In terms of ‘who’ the Slippery National Government are Governing on behalf of the Slippery little Shyster could well be patting Himself on the back for a job well done,
As one of the ‘share-holding’ elite Slippery has managed in 3 short years to short circuit the New Zealand economy removing most of the disposable income from the bottom 40% of income and redistribute this directly into the pockets of the top 60% of income thus insuring that production for the local economy drops as demand is stifled all the while maintaining the income streams of the top 60% of incomes via tax cuts and the virtual gifting of the top earning State Owned Assets to those within that income group,
His smugness must become ever more entrenched as He realizes that there is little chance of a Shearer lead government having the ‘metal’ needed to convince the electorate that both economically and socially the short circuiting of the New Zealand economy must be reversed…
What on earth is going on ? You used to be able to send your kids off to school, on their own, off to the local shop, wherever – without even thinking they might be abducted. Now – there seems to be an abduction or attempt at one on young children every second day, Why is this happening so often ? Why is it happening at all ?
This is in today’s Herald : (sorry, don’t know how to get italics, etc on this post)
“Police have issued a description of a man they say followed an 8-year-old girl and tried to drag her into his car – the latest in a series of abduction attempts in Auckland.
“The incident happened in Mt Roskill on Sunday, December 9, but was made public yesterday. In another sinister case in Ellerslie, a 9-year-old girl was led for 50m by an abductor before she managed to break free.
………..
“A police spokeswoman said the man – described as Indian, about 30 years old, of average height and medium build – first demanded they get into his car and then got out of his vehicle and grabbed the young girl. “Her sister intervened …….
“Police are still looking for information about the attempt last week outside Ellerslie School.
“The 9-year-old girl, who was forcefully led 50m away from the school, was unharmed”.
Welcome to Nationals Brighter Future.
Where the back office staff have been cut so much, the Police have to their work as well. Where CYFS are more interested in talking, than in action, to save the children. Where The minister for the Vulnerable (Unemployed) thinks nothing of using private information to shut you up. Where ACC instead of helping, uses tame doctors to send people on their way unwell and injured. Where the Minister for the Taxation system says there’s nothing wrong, yet getting anything done seems beyond them. And lets not forget the Minister for Education, 1 word. Incompetent.
Yes lets just bask in the glow of Nationals Brighter Future
“Yes, attempted child abductions are totally the fault of the National Government.”
No, not totally. But certainly the ongoing program of policies which make our society less equal and put those at the bottom of the heap under more and more pressure plays a substantial part.
It means that less equal societies foster more pressure, more stress, more fear, more violence, more crime, and more hatred than more equal ones.
That’s what you’re arguing for every time your knee jerks out to kick at at the least fortunate in support of some punitive, oppressive attack on the poor. A worse society in every way.
I would understand that comment if this was about stealing or something, but how does inequality make child abduction more prevalent.
My instinct tells me (i.e. I have no source to back this up) that child abductions will come from right across the wealth spectrum rather than stealing which will be weighted more to the poor.
I see you’re still tr0lling The Standard pretending to be retarded TC. Or maybe you really are dumb enough to think that the only crimes related to poverty and social inequality are those related to theft. I’m going with the former.
Hey try Googling ‘poverty child abuse’. It turns out there’s a whole bunch of stuff there that says you’re a complete dick.
My first paragraph was a response to TC’s preceding comment. My second paragraph was about my personal opinion of TC which people can agree with or not as they like.
However – you are talking semantics. ‘Child abuse’ is not that simple to define, I for one consider child abduction to be child abuse. No one has a monopoly on a definition. Feel free to offer yours, but note that the majority of abductions are commited by family members or acquaintances. http://suite101.com/article/statistics-on-child-abduction-a147599
“The California Child Abduction Task Force views family and non–family abductions as forms of child abuse. While the psychological trauma inflicted upon a child abducted by a non–family member is commonly acknowledged, abduction by a parent or other family member has long been minimized as having few serious consequences since the child knows the abductor. However, children who are abducted, whether by a person unknown to the child or by a family member, suffer serious psychological and emotional trauma.”
Of course abduction is abuse. That’s a given. But it’s useful to understand the differences between relatively rare stranger abductions that get a lot of MSM attention, and the everyday abuse of children done by people they know, without abduction.
The connections between poverty/stress and everyday abuse of children is self-evident. The connections between poverty/stress and abductions is less clear, although I personally think it’s still a factor.
Tc seems to be questioning the idea that poverty/stress is a significant factor in stranger abductions. I think that’s a valid question, even though I disagree with his stance.
“The correlation with child abuse is obvious. We’re talking about abduction, which is quite a different crime.”
“Of course abduction is abuse. That’s a given”
K…
TC didn’t say he didn’t think the connection between poverty and abductions was significant, he said he couldn’t see a logical connection at all. What I thought he seemed to be saying was that the only crimes related to poverty were those related to theft I pointed to the wealth of evidence that child abuse is indeed connected to poverty, and obviously, as you say, abduction (by a stranger or not) is a form of child abuse. So govt policy is connected to poverty which is connected to abductions.
How significant that connection is is next to impossible to quantify or measure, so it’s probably a pointless discussion. But you’ve said you think it’s a factor – that’s all I was saying.
How then, TC, can the huge increases in murders in New Zealand since, say, the mid 1980s, be explained? I’m talking about how the murders of Jennifer Beard and Mona Blades, for example, in the early and mid-1970s, were front page news for weeks and weeks because murders back then were so thin and far between. Now murders are generally mentioned once on page five because they’re so commonplace. How can this be explained? How does a right-winger describe the reasons for this phenomenon?
Yes 1Prent, its hot down here in Purgatory today. KK stands no chance of cooling down round here so dont send him, suggest you slap him round the ears with a banana instead.
While it’s a big call, it is reasonably consistent with the concept that government policies actually affect people and their behaviours rather than just being a balance sheet without chaotically-propagating repercussions.
ISTR reading somewhere that folks crossing the threshold from fantasizing to acting on the motives tends to coincide with life stresses such as relationship breakdowns, financial difficulty or deaths of loved ones.
Personally, I think that the frequency is thankfully too small to draw any correlation with national’s policies (although one might be able to do something with police response times and deployed resources).
Socio-economic mortality due to non-vaccine diseases, on the other hand, seems to have a much more clear correlation with tory governments.
Yeah but I can’t actually see what government policies would lead a 30 year old man to try and abduct a young girl. That sort of thing is kinda dependent on the person, no? Particualry when this sort of thing happens will a similar frequency under both Labour and National.
(not to mention the fact it is fairly repugnant to politicise something like this)
As I said, IMO I reckon the “stranger danger” rates are too small to draw any political conclusion.
But like most other antisocial acts, if social stressors are triggers for a significant percentage of the potential offender population, then times of stress could plausibly cause an increase in offences. For a less politicly abusable example, ChCh domestic violence rose significantly after the earthquakes.
Individual perspectives are valuable, but we also need to look at the wider social perspective to possibly identify causal factors that aren’t necessarily visible when we look at one case at a time.
“Yeah but I can’t actually see what government policies would lead a 30 year old man to try and abduct a young girl.”
Me neither. But I didn’t say there was any particular policy that caused any particular act.
What I said was (paraphrasing) people with fucked-up lives are more likely to do fucked-up things, and the right-wing policies that governmens like this one follow fuck up a lot of people’s lives.
And those with the most f-ed up lives are those who make the rules we have to live by, those who enforce the rules and those who are protected by the rule makers and enforcers.
“Socio-economic mortality due to non-vaccine diseases, on the other hand, seems to have a much more clear correlation with tory governments.”
Got a link for that for any country ? It’d be an interesting read.
Here’s an interesting one. Although by no means definitive (yadda yadda GFC yadda yadda), it’s slightly stronger than I suspect a time-series graph of stranger-danger abduction attempts might be. And probably a more robust reporting set, too.
I was thinking of a dataset looking at specific diseases (cancer, cardiovascular diseases etc) over time in relation to governments in power. i’d be surprised if there was any significant effect of government flavour in comparison to the general trend of incidence of the specific disease in question.
Mental health and non immunisable infectious diseases and respiratory illnesses would be interesting to look at but again it would likely be confounded by the diagnostic and treatment advances over time.
I’d be looking at RFD/RHD, pneumonia for older patients, and complications of ambulatory-sensitive conditions like skin infections and so on. Something with a plausible relationship to primary healthcare access and access to proper food hygiene and warmth. Maybe serious admissions for mental conditions that are reasonably treatable at the early stages, too, but I don’t know much about how applicable that would be.
The way I see it, cancer and a big chunk of cardiovascular conditions would have a socioeconomic relationship because of smoking, and it would get skewed because it’s narrowly targeted as a health condition. The non-smoking cancers would be largely geographic, or congenital like a large bit of the remainder of the heart disease if we’re looking across age groups, too.
It would be an interesting study to be part of, but to be really effective it would have to use the admissions and mortality datasets linked together over say 20 years, and even then you can’t properly get super-reliable deprivation data at the individual level, without maybe inspections and interviews and income records.
The paperwork hurts my brain at the very thought, which is probably why I’m not paid the big bucks :). But I’d be as happy as a pig in shit with the dataload. And a study that size with that level of confidential data might even be enough reason to get a dedicated high-performance computing centre 🙂
Jenny, was that the online or print version of the Herald?
I doubt that the rate of abductions has gone up hugely. More likely is that we notice more because of the increase in population, and because of increased media reporting.
I suspect that the Herald is being sensationalist. Since when is two attempted abductions a ‘series’? The use of the word ‘sinister’ is emotionally manipulative and completely unnecessary for reporting the story. Hard to know if those things are intentional or just stupid. Not to undermine the seriousness of abduction, but this is still a relatively rare crime compared to child abuse by people who know the child.
Not in a lawyerly way, no, it’s not inconsistent, you left yourself a big ambiguous loophole to paddle in, but you did still try to link child abduction/paedophilia/whatever with societal inequality as if it was just an ordinary crime motivated by stress or poverty. It’s not. Shades of Lysenkoism methinks, letting ideology trump science is bad form.
Hyping up issues around stranger rape of children hides the fact that most sexual abuse of children is done by people that know them and are in a position of care-giving or authority. The hiding of this makes it much harder for society to do anything useful or meaningful about child abuse.
Hyping up stranger rape also makes society paranoid about the wrong things.
And actually that is a very valid point. Such things are a lot more widely reported than they used to be because of the shame and embarrassment involved – not that anyone wanted to acknowledge such things happened in this country either. Compare that to the general media policy of not reporting on suicides on the silly grounds it might encourage copycats, or the tragic under-reporting of male rape victims to the police.
Another factor worth considering is the ease of transport and mobility available to people these days.
Zoned community facility, sold to an unknown developer,with tender bids decided by an unknown rugby trust commitee for $2m+ conditional on the city council rezoning to residential in the new district plan. The council, led by a mayor you may/or not recall seeing on Campbell live extolling her support for rubgy in the city, intend to rubber stamp after submission end in march.
I have a lovely little plan. I’m going to stop the rezoning from happening and ensure Stan Heather Park remain a community facility in the truest sense of the word, and never again be at the mercy of secret board trustees, greedy developers and an incompetent council. I just need some help to get set up to make it work.
Firstly, I need to set up a charitable trust. Any takers?
Second, get Owen Glenn to give me call.
Real change always comes from the bottom up, always. Get me set up and I’ll show you how in Hamilton West.
Remember kim.com’s cabbage boat song?
I wrote one about Key/Banks/child poverty and sent it to Campbell live at least two weeks before his debuted. Nothing against the guy, but to say I was pissed was an understatement. Not just because my song was better 😉 but where his, in the politest way possible, was self serving, I wanted to release mine anonymously, all proceeds to feed hungry kids in Deanwell, Melville and Glenview in Hamilton. Still do, so I’m asking for help.
I watched Campbell live’s pieces on child poverty and feeding kids in schools, knowing there have been several of my emails sitting in their inbox, asking for a bit of help to pull of a genuine attempt at doing, rather than talking. Never even had a reply of them. Not even a get fuc*ed. Must be a mediaworks thing.
I posted a link and the lyrics on the PM’s Facebook site a while back, but I guess he didn’t want to help, either.
Worst record ever made? Who cares? Who really cares?
al1en.org
The faeces of the species
One more day, one more lie, one more smile, one more wave.
Some old joke wants my vote = Aspirational fail.
Did you see on TV? The third world disease on her face.
Unlike me, all you see, are scabs not your first world disgrace.
You’re the faecese of the species, you’re the disease, you’re the plague on the face of that girl.
You’re the hunger, you’re the plunder, all assunder, heaven wonder if there’s oil on the moon (in our bones).
You’re the statistic, optimistic, pessimist e-con-o-mystic, you’re the waste in the space.
Merchant banker, supertanker, deep drill wanker, pull your anchor, just get out of the way.
And we’ll rise. And when we rise up.
We will sing, and we will be glorius.
One more try, one more bribe, one more tea for your friend.
Some old bloke on a rope while they bury his dead.
Did you see on tv? The mould on kids in their bed.
Unlike me, all you see, is dirt and the profits from rent.
You’re the faecese of the species, you’re a disease, you’re a plague on the backs of us all.
You’re the sadistic, little twisted, first world gifted, Mi-pad whizz kid, the foul wind in the sales.
You’re the hunter, you’re the blunder, toxic numbers, six foot under, and you’re a slag to good grace.
Mother cluster, bunker buster, colonel mustard, general custurd, just get out of our way.
And we’ll rise. And when we rise up.
We will sing, and we will be glorius.
Given that Killeen’s probably got a cabal of mates; including her very well connected hubby who is as we’ve already mentioned a senior partner at the law firm Simpson Grierson, as well as contacts in both the media, law society, judiciary her future in the legal profession will be assured.
She will also obviously pick up a few more directorships on boards as well for obvious reasons (her propensity for fibbing and getting away with it is a good starter)
This makes a mockery of the judicial system. I guess there are going to be a lot of very upset New Zealander’s out there…… criminal justice Ministers, perjurerous coppers, District Court Judges (convicted of fiddling their travel expenses) porn addicted High court judges…. Prosecutors convicted of crimes Act offences let off….It seems that Kiwi’s are really really getting the piss taken.
It’s a crazy comedy in the New Zealand we all love to hate….”God defend New Zealand” because no one in the real world really gives a shit.
Kiwis love it this way though, its built in that ignorance must be defended at all costs!
One of the most consistent aspects of the BBC’s reporting of Gaza and Israel is the insistence of its journalists that any “outbreak of violence” is the fault of the Palestinians.
When Israel bombs or shells Gaza, this is unfailingly reported by the BBC as being in “response” or “retaliation” to rockets being fired from the blockaded territory. The unflinching regularity of this one-sided reporting by the UK’s state broadcaster is meticulously recorded in More Bad News from Israel, the book by Greg Philo and Mike Berry which contains research by the Glasgow Media Unit into the BBC’s reporting of the occupation.
The BBC’s coverage of Israel’s most recent assault on Gaza in November was no exception. An article published on the BBC’s website the day Hamas commander Ahmed al-Jabari was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City stated that the killing “follows a wave of rocket attacks against Israel from the territory” (“Israeli air strike kills Hamas military chief Jabari,” 14 November 2012).
The article went on to feature an Israeli army spokesperson’s claim that al-Jabari had “a lot of blood on his hands” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that a “clear message” had been sent to “Hamas and other terrorist organizations.” Netanyahu’s comments ended with the words: “We will continue to do everything to protect our citizens.”
All of Israel’s key propaganda messages were conveyed, while the reality was carefully hidden. There is, of course, the ongoing reality that Israel is an occupier and a serial violator of international law — facts which are buried under the credibility and authority the BBC accords to its politicians and spokespeople and what they say.
Ignoring reality
On an immediate level, another crucial reality was ignored. By assassinating al-Jabari — itself an illegal act of extrajudicial murder which the BBC failed to examine, even as it printed Netanyahu’s triumphal “clear message” — Israel had violated a ceasefire brokered three days earlier.
This information, so casually ditched by the BBC’s journalists — online, on television and on radio news — was absolutely crucial. It emboldened the lie, disseminated across the BBC’s media outlets, that al-Jabari’s killing and the eight-day onslaught that came next followed “a wave of rocket attacks” from Gaza.
It didn’t. Al-Jabari’s assassination and the ensuing attack on Gaza which killed more than 160 Palestinians, including more than 30 children, followed a ceasefire, which the Palestinian groups in Gaza had been observing and may well have carried on observing if …..
Not sure there is any requirement to be able to read tea leaves, in order to spot the imbalance in the MSM around the world, including NZ. We can thank the AP/reuters network for ensuring this imbalance continues, on the same rabid path!
Our friend “Populuxe1” has again tried, unwisely, to be clever…
1.) “Again with the rabid Antisemitism?”
Criticism of an outlaw regime, a regime that is condemned by nearly every nation in the world, is “Antisemitism”?
2.) “Reading motivations in the BBC like tea leaves”
That article was a carefully and thoroughly researched piece of scholarly analysis. You can call it tealeaf reading if you like, but you’ve been discredited long ago on this forum, and nobody with any sense takes you seriously. (Anyone who thinks I am being uncharitable towards this dolt should check out his lunatic raving just the other day—Saturday—where he earnestly tries to make a case in support of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)
Having falsely identified anti-semitism Pop, you come over all anti-anti-semitism. So rational, like a cat chasing its tail, not. Your entire premise is flawed but round and round you go. And you fancy that’s a response ???
Thank you anyway for popping up as a perfect example of the lazy and the ignorant who are dispositionally vulnerable to the bias and falsehoods Morrissey is talking about.
For Palestine – Justice The Seed Peace The Flower !
The Dim Posts latest poll charts make for interesting viewing.
“One of the end-of year refrains in political summaries is that National ‘held steady in the polls’ despite a terrible year. Well, they did hold pretty steady compared to the election result. But the polls all massively over-estimated National’s election result – if you compare current poll estimates with pre-election poll estimates then National is way down. (It looks like Roy Morgan may have corrected their methodology post-election, the other firms not so much.)”
The smart money has Slippery’s National Government at 39% and tracking downward, given that the Maori Party seats currently held by both Flavell and Sharples are far from ‘safe’ with 1500 and 1000 vote majority’s respectively it is far from a sure thing that National could form a Government even with the (unlikely???), help of NZ First who (laughably), the main stream polling organizations still consign to less than 5% of the vote,
Labour of course are far from a shoe-in to form the next Government with a % of the vote at 34% a majority Labour Government would require a Green/NZFirst buy-in, it’s a long haul till November 2014 tho and if the trends continue i would expect that by election time Labour and National are going to be level pegging in terms of Party %’s…
If labour is regularly tracking at 34% in mid 2014 (unless the greens are regularly at 20%) I’d be a bit concerned. If they manage to build another regular 5% in 2013, like they did in 2012, a leftish government would be on track. But we need Mana and the Greens to provide some real flavour to the Labour sponge cake.
Following on from Karol’s series of critiques of how the MSM portrays and promotes Russell Norman as the leader of the GP, can the Standard authors please find an alternate picture to use for posts here that show both Meteria and Norman?
The one in vogue at the moment is a very nice picture of Russell Norman, but alongside a post headline about a Green Party policy it’s just wrong. Yes, Norman made the particular announcement, but he is not the GP.
With all their favourable press, their polling seems pretty static, and not trending up. If they were the default opposition as some would have us believe, surely they should be rating above 11%.
Is being the “default opposition” like an honourary title that some political party can take for granted? And expect to retain without continuous hard work? Which by the way the Greens and their members are doing in spades.
All through the 2010 and 2011 Roy Morgans the Green Party was typically sitting between 7% and 8%. Now that figure is bouncing around 12% and 13%. Will they cross 15% on a regular basis by 2014? Yes that’s very likely.
Unfortunately high intelligence is not a noted feature among New Zealanders. Average intelligence anywhere is about 100 (far from high), and this being the average necessitates many being below or well below even the average. The Greens appeal to intelligence, but it takes something else to make them popular.
So? What does that have to do with poltitcal performance?
BTW, according to his doctor, John Key is now a couple of kilos over weight. Anything to say on that, or Gerry Brownlee, or is it just women MPs that get your kind of comment?
Being clinically obese means you are greedy, lazy and have no self control. Not good traits for our Nations leaders. And you are right, Brownlee definately falls into this category however Turei coming from a party who is all about every one having their proper share and not taking more than you need to makes the irony greater.
You are pretty much a sick little puppy and i wonder why your contribution is allowed at all except for the fact that it shows you up for being a sick little puppy…
[lprent: Because he usually tends to be careful about violating the policy.
That means he doesn’t get too many of these wee notes (any more) and therefore doesn’t waste moderators time without reason. We tend to cut him some slack (as we do for all regular commentators) for the odd times that they go too far over the edge.
BTW: saying something that is an explicit or implicit question about the site policies does tend to attract moderators, so reading the policy appears to be a good idea… ]
This includes making assertions that you are unable to substantiate with some proof (and that doesn’t mean endless links to unsubstantial authorities) or even argue when requested to do so.
I look forward to reading KK’s back up for the assertion that “Being clinically obese means you are greedy, lazy and have no self control.” I also look forward to his evidence that Turei is clinically obese. Clinically obese is a medical term, so we’re going to see some substantial medical proof.
Otherwise his post looks like flaming to me. It’s the equivalent of him saying “Being Maori means you are greedy, lazy and have no self control.” Or “being a fat woman means you are useless”.
While I think there might be some use to exposing his misogyny (along the lines of bad’s point), it’s also tiring and often boring having to do so. I guess we might get some interesting debate from it, we’ll see.
Pah! Sexuality is for pussies! I mean dicks! I mean, uh, whatever. I’ve transcended that biological nonsense. I don’t even use meiosis, let alone mitosis! Yes, I use mimesis! No, better than that: memesis! Hah! I see your enormous imaginary penis and raise you my insidious propagandising of innocent youth in university tutorials!
I am infinitely, intellectually, transcendently fertile!
Turei is clinically obese. Now only her doctor will be able to confirm this to the level of proof you will require but any normal person who has seen her in the flesh recently will tell you that she is the size of Jabba the Hutt so it is a pretty fair assumption that the she is clinically obese.
“Show evidence that Turei’s weight has an impact on her job performance.”
When she was smaller she managed to work her way up through the party and made enough of an impression to be made co leader. Since she has started piling it on her ability has been questioned a bit more and Russell Norman has been doing all the heavy lifting. Not incredibly scientific I know.
“Show evidence that “Being clinically obese means you are greedy, lazy and have no self control”.”
Of course this is the case. Being massively fat means you eat way too much (greedy) don’t exercise enough (lazy) and even though you look like a disgrace, won’t stop doing what you are doing (lack of self control).
Being poor, depressed, alienated etc may be the reasons behind the greed, laziness and lack of self contol but these things are the certainly the fundementals of the problem.
Being massively fat means you eat way too much (greedy) don’t exercise enough (lazy) and even though you look like a disgrace, won’t stop doing what you are doing (lack of self control).
Age is a factor. Many people put on weight as they age: whether it’s John key, Brownlee or Turei. I notice I don’t need as much food as I did when I was younger, even though I seem to be just as busy and doing just as much exercise as before. And I think for some of us, our bodies become less efficient at processing fast foods and processed foods. I eat much less of those sorts of foods now for that reason.
It isn’t about laziness or working less hard. In fact, I know a middle-aged man or two who put on weight when they are working at their hardest: less time for exercise, and a tendency to eat less healthy food on the run – less energy left over for getting focused on health issues. Not to mention, in some professional jobs, fancy food is the centre of many work-related gatherings.
KK I have this hazy memory that in a previous life I made the mistake of stating that a large overweight lady (silly step number one mentioning weight) who was IMHO starving children should be able to be referred to as “fat” (silly provocative act number two) because she had the ability to choose what her weight was (silly argument perhaps). For this KK I was thrust by the earthly guardians of political correctness into the gulag at a trial with rabid commissars convinced like Grand Inquisitors of the sanctity of their mission (hey I might be guilty but in the case of “fat” statements punishment and crime dont match, you are better doing white collar fraud), it is sort of a hyper crime. At that point Purgatory offered itself as a viable option. Being dead is quite preferable. Be warned, dont go there.
Hmmmm, I’m no trick cyclist, but does anybody else think that its likely that KK is 20-30kg overweight himself and just lashing out as a form of transference based on his own depression and self loathing?
It isn’t about laziness or working less hard. In fact, I know a middle-aged man or two who put on weight when they are working at their hardest: less time for exercise, and a tendency to eat less healthy food on the run – less energy left over for getting focused on health issues. Not to mention, in some professional jobs, fancy food is the centre of many work-related gatherings.
This actually explains what is so very wrong with the environments, and how is it possible to expect people to function well under such conditions. Able bodied people can make time for self respect, like eating well and exercising, sleep etc, under most circumstances.
“I think you will find that a surplus of calories in than expended causes fat gain in humans. That calorie imbalance only happens one way.
This is science not bigotry.”
[citation needed]
Because that’s not what the science says. Even at the most basic level, the calories in/calories out theory just isn’t true – there are other factors at play in how nutrients get metabolised and what happens to metabolism when people expend energy. The science shows that weight gain is the result of many complex metabolic processes. For some people, the relationship between caloric intake/exercise and weight is fairly straight forward and so they can rely on the calorie in/out idea. But for many others, it just doesn’t work that way, biologically.
For instance it’s normal and natural for women in their 40s to put on weight in preparation for menopause (women with fat do better in menopause than thin women). Weight gain is also a consequence of exposure to prolonged stress. And Maori women are more at risk because they are not as genetically adapted to the high carb modern diet.
People with insulin resistance are biologically going to have a harder time losing weight or maintaining a weight considered healthy by contemporary standards. But then we don’t know what a healthy weight is because the goal posts have shifted so much. Despite what you’ve seen on teevee it’s possible to be ‘fat’ and healthy.
So, yes, in the absence of any actual evidence that “being clinically obese means you are greedy, lazy and have no self control.” (and “I said so does not equal evidence), you are just spouting your own nasty, ill-informed bigotry.
Of course, idle speculation drawing together a certain obsession with calling people grossly obese and the choice as one’s nom d’écume of the name of a massively oversized and somewhat portly ape does tend to suggest that our friendly gorilla has their own issues with body image insecurity.
And you are a brain dead moron KK. Being poor, depressed, alienated etc may be the reasons behind the Brain Death, but these things are the certainly the fundementals of the problem.
KK – I am glad to see you acknowledge not being “incredibly scientific” (to put it mildly!) Apparantly we are to conclude that you yourself contain all of the great virtues which you deny larger persons. Have you performed miracles? If so, make it known to the Vatican, sainthood might be coming your way! On the other hand, possibly you will continue growing in egotism.
You have the gall to state “Turei is clinically obese” – how do you know her doctor’s diagnosis? How do you know, for that matter, what is a “normal person”? (I guess you provide yourself for this criteria). Having stated that Turei is “clinically obese”, that is as a fact, later you say that “it is a pretty fair assumption that she is clinically obese”! You have moved your ground, and are virtually guilty of self-contradiction.
But, having very little by way of self-awareness (I suggest you read Socrates), you then have the superlative hide to enquire “Show evidence that Turei’s weight has an impact on her performance.” All the evidence anybody could ever require is there to see and examine. I suggest that you take a dispassionate look; then you will find no negative impact on her performance whatsoever.
KK – do you ever feel embarrassed? Well, it is about time that you did!
In my experience, folks who tend to be proud of their genetic advantage tend to be somewhat delusional, but with some vicious little subconscious insecurities that suggest the delusion goes only so deep.
Ok, now that we’ve spent the day establishing that King Kong is a fat-phobic bigot and trool, who can’t make even a half-hearted attempt to back up his prejudices, what do we do next?
ETA: couldn’t resist: QoT’s muppet on a blog citations
So Brownlee’s girth renders his politics unimpeachable and him a sincere non-politicking fiduciary of our democracy ? What planet are you on ? Bad Question Sorry.
This is the same bullshit Norman Kirk got 40 years ago – “……can’t be trusted to lead the nation ‘cos he can’t even control his own weight…..nah nah nah nah nah……”.
The wahanui irrelevancies of people who just know they gotta have a say. About whatever, whenever, and from whatever ignorant, facile base they spring.
(as kids back in the dark ages we used to have a joke about removing five pounds of ugly fat, but in this case I doubt it would make the weight requirement…)
And if you’re there r0b, the spelling of “stupidty” [sic], in your latest post?
Easily done – I really need those red underlines when I’m typing, but I don’t think they show under Post titles.
Not a criticism of you and I note several other comments by others on other posts here today have also mispelled Norman’s first name, but it is “Russel” not “Russell”.
[I am having a very nitpicking/pedantic day today – comes from having a battle with a certain Australian bank at present which includes on the wording of one of their online pieces of information related to the battle! I will get over it – but have finally won the battle. I will have won the war only when certain funds are transferred into my account …..]
Probably won’t mean much to non-IT people, the report is a big wad of fluff. The long & short of it is that parties un-named didn’t follow the most basic principles of network security. Any decent network admin could have told them that & saved the taxpayer about $380,000.
Another question is why the Govt engages these vastly overpaid consultants to perform a pointless exercise that really only served to whitewash the upper management of culpability. $400k of taxpayers money pissed against the wall.
actually, reading the kiosk report suggests to me that the real problem was that everyone did “their” bit, but nobody was looking at the entire thing. The testing brought up security issues (contractor did their bit), the security issues were resolved by ordering secure routers for each kiosk (IT security did their bit, although averaging “rare” probability with “severe” consequence into “moderate” risk seems unwise), the router order went to IT Network staff, the order wasn’t flagged as security-critical, along the line the network plan got changed and the (network)-redundant routers never got ordered (IT network did their job providing the network, though), and nobody had the job of going back and making sure that all identified issues had actually been resolved, rather than being ticked of lists in meetings.
A management clusterfuck, 100%. It doesn’t seem to be the case of any single incompetent individual, but is more a case of a number of units that seemed to work well together but there was no overall management. The engines were working, the navigator knew where they were but was in a separate room, the helmsman could steer the ship but couldn’t see anything, the bow lookout could see the rocks but couldn’t be heard from the wheelhouse, and there was no captain who could put everything together and stop the oil tanker running aground.
Personally I’m leaning more towards incompetence somwhere in the chain there. The security holes that Keith Ng exploited to browse the network can be disabled with a few clicks of the mouse in group policy editor. They knew about the problem and yet they did nothing about an issue that could have been fixed in less time than it took me to write this. There’s no excuses for that, even if they were sidetracked by plans to make bigger changes later it still doesn’t explain why they didn’t implement a simple fix in the meantime.
the report is fascinating. It really does point out that one team identified the issue, put it on the “to do” list for another team, but the other team ignored the apparently redundant “to do” when they upgraded their plans. Classic handover cockup.
That’s the way they paint it but it doesn’t wash. When an interim fix is that easy, and important, you don’t put it on a ‘to do’ list. You fix it straight away. These people are supposed to be professionals here, when someone finds a fault in your network you sure as hell don’t ignore it or forget about it.
LOL internationally noted jurist Endora Girl Judy of Clevedon doesn’t like its contents so we have
$400K diverted down the drain as the price of Baroness Judy playing internal National Party politics.
I thought public funding of partisan politics was circumscribed. Seems not. What about partisan internecine politics ? Again seems not with this government of higher standards LOL.
Just because I am a nit picker and pedantic, I note that the Stuff and Herald articles give opposite dates for the deadlines for filing submissions:
Stuff
“The council and iwi – represented by the Waikato River Dams Claim Trust – have until the end of the week to prepare their case, while the respondents have until January 18.
The respondents include the Attorney General, Minister of Finance and Minister of State Owned Enterprises. ”
whereas the Herald states:
“The respondents – the attorney-general, finance minister and state-owned enterprises minister have until 1pm on Friday to file their case.
The appellants, the council and the Waikato River and Dams Claim Trust have until January 18 to file their submissions.”
a tweet from Scoop this this link to the PDF document with the actual ruling. The respondents are the government ones.
“A: Leave to appeal, and to appeal direct to this Court, is granted. B: The approved ground of appeal is whether the High Court was right to dismiss the application for review. C: The respondents will prepare the case on appeal and will file and serve it by 1.00 pm on Friday 21 December 2012. D: The appellants are to file and serve their written submissions by 4.00 pm on 18 January 2013.
E: The respondents are to file their written submissions in 4.00 pm on 25 January 2013.
F: The Court will hear the appeal on 31 January and 1 February
2013.
G: Leave is reserved to the parties to apply for further directions
should they be required. “
The fatuity of the products is matched by the profundity of the impacts. Rare materials, complex electronics, the energy needed for manufacture and transport are extracted and refined and combined into compounds of utter pointlessness. When you take account of the fossil fuels whose use we commission in other countries, manufacturing and consumption are responsible for more than half of our carbon dioxide production(2). We are screwing the planet to make solar-powered bath thermometers and desktop crazy golfers.
As I’ve said, free-market capitalism must result in the over-use of resources and the destruction of the environment. Our politicians just won’t see it though and the MSM will never report on it.
To Draco Post 11 And what stops your post from being common-knowledge? Is the meme of self-interest. We must get rid of this meme and see it for the dinosaur-of-an-excuse for effective-philosophical understanding that it is. Our strength as a human-race is our intelligence and co-operation. The self-interest meme by-passes our greatest qualities and disallows the type of wide perspective we require to address the negative wider-consequences of our collective actions that we face today. Great to see you still posting Draco T Bastard (allbeit not as frequently) I miss CV’s comments and am greatful to you (both) for posting your insights. It takes a long time to shift group views into more enlightened ways of thinking and I’m sure you’ve added a great deal to that cause, for which I thank you 🙂
The most nutty thing in New Zealand this afternoon is the fact that all these Education Ministry people are still arseing around trying to get a computer program to pay their employees.
How utterly abysmal. It is classic evidence of the limitations of current technology.
Why not get a person to do it for each school? YOu could even have one person do a few different schools. And seeing as how no doubt everything needs to be ‘uploaded’ anyway, why not just ‘upload’ it once to your pay clerk? It would certainly be quicker than uploading and phoning and emailing and chasing and still not working.
It is in fact exactly like eftpos, a complete waste of time. Slow and useless.
We each have the best computer in existence inside of our skulls – why not use that computer? Plus you can get it for less than slave wages today, if you can pay the minimum wage. How many novapay employees are on slave wages?
Actually, the idea is that a team of say three plus computers can do the payrolls for say 30 schools (actual numbers may vary from these ad hoc informal benchmarks arrived at heuristically using ex posteriori methodologies).
Just like EFTPOS limits the amount of cash tallied at the end of the day.
Most electronic payroll systems work much more efficiently from initial implementation than the current debacle.
Are special schools for children with intellectual disabilities better at teaching those children than mainstream schools? Dr Jude MacArthur is a researcher based in Dunedin, working in the area of education and disability for Massey University. Trish Grant is Director of Advocacy at IHC.
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No Jesus Here.She rises, unrested, and stepsOnto the narrow balconyTo find the day. To greetThe Sunday God she sings to.But this morning His face is clouded.Grey and wet as a corpseWashed by tears.Behind her, in the tangled bedding,the children bicker and whine.Worrying the cheap furnitureLike hungry puppies.They clutch at her ...
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Ehara taku toa i te toa takatahi, engari taku toa he toa takimano – my strength is not mine alone but the strength of many (working together to ensure safe, caring respectful responses). We are striving for change. We want all people in Aotearoa New Zealand thriving; their wellbeing enhanced ...
The Green Party is throwing its support behind the 10,000 allied health workers taking work-to-rule industrial action today because of unfair pay and working conditions. ...
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Tiwhatiwha te pō, tiwhatiwha te ao. Tiwhatiwha te pō, tiwhatiwha te ao. Matariki Tapuapua, He roimata ua, he roimata tangata. He roimata e wairurutu nei, e wairurutu nei. Te Māreikura mārohirohi o Ihoa o ngā Mano, takoto Te ringa mākohakoha o Rongo, takoto. Te mātauranga o Tūāhuriri o Ngai Tahu ...
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The Government is contributing $100,000 to a Mayoral Relief Fund to help the Levin community following this morning’s tornado, Minister for Emergency Management Kiri Allan says. “My thoughts are with everyone who has been impacted by severe weather events in Levin and across the country. “I know the tornado has ...
The Quintet of Attorneys General have issued the following statement of support for the Prosecutor General of Ukraine and investigations and prosecutions for crimes committed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine: “The Attorneys General of the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand join in ...
Morena tatou katoa. Kua tae mai i runga i te kaupapa o te rā. Thank you all for being here today. Yesterday my colleague, the Minister of Finance Grant Robertson, delivered the Wellbeing Budget 2022 – for a secure future for New Zealand. I’m the Minister of Health, and this was ...
Urgent Budget night legislation to stop major supermarkets blocking competitors from accessing land for new stores has been introduced today, Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Dr David Clark said. The Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill amends the Commerce Act 1986, banning restrictive covenants on land, and exclusive covenants ...
It is a pleasure to speak to this Budget. The 5th we have had the privilege of delivering, and in no less extraordinary circumstances. Mr Speaker, the business and cycle of Government is, in some ways, no different to life itself. Navigating difficult times, while also making necessary progress. Dealing ...
Budget 2022 provides funding to implement the new resource management system, building on progress made since the reform was announced just over a year ago. The inadequate funding for the implementation of the Resource Management Act in 1992 almost guaranteed its failure. There was a lack of national direction about ...
The Government is substantially increasing the amount of funding for public media to ensure New Zealanders can continue to access quality local content and trusted news. “Our decision to create a new independent and future-focused public media entity is about achieving this objective, and we will support it with a ...
$662.5 million to maintain existing defence capabilities NZDF lower-paid staff will receive a salary increase to help meet cost-of living pressures. Budget 2022 sees significant resources made available for the Defence Force to maintain existing defence capabilities as it looks to the future delivery of these new investments. “Since ...
More than $185 million to help build a resilient cultural sector as it continues to adapt to the challenges coming out of COVID-19. Support cultural sector agencies to continue to offer their important services to New Zealanders. Strengthen support for Māori arts, culture and heritage. The Government is investing in a ...
It is my great pleasure to present New Zealand’s fourth Wellbeing Budget. In each of this Government’s three previous Wellbeing Budgets we have not only considered the performance of our economy and finances, but also the wellbeing of our people, the health of our environment and the strength of our communities. In Budget ...
It is my great pleasure to present New Zealand’s fourth Wellbeing Budget. In each of this Government’s three previous Wellbeing Budgets we have not only considered the performance of our economy and finances, but also the wellbeing of our people, the health of our environment and the strength of our communities. In Budget ...
Four new permanent Coroners to be appointed Seven Coronial Registrar roles and four Clinical Advisor roles are planned to ease workload pressures Budget 2022 delivers a package of investment to improve the coronial system and reduce delays for grieving families and whānau. “Operating funding of $28.5 million over four ...
Establishment of Ministry for Disabled People Progressing the rollout of the Enabling Good Lives approach to Disability Support Services to provide self-determination for disabled people Extra funding for disability support services “Budget 2022 demonstrates the Government’s commitment to deliver change for the disability community with the establishment of a ...
Fairer Equity Funding system to replace school deciles The largest step yet towards Pay Parity in early learning Local support for schools to improve teaching and learning A unified funding system to underpin the Reform of Vocational Education Boost for schools and early learning centres to help with cost ...
$118.4 million for advisory services to support farmers, foresters, growers and whenua Māori owners to accelerate sustainable land use changes and lift productivity $40 million to help transformation in the forestry, wood processing, food and beverage and fisheries sectors $31.6 million to help maintain and lift animal welfare practices across Aotearoa New Zealand A total food and ...
House price caps for First Home Grants increased in many parts of the country House price caps for First Home Loans removed entirely Kāinga Whenua Loan cap will also be increased from $200,000 to $500,000 The Affordable Housing Fund to initially provide support for not-for-profit rental providers Significant additional ...
Child Support rules to be reformed lifting an estimated 6,000 to 14,000 children out of poverty Support for immediate and essential dental care lifted from $300 to $1,000 per year Increased income levels for hardship assistance to extend eligibility Budget 2022 takes further action to reduce child poverty and ...
More support for RNA research through to pilot manufacturing RNA technology platform to be created to facilitate engagement between research and industry partners Researchers and businesses working in the rapidly developing field of RNA technology will benefit from a new research and development platform, funded in Budget 2022. “RNA ...
A new Business Growth Fund to support small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to grow Fully funding the Regional Strategic Partnership Fund to unleash regional economic development opportunities Tourism Innovation Programme to promote sustainable recovery Eight Industry Transformation Plans progressed to work with industries, workers and iwi to transition ...
Budget 2022 further strengthens the economic foundations and wellbeing outcomes for Pacific peoples in Aotearoa, as the recovery from COVID-19 continues. “The priorities we set for Budget 2022 will support the continued delivery of our commitments for Pacific peoples through the Pacific Wellbeing Strategy, a 2020 manifesto commitment for Pacific ...
Boost for Māori economic and employment initiatives. More funding for Māori health and wellbeing initiatives Further support towards growing language, culture and identity initiatives to deliver on our commitment to Te Reo Māori in Education Funding for natural environment and climate change initiatives to help farmers, growers and whenua ...
New hospital funding for Whangārei, Nelson and Hillmorton 280 more classrooms over 40 schools, and money for new kura $349 million for more rolling stock and rail network investment The completion of feasibility studies for a Northland dry dock and a new port in the Manukau Harbour Increased infrastructure ...
$168 million to the Māori Health Authority for direct commissioning of services $20.1 million to support Iwi-Māori Partnership Boards $30 million to support Māori primary and community care providers $39 million for Māori health workforce development Budget 2022 invests in resetting our health system and gives economic security in ...
Biggest-ever increase to Pharmac’s medicines budget Provision for 61 new emergency vehicles including 48 ambulances, along with 248 more paramedics and other frontline staff New emergency helicopter and crew, and replacement of some older choppers $100 million investment in specialist mental health and addiction services 195,000 primary and intermediate aged ...
Landmark reform: new multi-year budgets for better planning and more consistent health services Record ongoing annual funding boost for Health NZ to meet cost pressures and start with a clean slate as it replaces fragmented DHB system ($1.8 billion year one, as well as additional $1.3 billion in year ...
Fuel Excise Duty and Road User Charges cut to be extended for two months Half price public transport extended for a further two months New temporary cost of living payment for people earning up to $70,000 who are not eligible to receive the Winter Energy Payment Estimated 2.1 million New ...
A return to surplus in 2024/2025 Unemployment rate projected to remain at record lows Net debt forecast to peak at 19.9 percent of GDP in 2024, lower than Australia, US, UK and Canada Economic growth to hit 4.2 percent in 2023 and average 2.1 percent over the forecast period A ...
Cost of living payment to cushion impact of inflation for 2.1 million Kiwis Record health investment including biggest ever increase to Pharmac’s medicines budget First allocations from Climate Emergency Response Fund contribute to achieving the goals in the first Emissions Reduction Plan Government actions deliver one of the strongest ...
Budget 2022 will help build a high wage, low emissions economy that provides greater economic security, while providing support to households affected by cost of living pressures. Our economy has come through the COVID-19 shock better than almost anywhere else in the world, but other challenges, both long-term and more ...
Health Minister Andrew Little will represent New Zealand at the first in-person World Health Assembly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, to be held in Geneva, Switzerland, from Sunday 22 – Wednesday 25 May (New Zealand time). “COVID-19 has affected people all around the world, and health continues to ...
New Zealand is committing to trade only in legally harvested timber with the Forests (Legal Harvest Assurance) Amendment Bill introduced to Parliament today. Under the Bill, timber harvested in New Zealand and overseas, and used in products made here or imported, will have to be verified as being legally harvested. ...
The Government has welcomed the release today of StatsNZ data showing the rate at which New Zealanders died from all causes during the COVID-19 pandemic has been lower than expected. The new StatsNZ figures provide a measure of the overall rate of deaths in New Zealand during the pandemic compared ...
Legislation that will help prevent serious criminal offending at sea, including trafficking of humans, drugs, wildlife and arms, has passed its third reading in Parliament today, Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta announced. “Today is a milestone in allowing us to respond to the increasingly dynamic and complex maritime security environment facing ...
Trade and Export Growth Minister Damien O’Connor is set to travel to Thailand this week to represent New Zealand at the annual APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade (MRT) meeting in Bangkok. “I’m very much looking forward to meeting my trade counterparts at APEC 2022 and building on the achievements we ...
Settlement of the first pay-equity agreement in the health sector is hugely significant, delivering pay rises of thousands of dollars for many hospital administration and clerical workers, Health Minister Andrew Little says. “There is no place in 21st century Aotearoa New Zealand for 1950s attitudes to work predominantly carried out ...
Health Minister Andrew Little opened a new intensive care space for up to 12 ICU-capable beds at Christchurch Hospital today, funded from the Government’s Rapid Hospital Improvement Programme. “I’m pleased to help mark this milestone. This new space will provide additional critical care support for the people of Canterbury and ...
Budget 2022 will continue to deliver on Labour’s commitment to better services and support for mental wellbeing. The upcoming Budget will include a $100-million investment over four years for a specialist mental health and addiction package, including: $27m for community-based crisis services that will deliver a variety of intensive supports ...
Budget 2022 will continue to deliver on Labour’s commitment to better mental wellbeing services and support, with 195,000 primary and intermediate aged children set to benefit from the continuation and expansion of Mana Ake services. “In Budget 2022 Labour will deliver on its manifesto commitment to expand Mana Ake, with ...
Policy failure over the last eight years — including a massive cut to the ABC’s international funding — has weakened Australia’s voice in the Pacific to its lowest ebb since the Menzies government established the first radio shortwave service across the region more than 80 years ago. Now, with China’s ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern early in March insisted there was no cost-of-living “crisis” in New Zealand. Now her right-hand man, Grant Robertson, has presented a budget which he proudly claims deals with that very same “crisis”, giving away $1 billion in an emergency cost-of-living package. About 2.1 million New Zealanders ...
Podcast - This Budget needed to tackle health and climate while delivering cost-of-living relief. Deputy Political Editor Craig McCulloch assesses the implications. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne AAP/Lukas Coch The federal election is on Saturday. Polls close at 6pm local time; that means 6pm AEST in the eastern states, 6:30pm in SA and the ...
Analysis - It was the government's biggest week of the year with the Budget and the Emissions Reduction Plan coming out, and neither was given much of a welcome, Peter Wilson writes. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ataus Samad, Lecturer, Western Sydney University Mick Tsikas/AAP With the election almost upon us, thoughts are more than ever turned to political survival. While getting pre-selected and winning elections are the initial, difficult challenges of a political career, a major ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Chart by Keith Rankin. We know that New Zealand has one of the world’s lowest mortality outcomes, so far, in the Covid19 pandemic. (So has North Korea.) It’s still far too early to access the costs incurred – loss of utility enjoyed by actual and ‘would-have-been’ ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liz Giuffre, Senior Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology Sydney Lillie Eiger/ Sony You’ve probably heard the name Harry Styles. He is the current “real big thing” in popular music. But how did a former boy band star become ...
New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty managing director Mark Harris is advocating for a stamp duty on foreign buyers of residential property. Following yesterday’s Budget 2022 announcement, Harris believes that a stamp duty would help increase the ...
And how did the people react to the boost in spending announced in this year’s Budget to promote our wellbeing? In some cases by pleading for more; in other cases, by grouching they got nothing. But Budget spending is never enough. Two lots of bleating came from the Human Rights ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and Emma La Rouche, from the University of Canberra’s Media and Communications team, look at the last week of the campaign as Australians head to the polls. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Hurlimann, Associate Professor in Urban Planning, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock It will be impossible to tackle climate change unless we transform the way we build and plan cities, which are responsible for a staggering 70% of global emissions. ...
Military spending allocated in the 2022 Wellbeing Budget is $6,077,484,000 - an average of more than $116.8 million every week, and a 10.4% increase on actual spending in 2021. [1] This year’s increase illustrates yet again that the government remains ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Tingay, John Curtin Distinguished Professor (Radio Astronomy), Curtin University JIM LO SCALZO/EPA The United States Congress recently held a hearing into US government information pertaining to “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAPs). The last investigation of this kind happened ...
Bank shareholders, speculators, investors, and ticket clippers will be partying for days over the enormous profits they’ll be expecting following Labour’s budget reveal yesterday. After a 48 percent increase in profits in 2021, banks in particular ...
Budget 2022 has a relatively small amount of new cash allocated to science, research and innovation. This budget comes ahead of what could become a major overhaul of the research, science, and innovation sector in the coming years, with MBIE now ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Curtin, Professor of Politics and Policy, University of Auckland Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks to parliament via video link from COVID isolation during budget day.Getty Images All budgets are about economics and politics, and 2022’s was no different. The Labour ...
Early this Sunday evening there will be a phone alert you can’t ignore – but don’t worry, it’s just a test. This year’s nationwide test of the Emergency Mobile Alert system will take place on Sunday 22 May between 6-7pm It is expected ...
It was announced today that the inaugural Chinese Medicine Council of New Zealand (CMCNZ) has been appointed by the Minister of Health, Hon. Andrew Little. This brings the Chinese medicine profession in under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peggy Kern, Associate professor, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock It’s been a big week and you feel exhausted, and suddenly you find yourself crying at a nice nappy commercial. Or maybe you are struck with a cold or the coronavirus ...
No, we haven’t fully analysed Budget 2022, but we did listen to Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s speech. He took great pride in announcing his fifth Budget invests $5.9 billion a year in net new operating spending, while introducing multi-year funding packages that also draw from Budget 2023 and Budget 2024 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University Victor Grabarczyk/unsplash Dogs have an exceptional sense of smell. We take advantage of this ability in many ways, including by training them to find illicit drugs, dangerous goods and even people. In ...
The Government is using dirty tactics as it pushes through enabling legislation to increase PAYE revenue by 10% under the cover of yesterday’s Budget, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union in response to the Income Insurance Scheme (Enabling ...
RNZ Pacific A total of NZ$196 million has been set aside for Pacific services in Aotearoa New Zealand in this year’s Budget. A big chunk of that — $76 million will go on Pacific health services. Finance Minister Grant Robertson said the cash injection would be used to support Pacific ...
By George Heagney of Stuff A group of students from West Papua, the Melanesian Pacific region in Indonesia, are fearful about their futures in New Zealand after their scholarships were cut off. A group of about 40 students have been studying at different tertiary institutions in New Zealand, but in ...
By Craig McCulloch, RNZ News deputy political editor More than two million New Zealanders will get a one-off $350 sweetener as part of the Budget’s centrepiece $1 billion cost-of-living relief package. The temporary short-term support is counterbalanced by a record $11.1 billion for the health system as the government scraps ...
Asia Pacific Report newsdesk A movement dedicated to peaceful self-determination among indigenous groups in the Pacific is the latest group in Aotearoa to add support for struggling Papuan students caught in Aotearoa New Zealand after an abrupt cancellation of their scholarships. About 70 Papuan students are currently in New Zealand ...
RNZ Pacific The pro-independence coalition parties of Kanaky New Caledonia have selected their candidates for the French Legislative elections next month. Wali Wahetra from the Palika Party is standing in one electoral district, and Gerard Reignier from Union Caledonienne is standing in the other. Speaking with La Premiere, Wahetra explained ...
COMMENTARY:By Nina Santos in AucklandOn May 9, the Philippines went to the polls in what has been called “by far the most divisive and consequential electoral contest” in the Philippines.The electoral race had boiled down to two frontrunners: one was the current Vice-President Leni Robredo, running on ...
PNG Post-Courier Governor-General Grand Chief Sir Bob Dadae has described Papua New Guinea’s late Deputy Prime Minister Sam Basil as a vibrant and visionary leader who was passionate about his people and the electorate. He said Basil loved and dedicated his life to the people of Bulolo until his unexpected ...
Are you receiving NZ Superannuation? If you are, then no, you are not one of the 2.1 million Kiwi’s getting the $350 cost of living supplement announced in the 2022 Budget. If you hold a Gold card the extension of the half priced public ...
On May 19th, the Government released its 2022 Budget which included a number of initiatives to help vulnerable whānau in our communities. Many of these initiatives focus on a proactive strategy to recover from the effects of COVID. Within the community ...
Budget 2022 has been a disappointment for New Zealand’s leading advocate for older people. Although the Grey Power Federation is pleased to note that the Government is investing $3.103 million over four years to continue implementing the Better Later ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato Ukraine’s sea port of Mariupol, blockaded and now fallen to Russian forces.Getty Images Trying to gauge the worst aspect of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is difficult. For some, it will be the ...
The Government has committed $37.485m to continue the work of achieving a thriving, fair and sustainable construction sector. The funding will support the Construction Sector Accord to deliver its Construction Sector Transformation Plan 2022-2025. “This ...
The Commission commends the Government’s Budget 2022 investment in specialist mental health and addiction, particularly the investment in community-based crisis services, specialist child and adolescent mental health and addiction services, and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Kenny, Professor, Australian Studies Institute, Australian National University You first have to lose an election on principle if you want to win one on principle. This was how Labor rationalised the miscalculations that led to its “Don’s Party” disappointment in 1969, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Camilla Hoyos, Research Fellow, University of Sydney Shutterstock There is increasing recognition of the important role sleep plays in our brain health. Growing evidence suggests disturbed sleep may increase the risk of developing dementia. I and University of Sydney ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Wilson, Associate Professor of Leadership, Swinburne University of Technology Shutterstock Whatever the result of the 2022 election, one thing is clear: many Australians are losing faith that their social institutions serve their interests. Our annual survey of 4,000 Australians ...
National Party leader Christopher Luxon has labelled the Budget a "backwards Budget" and with "bandaid" solutions. Watch his post-Budget speech here ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The text arrived on Thursday morning, from a woman who helps me with my horses. “And now I have to do that voting thing. Recommendations please? Who is best?” Well Margaret, after an unedifying ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Margaret Hellard, Deputy Director (Programs), Burnet Institute Australia’s COVID death toll is rising, yet public health measures to reduce transmission such as mask mandates are largely a thing of the past. It’s time for governments and the community to consider what ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society and NATSEM, University of Canberra Shutterstock Early in the election campaign, on April 14, we learned that Australia’s unemployment rate had slipped below 4% in March, to 3.95% – ...
The sum includes about $1.8 billion to wipe out DHB deficits, while Pharmac will receive $191m over two years to fund new drugs - with a particular focus on cancer care. ...
E tū welcomes Budget 2022, which includes a range of measures that will help E tū members and their communities during a time of increased hardship coming out of the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. E tū Assistant National Secretary Annie Newman ...
The 2022 Budget was delivered against a gloomier backdrop. The latest forecasts suggest more subdued growth, more persistent inflation, and further tightening in the labour market. The headline numbers provided little surprise. The Government ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wendy Bonython, Associate Professor of Law, Bond University Shutterstock This Saturday, most Australians over 18 will vote in the federal election. The right to participate in elections is enshrined in international and domestic human rights law. Under Australia’s Commonwealth ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Shaw, Professor of Politics, Massey University Getty Images One way to make sense of Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s fifth budget speech was to see it as a political performance working on different levels. First, Labour needs this budget ...
Greater Wellington welcomed news today that the Government will permanently fund cheaper public transport fares for community services card hold holders. Chair of Greater Wellington Daran Ponter said there had been strong support for this type ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Preston, Professor of Economics, The University of Western Australia Shutterstock In 2020 the Morrison government allowed Australians to raid their superannuation to get through during the pandemic. This week Scott Morrison proposed letting people raid their super for a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Eltham, Lecturer, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University Shutterstock The past term of government has been tough for arts and culture in Australia. Culture was among the worst affected by the pandemic of any aspect of society: ...
It's a 'cost of living crisis' not a 'spending on living crisis'. Throwing more and more money at a black-hole for kiwis to spend is akin to the famous saying: "...it's like standing in a bucket and trying to pull yourself up by the handle." ...
Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union and the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations are disappointed to see the tertiary education sector largely ignored once again in the Labour government’s fifth Budget since taking office in 2017. ...
The biggest Budget spend up in New Zealand’s history has delivered some, but not a lot, of initiatives that will support businesses in the Canterbury region. "Some of the initiatives announced in Budget 2022 will go some way towards helping business, ...
Community Housing Aotearoa, a peak body for the community housing sector, welcomes the announcement in today’s Budget to create a $350M Affordable Housing Fund. This investment is a good use of the unallocated Residential Response Fund and a sign ...
The Government’s fourth wellbeing budget fittingly delivered a raft of initiatives to support people, communities and the environment, but when it came to business support it was much as expected. The good news is $100m has been allocated for a ...
Budget 2022 has pluses and minuses for the disabled community, says Disability Rights Commissioner Paula Tesoriero. On the plus side there was considerable investment in the new Ministry for Disabled People and other funding which has the potential ...
New Zealand’s national association for civil contractors has welcomed the $230 million investment in trades training programmes, increased funding for rail and rural broadband infrastructure, and support for Construction Sector Accord Transformation ...
Leading healthcare provider, ProCare is disappointed that primary care nurses have been left out of today’s Budget announcement. Gabrielle Lord, Nursing Director and General Manager Practice Services, at ProCare says: “Nurses have been the backbone ...
Key on TV3 Now that’s Delusional!!!! They have had a good year and back on track for a surplus and he rates his govt at 8/10. What a Clown!
In terms of ‘who’ the Slippery National Government are Governing on behalf of the Slippery little Shyster could well be patting Himself on the back for a job well done,
As one of the ‘share-holding’ elite Slippery has managed in 3 short years to short circuit the New Zealand economy removing most of the disposable income from the bottom 40% of income and redistribute this directly into the pockets of the top 60% of income thus insuring that production for the local economy drops as demand is stifled all the while maintaining the income streams of the top 60% of incomes via tax cuts and the virtual gifting of the top earning State Owned Assets to those within that income group,
His smugness must become ever more entrenched as He realizes that there is little chance of a Shearer lead government having the ‘metal’ needed to convince the electorate that both economically and socially the short circuiting of the New Zealand economy must be reversed…
+1
What on earth is going on ? You used to be able to send your kids off to school, on their own, off to the local shop, wherever – without even thinking they might be abducted. Now – there seems to be an abduction or attempt at one on young children every second day, Why is this happening so often ? Why is it happening at all ?
This is in today’s Herald : (sorry, don’t know how to get italics, etc on this post)
“Police have issued a description of a man they say followed an 8-year-old girl and tried to drag her into his car – the latest in a series of abduction attempts in Auckland.
“The incident happened in Mt Roskill on Sunday, December 9, but was made public yesterday. In another sinister case in Ellerslie, a 9-year-old girl was led for 50m by an abductor before she managed to break free.
………..
“A police spokeswoman said the man – described as Indian, about 30 years old, of average height and medium build – first demanded they get into his car and then got out of his vehicle and grabbed the young girl. “Her sister intervened …….
“Police are still looking for information about the attempt last week outside Ellerslie School.
“The 9-year-old girl, who was forcefully led 50m away from the school, was unharmed”.
Welcome to Nationals Brighter Future.
Where the back office staff have been cut so much, the Police have to their work as well. Where CYFS are more interested in talking, than in action, to save the children. Where The minister for the Vulnerable (Unemployed) thinks nothing of using private information to shut you up. Where ACC instead of helping, uses tame doctors to send people on their way unwell and injured. Where the Minister for the Taxation system says there’s nothing wrong, yet getting anything done seems beyond them. And lets not forget the Minister for Education, 1 word. Incompetent.
Yes lets just bask in the glow of Nationals Brighter Future
Yes, attempted child abductions are totally the fault of the National Government.
The Contrarian
You’re just jealous that nobody values you enough to abduct you.
uh, yeah.
“Yes, attempted child abductions are totally the fault of the National Government.”
No, not totally. But certainly the ongoing program of policies which make our society less equal and put those at the bottom of the heap under more and more pressure plays a substantial part.
So by that logic being rich means you are unlikely to turn into a kiddie fiddler.
Another good reason to avoid the poor
No that’s not what it means at all.
It means that less equal societies foster more pressure, more stress, more fear, more violence, more crime, and more hatred than more equal ones.
That’s what you’re arguing for every time your knee jerks out to kick at at the least fortunate in support of some punitive, oppressive attack on the poor. A worse society in every way.
Good on you mate.
I would understand that comment if this was about stealing or something, but how does inequality make child abduction more prevalent.
My instinct tells me (i.e. I have no source to back this up) that child abductions will come from right across the wealth spectrum rather than stealing which will be weighted more to the poor.
Crimes like theft, burglary and dishonesty offences I could see as being logically connected to poverty but not attempted child abduction.
I see you’re still tr0lling The Standard pretending to be retarded TC. Or maybe you really are dumb enough to think that the only crimes related to poverty and social inequality are those related to theft. I’m going with the former.
Hey try Googling ‘poverty child abuse’. It turns out there’s a whole bunch of stuff there that says you’re a complete dick.
The correlation with child abuse is obvious. We’re talking about abduction, which is quite a different crime.
My first paragraph was a response to TC’s preceding comment. My second paragraph was about my personal opinion of TC which people can agree with or not as they like.
However – you are talking semantics. ‘Child abuse’ is not that simple to define, I for one consider child abduction to be child abuse. No one has a monopoly on a definition. Feel free to offer yours, but note that the majority of abductions are commited by family members or acquaintances. http://suite101.com/article/statistics-on-child-abduction-a147599
From http://www.childabductions.org/, who might actually know what they’re talking about:
“The California Child Abduction Task Force views family and non–family abductions as forms of child abuse. While the psychological trauma inflicted upon a child abducted by a non–family member is commonly acknowledged, abduction by a parent or other family member has long been minimized as having few serious consequences since the child knows the abductor. However, children who are abducted, whether by a person unknown to the child or by a family member, suffer serious psychological and emotional trauma.”
Of course abduction is abuse. That’s a given. But it’s useful to understand the differences between relatively rare stranger abductions that get a lot of MSM attention, and the everyday abuse of children done by people they know, without abduction.
The connections between poverty/stress and everyday abuse of children is self-evident. The connections between poverty/stress and abductions is less clear, although I personally think it’s still a factor.
Tc seems to be questioning the idea that poverty/stress is a significant factor in stranger abductions. I think that’s a valid question, even though I disagree with his stance.
“The correlation with child abuse is obvious. We’re talking about abduction, which is quite a different crime.”
“Of course abduction is abuse. That’s a given”
K…
TC didn’t say he didn’t think the connection between poverty and abductions was significant, he said he couldn’t see a logical connection at all. What I thought he seemed to be saying was that the only crimes related to poverty were those related to theft I pointed to the wealth of evidence that child abuse is indeed connected to poverty, and obviously, as you say, abduction (by a stranger or not) is a form of child abuse. So govt policy is connected to poverty which is connected to abductions.
How significant that connection is is next to impossible to quantify or measure, so it’s probably a pointless discussion. But you’ve said you think it’s a factor – that’s all I was saying.
How then, TC, can the huge increases in murders in New Zealand since, say, the mid 1980s, be explained? I’m talking about how the murders of Jennifer Beard and Mona Blades, for example, in the early and mid-1970s, were front page news for weeks and weeks because murders back then were so thin and far between. Now murders are generally mentioned once on page five because they’re so commonplace. How can this be explained? How does a right-winger describe the reasons for this phenomenon?
You need to compare at the ratio of murders to population for those times and now.
“…stealing which will be weighted more to the poor.”
Some studies support that statement. Others maintain that property crimes are pretty much evenly distributed across all social strata.
Depends how it’s measured too. If purely by dollar value, bankers win hands down.
Fine. We are the thieves you are the [deleted – settle down please. r0b]
[lprent: 😈 Ah wasting moderators time.. The first step in the road to purgatory. ]
Lprent – no one gives a shit about your time.
Actually, I’m quite grateful he spends it here rather than doing polls analysis for the National Party…
Yes 1Prent, its hot down here in Purgatory today. KK stands no chance of cooling down round here so dont send him, suggest you slap him round the ears with a banana instead.
“child abductions will come from right across the wealth spectrum”
That’s not at all inconsistent with what I wrote.
GFC, .. Its labour,s fault didnt you know….. Fair dinkum
The Contrarian. Yes, probably, if indirectly, the fault of the National government “policies”.
A person attempts to abducate a child and this is the fault of Nationals policies?
Do explain
If those policies fuck our society up and fuck peoples’ lives up then yeah, could be.
wow
While it’s a big call, it is reasonably consistent with the concept that government policies actually affect people and their behaviours rather than just being a balance sheet without chaotically-propagating repercussions.
ISTR reading somewhere that folks crossing the threshold from fantasizing to acting on the motives tends to coincide with life stresses such as relationship breakdowns, financial difficulty or deaths of loved ones.
Personally, I think that the frequency is thankfully too small to draw any correlation with national’s policies (although one might be able to do something with police response times and deployed resources).
Socio-economic mortality due to non-vaccine diseases, on the other hand, seems to have a much more clear correlation with tory governments.
Yeah but I can’t actually see what government policies would lead a 30 year old man to try and abduct a young girl. That sort of thing is kinda dependent on the person, no? Particualry when this sort of thing happens will a similar frequency under both Labour and National.
(not to mention the fact it is fairly repugnant to politicise something like this)
As I said, IMO I reckon the “stranger danger” rates are too small to draw any political conclusion.
But like most other antisocial acts, if social stressors are triggers for a significant percentage of the potential offender population, then times of stress could plausibly cause an increase in offences. For a less politicly abusable example, ChCh domestic violence rose significantly after the earthquakes.
Individual perspectives are valuable, but we also need to look at the wider social perspective to possibly identify causal factors that aren’t necessarily visible when we look at one case at a time.
“Yeah but I can’t actually see what government policies would lead a 30 year old man to try and abduct a young girl.”
Me neither. But I didn’t say there was any particular policy that caused any particular act.
What I said was (paraphrasing) people with fucked-up lives are more likely to do fucked-up things, and the right-wing policies that governmens like this one follow fuck up a lot of people’s lives.
Hardly a controversial statement.
And those with the most f-ed up lives are those who make the rules we have to live by, those who enforce the rules and those who are protected by the rule makers and enforcers.
“Socio-economic mortality due to non-vaccine diseases, on the other hand, seems to have a much more clear correlation with tory governments.”
Got a link for that for any country ? It’d be an interesting read.
Other than The Spirit Level? 🙂
Here’s an interesting one. Although by no means definitive (yadda yadda GFC yadda yadda), it’s slightly stronger than I suspect a time-series graph of stranger-danger abduction attempts might be. And probably a more robust reporting set, too.
I was thinking of a dataset looking at specific diseases (cancer, cardiovascular diseases etc) over time in relation to governments in power. i’d be surprised if there was any significant effect of government flavour in comparison to the general trend of incidence of the specific disease in question.
Mental health and non immunisable infectious diseases and respiratory illnesses would be interesting to look at but again it would likely be confounded by the diagnostic and treatment advances over time.
I doubt you’d find any patterns alternating between a few years of red policy vs a few years of blue policy.
The interesting bit would be looking at the last 30 years of neoliberal freemarket policy vs the preceeding 30.
Not so sure about that.
I’d be looking at RFD/RHD, pneumonia for older patients, and complications of ambulatory-sensitive conditions like skin infections and so on. Something with a plausible relationship to primary healthcare access and access to proper food hygiene and warmth. Maybe serious admissions for mental conditions that are reasonably treatable at the early stages, too, but I don’t know much about how applicable that would be.
The way I see it, cancer and a big chunk of cardiovascular conditions would have a socioeconomic relationship because of smoking, and it would get skewed because it’s narrowly targeted as a health condition. The non-smoking cancers would be largely geographic, or congenital like a large bit of the remainder of the heart disease if we’re looking across age groups, too.
It would be an interesting study to be part of, but to be really effective it would have to use the admissions and mortality datasets linked together over say 20 years, and even then you can’t properly get super-reliable deprivation data at the individual level, without maybe inspections and interviews and income records.
The paperwork hurts my brain at the very thought, which is probably why I’m not paid the big bucks :). But I’d be as happy as a pig in shit with the dataload. And a study that size with that level of confidential data might even be enough reason to get a dedicated high-performance computing centre 🙂
Jenny, was that the online or print version of the Herald?
I doubt that the rate of abductions has gone up hugely. More likely is that we notice more because of the increase in population, and because of increased media reporting.
I suspect that the Herald is being sensationalist. Since when is two attempted abductions a ‘series’? The use of the word ‘sinister’ is emotionally manipulative and completely unnecessary for reporting the story. Hard to know if those things are intentional or just stupid. Not to undermine the seriousness of abduction, but this is still a relatively rare crime compared to child abuse by people who know the child.
Not in a lawyerly way, no, it’s not inconsistent, you left yourself a big ambiguous loophole to paddle in, but you did still try to link child abduction/paedophilia/whatever with societal inequality as if it was just an ordinary crime motivated by stress or poverty. It’s not. Shades of Lysenkoism methinks, letting ideology trump science is bad form.
CW. What is the point of comparisons in issues of these kinds? Bad is simply bad.
Hyping up issues around stranger rape of children hides the fact that most sexual abuse of children is done by people that know them and are in a position of care-giving or authority. The hiding of this makes it much harder for society to do anything useful or meaningful about child abuse.
Hyping up stranger rape also makes society paranoid about the wrong things.
Nothing has changed.
We got followed home by a paedo from school back in the day who got a bit leary.
We all ran away and then our Dad’s came out and gave him a hiding. Probably didn’t go on the police figures and certainly didn’t make the papers.
And actually that is a very valid point. Such things are a lot more widely reported than they used to be because of the shame and embarrassment involved – not that anyone wanted to acknowledge such things happened in this country either. Compare that to the general media policy of not reporting on suicides on the silly grounds it might encourage copycats, or the tragic under-reporting of male rape victims to the police.
Another factor worth considering is the ease of transport and mobility available to people these days.
Something’s going to happen – Something wonderful.
Stan Heather rugby park. http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?q=stan+heather+park&rlz=1C1SAVA_enNZ506NZ506&sugexp=chrome,mod%3D3&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&ei=z2LPUOv-He-eiAe6zYDQAg&ved=0CAsQ_AUoAA
Zoned community facility, sold to an unknown developer,with tender bids decided by an unknown rugby trust commitee for $2m+ conditional on the city council rezoning to residential in the new district plan. The council, led by a mayor you may/or not recall seeing on Campbell live extolling her support for rubgy in the city, intend to rubber stamp after submission end in march.
I have a lovely little plan. I’m going to stop the rezoning from happening and ensure Stan Heather Park remain a community facility in the truest sense of the word, and never again be at the mercy of secret board trustees, greedy developers and an incompetent council. I just need some help to get set up to make it work.
Firstly, I need to set up a charitable trust. Any takers?
Second, get Owen Glenn to give me call.
Real change always comes from the bottom up, always. Get me set up and I’ll show you how in Hamilton West.
All hailing frequencies open.
Remember kim.com’s cabbage boat song?
I wrote one about Key/Banks/child poverty and sent it to Campbell live at least two weeks before his debuted. Nothing against the guy, but to say I was pissed was an understatement. Not just because my song was better 😉 but where his, in the politest way possible, was self serving, I wanted to release mine anonymously, all proceeds to feed hungry kids in Deanwell, Melville and Glenview in Hamilton. Still do, so I’m asking for help.
I watched Campbell live’s pieces on child poverty and feeding kids in schools, knowing there have been several of my emails sitting in their inbox, asking for a bit of help to pull of a genuine attempt at doing, rather than talking. Never even had a reply of them. Not even a get fuc*ed. Must be a mediaworks thing.
I posted a link and the lyrics on the PM’s Facebook site a while back, but I guess he didn’t want to help, either.
Worst record ever made? Who cares? Who really cares?
al1en.org
The faeces of the species
One more day, one more lie, one more smile, one more wave.
Some old joke wants my vote = Aspirational fail.
Did you see on TV? The third world disease on her face.
Unlike me, all you see, are scabs not your first world disgrace.
You’re the faecese of the species, you’re the disease, you’re the plague on the face of that girl.
You’re the hunger, you’re the plunder, all assunder, heaven wonder if there’s oil on the moon (in our bones).
You’re the statistic, optimistic, pessimist e-con-o-mystic, you’re the waste in the space.
Merchant banker, supertanker, deep drill wanker, pull your anchor, just get out of the way.
And we’ll rise. And when we rise up.
We will sing, and we will be glorius.
One more try, one more bribe, one more tea for your friend.
Some old bloke on a rope while they bury his dead.
Did you see on tv? The mould on kids in their bed.
Unlike me, all you see, is dirt and the profits from rent.
You’re the faecese of the species, you’re a disease, you’re a plague on the backs of us all.
You’re the sadistic, little twisted, first world gifted, Mi-pad whizz kid, the foul wind in the sales.
You’re the hunter, you’re the blunder, toxic numbers, six foot under, and you’re a slag to good grace.
Mother cluster, bunker buster, colonel mustard, general custurd, just get out of our way.
And we’ll rise. And when we rise up.
We will sing, and we will be glorius.
The SFO, despite getting a guilty plea from disgraced criminal lawyer Anita Killee, has been left looking like a bunch of impotent cuckolds.
Kiwis love it this way though, its built in that ignorance must be defended at all costs!
Trite statistics are king Not justice or equity Its a” brighter future ” 9 out of 10 climate scintists agree….
BBC admits pandering to Israeli propaganda
by Amena Saleem, The Electronic Intifada, London, 14 December 2012
http://electronicintifada.net/content/bbc-admits-pandering-israeli-propaganda/12004
One of the most consistent aspects of the BBC’s reporting of Gaza and Israel is the insistence of its journalists that any “outbreak of violence” is the fault of the Palestinians.
When Israel bombs or shells Gaza, this is unfailingly reported by the BBC as being in “response” or “retaliation” to rockets being fired from the blockaded territory. The unflinching regularity of this one-sided reporting by the UK’s state broadcaster is meticulously recorded in More Bad News from Israel, the book by Greg Philo and Mike Berry which contains research by the Glasgow Media Unit into the BBC’s reporting of the occupation.
The BBC’s coverage of Israel’s most recent assault on Gaza in November was no exception. An article published on the BBC’s website the day Hamas commander Ahmed al-Jabari was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City stated that the killing “follows a wave of rocket attacks against Israel from the territory” (“Israeli air strike kills Hamas military chief Jabari,” 14 November 2012).
The article went on to feature an Israeli army spokesperson’s claim that al-Jabari had “a lot of blood on his hands” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that a “clear message” had been sent to “Hamas and other terrorist organizations.” Netanyahu’s comments ended with the words: “We will continue to do everything to protect our citizens.”
All of Israel’s key propaganda messages were conveyed, while the reality was carefully hidden. There is, of course, the ongoing reality that Israel is an occupier and a serial violator of international law — facts which are buried under the credibility and authority the BBC accords to its politicians and spokespeople and what they say.
Ignoring reality
On an immediate level, another crucial reality was ignored. By assassinating al-Jabari — itself an illegal act of extrajudicial murder which the BBC failed to examine, even as it printed Netanyahu’s triumphal “clear message” — Israel had violated a ceasefire brokered three days earlier.
This information, so casually ditched by the BBC’s journalists — online, on television and on radio news — was absolutely crucial. It emboldened the lie, disseminated across the BBC’s media outlets, that al-Jabari’s killing and the eight-day onslaught that came next followed “a wave of rocket attacks” from Gaza.
It didn’t. Al-Jabari’s assassination and the ensuing attack on Gaza which killed more than 160 Palestinians, including more than 30 children, followed a ceasefire, which the Palestinian groups in Gaza had been observing and may well have carried on observing if …..
Read more….
http://electronicintifada.net/content/bbc-admits-pandering-israeli-propaganda/12004
Again with the rabid Antisemitism? Reading motivations in the BBC like tea leaves
Not sure there is any requirement to be able to read tea leaves, in order to spot the imbalance in the MSM around the world, including NZ. We can thank the AP/reuters network for ensuring this imbalance continues, on the same rabid path!
Shalom
Pointing out that the MSM misrepresents the facts about the violence in the ME is anti-semitism?
Where’s the antisemitism? Weak.
1.) “Where’s the antisemitism?”
There is none, and the dolt knows it.
2.) “Weak.”
And depraved, dishonest and desperate. But, in the absence of an argument, it’s all the poor fellow has to offer.
Our friend “Populuxe1” has again tried, unwisely, to be clever…
1.) “Again with the rabid Antisemitism?”
Criticism of an outlaw regime, a regime that is condemned by nearly every nation in the world, is “Antisemitism”?
2.) “Reading motivations in the BBC like tea leaves”
That article was a carefully and thoroughly researched piece of scholarly analysis. You can call it tealeaf reading if you like, but you’ve been discredited long ago on this forum, and nobody with any sense takes you seriously. (Anyone who thinks I am being uncharitable towards this dolt should check out his lunatic raving just the other day—Saturday—where he earnestly tries to make a case in support of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)
Having falsely identified anti-semitism Pop, you come over all anti-anti-semitism. So rational, like a cat chasing its tail, not. Your entire premise is flawed but round and round you go. And you fancy that’s a response ???
Thank you anyway for popping up as a perfect example of the lazy and the ignorant who are dispositionally vulnerable to the bias and falsehoods Morrissey is talking about.
For Palestine – Justice The Seed Peace The Flower !
The Dim Posts latest poll charts make for interesting viewing.
“One of the end-of year refrains in political summaries is that National ‘held steady in the polls’ despite a terrible year. Well, they did hold pretty steady compared to the election result. But the polls all massively over-estimated National’s election result – if you compare current poll estimates with pre-election poll estimates then National is way down. (It looks like Roy Morgan may have corrected their methodology post-election, the other firms not so much.)”
See for yourselves here, http://dimpost.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/ho-ho-ho-heres-a-poll-chart/#more-14008
The smart money has Slippery’s National Government at 39% and tracking downward, given that the Maori Party seats currently held by both Flavell and Sharples are far from ‘safe’ with 1500 and 1000 vote majority’s respectively it is far from a sure thing that National could form a Government even with the (unlikely???), help of NZ First who (laughably), the main stream polling organizations still consign to less than 5% of the vote,
Labour of course are far from a shoe-in to form the next Government with a % of the vote at 34% a majority Labour Government would require a Green/NZFirst buy-in, it’s a long haul till November 2014 tho and if the trends continue i would expect that by election time Labour and National are going to be level pegging in terms of Party %’s…
If labour is regularly tracking at 34% in mid 2014 (unless the greens are regularly at 20%) I’d be a bit concerned. If they manage to build another regular 5% in 2013, like they did in 2012, a leftish government would be on track. But we need Mana and the Greens to provide some real flavour to the Labour sponge cake.
Following on from Karol’s series of critiques of how the MSM portrays and promotes Russell Norman as the leader of the GP, can the Standard authors please find an alternate picture to use for posts here that show both Meteria and Norman?
The one in vogue at the moment is a very nice picture of Russell Norman, but alongside a post headline about a Green Party policy it’s just wrong. Yes, Norman made the particular announcement, but he is not the GP.
With all their favourable press, their polling seems pretty static, and not trending up. If they were the default opposition as some would have us believe, surely they should be rating above 11%.
Is being the “default opposition” like an honourary title that some political party can take for granted? And expect to retain without continuous hard work? Which by the way the Greens and their members are doing in spades.
All through the 2010 and 2011 Roy Morgans the Green Party was typically sitting between 7% and 8%. Now that figure is bouncing around 12% and 13%. Will they cross 15% on a regular basis by 2014? Yes that’s very likely.
Unfortunately high intelligence is not a noted feature among New Zealanders. Average intelligence anywhere is about 100 (far from high), and this being the average necessitates many being below or well below even the average. The Greens appeal to intelligence, but it takes something else to make them popular.
+1 CW (and Karol)
Done.
Thanks, r0b, and weka.
Thanks r0b. I tried looking for a good photo of the two of them and didn’t have much luck. The Greens are dropping the ball here.
Come on. Metiria has put on at least 30kg since that was taken.
So? What does that have to do with poltitcal performance?
BTW, according to his doctor, John Key is now a couple of kilos over weight. Anything to say on that, or Gerry Brownlee, or is it just women MPs that get your kind of comment?
Being clinically obese means you are greedy, lazy and have no self control. Not good traits for our Nations leaders. And you are right, Brownlee definately falls into this category however Turei coming from a party who is all about every one having their proper share and not taking more than you need to makes the irony greater.
Being clinically obese means you are greedy, lazy and have no self control.
[Citation needed]
Of course, she has a gland problem
[lprent: So do you. Your balls appear to be running your brain ]
Or was it that she was inappropriately touched by a lamington when she was young.
You are pretty much a sick little puppy and i wonder why your contribution is allowed at all except for the fact that it shows you up for being a sick little puppy…
[lprent: Because he usually tends to be careful about violating the policy.
That means he doesn’t get too many of these wee notes (any more) and therefore doesn’t waste moderators time without reason. We tend to cut him some slack (as we do for all regular commentators) for the odd times that they go too far over the edge.
BTW: saying something that is an explicit or implicit question about the site policies does tend to attract moderators, so reading the policy appears to be a good idea… ]
I guess this is the relevant part of the policy
I look forward to reading KK’s back up for the assertion that “Being clinically obese means you are greedy, lazy and have no self control.” I also look forward to his evidence that Turei is clinically obese. Clinically obese is a medical term, so we’re going to see some substantial medical proof.
Otherwise his post looks like flaming to me. It’s the equivalent of him saying “Being Maori means you are greedy, lazy and have no self control.” Or “being a fat woman means you are useless”.
While I think there might be some use to exposing his misogyny (along the lines of bad’s point), it’s also tiring and often boring having to do so. I guess we might get some interesting debate from it, we’ll see.
Pah! Sexuality is for pussies! I mean dicks! I mean, uh, whatever. I’ve transcended that biological nonsense. I don’t even use meiosis, let alone mitosis! Yes, I use mimesis! No, better than that: memesis! Hah! I see your enormous imaginary penis and raise you my insidious propagandising of innocent youth in university tutorials!
I am infinitely, intellectually, transcendently fertile!
Bwhahahhahahahah!1!!!1!!ELEVENTEEN1111!!!!
Further to Lynn’s mod point above, let’s see some back-up for your intentionally offensive assertion KK.
Specifically:
Show evidence that Turei is ‘clinically obese’.
Show evidence that Turei’s weight has an impact on her job performance.
Show evidence that “Being clinically obese means you are greedy, lazy and have no self control”.
I mean, we all know that you are just being a misogynistic trool, but let’s play along and see what you can come up with.
“Show evidence that Turei is ‘clinically obese’.”
Turei is clinically obese. Now only her doctor will be able to confirm this to the level of proof you will require but any normal person who has seen her in the flesh recently will tell you that she is the size of Jabba the Hutt so it is a pretty fair assumption that the she is clinically obese.
“Show evidence that Turei’s weight has an impact on her job performance.”
When she was smaller she managed to work her way up through the party and made enough of an impression to be made co leader. Since she has started piling it on her ability has been questioned a bit more and Russell Norman has been doing all the heavy lifting. Not incredibly scientific I know.
“Show evidence that “Being clinically obese means you are greedy, lazy and have no self control”.”
Of course this is the case. Being massively fat means you eat way too much (greedy) don’t exercise enough (lazy) and even though you look like a disgrace, won’t stop doing what you are doing (lack of self control).
Being poor, depressed, alienated etc may be the reasons behind the greed, laziness and lack of self contol but these things are the certainly the fundementals of the problem.
Being massively fat means you eat way too much (greedy) don’t exercise enough (lazy) and even though you look like a disgrace, won’t stop doing what you are doing (lack of self control).
Age is a factor. Many people put on weight as they age: whether it’s John key, Brownlee or Turei. I notice I don’t need as much food as I did when I was younger, even though I seem to be just as busy and doing just as much exercise as before. And I think for some of us, our bodies become less efficient at processing fast foods and processed foods. I eat much less of those sorts of foods now for that reason.
It isn’t about laziness or working less hard. In fact, I know a middle-aged man or two who put on weight when they are working at their hardest: less time for exercise, and a tendency to eat less healthy food on the run – less energy left over for getting focused on health issues. Not to mention, in some professional jobs, fancy food is the centre of many work-related gatherings.
KK I have this hazy memory that in a previous life I made the mistake of stating that a large overweight lady (silly step number one mentioning weight) who was IMHO starving children should be able to be referred to as “fat” (silly provocative act number two) because she had the ability to choose what her weight was (silly argument perhaps). For this KK I was thrust by the earthly guardians of political correctness into the gulag at a trial with rabid commissars convinced like Grand Inquisitors of the sanctity of their mission (hey I might be guilty but in the case of “fat” statements punishment and crime dont match, you are better doing white collar fraud), it is sort of a hyper crime. At that point Purgatory offered itself as a viable option. Being dead is quite preferable. Be warned, dont go there.
Yeah that’s what I thought King Kong. You’re just asserting bigotry as fact and cannot back any of it up because it’s all bullshit.
You don’t like fatness and attribute it to moral failings because that suits your prejudice. Why not just be honest?
Hmmmm, I’m no trick cyclist, but does anybody else think that its likely that KK is 20-30kg overweight himself and just lashing out as a form of transference based on his own depression and self loathing?
This actually explains what is so very wrong with the environments, and how is it possible to expect people to function well under such conditions. Able bodied people can make time for self respect, like eating well and exercising, sleep etc, under most circumstances.
Choosing not to, is a conscious decision!
I think you will find that a surplus of calories in than expended causes fat gain in humans. That calorie imbalance only happens one way.
This is science not bigotry.
“I think you will find that a surplus of calories in than expended causes fat gain in humans. That calorie imbalance only happens one way.
This is science not bigotry.”
[citation needed]
Because that’s not what the science says. Even at the most basic level, the calories in/calories out theory just isn’t true – there are other factors at play in how nutrients get metabolised and what happens to metabolism when people expend energy. The science shows that weight gain is the result of many complex metabolic processes. For some people, the relationship between caloric intake/exercise and weight is fairly straight forward and so they can rely on the calorie in/out idea. But for many others, it just doesn’t work that way, biologically.
For instance it’s normal and natural for women in their 40s to put on weight in preparation for menopause (women with fat do better in menopause than thin women). Weight gain is also a consequence of exposure to prolonged stress. And Maori women are more at risk because they are not as genetically adapted to the high carb modern diet.
People with insulin resistance are biologically going to have a harder time losing weight or maintaining a weight considered healthy by contemporary standards. But then we don’t know what a healthy weight is because the goal posts have shifted so much. Despite what you’ve seen on teevee it’s possible to be ‘fat’ and healthy.
So, yes, in the absence of any actual evidence that “being clinically obese means you are greedy, lazy and have no self control.” (and “I said so does not equal evidence), you are just spouting your own nasty, ill-informed bigotry.
Sounds like you might struggle saying no to the family bucket yourself and are looking for something to blame.
“It was my metabolism that meant they had to cut me out of my house”.
Anyway I don’t think we were talking about middle aged birds putting on a bit of frump. We are talking about being a serious Billy Bunter.
Of course, idle speculation drawing together a certain obsession with calling people grossly obese and the choice as one’s nom d’écume of the name of a massively oversized and somewhat portly ape does tend to suggest that our friendly gorilla has their own issues with body image insecurity.
Is it the experience with your undersized sex organs that led you to that conclusion.
fwiw. As a naturally envious people, you lefties would be sick with jealousy if you could see the outstanding genetic hand I got dealt.
And you are a brain dead moron KK. Being poor, depressed, alienated etc may be the reasons behind the Brain Death, but these things are the certainly the fundementals of the problem.
KK – I am glad to see you acknowledge not being “incredibly scientific” (to put it mildly!) Apparantly we are to conclude that you yourself contain all of the great virtues which you deny larger persons. Have you performed miracles? If so, make it known to the Vatican, sainthood might be coming your way! On the other hand, possibly you will continue growing in egotism.
You have the gall to state “Turei is clinically obese” – how do you know her doctor’s diagnosis? How do you know, for that matter, what is a “normal person”? (I guess you provide yourself for this criteria). Having stated that Turei is “clinically obese”, that is as a fact, later you say that “it is a pretty fair assumption that she is clinically obese”! You have moved your ground, and are virtually guilty of self-contradiction.
But, having very little by way of self-awareness (I suggest you read Socrates), you then have the superlative hide to enquire “Show evidence that Turei’s weight has an impact on her performance.” All the evidence anybody could ever require is there to see and examine. I suggest that you take a dispassionate look; then you will find no negative impact on her performance whatsoever.
KK – do you ever feel embarrassed? Well, it is about time that you did!
In my experience, folks who tend to be proud of their genetic advantage tend to be somewhat delusional, but with some vicious little subconscious insecurities that suggest the delusion goes only so deep.
Why is this tr0ll being feed?
KK, you’re full of shit. And look, I can even provide citations to back up my claims. Would you like to try it?
If we are just using some muppet on a blog as citations then I will use this
Nice link KK (snigger).
Ok, now that we’ve spent the day establishing that King Kong is a fat-phobic bigot and trool, who can’t make even a half-hearted attempt to back up his prejudices, what do we do next?
ETA: couldn’t resist: QoT’s muppet on a blog citations
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.co.nz/2006/11/introduction-and-why-i-created-this.html
vs KK’s
http://www.yourefatbecauseyourestupid.com/contact/
I can see why you’re confused KK, you seem to have no idea what science is or what evidence is.
Oh wow, another right-wing bigot!
What a day!
KK – no surprises here, we get your usual discriminatory gabble (about the obese). Generous of you to make an exception of Brownlee!
“Being clinically obese means…”
What about being clinically ignorant, like you are? What does that mean?
So Brownlee’s girth renders his politics unimpeachable and him a sincere non-politicking fiduciary of our democracy ? What planet are you on ? Bad Question Sorry.
This is the same bullshit Norman Kirk got 40 years ago – “……can’t be trusted to lead the nation ‘cos he can’t even control his own weight…..nah nah nah nah nah……”.
The wahanui irrelevancies of people who just know they gotta have a say. About whatever, whenever, and from whatever ignorant, facile base they spring.
To wit – Mr King Kong.
(as kids back in the dark ages we used to have a joke about removing five pounds of ugly fat, but in this case I doubt it would make the weight requirement…)
And if you’re there r0b, the spelling of “stupidty” [sic], in your latest post?
Easily done – I really need those red underlines when I’m typing, but I don’t think they show under Post titles.
oops! Ta – fixed.
Good point CW.
Not a criticism of you and I note several other comments by others on other posts here today have also mispelled Norman’s first name, but it is “Russel” not “Russell”.
[I am having a very nitpicking/pedantic day today – comes from having a battle with a certain Australian bank at present which includes on the wording of one of their online pieces of information related to the battle! I will get over it – but have finally won the battle. I will have won the war only when certain funds are transferred into my account …..]
The final Deloitte report on the Winz kiosks was released a while back, anyone interested can find it here;
http://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/newsroom/media-releases/2012/independent-review-deloitte.pdf
Probably won’t mean much to non-IT people, the report is a big wad of fluff. The long & short of it is that parties un-named didn’t follow the most basic principles of network security. Any decent network admin could have told them that & saved the taxpayer about $380,000.
Why does this government keep paying for pre-deployment testing, and then ignores the results and rolls it out anyway?
Sigh
Another question is why the Govt engages these vastly overpaid consultants to perform a pointless exercise that really only served to whitewash the upper management of culpability. $400k of taxpayers money pissed against the wall.
actually, reading the kiosk report suggests to me that the real problem was that everyone did “their” bit, but nobody was looking at the entire thing. The testing brought up security issues (contractor did their bit), the security issues were resolved by ordering secure routers for each kiosk (IT security did their bit, although averaging “rare” probability with “severe” consequence into “moderate” risk seems unwise), the router order went to IT Network staff, the order wasn’t flagged as security-critical, along the line the network plan got changed and the (network)-redundant routers never got ordered (IT network did their job providing the network, though), and nobody had the job of going back and making sure that all identified issues had actually been resolved, rather than being ticked of lists in meetings.
A management clusterfuck, 100%. It doesn’t seem to be the case of any single incompetent individual, but is more a case of a number of units that seemed to work well together but there was no overall management. The engines were working, the navigator knew where they were but was in a separate room, the helmsman could steer the ship but couldn’t see anything, the bow lookout could see the rocks but couldn’t be heard from the wheelhouse, and there was no captain who could put everything together and stop the oil tanker running aground.
Personally I’m leaning more towards incompetence somwhere in the chain there. The security holes that Keith Ng exploited to browse the network can be disabled with a few clicks of the mouse in group policy editor. They knew about the problem and yet they did nothing about an issue that could have been fixed in less time than it took me to write this. There’s no excuses for that, even if they were sidetracked by plans to make bigger changes later it still doesn’t explain why they didn’t implement a simple fix in the meantime.
the report is fascinating. It really does point out that one team identified the issue, put it on the “to do” list for another team, but the other team ignored the apparently redundant “to do” when they upgraded their plans. Classic handover cockup.
That’s the way they paint it but it doesn’t wash. When an interim fix is that easy, and important, you don’t put it on a ‘to do’ list. You fix it straight away. These people are supposed to be professionals here, when someone finds a fault in your network you sure as hell don’t ignore it or forget about it.
depends if the same people at the first meeting were still working on the project at the second meeting.
Same with the Put-It-In-The-Binnie-Report.
LOL internationally noted jurist Endora Girl Judy of Clevedon doesn’t like its contents so we have
$400K diverted down the drain as the price of Baroness Judy playing internal National Party politics.
I thought public funding of partisan politics was circumscribed. Seems not. What about partisan internecine politics ? Again seems not with this government of higher standards LOL.
Are the elite bugging out? Hey dumbarse elite the moons not far enough!!!
The difference between pink floyd and gary larsen is worth the read – dark or far side – hadn’t really thought about that before.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/science/space/probes-will-crash-into-the-moons-dark-not-far-side-today.html?_r=0
Stuff breaking news: Supreme Court giving the Maori Council right to appeal 🙂
Great news.
Just because I am a nit picker and pedantic, I note that the Stuff and Herald articles give opposite dates for the deadlines for filing submissions:
Stuff
“The council and iwi – represented by the Waikato River Dams Claim Trust – have until the end of the week to prepare their case, while the respondents have until January 18.
The respondents include the Attorney General, Minister of Finance and Minister of State Owned Enterprises. ”
whereas the Herald states:
“The respondents – the attorney-general, finance minister and state-owned enterprises minister have until 1pm on Friday to file their case.
The appellants, the council and the Waikato River and Dams Claim Trust have until January 18 to file their submissions.”
Sloppy reporting on one or the other’s part.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10854793
a tweet from Scoop this this link to the PDF document with the actual ruling. The respondents are the government ones.
“A: Leave to appeal, and to appeal direct to this Court, is granted.
B: The approved ground of appeal is whether the High Court was
right to dismiss the application for review.
C: The respondents will prepare the case on appeal and will file and
serve it by 1.00 pm on Friday 21 December 2012.
D: The appellants are to file and serve their written submissions by
4.00 pm on 18 January 2013.
E: The respondents are to file their written submissions in 4.00 pm on 25 January 2013.
F: The Court will hear the appeal on 31 January and 1 February
2013.
G: Leave is reserved to the parties to apply for further directions
should they be required.
“
Thanks Karol.
So in fact both are somewhat sloppy as it is a three stage process.
The Gift of Death
As I’ve said, free-market capitalism must result in the over-use of resources and the destruction of the environment. Our politicians just won’t see it though and the MSM will never report on it.
Behold! Grumpycat!
The Gift of Death Would make a cracking read , but the ending is predictable .but only the last page is it clear…….
To Draco Post 11 And what stops your post from being common-knowledge? Is the meme of self-interest. We must get rid of this meme and see it for the dinosaur-of-an-excuse for effective-philosophical understanding that it is. Our strength as a human-race is our intelligence and co-operation. The self-interest meme by-passes our greatest qualities and disallows the type of wide perspective we require to address the negative wider-consequences of our collective actions that we face today. Great to see you still posting Draco T Bastard (allbeit not as frequently) I miss CV’s comments and am greatful to you (both) for posting your insights. It takes a long time to shift group views into more enlightened ways of thinking and I’m sure you’ve added a great deal to that cause, for which I thank you 🙂
good news
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/8094305/Victory-for-internet-openness
@ Contrarian
That sounds positive. Although the NZLP seems to have found away around openness of discussion…
The most nutty thing in New Zealand this afternoon is the fact that all these Education Ministry people are still arseing around trying to get a computer program to pay their employees.
How utterly abysmal. It is classic evidence of the limitations of current technology.
Why not get a person to do it for each school? YOu could even have one person do a few different schools. And seeing as how no doubt everything needs to be ‘uploaded’ anyway, why not just ‘upload’ it once to your pay clerk? It would certainly be quicker than uploading and phoning and emailing and chasing and still not working.
It is in fact exactly like eftpos, a complete waste of time. Slow and useless.
We each have the best computer in existence inside of our skulls – why not use that computer? Plus you can get it for less than slave wages today, if you can pay the minimum wage. How many novapay employees are on slave wages?
Actually, the idea is that a team of say three plus computers can do the payrolls for say 30 schools (actual numbers may vary from these ad hoc informal benchmarks arrived at heuristically using ex posteriori methodologies).
Just like EFTPOS limits the amount of cash tallied at the end of the day.
Most electronic payroll systems work much more efficiently from initial implementation than the current debacle.
The problem is it is still looks to be in idea stage.
Anyone know if there are sites taking bets on the outcomes of Novopay? Feelin lucky : )
Novopay is running one on the side. A $1 bet at 7:3 collected the next day pays NZ$428577.5511 and a zloty.
Datacom, a home grown NZ company, used to do the job OK didn’t they? I guess this is just the price of “progress”.
National Government back in surplus by 2014, by kind donations of New Zealand motorists. Great thinking Bill.
aren’t they saying “2014/15” now? Nice way to tack a year or two onto their performance targets without anyone noticing.
“Oh shit, did you think we meant a calendar year? We meant a financial year, obvs.”
…
“Oh sorry, did you think we said financial year? We meant calendar year, give us six more months.”
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Interesting piece on special schools.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon