was or what he did….
Some of the numbers highlight the extreme wealth and inequality within our country now.
What a sad shadow of the nation Micky Savage envisioned.
(The corporate media just loves telling the stories and tittle tattle of ‘the rich and famous.’)
and Herne Bay cougars who are drooling over Spithill…eewwww I wish I haven’t read that article.
uh 75 may be a couple of steps beyond “cougar” methinks…
This explains why Auckland house prices are continuously increasing, this possibly means (Spithall investing in Auckland residential property market) that their are some pretty sophisticated investment advisors backing the Auckland property market…scarey for renters because rental cost tends to increase with the value of homes.
Tim Watkin on the RNZ panel on Monday reckoned that given the demand for housing in Auckland it would be nearly impossible to bring the cost of housing down in Auckland…he was responding to Chris Trotter suggesting that the Greens/Labour housing policy would reduce house prices in NZ. Auckland house prices are a huge problem, I cant see how the problem can be fixed without reducing the cost of homes?
Really need to reduce the attractiveness of investment housing I think.
Yes multiple property ownership is a huge problem.
More houses for some, like Coutts and Spithill, so none left for others.
Easy one to solve.
Capital gains tax.
Inheritance tax.
And bring down houses in the common good.
Selfish property speculators need to make some sacrifices.
Yes. Lecturing the plebs on the need of diversifying the investment portfolios while they’re pumping their dollars predominantly into real estate.
Unfortunately neither Capital gains nor inheritance taxes will effect the Auckland property market,
The middle class have a love affair, fueled off of tax breaks and accommodation supplement payments for 2nd and 3rd properties as rental invesments,
”The surge of former owner-occupied houses becoming rentals was most evident in Mt Eden,(up 19%), Mt Wellington(up 24%), and Remuera (up 10%)”, unquote Bernard Hickey,
In 20 years across New Zealand 100,000 formerly owner-occupier homes have become rental investments, like Working for Families paid to the middle class, no political party is willing to directly address the real problem of ‘housing affordability’ for first home buyers,
Besides more than a few of the politicians being heavily ‘invested’ themselves it would be political suicide for any Government to directly threaten the middle classes fatted golden cow…
And it’s more than that. It’s also physical. You can’t cram 35% of your country’s population in 0.21% of your land area and not expect serious problems. It’s stupid.
“And it’s more than that. It’s also physical. You can’t cram 35% of your country’s population in 0.21% of your land area and not expect serious problems. It’s stupid.”
Not necessarily. It would depend on population density overall.
Well, no need for theorising, just look at Auckland house prices.
What is also obvious is that with so many MP’s having rental properties (and Trusts to hide them) one would not expect any MP’s to vote for any bill that affected their income streams.
Maybe a good socialist government could expect its MP’s to not be involved in property speculation?
Yes, but the main group affected by over priced housing isnt 1st home buyers, it is actually people who rent homes (Rent is a function of the house valuation). This is why over priced housing is the No 1 issue in New Zealand’s poverty issue. House price increases have contributed more to inequality than any other one factor. But it is an incredibly difficult issue, because a reduction in house valuations will probably slow the economy/spending down leading to all of the negative consequences that this brings.
Many people over the years have been picking a housing bubble burst in Auckland but it keeps climbing, and it does seem that governments (Both L & N) havent been keen on reigning it in regardless of the negative consequences for home renters, generally our poorest.
Obviously one answer is for state houses to do away with market based rents, to break the relationship between house valuation and rental cost. Labours existing policy will help increase supply of housing, combine this with CGT I would imagine that these initiatives will be helpful. But apparently demand in Auckland is still going to outstrip supply by quite a margin so I reckon stopping the tax deductibility of investment housing will have the biggest impact. I cannot understand what the point of encouraging people to invest in rental housing is…it simply transfers wealth from the poor to the wealthy.
“Easy one to solve.
Capital gains tax.
Inheritance tax.”
Also, make interest non deductible for tax purposes. Not just for rental properties but for businesses generally.
The Labour/Green housing plans removes some of the demand from the Auckland housing market, building and selling 10,000 100m homes in a year would remove that whole segment of new home buyer from the market while not unduly effecting that market as the homes will not be sold on the free market,
There will still be a huge demographic wishing to buy into the current Auckland market including those who are upwardly mobile wanting a bigger, better home and a large swathe of the middle class still in love with rental property,
While that middle class get to claim interest payments on the rental from their personal tax and also collect the accommodation supplement via the tenants this form of investment will continue unabated,
i would assume that if rules are not put in place for the Labour/Green housing to have a Government buy back based upon original price plus equity those lucky enough to be put onto the ‘property ladder’ by such Government largesse will go on to continue the house price inflation in Auckland by using these properties as leverage in the future to gain ‘rental investments’,
i had a little chuckle at last nights Campbell Live which featured a school teacher earning 50 grand a year who could not ‘afford’ to live in a house Her mother had sold Her,
My pick is that She not only gets the tax rebate on interest paid on that property but the tenant also collects the maximum amount of accommodation subsidy which all up gives Her an extra dip into the tax base of 2 or 300 a week,
The monetarism attached to the Neoliberal ethos finds this ‘rewarding’ of the winners in society to be a far better use of the tax base than it does the building of State Housing which would have achieved the same dampening effect in the Auckland housing market by removing a mass of tenants thus dampening the demand for rental properties,
The faces may change,but, i fear the song, as far as the bread and butter issues for those who occupy the bare seats of the ‘have not’s’ table, will remain largely the same…
The trouble with the housing market is it is very heavily geared and therefore prices are strongly driven by mortgage interest rates. International interest rates have been close to 200-300 year lows with central banks worldwide printing money in an attempt to kickstart the global economy after the GFC.
New Zealand is no exemption as this graph shows.
As wages have moved up little in the last decade a large component driving house prices is the reduction in interest rates.
For example interest rates were around 11% in 2008 and now are around 5.5%. Effectively a homebuyer with a small deposit borrowing just $400,000 in 2009 can today effectively service a loan of $800,000. This is particularly true with rental investors as they heavily gear to capture tax advantages.
The thing that will really bring property prices down with a thump is an upward movement in interest rates. This is starting to happen internationally as central banks tentatively remove the life support of QE. Select 1year at the bottom of this graph to see the almost doubling of rate in 10year US treasurys during the last few months.
The current situation in Auckland looks like a very fast inflating bubble. Any trend upwards in interest rates is likely to deflate this market rapidly as landlords and homeowners struggle to service the increase in loan repayments and the sellers overwhelm the buyers.
Which would tend to suggest that the next Labour/Green Government will need to take control of fixing interest rates,
What you are saying is a recipe for the Government presiding at the point where interest rates start the upward lurch to not be the Government at the election following…
Trouble is that’s not really practical for a Government to take control of interest rates particularly in a small country like NZ. If the international cost of money goes up because lenders are demanding a bigger risk premium then there’s little the Government can do to control the cost of lending under current legislation.
Not neccessarily – would depend on who the electorate decided to blame. The finger could well be pointed at the banking community rather than the Government. It would also depend on how the Government dealt with any such “crisis”. If they chose to protect the banks rather than the electorate, as in Cyprus, they would certainly be out at the next election.
“Trouble is that’s not really practical for a Government to take control of interest rates particularly in a small country like NZ”
Its really easy to do if you wanted to; the trade off is that of reduced policy space available to the govt eg in monetary policy and taxation.
“Which would tend to suggest that the next Labour/Green Government will need to take control of fixing interest rates”
Yes because that generally works out so well.
Why do you persist in pursuing fantasies? The next Labour/Green Government is not going to take control of fixing interest rates. For so many reasons that seem obvious to the whole world except for you sitting in your safe subsidised house.
The NZ Government already subtly controls interest rates, via the nominally independent Reserve Bank. I think what Bad12 is suggesting is that the guidance and parameters be changed, presumably along with changes to the inflation band targetting.
Perhaps if you ever decide to holiday in NZ you might spend some time familiarising yourself with how things are done here. In the meantime, you could learn a thing or two here:
http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/monetary_policy/about_monetary_policy/0072140.html
Lolz, we shall see how you squeal like the little stuck piglet when interest rates turn you into an even bigger cash cow milked by the banks…
Funny how idiots like Srylands have never noticed the interest rate fixing that already happens.
Because the reserve bank fixing interest rates has worked so well??
Not to mention “LIBOR”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal
http://kjt-kt.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/the-reserve-bank-debt-and-property.html
“In New Zealand we have the “Reserve Bank Act”.
Which basically requires the reserve bank to kill the rest of the economy, whenever Auckland house prices, or wages, rise.
Originally enacted, as a circuit breaker, to cap excessive inflation in the 80’s, politicians have kept it, long past its use by date, because in their limited view, what works once, briefly, will work perpetually.
It could be argued that it was somewhat successful in curbing very high inflation, on that limited occasion, though others would note that the end of very high inflation ended with the slowing of the rise in oil prices.
Now, every time the New Zealand productive economy struggles off its knees, the reserve bank delivers another knockout.”
Actually the State, us, should take over the issuance of debt altogether. And get away from paying through the nose for US banks to lend us money “printed” in the USA and China”.
The Shibor had a similar scandal (looks interesting too). 😉
Nice post, Steve. So do you think the NZ housing bubble will burst?
Thanks Geoff.
I do believe that without any significant increase in median incomes the bubble will burst in the more over extended areas such as Auckland. Whether this happens slowly over time, with real values falling gradually, or suddenly, really depends on what happens in global financial markets.
What I am sure of is that being highly leveraged in the Auckland market at the moment is a high risk place to be.
Nope, house prices are driven by the availability of money and the private banks print that stuff with, effectively, no restrictions.
To pull house prices back two things need to happen:
1.) Foreign buyers to be banned
2.) The government creates our money and not the private banks
This will reduce demand and reduce the amount of money available to buy houses.
Anything else, especially if it’s routed in the failed neo-liberal paradigm, won’t work.
Indeed a lovely morning….how refreshing to have hope again. Wishing the united Labour Team all the very best for the months ahead.
+1
Ah,.. is that what that feeling is? Hope; yes, it’s been so long now that I’d almost forgotten what it feels like.
Interesting and valid ideas framework coming down the pipe from progressive uk purple book.
Valid ideas for nz too.
http://www.progressonline.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/The-Purple-Book.pdf
Quick read shock horror excess speculative investment priming the global market for another GFC
http://t.co/rX3OgVwfEk
We wants it, we needs it.
http://www.policymic.com/articles/63743/lehman-brothers-crash-inside-the-accounting-trick-that-destroyed-the-economy
So now what?
With Cunliffe at the helm, it is just a start.
The next step is a policy programme to take Labour into the 2014 election. Whether or not I vote for Labour will depend on what policies that Labour will adopt for that particular campaign.
Policies that could be of use to Labour (which can capture core votes and can be appealing to centre voters):
Encourage co-ops in all shapes and sizes
An investment fund for oil, gas and mining royalties
A grand accord on mining — allowing mining to go ahead in some areas with other areas being locked up and having the key thrown away.
That’s a good start Millsy.
Cooperative work places
Regional investment initiatives
Regional training schemes targeted to skill requirements.
two things I would love to see considered
1. Establishing worker representation on boards of private companies.
2. Identifying what we could call Companies of significant interest to NZ and the state taking a shareholding. We could model it along the lines of the current regimes sell off of state assets. I am sure we would get support from National if we did that
I would suggest a stake in Fletcher’s and Fulton Hogan’s as a good start to further the interests of the people of New Zealand
1. is an Excellent idea Ron.
Council elections update No94: some facebook number crunching.
Michael Laws for Mayor: 778 likes
Michael Laws is a Complete Twat: 3323 members
Mate, I see that union members backed Cunliffe ahead of Robertson more than 3:1. Good stuff eh!
I can’t take all the credit, CV. but thanks for noticing!
EPMU members should be wondering why their execs wanted to make a recommendation to vote for Robertson.
Seems like Union members should bring their execs back to planet Labour
It has parallels with the Caucus: too many MP were out of synch with the membership and the country.
Er, not actually the case, Boadicea. The EPMU senior leadership made no recommendation and asked the voting delegates to consult with their members and vote accordingly. Which is what happened and I assume the EPMU vote was similar to the overall affiliate vote; overwhelmingly in favour of DC.
lol
this one should really go viral..
..so if you can help make that happen..plse do..
http://www.upworthy.com/people-should-know-about-this-awful-thing-we-do-and-most-of-us-are-simply-unaware-jl2-36b
..it got me..i got/am quite emotional..anger/prickling-eyes and all..
phillip ure..
@ phillip ure
thanks for that……beautiful and tragic!…puts anthropocentrism in perspective
have passed it on
and bad/shocking news for shane jones..eh..?
..penthouse has filed for bankruptcy..
..(does he have a support-group..?..who can rush to his side..?..
..tissues at the ready..?..as it were..?..)
..phillip ure..
The UN report on the Ghouta attack and the HRW response.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/168606795/U-N-Report-on-Chemical-Attack-in-Syria
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/09/16/dispatches-yes-it-was-sarin-un-report-says-now-what
I had problems with the scribd link, so downloaded from here ..
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/16/full-text-of-u-n-report-on-chemical-attack-in-syria/?_r=0
Some people may find this amusing ..
‘Why some Australian women loathe Tony Abbott – especially now.’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-politics/10313055/Why-some-Australia
n-women-loathe-Tony-Abbott-especially-now.html
“Thing is, merely saying someone is not sexist does not alter reality if they truly are. Tony Abbott has been Prime Minister for a week and has just announced his ministry and cabinet. Of eighteen cabinet ministers chosen by Abbott, only one, Julie Bishop, the new Foreign Minister, is a woman. In Gillard’s cabinet, there were seven. Of the 12 parliamentary secretaries chosen by Abbott, only one there is female, too. Abbott has excused his selection by saying that he’s “disappointed” there aren’t more women in his cabinet, but that it’s been chosen “on merit” and there are women “knocking on the door” of cabinet in the outer ministry – still, of course, heavily outnumbered by men. That Abbott’s cabinet contains a Treasurer who couldn’t correctly add up a costings document, an Attorney General who believes religious rights trump human rights and an agriculture minister who thinks equal marriage rights for gay couples might somehow affect his daughters’ chances of finding husbands, the “merit” defence does not carry much weight. Especially not, as the Labor Opposition Leader pointed out today, Australia now has less female representation at cabinet level than Afghanistan.”
“….. and there are women “knocking on the door” of cabinet…..”
Let me guess….Abbott turns up the radio to drown out the knocking…
here is a how to monster tory warmongers..and corporate media-trouts..master-class..
..’tis beautiful to behold..
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36255.htm
..phillip ure..
Another one bites the dust.
an odium for the moldboard plow.
“Unruly, reckless, often crude, and always curious, the Franks (as Muslims called them) were, like the Japanese at the other end of Eurasia, aware of the innumerable ways in which civilized neighbours excelled their own attainments. By 1500, therefore, Western Europeans had acquired an impressive array of learning from their Byzantine and Muslim neighbours, and had imported an equally impressive array of technologies from distant China. In short, they profited greatly in terms of wealth and power from their uninhibited sampling of ideas, goods, and practices circulating within the Old World Web. This held fateful consequences for America and world history after 1500.
By 1000, in the lands between the Loire and Elbe rivers, mounted knights and moldboard plow teams capable of cultivating flat, water-logged clay soils protected and supported one another very efficiently. From this core area, knights of Latin Christendom expanded their domain in every direction. Moldboard agriculture followed behind, but never caught up with the military frontier because climatic differences made the heavy plows impracticable in dry Mediterranean lands, as well as in Irish bogs and in the freezing winters of northeast Europe.
Within limits set by the mild winters and year-round rainfall the Gulf Stream and prevailing westerly winds brought to the plains, agricultural production swelled as peasant villagers developed a sustainable type of farming that employed labour almost uniformly throughout the year. By dividing arable land into three fields- one sown in autumn to harvest in late spring, one sown in spring for autumn harvest and one left fallow to be plowed (for weed control) in summer- plow teams could work almost all year round, interrupted only for Christmas and during weeks when planting and harvesting required everyone’s urgent effort. This regime allowed a single plowman’s share of cultivated land to amount to about thirty acres- far more than needed to feed himself, family and domestic animals.
Cooperative cultivation of open fields in NW Europe therefore permitted peasants to sustain fighting men who had a clear self-interest in guarding them against destructive raiders, together with priests and monks who attended to their relations with God. Surpluses extended the demand for artisans’ wares into peasant homes, furthering urban skills and tightening local trade and transport links. And when noble and clerical rent and tax receivers developed a taste for superior artisan products and commodities from afar, urban dwellers, recruited from the fringes of society, often led by pirate traders, began to supply them with their wants.
Tightening their links with the rest of the Old World Web, Western Europeans encountered far more sophisticated and more highly skilled peoples than themselves.Yet, as long as local agricultural and artisanal production expanded as rapidly as they did between 1000 and 1270, and Christian knights continued to be generally successful in battle, crude Westerners could feel confidant that God was on their side as they plumbed foreigners’ knowledge and skills for purposes of their own.
By 1500, Europe’s population was little, if at all, larger than in 1300 (famine and plague) even though by that time transport and industry were far more efficient. Stout, seaworthy ships now connected all the coasts of Europe, and interregional specialization and exchange had gathered momentum as an ever larger proportion of the population began to enter the market, thus replicating China’s commercialization after a delay of three to four centuries (dumbasses 😉 ); but unlike in China, European rulers and clerics failed to maintain control over the merchants and bankers who managed the new interregional economy.
European merchants and bankers attended to their own defense by gaining political control of a number of sovereign city-states. They could then deal more or less as equals with other local rulers, who found it impossible to do without loans or to repay their debts without concessions to bankers’ and merchants’ interests.Since moneyed men were continually on the lookout for anything that might turn a profit, a self-sustaining process of economic, social and technological change gathered headway wherever political conditions conceded it the freedom to operate. Time and again, local interests and traditional ways of doing things were displaced by politically protected economic innovators. This situation still persists today, having first transformed European society, and then infected the whole world, marking modern times off from earlier, more stable forms of society.
Urban self-government in Europe had another distinctive dimension. In Muslim and Chinese society, members of a single, sometimes extended family managed most economic enterprises. The strength of family ties made it difficult or impossible to trust outsiders, thus limiting the scale of most undertakings. Europeans found it easier to trust fellow citizens, regardless of blood relations or not.Extended family ties were unusually weak in most of Western Europe.
Self-government, in short, could be applied to common enterprises far afield as well as at home, so that large-scale private undertakings, far beyond the scope of any single family became routine and familiar. Shipbuilding and mining attained special vigor due to this sort of risk sharing among multiple private investors. As a result, by 1500 the supply of base metals- especially iron- available to Europeans far surpassed what other peoples had at their disposal.
It is plausible to believe that transfamilial commercial enterprise in the towns of medieval Europe derived from the practices of rural plow teams. Towns were unhealthful places and had to maintain themselves by attracting manpower from the countryside. In the heartlands of Western Europe, such rural recruits brought with them the habit of working in plow teams whose members came from different families. If a plowman failed to do his share of the work, or did not deal honestly with his fellows, penalties were dire indeed. Aggrieved neighbours could easily exclude him from plow teams.Such discipline, requiring mutual trust and cooperation beyond the limits of blood relations and short-sighted investment, prepared Europeans to trust one another.
However, such commercial flexibility came at the cost of the security and human warmth that extended families can provide, and the peace that imperial states can impose.
Indeed, endless rivalry and violence prevailed. 😎
You have been talking to the Clydesdales and Quarter horses again have’nt you Rogue.
neigh
When is John Key going to stop his private sector ways of doing business over the phone, and follow the LAWFUL requirements of the Public Records Act 2005 and ensure full and accurate records are created and maintained, in his ‘public service’ role as Prime Minister of New Zealand?
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2005/0040/latest/DLM345729.html
______________________________________________________________________________
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/key-discounts-covec-report-copper-pricing-%E2%80%98fundamentally-flawed-ts-145981
“At question time in Parliament today, Prime Minister John Key defended comments that Chorus may go broke if the Commerce Commission pressed ahead with plans for a sharp cut in the regulated price on the copper lines, saying Cabinet had received advice based on commercial and in-confidence briefings between Chorus and Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
In his post-Cabinet press conference yesterday, Key said he could not recall where the advice had come from.
He said today that those briefings probably would have come after he received a phone call from Chorus chair Sue Sheldon in December last year when she shared her view on the impact of the regulator’s draft decision and gave the government “some understanding of the issues they would face.”
______________________________________________________________________________
Penny Bright
Auckland Mayoral candidate
http://www.pennybright4mayor.org.nz
So, and important result from Cunliffe’s question to Key yesterday! MSM where are you? Gower? Garner? Young? Watkins?…
From the many, consistent and frustrated comments I get from people from overseas who have moved here, NZ would have to have the worst quality of media information in the English speaking world (and prob beyond). Including America; where at least you can get some intelligent channels and well-thought out articles in news papers.
Congratulations NZ Media. /sarc
(**How about you re-assess your audience, you fuck-wits.**)
It’s legal.
Release of Previously Classified August 29, 2013 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Opinion
Today the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court released a previously classified opinion reauthorizing the collection of bulk telephony metadata under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. The opinion affirms that the bulk telephony metadata collection is both lawful and constitutional. The release of this opinion is consistent with the President’s call for more transparency on these valuable intelligence programs.
http://icontherecord.tumblr.com/post/61526105674/release-of-previously-classified-august-29-2013
http://www.uscourts.gov/uscourts/courts/fisc/br13-09-primary-order.pdf
ooh, 300 Tractors organised by the Grower Action Group (Hort.) churn into protest the HBRC management of water at Hastings today; “RWSS takes focus away from the very real concerns of the Heretaunga Plains.
oh, and fingerprints and DNA to be exchange between NZ and The US.
Welcome to Stuckyville, Have a Nice Day 🙂
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11126566
Another one bites the dust…
…and we’re off to a flying start.
Acc changes afoot. Newer and bigger cars which guzzle petrol will have lower levies and older cheaper cars higher. Guess which part of society owns which cars?
Newer and bigger cars also have lower emissions than older cars
True, but it is still CO2 and there are lots more of them………
You mean because they weigh more and can only be built bigger to reach those lower emission standards, whereas an electric car can have its engine in its wheel opening up space in the car proper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Properties_of_water
Did you know water at just above freezing actually gets slightly more dense at 4 degrees. Can you imagine that, that the sea warming from 0 at the poles actually gets denser for a time and so shrinks, and once globally water is all above 4 degrees, the real effects of sea expansion will begin as the water is not linear as it gets warmer.
Economically young people, those wanting to have time and money to spare, are refraining from buying cars, and demanding to live and work in cities that have good public transport and housing spread. Unlike Auckland, our one and only, where the elite still dithers over public transport, still has to finalize plans to build density, where all the incentives to build at the top tier of housing still exist, and make it hard for those property developers to build where the demand is.
Welcome to NZ, the rest of the world is doing away high emission vehicles and so not engaging in stupid comparisons with our notorious fleet of old bombers. If its a good idea, you can be assured that NZ will talk it to death, and delay the solutions.
But the taxes for emissions should be within the fuel – not the ACC component.
IMO, cars more than 10 years old should be in the recycle queue. Better to design communities so that people don’t need a car.
This is the latest in a overall plot — yes, I will call it that — to have ACC behave like just another insurance companies and start turning down more and more claims.
When people enjoy their levy cuts, they need to realise that they came in the the backs of long term claiment, thrown off ACC, onto a benefit and into hardship.
+1 Exactly.
I’d prefer they spent what they have on ensuring as full rehabilitation as possible e.g. physio, pain management and psychological needs, and for them to stop declining accidents as ‘degenerative conditions’ just because someone isn’t 20 anymore or had a medical condition way back when.
The problem will be under Part 6A the staff from Novopay will all need to be taken on by a new contractor…. Lets hope Novopay behave like Labour and ignore the intent of this policy Labour plan to make everyone else abide by.
[lprent: You haven’t explained what 6A is, nor its relevance to the topic. Moved to OpenMike. Banned for a week for what looks like a out of context comment without explanation. Banned for a further 6 weeks – one per comment I had to move. ]
Yawn… Fucking idiot – find a new drum to bang.
you grumble like an old man yet have the logic skills of a preteen – WTF is wrong with you?
please for the love of (insert deity here) – get a new complaint!
drying paint is more exciting than this
(just as trivia – do you know that “watching paint dry” is actually a job? Who do you think comes up with the “drying times” on your tin of paint)
Yep – On the subject of rewarding failure … I can see why you lovers of power at any price and say anything to get elected get shitty when Part 6A is pointed out – Part 6A is all about rewarding failure.
Guess it’s too much to ask for you people to objectively look at how insane that policy is ?
What do you see are the National-led government’s main successes in the last 5 years?
– Asset sales? How’s that MRP price going.
– Economic growth? Yeah right.
– Assisted exporters? That dollar’s still 6th-highest traded in the entire world
– Run the books into a surplus? Not yet and not likely.
– Reconstructed Christchurch? Tui billboard
– Made the place less violent to children, or decreased poverty? Nope.
Looking forward to going to the hustings on all of that.
Count the days pal because your allies are walking dead.
Surely it would be possible to write a program to keep mentioning Part 6A automatically regardless of relevance or context like this, and isn’t there something in the site policy about that?
[lprent: There is. ]
Can one of youse with connections to Cunliffe please tell him that fat jokes lose votes. Even if they are directed at Gerry Brownlee.
Cheap shots like this in the House are a really good way to keep some of us ex-Labour people staying Green…
*massive disappointment*
Yes. Cheap shots about weight are a turn off.
But the rest of Cunliffe’s speech was pretty spirited and he even had Annette King nodding in agreement.
cosgrove calling ryall ‘twinkle-toes’ was also kinda ugly/stupid..
..and parker calling (bald) joyce ‘flathead’..also sucked..
..they have more than enough ammunition to hand..
..that kinda crap just diminishes them..not their targets..
..they should cease and desist..immediately..
..just argue the ideas/policies..
..it’s not smart..it’s not classy..
..we expect better..
..leave that infantile behavoiur to key..
..he does it so much better than anyone else..
..phillip ure..
Google doodle is for Leon Foucault. What a bummer that he died so early.
Foucault died of multiple sclerosis on February 11, 1868 at the age of 48 after being made a member of many of the top scientific societies in Europe.
He was buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre, with his name among those of seventy-two French scientists, engineers, and mathematicians engraved on the Eiffel Tower.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-doodle-celebrates-french-physicist-lon-foucaults-194th-birthday-with-foucault-pendulum-tribute-8822360.html
Reading all the things he worked on and is credited with discovering – he was amazing. And his name is engraved on the Eiffel Tower with 72 other great French brains. Do we have a place in New Zealand that has this sort of graffiti on it? All our clever people noted on marble or something and which we could hear details through a headset as we walked around looking at them?
Someone Else’s Country
8 New areas of oil exploration up for offer from the Nacts next year.
Twice as big as the previous auctions.
434,000 km2
yet,
of the original 23 proposed last auction, only 10 were eventually taken up.
Companies are struggling to find investment; competing internationally.
Government struggling to find buyers.
Oil, and, Water folks; let the show begin!
been another EQC privacy mix-up apparently; Wellington and Seddon clients receiving combinations of theirs and others claim details, etc. (I could mail them a chisel, or whip up a filing cabinet, flatpack will do).
Getting referred to the wiki page for astroturfing when I try thestandard.org.nz – I only got in to post by clicking a link in my web history.
Either someone’s hacked into the site or the admins joke is on me.
Edit.
Now it’s back to normal.
Sorry made a slip in .htaccess while consigning a non responsive malefactor to an informative page… (not you)
Not like that means anything to me, but good to know. 🙂
lolz I got that too and wondered who it was intended for
Ask not for whom the bell tolls 😆
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1006021913000
a resounding answer. Yeeha.
If I were clever I’d have linked straight to the poem and not the yahoo q+a.
If I were dishonest I’d have edited my post once I found out who actually wrote it.
clever is for jugglers
the unedited was seen
thoughts are not final
the printed word is.
as a two finger 😉 typer , assembling as I go, oftentimes the intention is incomplete on some comments ie, the closing quote marks and refs. for eg. J.R McNiell and William H. McNeil, The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View 😉 of World History. New York. 2003; pp 137-142. sigh. know lie, and numbers once you have them are TooLish.
“as a two finger typer”
I’m a two finger driver, although I’m competent at using just one when needed. 🙂
Look! Chum, no hands at 60MPH; beware looking over the shoulder and ride that Full Moon Fever.
(easy-peasy Japanesee) no more do’h. Old Hat.sigh. nostalgia aye. Abandon romanticism. (great link) Still synthesizing music.
I’ll be okay when I’m a teenage girl and/or the next big pretty thing with breasts.
I’m in love with a German film star – http://www.u-he.com/cms/diva
Luvely Jubbly, all those knobby bits to twiddle with.
A person who used 5 different identities this morning, has seen my warning, not responded, and who now can read a page on astroturfing whenever they look at the site – at least until they get another IP, start to use a direct RSS feed through our proxy, or discover the joys of getting a proxy through our anti-spam software. I like to spread the workload…
Vicious 😎
apparently there has been another privacy breach by EQC, mailing combinations of two claiments details combined to a number of folk. Maybe I could mail them a chisel, or a flatpack filing cabinet to assemble.
Just received from EQC after an OIA request :
“Please be aware that EQC has received a substantial increase of Official Information requests in recent months and a response will take longer to prepare than the 20 working day statutory timeframe. If you consider that your request should be given priority, for example you are experiencing severe health or financial issues, please advise us as soon as possible with supporting documentation so that we may consider whether your request should be escalated.
Presently your request may face a 5-6 month delay as EQC works through the significant demand for such information. EQC is addressing this by employing further staff and implementing smarter systems. This timeframe will be periodically reviewed with the aim of getting a response to you sooner.”
(Emphasis added).
@#&*%$* what can I say, if you follow me and do as your told and don’t cause any trouble we have a nice room where you can shower with your friends, otherwise sit in the rain and mud till you change your mind, EQC the stone in your shoe.
It seems no lessons have been learned from the GFC. When you read anything about it, it’s likely to blame sub-prime mortgages, but these were only a symptom. The real problem is the derivatives market, played with fantasy money and run by computers using algorithms based on an equation which the operators don’t understand. Within capitalism, there are no long term solutions, but short term ones could be:
1. Prison for anyone involved in the derivatives market. Fraud is the only word to adequately describe what they are doing.
2. A financial transactions tax, which would act to slow down the rate of transactions and damp out the problems a little.
3. An enforced limit on the number of speculative transactions that any dealer can make over a given time period. One a week might be reasonable.
4. Computers running trading algorithms should only be available to a trader who can publish an article on financial mathematics and the applicability of the Black-Scholes equation in a peer reviewed mathematical journal. In the hands of anyone else, they are weapons of mass destruction and severe penalties should be applied.
In defence of mathematics – the actual equation is good maths. It just doesn’t describe the economy or the financial market in any way, shape or form. The “econophysicists” and others who try to use Fokker-Planck or stochastic differential equations to do this are modelling it as Brownian motion with a few bells and whistles. They are assuming that the Central Limit Theorem applies and the distribution of events will be Gaussian – the famous Bell curve. That’s what these equations describe. Following this approach, we should get an average of one financial crisis every century or two, at the most. Extreme events should be very rare, but they’re not. The maths is great, it’s just irrelevant.
The main problem is that the traders don’t care. They know that we’ll bail them out. Again and again. Well, about time we bailed them up instead. Against a wall.
Its become a massive mathematised ponzi scheme underwritten by savers, pensioners, tax payers and ordinary citizens.
Lost your job and your house and want a govt bailout? Too bad buddy, only the big end of town get that!
Very good Murray, that’s nicely put, and on the mark!
The underwriting of many orders of magnitude worth of planetary energy supply, or human existence, is most likely past the point of no return, but they knew the outcomes when the path was cleared back in the 90’s.
Now everything that is necessary to keep it together, is laid out, and when the time is right, they will collapse the lot, but that’s a little way off still, IMO!
well, that was worth waiting up for Murray Olsen. (had a primary teacher Mr. Olsen, seemed like a kind chap). All the best for the improvement of your health.
If it was either of Maunu or Ngunguru Schools, he would have been my father.
Richmond
NZ is increasing its metadata & information sharing ties to the US meanwhile in Brazil…
Nick Smith old lizard eyes continuing govt sleaze misleading public and parliament yesterday PinoKeyo lied about sue sheldon of Chorus ph call $600 million bail out today leak of internal email at doc proves nick smith sent a directive demanding to read any recommendations opposing hawksbay dam!