The video of the apache helicopter crew laughing as they murder unarmed civillians in Baghdad that was leaked by Chelsea Manning was an event that forever changed my view of what collateral damage actually meant.
It is well known that information is power so unsurprising that elites strive to control the public narrative and unsurprising that Manning paid such a high price. To my mind Obamas finest act was one of his last when he commuted her 35 year sentence.
Manning has just cofirmed her candidacy for the Maryland senate race as a Democrat against the incumbent Ben Cardin. As you may expect this has gone down like a lead balloon. Partly this is because of the realisation that due to her name recognition Cardin will have to spend money rather than just sleepwalk to victory.
So how will Cardin rise to the Manning challenge? Early indications are that the attack lines will be Manning as Russian puppet leaking to an arm of Russian intelligence (wikileaks).
So I guess that answers the question of whether with the whole Russia thing we are dealing with WMD or McCarthyism. The perception of an evil enemy has been created and now all dissenting views get tarred with the evil enemy brush.
I link a twitter post of Zac Petkanas relating to his views on Chelsea Manning and also a Hill article explaining his position and role at the DNC where he leads the narrative of Trump as Putin puppet
The main reason manning’s candidacy has gone down like a lead balloon is that there is very strong support for the military by the US public and rightly or wrongly Manning is seen by many in the public as breaching the trust/treasonous and adding in the sex change in what is still a deeply conservative populace won’t help either.
Sorry for being unclear but I meant gone down like a lead balloon with the powerful not the general population. As regards the general population we will soon know their feelings about Manning
Trump is where he is because of his anti-entrenched power rhetoric. He’s then gone on to entrench the power of the rich even more.
Manning actually did something against that entrenched power. And the USians do support their troops and they support people doing the Right Thing at great risk to themselves.
And to go alongside your Petkanas twitter stream, we have Neera Tanden, who’s apparently the president of the largest Democratic Party think tank in Washington re-tweeting :-
“Senator Cardin authored and released a 200 page masterpiece on Russian influence in western elections. Suddenly he has a primary from Kremlin stooge Assange’s Wikileaks primary source Chelsea Manning. The Kremlin plays the extreme left to swing elections. Remember that.”
This conspiracy theory mocks itself. The idea that Vladimir Putin sat in the Kremlin, steaming over Cardin’s report on Russia and thus, developed a dastardly plot to rid himself of his daunting Maryland nemesis — “I know how to get rid of Cardin: I’ll have a trans woman who was convicted of felony leaking run against him!” — is too inane to merit any additional ridicule. But this is the climate in Washington: No conspiracy theory is too moronic, too demented, too self-evidently laughable to disqualify its advocates from being taken seriously — as long as it involves accusations that someone is a covert tool of the Kremlin.
The only “efficiency” I can see in the private education sector is in it’s ability to extract profit out of gullible RWNJs who can’t bear the thought of their little darlings being under the influence of the State system, least their poor wee minds be corrupted by alternative views to what they get at home.
…. and of course its ability to exploit foreigners from the 3rd world – aided and abetted of course with a bureaucracy (a private and public partnership) designed to lie and cheat to anyone that comes into contact with it.
It’s almost like a Nigerian internet scam.
Now we need new Labour Coalition Government to investigate the past publicly broadcast allegations made by Matthew Hooten on Radio Live against the last National Government illegal activities.
“put these dead bones to rest”
Specifically Hooten began rolling the ball in a ‘lively discussion’ with Miscelle Boag the past secretary of the National party.
Mike Williams was also on this debate as the past secretary of the Labour Party also and ca recall this event during the investigations that should now take place.
The first allegation was against the then “Minister of transport” Steven SS Joyce, who was apparently involved with a shady deal to allow his close mate’ of his who was a roading contractor to secure a multi million dollar road contract.
But the roading contractor apparently got into a dispute with MBIE “Ministry of Bussiness Innovation and Employment” over the contract.
The allegations can be heard here on this link to the audio on from ‘Radio live’ at that time 31/8/14.
The debarkle was AT THE 28 minute mark near the end of this 40 minute debate between Hooten and Boag.
Mark Sainsbury says criminal charges should now be leveled and an investigastion needs to be made.
This whole sordid event of “collusion against all political opponents” including the 2011 attack on Labour MP leader Phil Goff, (the Hanover financial ruin debarkle) and all these resulting shady deals be investigated by the new Government over these allegations since National at this time failed to investigate these inappropriate events during the sacking of the ‘Justice Minister Judith Collins and how the SIS obtained the “leaked email” – documents to fire the Minister using Whaleoil Cameon Slater and his connection with the PM and Jason Ede and PM office Wayne Eagleson as Mike Williamson is also importantly also saying on this clip he believes “an investigation is warranted”.
Actually, that is the benefit of PPPs – massive profits for the private sector with all the risk and extra costs landing on the public generating even more profits for the private sector.
They’re just of no benefit to the public as they cost more and provide less service.
Yeah … It’s not so much a problem of PPPs as such as the corruption of the government that administers them. PPPs in Korea deliver as promised or get restructured, and their CEOs investigated by the prosecution service. Strangely this make them work very hard not to bilk the greater population, and to deliver services as promised or better. Those that don’t do not survive.
Part of the problem highlighted in that article is the collapse of the private provider to bankruptcy.
Now, when that happens should the government step in and prop up the business and thus rewarding failure?
Should it buy out the business as the 5th Labour government bought out Transrail for an extortionate amount and thus rewarding failure?
Or should it let the business collapse and the service it provides go with it? This way doesn’t rewarding failure as the other two do but then it’s a government service and is probably essential.
PPPs are essentially a way to get government guaranteed profits with all the risk taken up by the government.
If corruption is a problem, and it is, then we need better laws covering it and I can hear the screams from the RWNJs about that already. Of course, we should still put such laws and investigators in place.
Then there’s the question of if there’s even enough scale in the country for the services provided. Is there really enough ex-government road building in the country to warrant having multiple contractors available to do it? Or are those contractors solely there because the government contracts out road building? I’m pretty sure it’s the latter which means that it’s far more efficient to simply re-institute the MoW and have the government build all their own roads.
If the government is the sole client to keep contractors going then it’s better done directly by the government. Removes huge amounts of bureaucracy and the dead-weight loss of profit.
Last year was one of the hottest years ever, according to new temperature data.
Provisional figures published by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit shows 2017 was the third warmest on record and the hottest ever without El Niño – a natural phase of the climate system that results in warmer temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.
The global average temperature last year was about 1C above pre-industrial times, and 0.4C above the 1981-2010 average.
The figures are released on the same day as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Nasa release their independently produced records of Earth’s surface temperatures.
“Forget what the sceptics will tell you, climate change is real and is happening right now,” said Professor Martin Siegert, a climate change expert at Imperial College London.
“With it comes the extreme storms and droughts experienced at historical levels across the world. This is yet another wake-up call – to develop a zero-carbon, sustainable economy before it’s too late to mitigate further dangerous climate change. Our efforts must be redoubled.
Plant based diets and specifically vegan diets are all the rage right now. In fact, vegan foods were one of the fastest growing supermarket categories of the last few years.
It appears the promotion of plant-based lifestyles in mainstream media and among celebrity circles — think Ellen and Portia, Alicia Silverstone and Ariana Grande — is continuing to gain momentum, both for the associated health benefits as well as environmental concern and to support animal rights.
There are numerous health benefits associated with plant based diets — lower body weights, reduced risk of developing some types of cancer, reduced risk of heart disease and diabetes and a longer lifespan.
The health benefits associated with a vegan diet comes from a diet based largely on natural, unprocessed foods.
As we got more, our guts shrank because we didn’t need a giant vegetable processor any more. Our bodies could spend more energy on other things like building a bigger brain. Sorry, vegetarians, but eating meat apparently made our ancestors smarter — smart enough to make better tools, which in turn led to other changes, says Aiello.
And the health benefits of bigger brains and better tools include digging up fossil fuels, population explosion, climate change, increased lead in the enviroment, WMDs and genocide…
Interesting link Draco! I found the comparison between average IQ scores of 1937 and 1997 (80 rising to 100) startling to say the least. *
There is also the well known factor of secular development within a population. While it is not clear that these trends are entirely the result of improving nutrition –
Changes in nutrition alone could not account for the trends which exceed the original socioeconomic differentials. In the United States, there have been per capita increases in the intake of protein and fat from animal sources, decreases in carbohydrates and fat from vegetable sources, and little change in caloric intake. It is not clear that these changes constitute better nutrition. The secular trends could reflect environmental improvements, specifically changes in health practices and living conditions leading to improvements in mortality rates and life expectancy. These factors are interrelated with those concerning family size. Also genetic factors, especially heterosis, may have played a small role in causing the secular trends
* For those who are going to argue that this is a misunderstanding of IQ and the average is always 100 – go and read the link Draco provides to see how the 80 figure for 1937 is arrived at.
Just don’t bother discussing the issue. It isn’t of importance to you.
Just like the morals of slavery weren’t important to the Pole and Norris families in Liverpool in the 1750s.
No Ed I don’t know what you think because I’m not a mind reader, thats why I’m asking what you would do and preferably if you could answer without the use of some random youtube that has nothing to do with the question
Omega 3 including the food intake of the brain that plays an important role in the development of cell membranes in the brain and neurological system signal path. Medically proven omega 3 is able to optimise the development of the brain’s memory both in children and adults. This means that better met the needs of omega 3, especially for those who find it easy to forget.
what i want to know is how vegans would stop nz being over run with wild deer,goats and pigs if we stopped hunting them ,because short of releasing a wolf breed and probably a big cat overrun we would be , spose we could just poison them.
Why don’t you become informed on the subject?
Here.
Watch this film.
[I’m putting you in premod until you stop spamming the site with videos. You’ve been warned about this multiple times before. If it happens again I will give a ban.
To be clear, spamming is when you start a conversation, someone asks you a reasonable question and instead of answering that you post a link to a long video and expect them to watch it. Or worse, in this case to a trailer that doesn’t in any way address the question.
Spamming is also posting multiple video links without context. Or just posting too many. If you are still unclear, ask and I will pick the comment up on Moderation. – weka]
Have seen it thank you.
I do think waghorn was deliberately taking the subject away from industrial farming.
And in future I shall ignore such diversions rather than post a video.
He’d probably suggest that government cullers are sent out to kill them but under no circumstances is the meat or skins to be harvested or maybe the animals are trapped and exported
Ahh poisoning…now theres a topic to get everyone going
in general pests are in control from what i see. although since it became next to impossible to sell wild venison there numbers could are building up massively , i’m just dying for a vegen to tell me how we would deal with it if we stopped harvesting them.
rabbits are still a huge issue in the SI. Farmers now use 1080 and other poisonings are routine. It’s a requirement from some councils to control, so if you don’t poison you have to do something else. A scheme that matches landowners with shooters sounds very useful to me.
I agree about the vegan thing. Even putting farming aside for a minute, huge damage is done to ecosystems from rabbits alone. This is why DOC uses poison on the conservation lands, it’s very hard to regenerate native plants in many places because of the rabbits. I’ve seen places eaten back to bare soil and stone (although that’s also to do with previous land management practices like overgrazing and burnoffs). If we don’t act as the main predator of rabbits we are basically saying it’s ok for those ecosystems to be impoverished permanently, or to even die.
The health benefits of being a vegetarian/vegan are undeniable, that certain celebrities promote them is one of the poorest reasons to become vegetarian.
I would expect the largest barriers locally to becoming vegetarian/vegan in no particular order would be:
Cultural attitudes to food
Apathy/lazziness
Perceived cost
Perceived lack of choice/taste
Satisfaction with current diet
It would be interesting to model the possible effect of everyone on the planet moving to veganism/vegetarian over the next decade and the effect on animal welfare and the ecosystem.
The new baby of the Prime Minister will be a hunter gatherer, burning fossil fuels to go fishing and most likely will be very neo-liberal like the parents. Sadly for you there will be nothing you can do to stop this.
1. Life will go on. It may be somewhat reduced but it will go on as has happened before. Five times in fact with the greatest being the Permian Extinction Event which even managed to even wipe out a few insects. Took ten million years for the biodiversity to recover.
2. That probably has something to do with all the grains fed to the meat first rather than an actual law of physics.
What next? Working conditions are really bad in some foreign countries so we should give up work? You really should look up the meaning of “non-sequitur.”
“A plant based diet has been shown in numerous studies to have big health benefits. In general, vegetarians live 6-9 years longer than non-vegetarians, and vegans longer again.
Many of today’s most common killer diseases are linked to diet. In particular, heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers and diseases resulting from obesity. The vegetarian diet can help in all these conditions.
Additionally, the vast array of vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients in plant-based foods offer significant health protection. There are still more plant compounds being discovered that are found to offer health benefits.”
Enthusiasts for a particular diet or medicinal drug often promote the idea of “lower death rate from killer disease X.” They usually skip over the question of whether there’s any difference in all-cause mortality, usually because this:
Conclusions: United Kingdom–based vegetarians and comparable nonvegetarians have similar all-cause mortality. Differences found for specific causes of death merit further investigation. [my emphasis]
Actual cost (especially when you include spoilage), the huge hurdle to adapt (I’ve involuntarily vomited nearly every vegetable I’ve ever eaten). But sure, for those who can afford the mental, physical, and financial toll – or who don’t have it – good on them.
The health benefits of being a vegetarian/vegan are undeniable, that certain celebrities promote them is one of the poorest reasons to become vegetarian.
Two things:
1. Being a vegan is detrimental to your health – you have to work pretty hard at managing your diet to maintain even a semblance of good health as a vegan, which is one reason people tend to drop it after a while.
2. The health benefits of being a vegetarian require context. Yes, being a vegetarian is way healthier than a standard western diet of refined carbs and fat, but that has little to do with meat consumption or the lack of it. The typical Masai warrior of a few hundred years ago rarely ate a vegetable but could snap your typical vegetarian like a twig.
Completely untrue. I quote from the article I posted at 4.
“There are numerous health benefits associated with plant based diets — lower body weights, reduced risk of developing some types of cancer, reduced risk of heart disease and diabetes and a longer lifespan.”
“There are numerous health benefits associated with plant based diets — lower body weights, reduced risk of developing some types of cancer, reduced risk of heart disease and diabetes and a longer lifespan.”
Compared with the high-carb standard western diet, yes. But lots of us non-vegetarians don’t eat that diet. There are no health benefits for us in a vegetarian diet, just crappier food and extra work to get decent nutrition.
Lots of vegans have health problems after the first few years. I’m sure some people can do ok on vegan diets long term, although we don’t know how that plays out over the really long time frames. Most people need animal products in their diet in some form.
A title designed to lead to confusion over if the First Man is receiving public money, but it actually being a fluff piece on Clark Gayford so people can get upset about low level news designed to have positive news about our lovely PM (whilst ignoring ow the previous PM’s got the same quite a lot)
God what an eyesore, did the architect reuse plans from the early 1990’s? What a shithole it looks like “Albany on sea” for the ‘fast tracked’ America’s cup.
If only normal people got such benefits as fast tracking, but if it comes to billionaires, hobbies and sports then… all hands on board from taxpayers money, stealing the harbour and fast track consenting of an eyesore. Couldn’t they at least design something that looks architecturally sophisticated?
I guess it is a slight step up from the shed 10 efforts/Cloud that bares no relationship to the harbour at all or each building, and has become a knic knack/bad experiences ghetto, that Aucklander’s keep away from.
Another wasted opportunity where corporates and politicians with little imagination and skills siphon off taxpayer money and resources with crap ideas and designers to make a dollar for some corporate enterprise or grab the limelight for themselves, while pretending it will have some use for the wider public later.
Some good public spaces in Auckland, Auckland Art gallery, The tank farm areas and Ponsonby central… all those areas humming day and night, not the ghetto’s that other spaces become.
lprent
I am thinking that you need to think about moderation and discuss with the other mods to find some way to manage it better. There are obvious cases of keeping trolls who want to upset , divide, sneer diminish not disagree and discuss.
It would be a shame to lose the interesting minds that come here and have helped make TS the blog it is. I think it is time to democratise the moderation. I also think
that regular writers with something to say should be able to be paused quietly when in the midst of some long obssession about the usual suspects. And let’s not have onerous PC chastisements. You are all clever buggers, you should be able to come up with a rewritten treatise for mods. The terms under which we operate everything now are changing and we have found we have to be adaptable to stay up with the flow. What is important to you, and I think having concerned, sincere, thoughtful, practical and kindly people who try to be literate and try to use the modern systems online must be, and surely you want to keep them coming and supporting the site or you could lose this.
It seems to me we all are in a slow war. The French Revolution was bloody and dramatic, this is slower but is impacting all the same, and the nobs are trying to turn the revolution over, get their advantages and prominence back. We are getting the let them eat cake while they sleep in the cars and drink themselves silly with our welfare money stuff. We are like WW2 Resistance, who were trained to be fast thinkers and practical doers, and flexible, and were also prepared to die because what they were fighting for was freedom from tyranny.
I think that you and the mods are important for whatever we are fighting for, the exact vision of which is unclear because of fast moving events, but the knowledge of what is already happening and what is likely to occur, should spur us on. Let all good men come to the aid of the party. All sounds a bit hysterical doesn’t it, but if we don’t stimulate those brain cells and get through to others, we are on a hiding to nowhere. TS is useful, good, and needs some changes to keep it in its premier place, and it’s your baby. So could you and the others consider changing mod practices which were drawn up early on, but the baby is now an enquiring, questioning teen ready for a Bar Mitzvah or something like that coming of age recognition.
[from the Policy, one of the reasons for moderating,
Abusing the sysop or post writers on their own site – including telling us how to run our site or what we should write. This is viewed as self-evident stupidity, and should be added as a category to the Darwin Awards.
Maybe have a rethink about how you are framing your comments here. Also, the amount of work you are saying we should be doing. You could try educating yourself about how moderation and writing works here and why it is the way it is before venturing into telling us what we should be doing – weka]
“you need to think about moderation and discuss with the other mods to find some way to manage it better. There are obvious cases of keeping trolls who want to upset , divide, sneer diminish not disagree and discuss.”
Agreed fully greywarshark, these trolls add nothing of any value to the uplifting of our health/well-being/quality-of life for all here and just put others off, which is their only role sadly.
Over at Martyn Bradbury’s ‘The daily blog’ he has heavily sanctioned these trolls already.
So we need to be mindful of keeping the discussion focused on the article we all contribute to assist the new labour coalition in making our country better to live in with a far better enjoyment of life.
Hope we get rid of these National Party disruptive trolls finally.
As long as your not a racist puke, or dump your hate on people Puckish rogue. I don’t care what you say.
That said, your girl Denise, how you feeling about that slacker? Just another lazy tory mp we all got to pay for? Or do you have good feelings about the torpid lunch eater?
Could we at least sacrifice one troll? We could do it spectacularly, all pile on, beat the stuffing out of them and block their responses? That’d be a larf! Pete George already thinks we do that to him whenever he visits, poor luv. We could (metaphorically) barbecue James or give Pucky a good rogueing 🙂
RG
One a month would be a good ritual. It could be done democratically, by voting and then that one stood down for a month. The trolls would enjoy it, boasting how many times they had been stood down.
No I think Grey is musing about something completely different – but I won’t elaborate as I might get myself banned. Just have a look at yesterdays OM for background.
@greywarshark
“It would be a shame to lose the interesting minds that come here and have helped make TS the blog it is.”
and “including telling us how to run our site or what we should write. This is viewed as self-evident stupidity” (moderators comment).
Leading horses to water, and all that. We’ll see how long those interesting minds continue to visit, and whether or not they can be bothered with the dogmatic and egotistic.
And of course, if ‘they’ (them, the other) were really committed and discontented, they’d set up their own blog apparently.
Easier sometimes to just peruse and watch what happens.
Anyway, for the next few weeks, I’m off to places in the third world where community, compassion, integrity, etc., (values ‘the left’ once prided itself on) still exist and are necessary for survival.
Yes OwT here I and you are thinking of survival of humanity and some graciousness, and many that come here one would think, to discuss that, don’t give a tinker’s curse about it. I’ve been coming here for years and observing and thinking and writing and I don’t know if there has been the enlightenment of all and esprit de corps that I expected after all that time – seems to degenerate all the time into just a place for verbal scrapping and point scoring. Bit disappointing really.
weka
You could try not batting back any suggestions for alteration of your approach, and actually treat the commenters as fellow workers in a thinking community, not like students that need behaviour conditioning. It seems that you are an academic or in the teaching profession or have adopted didactic behaviour. There is a group of moderators who have for years adopted a general attitude to the blog which has had a robust flexibility, that seems to be reduced. All commenters are treated the same, with little respect for long-term commenters who have tried to add to the value of the blog.
Not everyone can manage moderation, and that seems to create a division.
I am thinking that there should be a level below the moderators made up of commenters who like to act responsibly.
Anyway I have written enough now, something on OM 18/1 I think and a couple today. I seem to just strike anger in you. How dare I put my ideas forward and want them heard and considered? So I am bowing out, I am not wanted and just get my serious and sensible suggestions to develop the blog further ridiculed by others so i won’t bother further.
[“How dare I put my ideas forward and want them heard and considered?”
It’s all about the *how. There is a difference between sharing ideas and telling Authors/Admin what to do. I know this because I commented on moderation for years as a commenter, in some pretty tense situations, and was never moderated. I paid a lot of attention to the moderators, including very hard out moderators like Lynn. I listened to what they said, and why they did what they did, so that I could understand how it worked here.
And yes, given the shit that’s gone down on this site in the past few years, and what that has cost people, including losing Authors, I don’t actually rate your views on moderation when they are presented in such ignorant ways. You still don’t get it and show no interest in listening to people who have a great deal more experience and knowledge about moderation here than you do.
And yes, I am fucked off now. Because after over a day of trying to evenhandedly explain some things here about moderation I’m still having to deal with people who think it’s all about them. Fellow workers? FFS, when I see commenters taking responsibility and doing some of the mahi around here to help the site instead of treating TS as some kind of personal sand pit where their needs are paramount, I’m sure that things will be more equitable. But as it stands the more work you create for moderators the more likely they are to crack down harder. Lynn set the tone for that and it predates myself and Bill by years.
I actually think you have some good ideas, but your framing and timing is just way way off. Take some time out, because now I am shutting this down. There is no problem with talking about moderation, but you don’t get to tell Authors what to do or how to run the site. If you can’t figure out the difference, then ask when you get back and I’ll explain it. But this has run long enough. 1 week ban. If you have a problem with that, try emailing Lynn and he can explain to you why moderation in the end is precisely about behaviour modification. – weka]
and fwiw, I’m really open to discussing my moderation style. I”m just waiting for someone who knows how to do that constructively and with respect for the Authors here. Not all moderators are willing to do that.
I’d do it meself, but as you know, authors getting banned and demoted aint a good look. It wouldn’t take long. lol.
And besides that, my spealing is shote.
Technically, I can start writing again any time (I still have an author log in) and I’m actively considering it because the TS community means a lot to me and the blog itself clearly needs a shot in the arm.
However, the problem remains that at least two of my fellow authors (with mod powers) appear to find working class voices hard to handle. Ironic given that this blog started out intending to be a voice for the labour movement and is now appears to be almost exclusively written and moderated by folk whose exposure to workers is limited to ordering flat whites from them.
The real sadness of the situation is that when CV and I were booted out in late 2016, losing two male authors was supposed to usher in a new dawn of women writers. TS was suddenly going to become a ‘safe space’ for women and a thousand flowers would bloom. Predictably*, that never happened, and what has happened is that other writers, male and female, have drifted off.
I note TS is losing some terrific commenters too. When we piss off the likes of Marty Mars, the site drifts ever closer to being a blandly bourgeois bore fest.
On the upside, we have some new talent writing. Advantage continues to delight and I can’t begin to tell you what a terrific chap Enzo is, both as a writer and an activist. Fingers crossed there are more engaging writers to come.
So, I’m going to have a hard think this weekend about resuming writing here. Like everyone, I have other calls on my time and energy, however, I think TS is worth the effort.
*I wrote a post, ‘Broken’, which touched on what I saw as the difficulties for women participating on blogs. I still think the post is relevant.
[By the general agreement of the Authors in the back end last year, TRP’s login permissions are set at Contributor not Author. This means he can’t publish posts here. He can submit posts, but they will have to be approved by an Author with Editor level permissions. The dropping of his permissions to Contributor happen some time after he left the site, and it was prompted by him maligning TS off site (dropping permissions also meant he could no longer access the back end discussions but he hadn’t been involved in those for some time anyway).
There are so many mistruths in what he just wrote. I’m not even going to begin to untangle that, because we’ve been here too many times before. Given the last time he was banned as a commenter was for telling lies about an author, it’s really hard to see how he could return as an Author now and not have the same old shit go down again.
As far as I know there are only two Authors that have had their permissions dropped at TS – CV and TRP. TPR’s came after several years and multiple rounds of conflict that cause problems for the community, site, and authors. He is also one of the reasons why it is so hard to get women to write here.
Had he been willing to work *with other authors here, he would know that quite a lot has been done in the background on the women writers project. I will note that he had on a number of occasions worked against women and what we are wanting to have happen here. I think this comment demonstrates that he is still largely incapable of being here without causing problems.
I’m sure there will be discussion about this in the back end but I am going ban him now from commenting here, because of the lying and because of the potential to create the same sets of problems he was responsible for before. I also want the women’s project to largely have a free run once it gets into the public.
I reckon this site needs you now more than ever.
Hope your hard think works out for us mortals at the standard.
Off to read that blog now. Always a pleasure, never a chore. 🙂
No worries, mate. I don’t always agree with you, but I do respect your integrity and latent honesty.
I’ve never had to worry about home town modding on your posts.
[given the abuse I’ve just read in the back end in your comments sitting in moderation, I’m not even going to look at this further. 6 month ban – weka]
[further escalating and misogynistic abuse has led to a permanent ban. – weka]
I’m dropping your comments into Moderation until I have a chance to look at them. You can probably expect a shortish ban for attacking Authors. I’ll put a moderation note up when I’ve had a better look.
So its not enough that Seth Rogen ruins probably the greatest comic series ever written (Preacher) but know he wants to take a big, steaming dump on the best superhero parody ever (although The Pro is pretty good)
And I think Jonathan Freedland is about the worst at the Guardian.
A pro Israel hawk, he led a non stop assault on Corbyn. He makes Josie Pagani and Phil Quinn look like mice.
Jonathan Freedland, writing one of his toxic editorials in The Guardian, begs to differ. The fact that CIA didn’t release any evidence they did it…is evidence they didn’t do it, according to Freedland. His column, long on mockery and self-righteous smears but short on evidence (as usual), does nothing but demonstrate three things:
1. He is only just barely acquainted with the facts of the JFK case.
2. He has no faculty for basic logical thinking.
3. He is not averse to practicing intellectual dishonesty.
If you’ve been paying even the slightest bit of attention, none of these will come as a surprise.
But this article isn’t about JFK – we’ve written about that before, and will do again. But not today. This article isn’t about Freedland’s aggressively uninformed opinions, his cloying prose or his ill-deserved sense of moral superiority. It’s about the world-view he’s trying to market between banner ads begging for money. It’s about his smug insistence that conspiracy theories just don’t happen.
Or, to be more specific, conspiracy theories don’t happen…here.
Because, despite his deep-held belief that Conspiracy Theories are dangerous, he certainly believes in a lot of them. He thinks the Russian Government poisoned Alexander Litvinenko. He thinks Vladimir Putin had Boris Nemstov shot. He thinks Russian banks have been backing the far-right in Europe and supported Brexit. And he thinks the FSB “hacked” the American presidential election in order to get their Manchurian candidate elected.
Buzz in when you spot the connection.
These are all, by definition, conspiracy theories – but they are also all things done by the other. Conspiracies happen over there. They are done by the bad guys. We don’t do them.
The Guardian newspaper is a limited company and has been since 2008 when the Scott Trust was wound up and replaced by The Scott Trust Ltd, which appoints a board comprised of bankers, management consultants, venture capitalists and other classic left-wingers. The paper itself is written nearly exclusively by elite-educated members of the upper middle class. The viewpoint you would expect to come from this privileged set-up is what you do get.
Murray McDonald, in his Hidden History of the Guardian, explains that The Guardian was launched to undermine working-class leaders of the early 19th century reform movement (whose members were massacred at Peterloo), and during its 150 year history has denounced Ireland’s freedom fighters, Women Suffragettes, Abraham Lincoln’s campaign to end slavery, third world nationalism and pretty much any kind of genuine independence from the system. It supported Tony Blair, even when the worst of his crimes were known and continues to give him uncritical space, it regularly presents official pronouncements as news, regularly disguises adverts for its corporate sponsors as news and regularly finds time to pour bile on Jeremy Corbyn, Julian Assange, Media Lens and Noam Chomsky, who was so appalled by Emma Brocke’s infamous and outrageous distortions he forced them to print a long retraction.
In short, The Guardian is far to the right — just read a few articles by Nick Cohen, Jonathan Freedland or Michael White (with whom I had some correspondence a few years ago about thought-control in his paper) if you doubt where on the actual political spectrum the UK’s ‘leading left-liberal newspaper’ is situated.
Brian Fallow calls out business on their pro-National and anti-Labour government bias, clearly feeling so miserable about their businesses when unemployment, inflation, economic growth, interest rates, and bunches of other stuff are going so well for so long in New Zealand:
I’m worried to the extent that space travel becomes so cheap that people with overgrown lawns and hoarders become those nasty Martian neighbours from hell you see on TV… Overwhelming the criteria for gaining a seat on a shuttle is so high it weeds out the unfit. Unless some one makes a nano sky crane to space I just don’t see how it’s economically viable to get those commodities back on solid ground.
Although military commanders do accept that the first person to colonise the moon will be the most powerful man in the solar system. Because unlike earth bound natives who have to spend vast resources getting weapons systems to the moon, any one who colonises the moon can just chuck devastating rocks back at us for free basically.
So there are problems and we don’t really want nasty neighbours from hell.
Yeah, but if we can support a moon base to the point it’s sustainable, similar players can still obliterate the moonbase or its mother country. And if the moonbase is big enough to declare independence, the major nations down here will have the ability to put counter-battery fire in orbit. Even in the 1970s it would have been technically trivial to convert a rocket motor turbopump into a turbogenerator for a decent rail gun
Mr Peters will become the first Maori Priminster even only for 6 weeks this is a good thing for Maoris culture and Mana Ka pai. There is going to be a lot of howls from all the neoliberals racist bigots they can go get_____LOL. I’m happy that my Ngti Porou IWI has taken down shonky keys photo teno pai.
Now my Maori culture people know this if any dum stuff goes down at Waitangi this year I won’t be as polite as I have been with other Maori issues I have involved myself in. Ka kite ano
Following Pelosi releasing the Senate version, Nunes has released the House Intelligence Committee testimony by Fusion GPS.
Okay, politikids. Grab thyselves a beverage and settle in.I just careened through 180-pages of House Intel Committee testimony by Fusion GPS and it was just chockablock with tasty bits.Let's hit the buffet.1/— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) January 19, 2018
Okay, politikids. Grab thyselves a beverage and settle in.
I just careened through 180-pages of House Intel Committee testimony by Fusion GPS and it was just chockablock with tasty bits.
[I don’t allow climate change deniers on posts I put up, especially not ones that can’t pass even a basic test of manners in a new place to a guest post.
I also note that following your first link takes me to a page that is a comment by you that has a link to another page that is a comment by you, and eventually ends up at a climate change denier site. Way below the standard of debate that is acceptable here. Claims such as you are making require actual evidence. I’m moving this to Open Mike, you might find someone who will debate with you, personally I think it’s an utter waste of time. btw, have a read of the site Policy. – weka]
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
deafening silence on legalising marijuana.
the dompost can run a front page confabulating P with cannabis all mixed up and a million fallacies of composition to write a crummy ad for the justice industry but their standards have fallen into the abyss and it is to be hope that a progressive government will do the right thing immediately.
by Philip Ferguson This weekend just past marks the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, the most famous of the great 1960s music festivals. It was held over the weekend (Friday-Monday) of August 15-18, 1969. Woodstock was a highpoint of the US ‘counter-culture’, and also the beginning of its end. When exploring the ...
It looks like the government has won over the public on its vehicle feebate scheme:A feebate scheme that would transfer hundreds of millions of dollars from buyers of higher-emission cars into the pockets of people buying EVs and other more fuel-efficient vehicles has been winning favour with submitters, the Government ...
When people suggest lowering the voting age, others argue that the young are too uneducated or silly to exercise the duties of citizenship. Australian John Quiggin has just blown that argument out of the water:Looking at the array of ignorant and vindictive old men attacking Greta Thunberg and other young ...
In the previous two posts, I laid out the context and set the theoretical framework to answer a question: whether indigenous economies should take the LEAP. This final part outlines ways to conceive of practicing mana motuhake within the existing legal system by carving out special jurisdictions that enable Indigenous ...
Fully Informed? Labour’s 2017 promises raised expectations that were little short of revolutionary. Unfortunately, they were never adequately shaken through the fiscal sieve. The hard economic work was not done – and it shows. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s critics have long complained that her grasp of the way the New ...
You cannot expect to pound communities into the ground day after day, year after year, decade after decade and just expect them to take it lying down. There’s a point at which the place will explode. And we’re faced with some very big ructions on both sides of the Atlantic ...
Back in May, Destiny Church leaders Brian and Hannah Tamaki launched another political party. Despite consisting entirely of followers of their religion, they grandly called it "Coalition New Zealand", in a vain effort to suggest it was something broader. But when they applied for registration, submitters opposed the name, as ...
The following article is excerpted and translated from two articles in recent issues of Lutte de Classe (Class Struggle), the magazine of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the revolutionary workers group active in France. We don’t necessarily agree with everything in it – for instance, the 1956-62 war for independence involved rather more revolutionary forces than ...
The Pacific is on the front line of climate change, and if we don't cut emissions quickly, some countries are literally going to be underwater. Because of this, small Pacific states had tried to use this week's Pacific Islands Forum meeting to get Pacific countries to agree to ending coal ...
To Limit Another's Rights Is To Limit One's Own: Is it too much to expect senior members of our Government to be capable of explaining that we protect the rights of human-beings precisely because not even the most depraved act can cancel-out the fact that its perpetrator is also a ...
Going Down? Once truth and propaganda become fused in the minds of one’s followers, debate and discussion become redundant. If one’s opponents are all outrageous liars, then engaging with them in any way is pointless. Rather than waste its time, a political party should, instead, target all its messages at ...
This section builds on Part 1 of this series to provide a theoretical basis for the final instalment (part 3 – to come). Self-determination: law or resurgence — or both? International law promotes the principal of equal treatment and self-determination, which includes peoples’ rights to freely pursue their social, cultural and ...
Everyone was outraged yesterday to learn that the Christchurch shooting accused had been able to send mail from prison to his Nazi fans, apparently pushing more hate. "How could this possibly happen", people asked. Simple: because New Zealand is a civilised country, and so we let prisoners send and receive ...
If we are to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change, we need to rapidly decarbonise our transport fleet. The good news: its starting to happen:The number of electric vehicles on New Zealand's roads have nearly tripled in the past two years. There are currently 15,453 registered electric vehicles (EVs), up ...
We need to fundamentally reframe our systems settings to address the drivers causing and underpinning inequality; structural change in systems especially financial. The Equality Network Hui was held in Wellington on 27 June 2019. The hui covered important topics such as child poverty; a living wage; taxation; public health; mental ...
The views-per-page for some of my recent postings:Depressing, isn't it? Provide thoughtful and wise commentary on the mainstream of British politics and no-one notices. Make a passing reference to Tommy DICKHEAD Robinson in a thread title and you get hundreds of views. Write something about anti-Semitism and you get another ...
The government has announced plans to move the Treaty of Waitangi and other taonga to a new site. Great news! So where are they going? Right next to the old one:The new plan will see a new 22,000-square-metre archive built on the former site of Defence House - the former ...
Back in June, StatsNZ went public about a project to track population data on an hourly level by using people's cellphones. It wasn't as bad as it initially looked - they were receiving no individual data, only counts by suburb - but there was still a huge consent problem, so ...
Most economists agree that a currently slowing economy could do with some stimulus – and they would also agree that there is no shortage of infrastructure projects which could be brought to productive fruition with help from that stimulus. In view of the current practice of sub-contracting economic policy decisions ...
I did an interview on the TVNZ Breakfast Show about the situation in Hong Kong. I tried to frame the issue as a collective action problem between two sides with very different end games. The video is here. Because of time constraints we could not discuss the fact that the ...
Image Credit: Wild Rose College A new study reporting the ranges of values for kidney and liver parameters in a healthy population is being actively misrepresented by anti-fluoride campaigners. The Fluoride Action Network’s (FAN) latest ...
Image Credit: Wild Rose College A new study reporting the ranges of values for kidney and liver parameters in a healthy population is being actively misrepresented by anti-fluoride campaigners. The Fluoride Action Network’s (FAN) latest ...
AN OPEN LETTER FOR SIGN ON BY ORGANISATIONS AND MOVEMENTS ACROSS THE WORLD, ALLIED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST INEQUALITY. This letter was released at the UN Political Forum on 9 July, where the Sustainable Development Goal on inequality was reviewed. The purpose of the letter is to call out the ...
We asked a young gay science student and critic of trans ideology and the trans activists’ assault on women’s and gay rights to outline his views on Redline. Thanks to him for his article. by Cian Ó Catháin Gender identity ideology (Gender ID) is ripping through western society at full ...
The Environment Committee is currently hearing submissions on the Zero Carbon Bill, and Stuff is reporting on the submissions. Today, they're covering yesterday they heard from "NZ" Steel:NZ Steel has told MPs it may be forced to close with the loss of thousands of jobs if changes aren't made to ...
Students are striking against climate change on September 27. And this time, they're asking everyone to join them:Students are taking to the streets, beaches and parks on 27 September, and we're inviting everyone to join us. That's right, this is an intergenerational issue, and you're all invited to put pressure ...
Peter McKenzie has a piece on Newsroom this morning about how local body politics is awash with property developer cash. 70% of all the donations in the 2016 Wellington mayoral election came from property developers. And its pretty obvious what they want in exchange:That’s particularly important in local government, according ...
Source: Unknown, twitter user Recently, I wrote a (relatively) short paper titled as above, to explore what self-determination could like in a practical sense. Maybe I’m a bit of an international trade truther or something, but I absolutely believe trade is at the heart of achieving peace and self-determination. Since ...
In the 1960s, after I had graduated with a first-class Oxford postgraduate law degree, I joined the British Foreign Office as the top entrant of my year. There, I worked for a couple of years on European affairs and was eventually posted to the Embassy in Brussels. After this exposure ...
Alone, Alone. All, All Alone: Will it be a good or a bad thing, when humanity’s bright blue spacecraft is stricken by the civilisation-destroying problem of Climate Change, that no Huston Control will be standing-by to rescue the crew?“WE HAVE A PROBLEM, HUSTON.” These were the words used by the ...
I heard a 45 minute interview with Monica Lewinsky talking to TED’s Chris Anderson on BBC Radio 4 over the weekend, and have listened to it another two times out walking. I recommend it. Highly. Man, I am so impressed with how this woman has integrated her life experiences and ...
Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: how good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure, London, Penguin, 2019, 352pp; reviewed by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff’s book The Coddling of the American Mind is a timely book, whose ...
When the Justice Committee reported back on the Administration of Justice (Reform of Contempt of Court) Bill, free speech advocates breathed a sigh of relief. As originally introduced, the Bill reitered the ancient offence of "scandalising the court" - basicly, a special sedition law protecting judges from criticism. The select ...
Eighteen months ago, the government promised to strengthen the Bill of Rights Act, by explicitly affirming the power of the courts to issue declarations of inconsistency and requiring Parliament to formally respond to them. Since then - crickets. Which raises the obvious question: are they actually going to do this, ...
Back in March, the Ministry of Justice conducted a public consultation exercise on whether to hold a review of the Official Information Act. 285 people submitted on it. Now, Stuff has trawled through those submissions, and the case for reform is strong:The Justice Ministry asked Kiwis what they thought was ...
National's prisoner voting ban has gone down as one of the worst laws in New Zealand history. Passed after a farcical debate (including this farcial speech from ACT MP Hilary Calvert), it has subsequently been found to be inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act by the High Court, Court ...
Divided Loyalties: Can the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, be relied upon? That’s what the boys and girls at Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon needed to be reassured about. Because, from the perspective of Washington, it’s looking more and more like Jacinda Ardern and her Labour Party comrades are getting ready ...
This handy Queer Theory Glossary is from thetranswidow.com In case you’ve had trouble keeping up with the spate of new queer theory terms, here’s a handy glossary for your reference. Queer – A straight person with an interesting haircut. Non-binary/genderqueer – A chubby young female, typically 16-28, who has ...
by Daphna Whitmore US social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt spoke on 1 August in Auckland to a crowd of around one thousand people. He is best known for his bookThe Coddling of the American Mind which examines the new climate of trigger warnings and acute sensitivity of Gen Z. ...
What an extraordinarily depressing experience it is to be compelled to watch, at 12,000 miles distance, the contortions and machinations of the British political class as they set about their determined attempt to overturn the decision taken by the British people that they wish to leave the European Union. The ...
The winter grazing issue is becoming a highly sensitised one that I hope will not become so politicised that it delays solutions and results in the suicides of some very stressed farmers.Winter grazing has hit the headlines after a determined campaign, including the release of a video of some very ...
by Don Franks Way back when British guitar virtuoso Joe Brown was a beginning session guy he got to back a visiting American artist. Young Joe was an able technician but had yet to learn some points of professionalism. Part way through “Five foot high and rising” Joe tired of ...
Since scientists started studying climate change, they have warned that it will reduce food production. And now, its happening:The climate crisis is damaging the ability of the land to sustain humanity, with cascading risks becoming increasingly severe as global temperatures rise, according to a landmark UN report compiled by some ...
The Abortion Legislation Bill just passed its first reading, 94-23. Its a far bigger margin than I expected, even allowing for the Winston factor, and it reflects the overwhelming support there is in this country for reform. but that support isn't a new thing - it has existed for literally ...
The Justice Committee has called for submissions on the Referendums Framework Bill. The Bill does what it says on the label - establishes a framework for referenda. Things you may want to address in your submission: Whether the bill should apply only at the 2020 election, or whether it should ...
The Thompson and Clark / MBIE spying scandal continues to result in fallout, this time in the form of a report on the implementation of MBIE's "Operation Exploration", its internal operation to enforce the infamous Anadarko Amendment which criminalised protests against the oil industry. MBIE's enforcement operation was tainted by ...
So, Winston Peters is defending his last-minute demand for a referendum on abortion by claiming he was "blindsided" by the bill. Really? The bill is a government bill. It has been working through the cabinet approval process since December last year. As part of that process, NZ First was consulted, ...
The Green Part has been accused of lack of transparency in two recent situations. The first was the claimed media lockdown during Green's annual conference and the second was Julie Ann Genter's refusal to release a letter she had sent to Phil Twyford.I do get frustrated when journalist's succumb to ...
The Green Part has been accused of lack of transparency in two recent situations. The first was the claimed media lockdown during Green's annual conference and the second was Julie Ann Genter's refusal to release a letter she had sent to Phil Twyford.I do get frustrated when journalist's succumb to ...
Last week, the ongoing democracy protests in Hong Kong saw a pro-Hong Kong student assaulted at the University of Auckland. The Chinese consulate in Auckland followed this up with a press release "express[ing] its appreciation to the students for their spontaneous patriotism" - effectively condoning the assault and inciting further ...
Only those who close their eyes and minds to the evidence can still be in any doubt that we are facing a climate change crisis. The evidence is conclusive that the world is not only getting inexorably hotter, but also that the rising temperatures are creating a number of other ...
Rural communities are wailing about forestry conversions "taking land out of production" and putting it into locking up carbon. Its driven purely by economics: there's more money and lower costs in carbon than in sheep or beef, and if carbon prices rise, there'll be more net money than dairy even. ...
This week, the government introduced its (underwhelming) Abortion Legislation Bill. And despite having negotiated the text of the bill through the coalition process, Winston Peters is now suggesting that he will demand a referendum on it:NZ First leader Winston Peters has hinted that his party may only support the Government's ...
Blowing-Up The House: Is Winston Peters planning to put himself at the head of all those New Zealanders who refuse to countenance the Coalition Government caving-in to the Ihumatao protesters? The most effective way of doing this would be to issue Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern with an ultimatum. If she ...
Last night the police dramatically incresed their numbers at Ihumātao, shoving over protestors and threatening them with arrest. Despite police talk about the need to maintain "public order" and prevent a "breach of the peace", there appeared to be absolutely no justification for this: the protest camp is, was, and ...
A Cult, that many actors, politicians, and those with a low IQ are joining is sweeping across civilisation, with one main intention – ending humans reign on Earth. Starting as a well meaning though deeply flawed theory, that the Earth was warming due to mankind emitting greenhouse gasses, it was ...
Today's abortion reform announcement is just the latest in a long line of disappointing decisions or outright failures from the Labour government. The 90-day law. KiwiBuild. A capital gains tax. Climate change. Every time they make one of those decisions, we hope for better next time. No repeal of the ...
The Greens used their party conference over the weekend to push for a rent-to-own scheme, where people would be able to work towards home ownership by renting from the government. Its a sensible policy, and one which could make a real difference to home ownership rates. But its also basicly ...
by Daphna Whitmore Over the past fortnight, thousands of people have come to the Ihumātao land protest in South Auckland. On 23 July police prepared to evict a few dozen people who had maintained the encampment at Ihumātao for the past three years. As hundreds of supporters arrived the ...
The following article is translated from an article in Lutte de Classe (Class Struggle), the magazine of the French revolutionary workers’ organisation Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle). The United States’ blacklisting of the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei, which took shape in Google’s ban on Huawei using its systems on its phones, marks a ...
There is a military phrase: “Full spectrum dominance”. It refers to the all-encompassing policy to dominate across all spheres of war. Lately, that has come to include the internet – in other words, cyberwarfare initiatives. That is in addition to land, sea, air and the like. Now, if ...
The IMF issued a Report on the state of the Economy as it is at present. Some of it points out significant issues that certainly warrant attention, but that we know already exist. Some of it is very much tied to the very obvious context of global concerns, that everyone ...
I'm glad to see the Lib Dems won.I had a moment of terror yesterday thinking that the Conservatives might cling on, due to a combination of Johnson's elevation to the premiership, the apparent uselessness of the Lib Dem candidate (who had failed to be elected in other constituencies) and the ...
. . Current Leader of the National Party, Simon Bridges gave the usual rah-rah speech to the Loyal & Faithful in Christchurch today (27 July). With National’s party polling and his own personal popularity sliding steadily in the polls, Mr Bridges has not much left to reverse his fortunes. ...
Those concerned for Langridge’s wellbeing say they hope he’ll change his mind when he sees the ocean coming. The protester who has vowed to stand outside Parliament every day until the Government announces a climate emergency says he accepts that his quest will most likely end in drowning. Ollie Langridge, ...
Opportunities to dodge tax are shrinking with the completion of a new tax agreement with Switzerland, Revenue Minister Stuart Nash announced today. Mr Nash and the Swiss Ambassador David Vogelsanger have today signed documents to update the double tax agreement (DTA). The previous DTA was signed in 1980. “Double tax ...
Small Business Minister Stuart Nash says the report of the Small Business Council will help maintain the momentum for innovation and improvements in the sector. Mr Nash has thanked the members of the Small Business Council (SBC) who this week handed over their report, Empowering small businesses to aspire, succeed ...
Extra Police officers are being deployed from Northland to Southland with the graduation of a new wing of recruits from the Royal New Zealand Police College. “The graduation of 78 constables today means that 1524 new constables have been deployed since the government took office,” says Police Minister Stuart Nash. ...
Ongoing drug-test sanctions contradicts Government’s rhetoric on drugs Reports that two-thirds of beneficiaries who fail drug tests are still having their benefit sanctioned contradicts the Government’s so-called health approach to drugs. Auckland ...
An Auckland Homelessness Collective is optimistic extra government support for sustaining tenancies signals a commitment to a multi-pronged approach to tackling homelessness. ...
Wanaka-based trust ONE New Zealand will be hosting six days of talks, workshops and hands-on activities with local and national experts to educate, inspire and enable grassroots action towards a sustainable future. ...
In last week’s episode of Politics in Full Sentences, David, Brooke and Ruwan discussed why Jacinda Ardern has been lecturing our friends overseas, why Andrew Little called ACT's three strikes law “fascism”, whether he will give prisoners the right to ...
“Community safety must be the paramount consideration when releasing an offender, and the only way for that to be achieved is for the offender to acknowledge their crimes.” ...
“District Health Boards are failing to foster a culture of distributed clinical leadership, despite its demonstrated benefits to the sector,” says Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS). ...
Ratepayers around Auckland were spitting out their morning coffees listening to Phil Goff’s incredible claims on breakfast radio today that this election is about ‘honesty’ and that Aucklanders can trust him on his promises. Auckland Ratepayers’ ...
The Hōkai Rangi plan for reducing Māori reoffending announced today fails to fulfil the Waitangi Tribunal’s recommendations, says justice organisation People Against Prisons Aotearoa. Minister Kelvin Davis announced the plan this morning, which aims ...
Waatea News at the invitation of the North Island Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency will exclusively broadcast the next Māori-led Inquiry into Oranga Tamariki starting today at 1pm. ...
Staff at the Ministry of Social Development say they are enthusiastic about the government’s $54 million investment in housing the homeless, with many describing it as a welcome change. ...
Today posters have gone up outside ANZ branches across New Zealand to expose ANZ’s sponsorship of an exclusive oil industry group, ‘The Petroleum Club’. The satirical posters play on ANZ’s recent ad campaigns, replacing the banks’ tagline ‘healthy ...
Imagine a country where children look forward to walking or cycling to school, parents arrive home safely, and the journeys we take for work or pleasure do more than leave us alive or uninjured, they also improve our lives. This is happening now in countries ...
Sunday, 18 August, 2019 - Environmental groups and well known New Zealanders are preparing to deliver a 55,000 strong petition to the steps of Parliament tomorrow, calling on the Government to protect the world’s smallest dolphin. ...
The Government’s proposed rescue plan must be strengthened because it is the last chance to save Māui dolphins from extinction and secure the future for Hector’s dolphins, Forest & Bird says. ...
Simon Shepherd: Roads, schools, hospitals, prisons, the building blocks that keep society functioning. And we don't have enough. It's called the infrastructure deficit and will be the focus of a major conference this coming week. The man charged with ...
New Zealand has been issued a stark challenge from Pacific leaders to dramatically upscale its action to address climate breakdown, Oxfam says, after a clear rallying cry from nations at this week’s Pacific Islands Forum. ...
Support for Recreational Dope Going ‘Up in Smoke’ Family First NZ is welcoming yet another poll showing plummeting support for legalising cannabis in New Zealand. The Horizon Research poll shows support for legalising has plummeted from 60% last ...
The prospect of ending wider cannabis prohibition looks increasingly unlikely. Over the last nine months, the percentage of New Zealanders who would vote for legalising the personal use of cannabis has declined at a near linear rate of around 10% per ...
“It’s disappointing that news out of the United States of hospitalisations linked to illegal street drugs is somehow seen as relevant to the New Zealand vaping scene,” says Ben Pryor, Director of Alt New Zealand – the largest Kiwi-owned vaping company. ...
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) welcomes the successful passing of Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill through parliament, by the New Zealand Government. ...
Today’s news from the Electoral Commission has provided the party with the clarity it was seeking around use of the word “Coalition” being used as the brand name of the party. ...
A recently released Otago University study has provided further evidence that low-quality housing is a significant problem in Aotearoa. This has prompted the Chief Executive of the Association of Consulting Engineers (ACENZ) Paul Evans to question “why ...
With the BNZ-Business NZ PMI signaling manufacturing is contracting , the Government needs to seriously consider tax relief, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union . ...
The New Zealand Maori Council has called for an overhaul of the Public Services executive ranks as the Corrections debacle shows mis-management and incompetence at the highest level. Matthew Tukaki, Executive Director of the New Zealand Maori Council has said ...
Findings from the 2018 New Zealand Consumer Survey have been released and the results are in; 48 per cent of respondents consider their purchases based on how ethically employees are treated. ...
The responsibility for the fact that Westland Milk Products is now in the hands of an overseas conglomerate 25% owned by the Chinese government can be laid fair and square at our government's doorstep. ...
As Fonterra is projecting multi million dollar losses for the second year in a row, it is clear the writing is on the wall for dairy as more and more Kiwis turn to plant milks. 22nd August is International Plant Milk Day and there is now a different plant ...
The $65,000 granted to Interislander so it can install electric vehicle chargers on its ferries is the most absurd waste of money yet to be delivered by the “Low Emissions” vehicle fund, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. ...
Wellingtonians will have the chance to hear international child rights experts from Ireland, Scotland and Samoa speak at the Making Child Rights Real in Aotearoa New Zealand seminar to be held in the city on Wednesday 21 August. ...
Paul Evans, Chief Executive of the Association of Consulting Engineers (ACENZ), is advocating a balanced approach to the development of productive land. ...
CPAG (Child Poverty Action Group) says that new research from the University of Otago provides a solid foundation for why the Government must not delay instating a comprehensive Warrant of Fitness for tenanted homes in Aotearoa-New Zealand, and ...
The Independent Police Conduct Authority has found that an officer drove carelessly during a pursuit and that this was the primary cause of a collision with a motorcycle that injured the rider. ...
Responding to the Prime Minister’s commitment of $150 million in funding for climate change response in the Pacific, New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says: “It is no secret that many Pacific nations lack serious oversight when it ...
AUT research not only shows an increase in political affiliation, but that candidates affiliated to a central political party are more likely to win seats in Auckland local government. ...
On the 23rd of August School Strike NZ will join Ollie Langridge in his 100th day of sitting outside of New Zealand Parliament calling for the government to declare a climate emergency. School Strike 4 Climate NZ also demand that Parliament acknowledge ...
You have stood up for what is fair, and I am sure you will speak for over 7 million people who have been muted and rendered voiceless in Indian occupied Kashmir for more than a 10 days now. I am writing to bring to your notice the plight of Kashmiri ...
In the last 10 months alone, 11 petitions have been delivered to Parliament calling for medicines to be funded by Pharmac. Today, another nine petitions have been launched by Patient Voice Aotearoa (PVA) members asking that life changing, saving and extending ...
When we were first working to get Miscanthus approved for import into New Zealand, the Environmental Risk Management Authority (ERMA) waived the fee for their work because they thought that having Miscanthus in New Zealand was so very much in the ...
PHARMAC’s recent decision to fund two additional drugs from December this year has been widely welcomed by patients and the general public alike. The drugs, Kadcyla and Ibrance, are used in the treatment of advanced lung and breast cancers and will ...
Animal rights organisation SAFE is urging the Government to include experts and advocates from outside the agriculture industry on its newly announced winter crop grazing taskforce. ...
The Government’s plans to prohibit housing on ‘productive’ farmland will serve as yet another regulatory tax on housing, and is a shameful breach of Jacinda Ardern’s promise to fix housing supply, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union . ...
The latest round of the Ethnic Communities Development Fund opens today, supporting projects that grow the leadership and capability of ethnic groups, improve cultural understanding, and ensure our ethnic communities are a vibrant and celebrated part ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is warning of the dangers of hiking excise tax, in response to calls from a former Prime Minister for stronger action on alcohol harm. Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, “It seems inevitable ...
Is a second attempt at merging parts of Stuff and NZ Herald owner NZME planned, with a bid for political intervention to help the media industry? Tim Murphy reports. ...
How the NZ Superfund has drummed up $15 trillion to put pressure on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube giants over livestreaming following the Christchurch terror attacks. ...
Kiwi Jamie Greene has established herself as one of the fittest women on the globe in the fast-growing gruelling sport of CrossFit. And she wants to thank her runner sister for helping drive her. ...
Newsroom is delighted to welcome the University of Otago as our third university partner for the IdeasRoom section exploring issues of importance to society and the country’s future. ...
Who should decide how many more tourists fly into Queenstown and Wanaka? Journalist and former district councillor, Cath Gilmour, argues local residents should, not the airlines. ...
Phil Goff has kept a low profile compared with his headline-grabbing opponent in the early stages of the Auckland mayoral campaign. Hayden Donnell heads along to see if the mayor can win back the spotlight at his campaign launch.The Spinoff local election coverage is made possible thanks to ...
Backed by businessman Eric Watson and launched in a blaze of publicity, online trader Fashbae disappeared almost as quickly as it arrived. Now its founder is traversing the globe in a jeep. Business editor Maria Slade tries to keep up with events.It had it all. A suave multi-millionaire investor and ...
Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk Rioting broke out in Manokwari, West Papua, today as local people – mostly university students – protested against racial abuse of Papuan students in East Java, reports TheJakarta Post. The protesters blocked a number of major streets in the city this morning, cutting down ...
By Ben Bilua in Suva Multimedia skills and innovation are key to adapting to the changing media landscape, said US academic Professor Debora Wenger as newsmakers around the world continue to grapple with challenges arising from the transformation of technology and social media. Speaking to journalists at a regional ...
The new RBNZ seems to crave the limelight and be known for advocacy of new causes, and that has not impressed macroeconomics professor Robert MacCulloch. ...
The prime minister won't meet with Ihumātao protesters before Thursday - the deadline given by the group to stop them marching to her Auckland electorate office. ...
Cabinet ministers will discuss possible law changes to what mail can be received and sent by prisoners, after the accused Christchurch gunman was able to send mail to supporters. ...
The Catholic and Anglican churches are still considering quashing legal agreements that may prevent abuse survivors from giving evidence to the inquiry investigating historical abuse in care. ...
The new joint from the team behind one of Wellington’s favourite craft beer bars is dedicated to minimal-intervention, organic wine – and more exciting things are coming to the heritage building it’s housed in.Before the Cadbury factory opened in Dunedin in 1930, New Zealanders ate Cadbury chocolate made in England. ...
Alex Casey chats to Bree Tomasel about hosting Celebrity Treasure Island NZ, farting in the ZM studio and going viral on the regular. The most important thing you need to know about Bree Tomasel is not the fact that she peed her pants during Celebrity Treasure Island NZ, but the glee ...
Dr Bryce EdwardsAnalysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – The election race is on. The nominations process for local government positions has now closed, and the political campaign is officially underway. But does the public care? Will many of us even vote for any of the various mayoral or council ...
At Eden Park on Saturday night, the Wallabies were on the receiving end of a ruthless players’ revenge, writes Scotty StevensonThe rain came. It always seems to at Eden Park, just as the Wallabies warm up on the pitch, dreaming of ending a drought. It came from the west, the ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.Local government Michael Fallow (Stuff): Your council – what’s its job description? Dileepa Fonseka and ...
Protesters occupying land at Ihumātao will begin a four-hour hikoi to Mt Albert on Thursday to present a petition calling on the Prime Minister to visit the land. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jamie Walvisch, Lecturer, Monash University This morning an Extinction Rebellion protester was arrested after hanging from a rope over the William Jolly Bridge in Brisbane, blocking all lanes to peak hour traffic. And earlier this month in Brisbane, more than 70 climate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Jobson, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology, Monash University Many of us enjoy writing in a diary, reading autobiographies or nostalgically reflecting with others about past times. Why is remembering our past so important? Are there downsides? And what can we do ...
Roll Red Roll is a brutal, painfully illuminating documentary on the Steubenville High School rape case, a shocking crime that made headlines worldwide. Emily Writes reviews. This review discusses rape and sexual violenceAugust 11, 2012: two teenage boys rape an unconscious teenage girl as two of their peers watch and ...
By RNZ Pacific Tuvalu’s Prime Minister has condemned the Australian Prime Minister’s conduct at last week’s Pacific Islands Forum, calling Scott Morrison’s attitude “unfortunate” and “neo-colonial,” and questioning Australia’s future in the 18-member body. In an interview with RNZ on Sunday, Enele Sopoaga also threatened to pull Tuvaluan labour from ...
The second hui of the Māori-led inquiry into Oranga Tamariki takes place in Hamilton today. Newsroom, in partnership with Radio Waatea, are broadcasting it live from 1pm. ...
Prolific, award-winning Palmerston North poet Paula Harris somehow manages to be stroppy and properly vulnerable all at once. Here, she writes about her first slam competition – and why she cried all the way home. I am old enough to have given birth to most of the people here.Sure, there’s a ...
High speed rail links between cities could play a massive role in revitalising regional New Zealand, says a visiting transport infrastructure expert. Professor Andrew McNaughton spoke to Alex Braae. Imagine commuting from Hamilton to Auckland, and it only taking an hour to get there. It’s a vision of how the right ...
On the good days, riding a bike is the best. But in Auckland there aren’t nearly enough of those days, and unless decision makers take urgent action, that’s not going to change.This piece originally appeared on Bike AucklandMy first bike crash in central Auckland happened on Symonds Street. I was ...
It's not since 1989 that a mayoralty campaign in the southern city has been so unpredictable - a record 14 candidates have put their names forward. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Mills, Hon Senior Lecturer, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney On the morning of the last Monday in April, 2019, federal election officials opened the doors of more than 500 pre-poll voting centres around Australia, and waited for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Veronica Alfano, Research Fellow, Australian Catholic University Memorising poetry was once common in classrooms. But it has, for the most part, gone out of style. There are good reasons for this. Memorisation can clash with creativity and analytical thought. Rote learning can ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darren Paul Fisher, Head of Directing, Department of Film, Screen and Creative Media, Bond University What do J.J. Abrams, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Shonda Rhimes, David Lynch, Aaron Sorkin, Donald Glover, Jenji Kohan, Jordan Peele, Tina Fey, and Joss Whedon have in common? They ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Mayors launch bids to return in Auckland and Wellington, Hamilton’s skyline could change significantly, and support for cannabis legalisation plummets in poll.Two incumbent mayors have launched their re-election campaigns over the weekend, with a bigger fight on their hands than ...
MediaWorks has been lobbying the Government to turn TVNZ 1 into a non-commercial channel to help stem its own financial bleeding. Frustrated, and getting nowhere, it’s decided to change tack. ...
Open Mike 19/01/2018 
by Philip Ferguson This weekend just past marks the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, the most famous of the great 1960s music festivals. It was held over the weekend (Friday-Monday) of August 15-18, 1969. Woodstock was a highpoint of the US ‘counter-culture’, and also the beginning of its end. When exploring the ...16 hours ago
Last week, Australia sabotaged the Pacific Forum by opposing action on climate change. Their Deputy Prime Minister followed that up by saying that Pacific Peoples could always pick Australian fruit - just as they had done in the era of blackbirding. And now, that arrogant, tone-deaf approach has drawn a ...16 hours ago
In the previous two posts, I laid out the context and set the theoretical framework to answer a question: whether indigenous economies should take the LEAP. This final part outlines ways to conceive of practicing mana motuhake within the existing legal system by carving out special jurisdictions that enable Indigenous ...2 days ago
Fully Informed? Labour’s 2017 promises raised expectations that were little short of revolutionary. Unfortunately, they were never adequately shaken through the fiscal sieve. The hard economic work was not done – and it shows. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s critics have long complained that her grasp of the way the New ...2 days ago
You cannot expect to pound communities into the ground day after day, year after year, decade after decade and just expect them to take it lying down. There’s a point at which the place will explode. And we’re faced with some very big ructions on both sides of the Atlantic ...3 days ago
4 days ago
Going Down? Once truth and propaganda become fused in the minds of one’s followers, debate and discussion become redundant. If one’s opponents are all outrageous liars, then engaging with them in any way is pointless. Rather than waste its time, a political party should, instead, target all its messages at ...4 days ago
We need to fundamentally reframe our systems settings to address the drivers causing and underpinning inequality; structural change in systems especially financial. The Equality Network Hui was held in Wellington on 27 June 2019. The hui covered important topics such as child poverty; a living wage; taxation; public health; mental ...5 days ago
The views-per-page for some of my recent postings:Depressing, isn't it? Provide thoughtful and wise commentary on the mainstream of British politics and no-one notices. Make a passing reference to Tommy DICKHEAD Robinson in a thread title and you get hundreds of views. Write something about anti-Semitism and you get another ...6 days ago
The government has announced plans to move the Treaty of Waitangi and other taonga to a new site. Great news! So where are they going? Right next to the old one:The new plan will see a new 22,000-square-metre archive built on the former site of Defence House - the former ...6 days ago
Back in June, StatsNZ went public about a project to track population data on an hourly level by using people's cellphones. It wasn't as bad as it initially looked - they were receiving no individual data, only counts by suburb - but there was still a huge consent problem, so ...6 days ago
Most economists agree that a currently slowing economy could do with some stimulus – and they would also agree that there is no shortage of infrastructure projects which could be brought to productive fruition with help from that stimulus. In view of the current practice of sub-contracting economic policy decisions ...6 days ago
I did an interview on the TVNZ Breakfast Show about the situation in Hong Kong. I tried to frame the issue as a collective action problem between two sides with very different end games. The video is here. Because of time constraints we could not discuss the fact that the ...6 days ago
Image Credit: Wild Rose College A new study reporting the ranges of values for kidney and liver parameters in a healthy population is being actively misrepresented by anti-fluoride campaigners. The Fluoride Action Network’s (FAN) latest ... 6 days ago
Alone, Alone. All, All Alone: Will it be a good or a bad thing, when humanity’s bright blue spacecraft is stricken by the civilisation-destroying problem of Climate Change, that no Huston Control will be standing-by to rescue the crew?“WE HAVE A PROBLEM, HUSTON.” These were the words used by the ...7 days ago
Divided Loyalties: Can the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, be relied upon? That’s what the boys and girls at Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon needed to be reassured about. Because, from the perspective of Washington, it’s looking more and more like Jacinda Ardern and her Labour Party comrades are getting ready ...1 week ago
This handy Queer Theory Glossary is from thetranswidow.com In case you’ve had trouble keeping up with the spate of new queer theory terms, here’s a handy glossary for your reference. Queer – A straight person with an interesting haircut. Non-binary/genderqueer – A chubby young female, typically 16-28, who has ...1 week ago
The winter grazing issue is becoming a highly sensitised one that I hope will not become so politicised that it delays solutions and results in the suicides of some very stressed farmers.Winter grazing has hit the headlines after a determined campaign, including the release of a video of some very ...1 week ago
The Green Part has been accused of lack of transparency in two recent situations. The first was the claimed media lockdown during Green's annual conference and the second was Julie Ann Genter's refusal to release a letter she had sent to Phil Twyford.I do get frustrated when journalist's succumb to ...2 weeks ago
Blowing-Up The House: Is Winston Peters planning to put himself at the head of all those New Zealanders who refuse to countenance the Coalition Government caving-in to the Ihumatao protesters? The most effective way of doing this would be to issue Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern with an ultimatum. If she ...2 weeks ago
A Cult, that many actors, politicians, and those with a low IQ are joining is sweeping across civilisation, with one main intention – ending humans reign on Earth. Starting as a well meaning though deeply flawed theory, that the Earth was warming due to mankind emitting greenhouse gasses, it was ...2 weeks ago
There is a military phrase: “Full spectrum dominance”. It refers to the all-encompassing policy to dominate across all spheres of war. Lately, that has come to include the internet – in other words, cyberwarfare initiatives. That is in addition to land, sea, air and the like. Now, if ...2 weeks ago
The IMF issued a Report on the state of the Economy as it is at present. Some of it points out significant issues that certainly warrant attention, but that we know already exist. Some of it is very much tied to the very obvious context of global concerns, that everyone ...2 weeks ago
I'm glad to see the Lib Dems won.I had a moment of terror yesterday thinking that the Conservatives might cling on, due to a combination of Johnson's elevation to the premiership, the apparent uselessness of the Lib Dem candidate (who had failed to be elected in other constituencies) and the ...2 weeks ago
. . Current Leader of the National Party, Simon Bridges gave the usual rah-rah speech to the Loyal & Faithful in Christchurch today (27 July). With National’s party polling and his own personal popularity sliding steadily in the polls, Mr Bridges has not much left to reverse his fortunes. ...2 weeks ago
Those concerned for Langridge’s wellbeing say they hope he’ll change his mind when he sees the ocean coming. The protester who has vowed to stand outside Parliament every day until the Government announces a climate emergency says he accepts that his quest will most likely end in drowning. Ollie Langridge, ...3 weeks ago
Opportunities to dodge tax are shrinking with the completion of a new tax agreement with Switzerland, Revenue Minister Stuart Nash announced today. Mr Nash and the Swiss Ambassador David Vogelsanger have today signed documents to update the double tax agreement (DTA). The previous DTA was signed in 1980. “Double tax ...2 weeks ago
Ongoing drug-test sanctions contradicts Government’s rhetoric on drugs Reports that two-thirds of beneficiaries who fail drug tests are still having their benefit sanctioned contradicts the Government’s so-called health approach to drugs. Auckland ...11 hours ago
Is a second attempt at merging parts of Stuff and NZ Herald owner NZME planned, with a bid for political intervention to help the media industry? Tim Murphy reports. ...1 hour ago
How the NZ Superfund has drummed up $15 trillion to put pressure on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube giants over livestreaming following the Christchurch terror attacks. ...2 hours ago
Kiwi Jamie Greene has established herself as one of the fittest women on the globe in the fast-growing gruelling sport of CrossFit. And she wants to thank her runner sister for helping drive her. ...2 hours ago
Anna Rawhiti-Connell has no desire to see any further degradation of the news media in New Zealand, but something has to change. ...2 hours ago
Newsroom is delighted to welcome the University of Otago as our third university partner for the IdeasRoom section exploring issues of importance to society and the country’s future. ...2 hours ago
Who should decide how many more tourists fly into Queenstown and Wanaka? Journalist and former district councillor, Cath Gilmour, argues local residents should, not the airlines. ...2 hours ago
Phil Goff has kept a low profile compared with his headline-grabbing opponent in the early stages of the Auckland mayoral campaign. Hayden Donnell heads along to see if the mayor can win back the spotlight at his campaign launch. The Spinoff local election coverage is made possible thanks to ...2 hours ago
Backed by businessman Eric Watson and launched in a blaze of publicity, online trader Fashbae disappeared almost as quickly as it arrived. Now its founder is traversing the globe in a jeep. Business editor Maria Slade tries to keep up with events.It had it all. A suave multi-millionaire investor and ...2 hours ago
China is looming large over Hong Kong, and residents know they must fight back now. ...2 hours ago
Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk Rioting broke out in Manokwari, West Papua, today as local people – mostly university students – protested against racial abuse of Papuan students in East Java, reports The Jakarta Post. The protesters blocked a number of major streets in the city this morning, cutting down ...7 hours ago
By Ben Bilua in Suva Multimedia skills and innovation are key to adapting to the changing media landscape, said US academic Professor Debora Wenger as newsmakers around the world continue to grapple with challenges arising from the transformation of technology and social media. Speaking to journalists at a regional ...9 hours ago
The new RBNZ seems to crave the limelight and be known for advocacy of new causes, and that has not impressed macroeconomics professor Robert MacCulloch. ...9 hours ago
Pharmac’s model and budget is under intense scrutiny, as the Government prepares to announce its interim cancer action plan. ...10 hours ago
The prime minister won't meet with Ihumātao protesters before Thursday - the deadline given by the group to stop them marching to her Auckland electorate office. ...11 hours ago
After alleged Christchurch terrorist wrote to a supporter, Jacinda Ardern says our laws may need an update for the digital age. ...12 hours ago
The Commerce Commission's first market study will wade into the complex fuel market - here's what you need to know. ...13 hours ago
The new joint from the team behind one of Wellington’s favourite craft beer bars is dedicated to minimal-intervention, organic wine – and more exciting things are coming to the heritage building it’s housed in.Before the Cadbury factory opened in Dunedin in 1930, New Zealanders ate Cadbury chocolate made in England. ...14 hours ago
A new five-year strategy comes with a new prison population reduction target from the minister. ...14 hours ago
Alex Casey chats to Bree Tomasel about hosting Celebrity Treasure Island NZ, farting in the ZM studio and going viral on the regular. The most important thing you need to know about Bree Tomasel is not the fact that she peed her pants during Celebrity Treasure Island NZ, but the glee ...15 hours ago
The way things are going, Germany may soon be 'the sick man of Europe' again. ...15 hours ago
15 hours ago
At Eden Park on Saturday night, the Wallabies were on the receiving end of a ruthless players’ revenge, writes Scotty StevensonThe rain came. It always seems to at Eden Park, just as the Wallabies warm up on the pitch, dreaming of ending a drought. It came from the west, the ...15 hours ago
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jamie Walvisch, Lecturer, Monash University This morning an Extinction Rebellion protester was arrested after hanging from a rope over the William Jolly Bridge in Brisbane, blocking all lanes to peak hour traffic. And earlier this month in Brisbane, more than 70 climate ...16 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Jobson, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology, Monash University Many of us enjoy writing in a diary, reading autobiographies or nostalgically reflecting with others about past times. Why is remembering our past so important? Are there downsides? And what can we do ...16 hours ago
Roll Red Roll is a brutal, painfully illuminating documentary on the Steubenville High School rape case, a shocking crime that made headlines worldwide. Emily Writes reviews. This review discusses rape and sexual violenceAugust 11, 2012: two teenage boys rape an unconscious teenage girl as two of their peers watch and ...17 hours ago
By RNZ Pacific Tuvalu’s Prime Minister has condemned the Australian Prime Minister’s conduct at last week’s Pacific Islands Forum, calling Scott Morrison’s attitude “unfortunate” and “neo-colonial,” and questioning Australia’s future in the 18-member body. In an interview with RNZ on Sunday, Enele Sopoaga also threatened to pull Tuvaluan labour from ...17 hours ago
New Zealand's economy is not headed for recession, ASB chief economist Nick Tuffley says. ...18 hours ago
The second hui of the Māori-led inquiry into Oranga Tamariki takes place in Hamilton today. Newsroom, in partnership with Radio Waatea, are broadcasting it live from 1pm. ...19 hours ago
We continue our series on bookstores around New Zealand as Wilma van den Bosch explains how she opened Petronella's in Lake Tekapo. ...19 hours ago
Prolific, award-winning Palmerston North poet Paula Harris somehow manages to be stroppy and properly vulnerable all at once. Here, she writes about her first slam competition – and why she cried all the way home. I am old enough to have given birth to most of the people here.Sure, there’s a ...19 hours ago
The country's wood processors say the international log price war and protected overseas economies are crippling the New Zealand trade. ...20 hours ago
On the good days, riding a bike is the best. But in Auckland there aren’t nearly enough of those days, and unless decision makers take urgent action, that’s not going to change.This piece originally appeared on Bike AucklandMy first bike crash in central Auckland happened on Symonds Street. I was ...21 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Mills, Hon Senior Lecturer, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney On the morning of the last Monday in April, 2019, federal election officials opened the doors of more than 500 pre-poll voting centres around Australia, and waited for ...23 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Hart, Senior Research Fellow, University of Melbourne Last week, federal health minister Greg Hunt announced that more than 60,000 Australians will be asked about their mental health and well-being as part of the Intergenerational Health and Mental Health Study. The mental ...23 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Veronica Alfano, Research Fellow, Australian Catholic University Memorising poetry was once common in classrooms. But it has, for the most part, gone out of style. There are good reasons for this. Memorisation can clash with creativity and analytical thought. Rote learning can ...23 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darren Paul Fisher, Head of Directing, Department of Film, Screen and Creative Media, Bond University What do J.J. Abrams, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Shonda Rhimes, David Lynch, Aaron Sorkin, Donald Glover, Jenji Kohan, Jordan Peele, Tina Fey, and Joss Whedon have in common? They ...23 hours ago
The inverted yield curve is to economists what Voldemort was to Harry Potter - the dark lord whose name should never be mentioned. ...23 hours ago
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Mayors launch bids to return in Auckland and Wellington, Hamilton’s skyline could change significantly, and support for cannabis legalisation plummets in poll.Two incumbent mayors have launched their re-election campaigns over the weekend, with a bigger fight on their hands than ...1 day ago
MediaWorks has been lobbying the Government to turn TVNZ 1 into a non-commercial channel to help stem its own financial bleeding. Frustrated, and getting nowhere, it’s decided to change tack. ...1 day ago
The video of the apache helicopter crew laughing as they murder unarmed civillians in Baghdad that was leaked by Chelsea Manning was an event that forever changed my view of what collateral damage actually meant.
It is well known that information is power so unsurprising that elites strive to control the public narrative and unsurprising that Manning paid such a high price. To my mind Obamas finest act was one of his last when he commuted her 35 year sentence.
Manning has just cofirmed her candidacy for the Maryland senate race as a Democrat against the incumbent Ben Cardin. As you may expect this has gone down like a lead balloon. Partly this is because of the realisation that due to her name recognition Cardin will have to spend money rather than just sleepwalk to victory.
So how will Cardin rise to the Manning challenge? Early indications are that the attack lines will be Manning as Russian puppet leaking to an arm of Russian intelligence (wikileaks).
So I guess that answers the question of whether with the whole Russia thing we are dealing with WMD or McCarthyism. The perception of an evil enemy has been created and now all dissenting views get tarred with the evil enemy brush.
I link a twitter post of Zac Petkanas relating to his views on Chelsea Manning and also a Hill article explaining his position and role at the DNC where he leads the narrative of Trump as Putin puppet
https://mobile.twitter.com/Zac_Petkanas/status/952982355228221443
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/315980-dems-continue-campaign-with-war-room-on-trump
The main reason manning’s candidacy has gone down like a lead balloon is that there is very strong support for the military by the US public and rightly or wrongly Manning is seen by many in the public as breaching the trust/treasonous and adding in the sex change in what is still a deeply conservative populace won’t help either.
Sorry for being unclear but I meant gone down like a lead balloon with the powerful not the general population. As regards the general population we will soon know their feelings about Manning
Ah OK – Will be interesting to see the public response in Maryland, I would expect the general public response will be less than enthusiastic.
I think you’ll be surprised.
Trump is where he is because of his anti-entrenched power rhetoric. He’s then gone on to entrench the power of the rich even more.
Manning actually did something against that entrenched power. And the USians do support their troops and they support people doing the Right Thing at great risk to themselves.
Cardin is a solid left Dem with a 50 year service record in elected Maryland offices. He’ll have no problem.
Check his Wikipedia entry for the actual record.
Yep I do sense another over hyped ‘moment of truth’ from certain sectors is on its way.
Partly this is because of the realisation that due to her name recognition Cardin will have to spend money rather than just sleepwalk to victory.
Cardin’s dealings with AIPAC should ensure money’s not a problem.
And to go alongside your Petkanas twitter stream, we have Neera Tanden, who’s apparently the president of the largest Democratic Party think tank in Washington re-tweeting :-
“Senator Cardin authored and released a 200 page masterpiece on Russian influence in western elections. Suddenly he has a primary from Kremlin stooge Assange’s Wikileaks primary source Chelsea Manning. The Kremlin plays the extreme left to swing elections. Remember that.”
The commentary on that from Greenwald runs…
The benefits of PPP’s…. NOT
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jan/18/taxpayers-to-foot-200bn-bill-for-pfi-contracts-audit-office
And to put it in a new Zealand context, one word
Fletchers
Corporate Welfare Graeme $400 million for dodgy repairs supervised by Fletcher’s.
Casino Capitalism the Casino Contract etc.
Another example of private sector “efficiency”
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/1027k-integrated-education
Although the private providers would probably argue that they were providing a “better”standard and environment for their customers.
How is the information in that article and example of efficiency or the lack thereof ?
The only “efficiency” I can see in the private education sector is in it’s ability to extract profit out of gullible RWNJs who can’t bear the thought of their little darlings being under the influence of the State system, least their poor wee minds be corrupted by alternative views to what they get at home.
Yes yes all good, but as I said above …
How is the information in that article and example of efficiency or the lack thereof ?
…. and of course its ability to exploit foreigners from the 3rd world – aided and abetted of course with a bureaucracy (a private and public partnership) designed to lie and cheat to anyone that comes into contact with it.
It’s almost like a Nigerian internet scam.
100% correct Save NZ.
National Party spin doctors (Joyce/(Hooten) was all about this PPP stuff then back as far as the 2014 election when this happend.
Listen at the closing statement from Hooten/Boag then.
http://www.thepaepae.com/matthew-hootons-assertions-re-the-prime-ministers-office/35076/
Now we need new Labour Coalition Government to investigate the past publicly broadcast allegations made by Matthew Hooten on Radio Live against the last National Government illegal activities.
“put these dead bones to rest”
Specifically Hooten began rolling the ball in a ‘lively discussion’ with Miscelle Boag the past secretary of the National party.
Mike Williams was also on this debate as the past secretary of the Labour Party also and ca recall this event during the investigations that should now take place.
The first allegation was against the then “Minister of transport” Steven SS Joyce, who was apparently involved with a shady deal to allow his close mate’ of his who was a roading contractor to secure a multi million dollar road contract.
But the roading contractor apparently got into a dispute with MBIE “Ministry of Bussiness Innovation and Employment” over the contract.
The allegations can be heard here on this link to the audio on from ‘Radio live’ at that time 31/8/14.
Mark Sainsbury hosts ‘Sunday morning’ at RadioLIVE with guests Michelle Boag, Mike Williams, Matthew Hooton & Duncan Garner 31 Aug 2014
MP3 file
http://www.thepaepae.com/matthew-hootons-assertions-re-the-prime-ministers-office/35076/
The debarkle was AT THE 28 minute mark near the end of this 40 minute debate between Hooten and Boag.
Mark Sainsbury says criminal charges should now be leveled and an investigastion needs to be made.
This whole sordid event of “collusion against all political opponents” including the 2011 attack on Labour MP leader Phil Goff, (the Hanover financial ruin debarkle) and all these resulting shady deals be investigated by the new Government over these allegations since National at this time failed to investigate these inappropriate events during the sacking of the ‘Justice Minister Judith Collins and how the SIS obtained the “leaked email” – documents to fire the Minister using Whaleoil Cameon Slater and his connection with the PM and Jason Ede and PM office Wayne Eagleson as Mike Williamson is also importantly also saying on this clip he believes “an investigation is warranted”.
Actually, that is the benefit of PPPs – massive profits for the private sector with all the risk and extra costs landing on the public generating even more profits for the private sector.
They’re just of no benefit to the public as they cost more and provide less service.
Yeah … It’s not so much a problem of PPPs as such as the corruption of the government that administers them. PPPs in Korea deliver as promised or get restructured, and their CEOs investigated by the prosecution service. Strangely this make them work very hard not to bilk the greater population, and to deliver services as promised or better. Those that don’t do not survive.
Part of the problem highlighted in that article is the collapse of the private provider to bankruptcy.
Now, when that happens should the government step in and prop up the business and thus rewarding failure?
Should it buy out the business as the 5th Labour government bought out Transrail for an extortionate amount and thus rewarding failure?
Or should it let the business collapse and the service it provides go with it? This way doesn’t rewarding failure as the other two do but then it’s a government service and is probably essential.
PPPs are essentially a way to get government guaranteed profits with all the risk taken up by the government.
If corruption is a problem, and it is, then we need better laws covering it and I can hear the screams from the RWNJs about that already. Of course, we should still put such laws and investigators in place.
Then there’s the question of if there’s even enough scale in the country for the services provided. Is there really enough ex-government road building in the country to warrant having multiple contractors available to do it? Or are those contractors solely there because the government contracts out road building? I’m pretty sure it’s the latter which means that it’s far more efficient to simply re-institute the MoW and have the government build all their own roads.
If the government is the sole client to keep contractors going then it’s better done directly by the government. Removes huge amounts of bureaucracy and the dead-weight loss of profit.
The Herald calls it ‘weird weather.’
Rachel Stewart asks if we’re worried yet.
Global temperature figures show 2017 one of world’s hottest years on record
In the Herald.
Want to be a vegan? Here’s how to do it, safely
https://www.npr.org/2010/08/02/128849908/food-for-thought-meat-based-diet-made-us-smarter
As we got more, our guts shrank because we didn’t need a giant vegetable processor any more. Our bodies could spend more energy on other things like building a bigger brain. Sorry, vegetarians, but eating meat apparently made our ancestors smarter — smart enough to make better tools, which in turn led to other changes, says Aiello.
And the health benefits of bigger brains and better tools include digging up fossil fuels, population explosion, climate change, increased lead in the enviroment, WMDs and genocide…
…and music…and art..and literature……… and mathematics….. and science..so not all bad stuff.
Ye Gods I’ve turned into PhilU
There’s some really bad music out there. Crap literature too.
You’ll get no argument from an old fart like me Robert – I was thinking of some of the less recent efforts.
No such thing as bad music, just music that doesn’t appeal to you.
Does it have the same effect on an individual in these advanced times, Puckish? If not, your argument is not worth a fig.
Probably.
We’re still evolving after all and each generation gets smarter.
Interesting link Draco! I found the comparison between average IQ scores of 1937 and 1997 (80 rising to 100) startling to say the least. *
There is also the well known factor of secular development within a population. While it is not clear that these trends are entirely the result of improving nutrition –
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/503084
* For those who are going to argue that this is a misunderstanding of IQ and the average is always 100 – go and read the link Draco provides to see how the 80 figure for 1937 is arrived at.
What about the pressing issue of saving life on this planet?
Does that not get factored in?
What would happen to these animals if everyone went vegan?
They would not be bred.
They should not be bred.
http://www.businessinsider.com/chicken-breed-sizes-and-weight-over-time-2014-11?IR=T
No Ed, what would happens to all those animals right now.
The, probably, hundreds of millions sheep, cows, pigs, chickens and deer
Would you have them all slaughtered and their carcasses not used
What would you do Ed
What do you think?
No …what do you think ?
Great attempt to divert rather than discuss the bigger issue.
And stupid as ever.
😆
Just don’t bother discussing the issue. It isn’t of importance to you.
Just like the morals of slavery weren’t important to the Pole and Norris families in Liverpool in the 1750s.
Look at my lovely strawman !
No Ed I don’t know what you think because I’m not a mind reader, thats why I’m asking what you would do and preferably if you could answer without the use of some random youtube that has nothing to do with the question
It is a hypothetical question as industrial farming is not going to stop this second.
Once it stops, it will be phased out.
Stop being a coward and answer what is a pretty straight forward question Ed
I do not answer hypothetical questions.
From memory you don’t answer any questions.
And cut the abuse.
I am over it from the right wing brigade who come on this site simply to disrupt debate.
🙄
“From memory you don’t answer any questions.”
Maybe this will help
https://drhealthbenefits.com/food-bevarages/meats/health-benefits-red-meat
Red Meat to Feed Brain
10. Improving Memory
Omega 3 including the food intake of the brain that plays an important role in the development of cell membranes in the brain and neurological system signal path. Medically proven omega 3 is able to optimise the development of the brain’s memory both in children and adults. This means that better met the needs of omega 3, especially for those who find it easy to forget.
PR fertilizer.
what i want to know is how vegans would stop nz being over run with wild deer,goats and pigs if we stopped hunting them ,because short of releasing a wolf breed and probably a big cat overrun we would be , spose we could just poison them.
Why don’t you become informed on the subject?
Here.
Watch this film.
[I’m putting you in premod until you stop spamming the site with videos. You’ve been warned about this multiple times before. If it happens again I will give a ban.
To be clear, spamming is when you start a conversation, someone asks you a reasonable question and instead of answering that you post a link to a long video and expect them to watch it. Or worse, in this case to a trailer that doesn’t in any way address the question.
Spamming is also posting multiple video links without context. Or just posting too many. If you are still unclear, ask and I will pick the comment up on Moderation. – weka]
moderation note for you to respond to.
Have seen it thank you.
I do think waghorn was deliberately taking the subject away from industrial farming.
And in future I shall ignore such diversions rather than post a video.
Got the message
Some more educational material
He’d probably suggest that government cullers are sent out to kill them but under no circumstances is the meat or skins to be harvested or maybe the animals are trapped and exported
Ahh poisoning…now theres a topic to get everyone going
By the by I don’t know if you’ve heard of this:
https://farmerassist.com.au/
but a NZ version is going to be trialled in Canterbury and then, if successful, rolled out to the rest of the country
Excellent! I hope they add in an animal welfare and there is enough flexibility to give away the meat but otherwise a bloody good idea.
PR meat and milk will be made in labs .
Farming will collapse as we know it.
is that you roger douglas.?
in general pests are in control from what i see. although since it became next to impossible to sell wild venison there numbers could are building up massively , i’m just dying for a vegen to tell me how we would deal with it if we stopped harvesting them.
rabbits are still a huge issue in the SI. Farmers now use 1080 and other poisonings are routine. It’s a requirement from some councils to control, so if you don’t poison you have to do something else. A scheme that matches landowners with shooters sounds very useful to me.
I agree about the vegan thing. Even putting farming aside for a minute, huge damage is done to ecosystems from rabbits alone. This is why DOC uses poison on the conservation lands, it’s very hard to regenerate native plants in many places because of the rabbits. I’ve seen places eaten back to bare soil and stone (although that’s also to do with previous land management practices like overgrazing and burnoffs). If we don’t act as the main predator of rabbits we are basically saying it’s ok for those ecosystems to be impoverished permanently, or to even die.
The health benefits of being a vegetarian/vegan are undeniable, that certain celebrities promote them is one of the poorest reasons to become vegetarian.
I would expect the largest barriers locally to becoming vegetarian/vegan in no particular order would be:
Cultural attitudes to food
Apathy/lazziness
Perceived cost
Perceived lack of choice/taste
Satisfaction with current diet
There is also the more urgent issue of saving our planet.
And the moral imperative of animal welfare.
It would be interesting to model the possible effect of everyone on the planet moving to veganism/vegetarian over the next decade and the effect on animal welfare and the ecosystem.
Animals in agriculture are not part of the ecosystem.
I believe they would be in most peoples understanding of an ecosystem.
Have you looked at how industrial farming works?
Yes I am aware of how the many facets of industrial farming.
So it is clearly not a normal natural food chain.
Is this an ecosystem?
Part of one …Yes.
There is also the more urgent issue of saving our planet.
And the moral imperative of animal welfare.
1. The planet doesn’t need saving. It’s indifferent to what happens to us.
2. Becoming vegetarian has little environmental benefit compared with just stopping the feeding of grain crops to livestock.
3. Animal welfare isn’t significantly improved by vegetarianism, it just changes the animals being killed.
1. Life on this planet.
2. Eating meat has a much bigger carbon footprint than eating plants.
3. Have you looked at how industrial farming operates?
The new baby of the Prime Minister will be a hunter gatherer, burning fossil fuels to go fishing and most likely will be very neo-liberal like the parents. Sadly for you there will be nothing you can do to stop this.
That is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
Life on this planet.
Life on this planet isn’t dependent on humans changing from omnivores to herbivores.
Eating meat has a much bigger carbon footprint than eating plants.
Under specific circumstances that aren’t essential to an omnivorous diet.
Have you looked at how industrial farming operates?
Have you? Where do you think all that soy comes from?
1. Life will go on. It may be somewhat reduced but it will go on as has happened before. Five times in fact with the greatest being the Permian Extinction Event which even managed to even wipe out a few insects. Took ten million years for the biodiversity to recover.
2. That probably has something to do with all the grains fed to the meat first rather than an actual law of physics.
3. Yes.
This is what the industrial farming system looks like.
What next? Working conditions are really bad in some foreign countries so we should give up work? You really should look up the meaning of “non-sequitur.”
Another attempt to divert from the issue.
Ed, you do understand that the human body requires nutrients which are best absorbed through eating certain animal products…
You understand that….right?
That is not true.
“A plant based diet has been shown in numerous studies to have big health benefits. In general, vegetarians live 6-9 years longer than non-vegetarians, and vegans longer again.
Many of today’s most common killer diseases are linked to diet. In particular, heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers and diseases resulting from obesity. The vegetarian diet can help in all these conditions.
Additionally, the vast array of vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients in plant-based foods offer significant health protection. There are still more plant compounds being discovered that are found to offer health benefits.”
http://www.vegetarian.org.nz/health-and-nutrition/benefits-of-a-plant-based-diet/
https://www.pcrm.org/health/medNews/vegetarians-live-longer
http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/2009_ADA_position_paper.pdf
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/89/5/1627S.full
And these……
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/70/3/516s.short
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8bdd/e18a9b0eab9dd65a74dcfa4909630a84e671.pdf
Widen your reading..
Take of the blinkers first…
Enthusiasts for a particular diet or medicinal drug often promote the idea of “lower death rate from killer disease X.” They usually skip over the question of whether there’s any difference in all-cause mortality, usually because this:
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/103/1/218
Conclusions: United Kingdom–based vegetarians and comparable nonvegetarians have similar all-cause mortality. Differences found for specific causes of death merit further investigation. [my emphasis]
You are part of the problem blocking a no meat world.
So are you meatsack.
You have no idea what my meat intake is.
For some reason Kenneth Williams seems appropriate here
I shouldn’t lol, but I did
The classics never go out of fashion
If you dare question these right wingers thinking you get abuse.
Remember.
“All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. ”
Arthur Schopenhauer.
Actual cost (especially when you include spoilage), the huge hurdle to adapt (I’ve involuntarily vomited nearly every vegetable I’ve ever eaten). But sure, for those who can afford the mental, physical, and financial toll – or who don’t have it – good on them.
Do you also gag on grains? Puke over pulses? Barf after bananas and hurl on hummus?
The health benefits of being a vegetarian/vegan are undeniable, that certain celebrities promote them is one of the poorest reasons to become vegetarian.
Two things:
1. Being a vegan is detrimental to your health – you have to work pretty hard at managing your diet to maintain even a semblance of good health as a vegan, which is one reason people tend to drop it after a while.
2. The health benefits of being a vegetarian require context. Yes, being a vegetarian is way healthier than a standard western diet of refined carbs and fat, but that has little to do with meat consumption or the lack of it. The typical Masai warrior of a few hundred years ago rarely ate a vegetable but could snap your typical vegetarian like a twig.
Completely untrue. I quote from the article I posted at 4.
“There are numerous health benefits associated with plant based diets — lower body weights, reduced risk of developing some types of cancer, reduced risk of heart disease and diabetes and a longer lifespan.”
Watch this as well
“There are numerous health benefits associated with plant based diets — lower body weights, reduced risk of developing some types of cancer, reduced risk of heart disease and diabetes and a longer lifespan.”
Compared with the high-carb standard western diet, yes. But lots of us non-vegetarians don’t eat that diet. There are no health benefits for us in a vegetarian diet, just crappier food and extra work to get decent nutrition.
Exactly.
+2.
Lots of vegans have health problems after the first few years. I’m sure some people can do ok on vegan diets long term, although we don’t know how that plays out over the really long time frames. Most people need animal products in their diet in some form.
Ahh, a Herald article that everyone can complain about
New Zealand’s first man receives welfare check
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11977607
A title designed to lead to confusion over if the First Man is receiving public money, but it actually being a fluff piece on Clark Gayford so people can get upset about low level news designed to have positive news about our lovely PM (whilst ignoring ow the previous PM’s got the same quite a lot)
Not a welfare cheque though ;p. Also pretty sure welfare cheques don’t exist, that you must have a bank account.
God what an eyesore, did the architect reuse plans from the early 1990’s? What a shithole it looks like “Albany on sea” for the ‘fast tracked’ America’s cup.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11977653
If only normal people got such benefits as fast tracking, but if it comes to billionaires, hobbies and sports then… all hands on board from taxpayers money, stealing the harbour and fast track consenting of an eyesore. Couldn’t they at least design something that looks architecturally sophisticated?
I guess it is a slight step up from the shed 10 efforts/Cloud that bares no relationship to the harbour at all or each building, and has become a knic knack/bad experiences ghetto, that Aucklander’s keep away from.
Another wasted opportunity where corporates and politicians with little imagination and skills siphon off taxpayer money and resources with crap ideas and designers to make a dollar for some corporate enterprise or grab the limelight for themselves, while pretending it will have some use for the wider public later.
Some good public spaces in Auckland, Auckland Art gallery, The tank farm areas and Ponsonby central… all those areas humming day and night, not the ghetto’s that other spaces become.
lprent
I am thinking that you need to think about moderation and discuss with the other mods to find some way to manage it better. There are obvious cases of keeping trolls who want to upset , divide, sneer diminish not disagree and discuss.
It would be a shame to lose the interesting minds that come here and have helped make TS the blog it is. I think it is time to democratise the moderation. I also think
that regular writers with something to say should be able to be paused quietly when in the midst of some long obssession about the usual suspects. And let’s not have onerous PC chastisements. You are all clever buggers, you should be able to come up with a rewritten treatise for mods. The terms under which we operate everything now are changing and we have found we have to be adaptable to stay up with the flow. What is important to you, and I think having concerned, sincere, thoughtful, practical and kindly people who try to be literate and try to use the modern systems online must be, and surely you want to keep them coming and supporting the site or you could lose this.
It seems to me we all are in a slow war. The French Revolution was bloody and dramatic, this is slower but is impacting all the same, and the nobs are trying to turn the revolution over, get their advantages and prominence back. We are getting the let them eat cake while they sleep in the cars and drink themselves silly with our welfare money stuff. We are like WW2 Resistance, who were trained to be fast thinkers and practical doers, and flexible, and were also prepared to die because what they were fighting for was freedom from tyranny.
I think that you and the mods are important for whatever we are fighting for, the exact vision of which is unclear because of fast moving events, but the knowledge of what is already happening and what is likely to occur, should spur us on. Let all good men come to the aid of the party. All sounds a bit hysterical doesn’t it, but if we don’t stimulate those brain cells and get through to others, we are on a hiding to nowhere. TS is useful, good, and needs some changes to keep it in its premier place, and it’s your baby. So could you and the others consider changing mod practices which were drawn up early on, but the baby is now an enquiring, questioning teen ready for a Bar Mitzvah or something like that coming of age recognition.
[from the Policy, one of the reasons for moderating,
Abusing the sysop or post writers on their own site – including telling us how to run our site or what we should write. This is viewed as self-evident stupidity, and should be added as a category to the Darwin Awards.
Maybe have a rethink about how you are framing your comments here. Also, the amount of work you are saying we should be doing. You could try educating yourself about how moderation and writing works here and why it is the way it is before venturing into telling us what we should be doing – weka]
100% greywarshark; well said,
“you need to think about moderation and discuss with the other mods to find some way to manage it better. There are obvious cases of keeping trolls who want to upset , divide, sneer diminish not disagree and discuss.”
Agreed fully greywarshark, these trolls add nothing of any value to the uplifting of our health/well-being/quality-of life for all here and just put others off, which is their only role sadly.
Over at Martyn Bradbury’s ‘The daily blog’ he has heavily sanctioned these trolls already.
So we need to be mindful of keeping the discussion focused on the article we all contribute to assist the new labour coalition in making our country better to live in with a far better enjoyment of life.
Hope we get rid of these National Party disruptive trolls finally.
My lovely echo chamber !
Red Alert 2.0 🙂
Perhaps Lynn could appoint Clare Curran overlord and chief moderator of this site.
She might be a bit busy at the moment, I’d suggest T. Mallard
Oh the fun we’d have !
As long as your not a racist puke, or dump your hate on people Puckish rogue. I don’t care what you say.
That said, your girl Denise, how you feeling about that slacker? Just another lazy tory mp we all got to pay for? Or do you have good feelings about the torpid lunch eater?
What are you going on about?
Come on Bro, your racist puke comment you made, which got you banned.
Are you not a national party supporter? I’m sure most of your comments have been supporting the last government, am I wrong?
I get a few bans so you’ll need to refresh my memory
So you get banned for being a racist puke a lot do you?
Not that I’m aware of, can you post a link to back up what you’re saying or are you just assuming?
So you forgot the last time you were banned from here, you know, the long one?
So thats a no then, you can’t post what should be a reasonably simple to find link
“Perhaps Lynn could appoint Clare Curran overlord and chief moderator of this site.”
NO. She’s otherwise occupied, doing a wee job for me.
Lol, Martyn Bradbury’s a troll…
Could we at least sacrifice one troll? We could do it spectacularly, all pile on, beat the stuffing out of them and block their responses? That’d be a larf! Pete George already thinks we do that to him whenever he visits, poor luv. We could (metaphorically) barbecue James or give Pucky a good rogueing 🙂
https://giphy.com/gifs/creepy-beard-zach-galifianakis-V6R9thgW7fimI
RG
One a month would be a good ritual. It could be done democratically, by voting and then that one stood down for a month. The trolls would enjoy it, boasting how many times they had been stood down.
The left are in power so we attract the opposition.
It’s just business Grey.
Takes a bit to get used to after 9 years.
I could moderate but I’d be too permissive. Plus it’s too much time.
I think having the neoliberals trolls gives us the insight into the way they think and what they are up to just don’t let them get to you Ka pai
aye
Censorship, echo chamber, and propaganda – enough on the left already beat themselves with these things.
tl:dr – Greywarshark doesn’t like seeing comments by right-wingers and Something Must Be Done.
No I think Grey is musing about something completely different – but I won’t elaborate as I might get myself banned. Just have a look at yesterdays OM for background.
PM
It’s a waste of time trying to talk reasonably with some of you.
@greywarshark
“It would be a shame to lose the interesting minds that come here and have helped make TS the blog it is.”
and “including telling us how to run our site or what we should write. This is viewed as self-evident stupidity” (moderators comment).
Leading horses to water, and all that. We’ll see how long those interesting minds continue to visit, and whether or not they can be bothered with the dogmatic and egotistic.
And of course, if ‘they’ (them, the other) were really committed and discontented, they’d set up their own blog apparently.
Easier sometimes to just peruse and watch what happens.
Anyway, for the next few weeks, I’m off to places in the third world where community, compassion, integrity, etc., (values ‘the left’ once prided itself on) still exist and are necessary for survival.
Yes OwT here I and you are thinking of survival of humanity and some graciousness, and many that come here one would think, to discuss that, don’t give a tinker’s curse about it. I’ve been coming here for years and observing and thinking and writing and I don’t know if there has been the enlightenment of all and esprit de corps that I expected after all that time – seems to degenerate all the time into just a place for verbal scrapping and point scoring. Bit disappointing really.
weka
You could try not batting back any suggestions for alteration of your approach, and actually treat the commenters as fellow workers in a thinking community, not like students that need behaviour conditioning. It seems that you are an academic or in the teaching profession or have adopted didactic behaviour. There is a group of moderators who have for years adopted a general attitude to the blog which has had a robust flexibility, that seems to be reduced. All commenters are treated the same, with little respect for long-term commenters who have tried to add to the value of the blog.
Not everyone can manage moderation, and that seems to create a division.
I am thinking that there should be a level below the moderators made up of commenters who like to act responsibly.
Anyway I have written enough now, something on OM 18/1 I think and a couple today. I seem to just strike anger in you. How dare I put my ideas forward and want them heard and considered? So I am bowing out, I am not wanted and just get my serious and sensible suggestions to develop the blog further ridiculed by others so i won’t bother further.
[“How dare I put my ideas forward and want them heard and considered?”
It’s all about the *how. There is a difference between sharing ideas and telling Authors/Admin what to do. I know this because I commented on moderation for years as a commenter, in some pretty tense situations, and was never moderated. I paid a lot of attention to the moderators, including very hard out moderators like Lynn. I listened to what they said, and why they did what they did, so that I could understand how it worked here.
And yes, given the shit that’s gone down on this site in the past few years, and what that has cost people, including losing Authors, I don’t actually rate your views on moderation when they are presented in such ignorant ways. You still don’t get it and show no interest in listening to people who have a great deal more experience and knowledge about moderation here than you do.
And yes, I am fucked off now. Because after over a day of trying to evenhandedly explain some things here about moderation I’m still having to deal with people who think it’s all about them. Fellow workers? FFS, when I see commenters taking responsibility and doing some of the mahi around here to help the site instead of treating TS as some kind of personal sand pit where their needs are paramount, I’m sure that things will be more equitable. But as it stands the more work you create for moderators the more likely they are to crack down harder. Lynn set the tone for that and it predates myself and Bill by years.
I actually think you have some good ideas, but your framing and timing is just way way off. Take some time out, because now I am shutting this down. There is no problem with talking about moderation, but you don’t get to tell Authors what to do or how to run the site. If you can’t figure out the difference, then ask when you get back and I’ll explain it. But this has run long enough. 1 week ban. If you have a problem with that, try emailing Lynn and he can explain to you why moderation in the end is precisely about behaviour modification. – weka]
and fwiw, I’m really open to discussing my moderation style. I”m just waiting for someone who knows how to do that constructively and with respect for the Authors here. Not all moderators are willing to do that.
Hang in there Grey I’ll stick a post up about The Standard itself shortly.
Can you bring back TRP as well?
and i’ll just pluck perpetual goodness out of my capacious ass.
go get us a punchy author or two Union :-}
I’d do it meself, but as you know, authors getting banned and demoted aint a good look. It wouldn’t take long. lol.
And besides that, my spealing is shote.
‘n oath
Did you just call me an effin oaf? lol
Comment o’ the day, Ucg!
Technically, I can start writing again any time (I still have an author log in) and I’m actively considering it because the TS community means a lot to me and the blog itself clearly needs a shot in the arm.
However, the problem remains that at least two of my fellow authors (with mod powers) appear to find working class voices hard to handle. Ironic given that this blog started out intending to be a voice for the labour movement and is now appears to be almost exclusively written and moderated by folk whose exposure to workers is limited to ordering flat whites from them.
The real sadness of the situation is that when CV and I were booted out in late 2016, losing two male authors was supposed to usher in a new dawn of women writers. TS was suddenly going to become a ‘safe space’ for women and a thousand flowers would bloom. Predictably*, that never happened, and what has happened is that other writers, male and female, have drifted off.
I note TS is losing some terrific commenters too. When we piss off the likes of Marty Mars, the site drifts ever closer to being a blandly bourgeois bore fest.
On the upside, we have some new talent writing. Advantage continues to delight and I can’t begin to tell you what a terrific chap Enzo is, both as a writer and an activist. Fingers crossed there are more engaging writers to come.
So, I’m going to have a hard think this weekend about resuming writing here. Like everyone, I have other calls on my time and energy, however, I think TS is worth the effort.
*I wrote a post, ‘Broken’, which touched on what I saw as the difficulties for women participating on blogs. I still think the post is relevant.
[By the general agreement of the Authors in the back end last year, TRP’s login permissions are set at Contributor not Author. This means he can’t publish posts here. He can submit posts, but they will have to be approved by an Author with Editor level permissions. The dropping of his permissions to Contributor happen some time after he left the site, and it was prompted by him maligning TS off site (dropping permissions also meant he could no longer access the back end discussions but he hadn’t been involved in those for some time anyway).
There are so many mistruths in what he just wrote. I’m not even going to begin to untangle that, because we’ve been here too many times before. Given the last time he was banned as a commenter was for telling lies about an author, it’s really hard to see how he could return as an Author now and not have the same old shit go down again.
As far as I know there are only two Authors that have had their permissions dropped at TS – CV and TRP. TPR’s came after several years and multiple rounds of conflict that cause problems for the community, site, and authors. He is also one of the reasons why it is so hard to get women to write here.
Had he been willing to work *with other authors here, he would know that quite a lot has been done in the background on the women writers project. I will note that he had on a number of occasions worked against women and what we are wanting to have happen here. I think this comment demonstrates that he is still largely incapable of being here without causing problems.
I’m sure there will be discussion about this in the back end but I am going ban him now from commenting here, because of the lying and because of the potential to create the same sets of problems he was responsible for before. I also want the women’s project to largely have a free run once it gets into the public.
12 month ban from commenting – weka]
Second comment of the day, TRP lol
I reckon this site needs you now more than ever.
Hope your hard think works out for us mortals at the standard.
Off to read that blog now. Always a pleasure, never a chore. 🙂
Cheers, and thanks for the encouragement!
No worries, mate. I don’t always agree with you, but I do respect your integrity and latent honesty.
I’ve never had to worry about home town modding on your posts.
Now look what you did.
The problem was your moderating … and you and CV had terrible fights …
And rightly so, the guy was a fucking shill.
There was much more to it than that Micky. But I’m fed up of reading stuff that’s just people throwing lit matches and petrol. So….end.
[given the abuse I’ve just read in the back end in your comments sitting in moderation, I’m not even going to look at this further. 6 month ban – weka]
[further escalating and misogynistic abuse has led to a permanent ban. – weka]
I’m dropping your comments into Moderation until I have a chance to look at them. You can probably expect a shortish ban for attacking Authors. I’ll put a moderation note up when I’ve had a better look.
So not political at all but
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11977896
So its not enough that Seth Rogen ruins probably the greatest comic series ever written (Preacher) but know he wants to take a big, steaming dump on the best superhero parody ever (although The Pro is pretty good)
Media Lens
18/1/18
“A Liberal Pillar Of The Establishment – ‘New Look’ Guardian, Old-Style Orthodoxy”
http://medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=861:a-liberal-pillar-of-the-establishment-new-look-guardian-old-style-orthodoxy&catid=56:alerts-2018&Itemid=250
Liberal “Left” media like The Guardian are probably one of the the greatest enemies of real Progressive Left change in the west..IMO.
The Guardian’s Luke Harding’s recent interview was another low by the Guardian.
“I’m a storyteller.”
Sums up the paper nowadays – sells a narrative .
And then there was this article by Olivia Solon.
How Syria’s White Helmets became victims of an online propaganda machine
Which was brilliantly dissected here.
And I think Jonathan Freedland is about the worst at the Guardian.
A pro Israel hawk, he led a non stop assault on Corbyn. He makes Josie Pagani and Phil Quinn look like mice.
“Conspiracies don’t happen….here.”
A beginner’s guide to the Guardian
Brian Fallow calls out business on their pro-National and anti-Labour government bias, clearly feeling so miserable about their businesses when unemployment, inflation, economic growth, interest rates, and bunches of other stuff are going so well for so long in New Zealand:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11977515
Is anyone else quietly worried about the commodification of space?
https://www.planetaryresources.com/
Or that private companies are adding the spy networks?
http://www.spacex.com/
It’s feeling more and more like “in the mirror darkly”, rather than “to boldly go”.
I’m worried to the extent that space travel becomes so cheap that people with overgrown lawns and hoarders become those nasty Martian neighbours from hell you see on TV… Overwhelming the criteria for gaining a seat on a shuttle is so high it weeds out the unfit. Unless some one makes a nano sky crane to space I just don’t see how it’s economically viable to get those commodities back on solid ground.
Although military commanders do accept that the first person to colonise the moon will be the most powerful man in the solar system. Because unlike earth bound natives who have to spend vast resources getting weapons systems to the moon, any one who colonises the moon can just chuck devastating rocks back at us for free basically.
So there are problems and we don’t really want nasty neighbours from hell.
Yeah, but if we can support a moon base to the point it’s sustainable, similar players can still obliterate the moonbase or its mother country. And if the moonbase is big enough to declare independence, the major nations down here will have the ability to put counter-battery fire in orbit. Even in the 1970s it would have been technically trivial to convert a rocket motor turbopump into a turbogenerator for a decent rail gun
Same fucking “game”, bigger scale.
Mr Peters will become the first Maori Priminster even only for 6 weeks this is a good thing for Maoris culture and Mana Ka pai. There is going to be a lot of howls from all the neoliberals racist bigots they can go get_____LOL. I’m happy that my Ngti Porou IWI has taken down shonky keys photo teno pai.
Now my Maori culture people know this if any dum stuff goes down at Waitangi this year I won’t be as polite as I have been with other Maori issues I have involved myself in. Ka kite ano
I think, with this cool government, that you’ll find that Waitangi this year will be the celebration it’s meant to be. Ka kite
Following Pelosi releasing the Senate version, Nunes has released the House Intelligence Committee testimony by Fusion GPS.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/954149622397710337.html
This Dave Kennedy needs to harden the f. up and get real. It’s weather, not climate, you looney true believer. Start reading here…
https://sciblogs.co.nz/griffins-gadgets/2017/07/12/climate-sceptic-end-chris-de-freitas-dies/#comment-261280
Amongst all this, take particular note of this comment and link….
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2016/09/13040/#comment-582401
If confusion still exists in his mind that there is no atmospheric “greenhouse effect” ,the penny should finally drop with this comment….
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/24/can-a-cold-object-warm-a-hot-object/#comment-2685034
[I don’t allow climate change deniers on posts I put up, especially not ones that can’t pass even a basic test of manners in a new place to a guest post.
I also note that following your first link takes me to a page that is a comment by you that has a link to another page that is a comment by you, and eventually ends up at a climate change denier site. Way below the standard of debate that is acceptable here. Claims such as you are making require actual evidence. I’m moving this to Open Mike, you might find someone who will debate with you, personally I think it’s an utter waste of time. btw, have a read of the site Policy. – weka]
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
deafening silence on legalising marijuana.
the dompost can run a front page confabulating P with cannabis all mixed up and a million fallacies of composition to write a crummy ad for the justice industry but their standards have fallen into the abyss and it is to be hope that a progressive government will do the right thing immediately.