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Open mike 19/02/2025

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, February 19th, 2025 - 22 comments
Categories: open mike - Tags:


Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

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22 comments on “Open mike 19/02/2025 ”

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  1. PsyclingLeft.Always 1
    19 February 2025 at 8:01 am

    NAct1 overhaul (keelhaul?) Science…

    The mood inside Callaghan Innovation is grim, scientists say, as they scramble to secure themselves a future in New Zealand.

    The axe has so far fallen on 63 jobs at Callaghan, which is to be disestablished in the government's overhaul of the science sector.

    And in some venomous game of snakes and leaders (Tom Scott NZ hat tip), Dr Shane cigaReti ex Health has strangely become Science Minister?!

    However the lies continue….

    Science Minister says restructure is not about job cuts

    Reti – who recently inherited the Science, Innovation and Technology portfolio from Judith Collins – said the massive restructure was focused on strengthening the science system, not on job cuts.

    But..his truth breaks through. OUR. NAct1.

    "The science sector reforms aim to ensure we focus our investment that will generate greatest value for our economy and our people."

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/542298/callaghan-innovation-shutdown-trying-to-build-a-plane-as-we-re-falling-off-a-cliff

    Who voted and or supported NAct1 ? The damage they have/are doing will take a very long time to mitigate. If ever.

    And some positive Environment action …..sign this.

    In a warming climate, it's more important than ever to protect, restore and grow our areas of forests and wetlands.

    Please tell the Department of Conservation to prioritise protection of the environment for people and the planet before submissions close on 28 February.

    https://www.forestandbird.org.nz/petitions/keep-our-conservation-land-protected

    • Kay 1.1
      19 February 2025 at 8:20 am

      "Who voted and or supported NAct1 ?"

      Clearly, enough for them to form a coalition.

      Don't forget to include the way too many who chose not to vote.

      • PsyclingLeft.Always 1.1.1
        20 February 2025 at 8:47 am

        Personally? I always factor them in. As sadly, they have negatively affected my, my Family, and so many others lives. Who now have to try and survive NAct1's far reaching damage to NZ.

    • SPC 1.2
      19 February 2025 at 3:52 pm

      This is a scandalous level of self-destruction on a level that the
      Leader of the Opposition has no reasonable option but to call for the government to resign.

      While the Crown Research Institutes are set to be merged into three mega science entities – Public Research Organisations – with a fourth established to focus on "advanced technology" – they are not expected to be up and running for another 12-18 months.

      Wylie-van Eerd claimed many of the scientists losing their jobs could work in the new PROs, but the gap of at least six months before they existed was too big to bridge.

      "What none of us really expected is that there is no route from our current state of the research system… to any part of the new state of the research system.

      Of course not, this is unbelievable and it will have the government seen as the most inept in the first world.

      "The plan is to get rid of us now, and then wait a year to stand up a new Public Research Organisation, in which many of us have the appropriate skills. But that will be too late for us.

      "We'll have had to go and find something else by then, none of us can wait around for that long."

      "There could be some good things to come out of this change, but they'd have to be very good indeed to compensate for the loss of people."

      It aint that smart an approach, the aggregate approach is just a cover for reducing the numbers paid by government to do research.

      Dr Lucy Stewart, spokesperson for the Save Science Coalition, said the loss of hundreds of science jobs in the public sector in the past year was contrary to the government's stated goal of using science to fuel economic growth.

      "The Science System Advisory Group report highlighted that retention of the skilled workforce in this sector was of utmost importance. So far, it is difficult to see how the government is upholding this principle when we are seeing job cuts continue even after the publication of the much-awaited report."

      The government needs to go now, they are doing too much harm

  2. Tony Veitch 2
    19 February 2025 at 3:27 pm

    Just listening to the General Debate in the House – Tanya Unkovich (NZF) speaking.

    She's a died in the wool conspiracy nutter!

    Seriously, is this the rabbit hole our society has descended into?

  3. SPC 3
    19 February 2025 at 3:59 pm

    Simon Wilson has a look at the prospects of Luxon surviving as leader if the wrong direction perception leads to the party trailing in the polls.

    https://archive.li/ufzcc

    My simple summation – this is the worst government in our history.

    If they get a second term, they'll get their way on the Treaty – simply because by 2040 we'll become part of Oz (to remain part of the first world), because their actions will result in the nation having no viable future on its own.

  4. SPC 4
    19 February 2025 at 4:11 pm

    A 0.5% OCR fall.

    Such is really an expression of contempt from the RBG to the current government and our future under it.

    • SPC 4.1
      19 February 2025 at 4:53 pm

      Seymour will try to connect a falling OCR to government spending cuts. This because of its ideology of small government and inadequate public services for those it regards as people that do not count (children not in zone or private schools, without private health insurance, or registration with a GP/primary health care or income insurance).

      Orr says, inflation is falling as predicted years ago (before the change in government), thus he can cut the OCR again.

      The Labour Party says the OCR cut is good news for borrowers, but also a symptom of rising unemployment and an economy in recession

      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/542372/reserve-bank-cuts-ocr-by-50-basis-points-to-3-point-75-percent

      Yeah in a well run country it would have been only 0.25% this time.

      Orr knows that the lower OCR than in Oz and the USA will reduce the dollar – he is hoping to boost exporter incomes, but imported inflation will go up as a consequence (and the domestic component – rates, insurance and power and rents are still going up).

      It is 3.75 (and supposedly to go towards 3.0) USA 4.5 (may not go down much for a while) Oz 4.1.

      Another factor is that any dollar decline makes our assets cheap(er) for foreign investors (new visa) looking to buy in when the OIO rules are loosened.

      https://www.stuff.co.nz/money/360584750/how-our-ocr-compares-other-countries

  5. SPC 5
    19 February 2025 at 4:26 pm

    It's sort of official, Trump leads the most untrustworthy nation on earth. No lie is too big for the nation which no longer has any honour on the world stage.

    • joe90 6.1
      19 February 2025 at 6:39 pm

      There's that echo, again.

      /

      Ninety-two years ago this month, on Monday morning, January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the 15th chancellor of the Weimar Republic. In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler set about destroying a constitutional republic through constitutional means. What follows is a step-by-step account of how Hitler systematically disabled and then dismantled his country’s democratic structures and processes in less than two months’ time—specifically, one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes. The minutes, as we will see, mattered.

      […]

      Hitler opened the meeting by boasting that millions of Germans had welcomed his chancellorship with “jubilation,” then outlined his plans for expunging key government officials and filling their positions with loyalists. At this point he turned to his main agenda item: the empowering law that, he argued, would give him the time (four years, according to the stipulations laid out in the draft of the law) and the authority necessary to make good on his campaign promises to revive the economy, reduce unemployment, increase military spending, withdraw from international treaty obligations, purge the country of foreigners he claimed were “poisoning” the blood of the nation, and exact revenge on political opponents. “Heads will roll in the sand,” Hitler had vowed at one rally.

      https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-germany-constitution-authoritarianism/681233/

      https://archive.li/SNoXJ

    • SPC 6.2
      19 February 2025 at 9:14 pm

      And the Molotov von Ribbentrop Pact was just a reprise of the Prussia, Austria and Russia carve up of Poland.